I
"Spinoza"
[Original poem in Spanish]
Las traslúcidas manos del judío
Labran en la penumbra los cristales
Y la tarde que muere es miedo y frío.
(Las tardes a las tardes son iguales.)
Las manos y el espacio de jacinto
Que palidece en el confín del Ghetto
Casi no existen para el hombre quieto
Que está soñando un claro laberinto.
No lo turba la fama, ese reflejo
De sueños en el sueño de otro espejo,
Ni el temeroso amor de las doncellas.
Libre de la metáfora y del mito
Labra un arduo cristal: el infinito
Mapa de Aquél que es todas Sus estrellas.
[Translated into English by Willis Barnstone]
Here in the twilight the translucent hands
Of the Jew polishing the crystal glass.
The dying afternoon is cold with bands
Of fear. Each day the afternoons all pass
The same. The hands and space of hyacinth
Paling in the confines of the ghetto walls
Barely exists for the quiet man who stalls
There, dreaming up a brilliant labyrinth.
Fame doesn’t trouble him (that reflection of
Dreams in the dream of another mirror), nor love,
The timid love women. Gone the bars,
He’s free, from metaphor and myth, to sit
Polishing a stubborn lens: the infinite
Map of the One who now is all His stars.
II
"Baruch Spinoza"
[Original poem in Spanish]
Bruma de oro, el occidente alumbra
La ventana. El asiduo manuscrito
Aguarda, ya cargado de infinito.
Alguien construye a Dios en la penumbra.
Un hombre engendra a Dios. Es un judío
De tristes ojos y piel cetrina;
Lo lleva el tiempo como lleva el río
Una hoja en el agua que declina.
No importa. El hechicero insiste y labra
A Dios con geometría delicada;
Desde su enfermedad, desde su nada,
Sigue erigiendo a Dios con la palabra.
El más pródigo amor le fue otorgado,
El amor que no espera ser amado.
[Translated into English by Willis Barnstone]
A haze of gold, the Occident lights up
The window. Now, the assiduous manuscript
Is waiting, weighed down with the infinite.
Someone is building God in a dark cup.
A man engenders God. He is a Jew
With saddened eyes and lemon-colored skin;
Time carries him the way a leaf, dropped in
A river, is borne off by waters to
Its end. No matter. The magician moved
Carves out his God with fine geometry;
From his disease, from nothing, he's begun
To construct God, using the word. No one
Is granted such prodigious love as he:
The love that has no hope of being loved.
Source of the text - Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems, edited by Alexander Coleman. New York: Penguin Books, 2000, pp. 228-229 and 382-383.
TJB: Years apart, we get Spinoza the glassgrinder & Spinoza the godbuilder, both poems framed as an invisible poet looking in on the man at work.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
"Brazil" by B.H. Fairchild
Brazil
This is for Elton Wayne Showalter, redneck surrealist
who, drunk, one Friday night tried to hold up the local 7-Eleven
with a caulking gun, and who, when Melinda Bozell boasted
that she would never let a boy touch her "down there," said,
"Down there? You mean, like, Brazil?"
Oh, Elton Wayne,
with your silver-toed turquoise-on-black boots and Ford Fairlane
dragging, in a ribbon of sparks, its tailpipe down Main Street
Saturday nights, you dreamed of Brazil and other verdant lands,
but the southern hemisphere remained for all those desert years
a vast mirage shimmering on the horizon of what one might call
your mind, following that one ugly night at the Snack Shack
when, drunk again, you peed on your steaming radiator
to cool it down and awoke at the hospital, groin empurpled
from electric shock and your pathetic maleness swollen
like a bruised tomato. You dumb bastard, betting a week's wages
on the trifecta at Raton, then in ecstasy tossing the winning ticket
into the air and watching it float on an ascending breeze
with the lightness and supple dip and rise of a Bach passacaglia
out over the New Mexico landscape forever and beyond: gone.
The tears came down, but the spirit rose late on Sunday night
on a stepladder knocking the middle letters from FREEMAN GLASS
to announce unlimited sexual opportunities in purple neon
for all your friends driving Kansas Avenue as we did each night
lonely and bordeom-racked and hungering for someone like you,
Elton Wayne, brilliantly at war in that flat, treeless country
against maturity, right-thinking, and indeed intelligence
in all its bland, local guises, so that reading the announcement
in the hometown paper of your late marriage to Melinda Bozell
with a brief honeymoon at the Best Western in Junction City,
I know that you have finally arrived, in Brazil, and the Kansas
that surrounds you is an endless sea of possibility, genius, love.
Source of the text - B.H. Fairchild, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003, pp. 49-50.
TJB: This poem, an epithalamion-looking-backward, composed in four big celebratory run-ons, is most at home dwelling in failures & big gestures.
This is for Elton Wayne Showalter, redneck surrealist
who, drunk, one Friday night tried to hold up the local 7-Eleven
with a caulking gun, and who, when Melinda Bozell boasted
that she would never let a boy touch her "down there," said,
"Down there? You mean, like, Brazil?"
Oh, Elton Wayne,
with your silver-toed turquoise-on-black boots and Ford Fairlane
dragging, in a ribbon of sparks, its tailpipe down Main Street
Saturday nights, you dreamed of Brazil and other verdant lands,
but the southern hemisphere remained for all those desert years
a vast mirage shimmering on the horizon of what one might call
your mind, following that one ugly night at the Snack Shack
when, drunk again, you peed on your steaming radiator
to cool it down and awoke at the hospital, groin empurpled
from electric shock and your pathetic maleness swollen
like a bruised tomato. You dumb bastard, betting a week's wages
on the trifecta at Raton, then in ecstasy tossing the winning ticket
into the air and watching it float on an ascending breeze
with the lightness and supple dip and rise of a Bach passacaglia
out over the New Mexico landscape forever and beyond: gone.
The tears came down, but the spirit rose late on Sunday night
on a stepladder knocking the middle letters from FREEMAN GLASS
to announce unlimited sexual opportunities in purple neon
for all your friends driving Kansas Avenue as we did each night
lonely and bordeom-racked and hungering for someone like you,
Elton Wayne, brilliantly at war in that flat, treeless country
against maturity, right-thinking, and indeed intelligence
in all its bland, local guises, so that reading the announcement
in the hometown paper of your late marriage to Melinda Bozell
with a brief honeymoon at the Best Western in Junction City,
I know that you have finally arrived, in Brazil, and the Kansas
that surrounds you is an endless sea of possibility, genius, love.
Source of the text - B.H. Fairchild, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003, pp. 49-50.
TJB: This poem, an epithalamion-looking-backward, composed in four big celebratory run-ons, is most at home dwelling in failures & big gestures.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
"Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher" by Barbara Guest
Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher
I just said I didn't know
And now you are holding me
In your arms,
How kind.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher.
Yet around the net I am floating
Pink and pale blue fish are caught in it,
They are beautiful,
But they are not good for eating.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher
Than this mid-air in which we tremble,
Having exercised our arms in swimming,
Now the suspension, you say,
Is exquisite. I do not know.
There is coral below the surface,
There is sand, and berries
Like pomegranates grow.
This wide net, I am treading water
Near it, bubbles are rising and salt
Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer
Air than water. I am closer to you
Than land and I am in a stranger ocean
Than I wished.
Source of the text - Barbara Guest, The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest, edited by Hadley Haden Guest. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008, p. 14.
TJB: Flotsam-verse. Air, water & love are conflated here in float-images & net-images powered by comparative terms & deepened with conjunctions.
I just said I didn't know
And now you are holding me
In your arms,
How kind.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher.
Yet around the net I am floating
Pink and pale blue fish are caught in it,
They are beautiful,
But they are not good for eating.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher
Than this mid-air in which we tremble,
Having exercised our arms in swimming,
Now the suspension, you say,
Is exquisite. I do not know.
There is coral below the surface,
There is sand, and berries
Like pomegranates grow.
This wide net, I am treading water
Near it, bubbles are rising and salt
Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer
Air than water. I am closer to you
Than land and I am in a stranger ocean
Than I wished.
Source of the text - Barbara Guest, The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest, edited by Hadley Haden Guest. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008, p. 14.
TJB: Flotsam-verse. Air, water & love are conflated here in float-images & net-images powered by comparative terms & deepened with conjunctions.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
from "The Master" by H.D.
from "The Master"
VIII
And it was he himself, he who set me free
to prophesy,
he did not say
"stay,
my disciple,"
he did not say,
"write,
each word I say is sacred,"
he did not say, "teach"
he did not say,
"heal
or seal
documents in my name,"
no,
he was rather casual,
"we won't argue about that"
(he said)
"you are a poet."
Source of the text - H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Selected Poems, edited by Louis L. Martz. New York: New Directions, 1988, p. 108.
TJB: Psycho-hagiography. The poet says what she wanted Freud to say to her, conflates prophecy & poetry, & concludes he set her free, casually.
VIII
And it was he himself, he who set me free
to prophesy,
he did not say
"stay,
my disciple,"
he did not say,
"write,
each word I say is sacred,"
he did not say, "teach"
he did not say,
"heal
or seal
documents in my name,"
no,
he was rather casual,
"we won't argue about that"
(he said)
"you are a poet."
Source of the text - H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Selected Poems, edited by Louis L. Martz. New York: New Directions, 1988, p. 108.
TJB: Psycho-hagiography. The poet says what she wanted Freud to say to her, conflates prophecy & poetry, & concludes he set her free, casually.
Monday, August 9, 2010
from "The Prelude" by William Wordsworth
from The Prelude, Book First [from the 1850 edition]:
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society. How strange that all
The terrors, pains, and early miseries,
Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused
Within my mind, should e’er have borne a part,
And that a needful part, in making up
The calm existence that is mine when I
Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end!
Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ;
Whether her fearless visitings, or those
That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light
Opening the peaceful clouds; or she may use
Severer interventions, ministry
More palpable, as best might suit her aim.
One summer evening (led by her) I found
A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cove, its usual home.
Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in
Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
Leaving behind her still, on either side,
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,
Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon’s utmost boundary; for above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,—
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought,
That givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion, not in vain
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things——
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Source of the text - William Wordsworth, The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. Edited by Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979, pp. 47-51.
TJB: The tale of the cliff that terrified the boy. Miltonic consonance darkens this memory-vision of the ‘grandeur in the beatings of the heart.’
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society. How strange that all
The terrors, pains, and early miseries,
Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused
Within my mind, should e’er have borne a part,
And that a needful part, in making up
The calm existence that is mine when I
Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end!
Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ;
Whether her fearless visitings, or those
That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light
Opening the peaceful clouds; or she may use
Severer interventions, ministry
More palpable, as best might suit her aim.
One summer evening (led by her) I found
A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cove, its usual home.
Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in
Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
Leaving behind her still, on either side,
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,
Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon’s utmost boundary; for above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,—
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought,
That givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion, not in vain
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things——
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Source of the text - William Wordsworth, The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. Edited by Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979, pp. 47-51.
TJB: The tale of the cliff that terrified the boy. Miltonic consonance darkens this memory-vision of the ‘grandeur in the beatings of the heart.’
Friday, August 6, 2010
"The Names of the Hare," anonymous Middle English lyric
The Names of the Hare
Translation from the Middle English by Seamus Heaney
The man the hare has met
will never be the better of it
except he lay down on the land
what he carries in his hand—
be it staff or be it bow—
and bless him with his elbow
and come out with this litany
with devotion and sincerity
to speak the praises of the hare.
Then the man will better fare.
'The hare, call him scotart,
big-fellow, bouchart,
the O'Hare, the jumper,
the rascal, the racer.
Beat-the-pad, white-face,
funk-the-ditch, shit-ass.
The wimount, the messer,
the skidaddler, the nibbler,
the ill-met, the slabber.
The quick-scut, the dew-flirt,
the grass-biter, the goibert,
the home-late, the do-the-dirt.
The starer, the wood-cat,
the purblind, the furze cat,
the skulker, the bleary-eyed,
the wall-eyed, the glance-aside
and also the hedge-springer.
The stubble-stag, the long lugs,
the stook-deer, the frisky legs,
the wild one, the skipper,
the hug-the-ground, the lurker,
the race-the-wind, the skiver,
the shag-the-hare, the hedge-squatter,
the dew-hammer, the dew-hoppper,
the sit-tight, the grass-bounder,
the jig-foot, the earth-sitter,
the light-foot, the fern-sitter,
the kail-stag, the herb-cropper.
The creep-along, the sitter-still,
the pintail, the ring-the-hill,
the sudden start,
the shake-the-heart,
the belly-white,
the lambs-in-flight.
The gobshite, the gum-sucker,
the scare-the-man, the faith-breaker,
the snuff-the-ground, the baldy skull,
(his chief name is scoundrel.)
The stag sprouting a suede horn,
the creature living in the corn,
the creature bearing all men's scorn,
the creature no one dares to name.'
When you have got all this said
then the hare's strength has been laid.
Then you might go faring forth—
east and west and south and north,
wherever you incline to go—
but only if you're skilful too.
And now, Sir Hare, good-day to you.
God guide you to a how-d'ye-do
with me: come to me dead
in either onion broth or bread.
Source of the text - The Rattle Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. London: Faber and Faber, 1982, pages 305-306.
TJB: Rabbit magic. Since when was the hare so fearful as to require such an outstanding, sonically potent litany of names bursting in action?
Translation from the Middle English by Seamus Heaney
The man the hare has met
will never be the better of it
except he lay down on the land
what he carries in his hand—
be it staff or be it bow—
and bless him with his elbow
and come out with this litany
with devotion and sincerity
to speak the praises of the hare.
Then the man will better fare.
'The hare, call him scotart,
big-fellow, bouchart,
the O'Hare, the jumper,
the rascal, the racer.
Beat-the-pad, white-face,
funk-the-ditch, shit-ass.
The wimount, the messer,
the skidaddler, the nibbler,
the ill-met, the slabber.
The quick-scut, the dew-flirt,
the grass-biter, the goibert,
the home-late, the do-the-dirt.
The starer, the wood-cat,
the purblind, the furze cat,
the skulker, the bleary-eyed,
the wall-eyed, the glance-aside
and also the hedge-springer.
The stubble-stag, the long lugs,
the stook-deer, the frisky legs,
the wild one, the skipper,
the hug-the-ground, the lurker,
the race-the-wind, the skiver,
the shag-the-hare, the hedge-squatter,
the dew-hammer, the dew-hoppper,
the sit-tight, the grass-bounder,
the jig-foot, the earth-sitter,
the light-foot, the fern-sitter,
the kail-stag, the herb-cropper.
The creep-along, the sitter-still,
the pintail, the ring-the-hill,
the sudden start,
the shake-the-heart,
the belly-white,
the lambs-in-flight.
The gobshite, the gum-sucker,
the scare-the-man, the faith-breaker,
the snuff-the-ground, the baldy skull,
(his chief name is scoundrel.)
The stag sprouting a suede horn,
the creature living in the corn,
the creature bearing all men's scorn,
the creature no one dares to name.'
When you have got all this said
then the hare's strength has been laid.
Then you might go faring forth—
east and west and south and north,
wherever you incline to go—
but only if you're skilful too.
And now, Sir Hare, good-day to you.
God guide you to a how-d'ye-do
with me: come to me dead
in either onion broth or bread.
Source of the text - The Rattle Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. London: Faber and Faber, 1982, pages 305-306.
TJB: Rabbit magic. Since when was the hare so fearful as to require such an outstanding, sonically potent litany of names bursting in action?
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Oracle of Balaam, Numbers 23:18-24
Text of the poem in Hebrew:
English translation by Robert Alter:
"Rise, Balak, and listen,
give ear to me, O Zippor's son!
El is no man who would fail,
no human who would show change of heart.
Would he say and not perform
would he speak and not fulfill it?
Look, to bless I was taken,
and He blessed, so I will not reverse it.
He has beheld no harm in Jacob,
and has seen no trouble in Israel.
The Lord his god is with him,
the king's trumped blast in his midst,
El who brings them out from Egypt,
like the wild ox's antlers for him.
For there is no divining in Jacob
and no magic in Israel.
Now be it said to Jacob
and to Israel what El has wrought.
Look, a people like a lion arises,
like the king of beasts, rears up.
He will not lie down till he devours the prey,
and blood of the slain he drinks."
Source of the text in Hebrew - Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1967, pp. 256-257.
Source of the English translation - Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: a translation with commentary. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2004, pp. 807-808.
TJB: In fluid pronouns, this ancient oracle-poem praises Israel & its god El & refuses to contradict El although Israel permits no divination.
English translation by Robert Alter:
"Rise, Balak, and listen,
give ear to me, O Zippor's son!
El is no man who would fail,
no human who would show change of heart.
Would he say and not perform
would he speak and not fulfill it?
Look, to bless I was taken,
and He blessed, so I will not reverse it.
He has beheld no harm in Jacob,
and has seen no trouble in Israel.
The Lord his god is with him,
the king's trumped blast in his midst,
El who brings them out from Egypt,
like the wild ox's antlers for him.
For there is no divining in Jacob
and no magic in Israel.
Now be it said to Jacob
and to Israel what El has wrought.
Look, a people like a lion arises,
like the king of beasts, rears up.
He will not lie down till he devours the prey,
and blood of the slain he drinks."
Source of the text in Hebrew - Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1967, pp. 256-257.
Source of the English translation - Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: a translation with commentary. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2004, pp. 807-808.
TJB: In fluid pronouns, this ancient oracle-poem praises Israel & its god El & refuses to contradict El although Israel permits no divination.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
"A Dance" by Caroline Knox
A DANCE
Bouki fait gumbo,
Lapin mangé li.
Bouki ►Wolof for hyena;
Verbs are French: fait, mangé.
Gumbo ► Native American or Bangena
= Okra = filé = "dried powdered young sassafras leaves,
discovered by the Choctaw Indians,"
says Miriam Knopf in Around America:
A Cookbook for Young People.
Compair Bouki, Compair Lapin =
Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit.
"The hyena may have made the gumbo,
but it's the rabbit that ate it"—a distich of power
and viable Marxist grumbling?
Compair Aesop fait (get Greek word for "tale")
Compair LaFontaine fait fable.
God gives, but He doesn't share.
Compair Aesop fait fable.
Compair LaFontaine mangé Aesop.
Even gumbo z'herbes in a starving time, desperate cooking, meager soup.
Compair Marianne Moore traduit LaFontaine,
Compair Joel Chandler Harris fair storybook,
Choctaw Indians mangé gumbo.
Author's Note - "Bouki fait gumbo, lapin mangé li is a Creole proverb. The Knopf book was published in 1969. Most material in the poem comes from lectures on the American frontier by Joyce E. Chaplin (lines 1-6, 12-14, and 20). 'God gives, but He doesn't share' is a Haitian proverb cited by Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains (Random House, 2004)."
Source of the text - Knox, Caroline. Quaker Guns. Seattle: Wave Books, 2008, pp. 4-5 [poem] and 67 [author's note].
TJB: Driven by analogies, salted with exoticisms, this poem of sound-stew advances through thoughts & facts almost as if without a poet at all.
Bouki fait gumbo,
Lapin mangé li.
Bouki ►Wolof for hyena;
Verbs are French: fait, mangé.
Gumbo ► Native American or Bangena
= Okra = filé = "dried powdered young sassafras leaves,
discovered by the Choctaw Indians,"
says Miriam Knopf in Around America:
A Cookbook for Young People.
Compair Bouki, Compair Lapin =
Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit.
"The hyena may have made the gumbo,
but it's the rabbit that ate it"—a distich of power
and viable Marxist grumbling?
Compair Aesop fait (get Greek word for "tale")
Compair LaFontaine fait fable.
God gives, but He doesn't share.
Compair Aesop fait fable.
Compair LaFontaine mangé Aesop.
Even gumbo z'herbes in a starving time, desperate cooking, meager soup.
Compair Marianne Moore traduit LaFontaine,
Compair Joel Chandler Harris fair storybook,
Choctaw Indians mangé gumbo.
Author's Note - "Bouki fait gumbo, lapin mangé li is a Creole proverb. The Knopf book was published in 1969. Most material in the poem comes from lectures on the American frontier by Joyce E. Chaplin (lines 1-6, 12-14, and 20). 'God gives, but He doesn't share' is a Haitian proverb cited by Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains (Random House, 2004)."
Source of the text - Knox, Caroline. Quaker Guns. Seattle: Wave Books, 2008, pp. 4-5 [poem] and 67 [author's note].
TJB: Driven by analogies, salted with exoticisms, this poem of sound-stew advances through thoughts & facts almost as if without a poet at all.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
"After Anacreon" by Lew Welch
AFTER ANACREON
When I drive cab
I am moved by strange whistles and wear a hat.
When I drive cab
I am the hunter. My prey leaps out from where it
hid, beguiling me with gestures.
When I drive cab
All may command me, yet I am in command of all who do.
When I drive cab
I am guided by voices descending from the naked air.
When I drive cab
A revelation of movement comes to me: They wake now.
Now they want to work or look around. Now they want
drunkenness and heavy food. Now they contrive to love.
When I drive cab
I bring the sailor home from the sea. In the back of
my car he fingers the pelt of his maiden.
When I drive cab
I watch for stragglers in the urban order of things.
When I drive cab
I end the only lit and waitful things in miles of
darkened houses.
Source of the text – Lew Welch, Ring of Bone: Collected Poems 1950-1971, edited by Donald Allen. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1994, p. 21.
TJB: Anticlassical conceit. We see the poet as cabdriver, a beacon in the land of the sleeping, passengers as readers & the drive itself as poem.
When I drive cab
I am moved by strange whistles and wear a hat.
When I drive cab
I am the hunter. My prey leaps out from where it
hid, beguiling me with gestures.
When I drive cab
All may command me, yet I am in command of all who do.
When I drive cab
I am guided by voices descending from the naked air.
When I drive cab
A revelation of movement comes to me: They wake now.
Now they want to work or look around. Now they want
drunkenness and heavy food. Now they contrive to love.
When I drive cab
I bring the sailor home from the sea. In the back of
my car he fingers the pelt of his maiden.
When I drive cab
I watch for stragglers in the urban order of things.
When I drive cab
I end the only lit and waitful things in miles of
darkened houses.
Source of the text – Lew Welch, Ring of Bone: Collected Poems 1950-1971, edited by Donald Allen. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1994, p. 21.
TJB: Anticlassical conceit. We see the poet as cabdriver, a beacon in the land of the sleeping, passengers as readers & the drive itself as poem.
Monday, August 2, 2010
"Daystar" by Rita Dove
Daystar
She wanted a little room for thinking:
but she saw diapers steaming on the line,
a doll slumped behind the door.
So she lugged a chair behind the garage
to sit out the children’s naps.
Sometimes there were things to watch—
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf. Other days
she stared until she was assured
when she closed her eyes
she’d only see her own vivid blood.
She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared
pouting from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice? Why,
building a palace. Later
that night when Thomas rolled over and
lurched into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour—where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.
Source of the text - Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah: poems. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1986, p.61.
TJB: Routine-lyric. In simple prosody we hear the glory & transcendence of doing-nothing, of briefly seeing things with keener, more alive eyes.
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