Loved this book!
The author's note*, establishes not only a lively, engaging tone which never leaves the book, but prepares the reader for the quite amusing twist at the end.
What is the role of story and what do we learn from the telling? Here, it is not myth, nor surreal, nor an exercise in irony, wit or a treatise on animal behavior, and yet, there is some of all of that, with a believable voice of someone who is in trouble, addressing fear, aware that survival is involved with words as reality catchers, whether it is to address everything as part of God, God's Hat, Pants, the sky being God's Ear, or to understand the complexity of fear, and those tigers who push us to go on living. Fun, with substance. A hero who goes beyond the confines of each religion, combines them all, understands the interconnectedness of life, and is able to overcome the particulars of despair that allows the reader to return to a sense of hope and faith in being human.
**
*Martell talks about the research for his novel.
"The plot you've mapped out is simple and gripping. You've done your research, gathering the historical, social, climatic, culinary -- that will give your story its feel of authenticity. The dialogue zips along, crackling with tension. The descriptions burst with colour, contrast and telling detail. Really, your story can only be great. But it all adds up to nothing.
Of course, he's tongue in cheek -- meeting the whisper that speaks the awful truth, 'it won't work." Why? "It's emotionally dead, that's the crux of it. The discovery is something soul-destroying, I tell you. It leaves you with an aching hunger."
Reading his story is enough to make me want to write novels.
Like Chris Cleave -- "Little Bee" or Marcus Zuzak, "The Book Thief".
And yet, in a poem, so much can be said, squeezed so carefully
each choice, in each line. I love the challenge. How to write a book that never ends -- new eyes and fresh understanding at each read.
The worst pair of opposites: boredom and terror.
a dream rag.
Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?
In Japanese, a story would have an element of invention in it. We just want the straight facts.
Life is an invention. The way things are doesn't always correspond with the way we understand them. Which is the better story? In both stories, the ship sinks, my entire family dies and I suffer.
And yet, if you ask me about the book, I wouldn't say that's what the book is about. It's larger than life. It's relationship of a smart 16 year old and the left-overs of his father's zoo. The cruelty of the hyena chewing up the zebra, first the leg, then entering it to eat it inside out; the Orang-Utan, the tiger and the way the boy and tiger establish their ways of coexisting. Like the Odyssey -- the sailing by of a hope of rescue, the landing on an island whose vegetation eats whoever sleeps in it... It's about fear -- life's only true oponent.
"Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always, One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy; then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelieve nd disbelief tires to push it out. But disbelief if a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. //Fear next turns fully to your body which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing.
everything falls apart. Only your eyes work. They always pay proper attention to fear.
**
Pure animal confidence: mix of ease and concentration -- like Gary's idea of ACE:
accuracy, C and Ease. Being-in-the -presen.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
notes on translation -- and more on Merwin
W.S. Merwin:
interview : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/merwin_10-27.html
In it he mentions the thrush that sings with every cell of its body – as if obsessed with the urge to create that song. Our talent as humans is not so much language, communication, but imagination. We can imagine a situation and feel the suffering, the joy, the pain, the excitement in it.
So, in The Laughing Thrush
the “tumbling upwards” (vs. downwards) and what the thrush is saying, or not, will happen because of this powerful urge.
As for the translation of the Lorca poem:
I feel he has found a simpler way to express what Lorca was implying. The literal Spanish says “cut down my shadow/ deliver me from the torment of bearing no fruit”.
But what does that mean for a dry Orange tree who sings?
Instead of saying “Day turns round and round me” Merwin choses, walks in circles around me which gives a feeling of being bound.
Instead of saying “Let me live unmirrored” Merwin choses, “I want to live without seeing myself. And then the dream of the ants and thistleburrs equally are distinct in the tree’s imagination, not someone else’s.
**
Provision
All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere
Comments:
Merwin’s suspension of punctuation allows a special echo – and overtones
man-made instrument (farm implements, machinery) with the music of the field and rain
but dry instruments making the sound of “wet”
“from memory” as if the field has remembered what rain sounds like
What images does “invisible honey” evoke?
How do you understand the last line? What in the poem supports it?
Dry instruments… reeds, farm equipment, the music of bamboo pipes
interview : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/merwin_10-27.html
In it he mentions the thrush that sings with every cell of its body – as if obsessed with the urge to create that song. Our talent as humans is not so much language, communication, but imagination. We can imagine a situation and feel the suffering, the joy, the pain, the excitement in it.
So, in The Laughing Thrush
the “tumbling upwards” (vs. downwards) and what the thrush is saying, or not, will happen because of this powerful urge.
As for the translation of the Lorca poem:
I feel he has found a simpler way to express what Lorca was implying. The literal Spanish says “cut down my shadow/ deliver me from the torment of bearing no fruit”.
But what does that mean for a dry Orange tree who sings?
Instead of saying “Day turns round and round me” Merwin choses, walks in circles around me which gives a feeling of being bound.
Instead of saying “Let me live unmirrored” Merwin choses, “I want to live without seeing myself. And then the dream of the ants and thistleburrs equally are distinct in the tree’s imagination, not someone else’s.
**
Provision
All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere
Comments:
Merwin’s suspension of punctuation allows a special echo – and overtones
man-made instrument (farm implements, machinery) with the music of the field and rain
but dry instruments making the sound of “wet”
“from memory” as if the field has remembered what rain sounds like
What images does “invisible honey” evoke?
How do you understand the last line? What in the poem supports it?
Dry instruments… reeds, farm equipment, the music of bamboo pipes
Po and Spirituality -- Lux, Li-Young Lee and Ludvigson
Poems for 12/16
To Help the Monkey Cross the River -- BY THOMAS LUX
Praise Them -- By Li-Young Lee
3 poems by by Susan Ludvigson, from her book Sweet Confluence
Gratitude; Returning; Varieties of Angels.
I didn't plan it to be a series of poems by "L's" -- but for the last session of the year, we squared the corners with the humor of Lux, the meditative grace of Lee, and Ludvigson.
So, did the Monkey ask for our help? What is helpful intervention? Irony : we learn from animals…
and yet cage the one we ressemble the most.
"In Praise them", we have more animals... this time an aerial perspective -- not a parable or sermon, but rather an invitation. The invitation, "... See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
has the paradox of "less is more" in the cycle of things. We, the "nervous" and judging ones,
if even ONE of us could be gentle enough -- that possibility that a bird would come and complete us with singing is there...
the multiple perspectives -- not just our Judeo-Christian one... Each living thing lends to live, not just us.
In Gratitude, the body is celebrated -- we are not just mind or just spirit...
Are we spiritual beings trying to human?
If we were truly human, we could be more spiritual.
Catherine brought up Matthew Fox and medieval Catholic visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas,Saint Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Dante Alighieri, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.
Fox's Creation Spirituality also is aligned strongly with ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century and with a focus on “deep ecumenism” that embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world, including Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Native American teachings.
Fox has written 30 books that have sold millions of copies and by the mid 1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following".[3]
Fox was likened by academic theologians in one New York Times article to the controversial and influential 20th century Jesuit priest, philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, particularly for his interpretations of issues such as the doctrine of original sin and the Cosmic Christ and for the resulting conflicts with church authorities.
In Returning :
Dreamlike state... vs. the world which tries to dissuade us from leaving home...
After being lost...
"...it's a kind of grace—like geometry,
where right answers come through paths
we can never retrace—showing we're blessed.
Lost, lost, we cry, but return
like pigeons whose routes are unerring, unearned.
communication : conscious and unconscious…
What dwarves are working down there?
To Help the Monkey Cross the River -- BY THOMAS LUX
Praise Them -- By Li-Young Lee
3 poems by by Susan Ludvigson, from her book Sweet Confluence
Gratitude; Returning; Varieties of Angels.
I didn't plan it to be a series of poems by "L's" -- but for the last session of the year, we squared the corners with the humor of Lux, the meditative grace of Lee, and Ludvigson.
So, did the Monkey ask for our help? What is helpful intervention? Irony : we learn from animals…
and yet cage the one we ressemble the most.
"In Praise them", we have more animals... this time an aerial perspective -- not a parable or sermon, but rather an invitation. The invitation, "... See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
has the paradox of "less is more" in the cycle of things. We, the "nervous" and judging ones,
if even ONE of us could be gentle enough -- that possibility that a bird would come and complete us with singing is there...
the multiple perspectives -- not just our Judeo-Christian one... Each living thing lends to live, not just us.
In Gratitude, the body is celebrated -- we are not just mind or just spirit...
Are we spiritual beings trying to human?
If we were truly human, we could be more spiritual.
Catherine brought up Matthew Fox and medieval Catholic visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas,Saint Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Dante Alighieri, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.
Fox's Creation Spirituality also is aligned strongly with ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century and with a focus on “deep ecumenism” that embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world, including Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Native American teachings.
Fox has written 30 books that have sold millions of copies and by the mid 1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following".[3]
Fox was likened by academic theologians in one New York Times article to the controversial and influential 20th century Jesuit priest, philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, particularly for his interpretations of issues such as the doctrine of original sin and the Cosmic Christ and for the resulting conflicts with church authorities.
In Returning :
Dreamlike state... vs. the world which tries to dissuade us from leaving home...
After being lost...
"...it's a kind of grace—like geometry,
where right answers come through paths
we can never retrace—showing we're blessed.
Lost, lost, we cry, but return
like pigeons whose routes are unerring, unearned.
communication : conscious and unconscious…
What dwarves are working down there?
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Rimbaud and Trantner and a poem
Hotel de Ville (p. 197) of Poetry -- Dec. 2010
It's 14 lines. Unrhymed. rhythm changes each line. 8 lines : Mention of HS kids, Clinton, EEC debt, problem of reading difficult things to lead them astray. Why did Rimbaud turn from socialism to capitalism? as if
stanza break: 6 lines.
it matters. Rimbaud's uniform. Back to conditional. Present. We want to see all Modern art stuff too. (as if already on a visit to the history museum.) Press the button marked "monument" and see what happens: a recorded voice says/ "I have wasted my life," and we pay to listen.
A troubling poem. One I've read several times and pondered.
The notes say the question of wondering about Rimbaud -- dissolute youth for 3 years, then from 21 to 37 when he died, a capitalist -- is just as confusing as demanding politicians to be honest -- but our real demands force them to be dishonest... Poets excoriating the bourgeois, but hoping to survive by having these selfsame buy their books. Hmmm...
The goal of a visit to a history museum (Musee not "de beaux art" but de l'histoire)
to understand disgrace as a form of (Clinton's) victory. Balanced with bad dreams caused by EEC's debt. The weariness of pressing buttons. For what? What are we paying for?
Before you begin the workshop,ask if everyone knows the words,
at least their surface meaning,if not some etymology. The title is French. Hey! French! and a renegade 19th century French poet will appear. Hotel de Ville -- the French for City Hall -- the old idea of "Hotel" as being a Residence -- where a mayor passes through in increments of time. And those colons -- one in the penultimate line of first stanza of 8 lines, after astray; one in the penultimate line of the second stanza with six lines after "see what happens".
the use of quotations around
"I have wasted my life" :
may be a reference to James Wright's poem "Lying in a Hammock" etc. or a mis-
translation of something more literal than Rimbaud may have intended (J'ai perdu ma vie) or just a recording of the recorded voice.
O Tell
with a nod to Rimbaud and John Trantner "Hotel de Ville"
There is something irretrievable about
"I have lost my life", a deeper edge
to the sadness -- not of tossing out
life itself -- but a poet's sense of wastage
as the City decks its Halls.
Sing a little song in Winter, band
with those who ask for sixpence
and think how we all could stand
a trip to a museum, stand back, hence
for muse has time and wonder in its halls.
Question the whys, the Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain.
Find a new translation for words like "hark"
a new way for the city to deck its halls with "if"
each child were truly cared for, body, mind, spirit
and the planet's people wore Greensleeves
you could truly make a holy night of it,
deck more than halls with it.
**
Change in last stanza.
Question the whys, the wives of Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain! If
body, mind, spirit rejoice, all’s beck-
oning well and a word like "hark"
will wake up the city. Be on deck
for each child is this, don’t miss the mark.
It's 14 lines. Unrhymed. rhythm changes each line. 8 lines : Mention of HS kids, Clinton, EEC debt, problem of reading difficult things to lead them astray. Why did Rimbaud turn from socialism to capitalism? as if
stanza break: 6 lines.
it matters. Rimbaud's uniform. Back to conditional. Present. We want to see all Modern art stuff too. (as if already on a visit to the history museum.) Press the button marked "monument" and see what happens: a recorded voice says/ "I have wasted my life," and we pay to listen.
A troubling poem. One I've read several times and pondered.
The notes say the question of wondering about Rimbaud -- dissolute youth for 3 years, then from 21 to 37 when he died, a capitalist -- is just as confusing as demanding politicians to be honest -- but our real demands force them to be dishonest... Poets excoriating the bourgeois, but hoping to survive by having these selfsame buy their books. Hmmm...
The goal of a visit to a history museum (Musee not "de beaux art" but de l'histoire)
to understand disgrace as a form of (Clinton's) victory. Balanced with bad dreams caused by EEC's debt. The weariness of pressing buttons. For what? What are we paying for?
Before you begin the workshop,ask if everyone knows the words,
at least their surface meaning,if not some etymology. The title is French. Hey! French! and a renegade 19th century French poet will appear. Hotel de Ville -- the French for City Hall -- the old idea of "Hotel" as being a Residence -- where a mayor passes through in increments of time. And those colons -- one in the penultimate line of first stanza of 8 lines, after astray; one in the penultimate line of the second stanza with six lines after "see what happens".
the use of quotations around
"I have wasted my life" :
may be a reference to James Wright's poem "Lying in a Hammock" etc. or a mis-
translation of something more literal than Rimbaud may have intended (J'ai perdu ma vie) or just a recording of the recorded voice.
O Tell
with a nod to Rimbaud and John Trantner "Hotel de Ville"
There is something irretrievable about
"I have lost my life", a deeper edge
to the sadness -- not of tossing out
life itself -- but a poet's sense of wastage
as the City decks its Halls.
Sing a little song in Winter, band
with those who ask for sixpence
and think how we all could stand
a trip to a museum, stand back, hence
for muse has time and wonder in its halls.
Question the whys, the Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain.
Find a new translation for words like "hark"
a new way for the city to deck its halls with "if"
each child were truly cared for, body, mind, spirit
and the planet's people wore Greensleeves
you could truly make a holy night of it,
deck more than halls with it.
**
Change in last stanza.
Question the whys, the wives of Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain! If
body, mind, spirit rejoice, all’s beck-
oning well and a word like "hark"
will wake up the city. Be on deck
for each child is this, don’t miss the mark.
Amiri Baraka at RIT 12/13
We have not left an age of hypocrisy... this is not a post-racial age.
We live in a country where hope and wish monitor the news...
We are free to vote for the mediocrity of our choice...
and then we wake up one day and say, "oh shit -- you mean I am that person..."
The name of the black character in the play is "Clay" -- molded, shaped, wound up with music lessons, the right exposure to this and that to fit into society...
When does qualitative flip to qualitative?
What ghost of the future do you see?
When Clay drops his “outside” this is part of his main speech:
“I am sober and pious and sane and I will murder you!”
background of the 50's and carry over of time, place, conditions of Frederick Douglas who refers to whites as "soul thieves".
what were the Averill Harrimans doing? “
General discussion:
We know stuff we don't know we know. In writing the Dutchman, Baraka was finding out what he knew, but didn't know. He had spent the evening with Guston and Motherwell and the art school gang, and stopped at Cooper Square and the 5 spot, and sat up all night writing. It became clear to him he didn't want to be caught in Greenwich Village playing a part that dismissed what the world was dictating to him.
What a name for his poetry book:”Preface to a 20 volume suicide note.”
Langston Hughes wrote back to him in Green Ink -- Hail (hell). I understand your color.
What keeps talking to you? What insists?
the idea of aiming -- it's what we're doing all the time, whether we have the arrow in our hand, the target set up, -- just be at the top of your time. That takes study. Constant aim.
Everytime people's lives change, the music does too. Look at the Slave Songs, the blues, Rap...
Slave. "I might be wrong, but I won't be wrong always."
In Africa, the songs are singing words to space.
a drum kit is a one man band --
anecdote of man playing a kit and he hears a series of drums answering, saying what are you all (thinking there are many people) saying? We can't understand.
We have a rhythm-driven language.
Read "Digging"
and "The music"
Influence of Ravel on Ellington;
How persist against disillusion? Unity and Struggle.
People will clothe you in their rationale. Politics are in everything.
What makes people tick? Poli - tics
Goal: have as many positive memories as possible.
**
I’m glad I went. It’s cool to meet a “cat” like him!
We live in a country where hope and wish monitor the news...
We are free to vote for the mediocrity of our choice...
and then we wake up one day and say, "oh shit -- you mean I am that person..."
The name of the black character in the play is "Clay" -- molded, shaped, wound up with music lessons, the right exposure to this and that to fit into society...
When does qualitative flip to qualitative?
What ghost of the future do you see?
When Clay drops his “outside” this is part of his main speech:
“I am sober and pious and sane and I will murder you!”
background of the 50's and carry over of time, place, conditions of Frederick Douglas who refers to whites as "soul thieves".
what were the Averill Harrimans doing? “
General discussion:
We know stuff we don't know we know. In writing the Dutchman, Baraka was finding out what he knew, but didn't know. He had spent the evening with Guston and Motherwell and the art school gang, and stopped at Cooper Square and the 5 spot, and sat up all night writing. It became clear to him he didn't want to be caught in Greenwich Village playing a part that dismissed what the world was dictating to him.
What a name for his poetry book:”Preface to a 20 volume suicide note.”
Langston Hughes wrote back to him in Green Ink -- Hail (hell). I understand your color.
What keeps talking to you? What insists?
the idea of aiming -- it's what we're doing all the time, whether we have the arrow in our hand, the target set up, -- just be at the top of your time. That takes study. Constant aim.
Everytime people's lives change, the music does too. Look at the Slave Songs, the blues, Rap...
Slave. "I might be wrong, but I won't be wrong always."
In Africa, the songs are singing words to space.
a drum kit is a one man band --
anecdote of man playing a kit and he hears a series of drums answering, saying what are you all (thinking there are many people) saying? We can't understand.
We have a rhythm-driven language.
Read "Digging"
and "The music"
Influence of Ravel on Ellington;
How persist against disillusion? Unity and Struggle.
People will clothe you in their rationale. Politics are in everything.
What makes people tick? Poli - tics
Goal: have as many positive memories as possible.
**
I’m glad I went. It’s cool to meet a “cat” like him!
O pen -- Monday Dec. 13 -- Wiman and Wilbur with a touch of Saudade
Poems for December 13
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life." -- Robert Penn Warren
"Let us remember that in the end
we go to poetry for one reason,
so that we might more fully
inhabit our lives and the world
in which we live them, and that
if we more fully inhabit these
things, we might be less apt to
destroy both." – Christian Wiman, Editor, Poetry
From a Window – Christian Wiman
This talented poet, a disciple of Richard Wilbur has been stricken by Cancer. The poem above imbues a sense of awe beyond a hospital window, and the power of paying deep attention beyond our own condition. Like O’Henry, “The Last Leaf” he turns to remind us we have no control...
Richard Wilbur
While Wilbur continued to produce composed, reflective, and largely optimistic poetry in collections like Things of This World, (1956), Advice to a Prophet (1961) and Walking to Sleep (1969) using traditional patterns of rhyme and meter, the poetic landscape of the times meant that his work was often judged harshly. “The typical ghastly poem of the fifties was a Wilbur poem not written by Wilbur,” wrote Donald Hall in 1961, “a poem with tired wit and obvious comparisons and nothing to keep the mind or the ear occupied.”
(you can read more about him here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/richard-wilbur)
He also has written children’s verse.
Example from Opposites (with illustrations!)
The Disappearing Alphabet
**
Beasts — a terrific poem — in my copy of “Collected Poems” it is centered, so each five-line stanza spins like a small top :
The first stanza has a dreamy lullaby feel; the second, has an eyebrow-raising detail of “The ripped mouse, safe in the owl’s talon, cries/ Concordance. The next two stanzas, with moon as observer, create a larger than life experience of a man turning into a beast.
The final two stanzas show the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”.
Hopefully that will make you want to read it!
Boy At the Windows
I heard him read Dec. 2 at Amherst where he mentioned the background to this poem — his 5 year old son, not wanting to leave his snowman outside.
We concluded with a reading of “This Pleasing Anxious Being
http://www.webofstories.com/play/14765
What was even more terrific is that I saw this article about Wilbur early Monday, although for a different poem, “Love Calls Us to the Things of this world” which brought up the Portuguese concept of “Saudade” -- which has been described as a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
The poem and article can be accessed here: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_harrison.php
** on Goodreads posted today:
If you don't know Wilbur, try his poem "Beasts" where six stanzas of five lines arranged like spinning tops and language will grip at your heart. You will move you from the dreamland of animals through the transformation of werewolf to the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”. There is nothing insipid or trite about form crafted by such a master.
His poems probe without any ponderous posturing what it is about being human. His "Disappearing Alphabet" and "Opposites" with accompanying doodles, go beyond an Ogden Nash sense of whimsy to deeper levels of thought. One of my favorites, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" at first caught my eye with the line, "the air awash with angels" and seeing the sheets flapping on the laundry line, but then, I read again, and thanks to some background reading on Stoic philosophy, and an introduction to the term "Saudade" see how Wilbur fashions great poems that are not at all trite exercises in form and polish. Poems to read again and again.
I put the date December 13 as the date I "finished the book" -- but have been reading it in snatches for a long time and will continue to do so.
I had the pleasure of hearing him read at Amherst, 12/2/2010.
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life." -- Robert Penn Warren
"Let us remember that in the end
we go to poetry for one reason,
so that we might more fully
inhabit our lives and the world
in which we live them, and that
if we more fully inhabit these
things, we might be less apt to
destroy both." – Christian Wiman, Editor, Poetry
From a Window – Christian Wiman
This talented poet, a disciple of Richard Wilbur has been stricken by Cancer. The poem above imbues a sense of awe beyond a hospital window, and the power of paying deep attention beyond our own condition. Like O’Henry, “The Last Leaf” he turns to remind us we have no control...
Richard Wilbur
While Wilbur continued to produce composed, reflective, and largely optimistic poetry in collections like Things of This World, (1956), Advice to a Prophet (1961) and Walking to Sleep (1969) using traditional patterns of rhyme and meter, the poetic landscape of the times meant that his work was often judged harshly. “The typical ghastly poem of the fifties was a Wilbur poem not written by Wilbur,” wrote Donald Hall in 1961, “a poem with tired wit and obvious comparisons and nothing to keep the mind or the ear occupied.”
(you can read more about him here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/richard-wilbur)
He also has written children’s verse.
Example from Opposites (with illustrations!)
The Disappearing Alphabet
**
Beasts — a terrific poem — in my copy of “Collected Poems” it is centered, so each five-line stanza spins like a small top :
The first stanza has a dreamy lullaby feel; the second, has an eyebrow-raising detail of “The ripped mouse, safe in the owl’s talon, cries/ Concordance. The next two stanzas, with moon as observer, create a larger than life experience of a man turning into a beast.
The final two stanzas show the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”.
Hopefully that will make you want to read it!
Boy At the Windows
I heard him read Dec. 2 at Amherst where he mentioned the background to this poem — his 5 year old son, not wanting to leave his snowman outside.
We concluded with a reading of “This Pleasing Anxious Being
http://www.webofstories.com/play/14765
What was even more terrific is that I saw this article about Wilbur early Monday, although for a different poem, “Love Calls Us to the Things of this world” which brought up the Portuguese concept of “Saudade” -- which has been described as a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
The poem and article can be accessed here: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_harrison.php
** on Goodreads posted today:
If you don't know Wilbur, try his poem "Beasts" where six stanzas of five lines arranged like spinning tops and language will grip at your heart. You will move you from the dreamland of animals through the transformation of werewolf to the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”. There is nothing insipid or trite about form crafted by such a master.
His poems probe without any ponderous posturing what it is about being human. His "Disappearing Alphabet" and "Opposites" with accompanying doodles, go beyond an Ogden Nash sense of whimsy to deeper levels of thought. One of my favorites, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" at first caught my eye with the line, "the air awash with angels" and seeing the sheets flapping on the laundry line, but then, I read again, and thanks to some background reading on Stoic philosophy, and an introduction to the term "Saudade" see how Wilbur fashions great poems that are not at all trite exercises in form and polish. Poems to read again and again.
I put the date December 13 as the date I "finished the book" -- but have been reading it in snatches for a long time and will continue to do so.
I had the pleasure of hearing him read at Amherst, 12/2/2010.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
December 9 -- Poetry and Spirituality + MAG
DEC: CONNECTION …to each other, to peace in the midst of craziness, to spirit in the midst of materialism, to light in the midst of darkness (hope), to needs greater than our own, generosity, brother’s keeper, interdependence, empowerment of each other, reigniting the spark in each other, connection to our Christian roots, connection to all religions lifting up the light n the midst of darkness,
Jennifer Grotz: The Umbrella --
Joseph Stroud: Manna
Thomas Hardy: At the Railway Station, Upway
James Wright: The Blessing
Wave: Joanna Goodman
Different connections --
the Umbrella brought up the most -- how sweet fruit risks a moldy end; the blooming of umbrellas on the sidewalk; the sky escorted by the wind,, the way something that is supposed to protect (umbrella) becomes the vehicle to deliver the unexpected...
the midsection allows rain to become feeling and yet there is something not quite smooth in the jerkiness of "stutter"...
It poured until it wasn’t rain anymore
but something one endured with feeling,
deafening as laughter in a crowded bar
but equally awful because it made time stutter
inbetween day and night, city and sky.
John brought up a memory of going up the Pompidou elevator just as rain is starting, and looking down on the square where umbrellas popped open ...
Manna, also has the word "happy" in it -- in this case, snow.
childlike, not apologetic, nor arrogant, no need to feel ashamed, or to be "shriven of shame"...
key word, "so be it" -- not as conclusion of an Amen, but slipped in midway into the poem.
The Thomas Hardy painted a touching portrait of a Christ-like figure in a scene that would seem surreal if witnessed. From an article on empathy in APR.
James Wright's Blessing -- the curiosity and connection between the horses, and speaker and friend; the etymology of blessing -- Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars.
The wave... one senses a speaker overwhelmed, unable to put words together, at the end of a relationship, where the final gesture is love enough.
**
To leap from this discussion to leading children through art of the renaissance -- consideration of how to depict reality with feeling, humanize, put some personality into the narrative, the details, the facial expressions. We had fun with perspective -- how the floor looks like the knave will slide right off past the table, out of the picture; how the turned face of the man mostly out of the picture relies on the guesswork of the onlooker; how different from the floors of the renaissance painting. The "drama" of what all the people are saying in the Judith and Holoferness painting... the fun of feeling a painting really coming alive...
Jennifer Grotz: The Umbrella --
Joseph Stroud: Manna
Thomas Hardy: At the Railway Station, Upway
James Wright: The Blessing
Wave: Joanna Goodman
Different connections --
the Umbrella brought up the most -- how sweet fruit risks a moldy end; the blooming of umbrellas on the sidewalk; the sky escorted by the wind,, the way something that is supposed to protect (umbrella) becomes the vehicle to deliver the unexpected...
the midsection allows rain to become feeling and yet there is something not quite smooth in the jerkiness of "stutter"...
It poured until it wasn’t rain anymore
but something one endured with feeling,
deafening as laughter in a crowded bar
but equally awful because it made time stutter
inbetween day and night, city and sky.
John brought up a memory of going up the Pompidou elevator just as rain is starting, and looking down on the square where umbrellas popped open ...
Manna, also has the word "happy" in it -- in this case, snow.
childlike, not apologetic, nor arrogant, no need to feel ashamed, or to be "shriven of shame"...
key word, "so be it" -- not as conclusion of an Amen, but slipped in midway into the poem.
The Thomas Hardy painted a touching portrait of a Christ-like figure in a scene that would seem surreal if witnessed. From an article on empathy in APR.
James Wright's Blessing -- the curiosity and connection between the horses, and speaker and friend; the etymology of blessing -- Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars.
The wave... one senses a speaker overwhelmed, unable to put words together, at the end of a relationship, where the final gesture is love enough.
**
To leap from this discussion to leading children through art of the renaissance -- consideration of how to depict reality with feeling, humanize, put some personality into the narrative, the details, the facial expressions. We had fun with perspective -- how the floor looks like the knave will slide right off past the table, out of the picture; how the turned face of the man mostly out of the picture relies on the guesswork of the onlooker; how different from the floors of the renaissance painting. The "drama" of what all the people are saying in the Judith and Holoferness painting... the fun of feeling a painting really coming alive...
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
books blogged on goodreads
November:
Todd Davis :
These poems grow on you and ask to be read and re-read, each time giving back a rich layer that confirms that the time spent with them is time well spent indeed. I love the references to art, and how a 14th century Eve combines with Stem cells; the way tree branches aspire to the sacred yet reinforce their roots;
how the "now" is not in the realm of desire, but simply details that have caught our attention, demand it.
Geography of Imagination:
" I wish every English teacher read this book and shared the insights with their students -- hopefully with shades of enthusiasm and passion like Guy Davenport.
This is the sort of book that celebrates humanism and leaves the reader breathless, as if having attended a reception where everybody who was anybody from Homer and all his characters to Wittgenstein and beyond has been present and asked you some probing question. I love the chapters that deal with translation, and appreciate all the insights to so many of my favorite authors, which heretofore, were simply favorites without too much knowledge of anecdotes about them, or the tongue of Davenport to bring them alive.
CK Williams : Wait
Todd Davis :
These poems grow on you and ask to be read and re-read, each time giving back a rich layer that confirms that the time spent with them is time well spent indeed. I love the references to art, and how a 14th century Eve combines with Stem cells; the way tree branches aspire to the sacred yet reinforce their roots;
how the "now" is not in the realm of desire, but simply details that have caught our attention, demand it.
Geography of Imagination:
" I wish every English teacher read this book and shared the insights with their students -- hopefully with shades of enthusiasm and passion like Guy Davenport.
This is the sort of book that celebrates humanism and leaves the reader breathless, as if having attended a reception where everybody who was anybody from Homer and all his characters to Wittgenstein and beyond has been present and asked you some probing question. I love the chapters that deal with translation, and appreciate all the insights to so many of my favorite authors, which heretofore, were simply favorites without too much knowledge of anecdotes about them, or the tongue of Davenport to bring them alive.
CK Williams : Wait
Dec issue of The Sun -- and 12/2 discussion
4 poems by John Donne to contrast with
Elizabeth Bishop -- Casabianca
A new one published by linebreak: Kimberly Grey: Modern Sentences
How perfect that the December issue of The Sun starts with Kim Rosen on becoming the disciple of a poem -- learning it by heart, not to use our left brain to analyze it, but to allow our right brain to celebrate the "ineffable, the emotional, the relational" -- dressed up in the costume of the left brain -- i.e. words. "Learning a poem by heart is... a mutual relationship in which you let yourself be changed and healed. What the Tibetans used to call, "writing on the bones".
The Greeks believed speaking poetry raises the vibration of the physical body to ease the passage into the higher vibration of spirit.
It is as if the selection today were perfectly intended: Donne, combines R and L Brain; Bishop's parody of a popular poem memorized by school children for almost a century so as not to lose its emotional strength, has it's own strength; and a modern poem which imitates "web-thinking" and the great concern
...But how do we
keep from moving forward too
quickly and what do we do
with all the preciousness and time-
lessness and sadness? Even history
can't keep us. We keep inventing
newfangled ways to be in the world.
We are living in a country where people have forgotten to think in metaphor -- and with loss of metaphor, Rosen says, comes lack of imagination, ritual, mystery and discovery.
JFK in his Eulogy of Robert Frost
"When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
Love Dogs... Rumi -
The boy memorizing changed Coleman Barks' translation : he grief from which you cry --
vs. the grief you cry out from... the first version is predictable, the second is "a wonderful mess, falling over itself and open-ended."
The article also cited The songs of the Masaii and the Oliver poem, "The Journey"
Naomi Shihab Nye and Kindness --(Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things.) to be in kinship -- how kindness flows into us and out of us.
See how a poem stretches the rhythms of your breathing, pulse, voice -- let that poem show you that you don't end here, you're so much bigger. Because if we speak only our own words, there is a possibility that our unhealthy or worn out patterns will prevail. If we take in the words of somebody else, they might shake up our own patterns. Others' words rattle the "glass bottles of our own ego" as CH Lawrence says in his poem "Escape" --
**
Elizabeth Bishop -- Casabianca
A new one published by linebreak: Kimberly Grey: Modern Sentences
How perfect that the December issue of The Sun starts with Kim Rosen on becoming the disciple of a poem -- learning it by heart, not to use our left brain to analyze it, but to allow our right brain to celebrate the "ineffable, the emotional, the relational" -- dressed up in the costume of the left brain -- i.e. words. "Learning a poem by heart is... a mutual relationship in which you let yourself be changed and healed. What the Tibetans used to call, "writing on the bones".
The Greeks believed speaking poetry raises the vibration of the physical body to ease the passage into the higher vibration of spirit.
It is as if the selection today were perfectly intended: Donne, combines R and L Brain; Bishop's parody of a popular poem memorized by school children for almost a century so as not to lose its emotional strength, has it's own strength; and a modern poem which imitates "web-thinking" and the great concern
...But how do we
keep from moving forward too
quickly and what do we do
with all the preciousness and time-
lessness and sadness? Even history
can't keep us. We keep inventing
newfangled ways to be in the world.
We are living in a country where people have forgotten to think in metaphor -- and with loss of metaphor, Rosen says, comes lack of imagination, ritual, mystery and discovery.
JFK in his Eulogy of Robert Frost
"When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
Love Dogs... Rumi -
The boy memorizing changed Coleman Barks' translation : he grief from which you cry --
vs. the grief you cry out from... the first version is predictable, the second is "a wonderful mess, falling over itself and open-ended."
The article also cited The songs of the Masaii and the Oliver poem, "The Journey"
Naomi Shihab Nye and Kindness --(Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things.) to be in kinship -- how kindness flows into us and out of us.
See how a poem stretches the rhythms of your breathing, pulse, voice -- let that poem show you that you don't end here, you're so much bigger. Because if we speak only our own words, there is a possibility that our unhealthy or worn out patterns will prevail. If we take in the words of somebody else, they might shake up our own patterns. Others' words rattle the "glass bottles of our own ego" as CH Lawrence says in his poem "Escape" --
**
little genius -- Beethoven and Forster
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/music/chicago-symphony-introduces-ne.html
INDEED amazing. He dances the music. What I loved was the match of EM Forster underneath: that very passage of Beethoven and what Jonathan might have been feeling. I love the unabashed delight in two places, where he GETS the music — beyond the more classic baton sweeps.
"The goblins really had been there. They might return--and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall. Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things."
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/music/chicago-symphony-introduces-ne.html
INDEED amazing. He dances the music. What I loved was the match of EM Forster underneath: that very passage of Beethoven and what Jonathan might have been feeling. I love the unabashed delight in two places, where he GETS the music — beyond the more classic baton sweeps.
"The goblins really had been there. They might return--and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall. Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things."
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/music/chicago-symphony-introduces-ne.html
Line Break -- CK Williams
Ape : This is a terrific poem, however, the way it is formatted, disturbs me, especially as I contacted the editor to ask why there was a discrepancy between the hard and paperback versions of the Collected... The editor replied that he worked on "Wait" with the author and that line break should not be considered important for the overall appreciation of the work...
As the poetic line and line break are ways of creating tension in a poem, what distinguishes a poem from arbitrarily chopped-up prose?
I typed up the WAIT version of Apes.
Why terri-/torial
anthropo-/morphic
dement-/edly
confirm-/ing
phi-/losophy
gov-/erned;
Apes – by CK Williams (from his book, Wait)
One branch, I read, of a species of chimpanzees has something like terri-
torial wars,
and when the… army, I suppose you’d call it, of one tribe prevails and
captures an enemy,
“several males hold a hand or foot of the rival so the victim can be damaged at
will.”
This is so disquieting: if things with whom we share so many genes can
be this rule,
what hope for us? Still, “rival,” “victim,” “will” – don’t such anthropo-
morphic terms
make those simians’ social-political conflicts sounds more brutal than they
are?
The chimps that Catherine and I saw on their island sanctuary in Uganda
we loathed.
Unlike the pacific gorillas in the forest of Bwindi, they fought, dement-
edly shrieked,
the dominant male lorded it over the rest; they were, in all, too much
like us.
Another island from my recent reading, where Columbus, on his last
voyage,
encountering some “Indians” who’d greeted him with curiosity and
warmth, wrote,
before he chained and enslaved them, “They don’t even know how to kill
each other.”
It’s occurred to me I’ve read enough; at my age all I’m doing is confirm-
ing my sadness.
Surely the papers: war, terror, torture, corruption – it’s like broken glass
in the mind.
Back when I knew I knew nothing, I read all the time, poems, novels, phi-
losophy, myth,
but I hardly glanced at the news, there was a distance between what could
happen
and the part of myself I felt with: now everything’s so tight against me I
hardly can move.
The Analects say people in the golden age weren’t aware they were gov-
erned; they just lived.
Could I have passed through my own golden age and not even known I
was there?
Some gold: nuclear rockets aimed at your head, racism, sexism, contempt
for the poor.
And there I was, reading. What did I larned? Everything, nothing, too lit-
tle, too much…
Just enough to get me to here: a long-faced, white-haired ape with a book,
still turning the page.
**
Compare the poem “Light” on p. 391 of the paperback and and the way poetry foundation reproduces the line online. At least poetry foundation keeps the integrity of words like re-/lation; al-/lowed; alterna-/tive
subju-/gation; over-/whelmed; sur-/render; ex-haustion; be-/hold.
Also, the online version does not indent so the line spills nicely like an overflow.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182357
**
As Kimberley put it: he must believe in the strength of the line in and of itself! Of course the line breaks are only one technique that poets use, and so much else goes into crafting them.
Perhaps a small thing as indented sections of hypenated words are just a minor irritation -- a stray thread in the overall weave?
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life."
... Robert Penn Warren
As the poetic line and line break are ways of creating tension in a poem, what distinguishes a poem from arbitrarily chopped-up prose?
I typed up the WAIT version of Apes.
Why terri-/torial
anthropo-/morphic
dement-/edly
confirm-/ing
phi-/losophy
gov-/erned;
Apes – by CK Williams (from his book, Wait)
One branch, I read, of a species of chimpanzees has something like terri-
torial wars,
and when the… army, I suppose you’d call it, of one tribe prevails and
captures an enemy,
“several males hold a hand or foot of the rival so the victim can be damaged at
will.”
This is so disquieting: if things with whom we share so many genes can
be this rule,
what hope for us? Still, “rival,” “victim,” “will” – don’t such anthropo-
morphic terms
make those simians’ social-political conflicts sounds more brutal than they
are?
The chimps that Catherine and I saw on their island sanctuary in Uganda
we loathed.
Unlike the pacific gorillas in the forest of Bwindi, they fought, dement-
edly shrieked,
the dominant male lorded it over the rest; they were, in all, too much
like us.
Another island from my recent reading, where Columbus, on his last
voyage,
encountering some “Indians” who’d greeted him with curiosity and
warmth, wrote,
before he chained and enslaved them, “They don’t even know how to kill
each other.”
It’s occurred to me I’ve read enough; at my age all I’m doing is confirm-
ing my sadness.
Surely the papers: war, terror, torture, corruption – it’s like broken glass
in the mind.
Back when I knew I knew nothing, I read all the time, poems, novels, phi-
losophy, myth,
but I hardly glanced at the news, there was a distance between what could
happen
and the part of myself I felt with: now everything’s so tight against me I
hardly can move.
The Analects say people in the golden age weren’t aware they were gov-
erned; they just lived.
Could I have passed through my own golden age and not even known I
was there?
Some gold: nuclear rockets aimed at your head, racism, sexism, contempt
for the poor.
And there I was, reading. What did I larned? Everything, nothing, too lit-
tle, too much…
Just enough to get me to here: a long-faced, white-haired ape with a book,
still turning the page.
**
Compare the poem “Light” on p. 391 of the paperback and and the way poetry foundation reproduces the line online. At least poetry foundation keeps the integrity of words like re-/lation; al-/lowed; alterna-/tive
subju-/gation; over-/whelmed; sur-/render; ex-haustion; be-/hold.
Also, the online version does not indent so the line spills nicely like an overflow.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182357
**
As Kimberley put it: he must believe in the strength of the line in and of itself! Of course the line breaks are only one technique that poets use, and so much else goes into crafting them.
Perhaps a small thing as indented sections of hypenated words are just a minor irritation -- a stray thread in the overall weave?
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life."
... Robert Penn Warren
Poetry and Spirituality -- Follow-up 12/2
Poems for December 9 : I will send separately
Jennifer Grotz: Umbrella
Joseph Stroud: Manna
Thomas Hardy: At the Railway Station, Upway
James Wright: The Blessing
poems by Joanna Goodman (APR)
Sent earlier :
Developing the Land
(I will read out loud a companion poem "Glare Full Moon on the Equinox" by Steve Lewandowski)
WE WILL MEET from 11:30 AM – 12:40 PM
Follow-up : On December 2 – thank you Elaine, Joyce, Ronna, John for your insightful comments.
For the Todd Davis poems, the meditations on acceptance, recognizing desire as complicated, in the distractions of life, allowed the appreciation of the precious moment of “the now”.
For CK Williams, we discussed grief, the innocent and sensitive wisdom of children, as well as the problem of not knowing. Last night, listening to Richard Wilbur, in his poem “The Reckoning” he addressed the problem of “shame” – how if we get caught up in it, we risk being too proud. Williams gives us an insight into the complexity of being human, the complexity of contrition. In Light, he gives us the construct of Paradise and the dark of the Bat world in which to consider how we “blunder” through our deeds.
John shared a poem that his mother wrote (published in the NY Mirror!)
“If I could for a moment be
the person that I’d like to be
I think that I would cease to damn
the person that I really am.”
NY Mirror
Jennifer Grotz: Umbrella
Joseph Stroud: Manna
Thomas Hardy: At the Railway Station, Upway
James Wright: The Blessing
poems by Joanna Goodman (APR)
Sent earlier :
Developing the Land
(I will read out loud a companion poem "Glare Full Moon on the Equinox" by Steve Lewandowski)
WE WILL MEET from 11:30 AM – 12:40 PM
Follow-up : On December 2 – thank you Elaine, Joyce, Ronna, John for your insightful comments.
For the Todd Davis poems, the meditations on acceptance, recognizing desire as complicated, in the distractions of life, allowed the appreciation of the precious moment of “the now”.
For CK Williams, we discussed grief, the innocent and sensitive wisdom of children, as well as the problem of not knowing. Last night, listening to Richard Wilbur, in his poem “The Reckoning” he addressed the problem of “shame” – how if we get caught up in it, we risk being too proud. Williams gives us an insight into the complexity of being human, the complexity of contrition. In Light, he gives us the construct of Paradise and the dark of the Bat world in which to consider how we “blunder” through our deeds.
John shared a poem that his mother wrote (published in the NY Mirror!)
“If I could for a moment be
the person that I’d like to be
I think that I would cease to damn
the person that I really am.”
NY Mirror
Monday, December 6, 2010
4 poems by Donne + Elizabeth Bishop + Linebreak poem 12/6
16th- 17th C. He would have witnessed English civil war and the execution (1649) of King Charles I. The Commonwealth was dominated from the outset by Oliver Cromwell, who by the Instrument of Government (1653) was made lord protector of the Commonwealth. The subsequent government is usually known as the Protectorate, though the Commonwealth formally continued until Restoration in 1660.
Read more: commonwealth — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0813052.html#ixzz17ORWJ6uk
During the Restoration his writing went out of fashion and remained so for several centuries. Throughout the eighteenth century, and for much of the nineteenth century, he was little read and scarcely appreciated. Commentators followed Samuel Johnson in dismissing his work as no more than frigidly ingenious and metrically uncouth. Coleridge and Browning in the 19th; TSE and Yeats in early 20th century recognized the sparring of intellect and passion.
Divine Sonnet #10
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
for...
By addressing Death, putting death into its place, a mere slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, no more and no less than poison, war, sickness... Death, swollen with its importance, is reminded that it has no power after death.
Divine Sonnet #14 -- the repetitions -- first a gentle knock, then more forceful, with the triple break, blow, burn -- a petition
a forceful plea, with both military and romantic vocabulary. I love that "reason" is only a viceroy! The word 'ravish" makes you think of St. Teresa in Ecstasy ; union with God/divine.
What is it that you learn about the speaker of the poem? About God?
Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.
Triple Fool : A fool for loving; a fool for saying so, thinking that writing will change anything; a fool for making poem public.
The Bait: An idea: a hymn is a love song. What happens if you consider this poem beyond the sensual pleasure and think "Beloved" as divine.
**
Elizabeth Bishop:
Casabianca: by Elizabeth Bishop
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck". Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.
See the poem American school children had to learn by heart :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_(poem)
**
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_(poem)
This poem was a staple of elementary school readers in the United States over a period of about a century spanning, roughly, the 1850s through the 1950s. So often memorized and recited as to lose any shred of meaning or emotion, it is today remembered mostly as a tag line and as a topic of parodies.
Casabianca is a poem by British poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans, first published in the Monthly Magazine for August 1826.
The poem opens:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
It is written in ballad meter, rhyming abab.
In Hemans' and other tellings of the story, young Casabianca refuses to desert his post without orders from his father. (It is sometimes said, rather improbably, that he heroically set fire to the magazine to prevent the ship's capture by the British.) It's said that he was seen by English sailors on ships attacking from both sides but how any other details of the incident are known beyond the bare fact of the boy's death, is not clear. Hemans, not purporting to offer a history, but rather a poem inspired by the bare facts, writes:
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.
The flames rolled on—he would not go
Without his Father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
Hemans has him repeatedly, and heart-rendingly, calling to his father for instructions: "'Say, Father, say/If yet my task is done;'" "'Speak, father!' once again he cried/'If I may yet be gone!;'" and "shouted but once more aloud/ 'My father! must I stay?'" Alas, there is, of course, no response.
She concludes by commending the performances of both ship and boy:
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part—
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.
**
And finally
Modern Sentences BY KIMBERLY GREY
who captures the quick attention span required to live a day in the life in 2010 -- one thought per sentence. Very witty.
Read more: commonwealth — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0813052.html#ixzz17ORWJ6uk
During the Restoration his writing went out of fashion and remained so for several centuries. Throughout the eighteenth century, and for much of the nineteenth century, he was little read and scarcely appreciated. Commentators followed Samuel Johnson in dismissing his work as no more than frigidly ingenious and metrically uncouth. Coleridge and Browning in the 19th; TSE and Yeats in early 20th century recognized the sparring of intellect and passion.
Divine Sonnet #10
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
for...
By addressing Death, putting death into its place, a mere slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, no more and no less than poison, war, sickness... Death, swollen with its importance, is reminded that it has no power after death.
Divine Sonnet #14 -- the repetitions -- first a gentle knock, then more forceful, with the triple break, blow, burn -- a petition
a forceful plea, with both military and romantic vocabulary. I love that "reason" is only a viceroy! The word 'ravish" makes you think of St. Teresa in Ecstasy ; union with God/divine.
What is it that you learn about the speaker of the poem? About God?
Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.
Triple Fool : A fool for loving; a fool for saying so, thinking that writing will change anything; a fool for making poem public.
The Bait: An idea: a hymn is a love song. What happens if you consider this poem beyond the sensual pleasure and think "Beloved" as divine.
**
Elizabeth Bishop:
Casabianca: by Elizabeth Bishop
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck". Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.
See the poem American school children had to learn by heart :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_(poem)
**
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casabianca_(poem)
This poem was a staple of elementary school readers in the United States over a period of about a century spanning, roughly, the 1850s through the 1950s. So often memorized and recited as to lose any shred of meaning or emotion, it is today remembered mostly as a tag line and as a topic of parodies.
Casabianca is a poem by British poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans, first published in the Monthly Magazine for August 1826.
The poem opens:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
It is written in ballad meter, rhyming abab.
In Hemans' and other tellings of the story, young Casabianca refuses to desert his post without orders from his father. (It is sometimes said, rather improbably, that he heroically set fire to the magazine to prevent the ship's capture by the British.) It's said that he was seen by English sailors on ships attacking from both sides but how any other details of the incident are known beyond the bare fact of the boy's death, is not clear. Hemans, not purporting to offer a history, but rather a poem inspired by the bare facts, writes:
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.
The flames rolled on—he would not go
Without his Father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
Hemans has him repeatedly, and heart-rendingly, calling to his father for instructions: "'Say, Father, say/If yet my task is done;'" "'Speak, father!' once again he cried/'If I may yet be gone!;'" and "shouted but once more aloud/ 'My father! must I stay?'" Alas, there is, of course, no response.
She concludes by commending the performances of both ship and boy:
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part—
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.
**
And finally
Modern Sentences BY KIMBERLY GREY
who captures the quick attention span required to live a day in the life in 2010 -- one thought per sentence. Very witty.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
goodreads -- December 4
a wonderfully wacky week-end with Ta -- but I'm not so sure for Tira. What are these humans up to, with crazy bike rides in oak leaves, mini-golf, bi-athalon with 3 types of balls, ski-o, lugging equipment through 4 controls, the "crutches" and ax throwing for extra points, and an indoors warm up of a puzzle. Interlude of bowling before dinner.
I left at 8:15 to rescue Tira, fed, and back in by now the cozy quarters of Ta's room on Mill street, not terrified of the two large retrievers. But, it's been some time -- two pee's and now Tira is wondering where Ta is.
It gives me time to post stuff on Goodreads:
CK Williams : Wait
Hearing a reading of these poems, and being told by the publisher that the long lines don't really care about linebreaks, I am glad I had a chance to hear Charlie read them aloud in person just before Thanksgiving, in Rochester, NY. The intricacy of a poem like "The Gaffe" which travels from a childhood memory to present where it still chafes, alongside just what it is to live with all these people in oneself, especially the critical one, is delightful and reassuring. I enjoy the sense of humor, which allows yet deep probings such as "Apes" -- so that despair is allowed its place, and yet somehow, the poems give a sense of balance, of having gone somewhere deep, but without losing it completely. I look forward to reading these poems again and again.
November:
Todd Davis :
These poems grow on you and ask to be read and re-read, each time giving back a rich layer that confirms that the time spent with them is time well spent indeed. I love the references to art, and how a 14th century Eve combines with Stem cells; the way tree branches aspire to the sacred yet reinforce their roots;
how the "now" is not in the realm of desire, but simply details that have caught our attention, demand it.
Geography of Imagination:
" I wish every English teacher read this book and shared the insights with their students -- hopefully with shades of enthusiasm and passion like Guy Davenport.
This is the sort of book that celebrates humanism and leaves the reader breathless, as if having attended a reception where everybody who was anybody from Homer and all his characters to Wittgenstein and beyond has been present and asked you some probing question. I love the chapters that deal with translation, and appreciate all the insights to so many of my favorite authors, which heretofore, were simply favorites without too much knowledge of anecdotes about them, or the tongue of Davenport to bring them alive.
I left at 8:15 to rescue Tira, fed, and back in by now the cozy quarters of Ta's room on Mill street, not terrified of the two large retrievers. But, it's been some time -- two pee's and now Tira is wondering where Ta is.
It gives me time to post stuff on Goodreads:
CK Williams : Wait
Hearing a reading of these poems, and being told by the publisher that the long lines don't really care about linebreaks, I am glad I had a chance to hear Charlie read them aloud in person just before Thanksgiving, in Rochester, NY. The intricacy of a poem like "The Gaffe" which travels from a childhood memory to present where it still chafes, alongside just what it is to live with all these people in oneself, especially the critical one, is delightful and reassuring. I enjoy the sense of humor, which allows yet deep probings such as "Apes" -- so that despair is allowed its place, and yet somehow, the poems give a sense of balance, of having gone somewhere deep, but without losing it completely. I look forward to reading these poems again and again.
November:
Todd Davis :
These poems grow on you and ask to be read and re-read, each time giving back a rich layer that confirms that the time spent with them is time well spent indeed. I love the references to art, and how a 14th century Eve combines with Stem cells; the way tree branches aspire to the sacred yet reinforce their roots;
how the "now" is not in the realm of desire, but simply details that have caught our attention, demand it.
Geography of Imagination:
" I wish every English teacher read this book and shared the insights with their students -- hopefully with shades of enthusiasm and passion like Guy Davenport.
This is the sort of book that celebrates humanism and leaves the reader breathless, as if having attended a reception where everybody who was anybody from Homer and all his characters to Wittgenstein and beyond has been present and asked you some probing question. I love the chapters that deal with translation, and appreciate all the insights to so many of my favorite authors, which heretofore, were simply favorites without too much knowledge of anecdotes about them, or the tongue of Davenport to bring them alive.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Next to last day of November, 2010, 2nd day of Advent
The sunrise is busy painting the horizon with a wide flame of orange.
I've just had a dream of trying to find my way to an eye-glass store -- dependent on travelling with other teachers to get back to school -- but so much interferes -- new clothes for dancing, an AA meeting, cooking dinner for two daughters of new friends, but the ex-boyfriend of one arrives and spoils the party, and then the parents come as well, and there isn't enough food and Nick is less than happy with the organization, and meanwhile, I stumble into corporate offices, various stores, a garden and cannot find the oculist, and desperately roam streets, until coming to a fish market. There the phone book is out of date, and the occulist name is my dentist's name, who I no longer see anyway...
So it is peaceful, to imagine a new day.
A poem -- "You can't just sit There" -- by Joanna Goodman
feels like such a dream.
Between fits and starts, no bequest from sea or desert
phones-in angelic blueprints, muscles me through
each flowering, heavenly blow. "Just be patient"
says everyone and their dogs and fishes, the horses
with their milky eyes, the genteel wind.
Whoever can find me behind these lives oaks,
beneath the annunciation, in between three nervous systems,
arrive. The trees are quiet as lunch eaten alone
inside a house surrounded by trees. "You sound urgent"
says everyone and their baboons and finches. No, I say.
"Frustrated," they say. No, I say. "You can't pretend." No.
"Can't act like the innocent one here,
like the scales are balanced. How long are you going to bask
in the afterglow of your escapades, feet crossed
on the ottoman?" Oh, doctor. Where are thou
when I crave you most. Give me a juice ruin
to wade through. A range to rub myself in. A sea
without end, a bright shore to wash up on,
grateful, grateful, all the same.
(APR -- from Mar/Apr)
So many poems about gratitude. Merwin's "Thanks"...
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
...
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
**
we are saying thank you faster and faster
without nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
**
In my dream, faster and faster, I was NOT saying thank you.
I was saying "help me, help me" which makes a sarcastic reading of a poem
but when I got to the fish lady, it was indeed -- thank you, thank you.
To be so Buddhist that you convince yourself that life at any price is to be praised. The poem allows instances of thank you--
the automatic thank you's, the relief thank you's, the thank you to the natural world,
as if "thank you" is part of the birth and dying of this world.
A poem which responds to "Thank You" by saying, No.
this Zen poem, Dwain sent me responds in a gentler way.
The Use of Crying
Drink your tears;
If they are sweet, know impermanence
If they are bitter, know suffering
If they are sour, know remorse
If they are salt,
Know the earth that supports you in Great Emptiness.
**
I've just had a dream of trying to find my way to an eye-glass store -- dependent on travelling with other teachers to get back to school -- but so much interferes -- new clothes for dancing, an AA meeting, cooking dinner for two daughters of new friends, but the ex-boyfriend of one arrives and spoils the party, and then the parents come as well, and there isn't enough food and Nick is less than happy with the organization, and meanwhile, I stumble into corporate offices, various stores, a garden and cannot find the oculist, and desperately roam streets, until coming to a fish market. There the phone book is out of date, and the occulist name is my dentist's name, who I no longer see anyway...
So it is peaceful, to imagine a new day.
A poem -- "You can't just sit There" -- by Joanna Goodman
feels like such a dream.
Between fits and starts, no bequest from sea or desert
phones-in angelic blueprints, muscles me through
each flowering, heavenly blow. "Just be patient"
says everyone and their dogs and fishes, the horses
with their milky eyes, the genteel wind.
Whoever can find me behind these lives oaks,
beneath the annunciation, in between three nervous systems,
arrive. The trees are quiet as lunch eaten alone
inside a house surrounded by trees. "You sound urgent"
says everyone and their baboons and finches. No, I say.
"Frustrated," they say. No, I say. "You can't pretend." No.
"Can't act like the innocent one here,
like the scales are balanced. How long are you going to bask
in the afterglow of your escapades, feet crossed
on the ottoman?" Oh, doctor. Where are thou
when I crave you most. Give me a juice ruin
to wade through. A range to rub myself in. A sea
without end, a bright shore to wash up on,
grateful, grateful, all the same.
(APR -- from Mar/Apr)
So many poems about gratitude. Merwin's "Thanks"...
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
...
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
**
we are saying thank you faster and faster
without nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
**
In my dream, faster and faster, I was NOT saying thank you.
I was saying "help me, help me" which makes a sarcastic reading of a poem
but when I got to the fish lady, it was indeed -- thank you, thank you.
To be so Buddhist that you convince yourself that life at any price is to be praised. The poem allows instances of thank you--
the automatic thank you's, the relief thank you's, the thank you to the natural world,
as if "thank you" is part of the birth and dying of this world.
A poem which responds to "Thank You" by saying, No.
this Zen poem, Dwain sent me responds in a gentler way.
The Use of Crying
Drink your tears;
If they are sweet, know impermanence
If they are bitter, know suffering
If they are sour, know remorse
If they are salt,
Know the earth that supports you in Great Emptiness.
**
more favorites from Merwin -- discussed 10/28
W.S. Merwin:
interview : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/merwin_10-27.html
In it he mentions the thrush that sings with every cell of its body – as if obsessed with the urge to create that song. Our talent as humans is not so much language, communication, but imagination. We can imagine a situation and feel the suffering, the joy, the pain, the excitement in it.
So, in The Laughing Thrush
the “tumbling upwards” (vs. downwards) and what the thrush is saying, or not, will happen because of this powerful urge.
As for the translation of the Lorca poem: Song of the Barren Orange Tree:
I feel he has found a simpler way to express what Lorca was implying. The literal Spanish says “cut down my shadow/ deliver me from the torment of bearing no fruit”.
But what does that mean for a dry Orange tree who sings?
Instead of saying “Day turns round and round me” Merwin choses, "walks in circles around me" -- which gives a feeling of being bound. The night sky also mirrors the tree in the stars.
Instead of saying “Let me live unmirrored” Merwin choses, “I want to live without seeing myself. And then the dream of the ants and thistleburrs equally are distinct in the tree’s imagination, not someone else’s. And then it repeats -- how painful it is for the barren tree to see the shadow of itself, unable to bear fruit.
**
Provision
All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere
Comments:
Merwin’s suspension of punctuation allows a special echo – and overtones
man-made instrument (farm implements, machinery) with the music of the field and rain
but dry instruments making the sound of “wet”
“from memory” as if the field has remembered what rain sounds like
What images does “invisible honey” evoke?
How do you understand the last line? What in the poem supports it?
Dry instruments… reeds, farm equipment, the music of bamboo pipes
**
Other poems from Migrations...
The Snow
Rain Travel
A contemporary
interview : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/merwin_10-27.html
In it he mentions the thrush that sings with every cell of its body – as if obsessed with the urge to create that song. Our talent as humans is not so much language, communication, but imagination. We can imagine a situation and feel the suffering, the joy, the pain, the excitement in it.
So, in The Laughing Thrush
the “tumbling upwards” (vs. downwards) and what the thrush is saying, or not, will happen because of this powerful urge.
As for the translation of the Lorca poem: Song of the Barren Orange Tree:
I feel he has found a simpler way to express what Lorca was implying. The literal Spanish says “cut down my shadow/ deliver me from the torment of bearing no fruit”.
But what does that mean for a dry Orange tree who sings?
Instead of saying “Day turns round and round me” Merwin choses, "walks in circles around me" -- which gives a feeling of being bound. The night sky also mirrors the tree in the stars.
Instead of saying “Let me live unmirrored” Merwin choses, “I want to live without seeing myself. And then the dream of the ants and thistleburrs equally are distinct in the tree’s imagination, not someone else’s. And then it repeats -- how painful it is for the barren tree to see the shadow of itself, unable to bear fruit.
**
Provision
All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere
Comments:
Merwin’s suspension of punctuation allows a special echo – and overtones
man-made instrument (farm implements, machinery) with the music of the field and rain
but dry instruments making the sound of “wet”
“from memory” as if the field has remembered what rain sounds like
What images does “invisible honey” evoke?
How do you understand the last line? What in the poem supports it?
Dry instruments… reeds, farm equipment, the music of bamboo pipes
**
Other poems from Migrations...
The Snow
Rain Travel
A contemporary
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Rilke... Poetry and Spirituality -- What would you write to Orpheus?
What would YOU write to Orpheus?
“The "small russet sails" of the sonnets (Rilke's description) were written
at the same time as “the dark rigging of the greater” Duino Elegies which
are freeform unrhymed verse; The Sonnets to Orpheus: bright, discrete songs,
range in tone from transcendent to cantankerous but follow a tight rhyme
scheme in German.
http://www.hunterarchive.com/files/poetry/sonnetstoorpheus.html
(intro followed by an interesting translation)
I, 7 : Praising is what matters
The idea of the resurrection - “ore from a stone’s silence” (Schweigen is
only one word for silence - used in idioms such as “keep one’s peace; silent
majority; keep silent)
immortal pressed out of his heart like a winepress presses out wine
Ecstasy associated with Dionysios
How do you associate this sonnet with Orpheus with the Christian imagery?
I,8: Only in the realm of Praising should Lament / go,
The joy KNOWS, the fullness of being engaged with life, as opposed to
Lament, who is still learning.
Longing has accepted it. But Rilke paints a picture of Lament finally able
to make our voices into patterns of stars in the heavens.
**
two translations of Sonnet #6: Bly and Edward Snow:
Sonnet 6 by Rainer Maria Rilke
How to understand what it must be like to be of this world and not -- living and knowing the dead; How do you understand the clarity of the subconscious?
Vs. Ted Kooser's selection "Nocturne" -- how a man can try to better himself, but that might not be enough.
"He can play nocturnes by heart / they will not make the beloved appear."
Whatever effort we extend, we cannot expect any return.
10/14 we also discussed Robert Bly, his loosely-reminiscent ghazal, "Dawn" -- the paradox of beauty and impermanence,
if we can't find heaven, there are always bluejays // but there are also blue-coated sons who will die at dawn.
conversations of night sea with the dawn.
Cries.. disturbed at dawn.
Racoons washing God in the streams at dawn.
die at dawn
appear at dawn
disappear at dawn.
“The "small russet sails" of the sonnets (Rilke's description) were written
at the same time as “the dark rigging of the greater” Duino Elegies which
are freeform unrhymed verse; The Sonnets to Orpheus: bright, discrete songs,
range in tone from transcendent to cantankerous but follow a tight rhyme
scheme in German.
http://www.hunterarchive.com/files/poetry/sonnetstoorpheus.html
(intro followed by an interesting translation)
I, 7 : Praising is what matters
The idea of the resurrection - “ore from a stone’s silence” (Schweigen is
only one word for silence - used in idioms such as “keep one’s peace; silent
majority; keep silent)
immortal pressed out of his heart like a winepress presses out wine
Ecstasy associated with Dionysios
How do you associate this sonnet with Orpheus with the Christian imagery?
I,8: Only in the realm of Praising should Lament / go,
The joy KNOWS, the fullness of being engaged with life, as opposed to
Lament, who is still learning.
Longing has accepted it. But Rilke paints a picture of Lament finally able
to make our voices into patterns of stars in the heavens.
**
two translations of Sonnet #6: Bly and Edward Snow:
Sonnet 6 by Rainer Maria Rilke
How to understand what it must be like to be of this world and not -- living and knowing the dead; How do you understand the clarity of the subconscious?
Vs. Ted Kooser's selection "Nocturne" -- how a man can try to better himself, but that might not be enough.
"He can play nocturnes by heart / they will not make the beloved appear."
Whatever effort we extend, we cannot expect any return.
10/14 we also discussed Robert Bly, his loosely-reminiscent ghazal, "Dawn" -- the paradox of beauty and impermanence,
if we can't find heaven, there are always bluejays // but there are also blue-coated sons who will die at dawn.
conversations of night sea with the dawn.
Cries.. disturbed at dawn.
Racoons washing God in the streams at dawn.
die at dawn
appear at dawn
disappear at dawn.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
November 1 and 8;
Poems 11/1:
All Saint’s Day.
What brings Poetry to a higher level? that “new brain” –
Stevens’, The Snowman;
The Dickinson; Rilke’s Apollo’s Head; Oliver’s poem, ... I love that wonder and astonishment are precursors of philosophy — the paradox of life/death; Heaven/Earth; night as mother of day; how the spirit of discord calls us to seek harmony, and how infinity makes sense as a “nearest moment is far from mankind” .
I hope in spite of leaping about from Spanish to English, twisting into Mobius strips in little infinite poems, describing a love story through a confusion of lost images, and wondering what should really be swallowed up... That the mystery of a roomful of people trying to make sense of words provided a few new thoughts.
It left me thinking about translation as going beyond language, time period, and culture. Translation as transfer, transformation, carrying over from one context to another is perhaps a fitting in a "google" era, where more and more "foreign" (etrange means both strange and foreign) material is available, and reading poems which don't always facilitate the hopscotch the author is playing.
Enjoy the Merwin interview below:
http://progressive.org/Rampellx1110.html
Interview with W.S. Merwin
**
Poem: Lost Keys by Tony Hoagland is in his book, Unicorporated Persons in the Late Honda Industry
Poems for Nov. 8
An excerpt of Whitman, an Elegy by Thomas Gray, (18th c.) two poems by Merwin and a poem by Pinsky, Samurai song. Which poems strike you as something you would want to read again? Why?
Merwin:
Thanks -- starts this way -- accelerates into excruciating pain, for which we might think anything but thanks...
It starts this way:
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
**
ends this way
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
All Saint’s Day.
What brings Poetry to a higher level? that “new brain” –
Stevens’, The Snowman;
The Dickinson; Rilke’s Apollo’s Head; Oliver’s poem, ... I love that wonder and astonishment are precursors of philosophy — the paradox of life/death; Heaven/Earth; night as mother of day; how the spirit of discord calls us to seek harmony, and how infinity makes sense as a “nearest moment is far from mankind” .
I hope in spite of leaping about from Spanish to English, twisting into Mobius strips in little infinite poems, describing a love story through a confusion of lost images, and wondering what should really be swallowed up... That the mystery of a roomful of people trying to make sense of words provided a few new thoughts.
It left me thinking about translation as going beyond language, time period, and culture. Translation as transfer, transformation, carrying over from one context to another is perhaps a fitting in a "google" era, where more and more "foreign" (etrange means both strange and foreign) material is available, and reading poems which don't always facilitate the hopscotch the author is playing.
Enjoy the Merwin interview below:
http://progressive.org/Rampellx1110.html
Interview with W.S. Merwin
**
Poem: Lost Keys by Tony Hoagland is in his book, Unicorporated Persons in the Late Honda Industry
Poems for Nov. 8
An excerpt of Whitman, an Elegy by Thomas Gray, (18th c.) two poems by Merwin and a poem by Pinsky, Samurai song. Which poems strike you as something you would want to read again? Why?
Merwin:
Thanks -- starts this way -- accelerates into excruciating pain, for which we might think anything but thanks...
It starts this way:
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
**
ends this way
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
November 15 + 19 : UU -- Todd Davis
We started with Veil by Todd Davis -- like a parable.
How the poem moves from low, and moves to high;
how spare the detail of loss, mentioned casually, alongside the dark of an evening.
How without fail, days repeat, seasons repeat. How the marks of grief are as much part of life, indeed, like the fog where it is heaviest, marks the hardest, on the flowers that grow the fullest.
April Poem : the delight of Japanese Haiku artists, and an almost Haiku sense, yet not,
in the regulated couplets. Again, the sky, vs. the earth, the Fresh wind and petals blown to the fresh horse dung.
Ananias. Salt -- visible sign; from the bowels of the earth;
prayer -- how a hen has no hands, but wings...
and symbols of transformation : snake moulting -- from blindness to the light -- he is touched and the scales (weighing pros and cons? justifications? beliefs? or simply the shell which like petals fall to dust.
Evensong:
Although many of his poems are celebrating the break of dawn, and the appearance of light, this is one speaks to the mystery of disappearance – the idea of W.H. Auden that praying is attentiveness to each moment, and what the other has to say.
Unlike Aubade -- the song to the dawn or regret of lover's parting,
here, the atmosphere is beautifully rendered. The fox... the specificity of place, the perfect placements of line breaks, which flow, pause, breathless and breathing ... capturing a moment which asks, what of this rich "now" is not prayer?
Aubade : image of the trees branches against the sky --, and digging deep into the earth with their roots -- the music of something growing... note by note, a bridge to all other songs,
and all the other trees that greet the dawn, raise their arms and voices to the sky and keep
singing "even when they failed to reach it".
Mystical and deep. Stem cell... another trigger from a painting, this time 14th century creation of Eve -- quite unlike other paintings -- with Eve arising from Adam's hip -- this slow birth... scientific names for bones, catfish spawning, and how in the beginning "chaos and fury shaped our love-- but out of that shape/something more: the voice of od, / or the simple sound of wind/among turning leaves."
Not just fig leaves. turning leaves. This sense of aliveness.
The Sleep of Pears --
what will purge us of lament... of grief...
Judith mentioned it reminded her of ee cummings
when god lets my body be
when god lets my body be
From each brave eye shall sprout a tree fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea
How the poem moves from low, and moves to high;
how spare the detail of loss, mentioned casually, alongside the dark of an evening.
How without fail, days repeat, seasons repeat. How the marks of grief are as much part of life, indeed, like the fog where it is heaviest, marks the hardest, on the flowers that grow the fullest.
April Poem : the delight of Japanese Haiku artists, and an almost Haiku sense, yet not,
in the regulated couplets. Again, the sky, vs. the earth, the Fresh wind and petals blown to the fresh horse dung.
Ananias. Salt -- visible sign; from the bowels of the earth;
prayer -- how a hen has no hands, but wings...
and symbols of transformation : snake moulting -- from blindness to the light -- he is touched and the scales (weighing pros and cons? justifications? beliefs? or simply the shell which like petals fall to dust.
Evensong:
Although many of his poems are celebrating the break of dawn, and the appearance of light, this is one speaks to the mystery of disappearance – the idea of W.H. Auden that praying is attentiveness to each moment, and what the other has to say.
Unlike Aubade -- the song to the dawn or regret of lover's parting,
here, the atmosphere is beautifully rendered. The fox... the specificity of place, the perfect placements of line breaks, which flow, pause, breathless and breathing ... capturing a moment which asks, what of this rich "now" is not prayer?
Aubade : image of the trees branches against the sky --, and digging deep into the earth with their roots -- the music of something growing... note by note, a bridge to all other songs,
and all the other trees that greet the dawn, raise their arms and voices to the sky and keep
singing "even when they failed to reach it".
Mystical and deep. Stem cell... another trigger from a painting, this time 14th century creation of Eve -- quite unlike other paintings -- with Eve arising from Adam's hip -- this slow birth... scientific names for bones, catfish spawning, and how in the beginning "chaos and fury shaped our love-- but out of that shape/something more: the voice of od, / or the simple sound of wind/among turning leaves."
Not just fig leaves. turning leaves. This sense of aliveness.
The Sleep of Pears --
what will purge us of lament... of grief...
Judith mentioned it reminded her of ee cummings
when god lets my body be
when god lets my body be
From each brave eye shall sprout a tree fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea
CK Williams -- discussions
Two poems, both called "Light" -- one in his new book, one in his collected:
The first one, he observes himself:
"Always in the dream I seemed conscious of myself having the dream even as I dreamed it."
and knowing that nightmare is part of dream's definition -- and a stream of consciousness flood of questions and ruminations. Good ones to ask.
-- what causes the dream -- and what are the repercussions of being aware, involved, caught in all the aspects of dream and nightmare?
The real nightmare is having no power over the consciousness...
Sometimes, when I arrive in dream here, when I arrive nearly overwhelmed with uncertainly here,
I feel a compulsion to renounce what so confounds me, to abdicate, surrender, but to what?
I don’t even know if my despair might not be another deception the devious dream is proposing.
This is negative capability applied to dreams. Shades of the imagination.
the second one, which starts with a moment just after a rainstorm which makes him think of Dante the Blissful Blessed, and then a recollection of being in a cave of bats. The threads work well, especially with Dante interjected : Imagine, you are dead, and when you see a "shade" you do not say, hello So and So,
but hello, "the life of So and So" -- and that life is so thoroughly over. The bat doesn't know about this. You can know it for him.
Light -- enlightened; light vs. dark; light vs. heavy; light -- with the Blessed or with the weight only of ghost, vs. the heavy earthdrawn life. Magical poem.
We also read Wait... see my notes under "Thanksgiving" although Wait is filled with violent images about time and her ravages. Kathy reminded of Kunitz and the long boat -- as if I didn't want to stay forever...
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful poems. So much more on the surface than meets the eye.
To read and enjoy, discuss, read, enjoy, discuss.
Read aloud others.
Wood :
The girl I didn't love, then because she was going to leave me, loved...
what an opening line -- and then from wood to steel --
how easily we personalize, project,
and years later, revisiting a memory from so long ago, bring our retroactive experience to the retelling of the story. He brings us back to the Now.
The first one, he observes himself:
"Always in the dream I seemed conscious of myself having the dream even as I dreamed it."
and knowing that nightmare is part of dream's definition -- and a stream of consciousness flood of questions and ruminations. Good ones to ask.
-- what causes the dream -- and what are the repercussions of being aware, involved, caught in all the aspects of dream and nightmare?
The real nightmare is having no power over the consciousness...
Sometimes, when I arrive in dream here, when I arrive nearly overwhelmed with uncertainly here,
I feel a compulsion to renounce what so confounds me, to abdicate, surrender, but to what?
I don’t even know if my despair might not be another deception the devious dream is proposing.
This is negative capability applied to dreams. Shades of the imagination.
the second one, which starts with a moment just after a rainstorm which makes him think of Dante the Blissful Blessed, and then a recollection of being in a cave of bats. The threads work well, especially with Dante interjected : Imagine, you are dead, and when you see a "shade" you do not say, hello So and So,
but hello, "the life of So and So" -- and that life is so thoroughly over. The bat doesn't know about this. You can know it for him.
Light -- enlightened; light vs. dark; light vs. heavy; light -- with the Blessed or with the weight only of ghost, vs. the heavy earthdrawn life. Magical poem.
We also read Wait... see my notes under "Thanksgiving" although Wait is filled with violent images about time and her ravages. Kathy reminded of Kunitz and the long boat -- as if I didn't want to stay forever...
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful poems. So much more on the surface than meets the eye.
To read and enjoy, discuss, read, enjoy, discuss.
Read aloud others.
Wood :
The girl I didn't love, then because she was going to leave me, loved...
what an opening line -- and then from wood to steel --
how easily we personalize, project,
and years later, revisiting a memory from so long ago, bring our retroactive experience to the retelling of the story. He brings us back to the Now.
C.K. Williams -- reading 11/17: notes to myself
CK Williams:
Not everyone can live in Rochester, NY, and have CK Williams come and read to the "gestational poets" of SUNY Brockport along with enthusiasts in the poetry community...
You can access his reading of the following at this site: http://bigthink.com/ckwilliams
Rats– click on “global warming”
He says this is isn’t one of his best poems, the comments
before the poem are interesting.
The Singing – click on “my favorite poems”
Check here: CK Williams’ response to Beethoven : Allegretto – symphony No. 7.
His poem is called : “Two Movements to an Allegretto” as part of National Poetry Month’s program Notes to Verse: II
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=1780
you hear the ENTIRE, (beautiful, but very slow) Beethoven 2nd movement of the 7th symphony, followed by comments.
The theme Williams was working on was “silence” , before he received the assignment, and coincidence, this music was written by Beethoven when he was completely deaf.
After the poem, there is some discussion.
**
I thoroughly enjoyed all the poems he read from "Wait" :
The Coffin Store (p. 90)
Apes (p. 85)
Lies (p. 79)
Back (p. 58) (a little sex poem, he said!)
Light (p. 47)
Wood (p. 41)
Prisoners (p. 30)
my favorite : The Gaffe (p. 3)
and many more such as "Dirt".
The Foundation.
A poem for myself for my birthday
(Happy Birthday to you -- but this is me, singing to me! -- which brings him to think of visualizing his death, or you singing happy birthday to me on my 200th birthday... when this already tottering planet may well be on its way out...)
This is new, as is "Whacked" --
when a master will tell you , guide you so that you are not wasting time..."
Pithy, deep, witty.
Summary of Camus' myth of Sisyphus: why you shouldn't kill yourself.
vs. Marvin Bell: last line: Imagine Sisyphus happy.
**
Poetry and music share repetition.
Not everyone can live in Rochester, NY, and have CK Williams come and read to the "gestational poets" of SUNY Brockport along with enthusiasts in the poetry community...
You can access his reading of the following at this site: http://bigthink.com/ckwilliams
Rats– click on “global warming”
He says this is isn’t one of his best poems, the comments
before the poem are interesting.
The Singing – click on “my favorite poems”
Check here: CK Williams’ response to Beethoven : Allegretto – symphony No. 7.
His poem is called : “Two Movements to an Allegretto” as part of National Poetry Month’s program Notes to Verse: II
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=1780
you hear the ENTIRE, (beautiful, but very slow) Beethoven 2nd movement of the 7th symphony, followed by comments.
The theme Williams was working on was “silence” , before he received the assignment, and coincidence, this music was written by Beethoven when he was completely deaf.
After the poem, there is some discussion.
**
I thoroughly enjoyed all the poems he read from "Wait" :
The Coffin Store (p. 90)
Apes (p. 85)
Lies (p. 79)
Back (p. 58) (a little sex poem, he said!)
Light (p. 47)
Wood (p. 41)
Prisoners (p. 30)
my favorite : The Gaffe (p. 3)
and many more such as "Dirt".
The Foundation.
A poem for myself for my birthday
(Happy Birthday to you -- but this is me, singing to me! -- which brings him to think of visualizing his death, or you singing happy birthday to me on my 200th birthday... when this already tottering planet may well be on its way out...)
This is new, as is "Whacked" --
when a master will tell you , guide you so that you are not wasting time..."
Pithy, deep, witty.
Summary of Camus' myth of Sisyphus: why you shouldn't kill yourself.
vs. Marvin Bell: last line: Imagine Sisyphus happy.
**
Poetry and music share repetition.
From smile to mouse to smile: thinking bilingually
Hearing the Mouse in Smile – a few notes on Bilingual Thinking followed by a poem
Where we place a word, what we keep of the syntax which couches it in a phrase, is part of a poet’s work. I enjoy testing a poem by playing with line breaks, associations, with “best word in the best place” or order, as Coleridge and Dobyns would say.
Finding inspiration by thinking of homonyms and their translation can be quite beneficial, especially when the word is flexible to act as a noun and a verb.
In French, tu souris is “you smile”, from the verb sourire, which has a sous-entendu of “under a laugh”. Rather like Voltaire’s invitation to come to the Château Sans Souci (without worries), spelled this way:
ci
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
sans
If you eliminate the subject tu, souris becomes a command, “smile!”.
However, la souris means mouse. So it could be that you have dropped the article (la) to the noun, in order to address the mouse, as in souris, souris! Mouse, mouse! And of course the context and intonation will help you tell the difference.
As linguist, my mind is constantly playing this way, and often provides a source of triggers which I find amusing. Maybe you will too. Here’s an example.
Sous la Souris – souris: Under the mouse – smile.
What lies under a laugh?
A small mouse
some days, tight-lipped,
without a hint of a tooth,
the scurrying kind of mouse,
content to stop, burrow
in the bocal safety
battened shut
And look
his slightly larger sibling
curving at the mouth corners
considering a shimmy
down into a chuckle
but is not sure it is the time or place.
Other days, something makes it spread
from ear to ear, as if to ignite a lamp
in each eye.
As for the sleeping mouse,
smile draped light as angel kite,
when he wakes up, he’ll turn its rope
asking every cell to jump to it.
And "Version II"
Slippery
What lies under a laugh?
A small French mouse some days
tight-lipped, without a hint of a tooth,
a scurrying kind of mouse,
content to stop, burrow
in bocal safety battened shut
And look
his slightly larger sibling,
curving at the mouth corners
considering a shimmy
down into a chuckle,
considering a full-grown rire.
Somedays this under-laugh
spreads from ear to ear, as if to ignite
a lamp in each eye.
Other days, it sleeps,
smile draped light as angel kite,
but when he wakes up, he’ll turn its rope
asking every cell to jump to it.
Sad jumpropes to happy
English mouse to French souris
happy hopscotches to pensive
and a French command: smile
with plenty of sous-entendu
How do you translate mouse,
or what lies in a smile?
Where we place a word, what we keep of the syntax which couches it in a phrase, is part of a poet’s work. I enjoy testing a poem by playing with line breaks, associations, with “best word in the best place” or order, as Coleridge and Dobyns would say.
Finding inspiration by thinking of homonyms and their translation can be quite beneficial, especially when the word is flexible to act as a noun and a verb.
In French, tu souris is “you smile”, from the verb sourire, which has a sous-entendu of “under a laugh”. Rather like Voltaire’s invitation to come to the Château Sans Souci (without worries), spelled this way:
ci
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
sans
If you eliminate the subject tu, souris becomes a command, “smile!”.
However, la souris means mouse. So it could be that you have dropped the article (la) to the noun, in order to address the mouse, as in souris, souris! Mouse, mouse! And of course the context and intonation will help you tell the difference.
As linguist, my mind is constantly playing this way, and often provides a source of triggers which I find amusing. Maybe you will too. Here’s an example.
Sous la Souris – souris: Under the mouse – smile.
What lies under a laugh?
A small mouse
some days, tight-lipped,
without a hint of a tooth,
the scurrying kind of mouse,
content to stop, burrow
in the bocal safety
battened shut
And look
his slightly larger sibling
curving at the mouth corners
considering a shimmy
down into a chuckle
but is not sure it is the time or place.
Other days, something makes it spread
from ear to ear, as if to ignite a lamp
in each eye.
As for the sleeping mouse,
smile draped light as angel kite,
when he wakes up, he’ll turn its rope
asking every cell to jump to it.
And "Version II"
Slippery
What lies under a laugh?
A small French mouse some days
tight-lipped, without a hint of a tooth,
a scurrying kind of mouse,
content to stop, burrow
in bocal safety battened shut
And look
his slightly larger sibling,
curving at the mouth corners
considering a shimmy
down into a chuckle,
considering a full-grown rire.
Somedays this under-laugh
spreads from ear to ear, as if to ignite
a lamp in each eye.
Other days, it sleeps,
smile draped light as angel kite,
but when he wakes up, he’ll turn its rope
asking every cell to jump to it.
Sad jumpropes to happy
English mouse to French souris
happy hopscotches to pensive
and a French command: smile
with plenty of sous-entendu
How do you translate mouse,
or what lies in a smile?
Thanksgiving day --
It seems fitting on Thanksgiving to post a comment on CK Williams "Wait" -- how he deftly expresses how time works on us, how we work on it, how finally the question
is not caught in the hurry of "wait", nor really the anticipation, but the
gratitude for yet another day as it is.
Note how he uses the repetition: chop / chopped/ chopping
Slash/slahed/slashing in 1, 2, and 4th stanza.
The sounds are onomatopoetic — harsh, then sibilant (slowly, slowly... Otherwise) the tremulous “f’s” in the 3rd stanza — fleeing from / for/ frightened, fray/
The violence of the cleaver, ax, clumsiest clod of a butcher – how time works on us and we in turn, chop, slash through time. The recognition of needing a better way to deal with time. But what would that be. Wait! I have an idea. Hang on! Let me explain…
and the poem ends on the delight of having yet one more day.
This strange sense of being, and there is time... and the relationship we have with it... That seems like the relationship w/ life. And we, the speech creatures are caught up perhaps in the anticipation of “I can’t wait” ... And then, we’re caught in the moment and don’t have any footing with time — wait, we cry out. Time starts with a T. Wait ends with it.
As we approach the holidays, it is a good time to think about what we are waiting for” – and what it is we are saying what we say to each other “wait”.
**
A good day to reflect on thanksgiving: see facebook page with pictures.
"The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order." -- Henry Miller
Tira beagle is off to the far left, in the tall grasses.
"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are." -- John Burroughs
Walking our dog in Mendon Ponds park, Nick and Tif stop to enjoy scuffling in the leaves.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." -- Dalai Lama
"You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket.
... to have "running" water, you must let go of it and let it "run". " Alan Watts
The small leaf to the mid-right is ready to join a bush not in the picture, which had 5 little red-orange butterfly-like leaves calling to it.
"Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf" -- Native American Indian proverb
The idea of Tira being the camera-dog was abandoned in favor of a quiet moment, grateful for each other.
is not caught in the hurry of "wait", nor really the anticipation, but the
gratitude for yet another day as it is.
Note how he uses the repetition: chop / chopped/ chopping
Slash/slahed/slashing in 1, 2, and 4th stanza.
The sounds are onomatopoetic — harsh, then sibilant (slowly, slowly... Otherwise) the tremulous “f’s” in the 3rd stanza — fleeing from / for/ frightened, fray/
The violence of the cleaver, ax, clumsiest clod of a butcher – how time works on us and we in turn, chop, slash through time. The recognition of needing a better way to deal with time. But what would that be. Wait! I have an idea. Hang on! Let me explain…
and the poem ends on the delight of having yet one more day.
This strange sense of being, and there is time... and the relationship we have with it... That seems like the relationship w/ life. And we, the speech creatures are caught up perhaps in the anticipation of “I can’t wait” ... And then, we’re caught in the moment and don’t have any footing with time — wait, we cry out. Time starts with a T. Wait ends with it.
As we approach the holidays, it is a good time to think about what we are waiting for” – and what it is we are saying what we say to each other “wait”.
**
A good day to reflect on thanksgiving: see facebook page with pictures.
"The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order." -- Henry Miller
Tira beagle is off to the far left, in the tall grasses.
"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are." -- John Burroughs
Walking our dog in Mendon Ponds park, Nick and Tif stop to enjoy scuffling in the leaves.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." -- Dalai Lama
"You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket.
... to have "running" water, you must let go of it and let it "run". " Alan Watts
The small leaf to the mid-right is ready to join a bush not in the picture, which had 5 little red-orange butterfly-like leaves calling to it.
"Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf" -- Native American Indian proverb
The idea of Tira being the camera-dog was abandoned in favor of a quiet moment, grateful for each other.
Friday, October 22, 2010
O Pen -- October 4 -- 3 brains...
Poems for October 4
Trying to finish up the September batch!
My favorite : 4 poems from from Turkish Pears In August, by Robert Bly (published in 2007)
THE WATCHER OF VOWELS [Ramage #9]
Sound, music leads us to an energy that goes to what Bly refers to "the third, new brain".
Not the reptilian brain, (survival) and beyond the mammal brain (emotion). In Charles Fair's book "The Dying Self", he sugests that what Freud meant by the "Id" was the reptile and mammal brain, and what the ancient Indian philosophers meant by the "self" was the new brain.
What feeds this new brain is wild, spiritual ideas. Often the Reptilian and Mammalian brains don't understand it... but it is here, that mystery is perceived. Interesting that Bly said you cannot leap from the reptilian brain to the "new brain". Experience beyond an "I".
Brought in a new book called “A spicing of Birds” which has Audubon drawings of birds matched with Dickinson’s poems.
Here is one, In light of our discussion of Bly’s “Ramages”.
The Bird her punctual music brings
And lays it in its place –
Its place is in the Human Heart
And in the Heanvenly Grace –
What respite from her thrilling toil
Did Beauty ever take –
But Work might be electric Rest
To those that Magic make.
-- Emily Dickinson
And a few Seamus Heaney lines from his book, Human Chains.
p. 42
If you know a bit/
About the universe
It’s because you’ve taken it in
Like that,
Looked as hard
As you look into yourself,
Into the rat hole,
Through the vetch and dock
That mantled it.
p. 58:
Or doubting the solid ground
Of the riverbank field, twilit and a-hover
With midge drifts, as if we had commingled
Among shades and shadows stirring on the brink
And stood there waiting, watching,
Needy and ever needier for translation.
**
**
Trying to finish up the September batch!
My favorite : 4 poems from from Turkish Pears In August, by Robert Bly (published in 2007)
THE WATCHER OF VOWELS [Ramage #9]
Sound, music leads us to an energy that goes to what Bly refers to "the third, new brain".
Not the reptilian brain, (survival) and beyond the mammal brain (emotion). In Charles Fair's book "The Dying Self", he sugests that what Freud meant by the "Id" was the reptile and mammal brain, and what the ancient Indian philosophers meant by the "self" was the new brain.
What feeds this new brain is wild, spiritual ideas. Often the Reptilian and Mammalian brains don't understand it... but it is here, that mystery is perceived. Interesting that Bly said you cannot leap from the reptilian brain to the "new brain". Experience beyond an "I".
Brought in a new book called “A spicing of Birds” which has Audubon drawings of birds matched with Dickinson’s poems.
Here is one, In light of our discussion of Bly’s “Ramages”.
The Bird her punctual music brings
And lays it in its place –
Its place is in the Human Heart
And in the Heanvenly Grace –
What respite from her thrilling toil
Did Beauty ever take –
But Work might be electric Rest
To those that Magic make.
-- Emily Dickinson
And a few Seamus Heaney lines from his book, Human Chains.
p. 42
If you know a bit/
About the universe
It’s because you’ve taken it in
Like that,
Looked as hard
As you look into yourself,
Into the rat hole,
Through the vetch and dock
That mantled it.
p. 58:
Or doubting the solid ground
Of the riverbank field, twilit and a-hover
With midge drifts, as if we had commingled
Among shades and shadows stirring on the brink
And stood there waiting, watching,
Needy and ever needier for translation.
**
**
various... a few reflections on poetry in mid-October
What's poetry about?
Kim Addonizio's poem about Book Burning... which shifts into the first person POV, leaving me (one reader) behind. How different from Dorianne's poem about the Beatles...why they broke up, using titles of their songs... Or the Kooser selection about the Woman putting her crying baby to sleep. How the baby does the crying, and she doesn't yet with so much to cry about.
And so I wrote a poem about "putting America to sleep".
What is it we "tuck in" our days, our dreams, our lives?
And then there's the bop poem...
and the object poem :
Objects: Those things in the backgrounds of our pictures, cluttering our bookshelves and stuffed in drawers. We’re collecting their stories here—to celebrate and remember the strange intimacies of life with ordinary objects. Tell us a good story and we’ll make sure everyone else enjoys it too.
Read the guidelines and email submissions to lifewithobjects@gmail.com.
And the brilliant first chapter of "Little Bee": Chris Cleave
Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl.
everyone pleased to see me coming
if spent, not longed for.
can go wherever it thinks afest
disguise as power/property’
has tricks
and a sound poem...
Wind
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the winter stark,
Oh the level dark,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the mystery
Of the blasted tree
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the owlet's croon
To the haggard moon,
To the waning moon,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the fleshless stare,
Oh the windy hair,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the cold sigh,
Oh the hollow cry,
The lean and hollow cry,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the white sight,
Oh the shuddering night,
The shivering shuddering night,
On the wold, the wold, the wold
**
All good triggers for poems...
Kim Addonizio's poem about Book Burning... which shifts into the first person POV, leaving me (one reader) behind. How different from Dorianne's poem about the Beatles...why they broke up, using titles of their songs... Or the Kooser selection about the Woman putting her crying baby to sleep. How the baby does the crying, and she doesn't yet with so much to cry about.
And so I wrote a poem about "putting America to sleep".
What is it we "tuck in" our days, our dreams, our lives?
And then there's the bop poem...
and the object poem :
Objects: Those things in the backgrounds of our pictures, cluttering our bookshelves and stuffed in drawers. We’re collecting their stories here—to celebrate and remember the strange intimacies of life with ordinary objects. Tell us a good story and we’ll make sure everyone else enjoys it too.
Read the guidelines and email submissions to lifewithobjects@gmail.com.
And the brilliant first chapter of "Little Bee": Chris Cleave
Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl.
everyone pleased to see me coming
if spent, not longed for.
can go wherever it thinks afest
disguise as power/property’
has tricks
and a sound poem...
Wind
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the winter stark,
Oh the level dark,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the mystery
Of the blasted tree
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the owlet's croon
To the haggard moon,
To the waning moon,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the fleshless stare,
Oh the windy hair,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the cold sigh,
Oh the hollow cry,
The lean and hollow cry,
On the wold, the wold, the wold!
Oh the wold, the wold,
Oh the wold, the wold!
Oh the white sight,
Oh the shuddering night,
The shivering shuddering night,
On the wold, the wold, the wold
**
All good triggers for poems...
O pen -- October 18
Prose vs. Poetry:
What is the difference between a prose poem, a narrative poem, and a story which uses good language? What if writing were only collections of words that sting?
What hooks us in?
Here is the link (apologies -- fuzzy here) of Alan Ginsberg at RIT reading from “Howl”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm3QodfkUKw&feature=related
Are there works like “hydrogen jukebox” in the poems and sentences below?
Merlin Enthralled by Richard Wilbur
OCTOBER 4, 2010
Hell, by Zbigniew Herbert
(discussed with Christopher Kennedy 10/9 at his workshop. Two paragraphs; an ordering of Hell. One wonders about the nature of life as joke.)
Antonina’s Education (runner-up for Cranston prize awarded by Calyx.
http://www.calyxpress.org/Cranstonprize.htmlprize -- for winning poems and other runners’ up.
(stanzas: part 1 of 6 lines; part 2: 3 lines; (initiation -- as girl, changing language/country) part 3: couplets. The juxtaposition of the German guard who shares his sandwich. Her surprise when she expresses sympathy to him on the loss of his son.)
Lines from Prose : (from Gary Lutz' talk 10/9)
Sam Lipsyte: Novelist – sentences that read like a string of epiphanies, glued with assonance, patterned repetitions, blends.
“Viola tones rose from a carved alcove.”
“So maybe I wanted all these memories, the sorrows and the hollows.”
“the blade bordered on sword.)
Christine Schutt:
“Mother had used overcooked bacon for a bookmark,
or a hair pin, stick of gum, sucker stick, twig –
whatever was at hand.
**
Two poems by Christopher Kennedy from "Encouragement for a Man Falling to his Death"
poems with a touch a strange, beautifully structured prose poems.
Speech Identification Procedure : beautiful crafting in 3 stanzas -- relationship -- of father to child, light, dark, absence, disappearance. How italicized "father" migrates to italicized last word, "bird".
The 3rd stanza:
A person can stand still for a long time moving about in the world.
My days are like this, a scarecrow in a field, trying to imagine "birds"
King Cobra Does the Mambo
Like Ashbery -- a view of chaos, with serpent power and clin d'oeil to Villon, Stevens' monocle.
Juxtaposition. Italics: "I love you,/but you never phone." non-italics: For this, our species waited centuries./ That's as far as I go today;
and the poem continues. Ends with a dream -- "I intuit the laughter/of trees. That, or a runaway train headed your way."
**
There's an irresistable humor, more pleasing than Herbert's "Hell";
Prose cannot be a simple kyrielle (string of Kyrie) of epiphanies. Nor poetry for that matter.
Well-constructed snapshots that capture more than the black and white.
What is the difference between a prose poem, a narrative poem, and a story which uses good language? What if writing were only collections of words that sting?
What hooks us in?
Here is the link (apologies -- fuzzy here) of Alan Ginsberg at RIT reading from “Howl”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm3QodfkUKw&feature=related
Are there works like “hydrogen jukebox” in the poems and sentences below?
Merlin Enthralled by Richard Wilbur
OCTOBER 4, 2010
Hell, by Zbigniew Herbert
(discussed with Christopher Kennedy 10/9 at his workshop. Two paragraphs; an ordering of Hell. One wonders about the nature of life as joke.)
Antonina’s Education (runner-up for Cranston prize awarded by Calyx.
http://www.calyxpress.org/Cranstonprize.htmlprize -- for winning poems and other runners’ up.
(stanzas: part 1 of 6 lines; part 2: 3 lines; (initiation -- as girl, changing language/country) part 3: couplets. The juxtaposition of the German guard who shares his sandwich. Her surprise when she expresses sympathy to him on the loss of his son.)
Lines from Prose : (from Gary Lutz' talk 10/9)
Sam Lipsyte: Novelist – sentences that read like a string of epiphanies, glued with assonance, patterned repetitions, blends.
“Viola tones rose from a carved alcove.”
“So maybe I wanted all these memories, the sorrows and the hollows.”
“the blade bordered on sword.)
Christine Schutt:
“Mother had used overcooked bacon for a bookmark,
or a hair pin, stick of gum, sucker stick, twig –
whatever was at hand.
**
Two poems by Christopher Kennedy from "Encouragement for a Man Falling to his Death"
poems with a touch a strange, beautifully structured prose poems.
Speech Identification Procedure : beautiful crafting in 3 stanzas -- relationship -- of father to child, light, dark, absence, disappearance. How italicized "father" migrates to italicized last word, "bird".
The 3rd stanza:
A person can stand still for a long time moving about in the world.
My days are like this, a scarecrow in a field, trying to imagine "birds"
King Cobra Does the Mambo
Like Ashbery -- a view of chaos, with serpent power and clin d'oeil to Villon, Stevens' monocle.
Juxtaposition. Italics: "I love you,/but you never phone." non-italics: For this, our species waited centuries./ That's as far as I go today;
and the poem continues. Ends with a dream -- "I intuit the laughter/of trees. That, or a runaway train headed your way."
**
There's an irresistable humor, more pleasing than Herbert's "Hell";
Prose cannot be a simple kyrielle (string of Kyrie) of epiphanies. Nor poetry for that matter.
Well-constructed snapshots that capture more than the black and white.
O Pen -- October 11 -- on the heels of Black Mountain Symposium
October 11 :
I love October. Perhaps a bit like Molly Peacock's opening statement in "Why I am not a Buddhist". I love the "state of want and thought // of how to get.
There is something "tattered" about the leaves falling, in all their crimson, golden, royal glory.
A reminder that nothing is permanent.
& is such a sign. Ampersand. Put a line between two backward "C's" )( -- and a Greek letter schoots (scoots and shhhhh's?) across the page. et per se. etc.
Man and his symbols and constantly changing language -- and how love moves through it -- whether in ee cummings, "love is a place..." or Molly's poem.
Yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds.
Ashbery : p 11 "A Worldly Country" --
Like a Photograph.
"It will be all over in a minute you said. We both
believe that, and the clock's ticking: Flame on, flame on.
McLuhan on photography: you lose the experience. What we are left with depends not on the clicked instant, but the attention we bring to each moment. And then Emily started to sing
"Our little house is a very fine house,
all made out of ticky-tacky..."
I shared the Patrick Graybill's "mime" of Richard Cory
and a poem by Robert Creeley (from Bly's little book "Leaping Poetry".
Kore: one of those Greek sculptures of a clothed woman, feet together...
and a double flute makes her move
"O love / where are you // leading // me now ?
This intriguing click in a poem which stays in one part of the psyche -- a poetry of "steady light" vs. leaping flashes. As if the poem is tethering down the mind to stop any chaos.
Ashbery's "A Worldly Country" is the opposite --
from insane clocks; scent, and end-rhymed lines which contain everything in real time, novel time -- "In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon".
But at night? Peace. How sleep offsets the great ungluing.
And just as waves are anchored to the bottom of the sea
we must reach the shallows before God cuts us free.
I love October. Perhaps a bit like Molly Peacock's opening statement in "Why I am not a Buddhist". I love the "state of want and thought // of how to get.
There is something "tattered" about the leaves falling, in all their crimson, golden, royal glory.
A reminder that nothing is permanent.
& is such a sign. Ampersand. Put a line between two backward "C's" )( -- and a Greek letter schoots (scoots and shhhhh's?) across the page. et per se. etc.
Man and his symbols and constantly changing language -- and how love moves through it -- whether in ee cummings, "love is a place..." or Molly's poem.
Yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds.
Ashbery : p 11 "A Worldly Country" --
Like a Photograph.
"It will be all over in a minute you said. We both
believe that, and the clock's ticking: Flame on, flame on.
McLuhan on photography: you lose the experience. What we are left with depends not on the clicked instant, but the attention we bring to each moment. And then Emily started to sing
"Our little house is a very fine house,
all made out of ticky-tacky..."
I shared the Patrick Graybill's "mime" of Richard Cory
and a poem by Robert Creeley (from Bly's little book "Leaping Poetry".
Kore: one of those Greek sculptures of a clothed woman, feet together...
and a double flute makes her move
"O love / where are you // leading // me now ?
This intriguing click in a poem which stays in one part of the psyche -- a poetry of "steady light" vs. leaping flashes. As if the poem is tethering down the mind to stop any chaos.
Ashbery's "A Worldly Country" is the opposite --
from insane clocks; scent, and end-rhymed lines which contain everything in real time, novel time -- "In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon".
But at night? Peace. How sleep offsets the great ungluing.
And just as waves are anchored to the bottom of the sea
we must reach the shallows before God cuts us free.
Poetry and Spirituality -- October
Poetry and Spirituality -- Month of October – YES !
(Optimism, acceptance, tolerance, permeability, commitment, saying “yes to life” when the path is uncertain. )
I love serendipity.
For instance, that I am choosing poems to discuss that have to do with the feeling of YES, and stumbling on a series of ee cummings poems – where if you type eYes, the “vision” of “yes” appears… Oh indeed -- “love is a place” (yes is a world):
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-is-a-place/
or for instance, that I send an ee cummings poem, i thank you God to my friend, and she tells me – oh that is the one I copied by hand on all my wedding invitations 35 years ago!
YES! carried in the coincidence that Writer’s Almanac posted 2 ee cummings’ poems in celebration of his birthday 10/14:
i carry your heart with me // and since feeling is first
since feeling is first
or for instance that the new poet laureate, W.S. Merwin will be giving a reading, and a Seattle contact sends a link to his translation of Lorca’s poem, “Cancion del naranjo seco” – Song of the Barren Orange Tree, which talks about the need to live without having the mirror of oneself interfere – which coincides perfectly with our discussion of poems which beckon to “Atman”, beckon to the larger spiritual connection we seek.
today (10/21):
Ode to The God of Atheists by Ellen Bass -- (not a question of earning a reward, being punished, outward manifestation of faith, etc. Oh give me a god a holy dirt.)
The Thing Is – by Ellen Bass – posted on WA, 10/16 and sent by the minister after I’d already chosen it! And it IS a ‘YES” – a look at the “obesity of grief” and the thing is, you take life, and you love it – even if you have no stomach for it.
Fifth Avenue in Early Spring – by Philip Schultz -- the sense of Spring, young lovers, the raw edge of coming into a new season, the joy simply to “bear witness”. How is it that “satisfactions are disturbing” is such a meaningful paradox – knowing our hunger can only be temporarily satiated.
Dreams – by Szymborska,(translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak) where in spite of accidents, the unplanned and certainly not because of orderly fact, “at times even a clear-cut meaning may slip through”
YES! carried in the coincidence that Writer’s Almanac posted 2 ee cummings’ poems in celebration of his birthday 10/14:
i carry your heart with me // and since feeling is first
since feeling is first
Other poems discussed 10/14:
Dawn – by Robert Bly (Ghazal; like a beautiful rosary of precious beads, linked by the final word)
Derry Derry Down -- by Seamus Heaney for the joyful sound of it, the bright innocence
Ted Kooser’s Selection : Nocturne by Michelle Y. Burke, who lives in N.Y., in which a man who does everything right doesn’t quite do everything right.
Call to Prayer, Abby Murray (the need for prayer for a man, his daughters, and even a Sheik who will abuse them)
My country, I will build you again by Simin Behbahani. She is the
most prolific female poet in Iran, a country in which poetry is the national
scripture.
Shoulders, Naomi Shihab Nye. What we carry, how we carry it; “We’re not going to be able/ to live in this world/if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing/with one another.
October 7 :
Amy Lowell : Patterns
and two more ee cummings:
most(people
simply
can’t)
won’t (most
parent pople mustn’t
shouldn’t)most daren’t
(sortofpeople well
youknow kindof)
aint
&
even
(not having
most ever lived
people always)don’t
die(becoming most buried unbecomingly
very
by
most)people.
**
Here’s another “YES”
yes,is a pleasant country
if’s wintry
(my lovely)
let’s open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april’s where we’re)
September 30: Theme of Growth :
Identification : Szymborska
Roots: Lucille Clifton
Poems from Rochester Art Drop: (see : http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com )
Wandering Eye: Jan Cedras
English Flavors: Laure-Anne Bosselaar
The Giving in : Marvin Bell
(Optimism, acceptance, tolerance, permeability, commitment, saying “yes to life” when the path is uncertain. )
I love serendipity.
For instance, that I am choosing poems to discuss that have to do with the feeling of YES, and stumbling on a series of ee cummings poems – where if you type eYes, the “vision” of “yes” appears… Oh indeed -- “love is a place” (yes is a world):
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-is-a-place/
or for instance, that I send an ee cummings poem, i thank you God to my friend, and she tells me – oh that is the one I copied by hand on all my wedding invitations 35 years ago!
YES! carried in the coincidence that Writer’s Almanac posted 2 ee cummings’ poems in celebration of his birthday 10/14:
i carry your heart with me // and since feeling is first
since feeling is first
or for instance that the new poet laureate, W.S. Merwin will be giving a reading, and a Seattle contact sends a link to his translation of Lorca’s poem, “Cancion del naranjo seco” – Song of the Barren Orange Tree, which talks about the need to live without having the mirror of oneself interfere – which coincides perfectly with our discussion of poems which beckon to “Atman”, beckon to the larger spiritual connection we seek.
today (10/21):
Ode to The God of Atheists by Ellen Bass -- (not a question of earning a reward, being punished, outward manifestation of faith, etc. Oh give me a god a holy dirt.)
The Thing Is – by Ellen Bass – posted on WA, 10/16 and sent by the minister after I’d already chosen it! And it IS a ‘YES” – a look at the “obesity of grief” and the thing is, you take life, and you love it – even if you have no stomach for it.
Fifth Avenue in Early Spring – by Philip Schultz -- the sense of Spring, young lovers, the raw edge of coming into a new season, the joy simply to “bear witness”. How is it that “satisfactions are disturbing” is such a meaningful paradox – knowing our hunger can only be temporarily satiated.
Dreams – by Szymborska,(translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak) where in spite of accidents, the unplanned and certainly not because of orderly fact, “at times even a clear-cut meaning may slip through”
YES! carried in the coincidence that Writer’s Almanac posted 2 ee cummings’ poems in celebration of his birthday 10/14:
i carry your heart with me // and since feeling is first
since feeling is first
Other poems discussed 10/14:
Dawn – by Robert Bly (Ghazal; like a beautiful rosary of precious beads, linked by the final word)
Derry Derry Down -- by Seamus Heaney for the joyful sound of it, the bright innocence
Ted Kooser’s Selection : Nocturne by Michelle Y. Burke, who lives in N.Y., in which a man who does everything right doesn’t quite do everything right.
Call to Prayer, Abby Murray (the need for prayer for a man, his daughters, and even a Sheik who will abuse them)
My country, I will build you again by Simin Behbahani. She is the
most prolific female poet in Iran, a country in which poetry is the national
scripture.
Shoulders, Naomi Shihab Nye. What we carry, how we carry it; “We’re not going to be able/ to live in this world/if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing/with one another.
October 7 :
Amy Lowell : Patterns
and two more ee cummings:
most(people
simply
can’t)
won’t (most
parent pople mustn’t
shouldn’t)most daren’t
(sortofpeople well
youknow kindof)
aint
&
even
(not having
most ever lived
people always)don’t
die(becoming most buried unbecomingly
very
by
most)people.
**
Here’s another “YES”
yes,is a pleasant country
if’s wintry
(my lovely)
let’s open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april’s where we’re)
September 30: Theme of Growth :
Identification : Szymborska
Roots: Lucille Clifton
Poems from Rochester Art Drop: (see : http://artdrop.democratandchronicle.com )
Wandering Eye: Jan Cedras
English Flavors: Laure-Anne Bosselaar
The Giving in : Marvin Bell
Thursday, September 2, 2010
borderlines' poem -- 9/2 with comment 10/21
Today I sent this for workshopping: (9/2) AFTERWARDS: (10/21) pared off the parentheses and unnecessary trimmings. Re-thought what direction the poem was headed. It makes me realize posting a poem on a blog is just that. A temporary casing for a thought. I mean, how many versions of a draft does anyone REALLY want to see?
Questioning Evidence
What happened to the snail?
(disappearance)
A slip of
a shell
in slim-skinned silence
in a stare of August heat;
(non-interference)
Crabgrass elbows its joints, sleekly
combs its purple-seeded valence,
does not comment on the abandoned ship.
(surveillance?)
Did anyone see the snail disembark?
(perseverance)
Not the milkweed,
closed within seed-podded vigilance,
nor the cow parsley fleetly
seeking a full-hipped, laced-bell chance
to chorus line circumstance
(incoherence)
A snail does not leave its shell –
and yet here is this litter of shells in the garden.
(disappearance)
It reminds me of the fading images of Cambodian faces
printed on leaves, hanging in the museum.
(non-interference)
nameless victims in mass graves
(surveillance)
we are reminded not to forget
(incoherence)
each year, new snails, new shells.
(perseverance)
new snails, shells.
9/2/2010
Questioning Evidence
What happened to the snail?
(disappearance)
A slip of
a shell
in slim-skinned silence
in a stare of August heat;
(non-interference)
Crabgrass elbows its joints, sleekly
combs its purple-seeded valence,
does not comment on the abandoned ship.
(surveillance?)
Did anyone see the snail disembark?
(perseverance)
Not the milkweed,
closed within seed-podded vigilance,
nor the cow parsley fleetly
seeking a full-hipped, laced-bell chance
to chorus line circumstance
(incoherence)
A snail does not leave its shell –
and yet here is this litter of shells in the garden.
(disappearance)
It reminds me of the fading images of Cambodian faces
printed on leaves, hanging in the museum.
(non-interference)
nameless victims in mass graves
(surveillance)
we are reminded not to forget
(incoherence)
each year, new snails, new shells.
(perseverance)
new snails, shells.
9/2/2010
Member Night at W&B -- August 11
Leah Ruekberg,(terrific story teller) and I decided we'd have fun performing poetry -- which I envisioned as a way of connecting audience participation and poetry performance.
Leah's selection:
Methodist Church, from New and Selected Works by Stephen Dunn
Two Trains , from What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland
Square Dancing With Sister Robert Claire from Halfway Decent Sinners by Michael Cleary
Healing the Mare, and Hotel Nights with My Mother, from Eva Mary by Linda McCarriston
We Are Transmitters, from Collected Works by D.H. Lawrence
You do Not Have to Be Good, and Trilliums, from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
I Thank You God, My sweet old etcetera, and Somewhere i have never traveled, by e.e. cummings
The Lanyard, from The Trouble With Poetry, by Billy Collins
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, from Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins
Some Kiss We Want by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
My selection:
Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Donne, Auden, WCW, (ekphrastic), Housman, Ferlinghetti, Dylan Thomas,
I liked this quote :
"I think one of my early motivations for writing was that other people's versions of experience didn't gel with my own. It was a gesture toward sanity to try to get the world right for myself. I've since learned that if you get it right for yourself, it often has resonance for others."
Stephen Dunn
I think that is one of my early motivations for performing.
So, we giggled through Romeo and Juliette "kissing scene" (I'll never forget how Dorianne Laux performed it)
cavorted through Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
-- skies of couple colour... whatever is fickle, stippled, freckled, plotted, pieced,
all those things alliteratively fresh as firecoal and finches wings
On Fools: more Shakespeare, and Donne's Triple Fool (remembering how Heather McHugh performed it) at which point I felt more fool than three, and not wise enough...
For both Auden and William Carlos Williams -- Bruughel paintings: WCW's fun of "La Kermesse" with "The Round... and Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts (Brussels) ah... those old masters, never wrong about suffering... and that ship, hurrying on to get to where it had to get, while a boy is falling up there in the corner, out of the sky...
Housman: 8 O'clock -- how to tell a story in 8 lines, like a riddle. I love how those quarters the steeple sprinkles down seem as fresh as first snow flakes. How quick the luck of the draw -- how the clock does the work. Makes you re-tell the story differently if you isolate
the second stanza:
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
Ferlinghetti : Constantly Risking Absurdity : I did as an acrobat on a tightrope.
Ended with Dylan Thomas, remembering my Welsh grandfather who would cite Fern Hill.
The music always wins.
Leah's selection:
Methodist Church, from New and Selected Works by Stephen Dunn
Two Trains , from What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland
Square Dancing With Sister Robert Claire from Halfway Decent Sinners by Michael Cleary
Healing the Mare, and Hotel Nights with My Mother, from Eva Mary by Linda McCarriston
We Are Transmitters, from Collected Works by D.H. Lawrence
You do Not Have to Be Good, and Trilliums, from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
I Thank You God, My sweet old etcetera, and Somewhere i have never traveled, by e.e. cummings
The Lanyard, from The Trouble With Poetry, by Billy Collins
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, from Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins
Some Kiss We Want by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
My selection:
Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Donne, Auden, WCW, (ekphrastic), Housman, Ferlinghetti, Dylan Thomas,
I liked this quote :
"I think one of my early motivations for writing was that other people's versions of experience didn't gel with my own. It was a gesture toward sanity to try to get the world right for myself. I've since learned that if you get it right for yourself, it often has resonance for others."
Stephen Dunn
I think that is one of my early motivations for performing.
So, we giggled through Romeo and Juliette "kissing scene" (I'll never forget how Dorianne Laux performed it)
cavorted through Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
-- skies of couple colour... whatever is fickle, stippled, freckled, plotted, pieced,
all those things alliteratively fresh as firecoal and finches wings
On Fools: more Shakespeare, and Donne's Triple Fool (remembering how Heather McHugh performed it) at which point I felt more fool than three, and not wise enough...
For both Auden and William Carlos Williams -- Bruughel paintings: WCW's fun of "La Kermesse" with "The Round... and Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts (Brussels) ah... those old masters, never wrong about suffering... and that ship, hurrying on to get to where it had to get, while a boy is falling up there in the corner, out of the sky...
Housman: 8 O'clock -- how to tell a story in 8 lines, like a riddle. I love how those quarters the steeple sprinkles down seem as fresh as first snow flakes. How quick the luck of the draw -- how the clock does the work. Makes you re-tell the story differently if you isolate
the second stanza:
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
Ferlinghetti : Constantly Risking Absurdity : I did as an acrobat on a tightrope.
Ended with Dylan Thomas, remembering my Welsh grandfather who would cite Fern Hill.
The music always wins.
Aug. 16 -- Toy Bone, Town of Hill
A few sentences can capture a whole world within interactions of two people...
Ted Kooser selection
Toy Bone : triggered by the find of a toy bone in the attic, a stanza (room) filled with memory, a snapshot of a lonely boy, the simplicity of loving a dog, ending on the pause for breath
Town of Hill -- music always wins... Hall's comments on this poem in his book Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird give insight to this thin-column of "dream water" anchored by a real story.
Ronnyy Someck: Algeria -- translated from his book of the same, in 2009. I found this on "phatitude" is a copyrighted by Phatitude. You will see 4 of his poems here:
http://phatitude.org/online/phatitude-online/poets-corner/
ALGERIA
If I had another daughter
I’d call her Algeria,
and you would doff your colonial hats to me
and call me “Abu Algeria.”
In the morning, when she opened her chocolate eyes
I would say: “Now Africa is waking up,”
and she would caress the blonde on her sister’s head
certain that she had rediscovered gold.
The grains on the seashore would be her sandbox
and in the footprints of the French who fled from there
she would hide the dates that dropped from the trees.
“Algeria,” I would clasp the railing of the balcony and call to her:
“Algeria, come home, and see how I’m painting the eastern wall
with the brush of the Sun.”
Ted Kooser picked this poem introducing it this way:
Anton Chekhov, the master of the short story, was able to see whole worlds within the interactions of simple Russian peasants, and in this little poem by Leo Dangel, who grew up in rural South Dakota, something similar happens.
One September Afternoon
Home from town
the two of them sit
looking over what they have bought
spread out on the kitchen table
like gifts to themselves.
She holds a card of buttons
against the new dress material
and asks if they match.
The hay is dry enough to rake,
but he watches her
empty the grocery bag.
He reads the label
on a grape jelly glass
and tries on
the new straw hat again
Ted Kooser selection
Toy Bone : triggered by the find of a toy bone in the attic, a stanza (room) filled with memory, a snapshot of a lonely boy, the simplicity of loving a dog, ending on the pause for breath
Town of Hill -- music always wins... Hall's comments on this poem in his book Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird give insight to this thin-column of "dream water" anchored by a real story.
Ronnyy Someck: Algeria -- translated from his book of the same, in 2009. I found this on "phatitude" is a copyrighted by Phatitude. You will see 4 of his poems here:
http://phatitude.org/online/phatitude-online/poets-corner/
ALGERIA
If I had another daughter
I’d call her Algeria,
and you would doff your colonial hats to me
and call me “Abu Algeria.”
In the morning, when she opened her chocolate eyes
I would say: “Now Africa is waking up,”
and she would caress the blonde on her sister’s head
certain that she had rediscovered gold.
The grains on the seashore would be her sandbox
and in the footprints of the French who fled from there
she would hide the dates that dropped from the trees.
“Algeria,” I would clasp the railing of the balcony and call to her:
“Algeria, come home, and see how I’m painting the eastern wall
with the brush of the Sun.”
Ted Kooser picked this poem introducing it this way:
Anton Chekhov, the master of the short story, was able to see whole worlds within the interactions of simple Russian peasants, and in this little poem by Leo Dangel, who grew up in rural South Dakota, something similar happens.
One September Afternoon
Home from town
the two of them sit
looking over what they have bought
spread out on the kitchen table
like gifts to themselves.
She holds a card of buttons
against the new dress material
and asks if they match.
The hay is dry enough to rake,
but he watches her
empty the grocery bag.
He reads the label
on a grape jelly glass
and tries on
the new straw hat again
August Clean-up --
Goatfoot, Milktongue and Twinbird
Who can resist reading this title outloud, and start hunting for the "dark mouth of the vowel by which the image tells its sensual rhyme" ! We applied Donald Hall's concepts to the August picks for "O Pen". I particularly love his definition of a poem as "one man's insides speaking to another man's insides".
August 2: poems that resonate:
Naomi Shihab Nye: Shoulders
Are we willing to do what this man is doing? Are we willing to see him in the way Naomi does?
Have you listened for the hum of dreams deep inside someone else?
Mary Oliver : When Death Comes
how the name of each flower is a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.
Have you felt married to amazement?
Can you imagine measuring amazement???????
"I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."
Li-Young Lee : One Heart
"the work of wings/was always freedom, fastening one heart to every falling thing."
What will be the walker's lasting memory about the Art of the world?
**
Robert Hass: "Mexico" from Counting Thunder.
magical realism?
here and now in tongue-in-cheekish.
What do we know really of the speakers insides?
his posturing in a poem about Mexico, that really, he's being pursued by... hmmm. is it the lovely senorita in his dream, the posse, the wife...or the mirage... or that he is starving and running, and lives by his wits, gets side-tracked by mirages, white adobe with a red-tiled roof, where one will rest, drink some tequila,and dream of that lovely senorita.. but, enough of that.
Somehow, we're right on that faithful, unfaltering horse right with him, riding the poem.
**
See APR and all of Dorianne's poems. Timing is amazing!
cf. with Composed upon Westminster Bridge -- Wordsworth... poetry is not argument (as it was for Pope and George Herbert and Anne Bradstreet -- but mood, a way of feeling that distills experience.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: 1911...
Departure. and electronic poem from Linebreak 6/22/2010, "Naming Goodbye." by Stephanie Rogers.
form... craft. and fragments, negations. Trying to get the words to work. But do they?
Rae Armantrout: Scumble...
HAITE: Here's An Idea. The End.
vs. The Sweet Arab, the Generous Arab, Naomi Shihab Nye.
I go back to Kunitz, as if rolling on leaves.
"Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
**
Keeping on, keeping on.
Who can resist reading this title outloud, and start hunting for the "dark mouth of the vowel by which the image tells its sensual rhyme" ! We applied Donald Hall's concepts to the August picks for "O Pen". I particularly love his definition of a poem as "one man's insides speaking to another man's insides".
August 2: poems that resonate:
Naomi Shihab Nye: Shoulders
Are we willing to do what this man is doing? Are we willing to see him in the way Naomi does?
Have you listened for the hum of dreams deep inside someone else?
Mary Oliver : When Death Comes
how the name of each flower is a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.
Have you felt married to amazement?
Can you imagine measuring amazement???????
"I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."
Li-Young Lee : One Heart
"the work of wings/was always freedom, fastening one heart to every falling thing."
What will be the walker's lasting memory about the Art of the world?
**
Robert Hass: "Mexico" from Counting Thunder.
magical realism?
here and now in tongue-in-cheekish.
What do we know really of the speakers insides?
his posturing in a poem about Mexico, that really, he's being pursued by... hmmm. is it the lovely senorita in his dream, the posse, the wife...or the mirage... or that he is starving and running, and lives by his wits, gets side-tracked by mirages, white adobe with a red-tiled roof, where one will rest, drink some tequila,and dream of that lovely senorita.. but, enough of that.
Somehow, we're right on that faithful, unfaltering horse right with him, riding the poem.
**
See APR and all of Dorianne's poems. Timing is amazing!
cf. with Composed upon Westminster Bridge -- Wordsworth... poetry is not argument (as it was for Pope and George Herbert and Anne Bradstreet -- but mood, a way of feeling that distills experience.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: 1911...
Departure. and electronic poem from Linebreak 6/22/2010, "Naming Goodbye." by Stephanie Rogers.
form... craft. and fragments, negations. Trying to get the words to work. But do they?
Rae Armantrout: Scumble...
HAITE: Here's An Idea. The End.
vs. The Sweet Arab, the Generous Arab, Naomi Shihab Nye.
I go back to Kunitz, as if rolling on leaves.
"Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
**
Keeping on, keeping on.
Exercise: translating Robert Bly's Slim Fir Seed.
THE SLIM FIR-SEEDS [Ramage #23]
The nimble oven bird, the dignity of pears,
The simplicity of oars, the imperishable
Engines inside slim fir-seeds, all of these
Hint how much we long for the impermanent
To be permanent. We want the hermit wren
To keep her eggs even during the storm;
We want eternal oceans. But we are perishable;
Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.
BABELFISH:
Le FIR-SEEDS MINCE [Ramage #23] L'oiseau agile de four, la dignité des poires, la simplicité des avirons, l'impérissable/ Moteurs à l'intérieur des sapin-graines minces, toute la ces derniers conseil combien nous longtemps pour que l'impermanent soit permanent. Nous voulons le roitelet d'hermite Pour conserver ses oeufs même pendant l'orage ; Nous voulons les océans éternels. Mais nous sommes périssables ; Des amis, nous sommes des royaumes salés et impermanents.
YIKES! a nimble oven! graines de sapin sounding like sapeurs-pompiers, some incomprehensible interior syntax before the wish that impermanent be made permanent No sense of hint. I lik the choice of "roitelet" , but I'm not sure "little king" gives the same sense as "hermit thrush" nor the subjunctive relationship where we wish that the mother thrust keep her eggs,
Mes amis... not just some friends.
** Getting Started.
Listen to the three “s” in the title. How slim slides the short /i/ to the lips;
how seeds starts with a the soft sibilance of /s/ and ends with the buzzing/z/ of the plural.
The whir (of engine) of the R in fir connects by a hyphen to the broad double e which rhymes with heed, deed, reed – all of which pertain to living – take heed, the end is death; be flexible as the reed as you do your work.
call and response : /i/ to ir
from the “ih” of nimble and dignity, simplicity, slim, hint, hermit, perishable
pinned under the “er” of bird, fir, impermanent (twice) , permanent (once) (hermit) eternal
ee: eternal; seeds,
or: oars, storm
If you don’t know oven birds or hermit wrens, you will need to look them up, admire their olive and brown colors which camouflage them, and listen to their songs.
How “nimble” can jump in a lively way, whereas the hermit wren is tied in its sound, perhaps like the egg-like /o/ tied inside the word storm.
You will come to appreciate how in English, the verb “hint” holds the preposition “in”
like a secret, how “hermit” seems to make allusion to hermeunetics as if to make interpretations of the hermit wren protecting her eggs.
Working Title:
Les graines fluettes de pins
I chose “fluettes” although slim is both “pauvre” as in slim pickings, “peu probable” as in slim chance as well as physically “mince” svelte and slender. Fluette accents the shape and grace, with a breath of transitory youth.
Fir, in my mind is a general, green-boughed evergreen, whereas “pin” is a general pine, and I think of “pommes de pin” or pine cones. Seed, in general is “graines”
How cumbersome to say:
les graines de pommes de pins fluettes et transitoires
First line:
Nimble, one can call agile – but we have “associations with Jack and a candlestick, a lightness, a playfulness – not so much deft or that leger-de-main but something about jumping, not grace. what associations would a French person have with “agile”? How would a French person feel about the “m”, the rolling of the lips to make a “b”?
an ovenbird: well… thanks to google, you can hear the call, which doesn’t really sound like teacher, teacher, teacher attributed to it, but rather whistles and chirrups like many of the 70 varieties of warblers in the Eastern United States. A canary is also a warbler,
but translating nimble oven-bird into a canari agile really misses the beauty of the bird, whose olive and brown feathers camouflage it – something seen, but not heard.
Now for the dignity of pears. Since Louis Philippe was often caricatured as a pear (see the 1831 lithograph by Daumier : http://www.sociocritique.com/fr/image/image_0804.htm ) a French person might be hard-pressed to consider a pear digne although one could be deserving if in a dignified state…
Perhaps Bly was referring to prickly pears, studded with seed, short-lived and quite tricky to eat. It is not a common image.. but does force you to think of what makes a fruit “dignified” – and call attention to the pull of both sound and sense: nimble/dignity; what moves: bird with what doesn’t: pear,
“ir” and “air” sounds, one taking off and landing (bird) and one pushed into form, only to drop, ending with a /z/ sound.
So : le canari agile, la reverence des poires
comes to mind. flighty bird, with bright voweled “ee” and the more dignified ponderance of pears. Reverence is also a bow, a sign of obeissance before a King, potentate, or the Lord.
Line 2
Now we have the image of oars, without mention of a boat –
but the homonym is “or” which could mean the plurality of choices, coupled with a paradoxical “simplicity”, and an enjambment, where the adjective “imperishable” is suspended from the noun it qualifies,
“engines” which we find out are the seeds referred to in the title.
La simplicité des rames will puzzle the best of anyone either French, or possessing a French dictionary! Since long adjectives follow nouns, it will be confusing (but certainly suspenseful) to put "les impérissables" first, waiting for moteurs – which doesn’t have the driving force of the sound of "engine". I suppose there is something imperious about “Motors that will never die”, like a kingdom handed down from King to Prince.
Oars also will be what propels the boat from the shore of the living to the shore of the dead across the river Styx. Perhaps the double sibilance of simplicité moving to the single "impérissable" works in this case.
Third Line
Ah. We see the title! But, in the case of the French, do we want to repeat the awkward pommes de pin fluettes. The sense of “all of these” picks up on the wide “e” of seeds, referring to bird, pears, oars, and fir seeds all of which contain an “r” in final position, unlike the “r” inside imperishable.
One can argue that canari, poire, rames, graines also contain “r”
two in final position, two in initial position .
A French ear will also note that the first two lines in English are beautifully symmetric Alexandrins where the hémistiche falls neatly on the 6th syllable of bird and oars.
Not so with this French.
Le canari agile / la révérence des poires (don’t pronounce poir- uh)
la simplicité des rames (7 syllables) les impérissables (6 syllables)
moteurs dans les graines de pins fluettes, tout cela
(this clunky and inept attempt at literalism needs major work)
Fourth Line
another enjambment to “Hint” which rhymes more or less with “impermanent”
Hint, is NOT an easy idea to translate into French.
fait allusion / insinue/ imprègne d’une impression subtile, suggère
There is no one syllable equivalent with the word “in” (dans) inside of
two very whispering, light and suggestive consonants (“h” and “t”).
There is also a problem with translating “long” in the sense of yearning.
Note, long not only has an enduring sound, but means something that lasts, at least for a while.
aspirer ? desirer vivement soupirer auprès de..
as in Combien de fois, en l'entendant soupirer auprès de moi,
suggère combien nous désirons l’impermanent
de devenir permanent.
Fifth Line
Now we need a hermit wren. Maybe Bly meant a hermit thrush.
Another small, inconspicuous bird with a pretty song that chuffs softly.
They get their scientific name from the tendency of some species to forage in dark crevices.
I suppose you could use the scientific name.
Its call is a beautiful fluted whistle.
It can flick its tail.
Why might a hermit wren not keep her eggs in a storm? They often build nests on the ground and lay well-camouflaged eggs, of a soft moss-green color.
Maybe it is this idea of “hermit” or the duty of a bird or mother to protect the young.
But not knowing these things in English, how in heavens’ name can we approximate them in French?
Last line:
Friends: This changes the tone – he is using an envoi:
(address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.)He blends the ocean in the salt, playing on “salt of the earth” perhaps.
Mes Amis… les amis… nous sommes des royaumes salés, impermanent.
**
Now enjoy repeating the poem in English! If you do not speak English, hopefully you have asked some English-speaker to tell you the jist of this post. Ask them to read the poem. Taste a few sounds of it in the mouth. Chacun a son gout. I hope this speaks to yours.
The nimble oven bird, the dignity of pears,
The simplicity of oars, the imperishable
Engines inside slim fir-seeds, all of these
Hint how much we long for the impermanent
To be permanent. We want the hermit wren
To keep her eggs even during the storm;
We want eternal oceans. But we are perishable;
Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.
BABELFISH:
Le FIR-SEEDS MINCE [Ramage #23] L'oiseau agile de four, la dignité des poires, la simplicité des avirons, l'impérissable/ Moteurs à l'intérieur des sapin-graines minces, toute la ces derniers conseil combien nous longtemps pour que l'impermanent soit permanent. Nous voulons le roitelet d'hermite Pour conserver ses oeufs même pendant l'orage ; Nous voulons les océans éternels. Mais nous sommes périssables ; Des amis, nous sommes des royaumes salés et impermanents.
YIKES! a nimble oven! graines de sapin sounding like sapeurs-pompiers, some incomprehensible interior syntax before the wish that impermanent be made permanent No sense of hint. I lik the choice of "roitelet" , but I'm not sure "little king" gives the same sense as "hermit thrush" nor the subjunctive relationship where we wish that the mother thrust keep her eggs,
Mes amis... not just some friends.
** Getting Started.
Listen to the three “s” in the title. How slim slides the short /i/ to the lips;
how seeds starts with a the soft sibilance of /s/ and ends with the buzzing/z/ of the plural.
The whir (of engine) of the R in fir connects by a hyphen to the broad double e which rhymes with heed, deed, reed – all of which pertain to living – take heed, the end is death; be flexible as the reed as you do your work.
call and response : /i/ to ir
from the “ih” of nimble and dignity, simplicity, slim, hint, hermit, perishable
pinned under the “er” of bird, fir, impermanent (twice) , permanent (once) (hermit) eternal
ee: eternal; seeds,
or: oars, storm
If you don’t know oven birds or hermit wrens, you will need to look them up, admire their olive and brown colors which camouflage them, and listen to their songs.
How “nimble” can jump in a lively way, whereas the hermit wren is tied in its sound, perhaps like the egg-like /o/ tied inside the word storm.
You will come to appreciate how in English, the verb “hint” holds the preposition “in”
like a secret, how “hermit” seems to make allusion to hermeunetics as if to make interpretations of the hermit wren protecting her eggs.
Working Title:
Les graines fluettes de pins
I chose “fluettes” although slim is both “pauvre” as in slim pickings, “peu probable” as in slim chance as well as physically “mince” svelte and slender. Fluette accents the shape and grace, with a breath of transitory youth.
Fir, in my mind is a general, green-boughed evergreen, whereas “pin” is a general pine, and I think of “pommes de pin” or pine cones. Seed, in general is “graines”
How cumbersome to say:
les graines de pommes de pins fluettes et transitoires
First line:
Nimble, one can call agile – but we have “associations with Jack and a candlestick, a lightness, a playfulness – not so much deft or that leger-de-main but something about jumping, not grace. what associations would a French person have with “agile”? How would a French person feel about the “m”, the rolling of the lips to make a “b”?
an ovenbird: well… thanks to google, you can hear the call, which doesn’t really sound like teacher, teacher, teacher attributed to it, but rather whistles and chirrups like many of the 70 varieties of warblers in the Eastern United States. A canary is also a warbler,
but translating nimble oven-bird into a canari agile really misses the beauty of the bird, whose olive and brown feathers camouflage it – something seen, but not heard.
Now for the dignity of pears. Since Louis Philippe was often caricatured as a pear (see the 1831 lithograph by Daumier : http://www.sociocritique.com/fr/image/image_0804.htm ) a French person might be hard-pressed to consider a pear digne although one could be deserving if in a dignified state…
Perhaps Bly was referring to prickly pears, studded with seed, short-lived and quite tricky to eat. It is not a common image.. but does force you to think of what makes a fruit “dignified” – and call attention to the pull of both sound and sense: nimble/dignity; what moves: bird with what doesn’t: pear,
“ir” and “air” sounds, one taking off and landing (bird) and one pushed into form, only to drop, ending with a /z/ sound.
So : le canari agile, la reverence des poires
comes to mind. flighty bird, with bright voweled “ee” and the more dignified ponderance of pears. Reverence is also a bow, a sign of obeissance before a King, potentate, or the Lord.
Line 2
Now we have the image of oars, without mention of a boat –
but the homonym is “or” which could mean the plurality of choices, coupled with a paradoxical “simplicity”, and an enjambment, where the adjective “imperishable” is suspended from the noun it qualifies,
“engines” which we find out are the seeds referred to in the title.
La simplicité des rames will puzzle the best of anyone either French, or possessing a French dictionary! Since long adjectives follow nouns, it will be confusing (but certainly suspenseful) to put "les impérissables" first, waiting for moteurs – which doesn’t have the driving force of the sound of "engine". I suppose there is something imperious about “Motors that will never die”, like a kingdom handed down from King to Prince.
Oars also will be what propels the boat from the shore of the living to the shore of the dead across the river Styx. Perhaps the double sibilance of simplicité moving to the single "impérissable" works in this case.
Third Line
Ah. We see the title! But, in the case of the French, do we want to repeat the awkward pommes de pin fluettes. The sense of “all of these” picks up on the wide “e” of seeds, referring to bird, pears, oars, and fir seeds all of which contain an “r” in final position, unlike the “r” inside imperishable.
One can argue that canari, poire, rames, graines also contain “r”
two in final position, two in initial position .
A French ear will also note that the first two lines in English are beautifully symmetric Alexandrins where the hémistiche falls neatly on the 6th syllable of bird and oars.
Not so with this French.
Le canari agile / la révérence des poires (don’t pronounce poir- uh)
la simplicité des rames (7 syllables) les impérissables (6 syllables)
moteurs dans les graines de pins fluettes, tout cela
(this clunky and inept attempt at literalism needs major work)
Fourth Line
another enjambment to “Hint” which rhymes more or less with “impermanent”
Hint, is NOT an easy idea to translate into French.
fait allusion / insinue/ imprègne d’une impression subtile, suggère
There is no one syllable equivalent with the word “in” (dans) inside of
two very whispering, light and suggestive consonants (“h” and “t”).
There is also a problem with translating “long” in the sense of yearning.
Note, long not only has an enduring sound, but means something that lasts, at least for a while.
aspirer ? desirer vivement soupirer auprès de..
as in Combien de fois, en l'entendant soupirer auprès de moi,
suggère combien nous désirons l’impermanent
de devenir permanent.
Fifth Line
Now we need a hermit wren. Maybe Bly meant a hermit thrush.
Another small, inconspicuous bird with a pretty song that chuffs softly.
They get their scientific name from the tendency of some species to forage in dark crevices.
I suppose you could use the scientific name.
Its call is a beautiful fluted whistle.
It can flick its tail.
Why might a hermit wren not keep her eggs in a storm? They often build nests on the ground and lay well-camouflaged eggs, of a soft moss-green color.
Maybe it is this idea of “hermit” or the duty of a bird or mother to protect the young.
But not knowing these things in English, how in heavens’ name can we approximate them in French?
Last line:
Friends: This changes the tone – he is using an envoi:
(address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.)He blends the ocean in the salt, playing on “salt of the earth” perhaps.
Mes Amis… les amis… nous sommes des royaumes salés, impermanent.
**
Now enjoy repeating the poem in English! If you do not speak English, hopefully you have asked some English-speaker to tell you the jist of this post. Ask them to read the poem. Taste a few sounds of it in the mouth. Chacun a son gout. I hope this speaks to yours.
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