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Poem of the Day: Mirabeau Bridge

11/09/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Mirabeau Bridge

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away

And lovers

Must I be reminded

Joy came always after pain

The night is a clock chiming

The days go by not I

We’re face to face and hand in hand

While under the bridges

Of embrace expire

Eternal tired tidal eyes

The night is a clock chiming

The days go by not I

Love elapses like the river

Love goes by

Poor life is indolent

And expectation always violent

The night is a clock chiming

The days go by not I

The days and equally the weeks elapse

The past remains the past

Love remains lost

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away

The night is a clock chiming

The days go by not I

-by Guillaume Apollinaire (Translated by Donald Revell)

Posted in Apollinaire, Guillaume, Guillaume Apollinaire, joy, life, love, mirabeau bridge, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, revell, river, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: from Testament

11/08/2007 by Cosmographia Books

The Aloneness in which I have anchored myself for the last twenty years must not become an exception, a “vacation” which, adducing many justifications, I would have to beg from a supervising happiness. I must live in it without any boundaries. It has to remain this ground of consciousness, to which I can always return, without intending a quick gain here and now, without expecting that it should prove fertile for me; but involuntarily, unstressed, innocent: as to the place I belong to.

4X1: Works by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey, and Habib Tengour

Posted in lonely, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, ranier, rilke, testment, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: from Testament

11/07/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Artist, do not believe that your test lies in the work. You are not what you pretend to be, and what this or that one, not knowing any better, may take you for, until the work has become your very nature to such an extent that you cannot do otherwise than prove yourself in it. Working thus, you are the masterly thrown spear: laws from Her throwing hand receive you, and together you hit the target: what could be more certain than your flight?

Your test, however, is that you are not always thrown. That the spear-player Loneliness does not choose you for the longest time, that She forgets you. This is the time of temptation, when you feel unused, incapable. (As if being reading as not work enough!) Then, when you do not lie there very heavily, diversions exercise you and try to see to what other uses you can be put. As a blind man’s staff, as one of the rods in a grating, or as the balancing pole of a tight-rope walker. Or else they are capable of planting you in the soil of fate, for the miracle of the seasons to happen to you and for you perhaps to sprout small green leaves of happiness….

-Rainer Maria Rilke, from 4X1: Works by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey, and Habib Tengour

Posted in 4x1, A Quick One Before I Go, inspiration, inspire, loneliness, muse, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, ranier, rilke, work, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: from the draft of a letter

11/06/2007 by Cosmographia Books

All these refusals, do not forget it, my love, have to do with your power. If I were free, if my heart were not bound like a star into the relationships of the irrefutable spirit, then every word, from which rebellion in formed here, denial, complaint – would be Your fame, crossing over to You, agreement, the rush toward you – fall and resurrection in You.

If I were a man of graspable compass, a merchant, a teacher of comprehensible things, an artisan….

-Rainer Maria Rilke, from 4X1: Works by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey, and Habib Tengour

Posted in letter, love, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, ranier, refusal, rilke, sad, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

Poem of the Day: from Testament

11/05/2007 by Cosmographia Books

If I did not resist the lover, it was because of all the takeovers of one person by anothers, hers alone, unstoppable, seemed to me to be right. Exposed as I am, I did not want to avoid it either; but I yearned to pierce her! That she be a window for me into the expanded cosmos of Being…(not mirror.)

-Ranier Maria Rilke, from 4X1: Works by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey, and Habib Tengour

Posted in 4x1, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, rilke, Write, Writer, writing | 1 Comment »

Two Poems Published at Contemporary Rhyme

11/05/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Two of my poems “Mary, Mary” and “Nietzsche” can now be read at the online literary journal Contemporary Rhyme. Many thanks to them (especially because they’re a paying market)…So rare for poetry. But free to you, gentle reader.

roadsepia.jpgVive la rhyming poetry! I know some think it’s woefully old-fashioned, but I sure ain’t over it. It incorporates the musicality we look for in song and the sense of inevitability that we look for in art.

I also have a free-verse poem “bees” being published in the print journal Grasslimb. I will let you know when that issue comes out.

Posted in alvarez, grasslimb, journal, mary mary, nietzsche, nina, online, poem, poems, poetry, rhyme | Leave a Comment »

4 x 1: Rilke, Tzara, Duprey, and Tengour

11/03/2007 by Cosmographia Books

There is a book of poetry so unique  that it contains four very different poets who come together to form a metaphorical map of the last 150 years of poetry, taking us through Dadaism, Surrealism, Modernism, and Postmodernism.
4X1: Works by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey, and Habib Tengour

It includes Ranier Maria Rilke, whose popularity and importance grows more every year; Tristan Tzara, a polemicist of the Dada movement putting Africa oral poetry to paper; Jean-Pierre Duprey, the French surrealist whose poetry is so evocative, (so moving that I made a one-minute poem about it that you can watch below); and Habib Tengour, an Algerian Muslim master of the postmodern story, meandering through the landscape of a fertile, troubled modern mind.

This book of poetry is called 4×1, since it contains first English translations of 4 poets all translated by the award-winning translator and poet, Pierre Joris. It was published by Inconundrum Press in 2002, but has received little distribution because of the common travails of the small press…mostly the difficulty in getting a wide distribution for a rather small first print run.

History of the Press

Inconundrum Press (now Inconnue) was founded by three smart English major types in Albany, NY who happened to be good friends of mine. When they were ready to move on to other things, I took over the press and became its executive editor. That was in 2005.

But publishing companies need our support. Mine, as well as others. And I’ve parted with $11.95 for two La Fin Du Mondes (the Belgian tripple ale I love) and gone to bed with a headache and no book. I try to buy books as often as I can and to support small and independent presses. Independent presses pretty much exist solely on your direct purchases (what you buy on amazon.com leaves them with only a couple of dollars per sale).

Thanks for your time and for supporting ninaalvarez.net, Inconnue Press, and most of all, thanks for continually supporting the life of poetry.

Yours,

Nina

Posted in 4x1, alvarez, duprey, help, joris, nina, press, publish, rilke, tengour, tzara | 1 Comment »

Poem of the Day: Marginalia

11/03/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Marginalia

I am always trying to die
not big deaths, but small
deaths with paper and hard-cover books
deaths with envelopes and swirly-que doodles
deaths with text and the margins of thought
that can never hang from my head and never be wrought

I am always withering at one branch
like a sick gull’s wing
I am always tying one foot to the long rope
that drags from the ferryman’s boat
I ask for forgiveness, but I only want the broken glass
I’ve only ever wanted to take what was inside
and throw it in your face

to ask you to tell me you see it too,
and then to be done with the things that almost speak
and be done with wondering when the curtain will drop
just repairing to the afterlife with this stick
and some sand to scratch no symbols in.

-Nina Alvarez

Posted in alvarez, inside, marginalia, mind, nina, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, sad, thought, Write, Writer, writing | 1 Comment »

Poem of the Day: The Lady I Adore

11/02/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Today’s poem was submitted by a reader in Sri Lanka: M. Rezvi Omerdeen

The Lady I Adore

Gazing at the moon,
Posing from the Balcony,
Wearing the richest costume,
And a charming smile.
Humming like a mermaid,
In a romantic way,
Feet tapping rhythmically.
For a love-song of some sort.
Whom she’s looking for,
And her notions?
I’m eager to know,
‘Cause she’s
The lady I adore

Posted in lady, love, omerdeen, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, romance, sri lanka, Write, Writer, writing | 1 Comment »

Poem of the Day: Reading Biographies

11/01/2007 by Cosmographia Books

Reading Biographies

Perhaps Frost was poking his secretary,

The apple core of his good-living chewed

To the bitter seed. Perhaps he buttoned up,

Disgusted with the dead lizard cupped in his palm.

And his woman? She was as large as Gilbraltar,

A chunk of cheese in each armpit.

She took a deep breath

And wiggled the goose of her tasty fanny

Into the kitchen. There, she poured pancakes

Onto a skillet as old as this country,

And Frost, a pioneer for all writers,

Picked up his beaver-thrashed pencil and proclaimed,

O Sweet Youth, etc.

I don’t know how to read

Biographies, the dead words of dead writers

Etched on my eyes, then gone. I read them,

And drive my car recklessly through leaves,

The cushion for my own eventual death.

Sure, I reflect, like a chip of mirror,

And then I forget them, these subjects,

These writers with lungs and straight-A penmanship.

They’re of no use. I’m not saved

By the repetitions of jealousy and all-day drinking.

Wind frisked the trees, hair fell like wheat,

And the liver, saddlebag of disease,

Bulged with inoperable knots.

I touch my own hip, then hobble home

Where a pumpkin glows in a window.

Birds shrug into their coats of dirt.

Crickets stop the violin action of their thighs.

A fire is built, and I’m lit in the living room.

I’m a democrat, I slur to the couch,

And add, Venus is a star and fly trap.

Thank God, I’ve learned nothing.

– Gary Soto

Posted in learn, life, philosophy, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, reading biographies, soto, venus, words, Write, Writer, writing | Leave a Comment »

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