peace & love to you beautiful courageous woman - you are sui generis

dance the night & day away

one of my favorite poets is nathan whiting.  whiting has published in the small presses for several decades.  he used to run extreme marathons.  runs that would be a 100 miles or more.  he said he composed his poems while running.  but later in life whiting turned to dance.  he became a dancer.  a few years ago, i found this video of nathan dancing in a piece by choreographer stephanie miracle.  i've watched it numerous times.  it gives me great pleasure.  one of the piece's attributes is its title 'Yes, of Course' which to my ear is an affirmation.  here it is.  i hope you dig it as much as me.  

product of a life in poetry

i was doing my weekly household chores this morning hoping to get them done before the heat really set in & man!  is it really fucking warm!!  i'm telling you could fry an egg on the sidewalk [not really, but ya know what i mean?!] at any rate, i found this note from robert hansen in the proof of an anthology of haiku i co-edited with my brother jonathan hayes & with all that is going on in the world & in our own lives & thinking how short our time on this earth is i mean holy fuck! i am an oldster now & i wonder how the spacetime between meeting robert at his old store The Book Collector when we were both in our early 30s to right now got folded so freaking fast

so here's to you robert, i miss you brother

fantastic poem by a wonderful poet!

armchair travelling: stevens vs hemingway

i am currently watching a livestream vlogger stationed in key west.  i've been to the island once with an old girlfriend.  spent only a day there but i loved it.  key west is a magical place for me.  i remember having a beer at famed Sloppy Joe's Bar where ernest hemingway used to water his horses.

so again, it is Hemingway Days in key west right now.  the vlogger is broadcasting from Sloppy Joe's to see how many 'papas' there are inside because Sloppy Joe's sponsors Hemingway Days.  sure enough, the bar is filled with portly greybeards in honor of the great novelist.  

now, i understand the appeal of Hemingway Days to key west.  Hemmingway is a rare bird of hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-writing american prose stylist whose charisma cannot be contained in a mere published biography.  i resisted Hem myself because i don't cotton to machismo, violence & misogyny  but when i was 25 i spent a summer reading all of Hem's major novels, short stories, essays & other bits & pieces.  dude blew me the fuck away with his spare, clean prose.  his genius for creating a cosmos using the fewest words possible.

but man, i am a poet.  early on, i fell in love with the sumptuousness of Wallace Stevens' poetry.  i don't write like Stevens, i think i write more akin to Hemmingway, matter of fact.  but Stevens' ability to be lush, metaphysical, sensual, cosmic & down to earth bewitched me.  

well now, back to present day.  i am watching this vlogger detail Hemmingway Days in key west.  all these dudes that have cultivated Hem's look.  & as far as i know there are no Stevens Days where older dudes emulate the appearance of the great poet.  after all, Stevens was just a boring insurance executive.  Stevens was a large man but i think if he passed you by on the street you would not take notice of him.

but now yet, Hem & Stevens got into a brawl in 1936 on key west.  yep, that's right.  Stevens broke his hand hitting the granite jaw of Hemmingway.  & Hemmingway managed to knock Stevens in a puddle.  Stevens was in his 50s & Hemmingway was in his 30s at the time of the fight.  you'd think something as cool as this fight would make it into Hemmingway Days.  but no.

& i'd like to see a space carved out of Hemmingway Days sponsored by Sloppy Joe's that would recreate that brawl.  which would mean that a formidable number of participants would ape the look & manner of Wallace Stevens.  that is something i could get into!

suddenness of life: michael estabrook r.i.p.

somewhere in a poem the late polish poet tadeusz rozewicz does the ordinary things required of living in our present civilization as he says, 'he dives into life'.  the more i wade in the waters of living the more i am sure that poetry, being a poet, is not a special thing or occupation.  rather these are the ordinary actions of a sentient being at a certain slant of life.  in other words, poetry is not a rarefied art.  it is a human task using human language.  the poet is the person who tunes her inner antenna to the radio station that jack spicer claimed all poetry arrives.  

which may or may not be something the poet michael estabrook would agree with.  culture for him was indeed the products made of the highest materials of human reckoning.  but he was a prolific small-press poet whose poems were often in ordinary speech about the common things of living, including the working life of the company office.  estabrook often wrote poems about his beloved wife, patricia too.  for his love & devotion to his wife, to his family, were so palpably strong as to render his poems indelible like tattoo ink on the skin.  

i regret that i never got to writing michael estrabook an email.  he was, as i said a moment ago, prolific.  he was one of the first poets i fell in love with during the early days of the internet too.  but i would google for his work & i've been forturnate to download a few of his e-books.  i recommend going to his website now, https://michaelestabrook.wpcomstaging.com/, & downloading his e-books before his website goes dark.  

michael estabrook died on may 11, 2023 from a sudden heart attack at age 74.  his obituary is here https://memorials.actonfuneralhome.com/michael-estabrook/5192834/#details.  read a recent interview here https://bookviewreview.com/2022/08/03/bookview-interview-with-author-michael-estabrook/.

i thought michael estabrook would be here forever.  like me.  like you.  again, he was prolific as hell & because he frequently published his poems i thought i'd have time enough at last to write him, finally.  but fucking life accelerates as we age.  even if our inner life tells us that we are still 25.  so if you get an email from me - i shit you not - & we never met it is because i admire your work & want to say hi before i shuffle off this mortal coil. 

at any rate, michael estabrook sure as hell dived into life & wrote it into his poetry.  he sure as shit gave me a lot of pleasure reading his poems.  i remember an early bio that said, in summary form, how he got his first tattoo, i think a heart with this wife's name, because of the influence of his 'beautiful daughter.'  that made me love him all the more.  

rest in poetry, michael

38 years ago today

july 13, 1985 i was newly turned 18.  i remember the day not so well.  i recall it was a hot summer day.  i was running with friends doing whatever it was we were doing.  & i remember Live Aid on TV.  i didn't know it was going to be happening.  but wherever i went there was a TV on & tuned in to this legendary concert.  much has been written about this show.  i don't have much to add to the general ambient noise.  i don't remember who i saw performing.  my memories are all wrapped in the many times i've watched & watched again these bands perform for almost four decades now.  such as Queen's transcendent set where Freddie Mercury held an audience of 100,000 in the palm of his hand, or the mesmerizing pyrotechnic rock&roll of U2, or the electro-pop of early Madonna in all her sexy self-confidence, or the master David Bowie, especially when he sings 'Heroes' that song on that stage almost always brings me to tears.  but man!  i love The Cars & below is one of my very favorite Cars songs.  i really dig Benjamin Orr's voice & his phrasing.  the lyrics are happy, sweet, sexy & a tinge melancholy.  & the band is jamming at the first intensity.  

oh my!

george bellows rocketship

for my brother in rhyme, jonathan hayes

the drive down to LA was smooth sailing as we guided my brother's ford fiesta [god knows how we made it in that anti-rocket!] over The Grapevine that landed us into the city at dusk when the air was purplesoftlight & airplanes from LAX encircled us like bats leaving their cave 

the next day we explored the La Brea Tar Pits & then LACMA it couldn't have been a more pleasant sunny day maybe it was saturday or sunday or monday but the museum was filled with children & parents while outside at the cafe was the coolest looking dude i had ever seen up to that point he was dressed in black button down longsleeved shirt black jeans black doc martens boots close-cropped grey hair & bushy grey beard he was the very picture of what i thought a painter should look

inside i found the punishing boxing paintings of george bellows in all their wound-up sweat bruises & suffering of the pugilists as if it were a 8MM stag loop rendered in pulpy colors that had me think of the beauty & futility of living in a modern world 

& there were students at bellows' feet with large notebooks & pencils in hand copying his work for a school assignment

my brother & i caught between the brutal world of george bellows' boxing paintings & the MTV world that we knew which was beginning to learn their shape

indiana jones & the dial of destiny [2023]

anna purchased the tickets to see this fifth installment of the indiana jones franchise a few weeks ago.  i was not keen on seeing this flick after being burned by the fourth installment indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull [2008].  the fourth entry in the beloved franchise was so awful that i have an instant gag reflex whenever i recall any of its pieces.  

but anna wanted a summer flick to enjoy.  a throwaway adventure to dig in the heat of the summer.  & sure enough today was the day to cocoon in the ambient chilled air of a local cineplex for today was, at least for the moment, the hottest day of the year.  around 108 F/42 C.  again, i wasn't keen on seeing an aged indy in another flabby swashbuckler.  

today was a good day.  anna, nick & i went to the pool where we met our very good friends b. & c.  the pool water was so warm it felt like bath water.  then, nick, anna & i drove to the mall across the street from the cineplex to have dinner & go to Barnes & Noble bookstore.  nick wanted to buy a copy of jack kerouac's novel On the Road.  that made this ol' poet's heart swell with pride & happiness.  i warned nick that kerouac is a gateway drug & soon he might be mainlining The Beats & after The Beats the road to literature is vast, wide & deep.  but i think nick is imagining a cross-country road trip with his friends & is there a better way to learn about being on the road than from one of the OG writers of wanderlust?  

even so, this was the first time in a long while all three of us were together for an evening.  pool time, dinner time, bookstore time, & movie time.  damn!  which might have some hint of influence of my enjoyment of the latest indiana jones movie.  not that this movie has a plot.  the macguffin is a piece of engineering made by archimedes that can pinpoint the longitude & latitude of a tear in spacetime so one can pass thru that tear & travel in time.  there are nazis, of course, who want this time travel device & indy being the scholarly chap that he is thinks the device belongs in a museum.

everyone is quite game in this outing.  many familiar faces, if now 40 years older than the first indy outing, including karen allen as marion & john rhys-davies reprising indy's faithful sidekick, sallah.  phoebe waller-bridges plays indiana's goddaughter, helena shaw, an adventurer in the same vein as good old henry w. jones, jr., who may or may not take up the fedora & the whip in future installments.  we are kind of given that hint when in the last third of the flick helena dresses in duds quite similar to classic adventurer dr. jones.

the director, james mangold, keep the action swift.  we hardly have time to breathe for the globetrotting set-pieces slam against each other leaving the viewer breathless.  if there is a sentiment on display in this movie it would be one of nostalgia.  not a nostalgia of lost things.  but a kind of nostalgia present in the thrill of meeting an old friend after a long absence for when you see indiana put on the fedora, slip on the leather jacket, & take grip of his whip our emotions get hit hard.  john williams' score is still thrilling, rousing up the emotions as the indiana jones we've always loved is onscreen once again.  

for this latest adventure of indiana jones is a reminder, again, of the pulsating thrills of the magic of movies.  i hadn't even touched on the convincing way the FX team de-aged harrison ford.  realistic indeed.  especially so when they de-age indy to his middle-age period.  astounding CGI.   

& it was a perfect cap to what was an extraordinarily hot day but one that was in form of our family being together.  because, in the end, as the beatles remind us, the love you take is equal to the love you make.  

peace