My Blakean Year: Issa's Sunday Service, #58

This week's selection for Issa's Sunday Service is by the inimitable Patti Smith, her second go round here in the land of litrock. These are the lyrics, from the artist's website, plus a gander, in pdf, at her original ms. page for the song.

Right here is where poetry and rock come together:







And so, as Mr. Blake himself is invoked, I can hardly pass on the opportunity to share one of his many devastating short poems:

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a Human heart
And Jealousy a Human Face,
Terror, the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy, the Human Dress.

The Human Dress is forgéd Iron,
The Human Form, a fiery Forge,
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd,
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

William Blake

Death mask of William Blake



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Since it's the 4th of July, here's a little something for folks who maybe never really listened to the lyrics to this song. When we think about war and we think about freedom, let's think on this a bit. Seems to me the tone of this rendition captures the spirit of the words a tad better than the better known version:






For those without the pleasure of a Jersey history, the penitentiary he is talking about is Rahway State Penitentiary (aka East Jersey State Prison), where Rubin Carter did hard time:




And this is the refinery, the Bayway Oil Refinery, formerly owned by Standard Oil and Exxon, now owned by ConocoPhillips:





And, this 4th of July, the war drags on.


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From the archive this week: a poem by Greg Kosmicki, from Lilliput Review, #89, July 1997.

untitled, undated #2

How long can a writer go on intuition alone.
How long can a sparrow go on intuition alone.

Greg Kosmicki

baby sparrow--
even when people come
opening its mouth

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Antonio Machado, Issa, and the Return of the King

Cover by Oberc

As time and tide permit, I've been trying to get a hold of and read some of the volumes suggested for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list. This week, via the wonder that is interlibrary loan, I received The Sea and the Honeycomb: a Book of Tiny Poems, edited by Robert Bly. I've enjoyed much of what I've read; a great many of the poems are translations by Bly himself, occasionally with a collaborator.

The poems that struck me immediately were translations of the work of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado. I've run into his work before and enjoyed it, particularly the shorter poems. Here are a couple of Bly's translations:


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It is good to know that glasses
are to drink from;
the bad thing is not to know
what thirst is for.

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If it is good to live,
then it is better to be asleep dreaming,
and best of all,
mother, is to awake.

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Another excellent poem from this collection is by, of all people, Vladimir Nabokov:


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Only the birds are able to throw off their shadow.
The shadow always stays behind on earth.

Our imagination flies:
we are its shadow, on the earth.

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Finally there are a few poems by the delightful Issa, our patron; though I've seen this one translated differently, I like the starkness of this rendering:


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Why mention people?
Even the scarecrows
are crooked.

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The Sea and the Honeycomb is out of print and if you want a copy of your own, it will cost you via amazon's used market or my favorite virtual source for used books, abebooks. Some of the Bly translations are available in The Winged Energy of Delight, a volume of selected translations. The Issa and Machado are there but since the later's poems are part of a larger work, they are not indexed and one has to leaf through. But they are there, along with an incredible cross section of great poets. Here is the contents page plus a generous preview of the poems, courtesy of HarperCollins.

Since this blog takes its name and inspiration from the master poet Issa, I've tried to provide many different translators takes on his work (the Issa link above is new and different). Here is a translation from a master in his own right, Cid Corman, with a very different approach to another familiar Issa poem:


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Only one guy and
only one fly trying to
make the guest room do

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I've begun preparing the contributor copies of the new issues, #'s 163 & 164, for mailing and I'm hoping that they will begin to go out over the next two weeks. In the meantime at flashback central, here are a couple of little pieces from Lilliput #85, originally published in January 1997:



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Cutting

My father leans close
to my ear, a root beer
barrel rattling over
back teeth, he fumbles
against the rust clasp
on a blue plastic case,
scissors and black combs
within clear pockets.

Mark Forrester

Oh, Cowboy,

you climb up my tree,
wake all the bats.

Lindsey Royce

Why We Never Got Rid of the Poodle
----We Found at Blue Stem Lake

We are all of us
sparrows
in winter branches
without names.

Greg Kosmicki

Dear Don:

More threats. More haiku.

John Cantey Knight

N. B.

Life is like
nothing else.
Exactly.

Cid Corman

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Finally, to close out with a smile, below you will find the Monday edition from a relatively new comic strip, Lio. Lio is about a little boy with a mighty attraction to the macabre: zombies, monsters, aliens etc. are all regularly, and happily, featured in this generally amusing strip. This week takes it to another level with a homage to the greatest comic kid of all-time, Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes. Below, Lio is once more messing with the mystic, with results that will delight comic fans everywhere:




I'm a sucker for cartoon strip (as opposed to comic/graphic novel) crossovers.


Till next time:

Don

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