Shop Talk (a continuing series)

From The First 21 by Nikki Sixx 

“Early on [with Motley Crue] I would insist on rehearsing whole sets, playing backward from the encore, then forward again, building our intros, breaking every song down, remaking it, breaking it back down one more time. It was relentless.” 

Randy Sez:

Thank you to the writers I read just before I begin my day

They inspire me, but don’t hold them responsible.

My writing is like my wrestling

Informed by Japanese and Mexican stylists

With plenty of Freddie Blassie

And The Fabulous Moolah mixed in.

But all my own doing.

Randy Sez more:

I write using a secret formula.

A messy desk has many dimensions.

References and Source Material a go go.

A random list of random things at hand:

Writers’ Thesaurus

Old Farmer’s Almanac

Dr. Bronner packaging

A People’s Guide to Los Angeles

I Will Pass Even to Acheron, by Amanda Newell, 2021

A monograph of artworks by Chaim Soutine

The King James Version of the Holy Bible

A couple of books on NW Coast Native art.

Randy Sez More Plus:

And not always, but often I’m listening to music as I write or read. Sometimes I listen just to listen:

Vivian Fung, Phillip Glass, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Roy Hargrove,

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: There Are Strange Things Happening Every Day

Koko Taylor: Whang Dang Doodle

Memphis Minnie

Luther Johnson (Snakeboy?)

Little Willie Little Willie John - Wikipedia

Ramsey Lewis Trio — Reunion - YouTube

Symphony #2 by Johannes Brahms

Les McCann, Live at the Village Vanguard, 1967

Sofia Gubaidulina - Wikipedia

Her "Fachwerk for bayan, percussion and string orchestra" is great.

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

#randystarkpoet

String Theory

 

Art by Antonio Berni

I’LL TELL PEOPLE, HEY

Dream, believe, achieve.

YESTERDAY WAS BLACK ICE! 

I was terrified to drive

But not choice!!! 

YES

I want to win $1 million dollars a week for life!

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

#randystarkpoet

Choice Bits (a continuing series)

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

I hope this link works. Maya Deren.

Maya Deren - IMDb

And I’ll tell you right now

Things have been so great

They’re throwing money at my feet.

Contracts and women at my feet.

I don’t know what the rest of my body’s doing

But I’ve got the happiest feet you ever saw.

Jack E. Leonard, Hollywood Palace, October 16, 1965

The invincible power of poetry has reduced me to the condition of a tattered beggar.

Basho, 17th century

Every Country Gets the Refugees It Deserves

Rabih Alameddine, title chapter from The Wrong End of the Telescope, 2021

Here are some other things I liked over the past few months:

DUSIE: Tuesday poem #457 : Wayne Miller : WHAT I KNOW ABOUT TIRANA

Venus de Milo: On Being Rediscovered by Karen Head - Poems | poets.org

Trap Music by David Tomas Martinez - Poems | Academy of American Poets

Review: ‘Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet’ at the Met Museum – ARTnews.com

Maya Deren - Wikipedia

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, 2006

Harrow, by Joy Williams, 2021

Narrative of Sojourner Truth, dictated to Olive Gilbert, 1850

A Walk in the Night, stories by Alex La Guma 1968

Memories of the Future, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, 1920’s

And this poem: Minna IX

Sedate and archaic, a twilight-frilled haze

Walks over the meadows like rolled-out centuries

Quivering in sprightly welcome.

Trees pushed down by silence;

Trees lolling in comely abandon;

Trees pungently flamboyant,

Their leaves spinning in the wind’s golden elusiveness.

Trees probing the shrilly sensitive sunset

Like little, laced nightmares leaning

Upon a scarlet breast;

Trees sprinkling their stifled mockery

Upon the blue tomb of the air;

Trees, are you silenced beings

Whitening into the winding paradise

Of old loves seeking a second death?

And has this archaic, twilight-frilled haze

Moulded me to your semblance?

by Maxwell Bodenheim, born in 1892 in Hermanville, Mississippi, was a poet and novelist active in the early twentieth-century literary scenes of Chicago and New York’s Greenwich Village. 

These are the titles of my favorite poems by Frederick Seidel from his book Poems 1959-2009.

I’m Here This

The Complete Works of Anton Webern

The Death of Anton Webern

At a Factory in Italy

Yankee Doodle

A Pretty Girl

Going Fast

Portia Dew

The Birth of the Universe

Drinks at the Carlyle

Chiquita Gregory

We Have Ignition

Cosmopolitans at the Paradise

The Hour

A Word from the Apotropaics

Get luck in a hurry.

Hit the winning numbers.

And hit them again and again.

Scan to receive.

Use promo code.

Discover the secret to

Rejuvenate yourself.

Make a moment.

Feel the difference.

Start your skin care journey.

Reverse the damaging effects of winter weather.

Tame nervous tension.

Turn back the clock.

Forget fad diets.

God ALWAYS gives us 

MORE than we can handle.

Six times more.

In tablets, powders, patches, creams, ointments, gels.

© 2022 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.

My books are available on Amazon.

#randystarkpoet