Posted in joy, life, nazi, Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, ruth stone, sad, words, Write, Writer, writing on 05/12/2008| 1 Comment »
In the Next Galaxy
Things will be different.
No one will lose their sight,
their hearing, their gallbladder.
It will be all Catskills with brand
new wrap-around verandas.
The idea of Hitler will not
have vibrated yet.
While back here,
they are still cleaning out
pockets of wrinkled
Nazis hiding in Argentina.
But in the next galaxy,
certain planets will have true
blue skies and drinking water.
-Ruth Stone
Posted in lady of shallot, love, Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, sad, tennyson, words, Write, Writer, writing on 05/08/2008| Leave a Comment »
The Lady of Shallot
On either side of the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.1
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow veiled
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand? 25
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “‘Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.”
Part II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hands before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot: 50
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the curly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by to towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.
Part III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves, 75
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazoned baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewelled shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d; 100
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lira,” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Part IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote 125
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance —
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right —
The leaves upon her falling light —
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide 150
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
Posted in Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing, tagged add, alvarez, nina on 04/20/2008| 2 Comments »
What they don’t know
about ADD
is that you don’t have a present.
You could be a great filmmaker,
but for this affliction,
the sequence of small moments that make
an epiphany are too small
and too slow to recount,
your mind is already 15 years in the past, or counting your change from lunch
or watching
Vampire Weekend on SNL.
There are trends
and people that speak
about pink party Murakami
The Gawker stalker street New York
vibrant vibratory
lessons of too many words
too many Emily Gould
was right
I click keys at their fringes, I want
some movement
to keep my mind from reeling back
to what are now
consequences
of this long absence
of presence. Of attention.
Of a decade waiting to be
like I was before the mind took over. And was
as faithless
as a teenager.
-Nina Alvarez
Posted in Nina Alvarez, words, tagged alvarez, dante, nina, poem, poet, poetry, Write, Writer on 04/14/2008| Leave a Comment »
Inferno, Canto XIV
Love of that land that was our common source
moved me to tears; I gathered up the leaves
and gave them back. He was already hoarse.
We came to the edge of the forest where one goes
from the second round to the third, and there we saw
what fearful arts the hand of Justice knows.
To make these new things wholly clear, I say
we came to a plain whose soil repels all roots.
The wood of misery rings it the same way
the wood itself is ringed by the red fosse.
We paused at its edge: the ground was burning sand,
just such a waste as Cato marched across.
O endless wrath of God: how utterly
thou shouldst become a terror to all men
who read the frightful truths revealed to me!
Enormous herds of naked souls I saw,
lamenting till their eyes were burned of tears;
they seemed condemned by an unequal law,
for some were stretched supine upon the ground,
some squatted with tbeir arms about themselves,
and others without pause roamed round and round.
Most numerous were those that roamed the plain.
Far fewer were the souls stretched on the sand,
but moved to louder cries by greater pain.
And over all that sand on which they lay
or crouched or roamed, great flakes of flame fell slowly
as snow falls in the Alps on a windless day.
Like those Alexander met in the hot regions
of India, flames raining from the sky
to fall still unextinguished on his legions:
whereat he formed his ranks, and at their head
set the example, trampling the hot ground
for fear the tongues of fire might join and spread—
just so in Hell descended the long rain
upon the damned, kindling the sand like tinder
under a flint and steel, doubling the pain.
In a never-ending fit upon those sands,
the arms of the damned twitched all about their bodies,
now here, now there, brushing away the brands.
“Poet,” I said, “master of every dread
we have encountered, other than those fiends
who sallied from the last gate of the dead—
who is that wraith who lies along the rim
and sets his face against the fire in scorn,
so that the rain seems not to mellow him?”
And he himself, hearing what I had said
to my Guide and Lord concerning him, replied:
“What I was living, the same am I now, dead.
Though Jupiter wear out his sooty smith
from whom on my last day he snatched in anger
the jagged thunderbolt he pierced me with;
though he wear out the others one by one
who labor at the forge at Mongibello
crying again ‘Help! Help! Help me, good Vulcan!’
as he did at Phlegra; and hurl down endlessly
with all the power of Heaven in his arm,
small satisfaction would he win from me,”
At this my Guide spoke with such vehemence
as I had not heard from him in all of Hell:
“O Capaneus, by your insolence
you are made to suffer as much fire inside
as falls upon you. Only your own rage
could be fit torment for your sullen pride.”
Then he turned to me more gently. “That,” he said,
“was one of the Seven who laid siege to Thebes.
Living, he scorned God, and among the dead
he scorns Him yet. He thinks he may detest
God’s power too easily, but as I told him,
his slobber is a fit badge for his breast.
Now follow me; and mind for your own good
you do not step upon the burning sand,
but keep well back along the edge of the wood.”
We walked in silence then till we reached a rill
that gushes from the wood; it ran so red
the memory sends a shudder through me still.
As from the Bulicame springs the stream
the sinful women keep to their own use;
so down the sand the rill flowed out in steam.
The bed and both its banks were petrified,
as were its margins; thus I knew at once
our passage through the sand lay by its side.
“Among all other wonders I have shown you
since we came through the gate denied to none,
nothing your eyes have seen is equal to
the marvel of the rill by which we stand,
for it stifles all the flames above its course
as it flows out across the burning sand.”
So spoke my Guide across the flickering light,
and I begged him to bestow on me the food
for which he had given me the appetite.
“In the middle of the sea, and gone to waste,
there lies a country known as Crete,” he said,
“under whose king the ancient world was chaste.
Once Rhea chose it as the secret crypt
and cradle of her son; and better to hide him,
her Corybantes raised a din when he wept.
An ancient giant stands in the mountain’s core.
He keeps his shoulder turned toward Damietta,
and looks toward Rome as if it were his mirror.
His head is made of gold; of silverwork
his breast and both his arms, of polished brass
the rest of his great torso to the fork.
He is of chosen iron from there down,
except that his right foot is terra cotta;
it is this foot he rests more weight upon.
Every part except the gold is split
by a great fissure from which endless tears
drip down and hollow out the mountain’s pit.
Their course sinks to this pit from stone to stone,
becoming Acheron, Phlegethon, and Styx.
Then by this narrow sluice they hurtle down
to the end of all descent, and disappear
into Cocytus. You shall see what sink that is
with your own eyes. I pass it in silence here.”
And I to him: “But if these waters flow
from the world above, why is this rill met only
along this shelf?” And he to me: “You know
the place is round, and though you have come deep
into the valley through the many circles,
always bearing left along the steep,
you have not traveled any circle through
its total round; hence when new things appear
from time to time, that hardly should surprise you.”
And I: “Where shall we find Phlegethon’s course?
And Lethe’s? One you omit, and of the other
you only say the tear-flood is its source.”
“In all you ask of me you please me truly,”
he answered, “but the red and boiling water
should answer the first question you put to me,
and you shall stand by Lethe, but far hence:
there, where the spirits go to wash themselves
when their guilt has been removed by penitence.”
And then he said: “Now it is time to quit
this edge of shade: follow close after me
along the rill, and do not stray from it;
for the unburning margins form a lane,
and by them we may cross the burning plain.”
-Dante Alighieri (Translated by John Ciardi)
Posted in Nina Alvarez, words, tagged mourning, poem, poetry, rich, valediction on 04/13/2008| 11 Comments »
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.
A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.
To do something very common, in my own way.
-Adrienne Rich
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/08/2008| Leave a Comment »
In the effort to find one’s way among the contents of memory
(Aristotle emphasizes)
a principal of association is helpful—
“passing rapidly from one step to the next.
For instance from milk to white,
from white to air,
from air to damp,
after which one recollectes autumn supposing one is trying to
recollect that season.”
Or supposing,
fair reader,
you are trying to recollect not autumn but freedom,
a principal of freedom
the existed between two people, small and savage
as principals go—but what are the rules for this?
As he says,
folly may come into fashion.
Pass then rapidly
from one step to the next,
for instance from nipple to hard,
from hard to hotel room,
from hotel room
to a phrase found in a letter he wrote in a taxi one day he passed
his wife
walking
on the other side of the street and she did not see him, she was—
so ingenious are the arrangements of the state of flux we call
our moral history are they not almost as neat as mathematical
propositions except written on water—
on her way to the courthouse
to file papers for divorce, a phrase like
how you tasted between your legs.
After which by means of this wholly divine faculty, the “memory
of words and things,”
one recollects
freedom.
Is it I? cries the soul rushing up.
Little soul, poor vague animal:
beware this invention “always useful for learning and life”
as Aristotle say, Aristotle who
had no husband,
rarely mentions beauty
and was likely to pass rapidly from wrist to slave when trying to
recollect wife.
-Anne Carson
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 04/06/2008| 1 Comment »
Atlas
There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it
Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists
And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds
The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.
-U.A. Fanthorpe
Posted in words on 01/15/2008| 1 Comment »
Posted in laughlin, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 01/10/2008| Leave a Comment »
Dawn
Often now as an old man
Who sleeps only four hours a night,
I wake before dawn, dress and go down
To my study to start typing:
Poems, letters, more pages
In the book of recollections.
Anything to get words flowing,
To get them out of my head
Where they’re pressing so hard
For release it’s like a kind
Of pain. My study window
Faces east, out over the meadow,
And I see this morning
That the sheep have scattered
On the hillside, their white shapes
Making the pattern of the stars
In Canis Major, the constellation
Around Sirius, the Dog Star,
Whom my father used to point
Out to us, calling it
For some reason I forget
Little Dog Peppermint.
What is this line I’m writing?
I never could scan in school.
It’s certainly not an Alcaic.
Nor a Sapphic. Perhaps it’s
The short line Rexroth used
In The Dragon & The Unicorn,
Tossed to me from wherever
He is by the Cranky Old Bear
(but I loved him). It’s really
Just a prose cadence, broken
As I breathe while putting
My thoughts into words;
Mostly they are stored-up
Memories—dove sta memoria.
Which one of the Italians
Wrote that? Dante or Cavalcanti?
Five years ago I’d have had
The name on the tip of my tongue
But no longer. In India
They ca1l a storeroom a godown,
But there’s inventory
For my godown. I can’t keep
Track of what’s m there.
All those people in books
From Krishna & the characters
In the Greek Anthology
Up to the latest nonsense
Of the Deconstructionists,
Floating around in my brain,
A sort of “continuous present”
As Gertrude Stein called it;
The world in my head
Confusing me about the messy
World I have to live in.
Better the drunken gods of Greece
Than a life ordained by computers.
My worktable faces east;
I watch for the coming
Of the dawnlight, raising
My eyes occasionally from
The typing to rest them,
There is always a little ritual,
A moment’s supplication
To Apollo, god of the lyre;
Asking he keep an eye on me
That I commit no great stupidity.
Phoebus Apollo, called also
Smintheus the mousekiller
For the protection he gives
The grain of the farmers. My
Dawns don’t come up like thunder
Though I have been to Mandalay
That year when I worked in Burma.
Those gentle, tender people
Puzzled by modern life;
The men, the warriors, were lazy,
It was the women who hustled,
Matriarchs running the businesses.
And the girls bound their chests
So their breasts wouldn’t grow;
Who started that, and why?
My dawns come up circumspectly,
Quietly with no great fuss.
Night was and in ten minutes
Day is, unless of course
It’s raining hard. Then comes
My first breakfast. I can’t cook
So it’s only tea, puffed wheat and
Pepperidge Farm biscuits.
Then a cigar. Dr Luchs
Warned me the cigars
Would kill me years ago
But I’m still here today.
-James Laughlin
Posted in Hopkins, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, Spring, words, Write, Writer, writing on 01/07/2008| 1 Comment »
Spring and Death
I had a dream. A wondrous thing:
It seem’d an evening in the Spring:
– A little sickness in the air
From too much fragrance everywhere: –
As I walk’d a stilly wood,
Sudden, Death before me stood:
In a hollow lush and damp,
He seem’d a dismal murky stamp
On the flowers that were seen
His charnelhouse-grate ribs between,
And with coffin-black he barr’d the green.
“Death,” said I, “what do you here
At this Spring season of the year?”
“I mark the flowers ere the prime
Which I may tell at Autumn-time.”
Ere I had further question made
Death was vanished from the glade.
Then I saw that he had bound
Many trees and flowers round
With a subtle web of black,
And that such a sable track,
Lay along the grasses green
From the spot where he had been.
But the Spring-tide pass’d the same;
Summer was as full of flame;
Autumn-time no earlier came.
And the flowers that he had tied,
As I mark’d not always died
Sooner than their mates; and yet
Their fall was fuller of regret:
It seem’d so hard and dismal thing,
Death, to mark them in the Spring.
-Gerard Manly Hopkins
Poem of the Month 