Green Rocky Road

I took a hiatus from blogging and have just revived my other blog, so I thought it time to revive this one.

Today I have been listen to a folk musician I have somehow missed, Karen Dalton.  Dalton was a true folk artist, not a revivalist, although because she was young and pretty at the height of the 60's folk revival, she was often confused with one.  I discovered  a CD, Green  Rocky Road in the pop music section of the library today, but knew from the songs listed it was a folk album.

At home I popped it into my Cd and listen to the strong claw hammer banjo playing and the purity of her singing.  It was obvious she had learned her music sitting on the porch with the old timers and listening , trying asking.   Her versions of Little Margret, Nottingham Town and Skillet Good and Greasy placed her as a skilled old ballad singer.  But she had some compositions of her own that showed she also listened to contemporary trends in folk music.

Only a couple of her songs were recorded commercially while she was alive, but after her death a reel to reel tape recording from her concerts appeared, which included  the material on Green Rocky Road.  Finding this CD is almost like finding an old folk blues artist alive and living on his farm in the Delta.  Give her a listen.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RryRmyMv54

http://www.myspace.com/karendaltongreenrockyroad

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4429

Back Again

Just  brief note to let you know I will be resuming blogging on this site shortly.  And I have a new camera to make it interesting with photos. 

Freewheelin' Suze Rotolo

March, 2011. Suze Rotolo dead at age 69, famous as one half the shot on an album cover, but oh, such more. Suze was Dylan's girlfriend at the time of his second, break out folk alblum, Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. He was walking down a Village street in a light jacket, shivering and she was holding him tight on his arm. Bob Dylan, was really Robert Zimmermann, as she found out when his draft card fell on the floor.  He came to the village full of folk music influences and tall stories about who he was.  She was tied in, a red diaper baby born from New York Italian Reds, a researcher for Alan Lomax the musicologist, a friend of John Cohen the photographer and founder of New Lost City Ramblers, an artist and actress.  She introduced him to poetry, Bertold Brecht's plays, Truffaut's films, Picasso's art. She was also a political activist who volunteered with CORE (The Congress of Racial Equality) and who introduced Dylan to the civil rights movement.  She is the inspiration, the muse for many of his early love songs, civil rights songs and songs derived from the French symbolist poets.  His fame climbed over her, probably not by his intent, and she soon couldn't walk down the street without representing one half of an album cover.  There was the tragedy of an abortion, the break up, and geographic cure in the run to Italy.  Soon she was married and remained a professional artist and a political activist.  Good bye Suze. 

Graham Greene Lecture Thursday Night

I've gotten a notice from the Seattle Chesterton Society I wanted to share with you.  If you are living in the Seattle area I recommend that you attend if you can.

Graham Greene: Catholic Literary Modernist

Rev. Dr. Mark Bosco, S. J.

Loyola University Chicago

It is something of a cliché that the so-called modern age witnessed the death of God, religion, or both. Modernist writers, among those most aware of their own “modernity,” have done much eulogizing of faith. The success of this Modernist “project” is, of course, complicated by the persistence of religion. Moreover, the modern period produced writers the likes of T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene, to name only a few. I would like to suggest ways in which we can understand Greene as a representative “Catholic Modernist” who re-imagines Catholicism through modernist aesthetics, modernist sensibilities. In particular, I would like to develop the historical trajectory of this Catholic literary revival as a kind of Catholic literary modernism, and see in Greene's work, especially, how this is embodied.

Mark Bosco, S.J., holds a joint appointment as associate professor in English and Theology at Loyola University Chicago, and serves as its director of the Catholic Studies Program. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of Catholic theology, aesthetics, and literature. His book publications include Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination (Oxford UP 2005), and two edited volumes, Academic Novels as Satire: Critical Studies of an Emerging Genre (Edwin Mellen, 2007) and Finding God in All Things: Celebrating Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, and Karl Rahner (Fordham UP, 2007). He has published in such journals as The Southern Review, The Flannery O'Connor Review, and LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture.

Please see our full Events Calendar for more details pertaining to meetings.  Parking at the Newman Center is extremely limited. It is recommended that commuters park in the nearby "N5" lot on the University campus, accessible via the north gate at NE 45th St and Memorial Way. The fee for evening parking in the University lots is $5.00. Campus maps showing the exact location of the N5 lot are available here.

We look forward to seeing you Thursday evening!

For more infomration on the Chesterton Society: 

http://www.seattlechesterton.org/

For more information on Fr. Bosco: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bosco

Formation Films "Rainy Day Reels" Preview

I took a hiatus from blogging on any of my blogs for various reasons, but now with the film nights in my parish beginning  again, I am going to start up with a piece on that.  I see that I have been getting readers for older posts, which just proves that on the internet what you put out there stays out.

I know that most of my readers do not come from Seattle, but I will write about these films anyway, hoping you will either watch some of them, or start similar film projects where you are. I think every parish, school and neighborhood should have film nights with popcorn and discussions.  These movies should be, as our are, free and educational in purpose.  The discussion should elevate the listener, as should the movie choices. Discussion leaders should come prepare and new and interesting popcorn recipes should be ventured on.   (Tonight for instance we are trying a very spicy Sudanese recipe, a cheese popcorn and Italiano, one of our favorites.  We might save room for regular buttered popcorn as well. )

The way our Formation Films work at Blessed Sacrament is that we run a series for a few weeks, then we meet and schedule another series. Some of the active volunteers come with suggestions and then we talk it out.  We try to balance the topics a little to include peace or justice films, Catholic or Biblical films, thought provokers or various kinds, films on moral questions, spiritual films from other religions, and films of cultural significance or about other cultures. Some films even hit all of those categories at once, like The Ninth Day (http://www.kino.com/theninthday/)  did when we showed it.

Our films start tonight, January 9th 2011 at 7PM and "The Rainy Day Reels" runs every other Sunday until March 20th.

Here is our current line up:

January 9 - Joyeux Noel
Joyeux Noel captures a rare moment of grace from one of the worst wars in the history
of mankind, World War I. On Christmas Eve, 1914, as German, French, and Scottish
regiments face each other from their respective trenches, a musical call-and-response
turns into an impromptu cease-fire.  A moving tribute to those who saw past hate and
political intrigue long enough to share in their humanity.   2005. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyeux_No%C3%ABl)


January 23 - Sugar Cane Alley
Euzhan Palcy's warm, deeply felt film about mentorship and sacrifice is a life-affirming
experience of childhood in black Martinique in the 1930’s. Palcy recreates the plantation
life with a keen sense of balance, offsetting the squalid conditions of workers with an authentic feeling of community and the innocence of childhood.   1984. (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19840101/REVIEWS/401010395/1023)


February 6 - The Navigator
Vincent Ward's mystical tale of a tiny 14th-century English hamlet during the devastation
of the Black Plague mixes faith and fantasy in a compelling adventure. The Navigator
defies genre, mixing fantasy and science fiction, religion and mysticism, historical realism
and modern adventure, to create a compelling, beautiful, visually stunning leap of faith.
1988. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Navigator:_A_Medieval_Odyssey)


February 20 - Dersu Ozala
Akira Kurosawa’s epic film that traces the deep and abiding bond between two men; one
civilized in the usual manner, the other at home in the sub-zero Siberian woods.  This is
a true story, and a stunning piece of film making.  Riveting and relentless in its quest to
show the transcendence of human affection within the context of Russian history.  1975.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dersu_Uzala_(1975_film)


March 6 - Bonhoeffer, Agent of Grace
What is a moral person to do in a time of savage immorality? That question tormented
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German clergyman of great distinction who actively opposed Hitler
and the Nazis. His convictions cost him his life. Bonhoeffer's last years, his participation
in the German resistance, and his moral struggle are dramatized in this film.  2000.
(http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/ChurchAndMinistry/ChurchHistory/Bonhoeffer_Agent_of_Grace.aspx)


March 20 - Thérèse
Thérèse tells the story of St. Therese of Lisieux, a young girl who fell in love with Jesus
Christ and demonstrated a path of spirituality through the actions of unconditional love,
human compassion, and her "Little Way" to the modern world.
1986. (http://www.stlukeproductions.com/therese/index.html)

Each one of these films in some way ties into the values of the Catholic faith.  The first film, about a spontaneous Christmas truce is a great film for the last day of the Christmas season.  It shows that the transcendent values we have a Christians need not remain stuck in the mire of the trenches.  I think on a day when we are mourning a Congresswoman who fell victim to a heated political atmosphere a film about putting the weapons aside is a great one.

Sugar Cane Alley is a great film, about poverty, about familial love and about education.  The preferential option for the poor will no doubt be discussed that night.  The Navigator is in part being shown just to have a "fun film", a sci-fi/fantasy break from reality, but it also has a great deal of mystical content. Dersu Ozala, one of the greater films of  Akira Kurosaw, Japan's best film maker, has a lot to say about human culture, our obligations to each other as humans, and our relationship to nature.

 Bonhoeffer, Agent of Grace, returns us again to a these and setting familiar to our film series: moral choice against the huge backdrop of World War II. Would we have the courage to defy the Nazi's as Bonhoeffer did. What are the moral and theological implications of his course of action.  Should we remain pacifist, or is violence ever justified.

Thérèse, a fairly recent American production, is an excellent note to end on.  We often forget that The Little Flower, a contemplative, is the patron saint of missionaries, both because she prayed for them, and because she taught that it is the 'little things' that are important.  Perhaps she will be kind enough to send us all roses the night of the movie

If anyone has comments on film series projects, any of the films listed, or films we should show, please go ahead and live them. You are part of the community of this blog. thank you.

I would also like the staff of Scarecrow Video, one of the best  and biggest video stores in America, fortunately located one block from Blessed Sacrament.  The staff of Scarecrow has always been helpful in reserving films or answering questions.

Under my umbrella flash mob

Umbrella Flash Mob Official Video Seattle - Glee

Hounds at Bay About to Play 2

Ding Dong Ding Dong
Hounds@Bayare ringing at Egan's 
on Thursday December 9th
And it's a no-cover kinda night.
Please do come! 
We are going to howl in celebration! 
Reservations Recommended!
With schedules a'changin, new jobs and all, 
who knows when 
it will be able to happen again!
Oh my Father Christmas, You'd better come!

EGAN's Ballard Jam House Thursday December 9th   7:00 PM doors 6:30PM  Egan's Ballard Jam House  (206) 789-1621 (Reservations recommended) 1707 Northwest Market Street, Seattle, WA The food is great and this band is too ! NO cover - We're playin' for Scooby snacks and tips. Hounds@Bay is:  Larry Baumgartner, Jim Nason & Steve Peterson Help us celebrate our 1 year anniversary "Leaving our mark on Ballard" LET'S PACK THE PLACE Photo by Ron Dalton

This announcement sent to you by  Larry Baumgartner and Lynette Hensley 3009 NE 135th St. Seattle, Washington 98125 206 291-4117

New Issue of Victory Review

The December issue of Victory Review is in the stands!.  When not the stands exactly.  When it was an in print magazine it was given away at northwest folk events and stores, or mailed by subscription.  It's the magazine of Victory Organization the Northwest acoustic music organization.  Victory has been promoting folk, bluegrass, jazz and other music for years.  I have two CD reviews in this issue and I hope to be able to provide them more for the next issue. Of course there are a lot of reviewers these days.   Here is the link:
http://victorymusic.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=28&Itemid=74

Nuevo Tango Performance by Scott Vigil and Bridgette Maria Rivera

Greetings to New Readers

Greetings to new readers I am getting from St. Blog's Parish and Catholic Blogs.  This is a blog about the arts, primarily the ones I am most interested in: folk music, poetry and film, but other arts as seems good to me at the time.  I am, it's no secret Catholic, and some of my posts will be from a uniquely Catholic perspective, while others will be broader in theme and content.  I can't of course in an arts blog talk a lot about how my faith affects other aspects of life, but you can find some of that in my Roomin' House Blues blog. http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/
 
I welcome and value all my readers and encourage all of you to leave comments.  C.S. Lewis once told a young man that we read so that we know we are not alone.  I have said many times, accordingly, that we write so that others  know they are not alone.  I follow the old round table tradition of the Catholic Worker movement, which I am quite attracted to, and try to make sure that everyone has there say.  I live for the day when I check on of my posts and find there are twenty comments.  It isn't just for me.  It's for building community.  A one sentence comment can encourage the next reader to add something to the mulligan stew of conversation. (That's another Catholic Worker tradition, to always have a pot of stew on the stove that everyone could add to, to feed the guests of the hospitality houses. It comes from the old hobo camps, which had the hospitality of the poor that Steinbeck so well described in Grapes of Wrath) So leave a comment so the next guy has more to chew on.

One thing you can comment on here, if you wish, is any arts events, music, poets, etc you would like me to write about.  Or go ahead and provide links to some of those things on the internet.  Unless things are completely inappropriate, I am not inclined to remove them.  Thanks for your readership.

Catholicism and Poetry #7 Dante

"Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost."


Thus, simply,  begins Robert Pinsky's translation of the Inferno by Dante, or beautifully in Italian, "selva oscura".  As a writer on the arts, I have such great limitations and yet I believe that I have insight into the first Canto of the Inferno, which has always moved me, both before and after the middle of my life.  Perhaps it is because I have often found myself alone, lost in what is dark and grouping for a turning point. 

This is the genius of where Dante begins.   He begins with a confession.  His confession, brief though it is, is as complete as that of Augustine.  But it is the confession of a poet.   He says that
"To tell
About those woods is hard"


For Dante the woods will always be dark.  The experience of sin, loss, confusion, even upon our reflection, does not become light.  It isn't our goal.  The goal is at the end of the right road.  So a poet, speaking honestly, can never turn what is dark into light.  He has to rely on God.  His descriptions will be as obscure as his experience is.   And it is quite painful for:


"—so tangled and rough

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter." 

For Dante, as a true Christian, sin and alienation from God is as bitter as death.  It is the water of bitterness, Mariah, from Exodus.  There two was a journey from sin towards God.  And every time the Hebrews complained and alienated themselves from God, they gave themselves bitter water to drink.  So Dante is unhappy, but he does not despair for he says

"And yet, to treat the good I found there as well

I'll tell what I saw,"

The good is always present for Dante.  If we are being honest we can speak of the good as well as the evil.  

Evil is a mystery for Dante. Sin obscures it's origin. 

" though how I came to enter
I cannot well say, being so full of sleep
Whatever moment it was I began to blunder

Off the true path. "

Now he describes, literally, the morning star, but that is obviously not the real meaning of these lines.

"But when I came to stop
Below a hill that marked one end of the valley
That had piereced my heart with terror, I looked up

Toward the crest and saw its shoulders already
Mantled in rays of that bright planet that shows
The road to everyone, whatever our journey."

Dante is really talking about how God's light reaches us, no matter what path in life we are on. 

The Italian below:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita. (3)

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura! (6)

Tant’è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte. (9)

Io non so ben ridir com’i’ v’intrai,
tant’era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai. (12)

Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto,
là dove terminava quella valle
che m’avea di paura il cor compunto,

guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle
vestite già de’ raggi del pianeta
che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.

More of the first Canto at:

http://www.csupomona.edu/~jelerma/dante/index.html

More on the Inferno at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)

And for biography of Dante:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri

The Mystery of Man

Bruggeman On The Poets

Folk Hymns vs Folk Hymns

It's been a matter of some controversy in the Catholic church, post the "Folk Mass Era" of the 70's and early 80's to compare the old church music to the new church 'folk" hymns.  It was the subject of a book, advocating a conservative music liturgy,  called "Why Catholic's Can't Sing" which claimed that the new church hymns are unsingable and this is why you don't here a lot of pew accompaniment to the choir.  It's author said that the old high church hymns were very singable and in the old days everyone sang.

An interesting memory.  He suffered from false memory syndrome.  Don't get me wrong, as an old choir boy I loved the old church hymns.  And I, folk music lover that I am, I hate many of the new guitar strumbable "folk hymns".  But I hate them because they are fake folk hymns, not grown organically from the people's musical tradition.

The Catholic church would do well to adopt and adapt many of the old  Southern spirituals Black and white.  They grew up out of a fusion of African and European folk signing, a signing school tradition that started in New England and went South, a form of music called shape note singing that actually owes it's roots ultimately to the Gregorian chant, and the English Methodist practice of putting sacred lyrics on popular tunes, even bar tunes.  Why should the devil have all the good music it was asked.

Catholics will learn how to sing when the church adopts the old folk tradition of singing schools, when decent song books of old high church songs and true folk songs are provided with easy to follow notation and lyrics, and when song picks bear in mind carefully the beautiful and true.  We only sing when we want to sing, when we are encouraged to sing and when we have the resources.

A Visual Arts Blog

I can recommend highly to any readers I actually have, my friend Christen Mattix's blog, Traveling Light.  Besides a comment here and there on arts and politics she posts her wonderful work, and provides a link to her website that has her great short films on it.  She is clearly inspired by the great Russian contemplative film maker, Andrei Tarkovsky.  Give her blog a look see.
http://christenmattix.blogspot.com/

Irish Theater, Music and Dance

For those, who like me, love Irish folk music and dance, the local Irish Seattle new, which John Keane so faithful emails to me, had a great little notice. 

According to the Seattle Irish Clubs newsletter, Saturday, November 20th, it will be Irish night at the local Seattle Rep.  At Tony award winning play, Dancing at Lugnasa by Brian Friel will be shown, starting at 6Pm.  It will run until December 5th at Seattle Repertory Theatre.   But Saturdays event is special, starting with Irish Dance lessons, a live band, a potato bar, and whiskey tastings. The play is loosely based on the lives of Friel's relatives in the Glenties on the rural west coast of Donegal and set in 1936. It shows a beautiful fragement of five women's lives during a romantic summer.

More on the play at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_at_Lughnasa 

Thanks to:SEATTLE-NEWS@IRISHCLUB.ORG

Catholicism and Poetry #6: Samuel Menashe: A Jewish Poet a Catholic Should Love

Can a Jewish Poet write poetry a Catholic should love?  Did not St. Paul say we were spiritual Jews?  Our Bible begins with the Hebrew story and continues onto our unique beliefs and our Catholic poetry is rooted in the bible.

A Jewish poet who has labored in relative obscurity for years, Samuel Menashe, won Poetry Foundations Neglected Masters Award in 2006 and since he has become the darling of a New York literary scene that once snub him.  He writes terse, even taut poems with Zen like clarity and pointedness, but they are often on biblical or other Jewish themes.  He rhymes his short little poems, something now unconventional, and yet in many other ways his poems are completely modern.  Modern in language and influenced by existentialism, yet they touch the ancient additudes of the Hebrew people.

My favorite poem is  Adam Means Earth.    Are we not all born of the earth?  Menache plays on the fact that in the ancient semetic tounges Adama was earth, while Adam meant man.

The poem can be found at:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181927

In this poem he draws out the essential humility of the human condition, when we chose to embrace it.  When he  speaks of "the man  whose name is mud" is am reminded of the scene in Francesco where Mickey Rourke, playing St. Francis, rubs his face in the mud and says "I am so low, I am lower than the dirt."
Menache says "dust Adam became" aluding to our death, and yet also speaking ou our life, what we are made of.  He asks "Was he his name" which perhaps we should all ask of ourselves.  Have I lived up to my humble origins?


In august of 2006 NPR carried a wonderful audio story on Menasche, below.



Here is a wonderful u-tube of Menashe talking and reading



Here is a brief biography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Menashe

And great little interview recored on a blog.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/culture/a-visit-with-samuel-menashe/

And some more poems of Menashe.

http://www.archipelago.org/vol8-4/menashe.htm

Hounds at Bay About to Play

Acoustic Music fans there is a special treat coming up--Hounds at Bay is playing and there is an ad for it.   Go if you can.   I have also posted a U-Tube of these guys playing, Great stuff.

EGAN's Ballard Jam House Thursday November 18th   7-8:30 PM doors 6:30PM  Egan's Ballard Jam House  (206) 789-1621 (Reservations recommended) 1707 Northwest Market Street, Seattle, WA The food is great and this band is too ! $7 cover Hounds@Bay is:  Larry Baumgartner, Jim Nason & Steve Peterson Help us celebrate our 1 year anniversary "Leaving our mark on Ballard" LET'S PACK THE PLACE Photo by Ron Dalton

This announcement sent to you by  Larry Baumgartner and Lynette Hensley 3009 NE 135th St. Seattle, Washington 98125 206 291-4117

Houndsatbay -- Parchman Farm James Nason Hounds At Bay

Social Justice Film Picks

I have started a new blog on my unemployment and on the problems of all those marginalized in America.  I put some social justice film picks on it, and  rather than cross post right away I thought I would just give my arts readers a link.
http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2010/11/social-justice-film-picks.html
Please give this new blog a read and comment a little so I know what your thoughts are.

The Dark Arts of Halloween VII

Film has it's magic and in the early days it was a silent magic. Alister Crowley, the famous black magician of England claimed film for the anti-Christ, although many of are not willing to cede that claim.  But it's okay to have a little fun with the darker side of film.  I have decided to seduce you into a world of dark desire and flying in the night from the earliest days of film.  Nosferatu was one of the greatest silent films of it's day, made by the great director,  F. W. Murnau. This adaptation was more faithful to the novel than most later adaptations, although departures from the novel by film were usually not as severe as film departures from Shelly's Frankenstein. 



Here is a little on the film:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu

The novel itself was extraordinarily well written.  To give you a little chilling effect I have an excerpt from the novel describing the vampire.
"His face was a strong-a very strong-aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor."

Here is a little more on the famous novel by Bram Stoker it was based on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula

The Dark Arts of Halloween VI

Now we get to the dark art of puppetry.  These inoffensive little pieces of cloth and string here conjure up Halloween for us:

The Dark Arts of Halloween V

Poetry, an angelic art, may also be a dark art, leading use to experience the emotions of fear, horror and disgust. After all isn't poetry about emotions, and who are we to refuse to explore these emotions also.

I found this wonderful u-tube presentation  of a contemporary poem by it's author, presented here with puppets, a Confessional for Puppet's Halloween.:



And here by the conjurations of an animator, Edgard Allen Poe has come tapping at our door to read a poem:

The Dark Arts of Halloween IV

Continuing with our rather haunting theme for this week we are exploring the dark art of the devil's music, the blues. I first heard this little number on a Maria Muldaur album, Maria Muldaur and Her Garden of Joy, but I didn't find that on U-Tube.  So here is the best version I could bring you:

The Process of a Poem

A few days ago I wrote a blog entry on the process of a painting, but I am not a painter. So I directed you to someone else's blog, where she demonstrated her steps in producing a painting.

I am however unsuccessfully, a poet, so today I will discuss the process of a poem. I'm not going to go in a linear step by step manner. Rather I am going to discuss the various things I have done in writing poetry so that you can assemble your own process. For those who do not want to write but want to understand, I hope that you can see inside the feverish skull of a poet at work.

I was first introduced to poetry when Beat poet and ad copywriter Lew Welch came and spoke at my high school. He read a few of his poems which I neither remember now nor understood then, but I like something about poetry and I caught the fever from Welch. He said we could write poems, that we could put anything we wanted in them, even a shopping list. So a wrote my first poem, complete with a shopping list. I give gratitude to God that I long ago lost the poem, although I may try sometime another shopping list. The important thing was that I began writing. Maybe, like the Zen poets, I'll write a death poem --and it will be a shopping list.

Then I discovered that poetry was about emotion, So I began to write in states of emotional ecstasy or emotional longing. I wrote in a pagan language, deifying the woman of my imagination and worshiping forces of nature. In other words I was a teenage boy who had discovered poetry. Again I give gratitude to God that I long ago lost these poems. But the value to writing them was that I my emotional state grew deeper and I gradually reached towards the subtle emotions. Often in a poem, we don't at first perceive that there is emotion involved at all. We have to leap into a visual or intellectual world of the artist to feel the emotion. We have to be there with the poet. So the job of the poet is not to give an exact description of his state of mind or heart, but to beckon us forward to the edge of the known universe. He invites us to fall into his world like Alice fell.

Then I began to read the great dead poets, and a few living ones. I read Dylan Thomas and Hopkins and I fell in love with their use of alliteration and assonance. I learned that internal rhyme could provide rhythm even in a free verse poem.

I learned about the majesty of long lines in Whitman. I played around with end rhyme verse. Eventually I learned how to count the accents of my poetry and meter it and I learned from Hopkins how to spring that meter free again, in an irregular meter that wasn't quite free verse.

I learned from the contemporary and from European poets something called the deep image --a sort of surrealism I suppose, but tamed a bit. Where you use deep and inexact images from the subconscious in a poem that includes less deep imagery to provoke. In other words you shift levels of consciousness to bring the reader into your deeper place. The poem may have a non-surrealist structure but it has deeper images as well.

Then I learned to fall completely into the poem, to let it overwhelm me like a shamanic trance. Each poem I wrote I had to find the place where I was to begin and that was a magical struggle. I put my desk in the center of my room, and I put an old typewriter on it (this was before PCs and Macs) On one wall I put a bookshelf filled with volumes of poets --Blake, Neruda, Lorca, Whitman, Thomas and others. Every morning I walked around my desk. I kept walking under I felt I was ready to enter the word of poetry. Then I picked up a poet to come with my on my walk around the desk. I read some poems--maybe even out loud. I learned to hear the poet even when I read him silently. I read until poetry overwhelmed me and I moved past the state of being the listener to the state of being the poet. Then I sat in the chair and fought with the keys of the typewriter to hammer out a poem.

When I finished a draft of the poem I pulled it out of the typewriter. I stopped being the Shaman and applied intellect. I counted it's meter. I looked for opportunities to enhance internal rhyme. I determined what I really meant.

Then once more I became something else. I became an alchemist. I began to grind, boil and recast my metals, precipitating and refining over and over and over. Having spent an hour or so writing a page of poetry, and a few minutes to an hour lending a critical eye to it, now I alchemized the poetry and myself. I cut myself to pieces and I floated down a river until I reassemble as a new poet with a new poem. I sacrificed everything. I spared known of my pride in producing the finely crafted poem.

All of those poems were lost. Only God knows them. But that allowed me to begin again. I had deepened and matured the channels. I didn't need to use the exact same techniques, but I need to learn more about emotion and poetry. I stopped writing for several years, but poetry loved me and I loved her. She was my wife and no man could set aside what God had joined together.

The summery of my old method still exists in mature technique. I write without reservation, I lend a critical eye, and I edit without mercy.

Again my reader I will go back. As I promised you, this is not linear. I want to cover some techniques for starting a poem. One can copy the first line of another poem, follow the lead of that first line but with your own heart. Then in editing the poem, you destroy the other poet, you place him on the sacrificial altar.

You can start with lists. You can list five images of colors, five images of scent, five images of sound, five images of object, etc and then take a knife to the list. Let the list run blood. Start over again with the hacked up and pulpy remains and construct a poem.

You can go for a walk and record the pressure of the word against your skin and ear drums. You can let the world sing to you. Then you can leave that world in order to describe the emotions it gave you. You can walk in the memory or the imagination of that world. The emotions are pinned by your heart to the wall of your mind. it doesn't matter if the world is real or the word alone is real. You can follow the walkway to where the heart left it for you.

Or you can refuse to write the word down. You can memorize the word before you sleep and fall into the dream of those words. You can walk with the words for a day or longer and tumble them over and over, speaking them in your mind over even in your tongue until you can't hold off any longer. And you reach for your beloved and move with your beloved. But then you have to move away from your beloved. To move back towards the world in savage reordering of the words.

The poet must never be afraid to start, to look or to change. Where do you being. Sit down and make a shopping list.

The Dark Arts of Halloween III

Okay kiddies --now it's time for another "dark art" --the art of the mask. We'll keep this one simple. Hold on tight.

The Dark Arts of Halloween ll

Another dark art that can be practices this time of year is making mobiles. Not the pretty kind that tinkle in the wind, but the kind that creep up the neck and tighten up your jaw. Here is one for you.

Musical Saw? #2

As I promised more on the musical saw. In fact I will be providing much more later. Years ago in Santa Cruz I knew Tom Scribner who, among other things, was a legend in the musical saw field. He did more than anyone else in the 60's and 70's to revive the playing of the musical saw and an musical saw gathering started up in the Santa Cruz mountains as a result, after he died. If he taught you how to play the musical saw he would award you a P.h.d in musical saw playing. If anyone has one of those please send a photo in the comment section to show it off.

I remember many occasions upon which I was walking in downtown Santa Cruz and I could suddenly here the eerie, winning sound of the saw. I would follow it's beckoning and find Tom sitting somewhere downtown playing the saw, then I would sit beside him and listen for a while, and find him always willing to chat after a while. I'll provide more detail on Tom and his history in later posting.

Practical advice for those thinking of taking up the art: don't play the tooth side, you will use up to many bows. Actually look for a saw that has a good handle or one specifically made as a musical saw. And bend and play it before you buy it. If it doesn't produce a lot of high pitched sounds it's no good for anything except cutting wood. And between you and me, I think cutting wood is more work than making music.

Besides the saw convention in California there is now an annual one in New York City. I have a little U-Tube from that here for you.

The Dark Arts of Halloween

Well it's an arts blog and it's Halloween so it's time for a little of the spooky arts --like pumpkin carving. The winner of our pumpkin carving contest is my friend Greg Bau, who owes me a beer for appointing him the winner. Here is Greg's pumpkin, courtesy of his mobile upload.

I am willing to consider a runner up contest, of course, and I prefer dark beers, especially porters.

In the comments anything you have to say about other dark arts, like costume making and baking goodies would be welcomed. For the right brew I can award winners there also.

As to why pumpkin carving is a dark art, I am including this U-Tube:

Catholicism and Poetry #5 Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899) was a English poet and Jesuit priest. He converted from the Anglican church to Catholicism while studying at Oxford under the influence of John Henry Newman, one of man important people with whom he maintained correspondence. He developed at Oxford a friendship with the poet Robert Bridges, later poet laureate of England.

When he entered the Jesuits he burned all his poetry, but when his religious sentiment called forth a new kind of poetry he wrote while telling almost no one about the poems. While never abandoning Aquinas Hopkins began studying Duns Scotus who places emphasis on the uniqueness of each thing and person and in having exacting perception. This fit Hopkins temperament and guided the way he looked at things in his poetry. His poetry is a fusion of Aquinas, Scotus and the world that he sees before him to the service of the God he loves. Because he studied Scotus, however, when he took his final theological exam in the Jesuits, he failed, not relying solely on Aquinas for his answers, and he could not advance in the order. He studied Welsh, but gave it up when his superior suggested that unless he was going to use it in his mission in Whales to draw closer to people, it might not be a worthy pursuit. Yet the Welsh language enriched his poetry in the same way that it enriched Dylan Thomas's. He also had studied Old English and the poetry in that language, which , similarly to the Welsh, relied on internal rhyme devices, like alliteration and assonance. Hopkins did not publish his poetry, sharing them with Robert Bridges and a few others, mainly other poets whom he knew. Bridges revered him through he sometimes criticized his poetry, and in 1918, years after Hopkins death, Brides, as poet laureate had them published.

This U-Tube embed is a five part documentary on Hopkins, so start with the first and click onwards.

Lets take a look at one of the poems read on this documentary:

As Kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame

As kingfisher catch fire,dragonflies draw flame

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring;like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves-goes itself, myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me:for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices:

Keeps grace: that keeps his goings graces

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-

Christ-for Christ plays in ten thousands places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Hopkins here, as in most of his poetry, uses a sprung rhythm, that is the same number of beats as a regular line, but sprung from there position in the line to fall in differing places. This technique falls between classically metered poetry and the loose rhythm of free verse, such as in Whitman. However in this poem some of his lines have a more regular meter. Hopkins often mixed the two as if to place emphasis on why his meter varies in the other lines. He uses assonance and alliteration to spring the meter free and make it fall where he may it. (To spring free my grammar to make my point!)

In this poem Hopkins begins, as he often does showing the action and beauty of God in creation. But that is just a begging point. But then Hopkins does something different, swinging on the cord of a bell he carries us from the natural to the human world. Just as each natural thing serves it's purpose for God, so to does each human being, doing for me , that I came for. Each just man justices, and by that he is Christ for others, part of Christ playing in ten thousand places that the Father can see him lovely in limbs, see him through the features of men's faces.

Wikipedia on Hopkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

Poems of Hopkins

http://www.bartleby.com/122/

Time line for Hopkins Poems

http://www.google.com/search?aq=1&oq=Gerard+Ma&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=gerard+manley+hopkins+poems#q=gerard+manley+hopkins+poems&hl=en&prmd=ivbo&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=3OrETIXxJoX0swO6i92bDA&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CF0Q5wIwCg&fp=973e9f93f0f871cc

Catholicism and Poetry #4 Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas is not in any was a Catholic poet, and yet because of time in Welsh churches as a youth, the reading of the Bible, and an unfulfilled attraction to the Catholic faith, many of his poems show a deep spirituality. Thomas was the son of a failed Welsh poet and school teacher who raised his on great literature, hoping not vainly that his son would succeed where he had failed. Thomas's poetry was marked strong cadences derived from internal rhyme: alliteration and assonance. Although his meter was more regular than Gerard Manley Hopkins, his poetic energy was similar. His topics vary widely, but many of them come from his youth and others are spiritual in nature. Some dealt with death. He was one of the most brilliant poets and playwrights of his day, popular with British and American audiences as a reader, and with the British radio listening public.

In spite of his intellect and spiritual leanings, Thomas was also a notorious drunk and a con artist who would talk people out of money, justifying it as necessary to support his writing.

Here is a U-Tube animation with Thomas's voice that tries to recreate what it would have been like to here him read the deeply spiritual "And Death Shall Have No Dominion".

And here is the text of Thomas poem:

And Death Shall Have No DominionAnd death shall have no dominion

Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion

Thomas drew on Romans 6:9 "We know that Christ raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him." and Revelations, chapter 17, which promises that Christians on rising shall receive new bodies. Another biblical source may be Daniel 12:2-3 Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace. But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever."

However Thomas's reference from the stars may be partially scientific, in that we are born in the stars, or a reference in part to Orion the hunter who has stars in his knee and shoulder.

Thomas also makes reference to love in this poem. He seems to make a reference to the old tradition that sailors shall be tossed from there graves in the sea at the resurrection. An attempt to pin down exact meanings for this poem is futile, but I can say that the poem seems a definite statement of belief on Thomas part.

More on Thomas at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas

And Dylan Thomas Home:

http://www.dylanthomas.com/

And other poems by Thomas:

http://www.internal.org/Dylan_Thomas

Sing Out Magazine: The Sing Out Radio Magazine

Sing Out Magazine, for those not in the folkie know, is a magazine founded in 1950 by folk musicians and folk types including Pete Seeger. It has weather the political and economic storms of the years to continue writing about folk songs, musicians and issues in the folk scene. It was started as a successor to People's Songs, which had started as a mimeographed handout and grew to a circulation of 3,000, then folded as an anti-red wave affected was leveled against progressive organizations. In 1950 some of the same people got together and planned the first issue of Sing Out!, which had just broad enough appeal to last.

Sing Out has grown into a larger organization with a resource center and a radio program on NPR. Songs from past and present issues of Sing Out can be heard on this show, produced by the group that has been the heart and soul of the last two folk revivals, and the slow times for folk music in between.

I found some Homer and Jethro on the Sing Out page and track it's source down, so to give you a little flavor of Sing Out I'll post them here.

To find Sing Out Radio go to:

http://www.folkalley.com/music/singout/

And to find the online Sing Out organization and magazine go to:

http://www.singout.org/

Process of a Painting

Ah, dear reader, the few of you that there are. I can't pretend to know much about the visual arts besides film, but I loved the visual of the process for putting together a painting provided by Lynette Hensley on one of her blogs.

http://www.folkierthanthou.com/Art/paintingframe2.htm

Do any of you have comments on the process for putting together your artistic works?

Maybe it isn't T.S. Elliot--So?

Poetry is many things to many people, and often, just like kids who don't like vegetables because they have tasted raw broccoli, the young reader stays away from it because they are not read to tackle the intricacies of philosophical poetry. But a great many fine poets are accessible and write on popular topics, from Robert Frost to Alice Walker. Alice Walker has a new book recently covered in this NPR audio

The background story can be found at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130699176&sc=fb&cc=fp