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