tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-216774232024-03-19T04:48:46.402-04:00ursprachesometimes the words escape meJforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.comBlogger4332125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-91331474042635022042024-03-13T12:33:00.003-04:002024-03-18T13:29:26.268-04:00what isTu Fu is far from being a philosophical poet in the ordinary sense, yet no Chinese poetry embodies more fully the Chinese sense of the unbreakable wholeness of reality. The quality is the quantity; the value is the fact. The metaphor, the symbols are not conclusions drawn from images, they are the images themselves in concrete relationship.<br />
[…]<br />
The concept of the poetic situation is itself a major factor in almost all Chinese poems of any period. Chinese poets are not rhetorical; they do not talk about the material of poetry or philosophize abstractly about life—they present a scene and an action. “The north wind tears the banana leaves.” It is South China in the autumn. “A lonely goose flies south across the setting sun.” Autumn again, and evening. “Smoke rises from the rose jade animal to the painted rafters.” A palace. “She toys idly with the strings of an inlaid lute.” A concubine. “Suddenly one snaps beneath her jeweled fingers.” She is tense and tired of waiting for her master. This is not the subject matter, but it is certainly the method, of almost all the poets of the modern, international idiom, whether Pierre Reverdy or Francis Jammes, Edwin Muir or William Carlos Williams, Quasimodo or the early, and to my taste best, poems of Rilke.<br />
[…]<br />
If Isaiah is the greatest of all religious poets, then Tu Fu is irreligious. But to me his is the only religion likely to survive….It can be understood and appreciated only by the application of what Albert Schweitzer called “reverence for life.” What is, is what is holy.
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—Kenneth Rexroth, “Tu Fu, Poems,” <i>Classics Revisted</i> (New Directions, 1986)
JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-1385157282316278442024-03-12T19:24:00.002-04:002024-03-17T19:25:39.739-04:00stay humblePicking up an old poetry anthology, and perusing its contents page: A few names still known, but many more gone from contemporary consciousness. JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-7569771840561040142024-03-11T19:18:00.007-04:002024-03-14T19:20:19.134-04:00where social doesn't mean selfI dream of a social media site where the poets talk about what they’re reading and say very little about their own publications or events.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-54541108811649231112024-03-09T21:17:00.004-05:002024-03-11T21:18:48.503-04:00the innumerable lostBeing asked to contribute an essay to a book of forgotten or neglected poets—it’s not a small number to choose from. JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-62254679377030814512024-03-08T14:10:00.004-05:002024-03-11T14:12:49.585-04:00you can make this stuff upOulipo: mechanical prompts that produce dopey texts.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-54604891267484458492024-03-07T13:37:00.018-05:002024-03-10T15:34:13.206-04:00secrets of beautyI have just seen at Picasso’s house a drawing on a large canvas that depicts a mass grave. It was as if the drawing was deepened by innumerable lines that the painter had previously erased. These lines bear witness to a search—not for a better line, but for the only line that will do.
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Poetry is not holy just because it speaks of things that are holy. Poetry is not beautiful just because it speaks of things that are beautiful. If we are asked why it is beautiful and holy, we must answer as Joan of Arc did when she had been interrogated for too long:
<center> “Next question.”</center><br />
Beauty is lame. Poetry is lame. It is from a struggle with the angel that the poet emerges—limping. This limp is what gives the poet his charm.
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The masses can love a poet only by misunderstanding him.
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Poetry works like lightning. Lightning strips a shepherd bare and carries his clothes several miles away. It imprints on a ploughman’s shoulder the photograph of a young girl. It can obliterate a wall and leave a tulle curtain untouched. In short, it creates unusual things. The poet’s strikes are no more premeditated than lightning.
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A poet should be recognizable not by his style but by the way in which he looks at things.
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At first a poet is not read at all. Then he is read badly. Then he becomes a classic, and habit prevents him from being read. Eventually, he retains his few early lovers for eternity.
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A poet must not refuse honours, but he must see to it that no one thinks of offering them to him. If they are offered to him, it is because he has done something wrong. He must then accept the honours he is offered as a punishment.<br />
[…]<br />
This is what Erik Satie meant when he said, “It is not enough to refuse The Legion of Honour; you have not to deserve it.
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All beautiful writing is automatic.
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A poet’s laziness, waiting for voices: a dangerous attitude. It means that he isn’t doing what he needs in order to make the voices speak to him.
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I used to use a detective agency’s advertisement to describe the figure of the poet: “Sees everything, hears everything, nobody suspects a thing.”
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A poet never has enough freedom. Everything that he hoards turns against him. He is fortunate if somebody plunders him, dupes him, abandons him, ransacks his house, and drives him out of his home.
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The poet has a truth of his own that people mistake for a lie. The poet is a lie that tells the truth.
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The poet uses ornamentation to win people over and to seduce his readers. One day the ornamentation will fall away.
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A poem always unravels too quickly. You have to tie and retie it firmly.
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Seriousness that imposes: Never believe it. Never confuse it with gravity.
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The canvas hates to be painted. The colours hate serving the painter, the paper hates the poem, and the ink hates us. What remains of these struggles is a battlefield, a famous date, a hero’s testimony.
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Éluard’s clear water reflected the nature of his soul and so lovingly deformed it. Those who imitate him can only reflect a reflection.
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Poetry is ill-served by people who live with their feet on the ground while wanting to look like dreamers. Poetry walks with one foot in life and one foot in death. That’s why I call it lame, and it is by its lameness that I recognize it.
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I have noticed that one must write countless pages before a single word strikes a chord with a reader, or a single detail is remembered. The truth is that people will pass judgement on our house on as slight a basis as the catch on the door. This observation give me a sense of vertigo that makes me lazy.
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Why do these thoughts come to me, to someone who is so reluctant to write? It’s probably because—having broken down in a street in Orléans—I am writing them on the move, in a third-class carriage that keeps jogging me. I reconnect with this dear work [of writing] on the endpapers of books, on the backs of envelopes, on tablecloths: a marvellous discomfort that stimulates the mind.*
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—Jean Cocteau, selections from <i><a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/secrets-of-beauty/9781912475551" target="Secret of Beauty">Secrets of Beauty</a></i> (Eris, 2024; based on Éditions Gallimard, 2013), translated by Juliet Powys, with an introduction by Pierre Caizergues.
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*The introduction states that this book of thoughts was composed in March 1945 on a journey back to Paris from the town of Anjouin. The car in which Cocteau was traveling broke down and was towed into Orléans, where he then took a train to Paris.
JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-8847067709999608602024-03-05T13:10:00.001-05:002024-03-07T13:12:50.085-05:00almost a solicitationWhen a poet gets a “No, thanks,” rejection, he ignores the ‘no’ and clings to that ‘thanks’ and thinks the editor is saying in code, ‘Send me something again soon’.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-74439309085684083412024-03-04T12:44:00.001-05:002024-03-07T12:45:36.575-05:00building materialsFrom solitude and silence, the poet erects a home.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-85671379258178402212024-03-03T11:49:00.001-05:002024-03-07T11:51:36.041-05:00less is moreA shortened life magnifies the poet’s output.
JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-1805490911049020932024-03-01T16:54:00.008-05:002024-03-05T16:57:46.518-05:00attention and ardorTo read poetry requires attention and ardor.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-88523112157395655692024-02-28T18:53:00.004-05:002024-03-06T15:36:39.066-05:00avant lightMany of her poems were avant-garde versions of light verse. JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-41979527571696420512024-02-27T17:42:00.026-05:002024-03-04T17:49:16.054-05:00black soundsIn his 1930 essay, “The Duende: Theory and Divertissement,” Lorca wrote: “All that has black sounds has <i>duende</i>…. The black sounds are the mystery, the roots fastened in the mire that we all know and all ignore, the fertile silt that gives us the very substance of art.” Lorca goes on to describe the three forces—the Angel, the Muse, and the Duende—that “everyone senses and no philosopher explains.”
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According to Lorca, when the Angel sees death on the way he flies in slow circles and “weaves tears of narcissus and ice.” When the Muse sees death, she closes the door. But the Duende “will not approach at all if he does not see the possibility of death.” Lorca writes: “Everywhere else, death is an end.” Death’s possibility—the necessity of its proximity—is that which makes art human and alive.
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The omnipresent loom of death—the body and its dangers, the heart and its constancy of harm—is what makes the poetry of Thomas James so powerful. So ubiquitous is this power of “black sounds” that—according to a student who, in earnest, made a list of Thomas’ touchstones, his word-hoard, his lexicon (such easy prey—moon, stone, bone, wound)—over a dozen instances of the word “dark” appear in this one book. But Lorca wrote, after all, that poems are works of art that have been “baptized in dark water.”
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—Lucie Brock-Broido, Introduction to <a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/letters-stranger" target="Thomas James"><i>Letters to a Stranger</i></a> (Graywolf Press, 2008) by Thomas James.
JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-86815561197747681782024-02-26T13:49:00.002-05:002024-03-04T14:09:32.410-05:00missile strikethroughWhen writing, you’ll notice that certain words seem to be looking over their shoulders, certain that at any minute a strikethrough was about to hit them.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-79932746697445419672024-02-24T13:45:00.001-05:002024-03-04T13:46:46.312-05:00form isHe believed that form was the well-described thing.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-30239430202989418552024-02-23T13:41:00.001-05:002024-03-04T13:43:38.668-05:00language system Analyzing the poem as a language system.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-40280086214951044312024-02-22T12:31:00.001-05:002024-03-04T12:33:43.252-05:00bored throughI was bored by your poem…no, what I mean to say, is that your poem bored through me.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-88016135267075463512024-02-20T12:26:00.006-05:002024-03-04T12:34:32.878-05:00speaking from beyondPoets are eager to become mouthpieces for the dead.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-25396800301770334642024-02-18T14:49:00.002-05:002024-02-27T15:02:47.492-05:00lyric audacity‘Where did this fat, good-natured officer…get such astounding lyric audacity, the mark of a great poet?’ wrote Leo Tolstoy of Afanasy Fet.
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[…]
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[Afanasy Fet’s] poetic credo he summed up in a few words: ‘Anyone who cannot throw himself head-first from the seventh storey with the unshakable belief that he will be borne up on the air is no poet.’ The fixing of a moment in eternity (‘I look straight from time into eternity’)—the fixing in perpetual stillness of an accidental, transient, elusive moment of the soul, of some everyday detail—is the characteristic texture of his poetry:<br /><br />
This leaf that has withered and fallen<br />
Burns with eternal gold in song.
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[…]
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Lyric audacity is the key to the musicality in Fet’s poetry. Not the communication of meaning, but the inculcation of a mood. Feeling abolishes logic. Fet wrote: ‘Poetry and music are not just related, they are inseparable. All enduring works of poetry, from the Old Testament to Goethe to Pushkin, are essentially musical—songs, harmony--, also truth. I have always been drawn away from the explicit sphere of words to the indeterminate sphere of music, and have gone as far as my strength allowed.’ Tchaikovsky wrote of Fet: ‘I think his poetry is marvellous…At his best, Fet oversteps the bounds of poetry and strides boldly into our terrain. Fet often reminds me of Beethoven.’
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[…]
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Each poem has its own melody, its rhythmic profile, which is repeated in no other. ‘Seeking to re-create the harmony of truth, the poetic spirit automatically hits on the appropriate musical structure…No musical mood, no work of art’, wrote Fet.
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—“The Poetry of Afanasy Fet” by Yevgeny Vinokurov, an essay, which formed the introduction to a Russian edition of Afanasy Fet’s selected poems (1976), translated by Maxwell Shorter.
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<i>Afanasy Fet: I have come to you to greet you</i>, selected poems translated by James Greene. Introduction by Harold Gifford and an essay by Yevgeny Vinokurov (Angel Press, 1982).
JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-87477372588786418322024-02-17T13:41:00.001-05:002024-02-27T13:43:25.870-05:00marvels enoughA kind of poetry that I resisted on many levels yet there were marvels enough in the language to engage me, to keep me reading.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-84036142893043269822024-02-16T12:58:00.001-05:002024-02-27T13:00:00.130-05:00lyric sparkThe poem may be directed to an other or a beloved, yet the self remains the lyric spark. JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-69913524006483630982024-02-14T14:43:00.012-05:002024-02-15T14:46:27.916-05:00anaphora and other refrainsDo I repeat myself, yes, I contain multiples. [tweaking Whitman]JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-60264874880427153572024-02-13T14:25:00.005-05:002024-02-15T14:32:08.270-05:00poet me A poet with all the self-satisfaction you’d expect of an egotist on display.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-64397290091342943462024-02-12T10:10:00.001-05:002024-02-15T10:14:43.081-05:00gambit without the gameThe small poem is a flash, a gesture, a gambit without the game that follows. There’s no room for landscape here, or easeful reflection, but there is the opportunity for humor and poignancy. And this minimalist practice has its masters.
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—Billy Collins, Afterword to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547114/musical-tables-by-billy-collins/"><i>Musical Tables</i></a> (Random House, 2022)
JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-43994269205579292552024-02-10T15:41:00.002-05:002024-02-14T14:55:44.643-05:00the way inThrough poetic imagery we experience immanence.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21677423.post-24568305663493063312024-02-08T18:46:00.000-05:002024-02-08T18:46:09.237-05:00chastened readerLately what I’ve been reading shames me enough not to write. And that’s a good thing.JforJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17178504373218996278noreply@blogger.com0