Hollywood Hills Noir, Poem by Laurel Ann Bogen

HOLLYWOOD HILLS NOIR
Poem by Laurel Ann Bogen

Aberration of weather studs
the sloe eyed city where change
gels in ripples after due process
I could go deeper
pry open the locked vault
below, combustible fossils bubble
in tar and petroleum beneath
Wilshire Blvd. — the jacaranda’s roots
divide the house
Los Angeles
erupts in violet blossoms
each spring the profusion
is uncontained by stucco

Nature needs tending, or course
every few years the plates shift
the photogenic councilman is arrested
and somebody takes a fall
That’s how I came here — by a calling
as surely as the devil herself
cloaked in the need to be seen
in filtered light
latticed with faultlines
and an underground whirlpool
as profligate as oil.

“Hollywood Hills Noir” appears in Laurel Ann Bogen‘s collection Washing a Language (Red Hen Press, 2004), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Laurel Ann Bogen is the author of 10 books of poetry and short fiction, and from 1996 until 2002 was literary curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has been an instructor of poetry and performance for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program since 1990 and received the Outstanding Instructor of the Year in Creative Writing in 2008. Selected “Best Female Poet/Performer” by the L.A. Weekly in their Best of L.A. issue, she is well-known for her lively readings and is a founding member of the acclaimed poetry performance troupe, Nearly Fatal Women. The recipient of the Curtis Zahn Poetry Prize from the Pacificus Foundtion and two awards from the Academy of American Poets, her work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines and anthologies.

Photo: “The Famed Hollywood Sign from Bronson Canyon” by Corey Miller, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Humphrey Bogart Gets Caught Reading David Goodis

In 1947, Humphrey Bogart and wife Lauren Bacall starred in the film adaptation of David Goodis‘s noir novel DARK PASSAGE (1946). The book also served as inspiration for the television series THE FUGITIVE (1963-1967) starring David Janssen.

David Goodis — who never achieved the status of fellow noir writers Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett — has been called “The Poet Laureate of the Bleak.” He died in 1967 at age 49.

With his work often out of print, the prestigious Library of America decided to solidify Goodis’s place as a top noir stylist by in 2012 issuing GOODIS: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s. The Library of America states as its mission “to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping in print, authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing.”

Here’s an example of Goodis‘s prose — the opening passage to his 1947 novel NIGHTFALL:

It was one of those hot, sticky nights that makes Manhattan show its age. There was something dreary and stagnant in the way all this syrupy heat refused to budge. It was anything but a night for labor, and Vanning stood up and walked away from the tilted drawing board. He brushed past a large metal box of water colors, heard the crash as the box hit the floor. That seemed to do it. That ended any inclination he might have had for finishing the job tonight.

Heat came into the room and settled itself on Vanning. He lit a cigarette. He told himself it was time for another drink. Walking to the window, he told himself to get away from the idea of liquor. The heat was stronger than the liquor.”

Finding a Long Gray Hair, Poem by Jane Kenyon

FINDING A LONG GRAY HAIR 
by Jane Kenyon

I scrub the long floorboards
in the kitchen, repeating
the motions of other women
who have lived in this house.
And when I find a long gray hair
floating in the pail,
I feel my life added to theirs

###

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 23, 1947, Jane Kenyon earned a BA from the University of Michigan in 1970 and an MA in 1972. That same year, Kenyon married the poet Donald Hall, and moved to Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire. Kenyon’s published books of poetry include Constance (1993), Let Evening Come (1990), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), and From Room to Room (1978). In December 1993, she and Donald Hall were the subject of an Emmy Award-winning Bill Moyers documentary, “A Life Together.” At the time of her death from leukemia, in April 1995, Jane Kenyon was New Hampshire’s poet laureate.

Photo: Jane Kenyon, late 1980s.

Frank Capra Gets Caught Reading Hemingway

In the above photo, author Ernest Hemingway (left) dines with director Frank Capra at the Paramount Studio commissary in 1941. Capra holds a copy of Hemingway’s then-latest novel — FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (1940). Set during the Spanish Civil War (1933-1939), the book became the basis for the 1943 film of the same name starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman — actors that Hemingway selected for the roles.

Whether or not Capra was pitching his services during this lunch with Hemingway, he did not end up with the director’s slot — instead, Sam Wood assumed the role because shortly after this photo was taken, the United States entered WWII. Frank Capra served as a Colonel in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where he remained during the war years (1941-1945) making a variety of military films, including many shot during combat. Hemingway spend much of WWII as a war correspondent in various parts of the world.

After the war, Capra’s first Hollywood assignment was to direct James Stewart in the now-classic IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946). Hemingway did not release another major novel until 1952, when he published THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 and was cited for “his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.”

OPENING PASSAGE FROM FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS: 

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.”

The Green Croft, Poem by Barbara Eknoian

THE GREEN CROFT
by Barbara Eknoian

I’m sixteen working at The Green Croft,
a family inn, green-shuttered,
four stories high
right on Lake Hopatcong.
On the porch every night after supper,
my friends and I rock back and forth
in our chairs like old grannies
while the rich kids
whiz by in their speedboats.
Across the lake, the Bon Air Lodge
is lit up like an electric power plant.
We hear music from their band
and wish we were older to venture
across the River Styx Bridge
to attend their big Labor Day bash.
On our porch, the ancient jukebox
houses only one modern song.
I play Elvis’s
“I want you, I need you, I love you,”
over and over 
pining for a boy back home.
 
One night, Charlie, a guest who looks
like a forty-year-old bookworm,
sits at the upright piano playing,
“A Whole Lot of Shaking Going On”
 as good as Jerry Lee Lewis.
Guests push the Ping-Pong table aside,
start to rock ‘n’ roll. 
Peter the waiter tries to pull me up
to Lindy, but I’m too shy and say no.
He grabs Kathy, the waitress,
flips her around like the “Swing Kids.”
I sit there and feel the floorboards
vibrating beneath me
as Charlie bangs the piano
and pumps the foot pedal below.

Illustration: Vintage postcard “Lake Hopatcong”

Chances Are, Novel by Barbara Eknoian

Congratulations to Barbara Eknoian — author of poetry that appeared in the Silver Birch Press SILVER ANTHOLOGY and the Silver Birch Press GREEN ANTHOLOGY – on the May 2013 release of her novel CHANCES ARE.

BOOK DESCRIPTION: It’s the l950′s. Thirteen-year-old Susie Di Pietro lives near the projects in New Jersey. Bookies stand on the corner by the candy store and sound like characters from Guys and Dolls. Everyone plays the numbers, even young Susie. Throughout her high school years, she’s painfully aware that her pal, Ginger, and she are wallflowers. Susie shares her romantic tribulations, her trials with her teachers, and funny incidents that happen to her while she is growing up. Chances Are is a charming coming-of-age novel that will take you on a nostalgic trip: dancing to Johnny Mathis, Elvis, and The Platters. It will trigger fond memories for some readers of their teen years, and give younger readers a picture of that special era, “The Fifties.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Eknoian lives in La Mirada, California, with her extended family. Originally from New Jersey, she was forever homesick until she joined Donna Hilbert’s poetry workshop in Long Beach. Barbara was the first recipient of the Jane Buel Bradley Chapbook Award for her collection Jerkumstances (Pearl Editions). A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry, her story “Crazy Mom” was featured in the 2009 6th Annual Emerging Voices Group Show produced by Sally Shore‘s New Short Fiction Series.

CHANCES ARE is available in paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon.com

Of This Moment, Poem by Larry D. Thomas

OF THIS MOMENT
by Larry D. Thomas

primaveral,
when the trees
are tuning forks

struck into the tones
of birdsong,
the squirrels

descend the trunks
like beads
of hot wax,

each onto the floor
of his own
little room

sans walls or roof,
lit by a thousand
candles

in the dazzling
yellow house
of morning.

(“Of This Moment” was first published in The Christian Science Monitor and is featured in Larry D. Thomas‘s collection Where Skulls Speak Wind, Texas Review Press, 2004 — winner of the 2004 Texas Review Poetry Award.)

Illustration: “Silently Watching,” watercolor by Cathy Wilson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Michael C. Keith, Finalist in 2013 International Book Awards

Congratulations to Michael C. Keith, author of the Silver Birch Press release EVERYTHING IS EPIC: Stories (April 2013), for his recent honor — his  book OF NIGHT AND LIGHT: Stories (Blue Mustang Press, 2012) was named as a Finalist in the Fiction: Visionary Category in the 2013 International Book Awards, a  contest that honors excellence in independent and mainstream publishing.

Vertical, Poem by Linda Pastan

VERTICAL
by Linda Pastan

Perhaps the purpose
of leaves is to conceal
the verticality
of trees
which we notice
in December
as if for the first time:
row after row
of dark forms
yearning upwards.
And since we will be
horizontal ourselves
for so long,
let us now honor
the gods
of the vertical:
stalks of wheat
which to the ant
must seem as high
as these trees do to us,
silos and
telephone poles,
stalagmites
and skyscrapers.
But most of all
these winter oaks,
these soft-fleshed poplars,
this birch
whose bark is like
roughened skin
against which I lean
my chilled head,
not ready
to lie down.

“Vertical” is found in Linda Pastan‘s collection Traveling Light: Poems (© Norton, 2010).

Illustration: “Abstract Watercolor Painting of Brookings Lake in the Manistee National Forest of Michigan” by Rosemarie Seppala, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Loveliest of Trees, Poem by A.E. Housman

LOVELIEST OF TREES
by A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Illustration: “Cherry Blossoms,” watercolor by Hailey E. Herrera Art Journey, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED