Poetry Wednesday – Spoken Word (2) November 4, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: poetry wednesday, spoken word, transgender
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It’s Wednesday once again and today I thought I’d bring you two more spoken word poems. My roommate A showed me these a couple weeks ago and I just knew that I had to share them with you. I’m pretty positive they will make you cry, but each one for totally different reasons. “Hir” is the second video and it is performed by two people. I’ve never seen this before and it’s absolutely stunning. Both pieces are very moving and highly recommended. Please watch!
Too Big for My Skin
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Hir
Poetry Wednesday – Philip Larkin October 28, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: philip larkin, poetry wednesday
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I discovered Philip Larkin while searching for an aubade. I was editor-in-chief of my university’s literary magazine known as Aubade and we did a poetry reading. I wanted to read an aubade, which is a poem written about daybreak, usually about two lovers parting. Philip Larkin has a beautiful poem entitled “Aubade” that is just amazing. Larkin is not really known for his cheer, but there is always something hopeful about his negativity. It seems completely incongruous, but it’s there. I was only going to post “I Have Started to Say” because it resonated with the way I have been feeling lately, but then I decided I couldn’t pass up posting “Aubade” also, which for me is a more technically well-done poem.
“I Have Started to Say”
I have started to say
“A quarter of a century”
Or “thirty years back”
About my own life.
It makes me breathless
It’s like falling and recovering
In huge gesturing loops
Through an empty sky.
All that’s left to happen
Is some deaths (my own included).
Their order, and their manner,
Remain to be learnt.
I like this poem because it is simple. It takes a concept that you begin to understand, I suppose around my age because I’ve never thought it before. That time is moving so fast and I can’t believe sometimes just how fast. “Like falling and recovering/in huge gesturing loops/through an empty sky” is a particularly thoughtful line that I relate to. I remember when I first realized that there will never be an October 28, 2009 ever again. Once a minute has passed, it has passed forever. That was earth-shattering to my little brain. How did I know that I lived that moment as well as I could?
Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
– The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused — nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear — no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
What is so unique and fascinating about this poem is the fact that it takes a known form, the aubade, and turns it on its head. Instead of being about the parting of two lovers at dawn, this is about a man parting from life. He is pondering his own death as dawn rises. I like these two poems together because they are connected, both by what they say that is similar and the way they are different. The first poem is not overtly concerned with the speaker’s own death and it seems that it is only after some thinking about it that they reach the conclusion of “Aubade”. I am not well-versed enough in Larkin’s poetry to know for sure which was published first, but I like what these two poems say to each other. Favorite lines: “Most things may never happen: this one will” and “And realisation of it rages out/in furnace-fear”.
What do you think of Larkin’s take on life and death? What do you think of the conversation between these two poems?
Poetry Wednesday – Katrina Vandenberg October 21, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: katrina vandenberg, poetry wednesday
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This poem found its way unexpectedly into my life last week. I’m always fascinated by how things come into our lives, just when we think we need them. Last week, the National Book Award finalists were announced. I’m disappointed When You Reach Me isn’t on there, but have little to say about the Stitches controversy. In any case, it’s irrelevant outside the fact that it is this discussion that has lead me to Katrina Vandenberg’s poetry. John Green, on his blog, posted about how irrelevant the categorization of books into one category over another is, and presented Katrina Vandenberg as an example. Her poetry is recommended on Amazon if you go to any of John Green’s books. So I googled Katrina Vandenberg and found this poem, and it nearly brought me to tears. I can’t even explain to you why.
PESTO IN AUGUST by Katrina Vandenberg
How many times does this ritual repeat
itself, preparation that begins with sweetness
unlocked by the parting of leaves? How many
women have unpetaled garlic cloves, dripped oil
cold-pressed from olives down a bowl’s curve,
ground the edible seeds of pine with mortar
and pestle until the clay was sweet with resin?
Though the legend speaks of love, in Italy
when a woman let basil’s scent seep from
her clay-potted balcony, she was being modest
when she said the smell would tell a certain man
to be ready only for her flowers and her smile.
Tonight I steam pasta until my wallpaper curls
from the walls, slice heavy globes of tomatoes
that separate in sighs of juice and seed,
then toss them with hot spaghetti and the green
my garden has produced with sun, wind, earth,
moon, rain; I remember another legend,
that a sprig of basil given
in love seals love forever.
A clink of plates, of silverware, an overflow
of wine. Say, Love, I am ready. Come. Take. Eat.
__________________________________________________
I don’t even like pesto! Every word in this poem belongs there, everything to me is absolutely perfect. It is a love poem that looks at love in such a unique way that it’s blowing my mind a little bit. It is a poem about women and cooking and what cooking means for women, but in a way that is celebratory instead of stereotypical. Gah. I’m eternally jealous of this poem and what it does. Hello, Katrina Vandenberg, can we be best friends?
Poetry Wednesday – Roberto Bolaño October 14, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: poetry wednesday, roberto bolaño
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(© cccb/kosmopolis)
After finishing 2666, there was a void in my life. I miss the delightful confusion, the magnificent prose, and all the references I do not get. It is clear that there needs to be more Bolaño in my life, so I went searching for some of his poetry. It’s difficult to find and this poem Godzilla en México is the only poem I could find.
GODZILLA EN MÉXICO
Atiende esto, hijo mío: las bombas caían
sobre la ciudad de México
pero nadie se daba cuenta.
El aire llevó el veneno a través
de las calles y las ventanas abiertas.
Tú acababas de comer y veías en la tele
los dibujos animados.
Yo leía en la habitación de al lado
cuando supe que íbamos a morir.
Pese al mareo y las náuseas me arrastré
hasta el comedor y te encontré en el suelo.
Nos abrazamos. Me preguntaste qué pasaba
y yo no dije que estábamos en el programa de la muerte
sino que íbamos a iniciar un viaje,
uno más, juntos, y que no tuvieras miedo.
Al marcharse, la muerte ni siquiera
nos cerró los ojos.
¿Qué somos?, me preguntaste una semana o un año después,
¿hormigas, abejas, cifras equivocadas
en la gran sopa podrida del azar?
Somos seres humanos, hijo mío, casi pájaros,
Héroes públicos y secretos.
English:
GODZILLA IN MEXICO
Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You’d just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn’t be afraid.
When it left, death didn’t even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We’re human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.
It’s been compared to “The Road,” a strange post-apocalyptic poem that is deceptively simple. It begins as simple narrative, but the last five lines really got to me. I love the line, especially “We’re human beings, my son, almost birds,” it’s just beautiful.
What do you think fellow 2666 readers? Does this fill that void at all? If you haven’t read Bolaño before, are you intrigued by this poem?
Poetry Wednesday – Luis de Góngora October 7, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: español, luis de góngora, poetry wednesday
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(Picture from Wikipedia)
You know it’s a busy week when I miss Poetry Wednesday! I’m glad it’s back in session, if a little late this afternoon. I thought I would feature a poem that we recently read in class. It’s by one of my favorite poets, Luis de Góngora. He was a baroque poet who was a little angsty, mostly because he was forced into a life of piety as a priest that he did not want and all the other Spanish Baroque poets didn’t like him. My text book called them his “adversaries.” Yikes! Poor guy. But the result of all that inner emotional turmoil was a lot of really great poetry, so I don’t feel too bad. 
First in Spanish:
Soneto LCXVI
Mientras por competir con tu cabello,
oro bruñido al sol relumbra en vano;
mientras con menosprecio en medio el llano
mira tu blanca frente el lilio bello;mientras a cada labio, por cogello.
siguen más ojos que al clavel temprano;
y mientras triunfa con desdén lozano
del luciente cristal tu gentil cuello:goza cuello, cabello, labio y frente,
antes que lo que fue en tu edad dorada
oro, lilio, clavel, cristal luciente,no sólo en plata o vïola troncada
se vuelva, mas tú y ello juntamente
en tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada.
English:
Sonnet LCXVI
While trying with your tresses to compete
in vain the sun’s rays shine on burnished gold;
while with abundant scorn across the plain
does your white brow the lily’s hue behold;while to each of your lips, to catch and keep,
are drawn more eyes than to carnations bright;
and while with graceful scorn your lovely throat
transparently still bests all crystal’s light,take your delight in throat, locks, lips, and brow,
before what in your golden years was gold,
carnation, lily, crystal luminous,
not just to silver or limp violets
will turn, but you and all of it as well
to earth, decay, dust, gloom, and nothingness.
So I think it sounds better in Spanish, but I am totally impressed by this translator for (mostly) making it fit the requirements for a sonnet. I just love all of the imagery in this poem, but I think the English translation of it makes it sound a little cheesy, which it definitely isn’t. It’s a really difficult poem to translate, because none of the words are in the right order in Spanish, a technique that Góngora was very fond of. Mostly to confuse his poet-adversary “friends.”
Poetry Wednesday: Spoken word poetry September 23, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: poetry wednesday, rives, taylor mali
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We all write poems; it is simply that the poets are the ones who write in words.
- John Fowles
I think that that quote is a definite “aw” moment. I really like it and I like the idea of poetry being everywhere, because I happen to believe that it is. Anyway, today I want to show you some poetry that is presented in a slightly different medium. There is something so incredibly moving about spoken word poetry and slam poetry. It’s a totally different experience. You cannot read it; it’s just not the same effect. It can be sad and it can be funny; it can be moving and it can be angry. The best performance poets are the ones that make you feel with every inch of your skin the feelings they are trying to show you. Here are some of my favorites:
Taylor Mali: “The The Impotence of Proofreading”
“I Could be a Poet”
Rives: “Op-talk”
Rives has so many more that I love, so check out his website shopliftwindchimes.com. Do you have any slam poets you want to share? Who’s your favorite?
Poetry Wednesday – John Updike September 16, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: endpoint, john updike, poetry wednesday
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Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. – TS Eliot in “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
Fortunately, my class readings have been providing very relevant fodder for Poetry Wednesday! I am so intrigued by what TS Eliot is saying in this quote. Do you agree with it? What do you think he means? It is from a larger section that details what “good” poetry does and what young poets often run into when writing. Poetry is a craft that can serve to compartmentalize the good and the bad, helping the poet make sense of the world. Outside of the art of it, it is also a healing process; it is used frequently in trauma processing and therapy.
In his last book Endpoint and other poems, John Updike tackles his own impending death in a series of beautiful and haunting poems that cover a range of topics. Thus far, my favorite from the collection is entitled “Half Moon, Small Cloud.”
Half moon, small cloud
Caught out in daylight, a rabbit’s
transparent pallor, the moon
is paired with a cloud of equal weight:
the heavenly congruence startles.
For what is the moon, that it haunts us,
this impudent companion immigrated
from the system’s less fortunate margins
the realm of dust collected in orbs?
We grow up as children with it, a nursemaid
of a bonneted sort, round-faced and kind,
not burning too close like parents, or too far
to spare even a glance, like movie stars.
No star but in the zodiac of stars,
a stranger there, too big, it begs for love
(the man in it) and yet is diaphanous,
its thereness as mysterious as our.
In this poem Updike has taken an emotion and escaped from it; its only appearance is in the last line. This mystery of life and death and our own existence, but extended and paired with the moon. I really love this poem. It was love at first sight, if you will, and has lived up to its first reading wonderfully.
Poetry Wednesday – Wallace Stevens September 9, 2009
Posted by Lu in Poetry.Tags: poetry wednesday, thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, wallace stevens
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I’m going to start off today with a quote from our best friend forever Horace, from Ars Poetica:
Poetry is like painting. Some attracts you more if you stand near, some if you’re further off. One picture likes a dark place, one will need to be seen in the light, because it’s not afraid of the critic’s sharp judgment. One gives pleasure once, one will please if you look it over ten times.
I recently (this afternoon) read Ars Poetica for the first time, and to see all of those thoughts that I had heard and understood to be true in their original location was wonderful. I was impressed by how beautiful it was, like the quote above, and not just a delineation of goals for poets. Now, I want to present a poem that will please if you look at it over ten times, and a hundred times more (at least for me!).
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens
1
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
2
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
in which there are three blackbirds.
4
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
5
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
6
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
And indecipherable cause.
7
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
8
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
9
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
10
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
11
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
12
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
13
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
I chose this poem for a couple of reasons. First, because it suits my mood today. The world is glum and chilly; fall is here early despite a slow summer. There is a distinct melancholy to this poem, but that is about the only thing you can grasp onto the first time you read it. That and the blackbirds. I had a professor give us an assignment to attempt to mimic this poem and come up with thirteen ways of looking at something else. It was so difficult and I was so disappointed with mine that I just threw it out. I admire everything about this poem, even the things I don’t understand. I think it’s okay to sit back and say, “I might not get that line, but it’s absolutely beautiful.” My favorite way of looking at a blackbird has always been, and probably always will be, number 5.
Poetry Wednesday – Mary Oliver September 2, 2009
Posted by Lu in Books, Poetry.Tags: american primitive, mary oliver, poem, poetry wednesday, pulitzer
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One of the many goals of poetry is elevate the ordinary into something more. It is, in my opinion, one of the greatest powers of poetry and something that I look for most when I read. I think one of the more successful poets at elevating the ordinary is Mary Oliver. Here is an example:
LIGHTNING
The oaks shone
gaunt gold
on the lip
of the storm before
the wind rose,
the shapeless mouth
opened and began
its five-hour howl;
the lights
went out fast, branches
sidled over
the pitch of the roof, bounced
into the yard
that grew black
within minutes, except
for the lightning – the landscape
bulging forth like a quick
lesson in creation, then
thudding away. Inside,
as always,
it was hard to tell
fear from excitement:
how sensual
the lightning’s
poured stroke! and still,
what a fire and a risk!
As always the body
wants to hide,
wants to flow toward it – strives
to balance while
fear shouts,
excitement shouts, back
and forth – each
bolt a burning river
tearing like escape through the dark
field of the other.
“Lightning” is a poem that describes a natural event, elevating the ordinary occasion of a summer storm, into something extraordinary through verse. She also addresses the human urge to capture lightning, while still being afraid of it. I’m really admiring Mary Oliver at the moment, because after about six months of writing about the Big Issues, it’s time to write about something else. Something simpler, something beautiful and ordinary. For now, I’m going to read and enjoy Mary Oliver’s American Primitive and learn from the delicate nature she describes.
Poetry Wednesday – Derek Walcott August 26, 2009
Posted by Lu in Meme, Poetry.2 comments
Bringing you a little poetry, every week, once a week.
Welcome to the first installment of Poetry Wednesday. Get your weekly dose of verse right here!
This week: DEREK WALCOTT. Walcott has been a favorite poet of mine since I took a class on post-colonial literature my freshman year of college. His most common themes are race, the caribbean and nature. Though his poetry is laden with references, I believe it is still accessible to all readers. I like poetry with a little mystery in it, that you just might have to go researching for. Here is a good example:
As John to Patmos
As John to Patmos, among the rocks and the blue, live air, hounded
His heart to peace, as here surrounded
By the strewn-silver on waves, the wood’s crude hair, the rounded
Breasts of the milky bays, palms flocks, the green and dead
Leaves, the sun’s brass coin on my cheek, where
Canoes brace the sun’s strength, as John, in that bleak air,
So am I welcomed richer by these blue scapes, Greek there,
So I shall voyage no more from home; may I speak here.
This island is heaven – away from the dustblown blood of cities;
See the curve of bay, watch the straggling flower, pretty is
The wing’d sound of trees, the sparse-powdered sky, when lit is
The night. For beauty has surrounded
Its black children, and freed them of homeless ditties.
As John to Patmos, in each love-leaping air,
O slave, soldier, worker under red trees sleeping, hear
What I swear now, as John did:
To praise lovelong, the living and the brown dead.
So, I don’t know or understand the John to Patmos reference; however, I get it. I understand through what Walcott evokes in this poem what is meant by “as John to Patmos”. The beauty of life and its relationship to hoplessness. I think ultimately this is a poem of hope that does not necessarily ignore pain. It is the idea that those two things can coexist – death and life, hope and despair, beauty and the absence of beauty. I think that’s a good poem, a poem that evokes the reference, even if you don’t know it. Now I’m going to go look up John and Patmos.
Ah ha! John of Patmos is the author of the Book of Revelation. This makes so much sense! Essentially the idea of the apocalypse is contradiction. It is pain, followed by peace. Despair followed by hope. Walcott took this idea and wrote his own poem of Revelations. I love the use of the Bible to give meaning to something secular. Though I am not religious, I believe that religion is part of our culture, and the Bible is one of the origins of Western literature.
What do you think of Walcott’s poem? Does this poem make you want to read more by Walcott?
Do you regularly read poetry? Would you like to read more poetry?
