Thursday, December 31, 2009

Wednesday, December 30, 2009



a happy, safe & healthy new year readers! see you in a new & better decade!










local trees & c.

review of a new book on Monk
Many remember the six-month residency as a turning point when Coltrane became a legend. Sonny Rollins, whose star rose before Coltrane's, also remembered Monk as an incomparable teacher. Each of them attempted to play beyond the boundaries of what their instruments were made to do. They tried to re-create Monk's musical sense on an instrument that could only play one note at a time. Nevertheless, they honked where Monk banged, countering his cascades and circuitous phrases with their own runs, with their own personalities, in their own complementary vocabulary. They played with such speed, dexterity and obsession that each set a bar for the tenor saxophone that has still not been superseded half a century later. The grunting seer with the beret at the keys lit the match...



Anthony Lane on The Legacy of Grace Kelly

A paper napkin, a Christmas-tree decoration, a Schaefer beer mat, a bookmark with lines from Emily Dickinson, a red matchbook, a ticket for a charity golf match, and the wrapper from a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint, its cheerful greenness still bright. Joseph Cornell would have taken one look and wept...




Sunday, December 27, 2009










A Sampler

in memoriam Jonathan Williams

Skutz Falls on
Bruckner's 4th
non-fog salvia's
anecdote the antidote.

Clarence Bend
broke then re-broke the ice-ends
confectioner's toffee holes
patched the interior.

Gravel spot-welds
baked the basket's granite
into flakes of fondant
iced with dust.

Fornicating leaves
of each five one's upward
the vestige of Fielding Road
not excepted.

Mythago Wood
screech of harrier
screech of owl
permission to dig.

Sump path empties
into high river death splash
paint can pukes
it's last bridge tag.

Landfill campers stumble
four steps from the fence
gullets full of debt
mouths full of pebbles.

Enormously reduced
by reverse mapping
muskeg description
into pamphlet's gutter.