Podcast Transcriptions for Thomas Robert

Since Thomas Robert Higginson is by far the best thing in my life, and I hp[e he will always be that!  (and  this  permanent desire on my part)  I want to be sure he has my transcriptions of his podcasts, so I thought I would place them here, so at least access is possible.

Given that these transcription are of time spent in Alaska, I thought that my picture should be a bit more wintry, although it is well into June 2017,   I’ve known him so very long.  Well, these transcriptions were a gift and I give them again.

It was a pleasure to transcribe them, and here is one offering of a transcription of Episode one.

Well, it’s my last night in New York

I had a poem I wrote a while ago, “Last Nights”

–last nights are very important to me, because I’ve had a lot of them.

I love last nights because you always have, “well, that happened last night” but when it happens on your last night, then you know that you’re ready

for whatever comes next, the molecules lining up

in preparation for departure.

I can’t believe all of this is not even off the beaten path; it’s

off the highway here in Juneau.

That’s the sound of the waterfall coming down

–just one hole through the ice sheet

through the glacier; glaciers move back

and it turns into a waterfall

The green is the definition of green

which of course is a multihued “green”,

the “moss” popping, the leaves looking primordial

and the fir trees getting dark, dark, dark

and the sun filtering through with gold.

Everybody’s a bear.

Counting eagles from the front porch:

1. one just flew over, and then slowly

straight into the clouds

across the bay

2. two surprised me:  At a diagonal so close

I could hear the wind in the wings

3. three sailed so high up in a spiral,

I didn’t know it disappeared…

---

___________

It was a pleasure to try to transcribe them as they are all poetry, at least to me.  I did not transcribe all of them, but I did my best from close listening at the time, so these are for you Thomas Robert, the best I could do at the time that I transcribed them.

I had more difficulty with episode two and there are two versions; here is one of them:

I saw the bear a half hour after I landed in Juneau.

The crow has welcomed me, and three eagles;

pretty much the clans have given me the omen of omens.:

You really feel who owns the place

–and it sure ain’t me.

Gray.

Pick a gray that pours into Auke Bay

like a glacier, and what is true

for a cloud in Juneau is to be born rain

in a gray garment handed down from seals,

that gray, that other gray, that gray over there.

Mountain continues ocean

Language continues continues

Story continues language

Mother continues child

Child continues memory

Memory continues whale

Whale continues sea

Boat continues life

Twitter continues Twitter

Waves continue ice

Milk continues poem

Laughter continues dance

Mountain continues ocean

continues contains continues

rain continues continues continues

continues language

__________

(I believe this to be the other version, sorry if they’re identical; every time, I tried to open Microsoft Word, I couldn’t, and these are transcriptions I found in other places and copied them into Apple’s Pages word processor which has never given me a problem):

I saw the bear a half hour after I landed in Juneau.

The crow has welcomed me, and three eagles;

pretty much the clans have given me the omen of omens.

You really feel who owns the place

–and it sure ain’t me.

Gray.

Pick a gray that pours into Auke Bay

like a glacier, and what is true

for a cloud in Juneau is to be born rain

in a gray garment handed down from seals,

that gray, that other gray, that gray over there.

[some of the prose interlude]:

I’m looking out over Auke Bay in juneau; it’s not “awe”, but “auke” the “ka”

is a diminutive, so it’s little “ah” –just a little “awe” [ah] in the air

along with all the grays that are there.

–a lot of these clouds aren’t clouds;

they’re the moisture

off the mountains;

I know they’re there; I’ve seen them when the sun decides

to set fire to the sky.

A sea lion crossing:

In Kotzebue, you’re never too far from the tundra

In Kotzebue, you’re never too far from the sea.

The sun and moon dancing with the Northern Lights

–that’s about it here in Kotzebue.

Over the Arctic Circle, 60 miles from Russia

–unbelievable!– what they call the “Beringia Region”

–where the continents of Asia and North America

connected, where the Wooly Mammoth crossed,

and it still fels like wooly mammoth territory…

I read about how today was the last day of summer

in New York; it’s 70 degrees, but here,

it’s right at freezing, and you gotta bundle up!

Mountain continues ocean

Language continues continues continues

Story continues language

Mother continues child

Child continues memory

Memory continues whale

Whale continues sea

Boat continues life

Twitter continues Twitter

Waves continue ice

Milk continues poem

Laughter continues dance

Mountain continues ocean

continues contains continues

rain continues continues continues

continues language

---

_________

-“and it sure ain’t me” anymore, but it used to be me, Thomas Robert; it used to be me.  

A few more images of winter, not in Alaska, but right in Michigan:

This used to be my own back yard; I like to think of the world as my own back yard.  I am connected to so much, and all of it moves through me, all of it “continues” to use Thomas Robert’s language.  

Who can say what will be the lucky entity to continue something?  I will continue being myself; I have little choice in that anyway.  

I am not a bear per se, but I did write something about a bear that I will transcribe as soon as I can.  You see, Thomas Robert said,  at least that’s the way that I transcribed it.  As Thomas Robert said in episode one, “Everybody’s a bear”… 

Indeed, long before I knew Thomas Robert at all, I knew that everyone is a bear, and called my father “Teddy” out of that knowledge,

 

my father

and not that you need confirmtion of your statement from me, Thomas Robert, but you  have it anyway.

Let there be peace for the universe, for the world, and also between us, that “US”-ness you named and used to speak about, that very “US”-ness I will always love,

Even that “US”-ness of humanity; I give that back to you, my friend.  Always.

 

Me and my Thingdom

Mexico City invitation!

Opportunity for my Spanish-speaking self!  Limits! –can do; indeed, I have been addressign “limits” for quite some time, ergo, “Limited Fork” –migration! Duh! cultue, amalgamation of so much; talk about me and you have to  also talk about  migration, and transit systems –talking about those in the book about my father and in my daily life, think Jodie Foster in “Contact”:

 

and my favorite part, an intergalactic reunion with her father! What I wouldn’t give to have that! 

 

 

 

I am already looking forward to this!  –Maybe I will get to be Alita Oso again; as I became in grad school in New Hampshire when I realized that my Master’s degree in “American Literature” curriculum contained only lit for the United States, and my response was not to complain, but to write a letter apologizing for my failure not to include literature of  the rest of the Americas, since “US” was not specified in the degree requirements.  

 

And the response was that I could include literature of the rest of the Americas; but these classes had to be at the graduate level, and such classes were offered only in Spanish, so my first year of grad studies, I enrolled in undergrad Spanish course, and was able to enroll in four Latin American Lit courses my  second year, one of my favorite poems was “El descrubrimeiento de vidrio” — I still have that poem, writen by “Alita Oso”

 

who also wrote an essay I have been looking for; hope I find it before I go to Mexico City, an essay about “Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass in which the Looking Glass is a Gravitational Lens” –writen in Spanish; I received an A+ on it.  Guess I can write something similar again; Alita Oso wrote poems in Spaish, and I translated them into English.  I “found” her lost poems; had a goood time finding them.

 

I could not have enjoyed myself more!  The Spanish professor lived in Maine, and I would often visit her there; I recall walking on campus and those catcalls, “esos blujeannes!”esos blujeannes!”  (Those bluejeans!  Those blue jeans!)

 

I didn’t have time to learn enough Portugese also, so no Brazilian lit for me; Too bad.  Welcome back, Alita Oso! (Little Winged Bear)

New Review!

 

Received just minutes ago, a stellar review of “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code”  

in “american poets”, the Journal of the Academy of American Poets” 

Fall-Winter 2016 Volume 51, Poets.org

 

I am delighted to see this.  Every word.  Please enjoy.

 

 

Hear me read three poems for this new collection here:

 

Melissa Faliveno  of “Poets  & Writers” has uploaded my readings of poems  from “Wannabe” here:

https://www.pw.org/content/wannabe_hoochie_mama_gallery_of_realities_red_dress_code

1. Blue Coming (in response to Bob Holman’s “What You Can’t Understand Os Poetry Is Connected to the Body Again“)
2. The Glory Prelude
3. Me and Bubble Went to Memphis

And related to poem #3 “Me and Bubble Went to Memphis” 

is my video poam, “Bubbling”:

 

 

Please enjoy, and Happy Tuesday!   Hope you have opportunity to read this book!

Where Things Are Today

 

After “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code” is published at last, this week,  available on Amazon right now! my 11th book!

Don”t forget to check out my Amazon Author Page!

 

Cover of “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery Of Realities’ Red Dress Code

 

Video poem of the same name, source of the title of the book:

 

I will be officially without a poetry publisher, and will need one in the future.  

 

In the meantime, please enjoy Thylias Moss reading three poems from “Wannabe” in the Poets and Writer’s podcast at this URL:

Melissa Faliveno has loaded my readings of poems from “Wannabe” here:

https://www.pw.org/content/wannabe_hoochie_mama_gallery_of_realities_red_dress_code

1. Blue Coming
2. The Glory Prelude
3. Me and Bubble Went to Memphis

I hope you like them…  I do and consider them very special for various reasons.  

 

At the following URL, you may expereince “Blue Coming” as orginally published in “Colorado Reivew” in response to Bob Holman‘s “What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry Is Connected to the Body Again”:

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/586291

“Me and Bubble Went to Memphis” may also be both heard and read here at the poetry Foundation:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/54118

origainally published in The Oregon Literary review Vol 2, no. 2 in 2007:

Thylias Moss, “Me and Bubble went to Memphis” from The Oregon Literary Review, Vol 2, No 2. Copyright © 2007 by Thylias Moss.  Reprinted by permission of Thylias Moss.

Source: 2007

You can experience aother “Higginson” poem from this new collection, in this YouTube video of me reading, “Higginson Matters in Magnificent Culture of Myopia“

 

and here on Vimeo:

If you want to know why there is such an emphasis on “Moss” I canexplain that.  The reading interacted with external events affecting me on the day I read, and my poetry reveals the TRUTH, and so it did, so it does.  

Here you may experience a print version of  “The Glory Prelude” also in “Wannabe”

 

https://theoffingmag.com/poetry/glory-prelude/

and here is a video poem of the same name:

 

Also a video version of another print poem in “Wannabe” “Hypnosis at the Bird Factory”:

 

 

Since “Wannabe” is a collection of New and Selected poetry, here are  some video poems are in “Wannabe” in print versions:

 

Tornado Pi -video poem:

 

Print poem  in “Wannabe” “Tornados“: from “Rainbow Remnants on Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky”

Winner of the National Poetry series Open Competition

 

And from the same book, “Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky“, two video pieces from “The United States of Poetry“an excellent film I am very proud to be part of:

 

9:08 excerpt from the poem “The Linoleum Rhumba” in Wannabe“:

also “Green Light and Gamma Ways”

in “The United States of Poetry” as “Green Light and Gamma Rays” but the actual poem form which this is an excerpt is “Green Light and Gamma Ways”, in “Wannabe” correctly:

This five-part video series was shown on PBS,

perhaps you saw  “The United States of Poetry” there, 

This print poem, “Interpretation of a Poem by Frost” (a poem with an interesting story that I will be happy to tell), is also in “Wannabe” and also appeared in “Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky”

may be experienced on the Poetry foundation website here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47597

This poem was also “Poem of the Day” on 15 March 2015, 

and may be exeperienced here in that context:

http://livefriendie.blogspot.com/2015/03/poem-of-day-interpretation-of-poem-by.html

“Ant Farm” one of my favriite poems from “Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler” (a nominee for The National Book Critics Circle Award, by the way) origiannly published in Keyon Review, vol. 20, no.1

may be read here:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4337641?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

I include this video of me reading poems, from a previous New and selected collection, “Small Congregations”  from Daniel Halpern and Ecco Press,

“Small Congregations“, new and selected poetry by Thylias Moss, a collection, noted by Harold Bloom, mentioed in his book “The Western Canon“

you can find this book listed under great books at this URL:

http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

no doubt not respresented in “Wannabe” because of previous litigation, but I am only speculating about that, but I am reading versions of my poems, some of which are in “Wannabe” te video is, from my time in San Diego,  at the invite of Quincy Troupe and Margaret Porter Troupe, so here it is:

 

My first scheduled reading from “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code” is scheduled for 30 November, 2016 at 7:00 pm, at Columbia University, organized by Timothy Donnelly.  Hope to see many of you there.  I will be reading “Higginson Matters in Magnificent Culture of Myopia”, no peaches this time, but, as I understand it, there will be grapes for this interactive reading, as there were at The Pulitzer Fine Arts Center; here are a few pics, some of them by Cary Ann Faye, from when my video piece, “The Glory Prelude” was on display at the Pulitzer Fine Arts Center in St. Louis, MO, from 15 April 2016 until 2 Juky 2016:

and now some video stills of “The Glory Prelude” by me:

 

Read more about this upcoming event here:

http://arts.columbia.edu/events/fall-2016/moss

Trying to also arrange a public reading while I am in Manhattan at the Bowery Poetry Club,   a place I’ve long wanted to read.  

Will post more as events become more definite.

 And as soon as I recieve my copies of “Wannabe” I will post many photos of the book!  and photos of me wth it.  A radio podcast in Ypsilanti, MI, ahould be happening in October, and I will be discussing my new book: “Wannabe“

More updates coming and more photos as soon as I have them.  

Look for me on Facebook!

Twitter also.

Excitement reigns!

I am very excited about my forthcoming –just days now, volume of new and selected poetry! “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code“! (from Persea Books!)

I haven’t had a new book since 2006, and Tokyo Butter!

 

Tokyo Butter – a search for  forms of Dierdre (really my  late cousin Hilda).

 

The cover image is really a 50X USB microscpe scan I made of flowers from Hilda’s Funneral in 2002.  I  grew up with Hilda as if she were my sister… A terrible loss for me… 

I wonder what she would be like now?  She was only 3 months older than me, born 25 November 1953; I was born 27 February  1954.  “Tokyo Butter” explores some of that… I couldn’t believe that all of Hilda (“Deirdre” in the book) was gone from the world, and “Tokyo Butter” is the outcome of my (as yet incomplete) search for her.

 

Here is a version of a video piece I made about a poem in “Tokyo Butter“: The Cultue of Snowmen”:

I really want the Proscope mobile!  Oh what I would capture!

Images I captured with my Proscope Digital microscope:

:

 

 

Hope you’ve already put in your orders at Amazon for “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code“!

 

Video poam I made, the source of the title of this book soon to be available:

 

 

 

Also, please check out my Amazon Author Page!!

 

You can hear me reading three of my favorite poems from”Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code” for Poets and Writers Here:

 

 

 

http://www.pw.org/content/wannabe_hoochie_mama_gallery_of_realities_red_dress_code

The three poems I read:

1. Blue Coming
2. The Glory Prelude
3. Me and Bubble Went to Memphis 

Also here “Me and Bubble Went to Memphis” here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audio/detail/76019

 

The Glory Prelude video poam here (music composed and performed by Graphic Artist Ansted Moss, Vocals by Thylias Moss who also made the vide poam; contains footage of my mother who has recently been visited by “The Angel of the Lord” –whatever that means.  I cannot compete with “The Angel of the Lord” –noone can):

(my mother is unaware that this footage was captured)

Please don’t tell her, unless you are “The Angel of the Lord”.

she already told me that she’s coming to get me… –I am going to be haunted after her death, so if I make no further posts, you will know that:

1. I am dead
2. My mother got me.
3. My mother succeeded at what Houdini couldn’t
4. A mother’s love

How mama looks now, as she waits for The Angel of the Lord  (to come back in ways my deceased father can’t):

 

(She loves Popeye’s chicken, but isn’t supposed to eat it. Diabetes,  Hypertension, Glaucoma, Thyroid problems, loss of the ability to grasp physical objects (with her right hand especially) and to remember anything, Dementia; loss of hearing, loss of eyesight, unless looking at and/or listening to:  “The Angel of the Lord”, but she’s coming back to get me, a promise she has made to the “Angel of the Lord” –I take this most seriously, because she saw “The Angel of the Lord” as real as anything she has ever seen..

“The Glory Prelude to a Widow Shrine System” is for her, the widow since the death of my father in July 1980.   She says “the only man I  need is Jesus”, so I called a man I liked a lot, before I loved him as I do now, “Jésus”.  My mama with dementia, (I love her, but she still doesn’t know. Just wanted to tell her that I had found a good man; I thought that maybe she would like that.  But no.  

I’ve been divorced since 2013, but makes no difference… Even if nothing goes any furher, I just wanted her to know that I had found someone much better, who doesn’t lie to me, a man I can trust to tell me the truth, whether or not I like it.  He will not deceive me, the most trustworthy man I know. 

and “Hypnosis at the Bird Factory ” (also in “Wannabe”) as a video poam right here:

and Tornado Pi, video poem version of the print poem “Tornados“ also in “Wannabe“:

 

 

Print version of “The Glory Prelude” in The Offing here:

BUY THE BOOK!

READ THE BOOK!

 

A significant new poem from this collection is: “Higginson Matters in Magnificent Culture of Myopia” and I perform this signture poem from this collection here

(the unnatural emphasis on the word “moss” comes from  a niece of my ex, telling me that I could hardly be moving on with my life, since I still had their name, a name they did not copyright, a name they did not intiate; there are many other “Mosses”; they have no valid claim to the exclusivity of that name:

 

Speaking of things “trustworthy”, I was all set to believe that an unfortunae  sitution with my publisher was greatly improved; I’m still all set for that, but I was disappointed when I saw on the publisher’s website for my book; a quote about me, this mixed-race woman who would never choose a partner based on his color, or a partner who would choose a woman based on her color; I would not exist without mixing… 

and although the quote which offends me now and all that I’ve tried to accomplish in  my writing is gone from the book jacket, I still name, on the website, “the black truths behind white lies” and am still a writer “who speaks bitterness”… I was disappoined to see that, because of the inaccuracy, and immediaetely wote an email to my poetry editor

That is not who I am; I speak TRUTH, no matter what color it is.   And if “black” (a part of me but not all of me) is so powerful that whatever is “black” at all, even a tiny potent, powerful drop; if so powerful that I  can not avoid using a black lens to interpret everything, then everything I see automatically becomes “black” because I see it, and everything  I say automatically become “black” because I say it, and everything I hear automatically becomes “black” because I hear it, and everything I do, automatically becomes “black” because I do it, and everything I touch automatically becomes “black” because I “touch” it, and everything I feel automatically becomes “black,”because I feel it,  and everthing I eat automatically becomes “black” because I eat it,

 then there is no need for me to preface anything I think; anything I feel, anything I do with “black” since I cannot do anything that is not black, so when I think of quantum phyiscs, quantum physics becomes black; every form of math, everything I’ve written here is black; that’s how potent black is, one drop and black heaven is the reward!

 

I continue to think these black thoughts, as I thought them at the University of new Hampshire where in a class for those teaching English composition, the subject was “How To Eliminate Vagueness” in student wiring, and one TA observed that when a sudent writes the word, “black”, the student likely means something else, such as, and this was agreed upon (worth noting that I was the ony visibly “black” person in the room); agreed upon that the student meant “irreversible damage” , so I wrote this poem, for instructors of English 401 at the University of New Hampshire, originally published in Callaloo, then in my book, Pyramid of Bone, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award:

about Pyramid of bone, Langdon Hammer says this: 

Although many of Moss’s poems discuss race and gender, these subjects are, explains scholar Langdon Hammer, simply “starting points for her work…her poetry makes such facts of identity seem unfamiliar, their meanings not to be predicted, unavailable to the naked eye.” Known for startling metaphors and vivid imagery, Moss’s work demonstrates an expansive imagination that seeks to connect at times wildly disparate subjects”

Book by Thylias Moss

“To Eliminate Vagueness”

 instructions: substitute  irreversible damage for black wherever it occurs

 

 

In the red-legged locust’s black raids upon midwest soybeans,

in their illicit transmission of tapeworms and parasites

to quail, turkeys, and guinea fowl,

in all the black calendar days that are supposed

to indicate the ordinary.

 

In operating rooms body parts black with gangrene

are excised and trash cans seem to fill with dead crows.

 

There’s a black crust two miles thick in Soweto, some on bread,

around eyes, most on the streets where blood dried

into its own monument.

 

Then my mother’s black face nothing can soften, the sweating,

the forgetting to sleep, the solidarity with anyone troubling,

the compassion only I knew she felt hugging a radio, singing

spirituals, sequestering herself in her widow’s bedroom

praying for women unable to pray.

 

And what of Europeans, what of Asians and Latinos who are

     irreversibly

damaged, whose gangrened minds should be excised but who are

   not black?

 

 

One day I noticed my mother had poured her face onto mine

and had given me spirituals and lullabies.

I sang them when baskets of black clouds dumped

their transparent flowers over the convent

 

and the nuns’ basic black didn’t get wet

and they carted the flowers home in wheelbarrows

and arranged them like lullabies

and wept silently

 

as we were weeping, mother and daughter together

in my father’s old rocker, the damage already done.

 

                                            for Gary and the English 401 staff

 

                                                       Thylias Moss

Originally published many years ago in Callaloo, then in my award-winning collection “Pyramid of Bone” (University of Virginia Press, 1989)

 

and listen to me read, on the Poetry Foundation site: “The Pampering of Leora” 

 

and this video poam (product of act[s] of making) I made”Cosmic Seduction” is just another black thing I do:

Please enjoy as much of this truth as you can.  I thank you and  am grateful, always.

___________

Included for someone special 

HOUSE SALE-WTF WALK

HOUSE SALE-WTF WALK

all  for him

Walking for Joy, hoping for Bob, trying to accept that it might not be him; my world being crushed

Walking for Joy, hoping for Bob, trying to accept that it might not be him; my world being crushed

Walking for Joy, hoping for Bob, trying to accept that it might not be him; my world being crushed

 

His if he wants it, the most trustworthy, most deserving  man I know.