William Carlos Williams: No Good Too
She's the girl
had her picture
in the papers: just
14 years old and
ran off with
the guy her mother
brought home
from a gin mill
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963): No Good Too, from The Golden Goose, Autumn 1948
on the carnival midway at the 2018 carrot festival.
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 7 October 2016
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 7 October 2016
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 7 October 2016
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 7 October 2016
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 7 October 2016
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 7 October 2016
William Carlos Williams: Lines
Leaves are grey-green.
The glass broken bright green.
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963): Lines, from Poetry, March 1919
William Carlos Williams: Drugstore Library
That's the kind of books
they read.
They love their filth.
Knee boots
and they want to hear
it suck
when they pull 'em out.
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963): Drugstore Library, from The Pink Church, 1949
Satisfaction Guilt
It's not as easy to get
As you might think
Just keep thinking though
And you'll find yourself
Getting more and more of it
And it will feel so good
You'll no longer be able to recall
A time when you weren't satisfied
And feeling guilty
About it. Meanwhile -
Hey old Feller
No not you strange old guy in mirror
Or you dark ageless guy
Crumpled on pavement - No,
You! Bob!
It is you, isn't it, Bob?
Hey! It's me! Tom!
Remember that time back in I Oh Way
When you threw that fastball
Through the wall
Of that barn
And it blasted right through like 3-fork'd lightning
Shredding the boards
And I was standing there naked and defenseless exposed to the universe
Under the alien stars
In the middle of the vast unfenced infrared mojave desert
Under the alien stars
In the middle of the vast unfenced infrared mojave desert
On the other side?!
Hey old Feller
Who cares!
bridge to nowhere. yuma, az. 2018 | the abandoned 1929 mcphaul bridge over the gila river east of yuma.: photo by eyetwist, 11 February 2018
bridge to nowhere. yuma, az. 2018 | the abandoned 1929 mcphaul bridge over the gila river east of yuma.: photo by eyetwist, 11 February 2018
bridge to nowhere. yuma, az. 2018 | the abandoned 1929 mcphaul bridge over the gila river east of yuma.: photo by eyetwist, 11 February 2018
Downhill [Santa Barbara County]: photo by Andrew Murr, 25 April 2018
Granite [Joshua Tree National Park]: photo by Andrew Murr, 25 April 2018
Baltimore Facto: photo by Andrew Murr, 26 April 2018
Night factory [Eastside LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 26 April 2018
Untitled [south LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 27 April 2018
[Hollywood]: photo by Andrew Murr, 27 April 2018
: photo by Tom Bridge, 18 March 2007
: photo by Casinoproject, 8 November 2011
In discourse more sweet
(For Eloquence the Soul, Song charmes the Sense,}
Others apart sat on a Hill retir'd,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate,
Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledg absolute,
And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argu'd then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie:
Yet with a pleasing sorcerie could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured brest
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
Milton, Paradise Lost II 555 et seq
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 21 November 2015
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 24 April 2018
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 24 April 2018
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 24 April 2018
O Doc Bill ornery old stroked out coot
Our private mondrian
Out there on your crotchety lonesome
That fine square framed house you built
How'd you get away with it
Inventing ampo your own way
It looks easy to get
It's not as easy to get
New Bridge, Bratislava, Slovakia: temperature inversion: photo by Ondrejk, 11 November 2005
Intentionally blank pages at end of a book: photo by Roke, 2005
A wounded Palestinian during clashes with Israeli troops along the Gaza border.: photo by
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters, 27 April 2018
Soldiers have killed 41 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,000 others since Gaza residents began staging protests along the border fence on 30 March to demand the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The troops were holed up behind fortifications on their side of the 40km (25 mile) border fence and fired live ammunition and teargas at protesters at five locations on the Gazan side.
Gaza medical officials said two protesters who were struck by bullets were in critical condition in hospital and 600 others were wounded.
: photo by Tom Bridge, 18 March 2007
: photo by Casinoproject, 8 November 2011
Three Forks [MT]
In discourse more sweet
(For Eloquence the Soul, Song charmes the Sense,}
Others apart sat on a Hill retir'd,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate,
Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledg absolute,
And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argu'd then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie:
Yet with a pleasing sorcerie could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured brest
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
Milton, Paradise Lost II 555 et seq
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 21 November 2015
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 24 April 2018
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 24 April 2018
: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 24 April 2018
The house bill built
O Doc Bill ornery old stroked out coot
Our private mondrian
Out there on your crotchety lonesome
That fine square framed house you built
How'd you get away with it
Inventing ampo your own way
It looks easy to get
It's not as easy to get
As you might think
Just keep thinking though ampo
: photo by Metin Ekin, 3 June 2017
: photo by Metin Ekin, 3 June 2017
: photo by Metin Ekin, 3 June 2017
: photo by streetmax, 13 March 2018
: photo by streetmax, 13 March 2018
: photo by streetmax, 13 March 2018
: photo by Metin Ekin, 3 June 2017
: photo by Metin Ekin, 3 June 2017
: photo by Metin Ekin, 3 June 2017
: photo by streetmax, 13 March 2018
: photo by streetmax, 13 March 2018
: photo by streetmax, 13 March 2018
White Thought
New Bridge, Bratislava, Slovakia: temperature inversion: photo by Ondrejk, 11 November 2005
Here's what I love about the slipstream blankness
Of the white page, its ability to
Harbour an illimitable conception.
I'll sail through zero into paradise.
I'll summon white thought streaming through the pale
Veins of the white leaf. I'll watch it sink into
The watermark and insinuate the margins
The way a sailors' girl beckons from the shade of
A lamp, whose illumination also falls
To its knees before the grand fog incoming.
Harbour an illimitable conception.
I'll sail through zero into paradise.
I'll summon white thought streaming through the pale
Veins of the white leaf. I'll watch it sink into
The watermark and insinuate the margins
The way a sailors' girl beckons from the shade of
A lamp, whose illumination also falls
To its knees before the grand fog incoming.
Intentionally blank pages at end of a book: photo by Roke, 2005
A wounded Palestinian during clashes with Israeli troops along the Gaza border.: photo by
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters, 27 April 2018
Three dead and hundreds injured as Israeli troops open fire on Gaza border: Action against Palestinian protesters flares hours after UN criticism of Israel: Reuters in Gaza
Israeli
troops have shot dead three protesters along the Gaza border, hours
after the United Nations human rights chief criticised Israel for using
“excessive force” against demonstrators.
Soldiers have killed 41 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,000 others since Gaza residents began staging protests along the border fence on 30 March to demand the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The troops were holed up behind fortifications on their side of the 40km (25 mile) border fence and fired live ammunition and teargas at protesters at five locations on the Gazan side.
Gaza medical officials said two protesters who were struck by bullets were in critical condition in hospital and 600 others were wounded.
The
Israeli military said 10,000 Gazans were participating in what it
described as “riots” and some had tried to breach the border into
Israel. It said troops “had operated in accordance with the rules of
engagement” to stop people crossing the border.
The Gaza health ministry said 200 people were wounded by gunfire,
including a Palestinian journalist who was hit in the foot by a bullet.
Dozens more, including four medics, were treated for gas inhalation as
Israeli forces showered the area with teargas canisters from behind
their fortifications in Israel.
Protesters hurled stones, rolled burning tyres toward the fence and
attached cans of burning petrol to kites and flew them into Israeli
territory. Others cleared away barbed wire coils that Israeli troops had
placed in Gazan territory overnight in a bid to create a buffer zone.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein,
called the loss of life deplorable and said a “staggering number” of
injuries had been caused by live ammunition. Israel’s foreign ministry
had no immediate comment.
Israel’s UN envoy, Danny Danon, told the security council on
Thursday that Hamas in Gaza was responsible for Palestinian casualties
and that it was using innocent Palestinian women and children as human
shields. “The terrorists are hiding while allowing, even hoping, for
their people to die,” he said. “This is evil in its purest form.”
Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said: “Danon’s comments are an attempt
to escape responsibility and to cover up for the execution of unarmed
children and people by occupation soldiers.”
Named the Great March of Return, the protest action revives a
longstanding demand for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to
towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out
of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Israel refuses any
right of return, fearing that the country would lose its Jewish
majority.
Tear gas canisters are fired by Israeli troops at Palestinian demonstrators demanding the right to return to their homeland, at the Israel-Gaza border Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 April 2018
Supporters of the National Socialist Movement, a white nationalist political group, give Nazi salutes while taking part in a swastika burning in Georgia Photo Go Nakamura: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 April 2018
#USA Members of the US military carry the flags of Israel and the United
States during an honor cordon at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Photo @b_smialowski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 28 April 2018
GAZA - Palestinian mourners carry a coffin containing the body of
Palestinian scientist Fadi al-Batsh, assassinated in Malaysia, after his
body was returned to his native Gaza Strip his funeral in the city of
Jabalia Photo @mohmdabed #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2018
A Palestinian woman stands behind burning tyres in Khuza'a near the border in southern #Gaza Strip. By: Hosam Salem: image via Hosam salem @HosamSalemG, 27 April 2018
Relatives of Palestinian Tahrir Wahba, 18, mourn during his funeral in Khan Yunis in #Gaza. Wahaba was wounded with a shot in the head by #Israeli fire in a clash on April 6 and was pronounced dead today.: image via said khatib @saudkhatib, 23 April 20218
Relatives of Palestinian Tahrir Wahba, 18, mourn during his funeral in Khan Yunis in #Gaza. Wahaba was wounded with a shot in the head by #Israeli fire in a clash on April 6 and was pronounced dead today.: image via said khatib @saudkhatib, 23 April 2018
Relatives of Palestinian Tahrir Wahba, 18, mourn during his funeral in Khan Yunis in #Gaza. Wahaba was wounded with a shot in the head by #Israeli fire in a clash on April 6 and was pronounced dead today.: image via said khatib @saudkhatib, 23 April 2018
Relatives of Palestinian Tahrir Wahba, 18, mourn during his funeral in Khan Yunis in #Gaza. Wahaba was wounded with a shot in the head by #Israeli fire in a clash on April 6 and was pronounced dead today.: image via said khatib @saudkhatib, 23 April 2018
#Morning from #Gaza #Seaport By: Hosam Salem: image via Hosam Salem @HosamSalemG, 27 April 2018
#Spain A migrant keeps warm in a Red Cross blanket at Malaga's
harbour after an inflatable boat was rescued by the Spanish coast guard
Photo
Jorge Guerrero #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 April 2018
A migrant, part of a group intercepted aboard two dinghies in the Mediterranean Sea, rests upon arrival in Malaga, Spain Photo @JonNazca: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 April 2018
Untitled [Barcelona]: photo by Barlaam Caleb, 23 March 2018
Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow: Piet Mondrian, 1930, oil on canvas, 46 x 46 cm (Kunsthaus Zürich)
Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow: Piet Mondrian, 1930, oil on canvas, 46 x 46 cm (Kunsthaus Zürich)
Untitled [Barcelona]: photo by Barlaam Caleb, 23 March 2018
Untitled [Barcelona]: photo by Barlaam Caleb, 23 March 2018
The executive kiosk | Snapped in Athens, Attiki, Greece: photo by Spyros Papaspyropoulos, 9 October 2016
The executive kiosk | Snapped in Athens, Attiki, Greece: photo by Spyros Papaspyropoulos, 9 October 2016
The executive kiosk | Snapped in Athens, Attiki, Greece: photo by Spyros Papaspyropoulos, 9 October 2016
The executive kiosk | Snapped in Athens, Attiki, Greece: photo by Spyros Papaspyropoulos, 9 October 2016
The executive kiosk | Snapped in Athens, Attiki, Greece: photo by Spyros Papaspyropoulos, 9 October 2016
The executive kiosk | Snapped in Athens, Attiki, Greece: photo by Spyros Papaspyropoulos, 9 October 2016
Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow: Piet Mondrian, 1930, oil on canvas, 46 x 46 cm (Kunsthaus Zürich)
Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow: Piet Mondrian, 1930, oil on canvas, 46 x 46 cm (Kunsthaus Zürich)
Otis Redding: Mr. Pitiful (live)
ReplyDeleteBob Feller, Whose Fastball Dazzled, Dies at 92
ReplyDeleteBy RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
The New York Times
DEC. 15, 2010
Bob Feller, who came off an Iowa farm with a dazzling fastball that made him a national celebrity at 17 and propelled him to the Hall of Fame as one of baseball’s greatest pitchers, died on Wednesday in Cleveland, where he had played for the Indians for 18 years. He was 92.
The Indians said the cause was leukemia, which had been diagnosed in August. Feller, who lived in Gates Mills, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, had recently been treated at the Cleveland Clinic for pneumonia and was at a hospice at his death.
Joining the Indians in 1936, Feller became baseball’s biggest draw since Babe Ruth, throwing pitches that batters could barely see — fastballs approaching 100 miles an hour and curveballs and sinkers that fooled the sharpest eyes. He was Rapid Robert in the sports pages. As Yankees pitcher Lefty Gomez was said to have remarked after three Feller pitches blew by him, “That last one sounded a little low.”
A high-kicking right-hander, Feller was a major league phenomenon while still in high school in Van Meter, Iowa. His debut as an Indians starter, during his summer vacation, was spectacular: he struck out 15 batters.
Three weeks later he struck out 17, tying Dizzy Dean’s major league record. He pitched the first of his three no-hitters when he was 21. (He went on to throw an astonishing 12 one-hitters.) He had more than 100 victories at age 22.
By the end of his brief rookie season, Feller was the best-known young person in America, with the possible exception of Shirley Temple. When he returned for his senior year at Van Meter High School, the governor of Iowa attended a welcome-home ceremony. When the 1937 season opened, Feller’s picture was on the cover of Time magazine. And when he graduated from high school in June of that year (he had been tutored while on road trips), NBC Radio carried the ceremony nationwide.
Feller was not particularly big — 6 feet tall and a chunky 185 pounds — but by most estimations he threw harder than anyone who had ever pitched, with the possible exception of Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove.
Feller’s career predated the use of radar guns to measure a pitch’s speed, but he was nonetheless able to show exactly how fast he was in a demonstration in August 1946, when he threw 30 pitches through the hole of a photoelectric device before a game in Washington. They averaged 98.6 miles an hour.
“I don’t think anyone is ever going to throw a ball faster than he does,” Joe DiMaggio was quoted as saying during his epic 1941 season, when he hit in a record 56 consecutive games. “And his curveball isn’t human.”
TC,
ReplyDeleteWe'll take this as an unintended wedding gift from 45 years ago today. At 2:00 pm this afternoon, Me and the Mrs. will be watching our grandson pitch behind the church where precisely at that hour in 1973 we were inducted into the Hall of Mirrors. Hey, a feller and his gal can only try to do what they can do. "Hey, batta-batta..."
k
Thanks Tom, putting together those little known poems by Bill Williams followed by Milton (maybe a first pairing?!?) and those beautiful Mojave photos followed by (unfolding into) all those other photos including the ones of Rapid Robert Feller . . . "That last one sounded a little low" . . . and your "slipstream blankness Of the white page"
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff!~
A bit o’old Butte yesterday and good old Three Forks (an old Feller pitch?) today. Makes me smile, especially paired with Milton in the battery...and Borges in the bullpen. “There are no paradises except for the paradises lost.”
ReplyDeleteyes of course this post is absolutely a secret salute to the epic woodman union. Let's play 90!
ReplyDeleteSteve thanks very much for knowing how little known those wcw poems are. The little "Lines" is one he kept fiddling with for some years. I take it to be one of his personal practise pieces... as in a few easy pieces will do, if you do them over and over... sometimes improve sometimes ruin... always learning. Anyhow the version he published in boke form is surprisingly different. Revision not always improvement.
Your own practise of repetition and variation would have been a Revelation to him.
However even had such an example existed and had he known of such an example his common sense not to mention professional economy would probably have told him he was never going to have not only the time but more importantly the staying power/stamina for a daily formal practise of that order. Physically I mean. Nobody (except you) does! Not that it would ever have occurred to him. In the first place. And why would it.
Umm, I forget.
those grand mojave scapes do call to the soul like they say, and many have long believed Revelations will come true in that tectonic zone... somewhere near the Baker Grade... the witnessing agent (eyetwist) is kevin balluff.
He gets comments on these scenes from long haul truckers who run those long high desert grades, to whom such views are familiar, their workplace.
Tom,
Bob Feller was known for his Three Forked Lightning, as is told in Revelations.
Re. above reference to the little poem "Lines", this is the version Williams' editors, working from his typescripts at Yale, ultimately chose for his Collected:
ReplyDeleteLeaves are greygreen,
the glass broken, bright green.
evidence of grand mastery of craft, with ineffable rare bonus, Touch
how many hundreds of years of poets in this language would have recognized those skills
Thank you, Tom, for this. It feels like a revelation.
ReplyDeleteinventing ampo in his own way.
Gaza border: another rush of stats for the World to studiously ignore.
Duncan,
ReplyDeleteThe apocalypses just keep on coming.
The Gaza border event seems like it's gone on forever. In truth, only two more weeks. Then, the Nakba commemoration.
What can one say. There will be blood. All on the one side, as ever.
About WCW inventing ampo, he knew not what he did. Or had done. Did do. Nor what he left us with. Yeesh.
Ah Tom, the subtleties of detail in these two versions -- no hyphen between two color words, comma where period was, no cap in second line, comma between the two "b" words in that line:
ReplyDeleteLeaves are grey-green.
The glass broken bright green.
Leaves are greygreen,
the glass broken, bright green.
. . . Williams fiddling, the editors fiddling some more, gives us something to think about.
Reminds me of "Between Walls" wherein still "shine / the broken pieces / of a green bottle."
Thanks for recalling attention to all this!
Steve
Steve,
ReplyDeleteThanks again, and yes, the ND editors did a good job of minding the TSS, and yes the TSS matter... with the sort of work Williams was attempting, no detail too small to matter!