Hail Poetry!

Lord, fbaezer, The Rules of the Game is a poem full enough to be read a thousand times. It is cryptic, partly due to its being translated, but I think I understand the gist of it... a tiny part of what he's saying.


I've been laconically reading a book called The Alphabet & the Goddess, about how words "ruined" the natural way of being. It appears Becerra would agree with that premise.

There are some amazing lines, the first that struck me was this one -- It is a beautiful visual image, but frightening, as well.

I wondered about the lizard and the bird confrontation -- I think that is a Mexican... maybe even an Aztec cultural icon? Fire in his hair? Another image I don't understand it, but truly alarming. I am more comfortable with the conceptual metaphors of the ocean, of sealife, the moon rising, even the lights coming on at port.

There seems to be something missing in the translation of this line:



so it remains obscure to me. I tried to find a different translation to see what it might be, but he is not well-known in English.

Thank you for posting this and introducing Bacerra. Is he one of your favorites? I love that the Rules of the Game include determining your own exceptions to the rules. It seems to be young man's view. I wonder if he would have changed anything if he'd lived past 40? The good die young.

Dream -- That is a great complimentary poem to the O'Driscoll. The "Divine Majority" of a soul is a worthy truth. This poem expresses something closer to my own attitude than the other. I'm not quite as big a fan of Emily as I am of Edna, but I like this a lot.

I didn't realize you were a classical musician... is it the violin that you play? Enjoy your ten weeks off. A car trip? I love those! I've only been to Maine in the Spring... I liked it very much then, despite the cold. Imagine how much nicer it will be in the summer. Be sure to go to the top of Mt. Cadillac. You'll feel like you're Queen of the World.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

Lovely

Piffka, Becerra is indeed one of my vary favorite poets. I consider him to be among the 3 top Mexican poets of the XX Century (with Octavio Paz and Xavier Villaurrutia).
He only published two books in his lifetime and died at 33 in a car crash in Italy.
His complete works were published shortly after his death. Just one big book.
The poems I like best are the ones he wrote in his late 20s. At the time of his death he was more on experimenting.

The poem I posted is from his late 20s, but not his best, just the one I found a translation for.
The line you didn't understand is because of a typo. It should be read like this:

"and creatures of fog place their breath in new mirrors"

I would translate it as:

"and fog beasts place their vapor in new mirrors"

(the word "vaho" means vaporish breath, the one a child loves to expell to windows).

Lizards and birds are part of the jungle imagery of Becerra. He was born in Villahermosa, southern Mexico, a modern city in the midst of the tropical forest, built right next to La Venta, the former capital of the Olmecs (the oldest Mesoamerican culture).

To me, the "rules of the game" are the rules of poetry and life. Stale words need to have new meanings... and to do that, one "must enter his own beheading" (I'd use that word rather than "destruction", used in the translation"), and understand himself in order to create: one must make the rules, and the exceptions to those rules.

A poem of destruction and creation... of shutting up in order to speak anew... and the sea elements (the primary elements of life) reappear as if everything was made again. Finally, there a port of arrival, in its awakening.

Ahhh, Hiama, my father was an officer in the USAF and flew from England during WWII. Nice to have this poem here, thank-you. I wish we'd used it for his memorial servicie, it is so wonderful, but the poem he wanted was another that was "suggested" for officers -- "Crossing the Bar" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Those military men like their poetry!

fbaezer -- Thanks for providing so much more information about Becerra. I wish I could read Spanish. It is a failing of many here that we aren't multi-lingual. Anyway, I appreciate your clearing up the confusion with the fog creatures. I don't know of any fog creatures, so I'm entranced with the idea. I think it must be an ephemeral being... might just be us in our short lifespans. I looked around a bit and see that the Olmecs were big on masks... here's a link to some in a gallery:

http://www.barakatgallery.com/store/index.cfm/FuseAction/subcatItemsDetails/UserID/<CFOUTPUT/CFID/2762322/CFTOKEN/63568980/CategoryID/31/SubCategoryID/859.htm

Becerra was fascinated by La Venta. He was unsettled that such monumental remains were found in such an inhospitable place -a kind of island surrounded by salt marshes.

He wrote about it: "land was
like an artifice of water... Men dream laying their temples on dead men, and their dream contaminates their images with stone."

[URL=ttp://homepage.mac.com/bierman99/mlaventa.html]American Tourist and Olmec Faces at La Venta[/URL]

Salt marshes? I guess I'll have to look at a map, I didn't realize how close it was to the sea. Who wouldn't be fascinated to live next to one of the oldest mesoamerican settlements? You who live in Mexico have an outstanding history and tradition of ancient civilizations. It should make you proud. La Venta... I've been thinking about that, doesn't that mean "the market" or "the shop," something like that? I was thinking "venta" was similar to the English word, "vend," as in selling a product.

Your link, btw, is very interesting - huge heads! I did have to adjust the address slightly... it needs a "h" at the beginning which must have been lost in the copy & pasting. I was surprised at how much those heads had a Chinese look to them. Very strange.

Thanks - Muchos Gracias!

W.S. Merwin

Berryman

I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally

it was the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views on poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion and he praised movement
and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write

John Berryman

piffka,

I love the Merwin poem on Berryman.

It's now in my little anthology of favorites.

Jjorge, Really??? Thanks!

I usually prefer more structure and some rhyme in poems, but that one had so much to say about writing poetry, poets, life, being young, being old. I love it where Merwin says he was told to drop on his knees and pray to the Muse. It was a find for me last week. I really liked it, too. < on my way, rejoicing >

'This Much I Do Remember'



It was after dinner.

You were talking to me across the table

about something or other,

a greyhound you had seen that day

or a song you liked,



and I was looking past you

over your bare shoulder

at the three oranges lying

on the kitchen counter

next to the small electric bean grinder,

which was also orange,

and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.



Alll of which converged

into a random still life,

so fastened together by the hasp of color,

and so fixed behind the animated

foreground of your

talking and smiling,

gesturing and pouring wine,

and the camber of you shoulders



that I could feel it being painted within me,

brushed on the wall of my skull,

while the tone of your voice

lifted and fell in its flight,

and the three oranges

remained fixed on the counter

the way that stars are said

to be fixed in the universe.



Then all of the moments of the past

began to line up behind that moment

and all of the moments to come

assembled in front of it in a long row,

giving me reason to believe

that this was a moment I had rescued

from millions that rush out of sight

into a darkness behind the eyes.



Even after I have forgotten what year it is,

my middle name,

and the meaning of money,

I will still carry in my pocket

the small coin of that moment,

minted in the kingdom

that we pace through every day.

- Billy Collins

This won't line up right when I post it, but here goes anyway:

I Loved You So Much

I loved you
So much
That when
You left
It took
A lot
To keep me alive.


Prayer helped. And giving
Myself over
To emptiness.

Years later
I sit
On this
Beach
Not far
From an old
Hawaiian
Kahuna
Who teaches
All and sundry
How to clean
Their bowels.

Don't
Hold on
To the old
Stuff, flush it out
She says
Leis to her
Ears
Perched
Like a diva
On her bright yellow
Porch.

I gaze
Thankfully at the sea
Time's most faithful
Clock
Amazed
That every trace
Of that
Old pain
Your leaving
Stuffed me
With
Is washed
Clean .









by Alice Walker

Dream,

I like it, even though it brings a tear to my eye.

Well....I guess that's WHY I like it.

I like it too, Dream2020

I was looking at a volume of Billy Collins' poetry today at Borders.
I came upon this poem and HAD to post it for our friend of the same name:




Osso Buco

I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and wallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach--
something you don't hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
you know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife's laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.

-Billy Collins,
The Art of Drowning

Oh, my goodness! Wonderful poem, and we come together in the marrow of the earth.

I am ambivalent about eating ossobuco myself, fond as I am of live calves and lambs..I have and probably will again if the occasion is right. My friends in Napa made some for me a year ago and it was a dish that centers the world in your stomach's contentment...it was served in their victorian dining room, and yes, later I got to sleep in one of those old fashioned down feather beds, up in the corner room...

I love the sounds of the word, ossobuco, and the way it always make me think
of Italy, and other travels.

Travel..a luxury in this world of deprivation and despair, yes.
thank you for thinking of me!

Oh yes, ambivalence...so, the next time you succumb and have
Osso buco, it may be with a 'little cry of anguished delight' -to borrow a phrase from Grace Metalious.

Gorgeous lines... I love these!






I've started a new Poetry topic, meant to be short, of the Love Letters (3) from Beethoven. I also meant to post them yesterday, since the first two are dated July 6, but alas, I came home late, fell asleep. The last is appropriately dated July 7th. I don't know the year, but B lived from 1770 to 1827. Anyway, I thought you'd like to read them, Immortal Beloved. He has a beautiful turn of phrase though he gets bogged down, as you will see. Wish I knew more about this -- history's mysteries!

Beethoven's Works


I saw a movie on TV this weekend, The Anniversary. (I'd give it an 8 -- interesting film & worth watching.) The last stanza was read in the film. It was poetry I thought was shocking but wonderful. The entire poem is great, but the last bit... whew!


Dover Beach

The Sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -- on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness with it.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)