A Punch in the Face for Free Speech (It Can Happen Here) / Robert Creeley: America: "Give back / what we are" (13 Poems) / bobsan88: Middlemarch

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Trump supporters take a selfie with white nationalist leader Nathan Damigo, who punched a woman at the last Berkeley rally.: image via Shane Bauer @shane_bauer, 27 April 2017

A white nationalist punches her in the face. Then they come after her and her family. Still no charges from police.: image via Shane Bauer @shane_bauer, 27 April 2017
   

 This guy with the American flag attached to a bat insisted that if I quote him, I refer to him as "the giant.": image via Shane Bauer @shane_bauer, 27 April 2017

Approaching the 50th Anniversary of the Free Speech Movement

 

Platz Uritzki, Saint Petersburg: Natan Altman, October 1918: a temporary work of post-Cubist architectural sculpture erected to publicly commemorate the first anniversary of the October Revolution; by the following anniversary, Altman's canvasses "had already been cut up and used for soldiers' foot bindings" -- Susan M. Cerbesero: The Anniversaries of the October Revolution, 1918-1927 (2005): photographer unknown, from G: Journal for Elemental Form Creation 3, 1924 (Estate of Natan Altman/RAO, Moscow/VAGA, New York)

It lasted one moment, like the full blown lustre
of a peach or a rose, the next moment
that airy dream was over, now remain the unlit business
blocks, rats scurrying from trash bin to glassed-in bank
arcade, pavement carpeted with wet leaves, bodies sheltering
in the light rain dripping from the building overhang, the bones, the blows
that fall from all directions, from unlikely sources,
the scanning search beam of the police cruiser
cutting through the red mist, the quiet click of the picture of no one
being taken by an autoprogrammed camera somewhere
beneath the big clock on the bank
outside the BART station, the broken
clock that's never been correct, just as
the O/C guy who weirdly resembles Allen Ginsberg
confides in haste-elided rapidfire aside I'maJewGeminiJustLikeBobbyDylan
as he rushes past on his nightly rounds, quick-pace
orchestra conductor of a speeded-up cartoon ghost symphony
waving his broken-off-wooden-chair-rung baton, furiously
banging on every newspaper box
in repetitive percussive impatient urgent enquiry
to see if the lost magic of revolution
might still be lingering
in a broken coin slot

TC: Approaching the 50th Anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, November 2012, from Truth Game, 2013

Crowd in front of Sproul Hall in rain during Free Speech Movement rally: photo by Ron Hecker, December 1964 (UC Berkeley, University Archives)



Crowd in front of Sproul Hall in rain during Free Speech Movement rally: photo by Ron Hecker, December 1964 (UC Berkeley, University Archives)


  Surrounding a University police car in Sproul Hall Plaza on 1 October, demonstrators listen to Mario Savio (standing on car roof) protest arrest of Jack Weinberg. Weinberg remained in the stranded car for 32 hours, until an agreement between President Kerr and protest leaders ended demonstration: photo by Don Kechely, 1 October 1964 (UC Berkeley, University Archives)

 

Surrounding a University police car in Sproul Hall Plaza on 1 October, demonstrators listen to Mario Savio (standing on car roof) protest arrest of Jack Weinberg. Weinberg remained in the stranded car for 32 hours, until an agreement between President Kerr and protest leaders ended demonstration: photo by Don Kechely, 1 October 1964 (UC Berkeley, University Archives)

 
Memorial to the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley: image by Coro, 13 January 2009

Screaming Me-Me's

A video of Nathan Damigo (top) and Emily Rose Marshall (below) during the street fighting in Berkeley on April 15 went viral: photo by Stephen Lam/Reuters via ZUMA Press 15 April 2017

A Punch in the Face Was Just the Start of the Alt-Right's Attack on a Berkely protester: Then came the threats, doxing, and meme warfare: Shane Bauer, Mother Jones, 27 April 2017

On Saturday, April 15, Emily Rose Marshall drove up to Berkeley, California, from Los Angeles with a group of friends who were part of the anarchist Oak Roots Collective. They had heard about the "free speech" rally being held in Berkeley by an array of Donald Trump supporters, militiamen, and white supremacists. "We saw this was a rally meant to uplift neo-Nazis and the alt-right," Marshall says. "We wanted to be bodies yelling and screaming in the street, adding to the number of people letting neo-Nazis know they couldn't just show up for racism."

By the time Marshall and her friends arrived in downtown Berkeley, the scene had devolved into street skirmishes between the right-wing side and "antifascist" counterprotesters. She and her friends were dressed in black like their "antifa" comrades, masking their faces to protect their identities. They went near the front line where people were facing off. An antifa activist lobbed a tear gas canister, but the wind blew the cloud back and right wingers rushed the antifa side, swinging.

When the short melee was over, Marshall wasn't entirely sure what had just happened. Marshall, a 95-pound, 20-year-old white woman with dreadlocks who also goes by the alias Louise Rosealma, had been punched at least twice. The crew of right wingers who Marshall, her boyfriend, and others had tussled with for a minute ran up the street in pursuit of other antifa. She didn't know it yet, but the man who had hit her was Nathan Damigo, a 30-year-old ex-Marine and head of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. Within minutes, a video of her getting punched was on its way to going viral.

Blood was streaming from Marshall's boyfriend's nose, which looked like it might be broken. They left the rally and went to a hospital. After she got in the car, she checked her phone. Hate emails started streaming in. "Would you be interested in doing a role play photoshoot," read one she later forwarded to me, "where you are being beaten and raped (simulated), by a group of white nationalists?" "I absolutely love watching you get punched in your ugly ass face on YouTube. I can watch it over and over," another read. "Might I suggest leaping your ugly, hairy ass from a tall building? Or, perhaps, swallow a bottle of sleeping pills? How's it feel to finally be treated like a man? Haha." Since then, she says she's received more than 1,500 harassing or threatening messages via email, Facebook, and Instagram.

How did they know who Marshall was, and so quickly? One emailer signed off, "Praise Kek and Hail Victory," hinting at the source of the storm. "Kek" is the god of a satirical religion that originated in the meme-driven world of 4chan, the online message board popular among the so-called alt-right.

Archived 4chan threads provide a glimpse into workings of the alt-right hive mind on the day of the Berkeley showdown. "Looks like a rat faced kike," one commenter wrote shortly after the punching video was posted. Threads discussing the video became interspersed with memes of cartoon Jews with oversized noses. "That Jew whore thought she was the Jew bear," one poster wrote. (Marshall is not Jewish.) Within hours of her getting punched, people on 4chan and other message boards publicized Marshall's home address and contact information for her parents, grandmother, and 15-year-old brother. They discovered that she'd appeared in pornography. They turned explicit images of her into memes and posted links to her sex videos on her grandmother's Facebook page. Before Marshall got back to Los Angeles that Saturday night, her mom had received so many calls that she'd unplugged the phone.

 

Meme of Damigo punching Marshall spread on 4chan: image via 4chan

 

Meme of Damigo punching Marshall spread on 4chan: image via 4chan

Some on 4chan went to work building a case justifying Damigo's decision to punch Marshall. Before arriving at the rally, she'd posted on Facebook that she was "determined to bring back 100 nazi [sic] scalps," a reference to the Quentin Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds. This was presented as evidence that she'd come to fight and was therefore a fair target. Posters also found a Reuters photo and a video showing Marshall holding a glass bottle as Damigo rushed toward her. Some online posters claimed she had been throwing bottles at them. A military gear site called Tactical Shit claimed Marshall was putting powerful M80 firecrackers inside bottles and throwing them at rally attendees: 

"She was literally making IEDs. This makes her no better than the Boston Marathon bomber." Damigo, the site claimed, was eliminating a bomb threat.

Marshall insists none of this is true. She says she picked the bottle off the ground to stave off attackers when the fight began. There is no evidence to corroborate her account or the alt-right's. All that is clear based on video of the incident is that Marshall was holding a bottle as Damigo rushed in and hit her. She fell to the ground, dropped the bottle, got up, and stumbled away. A moment later, Damigo found her again and punched her in the face. (Asked for a comment from Damigo, Identity Evropa responded, "The video footage and photographs of the event as well as Miss Rosealma's social media speak for themselves. Other than that we have no further comment.")

The alt-right is aware that the new fight with its anti-fascist opponents is as much a clash of brawn on the streets as a culture war online. During the lead up to the April 15 rally, one 4chan commenter described it as "a battle on the front lines and the lefties help us make fun memes for the ages." At the rally, some right-wing attendees carried signs referencing obscure 4chan memes. Even as people were fighting in the streets, the 4chan meme factory was already churning out content.

 

Silicon valley's secretive Alt-Right meme warfare: image by Marco Rullkoetter/Getty via Mother Jones

 

Meme warfare is uniquely suited to the far right. Unlike the antifa's culture of anonymity, the far-right rallies around visible strongmen. Outlandish costumes like Spartan helmets and outrageous acts like Damigo's "Falcon Punch" create excellent hero memes, which galvanize supporters and refute critics. Where a man punching a woman in the face would have previously been seen as an act of cowardice, it is now quickly recast as an act of heroism against terrorism, of moralism over hedonism, or of the master race against Jewish globalists.

The alt-right tried to identify others at the Berkeley rally as well. Message boards posted pictures and purported names of various antifa activists who'd shown up in Berkeley. One antifa man who hit someone in the head with a bike lock was allegedly identified through a meticulous effort of combing through images of the rally and matching the sunglasses and facial hair of an unmasked man with the masked bike lock wielder's.

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Sergeant Andrew Frankel says the BPD is aware of the video, but he declined to state whether it is pursuing charges against Damigo. Marshall says she has avoided pressing assault charges against Damigo because she is afraid that if "they take action against him, I'll have actual Nazis at my door instead of the trolls."

 

Remember this is a day to celebrate free speech. Defend yourself against violent protestors, but follow Police orders. #BlueLivesMatter: image via The Proud Boys @ProudBoysUSA, 27 April 2017
 

This guy with the American flag attached to a bat insisted that if I quote him, I refer to him as "the giant.": image via Shane Bauer @shane_bauer, 27 April 2017

#Athens: Banner Drop in Solidarity With #Berkeley #antifa #antireport: image via Enough is Enough @enough 14, 27 April 2017

Mourning Becomes Immediate

This is the South Korean golf course where the US is deploying its THAAD missile defence system: image via Ed Jones @edwardesjones, 25 April 2017

March 17th we reported 1,000th alleged Coalition civilian casualty event tracked by us since 2014. In just 5 more weeks it jumped to 1,250: image via Airwars @airwars, 26 April 2017

 

Trump's 100 days: US air campaign hammers #Yemen with almost a strike a day #drones: image via Jack Serle @jackserle, 27 April 2017 

Flames believed to be from an explosion near Damascus International Airport can be seen from the rebel-held town of Douma: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 27 April 2017

SYRIA - Syria accuses Israel of strike near Damascus airport. @AbdDoumany: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2017

WEST BANK - Palestinian youth play volley ball as the sun sets in Gaza City. Photo @mohmdabed: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2017

Venezuela Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro rally in Caracas. Photo @federicoparra: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2017

#Iraq A displaced Iraqi man rides a donkey as pro-government Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary forces advance towards Hatra. Photo Ahmad Al-Rubaye: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2017

#Nigeria Peace reigns in Nigeria's Damasak but children still missing. Photo @Floplaucheur: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2017

#South Sudan Relatives begin to mourn moments after a patient with cholera dies at the temporary specialized hospital in Mingkaman. @AFPphoto: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2017

Pres. Donald Trump pats a U.S. Marine on the back as first lady Melania Trump looks on in Washington. #APPhoto by Pablo Martinez Monsivais: image via AP Images @ AP_Images, 27 April 2017

Robert Creeley: 13 Poems

Robert Creeley: Versions (after Hardy)

02147. this land: photo by Junk Male (borrowed_time), 24 March 2008

..............after Hardy

Why would she come to him,
come to him,
in such disguise

to look again at him --
look again --
with vacant eyes --

and why the pain still,
the pain --
still useless to them --

as if to begin again
again begin --
what had never been?

.

Why be
persistently
hurtful --
no truth
to tell
or wish to?
Why?

.

The weather's still grey
and the clouds gather
where they once walked
out together,

watched the world with
a faint happiness,
watched it die
in the same place.

 

02072. coast: photo by Junk Male (borrowed_time), 22 February 2008

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): Versions (after Hardy), from Mirrors, 1981

Robert Creeley: America

porchflag (Des Moines, Iowa): photo by greg (It'sGreg), 6 April 2014

America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world

you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.

People are your own word, you
invented that locus and term.

Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back

what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): America, from Pieces (1969)

Killer blob (Los Angeles): photo by anotherswede ON A BREAK, 7 July 2013

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): America, from Pieces (1969)

Robert Creeley: Generous Life

Ella: Gerhard Richter, 2007 (private collection)

Do you remember the way we used to sing
in church when we were young
and it was fun to bring your toys with you
and play with them while all the others sung?

My mind goes on its own particular way
and leaves my apparent body on its knees
to get up and walk as far as it can
if it still wants to and as it proves still able.

Sit down, says generous life, and stay awhile!
although it's irony that sets the table
and puts the meager food on broken dishes,
pours out the rancid wine, and walks away.

Betty: Gerhard Richter, 1991 (St. Louis Art Museum)

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): Generous Life from Yesterdays (2002)
 

Robert Creeley: The Times

East Wind over Weehawken: Edward Hopper, 1934 (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts)

If they had something
to worry about these
people wouldn't sit there
thinking about what

doesn't even exist they
would take each day as it
comes and thank their
lucky stars they had

enough to eat it says here
it reflects the hopeless
times make what isn't
the case all that is.

Container, detail [Larvik]: photo by astrid westvang, 12 April 2017

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): The Times, from Places (1990)

Robert Creeley: I Know a Man

Rain, gas station, dawn: photo by Riza Nugraha, 2007

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.

Berlin, Neukölln: photo by Lyd.ium, 10 April 2017

I Know a Man: Robert Creeley, (1926-2005) I Know a Man, from For Love, 1962

Robert Creeley: After Lorca

Malaguilla, Provincia de Guadalajara, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain: photo by Häkan Svensson, 2004

for M. Marti

The church is a business, and the rich
are the business men.

........................................... When they pull on the bells, the

poor come piling in and when a poor man dies, he has a wooden
cross, and they rush through the ceremony.

But when a rich man dies, they
drag out the Sacrament
and a golden Cross, and go doucement, doucement
to the cemetery.

And the poor love it
and think it's crazy.

Olivar en Alcalá la Real, Jaén, España: photo by Michelangelo-36, 2005

After Lorca: Robert Creeley (1926-2005), 1952, from For Love (1960)
 

Robert Creeley: The Rain

Waterfall in the Rosenlaui ravine, Switzerland: photo by McIntosh Natura, 2007

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent --
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

Upper Lehman Creek, Great Basin National Park, Nevada: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 2006

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): The Rain, from For Love, 1960

Robert Creeley: Heroes

Santa Fe, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2017

Santa Fe, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2017

Santa Fe, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2017

In those stories the hero
is beyond himself into the next
thing, be it those labors
of Hercules, or Aeneas going into death.

I thought the instant of the one humanness
in Virgil's plan of it
was that it was of course human enough to die,
yet to come back, as he said, hoc opus, hic labor est.

That was the Cumaean Sibyl speaking.
This is Robert Creeley, and Virgil
is dead now two thousand years, yet Hercules
and the Aeneid, yet all that industrious wis-

dom lives in the way the mountains
and the desert are waiting
for the heroes, and death also
can still propose the old labors.

Santa Fe, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2017

Santa Fe, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2017

Santa Fe, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, April 2017

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): Heroes, from For Love, 1960

Robert Creeley: Window

Starlings perform a murmuration at sunset near Gretna Green, in the south of Scotland: photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire, 29 November  2016

 .

Starlings perform a murmuration at sunset near Gretna Green, in the south of Scotland: photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire, 29 November 2016

Multitudes of Starlings appear at Newton, and run feeding about in the grass-fields.  No number is known to breed in these parts.  This is therefore an emigration from some other district.  
Entry for 23 November 1780, in The Journals of Gilbert White

Sometimes it seems just

a push would get you over

the rooftops and out into air

it feels has nothing but

space to give you. This

riding high was made for serious

people who want to live but

can't. Just a push and you're
out, and free as the birds.

 

Out the window of the Eismeer station of the Jungfraubahn, Switzerland: photo by Stan Shebs, 1996

#China Chinese workers clean the window of a building in Beijing. Photo @freddufour_afp: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2017

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): Window, from Places (1990)

Robert Creeley: Mother's Voice
 

Burning the autumn leaves in Norwich, Connecticut: photo by Jack Delano, November 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

In these few years
since her death I hear
mother's voice say
under my own, I won't

want any more of that.
My cheekbones resonate
with her emphasis. Nothing
of not wanting only

but the distance there from
common fact of others
frightens me. I look out
at all this demanding world

and try to put it quietly back,
from me, say, thank you,
I've already had some
though I haven't

and would like to
but I've said no, she has,
it's not my own voice anymore.
It's higher as hers was

and accommodates too simply
its frustrations when
I at least think I want more
and must have it. 

Street scene, Brockton [?], Massachusetts: photo by Jack Delano, c. November/December 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Small farm of John P. Collier, Taunton, Massachusetts: photo by Jack Delano, January 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

My mother's people were all Maine people, they had specific ways of saying things, they spoke with a particular humor. It was a way of speaking that I learned as a child from my increasingly single parent... The ways I placed the world were thus given a form in language from early on. And in emotional moments I now find I increasingly return to that language that's particularly local to my childhood and to the place where I was brought up.
 
Robert Creeley, in Tom Clark: Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place, 1993

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): Mother's Voice, from Mother's Voice, 1981

Robert Creeley: Somewhere

Auto accident on Storrow Drive, Boston, 9 a.m.: photo by Ernst Halberstadt, February 1973

The galloping collection of boards
are the house which I afforded
one evening to walk into
just as the night came down.

Dark inside, the candle
lit of its own free will, the attic
groaned then, the stairs
led me up into the air.

From outside, it must have seemed
a wonder that it was
the inside he as me saw
in the dark there.

Aftermath of an auto accident on Storrow Drive, Boston, nine o'clock in the morning: photo by Ernst Halberstadt, February 1973

When two, seated on the lap of a nurse on the on the front seat of a car beside my father as he drove through the city of Boston on some errand or other, I was showered with broken glass full in the face when a stray lump of coal shattered the side window. Again I recall nothing of it, and perversely the year that followed must have been a very happy one because I was not allowed to cry for fear of causing the affected eye further damage. For some time, then, the eye was left in place although it seems to have had little function. It began to grow larger, however, and so, when I was five, just a year after my father's death, the eye was taken out. That I do remember because my mother told me we were to go to the hospital on some routine business of her own, and once there, she suggested I wait inside, which was common enough. But from there I was taken to the doctor, and so on and so forth, till I came to with a great bandage covering my head, and the eye gone. So I wish she had told me, although I rationally understood why she did not, and why she also had not made clear to me our father wasn't coming back after we saw him taken away in the ambulance across our front yard in the snow. We knew nothing of the funeral, or let me speak for myself. Those tracks fading in the spring thaws mark for me the end of that previous time entirely.

But it is luck, which was the point, and the paradoxical fact that that his death and my injury had a curious consequence. The company employing the person responsible for the careful shovelful of coal paid damages of some nine thousand dollars, enough to see me through college, toward which I'd been determinedly propelled by my mother's sense of duty to my father.

Robert Creeley: from Autobiography, 1989, in Tom Clark: Robert Creeley and the American Common Place, 1993

Creeley was like the loyal philosopher brother one dreams of having. Creeley spoke almost dreamlike about loss. I truly believe he would have been the only one to help me see clearly. After all, he had suffered real loss himself, and his sense of psychic loss clung to him like a halo.

Jim Dine: from I Know About Creeley, 2012)

Switch House at the Taunton railroad crossing: photo by Ernst Halberstadt, April 1973
 

Switch House and Taunton railroad crossing: photo by Ernst Halberstadt, April 1973

Washington Street under the El, looking toward Eggleston Square: photo by Ernst Halberstadt, February 1973

Elevated railroad structure and blighted area below Washington Street, looking south from the corner of Bartlett, Boston, Massachusetts: photo by Ernst Halberstadt (1910-1987) for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, February 1973 (National Archives and Records Administration)

House on fire at Independence Point on Buzzard Bay at Onset: photo by Ernst Halberstadt, May 1973

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): Somewhere, from For Love, 1962
Photos by Ernst Halberstadt, 1973, for the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica Project (U.S. National Archives)

Robert Creeley: For Debora

An ethnic Rohingya Muslim woman looking back as she rides a tuk tuk near a camp set up outside the city of Sittwe in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Malaysia ordered search and rescue missions Friday for thousands of boatpeople stranded at sea, as Myanmar hosted talks with US and Southeast Asian envoys on the migrant exodus from its shores: photo by Ye Aung Thu/AFP, 22 May 2015

An ethnic Rohingya Muslim woman looking back as she rides a tuk tuk near a camp set up outside the city of Sittwe in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Malaysia ordered search and rescue missions Friday for thousands of boatpeople stranded at sea, as Myanmar hosted talks with US and Southeast Asian envoys on the migrant exodus from its shores: photo by Ye Aung Thu/AFP, 22 May 2015

"I have forgotten all
human relations, but not

poetry." I have for-
gotten all that seemed

significant but not
the consequence. I have

never seen this before
this I have wanted to

make this trip many
times but got lost getting

there I have had many
sorrows in my literal

life but much happiness
also I have forgotten

what it was they thought
to remember. I have forgotten.

A Palestinian boy rests on an old armchair in front of a dilapidated house on Friday in Gaza City: photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP, 22 May 2015

 

A Palestinian boy rests on an old armchair in front of a dilapidated house on Friday in Gaza City: photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP, 22 May 2015

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): For Debora, from Places, 1990

Robert Creeley: Love

In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Camille Corot (1796-1875), c. 1860-65, oil on canvas, 46 x 59 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Nothing is without place,

in mind, in physical apprehension --

or if "a dagger of the mind" is the purpose,

hold on to it for dear life, or else kill somebody.

Just when I thought I had it made, I lost it.

Just when I knew what to do, I was an old man.

You hear that bird sing in the tree, there,

you know still what a tree is?

Love is a place, not a person, love is

a weather of time, a convenience to absent sorrows.

But talk is the cheapest of all, means what it wants to,

waits up for no one, always goes home alone.

Robert Creeley (1927-2005): Love, from Places, 1990

 


Fontainbleau, the Bas Breau Road: Camille Corot (1796-1875), c. 1830-35, oil on canvas (private collection)

Robert Creeley (1927-2005): Love, from Places, 1990

Robert Creeley: So There

Persian lacquer binding, 18th century: cover of Persian manuscript: Collected Works of Ḥāfiẓ: Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ [?1799] (Rare Books and Fine Printing Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand)

...for Penelope Highton
 
Da. Da. Da da.
       Where is the song.
What’s wrong
       with life
 
ever. More?
       Or less --
days, nights,
       these
 
days. What's gone
       is gone forever
every time, old friend's
       voice here. I want
 
to stay, somehow,
       if I could --
if I would? Where else
       to go.
 
The sea here's out
       the window, old
switcher's house, vertical,
       railroad blues, lonesome

whistle, etc. Can you
       think of Yee's Cafe
in Needles, California
       opposite the train
 
station -- can you keep
       it ever
together, old buddy, talking
       to yourself again?
 
Meantime some yuk
       in Hamilton has blown
the whistle on a charming
       evening I wanted
 
to remember otherwise --
       the river there, that
afternoon, sitting,
       friends, wine & chicken,
 
watching the world go by.
       Happiness, happiness --
so simple. What's
       that anger is that
 
competition -- sad! --
       when this at least
is free,
       to put it mildly.
 
My aunt Bernice
       in Nokomis,
Florida's last act,
       a poem for Geo. Washington's
 
birthday. Do you want
       to say ‘It's bad’?
In America, old sport,
       we shoot first, talk later,
 
or just take you out to dinner.
       No worries, or not
at the moment,
       sitting here eating bread,
 
cheese, butter, white wine --
       like Bolinas, ‘Whale Town,’
my home, like they say,
       in America. It's one world
 
it can't be another.
       So the beauty,
beside me, rises,
       looks now out window --
 
and breath keeps on breathing,
       heart's pulled in
a sudden, deep, sad
       longing, to want
 
to stay -- be another
       person some day,
when I grow up.
       The world's somehow
 
forever that way
       and its lovely, roily,
shifting shores, sounding now,
       in my ears. My ears?
 
Well, what's on my head
       as two skin appendages,
comes with the package,
       I don't want to
 
argue the point.
       Tomorrow
it changes, gone,
       abstract, new places --
 
moving on. Is this
       some old time weird
Odysseus trip
       sans paddle -- up
 
the endless creek?
       Thinking of you,
baby, thinking
       of all the things
 
I'd like to say and do.
       Old fashioned time
it takes to be
       anywhere, at all.
 
Moving on. Mr. Ocean,
       Mr. Sky's
got the biggest blue eyes
       in creation --

here comes the sun!
       While we can,
let's do it, let's
       have fun.

Robert Creeley: So There, from Hello (Hawk Press, Taylors Mistake, Christchurch, New Zealand), 1976

 

 "New life": Lane's Emulsion restores and maintains health: Stanley Davis (1882?-1938), colour lithograph by the Christchurch Press, 1927 (Printed Ephemera Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand)

 

Maltexo for Growing Greater: New Zealand Railways poster for Wilson's Maltexo, chromolithograph, c. 1935 (Printed Ephemera Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand)

 
 
The Great Levante … How's Tricks: poster for Opera House, Wellington, chromolithograph, 1941 (Printed Ephemera Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand)

The Fun of the Fair: poster for New Zealand Centennial Exhibition of 1939-40, offset lithograph by Charles Haines Advertising Agency Ltd, N.Z., November 1939 (Printed Ephemera Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand)

New Zealand Line. R.M.S. Rangitata in Gaillard Cut: poster for New Zealand Shipping Company Ltd, screenprint, early 1930s (Printed Ephemera Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand)

bobsan88: Middlemarch

Middlemarch, Central Otago: photo by bobsan88, 10 March 2017

Weddeburn, Central Otago: photo by bobsan88, 10 March 2017

Naseby, Central Otago: photo by bobsan88, 9 March 2017

Ophir, Central Otago: photo by bobsan88, 7 March 2017

Clyde, Central Otago: photo by bobsan88, 5 March 2017

Haast, South Westland: photo by bobsan88, 5 March 2017

Fox, South Westland: photo by bobsan88, 4 March 2017

Clyde, Central Otago: photo by bobsan88, 5 March 2017

 Rambla. Collingwood, Golden Bay.: photo by bobsan88, 23 February 2017

 Westport, NZ: photo by bobsan88, 22 April 2017

Okarito, South Westland, NZ: photo by bobsan88, 25 April 2017