Friendswood Library flicks: classic movie lovers unite

Friendswood Library flicks is an ongoing movie series held every other Thursday evening in the Friendswood Public Library Activity Room.  Films are shown on an 8 X 10 ft. screen.  Movies are free and begin at 6:20pm.  Refreshments provided.

June 4: The More the Merrier starring Joel McCrea, Jean Arthur, and Charles Coburn. Directed by George Stevens in 1943. This film is not rated and runs 104 minutes.

George Stevens' comedy is set in Washington, D.C. during World War II, where a shortage of housing forces career woman Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur) to share a small apartment with an old codger (Charles Coburn) and an Air Force mechanic named Joe (Joel McCrea). Rotten Tomatoes

 

June 18: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade starring Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. Directed by Steven Spielberg in 1989.  This film is rated PG-13 and runs 127 minutes.

Take a good look at this movie. In fact, go back four or five times and take four or five good looks. In this imperfect world, you're not likely to see many manmade objects come this close to perfection. –Ralph Novak, People Magazine

As usual, the action is on an epic scale and delivered with breathless enthusiasm and much panache by director Steven Spielberg. –John Ferguson, Radio Time

July 2: I Confess starring Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1953. This film is Not Rated and runs 92 minutes.

Based on the turn-of-the-century play Our Two Consciences by Paul

Anthelme, this Alfred Hitchcock film is set in Quebec. Montgomery Clift plays a priest who hears the murder confession of church sexton O.E. Hasse. Bound by the laws of the Confessional, Clift is unable to turn Hasse over to the police. –Rotten Tomatoes Movie INFO

Clift's man-in-crisis performance is one of his finest. –Ken Mogg

One of the most astonishing-looking films in all of black-and-white cinematography. ---Walter Chaw

John Gorman reads at FPL off the page poetry series

Glynn Monroe Irby reads at FPL off the page poetry series

featured poet Daniel Carrington: May 14 at FPL

Daniel Carrington will be one of our featured poets on Thursday, May 14 at 7pm.  This event is free and open to the public.

Daniel Carrington is a Houston-based architect and poet. He is a lifetime member of the Gulf Coast Poets and has been a three-time Spotlight Poet at their annual Poetry Out of Bounds event. In addition, he was featured in Public Poetry’s 2013 Summer/Winter Reading Series and has been selected as a Juried Poet for Houston Poetry Fest in 2010, ‘12, ‘13, and ’14, and his work has appeared in each year’s anthology. He is currently working his first poetry collection entitled Mosaics of the Night.

PENS FOR PLOWSHARES

– for the poet Juan Manuel Perez

I reckon it must have felt like

living half a spade from hell,

but hotter still for all

the honest labor you devoted

to working in the fields...

before you left for other fields.

but then again, I guess

a pen is a plowshare, too –

no stretch for a poet,

less so, at least, than that

callused earth bringing forth

a hard-earned crop... and you.

you sprang from that hardpan

with a flourish of words

as if, unwatered, somehow

a garden grew on those parched

southern plains unaided;

as if, seeing no earthly source,

your hands dug down

further than most

and found a river below the land –

your soul its own deep well.

(Originally published in the 2012 Houston Poetry Fest Anthology)

~Daniel Carrington

THE MINNOWS’ STARE

in the earthly city, we waited, my grandmother and I,

for any ripple in the stillness, for a raindrop perhaps

out at the vast hardscapes of Parkdale Mall.

and the storm drain she neighbored was mainly dry

but ready to funnel the occasional downpour

in torrents passed her speck of ground

headed for the lost narrative of the Neches River.

and while she waited, she would sometimes dangle,

like time itself seemed to dangle, from a porch swing,

her face a stoic emblem overseeing that ditch.

on weekends when I’d visit, I’d climb down

the flared concrete sides by the little bridge.

beneath its cathedral ceiling, I found a tribe

of minnows clinging in extremis to the one puddle

the sunlight couldn’t touch. I often came there

to ask them about the weather and the why.

bending low, I thought I saw an oracle in their stare,

though they just swam in shy, tight-lipped circles,

fearfully dodging Greek shadows overhead.

now, looking back, those eyes seem less imbued

with wisdom than my grandmother’s. the rains came,

and she moved on; the minnows, too. all that is left

is their ever-present gaze across the intervening years,

not a weighty gaze full of unshared secrets,

only a telling emptiness that I envy in their stare.

how they swam with buoyant purpose in their puddle

slowly evaporating, like moments, under an overpass

so close to that big river, never knowing.

(Originally published in the 2013 Houston Poetry Fest Anthology)

~Daniel Carrington

featured poet Glynn Monroe Irby: May 14 at FPL

     Glynn Monroe Irby will be one of our featured poets on Thursday, May 14 at 7pm.  This event is free and open to the public.

Glynn Monroe Irby lives in Brazoria, County, Texas. He carries a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Texas, Austin, including earlier

studies at the University of Houston, the Brazosport College, and Edinburgh University, Scotland, with subsequent graduate studies in architecture at the

University of Houston.  Irby is the graphic designer and co-author of the book, 3 Savanna Blue, the graphic and cover designer of many other books, and has displayed and marketed photographic and poetic art for homes and offices. As a writer, Irby has been published in both the Houston and Austin poetry festival anthologies as well as Sol Magazine, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, The Spiky Palm, Galaxy Journal, Curbside Review, Poetz e-zine (New York), HIP, and others; Irby has been an invited poet to many reading venues in Texas, is a member of the Galveston Poets’ Roundtable, the Circle Way Poets, the Poetry Society of Texas, the Gulf Coast Poets, and was selected in 2006 as one of the “Bards of the Bayou.”

Shooting Gar

                   

While stepping over the trestle ties

and looking through foot gaps

to the chocolate water below,

I carried my rifle to the center span

and stood there, spring-kneed,

with index finger through the trigger loop,

searching the glossy faces

of cloud images sliding hazily

between the tangle banks

of blackberry vines and tallow shoots,

anticipating the elusive outline

of a garfish rising out

of the darkness of the bayou.

~Glynn Monroe Irby

       

Pipe Yards

               

I like it when pipes are stacked

and laid together on their sides

matching their full length of curve

into curve and lip onto lip.

               

I like to look into the heart

of each long pipe

and see the spherical light

playing on the inside.

               

To see the colors change,

and looking closer, I like to see

the colors of the clouds affect

the color of the core itself.

               

I do like it when pipes are polished

and their flanges are newly groomed.

Then I can easily see the view

of the sky and the trees beyond.

               

But also I like the rusted ones,

when their edges are held by roots

and they’ve already become

a part of the open yard of my home.

~Glynn Monroe Irby