Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Saturday 28 April 2018

That Glow: In the Pink Church | William Carlos Williams: Lines (3 poems) | Caution: Bees | Satisfaction Guilt (Hey old Feller)

.
L1160459-ust-kyma2017 | by Emil Gataullin

1140459-ust-kyma2017 | Ust-Kyma, Arkhangelsk region, Russia 2017: photo by Emil Gataullin, 18 April 2018

abandoned drive-in theater. parker, az. 2018. | by eyetwist

abandoned drive-in theater. Parker, az. 2018: photo by eyetwist, 11 February 2018
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

the zipper. holtville, ca. 2018. | by eyetwist

have ample supplies. mojave desert, ca. 2018. | by eyetwist
homestead. mojave desert, ca. 2018. | by eyetwist

homestead. mojave desert, ca. 2018: photo by eyetwist, 28 February 2018

homestead. mojave desert, ca. 2018. | by eyetwist

homestead. mojave desert, ca. 2018: photo by eyetwist, 28 February 2018

homestead. mojave desert, ca. 2018. | by eyetwist

homestead. mojave desert, ca. 2018: photo by eyetwist, 28 February 2018
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

eat. mojave desert, ca. 2016. | by eyetwist
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
On the other side?!

Hey old Feller
Who cares!


seabird carcass. tucson, az. 2015. | by eyetwist

seabird carcass. tucson, az. 2015. | by eyetwist

desert crossing. rice, ca. 2018. | by eyetwist


bridge to nowhere. yuma, az. 2018. | by eyetwist

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. | by eyetwist

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. | by eyetwist

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 | by ADMurr

Downhill [Santa Barbara County]: photo by Andrew Murr, 25 April 2018

Granite | by ADMurr

Granite [Joshua Tree National Park]: photo by Andrew Murr, 25 April 2018

7th Ward, New Orleans | by ADMurr

7th Ward, New Orleans: photo by Andrew Murr, 20 April 2018

Baltimore Facto | by ADMurr

Baltimore Facto: photo by Andrew Murr, 26 April 2018

Night factory | by ADMurr

Night factory [Eastside LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 26 April 2018

Sunflower Ave., Clarksdale | by ADMurr

. | by ADMurr

11 comments:

TC said...

Otis Redding: Mr. Pitiful (live)

TC said...

Bob Feller, Whose Fastball Dazzled, Dies at 92

By 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.”

kent said...

TC,

We'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

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

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"

Great stuff!~

Unknown said...

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.”

TC said...

yes of course this post is absolutely a secret salute to the epic woodman union. Let's play 90!

Steve 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.

TC said...

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:

Leaves 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

Mose23 said...

Thank you, Tom, for this. It feels like a revelation.

inventing ampo in his own way.

Gaza border: another rush of stats for the World to studiously ignore.

TC said...

Duncan,

The 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.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

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:


Leaves 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






TC said...

Steve,

Thanks 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!