tant mieux | number 1 audio blog
welcome to number one audio blog
welcome to number one audio blog where we read audio poetry and also podcast for www.teleread.org and hope that you'll visit. More, visit our home page at www.tantmieux.squarespace.com.
classics as e-books?

As a poet myself, it is only natural that I am often moved to read other poets – either for inspiration or for the sheer pleasure of simply reading without any work objective in mind. Until recently I had always taken my Tennyson and my Yeats off the top of my bookshelf, dusted off the thin, worn pages and carefully turned, reading each poem in turn. The same has been true of my Book of Nonsense with illustrations by Edward Lear and poems from diverse writers and anonymous poets and nonsense writers of all kind, including Lewis Carroll who included the poem Jabberwocky, my favorite and the first poem I ever memorized at age nine. ~ for complete story, listen to the podcast or visit
http://www.teleread.org
down the rabbit hole | alice's adventures as ebook?
Does Alice's Adventures Underground (the original title of Alice in Wonderland) work as an ebook? Listen in at www.Teleread.org or here and find out....
s.r.p.
the technicalities | from e to p
The difference between e-book and p-book: and editorial for teleread.org by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti ~ visit www.teleread.org and www.tantmieux.squarespace.com for other articles, news, images and more.
October, 2005
mobiread pocket reader on the Dell Axim PC
Check out MobiRead on the Dell Axim PC and visit www.teleread.org for more details on this podcast and to read the accompanying article. Article and podcast by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti: Teleread Editor, David Rothman.
continuity in e-book | industry standards ~ quieter version
continuity in e-book standards by sadi ranson-polizzotti, quieter version.
continuity in e-book | industry standards
continutity in e-books on www.teleread.org ~ podcast. Set industry standards for e-book readers and writers to help boost sales, create a cohesiveness that is missing and more... take a listen.
sadi ranson-polizzotti for www.teleread.org
scott sigler e-book deal introductory podcast
Scott Sigler moves from the world of podcasting and lands print book contract with trade house. Author thinks big. Listen to the podcast and read the full text and interview at www.teleread.org and email srp@teleread.org.
scott sigler's podcasts for Earthcore land print book deal.
a relfection on how things come back around. Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti for teleread.org. Tune in here or at www.teleread.org for the full scoop.
bridget jones availabe in e-book format
diary of bridget jones podcast for teleread.org ~ check out the original article at www.teleread.org; this is sadi ranson-polizzotti for teleread.org.
http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/wave-sound-files-of-poems/
wav poems at tant mieux, simply click the link above to hear more audio poems on tant mieux. There are many more there with complete text in the Archives if you wish to hear it.
thanks, and hope you'll tune in.
sadi ranson-polizzotti, summer, 2005
adam engst podcast for teleread.org try no. 2
Read the whole article at Teleread.org by sadi ranson-polizzotti, former editor and publicity director at David R. Godine, Atlantic Monthly reader, and Founder of Lumen Editions.
how to peel an apple
I remember all that year
you would not write and instead
bought a house and took to sulking.
A hermit, you spent your days
stripping paper and painting ends
and edges. If only you had known
that my own grief matched your own.
That I too was mourning the loss
of something sweet made bitter
by our rows.
All that storm and fury.
All that fucking nothing.
Remember those long, lazy
afternoons, how we stretched
long as cats after love. How after,
you taught me how to peel
an apple so the skin remained
whole. I watched, marveled at
the ripeness of the moment
how it came undone in your
palm, one long, easy ribbon
of crimson, palest green.
je dors
(pardon errors, please...)Je dors.
j’ai des reves inconnus.
Et tu – tu Viendrais.
Je sais. Tu serais ici prêt.
Dan mes reves, je sais tout.
je vois des choses bleues
des choses blanches comme la niege
comme ma peau. Aussi, je vois
les choses verts commes mes yeux.
Maintainant, mes yeux ne vois rien.
Ils sont fermes.
Dan mon sommeil, je dis,
“Caresse-moi”
Je dors, et je reve.
Et dans me reves sont
cent coeurs dans le ciel –
rougissant et bleu – un dessin-negatif
comme mon amour pour toi.
grand pressigny
The climb is dizzying
Each step closer to cloud
They whisper promise of rain
As you whisper promises hot
To my neck. I blush to the sound
Of it: what you promise to do.
I weaken at each word
Fall and rise to your touch.
I wonder who stood
Years before us, fought
For this land, as you once
Fought for me. Pushed
Back the boundary,
Take what is yours as I ran
To the bell tower, took
Firm the rope, and set
The clapper in motion
It licked each side ringing
Alto and sweet.
My bell tolled only,
For you, for you.
change of taste
A woman, young and olive skinned, pours milk
over her thighs and you are transfixed. Caught
in the moment of raw desire like Bunuel. A fire
i did not light. This fascination you say i won't
let go, it comes from you. Grown of your own
hot-faced transgression.
Every day you carry in new books -
Gauguin's girls in Tahiti, dreams and films
surreal, the lost but not forgotten.
You want a girl who tastes like harisa,
all hot paste, coriande, North African.
Lately, you enjoy telling me
i am bland as watercress.
So thin and see-through;
as if i did not know. As if you had not
made that much clear so long ago.
Gone are the sacred days and hue.
Now are the blank days, though who
here can say what any of it was.
If any of it was true. If any of it
really ever meant anything.
renege
How to overcome the sea-dark
clumsiness. The February
lengthening of day. Awkward,
negligent in its way. You had
grown used to this dark. Accustomed
to the brevity of moments,
Moments that lasted longer
than they should have. Confessions
unspoken, unspent, they
always could have
been absolved, made better,
palmed with some rose holy oil
til the hurt left the heart.
No. Not this. The way you
say I love you then renege.
like it’s a stock-trade, a deal
gone bad that you don’t want
anymore. You say, It
never was. You reel back
the years, the tears, the time,
the things I once thought mine.
There is nothing left here.
Nothing but these bare
sun-blasted rocks.
The sheeted sea slides in
an eyelid closing, then it
snaps open and reveals
the shock of the moment.
The death look in my eye.
your voice

Wires crossed, you voice lost
caught in some electrical box
downtown at night while a red
sign flashes Do not walk. So,
I run to the sound of you.
Chase the cool echo of your voice.
Every strained lover’s chord.
I read once that falling in love
is more about sound than sight.
Not ego, nor eyes, nor body,
nor height or face. None of it
mattered as much as the pitch
and hue that makes you you.
It alone is the high ranker
A touch carried by waves.
Sound, I recall your tone
our talk as the afternoon
unfolded all around us.
Heard buses idling outside,
the everyday workers rushing
to and fro, but not us.
Caught in the sound of this
moment, we two. Me, you.
Our conversation cushioned
and caught between the
pages of thousands of books,
the scent of them rosin and dust.
Little did we know we would
one day write our own. That
both books would be a story
of us. That after this one
moment, this one conversation,
I had given up my heart,
you had given up your heart,
and though some came between
never would they see us apart.
divination

The end of street sea sings
to my ear and I know that
I can rest. The fisted, hard
sounds of my jerked weeping
have now waned, pulled back.
The commotion has ceased, for
now at least. I do not sleep.
Who could? What fool to waste
the still dark, the first light
sight of the fog as it lifts from
the Atlantic, rolls in with its
gulls and everyone squawks
a story from the nearest
peaked roof. I savor the
blue-blackness of the moment.
An Indian sapphire and in it
I lie awake in m blue-induced
trance. Why I’ve even found
peace! Palms face up, I am
blank or is it calm? Neither
really matters. Contentment
now strikes me as vastly over-
rated. Not as important when
every day is a fight for some
half-done survival, living the
next day, knowing the next
act, knowing what we’ll say,
our stupid litany. Now, now
though. Not yet. For now,
I will curl by the sea-window,
and breathe as my room fills
with fog and the sounds
of pebbled waves that shake
like a bag of old bones.
Tomorrow I’ll lay them out.
Tomorrow I’ll divine our future.
first fruit

I was twenty-eight when we met.
All these years in America,
land of the exotic and still I had
not tasted the fruits of the land.
You found for us a room.
Private and quiet, our
first floor palace with its old, marble
fireplace and glass above the mantle.
Once a week we would meet – save
and scrounge from each paycheck
to make ends meet. It was necessary
to life, to go on breathing.
I would always go in first.
My cotton dress clinging in the heat,
I was all tits and ass - a sweet peach
embarrassed by want. How
I remember the light of that
white room. The antique ivory,
and darkening of the paint as the
sun slipped fast across the summer sky.
Always we brought fruit. A fresh
bag of cherries, pears, apples and more,
a bottle of sparkling cider which later,
we would devour. Lying as two gods
exhausted, our tawny skin burnished
with sweat. It was the first time I tasted
my first Anjou pear, perfumed and delicate.
My first ever mango, how the flavor of it
exploded clean inside my mouth until
I ate through to the core, bone white
with a thin down of filament.
note:
See, I make for you a gift! My cherry-red cheeks! My tacit close-lipped silence. Now, i am perfect. A quiet, pinkened house frau. The circuits all gone dead. Why they've rewired her head!
and all for you! My, my the road
is brief. Each orange pill, back
to back, a line of acid soldiers
awaiting orders from the front.
They will die with valor.
A certain dark honor bestowed
upon the weak and awful brave
that drives the self to the grave;
a sad note deliverance. Here,
we offer up this body to the cause!
Another one dead and for principle of what?
It sharpens the issue. Sweetens
the deal with its death stench and underlines
the point with black-crepe garlands.
A point now is moot.
With this body... the words go.
Til death... and so on.
The story ends here.
Dear, i am sorry.
the heavy tide
if you could look at it
for just one moment
you would see. No threat,
just a bare-wristed girl,
lily-white and faltering.
She tries to stay above
the tidal mark. Lashed
to the shore, it is her lot.
Has she displeased some
god? He who hurls a tide
of sorrow. Each day she
adds to the depth, a full
fathom of grief, sea-dark
and furious deep. She is
heavy as a stone, sinking.
Some burden cast aside
by a lover, she's a suicide
bride, her whites all sea-
foam and froth, frozen
stiff with disgrace, the
aftertaste of the current.
photograph
It is you, but not quite.
Expression recognized,
the gestures, so Italian,
your chestnut hair waving
as you toss back your fine
neck in disgust, the same
head-toss i saw just last
night, only then it was
surrender, as you came
into me and moved, your
Sicilian warmth exploding
as i came, again and again,
and took your mouth
to my mouth in a kiss
that spoke of a dark, white
hot passion. Now,
in this photo, i see
all of this yes. Yet there
you are, so distant,
years ago in New York,
where i was, where perhaps
we had passed. Had
our paths crossed
on Madison? Mortimer's?
On the A. Train or Path?
Did your eyes meet
mine, any recognition
or desire, surely then,
each of us with some
other, knowing if we could,
that certainly, yes, love
we would. Years, i study
math: philosophy. Look
back and try to understand
the gesture of the heart
the words that are spoken
the litany of lovers
the high, holy mass
or mess. Still, the tongue
not quite right.
I love you, too plain.
I leave you with this:
je te vois, et je te veux,
je t'adore, et oui,
comme toujours,
je t'aime, je t'aime
comme la nuit nous viens.
notification

I had not noticed at first, the way he looked at me
- all adoration and desire
A feeling fanned, it could grow bright and blue
Moth to a flame he came. For a third of my life
I said No. Lived instead as your suicide-bride
Fingers tying knots, rope, ribbon, noose, seven red
Wishes in a string. I fingered them at night
And prayed a private rosary, a dumb-founded nun
Desires denied. I was ice-white with holiness,
A wordless sheet of velum, hallowed silent
I was ascetic and hermetic. When then undid
Your trance? When had I woken up and realized
That those eyes I had loved so much for so long
Would never love me back with such fidelity.
That your superior impatience said it all.
That the ball was in my court, as you said,
I would drive you to her bed, or this or some other.
In any event, it was never your doing,
And cowed, I believed and took to my knees
And begged all forgiveness, prayed you not to leave
That seed of me knowing you had left long ago.
Did or did you not notice, the change as it came,
When did it begin? I cannot say. I grew more
Beautiful each day. Your threat had done her in
At last. I saw myself elsewhere, a fine-featured
Cameo, full-breasted and lithe, I swelled
To his attentions and when he pulled back
The heavy veil I had put on years before,
When my dark cassock fell, I was surprised
To see just a girl, ginger and freckled,
I watched in the mirror as the bees stung
Her lips, as the sun ripened her flesh and
She grew heavy with desire, took on the dusk
And blush of peach.
You never noticed.
Elsewhere, you were busy, making then guarding
Your secrets, making your way down some
Other orchard, admiring fruit on highest branches
Never once seeing the harvest in your basket
The others just waiting until the tears stopped,
Until I turned around, until I turned my face
To the sun and would need the salt licked
From my cheeks.
of contrition

How little you know of contrition.
The humble self-discipline that turns
boys into men, makes them humble
giants, colossus. Instead you sulk, petulant
child, refusing any sin, any betrayal
of the heart.
You tell me it's possible to fuck without loving,
I think, to love without fucking.
You prove each a thousand times
Suck the wafer that will lead to autonomy.
I could show you a greater love
a love of exception and inclusion.
the sacrament of marriage
in which these two exist,
two willing acolytes, we light
the thurible coals and breathe
the air of fiery frankincense.
do you not yet know that one can be
both virgin and whore
your lover, your mother
for every time you turned away
I took the sacristy and sought
absolution strong and pure,
a balm to soothe my dark heart
raw and ripe with sorrow.
in this dream you do not fall
to temptation. You see the slick
oils of medusa, putrid and
suffocating to the last. Nothing
you want is there.
I prayed some miracle
of transubstantiation
that would reveal me as I was
the once-pretty bride, pale
and ginger in the late-Spring light.
we would begin again.
make love for absolution,
lick clean the wounds
shed the soft tears
as we fuck away the years.
until it is done: until the heart unfurls.
the costly sacrifice
Always there are two
A wife and some other,
Usually I have seen her
Once, perhaps twice,
I seek out any vice,
Disappointed am I,
She is ordinary in her office,
Some buried dull secret
She believes you’ve kept
deep. Her eyes flash, but
Not to mine. There is fear.
She reeks of it
like the fox before the kill.
Den buried deep as she takes
you most days, as you enter
flesh to flesh, in mind
leaving behind some awful
nagging bride, image in your mind
Of what you think means
“Wife”, trouble and strife
all insecurity and argument.
Did you ever stop, pause
to consider that the
nagging bitch is you
sniffing each ass as it
passes, a mongrel dog
that shits where he lives
confused of what is his.
You have sacrificed everything
And in return you get nothing,
Just some heaviness of heart
as it burns sharp-flamed and bright
Centered blue and knowing
the welder’s hand is about
to come down, take
that ball of chest metal,
your anchor heavy heart,
she will bang it back down
Until the rounds are flat,
Until the sparks are spent,
Until the life is bled,
Until the shape of love is dead,
But a thinned and cheap
Piece of tin, good for nothing
It bears nothing good,
It is one dimensional and vacant
Love’s lamb’s blood stains
The floor. It warns, Here,
sacrifice was made.
the heart-stone beach | a poem story

I went to the beach to find a stone. The beach is near our home, a pebbled beach, all smooth and round, I seek the hearts among them. Buried in greys, and buried by waves, I find the full, the broken the craggy the crooked the thin the heart stones that mark the day. Because I fill my pockets with hearts from the beach near our home I believe I am bringing you gifts because you know of the beach, the stones, the home, the hearts, the pebbled the stone. Because I walked, both to and fro because the beach was bare, no snow, I could easily see the sea and me, my shadow, grey as the heart the stone the craggy, the crooked, the thin, the fat, the stones that mark the day. Because I want to tell you something that otherwise leaves me wordless, I went to the beach to find a stone, to the beach the one that is near our home and made mostly of pebbles, stones buried by waves and days and days, I filled my pockets with pebbled stone, with greyed hearts that mark the day, the craggy, the crooked, the thin, the fat, the stones that said all that and more, I gather each one, then gather some more. Because my pockets are only so deep, the walk back up the beach is steep, my pockets full, the beach all pebbled, the stones all grey, they mark the day, because I am wordless I find the stones, the craggy, the crooked, the full, the thin, a simple heart stone for everything, dove grey they match the winter’s day, the heart-stones from our beach. Because the mild summer days have past, because the dark has come on fast, I must go to the beach, the one near our home, I must fill my pockets with pebbled stone, the greyed crooked hearts that mark the day, the stones that speak what I cannot say, the craggy, the crooked, the fat, the thin, these simple heart stones mean everything. Love, I offer you me.
autumn's end
Autumn’s End
Autumn ends gently,
The sky heavy with
Soft clouds, September
greys, the rains
That cleanse, baptize.
We are all here again;
Another years swishing
Past, fast it moves
Traces the horizon
Where it skids and sparks
We wave goodbye
To all that; we welcome
All this but with some
Trepidation. What now,
Love? How can I be
What you want, what
I want, what the sea
Whispers louder every
Day, a message I don’t
Get. I cock my ear
Closer – listen hard
It says. Today, the sea
Wall is breached, the brine
And salt washing down
My street, the starfish
Broken and lost, no time
To heal. I pick them
One by one, toss them
Back to the waves,
Say a prayer that each
be saved. But who
Prays for me? Who seeks
My salvation. I wake today,
The sky is blank and white
As paper. It says nothing
Of what is to come, only
Whiteness and winter.
I shiver to its emptiness
Prepare for hard ice,
The walk I must soon face.
the coming of winter

The hour comes sooner now.
Dark, darker, darkest, gone are
The mellower days of summer’s balm
When my kisses were sweetened honey,
Before me stretch the tight, hard
Days of Lent, deepest, darkest
Farthest, they seem never to end.
One by one, I give up each thing,
A fast at last, a famine to feast
Some penitence for some banal
Sin. These are the heart days,
The days of throb and sob and
Wound emotion that leaves you
Rigid, unyielding. Gone is summer’s
Sapling, pale green slip thing,
You are bark hard and toughened
Yet the insides remain soft
As mourning dove’s down,
You cry the song of the soul
Dulcet, sweet while the crows
Take their place, rigid and stiff
Toss their winter black cackles
To the air, crisp and thin,
Stifling, hardly can you breathe
Or write, frozen-fingered and bony
This season’s old maid, your
Overall dress, your holy mess,
Your braided hair, your hazel stare
Your scrawling poems. You barricade
Yourself tight with reference books.
Light a candle and work through
The long cold night.
daily ritual | paris, 2004
For two weeks in Paris
I follow this routine:
Morning, wash the skin
Until it glows -- soft and luminous.
Afternoons, remove the soft armor
The lace about my breasts,
So heavy and swollen
With the love of you.
The pharmacienne sells me
A balm of chamomile and clover,
One marbled drop for each breast,
Their expanding lucent white
tight sore rosebud of nipple.
Each afternoon you come to me,
A child addicted to their chocolaty-
Sweetness. You nose your way,
Settle in, and suckle forty-beats
A minute to take what is yours
By some miracle it comes;
The first thin milk, sweeter
And thicker by the day.
This we were born to.
don't you go thinking
Listen you, don't you go thinking
You know. Always it gets us into
Trouble. Some rum-tum rubble of
What you thought I'd be, think I am.
Would that I were that! So not
As you see, veins open, I bleed
On my knees -- your virgin suicide,
Bride.
You've always had me wrong.
Elsewhere you seek your dark
Pride, a bride to take to bed
But not to mommy. I'm as holy
And as filthy as the best -- worst --
Those you think so above me.
I levitate them, then walk
On their backs, take from each
What I want.
I'm your bright electric whore
The blue madonna too - so pray.
Pray tell: Who did you think
I was when you did me: some
Saint, stiff with holiness.
Oh baby, I can surprise
With the best.
zazen on the metro

I went to Paris to find a thing I thought lost. Lost I was, I did not know my way
around Paris, so I sought a thing, a map of the metro that would help me find
my bearings. Bearings abound I saw my way around and took to the Metro of
Paris. The Metro was fast and I learned it at last and Paris was less of a
mystery. The mystery would be where to find a cup of tea, had a spell cast on
me and I rode the metro to find my bearings. I sought out my bearings I sought
out the tea and rode the whizzing metro to luxemborg. The jardin was quite calm
and I found my way down and I walked up the steps of the metro. In the jardin I
drank tea, you with me and I kissed you hard on the Metro which was fast and I learned it at last and Paris whizzed
by and the kiss was a bit of a mystery. The mystery had been that I was not
lost, the metro no mystery had taken me right quickly just after you kissed me
to the center of the jardin luxemborg. We sat and had tea and spoke of mystery
and you said I had mastered the metro that whizzed which had blurred when we
kissed but I kept my mouth shut as I sought out my tea and and we sat and
awaited our waiter. The tea was pekoe served, orange and hot, milk warmed, I
drank it and thought of the metro, no mystery, the way that you kissed me,
watched the trees in the park, give way to the dark and the mystery of Paris
revealed, I did not yield I had mastered the metro, kissed you hard on the
mouth, while the stations whizzed by and I found my bearings and wound up where
I stood and now where I sit, drinking my tea in the jardin where the tourists
walk by, and the European sky turns grey so heavy with clouds. The clouds are
quite different but promise no rain so no need to run for the metro, no
mystery, that whizzes for more of your kisses or mysteries unsolved for all is
absolved over tea in the jardin luxemborg. The orange pekoe, the yes and the
no, the whizzing, the pissing, the metro, the mystery, the kisses the hisses
the steam valve near misses the grey skies the tourists the jardin and the tea
I had landed in Paris the mystery was me. It was solved.
mourning to morning | my gift...
Okay. I will renounce them.
This I do for you. Shed my
dark cloak, my flowing
blacks, my invented She
dark rutting bitch of poetry.
Not a goddess no. I leave
this to me -- the other me.
But just so you know,
it was never I who invited
said, Pull up a chair! gave
meaningful stare. No. She I
distaned from premier, first
glance, no chance we would
be les amis. But okay, alright,
tonight I put her out
there on the curb
with all of yesterday's
news, by sun-up
she'll be gone.
We'll be blessed
with the absence
I'll sing a different
mourning song, not of
mourning but of morning
as bright and as clear
as the bell that I told you,
yes, you, for whom,
it tolls, it tolls, it tolls.
afterward
Nothing changed.
I hardly expected,
though part of me
wished. Sentimental
to the death, and I do
mean it literally.
what spell held us
there? some magic
in the air that made
so much love so
possible. Why then
does it end, the plane
step so final, the
smiles left abroad.
For every place
we went, I picked
a stone, a chunk
of memory to hold
on those overcast
and blank days
like this.
They are small comfort.
Only make the heart
yearn for what
it cannot have.
What is lost
over the years.
I spend the afternoon
pasting pictures in
an album, fixing
the smiles in place
like opening a doll's
eyes to make her
come to life; instead
we just look startled
the mind filling with
the question, Why
am I smiling? Who is
this person? As if one
day we went to bed,
woke up the next
day with a stranger.
I run for the safety of the doorframe.
I know the whole world is about to come down.
i did not want
I did not want
To do what everyone said I;
To be as some other I held apart
To be a vacant and passive wife
To be a ball of fury or rage
To be a woman scorned or sour
To hire attorneys and take you to the cleaner
To cry on every bored friend's shoulder
To hate and spite as some suggested
To flee the scene as would perhaps make sense
To scream in the kitchen until all the windows exploded
To write about these banal and domestic days
No. I would have none of it.
Yet it was there.
It was what I had.
All I wanted was -
To take my sorrow and run to the wood
And curl up alone like a leaf
At the base of the great oak,
My grief held in my tissue
All snot and dirt, my tear
Lined face filthy, distorted.
I wanted to lay there a while.
I wanted to examine it.
To see it for what it was.
summer '79 | audio poem
for text of these poems, please visit www.tantmieux.squarespace.com and check under November Poems. More poetry can be found at www.cabinetist.blogspot.com as well as www.tantmieuxparis.blogspot.com.
If YOU would like to contribute to tant mieux poetry project at www.tantmieuxtoday.blogspot.com, please contact Editorial Director Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti through the Contact link. See more tant mieux | sotto voce @ www.sottovocelinks.blogspot.com or simply go to your favorite search engine and type in Sadi Ranson.
check back regularly for updates; this site will be updated frequently.
If you are in the New England area and host a reading series, we'd love to hear about it and maybe come and read, or if you're a poet and would like to team up for a dual reading, i'd be interested in that too. Contact me anytime through Comments or the email address in my Profile.
Cheers,
sadi r-p
editorial director
october | 2004
conker conquest
this is a new form -- hard to say and i just made this up, this form, so have a listen....srp
part of teleread.org & tantmieux.squarespace.com