The Dangling Conversation: Issa's Sunday Service, #142

   

In case of wonky widget, click here to listen

When I thought about this song the other day, I was sure that it had appeared on a previous edition of the Sunday Service. Still, it nagged me, so I decided to check the Litrock from Issa's Sunday Service website, only to find out I was wrong.

How could I have missed this one? "Your Emily Dickinson," "my Robert Frost," hmn. Asleep at the switch again.



The Dangling Conversation

It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
 
And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.



So, here's my Emily Dickinson and my Robert Frost. How's about you?  



Never Again Would the Birds’ Song Be the Same - Robert Frost

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came. 


#320

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
'Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –  



Here's a song that will never make the litrock list but, hey, while we're here (and is that really Pat Metheny taking the solo, and Duck Dunn on the bottom?):
 

     

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

the ducks have gone--
peace and quiet
of the willow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

In memory: Donald "Duck" Dunn

best,
Don 

PS. Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 142 songs

Robert Hass Reads Issa, Thoreau Grinds Away & Damned Baseball Haiku

Cover by John Bennett

Ran across a number of interesting pieces this week, including a video of Robert Hass reading Issa haiku at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival. This short reading (less than 2 minutes) of 9 poems perfectly captures the playfulness and humor that endears Issa to so many. In addition, it a a model of how to perform haiku, no easy task. It misses the immense sadness of Issa, the other dimension that contributes to his immortality, but that was not the point of this reading as may be readily seen. This reading is part of a larger series entitled Poetry Everywhere, which includes such poets as Charles Simic, Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, and Robert Frost.

Fine, fine stuff. I've made it a permanent link in the Issa section of the sidebar.

In Monday's post, I mentioned The Blog of Henry David Thoreau; here is another gem from that journal, entitled Grinding Away.

Mary Karr has recently taken over the Poet's Choice column in the Washington Post and it has taken me a little time to warm up to her style and tastes. A recent post in which she began by admitting she never liked Emily Dickinson did the trick; she mentioned the anecdote that has long been making the rounds that you can sing almost any Dickinson poem to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Try it with Because I could not stop for Death.

Hmn.

Her latest column takes on something I just can 't abide: baseball haiku. It's not the fault of the haiku; I can't stand baseball fiction, baseball short stories etc. (n.b.: I am a big baseball fan). However, in her column covering the recent publication of Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball, she quotes the work of George Swede, among others. Congratulations to George, one of our finest purveyors of the haiku form. He ably proves why in the two poems quoted in the article:


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

empty baseball field
a dandelion seed floats through
the strike zone

video ball game
through knotholes in the old fence
evening sunbeams

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


Now, there are a couple of baseball haiku that even I like. The first is simply perfect and the use of the single word "evening" in the second has me on my back waiting for my tummy to be scratched (and you thought you could never really please an editor).

This week's selection of poems from a past issue of Lilliput Review takes us back to #89, July 1997. As the summer season begins, here are a couple of seasonal works from back then:


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

Tentative Summation

A poem is ocean -
without shore.

Tim Scannell

in my hand--
the rock smoothed
by part of the Pacific Ocean

Gary Hotham

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


And two by the late Joseph Semenovich:


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

narcissi

i present
whoever i am
both subject and object

and just like narcissus
how unlucky can you get
the pond became

the verb
he drowned
himself in

my step-father's paintings

the black rocks
the green frothy water breaking over them
the sky pulled apart like the innards of a pillow
one screaming gull

outside
the heavy trucks/the grinding
gears/the chug-a-lug
the way the world

is

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

best,
Don


Note: If you would like to receive the two current issues of Lilliput Review free (or have your current subscription extended two issues), just make a suggestion of a title or titles for the Near Perfect Books page.

Dickinson, Yosano Akiko, and Basho

Cover art by Harland Ristau

I'm currently working on a couple of projects concerning Emily Dickinson which I'll probably be discussing in future postings. For the moment, for those who didn't see/hear it, I'd like to refer you to The Writer's Almanac for yesterday's rendition of "I shall keep singing!", which, like much of the best of her work, seems so simplistic on the surface but resonates like all get-out.

Over the past year and into the foreseeable future, I have and will be continuing to publish Dennis Maloney's translations of the work of my favorite tanka poet, Yosano Akiko. At least four new poems are forthcoming in the next two issues of Lilliput. In the meantime, here are a couple of older translations by Glenn Hughes and Yozan T. Iwasaki:

There are numberless steps
Up to my heart.
He climbed perhaps two or three.

Like my heart,
Which is waiting for you,
This bouquet of flowers will wither
Before tonight has passed.

The white iris
And the purple iris
Grow side by side in the pond,
Yet never open their hearts
To each other.

I've been perusing Basho and His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda, one of the Near Perfect Books of Poems list; the list has now grown to 28 items, with lots of folks taking advantage of the two free issues offer. In addition to being an all new translation of Basho's work, the poems are accompanied by extensive notes and commentaries which are very helpful in bridging the historical and cultural gaps for Westerners. Here are a few:

night . . . silently
in the moonlight, a worm
digs into a chestnut



in the seasonal rain
the crane's legs
have become shorter



with morning glories
a man eats breakfast
- that is what I am

Finally, before getting to this week's archive issue of Lillie, I'd like to mention that their is an excellent article/interview on/with Mary Oliver, in the Block Island Times. When asked to name her favorite poets, she said "Whitman, Whitman, Whitman!" I knew there was a reason I liked her: Whitman was my choice on the Near Perfect Books of Poems list.

This week's archive issue is #90, from July 1997, with a great cover by the late, very much missed Harland Ristau. Here's a couple of little gems that opened that issue:

The Wrong Path

One more mile again
another dew thunders falling
from the leaf's edge

Laura Bast-Russo

the way
is not
the map

John Viera

from Reroutings III

ID ____ RID ____ RIDE

Richard Kostelanetz

And, to close out, by the queen of the small press:

I Don't Want To Move

pillow that smells like skin
your fingers ----- light on
water in a Monet ----- that
will change before the
paint drys

Lyn Lifshin

best,
Don


Note: If you would like to receive the two current issues of Lilliput Review free, just make a suggestion at the Near Perfect Books page.

Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, and Five Poets with Staying Power

Cover by Oberc

As noted on today's Writer's Almanac, it is the poet Gary Snyder's birthday (in addition, don't miss Patrick Phillips's sad and beautiful poem "Matinee" on today's WA posting). Recent winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, Snyder, along with poet, novelist and activist Wendell Berry, is one of our finest living writers; both celebrate and advocate for the earth from which we come and to which we return. As Alan Watts used to say, we are not born "into" the world, we are born "out" of it.

Rus Bowden's Poetic Ticker pointed me to the following Gary Snyder video on YouTube. I'm linking directly to part 1 for convenience. Click here for parts 2 through 4.






As part of the reorganization of the sidebar (look right) on this site, I've put together a group of links to the work of Issa, patron of all things small. Lots of interest may be found there.

There are two other notes before getting to this week's selection from the Lilliput archive. The Washington Post recently had a posting on their "Short Stack" blog entitled "Five Poets With Staying Power." There are at least two on the list I agree with. The comments that follow the posting are even more interesting than the choices. Any thoughts on your 5 poets with staying power (I'll take Whitman, Dickinson, Sexton, Shakespeare, and cummings - Frost would be 6th)? And, for those who might have missed it here, my review of Mary Oliver's new book, "Red Bird," has been posted at the library blog "Eleventh Stack."

This week's issue of Lilliput is #93, from December 1997. Here are three tiny highlights:



Before the wake ...
the eldest daughter helps
with her mother's make-up.

Patrick Sweeney

at the zoo
not a single
human face

George Ralph

ancient headstones
the names and numbers
worn to mutters

William Hart

And one to lighten the day:



Another Contributor's Notes
"I learned at the Iowa
Writers' Workshop that if you don't
jiggle the toilet's knob two or three
times, it won't ever stop flushing."

Wayne Hogan

Today is the last day for the free 6 issue gift subscription offer to Lilliput Review. Details at the link.


best,
Don

National Poetry Month and the Nature of Argument

As part of the celebration known as National Poetry Month, I think it's time to let the poems speak for themselves. So here are a few of my favorite poets, in no particular order. Reading a poem or two by each of them should help combat the persistent rumor that poetry is dead. Or will it? Of course, not many people know who Bruce Wexler is, but if Martin Amis says it's dead, who can argue? Or, really, who would want to?

William Wordsworth

Louise Glück

Issa

Mary Oliver

Gerald Stern

Amy Lowell

Allen Ginsberg

Audre Lorde

e.e. cummings

Langston Hughes

Sharon Olds

Yehuda Amichai

Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman

Han-shan

James Wright

Charles Baudelaire - in sidebar

Li Po

Anne Sexton

D. H. Lawrence

Franz Wright

Cover by Bob Zark

Since starting a Lilliput blog back in July 2007, samples of most issues from #100 through #150 have been posted, with the exception of some broadside issues it would be a disservice to excerpt. Beginning with this posting, we're going to step into the way back machine and begin posting poems from #99 (October 1998) down. Here's a couple of tiny gems from #99:




I'm getting old now
I think I'll marry
the rain
and settle down

Albert Huffstickler

poetry
the flowering morning
broken away.

John J. McDonald

An Imitation of Hsü Kan (171-218 A.D.)
4.
Since you, sir, went away,
my tiny trellis shakes with grief.
Red Chinese poppies you planted last fall
grow like tears --- immeasurable.

Linda Joan Zeiser

Before the ride ends she wants to go again

Patrick Sweeney

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the one line poem? Till next week,

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.