review of two books on George Oppen--

"For this reason, as Nicholls demonstrates, Oppen's poems rarely contain philosophical arguments, just as they rarely contain political arguments. The wonder of existence is registered not only in what Oppen's poems say--

In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down--
That they are there!

--but in their manner of saying: rather than providing the evidence of completed thought, the poems disclose the process of thinking as it happens. Nicholls is more interested in Oppen as a thinker than as a poet, but he allows Oppen to be everything that he was, refusing--like Oppen himself--to ask poetry to shoulder responsibilities it cannot bear..."

EPC/George Oppen Home Page

nice short piece on Gram Parsons & Frank Sanford--

"But it makes me feel bitter
Each time it begins
Calling me home, hickory wind..."

via

from Bolano's "Nazi Literature in the Americas"--The Fabulous Schiaffino Boys--

"He began to write poetry at the age of thirteen. At sixteen, while his elder brother was making his name with "The Path to Glory", he produced fifty mimeographed copies of his first book, at his own expense and risk. It was a series of thirty epigrams entitled "Anthology of the Best Argentine Jokes"; over one weekend he personally sold all the copies to members of the Boca gangs. In April 1973, employing the same editorial strategy, he published his story "The Invasion of Chile", an exercise in black humor (some passages resemble a splatter movie script) about a hypothetical war between the two republics. In December of the same year he published the manifesto "We’re Not Going to Take It", in which he attacked the league’s umpires, whom he accused of bias, lack of physical fitness, and, in some cases, drug use..."

poems by Lissa Wolsak (here "marqueed" by Jack Kimball) & Robert Mittenthal (above) at The Kootenay School of Writing, this Saturday at Spartacus Books 319 E. Hastings...

local trees

Killer of Sheep turned out to be as good as its reputation...

farewell Suzanne Pleshette

addendum to Payday/Naked Prey note below: Cornel Wilde directed Torn in the graphic gritty, Fulleresque Beach Red in 1967, based on a long narrative poem by Peter Bowman, published just after the war, which I have somewhere. The film shows up on TCM.

local trees