timeless
Josef Hofmann (1876-1957, piano), live, 1938; Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major (“Waldstein”)
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lagniappe
reading table
You lie in our bed as if an orchard were over us.
You are what’s fallen from those fatal boughs.
Where will we go when they send us away from here?—David Ferry (1924-2023), “In Memory of Anne Ferry” (Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations [2012], dedication)
alone
Mark Turner (1965-, tenor saxophone), live, Italy (Perugia), 7/6/26 (published 8/24/26)
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lagniappe
reading table
We’re all in this apart.
—David Ferry (1924-2023), from “Found Single-Line Poems” (Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, 2012)
Who needs instruments?
“God’s Got It,” 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.—Rebecca Elson (1960-1999), from “Antidote to Fear of Death”
alone
Jimmy Rowles (1918-1996, piano), “Poor Butterfly” (J. Golden, R. Hubbell), live, New Orleans, 1982
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Only: sing.
—John Berryman (1914-1972, MCOTD Hall of Fame), from “An Untitled Dream Song” (New York Review of Books, 8/21/25)
Happy (110th) Birthday, Billie!
Billie Holiday, “I Can’t Get Started” (V. Duke, I. Gershwin), with Buck Clayton (trumpet), Dickie Wells (trombone), Lester Young (clarinet/tenor saxophone), Margaret “Queenie” Johnson (piano), Freddie Green (guitar), Walter Page (bass), Jo Jones (drums), September 15, 1938, New York
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM (Columbia University): all Billie, all day.
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reading table
The Day Lady Died
By Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed meI walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandarinessand for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on itand I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
what’s new
Elisabeth Harnik (piano), Joe Morris (guitar), live, Austria (Wels), 11/9/24
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lagniappe
reading table
High over the dark
shadows of Pine Islands, a
skylark breaks into song—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from the Japanese by Sam Hamill
sounds of Chicago
Fred Moten (voice, words)/Brandon Lopez (bass), live, Chicago, 6/5/24
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reading table
Cut down, yes
But rooted still
What stumps compress
No axe can kill—Samuel Menashe (1925-2011), from “Survival”
sounds of New York
Being & Becoming (Peter Evans, trumpet; Joel Ross, vibraphone, electronics; Nick Jozwiak, bass, electronics; Michael Shekwoaga Ode, drums), “My Sorrow Is Luminous” (Yanka Dyagileva, 1966-1991), live, New York, 2023
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A Word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), from 1651 (Franklin)
sounds of New York
Marty Erlich: Dark Woods/Bright Sparks (Marty Ehrlich [1955-], woodwinds, compositions; Ron Horton, trumpet; Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon; Erik Friedlander, cello; Matt Pavolka, bass; Satoshi Takahashi, percussion; Erica Hunt, words), live, New York, 12/10/23
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
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Even now there are places where a thought might grow—
—Derek Mahon (1941-2020), from “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford”
only rock ‘n’ roll
Garbage & Screaming Females, “Because the Night” (B. Springsteen, P. Smith), 2013
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Oak Park, Ill.
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To think. This saving thing. This useless thing.
***
My mind is
smallish.—Anne Carson (1950-), from “Funny You Should Ask” (New Yorker, 12/11/23)
