Fragments of New Zealand

Barbecues, jandals and the long hot summer
Soaring mountains, clean fast-flowing rivers
virgin bush.

Can do, she'll be right
attitude
Yeah right Tui ads.

Kiwis, Kiwi Burgers
Maori and Pakeha
Treaty of Waitangi
1840.

Nuclear free, proud of it
and don't forget the
Rainbow Warrior.

Michael Joseph Savage, Norm Kirk, Keith Holoyoake
Gentleman Jack, David Lange and Spud Bolger.

Aotearoa
Land of the Long White Cloud.


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A.R Ammons - eclectic poet

Ammons was known as an eclectic poet in his time (he died in 2001).

The New York Times had the following to say:

Typing some of his work on long strips of adding-machine tape, Mr. Ammons wrote more than 25 books of poetry, including ''Garbage,'' a 1993 book-length poem that won him his second National Book Award.

It was one of many prizes that he collected in his long literary career, which he started while in the Navy in World War II. His honors included the Tanning Prize for ''mastery in the art of poetry,'' a MacArthur fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and the Frost Medal for Achievement in Poetry Over a Lifetime.

In 1973 he received a National Book Award for his ''Collected Poems: 1951-1971,'' and in 1974 he was awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry of the Yale University Library for ''Sphere: The Form of a Motion.''

It's good to see the re-use of adding-machine tape.

One of his poems called Poetics is reproduced below:

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms
things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:

not the shape on paper -- though
that, too -- but the
uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.

I particularly liked the phrase, from what black wells of possibility.


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Fragments of Oakland

Coffee and the BART
Berkeley and East Oakland
stylish hip dress
and jazz to die for.

Dangerous but bubbling with life
infused with color
and a cacophony of sounds.

The Best Western
Marriott
Jack London Square
The pub with the sloping floor
on the waterfront.

The bar by the fruit market
Ferry to SF
Gumbo food...

Radical is Good

Complacency sits
with its smug, self-satisfied smirk.
The self righteousness of
death before life.
Give me the razor sharp,
acerbic tongue anytime,
so that I might
squirm in turmoil
and feel alive.

Give me the bearded and pierced radical
with fiery breath
and sworded tongue
The polemic voice
that shatters all of
our comfortable
dogma

Live on the edge
and feel the pain
the cold, the hunger
of the poor and dispossessed

Capitalism stinks
Communism stinks
all the isms stink
Bring back the prophet
the bard
the radical
the poet.

Fragments of England

Snow, the Toon, Newcastle Brown Ale
Trees, parks, pristine fields.
The Underground, Metro and Railways,
Newcastle to London at 6am,
London to Newcastle at 6.05pm.
Castles, walls, history,
Literature, poetry.

Bronte, Woolf, Bloomsbury
Garsington, Sissinghurst,
Monks House, Charleston,
Leonard, Hogarth Press.
London, Birmingham, Nottingham
Hove, Shar, Hooriyah, Soleman.
Seamus, Andre and Yuliya
NUTH, Royal Berkshire.

The Black Swan, Victory
Millstone and Bacchus.












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Surround Sound

Wind whispering seductively,
Traffic rumbling
Annoyingly.
A holiday afternoon
On the sofa of a friend.
By a park
Surrounded by sound,
With wind chimes tinkling,
To the accompaniment of
Relaxation.

Azaria Joy

Bright eyed and inquisitive,
A baby full of life,
Curious explorer, exploring
With eyes and mouth
Hands and skin.

Five months
Young
With the genes
Of manifold
Generations...

Azaria brings joy.