A Simple New Year's Resolution...

Commit a poem to memory.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

by Clement Clark Moore

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

Primo Levi Translations.

Continuing with the theme of translation, today I share the work of another friend, Jenna Weiner, and the translations she has worked on by Primo Levi.  Her own words introduce her work better than I ever could and her prose following the poem offers sharp insight into the process and challenges of translation.

************************************************

As my final project, I chose to translate some poems by Primo Levi. Aside from being attracted to the original language of his poems (I am an Italian minor, after all), I was compelled by his experience in Auschwitz and the powerful role of bearing witness in his life and his works. While watching the documentary film about him, I was particularly struck by the urgency with which he wrote “Se Questo è un Uomo” (“If This is a Man”) upon returning from Auschwitz. A friend of his interviewed in the documentary said that Levi spoke for days and days after his return, explaining to his friends and family that he had been waiting for so long to tell everyone what he experienced. After he finished talking, he sat down to write “Se Questo è un Uomo.”

Although I am not translating that book, I can see the same sentiment carry over into his other works. I found his poems to be simple yet powerful—the language of someone who wants you to sit down and hear his incredible story. Discussing love, life, suffering, his specific experiences and the concept of bearing witness, all of Levi’s poems are marked by a kind of questioning for meaning or answers, either directly or implicitly. Searching within himself, society, the external world and God, his poems are extremely powerful and perceptive.

Regarding the classic dilemma of translating — the question of whether to make the translated poem the priority or to make the faithful translation a priority — I chose the latter. I was struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of Levi’s words, and I believe that he made the choices he did for a reason, so I tried to honor his choices as much as possible.

I have accompanied my translations with the original poem and the translations by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, for comparison. I have also followed the first two poems with explanations of the decisions I made while translating, to give you a sense of my thought process. It is safe to say that I continued translating the rest of the poems in the same way.

Cantare

by Primo Levi

… Ma quando poi cominciammo a cantare
Le buone nostre canzoni insensate
Allora avvenne che tutte le cose
Furono ancora com’erano state.

Un giorno non fu che un giorno:
Sette fanno una settimana
Cosa cattiva ci parve uccidere;
Morire, una cosa lontana

E i mesi passano piuttosto rapidi,
Ma davanti ne abbiamo tanti!
Fummo di nuovo soltanto giovani:
Non martiri, non infami, non santi.

Questo ed altro ci veniva in mente
Mentre continuavamo a cantare;
Ma erano cose come le nuvole,
E difficili da spiegare.

3 gennaio 1946

Singing 

translated by Jenna Weiner

... But then when we started to sing
Our beautiful senseless songs
It just so happened that everything
Was still like it always had been.

A day was nothing more than a day:
Seven make a week
Killing seemed evil to us;
Dying, something distant.

And the months pass rather quickly,
But there are still so many left!
We were again only young men:
Not martyrs, not infamous, not saints.

This and other things used to come to mind
While we kept singing;
But they were like the clouds,
And difficult to explain.

3 January 1946

Singing 

translation by Feldman and Swann

… But then when we started singing
Those good foolish songs of ours,
Then everything was again
As it always had been.

A day was just a day,
And seven make a week.
Killing seemed an evil thing to us;
Dying – something remote.

The months pass rather quickly,
But there are still so many left!
Once more we were just young men:
Not martyrs, not infamous, not saints.

This and other things came into our minds
While we kept singing.
But they were cloudlike things,
Hard to explain.

3 January 1946

In the first line, I used “sing” instead of the “singing” that Feldman and Swann used (the infinitive can be translated either way), because I thought it sounded better with “songs” in the next line. In the second line, I used “senseless” instead of Feldman and Swann’s “foolish,” because that’s literally what insensate means, and I thought it had a nice alliteration with “songs.” “Buone” can mean either good or beautiful (which speaks to the Italian culture), and I thought “beautiful senseless” had a nicer sound than “good foolish.” “Then everything” loses the “avvenne” in the Italian, which means “to happen,” so I thought a nice balance was “It just so happened that everything.” (It literally translates to “it happened that everything,” but I wanted a longer sentence to balance the rhythm.) I do not agree with Feldman and Swann’s decision to change the line break from the original (which translates to “everything / was”); I think it stands just fine as is.

In the first line of the second stanza, I stayed true to the original poem, which translates to “a day was not but a day.” I think that structure is more powerful than Feldman and Swann’s “a day was just a day.” In the next line, I stayed true to the original and did not add “And” as F&S did. In the last line of the stanza, I translated “lontana” as “distant” rather than “remote” because it has alliteration with “dying.” I did not think the change from the comma to the dash (as seen in F&S) was necessary.

In the next stanza, I kept the “and” at the beginning of the line, because clearly Levi put it there for a reason. I used “again” instead of “once more,” because it has nice internal rhyme with “men.”

In the next stanza I used “used to come to mind” to convey the imperfect verb tense (which suggests a continued or often-repeated action) of “to come;” something that “came” does not reflect. I did not see the need to turn the simple analogy of “they were things like clouds” (which is the original translation) into “cloudlike things.” I stayed with the literal translation of “difficult,” because I thought it balanced out the line length better than “hard” did.

Unfortunately, I was not able to preserve the rhyme of the original poem, which was really beautiful in the Italian.

Love America

A friend of mine, Mikaela Dunitz, worked on new translations of thirteen poems from Pablo Neruda's General Song.  I want to share them all, but will do so sporadically so as to prevent my readers from becoming too overwhelmed! 

Below is the poem in Neruda's Spanish followed by Mikaela's English translation.

Amor América
by Pablo Neruda

Antes de la peluca y la casaca
fueron los ríos, ríos arteriales,
fueron las cordilleras, en cuya onda raída
el cóndor o la nieve parecían inmóviles:
fue la humedad y la espesura, el trueno
sin nombre todavía, las pampas planetarias.
El hombre tierra fue, vasija, parpado
del barro trémulo, forma de la arcilla,
fue cántaro caribe, piedra chibcha,
copa imperial o sílice araucana.
Tierno y sangriento fue, pero en la empuñadura
de su arma de cristal humedecido,
las iniciales de la tierra estaban escritas.
Nadie pudo recordarlas después: el viento
las olvido, el idioma del agua
fue enterrado, las claves se perdieron
o se inundaron de silencio o sangre.

No se perdió la vida, hermanos pastorales.
Pero como una rosa salvaje
cayo una gota roja en la espesura
y se apago una lámpara de tierra.
Yo estoy aquí para contar la historia.
Desde la paz del bufalo
hasta las azotadas arenas
de la tierra final, en las espumas
acumuladas de la luz antártica,
y por las madrigueras despeñadas
de la sombría paz venezolana,
te busque, padre mío,
joven guerrero de tiniebla y cobre
o tu, planta nupcial, cabellera indomable,
madre caimán, metálica paloma.

Yo, incásico del légamo,
toque la piedra y dije:
Quien me espera? Y apreté la mano
sobre un puñado de cristal vacío.
Pero anduve entre flores zapotecas
y dulce era la luz como un venado,
y era la sombra como un parpado verde.
Tierra mía sin nombre, sin América,
estambre equinoccial, lanza de púrpura,
tu aroma me trepo por las raíces
hasta la copa que bebía, hasta la más delgada
palabra aun no nacida de mi boca.


Love America
by Mikaela Dunitz

Love America (1400) (164)

Before the wig and coat
were the rivers, the arterial rivers,
the mountain ranges, in whose weary wave
the condor or the snow appeared unstirring:
the thickness of the humidity, the unnamed
thunderclap, the planetary pampas.

Man was earth, a vessel, the eyelid
of the quivering clay, a form from the mud of the earth,
a Carib pitcher, a chibcha stone,
an imperial chalice or an Araucanian silica.
Tender and bleeding he was, but on the hilt
of his moist crystal weapon,
the initials of the earth were
inscribed.
No one
could remember them later: the wind
forgot them, the language of the water
interred, the keys were lost
or inundated by silence or blood.

Life was not lost, pastoral brothers.
But as a savage rose,
a red drop fell to the depths,
and the lamp of the land was extinguished.
I am here to tell history.
Since the peace of the buffalo
until the lashed sands
of final earth, in the accumulated surf
of antarctic light,
and for the burrows embedded off the cliffs
of somber Venezuelan peace,
I searched for you, my father,
young soldier of shadows and brass,
or you, nuptial plant, indomitable hair,
caiman mother, metallic dove.

I, Inca from mud,
touched the stone and said:
Who
waits for me? And I squeezed my hand
around a fistful of empty glass.
But I traveled among zapotec flowers
and the light was as gentle as a stag,
and the shade was like a green eyelid.

My earth without a name, without America,
equinoctial stamen, purple spear,
your aroma winds up my roots
into the chalice I nursed, into the finest
word still not yet born from my mouth.

Terza Rima

Terza Rima 

by Richard Wilbur

In this great form, as Dante proved in Hell,
There is no dreadful thing that can’t be said
In passing. Here, for instance, one could tell

How our jeep skidded sideways toward the dead
Enemy soldier with the staring eyes,
Bumping a little as it struck his head,

And then flew on, as if toward Paradise.

From The New Yorker.

A few years ago I had a lot of fun experimenting with various form poems -- pantoums and sestinas -- but, began to question the utility of form poetry compared to free verse.  This poem restores some of my confidence in form poetry.

Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, etc.  Poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet.

I like Wilbur's poem because:

a) It is self-referential and profoundly aware of its form -- in its title, opening line, and allusion to the work of Dante (famous for his use of terza rima in the Divine Comedy).  

b) Its play with fact and fiction in the last tercet reminds me of Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story".  What is important is that the jeep could skid and run over a soldier, not whether it actually happened.  As long as there is an audience that expects war stories, narratives of war must be created, told, and retold; and, reality will extend to the limits we are willing to accept as fiction.

Polar Bear Poetry

A group of Seattle poets and poetry enthusiasts read poetry on the shore of Green Lake before plunging in for a frigid swim.  The event's organizer, "Mimi" Allin said, she wants to make poetry fun, get in the news, wake people and bring together rival camps of "page poets and stage poets."  

While mildly entertaining, and certainly a rush for all involved I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of such "guerilla" art.  

Poetry Responds to Climate Change

350 is an environmental action organization dedicated to increasing awareness about global warming and climate change.  350 parts per million is the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that must be reached to prevent huge and irreversible damage to the earth; 350's mission is to spur policy and grassroots action to reduce carbon dioxide levels.  350 calls the global community to action while promoting education and awareness about climate change.  

350 has incorporated Yu Kwang-Chung's poetry into their awareness campaign.  Below he reads his poem, "Aunt Ice, Aunt Snow".  

Aunt Ice, Aunt Snow
in memory of two beauties in the Water family

by Yu Kwang-Chung

Aunt Ice, please cry no more
Or the seas will spill all over,
And homeless will be the polar bear,
And harbors will be flooded,
And islands will go under.
Cry no more please, Aunt Ice.

We blamed you for being so cold,
Fit to behold, but not to hold.
We called you the Icy Beauty,
Mad with self-love on keeping clean,
Too proud ever to become soft.
Yet, when you cry so hard, you melt.

Aunt Snow, please hide no more
Or you will truly disappear.
Almost a stranger year after year,
When you do come, you’re less familiar,
Thinner and gone again sooner.
Please hide no more, Aunt Snow.

You were beloved as the fairest:
With such grace you used to descend,
Even more lightly than Aunt Rain.
Such pure white ballerina shoes
Drift in a whirl out of heaven
Like a nursery song, a dream.

Cry no more please, Aunt Ice.
Lock up your rich treasury,
Shut tight your translucent tower,
And guard your palaces at the poles
To keep the world cool and fresh.
Cry no more please, Aunt Ice.

Hide no more please, Aunt Snow.
“Light Snow is followed by Heavy Snow.”
Descend in avalanche, Aunt Snow!
Your show the Lunar Pageant waits.
Come and kiss my upturned face.
Hide no more please, Aunt Snow.

Yu Kwang-Chung reads "Aunt Ice, Aunt Snow"

Alexander Orion

Not explicitly poetic, except perhaps in its ability to inspire an ekfrastic response, I wanted to share the work of Alexandre Orion.  He is a Brazilian artist that challenges the relationship between painting and photography by exploring the way art is represented and perceived.

Visit his website to view/learn more about his work!

  

Sunflowers

A friend shared this poem with me and I want to pass it forward to greater readership.  I find this poem alluring: its language is internally tight, but offers the reader a powerful flexibility in interpretation.  The lack of information about the poem and the poet (futilely un-google-able) contribute to my impression that I am reading private secrets.

I was able to ascertain the following information about poet Yu Kwang-chung from an interview by KC Leung published in World Literature Today in 1991.  Yu Kwang-chung is an poet, essayist, translator, and critic born in Nanking, China, in 1928.  During the Civil War, Yu fled to Hong Kong with his family and settled in Taiwan in 1950.  Leung describes him as "Stylistically versatile, cosmopolitan, yet intensely Chinese, Yu writes on a wide variety of subjects, of which one stands out: the fate of China, an obsessive interest perhaps not unrelated to his life of many exiles.  More than anyone else, he has succeeded in fusing the classical tradition and modern poetics."

As I continue to broaden my poetic horizons, learning about gems like Yu Kwang-chung reminds me how much I still have to read.  I'm excited to learn more about him, his work in translation, and a genre of poetry I was previously unexposed to.

 

Sunflowers
by Yu Kwang-chung

The mallet raised in Christie’s room,
          Going,
          Going,
          Gone,
Comes thumping down.
So with thirty-nine million are bought
The tightened breaths in the room
And the bulging eyes in the world.
Yet forever beyond ransom
Is the ear that was sliced,
The red hair that was scorched,
The decayed teeth that went loose.
Forever sold are the thirty-seven years.
The mallet is raised at the excited crowd,
The pistol was raised at the lonely heart –


         Going, the sliced ear,
         Going, the scorched hair,
          Going, the decayed teeth,
         Going, the haunted dreams,
         Going, the fits of convulsions,
         Going, the letters and the diary,
         Going, the doctors and the sickbeds,
         Going, Dear Theo my brother –
And with a bang all, all was gone,
When the generous heart
Burst into sunflowers and flowering suns.

Performing Paul Celan

I was first exposed to Paul Celan's, "Todesfuge" a couple of months ago and have had little nuggets of the poem with me ever since.  In written verse, the lines themselves are potent, but only once I heard the poem in Celan's own German (the language he struggled so hard to reinvent) did I hear the poem in a way that has continued to echo.  

Below are two readings of Celan's poem: one is Michael Hamburger's translation read by poet Galway Kinnell and the other Celan himself in the poem's original tongue.    

Galway Kinnell

Paul Celan

Bhopal Disaster Poetry

The Bhopal Disaster occurred during the evening/early morning of December 2-3, 1984 as a result of a chemical mishap in Union Carbide's central Bhopal plant.  3,000 died immediately, but the numbers are now believed to be seven times that great.  In 1989, Union Carbide paid the Indian government $470 million as a settlement, but has failed to reach the victims or begin to cover the costs the Bhopal community has incurred as a result of this disaster.

Union Carbide has since been acquired by Dow Chemical, yet Dow has refused to inherit any of their liability.  The exact chemicals released have also never been disclosed.  

The magnitude of the disaster has also extended to the environment, and Bhopal continues to suffer in the legacy of this corporate catastrophe.  Activism surrounding the Bhopal Tragedy is strong and in 2004 two of the most prominent activists, Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla (both survivors of the disaster), won the biggest environmental award given in the United States, the Goldman Prize.

Through awareness, activists hope to spur corporate accountability and restitution.  Below are some examples of poetry inspired by the Bhopal disaster.

"FLAMES NOT FLOWERS"
By Terry Allan

Har nari ki yahi ladai It is the struggle of all women
Jhadoo maro Dow ko Beat Dow with a broom
Phool nahi Chingari hain hum We are flames not flowers
Jhadoo maro Dow ko Beat Dow with a broom

Ither se maro, Uther se maro Beat from this side, beat from that side
Jhadoo maro Dow ko
Hum bhi marey tum bhi maro I beat and you also beat
Jhadoo maro Dow ko

Josh se maro, Host se maro Beat with pasión, beat fully conscious
Jhadoo maro Dow ko
Mil ke maro Takat se maro Beat together, beat with power
Jhadoo maro Dow ko

We are women of Bhopal, we are flames not flowers
We will not wilt before your corporate power
With brooms in hand we're gonna sweep you away
'Cause we'll fight for justice till our dyin' day

You're Union carbide, you cannot hide
Behind your deadly clouds of cyanide
You gassed our city with your poison factory
Cutting costs on safety making MIC
Using double standards, untried technology
And you said it's good for the economy
You ruined our lives, killed our sons and our mothers
And before we could mourn our dead sisters and brothers
You'd already denied responsibility
For the worst disaster in history.

You made a bargain, with our government
To drop the charges and take the settlement
The compensation, you said you thought was fair
"500 dollars goes pretty far over there"
Your champagne glasses you raised in the air
'Cause it only cost you 43 cents per share
Your paltry settlement sent the prices of your stock up
But we won't give up until your ass is in the lock-up

The blood we cough up
Because you screwed up
You're gonna fess up
And clean the mess up

Nineteen years later we're still suffering and dying
And you're still claiming trade secrets and lying
20,000 dead and counting is much more than a statistic
We remember every loved one's smile, our heartbreak's realistic
More than a hundred thousand still living in pain
How can you sit there and tell us that our cries are in vain
The toxic waste dumps around your factory
Are adding insult, to injury
The poisoned water that we have to drink
Ask any daughter, she knows how much it stinks.
You thought the merger with Dow Chemical
Would absolve you of liability
But for your crimes against humanity
We're gonna bring Dow Chemical to its knees.

Dow has a history, several claims to fame
It was their Napalm set Vietnam aflame.
Agent Orange causes birth defects
And using Dursban has nasty side-effects
Dioxin squirts from every mother's breast
Worldwide from north to south, east to west.
But you corporate men in your ties of silk
Can't know the horror of mothers feeding toxic breast milk
To our beautiful babies, our newborn innocents
This ain't no way to start their life experience.
You invade our bodies knowingly
Thanks to Dow, we're living poisoned daily.

If the truth be told we would rather die
Than have to live like you where every breath is a lie
Your corporate culture, for what it's worth
Has done more to ruin our planet earth
By turning humans into hollow shells
Addicted consumers in their homogenous hells.
But in your quest for profit we refuse to take part
Against all odds we'll live our lives with joy and heart
We believe in the power of the human spirit
We raise our voices together so everyone can hear it.

We are women of the world, we are flames, not flowers
We will not wilt before your corporate power
Hand in hand and heart to heart, side by side
We will fight for justice 'til the day we die.


"torture me"
By a Bhopal survivor

aim a blowtorch at my eyes pour acid down my throat strip the tissue from my lungs. drown me in my own blood. choke my baby to death in front of me. make me watch her struggles as she dies. cripple my children. let pain be their daily and their only playmate. spare me nothing. wreck my health so I can no longer feed my family. watch us starve. say it's nothing to do with you. don’t ever say sorry. poison our water. cause monsters to be born among us. make us curse God. stunt our living children’s growth. for twenty years ignore our cries. teach me that my rage is as useless as my tears. prove to me beyond all doubt that there is no justice in the world. you are a wealthy american corporation and I am a gas victim of bhopal.

"In the Sweep of Human Rights"
By Larry Dohrs
(dedicated to Champa Devi Shukla & Rashida Bee)

She sweeps like Shiva’s
universal dance against ignorance
cleaning up the toxic details
without fear of reprisals,
she sweeps the excuses
out from beneath the corporate
imported subsidy rug
where Mr. Executive Empire
piles up his indictment
to face criminal charges in India

Along with her neighbors -
the survivor widows of Bhopal
she sweeps up social responsibility
for the pesticide melt down,
cry’s out for clean up
of drinking water,
infected water with chemicals
decayed from cyanide exposure
(just like in gas chambers)

She shares the Goldman
Environmental Award (2004)
with her compatriot, together
they sweep out the evidence
gathered in stringent investigations,
sweep out the darkest grief
holding together the ten thousand-fold losses,
sweep away the social distance
concealing chronic pesticide wounds

Let us sweep
all together at their side
gather detailed answers for accountability,
sweep justice up
with this community of down-winders,
pick up full restitution
life long health care,
the simple human rights
required like bread
like a searing freedom song
for the endangered
(and the endearing)
women of Bhopal

Larry is a West Coast poet with recent work appearing in "Citizen 32" and in NthPositionDot-Com's "Poems for Madrid." Larry values a poetry of witness and contributing to a literature of justice. He is working on a book of poems called "Mural Poems." He has been a volunteer editor with Poets Against War, reads often with several poetry series, and assists Amnesty International Puget Sound with literary, and human rights events. He can be contacted at: wordheath at yahoo dot com.

For more Bhopal inspired poems and to access the poems you see posted above click here.

World AIDS Day Poetry

I'm a day late, but it just dawned on me that in honor of yesterday's 20th celebration of World AIDS Day I should have shared some poetry related to HIV/AIDS.

Here are selections from Tory Dent's "Black Milk".  Tory Dent lived with HIV for 17 years before her death in 2005 and was a famous poet and commentator on the AIDS crisis.  

Black Milk
in memory of "HIV, Mon Amour"

I.

Black trees, blue trees, white trees, bare trees --
Whatever was my life has been returned to me
in a made-of-trees coffin
killed in action like a veteran husband, its flag
a pitiful consolation,
its flag a smug presupposition,
for some greater cause more important
apart from what you know to be the most important to you:
his voice, his smile.

To me, the world now held away, irreversibly,
that once was just (now "just"?) suspended,
when I thought then there could be no greater torture.

Life's truest truth, it's that truth itself
unravels in ways that reveal less not more sense or comfort.

Consolationless is the tarmac wind, the kickback of jet fuel fume,
the bulkhead of the coffin wherein only regret to be alive
alights in contrast.

It burns like eyes burned out by cinders,
a hot poker waved amidst laughter.

It burns, a torch's temporary pathway
improvised within black trees, blue trees.

It burns like a novena unerring,
pure prayer within the black trees of longing.

It burns, the ultimate act of atonement,
the cremation of what I tried to save.

It burns in order to drown, ash in saline,
May fly rose petals of burial at sea.


II.

It burns in order to drown, ash in saline,
the May fly rose petals of burial at sea.

The regret burns like its converse property,
the hope I had (so fucking much of it) now retarded in me,
a tumor, inoperable, contained by chemo, a perverse kind of cancer
where the desire to live only prolongs the suffering --

I wish death upon this desire, I wish AIDS and cancer
upon this desire, let the desire suffer instead of me,
this pathetic willingness to live regardless of consequence,
regardless of indignation.

Who am I but the vessel, the holy vessel for this desire,
and for the natural spasms that confirm somatic reality:
vomiting, allergic reactions, orgasm, coughing;
involuntary humiliations, proof of living, of precious humanness.

In order to suffer one must divorce the pain,
divorce the vessel, until you become a slave to the vessel,
a whore to the harpy's needs, its spasms, its pathetic desires.

Its moanings must be tended, its shaking and sweating,
its fevers, its ailments, its medications -- copious, expensive.
What are these drugs but a very refined life-support system,
science at its most powerful, most phallocentric?

We were not born for this, this stainless steel,
this sanitary lack of love, this medicine-vacuum.


III.

For this, this stainless steel, this sanitary lack of love,
this medicine-vacuum, we were not born.

Yet every twelve hours I take my drugs and refuse to capitulate
to the desire, acquiesce to that most base, pre-conscious motivation
that's common to humans and dogs, from scavengers
whose howling in the distance we detect as equidistant to the canine
within us, the jubilee of inconsequential behavior.

We enjoy acoustically the disowning.

But under the weight of one life-threatening moment,
concretized and extenuated by its repercussion,
what distinguishes us as civilized, as generations apart
from the medieval acts of our ancestors, collapses,
so fragile is the rope bridge of its construction,
reducing us all to dogs.

Let no more natural light befall, thus, like shiny hair
upon pillowcase, this crying face.

Let no more jealousies assemble in my heart like migrant workers.

Take me as a life can be taken in a car accident,
or at gunpoint then exterminated,
taken from the pack, a succulent carcass extracted
from their exhilarated jaws, for too well do I identify
with the hunger, the taste, the smell.

Take the needle, arrest these senses,
excise the egg-shaped moon from my field of vision
and silence the bark.

Sections I, II, III of the 35-section title poem from Tory Dent's recently released Black Milk (Sheep Meadow Press, 2005).  Accessed via NPR. 

I invite you to look at The Body's collection of HIV/AIDS poetry.  Think about ways art enters the political and what role poetry plays as a means to instigate activism and awareness.

"A Noun Sentence"

To continue with the past two days' discussions of parts of speech, I introduce Mahmoud Darwish's, "A Noun Sentence".

A Noun Sentence

by Mahmoud Darwish

A noun sentence, no verb

to it or in it: to the sea the scent of the bed

after making love...a salty perfume

or a sour one.  A noun sentence: my wounded joy

like the sunset at your strange windows.

My flower green like the phoenix.  My heart exceeding

my need, hesitant between two doors:

entry a joke, and exit 

a labyrinth.  Where is my shadow -- my guide amid

the crowdedness on the road to judgment day?  And I

as an ancient stone of two dark colors in the city wall,

chestnut and black, a protruding insensitivity

toward my visitors and the interpretation of shadows.  Wishing 

for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me

or ahead of me, barefoot.  Where 

is my second road to the staircase of expanse?  Where

is futility?  Where is the road to the road?

And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present

tense, where are we?  Our talk a predicate 

and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam 

of speech the dots on the letters,

wishing for the present tense a foothold

on the pavement ...

From Mahmoud Darwish's The Butterfly's Burden translated by Fady Joudah (Copper Canyon Press: Washington, 2007), p. 255.  

I want to point out two distinct features of this poem.  

First, I am amused and comforted in the premise of a "noun sentence".  I say comforted because in the subsequent example of "noun sentences", I lose myself in his descriptions: "to the sea the scent of the bed/after making love ... a salty perfume/or a sour one."(2-4) needs no verb or action because it is complete in and of itself.  To pair a verb with that vivid image would displace the image and extend it to unnecessary associations.  

Similarly, "my wounded joy/like the sunset at your strange windows" (4-5) is a simile without legs (a verb, action) to move it from the "strange windows".  The poem exists completely in itself, in the presence and present of each line read.

This brings me to my second observation: Darwish's insistence on the present tense.  "Present tense" is made reference to explicitly thrice in the poem and the only verbs that dictate action are in the present tense in the questions of the second half of the poem.  The present tense being verbs, "is" and "are", are peppered throughout the poem's five questions.  The strict use of only being verbs is important insofar as it demonstrates the most simplistic expression of being or existence.  Appropriately, these verbs of being exist contextually to pose the reader with a series of rather existential questions: "Where is my shadow -- my guide amid/the crowdedness on the road to judgment day?" (9-10) and "Where/is my second road to the staircase of expanse?  Where/is futility?  Where is the road to the road?/And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present/tense, where are we?" (15-19).  

The emphasis on the present tense strengthens the success of the "noun sentence" or image being read completely in the moment without concern for the image's past or future.  These vivid images succeed without verbs to take them anywhere else.  Furthermore, verbs (in their function as the predicate of the sentence) are absent from all the declarative sentences, which suggests answers are written and found in nouns.       

Mad Lib Poetry

Today I offer an interactive activity!  One of the things that continues to amaze me about the poems I admire most is the precision of word choice.  As I child I loved playing Mad Libs during every road trip, so I decided to replicate the fun game with some of Robert Frost's most well-known poems.

The point of this word game is not to mock or parody Frost's poetry, but rather to demonstrate how easily the poem's entire meaning can be changed by replacing his nouns for others.  

I chose, "Mending Wall" and "The Road Not Taken". 

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost from The Norton Anthology of American Literature (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003.  Sixth edition), p. 1880-1881 and p. 1887.

I identified parts of speech in the first 11 lines of "Mending Wall" and the first stanza of "The Road Not Taken", and I asked friends and family to give me the first word that came to mind for the following parts of speech without telling them what poem their choices would become a part of. 

Mending Wall:

Noun:
Verb in the third person present tense:
Group of people (ex: hunters, Americans, etc...):
Object pronoun (him, her, them):
Animal:
Time of year (season, month, time around a particular holiday, etc...):

The Road Not Taken:

Plural noun:
Infinitive verb:
Singular person (hunter, doctor, etc):
Adverb:
Preposition:
Location:

Please feel free to add your own in the comments section!

Pronouns

Today I want to share Dunya Mikhail's poem, "Pronouns" from The War Works Hard (p. 75, A New Directions Book, 2005.  Translated by: Elizabeth Winslow).

Pronouns

by Dunya Mikhail

He plays a train.

She plays a whistle.

They move away.

He plays a rope.

She plays a tree.

They swing.

He plays a dream.

She plays a feather.

They fly.

He plays a general.

She plays people.

They declare war.

The progression of each strophe is dialectical.  While the first two lines of each strophe are not in opposition to each other (as would be a thesis/antithesis), there is a tension or incompatibility evident in their relationship that is ultimately resolved by the final line of each strophe (synthesis).  The last line of each stanza depends upon the first two: e.g., without a rope and a tree they could not swing, without a feather and a dream they could not fly.  

I love the formula of this poem: 

He plays ________.

She plays _______. 

They ___________.

The synthesis occurs not only in the material that fills in the blanks, but also most explicitly in the pronouns.  The pronouns follow a much more conventional dialectic: "he" and "she" are in opposition, and "they" appropriately synthesizes the two preserving the plurality while negating the gender and individuality of "he" and "she".  

Four strophes is convincing without being overly repetitive.  If the poem were to continue with this pattern for much longer, its point would become belabored and less compelling.  As is, the poem progresses in its verbs from "move away" to "swing" to "fly" to "declare war".  The poem itself moves from the whimsical and lighthearted world of whistles, trains, and swings to the resolute declaration of war.  The quick progression mirrors the haste that often dictates war. 

The repetitive pronoun/verb construction demonstrates the routinization of warfare and the ease of warfare to exist simultaneously against banal, innocent activities of play.

Finally, the choice of the verb "play" as the consistent verb throughout is a distinct determinant of the poem's meaning.  The OED lists thirty two distinct (with subpointed variants) definitions of the verb play.  It is defined by everything from movement ("move away") to fly, and is definitionally interpreted in a way that warrants each of the poems' unique uses.  

Evoking the imagery of "play" in relation to warfare, makes an interesting argument about war as a game or a simulation.  The relationship between a general and the people demonstrates the capacity of one man to mobilize an entire people toward warfare on a whim.  This poem expresses the injustice that war is instigated under seemingly capricious, playful behavior yet exacts consequences incompatible with "play" -- death, destruction, etc.  

A couple of posts ago I wrote about my own relationship to poetry.  Now that I'm home and memories are canvassed around me, I decided my next couple of posts would be an appropriate forum to reflect upon how I arrived at my current fascination with poetry.  

First semester of my sophomore year in high school, I stumbled clumsily around the dark room trying to create something meaningful in black and white. Photography was fun. I enjoyed composing photos, but I felt an extreme disconnect between myself, my camera, and the ultimate image these wonder chemicals produced. I hesitate to say I quit, but I temporarily retired my Nikon and adopted pen and paper as I enrolled in creative writing, which I quickly became immersed in for the rest of high school.

My school’s creative writing curriculum rotated thematically every year, moving in cycles from play writing/screenwriting, to nonfiction, to fiction, to poetry. As I dove in second semester, day one I was assigned to write a poem. I came home eager to write, but immediately grew frustrated by the cursor aggressively flashing against the stark white of my word processor. Writing had always flowed from my fingertips, but suddenly with the challenge of poetry I was obsessively self-editing. No more than twelve characters made it onto the page before they were quickly erased with the staccato press of rapid backspacing. This was my first serious attempt at art that required no materials I did not already innately possess. Simultaneous feelings of horror and exhilaration arose knowing my finished product would not depend on film, paintbrushes, or popsicle sticks. My creativity was my only instrument, and I felt like mine was out of tune and missing some strings.

My first written, artistic attempt was okay – perhaps better in idea than execution. I wrote what I then thought to be an edgy list poem, “23 Last Suppers” chronicling the imaginary last suppers of the twenty-three prisoners executed the previous year under the Texas death penalty. My relationship to poetry had evolved past my three cherished volumes of Shel Silverstein, but still read like a greatest works anthology filled with William Carlos Williams’ apologies for eaten plums and Rupert Brooke’s nationalist fervor. Writing poetry taught me the tools I needed to be a more critical reader. At first, I seldom looked to professional examples, but I learned valuable lessons from the work of my peers. Familiar with a whole new vocabulary of techniques and styles – pantoum, slant rhyme, anaphora – my first significant opportunity to engage poetry came in my Spanish literature class. Reading Bécquer and Neruda, I realized the extent to which poems lend themselves to intellectual play in interpretation.  This tale is to be continued, but in the interim, I'll share the aforementioned poem:

Twenty-Three Last Suppers

God is good, God is great, and we thank
Him for this food we eat.
Food characterizes life…

A gallon of pistachio ice cream,
Plump and juicy hot dogs,
A deliciously roasted turkey leg,
Four greasy fried empanadas,
A savory sirloin steak,
Twelve jumbo Big Macs,
Thirty-two sticky vegetable dumplings,
A decadent chocolate cake,
Helpings of handmade spinach ravioli,
Rich cheese enchiladas and refried beans,
One box of Hostess Ding Dongs,
A pint of creamy New England clam chowder,
A scrumptious serving of chicken cordon bleu,
Eleven slices of pumpkin pie,
Exquisite prime rib,
Half a dozen freshly baked sesame bagels,
Sixty-four ounces of wiggly blueberry Jello,
Three bowls of sweet Lucky Charms,
Lamb chops with mashed potatoes,
A short stack of gingerbread pancakes,
An enormous Cesar salad,
One quiche Loraine,
Chicken nuggets and French fries.

…The glorified final meal characterizes death.
And now you lay me down to sleep. If I should die
before I wake, I pray to you my soul to keep.


Texas catered to the dining wishes of its twenty-three
citizens executed in 2004.
The Lone Star State single-handedly prepared an
overwhelming forty percent of all Last Suppers
for the entire country. 

Homeward Bound!

After a long four months of school, tomorrow afternoon I am headed home and could not be happier. For your listening enjoyment I recommend Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound", and for your poetry enjoyment I share Es'kia Mphahlele's "Homeward Bound".

Mphahlele was born in South Africa in 1919 and applied for a permit to leave his country permanently in the mid 1950s before entering into exile in 1957. He lived all over the world before deciding to return to South Africa in 1978.

While its perhaps insensitive to compare my own excitement about going home for Thanksgiving with the much more complicated emotions of a patriot in exile returning to his homeland, I think both create an opportunity to interrogate our own relationships with "home" and the relationship we perceive others to hold with their own homes.

Also, as the holidays approach I invite you to keep all those who for whatever reason cannot return home: remember refuges, soldiers, alienated families.  I hope everyone finds peace in a feeling of "home" that brings the same comfort and happiness as would a physical presence.  

I read Mphahlele's poem as a profound gesture of acceptance; he distinguishes between expectations and reality and accepts the imperfections of his homeland.  His emphasis on topography (mountains) seems to reveal a preoccupation with the surface compared to what lies below and behind the surface (e.g., the sky as a permanent yet changing background for the mountainscapes and the emphasis on imagery of light).  The speaker seems to have reached a peace with his "home" by the poem's resolution, "you need not look just the way I want".

Homeward Bound

by Es'kia Mphahlele

The mountains that I like

and do not fear

don't stoop over me

like giant apes marooned

on a patch of Time;

they are the forms beyond,

holding down

the edge of blue

and etching with a light

of ever-changing tints;

--they can look the way I want them.

I do not like the lights

that come at me

and stab and flail

and blind the eyes of night

that bounce and cling on tarmac;

those shimmering faraway bodies

softly throbbing

tell me and love

that coffee's on the boil,

she's listening to my footsteps;

--they can look the way I want them.

But you beside me here--

the contours of

your mountainscape

lead me to sniff at the corners

of your passion and sprawl

in the light and shade of your valleys

reminding me clearly

distant sights

can easily become

explosions of a mood;

so let us ride along 

through dewy midnights

dewy dawns

and tumble gently into

disemboweled noontides;

--you need not look just the way I want.

Mphahlele, Es'kia. "Homeward Bound." Against Forgetting : Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Ed. Carolyn Forche. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 1993. 718-19.

Poetry and the Self

I am growingly attracted to autobiographical poetry.  Poems like Nazim Hikmet's "Autobiography" and Adam Zagajewski's "Self-Portrait" are so richly personalized, the specificity of their accounts conveys a creative ownership over experience that inspires me greatly.  I have reached an impasse in my own writing: I am eager to create poetry, yet can't get past a few lines that I self-edit incessantly.  My insecurity stems from questions of entitlement and experience.  I have always been told to write what I know, but find I know a few verses (occasionally a stanza) for a poem about any experience or observation and am unable to reach closure with any attempt.

This creative muzzle is entirely self-imposed, and I know it is entirely up to me to remove.  My desire to create something meaningful is paralyzed by my own feelings of inadequate content, but reading poems like the two mentioned above encourage me that the sum of experiences that are wholly and fully mine can yield poems that are extremely instructive for broader audiences. 

While my creative standstill leaves me in no place to instruct the creative process of others, I find "Autobiography" and "Self-Portrait" extremely encouraging that we ALL have the content and material to create, share, and recreate our own experiences in forms that are not purely self-indulgent.  

Autobiography

by Nazim Hikmet

I was born in 1902

I never once went back to my birthplace

I don't like to turn back

at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo

at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University

at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as a guest of the Tcheka

       Party

and I've been a poet since I was fourteen

some people know all about plants some about fish

        I know separation

some people know the names of the stars by heart

I recite absences

I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels

I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no

food I haven't tasted

at thirty they wanted to hang me

at forty-eight to give me the Peace Medal

which they did

at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in

half a year

at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours

I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24

in '61 the tomb that I visit in his books

they tried to tear me away from my party

it didn't work

nor was I crushed under falling idols

in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death

in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken 

heart waiting for death

I was jealous of the women I loved

I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit

I deceived my women

I never talked behind my friends' backs

I drank but not every day

I earned my bread money honestly what happiness

out of embarrassment for another I lied

I lied so as not to hurt someone else

but I also lied for no reason at all

I've ridden in trains planes and cars

most people don't get the chance

I went to the opera

most people can't go they haven't even heard of

the opera

and since '21 I haven't been tot he places that most people

visit

mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers

but I've had my coffee ground read

my writings are published in thirty forty languages

in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned

cancer hasn't caught up with me yet

and nothings ays that it has to

I'll never e a prime minister or anything like that

and I'm not interested in such a life

nor did I go to war

or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night

and I never had to take to the roads under driving planes

but I fell in love at close to sixty

in short comrades

even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief

I can say that I've lived like a human being

and who knows

how much longer I'll live

what else will happen to me.

This autobiography was written in East Berlin 

on September 11th in the year 1961.

Self-Portrait

by Adam Zagajewski

Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter

half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers--but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife's face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don't know.
I'm truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that--so far--
belongs to me.

“Self-Portrait” from Mysticism for Beginners by Adam Zagajewski, translated from Polish by Claire Cavanaugh. Translation copyright © 1997 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15866

American History

The National Museum of American History reopens tomorrow (21 November) as Americans hopefully anticipate the conclusion of a dark chapter of American history.  President Bush spoke at the dedication of the new and improved museum yesterday, praising the patriotism and educational value of the institution.  Soon, his administration will be a series of artifacts chronicled on the walls of museums and in the pages of history books.  

How would you curate an exhibit documenting the last eight years of America?  How and what should we remember?  Which details need be incorporated into our national biography?

How will our recent history be retold internationally?  With wide-spread international support for our President-Elect, how will this narrative change?

As we continue to process these and other questions of national identity, I offer international insight in Pablo Neruda's constructively critical poem on America's foreign conduct and responsibilities.

America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope

America, I do not cal your name without hope.

When I hold the sword against the heart,

when I live with the faulty roof in the soul,

when one of your new days

pierces me coming through the windows,

I am and I stand in the light that produces me,

I live in the darkness which makes me what I am,

I sleep and awake in your fundamental sunrise:

as mild as the grapes, and as terrible,

carrier of sugar and the whip,

soaked in the sperm of your species,

nursed on the blood of your inheritance. 

"America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope", Pablo Neruda as translated by Robert Bly.  As appears in Carolyn Forché's Against Forgetting (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 1993).

Photo via DCist 11/20 post: "National Museum of American History Reopens Tomorrow".

“Whims” and Finding Presence in the Present

Khaled Mattawa’s translation of Saadi Youssef’s “Whims” engages distinct styles of temporal organization that offer diverse readings of the past, present, and future both within and beyond the poem. Multiple interpretations of time are at work at any given locus in the poem, each competing for authority. The interplay of tense, word choice, chronology, and organization constructs time within the boundaries of the past and future, ultimately culminating in a vehement affirmation of the present.

No formal introduction of the measures of time is introduced until the third strophe with “days” (18) and “months” (19) and finally “today” (22) and “tonight” (25) in the fourth; yet, the poem’s tense and progression from numbered chapter to numbered chapter quickly introduces its temporal concerns. The first three chapters are written in the past: preterite and pluperfect. While the content is stuck in the past (“he wanted” (1), “she was told” (16)) its retelling depends upon the future jumps from chapter to chapter. The reader is forced to look ahead into the future of the poem to further understand this past narrative. This anticipation of the past exists most explicitly in the ellipses at the end of the first strophe, as the past will only be understood completely through the progression of the poem.

Two more occult calls to move forward appear in the use of the infinitive and the conditional. The repetition of the infinitives: “to ask her, to slap her, or to offer himself to shield” (2-3) present tense-less possibilities, which demonstrate the necessity to read on to resolve their appropriate tense. Furthermore, the infinitive in and of itself represents a grammatical turn to the infinite, which can only be realized in the future. The use of the conditional in the second strophe—“his world would have rained” (9), “his eyes would have closed” (11)—emphasizes the past is in fact a “condition” of its future retelling.

Aurally, “Whims” is peppered with “d” sounds. The strong “d” sound occurs most frequently in the morpheme, “-ed”, as a suffix of a verb to convey past tense, this familiar aural association with the past is repeated again and again in different parts of speech. In the first three chapters: “wanted”, “middle”, “shield”, “wondrous”, “forehead”, “walked”, “remained”, “word” (four times), “world”, “would” (twice), “rained”, “closed”, “told”, “had”, “arrived”, “passed”, “days”, “waited” (twice), “disappeared” accost the reader with “d” sounds over and over. There is a clever combination of associations here: in addition to the aforementioned association with the past, the emphasis of repetition gestures toward the future as the reader grows to expect the “d” sound.

Finally in the last chapter of the poem, the speaker shifts to the present tense: “I laugh” (22), “I write” (22), “I say” (23). In the entire strophe there is only one “d” sound, and that is in “today” (22). “Today” is important for a number of reasons. First, “today” is entirely present and the meaning of the word overwhelms the association of the “d” sound with the past. Furthermore, “today” terminates “d” sounds for the rest of the poem, which explicitly rejects the repetition that gestures toward the future.

The final chapter represents a duality of time. Its dominant stylistic differences—present tense, first person—differentiate it from the previous three chapters, yet it simultaneously responds to and depends on them. In asking what he writes tonight, the answer inevitably takes the form of the first three chapters. I initially questioned the chronology of the chapters. Why does chapter four not inspire the poem? Why do the first three chapters not follow as a response? I found my answer in the poem’s title: “Whims”. I read the first three chapters as the product of a sudden, unexplained desire to write, to create. I find support for this overwhelming passion for the word in the praise of the second strophe and in the only aberration to the past tense, third person construction. These words ring like a chorus: “O word he loves,/O single word./All my life is a single word./O single hope. (12-15). This celebratory disruption resonates as a tribute to the poetic process, an overwhelming gratitude for the speaker’s ability to write; and the stylistic shift introduces the affirmation of the present confirmed in the poem’s resolution.

The poem concludes immersed in the present, and the speaker’s shift to the personal pronoun “I” evidences an ownership over the present moment. “I laugh” (22) supports the whimsy suggested by the title, while conveying an enthusiastic embrace of the present. While there is a temporary shift to the third person in the spoken text: “I say: ‘Saadi,/my reasonable sir,/what are you writing tonight’” (23-25), I read a self-referential confidence substantiated by his naming and the complimentary description of a “reasonable sir” (24). Coupled together, the two demonstrate a respect that asserts the speaker’s subjectivity in a way that lends legitimacy to his personal affirmation of the present. Appropriately, this is the only poem in the collection that is both dated and time stamped: Basra, 15/3/1961, 1:20 AM.

Youssef, Saadi. Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems. Trans. Khaled Mattawa.
New York: Graywolf P, 2002. 18-19.

First Snow

In honor of DC's first day of snow (even if just a few flurries), enjoy Saadi Youssef's "First Snow".

First snow swarms the street;
its flakes speckle the trees,
and teh girls' cheeks redden.
Who can ask a flower how it bloomed?
Snow tumbles
and the fallen leaves swirl.
Snow...
and you pass by, warm,
wrapped in your leather coat
until the street ends.

Snow...
and on your writing papers
the girls' cheeks redden

From: Youssef, Saadi. Without an Alphabet, Without a Face : Selected Poems. Trans. Khaled Mattawa. New York: Graywolf P, 2002. 81.

Scrabble

A friend and I created our own version of magnetic poetry using Scrabble letters.  Focus on whatever words grab your attention; it's like a vertical/horizontal/top-down/bottom up, choose-your-own-adventure poem!

Poetry and Packaging

As a petite literary experiment, I typed "poetry" into my google news search bar and was really surprised by my results.  

The very first result was about a small Canadian winery, Southbrook Vineyard is launching a line of wines with poetry on the labels.

11 Canadian poets will be featured on the labels of this limited lin

e of vintage wines.  Plastering poetry on a wine bottle is a pleasant surprise and a sensible combination.  Poetry and wine seem compatible (the abundance of poetic invocations of Dionysus alone demonstrate the leap is not to grand); the link of poetry next marketing scheme I happened upon (the fifth result of my google query), seems a little more tenuous.

Apparently McDonald's is redesigning its packaging to include storytelling!

Can you imagine Yeats on your Big Mac or Ginsberg on your fries?  I'm all for the inclusion of poetry in the public sphere and increasing exposure to

 literature (even if as a byproduct of mass consumption), but I'm skeptical of the conflation of fast food with literary language.

I'm anxious to see the stories told as poetry moves to the vine and to the deep fry line!

Dada Poetry

Hankering for a craft project after what feels like forever of crummy weather, I decided to try my hand at creating some Dada poetry.  I scoured a copy of the Georgetown Hoya for interesting words and then randomly picked them out of a cup and pasted them in order.  There are moments that almost make sense and a number of places that would be perfectly clear after swapping just a word or two.  

To try your hand at Dada poetry without the risk of paper cuts, visit the Dada Poetry Generator. 

Revisiting Obama's Poetry

This is a great podcast by the Poetry Foundation and an interesting follow up to my previous post about the poetry of Obama's Presidential campaign.  Three poets are interviewed and share the poems they suggest President-Elect Obama read as he takes over the burdens of the Presidency.

Charles Bernstein recommends:  "The Bomb" by Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Patricia Smith recommends: "For My People" by Margaret Walker Alexander 

Forest Gander recommends: "The Blaze of the Poui" by Mark McMorris 

To listen, visit Poetry off the Shelf.

Romero Britto

To show a brighter side of Brazil, add some color to the blog, and honor the contemporary Brazilian artist that visited Georgetown today, enjoy these pictures!

"It's for You"

"Mona Cat"

Vita and Catarina's Dictionary

João Biehl's book Vita (University of California Press: 2005) traces zones of social abandonment in Brazil.  Biehl provides a compelling anthropological account of one woman's journey to and in Vita where she is left to die.  Through Catarina's story, this work adequately problematizes the societal and familial forces that actively purge members deemed unproductive.  Successful insofar as it exposes an otherwise unidentified issue of human rights and human agency, this book's attempt to give Catarina a voice by publishing her "dictionary"* ultimately reduces the value of her expression to its production output, reifying the same calculation that rendered her expendable.

Here is an excerpt from her "dictionary" (p. 5-6):

Computer

Desk

Maimed

Writer

Labor justice

Student's law

Seated in the office

Law of love-makers

Public notary

law, relation

Ademar

Ipiranga district

Municipality of Caiçara

Rio Grande do Sul

...

Hospital

Operation

Defects

Recovery

Prejudice

...

Frightened heart

Emotional spasm

Whether or not this or similar entries is a poem is not as important to me, as why Biehl insists on characterizing her "dictionary" as poetry.  Her patterns of word association and her choices of what to report seem very meaningful from a sociological, psychological, and even linguistic perspective for this is the greatest first hand account the reader has of Catarina's voice.  At times her words do have poetic resonance, which I respect and appreciate, but I take issue with Biehl's presentation of this material (literary or otherwise).  He seems to offer this "dictionary" as a way to prove Catarina's worth.  It is as if Biehl is saying: even alienated, paralyzed, and in deteriorating health Catarina constructs these verbal matrices that are beautiful.  And it is presented that because of this beauty the reader should be outraged she has been left to die on the outskirts of society.  Even in the exposition and criticism of human rights abuses and a society that disposes of nonproductive members, Catarina's production value (creating something beautiful) remains a prerequisite for her access to those fundamental rights.

* Explanation from p. 5 of Vita's Introduction: "Catarina told me that she had begun to write what she called her 'dictionary.'  She was doing this 'to not forget the words.'  Her handwriting conveyed minimal literacy, and the notebook was filled with strings of words containing references to persons, places, institutions, diseases, things, and dispositions that seemed so imaginatively connected that at times I thought this was poetry."