Grace #2

A smoky gray evening fraught with long-billed curlews & a pergola awash in pink roses & a maroon Pontiac Bonneville marooned in Daly City all unstuck in time—a wall clock lemon yellow & cornflower blue & thistle pink its face scalloped & floral—a checkerboard linoleum floor in a theater lobby—a single instant that stands in for forever like a luna moth in a truck stop sodium lamp

A Pennsylvania interstate phosphorescent at 3:00 a.m. & strewn with cigarettes & impossible laughter & poetic voices & other suicidal gestures—a smoky gray evening fraught with a gray Dodge pick-up hauling a horse trailer down North Grays Creek Rd & the polyrhythms of hummingbird wings—& here comes another star & it’s just as you say the stars are shattered glass like a C major 7 chord that won’t stop ringing

A mild dissonance a cognitive dissonance a tiger lily a paperback copy of Alcools tipped over on a shelf a pack of Camel lights beside an Adirondack chair a Bloody Mary garnished with celery all unstuck in time—a willow tree fraught with sparrows & the limbs are guitar strings in smoky gray air you cannot touch—a statue of Nuestra Señora housed in a scrap metal shrine beside a pink rose—a single instant that stands in for forever

Jack Hayes
© 2010

Photo of the Week 2/28/10

Fuel Tanks at Long Valley Farm Supply, 2/24/10

&: Happy Birthday to my mom, Bette Hayes, who is 94 years young today! I don't believe she'll have access to a computer until next weekend, but couldn't let such a big event go unmentioned.

Please check out today's post at The Days of Wine & Roses; it's called "My Funny Valentine."

Sepia Saturday 2/27/10

Happy Saturday, everybody! I’m posting my Sepia Saturday contribution bright & early this morning—at least bright & early if you’re in the western half of North America. I should mention this will be my last Sepia Saturday for a few weeks—as regular blog readers know, I’ll be on a road trip east until late in March, so I won’t be posting again for Sepia Saturday until March 27th at the earliest, & possibly not until the first Saturday in April. I will try to check in, but weekends are booked pretty solidly throughout the trip.

I’m posting my parents’ wedding picture today in honor of my mother’s 94th birthday tomorrow—yes, folks, that’s not a type: nine-four. My dad passed away in 2005, but he was well into his 92nd year when he died. They were married on November 9, 1941, & had been married for slightly over 64 years when he passed away.

The marriage took place in Quincy, Massachusetts in the home of my maternal grandparents, the Atkinsons (Joseph & Inez), & the honeymoon took my mother & father to Niagara Falls; as I have the story, my dad sold the Leica camera he used to take the photos you’ve seen here in the Dad’s Photos series to finance the trip. They had some car trouble around Albany, New York & didn’t make Niagara until the second day.

My father enlisted in the Navy in 1942 & was sent to Midway Island. My mother stayed in Leominster, Massachusetts where she was working, but moved to San Leandro in 1944 when my father came stateside on leave. She stayed in California “for the duration,” eventually moving down to Ventura. My father returned to Ventura in 1945, & somewhat to my mother’s chagrin, I suspect, they packed the car & headed back for the east, to settle in my father’s home state of Vermont.

Please take some time to check out other Sepia Saturday participants.

“My Muse”

Happy Friday evening, folks! I’m a bit ahead of time on the Weekly Poem post because I think it’s been a bit confusing the last couple of weeks with the Weekly Poem coming up Saturday morning & Sepia Saturday posting on Saturday afternoon. At least one blog friend briefly thought I might be related to Stevie Smith! So Sepia Saturday will be posted tomorrow morning & will be the post of the day.

Which brings me to another subject. I’ve been running the Weekly Poem series since Robert Frost’s Banjo started in the summer of 2008; I’ll be honest—I got the idea from another blog, Haphazard Gourmet Girls which, also to be honest, influenced a few structral aspects of Robert Frost’s Banjo. That blog is no longer in existence however; its founder has gone on to different things, quite important in their own right.

Anyway, having given credit where credit was due, I should say that at this point I’m suspending the Weekly Poem series after this week. It’s great having all this poetry on Robert Frost’s Banjo, but at this point between my poems & B.N.’s poems & L.E. Leone’s poems & the Weekly Poem—well, that’s a lotta poems & not so much banjo, so to speak. I know the blog vacillates between more or less poetry & more or less music depending on where my head is at, but it seems pretty far to the poetry side right now, & hey, I'll be a performing musician again in 6 weeks, so I need to get my musical brain kick started too!

Frankly, I’m also somewhat concerned with copyright issues. Most of the poems posted as part of the Weekly Poem series are copyrighted works, & while I could make the argument that any accompanying write-up would make this “fair use,” that rarely holds water; the argument that posts such as this might actually increase an author's sales overall seems inescapably valid, but has no standing. I may consider posting a Poem of the Month, since less frequent posts might fly a bit more under the radar.

So this is not only the wind-up of our look at Stevie Smith, but also a wind-up of regularly scheduled “name” poetry here for a bit at least. & it’s a great one to end on—we can even ask: is it a poem at all? That’s one of my favorite kinds of poems! It is a beautiful piece of writing & meditation on the Ars Poetica. Hope you enjoy it!

My Muse

Here are some of the truths about poetry. She is an Angel, very strong. It is not poetry but the poet who has a feminine ending, not the Muse who is weak, but the poet. She makes a strong communication. Poetry is like a strong explosion in the sky. She makes a mushroom shape of terror and drops to the ground with a strong infection. Also she is a strong way out. The human creature is alone in his carapace. Poetry is a strong way out. The passage out that she blasts is often in splinters, covered with blood; but she can come out softly. Poetry is very light-fingered, she is like the god Hermes in my poem ‘The Ambassador’ (she is very light-fingered). Also she is like the horse Hermes is riding, this animal is dangerous….

Poetry does not like to be up to date, she refuses to be neat. (‘Anglo-Saxon’, wrote Gavin Bone, ‘is a good language to write poetry in because it is impossible to be neat.’) All the poems Poetry writes may be called, ‘Heaven, a Detail’, or ‘Hell, a Detail’. (She only writes about heaven and hell.) Poetry is like the goddess Thetis who turned herself into a crab with silver feet, that Peleus sought for and held. Then in his hands she became first a fire, then a serpent, then a suffocating stench. But Peleus put sand on his hands and wrapped his body in sodden sacking and so held her through all her changes, till she became Thetis again, and so he married her, and an unhappy marriage it was. Poetry is very strong and never has any kindness at all. She is Thetis and Hermes, the Angel, the white horse and the landscape. All Poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will always be another poet.

Stevie Smith


(Those who are curious can read more about Thetis & Peleus here & here). I once wrote a poem on the subject, but it was one of those early works best to refer to & not to proffer!

& the Winner Is... February 26 edition

Mornin'! This was supposed to be up a bit earlier, but there were "technical problems...." Namely, the short video I made this morning announcing the winner refuses to upload in a reasonable amount of time either directly thru Blogger or thru YouTube. Why? No idea—it's not like I was trying to upload a Cecil B. DeMille epic. This being the case, & since I need to leave for the wilds of Ontario, Oregon in the next quarter hour, I'll announce the winner "the old fashioned way."

There were just two entrants in this week's Giveaway Contest, Willow & Totalfeckineejit, both long-time supporters of Robert Frost's Banjo. As it turns out, when I purchased books for Eberle & myself & friends I also purchased 3 extra books for giveaway contests. If you've been following along, you know one of these was given away last week. So, with two contest books remaining & with two entrants....the winner is....

Willow!
&
Totalfeckineejit!

If you'd both contact me at robertfrostbanjo@gmail.com with your respective email addresses, I'll get the books in the mail to you as soon as I can.

Hope all of you wonderful folks who do have a copy of The Days of Wine & Roses are enjoying it, & I hope others will consider buying it, which you can do at the product page on lulu.com. Also, for those who do have the book, or will in the future, please consider either writing a review or rating it (or both!) at that same page. Many, many thanks to Audrey Bilger, who's done just that!

Friday Blues Jukebox #4 – Gospel Edition

Happy Friday morning folks! I’m trying something a little different this time around on the Friday Jukebox—no commentary, just tunes, with performer & song listed, & links in case you want to explore further.

This will be the last Friday Blues Jukebox until I’m back from next month’s road trip. Hope you enjoy the music!

John the Revelator: Blind Willie Johnson



Jesus is a Dying Bed-Maker: Charlie Patton



Twelve Gates to the City: Reverend Gary Davis

Grace #1

A smoky-gray evening fraught with black-headed grosbeaks, when time passes thru you & casts a shadow—you’re at the confluence of what must be & what might—& radio voices echoing in outer space beyond the cell tower glinting in blush rose sunset atop the mesa

You could reach for the sky but you couldn’t touch it—the phosphorescent planet off to your left—the thin dime moon to your right—the smoky-gray air fraught with hummingbirds & a helicopter’s fixed pulse—you can hardly help but think about deserts: crows swooping giddy over Owyhee fossils & petrified wood & the one diner standing wooden & tin-roofed between Jordan Valley & McDermitt—spiked Joshua Tree March blooms & an abandoned diner its windows boarded with plywood at the Mohave’s northern edge—a black upholstered armchair on the porch in a Nevada ghost town—the sunrise whitewashing mineral deposits across rocks & sand & hot springs

A serving of coconut cream pie in a chrome & linoleum diner in Needles, CA—a wrong turn at Barstow towards the City of Angels—an angel-winged begonia blooming in a February corner beside a glass-top table—a piper betle’s heart-shaped leaves spilling off a shelf below an icon of Our Lady of Mercy—a mulberry dress with gray print a china bust of the BVM a dormant poplar—time passing thru you & casting an echo across the porch

Jack Hayes
© 2010

A new sequence of four poems that I'll be posting here & there over the next couple of weeks. By the way, if you want to enter for the Days of Wine & Roses book giveaway, best drop by Eberle's Platypuss-in-Boots blog & leave a comment on today's post &/or Monday's. Limit two entries per person, one entry per comment mentioning the giveaway on each post!