A New Year

My New Year's message's always been the same, year after year: "C'mon people, now, smile on your brother..."
_____________

Martin Richard, killed waiting for his dad to finish the Boston Marathonon

Give like Larry

Larry Fine

'Bravo'  and "Ah, look! I'd said, shortly after he'd been dead.
   Mischief-makers everywhere & not a single one

who could tune a bow and fill eyes (mine) to tears and laughs--
  well, nobody'd who'd said and done his job better or

sawn off  an ear and scattered his straw-hair hung in shreds,
   fighting back tears with difficulty as I'm sure they all did

when he'd been found blessed: not one could deny he'd been
  felled at last, pitched forward as if thrown by a

punch or slap, twisting and turning and hopping on one leg
  til he rested in a permanent chair & nearly reached

as far as the heart can, reaching mine. Give like a stooge, then
   many straggling bucks (like puppet-hair) & then die

                                                        Give til you die, like Larry

In conversation with Aditya Bahl...



I'd like to share an interesting email thread with publisher, poet Aditya Bahl that began as a mutual celebration of the poetic mastery of John Martone and now looks to branch off into interesting sidebars--paratexts, perhaps!-- on (among other things) non-referentiality, Barthes, scope and limits of Eastern writing. As this is an ongoing discussion I will add more text from time to time.

I'd love nothing more than for more interested onlookers to join in!

_____________________________

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:44:32 PM, aditya bahl <aditya25488@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Conrad,

I am Aditya from India. I am a regular reader of The Compass Rose, Curtis F's blog. I happened to read yr comment which mentioned John Martone on his latest post (I' a big admirer of his work). I visited yr blog and found out John Martone's poems and yr writings about them. Everything is so finely tuned between the poems and yr writings.

I wanted to share a poem, I had written months back and which appeared in the latest issue of Otoliths, titled--for John Martone.

Looking fwd to reading more of yr poems and writings.

Regards,

Aditya Bahl

_____________________________

 

On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 2:01 AM, conrad didiodato <cdidiodato@yahoo.ca> wrote:

Hello Aditya

I'm glad to meet you and even more glad that you admire (as I have for years) the superb minimalist poetry of John Martone. You might like this post I wrote a year or so ago about Storage Case (Otoliths).

Thank you for sharing "for John Martone": a fitting tribute to a contemporary master.

Conrad

_____________________________

On Wednesday, December 18, 2013 11:37:33 AM, aditya bahl <aditya25488@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for replying, Conrad.

And thanks for the link to the post. I don't have the book, but I've seen a few pictures, here & there.

I shall definitely read the post and share my thoughts with you. 

And my thoughts on John's minimal work, as well.

Just wanted to pass you the link of the third issue of Bones, of which I am one of the co-editors. 

Its available as a pdf and a flipbook. It is an attempt at documenting/showcasing the directions contemporary haiku has been taking. 

Do have a read, whenever you get time. 

Aditya

____________________

 

On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 2:00 AM, conrad didiodato <cdidiodato@yahoo.ca> wrote:

Thanks, Aditya

there was a time when I tried my hand at Eastern writing: I don't have much talent there but have learned from my teachers (especially Karina Klesko) the virtues of conciseness. I write a tighter, more focused type of poetry--oftentimes very purposely engimatic.

I will read Bones with interest and appreciation,

Again, nice to have met you and please do keep in touch.

Conrad

______________________________

On Thursday, December 19, 2013 6:26:34 AM, aditya bahl wrote:

The Eastern writing has been packaged and been a "sold out" in the West, I think.

Everything is broken down into three lines to make a haiku of it. 

"a neat little thing you do with your left hand and read on get-well-cards"

Although its the only excerpt of Barthes book I've read, The Neutral, 

it is interesting to note how he posits haiku against the Western tyranny of "meaning", esp. since haiku is referential (as against the other "non-signified" kinds of writings which abounded in the 70s). Barthes's hopes for/from haiku have since then been outrun by time itself. 

I like John Martone's work, one because he is aware that he is writing within language. He is aware of the shortcomings of language when it comes to it-- how to get past them/how to present them. How, for example, when he breaks lines, they stay broken,

     birch roots

     deeper than you

     imagine

Some hot discussions have taken place on yr blog, regarding LANGUAGE poetry and the like. I am enjoying reading them.

Aditya

_______________________________

Your mention of Barthes, Aditya, is appreciated (always a favourite author of mine). If you mean by "Barthes's hopes for/from haiku have since then been outrun by time itself" a sort of vindication of the uneasy alliance of non-referentiality to the poet's true text, the point's well taken. Or perhaps you're saying haiku has been left untouched by the 70s experimentalism? Then what's the right way of talking about haiku?

You might find my Google hangout with John Bloomberg-Rissmann interesting: what are your thoughts? Is haiku subject to same non-signifying cycles as Western art/poetry? Is haiku the odd man out?

Conrad

________________________
Conrad,

Excellent question, here. 

A lot of questions, in fact and not just regarding haiku bt the referential nature of language itself. For example, how can anything be not referential? Let's take Clark Coolidge's work, to begin with. Is it "non-referential"?, as more commonly it is though of? Or even Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons which was or is read in terms of automatic writing and verbal cubism. Feminist readings of Tender Buttons, for ex., presume a "hidden feminist code" in the work, which once revealed would iron out the varied complications of Stein's grammatical topography. 

[ I'm falling off to sleep right now (02:02 am) bt since one never knows when the internet comes and goes here, I'll quickly type down a few of my arguments, which are mostly paraphrases.. ]

It depends on how one "perceives" the "real" world and how one "represents" it. The perception of the reality and its linguistic manifestation.. 

Wittgenstein, for one, delivers the notion of "representation" from the constricted aesthetic principles of reproducing an "objective reality" as constituted by the material and palpable world. Wittgenstein defines the “image” of an object, in terms of "super-likeness". However, he argues that, because one often "imagines" that a person is in pain but is artfully concealing it or one can "imagine" that "the stone has consciousness", "image-mongery" or in other words, the importance attached to the factual nature of an objective description, is merely a farce. By defining, "imaginability" as "representability by a particular means of representation", Wittgenstein distinguishes the "visual room" from the "material room". The visual room is one's conception of the material room he/she inhabits. Unlike the latter, a visual room cannot have an owner. One's conception is bound to be different from another's conception of the same material room. Wittgenstein's propositions read like an unwitting analysis of the domestic space Stein represents in Tender Buttons. As Stein writes,

“The sight of a reason, the same sight slighter, the sight of a simpler negative answer, the same sore sounder, the intention to wishing, the same splendor, the same furniture.”

Wittgenstein further argues that the "quasi-physical phenomenon" one observes is only the "grammatical movement" one makes. 

One could take W's proposition to its rightful culmination by arguing that there is no "material room". Its only a visual room one has (as you would agree, I believe). 

I've always thought a lot of Nietzsche's assertion that The tree is not green. It is green and hence it is a tree. (a simplified version of N.'s argument). Similarly a stone is not hard. It is hard and hence it is a stone. 

Derrida's theory provides an interesting counterpoint to the above quoted statement. According to him, the four legged creature in the real world (again, I've to resort to language, to point you towards the ""MATERIAL" dog) does not precede the word Dog. Because "it" became a dog only after the conception of the word "Dog." The word is the pre-requisite for the . . "thing" to be called a Dog. Otherwise its not a "Dog". 

I'd like to end by quoting S.T. Coleridge frm one of his Letters to W. Godwin,

“in other words — Is thinking impossible without arbitrary signs? & — how far is the word ‘arbitrary’ a misnomer? Are not words &c parts & germinations of the Plant? And what is the Law of their Growth? — In something of this order I would endeavor to destroy the old antithesis of Words & Things, elevating, as it were, words into Things, & living Things too.” 

I'd like to write more but I'd like to read yr response first.

I've been slowly reading the comments under the video (cannot play it at such slow speeds). Interesting discussions..

Its a pleasure conversing w you. 

Aditya

PS-I've a blog on tumblr (although I don't regularly update), adityamohanbahl.tumblr.com

Have recently posted two erasures-- of Shakespeare's sonnet and R. Creeley's poem.
____________________________

Aditya,

may I have your permission to publish our discussion at my Word-Dreamer blog? I will answer your questions shortly and hopefully others will join in the discussion at my blog.

Conrad

________________

Today at 4:26 PM

That'd be great..

I would like to rephrase the previous email to make it more concise ? 

I'll do that tomorrow.. 

 ________________________

Thanks, Aditya

I look forward to the rephrase.

 I'd just like to say, in response to your original comments on the non-referentiality thesis vis–à–vis Coolidge, Wittgenstein, Stein, et al and, in particular, to your claim that  "It depends on how one "perceives" the "real" world and how one "represents" it, that it does indeed depend on how one defines the "representability" of poetic things. Everything does seem to stem from that. I think in particular of the great pains the Object-Oriented Ontology of a Graham Harman, for example, (See his Towards Speculative Realism)  has to go to dispense of traditional things ! I mention Harman (and company) because they don't seem to see how closely tied their revolutionary epistemology to good ol' Parmenidean (or certainly Heideggerian) metaphysics. These ol' guys are hard to get rid of! Poets who have taken up that rather fashionable critique of 'referentiality' will find themselves in the unenviable position of having to do philosophy before they write the first line.

 But, setting that aside, I wonder if there's an ontological divide between East and West in poetics/poetry at all or if the differece is imminent to Eastern writing only. Clark Coolidge is not easily open to easy 'referential' work but not in the same way that Li Po isn't. Nietzsche, and then his true successor Derrida have turned literary criticism on its ear, certainly; Wittgenstein spawned a whole generation of 'language philosophers' that eventually found its way (or transmogrified through a series of interesting moves) into L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E, which also made sport of the any Coleridgian notion of "Words & Things". But have they really redefined poetry writing? I doubt it.

I guess I'm questioning whether the "deconstruction" of language thing--which has pretty much become old hat by now-- has obliterated the "transcendentals" of language altogether. I doubt it has but it's sure made a dent in the "representationalist" thesis, hasn't it? I maintain that a well-formed minimalist poem after Martone can even show, in its always exquisitely nuanced phrasing and synkrisis of page, text and illustration, just how limited any grand pronouncements on the death of the 'Signifier' can look. Take a poem from Martone's bheid and you'll see the irresolvable "Word &Thing" tension turned into the very profoundly untouchable nature of poetic truth itself: as in 

                absurd

            

                 as winter grapes

                 you eat them
__________________

Had a quick read Conrad. Again, looking fwd to reading everything slowly.

I've been reading bheid too! I agree w yr fine reading of the poem you quote. It is a favorite of mine. Along w the two poems which follow the one quoted,

 

dreaming

nature

*

forgot

to put the pickaxe away

[[these are my opinions]] which are both terrific-- in the latter, the material pickaxe gave something to John write/think about.

But he isnt simply talking abt putting it away, as in hiding it away.. Or is the signifier "pickaxe" he is talking about.

In conjunction with the "nature" poem, the buddhist notion of "is the world made up of sense data?" also seems to be at work here..

also how the book opens up-

beyond 

that tree line--

This one put me in my mind Curtis F's review of Mark Truscott's latest book.

 

Don't you think that there is that transcendental sense in bheid-- John doesnt take the perceptual and the linguistic for granted. But I haven't read the work completely, so I wouldn't go on now..

Look fwd to reading again/replying to yr comments as well as rephrasing the previous comment..

 Show message history

sperma Theou*

"Here, too, however, the Spirit does not interpret, does not initiate us from outside, as it were"
                                                                                                                        (Hans Urs Von Balthasar)

"Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow." (T.S. Eliot)



"sperm of God"

 habitual is til the red wounds can curl into bloom
                                                          (somehow),
                     
sticky as bee's womb, at first
--squirrel with twig in its jaw (a kind of womb, too!),
                  

then a plant's inner fur, sated on wind,
                  
(or even a Lady's forced off-shining,
                                    arms always found  swelling
                                                                (somehow))--
______________________________________

Here is my version of the Incarnation, with mention made of an often neglected mother's role (inspired by Balthasar somehow)

Squirrels (3): Just two



"Just two"

Then two squirrels came sent to me,
  hoping I'd

tell these my lost loves-
  so I thinking them worthy proposed
                                                         they

do something new

-in spirit of travel, say!-

  so I sent with them as they left a
                                                      certain

part (a fifth) of heart-

The sun I thought then at first

won't shine on mud
  so these brunal runners ran hard into

their own woods,
  intuiting my own state, mindless

of heart, of course
  (sensing a perennial poor lost lady!)

They opted for woods, of course

  Two have already said as much, today-
poor yr love and muddy, too

Kateri (1)

*"Kateri"
   (for Steve Catlin)

Dear umbrous squat Kateri crawls
  like rain, eyes squirmed,
  scaly comb at her neck

  -to gall one for very holiness!

Wildly galled, indeed for to believe,
  do and eat came (for her)
  rather scurriedly, with no time

  for a true locust love-

 just some waters & beyond
______________

*I hope with this I've righted the terrible wrongs committed against her in Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers.

Uma*



*A poem inspired by my reading of one half of Anita Desai's novel Fasting, Feasting.
------------------------

"Uma"
(for Helen Senkiw)

Closed up to the gills
  a girl roils,
               regrettably--

  with empty tray, stands
like a party doll (in pigtails)

     eyes thick,
     collapsible

like every shunted  jasmine                       

  Uma,
like every collapsible ode to
                                   sun-whips
                                      silent tides,

  deep dark Uma,
                      my
                         wounded
                                      water
                                             bird

Running as a kind of lie



"Yes, but it hurts to realize!" (Lawrence Durrell)


A cento of suns (I still find) wouldn't
  nor let alone those

forested paths strung like the foetid
  body of a lie--

Always second or third from me the
  eyes, smile

that ought rather to smooth, to know
  but don't--

In a steady scentless rain, in park
  trails

always feeding second or third from
  that which ought most

and never does, soothe a numb, in-
  consolable me

Always lying eyes & the run

Ode to Narouz*

*A poem inspired by Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet. A work remarkable if only for its masterly portrayal of the imagination's true desert heart and, in particular, of the Hosnani brothers in Mountolive.
__________________________


Whip in hand, Narouz speaks and bats
  lie split at his feet:

to a brother's glib oily bitch, a whip! and
  an old desert queen
   -true hearts-

Sand and eye's clutching vision, inter-
  twined, slink like Suras
   -in desert light!-

Linking palms of lovers also split,
  lying dead like bats
   - at his feet-

Remarried



Like every mari complaisant , perhaps
 who's all tweed and gin
   (& no more)

  -soft on sighs-

scraping slowly up the stairs,
  swollen reptilian eye
     of
       the
        new/
         old
          husband

     carrying
        her
         handbags
          to
            the
              top

"Morning prayers" (3): gum arabic

Will Petersen

She's radiant all right, mouth a dangling
  lark and is mine-nuncupatively!-

  until it isn't God! I hope not

For according to me, the petals-i.e. the
   white ones-took the eye and

did it again, and then leaving me with one,
  just might want to fly:-

the love of  one who burns pure as sky
  ( "foreshown & foretold")

Squirrels (1): "If I could write a perfect line" (for Maria)

I'd be in a blaze somewhere or just alone (reading,
                                              too sore to stand, or

 probably too clouded   to see the squirrel that's
   not once, not twice gone for a falling twig,
                                                             already)

"Where the action is..."

Ah, what a sweeter time it was, the '60s and dance shows and teens singing and goofing off on the sidewalk as if their hearts would burst for joy...I loved dancing to the Turtles in front of the ol' black and white.

I want that back for today's kids
.
Can you spot the dancer doing the 'Freddie' (a specialty of mine then)?

"Agnieszka"

If a swelling branch, the speed and dark
   of it all  (a reason to run!)

   weren't enough

and the odd two, three coloured dogs,
   and bison

and, oh, cliffs and anfractuosities, too
   where you etched-

      well, dear pilgrim
                          then  they  weren't

Two from "Stella's Songs & Others"

Here are two of my favourite pieces from ginamarie lobianco's latest book of verses (published by "little dipper ink", 2013), "goose" and "honey". I like them for euphony, originality and a young poet's always bright illuminative wisdom...

 

goose

 

 

love, take it up above

what has been the meaning of this

someone's snapping fingers

someone's silence lingers

it happened just like magic that way

the goose flew away

 

and a prophecy got the most of me

when there's nothing left to see

with the buildings they tore down

it happened in the most unsuspecting way

the goose flew away

 

rust, what happens to the trees

is happening to me

some blame it on the weather

there was nothing that he left her

not even a feather

no one said a thing

 

no one knew what to say

the goose flew away

l'oca vola via

 

 

honey

 

honey is good.

honey

is

good

for catching flies

if that's what you like to do

 

 



"Panis Angelicus"

Some of the inspiringly beautiful music at World Youth Day 2013 in Brazil.

Here is surely a little of Dante's dolce sinfonia di paradiso

Samperi (Skysill) 'Trilogy' is out!

I'm exceedingly happy to announce that the Skysill Samperi Trilogy is out. Please go here to order your copy!

How you know you're getting old

Hell now points
          (a stormy finger)
                sex'angularly
                     at
                         me.

Royal baby...

In the face of this, do I really give a rat's ass about the birth of a royal baby?

Some Rilke translation: its scope and limits

 

"E pero' sappia ciascuno che nulla cosa per legame musaico armonizzata si puo' de la sua loquela in altra transmutare sanza rompere tutta sua dolcezza e armonia" (Dante)


Curtis Faville has got me wondering lately about translation, too. In response to the opening passage from Rilke's "Seventh Elegy" (translated by Edward Snow) that I'd recently posted he'd referred to what he suspects is perhaps the inscrutability of every poem, it's "original grace". Does translation, even the very best, have a chance? To see for myself what had been lost in translation I thought I'd have a go at the first few sections of "The Seventh Elegy" (relying on a very elementary knowledge of German and my old Langenscheidt dictionary). First the German text, then Snow's translation, then mine. I'll end with a few brief comments not just on the quality of Snow's work but, more generally, on the nature of the change I've detected (or perhaps caused) in the transformation of Rilke's poem into a foreign medium.
________________________


Werbung nicht mehr, nicht Werbung, entwachsene Stimme,
sei deines Schreies Natur; zwar schrieest du rein wie der Vogel,
wenn ihn die Jahreszeit aufhebt, die steigende, beinah vergessend,
daß er ein kümmerndes Tier und nicht nur ein einzelnes Herz sei,
das sie ins Heitere wirft, in die innigen Himmel. Wie er, so
würbest du wohl, nicht minder , daß, noch unsichtbar,
dich die Freundin erführ, die stille, in der eine Antwort
langsam erwacht und über dem Hören sich anwärmt,
deinem erkühnten Gefühl die erglühte Gefühlin.

O und der Frühling begriffe , da ist keine Stelle,
die nicht trüge den Ton der Verkündigung. Erst jenen kleinen
fragenden Auflaut, den, mit steigernder Stille,
weithin umschweigt ein reiner bejahender Tag.
Dann die Stufen hinan, Ruf-Stufen hinan, zum geträumten
Tempel der Zukunft ; dann den Triller, Fontäne,
die zu dem drängenden Strahl schon das Fallen zuvornimmt
im versprechlichen Spiel .... Und vor sich, den Sommer.

Nicht nur die Morgen alle des Sommers , nicht nur
wie sie sich wandeln in Tag und strahlen vor Anfang.
Nicht nur die Tage, die zart sind um Blumen, und oben,
um die gestalteten Bäume, stark und gewaltig.
Nicht nur die Andacht dieser entfalteten Kräfte,
nicht nur die Wege, nicht nur die Wiesen im Abend,
nicht nur, nach spätem Gewitter, das atmende Klarsein,
nicht nur der nahende Schlaf und ein Ahnen, abends ...
sondern die Nächte! Sondern die hohen, des Sommers,
Nächte, sondern die Sterne, die Sterne der Erde.
O einst tot sein und sie wissen unendlich,
alle die Sterne: denn wie, wie, wie sie vergessen!
__________________

No longer, voice. No longer let wooing send forth your cry:
you're past that. Even though your cry would be clear as a bird's
when first Spring bears him aloft, almost forgetting
that he's a cautious creature and not an unsheathed heart
being flung into brightness, into passionate skies.
Like him, will all his art, you'd also woo--: invisibly,
so that some silent mate might learn of you, and,
as she listened, a reply would slowly wake and grow warm--
the kindled complement of your own ardent feeling.

O and Spring would understand--, annunciation
would echo everywhere. First those small
questioning notes, which a clear, confident day
would surround with heightening silence.
Then up the calls, up that long flight of steps to the dreamt-of
temple of the future--; then the trill, that fountain,
whose urgent jet is teased by its falling
where promise is foreplay...And on ahead, the summer.

Not only all of summer's dawns--, not only
how they change into day and gleam with genesis.
Not only the days, so tender around flowers, and above,
in the patterned treetops, so forceful and strong.
Not only the calm reverence in these outspread powers,
not only the paths, the meadows as evening deepens,
not only, after late thunderstorms, the pulsing clarity,
not only the onset of sleep and, near dusk, a premonition...
But the nights! Those towering summer
nights! And the stars, the stars of the earth!
O to be dead and to know them endlessly,
all the stars: for how, how, how to forget them!
                                                              (trans. Edward Snow)
_________________________________


Don't let wooing (never again wooing!) be the form of your cry,
nor ever its originating voice;
indeed, you'd cry pure as the bird
when the season carries him up, up, almost forgetting
that he's a grieving creature and not a solitary heart
cast into very serenity, into heaven's depths. Like him,
you would likewise woo--yes, invisible still,
a young girl would take to the silent you, a reply
slowly awakening and warming to your voice--
her bright feelings venturing your own.

And yes Spring knows it, too--there's no place
where its musical announcement could ever deceive. First
that small inquiring note which, with growing stillness,
a pure affirming day deeply embraces.
Then up ascending steps, the cry-steps, all the way to
the dreamer's temple of tomorrow--: then the trill,
the fountain whose hurrying flash the fall first foresees
in its promised play...And then promised summer.

Not just summer mornings--, not just
how they become day-transformed and emit beginnings.
Not just days sweet on flowers, and overhead,
round patterned tree-blossoms, thick and powerful.
Not only the devotion of these spreading powers,
nor even the paths or evening meadows,
nor the breathing clarity of a late thunderstorm,
nor the nearing dream and its foreboding,  in late evening...
but also nights! The height of summer nights,
and the stars, stars of earth.
Yes, to be dead and know them for ever, the stars:
and how, how would I ever forget them!
                                                     (trans. Conrad DiDiodato)
________________________________

Firstly, in Strophe 1 the translator of the original text (Edward Snow) has fractured a complete opening statement (expressed as a wish), leaving the reader with a succession of competing grammatical constructions where Rilke intended only one: as a result the integrity of "Werbung" (wooing), indicated by position and emphasis through repetition, has been broken. There's nothing in the opening lines to accommodate Snow's "you're past that". The reader is now bound to be distracted by imminent 'bird flight' when it's "Werbung" (speaker's anguished wooing) Rilke gives primacy to. Rilke's masterfully juxtaposed the song-bird's cry to a mate's uncertain reply. It is venturesome at best, a case of the invisible wanting badly to take physical shape in the anticipated other;

secondly, tampering too loosely with Rilke's own syntax--which Snow has done a second time (at "Even though your cry...") by substituting a 'fragment' for what is a complete thought in the original-- results in a perhaps too 'romanticized' view of the lyricist's anguished voice desperately trying for release from the bonds of his earthly misery. Precisely that troubling sense of arrested flight needs to be kept and can't be in translation that doesn't respect the form of the original. The bird of poetry simply rises too freely, too untroubled by the causes of the anguished voice;

thirdly, Snow's translation has left us (for the reasons above-stated) with a Rilke the Romantic rather than the more properly Modernist figure that he really is. Heidegger (in "What Are Poets For?")has aptly called Rilke the poet who's given us poetic song that hovers (like the bird's flight and song) over the world's true "destitute land." And that sense is precisely missing in Snow's translation;

fourthly, in Strophe 2 the promise of reply has properly been transmogrified into a uncertain "inquiring" sort of dream-state, and nothing more. "Fragenden" is Rilke's own term. The dream (more certainly the dreamer in bird-song) is called a "temple of tomorrow" (Tempel der Zukunft). The metaphor is inventive and instructive. The long winding steps to the temple opening is reminiscent of Kafka's The Castle; the poem (to this point) is every bit as subtly phantasmagorical, every bit as interminably expectant. Here Snow seems to be more at home in the fragment sentences and remains pretty faithful to Rilke's own language patterning, perhaps sensing like the poet just how "out of joint" is a solitary heart's springtime; and

fifthly, Strophe 3 almost stutters over any intended Romantic (Shelleyan) notion of unity in song. I believe Rilke has left the reader in the end with the sole consolation of sharp illuminations of star-light, "in late evening". Song seems to tire the ear in its repetitiveness just as starry nights bedazzle the eye. Rilke's "Elegy" passages end in twilight where stars (those unforgettable stars) serve as one more distraction from the state of every "grieving creature" and are literally something to die for. One is also reminded of that other sorrowful lover of stars, van Gogh. Snow fails precisely because he gives the poetic heart the most brilliantly imaginative language possible: because he's really never properly registered the troubled nature of all spring "wooing" and failed to take Rilke's poem to its final resting-place, somewhere over the world's true "destitute land".

Artword Artbar launch of James Deahl's In A Springtime Instant: Selected Poems of Milton Acorn

 

I was exceedingly happy to have been asked to be one of the reader's at yesterday's Artword book launch of James Deahl's Milton Acorn: In A Springtime Instant and Michael Mirolla's The House on 14th Avenue. The Artword Artbar in Hamilton, ON is (and always will be) the favourite venue for poetry happenings like this. James Deahl was a gracious host who introduced speakers, read from his edited Acorn work and provided us with many interesting poetico-biographical details of Canada's great People's Poet. Michael Mirolla, distinguished publisher of Guernica Press in Toronto, chose Hamilton as the first of three places to launch his new collection of verses.

 Readers were each asked to pick two poems of Acorn's and two of their own. Below are the pieces I chose, pairing Acorn's worship and moon poems (the first two below) with my own:

"What I Know of God"

What I know of God is this:
That He has hands, for He touches me.
I can testify to nothing else;
Living among many unseen beings
Like the whippoorwill I'm constantly hearing
But was pointed out to me just once.

Last of our hopes when all hope's past
God, never let me call on Thee
Distracting myself from a last chance
Which goes just as quick as it comes;
And I have doubts of Your omnipotence.
All I ask is... Keep on existing
Keeping Your hands. Continue to touch me.

"Live with Me on Earth under the Invisible Daylight Moon"

Live with me on Earth among red berries and the bluebirds

And leafy young twigs whispering

Within such little spaces, between such floors of green, such

     figures in the clouds

That two of us could fill our lives with delicate wanting:

Where stars past the spruce copse mingle with fireflies

Or the dayscape flings a thousand tones of light back at the

     sun—

Be any one of the colours of an Earth lover;

Walk with me and sometimes cover your shadow with mine.

____________________________

HYMN

 

Lord, rove with me through chancy days

Where’er You go the pampas waist-high rise,

and souls  kick hard as the tree-reft jays

Crocus God! forgive me what I’ve been,

seeming witless, tossed in fields of delice—

where hearts are bad, & the grounds green

But that’s why night’s a Dawn in disguise,

why You are praised, argent-bright,

seized spiraling  in autumn’s glaucous skies

LA LUNA NON È SIMPATICA

A shimmer in eel grass is

all you really are—
  September freak!

                                    See

the toothy eye

look back at me and
  how she snorts and trails
day
after wearying day: see
the long leggy drag
  of hers

She’s eye-bald and all that,

too,
  a dragon tower rising
a good long time over this, that—
  cold magical power

Thanks to the shiny clasps

  loosed on
a full and formless night,
  anyone can see right
   thru her!

She’s a cool moon!

   Notable’s her work

(she’s the sail to my lone ship
  on a two-thirds sea!):

she’s a triple crown worn low,

  a heart-gusher, as well
as a kind of pale sun spun round &
                                          round!

 Like the steam-breathing roes,

  lying numb struck,
without quinoa, without passion,
  

I love her & run myself hard with it,

  from dale to brook
  east and west
 

By the hands I need to feel with,

  I feel my jacinth queen!
 

So lives the heart, at times

  seeing the edges
of a rotund eel-grass moon ,
 & two cruel hooks
 

 for hacking at quinoa & at me 

Picture taken by Wilma Seville