from Mystical Poems of Rumi
1.
What excuses have you to offer, my heart, for so many shortcomings? Such constancy on the part of the Beloved, such unfaithfulness on your own!
So much generousity on your side, on yours such niggling contrariness! So many graces from him, so many faults committed by you!
Such envy, such evil imaginings and dark thoughts in your heart, such drawing, such tasting, such magnificence in him!
Why all this tasting? That your bitter soul may become sweet. Why all this drawing? That you may join the company of saints.
You are repentant of your sins, you have the name of God on your lips; in that moment he draws you on, so that he may deliver you alive.
You are fearful at last of your wrongdoings, you seek desperately a way to salvation; in that instant why do you not see him by your side who is putting such fear into your heart?
If he has bound up your eyes, you are like a pebble in his hand; now he rolls you along like this, now he tosses you in the air.
Now he plants in your nature a passion for silver and gold and women; now he implants in your soul the light of the form of Mustafa.
On this side drawing towards the lovely ones, on that side drawing you to the unlovely; amid these whirlpools the ship can only pass through or founder.
Offer up so many prayers, weep so sorely in the night season, that the echo may reach your ears from the sphere of the seven heavens.
Rumi 13th Century AD
I will offer a better gloss on this poem later. For now, a few notes of clarification. Rumi is a mystic poet writing in the Sufi tradition in Islam. When he talks of the Beloved, he doesn't write of a boyfriend or girlfriend, as we might think of it now, but of Allah or God. I am interested in this poem because it looks at the inconstancy of man as causing suffering, but that suffering itself is redemptive.
Also, I will hopefully post the belated poem of the week this Thursday or Friday.
Yours,
Sarah
Monday, March 26, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
Poem of the Week 3/13/2007: Spring and All
Spring and All
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
William Carlos Williams 1923
Williams would always want us to read his poems as images only, but it is so difficult to not walk into them carrying some meaning! Perhaps it is not fair to say He Would Not want us to read anything into it. Rather, we might say that he doesn't want to write in a trace of ego. There ought to be no sense of authorial intent. I think that he looks to give us poems with the same kind of meaning that a photo has. So when we look at this poem, we are looking at Spring as such.
So enter landscape, enter the young and tender sprouts of Spring. It is a tenuous time Williams discuses; here, I get the sense that these are the three or four days before Spring arrives in full. The few days that this poem treats are the delicate ones stretching between Winter and Spring. These are the days of major change, of endings and beginnings. To come into the world is difficult, and the time of change is marked with vulnerability. I am not being that specific in this analysis, but I hope that you can infer the moments in the poem I am discussing.
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
William Carlos Williams 1923
Williams would always want us to read his poems as images only, but it is so difficult to not walk into them carrying some meaning! Perhaps it is not fair to say He Would Not want us to read anything into it. Rather, we might say that he doesn't want to write in a trace of ego. There ought to be no sense of authorial intent. I think that he looks to give us poems with the same kind of meaning that a photo has. So when we look at this poem, we are looking at Spring as such.
So enter landscape, enter the young and tender sprouts of Spring. It is a tenuous time Williams discuses; here, I get the sense that these are the three or four days before Spring arrives in full. The few days that this poem treats are the delicate ones stretching between Winter and Spring. These are the days of major change, of endings and beginnings. To come into the world is difficult, and the time of change is marked with vulnerability. I am not being that specific in this analysis, but I hope that you can infer the moments in the poem I am discussing.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Poem of the Week 3/5/2007: (all ignorance tobaggans into know)
all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter's not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?
all history's a winter sport or three:
but were it five,i'd still insist that all
history is too small even for me;
for me and you,exceedingly too small.
Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
--tomorrow is our permanent address
and there they'll scarcely find us (if they do,
we'll move away still further:into now
ee cummings 1944
I just wondered if one reason that ee cummings uses such strange punctuation is that he works to escape the norm--he looks to dive under language and play and play. This is how he can leap about within time and ignorance in this poem. What lighter and more fun images could there be save those of knowledge tobagganing between ignorance and wisdom? Nietzsch writes of this, that truth comes out of error, but nowhere is it so gracefully and easily apparent than right here. It is a gentler way of putting the idea that sometimes we are wrong, and that our knowledge climbs slowly, with many slips and turns.
Our ability for freedom also slips and turns, working to shake the fetters of What Has Been (presumably, since this is written during WWII, guilt, terror, and darkness. ee cummings was also a prisoner of war for a long time, and so there is good reason that he would want to avoid the terrors of war, to sink beneath them in joyous, leaping language). This is not to say that he looks to escape history, but rather that he does not want to chain himself to it. He looks to the future, looks even to where he is right now-- the idea is simple, relinquish the past, and don't let them worry you about your future. cummings' version of this idea, I think, has more to do with carelessness than it does with really sinking into the present, but even that ability to relax, to be what you are and where you are, that's something. Not nothing, anyway.
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter's not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?
all history's a winter sport or three:
but were it five,i'd still insist that all
history is too small even for me;
for me and you,exceedingly too small.
Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
--tomorrow is our permanent address
and there they'll scarcely find us (if they do,
we'll move away still further:into now
ee cummings 1944
I just wondered if one reason that ee cummings uses such strange punctuation is that he works to escape the norm--he looks to dive under language and play and play. This is how he can leap about within time and ignorance in this poem. What lighter and more fun images could there be save those of knowledge tobagganing between ignorance and wisdom? Nietzsch writes of this, that truth comes out of error, but nowhere is it so gracefully and easily apparent than right here. It is a gentler way of putting the idea that sometimes we are wrong, and that our knowledge climbs slowly, with many slips and turns.
Our ability for freedom also slips and turns, working to shake the fetters of What Has Been (presumably, since this is written during WWII, guilt, terror, and darkness. ee cummings was also a prisoner of war for a long time, and so there is good reason that he would want to avoid the terrors of war, to sink beneath them in joyous, leaping language). This is not to say that he looks to escape history, but rather that he does not want to chain himself to it. He looks to the future, looks even to where he is right now-- the idea is simple, relinquish the past, and don't let them worry you about your future. cummings' version of this idea, I think, has more to do with carelessness than it does with really sinking into the present, but even that ability to relax, to be what you are and where you are, that's something. Not nothing, anyway.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Poem of the Week 2/26/2006: from Duino Elegies
from Duino Elegies: The First Elegy
Yes, Springs needed you. Many stars
waited for you to see them. A wave
that had broken long ago swelled toward you,
or when you walked by an open window, a violin
gave itself. All that was your charge.
But could you live up to it? Weren't you always
distracted by hope, as if all this promised
a lover? (Where would you have hidden her,
with all those strange and heavy thoughts
flowing in and out of you, often staying overnight?)
When longing overcomes you, sing about great lovers;
their famous passions still aren't immortal enough.
You found that the deserted, those you almost envied,
could love you so much more than those you loved.
Begin again. Try out your impotent praise again;
think about the hero who lives on: even his fall
was only an excuse for another life, a final birth.
But exhausted nature draws all lovers back
into herself, as if there weren't the energy
to create them twice. Have you remembered
Gaspara Stampa well enough? From that greater love's
example, any girl deserted by her lover
can believe: "If only I could be like her!"
Shouldn't our ancient suffering be more
fruitful by now? Isn't it time our loving freed
us from the one we love and we, trembling, endured:
as the arrow endures the string, and in that gathering momentum,
becomes more than itself. Because to stay is to be nowhere.
Ranier Maria Rilke 1922
This is the next section of the poem posted on this blog in December; rarely do I place the same poet's work so close together, and never have I discussed the same poem. But I must have read at least forty poems of ee cummings and William Carlos Williams this evening (something to note: at times, the two are nearly indistinguishable. At others, their voices dance off in different directions--cummings towards love, towards ideas, and Williams towards things and images, of course). Unable to find a poem that loves the world without falling over from its own passion, I left the library, left cummings and williams, and came home to Rilke! Sitting there on my desk, the passage opened itself to me, opened its great and subtle affection for the world, its understanding of the place of human longing.
Rilke is interesting in that he is immensely complex and yet, when you read him, it is as if he talks straight to you. People understand innately what he says, but he is difficult to discuss (and do justice to) in writing. Ah--this is a moment when I am frustrated at writing's ability to discuss poetry. I forget that this bind crops up-- poems say what they want to say the best, and the job of the reader is to talk about it. To bring that text to life, into life. I suppose, then, the professional reader's job might be to offer direction to other's thoughts. Hm--of course we invented literary criticism because we want an excuse to write about the things we like to think and talk about. Well then, my suggestion is: read this poem again. Begin again---look how my language just gave over to Rilke! Indeed, he seems to be speaking to the issue above, writing "Begin again, try out your impotent praise again." Whether praise of poetry or of Spring, words so often fail. The praise is impotent, unable to push us forward or onward.
If any of you want to talk about this in person (if you're at UPS, talk to me in person), that would be the way to interact with this poem--words are failing--goodnight!
Yes, Springs needed you. Many stars
waited for you to see them. A wave
that had broken long ago swelled toward you,
or when you walked by an open window, a violin
gave itself. All that was your charge.
But could you live up to it? Weren't you always
distracted by hope, as if all this promised
a lover? (Where would you have hidden her,
with all those strange and heavy thoughts
flowing in and out of you, often staying overnight?)
When longing overcomes you, sing about great lovers;
their famous passions still aren't immortal enough.
You found that the deserted, those you almost envied,
could love you so much more than those you loved.
Begin again. Try out your impotent praise again;
think about the hero who lives on: even his fall
was only an excuse for another life, a final birth.
But exhausted nature draws all lovers back
into herself, as if there weren't the energy
to create them twice. Have you remembered
Gaspara Stampa well enough? From that greater love's
example, any girl deserted by her lover
can believe: "If only I could be like her!"
Shouldn't our ancient suffering be more
fruitful by now? Isn't it time our loving freed
us from the one we love and we, trembling, endured:
as the arrow endures the string, and in that gathering momentum,
becomes more than itself. Because to stay is to be nowhere.
Ranier Maria Rilke 1922
This is the next section of the poem posted on this blog in December; rarely do I place the same poet's work so close together, and never have I discussed the same poem. But I must have read at least forty poems of ee cummings and William Carlos Williams this evening (something to note: at times, the two are nearly indistinguishable. At others, their voices dance off in different directions--cummings towards love, towards ideas, and Williams towards things and images, of course). Unable to find a poem that loves the world without falling over from its own passion, I left the library, left cummings and williams, and came home to Rilke! Sitting there on my desk, the passage opened itself to me, opened its great and subtle affection for the world, its understanding of the place of human longing.
Rilke is interesting in that he is immensely complex and yet, when you read him, it is as if he talks straight to you. People understand innately what he says, but he is difficult to discuss (and do justice to) in writing. Ah--this is a moment when I am frustrated at writing's ability to discuss poetry. I forget that this bind crops up-- poems say what they want to say the best, and the job of the reader is to talk about it. To bring that text to life, into life. I suppose, then, the professional reader's job might be to offer direction to other's thoughts. Hm--of course we invented literary criticism because we want an excuse to write about the things we like to think and talk about. Well then, my suggestion is: read this poem again. Begin again---look how my language just gave over to Rilke! Indeed, he seems to be speaking to the issue above, writing "Begin again, try out your impotent praise again." Whether praise of poetry or of Spring, words so often fail. The praise is impotent, unable to push us forward or onward.
If any of you want to talk about this in person (if you're at UPS, talk to me in person), that would be the way to interact with this poem--words are failing--goodnight!
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Poem of the Week 2/19/2007: Frost at Midnight
Frost At Midnight
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village ! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O ! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come !
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams !
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book :
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike !
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought !
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798
"Frost at Midnight" moves from the most silent and attentive moment of the night to the height of hopeful ecstasy and, suddenly, to a soft quiet once again. The quiet frames Coleridge's blessing for his son--upon seeing the freedom and beauty of a leaf of ash in the fire, the poet memory is pulled to childhood. Next, he is so overcome with hopes for his son--that his son will grow up in the full language of nature, with the full feast of the natural world--that he nearly bursts at the brimming possibility in a life.
For the Romantics, childhood represented the unveiled way of moving through the world, a state unclotted by ego and rational repression. This childhood is something that each human shares, and so to wish that freedom, to even envision it for his son, is to wish that state of innocence for all of us. "Frost at Midnight" is a trilling response to this clear child in all, acknowledging and longing for participation with the things of this world.
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village ! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O ! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come !
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams !
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book :
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike !
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought !
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798
"Frost at Midnight" moves from the most silent and attentive moment of the night to the height of hopeful ecstasy and, suddenly, to a soft quiet once again. The quiet frames Coleridge's blessing for his son--upon seeing the freedom and beauty of a leaf of ash in the fire, the poet memory is pulled to childhood. Next, he is so overcome with hopes for his son--that his son will grow up in the full language of nature, with the full feast of the natural world--that he nearly bursts at the brimming possibility in a life.
For the Romantics, childhood represented the unveiled way of moving through the world, a state unclotted by ego and rational repression. This childhood is something that each human shares, and so to wish that freedom, to even envision it for his son, is to wish that state of innocence for all of us. "Frost at Midnight" is a trilling response to this clear child in all, acknowledging and longing for participation with the things of this world.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Poem of the Week 2/12/2007: St Kevin and the Blackbird
St Kevin and the Blackbird
And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.
*
And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he:
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bid
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.
Seamus Heaney 1996
Finishing this poem, I am reminded of a quote by (I think!) Frank O'Hara: "A poem should leave its readers distressed, / curious, and ready to believe / It is curious to be alive." What draw me in are Heaney's care and affection with language (something he is ever capable of), the deft with which he invites the reader into the poem, and his treatment of skepticism and prayer within the poem.
In the first section Heaney draws a simple and beautiful allegory of spiritual discipline and awakening. He moves from the initial announcement of the story--"And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird"--to the story, bring us into the present tense and the presence of Kevin. He attends to Kevin's knees, the size of the cell, his exact body position, inviting the reader to imagine in detail the afternoon.
The allegory itself is laden with Christian imagery. Kevin places his hand out the window "as a crossbeam," or forming one axis of the cross. The bird descends, settling in his hand, to form the vertical axis. From the intersection comes an egg, the possibility of sacred experience, and with patience is born a new bird. This bird represents both a mark of spiritual discipline and Ireland, for the blackbird is associated with Ireland. Heaney thus manages to pull together the personal, spiritual, and even the national in the simple story of one saint. Incorporating such breadth in one story underlines the following section's statement of universality, or non-duality.
At the opening of the second section, then, Heaney turns the poem again to the reader, this time addressing skepticism. Rather than using skepticism to dismiss the poem, though, he invites the reader to move deeper into Kevin's thoughts, Kevin's experience. Heaney uses simple questions to soften us to supernatural occurrences; willing to believe after imagining our knees hurt on the cold stone, we can accept earth blossoming beneath his knees.
The final two stanzas express unity with nature, a loss of definitions, boundaries--not a forgetting in the strict, apathetic sense, but the forgetting of nonattachment, a prayer wherein the body enters the cycles of the earth, and in becoming part of them loses itself, its definitions, those names and forms binding and fettering it. As St Kevin stands on the bank of the river of love, he can no longer name it, for the two are no longer separate.
And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.
*
And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he:
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bid
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.
Seamus Heaney 1996
Finishing this poem, I am reminded of a quote by (I think!) Frank O'Hara: "A poem should leave its readers distressed, / curious, and ready to believe / It is curious to be alive." What draw me in are Heaney's care and affection with language (something he is ever capable of), the deft with which he invites the reader into the poem, and his treatment of skepticism and prayer within the poem.
In the first section Heaney draws a simple and beautiful allegory of spiritual discipline and awakening. He moves from the initial announcement of the story--"And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird"--to the story, bring us into the present tense and the presence of Kevin. He attends to Kevin's knees, the size of the cell, his exact body position, inviting the reader to imagine in detail the afternoon.
The allegory itself is laden with Christian imagery. Kevin places his hand out the window "as a crossbeam," or forming one axis of the cross. The bird descends, settling in his hand, to form the vertical axis. From the intersection comes an egg, the possibility of sacred experience, and with patience is born a new bird. This bird represents both a mark of spiritual discipline and Ireland, for the blackbird is associated with Ireland. Heaney thus manages to pull together the personal, spiritual, and even the national in the simple story of one saint. Incorporating such breadth in one story underlines the following section's statement of universality, or non-duality.
At the opening of the second section, then, Heaney turns the poem again to the reader, this time addressing skepticism. Rather than using skepticism to dismiss the poem, though, he invites the reader to move deeper into Kevin's thoughts, Kevin's experience. Heaney uses simple questions to soften us to supernatural occurrences; willing to believe after imagining our knees hurt on the cold stone, we can accept earth blossoming beneath his knees.
The final two stanzas express unity with nature, a loss of definitions, boundaries--not a forgetting in the strict, apathetic sense, but the forgetting of nonattachment, a prayer wherein the body enters the cycles of the earth, and in becoming part of them loses itself, its definitions, those names and forms binding and fettering it. As St Kevin stands on the bank of the river of love, he can no longer name it, for the two are no longer separate.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Poem of the Week 2/5/2007: from When Lilacs Last in the Courtyard Bloom'd
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd,
As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look'd on,)
As we wander'd together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,)
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rin of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
As I watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the sawmp,
O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
Oh how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone"?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west.,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
Walt Whitman 1865-66
More than Song of Myself, Whitman's most famous poem, I find this and other poems treating death and loss more interesting and profound. Here we get the same communion with nature that Whitman finds in Song of Myself, but with an injection of melancholy, affection, and more. Poetry is one of the great vehicles of melancholy, especially when well executed. Whitman follows in the tradition of Keats and Coleridge's great odes on grief in this elegy written after the death of Abraham Lincoln. I have chosen these three stanzas because they represent a communion with that tradition and because they eclipse particular grief at the death of a well-loved symbol.
Beside the universal quality of this elegy (there are particular charateristics and references too, but more interesting to me is the project of using the individual to transcend the individual--using the particular as entry point to the infinite), I hope that you can notice the breathlessness of the stanzas. The repetition of "as" in the first stanza brings each line in to lap at us like waves, like the slow in and out of breath, the turning of the heavens. In most of his poems, Whitman uses this device--in my mind, he employs it as a kind of chant or invocation, something to mesmerize the reader, bring him into the song...
Though Whitman is a master of song, he discusses the difficulty of singing, writing of it as warbling, of expressing ourselves in the face of enormous grief. It is only in nature that he can find the expression of the love he feels--wow--hear how that doesn't sound as nice in prose as it does in his poetry? That's why people write poems. And this concludes this week's poem of the week, a somewhat poorer discussion than usual.
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd,
As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look'd on,)
As we wander'd together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,)
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rin of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
As I watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the sawmp,
O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
Oh how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone"?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west.,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
Walt Whitman 1865-66
More than Song of Myself, Whitman's most famous poem, I find this and other poems treating death and loss more interesting and profound. Here we get the same communion with nature that Whitman finds in Song of Myself, but with an injection of melancholy, affection, and more. Poetry is one of the great vehicles of melancholy, especially when well executed. Whitman follows in the tradition of Keats and Coleridge's great odes on grief in this elegy written after the death of Abraham Lincoln. I have chosen these three stanzas because they represent a communion with that tradition and because they eclipse particular grief at the death of a well-loved symbol.
Beside the universal quality of this elegy (there are particular charateristics and references too, but more interesting to me is the project of using the individual to transcend the individual--using the particular as entry point to the infinite), I hope that you can notice the breathlessness of the stanzas. The repetition of "as" in the first stanza brings each line in to lap at us like waves, like the slow in and out of breath, the turning of the heavens. In most of his poems, Whitman uses this device--in my mind, he employs it as a kind of chant or invocation, something to mesmerize the reader, bring him into the song...
Though Whitman is a master of song, he discusses the difficulty of singing, writing of it as warbling, of expressing ourselves in the face of enormous grief. It is only in nature that he can find the expression of the love he feels--wow--hear how that doesn't sound as nice in prose as it does in his poetry? That's why people write poems. And this concludes this week's poem of the week, a somewhat poorer discussion than usual.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Poem of the Week 1/30/2007: from Jerusalem. Plate 97.
from Jerusalem, a Poem.
Plate 97
Awake! Awake Jerusalem! O lovely Emanation of Albion
Awake and overspread all Nations as in Ancient Time
For lo! the Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day
Appears upon our Hills: Awake Jerusalem, and come away
--
So spake the Vision of Albion & in him so spake in my hearing,
The Universal Father Then Albion stretched his hand into Infinitude.
And took his Bow. Fourfold the Vision for bright beaming Urizen
Layed his hand on the South & took a breathing Bow of carved Gold
Luvah his hadn stretched to the East & bore a Silver Bow bright shining
Tharmas Westward a Bow of Brass pure flaming richly wrought
Urthona. Northward in thick storms a Bow of Iron terrible thundering
And the Bow is a Male & Female & the Quiver of the Arrows of Love.
Are the children of this Bow: a Bow of Mercy & Loving-kindness: laying
Open the hidden Heart in Wars of mutual Benevolence Wars of Love
And the Hand of Man grasps firm between the Male & Female Loves
And he Clothed himself in Bow & Arrows in awful state Fourfold
In the midst of his Twenty-eight Cities each with his Bow breathing-----
William Blake
What I am interested in for this poem is the tension in the third stanza between male and female, and the tension arising between opposites, or from struggle. Let us meditate on the image of an arrow and a bow. The tighter a bow is, the more tension there is within it, but the farther it can shoot an arrow. Tension leads to strength. Therefore, when the man chooses to clad himself in bow and arrows in the final stanza, he is not merely arming himself for war, but covering himself with strength. The "awful" state is also not one of horror, but of awe, of some kind of deep and abiding power within him. As for the fourfold nature of his state, he may be the symbol of the unity of the four Gods listed above (and many other things I am sure. Four is a key number for Blake, and the mode of thought in which he worked. There is little I know about this, but there are some things that I may say even in this small and limited space). He brings together the power of metals, gathering to him the power of metallurgy, which Blake equated with riotous transformation.
Yes! The melting of metals is "breathing bows," is the living fluid of struggle and overcoming.
This perhaps settles the initially offputting line, "Wars of mutual Benevolence Wars of Love"-- how can war and love go together? We don't tend to think that war is good for anybody. Surely Blake isn't merely talking about nationalism here. Maybe historicity is a part of it (I am not familiar with any historical references here; see Erdman for more on this), but it seems that the emphasis cannot just be a man loving his country like a man loves a woman. Romantic love (passioned?) involves reciprocated love. But here Blake seems to say that it also involves war, some kind of destructive tension. Men and women... that's reproduction, the sustained creation of a third through two who are different...
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
A Letter concerning the Poem of the Week
My favorite quote about poetry is written by Howard Nemerov:
"Poetry is getting something right in language."
Poetry is that which represents the world rightly, whatever piece of the world it regards. Nemerov's definition solves the dilemma of whether prose can be poetic, or whether every thirteen year old's spillover angst is *really* poetry.** It can take the form of a conversation, a song, a quote, an aphorism, poem, or paragraph. So long as the language gets something right about its subject, a precise and undefinable art, it is poetry.
With this understood, I am looking to expand the poem of the week to any form of right language that catches me. Aphorisms will make a frequent appearance from now on; Nietzsche writes that they move from peak to peak of knowledge. They are the crystals of understanding, the hardest and most beautiful expression of truth that require little explanation.
At the risk of filling in knowledge for you (or perhaps to fill in knowledge for myself), I hope to in the future put down my thoughts about various aphorisms and poetry. Ultimately there is not much difference between the two. Often, my favorite part of a poem is not the entirity, but one line, one sure and clear idea nestled among images or events.
I hope that the aphorisms don't appear too corny, as they sometimes can taken out of context, but I suppose that is one of the responsibilities of the new form of the poem of the week.
This change follows some changes in my own intellectual and personal drives. Close-reading is a helpful skill, and I hope that you have learned something if you have read the poems and perhaps my thoughts. However, there is only so much a muscle may grow, especially if my blood begins to flow elsewhere. So, from now on I will offer you different dances between beauty and ideas, which, despite a change in size and focus, remain at the core of this blog.
As always, feel free to email me with any questions, responses, or ideas.
Yours,
Sarah
**of course prose can be poetry, and, sorry, most angsty "poetry" is merely a collection of dripping, overstuffed sentences.
"Poetry is getting something right in language."
Poetry is that which represents the world rightly, whatever piece of the world it regards. Nemerov's definition solves the dilemma of whether prose can be poetic, or whether every thirteen year old's spillover angst is *really* poetry.** It can take the form of a conversation, a song, a quote, an aphorism, poem, or paragraph. So long as the language gets something right about its subject, a precise and undefinable art, it is poetry.
With this understood, I am looking to expand the poem of the week to any form of right language that catches me. Aphorisms will make a frequent appearance from now on; Nietzsche writes that they move from peak to peak of knowledge. They are the crystals of understanding, the hardest and most beautiful expression of truth that require little explanation.
At the risk of filling in knowledge for you (or perhaps to fill in knowledge for myself), I hope to in the future put down my thoughts about various aphorisms and poetry. Ultimately there is not much difference between the two. Often, my favorite part of a poem is not the entirity, but one line, one sure and clear idea nestled among images or events.
I hope that the aphorisms don't appear too corny, as they sometimes can taken out of context, but I suppose that is one of the responsibilities of the new form of the poem of the week.
This change follows some changes in my own intellectual and personal drives. Close-reading is a helpful skill, and I hope that you have learned something if you have read the poems and perhaps my thoughts. However, there is only so much a muscle may grow, especially if my blood begins to flow elsewhere. So, from now on I will offer you different dances between beauty and ideas, which, despite a change in size and focus, remain at the core of this blog.
As always, feel free to email me with any questions, responses, or ideas.
Yours,
Sarah
**of course prose can be poetry, and, sorry, most angsty "poetry" is merely a collection of dripping, overstuffed sentences.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Poem of the Week 1/23/2007
Train
You there, in the middle of your mind,
curled up into a ball but wide awake--
I am awake like you, in the same bed
hearing the train that when it passes
means it's almost morning, though the sky
is dark, though the highway is quiet.
You can follow the train in your mind,
but you cannot follow the train
from little town to little town to Boston,
where in the dark the transactions happen--
something poured, something filled,
something dropped off, something taken--
happen among the loud men at the wharf
before their very first sign of dawn,
and the train in Boston turns around.
I wish our minds were like the train,
passing once a night through the woods,
fading out among the lights and termini,
its load of oil or metal going some place
they want it, returning in the morning,
its mile-long belly not empty, not hungry;
not the wharf, accepting train after train
of junk from the provinces all night,
a throat that tries and tries to swallow dirt.
Dan Chiasson 2006
Now this is a lovely, lonely poem, a meditation on the mind of man and the thoughts of night. Several things are at work: rhythm, long phrases and sentences, and a symbolic explanation of distraction and thought. This poem discusses much that has been passing through my mind--restlessness, hunger, loneliness, the fact that we don't will thought but that it comes to us...
I don't know whether I want to write about this any more or not... it is a beautiful poem, lovely in tone and in content both.
Here's something, everybody, and I don't write this lightly. I don't know if the Poem of the Week is right for me any more. I am doing it more out of mechanical habit than real love for these poems, and that doesn't seem right to me. More and more I find myself wanting to repeat poems, becuase some of the poems that have nestled themselves in my chest aren't going to leave. So... I don't know about the future of the poem of the week. It's something that I will have to think about, and I am sorry that I might think of changing or abandoning this.
Best,
Sarah
You there, in the middle of your mind,
curled up into a ball but wide awake--
I am awake like you, in the same bed
hearing the train that when it passes
means it's almost morning, though the sky
is dark, though the highway is quiet.
You can follow the train in your mind,
but you cannot follow the train
from little town to little town to Boston,
where in the dark the transactions happen--
something poured, something filled,
something dropped off, something taken--
happen among the loud men at the wharf
before their very first sign of dawn,
and the train in Boston turns around.
I wish our minds were like the train,
passing once a night through the woods,
fading out among the lights and termini,
its load of oil or metal going some place
they want it, returning in the morning,
its mile-long belly not empty, not hungry;
not the wharf, accepting train after train
of junk from the provinces all night,
a throat that tries and tries to swallow dirt.
Dan Chiasson 2006
Now this is a lovely, lonely poem, a meditation on the mind of man and the thoughts of night. Several things are at work: rhythm, long phrases and sentences, and a symbolic explanation of distraction and thought. This poem discusses much that has been passing through my mind--restlessness, hunger, loneliness, the fact that we don't will thought but that it comes to us...
I don't know whether I want to write about this any more or not... it is a beautiful poem, lovely in tone and in content both.
Here's something, everybody, and I don't write this lightly. I don't know if the Poem of the Week is right for me any more. I am doing it more out of mechanical habit than real love for these poems, and that doesn't seem right to me. More and more I find myself wanting to repeat poems, becuase some of the poems that have nestled themselves in my chest aren't going to leave. So... I don't know about the future of the poem of the week. It's something that I will have to think about, and I am sorry that I might think of changing or abandoning this.
Best,
Sarah
Friday, January 05, 2007
Poem of the Week 1/8/2007: from The Drunken Song
from The Drunken Song
O man! Take care!
What does Deep Midnight now declare?
'I sleep, I sleep--
From deepest dream I rise for air:--
The world is deep,
And deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe--
Joy--deeper still than misery:
Woe says: Be gone!
Yet all joy wants Eternity--
--wants deepest, deep Eternity!
Friedrich Nietzsche 1885
Thus Spake Zarathustra trans. Graham Parkes
Though translated, which is not ideal, I was struck by this poem reading Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In context, it is far more beautiful than it is alone, here, but I ask you, when reading it, to imagine yourself rising to eternity, to meet the world head on, to learn that everything is something--every thought, tree, bird, and person is new to you every single second... new and simultaneously eternal, according to Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. Each and every moment is eternal, has the weight of eternity...
Joy and woe are the two deepest emotions, perhaps. Nietzsche writes of their interconnection, of the mingling of love and grief, joy and woe etc. I wish that I could make you all read this book. Well, instead, I will quote another passage. Maybe that will help place the gorgeousness of the poem, or help you feel/understand it.
You higher humans, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? A dreamer? Drunkard? A dream interpreter? A midnight-bell?
A drop of dew? A haze and fragrance of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? Just now my world became perfect, midnight is also midday--
Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun--be gone! or will you learn: a wise man is also a fool.
Did you ever say Yes to a single joy? Oh, my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained together, entwined, in love--
--if you ever wanted one time a second time, if you ever said 'You please me happiness! Quick! Moment!' then you wanted it all back!
--All anew, all eternally, chained together, entwined, in love, oh then you loved the world--
--you eternal ones, love it eternally and for all time: and even to woe you say: Be gone, but come back! For all joy wants--Eternity!
- TSZ p. 283
Better?
O man! Take care!
What does Deep Midnight now declare?
'I sleep, I sleep--
From deepest dream I rise for air:--
The world is deep,
And deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe--
Joy--deeper still than misery:
Woe says: Be gone!
Yet all joy wants Eternity--
--wants deepest, deep Eternity!
Friedrich Nietzsche 1885
Thus Spake Zarathustra trans. Graham Parkes
Though translated, which is not ideal, I was struck by this poem reading Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In context, it is far more beautiful than it is alone, here, but I ask you, when reading it, to imagine yourself rising to eternity, to meet the world head on, to learn that everything is something--every thought, tree, bird, and person is new to you every single second... new and simultaneously eternal, according to Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. Each and every moment is eternal, has the weight of eternity...
Joy and woe are the two deepest emotions, perhaps. Nietzsche writes of their interconnection, of the mingling of love and grief, joy and woe etc. I wish that I could make you all read this book. Well, instead, I will quote another passage. Maybe that will help place the gorgeousness of the poem, or help you feel/understand it.
You higher humans, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? A dreamer? Drunkard? A dream interpreter? A midnight-bell?
A drop of dew? A haze and fragrance of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? Just now my world became perfect, midnight is also midday--
Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun--be gone! or will you learn: a wise man is also a fool.
Did you ever say Yes to a single joy? Oh, my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained together, entwined, in love--
--if you ever wanted one time a second time, if you ever said 'You please me happiness! Quick! Moment!' then you wanted it all back!
--All anew, all eternally, chained together, entwined, in love, oh then you loved the world--
--you eternal ones, love it eternally and for all time: and even to woe you say: Be gone, but come back! For all joy wants--Eternity!
- TSZ p. 283
Better?
Monday, January 01, 2007
Poem of the Week 1/1/2007: Sonnet 60
Sonnet 60
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
William Shakespeare 1609
What better way to start a year than with Shakespeare! With a poem about the ravages of time, no less? Or a beautiful nod to the temporality of all? Check back soon for a close-read.
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
William Shakespeare 1609
What better way to start a year than with Shakespeare! With a poem about the ravages of time, no less? Or a beautiful nod to the temporality of all? Check back soon for a close-read.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Poem of the Week 12/25/2006: Sir David Brewster's Toy
Sir David Brewster's Toy
In this tube you see
At the far end a batch of
Colored-glass debris--
Which, however, grows
Upon reflection to an
Intricate pied rose,
Flushed with sun, that might,
Set in some cathedral's wall,
Paraphrase the light.
Now, at the least shake,
The many colors jumble
And abruptly make
The rose rearrange,
Adding to form and splendor
The release of change.
Rattle it afresh
And see its coruscating
Flinders quickly mesh,
Fashioning once more
A fine sixfold gaudiness
Never seen before.
Many prophets claim
That Heaven's joys, though endless,
Are not twice the same;
This kaleidoscope
Can, in that connection, give
Exercise in hope.
Richard Wilbur 2004
Wilbur offers us a sweet and simple poem about the joys of a kaleidescope--a fragmentary, collection of broken glass and shards of light. He starts the poem simply enough, with the humble description "tube" and "a batch of/ colored glass debris." However, when one turns it to the light, it reforms into a rose. The choice of "upon reflection" refers not only to the glass, but to the watcher--really looking at the light helps one find the beauty. Using "intricate pied rose" to describe the shape uses language to convey the delicacy of the kalidescope. The phrase's consonants dance along the tongue, reminding us of the beauty of the rose.
The rose is not only an apt image, but a reference to Christ, and to divine beauty. Wilbur heightens this connection by comparing it to a cathedral rose--the enormous stained glass mosaics in cathedrals (cf. Notre Dame, famously). Paraphrasing the light, these windows capture the glory of the world--paraphrase it. Beauty like this selects a piece of the holy world and presents it in a small way.
But, as one of my friends said (to whom in particular this poem is dedicated)--"This is just an idea. It’s transient. But I hope you can relate." The kalidescope demonstrates this, tentatively.... This world... is just an endlessly tumbling tube of beauty, if only we can see it, if only we can point it at the light. Infinitely varied, infinitely changing, each image shatters and reforms into something different, something else beautiful.
This is something that I think we forget as we get older, or that we struggle with. It's so easy to forget how beautiful the world is, to get caught up on the last image or excited for the next one, not willing to let the changes happen around us... But, when pointed to the light, what could be more beautiful than our revolving tube of the things of this world?
In this tube you see
At the far end a batch of
Colored-glass debris--
Which, however, grows
Upon reflection to an
Intricate pied rose,
Flushed with sun, that might,
Set in some cathedral's wall,
Paraphrase the light.
Now, at the least shake,
The many colors jumble
And abruptly make
The rose rearrange,
Adding to form and splendor
The release of change.
Rattle it afresh
And see its coruscating
Flinders quickly mesh,
Fashioning once more
A fine sixfold gaudiness
Never seen before.
Many prophets claim
That Heaven's joys, though endless,
Are not twice the same;
This kaleidoscope
Can, in that connection, give
Exercise in hope.
Richard Wilbur 2004
Wilbur offers us a sweet and simple poem about the joys of a kaleidescope--a fragmentary, collection of broken glass and shards of light. He starts the poem simply enough, with the humble description "tube" and "a batch of/ colored glass debris." However, when one turns it to the light, it reforms into a rose. The choice of "upon reflection" refers not only to the glass, but to the watcher--really looking at the light helps one find the beauty. Using "intricate pied rose" to describe the shape uses language to convey the delicacy of the kalidescope. The phrase's consonants dance along the tongue, reminding us of the beauty of the rose.
The rose is not only an apt image, but a reference to Christ, and to divine beauty. Wilbur heightens this connection by comparing it to a cathedral rose--the enormous stained glass mosaics in cathedrals (cf. Notre Dame, famously). Paraphrasing the light, these windows capture the glory of the world--paraphrase it. Beauty like this selects a piece of the holy world and presents it in a small way.
But, as one of my friends said (to whom in particular this poem is dedicated)--"This is just an idea. It’s transient. But I hope you can relate." The kalidescope demonstrates this, tentatively.... This world... is just an endlessly tumbling tube of beauty, if only we can see it, if only we can point it at the light. Infinitely varied, infinitely changing, each image shatters and reforms into something different, something else beautiful.
This is something that I think we forget as we get older, or that we struggle with. It's so easy to forget how beautiful the world is, to get caught up on the last image or excited for the next one, not willing to let the changes happen around us... But, when pointed to the light, what could be more beautiful than our revolving tube of the things of this world?
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Poem of the Week 12/18/2006: Another Sonnet to Black Itself
Another Sonnet to Black Itself
Thou Black, wherein all colors are compos'd,
And unto which they all at last return,
Thou color of the sun where it doth burn,
And shadow, where it cools, in thee is clos'd,
Whatever nature can, or hath dispos'd
In any other hue: from thee do rise
Those tempers and complexions, which discols'd,
As parts fo thee, do work as mysteries,
Of that thy hidden power; when thou dost reign
The characters of fate shine in the skies,
And tell us what the heavens do ordain,
But when earth's common light shines to our eyes,
Thou so retir'st thy self, that thy disdain
All revelation unto man denies.
Edward Herbert 1620
I choose this poem this week because it is close to the shortest day of the year, and so the blackest day. He opens the poem writing about the mystery of black: how it contains all colors, yet conceals them when they are together. Black is the beginning and end of color, to Herbert. It is also the end of matter, for he refers to the color of charring when something as firey as a sun burns something. He further associates black and the sun with his discussion of the black of shadows; black is both the power of the sun and teh absence of it, the light and the dark, Black is all things (colors), and it is the destruction of things.
As Herbert points out, black contains much mystery, a fact I felt more acutely recently when the school's power went out. It was so strange to walk at night without light, and yet it is only within the last hundred years or so that our nights are so lit. Maybe less.
But anyway, with that taken, the second half of the poem becomes more potent. He writes that black allows us to see the stars, which foretell the future. In the daytime, the stars are hidden, and so we can't see the future. We know very little during the daytime, when light is everywhere. So now that there is always light (and few stars), we know less. Hm.
Thou Black, wherein all colors are compos'd,
And unto which they all at last return,
Thou color of the sun where it doth burn,
And shadow, where it cools, in thee is clos'd,
Whatever nature can, or hath dispos'd
In any other hue: from thee do rise
Those tempers and complexions, which discols'd,
As parts fo thee, do work as mysteries,
Of that thy hidden power; when thou dost reign
The characters of fate shine in the skies,
And tell us what the heavens do ordain,
But when earth's common light shines to our eyes,
Thou so retir'st thy self, that thy disdain
All revelation unto man denies.
Edward Herbert 1620
I choose this poem this week because it is close to the shortest day of the year, and so the blackest day. He opens the poem writing about the mystery of black: how it contains all colors, yet conceals them when they are together. Black is the beginning and end of color, to Herbert. It is also the end of matter, for he refers to the color of charring when something as firey as a sun burns something. He further associates black and the sun with his discussion of the black of shadows; black is both the power of the sun and teh absence of it, the light and the dark, Black is all things (colors), and it is the destruction of things.
As Herbert points out, black contains much mystery, a fact I felt more acutely recently when the school's power went out. It was so strange to walk at night without light, and yet it is only within the last hundred years or so that our nights are so lit. Maybe less.
But anyway, with that taken, the second half of the poem becomes more potent. He writes that black allows us to see the stars, which foretell the future. In the daytime, the stars are hidden, and so we can't see the future. We know very little during the daytime, when light is everywhere. So now that there is always light (and few stars), we know less. Hm.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Poem of the Week 12/11/2006: from Duino Elegies: First Elegy
from Duino Elegies: First Elegy
And if I cried, who'd listen to me in those angelic
orders? Even if one of them suddenly held me
to his heart, I'd vanish in his overwhelming
presence. Because beauty's nothing
but the start of terror we can hardly bear,
and we adore it because of the serene scorn
it could kill us with. Every angel's terrifying.
So I control myself and choke back the lure
of my dark cry. Ah, who can we turn to,
then? Neither angels nor men,
and the animals already know by instinct
we're not comfortably at home
in our translated world. Maybe what's left
for us is some tree on a hillside we can look at
day after day, one of yesterday's streets,
and the perverse affection of a habit
that liked us so much it never let go.
And the night, oh the night when the wind
full of outer space gnaws at our faces; that wished for,
gentle, deceptive one waiting painfully for the lonely
heart--she'd stay on for anyone. Is she easier on lovers?
But they use each other to hide their fate.
You still don't understand? Throw the emptiness in
your arms out into that space we breathe; maybe birds
will feel the air thinning as they fly deeper into themselves.
Ranier Maria Rilke (trans. A. Poulin Jr.) 1922
I will write about this poem later, when my mind can sort a little bit about it. Some poems need to be lived with, digested, absorbed.
And if I cried, who'd listen to me in those angelic
orders? Even if one of them suddenly held me
to his heart, I'd vanish in his overwhelming
presence. Because beauty's nothing
but the start of terror we can hardly bear,
and we adore it because of the serene scorn
it could kill us with. Every angel's terrifying.
So I control myself and choke back the lure
of my dark cry. Ah, who can we turn to,
then? Neither angels nor men,
and the animals already know by instinct
we're not comfortably at home
in our translated world. Maybe what's left
for us is some tree on a hillside we can look at
day after day, one of yesterday's streets,
and the perverse affection of a habit
that liked us so much it never let go.
And the night, oh the night when the wind
full of outer space gnaws at our faces; that wished for,
gentle, deceptive one waiting painfully for the lonely
heart--she'd stay on for anyone. Is she easier on lovers?
But they use each other to hide their fate.
You still don't understand? Throw the emptiness in
your arms out into that space we breathe; maybe birds
will feel the air thinning as they fly deeper into themselves.
Ranier Maria Rilke (trans. A. Poulin Jr.) 1922
I will write about this poem later, when my mind can sort a little bit about it. Some poems need to be lived with, digested, absorbed.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Poem of the Week 12/6/2006: To Autumn
To Autumn
1.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
John Keats September 19, 1819
I know--it's not Autumn (indeed, we are full on along in Winter), but Keats felt right for today. His delicate, yearning stanzas and serene tone feel just right for this morning. Plus, notice the focus on age in the last stanza, and the quiet, tender grief that comes along with it. It seems as if the first stanza should be positive, for it is full of words like "sweet," "plump," and "ripe," but I sense some kind of tension or illness. Perhaps the opening of mist puts a damper over the exuberant abundance we find (the layers of flowers upon flowers). Also, it contains friendship and maturity rather than youth and romantic love. This seems to be the central tension in the poem--that between youth and age. "To Autumn" asks, what happens when youth is gone? What is there to love or mourn in age?
Keats achieves a tremendous amount of distance in the end of the poem. By positioning the animals and humans in different places--a hill, the sky, a hidden garden-croft--Keats puts their small noises far off. This has the effect of making both Spring and youth seem far away.
Though the poem asks us not to think of the songs of Spring, that Autumn (age) has its melody, too, one might argue that Spring is everywhere in the background here. There are flowers, bees, and brooks, and the sheep are identified as "full-grown lambs." Keats draws life in terms of Spring, which may place the emphasis on Spring nonetheless.
But who knows. Part of the achievement of this poem is Keats' ability to balance the beauty and abundance of Autumn with the poem's sad tone. "To Autumn" is like a psalm, a hymn, a lament: beautiful and tearing, ripe and sad. Keats has produced a poem of autumn, a poem of beauty and age. In it, there is a passing of grand poetic metaphors or gestures; these are replaced by a slow and solemnly beautiful three stanzas.
1.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
John Keats September 19, 1819
I know--it's not Autumn (indeed, we are full on along in Winter), but Keats felt right for today. His delicate, yearning stanzas and serene tone feel just right for this morning. Plus, notice the focus on age in the last stanza, and the quiet, tender grief that comes along with it. It seems as if the first stanza should be positive, for it is full of words like "sweet," "plump," and "ripe," but I sense some kind of tension or illness. Perhaps the opening of mist puts a damper over the exuberant abundance we find (the layers of flowers upon flowers). Also, it contains friendship and maturity rather than youth and romantic love. This seems to be the central tension in the poem--that between youth and age. "To Autumn" asks, what happens when youth is gone? What is there to love or mourn in age?
Keats achieves a tremendous amount of distance in the end of the poem. By positioning the animals and humans in different places--a hill, the sky, a hidden garden-croft--Keats puts their small noises far off. This has the effect of making both Spring and youth seem far away.
Though the poem asks us not to think of the songs of Spring, that Autumn (age) has its melody, too, one might argue that Spring is everywhere in the background here. There are flowers, bees, and brooks, and the sheep are identified as "full-grown lambs." Keats draws life in terms of Spring, which may place the emphasis on Spring nonetheless.
But who knows. Part of the achievement of this poem is Keats' ability to balance the beauty and abundance of Autumn with the poem's sad tone. "To Autumn" is like a psalm, a hymn, a lament: beautiful and tearing, ripe and sad. Keats has produced a poem of autumn, a poem of beauty and age. In it, there is a passing of grand poetic metaphors or gestures; these are replaced by a slow and solemnly beautiful three stanzas.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Poem of the Week 11/27/2006: The Sun Underfoot Among the Sundew
The Sun Underfoot Among the Sundew
An ingenuity too astonishing
to be quite fortuitous is
this bog full of sundews, sphagnum-
lined and shaped like a teacup.
A step
down and you're into it: a
wilderness swallows you up:
ankle-, then knee-, then midriff-
to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted
understory, an overhead
spruce-tamarack horizon hinting
you'll never get out of here.
But the sun
among the sundews, down there,
is so bright, an underfoot
webwork of carnivorous rubies,
a star-swarm thick as the gnats
they're set to catch, delectable
double-faced cockleburs, each
hair-tip a sticky mirror
afire with sunlight, a million
of them and again a million,
each mirror a trap set to
unhand unbelieving,
that either
a First Cause said once, "Let there
be sundews," and there were, or they've
made their way here unaided
other than by that backhand, round-
about refusal to assume responsibility
known as Natural Selection.
But the sun
underfoot is so dazzling
down there among the sundews,
there is so much light
in the cup that, looking,
you start to fall upward.
Amy Clampitt 1983
Some explicatory notes: this poem tells the story of a (wo?)man walking into a bog and falling into a deep, marshy area of sundews. I don't know how this works, and I am too tired to look it up, but that is what I get from the poem. She falls, but, slightly afraid of dying, sees the sundews shining out. They are so beautiful, that it seems that she is falling the opposite way.
That is an incredibly crude explanation of this poem, but my hope is that this little summary will help you parse out the poem yourself. Maybe it will help? It is a beautiful poem - light imagery always gets me.
I chose it because it's snowing here, and I was amused at the juxtaposition. Goodnight!
An ingenuity too astonishing
to be quite fortuitous is
this bog full of sundews, sphagnum-
lined and shaped like a teacup.
A step
down and you're into it: a
wilderness swallows you up:
ankle-, then knee-, then midriff-
to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted
understory, an overhead
spruce-tamarack horizon hinting
you'll never get out of here.
But the sun
among the sundews, down there,
is so bright, an underfoot
webwork of carnivorous rubies,
a star-swarm thick as the gnats
they're set to catch, delectable
double-faced cockleburs, each
hair-tip a sticky mirror
afire with sunlight, a million
of them and again a million,
each mirror a trap set to
unhand unbelieving,
that either
a First Cause said once, "Let there
be sundews," and there were, or they've
made their way here unaided
other than by that backhand, round-
about refusal to assume responsibility
known as Natural Selection.
But the sun
underfoot is so dazzling
down there among the sundews,
there is so much light
in the cup that, looking,
you start to fall upward.
Amy Clampitt 1983
Some explicatory notes: this poem tells the story of a (wo?)man walking into a bog and falling into a deep, marshy area of sundews. I don't know how this works, and I am too tired to look it up, but that is what I get from the poem. She falls, but, slightly afraid of dying, sees the sundews shining out. They are so beautiful, that it seems that she is falling the opposite way.
That is an incredibly crude explanation of this poem, but my hope is that this little summary will help you parse out the poem yourself. Maybe it will help? It is a beautiful poem - light imagery always gets me.
I chose it because it's snowing here, and I was amused at the juxtaposition. Goodnight!
Monday, November 20, 2006
Poem of the Week 11/20/2006: A Few Moments
A Few Moments
The dwarf pine on marsh grounds holds its head up: a dark rag.
But what you see is nothing compared to the roots,
the widening, secretly groping, deathless or half-
deathless root system.
I you she he also put roots out.
Outside our common will.
Outside the City.
Rain drifts from the summer sky that's pale as milk.
It is as if my five senses were hooked up to some other creature
that moves with the same stubborn flow
as the runners in white circling the track as the night comes misting in.
by Tomas Transtomer
translated by Robert Bly 2001
Robert Bly's interest is in poetry that is highly metaphorical; he is one of the most vocal members of the "Deep Image" school of poetry, which writes images that harmonize with the spiritual interior of a human. Much of his work has been translating poets such as Transtomer, Vallejo, and others whose names I cannot remember. He asks for a poetry that is almost Biblical in the symbolism of its imagery, I suppose.
I read this poem as an articulation of man's subconscious. This subconscious is scattered, complex, growing, unknown, much like the imagery and form of this poem. Transtomer opens with an image establishing, on one level, the smallness of man: "the dwarf pine." He personifies the tree, for it holds its poor head up, "a small rag." The pine is usually a tall tree, but, as I remember, a dwarf pine is a species that cannot grow much higher than the height of a man (please somebody correct me if I am wrong!). Thus, in this image is the idea of something stunted, limited, meager. With the pine, "what you see is nothing compared to the roots."
This line, though, offers a second interpretation of the tree. It may not merely be a humble human, but man's visible, or conscious thoughts. What we see of what we think, for most, comprises little of actual existence. Most of existence, the subconscious, is a tangled web of roots. Like the subconscious, the roots are unknown and complex, "widening [and] secretly groping." Looking deeper into the image, we find that roots feed a tree, which implies that subconscious feeds us.
Speaking of subconscious, sleep is taking over my brain. I will finish this tomorrow, I hope. It is beautiful; I hope you all agree.
The dwarf pine on marsh grounds holds its head up: a dark rag.
But what you see is nothing compared to the roots,
the widening, secretly groping, deathless or half-
deathless root system.
I you she he also put roots out.
Outside our common will.
Outside the City.
Rain drifts from the summer sky that's pale as milk.
It is as if my five senses were hooked up to some other creature
that moves with the same stubborn flow
as the runners in white circling the track as the night comes misting in.
by Tomas Transtomer
translated by Robert Bly 2001
Robert Bly's interest is in poetry that is highly metaphorical; he is one of the most vocal members of the "Deep Image" school of poetry, which writes images that harmonize with the spiritual interior of a human. Much of his work has been translating poets such as Transtomer, Vallejo, and others whose names I cannot remember. He asks for a poetry that is almost Biblical in the symbolism of its imagery, I suppose.
I read this poem as an articulation of man's subconscious. This subconscious is scattered, complex, growing, unknown, much like the imagery and form of this poem. Transtomer opens with an image establishing, on one level, the smallness of man: "the dwarf pine." He personifies the tree, for it holds its poor head up, "a small rag." The pine is usually a tall tree, but, as I remember, a dwarf pine is a species that cannot grow much higher than the height of a man (please somebody correct me if I am wrong!). Thus, in this image is the idea of something stunted, limited, meager. With the pine, "what you see is nothing compared to the roots."
This line, though, offers a second interpretation of the tree. It may not merely be a humble human, but man's visible, or conscious thoughts. What we see of what we think, for most, comprises little of actual existence. Most of existence, the subconscious, is a tangled web of roots. Like the subconscious, the roots are unknown and complex, "widening [and] secretly groping." Looking deeper into the image, we find that roots feed a tree, which implies that subconscious feeds us.
Speaking of subconscious, sleep is taking over my brain. I will finish this tomorrow, I hope. It is beautiful; I hope you all agree.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Poem of the Week 11/13/2006: No Tears
No Tears
Roses, Christ knows how they got to be so lovely,
green skies over the city
in the evening
in the ephemeral of the years!
The yearning I have for that time
when one mark thirty was all I had,
yes, I counted them this way and that,
I trimmed my days to fit them,
days, what am I saying days: weeks on bread and plum mush
out of earthenware pots
brought from my village,
still under the reselects of native poverty,
how raw everything felt, how tremblingly beautiful!
What good is the luster conferred by European pundits,
the great name,
the pour le merite,
people who shoot their cuffs and tool on,
it's only the ephemeral that's beautiful,
looking back, the poverty,
the frowstiness* that didn't know what it was,
sobs, and stands in line for its dole,
what a wonderful Hades
that takes away the frowst,
and the pundits both--
please, no tears,
no one say: oh, I was so lonesome.
Gottfried Benn 2006
*Hot stuffy fustiness.
It would do one good to ask why Benn opens the poem with the image of a rose; roses are a symbol of Christ (not so subtly associated in this poem), but they, again obviously, have thorns. Beauty and pain go together, the first lesson of the rose.
That is certainly how the narrator feels in this poem; he longs for his time of poverty, the kind of romantic simplicity of a life without too many goods. In what I find to be the best line of the poem, he calls this, "the rushlight of native poverty." That is, this kind of poverty lights softly, intimately, beautifully. And the rush goes out in an instant, unlike the steady, green throb of city lights in the opening section.
Essentially, this poem is concerned with many of the things I am thinking about now: simplicity, modernity, loneliness, beauty, and the sky. It is perhaps not as dense as it could be, but why make it so? It speaks to me. Modern society is lonely, harsh, tearful. We of course must question a romantic notion of the past, but this seems to be authentic. My best friend and I were recently talking about idealizing certain moments of high school, even, because it was so raw and new. Life was less clogged, then, I think. Perhaps that is what Benn is talking about.
He almost implies some kind of force or violence in the modern world when he writes of "people who shoot their cuffs." This is the harshness that seeks glory, a great name, some kind of masculine, lustrous permanence.
Modernity even turns the "native poverty" into something sad and broken. Only in cities do long lines of homeless stretch out over the city, perhaps because the modern world requires so much of us. It tires us, breaks us, makes us cry.
To be in a place of poverty and simplicity, now that's a different story. There is real beauty, and so real connectedness with the world. Rather than the mass-produced, buzzing fluorescent lights all around the modern world, a simple world is intimate, personal, ephemeral: a tiny lit reed flickering in the night.
I don't mean this to be a rant, but I stumbled on this poem exactly at the right time for myself. It's funny how that happens.
Roses, Christ knows how they got to be so lovely,
green skies over the city
in the evening
in the ephemeral of the years!
The yearning I have for that time
when one mark thirty was all I had,
yes, I counted them this way and that,
I trimmed my days to fit them,
days, what am I saying days: weeks on bread and plum mush
out of earthenware pots
brought from my village,
still under the reselects of native poverty,
how raw everything felt, how tremblingly beautiful!
What good is the luster conferred by European pundits,
the great name,
the pour le merite,
people who shoot their cuffs and tool on,
it's only the ephemeral that's beautiful,
looking back, the poverty,
the frowstiness* that didn't know what it was,
sobs, and stands in line for its dole,
what a wonderful Hades
that takes away the frowst,
and the pundits both--
please, no tears,
no one say: oh, I was so lonesome.
Gottfried Benn 2006
*Hot stuffy fustiness.
It would do one good to ask why Benn opens the poem with the image of a rose; roses are a symbol of Christ (not so subtly associated in this poem), but they, again obviously, have thorns. Beauty and pain go together, the first lesson of the rose.
That is certainly how the narrator feels in this poem; he longs for his time of poverty, the kind of romantic simplicity of a life without too many goods. In what I find to be the best line of the poem, he calls this, "the rushlight of native poverty." That is, this kind of poverty lights softly, intimately, beautifully. And the rush goes out in an instant, unlike the steady, green throb of city lights in the opening section.
Essentially, this poem is concerned with many of the things I am thinking about now: simplicity, modernity, loneliness, beauty, and the sky. It is perhaps not as dense as it could be, but why make it so? It speaks to me. Modern society is lonely, harsh, tearful. We of course must question a romantic notion of the past, but this seems to be authentic. My best friend and I were recently talking about idealizing certain moments of high school, even, because it was so raw and new. Life was less clogged, then, I think. Perhaps that is what Benn is talking about.
He almost implies some kind of force or violence in the modern world when he writes of "people who shoot their cuffs." This is the harshness that seeks glory, a great name, some kind of masculine, lustrous permanence.
Modernity even turns the "native poverty" into something sad and broken. Only in cities do long lines of homeless stretch out over the city, perhaps because the modern world requires so much of us. It tires us, breaks us, makes us cry.
To be in a place of poverty and simplicity, now that's a different story. There is real beauty, and so real connectedness with the world. Rather than the mass-produced, buzzing fluorescent lights all around the modern world, a simple world is intimate, personal, ephemeral: a tiny lit reed flickering in the night.
I don't mean this to be a rant, but I stumbled on this poem exactly at the right time for myself. It's funny how that happens.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Poem of the Week 11/6/2006: Proust in the Waters
Proust in the Waters
Swimming along the bar of moon
the yellow scattered sleeping
arm of moon
on Balsam Lake
releasing the air
out of your mouth
the moon under your arm
tick of the brain
submerged. Tick
of the loon's heart
in the wet night thunder
below us
knowing its shore is the air
We love things which disappear
and are found
creatures who plummet
and become
an arrow.
To know the syllables
in a loon sentence
intricate
shift of preposition
that signals meridian
west south west.
The mother tongue
a bubble caught in my beak
releasing the air
of a language
Seeing no human in this moon storm
being naked in black water
you approach the corridor
such jewellery! Queen Anne's Lace!
and slide to fathoms.
The mouth swallows river morse
throws a sound
through the loom of liquid
against sky.
Where are you?
On the edge
of the moon bar
Michael Ondaatje 1984
This strange and dreamy poem is concerned with language, connection, fragmentation, time, and solitariness, I think. It traces the location of another person, finding her through a web of moonlit shards. We have an interesting unity between water, loon, moon, and human. My thinking is muddy, but this poem is not! It is clear and luminous, even. Sometimes these things plant themselves in your mind; you read them over and over, and the meaning only unfolds after time. These are the poems that you live, that you act out, that you must wait for. Poetry and life go together, remember?
Even writing that loosened my thoughts a bit; the end is a coming together. The only instance of actual, spoken dialog in the poem (the other words are merely "releasing the air," "a bubble caught in my beak," and "the river morse." It is as if the two people are learning to talk, or perhaps finding their words among lunacy (of love?). I think I picked this poem because of the moon, the fragmentation, and the beautiful language.
Swimming along the bar of moon
the yellow scattered sleeping
arm of moon
on Balsam Lake
releasing the air
out of your mouth
the moon under your arm
tick of the brain
submerged. Tick
of the loon's heart
in the wet night thunder
below us
knowing its shore is the air
We love things which disappear
and are found
creatures who plummet
and become
an arrow.
To know the syllables
in a loon sentence
intricate
shift of preposition
that signals meridian
west south west.
The mother tongue
a bubble caught in my beak
releasing the air
of a language
Seeing no human in this moon storm
being naked in black water
you approach the corridor
such jewellery! Queen Anne's Lace!
and slide to fathoms.
The mouth swallows river morse
throws a sound
through the loom of liquid
against sky.
Where are you?
On the edge
of the moon bar
Michael Ondaatje 1984
This strange and dreamy poem is concerned with language, connection, fragmentation, time, and solitariness, I think. It traces the location of another person, finding her through a web of moonlit shards. We have an interesting unity between water, loon, moon, and human. My thinking is muddy, but this poem is not! It is clear and luminous, even. Sometimes these things plant themselves in your mind; you read them over and over, and the meaning only unfolds after time. These are the poems that you live, that you act out, that you must wait for. Poetry and life go together, remember?
Even writing that loosened my thoughts a bit; the end is a coming together. The only instance of actual, spoken dialog in the poem (the other words are merely "releasing the air," "a bubble caught in my beak," and "the river morse." It is as if the two people are learning to talk, or perhaps finding their words among lunacy (of love?). I think I picked this poem because of the moon, the fragmentation, and the beautiful language.
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