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Latest in the very occasional series of “things that are not ‘poetry’…but really are”; the book of photography The Americans by Robert Frank with introduction by Jack Kerouac, 1959 (photos taken 1956/7). Slide shown “US 285, New Mexico”, one of the very few in the book without figures/people in the frame.

Kerouac says, “That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that’s what Robert Frank has captured in these tremendous photographs…” and, after seeing them you end up “not knowing any more whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin”.

Its like a lost world, one only David Lynch remembers.

“Anybody doesnt like these pitchers dont like potry, see?…with that little camera he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film…”