Blood of the Poet

Say, Gate, let's dissipate!

Another six day work week comes to an end. And there's still one more to come! Oh, Joy Unbounded ... and when will I ever learn to say no? Or as I'm told Frank Zappa once said "What are we teaching our children? Just say no ... thank you!" Well, as Professor Nietzsche said "What doesn't kill you strengthens you."

While sauntering about beautiful down town P.A. I perchance did wander into the used bookstore. I had an ulterior motive, Gate, in that I wouldn't say no (you see ... there it is again) to another of those fab Putumayo "Groove" series CDs. And I didn't say no, no indeed, picking up Brazilian Groove. I'll give you all the lowdown on this great series of world music CDs, but in the mean time, don't bust your conk, Gate, latch on to their webiste and grab a first class seat on their groovy gravy train.

It's impossible for me not to go into a bookstore and come out without a book. Ask most anyone who's been into a bookstore with me. Today was no exception. First of all I found Men-of-War, Life in Nelson's Navy by Patrick O'Brian. You may be familiar with O'Brian's 20 volume epic chronicling the maritime doings of Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Vey likely you went to the theatre to see the excellent adaptation Master & Commander with Russel Crowe. This slim little volume looks like it will a killer diller ... the film has already piqued my interest in reading the books and after paging through Men-of-War I think I'll definitely be digging into them.

Last, but certainly not least, I found this fabulous volume of Carl Sandburg poems from 1910 - 1960. You may be familiar with Sandburg's Poem Chicago with that fabulous opening:

Hog Butcher of the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, Husky, Brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.

Ow! Talk about a Two Bass Hit, Gate! Like Walt Whitman before him, Sandburg hit the chord of his time. A truly distinctive American voice that spoke of the Common Man. I find Sandburg's poems have their visual equivolent in the murals of Thomas Hart Benton ... factory scenes, interiors of burlesque halls, ringside at a prize fight all worked together into a kaleidescope of Commonality ... or the music of Samuel Barber which always strikes me as a shifting series of musical samplings from apartment houses or tenements ... tin pan alley songs, ragtime piano rolls, parlour classics. Reading Sandburg is reading the Precursor of Kerouac.

Now dig of this:

Jazz Fantasia

Drum on your drums, batter your banjoes,
sob it on the long cool winding saxophones
Go to it, O jazzmen.

Sling your knuckles on the bottom of the happy
tin pans, let your trombones ooze, & go hush-a
husha-hush with slippery sand paper.

Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops, moan
soft like you wanted someone terrible, cry like a racing car
slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang! you jazzmen,
bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns, tin cans - make
two people fight on top of a stairway and scratch each
other's eyes in a clinch tumbling down the stairs.

Can the rough stuff ... now a Mississippi steamboat pushes
up the night river into a hoo-hoo-hoo-o ... and the green
lanterns calling to the high soft stars ... and a red moon rides
on the humps of the low river hills ... go to it, O jazzmen.


You go to it now, Gate!

Plant you now ... dig you later, Jack.