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Poetry
Poems I've written or am writing
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 193,907 times since October, 2007.
caminamos tú y yo
se anochece en el cielo
como un borracho en el arroyo
visitamos calles desiertos
esquinas quejumbrosas
y otras calles las que sigamos
y que formen argumento
cada vez mas aparente
hacia un propósito muy obvio
lo que sin embargo no podemos llamar
por cualquier nombre
o palabra
El silencio, roto por el repique sordo de un reloj—
A orilla de la calzada harapo mojado, harapo que solía ser camisa elegante—
La plaza que se llena de repente con oleada de sombras por delante
de la luz del sol, o de las alas—
El sueño que vuelve al cabo de cuarenta años, de volar por encima de un mar de lino—
Las huellas estampadas como rastros en la nieve
por la tarde disueltos en compunción y lluvia—
Fue aquí que te sentabas, junto al ramo de orquídeas
mirando más allá de la puerta del jardín, a tu lado la mujer
y el pelo ni siquiera gris—
por Luisa A. Igloria, en via negativa/tr. Jeremy Osner
las sombras y los sueños en que se consisten
las paredes y puertas de la casa en que moro
las palabras y frases que salen a chorros:
en que mi tiempo sea corto insisten
las sombras y las cortinas que las echen se repiten
y crecen y caen por completo en mi recámara
se deslizan alrededor de mis ojos alicántaras
y sueños: voy soñando con que mis antepasados me griten
a través de las paredes y las sombras de la casa de mi alma
caminamos tú y yo
se anochece en el cielo
como un borracho en el arroyo:
visitamos unos esquinas
y calles ya desconocidas
platicamos, sonreímos
me resulta muy difícil olvidar
-- The Modesto Kid
Let us go then, you and I,
the evening sprawled across the sky
just like a drunkard, passed out in the gutter.
The patrons scowl, and mutter.
his story still untold, it's full of silent fury
and significance and void
mute like some magnificent android, and so
the idiot recounts, he counts
he builds up poetry and mountains
crumbling pottery
shards of steel, silent fountains
distant voices
see him stuttering and pale and seeking
shelter from the storm of sorrow
shattering, resonant, freaking out
about the null tomorrow
and his idiotic legacy
comatose, potential
inside the eyelids snaky purple patterns weave all hectic and the
syllables shift and merge electric
inside the idiot's eyelids
the idiot wind-up's found his tongue, his sound, he sighs
and hesitant at first he tries
to flesh out some good story
and his wound-up spring uncoils, relaxes -- listen to him now,
now listen
see how surely in the end,
this craving
craving for a narrative, an order
which we've agreed for now to call consciousness
is nothing more than slow decay
a gradual unfolding into languor,
into entropy
the words tumble out of his wind-up mouth
of his mouth
his wind-up mouth, and he pries,
he tries, inquires, seeks out the void
of inner
meditation, gleaming immaculate clockwork --
but the automated web of narrative
unravels in the telling,
thread caught on some miscalculated bearing
point
--: meaning's left now without a structure
evaporates
in the noon-day sun
in the sun
but clockwork speech gives way to patchwork song, we hear
the idiot nattering on and on
this wretched plain bursts forth in song! a mournful minor wailing tune
reverberates across the arid pampa of the afternoon
angelic idiotic voice
we join, we sing along, we have no choice
the anger set behind the chords, the pain and fear
would move a statue's stony countenance to tears
until
the final note rings out
and its reverberations peter out, and the stone turns back to stone
across the pale dry sands where no tree stands
a thin dry breeze is blowing us towards home
the idiot's sleeping now, his story told, and old, forgotten
and his android body sleeping
while its clockwork spring ticks out the years
unwinds
relaxes, basks in its entropic destiny
silent not out of frustration now but of contentment
release
In the course of thinking about my idiot poem I came up with a metaphor that I like: Narrative structure has the function of a candle's wick. The flame of meaning will not adhere to a wick-less text. Thinking of meaning as the flame that burns in text (without consuming it), one which will dissipate if it does not have a wick, can take me in a lot of directions; one that seems especially promising is to think of song and poetry as a way of providing additional structure in which to anchor meaning so the narrative thread need not be as strong. (This ties in nicely with a take on Wittgenstein, "Whereof one cannot speak, one must sing.")
The structure of the poem as I am seeing it now is,
The idiot cannot speak. His story is full of sound and fury raging unexpressed.
The idiot speaks. This is represented as a mechanical process, the unwinding of a clockwork. The web of his story unravels and its meaning evaporates.
The idiot sings. His sung story becomes the landscape and its meaning the universe.
The idiot falls silent, sleeps. The story he told assumes divine status i.e. pure meaning in the firmament -- its structure does not persist.
genesis: I was sitting in the theater Friday afternoon with Sylvia waiting for the matinée (the spellbinding percussion ballet presentation of Mulan by the 北京红樱束打击乐团有限公司) to start -- when something struck me about Faulkner/Shakespeare's line that life is a "tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," to wit that what if the idiot has stage fright or writer's block, what if his narrative remains untold, what can it then signify? Is its meaningless anger rendered all-consuming by its silence, its unspokenness?
I came up with a pretty striking first line on the spot and (amazingly) remembered it later on when I had the pen and paper to hand; and the rough draft and revisions and the commentary seemed to flow pretty smoothly, naturally from the pen to the pad.
(and with that by way of introduction,) this is:
Mute
his story still untold, it's full of silent fury
and significance and void
mute like some magnificent android, and so
the idiot recounts, he counts
he builds up poetry and mountains
crumbling pottery
shards of steel, silent fountains
distant voices see him stuttering and pale and seeking
shelter from the storm of sorrow
shattering, resonant, freaking out
about the null tomorrow
and his idiotic legacy
comatose, potential
inside the eyelids snaky purple patterns weave all hectic and the
syllables shift and merge electric
inside the idiot's eyelids
posted afternoon of December 29th, 2012: 3 responses
Jeremy on Patrone de las causas urgentes y justas
Jeremy on Back-translation
cleek, Jeremy on Nations (2 responses)