Red Moon Cafe

with a menu of photography, books, jazz, poetry, and other items occasionally

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Poem in Flint Hills Review

One of my poems appears in the recently released edition of Flint Hills Review. Normally, the annual issue is released during the summer; the recent issue was delayed because of moving the offices at Emporia State University, among other things.

"A Seam of Coal,"  my poem, references Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, where my mother was born and raised, and where my family often returned for visits when I was younger. The Short Strand is a working class section of Belfast. USDB, by the way, is an abbreviation for the United States Disciplinary Barracks, aka military prison, located at Fort Leavenworth. I taught a writing class there one semester ten or more years ago.

Because the picture is hard to read, I am adding another copy of the poem. 


A Seam of Coal

Leavenworth, Kansas

Every few minutes 
the horns of the coal trains hauling 
empty hoppers to Wyoming interrupt 
a Saturday night. My computer digests 
what appears on my screen 
thanks to the plant matter from millions 
of years ago. The smell from coal fires 

reminds me of the smoke-filled air of Belfast
that greeted us when our ferry entered the lough.
My grandfather once shouldered bags of coal 
he delivered to the row houses of the Short Strand. 
My sister and I brought in a bucketful 
for our aunt and sat in front of the fireplace,
rubbing in its heat. One uncle, not having
a hot water heater, kept a fire burning
through the year, his own Burning Mountain.

What punctuates my night offers hope
to the inmates of the USDB, their prison
located next to the train tracks. They dream 
of clutching the ladder at the end of a hopper
and, despite their freezing in the January air,
jumping off somewhere in Nebraska.



Sunday, January 07, 2024

Jazz Recommendations for 2023

 

My jazz recommendations for 2023 appear below in no particular order. 

Jan Harbeck Quartet, Balanced. One jazz recording that I overlooked in 2022 is Jan Harbeck Quartet’s Balanced, which wasn’t released until late November of that year. Unlike previous recordings by Harbeck, where he plays standards like “Harlem Nocturne” or “I Love Paris,” this new album contains original music written by Harbeck and, with the exception of the opening track, “Balanced,” the album creates a dominant mood that conjures late nights in an urban jazz club. A fan of his music since 2011, I look forward to hearing upcoming albums by the Jan Harbeck Quartet.


Eriksen Quartet, As Good As It Gets. This new album reflects the close working relationship that the Espen Eriksen Trio and Andy Sheppard have established from having created two previous albums--Perfectly Unhappy and In the Mountains. The interplay between saxophone and piano is particularly strong on the tracks “Sticks and Stones,” “Pressure,” and “Drifting Clouds.” The entire album has gotten a lot of airplay in my house and car.
 

Helge Lien Trio, with Tore Brunborg, Funeral Dance. With this album, Helge Lien has included Tore Brunborg on saxophone.  Although Tore Brunborg has composed some of the tracks, the entire album has more of an atmospheric feel, in that the saxophone, instead of engaging in gymnastics, aids in creating a dominant mood. There are still individual tracks worthy of attention, such as “Apres Un Reve,” “Riss,” and “Kaldanuten.”

Soren Bebe Trio, Here Now. Contemplative, reflective, introspective, comforting—these adjectives describe much of Soren Bebe’s most recent album containing his trio, the first album of theirs to be released since Echoes (2019). My wife says she can imagine herself sitting outside watching the sunset while listening to this album. Although I would prefer much longer tracks because many of them are four minutes or less, I still find pleasure in such tracks as “Here Now,” “Tangeri,” "Winter," “Folksy (To Jan),” “Summer,” and “On and On.”



Matthew Halsall, An Ever Changing View. Finding inspiration in nature, in sculpture, and in the cityscape in Manchester, Matthew Halsall has created music that brings together the percussion pieces that he has collected over the years. Although there are many memorable tracks, one in particular that I like is titled “Calder Shapes.” It’s Gavin Barras’ bass that originally caught my attention. For a full appreciation of the album, I recommend listening to Matthew Halsall’s three-part podcast, which is available at YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpql41trSHs&t=37s&ab_channel=GondwanaRecords).

 

 

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Reading in 2023

I added twenty-three more titles to my Library Thing account during 2023, which brings my total number of books to 1,109. About six of these twenty-three titles are books of nonfiction that I picked up at library sales. Some books cost as little as twenty-five cents. I probably had good intentions when choosing these books, believing that I would quickly start reading them, but I haven’t yet started any of them as of yet, despite my battling a severe chest infection that has recently kept me housebound.

Early in the year, I started reading Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins on my phone when I had problems sleeping. I had downloaded a free sample through the Kindle app. It was a hefty sample, probably about a seventh of the book. My son gave me a cloth copy of the book for my birthday so that I could read the remaining six hundred and some pages. Sonny Rollins’s devotion to his craft was intense and admirable. I hadn’t fully heard the background information regarding his decision to spend a year practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge. One musical experiment of Sonny Rollins’ that I liked discovering was his inclusion of Rufus Harley, who played the bagpipes on one of Sonny's albums. The book itself is a great resource when listening to Sonny’s albums and when discovering previously neglected ones.

Sometime early in the year I also read Doug Peacock’s Walking It Off: A Veteran’s Chronicle of War and Wilderness. Peacock, by the way, was the inspiration for the character Hayduke in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. I particularly liked one of Peacock’s later essays when he describes hiking across a desert bombing range as the jet fighters occasionally flew overhead. It was a cathartic moment for him as he risked death during the few days that it took to cross the bombing range. 


Eight of the books that I added to my LibraryThing account were published by the press that my wife and I run—Choeofpleirn Press. Our nonfiction book contest selected Jacquelyn Shah’s Limited Engagement: A Way of Living. As a memoir, it describes the author’s early experiences and her decision to live life on her terms, without much concern for what her father wanted, what other men wanted, and what society as a whole wanted from her. 

We received about twenty selections for our poetry chapbook contest. Anita Skeen, our judge, selected Vivienne Shalom’s The Truth Is as the winning manuscript and Linda Enders’ Consider the Gravity as the finalist. 

My wife worked with a photographer from Wichita to create the book Wildflowers of Wichita, a combination of photos and text. 

Although technically journals but the size of books, we released our annual four collections, Coneflower CafĂ© (photos, short fiction, and poetry), Glacial Hills Review (photos, nonfiction, and poetry), Rushing Thru the Dark (photos, drama, and poetry), and Best of Choeofpleirn Press, the winning work that we published during the year. 

The capstone to our publication efforts was my wife’s Pitiless Bronze: A Postpatriarchal Examination of Prepatriarchal Cultures, the result of about seven years of research and a year or more of writing. Eventually, as she was engaged in research, I had to remind her of Eli S. Ricker, the Nebraska judge who spent ten years conducting research into the clash of cultures on the Great Plains during the 19th century and who never got the writing done. Pitiless Bronze uses literature and archaeological history to reveal the dominant role of women before their power was usurped by men, once men discovered that they had a role in procreation, something that they only discovered through the careful examination of swans and their mating habits.


The remaining books that I acquired during the year were collections of poetry. Jody Stewart was kind enough to give me a copy of her This Momentary World: Selected Poems. I added Anita Skeen’s Outside the Fold, Outside the Frame and Never the Whole Story to the other books of hers that I own. From reading the anthology The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, a kind of sequel to the previous anthology edited by James Crews—Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, I discovered more work by Faith Shearin and ended up buying two of her books and ordering three other books of hers through Interlibrary Loan. I ordered a couple of books by two other poets through Interlibrary Loan as well.


Except for allowing myself to be tempted by the books found at library sales, I have done better at limiting how many books that I purchased during the year. I still need to glean through my books so that I can make a sizable donation to my local library. One problem I have is that getting access to some of my bookshelves requires moving several pieces of furniture. I have so much packed into one little room that accessing my books is not always easy.

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Nonfiction Book Contest

The deadline for our nonfiction book contest is fast approaching. Get your manuscripts in by December 31.