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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 236,737 times since October, 2007.
He dreamt of his distributed weight
lying hair's-breadth by hair's-breadth this side of collapse
on the springs of his mattress; his linen-clad pillow,
the thousands of hairs on the nape of his neck; dreamt of
covers and sheets and the million thread count, the
mechanics of sleep, of the pale thunder moon, of the
gasp from his lungs as his body escapes
this cold matrix of wakefulness, bitterness, playfulness:
memories of nuzzling close in the arms of the
black grinning spectre of night.
Woke up this morning without much memory of the dream but with the strong impression that I had been dreaming about being asleep. Within a few minutes the poem had assembled itself in rough outline; over the next hour or so it came into a nice sharp focus.
The epigraph is from a villanelle by Roethke: one I did not know of until today. I like its sense and its sound. "I learn by going where I have to go."
Here is a link to several pieces I've posted over the last few months that I've been particularly happy with: Memories and Dreaming -- 7 original pieces plus 2 translations. Maybe if I get a couple more together, I will make a chapbook.
posted evening of July 15th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Dreams
A bit frustrating: last night's vivid dream was a dream explicitly about words; but the vividly recalled portion of the dream is all visual imagery and context, no words.
In the dream, I am writing a poem and think of a line that I want to use in it, a poorly-remembered line from a Salt-n-Pepa song. I bring up Google to check my memory of the lyric. Somehow Google will not give me the transcribed lyrics to the song, I can only find the song's video on YouTube. So I start watching it and listening. It is a fantastic, breathtaking video, with references to film noir and to Kurosawa, one that brings out resonances and meanings in the song that I have never understood before. But it is distracting and frustrating to be watching it and listening for a particular line, and trying to keep in mind the poem that I was writing and the way I wanted to use the line. The video is very long -- long enough to be divided into mutiple parts on YouTube -- and I wake up before I find the line I am looking for.
The path to understanding verse
must lie through repetition --well,
that's where my thoughts are leading me,
internal iteration linking
letters on the page to solid
consonants and sibilation
nothingness, annihilation
pausing where there's punctuation--
Write the letters large enough,
inscribed inside my skull, retraced,
and give my mind no choice except
to follow where they lead, to paint
the pictures they express, to put
myself inside the poet's psyche:
See what he sees, maybe, or self-
consciously be made to see
exactly where my failure lies
to get across what's bugging me
my fault as reader or as writer,
guilt external to the page, the
page can feel no guilt, it's paper,
blank until I taint it with
my thoughts, my visions, my regret,
my happy-ever-after longing;
Strike a key and watch the letter
print itself, its inky form
laid down forever with its partners.
Sing in silent chorus from the
blankness of the page.
posted morning of August 28th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Projects
Laura's wishing Peter would just
Give up this pretension, would just
Break this patterned silence
Where he builds his lonesome castle. Now she
Cries out in the morning when she
Wakes and finds him missing. Wishes
He'd reach out and touch her, wants
To hold him in his grief -- she wants to
Have back these long years that
she's been waiting for his voice. Peter's
Walking in the garden, where he
Knows the paths are laid,
Planted crocus in the springtime, planted
Hostas in the shade, wanders
Down the road to town, but nothing's
Open Sunday morning, now he
Rubs his eyes and wonders if he'll
ever find his home.
Expectation conquers knowledge and the
Evidence of senses; what I
see and hear and feel
I'll never grasp if I decline;
For all I wish and want and hope I'll never
Stand beside my grave, I'm seeing
Gauzy patterns traced out
On the page of wounded time.
She gets up, groggy, runs the water,
Steaming up the mirror, she hears
Peter downstairs in the kitchen,
hopes he's making coffee,
Laura's tired out, she didn't sleep well,
Combs her hair and squints and in the
Mirror she can see the look of
anguish on her face.
She's downstairs with a cup of coffee,
Looking quizzically at Peter,
Peter's solemn face that just
can't seem to meet her gaze.
A question's in the air and they both know it, but the
heavy silence keeps their lips held tight; keeps
Heavy thoughts drawn back to yesterday.
There aren't any words in the Bible anyways, let alone jokes,
I wouldn't worry so much about translating it,
about being swept into its blank void,
slipping frictionless and lucid across its empty page.
Those who have preceded you have left no spoor, no trace,
that you can make out anyways, and yet you know
full well their journey and retrace it.
posted evening of February first, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Translation
There aren't any words in the Bible anyways, let alone jokes,
I wouldn't worry so much about translating it,
about being swept into its blank void,
slipping frictionless and lucid across its empty page.
Those who have preceded you have left no spoor, no trace,
that you can make out anyways, and yet you know
full well their journey and retrace it.
Rilke asked who'd hear him,
among the choirs of heaven or
among the rankèd Angels or among their hierarchy, or something,
if he cried out -- and your throat is still,
your sigh is dead a-borning. Candle's flicker casts its shadows
among the ranked symbols and their blanknesses,
their blacknesses:
this yellowing forest of text.
posted evening of February first, 2012: 1 response
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
sà sÃ, tu aviso estóy escuchando pero hallo que no me importa esto rodeo del confesionario dar, del medio narrativo, del reflejo retro. Asà afirmando, estóy la suerte cerrando:
Am Am(sus)
Finding aptly chilling epitaphs in Robyn Hitchcock lyrics,
Am Em
All I want to do is fall in love while there's still time
Am Am(sus)
Sitting crosswise on the centerpiece and shining off the mantlepiece
Am Am(sus) Am
A skull, a suitcase and a long red bottle of wine.
I was playing in a pubful, of afternoon drinkers
And I asked them as I strummed my guitar, who's got all the chunes
And he crawled along a centipede and rode on his velocipede
Cutting paper napkins into little crescent moons
Tom and Kevin citing happily the sages of their destiny
His living words were dying words he smiled and he said "Yeah"
Searching sadly for that bluegum you can take my eyes I've used 'em
Searching sadly for a quaint old fashioned way to say goodbye
The noises on my evening porch on Meeker Street divide
into infrequent spots of sound --
the quiet cars and trains far off and sometimes getting closer --
and constant streams, these further classified
into degrees of variation:
cicadas' incessant, homogenous roar muffles
(but listen closer)
the babbling brook of excited birds:
the quiet fizz of soda in my glass.
There aren't any words in the Bible anyways, let alone jokes, 