Posted on: May 31, 2008
Edmond Jabes. Photo by Bracha L. Ettinger.
I discovered the amazing poetry of Edmond Jabes back in the 80s, thanks to the foundational Random House Anthology of 20th Century French Poetry. Foundational for me, at least. His poetry stunned me with its wisdom, silence, profound silences, and made me think of other poets of the unsaid like Beckett, Camus, Hemingway, Celan and Blanchot. The power of the sun and the desert to create moments beyond language was his unique gift. His attempt to express those moments. The impossibility of using words to emote silence. The impossibility of remembering or forgetting the terrible, the extremes of grief beyond endurance. The impossibility of knowing or forgetting or naming his god. The impossibility of not doing so.
Jabes was a veritible UN of the mind. Jewish, Italian, born in Egypt, he fled to France in 1956 during the Suez crisis. Wrote most of his poetry in French.…
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Posted on: May 31, 2008
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens is probably my favorite English language poet. His elegance, eloquence, and wordsmithiness shine above all others for me. He had wit and whimsy, along with a deep sadness and melancholy coursing through his poetry. A sometimes strange combination that worked, that merged sound and sense better than any other poet in English to my mind.
The Magritte of poets, Stevens worked for an insurance company, the Hartford, rising eventually to VP. Most, if not all of his coworkers knew nothing of his genius for poetry until after his death.
Here is a reading by Wallace Stevens of The Idea of Order at Key West.
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Posted on: May 30, 2008
Anna Akhmatova, by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. 1922.
I love the sound of Russian names. And words in general in Russian. Can’t speak a word of it. But when I hear it, I love the sound. The sound fascinated Rilke as well. I think he wanted to be Russian, but didn’t really know how to work that. It’s more than interesting to ponder if Tsvetaeva and Rilke had a love child, and if that child grew up to be a poet, merging the sounds of German and Russian, the lyrical beauty of his or her parents.
Akhmatova’s poetry is direct, often startling, original. She lived through tumultuous and dangerous times, to put it mildly. Her poetry reflects those times and that danger. She is sometimes considered under the umbrella of the Acmeists, a Russian artistic movement that started in 1910, roughly. The movement bears some resemblance to Imagism. Famous poets under that umbrella (along with Akhmatova) were Boris…
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Posted on: May 27, 2008
What is sacred? Knowing that the sacred has changed across time and space, knowing that it will change again and again and again, how do we deal with the quandary of holding certain things above the fray, versus switching the sacred as new evidence appears? Or as empires collapse?
Detail of the Acropolis. By Aaron Logan. 2004
There is a quandary. Rather, one of a multitude of quandaries. That we should cling to the sacred despite change, or the accumulated wisdom of centuries, or hold nothing above the fray. In other words, live in the moment, for the moment, with no hierarchies of the sacred, or remain locked in those hierarchies.
Perhaps the quandary is overstated. Most of us do not deal in absolutes. Most of us do not live either/or lives, black and white lives, manichean lives. Most of us do nuance, degrees, levels. We can handle complexity and uncertainty. Perhaps better now than before…
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Posted on: May 27, 2008
Humans have two choices. Well, we actually have millions of choices, but for the purpose of this post, we have two.
Believe in a divinity that guides our lives and controls the universe, or in a universe that guides itself, leaving us basically on our own.
Strike that. There may just be a third choice in there somewhere. Yes. At least for the purpose of this post. The belief in a divine entity that no organized religion has yet described, defined, or even remotely gotten close to. Remember, there have been thousands of organized religions throughout the centuries, and thousands of deities on display. Putting them side by side for a moment, letting them hash out their differences across time and space, might just bring us the world’s greatest jam session. Or, the mother of all headaches. Devotees would root for their own, passionately, obstinately, vigorously.Perhaps more than just vigorously.
To me, the…
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Posted on: May 24, 2008
Gorecki’s Symphony #3
Like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 brings us to the extreme of grief, holds us there, locks us in that eternal space, with no escape, no way out, except through a kind of mysterium of hope. A mystery of overcoming something no one can overcome.
In this piece, motherhood is the focus, extreme suffering is the focus, cruelty is the plague. The Holocaust is a driving force for one of the movements, and it drives the vocalist to express something that can’t be expressed outside of music.
Theodor Adorno once said that "to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." But that didn’t stop Paul Celan, whose Deathfugue may be the single greatest poetic expression of unendurable grief ever written.
I feel extreme sadness for anyone who can’t see what war and empire really are, who benefits from that ugly couple, who pays for it, who profits from it. I…
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Posted on: May 22, 2008
Edgar Allen Poe. 1848
Watched Rio Bravo the other night. You remember. The story that just wouldn’t die for Howard Hawks. Good film, made three times. Rio Bravo; El Dorado; and Rio Lobo. Added back story each time. Complications. As John Wayne aged, the younger characters gained more importance. From Ricky Nelson, to James Caan, to Christopher Mitchum, son of Robert, who starred in the second film. The cast grew over time, and the core story of The Exchange was embellished, nearly hidden.
Why bring Poe into all of this? Well, because James Caan’s character recites part of Poe’s poem. Possibly because he thinks of Wayne’s character as the person in the poem:
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old,
This knight so bold,
And o’er his heart a shadow,
Fell as he found,
No spot of ground,
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength,
Failed him at length,
He…
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Posted on: May 21, 2008
El Greco’s View of Toledo. 1596-1600. The Met, NYC.
Context is everything and nothing. But mostly always everything when we think. Its importance is critical, when it comes to utilizing the past as prologue, or avoiding that entirely. Without examining context, in full, rationally, holistically, we will stumble about in the dark, without a view of anything. We will fail to see crossroads and convergences. We will fail to see crosscurrents and cross purposes. We will fail.
When studying literature, I like to concentrate on aesthetics, on expressive properties, on the quality of prose. I like to study the characters, their stories and interaction. The dynamics on display. How it all comes together. I prefer that to digging into political subtext and subjective analyses of times we know little about. Unless, of course, we do. Unless we really do know about a time and place, and how that impacts the writer, artist,…
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Posted on: May 19, 2008
Franz Kafka, cerca 1906
Kafka’s not just one of my favorite writers. He’s my friend. As in, on many a dicey occasion, the thought of his work, his life, his struggles, the obstacles he overcame, kept me trudging through the mud. Interior castles, trials beyond judgment, my own hunger artist period, my own sense of the hollow . . . . It was as if he walked with me in my shoes, the shoes I borrowed from him. The shoes I then took off as I waited before the law, waited for the doorkeeper to let me in to see for myself.
See what? I would shout back at Kafka, my rabbi. Why am I here, waiting to get through that door? See what? My destiny? My punishment? My . . . . Yes, he would say. All of those things and none of them. Judgment is what you want, he would say.…
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Posted on: May 17, 2008
We have some fine new poetry on tap. From Tony Jones and Rick Diguette. Please comment on their works–and the postings throughout the site. We write, paint, compose, snap pictures, etc. for a reason. To attempt a form of communication and expression deer to our harts. Feedback is most welcome, and often a necessity.
John Everett Millais’ Ophelia. 1852. The Tate, London.
I thought again of this painting while reading Ross King’s The Judgment of Paris (and about his retrospective in the Van Gogh Museum this year). There is always a back story. Elizabeth Siddal was the nineteen-year-old model and muse for Millais, and she seems to have earned her fees the hard way. Millais painted her in a tub, which he attempted to warm with oil lamps but often forgot to. She caught a nasty cold for her troubles. In 1852, catching a cold was a dangerous affair, of course. She sent him…
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Posted on: May 17, 2008
To the Pain
en faveur de la guerre a l’outrance
Viet Minh in crazy hats, Hanoi is
bombed again, the Empire will
be lost. The giant across the
ocean stirs in Pachydermian slumber
and the dollars begin to flow like
million-dollar drops down a stalactite.
2.
de Tassigny is dead.
Les Parachutistes, ils sont tous morts, lui.
The Viet Minh are still there.
My brother is all gone.
3.
Tobacco stains on troubled
fingers, rice paddies heaped to
kingdom coming with the brutes
of dead and the curs of delinquency,
the urns mobiles and the gunpowder
slap of fightpowered Wehrmacht
veterans who died at Dien Bien Phu
eleven years after surviving
Stalingrad. But the Imperial machine
is still not dead.
Infield Aquinas
blending
teas in the
dented kettle
reading Aquinas
with my blonde
angel
time was
no thing to
you - screen door
pops and cracks
heat lightning
summer bug
clouds hover over
the pool, easier to
watch from the porch
than try to swim
as the dust swirls slowly
over the softball diamond.
Sea of Mirrored Sorrow
lightning arc of joys
that babble, become
fluid speech. You taste
the salt, brine crusts your
skin, you start to…
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Posted on: May 15, 2008
THE TRAVELING CURMUDGEON,
SOMEWHERE NEAR PERUGIA
There’s so much to see wherever you go,
Why else would so many spend
So much dough getting to Europe
And back with so many photos?
I haven’t seen all that much,
Or maybe I’ve looked at the wrong things
In the wrong way. The churches, for instance,
Leave me cold, their stone armature
Ascending into gloomy regions of shadow
And silence. Nor are the fountains remarkable,
Except that they smell awfully funny,
Like overused and seldom cleaned
Public restrooms smell funny
In a subterranean sort of way.
Then there are the people,
Literally throngs of them, travelers
And natives alike vying noisily
For table, cab and tram, or a halfway decent
Rate of exchange. Clamorous rather than
Glamorous, they eye each other surreptitiously
While suffering various affronts
To cherished ideals and personal beliefs
Sounding in history, or what might be called
The mystery of mistaken impressions.
I’ve been dead tired more often than not,
Tired of looking for places that seem
Always hidden in a fold…
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