Category: Arts & Letters

PRELUDE & FUGUE 39/

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

a dingy moored on still water
dancing to Bix tonight
in front of the boulder and island

*   *   *

in front of the boulder and island
moored on still water
spires, houses, and the brick millyard
red between granite

a dingy in front of the boulder and island
moored on still water spires,
houses, and the brick millyard

red between granite
a dingy
in front of the boulder and island
moored on still water

spires, houses, and the brick millyard
red between granite
a dingy

dancing to Bix tonight in a blue lake
against mountains reflected foliage
along a green river moose drab
on a sandbar amid dancing to Bix
tonight foliage along a green river
in a blue lake against mountains moose
amid reflected sallow dancing tonight
foliage along a green river, Bix on a sandbar
looking down from the hill in blue
lake against mountains dancing
to Bix tonight moose dun foliage along
a green river sandbar in blue mountains
against moose reflections looking down the hill

~*~

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.

A BIT MORE ON HIPPIE LIT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of my lingering questions wonders why the intensity of the hippie experience didn’t flower more fully in fiction.

Yes, I know hippies were considered “laid back” and “mellow,” but that’s only part of the picture. A lot of what we felt was indeed incredible and new. Yet while the music of the era gives both lyrics and a soundtrack to the late ’60s and early ’70s, the literary parallel runs thin. Most of the prose is in the non-fiction side of the aisle – memoir, especially, and sociology – works like Barry Miles’ Hippie. Within that flourished a range of small publishing operations, such as Straight Arrow Books and Ten-Speed Press.

But novels are another matter.

As I’ve already noted, Richard Brautigan and Gurney Norman (Divine Right’s Trip) did give wondrous voice to the action. Add to that Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey, T.C. Boyle’s Drop City, and we’re soon at the fringe. Thomas Pyncheon’s Vineland, Lisa Mason’s Summer of Love, and Jan Kerouac’s Baby Driver get nods. I’d add Edward Abbey, Tom Robbins, and John Nichols to the list. And then?

Well, there’s always my Freakin’ Free Spirits cycle at Smashwords.com. All four volumes.

As Michael Wards, author of Bitch, a novel about Berkeley 1968-73, commented on an earlier post here, “Today I don’t think 20-year-olds would believe their grandparents were capable of anything that actually happened then.”

That, I suppose, is the entire point. We came so close to a real revolution across the social and economic spectrum. That vision needs to be kept alive and rekindled. Especially in the face of today’s repressive regime.

BRAINCHILD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

a feathered and furred woman
bare shouldered, face painted white
black mouth and black exaggerated eyebrows
a black veil over her face

where is the balm?
the salve for stinging nettles?

potted plants on a white mantle

a bowl of sprouts atop a handwritten note
spread over a blue napkin

richly patterned fabric
behind a waxy flower

a pile of Valentines

reeds and songbirds
home is a refuge or should be

a bar of soap wrapped in pale-tea ribbon
a hole cut in a painting left open with crossed ribbons

two men in an open briefcase, as dolls torn apart
so many screws and nails and tense threads
for connections

a barn owl in front of a red barn

a red house with shiny metal roof in the woods

red hen, red comb, red alarm

Bright day in the valley

Lincoln’s Indiana legacy
in a place that couldn’t support a used bookstore

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.

PRELUDE & FUGUE 40/

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

three dogwood

two owls

a stone barn

*   *   *

stone fence
halfway up the valley of silos, tractor trailers
in mirrored sunrise

the symmetry, yee hah! of fence half stone
up the valley silos, tractor trailers, in the mirror
of sunrise coming home, yee hah!
setting forth along stone fence halfway up
the valley silos, tractor trailers,

in glittering yee hah! sunrise
so fleeting, unbalanced
between the gloved hands

a rosebud, three dogwood, two owls
a stone barn with blossoms that God
in front of a lone maple looks down

in a rosy stone barn fronting a lone dogwood
three maple blossoms look on two owls
that God, in a rousing talk in front of the lonely

fireworks of dogwood, owls, rosebud
blossoms, by God, around a stone barn

in front of a lone dogwood, what blossoms
into a conversation of two owls with God
looks up, looks down, looks around fireworks

~*~

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.

OUVERTURE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

welcomed into my orbit

a Chicago-Baltimore axis
its own perspective

a shadowbox with sixteen cells of teeth numbered
out of the thirty-two originals

to whip up something before a martini

a gray vase with a cow skull
places I once treasured
since lost, yes, lost. And now?
how often, not the place as much as fragile
in the void of letters, Well, kiddo
all the right intentions

a postcard of Florida seashells

a secretary (white blouse, tight black skirt, black heels)
waiting for the midday train in a suburb

three close-lipped fishermen wait to build a fire
on a rocky bend of the river

a woman in a blue dress pauses at the end of the blue deck
before leaping into subtropical ocean

the blurry backside or figure with bent leg
reaching for balance

to sit, wearing blue jeans and a blue polo shirt
in a corner office overlooking parking in a desert

to enter a tall office building housing a Jekyll and Hyde club
befit with gargoyles, sculpted climbers, human skulls,
and Ionic columns

to pose standing in a powder blue wrapper
under a Greek male torso and the head of a stallion

to leap in a fiery ballet costume
from the Brooklyn Bridge before breakfast
onto a parked Harley on cobblestone

dazzling Shakti Style weavings

a Celtic bowl with three mermaids as snakes

Open 24 Hours
misery, in spicy flavors

modern glass teacups and teapot
modern glass table lamps
modern plastic table radio

all I’ve inhabited but won’t return, ever

no, waiting for a “better” scheduling day means
another couple of years, at best, so let’s do it while we can

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.

PRELUDE & FUGUE 43/

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

green drapes
the first week of leaf

before the coral color of cooked lobster

*   *   *

coral (stars) (in a buds of) still birches
(with the wind) an ocean of northern lights

divers (however) shamefaced
avoid the first leaf
draping some fancy coral (yet)

northern lights drape the stilled birches
shamefaced, avoiding some fancy ocean
frogman first

(as) the coral northern lights
leaf out, draping

some still sand bar
beyond fancy birches
(shelters) a roseate sea nymph

(at noon) divers are shamed
facing (her) (the one as fleeting as the) first leaf
or northern lights avoiding (possession) (capture)

(at midnight) hanging still (as) birches, divers
in their shame, avoid facing
(their) fancies, first leafing
(in the) still briny reef

lobster footwork
coming clear

the still green lobster
works its feet in coming
to the clear green

the rippling lobster foot
works clearly
in the coming
green

~*~

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.

REHASH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

the return of the Princess Wen-Chi

 400 years later I understand it wasn’t
my fault we never connected
but the hardness she’d become

with the curtain already up
when the lights took hold

unicorn and gazelle in repose

too weird, too impractical, too brash, too arrogant

hypodermic syringe on a porcelain teacup

favorite hardware
goof balls, golf balls

perhaps annoy or anger, delight
and so on and on. It never ends, does it?

above the treetops
astrologers, even witches

but mostly the aroma of freshly cut grass

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.

PRELUDE & FUGUE 24/

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

there, in thick grass beside a slow stream
a Jersey heifer
wears telescope goggles to observe
a bragging rival

*   *   *

one with horns turns
to observe the huddled two Holsteins
wait for grain

three in thick grass beside a slow stream
four in a high meadow
four on a green slope, still

a Jersey heifer, a bragging rival with horns
turns to the huddled dairy cows awaiting
grain

three in thick grass beside a slow stream
four brown in a high meadow
along a green slope

a Jersey heifer wears telescope goggles
to observe a bragging rival
with long horns turns

the dairy cows, huddle, waiting
for grain beside a slow stream
and the high green meadow

the inertia, meanwhile, is extraordinary
waiting, huddling, bragging rival
mooing, with horns

turning to observe the inertia
meanwhile, a Jersey heifer wears telescope goggles
to stalk a bragging rival

four brown cattle in a high meadow
four on a green slope
two Holsteins waiting for grain

three in thick grass beside a slow stream
the inertia, meanwhile, is
brown, green, mooing, bragging

the wait for grain
huddled beside a slow stream mooing
in the inertia

meanwhile, a Jersey heifer wears telescope goggles
to observe another cow, its bragging
“meow”

~*~

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.

QUADRILLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

four theatrical scenes

1

thirteen dancers hold large butterflies, frogs, crabs, and fish
on sticks over their heads

on our pallet, everyone laughing and tickling

Christmas lights adorn a swan the size of a sailboat on the beach
surrounded by jesters and an undertaker in top hat

and don’t giggle much

tents with electrical lighting have encamped under a bird feeder in the library

late-night lime daquiris, with or without salt

a dozen dresses covering light bulbs
hang from a leafy tree after sunset

2

the classic marble trio upholding the blue orb
stands in three stages of undress

regardless, stay cool

3

behind the eyes and ears of her diaphanous gown
she wears nothing

she still has eggshells behind the ears

Salome, with her slippery hands

4

a surgical theater of the dead Romans and Dutch masters
with a sole nun present and in prayer

while the child skateboards through the kitchen

elaborate mathematical equations in icing on the wedding cake
as animal tracks through a universe

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.

REAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE YEARS SINCE I DRAFTED THAT NOVEL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The years since I drafted Big Inca versus a New Pony Express Rider have brought significant, often dramatic, restoration and redevelopment to long neglected historic mills like the ones at the heart of my novel.

One impetus for the renewal appeared in a handful of towns in Maine, where credit-card giant MBNA transformed old mills into attractive call centers that in turn revitalized local economies. Even after being shut down in a later buyout, the benefits linger, and other developers had concrete models to follow.

Visionary entrepreneurs like the late Joseph Sawtelle here in New Hampshire as well as nonprofit agencies or local government-backed councils entered the picture, making mills in other towns emerge as small-business incubators or readily adaptable buildings for new arrivals, especially enterprises growing rapidly.

And, if the location’s right, they can attract artists of all stripes – painters, sculptors, printers, dancers, musicians, craftsmen, bakers and caterers – as an affordable alternative with natural light and high ceilings. (We love the annual studio tours and open houses in the mills in one nearby town.)

Sometimes the downtown locations lend themselves to conversion into residential condos as well. And then there are universities, health-care organizations, and museums that move in for convenience. (Well, one mill in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, does have a helicopter pad on the roof.)

In other words, there are some fascinating case studies just about everywhere I turn.  But I still haven’t found any where the top of the tower is turned into a tiny penthouse, not the way Bill did at one point in the novel. I’m still quite fond of that touch.