POTD - November 7 by Peter J. Harris

November 7

by Peter J. Harris
from a prompt by Beth Marquez

The forecast calls for pain
—Robert Cray

shoulders aching
inches from goodbye
squatting Arroyo Seco boulders
tortured foreheads tilted in
fractured intimacy

a kiss could resurrect me
heal my palsied mouth
hold off epic flood already
misting my view of receding
horizon in her beloved face
keepsake face of so many
nights my name a guitar solo
of pleasure & satisfaction
her name in wailing gratitude
beyond any lyrics I've ever sung

keepsake flood plain
we've skipped across these same boulders
sculpted by galloping waters in rainy seasons
of confessions & sensuality

namesake flood plain
sitting in for all places we've hiked
while savoring touch on narrow pathways
unraveling esoteric conversations sensing family in the wind
daring to glimpse our future on a sunset's horizon

forecast calls for pain
a momentum in opposite directions
a locomotion of unstoppable emptiness
water nowhere
not to sip nor to soften earth
we could muddy & smear on our forgiveness in a ritual of reunion

her mouth a pool of salvation
if we weren't drowning in this final telling
inflamed in our dreaded knowing
hunger too exhausted to wait for rain

Catch Peter J. Harris in Los Angeles at Poetry Sonidos March 11, 2018

Poem of the Day [VIDEO] — The Ecstasy by Philip Lopate

Read by Samantha Spaulding See all 5 and links to the texts at http://bit.ly/j33tBz

Poem of the Day - Berryman by W.S. Merwin

Berryman

by W. S. Merwin

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 in the day 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 walls with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

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

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

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More on John Berryman

POTD - Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms by Hayan Charara

Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms

Hayan Charara

The trees alongside the fence
bear fruit, the limbs and leaves speeches
to you and me. They promise to give the world
back to itself. The apple apologizes
for those whose hearts bear too much zest
for heaven, the pomegranate
for the change that did not come
soon enough. Every seed is a heart, every heart
a minefield, and the bees and butterflies
swarm the flowers on its grave.
The thorn bushes instruct us
to tell our sons and daughters
who carry sticks and stones
to mend their ways.
The oak tree says to eat
only fruits and vegetables;
the pine says to eat all the stirring things.
My neighbor left long ago and did not hear
any of this. In a big country
the leader warns the leader of a small country
there must be change or else.
Birds are the same way, coming and going,
wobbling thin branches.
The warblers express pain, the crows regret,
or is it the other way around?
The mantra today is the same as yesterday.
We must become different.
The plants must, the animals,
and the ants and worms, just like the carmakers,
the soap makers before them,
and the manufacturers of rubber
and the sellers of tea, tobacco, and salt.
Such an ancient habit, making ourselves new.
My neighbor looks like my mother
who left a long time ago
and did not hear any of this.
Just for a minute, give her back to me,
before she died, kneeling
in the dirt under the sun, calling me darling
in Arabic, which no one has since.

POTD - The City Limits by A.R. Ammons

The City Limits

by A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

---

From The Selected Poems: 1951-1977, Expanded Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1986 by A. R. Ammons.

City Limits by A.R. Ammons read by Ryan Scott Nance http://5thingsilearnedtoday.com

I love thinking how so much of Ammons' greatest poetry he wrote while an elementary school principal, a real estate salesman, an editor, and an executive in his father's biological glass company. His surprising and swerving mind embues the world we live our lives in with the radiance of meaning and beauty.

POTD - After Mayakovksy by Denis Johnson

AFTER MAYAKOVSKY

by Denis Johnson

It’s after one. You’re probably alone. 
All night the moon rings like a telephone 
in an empty booth above our separateness. 
Now is the hour one answers. I am home. 
Hello, my heart, my god, my president, 
my darling: I’m alarmed by the alarm 
clock’s iridescent face, hung like a charm 
from darkness’s fat ear. This accident 
that was my life will have its witnesses: 
now, while the world lies wholly motionless 
and sorry in a crapulence of stars, 
now is the hour one rises to address 
the ages and history of the universe; 
I swear you’ll never see my face again.

http://bit.ly/hUfoHr Read by Ryan Scott Nance

Denis Johnson ​wrote only poems for a while, and a lot of them. His third book, Incognito Lounge, showed a voracious imagination and relentless voice. Both of these have found full expression in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Tree of Smoke.

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More Poems of the Day​

Blog

POTD - For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry by Christopher Smart

about 6 years ago

POTD - Dire Wolf by Lucie Brock Broido

about 6 years ago

Timelapse Map​

Finals of Copa Poética this Friday Night, 8-10pm in Highland Park

This Friday, July 11th, I'll be reading alongside some of the most dynamic poets in Los Angeles for the last of the Copa Poética series, looking to capture some of the spirit and energy of the World Cup in words.

For the series, I've been writing a new form I am calling the XI (and 11-lined poem).

The most recent post over on Manipulated Bestiary (my poem a week for a year book project) is a tribute to Miroslav Klose, the player with the most World Cup goals in history who will be playing this Sunday in the finals.

XI: Klose - Die Mannschaft

The years swim back to you, brightening
your implacable wisdom with strength

Do you not stand at the edge of the sky
with your nervous arms extended invoking a personal
God to breathe a wind into your empty heart
like the rest of us? Exchanging your being with
the terrible angels wheeling overhead one exhaled breath
at a time? The winds gnaw at your face

the time you move through is the time of monument
and story, grain for grain exchanging marble for stone
we outlive our own lives in your softening cheek.

Achingly Beautiful Illustrations for Whitman's Song of Myself

Artist Allen Crawford creates 256 pages of hand-drawn illustrations together to light on the centerpiece of Whitman's titanic Leaves of Grass in his absolutely gorgeous Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself. 

Song of Myself

VI

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
	hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
	more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
	green stuff woven.

Or I guess if is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
	may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of 
	the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
	zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
	same, I receive then the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
	soon out of their mother’s laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
	mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
	for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
	and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
	taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
	children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
	at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
	luckier.

POTD - A Boat by Richard Brautigan

A Boat

by Richard Brautigan

Read by Brandon Jordan Brown 

O beautiful
was the werewolf   
in his evil forest.   
We took him
to the carnival   
and he started   
   crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.   
Electric
green and red tears   
flowed down
his furry cheeks.   
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark   
water.

Brandon Jordan Brown

Poets' Poem of the Day - Rules for Captain Ahab’s Provincetown Poetry Workshop by Martín Espada

This is the first in a series of Poets' Poems of the Day, suggested to me by amazing poet friends. Martín Espada was one of the poets that both Luivette Resto and Yago Cura wanted me to read. 

Rules for Captain Ahab’s Provincetown Poetry Workshop

By MARTÍN ESPADA

1.   Ye shall be free to write a poem on any subject, as long as it’s the White Whale. 

2.   A gold doubloon shall be granted to the first among ye who in a poem sights the White Whale. 

3.   The Call Me Ishmael Award shall be given to the best poem about the White Whale, with publication in *The White Whale Review.* 

4.   The Herman Melville Memorial Picnic and Softball Game shall be open to whosoever of ye writes a poem about following thy Captain into the maw of hell to kill the White Whale. 

5.   There shall be a free floating coffin for any workshop participant who falls overboard whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 

6.   There shall be a free leg, carved from the jawbone of a whale, for any workshop participant who is dismasted whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 

7.   There shall be a free funeral at sea, complete with a chorus of stout hearties singing sea chanteys about the White Whale, for any workshop participant who is decapitated whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 

8.   Ye who seek not the White Whale in thy poems shall be harpooned.

 

My 5 - Portable Poetry Library - Ryan Nance

Most of my poetry library ( a library I've been very proud of) is in storage, or has been traded, gifted or lost. I've dragged it around the world with me, in cardboard boxes, plastic bins, bags. It's grown. There was a period before I first left for study in Madrid where I thought about winnowing it to the essentials. I would after all not be able to read it all, even given the chance. I ended up adding to it: new books by some of my favorite poets, old books by poets I'd never heard of. It was and is a joy to find, remember and discover new works. Like stumbling upon a neighborhood I'd never once been to before. Delicious. Full of possibility. In this period I was adding young poets ( Ben Lerner, Matthea Harvey, Tracey K. Smith [whose Life on Mars just won the Pulitzer], Christine Hume ), classmates (Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Tom Healy and Ravi Shankar), 

The Great Reduction

For a lot of reasons, having a large library, even of slim, tidy volumes, became impossible for me. Storage, display, space, time. I've reduced my library down to the ones I read. Seems a bit self-fulfilling, I know. But, I am often asked (and overwhelmed by the possibilities) for the books and poets I'd recommend people start with. This great filtering reduction of mine has made it abundantly clear.

So here are My 5 Portable Poetry Library

1  - Louise Glück

I haven't always been clear that I got much from her work. It was hard for me, with my life as my only computational material, to access her charged, urgent, masterful poetry. But their phrases and imagery, premises and tropes, have installed themselves as part of my psyche. I refer often to a line or image, find myself recommending. And have made sure that her books have continued to elude the great reduction.

If you haven't read her before I'd say that First Four Books of Poems is a good place to start. You'll find some of the more well-known poems ( Mock Orange, All Hallows). 

Her Pulitzer Prize Winning Wild Iris and her A Village Life both offer a vast country of tight, smart, surprising poems. 

Read by Daniel Dean Demerin See all 5 and links to the texts at http://bit.ly/j33tBz

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2 - Donald Revell

Revell was a poet I first read while an undergraduate. I had had a very different expectation of what poetry could be before this period in my reading. When I was asked to respond to a poem for my grad school application, it was The Psalmist from The New Dark Ages that I wrote on. And now, 15 years later, I find poems of his I'd never met before and am relieved to find that the interest and power I'd felt then hasn't worn off. His books have also managed to find a place in my bags and suitcases as my library shrank. 

---

3 - Rainer Maria Rilke

There are a few things (books, songs, paintings, places, tidbits of knowledge) that seem to contain immense and irreducible truth in something which fits into our human scale. Rilke's 3rd Elegy from his Duino Elegies has always been one of those mysteries. I've read it to people when I am ready to sound silly in my enthusiasms. I read it and its bookmates (all phenomenal poems) over and over again. On the very first meeting of grad school first-year workshop, I was asked to name a poet I cherished and explain why it was that one that I chose. I cheated. I chose two. Robert Hass (coming up) because he helped me be a better poet and Rilke because he helped me be a better person. I heard snickers at my nearly religious reverence for these two from my classmates. Rilke never has rewarded my admiration with quotables. In fact, I realize exactly how remarkable his work with the distance I feel it is from normal speech. It isn't the sort of thing you can even try to explain to people without sounding a little kookie. So, instead of explaining, I'll hope to be able to indulge in Rilke talk with more and more people soon.

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4 - Robert Hass

I have been prepared with a clear, emphatic answer to the often asked question: Who's your favorite poet? Robert Hass.
His works have been a consistent companion throughout my entire adult life. He has been the author of the words that soothed some of the worst hurts I've ever had to endure; the mind that has inspired the wonder and curiosity of mine that I have become so proud of, helped me formulate so much of my own framework for approaching the world. 

His poems are the poems I've read and shared, memorized and given. All 5 of his books have and will survive any poetry reduction. I have bought 5 copies of Field Guide because I keep giving it away and then needing my own copy again.

Read by Ryan Nance See all 5 and links to the texts at http://bit.ly/j33tBz

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5 - Mary Oliver

Oliver's work and words are alive with wisdom, energy and balm. I have had to keep her books around because I have needed them. And there is such reassurance that she has such an enormously large body of work, an inexhaustible fountain of some of my very favorite poetry.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver read by Devereau Chumrau http://5thingsilearnedtoday.com

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my 5 is a series brought to us from the incredibly interesting readers/friends. If you have a point of view that you want to share in your own my 5, drop us a line.

POTD - The Sleepers - Part 1 by Walt Whitman

The Sleepers

by Walt Whitman

1

I wander all night in my vision, 
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, 
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, 
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, 
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

How solemn they look there, stretch'd and still, 
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.

The wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists, 
The gash'd bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door'd rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates, 
The night pervades them and infolds them.

The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband, 
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed, 
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs, 
And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully 
wrapt.

The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep, 
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son 
sleeps, 
The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he 
sleep? 
And the murder'd person, how does he sleep?

The female that loves unrequited sleeps, 
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps, 
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day 
sleeps, 
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all 
sleep.

I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the 
worst-suffering and the most restless, 
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from 
them, 
The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.

Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear, 
The earth recedes from me into the night, 
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not 
the earth is beautiful.

I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the 
other sleepers each in turn, 
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other 
dreamers, 
And I become the other dreamers.

I am a dance--play up there! the fit is whirling me 
fast!

I am the ever-laughing--it is new moon and twilight, 
I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts 
whichever way I look, 
Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and 
where it is neither ground nor sea.

Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine, 
Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if 
they could, 
I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet 
besides, 
And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I walk, 
To lift their cunning covers to signify me with 
stretch'd arms, and resume the way; 
Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with 
mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennants of 
joy!

I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician, 
The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in 
the box, 
He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after 
to-day, 
The stammerer, the well-form'd person, the wasted or 
feeble person.

I am she who adorn'd herself and folded her hair 
expectantly, 
My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

Double yourself and receive me darkness, 
Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go 
without him.

I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself 
to the dusk. 
He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my 
lover, 
He rises with me silently from the bed.

Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was 
sweaty and panting, 
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all 
directions, 
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are 
journeying.

Be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me? 
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are 
one, 

I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.

Whitman is one of those figures who arrives at your doorstep packed with some many other people's opinion about him, but once I finally unwrapped him I was struck by his inimitable spirit most of all.

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Picks

Blog

5 Old Books for History: From the Ancients, Through The Rise of England to the Fight Against the Witches

about 7 years ago

5 Video Gadgets for the iPhone Videographer

about 10 years ago

Ideas, Art, Aesthetics - 5 Books I Love to Share

about 10 years ago

Blog

My 5 - Portable Poetry Library - Ryan Nance

about 11 years ago

Get 5 things in your Inbox

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POTD - Arbolé, Arbolé by Federico Garica Lorca

Arbolé, Arbolé

(scroll down for English translation by W.S. Merwin)

by Federico Garica Lorca

Arbolé, arbolé,
seco y verdí.

La niña del bello rostro 
está cogiendo aceituna. 
El viento, galán de torres, 
la prende por la cintura. 
Pasaron cuatro jinetes 
sobre jacas andaluzas,
con trajes de azul y verde, 
con largas capas oscuras. 
"Vente a Córdoba, muchacha." 
La niña no los escucha.
Pasaron tres torerillos
delgaditos de cintura, 
con trajes color naranja 
y espadas de plata antigua. 
"Vente a Córdoba, muchacha." 
La niña no los escucha. 
Cuando la tarde se puso
morada, con lux difusa, 
pasó un joven que llevaba 
rosas y mirtos de luna. 
"Vente a Granada, muchacha." 
Y la niña no lo escucha.
La niña del bello rostro 
sigue cogiendo aceituna, 
con el brazo gris del viento 
ceñido por la cintura. 
Arbolé, arbolé.
Seco y verdé.

Arbolé, arbolé

Tree, tree
dry and green.

The girl with the pretty face 
is out picking olives. 
The wind, playboy of towers, 
grabs her around the waist. 
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies, 
with blue and green jackets 
and big, dark capes. 
"Come to Cordoba, muchacha." 
The girl won't listen to them. 
Three young bullfighters passed, 
slender in the waist, 
with jackets the color of oranges 
and swords of ancient silver. 
"Come to Sevilla, muchacha." 
The girl won't listen to them. 
When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light, 
a young man passed by, wearing 
roses and myrtle of the moon. 
"Come to Granada, muchacha." 
And the girl won't listen to him. 
The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives 
with the grey arm of the wind 
wrapped around her waist.
Tree, tree
dry and green.

Lorca was a bit of a pilgrimage for me. First his time with his cohorts of the Generación del 27 at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, and then his room at Columbia. His surrealistic vision has always been thrilling and moving to me.

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Travel

Blog

The Stunningly Beautiful Photojournalism of Sebastião Salgado

about 5 years ago

Beautiful Underwater Shots of Freediving in the Cenotes of Tulum

about 6 years ago

Wooden Bridges 1,000 Years Old in Rural China

about 6 years ago

Holy Men: Varanasi, India by Joey L

about 7 years ago

Life at the Docks of Dubai - The Shipping Yard by Brandon Li

about 9 years ago

Picks 

Blog

5 Old Books for History: From the Ancients, Through The Rise of England to the Fight Against the Witches

about 7 years ago

5 Video Gadgets for the iPhone Videographer

about 10 years ago

Ideas, Art, Aesthetics - 5 Books I Love to Share

about 10 years ago

My 5 - Portable Poetry Library - Ryan Nance

about 11 years ago

My Pick - 5 Novels of Noteworthy Novelty

about 11 years ago

Get 5 things in your Inbox

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POTD - Rocks By Lynne McMahon

Rocks

By Lynne McMahon

These rocks, plucked like rusty fruit from the granite field
at the construction site, were never so inviting as today
when, heaped into a momentary rockery, they gave
each hand-sized face to light as if this height of summer,
Solstice Celebration Day, meant to make a pink-lit temple
at the lip of our ravine.
                                     It seemed a different thing
to take them down, reground them into useful lines
runneling the creekbed to the wash. To hold erosion
to a human pace, though a necessity,
could not assuage our sense that monuments
heap up, not down, and should stay visible from
the back porch steps. The heft and loft of each rock
                                 we heaved to disappear into the snarl
of vines reclimbed the aching musculature to settle
in our heads. Rocks mark the place the living
cede the dead, but our garden Buddha, calm
at the head of the rocked-in creek, repeats instead his scholar
protégé Wang Wei: No one can tell which way
                                        may flow the stream of paradise.

McMahon was first introduced to me in undergraduate, and is one of the poets I reach for, without prompting.

« Previous Poem

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Picks

Blog

My 5 - Portable Poetry Library - Ryan Nance

about 11 years ago

Blog

5 Old Books for History: From the Ancients, Through The Rise of England to the Fight Against the Witches

about 7 years ago

5 Video Gadgets for the iPhone Videographer

about 10 years ago

Get 5 things in your Inbox

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POTD - Going There by Jack Gilbert (R.I.P.)

Going There

by Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life. 

After struggling with Alzheimer's for a number of years, Jack Gilbert passed this morning (November 13, 2012) in San Francisico, CA. This is the second of his poems we've featured here ("Tear It Down" was the first).

« Previous Poem

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More Poems of the Day

Blog

POTD - For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry by Christopher Smart

about 6 years ago

POTD - Dire Wolf by Lucie Brock Broido

about 6 years ago

Recent Posts

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Unpublished Color Photos from WWII War Photographer Robert Capa

about 3 weeks ago

Geospatial Mappings of Tides and Salt

about 3 weeks ago

Flat Pack — Travel Stuff I Love

about 7 months ago

Stream the Globe Theatre's Productions of Shakespeare's Greatest Plays

about 4 years ago

Dark Side of the Moon - The Moon Caught Transiting The Earth

about 4 years ago

Picks

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5 Old Books for History: From the Ancients, Through The Rise of England to the Fight Against the Witches

about 7 years ago

5 Video Gadgets for the iPhone Videographer

about 10 years ago

Ideas, Art, Aesthetics - 5 Books I Love to Share

about 10 years ago

My 5 - Portable Poetry Library - Ryan Nance

about 11 years ago

POTD - Gacela of the Dark Death by Federico García Lorca

Gacela of the Dark Death

by Federico García Lorca
translated by Robert Bly

   I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

   I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.

   I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

   When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

   Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

Lorca was a bit of a pilgrimage for me. First his time with his cohorts of the Generación del 27 at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, and then his room at Columbia. His surrealistic vision has always been thrilling and moving to me.

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POTD - Every Day You Play by Pablo Neruda

Every Day You Play

by Pablo Neruda

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. 
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Neruda has such a facility for figure, making metaphor seem almost translucent, something to see through rather than fix your eye on.

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Pablo Neruda - Poema 14 - Every Day You Play by poetictouch

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POTD - Now These Objects Will Move by Themselves by Hsia Yü

Now These Objects Will Move by Themselves

by Hsia Yü

Every time you get to thinking this time doesn't count
Every time you come to feel this here and now isn't real
The sound of silk ripping in the air
You run inside as fast you can
Hide yourself

Peering through a crack
Softly say: "Next time, OK."

Just as everything begins to happen you become conscious
Your consciousness is taking the happening
Out of what's happening
But for that one day someday you are able to say:
"Well, actually . . ."
Or maybe
"Once . . ."

Every time you find yourself believing:
"Next time will count far more than this time."

Which is strictly speaking
The next time of the next time

Or the next time ready to rush out
You shout:
"Doesn't count!"

Just as you think of making these objects move by themselves
On account of the fact you're beginning to fidget
Sure enough it all begins to happen

And so we see
A chair moving towards us all by itself
"Just the same it doesn't count."
You say ever so languidly:
"Even that doesn't count doesn't count."

translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury

There isn't a lot of contemporary Chinese language that gets translated into to English. Hsia's voice has such structure and shape in what are otherwise featureless worlds.

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POTD - Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form by Matthea Harvey

Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form

BY MATTHEA HARVEY

1.   

Pity the bathtub that belongs to the queen its feet
Are bronze casts of the former queen’s feet its sheen
A sign of fretting is that an inferior stone shows through
Where the marble is worn away with industrious
Polishing the tub does not take long it is tiny some say
Because the queen does not want room for splashing
The maid thinks otherwise she knows the king
Does not grip the queen nightly in his arms there are
Others the queen does not have lovers she obeys
Her mother once told her your ancestry is your only
Support then is what she gets in the bathtub she floats
Never holds her nose and goes under not because
She might sink but because she knows to keep her ears
Above water she smiles at the circle of courtiers below
Her feet are kicking against walls which cannot give
Satisfaction at best is to manage to stay clean

2.

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the whims of
One man loves but is not loved in return by the object
Of his affection there is little to tell of his profession
There is more for it is because he works with glass
That he thinks things are clear (he loves) and adjustable
(she does not love) he knows how to take something
Small and hard and hot and make room for
His breath quickens at night as he dreams of her he wants
To create a present unlike any other and because he cannot
Hold her he designs something that can a bathtub of
Glass shimmers red when it is hot he pours it into the mold
In a rush of passion only as it begins to cool does it reflect
His foolishness enrages him he throws off his clothes meaning
To jump in and lie there but it is still too hot and his feet propel
Him forward he runs from one end to the other then falls
To the floor blisters begin to swell on his soft feet he watches
His pain harden into a pretty pattern on the bottom of the bath

3.

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the human
Form may define external appearance but there is room
For improvement within try a soap dish that allows for
Slippage is inevitable as is difference in the size of
The subject may hoard his or her bubbles at different
Ends of the bathtub may grasp the sponge tightly or
Loosely it may be assumed that eventually everyone gets in
The bath has a place in our lives and our place is
Within it we have control of how much hot how much cold
What to pour in how long we want to stay when to
Return is inevitable because we need something
To define ourselves against even if we know that
Whenever we want we can pull the plug and get out
Which is not the case with our own tighter confinement
Inside the body oh pity the bathtub but pity us to

One of the first poets of my generation I fell in love with, Harvey doesn't shy from muscular syntax or florid imagery.

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POTD - Reasons by Thomas James

Reasons

BY THOMAS JAMES

For our own private reasons
We live in each other for an hour.
Stranger, I take your body and its seasons,
Aware the moon has gone a little sour

For us. The moon hangs up there like a stone
Shaken out of its proper setting.
We lie down in each other. We lie down alone
and watch the moon’s flawed marble getting

Out of hand. What are the dead doing tonight?
The padlocks of their tongues embrace the black,
Each syllable locked in place, tucked out of sight.
Even this moon could never pull them back,

Even if it held them in its arms
And weighed them down with stones,
Took them entirely on their own terms
And piled the orchard’s blossom on their bones.

I am aware of your body and its dangers.
I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather
Where other fugitives and other strangers
Will put their mouths together.

When I was first introduced to James​, it was in a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. His Letters to a Stranger, published in 1974, had gone out of print. It was my professor, Lucie Brock-Broido who brought him to me. Her story of being introduced to him by my other, elder professor Richard Howard is itself a compelling story. The book, his only one before he committed suicide, is back in print, in no small part thanks to these twin literary lions. 

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