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Cluster index: Jon Thompson

‘Last kind words.’

Peter Riley: ‘The song was recorded in 1930 in a makeshift studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, and issued by Paramount Records as‘ Last Kind Words Blues’ on one side of a 78 rpm shellac disc with the musician’s name given as “Geeshie Wiley”. It’s not a simple lyric. It’s not about slavery, but slavery is there in it. It’s about the victims of war, but forgets that and after verse four goes off into transferable formulae (floating verses).’

Jon Thompson: Three new poems.

BIG WEATHER Low hum or high winds, hard to say. Outsideness looks cinematic, the world putting on airs with winter-stripped trees, gospel-swaying back & forth outside old-fashioned paned glass. Winter-sharp branches wave wildly, sough a song not their own. Wrens try out a call & response in the emptiness between boughs then wing away. What […]