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 There the phone book is out of date, and the occulist name is my dentist's name, who I no longer see anyway...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.
**
Monday, November 29, 2010
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.
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