Sympathy for the Devil: Issa's Sunday Service, #34

Friday, December 18th, was the birthday of Keith Richards and so, running perhaps a little counter to seasonal sentiment, this week's selection is "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones. The list of historical events is obvious, but what's the lit connection, you might ask? Jagger has claimed that the song was influenced by French writing, particularly Baudelaire, but isn't really exactly sure. Folks have pointed out a lot of parallels to Mikhail Bulgakov's classic novel, The Master and Margarita, and though this connection may be tenuous I'll take it, coupled with Jagger's account, and call it a LitRock sizzler. Though originally attacked by fringe groups as promoting Satanism, the songs strong moral underpinnings are rather obvious to anyone who bothers to listen. That the singer takes the persona of The Devil certainly has its model in religious sources, in the West starting with the Bible itself (which, of course, is a 3rd lit reference).

As a bonus, here's a live performance by the Stones, arguably at their creative peak from their film, "Rock and Roll Circus."

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Though I've featured most of the poems from the double sized issue, #53, from February 1994, in two previous posts, I've managed to dig out one more little gem that I somehow overlooked. So, this week's feature poem by Hugh Hennedy:

After Graduation Day

Like isolated notes
Blackbirds stand on the wires
In the fog off the ocean, and the music
Sounds slow and quiet,
Mostly strings down low

Hugh Hennedy

And one from Issa:





wisteria in bloom--
voices of pilgrims
voices of birds

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don


PS If you receive The Hut via email or a reader, you may miss audio and video attached to posts, especially Issa's Sunday Service. For the full post, just click through.

Robert Bly's Silence in the Snowy Fields and More

The book by Robert Bly chosen for the Near Perfect Book of Poetry list is Silence in the Snowy Fields. The book was written largely at the same time and in the same location as much of The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright. In fact, Bly is the friend referred to in The Blessing, which was featured in last Thursday's post.

As you know if you are a regular around here, the Near Perfect list is reader nominated and remains an ongoing project. As such, I don't necessarily have to agree with the choices; this is a communal thing. I hope to be featuring a poem or three from each of the nominated books by way of sharing the work valued by regular readers of poetry.

Which brings us back to Silence in the Snowy Fields. I'm a fan of Robert Bly, I think he has written more than his share of very good poems and has done more promoting the art of poetry than many of our laureates ever have. That being said, I've read Silence through twice over the past couple of months and, well, it didn't really grab me in a big way. So, this is by way of saying I'm not the final arbiter in this. I featured one poem from Silence back in July. Here are two more that stood out for me:

Watering The Horse

How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
The white flake of snow
That has just fallen in the horse's mane!

Where We Must Look For Help

The dove returns: it found no resting place:
It was in flight all night above the shaken seas;
Beneath ark eaves
The dove shall magnify the tiger's bed;
Give the dove peace.
The split-tail swallows leave the sill at dawn;
At dusk, blue swallows shall return.
On the third day the crow shall fly;
The crow, the crow, the spider-colored crow,
The crow shall find new mud to walk upon.

The horses on Bly's farm played a large part in American poetry it would seem. The second poem feels pretty average until you hit the last two lines; suddenly the language rises to the image, transmutes to archetypal myth, and we are forced to see the cliche of a familiar story in a very different way.

Silence was Bly's first book and it is considered groundbreaking for its time, clearing out some of the cobwebs of what had been for many years a fairly staid American poetry scene. I'll be sharing one more poem from Silence in the coming days. For a very sizable preview of Silence in the Snowy Fields, check it out in google books.

This week's featured back issue of Lilliput Review is #60, a little different in layout and approach. It even comes with a title: "Poems Without Segues II." The whole idea was a matter of expediency; I had more poems on hand than I could, at that time, deal with, and so threw nuance to the wind and simply printed them. #60 was originally published in August 1994.

Artwork by Harland Ristau

Since the scan actually includes 6 poems from the cover (click on the image above for a readable version), I'll be featuring more poems than usual. What follows are some selections from the other 7 jam-packed pages.



breezy--
the spider's thread
warps a sunbeam

William Hart

waves break
on the cusp
of our bed--
I cradle
her moans,
moonlit
between my
crescent thighs

Janet Mason

from Rainy Day Sweetish Bakery

I think the rain
is falling
on my mother's
grave I think
it falls
very quietly.
I think there
is a tree there
and it catches
the drops
and sifts them
down
silently.

Albert Huffstickler

Ely Cathedral

Seeing you from a distance
I knew at once
O Ship of the Fens
How right it was
to make you metaphor

Hugh Hennedy

There is me
and this tree
and that bird

and there is morning.
Suzanne Bowers

trumpet curves stagelight -
the rainy street outside

christien gholson

Self Aggrandizing Poet
The head of the dead window box
flower bows away from
the grimy window in
the town with
your name.

K. Shabee

And a Brobdingnag poem from Huff:

Laundromat

This is how Hopper would have painted it:
the line of yellow dryers
catching the sunlight from the broad window.
Man with his hand reached up to the coin slot,
head turned to the side as though reflecting,
woman bent over the wide table
intent on sorting,
another standing hands at her side, looking off -
as though visiting another country;
each thing as it is,
not reaching beyond the scene for his symbols,
saying merely, "On such and such a day,
it was just as I show you."
Each person, each object, static
but the light a pilgrim.

Albert Huffstickler

best,
Don