Isabella Rossellini, Dante's Inferno, and Antonio Machado

Cover by Wayne Hogan

Well, this week started with some Green Porno, so who am I not to share? Is it poetry? Maybe not, but it is lyrical in its own way and we need truth like this in a post George Carlin world. Thank you, Isabella Rossellini.

And, oh, yeah, humor. (Don't miss the other mini-films on the side bar).

I've had an idea percolating for a blog post at Eleventh Stack (the blog at my "other job") and it seemed worthy of sharing here (the idea, not the post). I stumbled across the fact, thanks once again to the folks over at the Bookslut blog, that there is a paper puppet version of Dante's Inferno, due for DVD release next month. Here is the trailer, posted at YouTube:





For those with hearty hard drives, you might want to try one of the higher-tech versions at the film's website. If the trailer tantalizes, Ovation TV has posted a 4 minute excerpt that portrays the Flatterers as congressional lobbyists (if this isn't in the spirit of the original epic poem, I'll take my 8th circle punishment right now. Oh, what the hell, here's the 4 minute excerpt (there is no doubt that this is poetry):





Perhaps I've strayed a bit and need a stopover in the 6th circle on my way down. Obviously, that one ain't my call.

In the more traditional area of poetics, I've been digging into a parcel of poetry books this past week, including Han Shan (more about that in a future post, I hope) and C . D. Wright's new take on the state of things, given Iraq and all that, in Rising, Falling, Hovering. If you are detecting some cynicism in the way the later part of the previous sentence trailed off, it seems I've got still another stop to consider. But I'll withhold judgment on that for a moment. Today what I'd like to recommend is a good, strong dose of Antonio Machado.





Dennis Maloney and Mary G. Berg have translated a volume of Machado's enigmatic short poems entitled There Is No Road, published by White Pine Press and pictured above. The works are all short, blending aphorism, philosophy, and a lyrical mysteriousness that is pure poetry. Here are a handful to give you a taste:

It is good to know that glasses
are to drink from;
the bad thing is that we don't know
what thirst is for.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Man is only rich in hypocrisy;
he relies on his ten thousand disguises
----------to deceive
and uses the double key that protects his house
to pick the lock of his neighbor.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Look in your mirror for the other one,
the one who accompanies you.

-----------------------------------------------------------

These chance furrows
why call them roads?
Everyone on a journey walks
like Jesus on the sea.

At 110 plus pages, one poem per page, there is much to ponder here. I'm partial to Dennis' work as I've published a volume of his Issa translations, Dusk Lingers, and one of love poems from the classic 100 Poems by 100 Poets entitled Unending Night. There will be a companion volume to the later focusing on nature poems from 100 Poems to be published in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series sometime next year. The clear, concise language of the translation of Machado comes through in There Is a Road. It's definitely worth a look.

Speaking of journeys, the tour of Lilliput Review's back pages continues this week with issue #83, published in November 1996. If anyone is actually keeping tabs, I've skipped #84, which was a broadside issue by Christien Gholson, Winter Prayers. As with many of the broadsides, excerpting work just doesn't do it justice. If you are interested, it is still available for $1 or can be bundled with 2 other broadsides, for a total of 3 for $2.00. On to the poetry in #83 ....

it is still

worth the risk
to sit, old and troubled
inside the heart
and scrape the walls
worth everything
to dip fingers
in the gravy
to paint the tablecloth
with words
necessary and fat.

jen besemer

----------------------------------------

The Ego and the Raven

Wings, talons, hair, horns:
Why heed a raven's lecture
when you've got it all?

Marjorie Power

----------------------------------------

places I've never been
people I've never met
the things that connect us

David Stensland

----------------------------------------



And one that probably hasn't aged so well ...



I Can't Believe Its Not Buttofucco Madonna

has an oily
texture of
rancid
margarine

Lyn Lifshin

----------------------------------------

Yikes, I can't end with that - here's a Donny Smith translation of an Anonymous Greek epigram:

epigram

The puckered rosebud opens, darkens, withers.
Where it was sweet, now it prickles.

Anonymous (translated by Donny Smith)

Till next time,
Don

Derek Walcott, Bill Deemer, and Some Near Perfect Books of Poems

As noted yesterday, there was more news than I could fit in one post. In particular, there is a truly beautiful poem in the May 15th New York Review of Books by Derek Walcott:



The Hulls Of White Yachts

The hulls of white yachts riding the orange water
of the marina at dusk, and, under their bowsprits the chuckle
of the chain in the stained sea; try to get there
before a green light winks from the mast and the foc'sle
blazes with glare, while dusk hangs in suspension
with crosstrees and ropes and a lilac-livid sky
with its beer stein of cloud froth touched by the sun,
as stars come out to watch the evening die.
In this orange hour the light reads like Dante,
three lines at a time, their symmetrical tension,
quiet bars rippling from the Paradiso
as a dinghy writes lines made by the scanty
metre of its oar strokes, and we, so
mesmerized can barely talk. Happier
than any man now is the one who sits drinking
wine with his lifelong companion under the winking
stars and the steady arc lamp at the end of the pier.



If ever there was a poem as painting, this is one; in addition, it is a poem to propel us onward through spring into summer. I haven't lived at the shore for 17 years and this whisked me back there as if it was yesterday. Although Lilliput is a mag dedicated to the short poem, Walcott's Omeros, a book length poem, comes highly recommended, indeed. This is just gorgeous work.

Here is a 2nd list of near perfect books of poems, sent along anonymously:


1. The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster by Richard Brautigan
2. Basho and His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda
3. Variations by Bill Deemer
4. Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac


And a fine list it is. The one volume I was unfamiliar with was by Bill Deemer, who I was very happy to learn was published and is available from our friend Bob Arnold of Longhouse. While looking up info on Bill Deemer, I stumbled on an online collection of Twenty Poems. From that collection, the following beauty:



Ode

O little town, you are all America to me.
Two gas stations, one tavern, sunset the big event.
I'm glad the only traffic light always stops me.



So far, there have been two takers on the free subscription offer to Lilliput Review which ends next Thursday the 8th.

Hmn.

best,
Don

Beckett on Dante, Freud Meets Aquinas, and the Fine Art of the One Word Poem

Cover collage by John Harter

Last week's posting opened with an elegant quote by James Wright concerning Dante. Perhaps Dante would be appreciative of a maniacal mood swing to another aspect of his persona, as well as ours. In my job, I read literally dozens of reviews every week, concentrating on the areas of literature. In the Times Literary Supplement 11/30/07 under the heading "Cultural Studies", there is a review of Valerie Allen's On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages. From that review, the following:

"Samuel Beckett, the creator of more than one flatulent character, when asked about his ambitions once replied: 'All I want to do is sit on my arse and fart and think about Dante.'"

One might suppose that reading dozens of literary reviews weekly might be conducive to all sorts of reactions, but that line of thought is surely a cul-de-sac. Rather, better to take the high road and press on to Joyce Carol Oates's review of Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life by Philip Davis in the Dec. 21-28 TLS, for the following interesting tidbit on the pitfalls of the biographer:

"In the preface ... Davis quotes the notorious remarks of Sigmund Freud on the futility of the biographical enterprise: 'Anyone turning biographer has committed himself to lies, concealment, to hypocrisy, to flattery, and even to hiding his own lack of understanding, for biographical truth is not to be had, and even if it were it couldn't be useful.' Such an irrational outburst leads one to wonder what Freud was desperate to conceal from biographers, and whether he succeeded ..."

Freud and his talking cure have long been discredited, despite or, perhaps, because of its many successes; Oates's little diatribe, of course, prompts the reader to wonder how such "an irrational outburst leads one to wonder what" Oates was desperate to conceal about the futility of the reviewing enterprise. Extending this logical progression of thought with a mighty Aquinian (as opposed to Kierkegaardian) leap, one might actually come to posit that Freud was, in his notably prescient way, commenting on the blogging enterprise of the early 21st century and its futility.

Under every rock, a post-modern observation lurks, it would seem.

So, enough of what I do when not reading poetry, posting letters, laying out new issues, and thinking about Dante. More selections of poetry have been added to the Back Issue Archive; there are now 14 back issue samplings up online, with over 80 poems. More samples, of course, are posted every week in this blog, so there are now well over 100 poems from the past 18 years of Lilliput Review online, with more to come. This week's selections come from #135, pictured above. As a lover of the short poem, I've an unhealthy fascination for the one line poem and, even more narrowly, perhaps, and even more life threateningly, the one word poem. Among the selections below is one of my favorites ...

2003

Just before spring

the war begins

but - ignorant -

the pink blossoms

keep opening

their tiny fists

Julie Toler

The year comes to an

end, another begins. Still

it is not finished.



David Lindley










TAOUBT



Ray Skjelbred









Each that we lose takes part of us;

A crescent still abides,

Which like the moon,

some turbid night,

Is summoned by the tides.



Emily Dickinson




Here's to peace in 2008.

Best till then,
Don.