As I stare at my oncoming future,
it looks quite a bit like my past.
Though my heart could sure use some sutures,
perhaps I can get it to last.
The old year is packing a suitcase,
to head off to places unknown.
Trying to put on a bright face,
although his sole purpose is gone.
And the new year still waits on the sidelines,
but the pressure he feels is insane.
We expect him to fix all our bad times
and somehow erase all our pain.
Like the last-minute deal of a martyr,
we promise to be someone else.
We’ll bargain and haggle and barter,
instead of improving ourselves.
We put off the changes we’re needing,
we shove them all under our beds.
Perfecting all our self-defeating,
while ignoring the voice in our heads.
So I gaze at the me of tomorrow,
and she looks like the me that I am.
The me yet to be has my sorrows,
unless I come up with a plan.
I won’t curse the year that has ended
or praise the new one drawing near,
or expect to be magically mended
‘cause a ball finally drops in Times Square.
Barbie Angell
© 2013
Yes, Barbie Angell is back with her special poems & illustrations! The image leading off the post is one of her pieces in a show in Asheville, NC.
So in the torpor of last year’s blogging, I never really had a chance to expatiate upon just how much I love Kaki King, not only because she is a superb guitarist & gifted compsoer, but also because she is such a wonderful creative force—there was a series planned about her, but it never quite got off the ground. So that’s one thing I can set right straight away.
Of course, Kaki King is far from “a new thing” at this point—she’s in the prime of a career that dates back to the 1990s, & her recordings go back to 2003, with Everybody Loves You on the Velour label. In the interim, she has established herself as one of the top guitar instrumentalists & composers, & is clearly one of the preeminent contemporary fingerstyle players. “Cargo Cult,” here from a 2012 performance in Livorno, Italy, is from her most recent album, Glow from 2012.
But my purpose here is not to be on the leading edge, but simply to communicate about music & artists I care about (among other things), so while Kaki King isn’t a new discovery, she’s a musician who’s worth getting to know better if you’ve already heard her—& if you love guitar music & you don’t know her work, then I can’t recommend her highly enough!
Enjoy.
Image of Kaki King by Daniel Temmesfeld, (cc) 2010, who allows its re-use with a Creative Commons Attribution.
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
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.
Vagabond Thoughts….
You were a part of my speech.,
the unexplained break in my voice.
You wrote the song in my head,
and I promise this wasn’t my choice.
You were the spin of the stars,
the sweet chaos of all I could see.
You haven’t uncovered the truth
of the wonder and magic of me.
You were the start of a thought
that I was too cautious to think.
Unable to fend off your charms,
you lured my heart to the brink.
You were a part of my speech.
A whisper too loud to ignore.
The voice that coaxed me to sleep,
the one this poem is for.
Barbie Angell
© 2011
Thank you, Barbie : )
blood hymn
my God
likes him some destruction
sodom and gommorah style
He says
you gotta beat 'em
til they stop moving
and then some
only through blood
and broken bodies
on the far side
of that all too carnal war
only there
is His joy
and your salvation
and His angels
have scars
that are mountains and valleys
and they count them
like blessings
but i said,
listen
Father
and i said
something about flies
and vinegar
and i said
can't you cut them
some slack ?
actually,
some fucking slack
and i wasn't really talking about
syria, or cancer, or anything
just about you
some fucking slack,
i said
some things are fragile
breakable, you know
handle with care
with fucking care,
actually
and He said
yeah
but isn't it neat
how many directions
the shards fly in
when they shatter?
and i said yeah,
and get stuck in my foot
i said
actually,
get stuck in my fucking foot
(He smiled,
at that)
Mairi Graham-Shaw
© 2013
Image links to its source on Wiki Commons - public domain image
Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562)
Thanks, Mairi : )
Vermillion
Vermillion.
Whatever it means,
how could you not love its squirming sounds?
The only place I’ve seen it used in context
is in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins,
so I still don’t know what it means.
He speaks of a falcon swooping,
And this reminds him of embers that
“fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.”
Vermillion then is something that can be gashed,
something that can be gold.
I could look it up,
But what if it doesn’t mean “a million tiny worms”?
I picture them in a bowl,
twisted and tangled like thin spaghetti
in bright red sauce.
If sprinkled with tiny cellos instead of cheese,
they become vermicelli.
Don’t, please don’t look it up.
Or if you do, don’t tell me what you find,
Or the word will be nothing more
than a city southwest of Cleveland.
It will no longer squirm
in my concave bowl of a brain
making me happy as Sunday dinner.
AUG 09
Carmen Leone
© 2009-the present
Image links to its source at Wiki Commons; public domain
Thanks Carmen!
