A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

(for Wade Jennings)

1

There is a kind of sweet distress
In children dancing out of time;
Attendant on that awkwardness
A mute unsureness, a duress
Whose only succor is finesse;
It is as though
They know,
Sensing the aisles’ restlessness,
Though it stand only for a time
And though
It be blameless
It be nameless,
Still
They count it as [...]

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A reminder

Writers are reminded of the opportunity for open reading this Tuesday, June 3, 2008, at the Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center Writers Forum at 7 pm.
The meeting begins . Writers are allowed ten minutes each to read whatever they would like–their own work, that of major influences, a piece they have run across or [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters
Crosswalked in winter where your dream was riven
Into red fragments on a city street,
We pause today as curbed and unforgiven,
As jayed and ticketed and incomplete.
Clio had wooed and won you long before us,
Whose dress is draggled in such ancient blood
That, had you lived, were you quite sure this [...]

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A recompilation
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Eschewed writing verses stately
Instead his preferred art
Was something like a verbal fart.
It’s Friday and, as promised I’m bringing our many many entries up to the front page for a brief dash in the sun. I’m also categorizing them several different ways, but mainly by the subject matter. Recall that clerihew by definition [...]

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A notice
Dancing on the head of a pin,
As passé as drinking gin,
Who you nailin’ down again?
The elite, they’s not like me,
the elite, why we let them be?
Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, has a thing or two to say about the denigration and the most common misuse in political discourse of the [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

Who has not read of mankilling Achilles?
Him of the mighty thews, myrmidon mannered one
In whose red such ichor ran the ships where he dallied
Sail in our sayings, the heads that he hammered;
As hilted as language is, the bloodsayings backing us,
Screwing our courage, it is his name tracks us.
Who [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…continuing those never-ending moments, and they come faster and faster as my end nears ….
The man has a Marine cap. I say, “Former Marine?”
He leaps at me and growls, stopping short of hitting me, and says, “Never former, never ex, always a Marine!” Shoppers jump back at his growl.
“What war?”
“Three, WW Two, Korea [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters
1
SWEET Lesbia, would you know the half
of all my pleasure when your husband laughs
delighted at your flyting and the flashing spite
that lights your countenance when we two fight?
watch out, my girl, your fat fool’s treasure,
I may absent myself and rob the only pleasure
he takes in both of us. [...]

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Announcements
One of McAllen’s newest art venues is an ice cream parlor. Fun loving Jim Kryzak notified me that he will be hosting live music from 7 – 9 pm on Tuesdays at the new Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Shop at Palms Crossing, next to Barnes & Noble at McAllen Convention Center. [...]

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A performance
Here’s a performance of Donnie Hathaway’s “Valdez in the Country” by the Mid-Night Combo at the benefit concert for Dulce Rodriguez last Sunday. Thomas Raines, the keyboard player, is my son. Other players are Noé García, Jorge Mujica on drums, and special guest Ted Lucio, The Dude, on bass.
Enjoy.

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A lyric by Stan Raines (with a twenty-times-revised explanatory essay appended)
I write him letters
When I cannot sleep
When the I-Pod dreams
Won’t come.

I draw him pictures
When I have the time
Of my cat dancing
Across the lawn.
He doesn’t come
From my home town,
But I know he loves
The homeland.
I’ll see him soon,
I know I will
In five years
Or maybe twenty.

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters
The day was blithe as she swung by,
Dimple-shouldered, hair awry,
Soft kirtled in a downy gown
To do her washing by the town;
She rilling, whistled tirra, lira,
Knelt beside the lilting water.
Arlotta, the tanner’s daughter.
When she awoke, the wadded tunic
Beneath her hip was dark, was dank;
The river ran on, ancient, runic;
She [...]

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An announcement from Virginia Gause
The City of McAllen, McAllen Chamber of Commerce and the McAllen Arts Council announce a request for qualifications for permanent art projects to be placed in public settings.
 

The deadline for application is Friday, May 30, 2008.
 
 

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An announcement 
SUMMER SIZZLER 2008
3409 N. Ware Rd. McAllen        ~~~~~~        956-683-STAR 
Singing Stars is pleased to announce our summer music camps!  Each week will have a different theme. Tuition includes all materials. Students must bring a snack & a drink. We hope you can join us for one if not all of this summer’s fun-filled music camps!!!  [...]

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A reminder
It’s been a while since I’ve stopped by, but Gene Novogrodsky has reminded me that there’s good live music to be had Wednesday evenings at Joe’s on the Boulevard. Usually, the music starts up somewhere around nine o’clock and continues until midnight or so. It’s volunteer work and the musicians are doing it for [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
…and the cat made its way along a wall near the Gateway Bridge fence, white cat, going west …. And I made my way east in today’s pre-dawn, though even before 6 a.m., pink and blue played with the eastern clouds - true dawn ….
I was pedaling to the airport to bid two [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg
from Ancient Letters (1987)
 
After the last trick had been turned in the game,
The bumpers drunk, the galley fallen apart;
The lying maid having drunk to a different name
A cup for the journey, so to speak, at the start;
One wonders whether that harried dame ever thought
In terms of that fat man she and [...]

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A journal entry in the old style
Ah.. rested at last. Not well-rested, mind you, but some-rested, and better than the last few nights.
Friday night, trying to sleep, and the nose would not stop dripping, so every ten minutes or so I had to blow it out. Then it dried up suddenly and swelled and closed [...]

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A poem by Thomas Thornburg
 
 
One wonders whom the next elected
Criminal for these troubled times
Will the feckless public, suspect,
Lever in the long direction
(Between the last war and the next)
We take in our quotidian crimes;
How long our matrons skirt the leering
Lawless on main ways to market;
How long our aged folk in fear
Imprisoned at their portals peering
On them [...]

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A suggestion from Stan
Add your clerihews as comments! Raucus up the town! We’ll front page ‘em at the end of the week.
As of 8:45 pm, THURSDAY, May 29, THIRTY-SIX carefully counted new clerihew plus SIX other quatrains of high merit have appeared! Keep ‘em coming!
Thomas Thornburg introduced himself here with “Ten Clerihew and Something Else.” [...]

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A nostalgic comment by Stan Raines
Hillary Clinton’s recent comment that her husband’s clinching his first nomination in June of 1992 and of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in June, 1968 was peculiar not only because it was in poor taste in the second part, but because no one has noted that, in former times, it was usual for the [...]

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From Gene’s Notebook
Steamy and humid out there on another Bob Dylan birthday weekend, Dylan and the Nunnayerbizness writers, nice, inspiring … supreme beings, moons ….
…and he’d been wanting to sell the seven red cattle, finally, and stick to pigs and chickens, much easier, and cheaper to feed …but the cattle are still around and hungry, [...]

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A poem by Stan Raines (revised)

I
Last week, from the left, at dark
Beams of blue farm light
Clearly danced in my eye;
I turned to the right,
And they died.

II

Two days ago, at sunset
A dove made of smoke
Gathered itself before me,
Rose, and dove straight down,
Through my eye.
III
Yesterday, in high relief,
The sun’s light became
Women of bronze, dancing forms
Whom I have [...]

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An announcement
“Past, Present & Future”
Deadline: July 1st

Is photography your hobby or forte? Would you like to share your work with the rest of world?
If so, Hidalgo County invites you to participate in its first ever photography contest, celebrating the past, present and future of Hidalgo County.

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A poem by Jack King
The very same moon that I saw as a boy
I see again tonight.
It looks the same as it did back then,
A sphere of mottled white
That lit the world for night-owl youth
And filled young eyes with wonder
And spiked our dreams with lightning bolts
And charged our hearts with thunder.
The very same moon that [...]

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