Loved this book!
The author's note*, establishes not only a lively, engaging tone which never leaves the book, but prepares the reader for the quite amusing twist at the end.
What is the role of story and what do we learn from the telling? Here, it is not myth, nor surreal, nor an exercise in irony, wit or a treatise on animal behavior, and yet, there is some of all of that, with a believable voice of someone who is in trouble, addressing fear, aware that survival is involved with words as reality catchers, whether it is to address everything as part of God, God's Hat, Pants, the sky being God's Ear, or to understand the complexity of fear, and those tigers who push us to go on living. Fun, with substance. A hero who goes beyond the confines of each religion, combines them all, understands the interconnectedness of life, and is able to overcome the particulars of despair that allows the reader to return to a sense of hope and faith in being human.
**
*Martell talks about the research for his novel.
"The plot you've mapped out is simple and gripping. You've done your research, gathering the historical, social, climatic, culinary -- that will give your story its feel of authenticity. The dialogue zips along, crackling with tension. The descriptions burst with colour, contrast and telling detail. Really, your story can only be great. But it all adds up to nothing.
Of course, he's tongue in cheek -- meeting the whisper that speaks the awful truth, 'it won't work." Why? "It's emotionally dead, that's the crux of it. The discovery is something soul-destroying, I tell you. It leaves you with an aching hunger."
Reading his story is enough to make me want to write novels.
Like Chris Cleave -- "Little Bee" or Marcus Zuzak, "The Book Thief".
And yet, in a poem, so much can be said, squeezed so carefully
each choice, in each line. I love the challenge. How to write a book that never ends -- new eyes and fresh understanding at each read.
The worst pair of opposites: boredom and terror.
a dream rag.
Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?
In Japanese, a story would have an element of invention in it. We just want the straight facts.
Life is an invention. The way things are doesn't always correspond with the way we understand them. Which is the better story? In both stories, the ship sinks, my entire family dies and I suffer.
And yet, if you ask me about the book, I wouldn't say that's what the book is about. It's larger than life. It's relationship of a smart 16 year old and the left-overs of his father's zoo. The cruelty of the hyena chewing up the zebra, first the leg, then entering it to eat it inside out; the Orang-Utan, the tiger and the way the boy and tiger establish their ways of coexisting. Like the Odyssey -- the sailing by of a hope of rescue, the landing on an island whose vegetation eats whoever sleeps in it... It's about fear -- life's only true oponent.
"Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always, One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy; then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelieve nd disbelief tires to push it out. But disbelief if a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. //Fear next turns fully to your body which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing.
everything falls apart. Only your eyes work. They always pay proper attention to fear.
**
Pure animal confidence: mix of ease and concentration -- like Gary's idea of ACE:
accuracy, C and Ease. Being-in-the -presen.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
notes on translation -- and more on Merwin
W.S. Merwin:
interview : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/merwin_10-27.html
In it he mentions the thrush that sings with every cell of its body – as if obsessed with the urge to create that song. Our talent as humans is not so much language, communication, but imagination. We can imagine a situation and feel the suffering, the joy, the pain, the excitement in it.
So, in The Laughing Thrush
the “tumbling upwards” (vs. downwards) and what the thrush is saying, or not, will happen because of this powerful urge.
As for the translation of the Lorca poem:
I feel he has found a simpler way to express what Lorca was implying. The literal Spanish says “cut down my shadow/ deliver me from the torment of bearing no fruit”.
But what does that mean for a dry Orange tree who sings?
Instead of saying “Day turns round and round me” Merwin choses, walks in circles around me which gives a feeling of being bound.
Instead of saying “Let me live unmirrored” Merwin choses, “I want to live without seeing myself. And then the dream of the ants and thistleburrs equally are distinct in the tree’s imagination, not someone else’s.
**
Provision
All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere
Comments:
Merwin’s suspension of punctuation allows a special echo – and overtones
man-made instrument (farm implements, machinery) with the music of the field and rain
but dry instruments making the sound of “wet”
“from memory” as if the field has remembered what rain sounds like
What images does “invisible honey” evoke?
How do you understand the last line? What in the poem supports it?
Dry instruments… reeds, farm equipment, the music of bamboo pipes
interview : http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/merwin_10-27.html
In it he mentions the thrush that sings with every cell of its body – as if obsessed with the urge to create that song. Our talent as humans is not so much language, communication, but imagination. We can imagine a situation and feel the suffering, the joy, the pain, the excitement in it.
So, in The Laughing Thrush
the “tumbling upwards” (vs. downwards) and what the thrush is saying, or not, will happen because of this powerful urge.
As for the translation of the Lorca poem:
I feel he has found a simpler way to express what Lorca was implying. The literal Spanish says “cut down my shadow/ deliver me from the torment of bearing no fruit”.
But what does that mean for a dry Orange tree who sings?
Instead of saying “Day turns round and round me” Merwin choses, walks in circles around me which gives a feeling of being bound.
Instead of saying “Let me live unmirrored” Merwin choses, “I want to live without seeing myself. And then the dream of the ants and thistleburrs equally are distinct in the tree’s imagination, not someone else’s.
**
Provision
All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere
Comments:
Merwin’s suspension of punctuation allows a special echo – and overtones
man-made instrument (farm implements, machinery) with the music of the field and rain
but dry instruments making the sound of “wet”
“from memory” as if the field has remembered what rain sounds like
What images does “invisible honey” evoke?
How do you understand the last line? What in the poem supports it?
Dry instruments… reeds, farm equipment, the music of bamboo pipes
Po and Spirituality -- Lux, Li-Young Lee and Ludvigson
Poems for 12/16
To Help the Monkey Cross the River -- BY THOMAS LUX
Praise Them -- By Li-Young Lee
3 poems by by Susan Ludvigson, from her book Sweet Confluence
Gratitude; Returning; Varieties of Angels.
I didn't plan it to be a series of poems by "L's" -- but for the last session of the year, we squared the corners with the humor of Lux, the meditative grace of Lee, and Ludvigson.
So, did the Monkey ask for our help? What is helpful intervention? Irony : we learn from animals…
and yet cage the one we ressemble the most.
"In Praise them", we have more animals... this time an aerial perspective -- not a parable or sermon, but rather an invitation. The invitation, "... See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
has the paradox of "less is more" in the cycle of things. We, the "nervous" and judging ones,
if even ONE of us could be gentle enough -- that possibility that a bird would come and complete us with singing is there...
the multiple perspectives -- not just our Judeo-Christian one... Each living thing lends to live, not just us.
In Gratitude, the body is celebrated -- we are not just mind or just spirit...
Are we spiritual beings trying to human?
If we were truly human, we could be more spiritual.
Catherine brought up Matthew Fox and medieval Catholic visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas,Saint Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Dante Alighieri, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.
Fox's Creation Spirituality also is aligned strongly with ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century and with a focus on “deep ecumenism” that embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world, including Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Native American teachings.
Fox has written 30 books that have sold millions of copies and by the mid 1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following".[3]
Fox was likened by academic theologians in one New York Times article to the controversial and influential 20th century Jesuit priest, philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, particularly for his interpretations of issues such as the doctrine of original sin and the Cosmic Christ and for the resulting conflicts with church authorities.
In Returning :
Dreamlike state... vs. the world which tries to dissuade us from leaving home...
After being lost...
"...it's a kind of grace—like geometry,
where right answers come through paths
we can never retrace—showing we're blessed.
Lost, lost, we cry, but return
like pigeons whose routes are unerring, unearned.
communication : conscious and unconscious…
What dwarves are working down there?
To Help the Monkey Cross the River -- BY THOMAS LUX
Praise Them -- By Li-Young Lee
3 poems by by Susan Ludvigson, from her book Sweet Confluence
Gratitude; Returning; Varieties of Angels.
I didn't plan it to be a series of poems by "L's" -- but for the last session of the year, we squared the corners with the humor of Lux, the meditative grace of Lee, and Ludvigson.
So, did the Monkey ask for our help? What is helpful intervention? Irony : we learn from animals…
and yet cage the one we ressemble the most.
"In Praise them", we have more animals... this time an aerial perspective -- not a parable or sermon, but rather an invitation. The invitation, "... See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
has the paradox of "less is more" in the cycle of things. We, the "nervous" and judging ones,
if even ONE of us could be gentle enough -- that possibility that a bird would come and complete us with singing is there...
the multiple perspectives -- not just our Judeo-Christian one... Each living thing lends to live, not just us.
In Gratitude, the body is celebrated -- we are not just mind or just spirit...
Are we spiritual beings trying to human?
If we were truly human, we could be more spiritual.
Catherine brought up Matthew Fox and medieval Catholic visionaries as Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas,Saint Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Dante Alighieri, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.
Fox's Creation Spirituality also is aligned strongly with ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century and with a focus on “deep ecumenism” that embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world, including Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Native American teachings.
Fox has written 30 books that have sold millions of copies and by the mid 1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following".[3]
Fox was likened by academic theologians in one New York Times article to the controversial and influential 20th century Jesuit priest, philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, particularly for his interpretations of issues such as the doctrine of original sin and the Cosmic Christ and for the resulting conflicts with church authorities.
In Returning :
Dreamlike state... vs. the world which tries to dissuade us from leaving home...
After being lost...
"...it's a kind of grace—like geometry,
where right answers come through paths
we can never retrace—showing we're blessed.
Lost, lost, we cry, but return
like pigeons whose routes are unerring, unearned.
communication : conscious and unconscious…
What dwarves are working down there?
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Rimbaud and Trantner and a poem
Hotel de Ville (p. 197) of Poetry -- Dec. 2010
It's 14 lines. Unrhymed. rhythm changes each line. 8 lines : Mention of HS kids, Clinton, EEC debt, problem of reading difficult things to lead them astray. Why did Rimbaud turn from socialism to capitalism? as if
stanza break: 6 lines.
it matters. Rimbaud's uniform. Back to conditional. Present. We want to see all Modern art stuff too. (as if already on a visit to the history museum.) Press the button marked "monument" and see what happens: a recorded voice says/ "I have wasted my life," and we pay to listen.
A troubling poem. One I've read several times and pondered.
The notes say the question of wondering about Rimbaud -- dissolute youth for 3 years, then from 21 to 37 when he died, a capitalist -- is just as confusing as demanding politicians to be honest -- but our real demands force them to be dishonest... Poets excoriating the bourgeois, but hoping to survive by having these selfsame buy their books. Hmmm...
The goal of a visit to a history museum (Musee not "de beaux art" but de l'histoire)
to understand disgrace as a form of (Clinton's) victory. Balanced with bad dreams caused by EEC's debt. The weariness of pressing buttons. For what? What are we paying for?
Before you begin the workshop,ask if everyone knows the words,
at least their surface meaning,if not some etymology. The title is French. Hey! French! and a renegade 19th century French poet will appear. Hotel de Ville -- the French for City Hall -- the old idea of "Hotel" as being a Residence -- where a mayor passes through in increments of time. And those colons -- one in the penultimate line of first stanza of 8 lines, after astray; one in the penultimate line of the second stanza with six lines after "see what happens".
the use of quotations around
"I have wasted my life" :
may be a reference to James Wright's poem "Lying in a Hammock" etc. or a mis-
translation of something more literal than Rimbaud may have intended (J'ai perdu ma vie) or just a recording of the recorded voice.
O Tell
with a nod to Rimbaud and John Trantner "Hotel de Ville"
There is something irretrievable about
"I have lost my life", a deeper edge
to the sadness -- not of tossing out
life itself -- but a poet's sense of wastage
as the City decks its Halls.
Sing a little song in Winter, band
with those who ask for sixpence
and think how we all could stand
a trip to a museum, stand back, hence
for muse has time and wonder in its halls.
Question the whys, the Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain.
Find a new translation for words like "hark"
a new way for the city to deck its halls with "if"
each child were truly cared for, body, mind, spirit
and the planet's people wore Greensleeves
you could truly make a holy night of it,
deck more than halls with it.
**
Change in last stanza.
Question the whys, the wives of Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain! If
body, mind, spirit rejoice, all’s beck-
oning well and a word like "hark"
will wake up the city. Be on deck
for each child is this, don’t miss the mark.
It's 14 lines. Unrhymed. rhythm changes each line. 8 lines : Mention of HS kids, Clinton, EEC debt, problem of reading difficult things to lead them astray. Why did Rimbaud turn from socialism to capitalism? as if
stanza break: 6 lines.
it matters. Rimbaud's uniform. Back to conditional. Present. We want to see all Modern art stuff too. (as if already on a visit to the history museum.) Press the button marked "monument" and see what happens: a recorded voice says/ "I have wasted my life," and we pay to listen.
A troubling poem. One I've read several times and pondered.
The notes say the question of wondering about Rimbaud -- dissolute youth for 3 years, then from 21 to 37 when he died, a capitalist -- is just as confusing as demanding politicians to be honest -- but our real demands force them to be dishonest... Poets excoriating the bourgeois, but hoping to survive by having these selfsame buy their books. Hmmm...
The goal of a visit to a history museum (Musee not "de beaux art" but de l'histoire)
to understand disgrace as a form of (Clinton's) victory. Balanced with bad dreams caused by EEC's debt. The weariness of pressing buttons. For what? What are we paying for?
Before you begin the workshop,ask if everyone knows the words,
at least their surface meaning,if not some etymology. The title is French. Hey! French! and a renegade 19th century French poet will appear. Hotel de Ville -- the French for City Hall -- the old idea of "Hotel" as being a Residence -- where a mayor passes through in increments of time. And those colons -- one in the penultimate line of first stanza of 8 lines, after astray; one in the penultimate line of the second stanza with six lines after "see what happens".
the use of quotations around
"I have wasted my life" :
may be a reference to James Wright's poem "Lying in a Hammock" etc. or a mis-
translation of something more literal than Rimbaud may have intended (J'ai perdu ma vie) or just a recording of the recorded voice.
O Tell
with a nod to Rimbaud and John Trantner "Hotel de Ville"
There is something irretrievable about
"I have lost my life", a deeper edge
to the sadness -- not of tossing out
life itself -- but a poet's sense of wastage
as the City decks its Halls.
Sing a little song in Winter, band
with those who ask for sixpence
and think how we all could stand
a trip to a museum, stand back, hence
for muse has time and wonder in its halls.
Question the whys, the Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain.
Find a new translation for words like "hark"
a new way for the city to deck its halls with "if"
each child were truly cared for, body, mind, spirit
and the planet's people wore Greensleeves
you could truly make a holy night of it,
deck more than halls with it.
**
Change in last stanza.
Question the whys, the wives of Y's, as if
it matters. O tell it on the mountain! If
body, mind, spirit rejoice, all’s beck-
oning well and a word like "hark"
will wake up the city. Be on deck
for each child is this, don’t miss the mark.
Amiri Baraka at RIT 12/13
We have not left an age of hypocrisy... this is not a post-racial age.
We live in a country where hope and wish monitor the news...
We are free to vote for the mediocrity of our choice...
and then we wake up one day and say, "oh shit -- you mean I am that person..."
The name of the black character in the play is "Clay" -- molded, shaped, wound up with music lessons, the right exposure to this and that to fit into society...
When does qualitative flip to qualitative?
What ghost of the future do you see?
When Clay drops his “outside” this is part of his main speech:
“I am sober and pious and sane and I will murder you!”
background of the 50's and carry over of time, place, conditions of Frederick Douglas who refers to whites as "soul thieves".
what were the Averill Harrimans doing? “
General discussion:
We know stuff we don't know we know. In writing the Dutchman, Baraka was finding out what he knew, but didn't know. He had spent the evening with Guston and Motherwell and the art school gang, and stopped at Cooper Square and the 5 spot, and sat up all night writing. It became clear to him he didn't want to be caught in Greenwich Village playing a part that dismissed what the world was dictating to him.
What a name for his poetry book:”Preface to a 20 volume suicide note.”
Langston Hughes wrote back to him in Green Ink -- Hail (hell). I understand your color.
What keeps talking to you? What insists?
the idea of aiming -- it's what we're doing all the time, whether we have the arrow in our hand, the target set up, -- just be at the top of your time. That takes study. Constant aim.
Everytime people's lives change, the music does too. Look at the Slave Songs, the blues, Rap...
Slave. "I might be wrong, but I won't be wrong always."
In Africa, the songs are singing words to space.
a drum kit is a one man band --
anecdote of man playing a kit and he hears a series of drums answering, saying what are you all (thinking there are many people) saying? We can't understand.
We have a rhythm-driven language.
Read "Digging"
and "The music"
Influence of Ravel on Ellington;
How persist against disillusion? Unity and Struggle.
People will clothe you in their rationale. Politics are in everything.
What makes people tick? Poli - tics
Goal: have as many positive memories as possible.
**
I’m glad I went. It’s cool to meet a “cat” like him!
We live in a country where hope and wish monitor the news...
We are free to vote for the mediocrity of our choice...
and then we wake up one day and say, "oh shit -- you mean I am that person..."
The name of the black character in the play is "Clay" -- molded, shaped, wound up with music lessons, the right exposure to this and that to fit into society...
When does qualitative flip to qualitative?
What ghost of the future do you see?
When Clay drops his “outside” this is part of his main speech:
“I am sober and pious and sane and I will murder you!”
background of the 50's and carry over of time, place, conditions of Frederick Douglas who refers to whites as "soul thieves".
what were the Averill Harrimans doing? “
General discussion:
We know stuff we don't know we know. In writing the Dutchman, Baraka was finding out what he knew, but didn't know. He had spent the evening with Guston and Motherwell and the art school gang, and stopped at Cooper Square and the 5 spot, and sat up all night writing. It became clear to him he didn't want to be caught in Greenwich Village playing a part that dismissed what the world was dictating to him.
What a name for his poetry book:”Preface to a 20 volume suicide note.”
Langston Hughes wrote back to him in Green Ink -- Hail (hell). I understand your color.
What keeps talking to you? What insists?
the idea of aiming -- it's what we're doing all the time, whether we have the arrow in our hand, the target set up, -- just be at the top of your time. That takes study. Constant aim.
Everytime people's lives change, the music does too. Look at the Slave Songs, the blues, Rap...
Slave. "I might be wrong, but I won't be wrong always."
In Africa, the songs are singing words to space.
a drum kit is a one man band --
anecdote of man playing a kit and he hears a series of drums answering, saying what are you all (thinking there are many people) saying? We can't understand.
We have a rhythm-driven language.
Read "Digging"
and "The music"
Influence of Ravel on Ellington;
How persist against disillusion? Unity and Struggle.
People will clothe you in their rationale. Politics are in everything.
What makes people tick? Poli - tics
Goal: have as many positive memories as possible.
**
I’m glad I went. It’s cool to meet a “cat” like him!
O pen -- Monday Dec. 13 -- Wiman and Wilbur with a touch of Saudade
Poems for December 13
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life." -- Robert Penn Warren
"Let us remember that in the end
we go to poetry for one reason,
so that we might more fully
inhabit our lives and the world
in which we live them, and that
if we more fully inhabit these
things, we might be less apt to
destroy both." – Christian Wiman, Editor, Poetry
From a Window – Christian Wiman
This talented poet, a disciple of Richard Wilbur has been stricken by Cancer. The poem above imbues a sense of awe beyond a hospital window, and the power of paying deep attention beyond our own condition. Like O’Henry, “The Last Leaf” he turns to remind us we have no control...
Richard Wilbur
While Wilbur continued to produce composed, reflective, and largely optimistic poetry in collections like Things of This World, (1956), Advice to a Prophet (1961) and Walking to Sleep (1969) using traditional patterns of rhyme and meter, the poetic landscape of the times meant that his work was often judged harshly. “The typical ghastly poem of the fifties was a Wilbur poem not written by Wilbur,” wrote Donald Hall in 1961, “a poem with tired wit and obvious comparisons and nothing to keep the mind or the ear occupied.”
(you can read more about him here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/richard-wilbur)
He also has written children’s verse.
Example from Opposites (with illustrations!)
The Disappearing Alphabet
**
Beasts — a terrific poem — in my copy of “Collected Poems” it is centered, so each five-line stanza spins like a small top :
The first stanza has a dreamy lullaby feel; the second, has an eyebrow-raising detail of “The ripped mouse, safe in the owl’s talon, cries/ Concordance. The next two stanzas, with moon as observer, create a larger than life experience of a man turning into a beast.
The final two stanzas show the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”.
Hopefully that will make you want to read it!
Boy At the Windows
I heard him read Dec. 2 at Amherst where he mentioned the background to this poem — his 5 year old son, not wanting to leave his snowman outside.
We concluded with a reading of “This Pleasing Anxious Being
http://www.webofstories.com/play/14765
What was even more terrific is that I saw this article about Wilbur early Monday, although for a different poem, “Love Calls Us to the Things of this world” which brought up the Portuguese concept of “Saudade” -- which has been described as a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
The poem and article can be accessed here: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_harrison.php
** on Goodreads posted today:
If you don't know Wilbur, try his poem "Beasts" where six stanzas of five lines arranged like spinning tops and language will grip at your heart. You will move you from the dreamland of animals through the transformation of werewolf to the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”. There is nothing insipid or trite about form crafted by such a master.
His poems probe without any ponderous posturing what it is about being human. His "Disappearing Alphabet" and "Opposites" with accompanying doodles, go beyond an Ogden Nash sense of whimsy to deeper levels of thought. One of my favorites, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" at first caught my eye with the line, "the air awash with angels" and seeing the sheets flapping on the laundry line, but then, I read again, and thanks to some background reading on Stoic philosophy, and an introduction to the term "Saudade" see how Wilbur fashions great poems that are not at all trite exercises in form and polish. Poems to read again and again.
I put the date December 13 as the date I "finished the book" -- but have been reading it in snatches for a long time and will continue to do so.
I had the pleasure of hearing him read at Amherst, 12/2/2010.
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life." -- Robert Penn Warren
"Let us remember that in the end
we go to poetry for one reason,
so that we might more fully
inhabit our lives and the world
in which we live them, and that
if we more fully inhabit these
things, we might be less apt to
destroy both." – Christian Wiman, Editor, Poetry
From a Window – Christian Wiman
This talented poet, a disciple of Richard Wilbur has been stricken by Cancer. The poem above imbues a sense of awe beyond a hospital window, and the power of paying deep attention beyond our own condition. Like O’Henry, “The Last Leaf” he turns to remind us we have no control...
Richard Wilbur
While Wilbur continued to produce composed, reflective, and largely optimistic poetry in collections like Things of This World, (1956), Advice to a Prophet (1961) and Walking to Sleep (1969) using traditional patterns of rhyme and meter, the poetic landscape of the times meant that his work was often judged harshly. “The typical ghastly poem of the fifties was a Wilbur poem not written by Wilbur,” wrote Donald Hall in 1961, “a poem with tired wit and obvious comparisons and nothing to keep the mind or the ear occupied.”
(you can read more about him here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/richard-wilbur)
He also has written children’s verse.
Example from Opposites (with illustrations!)
The Disappearing Alphabet
**
Beasts — a terrific poem — in my copy of “Collected Poems” it is centered, so each five-line stanza spins like a small top :
The first stanza has a dreamy lullaby feel; the second, has an eyebrow-raising detail of “The ripped mouse, safe in the owl’s talon, cries/ Concordance. The next two stanzas, with moon as observer, create a larger than life experience of a man turning into a beast.
The final two stanzas show the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”.
Hopefully that will make you want to read it!
Boy At the Windows
I heard him read Dec. 2 at Amherst where he mentioned the background to this poem — his 5 year old son, not wanting to leave his snowman outside.
We concluded with a reading of “This Pleasing Anxious Being
http://www.webofstories.com/play/14765
What was even more terrific is that I saw this article about Wilbur early Monday, although for a different poem, “Love Calls Us to the Things of this world” which brought up the Portuguese concept of “Saudade” -- which has been described as a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
The poem and article can be accessed here: http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_harrison.php
** on Goodreads posted today:
If you don't know Wilbur, try his poem "Beasts" where six stanzas of five lines arranged like spinning tops and language will grip at your heart. You will move you from the dreamland of animals through the transformation of werewolf to the beastly actions of men (“suitors of excellence) in the name of “dreams for men”. There is nothing insipid or trite about form crafted by such a master.
His poems probe without any ponderous posturing what it is about being human. His "Disappearing Alphabet" and "Opposites" with accompanying doodles, go beyond an Ogden Nash sense of whimsy to deeper levels of thought. One of my favorites, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" at first caught my eye with the line, "the air awash with angels" and seeing the sheets flapping on the laundry line, but then, I read again, and thanks to some background reading on Stoic philosophy, and an introduction to the term "Saudade" see how Wilbur fashions great poems that are not at all trite exercises in form and polish. Poems to read again and again.
I put the date December 13 as the date I "finished the book" -- but have been reading it in snatches for a long time and will continue to do so.
I had the pleasure of hearing him read at Amherst, 12/2/2010.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
December 9 -- Poetry and Spirituality + MAG
DEC: CONNECTION …to each other, to peace in the midst of craziness, to spirit in the midst of materialism, to light in the midst of darkness (hope), to needs greater than our own, generosity, brother’s keeper, interdependence, empowerment of each other, reigniting the spark in each other, connection to our Christian roots, connection to all religions lifting up the light n the midst of darkness,
Jennifer Grotz: The Umbrella --
Joseph Stroud: Manna
Thomas Hardy: At the Railway Station, Upway
James Wright: The Blessing
Wave: Joanna Goodman
Different connections --
the Umbrella brought up the most -- how sweet fruit risks a moldy end; the blooming of umbrellas on the sidewalk; the sky escorted by the wind,, the way something that is supposed to protect (umbrella) becomes the vehicle to deliver the unexpected...
the midsection allows rain to become feeling and yet there is something not quite smooth in the jerkiness of "stutter"...
It poured until it wasn’t rain anymore
but something one endured with feeling,
deafening as laughter in a crowded bar
but equally awful because it made time stutter
inbetween day and night, city and sky.
John brought up a memory of going up the Pompidou elevator just as rain is starting, and looking down on the square where umbrellas popped open ...
Manna, also has the word "happy" in it -- in this case, snow.
childlike, not apologetic, nor arrogant, no need to feel ashamed, or to be "shriven of shame"...
key word, "so be it" -- not as conclusion of an Amen, but slipped in midway into the poem.
The Thomas Hardy painted a touching portrait of a Christ-like figure in a scene that would seem surreal if witnessed. From an article on empathy in APR.
James Wright's Blessing -- the curiosity and connection between the horses, and speaker and friend; the etymology of blessing -- Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars.
The wave... one senses a speaker overwhelmed, unable to put words together, at the end of a relationship, where the final gesture is love enough.
**
To leap from this discussion to leading children through art of the renaissance -- consideration of how to depict reality with feeling, humanize, put some personality into the narrative, the details, the facial expressions. We had fun with perspective -- how the floor looks like the knave will slide right off past the table, out of the picture; how the turned face of the man mostly out of the picture relies on the guesswork of the onlooker; how different from the floors of the renaissance painting. The "drama" of what all the people are saying in the Judith and Holoferness painting... the fun of feeling a painting really coming alive...
Jennifer Grotz: The Umbrella --
Joseph Stroud: Manna
Thomas Hardy: At the Railway Station, Upway
James Wright: The Blessing
Wave: Joanna Goodman
Different connections --
the Umbrella brought up the most -- how sweet fruit risks a moldy end; the blooming of umbrellas on the sidewalk; the sky escorted by the wind,, the way something that is supposed to protect (umbrella) becomes the vehicle to deliver the unexpected...
the midsection allows rain to become feeling and yet there is something not quite smooth in the jerkiness of "stutter"...
It poured until it wasn’t rain anymore
but something one endured with feeling,
deafening as laughter in a crowded bar
but equally awful because it made time stutter
inbetween day and night, city and sky.
John brought up a memory of going up the Pompidou elevator just as rain is starting, and looking down on the square where umbrellas popped open ...
Manna, also has the word "happy" in it -- in this case, snow.
childlike, not apologetic, nor arrogant, no need to feel ashamed, or to be "shriven of shame"...
key word, "so be it" -- not as conclusion of an Amen, but slipped in midway into the poem.
The Thomas Hardy painted a touching portrait of a Christ-like figure in a scene that would seem surreal if witnessed. From an article on empathy in APR.
James Wright's Blessing -- the curiosity and connection between the horses, and speaker and friend; the etymology of blessing -- Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars.
The wave... one senses a speaker overwhelmed, unable to put words together, at the end of a relationship, where the final gesture is love enough.
**
To leap from this discussion to leading children through art of the renaissance -- consideration of how to depict reality with feeling, humanize, put some personality into the narrative, the details, the facial expressions. We had fun with perspective -- how the floor looks like the knave will slide right off past the table, out of the picture; how the turned face of the man mostly out of the picture relies on the guesswork of the onlooker; how different from the floors of the renaissance painting. The "drama" of what all the people are saying in the Judith and Holoferness painting... the fun of feeling a painting really coming alive...
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