“Crow on the Wire” Publishing Announcement

It’s my great pleasure to announce the publication of my most recent book of poetry, Crow on the Wire. The book is currently available for purchase along with my other books at this link on the lulu.com website, & will soon be joining the rest at Amazon.com as well as Barnes & Noble online. I’m also hoping to make them available at some local booksellers here in Portland, Oregon, but I have to admit I’m much better at writing poetry than at marketing it.

Crow on the Wire has the odd distinction of being both the longest book of poems I’ve ever written—the book is 188 pages & contains 231 poems—& also being the book written in the shortest amount of time. Ullambana in Portland was published at the end of September 2016, & I began writing the first poems for Crow on the Wire just after that. The final two poems for the book were composed on February 23, 21017—a pace that was exhilarating, unprecedented, & yes, at time even alarming. To quote the book’s Preface:

These poems were composed in a rush of inspiration between the beginning of October 2016 & late February 2017. Although I’ve been seriously engaged in writing poetry for the better part of 40 years, I’ve never before enjoyed such a fruitful period; it was a blessing overall, & I’m deeply grateful. On the other hand, as Arvo Pärt has said of music, while poetry is my “friend” & “comforter”, & indeed a source of “liberation”, it can be “also a painful thorn in flesh & soul.” Nonetheless, as I hope this book suggests, we must strive to accept the gift as given.

The poems in Crow on the Wire are very loosely based on the Chinese lüshi & jueju forms, & so are all in eight & four line lengths. Some poems double or even quadruple the eight-line form. The poems don’t rhyme—as the Chinese poems do—& there’s no way to duplicate the pitch patterns or concision of the Chinese language. But in addition to the line lengths the following formal considerations have been retained: a strict syllable count; the couplet as the primary building block; & presentation based on parallelism & a series of images.

Crow on the Wire is the first in a series of three planned books that will form a poetic journal over a 12-month span, more or less from one “mid-autumn moon” to the next. Poems from the second book have been appearing on the blog for a few weeks now, & while they retain the same form, they have changed in voice & focus as the season changes. As was the case with Crow on the Wire, not all the poems from the second book will appear on the blog.

Thanks as always for your interest in my poetry & in Robert Frost’s Banjo. Both mean a great deal to me. Finally, to quote one last time from the Preface:

The crow on the wire stands poised between earth & heaven, between the ever-present now & the ever-emerging future. The crow—pervasive in this urban landscape—plumage dark as letters on a page, forthcoming, intelligent & savvy, sociable but wary, guided by its own rules of conduct: now on the wire; now on the wing.

State of the Blog 2017

Mitsumata on N. Fremont St 1/2/17

Hello friends. I decided to step aside from the torrent of poetry for a day & address you directly about where Robert Frost’s Banjo is at these days.

If you’ve been following the blog regularly, you’ve noticed a couple of things over the past few months. First, I’ve been blessed with a remarkable degree of poetic inspiration, & in the close to 40 years I’ve been seriously engaged in writing poetry, have never enjoyed such an output. I’m deeply grateful for this, but it’s strained what the blog can take—even posting two or three poems at a time, the posts now, with the exception of the occasional recent composition, such as yesterday or the last two Saturdays, are still poems from a month ago. Because the poems in essence form a journal & are very caught up in the moment, it’s making much less sense to continue the complete sequence here, & going forward I’ll only post poems that have been composed much closer to the date they appear—say within a couple of weeks at most.

This means the blog won’t have a complete record of the work, nor will there be a blog dedicated to the poems from this manuscript as there have been for The Spring Ghazals & The Days of Wine & Roses.  I also didn’t create blogs for the poetry contained in the Union Pacific chapbook & the full-length collection Ullambana in Portland. This decision is in part simply because I’d like to sell some books, but also because of the work involved in maintaining so many blogs. Possibly in the future I’ll create such dedicated blogs—we’ll see. But not now. For those who are interested, the poems that have been appearing on the blog since early October will be published within the next few months, probably by early to mid March. News of this, with relevant links, will certainly appear right here!

The Sunday Music feature has returned, & I’d really like to keep that going; & occasionally I even post photos of the week! Ideally, I’d like to get Robert Frost’s Banjo back to something more resembling “A miscellany like Grandma’s attic in Taunton, MA or Mission Street's Thrift Town in San Francisco or a Council, ID yard sale in cloudy mid April or a celestial roadmap no one folded—you take your pick”—but for now my poetry is simply too pressing to allow for the research & writing that would entail.

We—that is my translation partner, Sheila Graham-Smith & I—really want to get back to the Chinese translations too, but again, the original poetry has taken precedence for the time being. I was sad we had to drop Du Fu’s “Autumn Meditations” halfway through, but the reality is we only have so much time for writing & editing. There are draft versions of “Meditations” five through eight, as well as a few other Du Fu translations we’ll complete when we can—& eventually forge ahead with many more from the Chinese classics!

Thanks for your continued support, & a very happy 2017 to you all.

Ullambana in Portland – the Book

It’s with great pleasure that I’m announcing the publication of my fifth collection of poetry, Ullambana in Portland. The work is available for purchase through the lulu website at this link, & will also be available at Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble online within the coming weeks. We’ll also work to get some local distribution here in Portland, Oregon, at least on a limited basis. News of such things typically can be found on my public Facebook page, The Poetry of Jack Hayes.
Ullambana in Portland includes all of the work I’ve done since moving to Portland, from the 2012 raintown series, continuing through the poems written under as “AK Barkley”, & finally the sutra poems & related pieces composed over the past two years. As the book came to be assembled, it was gratifying to realize how seamlessly the apparently disparate parts cohered.

Sheila Graham-Smith, who was instrumental in the book coming to be as reader, editor, fellow poet, & understanding friend, graciously provided me with the following short response to the collection to share in this post:

Ullambana in Portland is a play by play of dozens of walks through an urban landscape, reporting on things seen as through a magnifying glass, a telescope, binoculars, a camera lens and the very naked human eyes behind the narrating voice. In flashes of insight and meditative consideration we are given, not only the city of Portland, its avenues and bridges and waterways, its birds and trees and flowering plants, its skyscapes and buses and litter, but also the tireless perambulations of a questing heart.

I’m filled with the deepest gratitude to Sheila for all she’s provided to this work, & am so appreciative of her deep understanding of the poems.

Of course all of these poems are scattered hither & yon on Robert Frost’s Banjo. But as was especially the case with my book The Spring Ghazals & the intervening chapbook Union Pacific, this was put together as a “book” as opposed to a “collection”. Also, differing from my practice with past full-length books, there won’t be any blog that reproduces the “book order” of the poems.

Ullambana refers to the Buddhist “hungry ghost festival”. The book contains 60 poems—55 original works, four translations from classical Chinese poetry, & a translation from Apollinaire. There’s also my translation of the opening of the Ullambana Sutra, which is used to introduce one of the sections.

Thanks so much for your continuing interest in my poetry & in the Robert Frost’s Banjo blog.

That Summer Feeling (revisited)

Hello, friends! Hope you all are enjoying your summer at least as much as I have been.

From time to time a good friend sends me an email that begins with words to this effect: “As much as I enjoy your last blog post, it has been up for a really long time.” It’s true. Blog posts have been few & far between on Robert Frost’s Banjo this year. I used to fret about that sort of thing, & it’s true that at one time there were daily posts here, & even after that frenetic pace slowed down, there were still regular series & such.

For a lot of reasons, that has slowed down for a few years. I used to fret about it, but not so much anymore. I’m glad the blog is here to return to when I can, & I’m also content that there may be significant gaps between posts.

To a large extent, my life in Portland has been an active one as opposed to the more contemplative life I lived in Idaho during the blog’s first years. Though I still face challenges, my health is the best I’ve enjoyed in years, & for the most part that’s thanks to a dramatically increased activity level—walking five miles a day, playing softball from February through October, & regularly attending tai chi classes. I suppose I could chronicle these activities, especially as they might be of interest to other people with chronic lung issues, but I simply haven’t done so. For those who are really craving more regular updates about my activities, I do keep a blog for one of my softball teams, the Underhanded Compliments; however, I’d say it is of considerably more interest to the team members & their close friends & families than to a more general readership.

But the summer is here. & to celebrate it, I’m sharing (again, but the last time was 5 years ago!) one of my favorite songs about the season. Beautiful music, & amidst the fun of the rhymes & images, some deep thoughts about seizing the day.

Enjoy!

14 Strings for ’14

Obviously this also could be titled “I Spoke Too Soon.”

Yes, friends, Robert Frost’s Banjo is back, refreshed from the vacation! I really didn’t anticipate this back in August—or through most of 2013, in which I was anticipating shutting the blog down. But a while ago, I realized my main contributions to the Facebook universe were music postings—& it occurred to me that I could be doing this on the blog & maybe do some other writing besides. So here I am.

Robert Frost’s Banjo will continue to be the same in its broad outlines. However, I did learn a lesson from the past year or so that really only sunk in when I’d stepped away from the blog: the tight scheduling of weekly series was a great thing at one time, but it also has a limiting effect; so while I’ll still be writing about many of the same topics (& some new ones as well, I hope), there will be no ongoing weekly series. They do tend to defeat the notion of “A miscellany like Grandma’s attic in Taunton, MA or Mission Street's Thrift Town in San Francisco or a Council, ID yard sale in cloudy mid April or a celestial roadmap no one folded.”

So I hope to return to more of that original miscellany idea—but don’t worry, there will be plenty of guitars & banjos & the like in all their amazing incarnations. I’m also really happy to let you know that the four poet contributors, Barbie Angell, Carmen Leone, Mairi Graham-Shaw & AK Barkley will be back, though poems will appear just a couple of times a month rather than weekly.

Anyway, for today I have a wonderful guitar duet featuring the father & son jazz guitar team Bucky & John Pizzarelli. But in addition to being a rousing duet on the perennial crowd pleaser, “Sweet Georgia Brown,” note that both men are playing seven- string guitars.

Of course the quest to extend the guitar’s range is a seemly endless endeavor; & if you take the time to read the Wikipedia article, you’ll find that seven-string guitars have been around for a good long time. In terms of jazz guitar, they first caught on with George Van Epps in the 1930s, & while they aren’t uncommon at jazz gigs anymore, for a long time Van Epps & Bucky Pizzarelli were the main proponents of this type of instrument. The advantage is more bass—the seventh string is typically tuned down to a low B, just as a five-string electric bass will have a B on the fifth string. This means that the interval between the seventh & sixth strings (typically an E) remains the same for the added string—a fourth, as is the case with all the strings in standard tuning except for the third to second strings, in which the interval is a major third.

Seven-string guitars are used in many forms of music—jazz, classical, & more recently, even in rock & heavy metal. In fact if you search for images of seven-string guitars online, the photos of seven-string solid body electrics tend to predominate.

So: something that may be new to some of you! A happy New Year & thanks for coming back to Robert Frost’s Banjo!




Image links to its source at the top1000songs blog

The Time Has Come…

Hello, friends! A happy Friday to you all.

The time has come, as the Walrus said, to talk of many things—well, perhaps not many, but one or two of some importance to this little corner of the internet cosmos. Today is the fifth anniversary of the Robert Frost’s Banjo blog, & I'm here to let you know that the blog will go on indefinite hiatus after this post.

Now please be assured: this blog isn’t going to go anywhere—it will remain online as long as Google in its infinite wisdom keeps Blogger blogs available & free; however, I don't anticipate adding any content either generated by myself or others in the foreseeable future. This is not an impulsive or precipitous decision—I’ve been thinking about it for some time, & it’s become clear to me over the past several months that the blog has simply run its course in terms of the content I can create for it & the engagement I can bring to it.

Of course, the blog never was just me. It’s always been a place for collaboration, & I have nothing but thanks & gratitude for the friends who have contributed to Robert Frost’s Banjo & who have done so much to make it a space people have enjoyed—on alphabetical order: my old friend Audrey Bilger, who has contributed some of the most popular & widely read pieces; dear Barbie Angell, whose poetry & illustrations absolutely won me over, & who has been such a big part of the blog the past couple of years—Barbie’s poem posts are always popular, & deservedly so; Brittany Newmark, a cherished old friend & remarkably talented poet & fiction writer who’s been generous enough to contribute her writing;  Carmen Leone, who has conscientiously &  generously supplied me with his wonderful poems; Eberle Umbach, who brought the Weiser River Pillow Book, poetry, music, & stories about everything from Jane Austen to the Rock Band game & much more—& who was the source of the blog’s name, which was a stroke of genius in my opinion—the blog certainly never would have been what it has been without Eberle's major contributions, & they are much appreciated; L.E. Leone (or Dani as I know her), a dear friend whose poems have been a mainstay on the Tuesday poet’s corner & who also has contributed music as part of Homegrown Radio; my dear friend Mairi Graham-Shaw, who has such creative energy & for whom I envision such a bright future, has contributed her high energy poetry; & & Nancy Krygowski, who stepped in & contributed poems of first-rate quality. All of these people have been so much fun to work with, & I’m grateful to call them all friends. If I were to include all the many people who contributed to such series as Writer’s Talk, Homegrown Radio & Musical Questions, the list simply would go on & on. But check them out in the blog archives & in the label section! These are the folks that made Robert Frost’s Banjo a special place.



& thank all of you who stop by to read, whether regularly, sporadically, or once in a blue moon. You’ve also been a big part of the blog! I wish you all the best in your endeavors, wherever they may take you, & if we meet in this space again down the road, so much the happier.

So how shall we send the blog off to rest? Well, it is Robert Frost's Banjo! See below.

Happy trails!







Image is of course by John Tenniel—one of his illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. It links to its source on Wiki Commons, & is in the public domain.

We Interrupt our Regular Programming….

Hello friends, & a happy Tuesday to you.

Today would normally be the day we read one of A.K. Barkley’s poetic offerings, but sadly, that will be delayed this week. Mr Barkley has quite a busy schedule at times. But he has assured me he’ll have something ready in time for a Wednesday morning post, so I decided to cut him some slack.

Briefly, in other blog news: Probably obvious, but Monday Morning Blues is on indefinite hiatus. The fact is, I just don’t really have much to say about blues music these days. Although as a performer I’ll always keep my hand in with the blues, my personal focus is in different directions at this time. I have moved the link down the page, but you can still use that to access past posts.

Despite my “burnout” on the blues, at least in terms of writing, I am going to keep the Any Woman’s Blues series going at least until I work through the list of performers I compiled way back when. The series will be returning in March, but with a difference: each Monday in March will be an installment in the Any Woman’s Blues series. Then I plan on taking a couple of months off for other musical features, & probably returning with Any Woman’s Blues in June—& so forth. I’m hoping this posting schedule will work well for me & enable me to bring the series to the conclusion I’d planned.

Speaking of my musical direction, you probably have noticed the link to my public musician’s Facebook page, which for the time being is serving me as a website; here’s the link. Since it’s a public page, anyone can go there & view all the content, whether they have a Facebook account or not. If you do have an account, “likes” are very welcome & appreciated, as it helps me to get my material out to more people. I will occasionally post some of my original music on the blog, but the majority of it will be found on the Facebook page, at least for the foreseeable future. You can also see photos of me in various bands & with various guitars & other instruments past & present. Once I get a webcam that wants to cooperate, there will be videos as well.

Have a great day!

An Interview with…

A happy Wednesday, friends. The photo leading off the post is yours truly in my digs with my new Cordoba guitar—yes, nylon strings! Obviously, this is not a guitar designed for playing Delta blues, & yes, I’m moving in another direction musically. Quite exciting. I won’t be turning my back on the blues, but I have felt for some time the need for a different & softer sound to complement the hard-edged blues stuff. I particularly am interested in getting together a set of music that would be more appropriate for background music, as there is always demand for that.

Which is all a lead in to say that you can read my thoughts on poetry & music on the always excellent The Sill of the World blog from writer Hila Katz. The Sill of the World features first class writing, the always thoughtful & delightful “Week in Seven Words” series, & recently Hila Katz has been running interviews with various creative folks in her acquaintance. I was most flattered to be included in the series. The post is at this link.

I did want to clarify one point in the interview for blog readers: As I mention in the interview, I am quite excited to be working on setting a manuscript of poems by another poet to music—not in the sense of writing songs, but in the sense of providing settings. But I also have recently written a setting for a poem by my good friend & Robert Frost's Banjo collaborator Barbie Angell. In fact, you will be able to hear a rough draft of that in this very space tomorrow! I’ve sort of reserved Thursday for guitar related posts, & am hoping to post some recordings of my own material over time. I’m working with a rather primitive recording set up right now, but I hope that will change over the next several months.

I know the posting has been sporadic at times here, but I expect it will all sort itself out! Thanks for hanging with the blog, & have a great Wednesday!

Photo of the Week 11/28/12

Bandstand at Dawson Park

Portland, Oregon

Tuesday 11/27/12

Hello friends.  Yes, you're reading that correctly—Photo of the Week is returning, but now on Wednesday rather than Sunday. I'll also endeavor to post Rose City Wednesday as a monthly feature; those stories tend to have a lot of photos anyway, so once a month it will be a sort of expanded Photo of the Week. 

Hope you enjoy your day!

The Tuesday News

Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, N. Interstate Ave., Portland, Oregon

Good morning, folks. Due to the storm back east, I’ve decided to postpone today’s regular poetic post, which would have been one of Barbie Angell’s poems. Last I heard, the part of North Caroline where she lives was getting swamped by the big storm, & I expect there will be a lot of power outages along the US eastern seaboard.  As a result, the Tuesday poetry posting schedule will be pushed back by a week across the board. However, I would encourage, recommend & cajole you to stop by the website for Barbie’s delightful book of children’s poems, Roasting Questions: give the book a look, & if you like what you see, as I believe you will, please consider purchasing it & possibly sponsoring it to help with the printing costs. Barbie explained the publication process in my recent interview with her, which you can read here.

In addition, as I mentioned in yesterday’s Any Woman’s Blues post, I’m very gratified that Robert Frost’s Banjo has been selected as a site to feature a free download by blues artist Danielia Cotton, who was featured in the Any Woman’s Blues series in September. You can find that free download in the right sidebar, right below the link to Barbie Angell’s book. I’ll also be reviewing Danielia Cotton’s latest release, Gun in Your Hand. Check back on Thursday for that!

In other blog-related news: as of right now (Monday evening), I’m not sure about the status of Rose City Wednesday this week. A lot will depend on the weather tomorrow. I realize this series has been sadly neglected for a little while, but I assure you it still interests me & it will be returning!

Finally, I leave you with some fantastic guitar playing by a guitarist whose playing I admire a great deal, Kaki King.  In the video, Kaki King is playing a harp guitar, an instrument I have also long admired, ever since I saw one in a Lark in the Morning mail order catalog several years ago & also heard one played on NPR. It was Christmas season, & I was coming home from a gig in which I’d played a much more mundane instrument (the electric bass—mundane, but I do miss it), & an artist whose name I’ve since forgotten played the most remarkable version of “Welcome, Christmas” from How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original cartoon version, of course!)  Sadly, such things are far beyond my budget, & perhaps it’s just as well. I do love the sound, & Kaki King is extremely good with the harp guitar, & indeed, with the guitar in most of its other forms as well.

Hope you enjoy your Tuesday, & stay safe out there!

Where I’m At

Good morning, friends. Glad you could stop by Robert Frost’s Banjo.

This is not a Monday Morning Blues post, as you can no doubt tell—& my apologies to the music loving readers out there. I know the Monday Morning Blues & Banjo Friday posts have been sporadic over the past month or so.

In fact, that’s what I’m here to talk about today. If you’ve been following regularly, you know that I’ve had some misgivings about the viability of Monday Morning Blues & Banjo Friday as ongoing series. But until very recently I didn’t realize or admit to myself that all other considerations aside, I really need a break from the fixed posting schedule of those two series. I’ve written many posts about the blues & the banjo since Robert Frost’s Banjo began in 2008; there are 76 posts with the “banjo” label & 134 posts labelled “blues.”  Especially with my own musical life being in more than a little flux, I'm not sure what more I have to say on either subject right now!

As those of you who know me personally are aware, I’ve undergone significant personal life changes over the past year—the end of a long-term relationship, a move to a new city, followed by a move to a new place within that same city—getting used to new surroundings, new pace of life, getting used to living completely on my own for the first time since January 1998.  In light of all this, I believe I need to scale back some; & I also feel that I need some time to figure out how Robert Frost’s Banjo will continue to fit into my life.

This doesn’t mean I’ll never write about the blues or the banjo again—& when I do, the posts may very well appear on Mondays or Fridays! But not as ongoing series with any kind of regular posting series, at least not in the foreseeable future.

As I see it, the blog will go to a three-day per week posting schedule: Photo of the Week, Tuesday Poets, & the Wednesday Portland feature. Once I get my feet a bit more solidly beneath me, I may very well return to a more frequent posting schedule, but for now I think the three features are a good fit. This also means that I’ll probably be visiting other blogs a bit less frequently, as I continue to figure out my new city & new life, & how all of this dovetails with what has been an extremely active online life.

Enough from me. But what would a Robert Frost’s Banjo Monday post be without a little music? I think this great Gillian Welch song may be appropriate to the mood.

There’ll Be Some Changes Made

Happy Saturday, dear readers. Just checking in with you quickly about some changes I’ll be trying on the blog at least during the month of April.

I’ve decided that I’ll be reducing the Monday Morning Blues & Banjo Friday series to every other week rather than weekly. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, these series simply aren’t getting many readers at all, & the posts themselves—while generally enjoyable to write & research—are relatively time-consuming. The series will run in alternate weeks—for instance, this coming Monday I’ll run the Monday Morning Blues (with a brand new series starting up—stay tuned), but there won’t be a Banjo Friday on April 6th; then the next week it will be just the opposite.

All the other series will continue as they have been running—Barbie Angell’s & L.E. Leone’s poems will appear on alternate Tuesdays; Rose City Wednesday & Sunday’s Photo of the Week will continue to appear weekly.  There will be no regularly scheduled posts on Thursday or Saturday, but I will leave them open (especially Thursday) for things that may come up thru the week; that's also at least theoretically true for the open Mondays & Fridays. Anyhow, that's pretty much how things have been for a while.

This will mean I'll only be committed to writing two posts per week, & I suspect that will generally be a good change—for me at least.  But I assure readers—& also other people involved in the blog—that there are things the blog offers that continue to excite me, & that continue to fit into the rhythm of my life—which of course has changed very much over the past several months.  Maybe I feel the need myself to re-group some, & cutting back on the music posts seems a way to give myself a little space to do that. I have been very much absorbed in the question of “3-D” versus “virtual” life of late, & drawing back a little on the blog is also a way of addressing that question.

But if you know me at all, you know I’m a Heraclitean at heart—I believe very much in the concept of change—never stepping in the same river twice & so forth. So for now these ideas are a concept I’ll experiment with in April, & come May, we’ll see which direction we turn!

Have a nice Saturday, friends. I leave you with the great, unique & inimitable Fats Waller to tell you the rest of the story!

I Am Here #2

The new Robert Frost's Banjo Central

Greetings from a rather soggy day in Portland.  I woke a bit late this morning to the sound of a garbage truck & big raindrops. In the right context, the latter sound can be almost inviting: asking you to stay in for a pleasant day of reading & music for instance—but the sad fact is, I need to get out & about on errands.  Timing is almost everything, & in this case, my timing is not spectacularly good!

It occurred to me that I haven’t posted a “personal” update for some time: we’ve been enjoying a lot of poetry & music here on Robert Frost’s Banjo, which is of course all to the good.  Yours truly has even started writing again, & that’s always a cause for some small celebration here at Robert Frost’s Banjo Central.

But as far as personal news goes: I’m settling in to my new place, which is a sweet little apartment & all in all, feeling much like home.  One of the most lovely thing about my place is that almost everywhere I look I see something that was a gift from a friend, & that’s something that makes my heart glad.  

Two such gifts-both very practical as well!

Still, truth be told, I deal a lot with loneliness—I state this as a fact, & given the circumstances, a rather obvious one, & not to elicit sympathy. But I am in a transition from being one person in a couple to being a person on his own, & I’m also doing that in unfamiliar surroundings. In addition, the move from southeast Portland, where I was staying the first few months, to north Portland where I now live is significant because the neighborhood is new & the connections I do have here are a bit further away—it’s about 45 minutes to an hour by bus to visit my friends in the Southeast. But on the plus side, I have found a music jamming pal over in my neck of the woods—a fine guitarist who goes by the name of Kentucky Bob—& spent most of yesterday jamming on tunes from “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down & Out” to “Kodachrome.” Great fun.

There’s also a certain “finality” to the Portland move that comes from having my own place. While I’m convinced the move was the best thing for all concerned, I’m no longer in the “limbo” state I occupied from August thru November. This is also to the good, of course, but it does carry a concomitant stress & sadness.

In other news: I’m slowly building my teaching practice, now with two guitar students & two uke students. In addition, I explored some forms of assistance thru the state of Oregon, & these have actually made a significant improvement in my financial picture. So on a practical level, things are looking quite good.

As far as Robert Frost’s Banjo news goes: for the past while, Wednesdays have been an “off” day here. I’m going to be starting a new series, however, as of next Wednesday, which will explore an aspect of Portland each week—thanks to my good friend Scotty Houston for this suggestion! This will be fun writing for me, & it will also be motivation for me to explore—something that can be a bit difficult to muster in the rainy Northwestern winter. 

Hope you have a great Thursday, friends!

Rainy day-the view from my front door!

“Three Angels”

 

 Happy Thursday, kids!  I’m checking in today with odds & ends, not to mention some Xmas Music for People Who Hate Xmas Music.

The holiday is really almost upon us of course, & I must say it’s been an odd one for me, living on my own after a number of years of sharing holiday traditions in a relationship.  It’s lonely at times, tho mostly I consider myself fortunate—indeed, in a real sense of the word, blessed—to have so many dear friends with whom I can share the time, whether they’re friends here in Portland or friends scattered not only thru this country but in others as well.

The holiday has been simplified for me, that’s for sure.  I bought exactly one gift, which was for my mom—95 & still maintaining back in Massachusetts.  I did “splurge” on some Christmas cards, which I enjoyed sending & which helped me feel like I was acknowledging the holiday in a way that meant a lot to me—again, getting back to the friends who’ve so enriched my life.

Speaking of friends, some local friends loaned me the small tree that you see in the photo above, as well as the decorations.  That also meant a lot to me—the tree is perfectly in scale with my celebration this year, & I enjoy it daily.  As far as other holiday festivities go, I’ll be attending a Christmas Eve dinner party, which I’m really looking forward to—some great folks involved—including great cooks!—& have decided that I’m going to watch (for the umpteenth time, but who’s counting) Chaplin’s Modern Times on Christmas Day itself—one of my very favorite films.  It sounds pretty nice to me.

I’ve loved today’s song for many years.  Bob Dylan’s New Morning album has always struck me as a somewhat overlooked gem in his oeuvre; admittedly, “If Not For You” was a hit, but all in all, I think the album hasn’t received the attention it deserves.  Songs like “Sign on the Window,” “Time Passes Slowly” & “Day of the Locusts” are really powerful compositions, both lyrically & musically, & the album has a definite sound—lots of piano on this one.  While writing this post, I was looking thru the list of outtakes for New Morning—it’s quite long—& was fascinated to learn that Dylan recorded both “Yesterday” (yes, that “Yesterday”!) & “Ghost Riders in the Sky” for possible inclusion on the album!  Wow. 

Anyway, “Three Angels” is a beautiful recited piece—complete with the “angel chorus” at the end.  I’ve never been sure whether I liked how he ended the song lyrically—it seems a bit pat to me—but the rest of the lyrics are very strong.

Robert Frost’s Banjo will have posts right up thru Christmas morning, so stay tuned for your holiday listening & reading pleasure.

Enjoy!

Nightingales in a Stateside Zoo

At some point last week I promised an announcement about Jack Hayes’ poetry—Jack Hayes equals yours truly, at least in the poeticizing world in case you didn’t know.  In any case, the announcement never materialized.

A transporter accident, as on one of the Star Trek shows?  Not exactly: in fact, I’m here with the announcement today, & that’s to let you all know that there is a new blog in the little Robert Frost’s Banjo solar system, & it’s called Nightingales in a Stateside Zoo.  Regular readers know that I self-published three books of poetry in 2010: The Spring Ghazals (poems from 2008-2010 written in Idaho), The Days of Wine & Roses (poems from 1990-1996 written in San Francisco) & Nightingales in a Stateside Zoo (poems written from 1984-1989 written in Charlottesville, Virginia.)  All three of the books are available at lulu.com here.

Both The Spring Ghazals & The Days of Wine & Roses have been provided with dedicated blogs where all the content has been reproduced gratis.  For some time I’ve debated whether or not to do the same for Nightingales in a Stateside Zoo, & have finally decided the answer is “yes.”  While I believe the poems in the later books are more accomplished, I also believe the Charlottesville poems have their own strengths, & a number of people still like them.  I hope some of you will enjoy them too!

Poems will post on Nightingales in a Stateside Zoo each Wednesday & Saturday morning until all 36 poems in the book have appeared (today's post is the exception that proves the rule, or something to that effect) , at which point the blog will become archival, as is the case with my other two poetry blogs—still available for reading, but with no further scheduled content.  There are two poems in the collection that are quite long, but I’m not getting into the business of serializing poetry.  They’ll post as complete poems & folks can wade in or not as their fancy takes them.

The first poem is titled "Aubade," & was written in 1987.  You can read it & also read a brief introduction to the blog at this link.

Have a happy Thursday, & hope you enjoy Nightingales in a Stateside Zoo.

Platypuss in Boots Bids Us Fond Au Revoir

Happy Saturday, folks.  Well, actually a bit of a sad Saturday here. 

As you may know, I’ve been re-posting material from Eberle’s wonderful but dormant blog Platypuss-in-Boots on alternate Saturdays, & in the normal course of blog events, today we’d feature one of these posts.  But, as you also know if you’re a regular reader, Eberle & I have now gone our separate ways in life; I’m making a new life in Portland, Oregon, while she’s transforming her life back in Idaho.  & the fact is, posting the Platypuss-in-Boots material was just becoming too sad for me.  I discussed this with Eberle, & she understood where I was coming from & was in full support of me stopping the posts.  Needless to say, it is great to be able to have friendly talks about things with her, despite the fact that we’ve taken these separate paths.

Now in practical terms, don’t forget: these posts all exist on the interwebs already & will continue to do so: you can read all the material on the original Platypuss-in-Boots  blog that Eberle created at this very link.  It’s great stuff: funny, enchanting & wildly imaginative. 

I’m not sure what will be taking the place of these posts yet—but stayed tuned, because there are a lot more fun features to come in the days ahead!

Just Looking for a Home

Portland's TriMet: it's working for me so far

If it’s Thursday, you may ask, why is there no poem or Writers Talk interview or book review on Robert Frost’s Banjo?  It appears there may be some scheduling changes in the offing, dear readers.  In my new surroundings I am more interested in having some more “personal” posts on a somewhat regular basis, so that’s one thing you’ll be seeing at least some Thursdays.

I’ve been in Portland just over a month, & I’m very comfortable in a temporary housing situation provided by friends Sue & Jay who’ve shown me great hospitality & provided wonderful support.  But the fact is, I need a place to call my own, & living on a fixed income, this is a bit challenging.  But I will say this: I’ve gotten to know certain parts of Portland pretty fast as I’ve toured looking around at various subsidized housing complexes.  It’s also enabled me to get to know several bus routes fairly well in a short period of time. 

Food Truck, NE Alberta Street

 Yesterday, for instance, I spent the morning & much of the afternoon exploring north & northeast Portland, looking at subsidized housing units.  I like northeast Portland for several reasons, not least of which is that it’s flat!  Not a small consideration when you have a chronic lung condition!  In case you folks don’t know, Portland is essentially divided into quadrants, with a number of distinct neighborhoods in each.  The north & northeast quadrants are areas that are very much in the process of urban renewal/artification/hipsterification/gentrification—at least some parts.  Other neighborhoods over there are a bit sketchy.

A Night On the Town in Ortland? NE Killingsworth

But fortunately, there are several cool options.  I found it definitely paid to scout them out by bus & on foot—you can get a better sense of the neighborhood’s vibe that way, & since those will be my transportation options when I’m in my own place.  If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know I love cars & road trips (witness the cross country drive in March of 2010!), but no cars for me in any foreseeable future.  As a side note to that, I am very happy to be someplace that’s on the Amtrak grid!  I’m hoping to make a California train trip at some point.

Anyway, it’s fun (tho it was a hot day, at least by Portland standards) to check out these new sights & figure out how I’d do things like buy groceries if I were living in a certain place.  Again, as you know if you’re a long-time reader, I’m not unfamiliar with urban life—I did live for almost 10 years in San Francisco.  But that was also over 13 years ago, so there’s certainly some adjustment.

The light bulb store - North Mississippi

Moving is not an easy thing.  I left behind a lot in Idaho, both literally in terms of stuff & emotionally in terms of important connections & a sense of continuity.  Sometimes it does feel daunting—I think about my age, the fact that I’m on my own, the fact that I have a chronic condition; all these things can be discouraging if I dwell on them.  But overall, I’ve felt most a sense of determination to make a new life here, & I’ve tried to focus on a few doable tasks everyday to build toward that.

& of course, it’s not like anything’s ever finished!  At some point, I’ll be in a place of my own, & there will still be new challenges.  Here’s hoping they keep me energized!

Oh by the way: any guesses on the source for today's post title?

Betwixt & Between & an Excellent Blogger

Hello everybody.  Hope you’re looking forward to a pleasant weekend, & thanks for spending a few minutes of that here on Robert Frost’s Banjo!

If you’re a regular reader &/or connected to me thru various social media, you know I’ve been going thru some major changes over the past while.  After living in rural Idaho for the better part of 14 years, I moved to Portland, Oregon two weeks ago, & am living there with friends while I seek out more permanent living quarters.

The move also meant a major transformation in my life’s most significant relationship, as Eberle (whom regular readers also know from her many contributions here) & I have decided to pursue separate paths in life.

So just like my friend the squirrel, I feel a bit up in the air & perhaps uncertain which way to turn at times.  In Idaho I had a certain identity as a musician/blogger/poet that now is being translated from a very rural setting to a very urban one.  As we know, with any translation, things get added & subtracted, & the end result is both the same & different.

I’ll try to make Robert Frost’s Banjo a bit more personal in the wake of this move.  Now don’t worry—all your favorite music, poetry & other series will continue.  But once every week or two I’ll try to chime in with a bit of an “emotional weather report” or newsy post.

Speaking of a nice piece of news: I was touched last week when one of my very favorite bloggers, Jacqueline T Lynch, named me as a recipient of the Liebster Blog award.  As I mentioned some time ago, I’ve decided not to display awards on this blog or to pass them along, as I find the latter situation more than a bit awkward—someone is always bound to be left out.  But I have huge respect for Jacqueline T Lynch as a writer & blogger, & also as a person I got to meet once as I was passing thru her home state of Massachusetts.  If you want to read about classic film, New England or repertory theater, you really need to be subscribing to Jacqueline’s blogs, namely Another Old Movie Blog, New England Travels & Tragedy & Comedy in New England.  Jacqueline Lynch is an accomplished & witty writer who never fails to produce first-rate, informative & entertaining blog posts.

In addition, Jacqueline is a published playwright & novelist, & you can find out more about her books (which I recommend!) on her web page here.  All of Jacqueline’s novels are available as ebooks.

Thanks so much Jacqueline!  & seriously, if you’re a blogger on any of my blog rolls, & you’d like the Liebster Blog award to display, please consider it passed on to you with my regards!

Oh, & speaking of “emotional weather reports,” how about some Tom Waits to take us into Saturday!

Leaving

A happy Thursday, dear readers, tho I admit I’m writing today’s post with a heavy heart.  This doesn’t come as news to those of you connected to me thru Facebook & Twitter, but I’m now making the general announcement that I will be leaving Indian Valley, Idaho before the month of July is out—as of this writing, the exact date is still a bit up in the air.

I first visited Idaho in April 1997 to visit an old friend & new romantic partner—if you’re familiar with this blog at all, you know Eberle Umbach, at least thru her writing & music.  Eberle & I have known each other since we both moved to Charlottesville, Virginia in 1984, & we became friends thru a shared love of writing, music, good humor & more.  After falling out of touch for some time following her move from Virginia (& my eventual move to San Francisco), we re-connected in 1996 &, as they say, one thing led to another.

Although I’m probably by nature more of a town or city person, I must admit to being totally charmed by this rural setting in which Eberle lived.  I remember well how it looked then, & all its changes over the years: the outbuildings, the garden, the willow boughs turning red & orange in the spring, the little pond out in the pasture, the massive old cottonwood in the yard & so much more.  To make a long story short, I moved here in January 1998—what a time of year to move from San Francisco to Idaho!

Eberle & I have been together since, but that chapter is now coming to a close.  Is this permanent or temporary?  No one can say right now.  I will be living in Portland, Oregon for at least the foreseeable future & I have no specific plans to return to Idaho.  But a return at some point certainly isn’t impossible either.

As far as the blog goes, I’m expecting (hoping) the transition will be fairly seamless.  It’s possible there may be a few more days off than usual over the next few weeks, but I believe all the main series will keep posting pretty much on schedule.  It is odd to think that on next month’s blogoversary, the Banjo will be transmitting from a much different location, but that’s the reality of things.  As an aside, I should note that I’m going to stop the 19 Elastic Poems translation series (which was appearing on alternate Saturdays), simply because I’m not satisfied with some of the upcoming translations, & under the current circumstances I don’t have the time, energy or resources to work on them. 

Things have often been difficult over the past few years.  At a certain point, I made a conscious decision to minimize mention of my personal life on this blog & instead let it develop into something more like a “magazine” than a personal journal.  I’m happy with the way the blog now exists & will continue to keep personal news to a minimum here.  However, I felt something of this much significance should be posted, especially as some specific aspects of the blog no doubt will be affected.

I’m torn as to whether to say more or not.  There’s so much I could say about the past 15 years (since the summer of ’96), but perhaps this isn’t the right time &/or place—but I will note that when I state I could say so much, I mean so much “good.” 

Thanks to you all for your support!

“Brigg’s Corn Shuckin’ Jig”

A happy Banjo Friday to all of you, dear readers.  The music today is a real treat: Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops playing a “mistrel tuned” gourd banjo.  Since we discussed the ekonting two weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to offer some gourd banjo music this time around.

I had intended to make this post a bit more in depth, but I'm writing it "on the fly."  I can tell you that if you’re interested in finding out more about the gourd banjo, you can find “The (Almost) Definitive History of Gourd Banjos” at this link.  There’s a lot of good information there.

Should your interests lie in a more “DIY” approach, you can even find detailed plans about how to make your own gourd banjo at several sites, including this one!  There have been a number of gourd banjo makers in recent years, including Scott Didlake, Pete Ross, Jeffrey Menzies, Bob Thornburg, Jay Moschella & David Hyatt.

Rhiannon Giddens tells us that the banjo is in “minstrel tuning.”  One might think this is a precise description, but actually it’s not.  One thing that we can tell for sure (either by listening to the music or by looking up “minstrel tuning”) is that the banjo is pitched lower than usual.  These days the banjo’s most “standard” tuning is probably open G; we do know that the “minstrel tunings” were more in the key of E or D, so that the strings were lower in pitch by either a third or fourth interval.  However, there were variants on the “minstrel tuning.”  One common variant didn’t involve an open tuning at all—in other words, the strings when played unfretted didn’t produce a major triad of notes—but was a lower version of what was once considered standard tuning, that is: gCGBD.  Again, this was all lowered about a third in pitch.

Hope you enjoy the music!