I like the idea of the Cleave poem (Napowrimo)
Computers mess with the graphics though. I posted this on on ipoetry and the columns didn't stay. Italics disappear -- so I put in quotation marks.
April 16
Along the Silk Road
The job description, to complicate
speak a new language to make a new world
voice like spinning silk
woven from the soul threaded heart to heart
half to understand halved,
have is illusion; just as oneness,
otherness belongs
in each separate part to the Belovèd
like the man searching a lost son. Do you know how the father,
do you know how he found him?
discovered his lost son? The man thought
"Each person before him," "whoever comes before me
he thought,"This could be him," "This could be him."
Kitty Jospé
4/16/2010
In a cleave poem, you read each column separately,
then the third time, read it horizontally. The 3 parts in sequence, for the eye to read below.
Along the Silk Road
I
The job description,
speak a new language
voice
woven from the soul
half to understand
have is illusion;
otherness
in each separate part
like the man searching.
do you know how he
discovered his lost son?
"Each person before him,
he thought, This could be him."
II
to complicate
to make a new world
like spinning silk
threaded heart to heart
halved;
just as oneness,
belongs
to the Belovèd.
A lost son? Do you know how the father
found him?
The man thought
"whoever comes before me
This could be him."
III
The job description, to complicate
speak a new language, to make a new world,
voice like spinning silk
woven from the soul, threaded heart to heart
half to understand, halved:
have is illusion; just as oneness,
otherness belongs
in each separate part to the Belovèd.
Like the man searching a lost son. Do you know how the father,
do you know how he found him?
discovered his lost son? The man thought
"each person before him, whoever comes before me,
This could be him, this could be him."
Friday, April 16, 2010
poems for April 10-15
April 10:
SUN IN THE SPRING WINDOW PANE
Spiders do not lose hair, nor weave
unscripted valentines, unbirthday wishes.
What is spun in the corner , sure as sun
catching your eye, wraps what flies
in swing of silk
dance in the frame.
April 11
What we see, we have already "read" as our visual cortex filters our perceptions down through the doors of our experiences. What we read is immediately transposed perceptually to some kind of image that is compatible with our imagination.
Untitled
I read “loafers”,
and images of bread rise
in my mind and then a tramp
straight out of Frost’s mud-time,
with worn out shoes
the kind with those empty eyes
where pennies are supposed to go;
I am aching
to know if he tossed it
and what kind of wish
he knew
April 12:
(hommage to Abby for the Avocado)
type and tap to tip and tape
as words escape, escape,
scrape below the seascape
and find a story about an avocado
and remember
that this strange
wrinkled testicle of the earth
contains a pit and how countless
trees sprout for the children waiting
to see it split, upward thrust
and snaggle of roots
ready to plant,
for a deeper scrape
April 13
(preamble to poem)
Parable of the Squash and the Tree – From Nasir Khusraw
Have you heard? A squash vine grew beneath a towering tree.
In only twenty days it grew and spread and put forth fruit.
Of the tree it asked: "How old are you? How many years?"
Replied the tree: "Two hundred it would be, and surely more."
The squash laughed and said: "Look, in twenty days, I've done
More than you; tell me, why are you so slow?"
The tree responded: "O little Squash, today is not the day
of reckoning between the two of us.
"Tomorrow, when winds of autumn howl down on you and me,
then shall it be known for sure which one of us is the most resilient!"
**
(My poem below)
A Thousand Years Later
Compare? You and me?
Today is not the best day.
I will practice the 200 year old tree’s reply
should a squash should peer up after the task
of rushing from seed to fruit in 20 days, then ask
What is your slowness caused by?
The rudeness of such a brash remark
is best kindly steered to a kinder mark.
Let squash be squash.
Let oystered shell cloister a pearl.
What remains? Remains.
April 14
Marmeladov’s Loneliness
Did you hear about his oldest daughter, Sonia,
the crying of the half siblings,
the illness of her step-mother,
and how she went out one night at 6 o’clock and returned at 9
and laid 30 roubles in front of Katerina Ivanovna
and without a word, picked up
the green shawl,
put it over her head,
her face to the wall
her shoulders shuddering
her body shuddering
and in that silence Katerina went to her, knelt and kissed her feet
and would not get up, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
What if she had understood there is good in the worst of us
and how he suffered so, drinking up her clothing
crying out that she understand his stupor
the only way he knew how to suffer twice as much.
What if we understood that?
April 15
One spring day, many years ago,
scent of loneliness, in the woods,
apple blossoms
a fleet of white caps
shredding into the air.
And today, I join the blackbird to look
towards the woods, watch snow
blossom by the birch.
There on the honeywheat stalk of grass
the redwing ratchets – then stills
no commentary
on snowy blossom, sliding off the branches.
Silence and a bird swaying.
Drift of spring curling,
repeating.
SUN IN THE SPRING WINDOW PANE
Spiders do not lose hair, nor weave
unscripted valentines, unbirthday wishes.
What is spun in the corner , sure as sun
catching your eye, wraps what flies
in swing of silk
dance in the frame.
April 11
What we see, we have already "read" as our visual cortex filters our perceptions down through the doors of our experiences. What we read is immediately transposed perceptually to some kind of image that is compatible with our imagination.
Untitled
I read “loafers”,
and images of bread rise
in my mind and then a tramp
straight out of Frost’s mud-time,
with worn out shoes
the kind with those empty eyes
where pennies are supposed to go;
I am aching
to know if he tossed it
and what kind of wish
he knew
April 12:
(hommage to Abby for the Avocado)
type and tap to tip and tape
as words escape, escape,
scrape below the seascape
and find a story about an avocado
and remember
that this strange
wrinkled testicle of the earth
contains a pit and how countless
trees sprout for the children waiting
to see it split, upward thrust
and snaggle of roots
ready to plant,
for a deeper scrape
April 13
(preamble to poem)
Parable of the Squash and the Tree – From Nasir Khusraw
Have you heard? A squash vine grew beneath a towering tree.
In only twenty days it grew and spread and put forth fruit.
Of the tree it asked: "How old are you? How many years?"
Replied the tree: "Two hundred it would be, and surely more."
The squash laughed and said: "Look, in twenty days, I've done
More than you; tell me, why are you so slow?"
The tree responded: "O little Squash, today is not the day
of reckoning between the two of us.
"Tomorrow, when winds of autumn howl down on you and me,
then shall it be known for sure which one of us is the most resilient!"
**
(My poem below)
A Thousand Years Later
Compare? You and me?
Today is not the best day.
I will practice the 200 year old tree’s reply
should a squash should peer up after the task
of rushing from seed to fruit in 20 days, then ask
What is your slowness caused by?
The rudeness of such a brash remark
is best kindly steered to a kinder mark.
Let squash be squash.
Let oystered shell cloister a pearl.
What remains? Remains.
April 14
Marmeladov’s Loneliness
Did you hear about his oldest daughter, Sonia,
the crying of the half siblings,
the illness of her step-mother,
and how she went out one night at 6 o’clock and returned at 9
and laid 30 roubles in front of Katerina Ivanovna
and without a word, picked up
the green shawl,
put it over her head,
her face to the wall
her shoulders shuddering
her body shuddering
and in that silence Katerina went to her, knelt and kissed her feet
and would not get up, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
What if she had understood there is good in the worst of us
and how he suffered so, drinking up her clothing
crying out that she understand his stupor
the only way he knew how to suffer twice as much.
What if we understood that?
April 15
One spring day, many years ago,
scent of loneliness, in the woods,
apple blossoms
a fleet of white caps
shredding into the air.
And today, I join the blackbird to look
towards the woods, watch snow
blossom by the birch.
There on the honeywheat stalk of grass
the redwing ratchets – then stills
no commentary
on snowy blossom, sliding off the branches.
Silence and a bird swaying.
Drift of spring curling,
repeating.
Friday, April 9, 2010
April challenge -- a poem a day : poems for April 1-9
I just found this --
http://readwritepoem.org/wp-signup.php
and took the poems I read last night, re-tweaked them, and set them up.
I love this idea of writing a poem a day for a month.
Here they are up to today:
POEM A DAY CHALLENGE: =-- joined April 9, 2010
Back log of poems:
April 1 :
Winter Song for my Son Skiing in Val d’Isère
The snow shook serious – none
of that saltshaker-I-have-plenty-of-time-to-drift-
down-
powder-your-nose-with-a-sloppy-kiss- expansion
of flake in lazy wind.
And in this white, my son takes tight turns
down the steep slope
like a clock disappearing
tick,
tock,
seconds scraped by skis
and I follow
tick
tock
and we pause to rest.
Whiteness wraps me a song:
if you are not dance, my love,
be the clay coiling on the potter’s wheel
supple… be unbaked clay
and if you are not clay my love,
be cobalt glaze
reflecting… be illusion of glaze
and if you are not glaze my love
be music and the stars in the dream
of the one who loves you.
And then he is off again,
like a clock
tick
tock
seconds scraped by skis
in the blind white,
bound in the wind.
**
April 2
Prelude to a Winter Rabbit
From our chairlift, we peer
down at commas,
stenciled lines of print—
scampered melody
of rabbit traces
on wind-crested snow,
winter hunger licking
thick meringue
of stillborn waves,
negatives of rabbit prints,
half-cadenced
silence.
April 3
Whitening
Nailing the truth on the head
toothlessly
like bleaching rainbows
to arrive at white
without skinning truth from other’s bones
and you ask white,
absent to explain itself,
(too busy being the sum of all colors)
to declare the rosy udder in milk,
all the purple vetch, the goldenrod,
and all those greens and oranges and blues
lumbered over and chewed,
lumbered over and chewed.
Lumbered truth, chewed until it lies
tenderly, white.
April 4
Notes to remind myself not to take little things too seriously
… for today. Forget counting
the spots of coffee’s dank bitter brew
that flew out of the cup
when the car bumped into two feet of ice
and leave aside counting when you hear
that your mother’s smile has only one
remaining tooth
and if you insist on counting,
look at the sky with cirrus script
and how the wind encrypts wonder,
wild mustard, without asking why
and why it is thus and so
and so, if counting the nth time the dog
has pee’d on the carpet, without intending
to upset, or the umptieth time you re-read
that passage from a day ago,
watch how today, you can walk, ON TOP
of the snow, and how soon, so
and so will sink into a dark gulley,
rim of spring, and then
May, will green-curl spears and spread
to leaf, and lace-edged bells. Remember how
they leave no trace in summer –
leave without thinking,
like today’s snow.
April 5
Tossed off the Cuff – a poem of 60 syllables, written in under a minute
Sixty syllables in one minute?
I’ve written nine in the first line
and see letters fall, like acorn, walnut
as the seconds tick fine, fine, fine
I say, but don’t feel… I’ll never finish
if those are the rules! Re-read
minute as in tiny – cuffed!
April 6
Pop-a-lock and Attending to Spring
What to do as life grows wild around you
and you are locked out of your house
your mind a mill of excuses
fatigue of driving, a funeral service
the lure of
too much waiting for you to do
the desire to linger
in replays of faces over decades.
Call pop-a-lock, and wait, and then
watch the spring
rain washing the swelling
toothy green waves of dandelion
staccato notes in the high grass
waiting for pop-a-lock
with a trowel,
to root out those dandies with their
hard nuts of flower bound like sleeping eyes.
It’s as if Spring has popped its lock,
its wound up clock out of control
last week’s first daffodils no longer
jazz with the sunshine
rain or no rain -- they’ve finished their lick
half of them withered
trumpets petal to parchment
while a new platoon of jonquils croons
by the lilac busting its chops in silence.
The pop-a-lock man’s arrived.
pulls out his kit,
concentrates, inserts a needle,
and twists. Tells how he used
to work for the police, and how
he had to be real quiet
because you never knew
what was waiting behind the door.
**
April 7
Writer’s Guests
Hello thought. Be my guest
but quietly, please,
to make room for the others.
**
Thinking about “My happiness, bears no relation to happiness” :
"Adina Hoffman's portrait of Taha Muhammad Ali brings to life character after character, each one viewed with the author's singular humanity. The poet himself is a figure of great originality and integrity, and his life becomes a mirror of a world which we have glimpsed, until now, largely in broken fragments. I hope this landmark book will be widely, and carefully, read."—W.S. Merwin
Another idea: I’m happy has no equivalent in Japanese – maybe “I’m glad” and further,
you don’t express watashi which means “I”. So perhaps “I’m happy” is not the same as the transliterated “I’m glad” which a woman in Japan might say as "ureshii desu".
Thoughts come in and out,
how there is no easy word
to describe a particular happiness
how there is a sense of bonheur
as in, alignment with the hour,
this very minute.
April 8
Writer’s Guests – II
Worry, would you kindly take a number,
row yourself to a seat,
maybe there next to Doubt,
gobbling the very air, not out
of hunger, but to press
the engine of something as irrepressible
as joy— without a sliver
of an almond’s worth of coconut-crusted joie
or crumpled hat of a fortune cookie.
No? Doubt is too loud? Well, reverse,
make WORRY become YR ROW.
Sit next to Dao, and its ten thousand things:
bee stings, measles and barbed wire fences,
conch shells, kittens, daily expenses,
costumes, school plays, tooth-fairy rewards,
moon phases, star gazing and classroom boards.
Thank you Dao. Worry is trying to shake itself
into plural. No? Yes? Worries?
April 9, 2010
If arabesques curled around a key
and goldfish jazzed sufficiently,
a foggy day in London town
might mean that when you’re low
you’re up, not down.
http://readwritepoem.org/wp-signup.php
and took the poems I read last night, re-tweaked them, and set them up.
I love this idea of writing a poem a day for a month.
Here they are up to today:
POEM A DAY CHALLENGE: =-- joined April 9, 2010
Back log of poems:
April 1 :
Winter Song for my Son Skiing in Val d’Isère
The snow shook serious – none
of that saltshaker-I-have-plenty-of-time-to-drift-
down-
powder-your-nose-with-a-sloppy-kiss- expansion
of flake in lazy wind.
And in this white, my son takes tight turns
down the steep slope
like a clock disappearing
tick,
tock,
seconds scraped by skis
and I follow
tick
tock
and we pause to rest.
Whiteness wraps me a song:
if you are not dance, my love,
be the clay coiling on the potter’s wheel
supple… be unbaked clay
and if you are not clay my love,
be cobalt glaze
reflecting… be illusion of glaze
and if you are not glaze my love
be music and the stars in the dream
of the one who loves you.
And then he is off again,
like a clock
tick
tock
seconds scraped by skis
in the blind white,
bound in the wind.
**
April 2
Prelude to a Winter Rabbit
From our chairlift, we peer
down at commas,
stenciled lines of print—
scampered melody
of rabbit traces
on wind-crested snow,
winter hunger licking
thick meringue
of stillborn waves,
negatives of rabbit prints,
half-cadenced
silence.
April 3
Whitening
Nailing the truth on the head
toothlessly
like bleaching rainbows
to arrive at white
without skinning truth from other’s bones
and you ask white,
absent to explain itself,
(too busy being the sum of all colors)
to declare the rosy udder in milk,
all the purple vetch, the goldenrod,
and all those greens and oranges and blues
lumbered over and chewed,
lumbered over and chewed.
Lumbered truth, chewed until it lies
tenderly, white.
April 4
Notes to remind myself not to take little things too seriously
… for today. Forget counting
the spots of coffee’s dank bitter brew
that flew out of the cup
when the car bumped into two feet of ice
and leave aside counting when you hear
that your mother’s smile has only one
remaining tooth
and if you insist on counting,
look at the sky with cirrus script
and how the wind encrypts wonder,
wild mustard, without asking why
and why it is thus and so
and so, if counting the nth time the dog
has pee’d on the carpet, without intending
to upset, or the umptieth time you re-read
that passage from a day ago,
watch how today, you can walk, ON TOP
of the snow, and how soon, so
and so will sink into a dark gulley,
rim of spring, and then
May, will green-curl spears and spread
to leaf, and lace-edged bells. Remember how
they leave no trace in summer –
leave without thinking,
like today’s snow.
April 5
Tossed off the Cuff – a poem of 60 syllables, written in under a minute
Sixty syllables in one minute?
I’ve written nine in the first line
and see letters fall, like acorn, walnut
as the seconds tick fine, fine, fine
I say, but don’t feel… I’ll never finish
if those are the rules! Re-read
minute as in tiny – cuffed!
April 6
Pop-a-lock and Attending to Spring
What to do as life grows wild around you
and you are locked out of your house
your mind a mill of excuses
fatigue of driving, a funeral service
the lure of
too much waiting for you to do
the desire to linger
in replays of faces over decades.
Call pop-a-lock, and wait, and then
watch the spring
rain washing the swelling
toothy green waves of dandelion
staccato notes in the high grass
waiting for pop-a-lock
with a trowel,
to root out those dandies with their
hard nuts of flower bound like sleeping eyes.
It’s as if Spring has popped its lock,
its wound up clock out of control
last week’s first daffodils no longer
jazz with the sunshine
rain or no rain -- they’ve finished their lick
half of them withered
trumpets petal to parchment
while a new platoon of jonquils croons
by the lilac busting its chops in silence.
The pop-a-lock man’s arrived.
pulls out his kit,
concentrates, inserts a needle,
and twists. Tells how he used
to work for the police, and how
he had to be real quiet
because you never knew
what was waiting behind the door.
**
April 7
Writer’s Guests
Hello thought. Be my guest
but quietly, please,
to make room for the others.
**
Thinking about “My happiness, bears no relation to happiness” :
"Adina Hoffman's portrait of Taha Muhammad Ali brings to life character after character, each one viewed with the author's singular humanity. The poet himself is a figure of great originality and integrity, and his life becomes a mirror of a world which we have glimpsed, until now, largely in broken fragments. I hope this landmark book will be widely, and carefully, read."—W.S. Merwin
Another idea: I’m happy has no equivalent in Japanese – maybe “I’m glad” and further,
you don’t express watashi which means “I”. So perhaps “I’m happy” is not the same as the transliterated “I’m glad” which a woman in Japan might say as "ureshii desu".
Thoughts come in and out,
how there is no easy word
to describe a particular happiness
how there is a sense of bonheur
as in, alignment with the hour,
this very minute.
April 8
Writer’s Guests – II
Worry, would you kindly take a number,
row yourself to a seat,
maybe there next to Doubt,
gobbling the very air, not out
of hunger, but to press
the engine of something as irrepressible
as joy— without a sliver
of an almond’s worth of coconut-crusted joie
or crumpled hat of a fortune cookie.
No? Doubt is too loud? Well, reverse,
make WORRY become YR ROW.
Sit next to Dao, and its ten thousand things:
bee stings, measles and barbed wire fences,
conch shells, kittens, daily expenses,
costumes, school plays, tooth-fairy rewards,
moon phases, star gazing and classroom boards.
Thank you Dao. Worry is trying to shake itself
into plural. No? Yes? Worries?
April 9, 2010
If arabesques curled around a key
and goldfish jazzed sufficiently,
a foggy day in London town
might mean that when you’re low
you’re up, not down.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
poem that makes me laugh
Written for the fun of it.
Writer's Guests
Worry, would you kindly take
a number, row yourself to a seat,
maybe there, next to Doubt.
I’m afraid today I have no
time and I’m writing.
Here, let me double you
into lining
like this: =D =D
into wide-mouthed, long-eyed D's
gobbling the very air,
not out of hunger, but to press
the engine of something as irrepressible
as joy. Don't! Worry!
J chews, then oy swallows.
Not a bar of song,
not a sliver of an almond’s worth
of joie, Freude, or Japanese ureshii
not a crumpled hat of a fortune cookie.
Joy has turned into a coffee cup,
bacon-stripped to look like marbled
chocolate before it sizzles and melts.
Just for a minute,
look at overindulgence
swelling like a greedy frog
rolling out a sticky tongue
to snare the fat flies, still sluggish
from winter.
Look at Parsimonious
sniffling and staggering
in the lasso of its stingy silhouette.
Look at Busy
snaring l – until it snarls,
disables Linger and Love.
That’s when Worry’s sharp elbows
dig in for a feast.
Something doubles.
Let’s reverse.
Doubt sits next to Dao, and starts to list
ten thousand things:
bee stings, measles, barbed wire fences,
conch shells, kittens, tooth-fairy rewards,
Easter eggs, laundry, daily expenses,
costumes, school plays, certificate awards,
dances, weddings, travels and chances
moon phases, star gazing, classroom boards…
Dao says nothing, which makes Doubt
squirm just a bit closer to Worry
until we shake it plural -- no
worries
left
turned, no doubt, inside out.
Any other guests?
Writer's Guests
Worry, would you kindly take
a number, row yourself to a seat,
maybe there, next to Doubt.
I’m afraid today I have no
time and I’m writing.
Here, let me double you
into lining
like this: =D =D
into wide-mouthed, long-eyed D's
gobbling the very air,
not out of hunger, but to press
the engine of something as irrepressible
as joy. Don't! Worry!
J chews, then oy swallows.
Not a bar of song,
not a sliver of an almond’s worth
of joie, Freude, or Japanese ureshii
not a crumpled hat of a fortune cookie.
Joy has turned into a coffee cup,
bacon-stripped to look like marbled
chocolate before it sizzles and melts.
Just for a minute,
look at overindulgence
swelling like a greedy frog
rolling out a sticky tongue
to snare the fat flies, still sluggish
from winter.
Look at Parsimonious
sniffling and staggering
in the lasso of its stingy silhouette.
Look at Busy
snaring l – until it snarls,
disables Linger and Love.
That’s when Worry’s sharp elbows
dig in for a feast.
Something doubles.
Let’s reverse.
Doubt sits next to Dao, and starts to list
ten thousand things:
bee stings, measles, barbed wire fences,
conch shells, kittens, tooth-fairy rewards,
Easter eggs, laundry, daily expenses,
costumes, school plays, certificate awards,
dances, weddings, travels and chances
moon phases, star gazing, classroom boards…
Dao says nothing, which makes Doubt
squirm just a bit closer to Worry
until we shake it plural -- no
worries
left
turned, no doubt, inside out.
Any other guests?
Sonnet 65 -- Fooling Around
So, there on Writer's Almanac is Shakespeare's Sonnet.. and much as David Bleispeil says he's a better playwright than poet, how irresistible to fool around, in 14 lines.
I was told by a few well-meaning Australians that mine was no "true sonnet" -- but here's to fooling around. A little Beatles, a little Shakespeare.
Working with Sonnet 65
As I get older, losing my hair
the ephemerally lovely breezed out to sea,
then do I watch beauty be air
and rage at the siege of battering days, for we
know our stronghold of sinew and bone
ticked into breath, shall be kicked out alone.
I borrow Will’s question and repeat his bid,
“Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?”
His black ink, still shiny, how can it be
his love still bright in this century
not cracked on friable, wreckful rock?
But there’s the ticket, to unlock the lock
that ink waves into depths words only suggest,
so we die, so we love, let beauty take the rest.
**
penned in March 2010 -- copyright kj.
I was told by a few well-meaning Australians that mine was no "true sonnet" -- but here's to fooling around. A little Beatles, a little Shakespeare.
Working with Sonnet 65
As I get older, losing my hair
the ephemerally lovely breezed out to sea,
then do I watch beauty be air
and rage at the siege of battering days, for we
know our stronghold of sinew and bone
ticked into breath, shall be kicked out alone.
I borrow Will’s question and repeat his bid,
“Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?”
His black ink, still shiny, how can it be
his love still bright in this century
not cracked on friable, wreckful rock?
But there’s the ticket, to unlock the lock
that ink waves into depths words only suggest,
so we die, so we love, let beauty take the rest.
**
penned in March 2010 -- copyright kj.
poem on the CD of Cadences that isn't in the book : Yellow Blues
included on the CD of Cadences read before Liubliu (love you) p. 51.
At a peace conference, when the Russian kids said, ya liubliu vas (I love you)
and the American kids understood, yellow-blue bus.
Yellow Blues
Don’t forget, we’re told so often
(color, chords, shapes and word)
as we get older, the details soften.
Rainbow, waterfall, they’re off in
her mind with other bird.
Don’t forget we’re told so often.
Coffee, soap, the new-hewn coffin,
(color, chords, shapes and word)
as we get older the details soften.
Ya lyubliu vas, she would say, and soften
yellow-blue bus, the others heard.
I love you, we’re told so often.
Details of a life will roughen
skin, mute chord, sight, word.
As we get older, the details soften.
To a life, will you toughen,
blacken out memory word by word?
Don’t forget, we’re told so often
as we get older. The details… soften.
At a peace conference, when the Russian kids said, ya liubliu vas (I love you)
and the American kids understood, yellow-blue bus.
Yellow Blues
Don’t forget, we’re told so often
(color, chords, shapes and word)
as we get older, the details soften.
Rainbow, waterfall, they’re off in
her mind with other bird.
Don’t forget we’re told so often.
Coffee, soap, the new-hewn coffin,
(color, chords, shapes and word)
as we get older the details soften.
Ya lyubliu vas, she would say, and soften
yellow-blue bus, the others heard.
I love you, we’re told so often.
Details of a life will roughen
skin, mute chord, sight, word.
As we get older, the details soften.
To a life, will you toughen,
blacken out memory word by word?
Don’t forget, we’re told so often
as we get older. The details… soften.
April 1, 2010 -- Wallace Stevens -- 3 poems + TSE Burnt Norton
Today's topic was slated as "minding time and mind timing" --and just what is time...
multiplication; how many times; 2 times 2;
music: to measure
seasonal: a time to sow/reap
clock:
earth time: as hours; as shifts; as path around sun
sideral time:
memory
projection
time warp
two poets who experienced the excitement of discoveries which changed our thinking about time; who encountered Eastern philosophy and contemplated the nature of reality.
According to Wallace Stevens, reality is a product of our imagination as it shapes the world.
3 poems :
Wallace Stevens: The Snowman; 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
TSE: Burnt Norton (4 Quartets)
What a delight to spend an hour and a half sharing our perceptions, not in order to
understand the words, and lock them into a cage, but rather accepting that truth escapes words... poetry resists intelligence...
Discussion of Burnt Norton:
We read it aloud, a sentence at a time, rocked in the lyricism and Marge said how she likes to listen to TS Eliot reading, and puts on the record of him before going to sleep,
and that it’s like a lullaby saying, “not to worry”.
We would need to read it again and have years of discussion on this rich meditation.
WALLACE STEVENS
**
The 5 tercet sentence with two semi-colons, 4 commas of The Snowman also addresses time. No memory, only sight and sound: snow; sun; and sound repeated three times, just as nothing is repeated three times. Silence between the sibilance with prerequisites for seeing (one must have a mind of winter to regard; and to have been cold a line time to behold) and a mind of winter not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind – imbedded in the sound of a few leaves which is the sound of the land, which is full of the same wind -- and then one wonders – about same applied to wind, and bare place. And is the listener nothing himself, or perhaps a snowman, who will become nothing in Spring. Such strange fullness in the glitter, the sound, the numb emptiness of winter.
Breaking up the sound reveals patterns in the meaning and tone :
ST sounds.
must / frost / distant / listener : (cold a long time)
S as plural:
boughs / pine-trees / junipers / spruces / leaves: (what is covered)
SH sound
shagged
SN
snow (twice) and Snowman title.
/s/
ice / sun / sound light, reflection, music
/z/
misery / is misery has nothing to do with “is”
The trick of the unending sentence lies in AND. It comes after the semi-colons, in the last tercet, snuggled between an end-line comma and the comma before the second word of the second line, and finally, completes the six syllable count to balance “nothing that is not there”. Jay Keyser explains it in an interview on NPR – how just as we think we understand a sentence, the “and” appears and forces us to rethink what we thought we understood. Here are Keyser’s closing remarks about why it is a perfect poem.
“I once put all the words of the poem on little white cards and made a mobile out of it. It dangled, perfectly balanced, like an Alexander Calder creation. The poem, twisting and turning when I blew on it, became the visual counterpart of what it's about.
But what is it about? The poem is a recipe for seeing things as they really are. To do that, you must see the world the way the snow man does. The snow man is free of human biases. He knows that in winter the days aren't cold and miserable; you are. To see like him, you must constantly challenge your own assumptions. It's one thing to say that in words. It's quite another to say it in the structure the words hang on. No one did it before. No one has done it since. You can measure great jugglers by how many balls they keep in the air. It's the same thing with poets.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5031535
(November 29, 2005)
"Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point." ~ Wallace Stevens
Now, enjoy this poem :
Man and Bottle
The mind is the great poem of winter, the man,
Who, to find what will suffice,
Destroys romantic tenements
Of rose and ice
In the land of war. More than the man, it is
A man with the fury of a race of men,
A light at the center of many lights,
A man at the center of men.
It has to content the reason concerning war,
It has to persuade that war is part of itself,
A manner of thinking, a mode
Of destroying, as the mind destroys.
An aversion, as the world is averted
From an old delusion, an old affair with the sun,
An impossible aberration with the moon,
A grossness of peace.
It is not the snow that is the quill, the page.
The poem lashes more fiercely than the wind,
As the mind, to find what will suffice, destroys
Romantic tenements of rose and ice.
**
In the West, we might call the Tao ‘the Holy Spirit’ if we were religiously inclined. Wallace Stevens, may have assigned it to the ‘blackbird.’
Marge thought the blackbird could be conscience.
13 ways of looking at a blackbird.
we took just one stanza (XII) asking what does this mean to you:
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
Here are some responses:
the interconnectedness – the meaning of movement; the opposite of nothing; a visual sense of one bird who normally is part of a flock.
The problem of artifice:
The bawds of euphony: prostitutes of harmonious sounds—cry out sharply. I don’t think this is from pleasure. The thin men of Haddam… as in the everyday men of Connecticut whose glass coaches are illusions. The Tao Te Ching says, “Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.” (verse 1)
multiplication; how many times; 2 times 2;
music: to measure
seasonal: a time to sow/reap
clock:
earth time: as hours; as shifts; as path around sun
sideral time:
memory
projection
time warp
two poets who experienced the excitement of discoveries which changed our thinking about time; who encountered Eastern philosophy and contemplated the nature of reality.
According to Wallace Stevens, reality is a product of our imagination as it shapes the world.
3 poems :
Wallace Stevens: The Snowman; 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
TSE: Burnt Norton (4 Quartets)
What a delight to spend an hour and a half sharing our perceptions, not in order to
understand the words, and lock them into a cage, but rather accepting that truth escapes words... poetry resists intelligence...
Discussion of Burnt Norton:
We read it aloud, a sentence at a time, rocked in the lyricism and Marge said how she likes to listen to TS Eliot reading, and puts on the record of him before going to sleep,
and that it’s like a lullaby saying, “not to worry”.
We would need to read it again and have years of discussion on this rich meditation.
WALLACE STEVENS
**
The 5 tercet sentence with two semi-colons, 4 commas of The Snowman also addresses time. No memory, only sight and sound: snow; sun; and sound repeated three times, just as nothing is repeated three times. Silence between the sibilance with prerequisites for seeing (one must have a mind of winter to regard; and to have been cold a line time to behold) and a mind of winter not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind – imbedded in the sound of a few leaves which is the sound of the land, which is full of the same wind -- and then one wonders – about same applied to wind, and bare place. And is the listener nothing himself, or perhaps a snowman, who will become nothing in Spring. Such strange fullness in the glitter, the sound, the numb emptiness of winter.
Breaking up the sound reveals patterns in the meaning and tone :
ST sounds.
must / frost / distant / listener : (cold a long time)
S as plural:
boughs / pine-trees / junipers / spruces / leaves: (what is covered)
SH sound
shagged
SN
snow (twice) and Snowman title.
/s/
ice / sun / sound light, reflection, music
/z/
misery / is misery has nothing to do with “is”
The trick of the unending sentence lies in AND. It comes after the semi-colons, in the last tercet, snuggled between an end-line comma and the comma before the second word of the second line, and finally, completes the six syllable count to balance “nothing that is not there”. Jay Keyser explains it in an interview on NPR – how just as we think we understand a sentence, the “and” appears and forces us to rethink what we thought we understood. Here are Keyser’s closing remarks about why it is a perfect poem.
“I once put all the words of the poem on little white cards and made a mobile out of it. It dangled, perfectly balanced, like an Alexander Calder creation. The poem, twisting and turning when I blew on it, became the visual counterpart of what it's about.
But what is it about? The poem is a recipe for seeing things as they really are. To do that, you must see the world the way the snow man does. The snow man is free of human biases. He knows that in winter the days aren't cold and miserable; you are. To see like him, you must constantly challenge your own assumptions. It's one thing to say that in words. It's quite another to say it in the structure the words hang on. No one did it before. No one has done it since. You can measure great jugglers by how many balls they keep in the air. It's the same thing with poets.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5031535
(November 29, 2005)
"Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point." ~ Wallace Stevens
Now, enjoy this poem :
Man and Bottle
The mind is the great poem of winter, the man,
Who, to find what will suffice,
Destroys romantic tenements
Of rose and ice
In the land of war. More than the man, it is
A man with the fury of a race of men,
A light at the center of many lights,
A man at the center of men.
It has to content the reason concerning war,
It has to persuade that war is part of itself,
A manner of thinking, a mode
Of destroying, as the mind destroys.
An aversion, as the world is averted
From an old delusion, an old affair with the sun,
An impossible aberration with the moon,
A grossness of peace.
It is not the snow that is the quill, the page.
The poem lashes more fiercely than the wind,
As the mind, to find what will suffice, destroys
Romantic tenements of rose and ice.
**
In the West, we might call the Tao ‘the Holy Spirit’ if we were religiously inclined. Wallace Stevens, may have assigned it to the ‘blackbird.’
Marge thought the blackbird could be conscience.
13 ways of looking at a blackbird.
we took just one stanza (XII) asking what does this mean to you:
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
Here are some responses:
the interconnectedness – the meaning of movement; the opposite of nothing; a visual sense of one bird who normally is part of a flock.
The problem of artifice:
The bawds of euphony: prostitutes of harmonious sounds—cry out sharply. I don’t think this is from pleasure. The thin men of Haddam… as in the everyday men of Connecticut whose glass coaches are illusions. The Tao Te Ching says, “Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.” (verse 1)
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