The last day of April, last post, although I’ll keep writing a poem a day.
How close “refuse” as garbage, sounds like “refuge” – a curious thing, to think our moon— we have left our “garbage” on the face of the symbol of so much imaginative “refuge”...
perhaps we should refuse—
convenience
"à l’écart"
thrown away in crisp clattered start
into a different r’s shopping cart).
**
Gravity
The moon is full—
fully pulling
her out into a quieter space
paced for her among the stars
for a few brief hours.
The moon, full
and pocked by
copper pipes and pieces
left by Apollo missions
still quietly pulls.
Moon, no matter how lit,
or littered,
no matter if she appears
slivered, quartered, halved,
pulls us into
dream, with just enough
gravity to lighten
our leaps.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Napowrimo - April 29
Where are you going?
stone-slip steps pressing
into a path of fog
mist tracing
castles in the air
card houses balancing
tiles (clubs, diamonds) to triangles
refusing thought
of a roof, walls...
tendrils of fog
and brook-tongued stone,
hewn, polished, (but do you want a spade?)
Do you want to dig?
Can you stop?
What are the risks of loss ?
And if you stop, will you lose
your footing,
your way
your shapeshifting
dream ?
Now the King of Hearts
crosses the brook
leading the Queen
through tendrils of fog
a wind rises
everything quivers
in a heartbeat
their palace a card rubble
and we ask them,
where are you going?
but only their stone-slip steps
press answer.
stone-slip steps pressing
into a path of fog
mist tracing
castles in the air
card houses balancing
tiles (clubs, diamonds) to triangles
refusing thought
of a roof, walls...
tendrils of fog
and brook-tongued stone,
hewn, polished, (but do you want a spade?)
Do you want to dig?
Can you stop?
What are the risks of loss ?
And if you stop, will you lose
your footing,
your way
your shapeshifting
dream ?
Now the King of Hearts
crosses the brook
leading the Queen
through tendrils of fog
a wind rises
everything quivers
in a heartbeat
their palace a card rubble
and we ask them,
where are you going?
but only their stone-slip steps
press answer.
Napowrimo -- April 28
The prompt was to use rhyme...
'Tis stars and cards that set their own bars.
What do you seek dear child—
what do you seek?
Crow perch, church spire,
mud-hut, palace for a shiek?
Card after card placed like tents in a row
roofed and repeated, rising, grow.
What do you build dear child—
what do you build?
Castle for kings or tar paper shack,
a house where dreams are fulfilled?
Card after card suited in red and black
balanced and crafted, without thought of attack.
What is it you wish dear child,
what is it you desire?
Oar and rudder to guide your own boat?
Sky sails will carry you safe through starfire.
And then it happens, as it eventually does,
lattice-work tower tumbles, because, because—
hidden unknown to you or to me
fate has its own drum and decree:
‘tis nothing about effort, care or work
‘tis not even a slap from what we shirk:
we build high, aim for the stars
but ‘tis stars and cards that set their own bars.
'Tis stars and cards that set their own bars.
What do you seek dear child—
what do you seek?
Crow perch, church spire,
mud-hut, palace for a shiek?
Card after card placed like tents in a row
roofed and repeated, rising, grow.
What do you build dear child—
what do you build?
Castle for kings or tar paper shack,
a house where dreams are fulfilled?
Card after card suited in red and black
balanced and crafted, without thought of attack.
What is it you wish dear child,
what is it you desire?
Oar and rudder to guide your own boat?
Sky sails will carry you safe through starfire.
And then it happens, as it eventually does,
lattice-work tower tumbles, because, because—
hidden unknown to you or to me
fate has its own drum and decree:
‘tis nothing about effort, care or work
‘tis not even a slap from what we shirk:
we build high, aim for the stars
but ‘tis stars and cards that set their own bars.
Friday, April 27, 2012
NaPoWriMo April 27
Rifting
heart-lift
once believing
he loves me!
feet flying
and all is thought into
word-exchange
love fly-winged
thought.
Have you too lifted
all you could,
to offer?
(words drift
like flaked wood
chips in the coffer)
Cinders now
and now too old
for such
young love.
Too old to polish other
than what we have.
And what is that?
heart-lift
once believing
he loves me!
feet flying
and all is thought into
word-exchange
love fly-winged
thought.
Have you too lifted
all you could,
to offer?
(words drift
like flaked wood
chips in the coffer)
Cinders now
and now too old
for such
young love.
Too old to polish other
than what we have.
And what is that?
O Pen -- May 2
2 “favorite” poems offered by UR Alums on “Poem in your pocket day: http://www.rochester.edu/news/pocketpoem/)
-- One Winter Afternoon, by ee cummings. offered by Lori Walter, UR Alum
-- Things to Think—by Robert Bly (offered by Betz (Marini) Petersen '98)
3 poems read at the “The Superior Donuts Poetry Jam” at GeVa, 4/21:
-- The Thirty-Eighth Year by Lucille Clifton
-- Consider Me – by Langston Hughes
-- Be Nobody’s Darling – by Alice Walker
Diary [Surface] --by Rachel Zucker
I prefer the imaginative approach of ee cummings and Robert Bly, (the first two poems we discussed today.) For Cummings, one UR alum said, "His poems always make me feel like I am in on some cosmic joke with the universe.” At least then, complexity is not so terrifying, but rather, something to play with... the sheer joy of being alive, as if a clown, entering a parentheses to explore that magical moment (when is becomes if), and time expands into possibilities, not predictions. Tell me which are your favorite lines in this poem! For me (and others) it is that opening parenthesis --
We discussed the complexity of this:
he was
whatever(first and last)
mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i’ve
no word except alive
**
which Cummings goes on to explain is completely (and miraculously) whole. But he’s not finished – but uses a semi-colon twice more, first with a negative restriction, an adverb/adjective oxymoron which has both “fun” and “really” in it, (funereally), to lead up to another adverb which looks like a combination of “ether” and “rally”, but not ethereal, (the adjectives being hilarious and serious) with yet another colon,
leading up to the fact of what kind of clown he is, another semi-colon, followed by one more contradiction of his silence singing like a bird. What fun writing!
We discussed Langston Hughes, "Consider Me", and how the first 6 lines are a beautifully succinct poem in and of themselves. Actually, Lucille Clifton's poem also works beautifully in a shortened version, as well as Cummings' poem, -- I don't think he needs the political ending -- although it was fun to have Mary recall how protests involved putting daisies in the nozzles of guns...
No one really understood Zucker's poem -- even diving under the surface to discover all sorts of incoherent sorts of things... We are honed to liking precision, as a group,
with a good dose of mystery -- but the craft and/or message needs to support whatever "the stakes" are at hand.
It is fine, as in Bly's case, to speak of something unnameably large -- his last stanza however feels authentic and personal -- and makes just enough universal fun of the fact, that if we are writing, we are not about to die... and perhaps, just perhaps it really is not necessary to work all the time, or worry about being forgiven.
Clifton's elegiac tone set the discussion about mothers/daughters, identity, and how it is at age 38, one would write something quite different than another time... and what does it mean "ordinary" -- not, unimportant, not someone to be ignored -- but rather,
a host of celebrations of "ordinary" ...
-- One Winter Afternoon, by ee cummings. offered by Lori Walter, UR Alum
-- Things to Think—by Robert Bly (offered by Betz (Marini) Petersen '98)
3 poems read at the “The Superior Donuts Poetry Jam” at GeVa, 4/21:
-- The Thirty-Eighth Year by Lucille Clifton
-- Consider Me – by Langston Hughes
-- Be Nobody’s Darling – by Alice Walker
Diary [Surface] --by Rachel Zucker
I prefer the imaginative approach of ee cummings and Robert Bly, (the first two poems we discussed today.) For Cummings, one UR alum said, "His poems always make me feel like I am in on some cosmic joke with the universe.” At least then, complexity is not so terrifying, but rather, something to play with... the sheer joy of being alive, as if a clown, entering a parentheses to explore that magical moment (when is becomes if), and time expands into possibilities, not predictions. Tell me which are your favorite lines in this poem! For me (and others) it is that opening parenthesis --
We discussed the complexity of this:
he was
whatever(first and last)
mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i’ve
no word except alive
**
which Cummings goes on to explain is completely (and miraculously) whole. But he’s not finished – but uses a semi-colon twice more, first with a negative restriction, an adverb/adjective oxymoron which has both “fun” and “really” in it, (funereally), to lead up to another adverb which looks like a combination of “ether” and “rally”, but not ethereal, (the adjectives being hilarious and serious) with yet another colon,
leading up to the fact of what kind of clown he is, another semi-colon, followed by one more contradiction of his silence singing like a bird. What fun writing!
We discussed Langston Hughes, "Consider Me", and how the first 6 lines are a beautifully succinct poem in and of themselves. Actually, Lucille Clifton's poem also works beautifully in a shortened version, as well as Cummings' poem, -- I don't think he needs the political ending -- although it was fun to have Mary recall how protests involved putting daisies in the nozzles of guns...
No one really understood Zucker's poem -- even diving under the surface to discover all sorts of incoherent sorts of things... We are honed to liking precision, as a group,
with a good dose of mystery -- but the craft and/or message needs to support whatever "the stakes" are at hand.
It is fine, as in Bly's case, to speak of something unnameably large -- his last stanza however feels authentic and personal -- and makes just enough universal fun of the fact, that if we are writing, we are not about to die... and perhaps, just perhaps it really is not necessary to work all the time, or worry about being forgiven.
Clifton's elegiac tone set the discussion about mothers/daughters, identity, and how it is at age 38, one would write something quite different than another time... and what does it mean "ordinary" -- not, unimportant, not someone to be ignored -- but rather,
a host of celebrations of "ordinary" ...
O Pen April 25
The day BEFORE "Poem in your Pocket" day...
A Cat in an Empty Apartment, by Wislawa Symborska (2 translations)
(Clare Cavanagh, vs. Walter Whipple; Cavanagh's comment about this: Ms. Szymborska “looks at things from an angle you would never think of looking at for yourself in a million years,” Dr. Cavanagh said on the day of the Nobel announcement. She pointed to “one stunning poem that’s a eulogy.”
“It’s about the death of someone close to her that’s done from the point of view of the person’s cat,” she said.
The Pattern, by Robert Creeley
Another Song(Are they shadows that we see?) by Samuel Daniel
The Needle by Jennifer Grotz
Man Carrying Thing, by Wallace Stevens
Ghostology, Rebecca Lindenberg
How we tell a story, how we couch our terms, how we “thread the needle – where the poem is the eye, and memory the thread stitching in an unraveling world... to use the metaphor of Jennifer Grotz... how we lengthen experience with our thought, understanding the fleeting pleasures, as pleasurable, not because understood, but simply allowed, until as in Ghostology, everything becomes song, and an opening.
In a way, the sequence of poems makes a poem. An empty apartment, where a cat notes the absence of the occupant; a poem exploring pattern, as thought pulls words into consciousness, a reflection on what it is that we see in the shadows of our thoughts and experiences, threaded into yet another poem, understanding that the poem hovers on the border of understanding, which if understood fully, takes away the vitality of the poem to constantly challenge us, bring us to new levels... always a song, an “open door, opening”.
We discussed the two translation sof Szymborska’s poem. The Whipple seems more literal, whereas the Cavanagh seems more vernacular, capturing the emptiness from a real live cat’s perspective. Not “one does not do that to a cat.” But “You can’t do that” –
as if the cat had a special relationship with the person who is no longer returning. Cavanagh prolongs the questions of options: Climb the walls? Caress against the furniture? This suggests there had been a climbing onto a lap, a caress against the now missing person.
What’s a cat to do? (not as Whipple continues, “in an empty apartment” – but the BIG question: what is it we are supposed to do when someone dies...) The question marks in the Cavanagh are at the beginning. In the middle: “What remains to be done” is a fragment ending with a period, followed by instructions: sleep and wait. Perhaps for your own death, or the return of the missing... not Whipple’s question, “What more is to be done?” which seem seems to follow the list of the cleaning out process.
Somewhat off-subject: Good notes for a eulogist – be sure you tell the truth.
A cat might keep us honest, the offended paws have nothing to do with niceties of how we want to remember someone, but the real sense of loss of a 3-D person, with virtues and faults.
The Pattern, by Creeley has a stuttering feel with the linebreaks. It/ stanza break, it wants to/ be free / where it might be I, or I speaking, -- “it” is unable to say what “it” wants “in the direction/ of its/ words.” The imperative, “Let (stanza break)(Let x... as postulation, is repeated in the indicative, and x by association could be “I”.)
x equal x. x/also equals x / I... the doubling of “speak” and end, solo position of “I”
the highly charged “such”, which could vary in syntactic weight, falling onto the surprise of “undone” which begins the final stanza. For puzzle people and linguists, a delight of a poem – for others, an experience in frustration.
The 16th c. Samuel Daniel provided the epigraph to Jennifer Grotz’ poem, “The Needle”,
and evoked in some the 1930 radio program, “The Shadow” long-intoned by actor Frank Readick Jr., has earned a place in the American idiom: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh and a musical theme, Camille Saint-Saëns' Le Rouet d'Omphale ("Omphale's Spinning Wheel", composed in 1872). At the end of each episode, The Shadow reminded listeners, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay.... The Shadow knows!"
In others, a little Keatsian Negative Capability, with a little “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” – from question, “are they shadows” and a meditation on pleasures, ends with timely advice, “When your eyes have done their part,/ Thought must length it in the heart.”
Jennifer’s poem does this: varying a line in the present tense, which recalls something in the past tense... Memory “stitching” (three times) and understanding it is no guarantee
for holding time, truth, life in place, “where only vendors, and policemen stood in place”.
Ending with this image of market and order-keeping which continues, contrasts beautifully with the needle stitching – not lost in a haystack, but rather, as small as one needle can be in the large tapestry of life.
We read the Wallace Stevens both without the words in the parentheses, and with them
in couplets. Note that the parentheses starts with a command, “Accept” and does not end with a period, but rather a comma after the closure. Since each line is capitalized, “A horror” can be read both as an independent sentence, or as an aside to the parentheses.
Stevens gives us instructions about what a poem should do. He ends with the fate of
the bright obvious – if it is cleaned up – it will be ever so numb
Ghostology is a lovely neologism – the poem an example of it with plenty of “white space” between a trio of couplets, a quatrain and two more couplets with short lines.
I find the punctuation delightful – with and without commas for small breaths between stanzas, the separation of “is” and “not” combined in the double negative “Nothing/isn’t
song, cut by a line break!
A Cat in an Empty Apartment, by Wislawa Symborska (2 translations)
(Clare Cavanagh, vs. Walter Whipple; Cavanagh's comment about this: Ms. Szymborska “looks at things from an angle you would never think of looking at for yourself in a million years,” Dr. Cavanagh said on the day of the Nobel announcement. She pointed to “one stunning poem that’s a eulogy.”
“It’s about the death of someone close to her that’s done from the point of view of the person’s cat,” she said.
The Pattern, by Robert Creeley
Another Song(Are they shadows that we see?) by Samuel Daniel
The Needle by Jennifer Grotz
Man Carrying Thing, by Wallace Stevens
Ghostology, Rebecca Lindenberg
How we tell a story, how we couch our terms, how we “thread the needle – where the poem is the eye, and memory the thread stitching in an unraveling world... to use the metaphor of Jennifer Grotz... how we lengthen experience with our thought, understanding the fleeting pleasures, as pleasurable, not because understood, but simply allowed, until as in Ghostology, everything becomes song, and an opening.
In a way, the sequence of poems makes a poem. An empty apartment, where a cat notes the absence of the occupant; a poem exploring pattern, as thought pulls words into consciousness, a reflection on what it is that we see in the shadows of our thoughts and experiences, threaded into yet another poem, understanding that the poem hovers on the border of understanding, which if understood fully, takes away the vitality of the poem to constantly challenge us, bring us to new levels... always a song, an “open door, opening”.
We discussed the two translation sof Szymborska’s poem. The Whipple seems more literal, whereas the Cavanagh seems more vernacular, capturing the emptiness from a real live cat’s perspective. Not “one does not do that to a cat.” But “You can’t do that” –
as if the cat had a special relationship with the person who is no longer returning. Cavanagh prolongs the questions of options: Climb the walls? Caress against the furniture? This suggests there had been a climbing onto a lap, a caress against the now missing person.
What’s a cat to do? (not as Whipple continues, “in an empty apartment” – but the BIG question: what is it we are supposed to do when someone dies...) The question marks in the Cavanagh are at the beginning. In the middle: “What remains to be done” is a fragment ending with a period, followed by instructions: sleep and wait. Perhaps for your own death, or the return of the missing... not Whipple’s question, “What more is to be done?” which seem seems to follow the list of the cleaning out process.
Somewhat off-subject: Good notes for a eulogist – be sure you tell the truth.
A cat might keep us honest, the offended paws have nothing to do with niceties of how we want to remember someone, but the real sense of loss of a 3-D person, with virtues and faults.
The Pattern, by Creeley has a stuttering feel with the linebreaks. It/ stanza break, it wants to/ be free / where it might be I, or I speaking, -- “it” is unable to say what “it” wants “in the direction/ of its/ words.” The imperative, “Let (stanza break)(Let x... as postulation, is repeated in the indicative, and x by association could be “I”.)
x equal x. x/also equals x / I... the doubling of “speak” and end, solo position of “I”
the highly charged “such”, which could vary in syntactic weight, falling onto the surprise of “undone” which begins the final stanza. For puzzle people and linguists, a delight of a poem – for others, an experience in frustration.
The 16th c. Samuel Daniel provided the epigraph to Jennifer Grotz’ poem, “The Needle”,
and evoked in some the 1930 radio program, “The Shadow” long-intoned by actor Frank Readick Jr., has earned a place in the American idiom: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh and a musical theme, Camille Saint-Saëns' Le Rouet d'Omphale ("Omphale's Spinning Wheel", composed in 1872). At the end of each episode, The Shadow reminded listeners, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay.... The Shadow knows!"
In others, a little Keatsian Negative Capability, with a little “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” – from question, “are they shadows” and a meditation on pleasures, ends with timely advice, “When your eyes have done their part,/ Thought must length it in the heart.”
Jennifer’s poem does this: varying a line in the present tense, which recalls something in the past tense... Memory “stitching” (three times) and understanding it is no guarantee
for holding time, truth, life in place, “where only vendors, and policemen stood in place”.
Ending with this image of market and order-keeping which continues, contrasts beautifully with the needle stitching – not lost in a haystack, but rather, as small as one needle can be in the large tapestry of life.
We read the Wallace Stevens both without the words in the parentheses, and with them
in couplets. Note that the parentheses starts with a command, “Accept” and does not end with a period, but rather a comma after the closure. Since each line is capitalized, “A horror” can be read both as an independent sentence, or as an aside to the parentheses.
Stevens gives us instructions about what a poem should do. He ends with the fate of
the bright obvious – if it is cleaned up – it will be ever so numb
Ghostology is a lovely neologism – the poem an example of it with plenty of “white space” between a trio of couplets, a quatrain and two more couplets with short lines.
I find the punctuation delightful – with and without commas for small breaths between stanzas, the separation of “is” and “not” combined in the double negative “Nothing/isn’t
song, cut by a line break!
Thursday, April 26, 2012
NaPoWriMo -- April 26
Yesterday, I went to see the exhibit at the Cary (Wallace Library) at RIT, called "The Light of the Sublime". There you will see three large calligraphed pages by Dan Kunz:
Art and word illustrate the movement of the parrot's flight; the cage that restrains him, a man's grasping him, and a final unity of the parrot's spirit with God.
I jotted down these notes
Flight of the Spirit
This parrot was drawn burning the darkness away -- a light whose spirit flew from my end to my beginning.
this corresponds with Verse 1117 Masnavi I
(from Fragments of Light 3)
"The light of the light of the eye is the light of the heart
The light of the eye is produced by the light of the heart.
Again, the light of the light of the heart, is the light of God
Which is free and pure of the light of sense and mind.
... Only the light of truth has no antithesis
Through which it could be found.
**
My poem for today:
Pondering "Ruminescence"
wake up! the wind is changing
and one cloud is calling,
like a letter from God
in the shape of a sheep
leaping.
Now wake up the inner eye—
do not confuse the running shadows
for birds, but listen to strains of harp—
you have not missed the music,
it plays the voice of the Beloved
which lies deep in the house of the Beloved
You understand the soul is falcon,
that human desire is crow
the the soul is burning and sobbing
when it is pecked by the cawing crows
of course you must wake up! not for the wind
but for the letters from God leaping.
Art and word illustrate the movement of the parrot's flight; the cage that restrains him, a man's grasping him, and a final unity of the parrot's spirit with God.
I jotted down these notes
Flight of the Spirit
This parrot was drawn burning the darkness away -- a light whose spirit flew from my end to my beginning.
this corresponds with Verse 1117 Masnavi I
(from Fragments of Light 3)
"The light of the light of the eye is the light of the heart
The light of the eye is produced by the light of the heart.
Again, the light of the light of the heart, is the light of God
Which is free and pure of the light of sense and mind.
... Only the light of truth has no antithesis
Through which it could be found.
**
My poem for today:
Pondering "Ruminescence"
wake up! the wind is changing
and one cloud is calling,
like a letter from God
in the shape of a sheep
leaping.
Now wake up the inner eye—
do not confuse the running shadows
for birds, but listen to strains of harp—
you have not missed the music,
it plays the voice of the Beloved
which lies deep in the house of the Beloved
You understand the soul is falcon,
that human desire is crow
the the soul is burning and sobbing
when it is pecked by the cawing crows
of course you must wake up! not for the wind
but for the letters from God leaping.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Napowrimo April 24
Grief... loss
it comes in so many guises. I love the idea of a life being the time spent " between the dashes" of birthyear and year of death -- which moments do we polish of the pauses?
I need to read more stories...
"Waiting to Waltz" by Cynthia Ryland
"Stories I ain't told yet"
The Underbeast
... hides in shadows, in parts of things, or missing parts. It screams silently and can only be heard by the person in whose body it hides. The only way you can surprise it, is to refuse any plan. It is curious, and when you say, "I'm too busy to be interested in you", it wants to know what you are so interested in that it is ignored.
Can you imagine spending your life trying to get attention like this? Can you imagine, existing as such a smoke machine, playing with illusions so that a goat-skull ressembles a human head, the spaces between ribs look like seashore? Perhaps the underbeast is artist-informer. Do not discount its magic -- have you seen it working marble?
Stone is stone, and yet, the underbeast has worked fingers pressed into a back, and two faces, so close you can sense the breath they exchange through their lips, and how the touch of his index finger paints her cheekbone, until it turns a soft, living pink.
and at night, when you think you are asleep, the underbeast takes you through the webbing of shadows,
through the dreamstreets you half-know but can't remember, partly in the past, but telling of the future too.
Like the firmen, sleeping under their shaggy snow blankets on the side of the road. Perhaps they heard the tires drawing the arcs and eyebrowed lines-- perhaps they witnessed the slow erasure of the white on black pavement-parchment. The absence of all color is erasing the embrace of all color. It takes the underbeast's whitening to see such passages.
it comes in so many guises. I love the idea of a life being the time spent " between the dashes" of birthyear and year of death -- which moments do we polish of the pauses?
I need to read more stories...
"Waiting to Waltz" by Cynthia Ryland
"Stories I ain't told yet"
The Underbeast
... hides in shadows, in parts of things, or missing parts. It screams silently and can only be heard by the person in whose body it hides. The only way you can surprise it, is to refuse any plan. It is curious, and when you say, "I'm too busy to be interested in you", it wants to know what you are so interested in that it is ignored.
Can you imagine spending your life trying to get attention like this? Can you imagine, existing as such a smoke machine, playing with illusions so that a goat-skull ressembles a human head, the spaces between ribs look like seashore? Perhaps the underbeast is artist-informer. Do not discount its magic -- have you seen it working marble?
Stone is stone, and yet, the underbeast has worked fingers pressed into a back, and two faces, so close you can sense the breath they exchange through their lips, and how the touch of his index finger paints her cheekbone, until it turns a soft, living pink.
and at night, when you think you are asleep, the underbeast takes you through the webbing of shadows,
through the dreamstreets you half-know but can't remember, partly in the past, but telling of the future too.
Like the firmen, sleeping under their shaggy snow blankets on the side of the road. Perhaps they heard the tires drawing the arcs and eyebrowed lines-- perhaps they witnessed the slow erasure of the white on black pavement-parchment. The absence of all color is erasing the embrace of all color. It takes the underbeast's whitening to see such passages.
napowrimo April 25
Just Imagine One Rain Drop
Sheets of rain blow over the fields
the wind slashing like this ///////////////
//
//
changing the way an artist changes
the smile on a portrait with one mark.
I say “rain” and cannot describe
the grey shimmer of a cape
that flies over the brown field.
And so I imagine just one rain drop.
And yet even as part of wind-slashed rain-whip
how to explain these April rags of snow
littering exhuberant greens?
A rain-drop on dandelion brushes
with their closed-for-business look;
a rain-slip off the fern that looked
like a dragon yesterday, nestled in white;
rain-pearl on the still-life fountain of ferns
bereft now of snow.
It's a good day to go inside
a raindrop.
Let someone else
be the fat robin,
let someone else yank
at weeds, drive to work,
answer the phone.
It's a good day to ride raindrops
even if the wind slashes us
across a field.
Hang on-- It all goes by too fast.
NaPoWriMo -- April 23
These two photos are part of the poem below -- the format is NOT all smacked into the LH side of the page -- but stanzas are pushed forward -- copy of poem available separately. It's a work in progress... The first photo was composed by David Perlman, Artist in Residence at Image City and can be viewed here: http://www.imagecityphotographygallery.com/Photogs_air.htm
He explained, "it is a composite of two photographs taken at a steam train museum in Vermont many years ago. I scanned the images from the original 35mm negatives and then combined them in my computer-- a process inconceivable back in the 1970s when the pictures were taken. The lower part is a cropped portion of an operating steam locomotive and the upper part is an enlarged picture of the same engine's piston rods (I'm attaching a copy). Each image is placed in the electronic equivalent of a separate acetate layer located one above the other. Where the piston rods show, the upper layer has been masked and made semi-transparent. The software provides an endless opportunity for creativity, AND, you can undo your mistakes!".
The other photo, I took.
To the tune of “Oblivion”
(Astor Piazzola) Sheet music: http://www.slideshare.net/sahya/oblivion-for-clarinet-pdf + arrangement for Piano + Clarinet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAC0XDjsNGI
piston rods quiet now
steel and strength silent
ob levis: who will remember
a chuffing train
on the tracks, whistling
here I come, carrying goods—
good people in good land
piston rods quiet now
steel and steam ghosted
ob levis: smoothing time
It is Spring, and snow covers daffodils,
and a steam engine.
It waits for children
to climb aboard, imagine old times
unlike the tractor
abandoned in the field two farms over.
Rust spangles patterns
on its chipped green hood;
angled blades will no longer break
the good earth; the spring-tooth harrow
is no longer good to prepare for planting.
plough blades quiet now
steel and strength silent
ob levis: drag horse, harrow
ob levis: in the way, of smoothing
ghosted in curls of clarinet
in a tune called oblivion
The way last night’s dusting of snow
covers the field which next year
will not grow corn, but new houses.
He explained, "it is a composite of two photographs taken at a steam train museum in Vermont many years ago. I scanned the images from the original 35mm negatives and then combined them in my computer-- a process inconceivable back in the 1970s when the pictures were taken. The lower part is a cropped portion of an operating steam locomotive and the upper part is an enlarged picture of the same engine's piston rods (I'm attaching a copy). Each image is placed in the electronic equivalent of a separate acetate layer located one above the other. Where the piston rods show, the upper layer has been masked and made semi-transparent. The software provides an endless opportunity for creativity, AND, you can undo your mistakes!".
The other photo, I took.
To the tune of “Oblivion”
(Astor Piazzola) Sheet music: http://www.slideshare.net/sahya/oblivion-for-clarinet-pdf + arrangement for Piano + Clarinet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAC0XDjsNGI
piston rods quiet now
steel and strength silent
ob levis: who will remember
a chuffing train
on the tracks, whistling
here I come, carrying goods—
good people in good land
piston rods quiet now
steel and steam ghosted
ob levis: smoothing time
It is Spring, and snow covers daffodils,
and a steam engine.
It waits for children
to climb aboard, imagine old times
unlike the tractor
abandoned in the field two farms over.
Rust spangles patterns
on its chipped green hood;
angled blades will no longer break
the good earth; the spring-tooth harrow
is no longer good to prepare for planting.
plough blades quiet now
steel and strength silent
ob levis: drag horse, harrow
ob levis: in the way, of smoothing
ghosted in curls of clarinet
in a tune called oblivion
The way last night’s dusting of snow
covers the field which next year
will not grow corn, but new houses.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Napowrimo -- April 22
Of course... it is Earthday... and of course, there are so many wonderful things in the world -- even in the short space of a week-end, so much taken in...
I was taken by this photograph... and so wrote this
Snap Shot
You can’t see her pearl
earring, covered by the camera,
just as you don’t see the mirror.
(snap)
Her camera’s name: Earl
as in anglo-saxon chieftain
as he calls the shots
(shot)
although by the middle
ages, replaced by dukes,
counts, (Earl no longer)
(shot)
We think to capture, curl
in the folds of our mind
an image. Do you see
(snap)
the ear curled up in pearl
and look at her, so lonely.
Is she ready to shoot—
(snap?)
not herself – not the girl
we all know by Vermeer
but us? She looks rather
(shot)
amused. A thought swirls
to mind. Those very strong fingers
know how to snap.
(snapshot)
I was taken by this photograph... and so wrote this
Snap Shot
You can’t see her pearl
earring, covered by the camera,
just as you don’t see the mirror.
(snap)
Her camera’s name: Earl
as in anglo-saxon chieftain
as he calls the shots
(shot)
although by the middle
ages, replaced by dukes,
counts, (Earl no longer)
(shot)
We think to capture, curl
in the folds of our mind
an image. Do you see
(snap)
the ear curled up in pearl
and look at her, so lonely.
Is she ready to shoot—
(snap?)
not herself – not the girl
we all know by Vermeer
but us? She looks rather
(shot)
amused. A thought swirls
to mind. Those very strong fingers
know how to snap.
(snapshot)
NaPoWriMo April 21
Saturday involved so much... giving my friend a special pin from Japan; thinking about a photography exhibit; and Sunday I will have had some time to think of the powerful voices at a poetry reading before a great play called "Superior Donuts"... This link, triggered a different poem.
29 yr. old “open air poet” http://www.npr.org/2012/04/17/150722541/the-poem-store-open-for-business?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20120422
and http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150581238/poetry-match-game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27HnzOI4NWk
from the prompt: "spring break; road trip; and Olympia" Houston starts typing away immediately. In roughly 60 seconds, he pulls out the small, asymmetrical piece of white paper from the typewriter and reads it aloud:
"Where the Greek gods live with history and trees
protecting patience of rainforest
where it doesn't rain
simmers, fog, moisture
worship her, mother nature, newly wed
every year to visit a season
is called spring
forever returning to its source"
So I try that:
-- Ghosts of Auschwitz-Birkenau
-- Zen monk’s beard whiskers into a fan, waterfalls his silence
-- cat, curled into a sweep of a tail with one black-ink brushstroke
Poem Typed into Being from 3 images
It is Spring-chill cold today,
outside, fields fresh-plowed,
apple blossom snowing down.
Inside, a book of photographs
of a grey-stoned village
And the white smoke of ghosts—
naked, huddled into a collective blur
onto the streets leading to the arch
lettered Arbeit Macht Frei .
This is cold that makes you gasp,
lose your breath as if someone has just
cut off three fingers of your very best friend.
It is the type of day a monk in a drafty temple
would wind his brown blanket around him
like a brush-stroked sweep of a cat’s tail.
His sparse whiskers waterfall
into his silence as he allows his mind to empty.
He understands the cold does not need
to penetrate further than his skin.
his breath warms him,
his heart-drum steady.
29 yr. old “open air poet” http://www.npr.org/2012/04/17/150722541/the-poem-store-open-for-business?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20120422
and http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150581238/poetry-match-game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27HnzOI4NWk
from the prompt: "spring break; road trip; and Olympia" Houston starts typing away immediately. In roughly 60 seconds, he pulls out the small, asymmetrical piece of white paper from the typewriter and reads it aloud:
"Where the Greek gods live with history and trees
protecting patience of rainforest
where it doesn't rain
simmers, fog, moisture
worship her, mother nature, newly wed
every year to visit a season
is called spring
forever returning to its source"
So I try that:
-- Ghosts of Auschwitz-Birkenau
-- Zen monk’s beard whiskers into a fan, waterfalls his silence
-- cat, curled into a sweep of a tail with one black-ink brushstroke
Poem Typed into Being from 3 images
It is Spring-chill cold today,
outside, fields fresh-plowed,
apple blossom snowing down.
Inside, a book of photographs
of a grey-stoned village
And the white smoke of ghosts—
naked, huddled into a collective blur
onto the streets leading to the arch
lettered Arbeit Macht Frei .
This is cold that makes you gasp,
lose your breath as if someone has just
cut off three fingers of your very best friend.
It is the type of day a monk in a drafty temple
would wind his brown blanket around him
like a brush-stroked sweep of a cat’s tail.
His sparse whiskers waterfall
into his silence as he allows his mind to empty.
He understands the cold does not need
to penetrate further than his skin.
his breath warms him,
his heart-drum steady.
Friday, April 20, 2012
NaPoWriMo April 20
One prompt I had been thinking about: Imagine today that the universe is trying to send you a message. Try to see everything through this imagined perspective. Take note of the day's incidentals that are working to convey this message to you: the guy walking toward you on the street wearing your brother's favorite color, the petals of the same color blowing in the wind, a sign you notice with a saying that strikes you, how the quality of light conjures a past event. Write a poem using these collected images and impressions that reveals the message.
I used headlines and words from Earth Day -- but thinking of these things: the emotional impact of names and how people react to people knowing their name as in reputation. I also stole from googling -- what happens when one say O! depends on what follows -- so why not break O Romeo, to feel the despair of wanting something so badly it is not there, yet have a strong bodied Eldee proclaim it.
Of course a rough draft!
Her name is Eldee, or at least that’s the way I think she spells it.
You know your alphabet. Say L.D. and you’ll know who I mean.
Less Destruction and no mauling of any wild.
Lead Destroys would be the sort of slogan she would question:
I can see her waving a #2 pencil saying, “are you sure you didn’t
mean lead, as in leader?” She’ll answer, “not the lieder and dirndl type”
singing with bodice, blouse, full skirt and apron. She’ll pro-
claim: O
RO
ME
O
which you could hear as O! Rome! O!
or Oro meo as in to my Gold
Initialed as Open Research Online
Medium Earth orbit
O! would any name smell as sweet, O!
Eldee, wherefore art thou then?
And she’ll answer, I have tears to say.
It’s all in the dream of my boy on the bridge
and he looked at the water and said, I want to go
there, and he sprang over the railing, then caught
the edge of the bridge with his hands, changing
his mind and couldn’t keep hold, and so
he fell... l, l, l, l, l, so far, and she saw him
so still, in that transparent water and knew
he was dead, dead .. finish with a D.
and so she does, inserting A, all over again,
de.... dead, I’m Eldee,
L. of fall and D.
the part dead.
I used headlines and words from Earth Day -- but thinking of these things: the emotional impact of names and how people react to people knowing their name as in reputation. I also stole from googling -- what happens when one say O! depends on what follows -- so why not break O Romeo, to feel the despair of wanting something so badly it is not there, yet have a strong bodied Eldee proclaim it.
Of course a rough draft!
Her name is Eldee, or at least that’s the way I think she spells it.
You know your alphabet. Say L.D. and you’ll know who I mean.
Less Destruction and no mauling of any wild.
Lead Destroys would be the sort of slogan she would question:
I can see her waving a #2 pencil saying, “are you sure you didn’t
mean lead, as in leader?” She’ll answer, “not the lieder and dirndl type”
singing with bodice, blouse, full skirt and apron. She’ll pro-
claim: O
RO
ME
O
which you could hear as O! Rome! O!
or Oro meo as in to my Gold
Initialed as Open Research Online
Medium Earth orbit
O! would any name smell as sweet, O!
Eldee, wherefore art thou then?
And she’ll answer, I have tears to say.
It’s all in the dream of my boy on the bridge
and he looked at the water and said, I want to go
there, and he sprang over the railing, then caught
the edge of the bridge with his hands, changing
his mind and couldn’t keep hold, and so
he fell... l, l, l, l, l, so far, and she saw him
so still, in that transparent water and knew
he was dead, dead .. finish with a D.
and so she does, inserting A, all over again,
de.... dead, I’m Eldee,
L. of fall and D.
the part dead.
Napowrimo April 19
Lots of food for for thought, which I just typed as "foot for thought"
as in kicking ideas around.
I had an idea of connecting the inevitability of war with the French saying, "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" and further, to look at that expression of despair/resignation in front of disappointed hopes as an invitation to reflect on kindness.
Although I was chided that the expression is an invitation to... giving up (une invitation à baisser les bras)
my idea of reflecting on kindness asks that one look at all that is cruel, horrific, injust... to tap into a different part of "being human" -- accessible to all...
I felt chided for using the word "kindness" with a call to looking at the book "Killer of Angels" to which I answered:
It troubles me to feel chided so for using the word "kindness".
Of course war is not kind -- but is it too naive to say, I want to extract myself from fatalism, fight against the historically proven inevitable nature of man which leads to war, and say, what if, with an understanding, if not of love, at least a kindness in action in one's own personal life?
Of course, the Civil war was brutal, and Crane shows it. And the book you mentioned sets the record straight about it. Much of the "battle art" of the 19th century shows bloodless war, such as Benjamin West and the depiction of a swooning, heroic general being held up, surrounded, revered by his men. Fact is he probably died alone, under some bushes in a pool of blood, screaming in agony.
This combined with looking at the poem below, provided me with a rough draft of a poem.
Prelude by Oliver Bendorf (posted in Linebreak)
what kind of
boy
if just two neckties,
what kind of ship,
default
and markless.
my body yearns
for animal
and I wake
on dampened sheets—
what kind of
bed
if tampered
pronouns,
what kind of
cockcrow dawn
is this new me
warbled
from your frets
and bow.
mother,
I have chosen
the name
you once chose.
and when I arrive
fashionably late,
when Odysseus
crawls
between my olive tree limbs,
his guile hanging lower
than his brawn,
what kind of
knot
with two small hands—
what kind of
boy.
**
My poem:
Repeated Prélude
What kind
(of man)
if the detail
is buttons,
what kind of
poem
if war’s called kind
what kind of tone
in “nothing changes”
when bitter
etches cross, skullbones
kind
all by itself,
as reminder
we lose
find again
until something
kindles the hand
to sew on the lost button
found in some sunken valley.
as in kicking ideas around.
I had an idea of connecting the inevitability of war with the French saying, "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" and further, to look at that expression of despair/resignation in front of disappointed hopes as an invitation to reflect on kindness.
Although I was chided that the expression is an invitation to... giving up (une invitation à baisser les bras)
my idea of reflecting on kindness asks that one look at all that is cruel, horrific, injust... to tap into a different part of "being human" -- accessible to all...
I felt chided for using the word "kindness" with a call to looking at the book "Killer of Angels" to which I answered:
It troubles me to feel chided so for using the word "kindness".
Of course war is not kind -- but is it too naive to say, I want to extract myself from fatalism, fight against the historically proven inevitable nature of man which leads to war, and say, what if, with an understanding, if not of love, at least a kindness in action in one's own personal life?
Of course, the Civil war was brutal, and Crane shows it. And the book you mentioned sets the record straight about it. Much of the "battle art" of the 19th century shows bloodless war, such as Benjamin West and the depiction of a swooning, heroic general being held up, surrounded, revered by his men. Fact is he probably died alone, under some bushes in a pool of blood, screaming in agony.
This combined with looking at the poem below, provided me with a rough draft of a poem.
Prelude by Oliver Bendorf (posted in Linebreak)
what kind of
boy
if just two neckties,
what kind of ship,
default
and markless.
my body yearns
for animal
and I wake
on dampened sheets—
what kind of
bed
if tampered
pronouns,
what kind of
cockcrow dawn
is this new me
warbled
from your frets
and bow.
mother,
I have chosen
the name
you once chose.
and when I arrive
fashionably late,
when Odysseus
crawls
between my olive tree limbs,
his guile hanging lower
than his brawn,
what kind of
knot
with two small hands—
what kind of
boy.
**
My poem:
Repeated Prélude
What kind
(of man)
if the detail
is buttons,
what kind of
poem
if war’s called kind
what kind of tone
in “nothing changes”
when bitter
etches cross, skullbones
kind
all by itself,
as reminder
we lose
find again
until something
kindles the hand
to sew on the lost button
found in some sunken valley.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
O PEN -- POEMS FOR APRIL 25
Poems for April 25:
Last week, we shared thoughts about Barot’s poem “The Wooden Coffin” , exploring the angles of “detail” and “image”. This week, a series of poems which play with point of view, syntax, and what it is we “see”, visually and in our mind’s eye.
Wislawa Szymborska: Cat in an Empty Apartment translated by Dr. Clare Cavanagh + Stanisław Barańczak,
Robert Creeley:
The Pattern (Creeley, Collected Poems, 294)
( if time "The Rain" -- read by Forrest Gander 4/13 at RIT at the Mano project)
Samuel Daniel Another Song [Are they shadows that we see?]
Jennifer Grotz: The Needle
Wallace Stevens: Man Carrying Thing
Rebecca Lindenberg Ghostology (posted on Verse Daily)
Last week, we shared thoughts about Barot’s poem “The Wooden Coffin” , exploring the angles of “detail” and “image”. This week, a series of poems which play with point of view, syntax, and what it is we “see”, visually and in our mind’s eye.
Wislawa Szymborska: Cat in an Empty Apartment translated by Dr. Clare Cavanagh + Stanisław Barańczak,
Robert Creeley:
The Pattern (Creeley, Collected Poems, 294)
( if time "The Rain" -- read by Forrest Gander 4/13 at RIT at the Mano project)
Samuel Daniel Another Song [Are they shadows that we see?]
Jennifer Grotz: The Needle
Wallace Stevens: Man Carrying Thing
Rebecca Lindenberg Ghostology (posted on Verse Daily)
discussion of O PEN April 18
We spoke a bit of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane -- of Levine's wry humor, which allows us to access imagination both for grief and for "myths we live by". The parallel of having a headache by jumping back and forth from one language to another, then jumps to vision -- which instead of being a moment's relief as announced, shakes your head back at the image of a horrible accident or death. Just as Levine does not use "The Fall of Icarus" directly to make his point of an indifferent world,
"The Merciless God" is nonetheless set up to think of it, like neoclassical paintings using Renaissance religious settings for 19th century historical work, just as one thinks both of work accidents, hard luck of 1929, and Hart Crane's suicide off Brooklyn Bridge. Levine reminds us not to be frivolous -- he is talking about two men, and imagination shared in a way "that even ants in your own house won't forget" -- not imagination elevated to be some divine inspiration, but the very real,
important imagination we need for every day life.
The three poems from the April issue of Poetry Magazine prompted an equal amount of discussion:
Barot’s poem brought up the idea of what we bring to a poem in terms of what attitudes are shaping our reading. For instance, having just read the book “Talking to Trees” which is filled with “definitions” such as this: Faith: one part belief, two parts courage,
I found the opening line more “telling” which detracts from a poem’s power. And yet, yet saying what image is, then questioning it, coming to the conclusion that the speaker doesn’t know, is a fine example of how we explore what we hold in our mind, what we want to believe. What the poem doing is more important than what the poem is “teaching”. Death, from the title, to the image of the horse, and practices of the Shoshone which are not familiar to us, threads to the very last line, where the clock stops. The finality of a coffin changes once we start to call it “wooden overcoat” which image changes the detail of funerary box for the deceased to something protective, warm. A detail names... or does it? as the poem ends on “details.”
It reminds me of Robert Creeley’s “Patterns”
"The Pattern," (Creeley, Collected Poems, 294)
As soon as
I speak, I
speaks. It
it wants to
be free
but impassive lies
in the direction
of its
words. Let
x equal x. x
also equals x
I
speak to hear
myself speak?
I
had not
thought that some-
thing had such
undone. It
was an idea
of mine.
Jason Guriel’s poem explains “a magnetic personality” creating a verb out of Marc-Anthony, referring to Picasso and Gertrude Stein, with a delightful use of language play.
Michael Collier’s poem also pays tribute not only to Louise Bogan, her contribution to poetry, her difficult life, but imbeds loving to beloved, taming to tamed, cupping wildness lost along with the beloved, into parentheses as if to protect it. One of those short poems worthy of memorizing, to be able to think about.
The two Louise Bogan poems, also are worthy of memorizing. The 9 lines of tears in sleep combines familiar associations (Peter and the the Garden of Gethsemene but not 3 times the cock crew – all night long) and Clement Moore’s “Night Before Christmas”
(the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster to midnight); what is real and what false, what is joy and sorrow, how do we speak in tears? Although this is in the cage of sleep, the poem challenges us to think of the cages we enter during wakefulness.
As for the dragonfly — a more exquisite picture could not be drawn of its ephemeral beauty. We listened to her say it — she pronounces "predator" as PRE – DATE – OR which invites the imagination to break down the image into the double-life of butterflies.
"The Merciless God" is nonetheless set up to think of it, like neoclassical paintings using Renaissance religious settings for 19th century historical work, just as one thinks both of work accidents, hard luck of 1929, and Hart Crane's suicide off Brooklyn Bridge. Levine reminds us not to be frivolous -- he is talking about two men, and imagination shared in a way "that even ants in your own house won't forget" -- not imagination elevated to be some divine inspiration, but the very real,
important imagination we need for every day life.
The three poems from the April issue of Poetry Magazine prompted an equal amount of discussion:
Barot’s poem brought up the idea of what we bring to a poem in terms of what attitudes are shaping our reading. For instance, having just read the book “Talking to Trees” which is filled with “definitions” such as this: Faith: one part belief, two parts courage,
I found the opening line more “telling” which detracts from a poem’s power. And yet, yet saying what image is, then questioning it, coming to the conclusion that the speaker doesn’t know, is a fine example of how we explore what we hold in our mind, what we want to believe. What the poem doing is more important than what the poem is “teaching”. Death, from the title, to the image of the horse, and practices of the Shoshone which are not familiar to us, threads to the very last line, where the clock stops. The finality of a coffin changes once we start to call it “wooden overcoat” which image changes the detail of funerary box for the deceased to something protective, warm. A detail names... or does it? as the poem ends on “details.”
It reminds me of Robert Creeley’s “Patterns”
"The Pattern," (Creeley, Collected Poems, 294)
As soon as
I speak, I
speaks. It
it wants to
be free
but impassive lies
in the direction
of its
words. Let
x equal x. x
also equals x
I
speak to hear
myself speak?
I
had not
thought that some-
thing had such
undone. It
was an idea
of mine.
Jason Guriel’s poem explains “a magnetic personality” creating a verb out of Marc-Anthony, referring to Picasso and Gertrude Stein, with a delightful use of language play.
Michael Collier’s poem also pays tribute not only to Louise Bogan, her contribution to poetry, her difficult life, but imbeds loving to beloved, taming to tamed, cupping wildness lost along with the beloved, into parentheses as if to protect it. One of those short poems worthy of memorizing, to be able to think about.
The two Louise Bogan poems, also are worthy of memorizing. The 9 lines of tears in sleep combines familiar associations (Peter and the the Garden of Gethsemene but not 3 times the cock crew – all night long) and Clement Moore’s “Night Before Christmas”
(the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster to midnight); what is real and what false, what is joy and sorrow, how do we speak in tears? Although this is in the cage of sleep, the poem challenges us to think of the cages we enter during wakefulness.
As for the dragonfly — a more exquisite picture could not be drawn of its ephemeral beauty. We listened to her say it — she pronounces "predator" as PRE – DATE – OR which invites the imagination to break down the image into the double-life of butterflies.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Napowrimo -- April 18
Twas the 18th of April 1775...
hardly a man still alive
to remember that famous day and year
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...
**
Poem for today informed by all that is below.
Heartbeat Clock
It's time enter a quiet room, your head
empty of all but the vignette
of the French duck who wanted to be a cat,
ignoring his set of wings and webbed feet.
Wise King Charles* thought his palace clock
could set time straight, but it was as subject
to mood as each citizen -- each YOU a perfect set
of selves. It's time to reflect before giving
into the urge to trade your feathers and quills
for some cat's handset and fur. I hear the beat
without needing anyone to measure what it clocks.
I'm thinking today, is a good day to let go of old memories.
All I want is...
such a common expression that drops out of the mouth.
I remember my mother saying, "All I want is a little white pill to end this all",
and as a young mother myself, feeling the confusion of wishing both that HER misery end,
but also my own, watching her struggles with alcohol and mental illness.
How many years of little blue pills, little pink pills, large quantities of Jim Beam in half gallon bottles standing in their black-lettered labels as straight as any Kentucky gentleman posing for a picture. And the pain of
knowing little can hold a soul trapped in a body rattling ice-cubes.
I remember the African refugee women I taught who hadn't learned "damn you to hell" as a response to lunatics who shot their husbands, burned their huts, abducted their sons. How do they numb the pain, except by their courage
to survive.
"How little we know" my mother taught her roomnate Rita.
If Yeats could say, "Now that my ladder is gone/I must lie down where all ladders start/In the foul rag and bones shop of the heart.
« C'est l'horloge du palais (qui fait comme il lui plaît) »
Imagine having a clock in your palace by which all the clocks in the city would be set!
My poem today was inspired by thinking of all these things -- found in a stack of notes in a tick-tocked
old folder I'm happy to toss!
*Charles V, dit Charles le Sage,
hardly a man still alive
to remember that famous day and year
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...
**
Poem for today informed by all that is below.
Heartbeat Clock
It's time enter a quiet room, your head
empty of all but the vignette
of the French duck who wanted to be a cat,
ignoring his set of wings and webbed feet.
Wise King Charles* thought his palace clock
could set time straight, but it was as subject
to mood as each citizen -- each YOU a perfect set
of selves. It's time to reflect before giving
into the urge to trade your feathers and quills
for some cat's handset and fur. I hear the beat
without needing anyone to measure what it clocks.
I'm thinking today, is a good day to let go of old memories.
All I want is...
such a common expression that drops out of the mouth.
I remember my mother saying, "All I want is a little white pill to end this all",
and as a young mother myself, feeling the confusion of wishing both that HER misery end,
but also my own, watching her struggles with alcohol and mental illness.
How many years of little blue pills, little pink pills, large quantities of Jim Beam in half gallon bottles standing in their black-lettered labels as straight as any Kentucky gentleman posing for a picture. And the pain of
knowing little can hold a soul trapped in a body rattling ice-cubes.
I remember the African refugee women I taught who hadn't learned "damn you to hell" as a response to lunatics who shot their husbands, burned their huts, abducted their sons. How do they numb the pain, except by their courage
to survive.
"How little we know" my mother taught her roomnate Rita.
If Yeats could say, "Now that my ladder is gone/I must lie down where all ladders start/In the foul rag and bones shop of the heart.
« C'est l'horloge du palais (qui fait comme il lui plaît) »
Imagine having a clock in your palace by which all the clocks in the city would be set!
My poem today was inspired by thinking of all these things -- found in a stack of notes in a tick-tocked
old folder I'm happy to toss!
*Charles V, dit Charles le Sage,
Napowrimo April 17
Stage Lights
The late afternoon sun catches the petals,
lights them like pink lanterns
and suddenly, my daughter appears
as if slipping out of the picture
in her lavendar-blue prom dress
not to return to twelve years ago,
but to start a theatre of pictures
from laughing, toe-catching baby,
cartwheeling six, faster and faster
to bicycles and skis
and always her very own legs,
her spirit running
her own two deft feet.
Monday, April 16, 2012
NaPoWriMo -- April 14, 15, 16
This week-end, I shared my "Friday the 13th poem" -- and enjoyed the fact that someone else used the fact that Palm Sunday AND April Fools' Day fell on the same day. With a bit of feedback, I thought on my poem, so April 15, the mid-month poem is a revision of it. The poem doesn't really address superstition...so change of title.. a little paring...
Spring Busting Out
Purple Henbit, all lavender bloom,
sunbathes in the soft grass,
not to tan, nor to preen
nor to relax after a hard bit
of birthing for such a short-lived
existence.
In suburban life, someone will
shortchange such plants,
pieces of silver traded
for an American Tru-green lawn
doctored with poisons.
A little surgery by mower-blade
will chop the purple nicely,
fine as ashes without a tell-tale
streak. No monument, entombment,
no grave-- such require real
estate, this idea of permanence,
claim, control.
**
and what is luck? and what is "control" all about. Sunday's poem was a meditation on the arbitrariness of weeding... why
Luck of the Draw
Borders are borders, I tell them.
You are not supposed to be here.
We have strict orders: dandelions
may under no circumstance appear
in the flower bed. Granted, yellow
starred heads are as pretty as a jonquil
with edible leaves, but you fellows
are seedy, go to pot, make for ill-will
dot by bright dot in a country made
for common uniform! Out you go!
You are not invited, we'll have you know!
I'm glad you like borders, they tell us.
But we are supposed to be where we land
and who decides who lives where? What fuss
have you made about eliminating our band
of merry yellow? Our star-globes bear no ill
seed by seed, pot or no pot in the tranquil
web that weaves us all. On we go!
Not all survive.
First to go: the ones near the borders
next the thick-necked, so large and loud
next, the multiple-headed,
and yet, even if diminished, they still thrive.
And then for a minute, imagine the world
if they really disappeared.
No, bring on those lions
I'd have them rule any day in the course
of empires!*
*Painter Thomas Cole had an idea of "the course of empires" and painted five paintings which show:
1) savage (wild) state (no trace of man)
2) pastoral
3) Empire
4) Destruction
5) Desolation
** I had thought of using this idea for today:
Why is it that we document what it is we are about to destroy? Thomas Cole was asked to sketch Letchworth park in 1839, before they blasted parts of it to make way for a Canal extension.
My writing group is undergoing some changes. One of which is a new name, and this one was suggested:
C L A N J A M P H R Y
clanjamphry (plural clanjamphries)Mob, rabble, crowd. I'm afraid I don't consider myself as writer as being part of a mob. Our job is to interpret the world, make it accessible.
Clanjamphry or gone awry?
The clan will jam and fry the mob
who will poke and try to kill the king.
The crowd will start to cry
give us music, and we will sing
of the sweet berries of days gone by
but alas, alack Milady, Milord, so high
on their horses, they have lost sight of things.
Friday, April 13, 2012
o pen : poems for April 18 CONVERSATIONS
After a stunning reading by Philip Levine on Thursday, April 12, I would like to follow the advice of Jennifer Grotz' advisor who told her that she should "write like someone else, and read Philip Levine".
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/poetry/levine.htm
This above interview gives a portrait of Philip Levine – his personality, his gentle humor, his thinking -- a few insights on “They Feed, They Lion” which we discussed earlier.
This week’s selection is a constrast of times, takes, in honor of the way poems do their work in the world. It might be language play, a metaphysical boxing match, blend of narrative and lyric voice and as ever, an invitation to see how words corralled line, image touch us. by will contrast one Philip Levine poem with a few poems in the April 2012 Poetry one of which refers to Louise Bogan, so two of her poems too!
-- On The Meeting Of García Lorca And Hart Crane-- by Philip Levine
3 poems from the April 2012 edition of POETRY
-- The Wooden Overcoat -- by Rick Barot
-- A Magnetic Personality -- Jason Guriel
-- Six Lines for Louise Bogan -- by Michael Collier
2 poems by Louise Bogan:
Tears in Sleep by Louise Bogan and The Dragonfly
NaPoWriMo April 13
Friday the 13th
The purple henbit, all decked out
in lavender and fuchsia bloom,
sunbathes in the soft spring grass.
Not to tan, nor to preen, certainly
not to relax after a hard bit of work
coming to this point in such a short-
lived existence.
Little do these tiny plants know,
here in suburban life, someone will
shortchange them, like pieces
of silver traded for an American
Tru-green, serviced lawn,
doctored with with poisons.
And if not dispensed with that way,
a little surgery by mower-blade
will chop them nicely, fine as ashes,
without even a tell-tale streak left.
No state funeral necessary. Certainly
no monument, no entombment, no grave,
for such require real
estate, this idea of some permanence,
this idea of claim, of control.
The purple henbit, all decked out
in lavender and fuchsia bloom,
sunbathes in the soft spring grass.
Not to tan, nor to preen, certainly
not to relax after a hard bit of work
coming to this point in such a short-
lived existence.
Little do these tiny plants know,
here in suburban life, someone will
shortchange them, like pieces
of silver traded for an American
Tru-green, serviced lawn,
doctored with with poisons.
And if not dispensed with that way,
a little surgery by mower-blade
will chop them nicely, fine as ashes,
without even a tell-tale streak left.
No state funeral necessary. Certainly
no monument, no entombment, no grave,
for such require real
estate, this idea of some permanence,
this idea of claim, of control.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Napowrimo - April 13
This prompt really works for me.
Look through your poem drafts, notes, and writing fragments. Choose one line that you like and refine it until it feels as complete and polished as one line out of context can be. Use that line as a refrain in a new poem. When you've completed a decent draft, try writing an additional draft of the poem without the line, using it instead as the title.
Below the three poems. The blog is not doing justice to line breaks, italics and all,
so if you really want to see this, email me: kjospe1@rochester.rr.com
First poem
**
Spruce boughs heave under the rain’s cold diamond spit
a few miles beyond the hum of the New York State Thruway
just at the edge of the fresh-skunk scent, under
a halo-sliver of moon in that moment between dog
and wolf when everything wild knows
I belong here, doing what I do
and if you hear it, you
too feel the web
of things.
Second poem
Even if the wind spits cold diamond edges of April sleet,
do not send back, dagger-dash knife-tongue.
The wind also sends kindness, like kisses.
And if the skunk leaves you a fresh-scent, and fleet-footed
deer have trampled your garden, remember the lily’s perfume
the wind sends to you, to wend your curses to kisses.
And if the moon seems cut to a sliver, greet the light
that day-wipes the stars, greet the clouds shrouding dawn
you know the wind will comes, like a kindness kisses.
**
3rd poem
The wind will come, like a kindness kisses
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
The wind will,
as will does,
spins into comings,
goings.
We measure it in gusts,
lusty gales,
in breezes, soft as sheets billowing on laundry lines,
or stiff as the eager sail;
The wind will,
as abroholos on the coast of Brazil, or
as will does,
squall and scream,
suffer us to moan.
We measure it into rhythms
patterns of whistle,
gallop,
figures of flight,
rollings’ leap,
The wind will burn
as sirocco, tramontane, foehn or fén-fēng** (焚風 'burning wind')
as fire does,
Anemoi... to explain moods,
how the chords tighten in our throat
until Zephyros, gentlest god,
allows us to sing
and the song carries like a kindness kisses
unexpectedly,
the song presses into the wind,
like kindness,
kisses.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
NaPoWriMo - April 11 -- Chary/Cherries
It's cold... but Spring... and I love that I sent Mark Strand's poem to my father in law (see below)
to which he replied: "Am struggling with "infinite"( strong quotation marks, comme des griffes), specifically in Jung. We shall eliminate this word from our language and find out if there is anything missing from what we want to say."
From Knopf today:
The below may not be a poem, but it is also not NOT a poem. It is typical of the work in Almost Invisible, a slim but significant book of playful creations from the pen of Mark Strand, whose whole career, in a way, has been an attempt to understand (or perhaps to refute!) "The Triumph of the Infinite."
The Triumph of the Infinite
I got up in the night and went to the end of the hall. Over the
door in large letters it said, "This is the next life. Please come
in." I opened the door. Across the room a bearded man in a
pale-green suit turned to me and said, "Better get ready, we're
taking the long way." "Now I'll wake up," I thought, but I was
wrong. We began our journey over golden tundra and patches
of ice. Then there was nothing for miles around, and all I could
hear was my heart pumping and pumping so hard I thought I
would die all over again.
**
My poem... What is "it" -- we say -- but where is the emphasis? WHAT is it? What IS it? What is IT
are three different sentences in English. What happens if you delete just one word? What if there were no "it" ? IT in its grandest meaning of what perhaps has been referred to, but can be so much more.
hmmmmmm. Hence my title.
Chary about It
The artist sketches lines
to test his memory: today cherries
pronounced cha –ar- ries
and he imagines the plump sweetness
hugged in taut skin, the pucker
on the tongue as purplish juice
blends with the flesh, and sun-ripe
perfume.
What does it mean to you, cherries?
WHAT does it mean
What DOES it mean
What does it MEAN
What does mean is missing it.
Just like the cherries are missing
the tree. The it of cycle: blossom,
leaf, fruit, followed by sleep
in bare branches of nubbled bark.
The artist is wearing a wool hat,
gloves that allow him to feel his pencil.
He draws branch bones whipped
by the wind— they’re flutter-filled bloom
after a snowless winter. But today,
it is cold enough to ice things over.
The cherries will be dear this year.
What do you notice?
WHAT do you,
What DO you,
What do YOU
What do you NOTice?
What does it mean to you?
to which he replied: "Am struggling with "infinite"( strong quotation marks, comme des griffes), specifically in Jung. We shall eliminate this word from our language and find out if there is anything missing from what we want to say."
From Knopf today:
The below may not be a poem, but it is also not NOT a poem. It is typical of the work in Almost Invisible, a slim but significant book of playful creations from the pen of Mark Strand, whose whole career, in a way, has been an attempt to understand (or perhaps to refute!) "The Triumph of the Infinite."
The Triumph of the Infinite
I got up in the night and went to the end of the hall. Over the
door in large letters it said, "This is the next life. Please come
in." I opened the door. Across the room a bearded man in a
pale-green suit turned to me and said, "Better get ready, we're
taking the long way." "Now I'll wake up," I thought, but I was
wrong. We began our journey over golden tundra and patches
of ice. Then there was nothing for miles around, and all I could
hear was my heart pumping and pumping so hard I thought I
would die all over again.
**
My poem... What is "it" -- we say -- but where is the emphasis? WHAT is it? What IS it? What is IT
are three different sentences in English. What happens if you delete just one word? What if there were no "it" ? IT in its grandest meaning of what perhaps has been referred to, but can be so much more.
hmmmmmm. Hence my title.
Chary about It
The artist sketches lines
to test his memory: today cherries
pronounced cha –ar- ries
and he imagines the plump sweetness
hugged in taut skin, the pucker
on the tongue as purplish juice
blends with the flesh, and sun-ripe
perfume.
What does it mean to you, cherries?
WHAT does it mean
What DOES it mean
What does it MEAN
What does mean is missing it.
Just like the cherries are missing
the tree. The it of cycle: blossom,
leaf, fruit, followed by sleep
in bare branches of nubbled bark.
The artist is wearing a wool hat,
gloves that allow him to feel his pencil.
He draws branch bones whipped
by the wind— they’re flutter-filled bloom
after a snowless winter. But today,
it is cold enough to ice things over.
The cherries will be dear this year.
What do you notice?
WHAT do you,
What DO you,
What do YOU
What do you NOTice?
What does it mean to you?
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Napowrimo day 10 -- Ghazal (Teal)
Today is a composite prompt... a monologue/ghazal/color prompt/forest/shade... which didn't exactly happen BECAUSE of the prompts -- but having skimmed quite a few poems and re-read the essay in which TS Eliot talks about "transforming" what we read, which has been coined as "great writers steal" (which is not quite what he said)... here is a draft.
I love the color teal -- love that it has a long history in different languages, although first used in earnest as color in 1917, and comes from a water-drake's eyes -- love that by saying teal-blue or teal green, it combines to be more of one than another... part of the prompt was to use the opposite association w/ the color -- so any mention of man-made fashion is completely out to dress "Spring"!
She has her own colors and sounds.
I'm not liking the way the blog is squishing my lines. I'm hoping that I fixed the settings...
A ghazal is in couplets. "teal" is the last word of the 2nd line. I did use a "takhallus" (pen name) which can be a nickname. In my case, my childhood nickname: Kit.
**
Spring
Teal I see you, teal, as if a lake contains you, teal—
not a banner nor the drake with eyes ringed with teal.
In morning, you mist into light, drizzle with rain,
reflecting in each drop light ringed with coral and teal.
You are free from, ice, alive in frog-dropped splash
peepers’ peel, robin call, a greenish symphony of sound and teal.
You are magic key lifting a fiddlehead ring, you are shake of blossom.
apple snow and cherry sweep, in a sky more azure than teal.
Ah how you stir the fox kit’s heart, as he leaves the birthing den
ready now to thread his long red tale through the woods dappled with teal.
I love the color teal -- love that it has a long history in different languages, although first used in earnest as color in 1917, and comes from a water-drake's eyes -- love that by saying teal-blue or teal green, it combines to be more of one than another... part of the prompt was to use the opposite association w/ the color -- so any mention of man-made fashion is completely out to dress "Spring"!
She has her own colors and sounds.
I'm not liking the way the blog is squishing my lines. I'm hoping that I fixed the settings...
A ghazal is in couplets. "teal" is the last word of the 2nd line. I did use a "takhallus" (pen name) which can be a nickname. In my case, my childhood nickname: Kit.
**
Spring
Teal I see you, teal, as if a lake contains you, teal—
not a banner nor the drake with eyes ringed with teal.
In morning, you mist into light, drizzle with rain,
reflecting in each drop light ringed with coral and teal.
You are free from, ice, alive in frog-dropped splash
peepers’ peel, robin call, a greenish symphony of sound and teal.
You are magic key lifting a fiddlehead ring, you are shake of blossom.
apple snow and cherry sweep, in a sky more azure than teal.
Ah how you stir the fox kit’s heart, as he leaves the birthing den
ready now to thread his long red tale through the woods dappled with teal.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Napowrimo - Day 9 -- Fiddlehead sighting!
Spring has taken a sharp blast back to gusting -- but there underfoot, in a bare patch free of the eagerness of weedy undergrowth, two ferns. One a perfectly smooth green ring -- as if ready for some wood fairy to pull it up,
revealing some surprise. Who would guess in the curled up ball it will raise up, feathery fronds of fern will
slowly unfurl and grow! I do hope they will seed and make more!
The haiku:
Fiddleheads! spring rings
unwinding with no forethought--
be mindful of steps!
**
There is no forethought, to quote Wendell Berry, OF GRIEF.
It's not so much "be careful where you step" as be mindful of steps.
Napowrimo -- Day 8 : Serious/Sirius
Prompted by George Bilgere's poem, Robert Frost "posted in Writer's Almanac
Googling Sirius
I like that a star’s name can be confused
with an adjective. How grateful
we can be for google to tell us more
about Sirius and serious. Finding out
information about a dog star, allows
the opening up of a can of new thoughts
perhaps to share with a friend,
or use to impress someone at work, or
write into a poem to be sent out for
publication, or rejection, considered
along with the myriad poems filled with
thoughts penned by other people who
also have found new triggers thanks
to the juggling of googled information.
Seriously. Imagine if your calendar were
based on the brief moment a star becomes
visible above the horizon, in the case of Sirius
which google suggests the Egyptians
called Sopdet (and the Greeks called Sothis)
and your local river flooded in conjunction with this star,
you might feel Sirius is worth your attention.
I know I won’t look at the horizon quite the same
way at dawn, knowing now, thanks to Google,
about heliacal rising where a star rises
each day just a little higher,
staying a little longer. If Sirius is at the root
of those impossibly hot days of summer,
prestilence, plague, not to mention wheat rust,
the Dog Star and dog days take a serious bite
into health and human welfare.
Such information could prompt us to take
some serious sacrifice – and pay attention to
skies that are clear or misty...
or go back to the idea of Σείριος (Seirios)
as in "glowing" or "scorcher where star-struck
is a malignant flaming up. Or simply, we can
look at how human nature seriously defies
change. Who shall we blame now when plants
wilt, men weaken, etc, etc. Maybe serious.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
O Pen : Poems for April 11
Two Trees-- by Ellen Bryant Voigt
Variation: Two Trees -- by Ellen Bryant Voigt
The world is a beautiful place – by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
"Don’t let that horse” (#14) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15) - by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am intrigued by what makes poems accessible. Why do we perk up our ears to certain things, and not others?
I love the idea of writing a poem, and then a variation; I also love that this theme of "everything is beautiful" has endless permutations.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Napowrimo day 6-- Unportrait
I might have misunderstood a prompt -- but it produced this! At first I googled "unPortrait" and found a wedding photographer's site -- with trademark -- the unPortrait, of bride/groom/couple executed in under 7 minutes before the guests would miss them... This took a little longer than that! Self–Un-portrait If you find an endless spool of thread the flesh color of your nose unwind it until it covers every inch of your skin. and call it un portrait de soi which sounds like poured silk. If you used to say toy-boat fast until you tripped on your tongue try saying self-unportrait slowly, until you hear sell- f-un –port-rip, and see a merchant ship filled with wooden statues and start looking for one which looks like you and that you call un portrait en bois which sounds sharp as a dog’s bark as you tap it like a cane in a Parisian park. At this point the telephone rings, and your name will be announced on caller ID, unavailable, out of area, not provided. This is your very own portrait sans titre which the hard of hearing might think sounds like Saint Peter. This is where a mirror might come in handy. A little reflection, different angles, so a virtual image in all its complexity appears and you trace exactly what you see in lines as thin as silk threads resembling a ridged lute of a leatherback turtle. Of course, you are an excellent swimmer, used to cold waters, and diving deep. Un portrait d’une tortue which sounds like told you, told you, told you. In the mirror, the lines shift as you watch your face from puzzled infant, to surprised toddler, gleeful child, and then all those years where busy equaled survival. This is where you start to peel, to shuck, undo. Un-tongue which does not mean mute— un-portrait of the only self you are.
Napowrimo -- Day 7- Unlying Questions Run (Dance)
Underlying Questions Run in Italics (in the Fog) if stones were glass and twilight single, one square of silence in every stone as the river whispers a scoop of perhaps questions question... water curves would finger truth, a tingled whisper stretched comma by lone comma, until gathered into a scoop of perhaps questions, question the swinging flail, the swiple thrashing grain, seed settling like ashes, one by one waiting to be scooped up and kneaded, question after question after question. ** (Swedish proverb: worry gives a small thing a big shadow) ** part of a collaboration with Christine Fendley and Park Avenue Dance
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Discussion (Rich) 4/4/2012
Adrienne Rich: Passionate political activist, feminist who appeared in the 50’s, said “Art means nothing if it simply decorates the table of the power which holds it hostage.”
****
Discussed:
3 poems by Adrienne Rich and epilogue by Ellen Bryant Voigt.
I initially said that I chose the poem Epilogue, by Ellen Bryant Voigt as tribute to her. Now, I am not sure I meant the word "tribute". Rather, a counter voice to Adrienne Rich. Epilogue ends Voigt's book "Kyrie" (published 1995) which tells of the 1918 influenza epidemic through a sequence of linked blank verse sonnets.
There are sonnets of reflections; sonnets about different people, like Mattie, the Doctor; sonnets that are strictly metaphor. The epilogue, written in six tercets draws the curtain with a snow storm.
Something about ending a book about a devastating subject with a work horse, let out in the storm, and the choice that a different horse might be indoors, munching his oats seemed a different way of looking at
"the truth and dread" we experience, season after season. In a way it is like Adrienne's expression of what it feels like to be violated; her observation of how our response to violence is not sufficient, just as our words cannot serve just causes. A snowstorm comes, everything is temporarily whitened, blanked out, like a palimpsest, ready for the next script.
Adrienne Rich:
1. What Kind of Times Are These
2. Delta
3.The Burning of Paper Instead of Children
1. What kind of times are these; don't be fooled is a theme -- and yet that a thread of hope,
answering "why should I tell you anything", is that we will listen -- that we will come to terms with the fact that "truth" can be filled with dread, and is not "good news". We thought of other women, much more at risk -- and yet, whether Akhmatova, or Allende, or ourselves in our safe America, we have have been silent when our "truth" is not safe to share -- whether it be about Indians, Slaves, protesting war.
a time when it’s safe to talk ; Isabelle Allende...
2. Delta: Adrienne Rich has an admirable style that is both direct and clear. The 5-fingers of the river at the Delta could indeed represent 5 different aspects of her voice carried in her river: feminist, lesbian, activist, jewish, american citizen... and how art for her, this task of using words well, becomes creative residue...
Kathy shared "In the Classroom" (which appeared in an early book, "Time's Power".)
In a Classroom
Talking of poetry, hauling the books
arm-full to the table where the heads
bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud,
talking of consonants, elision,
caught in the how, oblivious of why:
I look in your face, Jude,
neither frowning nor nodding,
opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table:
a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking
What I cannot say, is me. For that I came.
**
the last lines reminded us of a famous line from someone else, Kathy recognized later as
"Selves - goes itself, myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
( Gerald Manley Hopkins:"As Kingfishers Catch Fire")
3. The Burning of Paper Instead of Children
Mary said the epigraph by Father Berrigan immediately triggered memories of the Vietnam war. We took a moment to remember how differently news was reported in the late 60's; the striking images of LIFE magazine.
What happened to us that we do not respond to injustice that way anymore? It is frightening that our words would appear to have even less power now. Are we too asleep to look at Durer's Melancholia? Are we that much in the present, that few in America know the name Herodotus, let alone, know what he meant about open-jawed crocodiles with tasty bits in their teeth? How many times have there been book burnings?
What happens between us
has happened for centuries
we know it from literature
Still it happens.
What IS Artaud saying with the words "Burn the Books": Dadaist nihilism -- destroy museums, culture...
Burning as a way of guarding secrets and maintaining power through torture ... the Inquisition, the Nazis, or Fahrenheit 451. David reminded us of Heinrich Heine's quote posted at Dachau: (translated in English): When one burns books, one soon burns men as well.
Does art have a moral obligation? What happens to Beauty and truth if there is not?
As Sonnia remarked, the term "dialectic" is appropriate and throws some of us back to days when we talked in Marxist lingo.
Martin spoke of the last poem as a collection of disparate, raw data, but wonders how the reader is to make sense of it...
Similar questions: how to understand the "language of the oppressor" and language in general. Adrienne Rich spent her life writing about power, and understand the power of language. Her determination, her strong voice, unwavering authenticity command that we listen... and more, that we too find again what it is in us that calls a spade a spade, and that we use it to dig, diving into our metaphorical wrecks.
napowrimo - April 5 -- 100%
The prompt, 100%... and meeting with fellow "Beets", Tricia providing a word list which included "aglet" -- the part of a shoelace that gathers all the threads and fastens them, keeps them together... The idea of Cavalcanti, addressing his Ballatetta entered as well... Running Back Home 100% trouble has not yet begun to unravel. However, you see the start of it, in the damaged aglet holding your shoelace threads together. You are running over rubble and gravel stumbling to reach the other edge of the city to deliver a message. Whether you and the message have become traveling companions is not yet clear. You are sure the message is tethered to you, as if pinned to your tongue. Nothing will keep it from arriving. But you arrive at your door, out of breath, your shoe laces tangled, panting— as if you have escaped from a den of thieves and you press the latch, enter and there is your mother, and all you can say is mommie, mommie, mommie. ** use of the 2nd person... effective? as the poem unraveled, by the end, it revealed the memory of being maybe 5-6, and the scariness of straying up the street with my older sister and our neighbor, and ducking down as we passed a house with shades drawn -- not because someone had died, but because BURGLARS lived there!
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
napowrimo April 4 -- Univ. of Rock
univ. of rock* In rock-shaped-sun today by the cairn, in the shimmy of a grove of skinny hawthorns he brings new rocks, hoists a dragon head with a clean-split jaw, just as a roar of March arrives to whistle through. Here, let me show you the slit, how rock too, shifts how at one point, a man in the sun of spring day can find a dragon-head, roll the rock, find pleasure as he shifts it into a place. It’s his rock, now, sun-shaped, shadow licked. *This is his universe, not where he works, called by caller ID, univ of roc ** One poem prompt was to write a "communication poem" -- a tweet... postcard... just about anything. I wouldn’t have written the above without my dear man emailing me (while I was in a different part of the country) about working with rocks, and how he found that dragon head. What a contrast with the sort of message that just gets deleted, to clean out the “in box”, or one of the stuffed envelopes asking for money from an organization you don’t know, or countless appeals to subscribe to services and goods you neither want nor need. Real communication, as opposed to phone calls a computer identifies as pub-intrst-grp, out-of-area, not-provided. When my good man calls from work to tell me he’s on his way, the caller ID tells me, "univ of rock" and my heart skips a beat!
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Napowrimo April 3 -- Caught in the gazing
Caught in Gazing You cannot see the sun yet, nor know the gold in the slit of scurried cloud will be tossed to the field below. Even as the sun bulges, bouffant, gravid flaming up out of the horizon, you cannot predict how it will shrink, as it rises through orange-flecks in a mauve sky, nor augur what happens next: a veil of cloud bank drops like deadweight curtains all light, so quick on the heels of a scoop of golden perhaps admired in gazing's catch. ** this is thanks to a friend's kind observations two drafts ago; Wordsworth's Glad sight wherever new with old Glad sight wherever new with old Is joined through some dear homeborn tie; The life of all that we behold Depends upon that mystery. Vain is the glory of the sky, The beauty vain of field and grove Unless, while with admiring eye We gaze, we also learn to love. ** Artist Breakfast Group. Comments on collaborations; on pros and cons of technology; on looking again at the futurist manifesto and speed being coupled with beauty -- and finding antidote in the beauty of slowing down to share. Very golden scoops !
Monday, April 2, 2012
Napowrimo April 2 -- Anagram KATHRYN
Yesterday the idea of friends providing oars, balanced with filling our boat with what we need as we seek our direction came to mind. A prompt was to write an acronym of your first name. I chose KATHRYN, my given name, eponymous for my grandmother. Knowing’s silent K paddles past Act after act, Tightening yes and no, like wings. How heartening the knell Resonating Yes, No ** good comment: 'tightening yes and no like wings" I want to know more. Take out or unpack. I think take out. yes and no would not be a very good pair of wings, in contrary motion, and I'm not sure I see how you would tighten. Knowing’s silent K paddles past Act after act, Triggered by yes, no. How heartening the knell Resonating Yes, No
Sunday, April 1, 2012
NAPOWRIMO -- April 1 : Spring(____ A.D.)
There is so much to write about with April 1st, a beautiful sunrise, a sense of beginning... the role of fools... but today, I will start with this poem, penned in response to a fracking compressing accident in Pennsylvania which happened the same day Adrienne Rich passed away. In honor of her courage to speak authentically. APRIL 1 Spring ( _ _ _ _ Anno Domine) What is danger but D with anger daggering some message awake. What is anger but A for age blazing, for announcing someone figured out how to go to the moon, fracture the earth to extract gas, create amazing weapons of mass destruction. (This is not an order.) An age of something doesn’t feel right as we prepare over-plump chicken, tasteless, but perfect tomatoes, and our ears. This morning, a fracking compressor exploded for some, somewhat close for others somewhere in someone else’s neck of the woods for others, billowing black smoke blows through the window. What is dungeon but D without unguent, few awake. A dark age of someone says using the eye to view screens instead of each other. Domine, Domine. To some sort of god, some sort of time.
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