poets are more game than music students

Media Announcement: In this week's 225 Record Crate blog, I lay out the skinny on Blues Week activities, tell you all about Ruthie Foster, and make a plea for you to go to the Baton Rouge Blues Fest even though it's on the same day My Morning Jacket is at JazzFest. Still weighing that one out myself.

On my lunch library round, I came across a young woman in recital wear pushing a dolly containing a harp wrapped in blue protective fabric up the handicapped ramp of the theatre. I held the door for her, asking if I could take her picture with it because it was such a great image, and she half-smiled "no, you can't" and darted in, so instead you get Anne Sexton skinny-dipping in Newton, 1962, from this wonderful post by Alex Carnivale at This Recording. It is her right to go about the cumbersome business of moving a harp un-picked-over and I am probably a bit of a creep for asking, but it proves, once again: poets are more game than music students.

From that same post; catch that glare she gives the dog at 0:41. Also, she doesn't let anyone be camera shy.

Excerpt of LETTER WRITTEN ON A FERRY WHILE CROSSING LONG ISLAND SOUND from All My Pretty Ones

There go my dark girls,
their dresses puff
in the leeward air.
Oh they are lighter than flying dogs
or the breath of dolphins;
each mouth opens gratefully,
wider than a milk cup.
My dark girls sing for this.
They are going up.

See them rise
on black wings, drinking
the sky, without smiles
or hands
or shoes.
They call back to us
from the gauzy edge of paradise
good news, good news.