NPM 2013 - V is for Vallejo and Voznesensky

So, V is another tricky one. When I started the theme for NPM 2013, I knew Q and X would be problematic but had not considered V would be so. I can think of two choices for today but I've not read poems by either one of them. One's wikipedia entry says:

"... a poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. .... . Thomas Merton called him "the greatest universal poet since Dante". The late British poet, critic and biographer Martin Seymour-Smith, a leading authority on world literature, called Vallejo "...the greatest twentieth-century poet in any language."

And the other's wikipedia entry says:  

"...poet and writer who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as "one of the greatest living poets in any language." He was one of the "Children of the '60s," a new wave of iconic intellectuals .... considered "one of the most daring writers of the Soviet era"

Both of them are very famous poets though and both wrote in languages other than English. Tough to make a choice really and so I've decided to post 2 poems each by both of them.

~*~*~*~

First up, Peru's César Vallejo (March 16, 1892 – April 15, 1938), who in exile became a major voice of social change in Spanish American literature. Read his bio here or here - what a tumultuous life he led! The latter link has this lovely excerpt about his poetry:

“Vallejo confounds the reader’s expectations by his daring exploitation of the line pause, which often leaves articles, conjunctions and even particles of words dangling at the end of a line, by his frequent resort to harsh sounds to break the rhythm, by employing alliterations so awkward as to be tongue-twisters. He distorts syntactic structures, changes the grammatical function of words, plays with spelling. His poetic vocabulary is frequently unfamiliar and ‘unliterary,’ he creates new words of his own, he often conflates two words into one, he tampers with cliches to give them new meaning, he plays on the multiple meaning of words and on the similarity of sound between words. He repeatedly makes use of oxymoron and paradox and, above all, catachresis, defamiliarising objects by attributing to them qualities not normally associated with them.”

~*~ 

2 poems then by Vallejo:

Weary Rings
by César Vallejo
Translated from the Spanish by Rebecca Seiferle
    There's the desire to return, to love, to not be absent,
and the desire to die, fought by two
opposing waters that are never to be an isthmus.

    There's the desire for a great kiss that shrouds Life,
that ends in the Africa of burning, suicidal
death throes!

    There's the desire... to have no desire, Lord;
I point the finger of deicide at you:
there's the desire to have never had a heart.

    Spring returns, and will go away. And God,
curved in time, repeats himself, and walks by, walks by
carrying on his back the backbone of the Universe.

    When my temples play their lugubrious drum,
when the dream engraved on a dagger hurts me,
there's the desire to remain rooted in this verse!

 ~*~

Lines
by César Vallejo
Translated from the Spanish by Rebecca Seiferle

    Each ribbon of fire,
that in search of Love,
I cast and vibrate in lamentable roses,
births me to the burial of my eve.
I don't know if the throbbing where I search
will be the painting of rock,
or the perennial birthing of heart.

    There is stretched out in the very depth of being,
an ultranervous axis, a profound plumb line.
The thread of destiny!
Love will deflect such a law of life
toward the voice of Man;
and will give us supreme liberty
in blue transubstantiation, virtuous,
against what is blind and fatal.

    May there throb in each cipher,
hidden away in fragile dawns,
a even better Jesus of another great Yolk!

    And afterwards... The other line...
A Baptist who watches, watches, watches...
And, riding the intangible curve,
a foot bathed in purple.

~*~

A handful  of his poems can be read via the Poets.org website or the Poetry Foundation website.  I particularly liked "Black Stone Lying On A White Stone". There's also a few more poems translated by Robert Bly in Bly's recent book "The Winged Energy of Delight - Selected Translations." I got this book from the public library last month but did not get time to read it.

~*~*~*~

 

Onto the second poet for today now - Andrei Voznesensky (May 12, 1933 – June 1, 2010), the poet who rocked Russia's stadiums and is celebrated even in the West as "one of the Soviet Union's boldest and most celebrated young poets of the 1950s and '60"

~*~

Her Story
by Andrei Voznesensky
Translated by Alec Vagapov

I started up the engine and I lingered.
Where should I go? The night was fine, I figured.
The bonnet trembled like a nervous hound.
I shivered. Night lit up the houses around.
The Balzac age, I felt its burning pain,
Chilled to the bone, I couldn't hold my own.
The age of balsam wine mixed with champaign!..

So I looked up, and wound the window down.

They were young, two pretty-pretty fellows,
wearing fur coats, looking slightly careless.
"You're free, Miss, aren't you ? Care for delight?
Five hundred now. One thousand for the night".

I flared up. They took me for a prostitute.
My heart was jumping. What an attitude!
They want you, you're young, you're a whore!
Indignant, I said "Yes", instead of "No".

The other one, so "sweet and pure",
swaying his hips, looking aside,
said: "Have you got a friend, as rich as you are?
I, too, will take it. A thousand for the night".

The brutes! I thought I'd better vanish!
I stepped upon the gas and left the site.
My heart, however, jumped for joy and anguish!
"Five hundred now. One thousand for the night".

~*~

Parabolic Balad
by Andrei Voznesensky
translated by W. H. Auden

Among a parabola life like a rocket flies,
Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow,
Red-headed bohemian Gauguin the painter
Started out life as a prosperous stockbroker.
In order to get to the Louvre from Montmartre
He made a detour all through Java, Sumatra,
Tahiti, the Isles of Marquesas.

                               With levity
He took off in flight from the madness of money,
The cackle of women, the frowst of academies,
Overpowered the force of terrestrial gravity.
The high priests drank their porter and kept up their jabbering:
'Straight lines are shorter, less steep than parabolas.
It's more proper to copy the heavenly mansions.'

He rose like a howling rocket, insulting them,
With a gale that tore off the tails of their frock-coats.
So he didn't steal into the Louvre by the front door
But on a parabola smashed through the ceiling.
In finding their truths lives vary in daring:
Worms come through holes and bold men on parabolas.

There was once a girl who lived in my neighbourhood.
We went to school, took exams simultaneously.
But I took off with a bang,
                                I went whizzing
Through the prosperous double-faced stars of Tiflis.
Forgive me for this idiotic parabola
Cold shoulders in a pitch dark vestibule...
Rigid, erect as a radio antenna-rod
Sending its call-sign out through the freezing
Dark of the universe, how you rang out to me,
An undoubtable signal, an earthly stand-by
From whom I might get my flight-bearings to land by
The parabola does not come to us easily.
 Laughing at law with its warnings and paragraphs
Art, love and history race along recklessly
Over a parabolic trajectory.
 He is leaving tonight for Siberia.
                               Perhaps
A straight line after all is the shorter one actually.

~*~

   

You can read 5 of his poems via the New York Review of Books, with translations by Auden and James Merrill and there's no doubt other resources online for some of his poetry like this collection of his poems translated by Alec Vagapov (never heard of him before today!) but I'll leave you with this Paris Review interview with Voznesensky. I knew about the immense popularity of Yevtushenko during Krushchev's reign in the Soviet Union but it seems Voznesensky was also an equally popular poet of the times. 

"Public readings by writers including Voznesensky and Yevtushenko had already grown to the point that huge stadiums could hardly contain the audiences clamoring to hear the new poetry..... He is a small man—about the size of a Beatle—with firm Slav features. When he reads, his voice is equal to every music his language offers, and he whips his poems toward the audience with a right arm like a tweed cobra; he delivers his lines with a passionate, almost frightening intensity. During performances, crowds have been known to rush the podium to touch the cuffs of his trousers; after them, poetry groupies seek the kind of backstage benediction Dylan Thomas used to like to give. His name shows up in literary journals while his face appears in fashion magazines. He is a legend in Russia; he is recognized in small airports in the American South."

NPM 2013 - U is for Updike

John Updike is more renowned for his novels, short stories, and essays and while his poetry may not stand the test of time and he won't be heralded as a premier poet of the 20th century, I remember sitting outside Boston Public Library one sunny Fall day in 2009 and reading his last (posthumously published) book of poems, EndPoint & Other Poems, in one sitting. Overall though, I should admit that while I am a big fan of his short stories, I have read just a couple of his novels (the famed Rabbit series) and just one book of poems.

Like Clive James wrote about his poetry in the New York Times shortly after his death:

John Updike was always so careful not to make high claims for himself as a poet that he gave his more owlish critics the opportunity to say he wasn’t a poet at all. They should have looked harder. Most of the poems he ever published in book form counted as light verse, but his light verse was dauntingly accomplished. Very few recognized poets could handle the formal element that well, and occasionally there was a serious poem with all the linguistic vigor of the prose that had made his novels compulsory reading.

Here then are a few of his poems.

~*~

Dog's Death
by John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog.

~*~

Penumbrae
by John Updike

Penumbrae

The shadows have their seasons, too.
The feathery web the budding maples
cast down upon the sullen lawn

bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum-

black leached from green, deep pools
wherein a globe of gnats revolves
as airy as an astrolabe.

The thinning shade of autumn is
an inherited Oriental,
red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.

Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,
exultant at the summit, sees his poles
elongate toward the valley: thus

each blade of grass projects another
opposite the sun, and in marshes
the mesh is infinite,

as the winged eclipse an eagle in flight
drags across the desert floor
is infinitesimal.

And shadows on water!-
the beech bough bent to the speckled lake
where silt motes flicker gold,

or the steel dock underslung
with a submarine that trembles,
its ladder stiffened by air.

And loveliest, because least looked-for,
gray on gray, the stripes
the pearl-white winter sun

hung low beneath the leafless wood
draws out from trunk to trunk across the road
like a stairway that does not rise.

~*~

I remember this poem scared me (Old age is not fun!) and at the same time made me smile. 

Colonoscopy
by John Updike

Talk about intimacy! I'd almost rather not.
The day before, a tussle with nausea
(DRINK ME: a liter of sickly-sweet liquid)
and diarrhea, so as to present oneself
pristine as a bride to the groom with his tools,
his probe and tiny TV camera
and honeyed words. He has a tan,
just back from a deserved vacation
from his accustomed nether regions.

Begowned, recumbent on one's side,
one views through uprolled eyes the screen whereon
one's big intestine snakes sedately by,
its segments marked by tidy annular
construction-seams as in a prefab tunnel
slapped up by the mayor's son-in-law.
A sudden wash of sparkling liquid shines
in the inserted light, and hairpin turns
loom far ahead and soon are vaulted past
impalpably; we float, we fall, we veer
in these soft, pliant passages spelunked
by everything one eats.

Then all goes dark,
as God intended it whenever He
sealed shut in Adam's abdomen
life's slimy, twisting, smelly miracle.
The bridegroom's voice, below the edge of sight
like buried treasure, announces,
"Perfect. Not a polyp. See you in
five years." Five years? The funhouse may have folded.

I'll leave you with this excerpt from the long poem, Endpoint

Raw days, though spring has been declared.
I settle in, to that decade in which,
I’m told, most people die. Then, flying south,
I wonder why houses in their patterned crowds
look white, whatever their earthbound colors,
from the air. Golf courses, nameless rivers.
The naked Connecticut woods hold veins of madder
like the green veins of the sea.

The pilot takes us down Manhattan’s spine—
the projects, Riverside cathedral, Midtown
bristling up like some coarse porcupine.
We seem too low, my palms begin to sweat.
The worst can happen, we know it from the news.
Age I must, but die I would rather not. 

~*~

 

A few more of his poems can be read at this website and also at the Poetry Foundation website.

NPM 2013 - T is for Tate

T was a problem for me today. I wanted to include at least one poet from India this month and so Tagore (the only one from India to win the Nobel Prize in Literature) was a good choice but from the little I have read of his poems in English, a lot of the magic is lost and the poems seem a bit stilted. Then I thought of Tsvetaeva but the same applies to translations from the Russian though over the years I have enjoyed a few of Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova's poetry in English. (I recently read a article by Joseph Brodsky about the difficulties of translating from the Russian. He writes: "Russian poetry has not been lucky with its translations into English. It has been so unlucky that it may seem that the problem is in the Russian language itself—a synthetic, too flexible language which cannot be reproduced adequately in analytic English with its “iron word-order.” Successful translations are rare.")

I also thought of Tennyson but then decided to find some contemporary poet and found Allen Tate and James Tate, and finally decided that I'll go with James Tate, whose poetry I am not very familiar with and so this post provided an opportunity to read some of his work and to also read a few interviews with him. (I love reading interviews with writers and poets; sometimes, in the case of fiction, more so than reading the novels themselves, I enjoy reading book reviews, critiques, and interviews with the authors. I think this says something about me but that psycho-analysis can wait for some other day.)

Here then are four poems by James Tate.

~*~

The Lost Pilot
by James Tate

for my father, 1922-1944

Your face did not rot
like the others—the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot

like the others—it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their

distinction. If I could cajole
you to come back for an evening,
down from your compulsive

orbiting, I would touch you,
read your face as Dallas,
your hoodlum gunner, now,

with the blistered eyes, reads
his braille editions. I would
touch your face as a disinterested

scholar touches an original page.
However frightening, I would
discover you, and I would not

turn you in; I would not make
you face your wife, or Dallas,
or the co-pilot, Jim. You

could return to your crazy
orbiting, and I would not try
to fully understand what

it means to you. All I know
is this: when I see you,
as I have seen you at least

once every year of my life,
spin across the wilds of the sky
like a tiny, African god,

I feel dead. I feel as if I were
the residue of a stranger's life,
that I should pursue you.

My head cocked toward the sky,
I cannot get off the ground,
and, you, passing over again,

fast, perfect, and unwilling
to tell me that you are doing
well, or that it was mistake

that placed you in that world,
and me in this; or that misfortune
placed these worlds in us.

~*~

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
by James Tate   

They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"

~*~

Never Again The Same
by James Tate

Speaking of sunsets,
last night’s was shocking.
I mean, sunsets aren’t supposed to frighten you, are they?
Well, this one was terrifying.
People were screaming in the streets.
Sure, it was beautiful, but far too beautiful.
It wasn’t natural.
One climax followed another and then another
until your knees went weak
and you couldn’t breathe.
The colors were definitely not of this world,
peaches dripping opium,
pandemonium of tangerines,
inferno of irises,
Plutonian emeralds,
all swirling and churning, swabbing,
like it was playing with us,
like we were nothing,
as if our whole lives were a preparation for this,
this for which nothing could have prepared us
and for which we could not have been less prepared.
The mockery of it all stung us bitterly.
And when it was finally over
we whimpered and cried and howled.
And then the streetlights came on as always
and we looked into one another’s eyes —
ancient caves with still pools
and those little transparent fish
who have never seen even one ray of light.
And the calm that returned to us
was not even our own.”

~*~

Wait for Me
by James Tate

A dream of life a dream of birth
a dream of moving
from one world into another

All night dismantling the synapses
unplugging the veins and arteries . . .

Hello I am a cake of soap
dissolving in a warm bath

A train with no windows and no doors
a lover with no eyes for his mask
—inside is the speed of life

Who can doubt the worth of it
each letter written is obsolete
before it finds its friend

Our life is shorter now
full of chaotic numbers
which never complete a day

It will be the same
as it has always been
and you are right to pack

Your heart in ice
if you believe this.
 

~*~

I'll leave you with a link to 40 poems by James Tate at the Poetry Foundation website.

NPM 2013 - S is for Strand

Given all that is happening in Boston today, maybe not many (at least here in the US) are in the mood for poetry. But National Poetry Month has to go on...

"If absence and loss are inescapable conditions of life, the poem …is an act of recovery. It synthesizes, for all its meagreness, what is with what is no longer; it conjures up a life that persists by denial, gathering strength from its hopelessness, and exists, finally and positively, as an emblem of survival." - Mark Strand  

~*~

 
For today, I debated between Wallace Stevens and Mark Strand and while I've read both of their work quite a bit over the last five years, I decided to go with Mark Strand since his poems have appealed to me at an emotional level more than Stevens's poems. I'll probably keep reading Wallace Stevens poems all my life (bought his Collected Poems at a used book store last year) but for today, Strand it is.

Here are a few of the many poems by Mark Strand that I have loved and saved away for later reading and re-reading. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

~*~

The Night, the Porch 
by Mark Strand

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter. Even now we seem to be waiting for something
Whose appearance would be its vanishing—the sound, say,
Of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf, or less.
There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells as much, and was never written with us in mind.

~*~

The Coming of Light

by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light.

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows.

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine

and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

~*~

A Piece of the Storm
by Mark Strand

    From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
    A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
    And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
    From your book, saw it the moment it landed.
    That’s all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
    To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
    A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
    Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
    Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
    That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
    “It’s time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.

~*~

Keeping Things Whole
by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in  
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

~*~

Eating Poetry

by Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

~*~

I could go on and on as I love so many of his poems but I have to stop at my self-set maximum of 5 poems. I recommend you get some of his books on poetry to savor (and eat) his poetry - I especially love The Continuous Life and Dark Harbor but all his books of poems are great and so you could just start with  New Selected Poems (2009) or  Selected Poems (1990), which I found to be little easier to find at public libraries than the former two I mentioned here.

I'll leave you with this review from 1998 of another book I highly recommend - his Pulitzer Prize winning book, A Blizzard of One:

 "Mark Strand confronts the infinite, which sometimes returns his gaze."

NPM 2013 - R is for Rich

Today's poet is Adrienne Rich. The great literary critic of our times, Harold Bloom may frown on this but the author Cheryl Strayed says Adrienne Rich's poetry inspired and consoled her through some tough times and that is good enough for me. 

"There's a line in one of Adrienne Rich’s best and most famous poems, “Diving Into the Wreck,” that I’ve carried around inside myself like a brain tattoo for 20-some years: We are, I am, you are. Rich wrote many lines that meant something important to me over the course of her long career, but that one strikes me as core. In those six lean words, she bound us together — the entire beautiful and ugly mass of us made, by virtue of her words, indivisible. Indivisibility is classic Rich. She was a great connector of things: art to politics, love to rage, consciousness to action, society to self, power to wound, me to you, us to her." - Cheryl Strayed

Photograph by Robert Giard. via Paris Review

Also, these raving words by the author and poet, Margaret Atwood, who in reviewing the book in 1973  called it “one of those rare books that forces you to decide not just what you think about it; but what you think about yourself. It is a book that takes risks, and it forces the reader to take them also.” Atwood also wrote in reviewing Rich's "The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977":

 "Rich's poems do not demand the willing suspension of disbelief. They demand belief, and it is a measure of her success as a poet that most of the time they get it. . . . The affirmation and the occasional moments of pure joy in these poems are quiet but fully earned."--Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review

~*~

Here then, are four poems by Adrienne Rich:

In Those Years
by Adrienne Rich

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

  

~*~

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve
by Adrienne Rich

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid

later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

Syntax of rendition:

verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action

verb force-feeds noun
submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb    disgraced    goes on doing 

now diagram the sentence

~*~

What Kind of Times Are These
by Adrienne Rich

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows. 

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooledthis isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear. 

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell youanything? Because you still listen, because in times like theseto have you listen at all, it's necessaryto talk about trees.

~*~

And last but not least...

Diving into the Wreck

by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,

and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,

I put on

the body-armor of black rubber

the absurd flippers

the grave and awkward mask.

I am having to do this

not like Cousteau with his

assiduous team

aboard the sun-flooded schooner

but here alone.

There is a ladder.

The ladder is always there

hanging innocently

close to the side of the schooner.

We know what it is for,

we who have used it.

Otherwise

it is a piece of maritime floss

some sundry equipment.

I go down.

Rung after rung and still

the oxygen immerses me

the blue light

the clear atoms

of our human air.

I go down.

My flippers cripple me,

I crawl like an insect down the ladder

and there is no one

to tell me when the ocean

will begin.

First the air is blue and then

it is bluer and then green and then

black I am blacking out and yet

my mask is powerful

it pumps my blood with power

the sea is another story

the sea is not a question of power

I have to learn alone

to turn my body without force

in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget

what I came for

among so many who have always

lived here

swaying their crenellated fans

between the reefs

and besides

you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.

The words are purposes.

The words are maps.

I came to see the damage that was done

and the treasures that prevail.

I stroke the beam of my lamp

slowly along the flank

of something more permanent

than fish or weed

the thing I came for:

the wreck and not the story of the wreck

the thing itself and not the myth

the drowned face always staring

toward the sun

the evidence of damage

worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty

the ribs of the disaster

curving their assertion

among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.

And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair

streams black, the merman in his armored body.

We circle silently

about the wreck

we dive into the hold.

I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes

whose breasts still bear the stress

whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies

obscurely inside barrels

half-wedged and left to rot

we are the half-destroyed instruments

that once held to a course

the water-eaten log

the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear.

Also, more about the poem via the University of Illinois English department site and hear the poet read the poem in the video below.

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228#sthash.WAaNJo2O.dpuf

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228#sthash.WAaNJo2O.dpuf

NPM 2013 - Q is for Qi

I've read a lot of haiku over the years but very little (well; none at all!) of Chinese poetry from the Tang dynasty and other periods of Chinese history over the last two millennia and more. But in trying to find a poet with a last name starting with Q, I found Li Qi, Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty, a period known for its poetry.

 "Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain" by Emperor Gaozong

But given the vast amount of poetry from China that is out there, instead of focusing on one poet, because his name starts with a certain alphabet (which in fact, spelled a different way, as is common with Chinese names being written in English, may not even be start with a Q), I decided to instead read up a little bit about Chinese poetry through the remainder of this month and got two books from the public library. Studying Chinese poetry can become a life-long endeavor and I do not have the time and bandwidth for it right now but a quick perusal and a basic understanding of poetry should be possible, especially since I have read a lot of literature about haiku and understand its aesthetics. (Remember that Basho was influenced in many ways by Li Po and other Chinese poets of the Tang dynasty.)

Anyways, I randomly picked these 5 poems for today. While reading them keep in mind that a lost is lost in translation and in fact, different translators will translate a given poem in very different ways sometimes.

~*~

A Lute Song
by Li Qi

Our host, providing abundant wine to make the night mellow,
Asks his guest from Yangzhou to play for us on the lute.
Toward the moon that whitens the city-wall, black crows are flying,
Frost is on ten thousand trees, and the wind blows through our clothes;
But a copper stove has added its light to that of flowery candles,
And the lute plays The Green Water, and then The Queen of Chu.
Once it has begun to play, there is no other sound:
A spell is on the banquet, while the stars grow thin....
But three hundred miles from here, in Huai, official duties await him,
And so it's farewell, and the road again, under cloudy mountains. 

~*~

Facing Snow
by Du Fu
 
After the battle, many new ghosts cry,
The solitary old man worries and grieves.
Ragged clouds are low amid the dusk,
Snow dances quickly in the whirling wind.
The ladle's cast aside, the cup not green,
The stove still looks as if a fiery red.
To many places, communications are broken,
I sit, but cannot read my books for grief.

~*~

Thinking of Li Bai at the End of the Sky by Du Fu

Cold wind rises at the end of the sky,
What thoughts occupy the gentleman's mind?
What time will the wild goose come?
The rivers and lakes are full of autumn's waters.
Literature and worldly success are opposed,
Demons exult in human failure.
Talk together with the hated poet,
Throw a poem into Miluo river. 

~*~

Waking from Drunken Sleep on a Spring Day by Li Po
Life is a dream. No need to stir.
Remembering this I’m drunk all day.
Lying helpless beside the porch,
Waking to see the deep garden.
One bird calls among the flowers.
Ask myself what’s the season?
Song of the oriole in Spring breezes,
Voice of beauty sadly moves me.
Is there wine? Ah, fill the cup.
Sing and watch the white moon rise,
until song’s end and sense is gone.

~*~

The Solitude of Night
by Li Po
Translated By Shigeyoshi Obata

It was at a wine party—
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.

  

~*~

You can also try to peruse through this archive of 300 Tang dynasty poems or read a few here. I am sure there are many other resources online to study Chinese poetry, from the ancient to contemporary.

NPM 2013 - P is for Paz

I was introduced to the poetry of Octavio Paz in the mid-90s around the same time that I first read Pablo Neruda and so, though their poetry is very different, I hold his poems also in the same vaunted position that I hold Neruda's poems. Both are in the Spanish and both made me wonder how good they must be in the original if I can enjoy them so much even in translation.

"Poetry is not what words say but what is said between them, that which appears fleetingly in pauses and silences."  - Octavio Paz

“Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.” - Octavio Paz

I blogged about Octavio Paz during the 2011 NPM celebrations and while I am tempted to just recirculate the 5 oems I posted then, that is not fair....so, here then are a few poems by him. The challenge, as always, is how to pick 3-5 poems to represent a life-long of poetry.  Like the Nobel Prize committee member said, in giving him the Literature Prize in 1990, "it is like trying to press a continent into a walnut shell."

"It has been my task to give a picture of your writing in a few minutes. It is like trying to press a continent into a walnut shell - a feat for which the language of criticism is poorly equipped. This is, however, what you have managed to do, again and again, in poems which have, quite rightly, an improbably high specific gravity."

Anyways, here are 3 random poems by the great Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat. 

Proem
by Octavio Paz   
translated by Eliot Weinberger

At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and the vertigo of death;
the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena in submarine gardens;
the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments;
the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page;
the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses,
for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-sorrow desert;
the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipation of the self;
the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors;   
the recollection of pronouns freshly cut in the garden of Epicurus, and the garden of Netzahualcoyotl;
the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the cave of thought;
the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;
the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language;
the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in love.

 ~*~

Sunstone (Piedra de sol) ... an excerpt.
by Octavio Paz I search without finding, I write alone,there's no one here, and the day falls,the year falls, I fall with the moment,I fall to the depths, invisible pathover mirrors repeating my shattered image,I walk through the days, the trampled moments,I walk through all the thoughts of my shadow,I walk through my shadow in search of a moment,I search for an instant alive as a bird,for the sun of five in the afternoontempered by walls of porous stone:the hour ripened its cluster of grapes,and bursting, girls spilled out from the fruit,scattering in the cobblestone patios of the school,one was tall as autumn and walkedthrough the arcades enveloped in light,and space encircled, dressed her in a skineven more golden and transparent,tiger the color of light, brown deeron the outskirts of night, girl glimpsedleaning over green balconies of rain,adolescent incalculable face,I've forgotten your name, Melusina,Laura, Isabel, Persephone, Mary,your face is all the faces and none,you are all the hours and none,you're a tree and a cloud, all the birdsand a single star, the edge of the swordand the executioner's bowl of blood,the ivy that creeps, envelops, uprootsthe soul, and severs it from itself . . .

~*~

And last but not least, this poem from the book 'A Tale of Two Gardens', Poems from India (1952-1995) that I bought for myself over 10 years ago. I opened it just now and picked the second random poem that I came upon opening the book. (The first one was lovely too - Maithuna - but is too long to be posted here.)

The Arms of Summerby Octavio Paz
Hear the throbbing of spaceit is the steps of a season in heatacross the embers of the year
Murmur of wings and rattlesthe far-off drumbeat of the stormthe crackling and panting of the earthunder its cape of roots and bugs
Thirst wakes and buildsgreat cages of glasswhere your nakedness is water in chainswater that sings and breaks loose from its chains
Armed with the arms of summeryou come into my room come into my mindand untie the river of languagelook at yourself with these hurried words
Bit by bit the day burns outover the erasing landscapeyour shadow is a land of birdsthe sun scatters with a wave.

~*~

I will leave you with his interview with the Paris Review and this short but lovely Nobel banquet speech celebrating life, nature, and all the lovely things on earth!

At the close of this century we have discovered that we are part of a vast system (or network of systems) ranging from plants and animals to cells, molecules, atoms and stars. We are a link in "the great chain of being", as the philosophers of antiquity used to call the universe. One of man's oldest gestures, repeated daily from the beginning of time, is to look up and marvel at the starry sky. This act of contemplation frequently ends in a feeling of fraternal identification with the universe. In the countryside one night, years ago, as I contemplated the stars in the cloudless sky, I heard the metallic sound of the elytra of a cricket. There was a strange correspondence between the reverberation of the firmament at night and the music of the tiny insect. I wrote these lines:

The sky's big.
Up there, worlds scatter.
Persistent,
unfazed by so much night,
a cricket: brace and bit.

Stars, hills, clouds, trees, birds, crickets, men: each has its world, each is a world, and yet all of these worlds correspond. We can only defend life if we experience a revival of this feeling of solidarity with nature. It is not impossible: fraternity is a word that belongs to the traditions of Liberalism and Socialism, of science and religion.