I’m dreaming of
the fluffy white pillows
& white down-filled quilt
of my Polish grandparents' bed
on Forester St. off Salem Common
where as a child I slept away
Sunday afternoons after WW2.
(9 SEP 2011, Santa Clara CA)v2
Friday, September 9, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
HUGH FOX
HUGH FOX
(1932-2011)
From 1968, the more
I got to know Hugh,
the more he perplexed:
transvestitism as Connie,
conversion to Judaism,
really only amounted to
ordinary provocations.
Q: What next? I wondered.
A: Death by cancer.
(05 SEP 11, Santa Clara CA)5
Sunday, September 4, 2011
BIZ.ARROW WORLD
In today's Biz.arrow World
companies pay top CEOs
companies pay top CEOs
to hire bottom workers
who can't buy what
they make; buying less,
economies plunge, CEOs
claiming to be unaware
that Henry Ford sold
Fords to his workers.
(04 SEP 11, Santa Clara CA)v10
Saturday, September 3, 2011
My father never taught me how to garden
My father went to Essex Agricultural Institute ('The Aggie') in Danvers MA, but hardly gardened in West Lynn where I grew up (7-21.) He never taught me to garden. Maybe it was because we rented.
But taking me along with him to the cemetary on Mother's Day, he would stop at a florist to buy a flat of hot-house pansies, his mother's favorite annual, to place on the family plot.
After retiring early (62.5) from the Lynn GE River Works, he bought a small house a block from where I'd grown up & gardened in the back yard. I'd moved away by then, & when I visited again, he showed me some Egyptian walking onions with tiny bulbs at the tip of scallion-like stalks.
He still never taught me how to garden, keeping that to himself. He was strangely secretive.
.
But taking me along with him to the cemetary on Mother's Day, he would stop at a florist to buy a flat of hot-house pansies, his mother's favorite annual, to place on the family plot.
After retiring early (62.5) from the Lynn GE River Works, he bought a small house a block from where I'd grown up & gardened in the back yard. I'd moved away by then, & when I visited again, he showed me some Egyptian walking onions with tiny bulbs at the tip of scallion-like stalks.
He still never taught me how to garden, keeping that to himself. He was strangely secretive.
.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Poets, Verging
As a young poet (25) in 1967 I verged at Wind in the Timothy, an 'upcountry' poetry festival held across the road from the old Shaker colony in Canterbury NH. It was mostly anti-war.
I came along with my poetic mentor, Tom Sheehan (Boston College '56) , a pro-war poet who had joined me (Boston College '63) in producing Earthwork/Redoubt a xeroxed 10-pg. pro-/anti-war poetry booklet we sold for 60c (the cost to produce it.) We read it to a mostly-poet audience; amazingly, it sold out.
Biologist Dr. Bob Chute of ME, an anti-war poet & editor we met at the festival soon began publishing both of us in his new 'small-press' mimeo quarterly, The Small Pond of literature.
44 years later, Bob & I exchange our latest poems via internet. Here's his blog: A Poet On the Verge of Science http://scientificpoet.blogspot.com/
I came along with my poetic mentor, Tom Sheehan (Boston College '56) , a pro-war poet who had joined me (Boston College '63) in producing Earthwork/Redoubt a xeroxed 10-pg. pro-/anti-war poetry booklet we sold for 60c (the cost to produce it.) We read it to a mostly-poet audience; amazingly, it sold out.
Biologist Dr. Bob Chute of ME, an anti-war poet & editor we met at the festival soon began publishing both of us in his new 'small-press' mimeo quarterly, The Small Pond of literature.
44 years later, Bob & I exchange our latest poems via internet. Here's his blog: A Poet On the Verge of Science http://scientificpoet.blogspot.com/
Holding an apple in my hand
takes me back over a half-century
to my Massachusetts childhood,
sinking my teeth into Winesaps.
(What did they taste like? I forget.)
Today, I read in the NYT online
that Gravensteins are fading from
California’s winey Sonoma County.
Where are the Winesaps of yesteryear?
Answer: Growing in Virginia.
(01 SEP 11, Santa Clara CA)v6
Thursday, September 1, 2011
HAUF & HALF
It’s one thing to be half-something, but it’s quite another for them to be dissimilar halves.
In my case it’s Scottish (my dad was born in Glasgow, Scotland ) & Polish (my mother was born in the Salem MA Polish-speaking community.) He was allegedly monolingual; she was perfectly bi-lingual
Anyone familiar with Scotland knows that most Scots speak a dialect of English, but also 'The Scots' with its distinctly Scottish vocabulary.
When I was living in Fife, Scotland, the father of my poet-friend Tom Hubbard suddenly turned to me and said “D’ye ken the braid Scots?” (Do you understand the broad Scottish dialect?) I carefully answered in Boston-American: “I ought to, my dad was born in Glasgow.” Thereafter, he comfortably spoke broad-Scots when I was around.All my life I’ve switched (mentally & vocally) between multiple linguistic frequencies: Belarusian Polish, Glasgow Scottish, New England American & std. American English. In prep-school & undergraduate college I also learned Latin, French, & Russian. All of them have filtered what I say or hear.
I feel it makes me not quite what I appear to be. Indian- & Asian-Americans must feel this even more acutely.
But who ever bothers to ask them? How to begin? Q: “What’s it like to live with embedded linguistic filters?”
Would they be startled to know that anybody else knows?
(01 SEP 11, Santa Clara CA)v2
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