Blackberries, with all the adjectives, ripe p’s and b’s punctuating
Blackberries, and the crossed arrangement of black art + blackberry-making; black language + blackberry-eating!
The doubling and opposing,then melding contradictions of Li-Young Lee’s story; melding of past/present; the pauses
And discoveries. I shared the fact that in Chinese, one doesn’t use just one word for instance for Moon (Yue) but
Yu Liang, which literally means bright moon — not that that MEANS the moon is bright. So a subtle doubling,
Reflected as well in the mother’s referral to persimmon as containing a sun; and the cardinal singing the sun, the sun.
It mimics the confusion of persimmons and precision; the persimmon experience at home and school; the actual persimmon and brush and ink drawing of it; How some things never leave a person; sight/insight… all revolving around the multiple memories of
Persimmons.
I hope you all giggled at the rhyme… how would you rhyme:
I’ll take vanilla.... said the ...
chocolate...
etc.
the the surprise at the end.
For the Frost, this was the only poem in North of Boston that was not written in Blank Verse. Anapestic Tetrameter, or the galloping rhythm (think Night before Christmas) is handled in a natural way, creating a real sense of place, and peopled with real characters. The exaggeration
at the end makes a fitting image for wet blueberries... and the desire for them, old Loren still holding his secret and straight face.
The final poem was difficult. Here is the original Spanish.
How good a job did Dennis Maloney do in translating it?
Tal vez ésta es la casa en que viví
cuando yo no existí ni había tierra,
cuando todo era luna o piedra o sombra,
cuando la luz inmóvil no nacía.
Tal vez entonces esta piedra era
mi casa, mis ventanas o mis ojos.
Me recuerda esta rosa de granito
algo que me habitaba o que habité,
cueva o cabeza cósmica de sueños,
copa o castillo o nave o nacimiento.
Toco el tenaz esfuerzo de la roca,
su baluarte golpeado en la salmuera,
y sé que aquí quedaron grietas mías,
arrugadas sustancias que subieron
desde profundidades hasta mi alma,
y piedra fui, piedra seré, por eso
toco esta piedra y para mí no ha muerto:
es lo que fui, lo que seré reposo
de tu combate tan largo como el tiempo.
How do we understand the Earth houses us,
and how we house something?
Ask a few English speakers what they think of the poem.
Then ask a few Spanish speakers.
Tell me what you find out.
**
I shared the mystery of penning words to paintings with a writing exercise:
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