Un vistazo a Hard Ground

Le damos un vistazo a Hard Ground, el libro de fotografías de mendigos de Michael O'Brien para el que Tom Waits ha creado algunos poemas.

Seeds on Hard Ground, un poema en beneficio de los sin techo

Tom Waits ha editado una pequeña tirada del poema Seeds on Hard Ground a beneficio de diversas organizaciones que trabajan en defensa de los sin techo en el área del norte de California: Redwood Food Bank, Sonoma County's Homeless Referral Services y el Family Support Center que gestiona Catholic Charities.

Ante el éxito de la primera edición de dos mil ejemplares, se ha anunciado una segunda tirada. El librillo puede adquirirse en la página oficial de Tom Waits.

Seeds on Hard Ground se inspira en los retratos de indigentes que realiza fotógrafo Michael O'Brien. Una versión abreviada del poema aparecerá en el próximo libro de fotografías de O'Brien: Hard Ground.

Hard Ground

Poco se sabe de momento sobre este libro que todavía no tiene fecha de publicación pero que ya puede reservarse en línea.

Hard Ground dice reunir en un único volumen fotografías de Michael O'Brien y poemas de Tom Waits sobre la vida de los vagabundos, un tema que ambos han tratado asiduamente a lo largo de sus respectivas carreras.

Fortune, de Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Apenas se ve nada, pero he aquí la actuación de Tom Waits de hace unos días en el homenaje a Lawrence Ferlinghetti en San Francisco. Al menos el sonido es aceptable...

Se trata de una nueva adaptación de un poema de Ferlinghetti con Marcus Shelby al contrabajo.

fortune has its cookies to give out which is a good thing since its been a long time since that summer in Brooklyn when they closed off the street one hot day and the fire men

turned on their hoses and all the kids ran out in it in the middle of the street and there were maybe a couple dozen of us out there with the water squirting up to the sky and all over us there was maybe only six of us kids altogether running around in our barefeet and birthday suits and I remember Molly but then the firemen stopped squirting their hoses all of a sudden and went back in their firehouse and started playing pinochle again just as if nothing had ever happened while I remember Molly looked at me and ran in because I guess really we were the only ones there

Susan Borgeson. Letters Never Mailed: 32 Years of Writing to Tom Waits

Susan Borgeson acaba de publicar un pequeño libro de poemas titulado Letters Never Mailed: 32 Years of Writing to Tom Waits. En él recopila algunos de los poemas que ha dedicado a Tom Waits a lo largo de los últimos 32 años.

En el año 1977, Susan Borgeson conoció a Tom Waits mientras el músico promocionaba su disco Small Change en Eugene, Oregon. El encuentro marcó a la joven Borgeson, diagnosticada con indicios de esquizofrenia y un severo desorden bipolar que la han hecho ser hospitalizada en numerosas ocasiones.

Los beneficios derivados de la venta del libro, que puede adquirirse en Amazon, se destinarán a NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill).

Tom Waits, I Hate You

La revista de poesía estadounidense Cold Mountain publica en su último número este poema de Simone Muench:

Tom Waits, I Hate You

the way your voice snags
my skin when I'm waltzing
through a coffee shop, for the thousand
crows caught in your throat,
how it rains
every time I play "Tom Traubert's Blues."
I hate you for every Valentine you never sent.
Call me indigo, azure, cerulean; call me
every shade of clue for being born
two decades after you.

I hate you for every cornfield, filling
station, phone booth I've passed with my feet
on the dash, listening to you pluck
nightingales from a piano; writhing
as if it were my ribcage being played
beneath a moon that is no grapefruit,
but the bottom of a shot glass.

For every bad relationship, every dead pet,
and every car I've wrecked
into light posts trying to tune you out;
for all the lost radios, Walkmans
tossed over bridges��still the sound of you
rising from water like a prayer at midday,
or the ragged song of cicadas
tugging frogs out of watery homes.

For every lounge lizard, raindog, barfly
I've met; for every vinyl booth I've been pushed
into by a boy with a bad haircut;
for every man I've fucked
according to the angle of his chin
or the color of his coat.
Tom Waits, I hate you.

Well, the night is too dark
for dreaming; the barman bellows out
last call; and you've turned me into a gun-
street girl with a pistol and a grudge
and an alligator belt, a pocket
full of love letters
that have never been sent.

Simone Muench