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Happy together (Sept. 8, 2001)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

Los verdaderos poemas son incendios. La poesí­a se propaga por todas partes, iluminando sus consumaciones con estremecimientos de placer o de agoní.

Vicente Huidobro


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Friday, September 7th, 2012

🦋 Backstory

The cloud formations over Oaxaca are more spectacular each time you look at them. I've never been able to capture their grandeur on my camera, and I'm hardly enough of a poet to describe them to you, you'll have to take my word for it. They roll in slow over the mountains to the north-east, creep slowly toward the city, they pile up around the edge of the sky. I can hear the thunder far off, I look nervously upward, wonder if I can make it home before the rain gets here. I can already feel the first drops on my shoulder.

Laura told me I was making a mistake, and she's probably right.

posted evening of September 7th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about This Silent House

🦋 La madre de la noche

paralizada
sus movimientos lentos
crecen como las nubes
que crezca hipnotica, paralizada
que sea la totalidad
que sea la madre de la noche
lejano la miro
le sonrío
a ella
paralizado

posted evening of September 7th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Poetry

Thursday, September 6th, 2012

🦋 Mataderos

(another poem written to a prompt from La universidad desconocida...)

Poesía que tal vez abogue
por mi sombra
en días venideros
cuando yo sólo sea un nombre
y no el hombre
que con los bolsillas vacillos vagabundeó
y trabajó
en los mataderos del viejo y
del nuevo continente
Mis sueños no tan fáciles
   que tengan como antecedente
   alguna trauma desconocida
   alguna pesadilla anterior
los dejo y caen
   no soportados de ninguna
   referencia exterior, no enlentecidos
   abajo de mi paracaidas, y
   Â¿a dónde? y ¿cuándo
   pararán, cuándo van a poder
   descansar?

Caen sueños del viejo
   y del nuevo continente,
   sin término caen;
sueños de amistad
   masculino: rough homoerotic self-
   sufficiency, soledad publicada. Que en los
mataderos norteamericanos
   no trabajen sueños
    sino sombras

posted evening of September 6th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

🦋 Outertainment

So cleek asked what I'm listening to...

For years now I've been hearing of Baby Gramps, every now and then someone would tell me I ought to check his music out. Shockingly, reprehensibly, I ignored this great advice every time it was offered me, and I did not hear a note of his music until last weekend, when I went down to Bordentown to hear Peter Stampfel performing, with Baby Gramps on the same bill.

Turns out they have released a record together, Outertainment, and it blew my mind. There are traditional tunes freaked out beyond all recognition, some fantastic covers (Gramps singing "Surfin Bird" is truly amazing), originals sarcastic, whimsical, sincere. Every song will draw you in and through it.

posted evening of September 6th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The Blues

Monday, September third, 2012

🦋 Parallel versions

Hm... merging a couple of the themes I've been writing about here lately. Writing/revising poetry, writing and thinking in a language not my own, the different voices of the writing process and translation process.... This is a poem I started working on in Oaxaca keying off the rhythm of the first line. (+first line should serve as a clue that I spent a lot of time in class working on imperative and subjunctive voices.) Mil gracias a Paty de ICO para sus direcciones y sugerencias. I added two more stanzas and reworked the first a bit in the past week or so, and turned it into what I think is a coherent poem, a pleasant read.


Escucha; oye. Mira. Ve.

Instrucciones (por The Modesto Kid)
Escucha; oye. Mira. Ve.
¿Qué oyes, pues, amigo? ¿Me oyes
gritar en mi espanto hondo?
Tu mirada me recuerda algunas cosas olvidadas;
dime cosa divertida, hecho falso, algo que
yo pueda olvidar en su lugar.
Oh confuso, casi ciego, busca
simpatía o rechazo
—tratamiento por curarte—
y escucha; oye. Mira. Ve.

Primitivo -- sofisticado
     ¡canta!
que tu graznido
     atraviese
     vacilente
el micrófono, y los amplificadores
y las lágrimas

Me toca me bendice padre
no bendígasme, mi padre
aunque he pecado
Directions (by The Modesto Kid/tr. Peter Conlay)
Listen; hear. Look: see:
What are you hearing, my friend? Hear me
screaming in my pit of terror?
Your face brings it all back, things I had forgotten:
tell me something, make me laugh, some lie
for me to remember instead of all that.
Confused man, almost blind, go look
for friendship or rejection
—seek some treatment—
Listen; hear. Look. See.

Caveman — sophisticate —
     sing!
slowly your cawing
     will seep
     across
the mics, and the PA
and the tears

Touch me bless me o my father
Don't bless me father
Even though I've sinned


I uploaded a reading of the Spanish text to SoundCloud. That is a not-quite-final revision, I think the rhythm and clarity of it are really improved by the addition of "Oh" at the beginning of the seventh line. (If memory serves, this is an example of an edit to the original text prompted during the process of translation.)

posted morning of September third, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Projects

Sunday, September second, 2012

🦋 Walking around Oaxaca

Ellen and Sylvia and I spent half of the past month in the deep south of Mexico, in the city of Oaxaca. We took language classes in the mornings, at Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca, and over the course of the days acquired some familiarity with the language and with (a small corner of) one of the most beautiful cities I can imagine. (A city which would, by the way, be absolutely baffling to Winston Rowntree's anomalies spotter.)

Lots of pictures of the trip at Flicker; take a look.

posted morning of September second, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about the Family Album

Saturday, September first, 2012

🦋 Let's Listen to

Ray Wylie Hubbard. Ain't exactly "Kumbaya".

You're welcome.

(chain of YouTube "similar videos" associations that got me here: Movin' Day -> Walk Right In -> Ray Wylie Hubbard in concert at Tennessee State Museum. Jackpot!)

posted evening of September first, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Music

🦋 Epistles, Gospels, Prophesy

Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus,
unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ:
Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Marcus Borg of Huffington Post examines the possibilities for a new understanding of the Christian testament as an evolving document offered by a chronological reading of its books in the order that they were written, rather than the canonical order. Thanks for the link, Barbara!

posted morning of September first, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The Bible

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

🦋 Instrucciones

Escucha; oye. Mira. Ve.
¿Qué oyes, pues, amigo? ¿Me oyes
gritar en mi espanto hondo?
Tu mirada me recuerda algunas cosas olvidadas;
dime cosa divertida, hecho falso, algo que
yo pueda olvidar en su lugar.
Oh confuso, casi ciego, busca
simpatía o rechazo
—tratamiento por curarte—
escucha; oye. Mira. Ve.

posted evening of August 28th, 2012: 4 responses

Friday, August 10th, 2012

🦋 Alignment

Cómo pensar en idioma extranjera, cómo
tomar revelación en los pensamientos
y pasajes, palabras de luz
y de apologia

cómo imaginarte que la tierra,
la desierte debajo de tus pies
sea planeta ajeno: que la estrella
la que deseas
a tí te sea patria
a donde nunca mas te volvieras

posted evening of August 10th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures

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