Robbie Robertson on How Dylan and The Band Got Together

 

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Jazz and Jack Kerouac (with Steve Allen)

The pioneering broadcast journalist Fred W. Friendly once said, “Television makes so much at its worst, that it can’t afford to do its best.*” Steve Allen, one of the television pioneers working in front of the camera was an exception to Mr. Friendly’s observation, as we see in this television interview he did with Jack Kerouac. 

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* Quoted by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac, October 30, 2019.



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The Singing Bowl by Malcolm Guite

 

 

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"Let Love" by Rumi (translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

Haleh Liza Gafori is a rare gift for the English-speaking world interested in the poetry of Rumi. She is a poet of Persian descent who speaks Farsi. Born in New York City to Iranian parents, she grew up hearing Persian poetry recited and has been translating various Persian poets for a decade. 

She is a poet who is eminently qualified to convey Rumi's work to us. Her 2022 publication, Gold, is a translation of some of Rumi's ecstatic poetry. Here she offers her English translation and then sings Rumi's verse in the original Farsi. 

  

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Mother and Son Poet Laureates'

Becoming a poet laureate is a coveted role and rare honor. Rarer still is having two laureates in the same family. PBS's Jeffrey Brown traveled to Philadelphia to meet with a poetic family and hear how a mother-son duo is working to bring poetry to a wider public. It’s part of the PBS arts and culture series, "CANVAS."

To see the six and a half minute episode go to the link below:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mother-and-son-who-are-both-poet-laureates-work-to-inspire-others

John Trudell: Crazy Horse

The late John Trudell, Native American poet offers poetic wisdom from the Lakota shaman, Crazy Horse

 

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Poetry Unites Alabama

 

 

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Monday Music: In the Summertime (Bob Dylan)

A Shot of Love, ironically is an album that is usually not recognized and one of Dylan's best, yet it has some of his most memorable recordings: "Every Grain of Sand," "Lenny Bruce,"The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar," and "In the Summertime."

 

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Monday Music: Angel from Montgomery (John Prine and Bonnie Raitt)

 

 

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Saturday Haiku: Grand Tetons

green spruce trees gracing
a golden mountain meadow
beneath snowy peaks

 

_______________________________

Image: Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming

Artist: Tony Bennett (Antony Benedetto)*

*The legendary Tony Bennett retired from performing at the age of 95. His career spanned eight decades. Famous for his singing career, he also had a passion for painting. Today's post is part of a series of haiku inspired by Mr. Bennett's artwork (when he paints, he uses his given name, Antony Benedetto).

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Monday Music: Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

Burt Bacharach died last week at the age of 94. Growing up and coming of age, we boomers heard his music everywhere we turned: "Close To You" sung by The Carpenters, "Walk On By," sung by Dionne Warwick, and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," sung by just about everybody. There was "The Look of Love" (Dusty Springfield), "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head" (B.J. Thomas), and "Magic Moments" (Perry Como -- we heard that one on TV commercials). 

The prolific songwriter collaborated with Carole Bayer Sager and Christopher Cross on the theme for the movie Arthur. He picked up one of many awards for that one. I could do a year's worth of Monday Music posts just on Burt Bacharach's music, but I'll settle with "Arthur's Theme" for today because of the great delight I took in the song and the movie back in the day.

 

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Saturday Haiku: Collapse

 

sometimes the earth shakes
disagreements forgotten
in the search for life 

___________________

Photo from The Wall Street Journal via Mint: "Civilians look for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras, close to the quake's epicentre, the day after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country's southeast, on February 7, 2023." (Photo: AFP)

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Monday Music: Kyie (Emmylou Harris with John Paul White)

 From the YouTube site:

Performed by Emmylou Harris with John Paul White. Produced by Phil Madeira. Written by Emmylou Harris & Phil Madeira. From "Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us, Volume II" on Mercyland Records, LLC.

 

Bless the Mothers and the Daughters

The Fathers and the Sons

Whose Journey’s now ended

Whose Journey’s just begun

The helpless and the holy

Who do and don’t believe

Bless us in Thy mercy

Where all come to grieve

Kýrie eléision

Bless the found and the forsaken

The fearful and the bold

The children of the ages

The broken in the hall

The callous and the caring

The weary to the bone

Bless us in Thy mercy

As we walk this world alone

Kýrie eléision

For we all are bound together

In our sorrow and despair

Bless us in Thy mercy

O, hear our humble prayer

Kýrie eléision

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Saturday Haiku: Winter Storm

My haiku post from 9 years ago. after a paralyzing storm in Birmingham, Alabama. I have friends in Texas who experienced a similar winter storm this past week. - CK
 

  On a winter’s day

       nature casts her icy net,

       brings a fierce sabbath.

                                       

_____________________

Photo: Birmingham News photo, "when a snowstorm brought travel to a halt."
Credit: Joe Songer at http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2014/01/birmingham_winter_storm_qa_for.html



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Open Wounds and Soul Distress – Again

      Tyre Nichols, 29, died in a Memphis hospital on Jan. 10, three days after he was
      beaten by officers during a traffic stop.

Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images

It is an all too familiar refrain in the social fabric of America that brings to light the senseless brutal killings of young Black men on our city streets. When events unravel such as we witnessed last week in Memphis, before that in Minneapolis, before that in Ferguson, and before that in countless other tragedies, some of us wish that such tragic and sorrowful events were not our present reality. 

His Name was Tyre Nichols

According to an NPR report,

Nichols, a father of a 4-year-old son, was known to his family as an avid skateboarder and nature photographer from Sacramento, Calif., according to The Associated Press. He arrived in Memphis just before the pandemic, and later started a job with FedEx, a major employer there. Nichols had been with the company for about nine months before his death, The New York Times reported.

"He was one of those people who made everyone around them happy," Nichols' step-grandmother Lucille Washington said at a memorial service.

Many More Names

In 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, his name was Michael. In 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, his name was George. Last week in In Memphis Tennessee, his name was Tyre. In Mississippi in 1955 his name was Emmet. In Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel, The Invisible Man, his name was Clifton. Ellison's novel illustrated the fate that too many Black men face in this country.

In 2014 with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, I wrote an essay that I posted on this blog. I lamented the military-styled police forces that had come about in so many cities. “The move toward the military outfitting of local police,” I said then, “came after 9/11 with certain provisions of the Homeland Security Act. In essence, out of fear we sold our freedom and headed toward a police state. Is it too late now to turn back? I hope not.”

The crux of the unrest, however, in Ferguson then and across America today goes deeper than oversized military-styled police responses. It runs through our history as a wound that we have not been able to heal thus far. I cannot pretend to offer any solutions. I cannot even pretend to claim understanding. I have been trying, however, to listen. The only recommendation I can offer is that we stop and listen.

His Name was Clifton 

I mentioned in that 2014 post that I had recently read Ralph Ellison’s, The Invisible Man. Near the end of that existential 1952 novel there was a passage that I was particularly struck by. The passage is the protagonist's eulogy for a fellow member of “The Brotherhood” who was shot in the street by a policeman:

“...His name was Clifton and they shot him, and I was there to see him fall. So I know it as I know it.

 "Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He tell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and birds and trees, or your face if you'd looked into its dulling mirror -- and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all.They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after awhile, became dull then dusty, then dried. That's the story and that's how it ended. It's an old story and there's been too much blood to excite you. Besides, it's only important when it fills the veins of a living man. Aren't you tired of such stories? Aren't you sick of the blood? Then why listen, why don't you go? It's hot out here. There's the odor of embalming fluid. The beer is cold in the taverns, the saxophones will be mellow at the Savoy; plenty good-laughing-lies will be told in the barber shops and beauty parlors; and there'll be sermons in two hundred churches in the cool of the evening, and plenty of laughs at the movies. Go listen to 'Amos and Andy' and forget it.Here you have only the same old story. There's not even a young wife up here in red to mourn him. There's nothing here to pity, no one to break down and shout. Nothing to give you that good old frightened feeling. The story's too short and too simple. His name was Clifton, Tod Clifton, he was unarmed and his death was as senseless as his life was futile. He had struggled for Brotherhood on a hundred street corners and he though it would make him more human, but he died like any dog in a road.

"All right, all right," I called out, feeling desperate. It wasn't the way I wanted it to go, it wasn't political. Brother Jack probably wouldn't approve of it at all, but I had to keep going as I could go.

"Listen to me standing up on this so-called mountain!" I shouted. "Let me tell it as it truly was! His name was Tod Clifton and he was full of illusions. He thought he was a man when he was only Tod Clifton. He was shot for a simple mistake of judgment and he bled and his blood dried and shortly the crowd trampled out the stains. It was a normal mistake of which many are guilty: He thought he was a man and that men were not meant to be pushed around. But it was hot downtown and he forgot his history, he forgot the time and the place. He lost his hold on reality. There was a cop and a waiting audience but he was Tod Clifton and cops are everywhere. The cop? What about him? He was a cop. A good citizen. But this cop had an itching finger and an eager ear for a word that rhymed with 'trigger,' and when Clifton fell he had found it. The Police Special spoke its lines and the rhyme was completed.Just look around you. Look at what he made, look inside you and feel his awful power. It was perfectly natural. The blood ran like blood in a comic-book killing, on a comic-book street in a comic-book town on a comic-book day in a comic-book world.

"Tod Clifton's one with the ages. But what's that to do with you in this heat under this veiled sun? Now he's part of history, and he has received his true freedom. Didn't they scribble his name on a standardized pad?His Race: colored! Religion: unknown, probably born Baptist. Place of birth: U.S.Some southern town. Next of kin: unknown. Address: unknown. Occupation: unemployed.Cause of death (be specific): resisting reality in the form of a .38 caliber revolver in the hands of the arresting officer, on Forty-second between the library and the subway in the heat of the afternoon, of gunshot wounds received from three bullets, fired at three paces, one bullet entering the right ventricle of the heart, and lodging there, the other severing the spinal ganglia traveling downward to lodge in the pelvis,the other breaking through the back and traveling God knows where.

"Such was the short bitter life of Brother Tod Clifton.Now he's in this box with the bolts tightened down. He's in the box and we're in there with him, and when I've told you this you can go. It's dark in this box and it's crowded. It has a cracked ceiling and a clogged-up toilet in the hall. It has rats and roaches, and it's far, far too expensive a dwelling.The air is bad and it'll be cold this winter. Tod Clifton is crowded and he needs the room.

'Tell them to get out of the box,' that's what he would say if you could hear him. 'Tell them to get out of the box and go teach the cops to forget that rhyme. Tell them to teach them that when they call you nigger to make a rhyme with trigger it makes the gun backfire.'

"So there you have it. In a few hours Tod Clifton will be cold bones in the ground. And don't be fooled, for these bones shall not rise again. You and I will still be in the box. I don't know if Tod Clifton had a soul. I only know the ache that I feel in my heart, my sense of loss. I don't know if you have a soul. I only know you are men of flesh and blood; and that blood will spill and flesh grow cold. I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers. And I know too how we are labeled. So in the name of Brother Clifton beware of the triggers;go home, keep cool, stay safe away from the sun. Forget him. When he was alive he was our hope, but why worry over a hope that's dead? So there's only one thing left to tell and I've already told it. His name was Tod Clifton, he believed in Brotherhood, he aroused our hopes and he died."

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Monday Music: René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War (Paul Simon)

Last year I posted a wonderful live version of this Paul Simon tune. Here is the original studio recording accompanied by artwork by René Magritte and including the photo that served as a prompt for Paul Simon to write the song.

 

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Saturday Haiku: Winter Blue Sky

 bare oak branches sway
under a blue winter sky
remnants of a nest

__________________________

Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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"Let Love" (Rumi)

I've been reading Gold, a Rumi translation by Haleh Liza Gafori, and I am quite excited by this new find.

Haleh Liza Gafori is a rare gift for the English-speaking world interested in the poetry of Rumi. She is a poet of Persian descent who speaks Farsi. Born in New York City to Iranian parents, she grew up hearing Persian poetry recited and has been translating various Persian poets for a decade. 

She is a poet who is eminently qualified to convey Rumi's work to us. Her 2022 publication, Gold, is a translation of some of Rumi's ecstatic poetry. Here she offers her English translation and then sings Rumi's verse in the original Farsi. 

  

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Monday Music: Remembering David Crosby

When you see the southern cross for the first time, you know you have crossed into another realm. When you hear David Crosby's harmonies, you know he can transport you to another musical realm.  We lost David Crosby last week. He was 81 years old.

Listen to Jason Isbell's introduction to "Ohio", and you'll see why we remember. RIP David Crosby.

 

David Crosby had been one of the founding members of The Byrds. Here they are on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965 singing their hit, "Turn, Turn, Turn" (written by Pete Seeger).

 

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Saturday Haiku: January Rain

 

window tightly closed
to the January rains
a robin appears

_____________________

Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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War Dogs

 

Rescuers work to free victims from the rubble. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)

“As the city neared its midnight curfew Saturday, dogs wearing specialized shoes to protect them from injuries were scaling the mound of debris, sniffing for survivors.” (“When Russia bombs a building full of people, this is the aftermath,” by Siobhán O'Grady and Anastacia Galouchka, The Washington Post, January14, 2023)

 

War Dogs

“Man’s best friend” can be trained

to hunt, to guide, to guard,

to keep watch in the night.

There are service dogs and therapy dogs –

all taking their place to enhance the world

where humanity’s footsteps fall.

 

War dogs are trained as scouts,

sentries and messengers.

Some are mercy dogs

who find the survivors.

 

With painful foresight

in times of peace and prosperity,

mercy dogs are prepared for

human devastation.

They are fitted with shoes

to protect them in their search

as they traverse the smoking rubble

and shards

of respectable neighborhoods

devastated by war.

 

In another time,

they would have sniffed out

wounded soldiers.

Today they search

for grandmothers and children.

They seek surviving citizens

who wanted nothing more

than to arise another day

to work an ordinary job,

to hold their children in the evening,

to kiss their loved ones

and joke with their friends.

 

A traumatic day in Ukraine;

war dogs make their way.

They recognize, like Hindu saints,

the sacred light of every person,

looking for those who may have a chance,

finding people who still have breath,

helping humanity piece together what remains.

 

 

                                                  ~ Charles Kinnaird

 

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Music Of A Movement: I've Been Buked and I've Been Scorned/We Shall Overcome

 Here are two videos of songs from the Civil Rights Movement that were among those shared by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner in "Music of a Movement."

 

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Saturday Haiku: Wintertime

 the still of winter
brings all the town together
to keep life kindled

___________________

Image: Winter Landscape with Skaters (1608) at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Artist: Hendrick Avercamp
Medium: Oil on oak 

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The Life of Poetry

The poet often taps into what Jung called our collective unconscious, giving voice to our humanity and meaning to our struggles.  A good poem, therefore, tells us something we already know. When we read it or hear it we say, “Ah, yes.” An exceptional poem tells us something we are on the verge of knowing. When we read it or hear it, we say, “Oh my!”                                                     
                                                                                                          ~ Charles Kinnaird

Consider Poems for Hungry Minds, available at Amazon. Perhaps some of the poems will make you say, “Ah, yes.” Maybe you will say, “Oh my!”

From the Preface:

This anthology gathers the voices, wisdom, community, fellowship, and longing for a better world through awareness, deep examination, and the joy of poetry. The HIGHLAND AVENUE POETS are a long-standing community of southern poets meeting monthly to workshop, edit and collectively refine their work.

Poetry slows the urgent world and grants a focus on life within it. The discipline practiced by these authors has occasioned a kind of communal joy - poems that reflect a community of compassion for the world.

You are invited within.

*    *    *

To take a peek at the first pages, check out the Amazon site here. 

Books may also be purchased at Barnes and Noble here.

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Monday Music: Old Man (Bluegrass cover)

 The Travelin' McCourys offer a fine bluegrass rendition of Neil Young's "Old Man."

 

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Saturday Haiku: Avian Shadows

Today's haiku was written by guest poet and journalist, Tom Gordon, who also supplied the photo. Tom has other poems in the new anthology, Poems for Hungry Minds.

 even when shadows
swathe its color, a bluebird
brings cheer to my world

_______________

Photo and haiku by Tom Gordon

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A Poem for Epiphany

                                BC: AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

                                       ~ U.A. Fanthorpe 

 

Ursula Askham Fanthorpe (1929–2009) graduated from Oxford University, after which she taught at Cheltenham Ladies' College for sixteen years. She later worked as a clerk and receptionist at a psychiatric hospital. In 1994, she was the first woman to be nominated to the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Fanthorpe published some twenty books of poetry, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

(Re-posted from Dan Clendenin’s blog Journey with Jesus)

Monday Music: A Child Is Born (Tony Bennett and Bill Evans)

 I'm listening to the legendary Tony Bennett with the remarkable Bill Evans 
at the piano and looking ahead to the Feast of the Epiphany.

 

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