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In the Third Quarter of the Last Days of Summer
Friday, August 19, 2011
Photo by Thane Zander VI.8.4. I have two specials for you this week. First, I've brought my friend Anonymous back with Part III or his Message in a Bottle. Also, spread throughout the post, are photos by my poet, now photographer, friend Thane Zander. Thane is 52 and currently lives in Palmerston, North New Zealand where he works as a Peer Support person in the Mental Health field. Before that, he served for 27 years in the Navy, and then spent 7 years dedicated to writing poetry and short stories, including two years at University as a creative writing student. A couple of years ago he bought a digital camera and has been investigating the creative opportunities in the art of photography since. Thane has two daughters, Amy and Ashleigh, of whom he is exceedingly proud. Here's this week's crew. Note to David First Station Me the dumb days of August Aleda Shirlie Blue Over Orange Me I do not want to write tonight From Exchanges - Spring 1997 Zehra Cirak Grandmother’s Nods Hennrik Nordbrand Pragmatic Me Old Mcdonald From Pierced by a Ray of Sun Natalia Robbins Birth Elegy VI Dona Luongo Stein Visiting Day, Worcester County House of Correction James Masao Mitsui Destination: Tule Lake Relocation Center, May 20, 1942 Anonymous (from the Tewa language) The Mountain Far Away Me Chinaski Wendell Berry The Fear of Darkness The Plan Me Sol Brother Anonymous Message in a Bottle, Part III Me rear guard Dave Rushlander Wasted Journal Entry 12 Me wanting to drive the big bus From The Faber Book of 20th-century German Poems Volker Sielaff Sleepless Matthias Goritz For Volodya in Moscow Jan Wagner Frogs Hauke Huckstadt No One Home Me the fish who seeks his sea From Women of the Red Plain Li Xiaoyu The Silk Dream Lin Zi Yes, I Admit Yang Liuhong The Butterfly Specimen Me case closed Rienzi Crusz Let Us Now When Tarzan Shook Hands with God Me there is a field Devreaux Baker Bear Berry, Mullen, Red Willow Bark Changing Woman Me a community; a house 
Photo by Thane Zander I begin this week with something by Lorna Dee Cervantes, from her book Drive: The First Quartet, published in 2006 by Wings Press. Cervantes is a fifth generation Californian of Mexican and Native American (Chumash)heritage from San Jose. She currently is an associate professor at the University of Colorado. The book includes five distinct collections produced during the period 1980 through 2005. The collection I've drown from is titled "Letters to David: An Elegiac Mass in the Form of a Train." The collection begins with a journal entry followed by several poems. I use this week, the journal entry and the first poem. Note to David From Journal Entry - April 25, 1984 Today, goddamned David Kennedy drank himself to death. After holding up in a Palm Beach hotel suite he was found on the floor of his room between two king-sized waterbeds. Two beds! It rang through my ears like a mantra. Two beds. $250 a day he paid for that room & most of the time he stayed in the downstairs bar. Cops couldn't find evidence of any hard drugs, only the vodkas and grapefruit juice the bellhops said he drank steadily from 8 in the morning until 12 at night every day. I picked the paper off the kitchen table which is mostly littered with my books from the night before: Prescott's Conquest of Mexico & Conquest of Peru, The Fall by Albert Camus, an aesthetics and anthology, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, by the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, A Handbook of Style, The MLA Guidelines for submitting papers, Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust, Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. I start reading the accompanying articles about the trials & tribulations of life as a Kennedy as I pick up my, by now, lukewarm coffee and head back to the room, over-stepping the fish-hooked shards of glass from a broken lightbulb. "When he was 12 years old, young David stayed up in his hotel room late at night and watched his father on television. A family friend found him seated in front of the set switching the channels to the different news broadcasts to watch the tape play over and over. The friend recalled that thee was no tears, only a look of stunned horror." "The day before, on a family outing, the senator had saved David's life when the boy was being swept away in an undertow." I remember the day Robert Kennedy was assassinated. I remember it better than when the President was shot. I felt it more. I was in the seventh grade, and that was the first year I was every truly aware of politics or the wars of the world. That was the day the next door the next door neighbor poisoned my pet cat to keep it off her lawn. I remember the sweet smell, like bitter almonds some say,but to me it smelled like she was vomiting rock candy. When I found her I could tell by the way she looked at me that it was too late to save her. I didn't even bother to call anyone. Just held her stiff, retching body & I remember I didn't cry. I felt solid, smooth,like ice but dry, warm. I remember the sun that June morning. It burned the hairs on my arms & I remember how strange the heat felt, like needles of radiation entering in through the pores in my skin. It was numbing me. I held her on the ground. She was too convulsive to hold in my arms and I tried to tell her that. The ants around us were swarming as if excited by the smell of her cooling flesh. I stopped watching her die and smashed ants. Sick. they were so many frantic kamikazis. I wondered if it was a sin. So much minute life snuffed out could leave a blotch on my soul like murder. I put the paper down and go to the desk by the window. Under it is a cardboard box where I keep a lot of old stuff. In case there's ever a fire, I plan to heave it out & then jump out after it. I don't even have to look for the diary. I know exactly where it is. I reach in between the notebooks and pull it out. I turn the leaves to the page as I lie back in my bed. June 2, 1968. Today, Robert Kennedy was shot! Kitty died. That was the day I learned the word: apocalyptic. June 5, 1968 I remember it was a very hard day there were buds the size of plums on the sugar tree daddy was a word wandering in the night your daddy talked nationwide the chosen prince you were on the doorstep of his shoes between two worlds in that LA motel you were in your pajamas he was on the floor I remember the sun was very hot you were in a worldwide disneyland your dad the TV mascot through the race wars I spent my life ducking the bullets from duck bombs came through the worn hole of my elegant dreaming only crackpots dream in color only the insane order flowers the color of living blood you ordered your life ended ripped from the script that day the red anemone burst your eyes glued to the set your eyes still holding that vast expression rapt as St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata that morning they found you stuck between two beds in your Brazilian Court suite you hung a painted flower over your head your last request still for art they call you and artist they call you the other victim in an endless film loop the willful repeater in your dreams you heard the shot over and over again saw the bloom swell saw it drop I duck in the dream American satellites killers every one falling indiscriminately from the sky armed junk heaps US stars and stripes forever painted on the side like a piece of Jasper's Rauchenerg's falling the way the sky looked dripping not rainbows but anemones beautiful watercolors I remember white phosphorous burning through the debris of five months before your superman pulled you from the tow the life was saved but the knife left a hole the size of a needle mark on your skin and the red blower bloomed on my pants brown as the blood of a father gone fifteen years dead the flower you said was very sexy you were seduced she was very sorry for your father as the plum was ready to split she turned on the set duck! I said duck! but the television showed it all cowboys and gangsters young girls stalked young boys getting ripped from the horse 
Photo by Thane Zander From the sublime to....this. the dumb days of August it’s not just that I didn’t want to write a poem this morning, but that I didn’t want to get up at all and now that I have I think it was a mistake it’s the heat - the entire month of August, bringing on the state of sweaty-dumbinicity , the dumbs of August as the heat leaches all the vitals from my physical essences, ambition, curiosity, hope, charity and, especially, brains most especially brains it’s why the blonde babes of bikini beaches to the north, south, east and west are generally so vapor-brained, the vacuum enfeebled space between their eyes demonstrating the known and scientifically tested and valid, as documented in Popular Science, fact that blondliness is a certain sign of overexposure to brain-shrinking heat I was a little bit blond in my youth, but I’ve overcome the effects through liberal application of rubic cubish mind-games and New York Times crossword puzzles and careful parsing of the deepest logical constructs of certain right- winged flavors-of-the-month so proclaimed by the Elders of the Protocols of the We-Got-Ours-So-Fuck-the-Rest-of-You Society, also known as the "Let's Put Morals back in Morality Coalition For the American Way"... but i digress the point is i have worked hard at intellectually stimulating activities that enhanced my brain power and reduced my heat-induced blond inhibition on thoughtful thinking and was, consequently,looking forward to being more and more brainly as my hair buried the blond past in a grey thicket and my cranium became more and more a Caesar salad bowl of insight and ideas of the highest smartness, all my mental marbles intact and clicking... but I worry about this heat and what it’s doing to my so carefully preserved forms of cogitationalism, as evidenced by my difficulty for the past couple of days to master the complications of getting out of bed and putting my shoes on, shoes, I must add, that don’t even have laces to master then, when I finally got up this morning, looking in my bathroom mirror I’m positive I saw wisps of blond over my left and right ears which might mean that this is my last poem until the weather cools down and my brain, reverting to a winterly mode, returns to a state somewhat less blondly unambitious 
Photo by Thane Zander The next poem is by Mississippi poet, Aleda Shirley. The poem is from her book Dark Familiar, published by Sarabande Books of Louisville, Kentucky, in 2006. Shirley is the author of two books, the first of which the first, Chinese Architecture, won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award in 1986. Blue Over Orange October's first cold day & when I get in the car my breath forms a brief chrysanthemum on the inside of the windshield & I'm aware suddenly, of all the yellow leaking form the world, the lost green veins of the leaves. On my list of errands the last stop is the video store where the movies I watched in college are not classified as Cult Favorites or Classics & the beautiful boy who works the counter rolls his eyes when I take out the Truffaut for the dozenth time. Not again, he says. He's nice to everyone, but he sees me, if he sees me at all, as an adult woman in a dark coat, with an expensive bag. We touch only when we exchange money. The lobby of a narrow French apartment, an allee of poplars; those are scenes from a movie, not my life. I'm unlikely to rent the movies that excite him: Japanese animation, a documentary on mountain climbing, seventies concert films from before he was born. Hours later, at home with my glass of bourbon, he's with me still, & I think, out of nowhere I tell myself, about how when I was thirteen & we lived overseas I saw middle-aged NCOs with beer guts & sunburned scalps walking the streets of San Angeles City, holding the hands of girls not much older than I was, girls paid to be adoring, who covered their mouths when they giggled & wore strange yellow nylons the color of no human skin. When we'd walk down those streets, my friends & I, our raffia bags stuffed with devalued pesos, Filipino boys would sit on their haunches & make wet clucking noises at us. Back then I imagined the misery of the teenaged prostitutes, though not in any detail, & the men's daughters stateside, reading Tiger Beat in their rooms, trying on Yardley lipstick. Later I thought about the wives, left behind at Lackland or Minot or Clovis, the scent of coffee,Salems, Emeraude, & something that may or may not have been history pushing them to the sides of their own lives; now I think of the men - how little of life turns out to ba a choice, after all, & the way those choices we do make can transform beauty into pathos or desire into commerce. We are, all of us, almost alike. 
Photo by Thane Zander Nothing makes one fell less like writing than trying to follow a writer who is so much better than anything you're going to come up with. I do not want to write tonight I do not want to write tonight I read a new poet and it was like flying inside a skyrocket crashing into the sky exploding over an ocean a thousand sparkles multiplied in briny reflection above and below and all around and I am struck dumb by the green fire above and below and all around and do not want to write tonight 
Photo by Thane Zander Here are two poems from the Spring 1997 issue of Exchanges. The first poem is by Zehra Cirak. Born in Istanbul, Cirak was moved to Germany as an infant in 1963. She has lived in Berlin since 1982, publishing in numerous anthologies and has won stipends to continue her work. Her poem was translated from German by Elizabeth Oehlkers Grandmother's Nods Is it true? Can it be that in those years leived long ago she had lips that pressed like a hot iron on Grandfather's mouth till he glowed with her love? Today Grandmother's face is lipless since Grandfather's beatification she's drawn them within like her soft words the folded slit which once so flattened Grandfather rarely opens now Today Grandmother will be 99 and to all our begging and bothering to tell stories from long ago she nods without a word sometimes shakes her head looks through us and smiles as if she sees Grandfather she blinks and still knows despite the distance his sore lips The second poem is by Hennrik Nordbrandt, a Danish poet with more than 20 published collections of poetry. This poem is from a collection of elegies he wrote after the sudden death of his girl friend. The poem was translated from Danish by Thom Satterlee. Pragmatic The things that were here before you died and the things that have come after: To the former belong, first of all, your clothes,the jewelry and the photographs and the name of the woman you were named after and who also died young... But also a couple receipts, the arrangement of a certain corner of the living room, the shirt you ironed for me and which I keep carefully under my pile of shirts, certain pieces of music, and the mangy dog that still stands around smiling stupidly, as though you were here. To the latter belong my new fountain pen, a well-known perfume on the skin of a woman I hardly even know and the new light bulbs I put in the bedroom lamp by whose light I read about you in every book I read. The former remind me that you were, the latter that you no longer are. It is the near indistinguishableness I find hardest to bear. 
Photo by Thane Zander A lesson from one of the old-timers. Old McDonald the poet must be more the poet of his stories or plots than of his verses, inasmuch as he is a poet by virtue of the imitative element in his work, and it is actions he imitates. .....Aristotle's Poetics Old McDonald had a farm, e-i e-i o and on this farm there were oink oinks quack quacks cluck clucks moo moos etc etc that did nothing but oink and moo and quack and etc and that amused children and that’s a pretty good thing but it’s not art it’s just a little nursery rhyme but then one day the animals quit their mooing and quacking and cluck clucking and whatever and took action, tied Old McDonald up in the barn and took over and McDonald’s farm became Animal Farm and there was art as defined by Mr. You-Bet- It’s-Greek-To-Me Aristotle 
Photo by Thane Zander Next, I have four poems from Pierced by a Ray of Sun, a small anthology compiled by noted librarian Ruth Gordon. The book was published in 1995 by HarperCollins. The first short poem is by Natalie Robbins. The only biographical information about contributors in the book is their birth year (in this case 1938)and I was unable to fine a "Natalie Robbins" via google that I could be sure was this poet. Birth Elegy VI I've learned something: nothing is fair, but you can't change the rules. The next poet is Dona Luongo Stein, born in 1935. Visiting Day, Worcester County House of Correction I am a good girl, I have come directly from my Ancient Greek Class for a visit; I have brought the shoes you wrote for; although I am afraid of the high spiked fence, towers around the walled yard, and the beefy guards staring at my spring dress blown against my thighs, I walk from the yard filled with daffodils, hyacinths, and sculptured bushes into the prison. I imagine your brown eyes filled with patience as you wait while one door is unlocked then locked behind you: they bring you to me. You are not in a striped uniform but wear a gray work suit. You are as neat as you always were at home; hair trimmed, face absolutely clean-shaven, and nails their neat half-moons. I look at everything but your eyes while you talk. You have become a tape recording: you ask where my mother goes, and when, then call her a whore. Quickly I hand over the shiny black shoes; I cannot look at your eyes, they are not yours, Father. The third piece is my James Masao Mitsui, born in 1940. I think I might have used the poem before, from another book, but it is so powerful to be such a minimalist thing, I am pleased to use it again. Destination: Tule Lake Relocation Center, May 20, 1942 She had raised the window higher than her head; then paused to lift wire spectacles, wiping sight back with a wrinkled hand- kerchief. She wanted to watch the old place until the train's passing erased the tarpaper walls and tin roof; she had been able to carry away so little. The finger of her left hand worried two strings attached to a baggage tag flapping from her lapel. The last poem from the anthology was translated from the Tewa by Herbert J. Spinden. It's author is unknown. Tewa is spoken by Pueblo people, mostly in the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico, north of Santa Fe. From the the 1980 census thirty years ago, only 1,298 speakers, almost all bilingual in English. Each pueblo or reservation where it is spoken has a dialect of its own. The Mountain Far Away My home over there, my home over there, My home over there, now I remember it! And when I see a mountain far away, Why,then I weep. alas! What can I do? What can I do? Alas! What can I do? My home over there, now I remember it. 
Photo by Thane Zander Maybe another lesson here... Chinaski if you live to a reasonably decent age, you’ll look back and discover that 99.5 to 99.9 percent of your span was boring as cold dishwater so what is one to write about consider Bukowski who turned his life into books and poems that never mention the name Bukowski Instead we’re left to wonder about Hank Chinaski 
Photo by Thane Zander Here I have two poems by Wendell Berry, from his book Collected Poems, 1957-1982, published by North Point Press. The Fear of Darkness The tall marigolds darken. The baby cries for better reasons than it knows. The young wife walks and walks among the shadows meshed in the rooms. And he sits in the doorway, looking toward the woods, long after the stars come out. He feels the slow sky turn toward him, and wait. His birthright is a third-hand Chevrolet, bought for too much. "I floorboard the son of a bitch, and let her go." The Plan My old friend, the owner of a new boat, stops by to ask me to fish with him, and I say I will - both of us knowing that we may never get around to it, it may be years before we're both idle again on the same day. But we make a plan, anyhow, in honor of friendship and the fine spring weather and the new boat and our sudden thought of the water shining under the morning fog. 
Photo by Thane Zander We live in age of amazing stuff, just about every day. Sol brother I read a story once that imagined stars were sentient creatures, unimaginably remote from all others like themselves, great lonely beings who, through loneliness and the weight of billions of years of life, grew wise as any god ever imagined I remember this story as, just minutes ago, I heard on the news of the discovery of something called “plasma dust,” inorganic matter that creates little DNA-like links that define it, that replicates itself, that grows, and that, in all other ways, demonstrates something that looks like a kind of inorganic life flourishing in the blazing furnace of stars like our own, a kind of life unimagined by anyone but, maybe, a science fiction writer forty years ago 
Photo by Thane Zander Here's the third and final part of Anonymous' Message in a Bottle. III. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men Armed & Ready I’m still moving. The city is where my head might be or on the outskirts of town mingling with the unwanted and used up. My breath made it back a minute ago, my thoughts, nowhere to be found. Go back to sleep, baby. I’ll be alright after a good night’s sleep. Promise to leave the light on. And I’ll promise to come home. You know everything vanishes, everything dissolves at the right temperature. Yet, you ask for nothing. Nothing but my hand on your heart and a story, fragile and green. Diorama It is quiet except for the steady hum of the refrigerator. All the shades are drawn. TV, radio turned off. The CD player is loaded. Final decision has not been made so three are queued and ready: Boxer, The National; Blonde on Blonde, Dylan; The Forgotten Arm, Aimee Mann. The dining room table is bare. One flower, in a narrow crystal vase, sits in the center. Purple Orchid. There’s nothing left to do. Go ahead. Turn the page. Night before haiku We are color and light: a bird on a sill flash of pale blue Note on the Refrigerator Dearest, The sound of a bird, of thunder, of wind, of music; that is what we live for I can no longer recall the different shades the sky turns when it is filled with birds, empty except for one or two renegade clouds. I don't want to be buried. Want no part of this earth that has abandoned me. I can no longer tell the difference between a call of a tanager and the low rumble of thunder. I have become both deaf and blind, unable to put syllables together to make words; unable to arrange words into meaning beyond hopelessness, despair, loss. My only wish is silence. To forget; every thought, every quiet glance and touch. Then hold my breath and wait until stillness becomes enough. Yours always and for ever We can make that list now Brother John. Check it twice. Once you gone baby, you gone for good... Lust Two bits four bits six bits a dollar long hair longer legs last call & gone. Gluttony 2218 First Avenue South: free me up tie me down ‘til I can’t see the Promised Land. Greed All the Way, Frank Sinatra; Don’t Explain, Cat Power; Jean Genie, David Bowie. Sloth whatthehellwashernametheonethatsaid you lucky young man damnshewaskillerhot Wrath Just one? What can a man do with just one? Isn’t even worth crossing the goddamn room. Envy One. Pride Anything less than zero. ...and good and gone shortcake. Mourning Sonnet (XXVII) I watch you breathe, your breast moves with every inhale, stars blink with every exhale. It is beautiful; it is truth. Your hands smooth, your lips, slightly parted. The earthy scent of sex lingers. I can’t imagine night without your body. Naked you are a thin beam of light breaking through the window. Naked you are small as one of your hands. We feel the weight of knowing, we are gravity, we are complete, deliberate. Tell me your first wish, made at midnight as a meteor burned through a cloud. I want to know how it feels to get lost in the motion of you moving within me; that feeling of being home. 
Photo by Thane Zander One has to protect one's assets, particularly after you reach a certain age. rear guard it’s about age 50 when men begin to lose their butts nobody knows why and nobody knows where they go maybe they all go to Vegas and spend the rest of their days flat-cheeked on a bar stool, or maybe there’s an old men’s butt graveyard, like the elephants have, just instead of ivory tusks scattered across a valley of final elephantine rest, there’s piles and piles of Sans-a-Belt pants like Ed McMahon used to pitch on the Johnny Carson show, just laying around butt-less on field of white cotton underpants… well past that age of backside backsliding I have, so far, maintained my posterior, mostly through careful and constant monitoring, making sure said body part does not get away from me by, several times a day, grabbing my ass and whistling Dixie it is clear, in hindsight, that this was an effective prescription for protecting my assets, seeing that it has worked very well for me, having still, even in these later years, my own carry-on cushion whence ever I roam 
Photo by Thane Zander Next, I have two short poems from a poet friend, Dave Rushlander, who I haven't heard from in a very long line. Dave, if you're out there, wave or something. The poems are from Dave's book Voices in My Head Wasted I am a soft-shoe wastrel See me dancing through the puddles. Take care, beware: I aim to pull you in. Journal Entry 12 You open my journal and press your thumb to my spine shooting off synapses. wonder and pain shadowy darkness and firefly light, open and then closed. 
Photo by Thane Zander Here's a poem-like thing fresh off your newspaper's front pages. Despite the subject I don't consider it a political poem, but more like a warning from one who warned ten years ago and was not heeded. I certainly hope you do better this time. wanting to drive the big bus now twenty years of change in this state and he’s always been a rider, never the driver, even though he held the driver’s seat during most of that time because being driver requires a moral and intellectual center and he’s never had one of those but he’s got the good-old-boy background and the good-old-boy accent and does cowboy boots mighty fine and though lots of people in this state love him, most just tolerate, because, well, hell, he don’t do nothing, and gov’ment that don’t do much ain’t likely to fuck up, make hay prices go up; cattle price go down, so let’s just leave him in charge and maybe he won’t do nothing for four more years - all in all, a good recipe for electoral success in the great state of this state - but now he wants to move on up to the east side, wants to be driver this time, in a bigger bus , this time - well don’t say I didn’t warn you, just like I warned you last time a fella from the great state of this state wanted to move on up to a bigger bus, set aside the training wheels, and he, at least had a good heart, but you didn’t pay any attention to me and look where it got us, and I’m thinking all this this morning over breakfast because the fellow in the booth right in front of me looks exactly like the fella that ran against the fella who wants to hijack the big bus this time around… he lost, the fella who looks like the fella in front of me, and that’s just doo damn bad, maybe for you too 
Photo by Thane Zander Now I have three poets from The Faber Book of 20th Century German Poems. All three poets are young, the oldest barely more than 40 years old. The first of the poets, and the oldest, is Volker Sielaff, born in 1966 in the Lausitz region. Currently he lives as a writer and freelance journalist in Dresden. Since 1990, he published poems, essays and reviews in literary journals and anthologies. His poems have been translated into English, Czech, Hungarian, and Arabic. in 2007 he received the Lessing-award. His poem was translated by MichaelHofmann,who was also editor of the anthology. Sleepless The racket of the birds in the trees at a quarter past three. Cioran complained of sleeplessness all his life. I throw myself blindly into the arms of the morning. No experience is communicable. The next poem is by Matthias Goritz. Born in 1969 in Hamburg, Goritz has taught at many German Universities as well as at Bard College in New York. A recipient of numerous fellowships, he has contributed prose and poetry to many magazines, anthologies and major German newspapers. He has also worked as translator and editor. This poem was also translated by Michael Hofmann. For Volodya in Moscow. I go over to the window and turn into a fine evening What do people get up to in heaven? If you die you're no longer in the world In heaven they eat ice cream - Or they will do if the have colour, at any rate Is colour just a dreamspace I'm in Mama's belly God is making pizza there When I get out, there'll be hell to pay Mama yells I say hello I prefer not to imagine hell I'm pretty sure it exists Unlike a lot of things Nothing is coloured white My mothers are descended from apes I'm sick of the sight of bananas It all makes noise And purgatory must be something like a chemical laundry Everything in the world must die And if we live on afterwards, for instance in heaven, I bet it'll be raining. The final poet from the anthology is Jan Wagner. Born in Hamburg in 1971,Wagner is a poet and translator of poetry from English. He studied English and American studies in Hamburg, Dublin and Berlin and has worked as a freelance reviewer for various newspapers and publisher. He has lived in Berlin since 1995. Translator for his poem was Georgina Paul. Frogs From 1800 until his early death in 1810 the scientist Johann Willhelm Ritter - inspired by the discoveries of Luigi Galvani - undertook numerous experiments on himself with the so-called Voltaic Pile. the room - a chaos. what's not yet been sold forms on the floor the scarcely decipherable formula of his endeavour: wires, instruments and books. empty bottles. his wife is long since gone. and so is his last tooth: "undeterred by respect for m own body" achim von arnim said, he battles with the wine and with the premise that all life consists of electricity. outside on the lake it is suddenly uncannily still - the frogs are in secret transmitting the new codeword to each other. One more from the anthology, since I like it. This one by Hauke Huckstadt, also born in 1969. I was able to find nothing else about Huckstadt beyond his birthdate. The translator was Michael Hofmann. No One Home The room we lived in together was deserted. I hung around in front of the window - a piece of wood getting in your light. You were at one with the grandfather chair in which I write these lines, where you spent whole weeks muttering litanies of human physical deficiencies to yourself: Books cracked open and stimulating like packets of prescription medicine or distalgesics. Orr halting intercourse called to mind the injuries it was intended to treat. In the morning, we conducted an autopsy on the wardrobe, yanked open its doors, and reached among the small bones of the coathangers where we dangled together. 
Photo by Thane Zander This is a little piece I wrote this week after rearing a quotation from Persian mystic, Rumi. the fish who seeks the sea Rumi tells of the fish who vainly sought the sea while the great ocean was all around and within him… I am the fish seeking glory beyond the glory of my mere existence seeking beauty beyond the unmined beauty of my heart and in every other heart that touches mine seeking wealth when no wealth can buy the things I most desire or the forgetfulness that is my greatest need I am the fish seeking gods when the only God is within me, within that cosmic speck of my self that is born of all selves but like no other one, master of my own universe, a creature of all universes but like no other one, my own self that will fade, with its universe, when the time for a newer self, a newer reality, arrives I am the fish and I am the sea I seek and hope some day to find 
Photo by Thane Zander And now,another anthology, this one, Women of the Red Plain, a collection of contemporary Chinese Women's poetry. The book was first published in China in 1992 by Chinese Literature Press of Beijing, my copy published by Penguin at the same time. The first of three poets from the anthology for this week is Li Xiaoyu. The poet, born in Hubei Province in 1951 was working as a railyway system hygienist in 1972 when she published her first series of poems. Beginning in 1976, she has worked for the Poetry Journal in Beijing, where she also attended the Lu Xun Academy of Literature as well as the Beijing University for advanced studies. The Silk Dream Moon thin as water And watery candlelight Shine upon China A sleeping silkworm Exhaling a long long thread of silk On a nine-hundred and sixty thousand square miles Mulberry leaf Its skin cold as ice,luminous as first snow This great river of silk With its silent billowing waves With hidden perfume drifting and shuddering shades of plum blossoms With its dazzling riot of bright lights With its soft soft footfall of a princess In the quiet recess of the tall pillars With its iridescent scales of dragon and phoenix dancing To the music of bells and drums. In the bronze mirror Weave another song of the Yellow River Another swirl of solitary smoke in a vast desert Another and another city gate Volume after volume of poems Oh China The China by the pines and beneath the moon The China of bamboo tablets in raised hands Oh the China of tinkling porcelain vases Oh you the silken culture All that's carved in stones, etched in bronze The profound soul of Huaxia* Arises And soaring upward This night In the great silken river Thin and airy as a cicada's wings Slippery-soft as waves Is there a Zheng He** setting sail for a distant voyage To chart out a passage to the far far West into A rippling soaring ribbon? *Old name for China **An ancient Chinese explorer The next poet is Lin Zi. Born in 1935, Lin did editorial work in both Tianjin and Harbin. Since 1981 she has devoted most of her time to writing. Yes, I Admit One mailbox, another mailbox Every mailbox Is blinded in one eye. Yes, I admit - There's one unposted letter in my pocket. One thought that undertakes no distant flight, One wish that reaches no other shore, And these now play havoc in my pocket. Last night willfulness and confidence - On my long checked thoroughfare Open a route of green lights. My wavering emotions surge forth, Exposing a bold corner, Make a rubbing of the soul's true image, Make the night into a silhouette cutting. Stars no longer seem so remote And out of the dawn clouds immersed with sincerity Emerges an envelope, the color of blue sky... In this moment,I wait between the mailboxes, Waiting for someone to come out and argue with me: I shall harden my indecision, And in a second, decisive Mail off the letter... The last poet from the anthology for this week is Yang Liuhong. Yang, born in Beijing in 1965, spent her childhood years during the decade of political turmoil of the "cultural revolution" in the various cadre schools in the villages where her parents were sent. In 1986 she graduated from the Population Department of the Chinese People's University and, at the time of publication, was on the staff of the Social Institute of that university. The Butterfly Specimen No longer able to fly You yet offer men the dream of flight; No longer able to dream You yet offer men the memories of summer; You yet immortalize all memories. Ages later when men See you again They will surely realize Your memories, your dreams... 
Photo by Thane Zander Continuing my love affair with Rumi. case closed Rumi says: “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.” the wonder of reading is in the finding of someone who seems to read your mind, saying exactly the thing you have thought and tried to say in many ways, none as clear or deep or true as the words you just read it is the bane of the poet to find such a phrase, jealous at its finding and, at the same time, sad with lose, knowing there is no more you can say about this than that which you just read knowing the subject is closed to you now, never to be reopened knowing the futility of having shot and shot and shot and always missed that which another poet has so cleanly hit knowing that poets read poetry only at their own risk 
Photo by Thane Zander Next, I have two poems by Sri Lankan poetRienzi Crasz. The poem is from his book, Gamboling With the Divine, published in 2003 by TSAR Publications. Crusz was born in Sri Lanak and came to Canada in 1965. Educated at the Universities of Ceylon, Toronto and Waterloo, he was, for many years, reference librarian at the University of Waterloo. This book is his tenth collection of poetry. Let Us Now "Let us now in the embracing love of the Father, wish each other the Peace of Christ" so says Pastor Malone of St :Michael's. So,my brown hand stretches to greet the old lady standing beside me. She turns, glares, extends a thin pale index finger. I accept this one-fifth brotherhood, still believing, still refusing to snuff out the last candle to our darkness. When Tarzan Shook Hands with God Many, many years later - I understood the secret of Tarzan and his kingdom. Herman Brix in the "New Adventures of Tarzan": a child watches with bulging eyes how the Ape-man fashions airy highways from jungle vines saves Jane from the leaping lion with only a "shoo!" and a violent gesture; who bathes in limpid waters as crocodile snouts cruise a body length away how by twilight he comes back to his tree-top home with a string of fish dangling from his waist, a basket of sun-ripe wood apple and mango. Where paradise is eternal whispering of leaves, sweet mountain air gigantic trees thrust their heads to heaven, poetry in bird song, mountain dew, where the elephant comes like a hound dog to his clarion call, and God's silence seeps through the waking forest like spring sap. I think I know the secret of it all - Tarzan's contract with God, that warm handshake: "So long as you refuse the sin of Adam, so long as you see Me in every tree, shrub and flower, in every creature that breathes and roams your kingdom, you shall be lord of this jungle paradise, Consider these as my favourite lines of poetry, Learn them by rote." 
Photo by Thane Zander More Rumi. there is a field Rumi says: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. _____ talking to a friend, he a believer, and me, not, about the differences between the old and new testaments of the Christian bible, when Rumi intervenes - the old testament, the book of wrongdoing and rightdoing and the rites and strictures of both, an earth bound by the regulations of a creator who lays out rules for everything from how to pray to what and when you eat The Christ of the new testament having no time for such as that, a prophet who has no time for rules old or new, a prophet of the field, where wrongdoing and rightdoing lie together in the grass, irrelevant, too much world/ time/life, to spend any of it talking about them, a field where the great soul over all souls cushions the heads of both the right and the wrong, the good and the bad, requiring only acceptance of that great soul to nullify all the harsh and vengeful warnings that came before a precious dream, even if not my own 
Photo by Thane Zander My last poem this week from my library is by Devreaux Baker. The poem is from the book Red Willow People, published last year by Wild Ocean Press. I bought the book this week at the second-hand book store. It's unusual to find a book so new on their shelves. This is Baker's third collection of poetry. Her awards and honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, A Hawthornden Castle International Fellowship, three California Arts Council Grants, and the Helene Wurlitzer Writing Fellowship. Bear Berry, Mullen, Red Willow Bark Inside the walls of the pueblo there is no electricity no running water. Outside the walls the other world goes on. We are gathering bear berry, mullen, red willow bark, osha root, yerba santa. Your grandmother says This is a good smoking blend. Inside the walls where willows are regarded as relatives of the four winds, knots of tourists crowd around the pueblo woman. She is telling jokes the don't understand, but they are laughing anyway. Red willow is for prayer sticks and amulets. Changing Woman Up at first light blue, watery, thin, Taos is dreaming herself backwards, onto the trail that moves beneath my sleeping body. A dark arrow forming from Santa Fe and going further all the way up the mountain into the sacred waters of Blue Lake, backwards through time, scooping up all the stories of the people, carrying them cradled like infants against cold. She is walking up the; trail headed north, spilling words out of her mouth. K'e, the kinship way of Changing Woman. She is leading the way on blue horses forming out of snow. A long black braid oiled by many hands of night falls down her back. Ash tree, alders, cottonwoods share the dreaming place. Smoky mountain fog dreams where stories get passed from heart to hand to mouth, moving down through all the generations. Outside snow is falling in Not-Yet-Light places. Taos is dreaming beneath my body, lifting my shape into her arms, bringing me with her back up the mountain. 
Photo by Thane Zander Finishing off this week with a little tribute to the community of poets with whom all my poems of the past five years have been written. a community; a house Rumi said: “There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise. Drink all your passion, and be a disgrace. Close both eyes to see with the other eye.” ___ a community a house the sweet noise of poets fearlessly sighted seeing with the lens of their unobstructed eye the proud and horrible stories of our kind speaking 
Photo by Thane Zander Another summer week ended, the month, the hottest on record, tomorrow, high predicted 105 degrees. I've had enough. Just remember, despite the heat, that all the material presented here remains the property of its creators. You're welcome to my stuff; just credit "Here and Now" and me. And "me" is allen itz, owner and producer of this blog, hot stuff, you betcha. |
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