Daisy's Dead Air (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
I guess I shoulda used these for Halloween, but decided to save them for Friday the 13th. :) ~*~ The first is from the British anthology TV series titled Journey to the Unknown , which used to scare little Daisy to death. Wikipedia link says: The series had a memorably famous whistled theme tune by [famous horror moviemakers] Hammer 's Harry Robinson and title sequence involving a deserted and apparently...
Five Branch Tree (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
[Death and the Woodcutter; Jean-François Millet] Where we were walking in the day's light, seeing the flight of bones to the stars, the voyage of dead men, those who go forth like dead leaves on the air in the long journey, those who are swept on the last current, the cold and shoreless ones, who do not speak, do not answer, have no names, nor are assembled again by any thought, but voyage in...
Five Branch Tree (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
Go out in fog go out in snow go out in hoarfrost break down the autumnal web that bars your path gather your leaves and berries seeds and torments your hours and minutes and all you save therefrom assuble in all weathers the world's wonder that tapestry of consciousness and stars which grows from cabbage roots and sines and cosines sing as you walk sing as you gather nonsense sing as you make your...
Five Branch Tree (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Conrad Aiken was a contemporary to the early American modernists, such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Willimas. Born 1889 in Savannah, Georgia and at the age of 11, he was the first to discover the dead bodies of his parents, both killed at the hands of his father, then later raised by a great-great aunt in Massachusetts. While such horrific trauma is...
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
... actually: The sovereign ghost of Wallace Stevens. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) "... Blackmur, as close to a genius as American criticism ever produced (excepting only Poe) ... " I think some - not I - would put forth Edmund Wilson as a critic of genius, and have much evidence to support their case. My choice for the critic as artist would be Van Wyck Brooks, whose critical judgments are incorporated...
Five Branch Tree (Free subscription) | 10/25/2009
LXXXIII Music will more nimbly move than quick wit can order word words can point or speaking prove but music heard How with successions it can take time in change and change in time and all reorder, all remake with no recourse to rhyme! Let us in joy, let us in love, surrender speech to music, tell what music so much more can prove nor talking say so well: Love with delight may move away Love with...
HG Poetics (Free subscription) | 09/24/2009
The William Blackstone who keeps turning up, hovering in & out of my poems, is the same Wm. Blackstone celebrated in Conrad Aiken's great & seemingly-forgotten poem, "The Kid". (I've probably mentioned this before here. & also previously noted the thread linking Aiken - Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano ...)
The Real Estate (Free subscription) | 09/22/2009
What do Conrad Aiken and Pontius Pilate have in common? At Seize sur Vingt, purveyor of high-end and custom-made suits, you can wear them both; to the tune of $200 a piece, the eponymous Egyptian cotton shirts add a dash of flair to the well-funded wardrobe. Seize sur Vingt’s new Soho home at 78 Greene Street will boast a custom clothing fitting room, what it calls a “serious upgrade to...
composite drawlings (Free subscription) | 08/17/2009
Go away. Why won't you leave? Are you simply and by nature a cruel animal? Why would you stay when you know you are invading a person's solitude? Isn't there somewhere else you can be? Like, jumping in a lake, maybe? Or, even just hopping a bus to Farawayland? No? So what is it that brings you and keeps you here? Oh, but naturally, you want something from me. And I'll bet I can guess what that is,...
Shelf Elf: read, write, rave. (Free subscription) | 07/24/2009
I love this poem. Unfortunately I can’t seem to figure out how to get silly WordPress to let me fix up the indents properly, so you don’t get the full effect. Still lovely. The Grasshopper – by Conrad Aiken Grasshopper grasshopper all day long we hear your scraping summer song like rusty fiddles in the grass as through the meadow path we pass such funny legs such funny feet and how...
Erasing.org (Free subscription) | 07/21/2009
Conrad Aiken, “Time In the Rock”: As weight and as water as space within space this huddle of thought which has lifted a face — too simple this ending the bird has been seen the word has been stripped to what words cannot mean — tags: Conrad Aiken , Time In the Rock , poetry
The Rhetorical Situation (Free subscription) | 06/29/2009
CHANCE MEETINGS, Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) IN the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive, The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves, In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices, I suddenly face you, Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you, They shine into mine with a sunlit desire, They say an 'I love you, what star do you live on?' They smile and then...
Libertarian Democrat Point Of View (Free subscription) | 03/17/2009
THE DANCE OF LIFE by: Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) RACIOUS and lovable and sweet, She made his jaded pulses beat, And made the glare of streets grow dim And life more soft and hushed for him.... Over her shoulder now she smiled Trustfully to him, like a child, The while her fingers gayly moved Alonge these white keys dearly loved, Making them laugh a jocund measure, Making them show and sing her pleasure....
baithak (Free subscription) | 03/13/2009
The Poetry Society of America (PSA) has placed US prose poet Gary Young in the company of such luminaries as Elizabeth Bishop and EE Cummings after naming him the recipient of its prestigious Shelley Memorial award. Established in 1929, with Conrad Aiken the first winner, the $3,500 (£2,500) award is given annually to a living American poet "selected with reference to genius and need"....
Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A. (Free subscription) | 01/05/2009
Feodor brought this great work, by Conrad Aiken, to my attention. It fits my melancholy Monday mood -- with Dr. ER's and my 45th birthdays looming -- perfectly. ... --ER
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