Hillsborough poet Jeffery Beam was in town last weekend for Loco Logodaedalist, the celebration of Jonathan Williams’ work hosted Saturday night by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, so I talked him into coming into the micro-studio at WPVM to talk about his work. He read a few poems from his Visions of Dame Kind (Jargon, 1995), a book whose vision I’ve long admired, but we spent much of the program reading and discussing poems from his new (as in brand new) The Beautiful Tendons, Uncollected Queer Poems 1969-2007 (White Crane Books, 2008). It’s a fine, emotionally searching and honest, collection of love poems - when we’re in the kingdom of love, it doesn’t matter whom we see as the other, the same rules pertain, and this book limns them with a searching, forthright grace.

Several of Jeffery’s poems have found musical settings, so we discussed the relation of music and poem, and Jeffery, in honor of his lifetime love of the old songs he grew up in Kannapolis singing, and which he feels still inform his work, closed the show with a remarkable rendition of the old Methodist hymn “In the Garden”.

If you don’t yet know his work, here are three poems from Beautiful Tendons that he read on the show, just to give you a glimpse:

TWO LOVES

This is my lesson in humility.
My lesson in grief.
My lesson in the cruelty of the human heart, my own.
Trudging through deep southern snow:
finding both of your faces frozen in the white.
Sparrows still singing in the shrubbery.

I could not say it then.
I cannot say it now.
My heart split in two.
A tree limb weighted by ice.
A white        quiet and protective.
A white        dangerously warm.
My hands spiritless in the drifts.

Why do birds continue to sing?

LOVE COMES

not silent,
   but noisy and indiscreet,
           rowdy and persistent.
He comes in leaf fall.
   musty earth in his palms.

           Held out to me
I can do nothing but take it,
   and take it gladly,
           earth being the one coolness
other than water
   to be enjoyed.

           The fact of the matter is this:
tomorrow he may come silent.
   Tomorrow may be love quiet as mist,
           but today,
his cheeks rough with new hairs,
   I smell furrows of new fields.
           I turn over fertile soil.
I hear burrowing insects, happy worms.

   I taste the gentle, crude, excavating damp.
           The stain of love upon the earth!
Stain of love!
   His sleep rattling me.
           His sunrise and breath awakening me.

THAT NIGHT

That body        tree on a misty hill
That face        fawn with dark eyes
That full moon       surrounded by evening skies
That hour        pavement ending in dust
That grass        green with summer’s black-green
That night        coming over us with its breath
That sound        crickets singing at eye level
That body        me on the ground with their song
That body        another touching me with fire
That fire              round as the moon burning as the sun
That face        fawn with dark eyes
That you        speaking in tongues unknown and green
That sound        crickets singing in my ear
That body        tree on a misty hill

There were many more, so give the show a listen. It’ll be available through Sunday at WPVM’s Archive page (just scroll down to Wordplay) as on-demand stream and download.

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The show opened with McCoy Tyner playing “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit” from the 2007 release McCoy Tyner Quartet. We also heard three of Billy Holiday’s classic performances, “Easy to Love,” “Life Begins When You’re in Love,” and “Summertime,” all from Lady Day: The Master Takes and Singles. Keith Jarrett’s “Paint My heart Red,” from the 2006 The Carnegie Hall Concert: Selections for Radio, took the show out.

Enjoy,

Jeff

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The photo of Jeffery is by M. J. Sharp.

Cross-posted at Natures.

But just for today, enjoy mash ups, new music and perhaps take heed — The Last Word! Commentary: Mumia Abu Jamal - Never again? Really?

Email: easymark @ wpvm.org or feedback @ wpvm.org

Robin Long

After a long legal battle, Robin Long was deported last week from Canada where he has lived for the last three years.  He is currently being held in a county jail near Fort Carson, CO. 

Read more:  http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/608/1/

Robin Long

El Paso County Sheriff’s Office

2739 E. Las Vegas

Colorado Springs, CO 80906

James Burmeister

James was in Iraq when his convoy was caught in an IED explosion.  Suffering both mental and physical wounds, he decided to go AWOL to Canada.  After turning himself into the military, he has been sentenced to six months at the Fort Knox Regional Confinement Facility.

Read more:  http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/601/1/

James Burmeister

Box A

Building 7741

PMB1158

Gold Vault Rd

Fort Knox, KY40121-5184 USA

-James can receive mail, as many letters as we want. He does not have to pre-approve senders.

Tune in to Veterans’ Voices at 5 pm every Wednesday or stream/podcast here.

Francois Manavit of WPVM’s “Paris of the South” will tell us about the threat to Fairview’s water by a new golf course development.

Also, Bele Chere is coming. What is it besides a party? Veronika will tell us about the non-profits like the Mountain Area Information Network that use Bele Chere for community outreach.

This local news and public affairs show focuses on underreported information and encourages civic activism. Tune in live 7-8 pm Monday, catch the 1 pm Tuesday rebroadcast, or stream or podcast.

JOHN PAYNE, popular metal artist and owner of the wedge on the river front just passed away today at 10.30 am at Mission Hospital.  ”Between Roberts Street and a set of railroad tracks is the Wedge Building, a renovated produce warehouse, where two dozen or so artists currently toil. The Wedge’s owner is John Payne, a gaunt man of 58 with a tidy white goatee and hair the color of old piano keys. “I make marionettes,” he told me one afternoon. Given the scale of Payne’s puppets, that would be like Robert Smithson, the creator of “Spiral Jetty,” saying, “I fool around with dirt.” Payne led me down to the far end of his studio, where a steel crow the size of a Piper Cub was balanced on a perch made of flagpole-gauge brass tubing. It had a head like a sharpened watermelon, eyes of a cold, hostile cast and a 16-foot wingspan feathered with black steel mesh.” from the  NYT.

The Wedge Brewing Co.will have its Grand Opening Saturday, and it will be, in part, a celebration of John and his legacy. The Wedge will continue.

To listen to the show CLICK HERE NOW ! 

Wednesday, July 16

11pm - 1am

TUNE IN TONIGHT!

WE’RE GIVING AWAY A PAIR OF TICKETS TO NOMO!

NOMO (Ubiquity Records) @ Stella Blue / Thursday, July 17

www.nighttimeswerve.org 

Tune in to Veterans’ Voices at 5 pm every Wednesday or stream/podcast here.