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 Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:13 am Post subject: |
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Jan Kochanowski
Laments
Translated by Seamus Heaney and
Stanislaw Baranczak
| Quote: | Jan Kochanowski (1530-84), the greatest poet of not just Poland but the entire Slavic world up to the beginning of the 19th century, was at the same time both the worst -and the best-equipped person to deal with personal tragedy. The entire experience of the first five decades of his life had been apparently consistent with the kind of outlook that he, the Renaissance poet par excellence, derrived from the spirit of the epoch and from his thoroughly Humanistic education. His cast of mind was formed by a philosophy of the golden mean and moderation, and this in turn produced a quiet acceptance of whatever life might bring, a tendency to handle the vicissitudes of earthly existence in a rational and orderly way, one always seasoned with a dose of healthy scepticism as regards both gain and loss, success and failure, happiness and misery.
The stable - or stable-seeming - foundation of such an outlook was provided by both ancient thought and Christian theology. For a 16th century Humanist - in this case, moreover, a poet whose earlier work included not only a Classical tragedy with a plot borrowed from Homer but also a poetic translation of the Psalms - elements of stoicism or epicureanism could merge conflictlessly with the belief in Providential protection bestowed on the just as a reward for their virtuous lives. (Calvinism was to score a huge, if short-lived success in Poland, but only several decades later.)
Yet it is precisely this kind of stable and secure philosophical foundation that may well be the first thing to crack 'when the Parcae cease to spin/Their thread, when sorrows enter in,/When Death knocks at the door'. And this is what happened to Kochanowski in middle age when Death snatched away his youngest child, a 2-1/2-year-old daughter called Ursula, devastating the poet's hitherto unshakeable equanimity. In such a case, the hiatus between the palpability of pain and abstractness of argument expands into an untraversable gap. All of a sudden, pain reaches a degree of intensity that cannot be explained away. No rationalization makes sense to us any more when its very philosophical basis is pulled out like a rug from under our feet -when we can no longer subscribe to the belief that each of us is to a large extent a master of his or her own fate, and that we therefore have the right at least to hope that our actions, if purposeful, timely and determined enough, may bring the desired result:
'You weep in vain,' my friends will say. But then,
What is not vain, by God, in lives of men?
If nothing else, the irretrievability of the loss alone suffices to make the attitude of rationalistic patience and stoical resignation just one of the numerous 'error[s] of our minds', a sorry product of humanity's 'insane conceit.' Our steady climb towards the heights of quasi-divine Wisdom has, as a rule, an abrupt and humiliating end:
Wisdom for me was castles in the air;
I'm hurled, like all the rest, from the topmost stair.
(From the Introduction by S.B. at pgs. vii-viii) |
| Quote: | Lament I
All Heraclitus' tears, all threnodies
And plaintive dirges of Simonides,
All keens and slow airs in the world, all griefs,
Wrung hands, wet eyes, laments and epitaphs,
All, all assemble, come from every quarter,
Help me to mourn my small girl, my dear daughter,
Whom cruel Death tore up with such wild force
Out of my life, it left me no recourse.
So the snake, when he finds a hidden nest
Of fledgling nightingales, rears and strikes fast
Repeatedly, while the poor mother bird
Tries to distract him with a fierce, absurd
Fluttering - but in vain! The venomous tongue
Darts, and she must retreat on ruffled wing.
'You weep in vain,' my friends will say. But then,
What is not vain, by God, in lives of men?
All is in vain! We play at blind man's buff
Until hard edges break into our path.
Man's life is error. Where, then, is relief?
In shedding tears or wrestling down my grief?
(-- p. 3) |
| Quote: | Tren I
Wszytki placze, wszytki lzy Heraklitowe
I lamenty, i skargi Symonidowe,
Wszytki troski na swiecie, wszytki wzdychania
I zale, i frasunki, i rak lamania,
Wsytki a wszytki za raz w dom sie moj noscie,
A mnie plakac mej wdziecznej dziewki pomozcie,
Zktora mie niepobozna smierc rozdzielila
I wszytkich moich pociech nagle zbawila.
Tak wiec smok, upatrzywzy gniazdko krjome,
Slowiczki liche zbiera, a swe lakome
Gardlo pasie; tymczasem matka szczebiece
Uboga, a na zbojce coraz sie miece,
Prozno! bo i na same okrutnik zmierza,
A ta nieboga ledwe umyka pierza
'Prozno plakac' - podobno drudzy rzeczecie.
Coz, prze Bog zywa, nie jest prozno na swiecie?
Wszytko prozno! Macamy, gdzie miekcej w rzeczy,
A ono wszedy cisnie! Blad - wiek czioieczy!
Nie wiem, co lzej: czy w smutku jawnie zalowac,
Czyli sie z przyrodzeniem gwaltem mocawac?
(-- pg. 2) |
Yes, and here's another loss just as bad or worse:
| Quote: | | As Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, has written of Kochanowski: 'His presence belies foggy notions common in the West about a barbaric Eastern Europe. And yet, the Renaissance literature of Poland is virtually unknown in the West because of the lack of translations. The Laments of Kochanowski should be ranked with the world classics. There were some attempts to translate Laments into English in the past, but now something has happened which allows the English-speaking reader to have nearly direct access to his work. Namely, the cooperation of two excellent poets, Professor Stanislaw Baranczak of Harvard and Seamus Heaney. That team has translated Laments, preserving its metres and rhythms. It is a rare accomplishment, which brings joy to me as an inheritor of Kochanowski's language and of the Renaissance tradition.' (From the back cover) |
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| Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
Westward Ho!
Revisiting Kit Carson - the man, the myth,
and the dime-novel hero
By Jill Lepore
Oct. 9/06
| Quote: | Blood and Thunder:
An Epic of the American West
Hardcover
By Hampton Slides
| Quote: | | Sides's book, too, disengages the story of the West from the story of the nation, though with infinitely more subtlety and sophistication. The Mexican War, for Sides, is finally more about James K. Polk, the man, than about manifest destiny, the ideology. Sides bothers to explain that Polk, as a teen-ager, was probably rendered impotent by excruciatingly painful and primitive prostate surgery and that, as President, he was "a joyless, childless man fueled by an expansionist agenda." He does not bother to explore how the American expansionist ideology known as manifest destiny appealed to Northerners and Southerners alike; or how the dime-novel Western helped make that expansion appear inevitable and even glorious. Northerners were attracted to manifest destiny's vision of spreading democracy across the continent. Southerners were eager to extend slavery into the western territories, both to buttress their own political power and to open new markets to the domestic slave trade. If the West promised freedom, it also promised slavery. Most of all, it promised civil war. And when the war came, and rent the North and the South apart, the dime novel stitched the two together again, with the fiction that the West didn't matter at all, except as a place where men could be men and Indians would always lose. (-- p. 80) |
|
...sigh
More First Nations Gambles and Gamblers.
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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What Do We Know?
Poems and Prose Poems
Hardcover
By Mary Oliver
| Quote: | 6.
Don't tell us
how to love, don't tell us
how to grieve, or what
to grieve for, or how loss
shouldn't sit down like a gray
bundle of dust in the deepest
pockets of our energy, don't laugh at our belief
that money isn't
everything, don't tell us
how to behave in
anger, in longing, in loss, in home-
sickness, don't tell us,
dear friends.
7.
Goodbye, house.
Goodbye, sweet and beautiful house,
we shouted, and it shouted back,
goodbye to you, and lifted itself
down from the town, and set off
like a packet of clouds across
the harbor's blue ring,
the tossing bell, the sandy point - and turned
lightly, wordlessly,
into the keep of the wind
where it floats still -
where it plunges and rises still
on the black and dreamy sea.
(From On Losing a House, pgs. 30-32) |
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| Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:24 pm Post subject: |
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The Dubliners
Paperback
By James Joyce
With an introduction and copious scholarly notes by Terence Brown
| Quote: | ...It must have been a good speech. Farley clapped him on the back and laughed loudly. What jovial fellows! What good company they were!
Cards! Cards! The table was cleared. Villona returned quietly to his piano and played voluntaries for them. The other men played game after game, flinging themselves boldly into the adventure. They drank the health of the Queen of Hearts and of the Queen of Diamonds. Jimmy felt obscurely the lack of an audience: the wit was flashing. Play ran very high and paper began to pass. Jimmy did not know exactly who was winning but he knew that he was losing. But it was his own fault for he frequently mistook his cards and the other men had to calculate his I.O.U.s for him. They were devils of fellows but he wished they would stop: it was getting late. Someone gave the toast of the yacht The Belle of Newport and then someone proposed one great game for a finish.
The piano had stopped; Villona must have gone up on deck. It was a terrible game. They stopped just before the end of it to drink for luck. Jimmy understood that the game lay between Routh and Segouin. What excitement! Jimmy was excited too; he would lose, of course. How much had he written away? The men rose to their feet to play the last tricks, talking and gesticulating. Routh won. The cabin shook with the young men's cheering and the cards were bundled together. They began then to gather in what they had won. Farley and Jimmy were the heaviest losers. (From After the Race at p. 41) |
The Dubliners
CD Audio
Read by Frank and Malachy McCourt, that couple of blackguards, and
Celebrated Others of Stage and Screen
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| Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 10:47 am Post subject: |
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Thirst
Poems by Mary Oliver
Hardcover
| Quote: | Thirst
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for your are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expect-
ing to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.
(-- p. 69)
*After Her Death
I am trying to find the lesson
for tomorrow. Matthew something.
Which lectionary? I have not
forgotten the Way, but, a little,
the way to the Way. The trees keep whispering
peace, peace, and the birds
in the shallows are full of the
bodies of small fish and are
content. They open their wings
so easily, and fly. So. It is still
possible.
I open the book
which the strange, difficult, beatutiful church
has given me. To Matthew. Anywhere.
(-- p. 16) |
| Quote: | The Boston Globe
*Molly Cook; Cape gallery owner offered unique lens on life
By Tom Long
Aug. 30/05
Artsy, eccentric, and smart, Molly Malone Cook was a colorful fixture on the Provincetown scene for 50 years. ''She was both formidable and lovable, if that makes sense. She didn't suffer fools, but at the same time, she was very warm-hearted," her friend filmmaker John Waters said yesterday. ''She represented everything that is great about Provincetown."
Ms. Cook -- photographer, gallery owner, and muse -- died of complications of lung cancer Friday (Aug. 26/05) in the Provincetown home she shared with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver. She was 80. |
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| Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:25 am Post subject: |
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The New Yorker
International Magazine Subscription
Sept. 11/06
| Quote: | The Joke
One afternoon you skipped school
to go for a swim in the river.
There were a few older boys there
splashing around naked,
their clothes in neat piles on the bank.
That time someone hid yours as a joke.
You squatted in shallow water
pleading, while they took their time
combing their hair, getting dressed,
running off without a glance back.
Little by little it got dark and cold.
The lights went on in the city.
Still, you were going to wait a bit longer
before stepping out of the river
to make a search among the rocks -
or, if no luck, scale the embankment,
dash bare-assed over the railroad tracks,
slip mothlike past the first lampost,
let shadows lying past the first lamppost,
let shadows lying in wait take you home
on small streets lined with trees.
-- Charles Simic
(-- p. 57) |
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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LIVE
Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie
Together in Concert (1975)
Audio Cassette
COMING SOON to Audio CD
Featuring Huddie Ledbetter's blues classic,
On a Monday (Almost Done)
Here's a taste from a 1978 concert
posted at youtube.com.
| Quote: | "There is no gap in the two generations of singers heard on this record. Rather, the music and songs express a continuity of understanding and a reflection of the world as it is and has been. The audience at these concerts- those who were lucky enough to get tickets- spanned several generations: grandfathers and grandmothers with their grandchildren, workers and students, young and old. A New York reviewer perhaps best summed up when he wrote,"It is another time, but the need for the Seegers and Guthries of whatever generation remains."
-Harold Leventhal (Sometime manager of Pete, Arlo and Woody)(From Rising Son Records) |
| Quote: | On a Monday
By Leadbelly
On a Monday, I was arrested
On a Tuesday, I got locked up in jail
On a Wednesday, my trial was attested
On a Thursday, nobody would go my bail
Now I'm gone, I'm almost gone,
Yes I'm gone, I'm almost gone.
Yes, I'm gone, I'm almost gone,
and I ain't gonna be seein 'em pretty wimmin no more.
Take these stripes, stripes from offa my shoulder
Take these chains, these chains from offa my legs
Lord, these stripes, it sure don't worry me
But these chains, these chains are killing me dead.
Yes, I'm gone, I'm almost gone,
Yes, I'm gone, I'm almost gone.
Yes, I'm gone, I'm almost gone, and I ain't gonna' be
seein' 'em pretty wiimin no more.
Well, on a Friday, my baby went out walking,
On a Saturday, she locked up the door,
On a Sunday, we were sitting down a-talking,
On a Monday, she pawned all of my clothes.
Yes, I'm gone, I'm almost gone.... |
Song for a very bad week.
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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Modern French Poetry
Paperback
Selected and Translated by
Martin Sorrell
| Quote: | Jai tant rêvé de toi
Jai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.
Est-il encore temps datteindre ce corps vivant
Et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance
De la voix qui mest chère ?
Jai tant rêvé de toi que mes bras habitués
En étreignant ton ombre
À se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas
Au contour de ton corps, peut-être.
Et que, devant lapparence réelle de ce qui me hante
Et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années,
Je deviendrais une ombre sans doute.
Ô balances sentimentales.
Jai tant rêvé de toi quil n'est plus temps
Sans doute que je méveille.
Je dors debout, le corps exposé
À toutes les apparences de la vie
Et de lamour et toi, la seule
qui compte aujourd'hui pour moi,
Je pourrais moins toucher ton front
Et tes lèvres que les premières lèvres
et le premier front venu.
Jai tant rêvé de toi, tant marché, parlé,
Couché avec ton fantôme
Quil ne me reste plus peut-être,
Et pourtant, qua être fantôme
Parmi les fantômes et plus ombre
Cent fois que lombre qui se promène
Et se promènera allègrement
Sur le cadran solaire de ta vie.
I've dreamed such dreams of you
I've dreamed such dreams of you that you're losing your reality.
Do I still have time to reach your vital body, to kiss
into life that voice I love so much?
I've dreamed such dreams of you that my arms,
long practised in hugging your shadow and falling flat
across my chest, might not yield to your body's shape.
Faced with the real presence of what's haunted and
guided me all these days and years, doubtless I'd become
a shadow.
Fine balance of feelings!
I've dreamed such dreams of you that the time for
waking must have come and gone. I'm asleep on my feet,
exposed to every image of life and love, and you, the only
thing which counts for me now, any lips, any forehead
will be easier for me to touch than your forehead, your
lips.
I've dreamed such dreams of you, I've walked so
much, talked so much, lain so much with your shadow,
that perhaps now all I can be is a ghost among ghosts, a
hundred times more shadow than the moving shadow
cast and lightly cast again across your life measured by
the sun.
-- Robert Desnos
(-- pgs. 62-63) |
More of this wonderful Surrealist poet, who died young and horribly, at Les Rouès.
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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Burnt Water
Stories by Carlos Fuentes
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
Hardcover
| Quote: | It was only recently that Filiberto drowned in Acapulco. It happened during Easter Week. Even though he'd been fired from his government job, Filiberto couldn't resist the bureaucratic temptation to make his annual pilgrimage to the small German hotel, to eat sauerkraut sweetened by the sweat of the tropical cuisine, dance away Holy Saturday on La Quebrada, and feel he was one of the "beautiful people" in the dim anonymity of dusk on Hornos Beach. Of course we all knew he'd been a good swimmer when he was young, but now, at forty, and the shape he was in, to try to swim that distance, at midnight! Frau Muller wouldn't allow a wake in her hotel - steady client or not; just the opposite, she held a dance on her stifling little terrace while Filiberto, very pale in his coffin, awaited the departure of the first morning bus from the terminal, spending the first night of his new life surrounded by crates and parcels. When I arrived, early in the morning, to supervise the loading of the casket, I found Filiberto buried beneath a mound of coconuts; the driver wanted to get him in the luggage compartment as quickly as possible, covered with canvas in order not to upset the passengers and to avoid bad luck on the trip.
When we left Acapulco there was still a good breeze. Near Tierra Colorada it began to get hot and bright. As I was eating my breakfast eggs and sausage, I had opened Filiberto's satchel, collected the day before along with his other personal belongings from the Mullers' hotel. Two hundred pesos. An old newspaper; expired lottery tickets; a one-way ticket to Acapulco - one way? - and a cheap notebook with graph-paper pages and marbleized-paper binding.
On the bus I ventured to read it, in spite of the sharp curves, the stench of vomit, and a certain natural feeling of respect for the private life of a deceased friend. It should be a record - yes, it began that way - of our daily office routine; maybe I'd find out what caused him to neglect his duties, why he'd written memoranda without ghyme or reason or any authorization. The reason, in short, for his being fired, his seniority ignored and his pension lost. (Opening paragraphs of Chac-Mool) |
A word about Chac-Mool:
| Quote: | | Chac-Mool is the name given to a type of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican stone statue. The Chac-Mool depicts a human figure in a position of reclining with the head up and turned to one side, holding a tray over the stomach. The meaning of the position or the statue itself remains unknown. (From the ever-expanding, ever-improving Wikipedia) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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Staying Alive
Real Poems for Unreal Times
Paperback
Edited by Bloodaxe founder Neil Astley
| Quote: | Relationship
What a silence, when you are here. What
a hellish silence.
You sit and I sit.
You lose and I lose.
János Pilinszky
translated from the Hungarian by Peter Jay
(-- p. 282) |
View our favorite Polish Gambles.
Favorite Hungarian Gambles.
Even Bosnia Herzegovina is up!
Gypsies, too!
| Quote: | About Death
1
At the moment of death
what is the correct procedure?
Cut the umbilical, they said.
And with the umbilical cut
how then prepare the body?
Wash it in sacred water.
Dress it in silk for the wedding.
2
I wash and iron for you
your final clothes
(my heart on your sleeve)
wishing to wash your flesh
wishing to close
your sightless eyes
nothing remains to do
I am a vacant house
P.K. Page
(-- 391) |
More Gambling Frostbacks, eh?
| Quote: | Meditation at Lagunitas
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particilar erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full,
of endless distances, I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
Robert Hass
(-- p. 444) |
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:07 am Post subject: |
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The Light of Evening
Hardcover
By Edna O'Brien
| Quote: | | Later in bed she said that people at home, her people, my people, believed that America was a land of riches but that nothing could be further from the truth. America was a land of bluff and blighted dreams and I would be lucky if I got a job as a maid in a big house. I would be a Biddy, a kitchen canary. (From The Great Hall, p. 42) |
| Quote: | | He leaned on me as we crossed the street, because they were still shouting and haranguing him, and we walked lopsided, but once on the other side he would not let go of me. I knew he was mad, he had to be mad, the way he raved: Walt Whitman, the city's poet, Walt Whitman's masts of Manhattan and tall hills of Brooklyn, Walt Whitman, who had fallen, just like the blind man, into the mire, as had Horace who succumbed to the lures of a perfume seller. I was a clean girl in a city of vice, ancient Egypt or ancient Babylon no more wicked or no more corrupt. He had been a player once, in the saloons, at the trotting races, chancing his arm, scoring, and even the reverent fathers had singled him out. Sold religious articles, up in the silk stocking district, going from door to door, his valise crammed with holy statues, books, leaflets, novenas, miniature altars, miraculous medals, could put the sales over with a real punch, sold more in a day than the peanut man or the hot dog man. Flying it. Long-lashed Lenny as he was known. Face to face with the ladies and their nice drawl, in their morning coats, with their little lap dogs nested in their laps, time on their hands, their husbands making the loot. Yes, the swank ladies in their swank houses. One in particular. A doll. Wanted for nothing but her cup was never full. He knew the cup she meant. He filled the cup. Sweet as butter grass. Blonds, brunettes, redheads. One played him false or maybe more than one. Went from being a player to a human cockroach. Wakened one morning in some dive to know the game was up. Nausea, the shivers, the disease that bums, stevedores, poets, and the city elders all fell foul to. The syph. Had to be burned out of him. Oh man, the mercury that cured also took away, a descent into blindness. "I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and defiled my horn in the dust." (From A Blind Man, p. 44) |
| Quote: | | There were six men, all in their good suits, and they gabbled their names as I mounted the high step and a hand helped me in. I was squeezed between Iggy the driver and a man named Cornelius, a chain-smoker, his brown hair flopping over the side of his lean face, the others all beholden to him and Iggy telling me to watch out for that man, that he was Mr. Coaxyoram himself and many a young girl soft on him, but oh, what a gentleman and from a scion of gentlemen. I learned that it was his horse, Red River, that would be played for. He had given it to his friend Jacksie who had lost his all gambling, and the lady he'd been engaged to had jilted him and had not even returned the engagement ring that was his mother's, which was an heirloom. (From Revel, p. 108) |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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Blues Story
Audio CD
2 Disc Set
A classic!
| Quote: | Born Under a Bad Sign
By William Bell and Booker T. Jones
Recorded by Albert King
View the YouTube.com video.
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
Hard luck and trouble is my only friend
I been on my own ever since I was ten
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
I can't read, haven't learned how to write
My whole life has been one big fight
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
I ain't lyin'
If it wasn't for bad luck
I wouldn't have no kind-a luck
If it wasn't for real bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
Wine and women is all I crave
A big legged woman is
gonna carry me to my grave
Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all
Yeah, my bad luck boy
Been havin' bad luck all of my days, yes |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3081#3081
Last edited by editor on Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:44 am; edited 1 time in total |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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Earl Scruggs and Friends
Audio CD
Featuring Sting/k on his own
composition, Fill Her Up. Even
wife Trudie sings on this one,
apparently.
View the YouTube.com video.
| Quote: | Fill Her Up
Mobile station,
Where I stand
This old gas pump
In my hand.
The boss don't like me
He's got a face like a weasel,
All over my hands
The smell of diesel.
Here comes the big shot,
Here he comes!
From the city.
God Damn!
A V-8 engine
She runs so pretty.
Woo!
Fill 'er up son
With unleaded.
I need a full tank of gas
where I'm headed
Up in the front seat
A pretty redhead,
We're going to Vegas
We're gonna get wed
So fill her up son!
Don't be starin'!
Yeah that's a real diamond she be wearin'.
I'm gonna treat my baby one day.
I'm gonna fill her up and head out West.
I'm gonna find some money alright. Yeah
That's it.
See those tail lights headed West
I got no money to invest
I got no prospects
or education
I was lucky to get the job at this gas station
That old cash box
On the top shelf
The boss is sleeping
I'll just help myself
Let's consider this
as just a loan
I can sort it out later on the phone
I'm gonna pick my girl up tonight
I'm gonna fill 'er up and head west
I'm gonna show her all the bright lights
We're gonna say we lived 'fore we come home
And as I head through the woods on the way back
The evening sun is slanting through the pine trees real pretty
it's like I walked into a glade of heaven
and there's music playing
and this money is cold in my hand and a voice somewhere says:
"Why were you going to take that stolen thing?
What real happiness can it bring?
You're gonna fill her up with sadness
You're gonna fill her up with shame
You're gonna fill her up with sorrow before she even takes your name
You're gonna fill her up with madness
You're gonna fill her up with pain
You're gonna live with no tommorow
You're gonna fill her up with hate
You're gonna fill her up darkness
You're gonna fill her up with light
You gotta fill her up with Jesus!
You gotta fill her up with light!
You gotta fill her up with spirit! Fill her up!
You've gotta fill her up with faith
You gotta fill her up with heaven!
You've got the rest of life to face
You've gotta fill her up right away
You've gotta fill her up with faith
You've gotta fill her up with babies
You've gotta fill her up this way
You're gonna love that girl forever
Your gonna fill her up for life
You're gonna be her loving husband
She gonna be your loving wife
You've gotta fill her up with gladness.
You gotta fill her up with joy!
You gotta fill her up with love,
You gotta fill her up with love
You gotta fill her up with love." |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3082#3082 |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:19 am Post subject: |
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*This Land Was Made for You and Me
The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie
Hardcover
By Elizabeth Partridge
| Quote: | With the radio show (at KVFD with cousin Jack Guthrie and Maxine Crissman Lefty Lou from Ole Mizzou) a firm commitment, Woody sent for Mary (his first wife). Her parents didn't trust Woody and begged her not to go. She had never been out of Texas, had never ridden on a train. But Mary didn't care what her parents thought. Hadn't Woody made it on the radio? She couldn't wait to get to California and start a new life. Excited and scared, she bundled up two-year-old Teeny and the new baby, Sue, and got on a train headed for California.
...They moved in with Woody's cousin Amalee, her husband, and their little children. The house was jammed full of Guthries day and night. Mary and Amalee became good friends, often starting a pot of beans in the morning and taking the kids to the beach and the zoo. In the evenings they made popcorn and stayed up late, playing poker and drinking red wine. Mary was thrilled to be in California. It was green and lush and Woody was on his way to being big, maybe really big, like Will Rogers. Mary figured she was out of the Dust Bowl for good. (From the chapter entitled, California and Lefty Lou, at p. 63) |
All the facts and none of the humor or romance make Woody's life sound as if it was all nothing but sadness, as if he brought all who knew him nothing but misery. A joyless publication despite its charming subject and excellent photos, including a few of another of America's greatest songwiters, Huddy Ledbetter.
Indeed, according to the book, here's what Woody had to say about 19-year-old Bob Dylan, who went to New York in search of his hero, who was by then quite ill with Huntington's Chorea:
| Quote: | | Woody called Dylan simply "the boy," and often asked the Gleasons if he would be showing up on Sunday. "That boy's got a voice. Maybe he won't make it with his writing, but he can sing it. He can really sing it." (From Windblown Seeds at p. 194) |
Words to live by:
| Quote: | | I hate a song that makes you think you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are either too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that...Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun of you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to fight these kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter how hard it's run you down or rolled over you, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and your work. And the songs I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. (From script for opening broadcast of WNEW radio show on 12/3/44)) |
Better:
Bound for Glory
Paperback
By Woody Guthrie
Illustrated by the author
Not as good as Bound for Glory but good:
Seeds of Man
Paperback
By Woody Guthrie
Terrific documentary:
Woodie Guthrie: Hard travelin'
VHS
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3086#3086 |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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The Globe and Mail
Otherwise dull corporate daily
from dullest Toronto
What happens now?
Questions and Answers
(See Lord Black: Why he fell, Dec. 10/07)
Compiled by Globe Staff
July 14/07
| Quote: | IS HE AT RISK OF LOSING HIS ORDER OF CANADA?
Yes. Anyone can write to the Governor-General's office (the deputy secretary of the chancellery, to be specific) requesting that a member be removed from the Order. A criminal conviction is listed as grounds for such consideration. That triggers a 10-stage process involving an advisory council review. As for the Privy Council, an official said yesterday that a criminal conviction does not mean automatic ejection from the council.
CAN HE SERVE HIS TIME IN CANADA?
It's unlikely Lord Black will be able to apply for a transfer to a facility outside the United States. He renounced his Canadian citizenship to become a member of the British House of Lords, making a move to Canada difficult.
CAN HE REGAIN HIS CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP?
Unlikely. The Citizenship Act calls for the rejection of applications by those convicted of an offence that would also be an offence had it been committed in Canada.
WHAT WILL BECOME OF LORD BLACK'S FORTUNE?
The full extent of his personal wealth is still unclear, but the civil litigation is likely to destroy the remnants of his corporate empire. The U.S. government has also indicated it intends to petition the court for forfeiture of assets, including the peer's prized beachside mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., and the proceeds from the sale of his Manhattan co-op.
... HOW MANY LAWSUITS DOES HE STILL FACE?
A mountain of them: More than a dozen legal proceedings were suspended until the criminal trial ended and many will now resume in earnest. The most serious cases involve the Ontario Securities Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States, both of which filed a long list of allegations against Lord Black and other former Hollinger group executives more than two years ago. (-- A3) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3245#3245[/i]
Last edited by editor on Tue Mar 24, 2009 2:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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