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An Ear in Bartram's Tree: Selected Poems 1957-1967
Poems by Jonathan Williams
162 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1972
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27 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Chamberlain Williams
38 books6 followersMarch 8, 1929 - March 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/boo...
Writer, photographer, and publisher. Founded the Jargon Society Press.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/boo...
Writer, photographer, and publisher. Founded the Jargon Society Press.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 1, 2011
This fantastic book contains Williams most exciting poems-- those composed with the greatest proximity to Black Mountain College.
January 20, 2022
Credo:
I do
dig Everything Singing (thinking
as I do:
ah, art
is fro-
zen Zen)
Goethe said: Architecture is frozen music.
* * *
A Vulnerary, for Robert Duncan
one comes to language from afar, the ear
fears for its sound-barriers -
but one 'comes'; the language 'comes' for
The Beckoning Fair One
plant you now, dig you
later, the plaint stirs winter
earth . . .
air in a hornets' nest
over the water makes a
solid, six-sided music . . .
a few utterly quiet scenes, things
are very far away - 'form
is emptiness'
comely, comely, love trembles
and the sweet-shrub
* * *
Great Gray Green Greasy
1.
put the blocks
to winter?
raising avocados indoors
is, ouch,
hard enough
2.
goosed lizards, leaping . . .
put them peapickin claws
whar they belong,
alligator!
3.
after while, crocodile . . .
* * *
Finger Exercises
went down to the
boneyard
to buy a pair of hands, to quote
Robert Creeley
Olson wrote about Marsden Hartley's
hands, how they got,
refusing women's
flesh
and yes:
Hands, by
Sherwood Anderson,
hot to grope
blueberry, blacksuited
Ohio
arma virumque cano! -
plus the law's got a long
arm
we are too much in the hands of
those on whom we lay
no hands
* * *
To Charles Oscar
may there by stiff reeds
for your hands
among the asphodels,
Charles
and wind
to move them
over the bronze water
onto paper
and Lethe for us,
left
with your shattered
inkstone
* * *
The Flower-Hunter in the Fields, for Agnes Arber
a flame azalea, mayapple, maple, thornapple
plantation
a white cloud in the eye
of a white horse
a field of bluets moving
below the black suit
of William Bartram
bluets, or "Quaker Ladies," or some say
"Innocence"
bluets and the blue of gentians and
Philadelphia blue laws!
high hills,
stone cold
sober
as October
* * *
Heart-Song Dear to the American People
don't let the sun set on your head! I said
to the golden rod
it stood
in the pine wood
out back
it was black
as a heart
* * *
Dealer's Choice and the Dealer Shuffles, for William Burroughs
I saw the Chattahoochee River get a haircut.
I saw Fidel Castro flow softly towards Apalachicola, Florida.
I saw a bank of red clay integrate with Jesuits.
I saw Bob Jones Bible University used to make baked flamingos.
I saw the Governor of Mississippi join the NAACP.
I saw a black gum tree refuse to leaf and go to jail.
I saw the DAR singing "We Shall Overcome!"
I saw Werner von Braun knitting gray (and brown) socks for the National Guard.
I saw the Motto of Alabama: "IT'S TOO WET TO PLOUGH!"
I saw God tell Adam: "WE DARE DEFEND OUR RIGHTS!"
I saw the City of Albany fried in deep fat.
I saw eight catfish star on Gomorrah TV.
I saw "THE INVASION OF THE BODY-SNATCHERS" at the Tyger Drive-In.
I saw William Blake grow like a virus in the sun.
I saw the South suckin hind titty.
I saw the North suckin hind titty.
I saw a man who saw these too.
And said though strange they were all true.
* * *
Symphony No. 5, in C Sharp Minor
I. FUNERAL MARCH
Mahler, from his studio on the 11th floor of the
Hotel Majestic, New York City, hears the cortege of a
fireman moving up Central Park West:
one roll of the drum
one road where the wind storms, where
Cherubim sing birds' songs
with human faces and hold the world
in human hands and
drift on the gold road
where black wheels smash
all
one roll of the drum
II. STORMILY AGITATED
to be a block of flowers
in a wood
to be mindlessly in flower
past understanding
to be shone on
endlessly
to be there, there
and blessed
III. SCHERZO
one two three
one two three
little birds waltz to and fro
in the piano
at Maiernigg on the
Wörthersee
and up the tree:
cacophony
one two three
IV. ADAGIETTO
one feels
one clematis petal
fell
its circle
is all
glimmer on this pale
river
V. RONDO-FINALE
Schoenberg: "I should
even have liked to observe
how Mahler
knotted his tie,
and should have found that
more interesting and instructive
than learning how
one of our musical bigwigs composes
on a quote sacred subject
unquote
. . . An apostle
who does not glow
preaches heresy."
his tie was knotted
with éclat
on
the dead run!
* * *
Gardyloo!, A Salutation for Christopher Murray Grieve On the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, August 11, 1967
May Glen Fiddich trickle down the burns
and white roses replace heather!
May Burns, Dunbar, MacDiarmid
trickle in the minds
and climate replace weather!
May your conturbation
rouse the artless Nation!
"May your bottom
never be used
to stretch a Banjo!"
- the latter toast
Chris Grieve gave me in Langholm,
presumably a gist
from the Gaelic-Scots, the original, alas,
now lost . . .
I salute his zest!
* * *
Blue Ball Blues, for Paul Goodman
O, Mr. Chemist, please let me buy
350 pounds of premium Kentucky KY,
cause it's a dry season
for the reason
Anglo-Saxon sex glands
are awry . . .
Arise, arise and come
to Perineum
('the more you come
the more you can')
Let not your sword sleep in your Hand
and we shall smear Petroleum
on England's Groin
& Pleasant Gland!
* * *
That Old Original Phrygian Ball-Buster
Attis is
at it is
he?
- to quote Cybele, a Really Big Earth-Lady (she too go off nut, she make much lamentations-like:
1) to make a totem of pine
out that sweetheard of mine
he cut off the
old pine tree . . .
2) he's a sure nuf gone tomato, he's
a busted valentine . . .
3) Attis-Kit / Attis-Kat -
a green & yaller double-backed beastie
in the form of a monkey
on somebody's back . . .
come on friend,
gimme some skin!
moans the Magna Mater,
croon the Castrate Choir . . .
tambourines
and redder violets
in a bloody ditch -
ain't it a bitch!
* * *
The Switch Blade (or, John's Other Wife)
men share perceptions (and
their best friends' wives, in lieu of
a perverse tangling of arseholes)
- so, if you don't dig that sound get down together
on the wrestling mat mit your
Blutsbrüderschaft,
Mr. Caesar,
Mr. Seizure,
Mr. Man
(every man's woman and every
woman's man, said Suetonius)
yes, but:
Will Andrew Jones Join
the Androgynes?
play it as cool as you can, a pragmatic man said -
there is no end
to desire
* * *
Five Far-Fetched Literary Rambles
Noah (Webster) Counts the Animalcules Two-by-Two:
ab cd EF gh iJ KL mn OP qr st uv WX yz
Who, According to Coleridge, is the "Fair, Soft-Flowering Daughter of Fright"?
Urine
What is the First Really Miltonic Adjective?
adamandeve
An Aspect of a Well-Hung Wallpaper in a Pre-Regency Gentile Drawing-Room:
pre-
puce
Who said, Great Things Are Done When Sprouts & Mountains Meet?
Cole-
ridge
* * *
Rainer Maria Gerhardt
'an end, un-
expected
all of a sudden
even
for himself'
* * *
Mina Loy
'each sin, severally
sinned, or to be
sinned
since the Fall' -
the pen was in
the glands of Bartholin
* * *
Erik Satie
sat at tea
* * *
Jack Spicer
there was his poem
about the ugly gardener's son,
Crotchety Priapus,
weary in the weeds without the hots
for anyone
let's hope Death
has a big one
for Jack
* * *
An Objectivist's Anthology:
1. Lou-
2. is
3. Zu-
4. kof-
5. sky
* * *
The Hermit Cackleberry Brown, On Human Vanity:
caint call your name
but your face is easy
come sit
now some folks figure theyre
bettern
cowflop they
aint
not a bit
just good to hold the world together
like hooved up ground
thats what
I do
dig Everything Singing (thinking
as I do:
ah, art
is fro-
zen Zen)
Goethe said: Architecture is frozen music.
* * *
A Vulnerary, for Robert Duncan
one comes to language from afar, the ear
fears for its sound-barriers -
but one 'comes'; the language 'comes' for
The Beckoning Fair One
plant you now, dig you
later, the plaint stirs winter
earth . . .
air in a hornets' nest
over the water makes a
solid, six-sided music . . .
a few utterly quiet scenes, things
are very far away - 'form
is emptiness'
comely, comely, love trembles
and the sweet-shrub
* * *
Great Gray Green Greasy
1.
put the blocks
to winter?
raising avocados indoors
is, ouch,
hard enough
2.
goosed lizards, leaping . . .
put them peapickin claws
whar they belong,
alligator!
3.
after while, crocodile . . .
* * *
Finger Exercises
went down to the
boneyard
to buy a pair of hands, to quote
Robert Creeley
Olson wrote about Marsden Hartley's
hands, how they got,
refusing women's
flesh
and yes:
Hands, by
Sherwood Anderson,
hot to grope
blueberry, blacksuited
Ohio
arma virumque cano! -
plus the law's got a long
arm
we are too much in the hands of
those on whom we lay
no hands
* * *
To Charles Oscar
may there by stiff reeds
for your hands
among the asphodels,
Charles
and wind
to move them
over the bronze water
onto paper
and Lethe for us,
left
with your shattered
inkstone
* * *
The Flower-Hunter in the Fields, for Agnes Arber
a flame azalea, mayapple, maple, thornapple
plantation
a white cloud in the eye
of a white horse
a field of bluets moving
below the black suit
of William Bartram
bluets, or "Quaker Ladies," or some say
"Innocence"
bluets and the blue of gentians and
Philadelphia blue laws!
high hills,
stone cold
sober
as October
* * *
Heart-Song Dear to the American People
don't let the sun set on your head! I said
to the golden rod
it stood
in the pine wood
out back
it was black
as a heart
* * *
Dealer's Choice and the Dealer Shuffles, for William Burroughs
I saw the Chattahoochee River get a haircut.
I saw Fidel Castro flow softly towards Apalachicola, Florida.
I saw a bank of red clay integrate with Jesuits.
I saw Bob Jones Bible University used to make baked flamingos.
I saw the Governor of Mississippi join the NAACP.
I saw a black gum tree refuse to leaf and go to jail.
I saw the DAR singing "We Shall Overcome!"
I saw Werner von Braun knitting gray (and brown) socks for the National Guard.
I saw the Motto of Alabama: "IT'S TOO WET TO PLOUGH!"
I saw God tell Adam: "WE DARE DEFEND OUR RIGHTS!"
I saw the City of Albany fried in deep fat.
I saw eight catfish star on Gomorrah TV.
I saw "THE INVASION OF THE BODY-SNATCHERS" at the Tyger Drive-In.
I saw William Blake grow like a virus in the sun.
I saw the South suckin hind titty.
I saw the North suckin hind titty.
I saw a man who saw these too.
And said though strange they were all true.
* * *
Symphony No. 5, in C Sharp Minor
I. FUNERAL MARCH
Mahler, from his studio on the 11th floor of the
Hotel Majestic, New York City, hears the cortege of a
fireman moving up Central Park West:
one roll of the drum
one road where the wind storms, where
Cherubim sing birds' songs
with human faces and hold the world
in human hands and
drift on the gold road
where black wheels smash
all
one roll of the drum
II. STORMILY AGITATED
to be a block of flowers
in a wood
to be mindlessly in flower
past understanding
to be shone on
endlessly
to be there, there
and blessed
III. SCHERZO
one two three
one two three
little birds waltz to and fro
in the piano
at Maiernigg on the
Wörthersee
and up the tree:
cacophony
one two three
IV. ADAGIETTO
one feels
one clematis petal
fell
its circle
is all
glimmer on this pale
river
V. RONDO-FINALE
Schoenberg: "I should
even have liked to observe
how Mahler
knotted his tie,
and should have found that
more interesting and instructive
than learning how
one of our musical bigwigs composes
on a quote sacred subject
unquote
. . . An apostle
who does not glow
preaches heresy."
his tie was knotted
with éclat
on
the dead run!
* * *
Gardyloo!, A Salutation for Christopher Murray Grieve On the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, August 11, 1967
May Glen Fiddich trickle down the burns
and white roses replace heather!
May Burns, Dunbar, MacDiarmid
trickle in the minds
and climate replace weather!
May your conturbation
rouse the artless Nation!
"May your bottom
never be used
to stretch a Banjo!"
- the latter toast
Chris Grieve gave me in Langholm,
presumably a gist
from the Gaelic-Scots, the original, alas,
now lost . . .
I salute his zest!
* * *
Blue Ball Blues, for Paul Goodman
O, Mr. Chemist, please let me buy
350 pounds of premium Kentucky KY,
cause it's a dry season
for the reason
Anglo-Saxon sex glands
are awry . . .
Arise, arise and come
to Perineum
('the more you come
the more you can')
Let not your sword sleep in your Hand
and we shall smear Petroleum
on England's Groin
& Pleasant Gland!
* * *
That Old Original Phrygian Ball-Buster
Attis is
at it is
he?
- to quote Cybele, a Really Big Earth-Lady (she too go off nut, she make much lamentations-like:
1) to make a totem of pine
out that sweetheard of mine
he cut off the
old pine tree . . .
2) he's a sure nuf gone tomato, he's
a busted valentine . . .
3) Attis-Kit / Attis-Kat -
a green & yaller double-backed beastie
in the form of a monkey
on somebody's back . . .
come on friend,
gimme some skin!
moans the Magna Mater,
croon the Castrate Choir . . .
tambourines
and redder violets
in a bloody ditch -
ain't it a bitch!
* * *
The Switch Blade (or, John's Other Wife)
men share perceptions (and
their best friends' wives, in lieu of
a perverse tangling of arseholes)
- so, if you don't dig that sound get down together
on the wrestling mat mit your
Blutsbrüderschaft,
Mr. Caesar,
Mr. Seizure,
Mr. Man
(every man's woman and every
woman's man, said Suetonius)
yes, but:
Will Andrew Jones Join
the Androgynes?
play it as cool as you can, a pragmatic man said -
there is no end
to desire
* * *
Five Far-Fetched Literary Rambles
Noah (Webster) Counts the Animalcules Two-by-Two:
ab cd EF gh iJ KL mn OP qr st uv WX yz
Who, According to Coleridge, is the "Fair, Soft-Flowering Daughter of Fright"?
Urine
What is the First Really Miltonic Adjective?
adamandeve
An Aspect of a Well-Hung Wallpaper in a Pre-Regency Gentile Drawing-Room:
pre-
puce
Who said, Great Things Are Done When Sprouts & Mountains Meet?
Cole-
ridge
* * *
Rainer Maria Gerhardt
'an end, un-
expected
all of a sudden
even
for himself'
* * *
Mina Loy
'each sin, severally
sinned, or to be
sinned
since the Fall' -
the pen was in
the glands of Bartholin
* * *
Erik Satie
sat at tea
* * *
Jack Spicer
there was his poem
about the ugly gardener's son,
Crotchety Priapus,
weary in the weeds without the hots
for anyone
let's hope Death
has a big one
for Jack
* * *
An Objectivist's Anthology:
1. Lou-
2. is
3. Zu-
4. kof-
5. sky
* * *
The Hermit Cackleberry Brown, On Human Vanity:
caint call your name
but your face is easy
come sit
now some folks figure theyre
bettern
cowflop they
aint
not a bit
just good to hold the world together
like hooved up ground
thats what
May 4, 2008
It's my LUCK to be living in Philadelphia, where Bartram's Garden actually exists, and of course Bartram's TREE! The flower on the cover is sublime, and one August (that's when the tree's in bloom) I sat beneath the tree to read this book from cover to cover. COME TO PHILADELPHIA in August and read this book with me, let's make a habit of it! Let's make a tradition of it! Let's LOVE this magnificent poetry together why don't we!?
With Love,
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
With Love,
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
March 21, 2023
The strongest lines in this:
air in a hornet’s nest
over the water makes a
solid, six-sided music…
air in a hornet’s nest
over the water makes a
solid, six-sided music…
Read
September 21, 2019omg lol
November 18, 2015
Reread some of the poems recently and raised up my rating.
As the years pass me by, my appreciation of Jonathan Williams' poetry increases.
As the years pass me by, my appreciation of Jonathan Williams' poetry increases.
December 30, 2016
A book of small illuminations undoubtedly disconnected but grandiose and lovely in their own appropriate way.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews