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<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Hello Folks,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>I would enjoy hearing of any
recommendations, thoughts, and so on for what everyone will or might be reading
this summer. For whoever might be interested, I can recommend two books of
poetry I have read of late. Yeah, poetry, I know. The P-word. Some of us
actually love it deeply, but...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>One is <EM>Time and Materials</EM> by
Robert Hass. It and he won both the 2007 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.
Such encomium is basically unheard of. If it helps, he is a
wonderfully kind, intelligent, funny, and self-effacing person, and a
poet whose poems rest light on the ear and deep in the mind. Here are
two quick examples, which also underscore his range.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Iowa, January</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>In the long winter nights, a farmer's
dreams are narrow.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Over and over, he enters the
furrow.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Yup, that's it. Two lines. One
more:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Ezra Pound's Proposition</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Beauty is sexual, and
sexuality</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Is the fertility of the earth and the
fertility </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Of the earth is economics. Though he
is no recommendation</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>For poets on the subject of
finance,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>I thought of him in the thick
heat</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Of the Bangkok night. Not more than
fourteen, she saunters up to you</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Outside the Shangri-la
Hotel</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>And says, in plausible
English,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>"How about a party, big
guy?"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Here is more or less how it
works:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>The World Bank arranges the credit
and the dam</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Floods three hundred villages, and
the villagers find their way</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>To the city where their daughters
melt into the teeming streets,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>And the dam's great turbines,
beautifully tooled</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>In Lund or Dresden or Detroit,
financed</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>By Lazard Freres in Paris or the
Morgan Bank in New York,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Enabled by judicious gifts from
Bechtel of San Francisco</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Or Halliburton of Houston to the
local political elite,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Spun by the force of rushing
water,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Have become hives of shimmering
silver</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>And, down river, they throw that
bluish throb of light</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Across her cheekbones and her lovely
skin.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Another book I would recommend is
from an author not as well-known as Hass, the former Poet Laureate and
recipient of a MacArthur etc etc. The book, lent to me at first by an Iraq
vet friend, is titled <EM>Here, Bullet</EM> by Brian Turner. Turner is a
vet, and the book centers on the Iraq war and his time there. These poems are
not diatribes against anything other than the loss of human life. They capture
the honesty of bewilderment of what we are capable of doing to one another for
whatever reasons. They are not pretty, but rather attain their own dark beauty
within their reverence for life. They are the heart-felt and clear-headed
writings of a profoundly observant and caring individual who was a soldier as
well.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Here are two poems as examples.
"<EM>sadiq</EM>" is Arabic for "friend."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Sadiq</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><FONT face="Palatino Linotype"> <EM>It is a
condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient</EM></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2><EM>because when the arrow leaves the
bow, it returns no more.</EM></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>
--Sa'Di</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>It shoud make you shake and
sweat,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>nightmare you, strand you in a
desert</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>of irrevocable desolation, the
consequences</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>seared into the vein, no matter what
adrenaline</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>feeds the muscle its courage, no
matter</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>what god shines down on you, no
matter</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>what crackling pain and
anger</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>you carry in your fists, my
friend,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>it should break your heart to
kill.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Here, Bullet</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>If a body is what you
want,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>then here is bone and gristle and
flesh.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Here is the clavicle-snapped
wish,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>the aorta's opened valves, the
leap</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>thought makes at the synaptic
gap.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Here is the adrenaline rush you
crave,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>that inexorable flight, that insane
puncture</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>into heat and blood. And I dare you
to finish</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>what you've started. Because here,
Bullet,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>here is where I complete the world
you bring</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>hissing through the air, here is
where I moan</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>the barrel's cold esophagus,
triggering</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>my tongues's explosives for the
rifling I have</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>inside of me, each twist of the
round</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>spun deeper, because here,
Bullet,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>here is where the world ends, every
time.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Palatino Linotype" size=2>Warren
Hayman</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>