Why Books?/Coletti "Coltrane, Dig?" and "Bodies" a Painting/Amy Trussell & Krista Brown/

Happy New Year 2012 from Ed Coletti at No Money in Poetry 



The unadmitted reason why traditional readers 

are hostile to e-books is that we still hold the

superstitious idea that a book is like a soul, and

that every soul should have its own body.

Adam Kirsch in Poetry November 2012

I like and respect Kirsch's quotation with the

              possible exception of the word "superstitious." -ejc

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Painting "Bodies" (Acrylic December 2012) also by Ed Coletti (more images of coletti paintings)

Coltrane, Dig?

I suppose what it is with trane and me is

he takes all the time he wants to take

even outside of time, sidereal time,

stardust time, bessie blue time,

through-and-through-him time,

trancey groove time, even arranged time.

The duke laying down stevie blocks,

trane ain’t gonna be no mortar here

he gonna weave a kinda mesh  

round duke’s work, trane lacing

duke’s solidity with blue spirit,

blues spirit.  duke hears it, stays

near it, layin’ stevie blocks

now playing trane blocks, the duke

in-spired, layin’ down trane blocks.

Then comes slo-trane’s pleasing

molasses blue invention and

no one makes new like coltrane,

the original organic cat and not such

a stranger-in-a-not-so-strange-land,

he resonates—that’s it—we get trane,

that why trane — is — trane.

you hear a bass soloing, wherever

that bass is echoing, whoever

that bass, he echoing trane

that what jazz all about.

If the drum set belong to tootie heath or to

philly joe jones, it don’t matter. they both

coltrane without his horn, c’est la vie, man,

trane be something else, something like

                        deity ethereal night, man. I mean you take

nancy, you give her a lavender face

so she be nancy with the laughing face.

what you got be only coltrane stirring

something delicious in his pot,

coltrane doing nancy, no need explaining

her gleeful countenance,  you dig?

trane, hey, he got no need to wreck the show.

- ed coletti

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Qatari poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami’s crime consisted of reciting a poem extolling the courage and values of the popular uprisings in Tunisia. For that he's been sentenced to life in prison.

Please join with a remarkable list of prominent poets from around the world and urge the court in Qatar to reconsider.

POETS MUST HELP POETS! ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FREE SPEECH ACTIONS ORGANIZED BY POETS IN MANY YEARS!

Please join Alice Walker, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Marcia Lynx Qualey, Sam Hamill, Philip Levine, Naomi Shihab Nye, Carolyn Forché, Martin Espada, Chris Abani, Jerome Rothenberg, Pina Piccolo, Pilar Rodriguez Aranda, Nana Nestoros, Jack Hirschman, Patricia Smith, Paul Polansky, Ron Silliman, Menka Shivdasani, Karam Youssef, PEN America Center, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, co-founders of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Rootsaction.org, Code Pink and Split This Rock, and many more of our friends in this global campaign to free the Qatari poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami, sentenced to life imprisonment for reciting a poem! Sign this petition and send a letter the Qatar Embassy! We can do this!

http://act.rootsaction.org/o/6503/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=136398

 
 "Poetry Moonspell" by Krista Brown

Moonspell

There seems to be little territory to stand on

anymore, only several inches of water

running through the canal streets

of this nearly abandoned heart

housed in the city that was almost

sucked down as the next Atlantis,

drenched in toxicity,

blue gas flames shooting from

the top of the water.

We were hip deep in despair

but the temple priestess said

the ocean goddess has given us a gift.

So I looked in the palette and saw

the woman of the tide pool and starfish

that are open wherever they end up

in this earth and sky running with river,

oceans, blood, oil paint.

Go to the blood bank and let them

tap my heart, feeling back to the time

of my own transfusion,

how light I felt the next day

standing next to the sea of the outpost,

moon in the sky like a tugboat.

Some liquid part flowing through me

was once filtered through another’s center.

Look at the fishes’ perseverance

and intelligence as it whips upstream

to find its pool of re-creation,

the flesh medicine for our sad restless brains.

And there are the elephants

who sensed a tsunami before it came,

and bowed down to lift people

and carry them back up into the jungle.

Scientists say we are not that different

in our chromosomes from eels and butterflies

so maybe there is hope for us.

Fluttering in the chest as my offspring plays guitar.

A coastguard or fireman rushes into the

double doors on the news

carrying a perfect baby to safety

and the moon card turns over in endless sky.

Trust instinct, trust the inner pull

toward illuminated mystery

even in times of shipwreck.

-Amy Trussell

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