C. P. Cavafy: State of the Art Website

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of the great Greek poet, C. P. Cavafy. Two new volumes of his work have just been published: a new Collected Poems and a volume entitled The Unfinished Poems. Online the official Cavafy website is a state of the art wonder, collecting a variety of translations (sometimes up to 4 for an individual poem) into 5 distinct categories: "The Canon," "Repudiated," "Hidden," "Unfinished (titles only)," and "Prose Poems." There are also sections of his prose, as well as biographical, critical material, and a bibliography of his work. In addition there is an archival section that has notes, images, manuscripts, and more.

The respect accorded to the poet here should be a model for website development of all major poets, it is that good. All the major works, as translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard are available to read, with many alternate translations as alluded to above. As an example, here are two translations of a short poem of interest:

Long Ago

I’d like to speak of this memory...
but it’s so faded now... as though nothing is left—
because it was so long ago, in my early adolescent years.

A skin as though of jasmine...
that August evening—was it August?—
I can still just recall the eyes: blue, I think they were...
Ah yes, blue: a sapphire blue.

C. P. Cavafy
translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

Far Back

I should like to tell you of this reminiscence....
But it has faded so.... it is as though nothing now remained —
because far back, in my first adolescent years it lies.

A skin that was suggestive of the jasmine....
That August evening — Was it the month of August?....
Hardly do I remember now the eyes; they were blue, I think....
Ah, yes! I can recall their blue — a sapphire blue.

C. P. Cavafy
translated by John Cavafy

Placing a variety of translations of individual poems side by side like this helps greatly in attempting to evoke the poet's original execution and intent. Even the lesser translations provide a wealth of suggestion for healthy speculation. Another poem I was taken with, "Candles," has three variations as well as the original Greek. It just doesn't get much better than this. It's well worth checking out while Cavafy is in mind.

Tomorrow is also the birthday of Yusef Komunyakaa: here is nice selection of his work at the Internet Poetry Archive.

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Cover by Bobo

This visit to the Lilliput Review archive takes a look at issue #37 from October 1992. Issues #1 through the 30's were in the original Lillie format, approx. 3.6 x 4.25", as opposed to the layout it eventually morphed into, 4.25 x 3.5." Whats the diff, you might ask. Well, the current format has 16 pages, as opposed to 12 pages, and is taller than it is wide, the reverse of the original. Thus more pages and more poems per page. The old format averaged between 10 to 15 poems, the new 20 to 26 or so.

Just in case you were wondering.

As a result, from here out through issue #1, there are less poems to choose from so, as a result, there will probably be a few less sample poems per issue. Here are 3 from October 1992:

blackness
like a smile
engulfing a white bird
a single motion
gaining the swooping speeed
of a voice
stretching across the land,
a sheet of sound
that might blanket
the living birth
within your throat

Ben Tremillo

Second Chance

In your dream you return
to the place where you went
wrong, and given this chance
to change things you go on
the way you went before.
Even in sleep you know
there is only one go --
and it went well the first time.
Where it didn't -- well, it will
be good to see you again.

Louis McKee

Gone Forever

the sky, flat and infinite blue
with coos of a mourning dove
bouncing off its page

who would call you back
when even the smallest cries
are erased

Vogn

Finally, happy birthday to Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth:

the distant mountain
reflected in his eyes...
dragonfly

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: 90 Lyrical Years

Today is the 90th birthday of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He has been the touchstone of generations of poetry readers; if you had never read poetry, somehow, somewhere, if you had the inclination to, you'd run into the work of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It seems as though serendipity and that is his magic.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is first and foremost a word magician (tired, I keyed musician, and he, of course is that, too: a word musician). His Coney Island of the Mind seems to be on everybody's list of best poetry books and deservedly so. Even so, he is hardly a one-trick pony. Here's a poem from his first collection, Pictures of the Gone World, published in 1955:



25

---------The world is a beautiful place
--------------------------------------------to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
------------------------------- ---not always being
--------------------------------------- --------- -- ---so very much fun
------if you don't mind a touch of hell
-----------------------------------------now and then
--------------just when everything is fine
-------------------------------------------------because even in heaven
--------------------------they don't sing
-------------------------------------------------all the time

------------The world is a beautiful place
-----------------------------------------to be born into
--------if you don't mind some people dying
------------------------------------------------------all the time
-----------------------or maybe only starving
---------------------------------------------------some of the time
--------------------which isn't half so bad
-------------------------------------------------if it isn't you

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Here's another from A Far Rockaway of the Heart, published 42 years later, in 1997:




#47

In far-out poetry
---------------- ---the heart bleeds upon the page
---------------------------------------------------------shamelessly
--------as printer's ink bleeds onto
---------------------------------------the fine tooth of paper
As blood in its rage
-----------------------beats through the body
--------------------------------------------------blind in its courses
Leaving its indelible imprints
--------------------those fine tattoos of living
----------------------------------------------------known as poems

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Finally from the 2001 collection, How to Paint Sunlight (not available via City Lights - o.p., maybe?), his beautiful elegy for the most beautiful Allen Ginsberg:

Allen Ginsberg is Dying

Allen Ginsberg is dying
It's in all the papers
It's on the evening news
A great poet is dying
But his voice
----------------won't die
His voice is on the land
In Lower Manhattan
in his own bed
he is dying
There is nothing
to do about it
He dying the death that everyone dies
He is dying the death of the poet
He has a telephone in his hand
and he calls everyone
from his bed in Lower Manhattan
All around the world
This is Allen
----------------the voice says
Allen Ginsberg calling
How many times have they heard it
over the long great years
He doesn't have to say Ginsberg
All around the world
in the world of poets
there is only one Allen
I want ed to you he says
He tells them what's happening
what's coming down
on him
Death the dark lover
going down on him
His voice goes by satellite
over the land
over the Sea of Japan
where he once stood naked
trident in hand
like a young Neptune
a young man with black beard
standing on a stone beach
It is high tide and the seabirds cry
The waves break over him now
and the seabirds cry
on the San Francisco waterfront
There is a high wind
There are great whitecaps
lashing the Embarcadero
Allen is on the telephone
His voice is on the waves
I am reading Greek poetry
The sea is in it
Horses weep in it
The horse of Achilles
weep in it
here by the sea
in San Francisco
where the waves weep
They make a sibilant sound
a sibylline sound
Allen
-------they whisper
-----------------------Allen

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Happy birthday, Mr. F. Send him a present; order a book or two of his work from City Lights Books, the finest independent shop in America. And, ah, what the hay, know how you like to give yourself a little something for your birthday, especially the older you get? Well, here's a little present from the younger Ferlinghetti (1955 again, this time "#2" from Pictures of a Gone World) to his older Lawrence-self, accompanied by the Pan-like, multi-faceted David Amram:






******************************************************************

No Cover Art by Bobo

This week's back issue from the Lilliput Review Archive comes from April 1993, some nearly 16 odd years later. Odd might be the operative word, if the 16 years previous to those had not been a good deal odder. Here's four short flashes of times gone by:




Weak with Doubt

catching a butterfly
who was ready to suffer

Vogn

The Right Moment

standing through the windshield
that the car behind you didn't have

Stacey Sollfrey

Getting ready

my mind walks out
of here

swoops
down flights of stairs

and glides to a gutter pigeon
its stiff body vibrating

about
to fly

Sanford Fraser

Ice Out

--------raging torrents, black waters rushing by
quiet nighttime hours, carrying whispers of
ancient female ghosts along on gentle river
winds, dusty voices, long gone pioneer wives
and mothers, once again searching for hope
amid new spring trilliums, wild cherry petals.

T. K. Splake

To finish, a greeting to spring from the master:

borrowing the umbrella-hat
daffodil...
sleeping sparrow

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

Enjoy it all - as long as autumn seems to linger, spring flies by.


best,
Don

Lilliput Review: the 20th Anniversary

Click on the cover to enlarge

Somehow, the day has arrived: it is the month of March and, incredulously, it is the 20th anniversary of Lilliput Review. I made (or perhaps that's dreamed) big plans for this moment. An anthology chapbook or, better still, a "best of" Lilliput, the first 20 years, a collection that another, adventurous press would be willing to take the risk and publish.

All of which I haven't taken step one toward.

Publishing the magazine and its imprint, Modest Proposal Chapbooks, got in the way. An impromptu haiku contest, prompted by an unexpected comment to a post about Bashô, resulted in the first annual Bashô Haiku Challenge, and a chapbook of the best work resulted (more about this below). I fell behind in getting the new issues out. There were piles of submissions to attend to. I got mixed up with Facebook and the wonderful deluge that's resulted.

To put it simply I was just too damn busy to do another thing. Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, as the cliché goes.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

So, for now, this post will serve as a celebration.

Lilliput started on the floor of a bungalow at the Jersey shore, amidst books and sand and ubiquitous crickets, me on my knees, cutting and pasting little bits of paper on to other little bits of paper. It was inspired by other small press publications that took that term very literally, such as Pig in a Pamphlet and This is Important. As a regularly published poet in the little magazines in the 80's, it seemed a good way to tap into the creative juices when my own poetry would hit a wall. I received the support of many other small mags, that helped to get the word out and the mag afloat. The camaraderie of the small press, which is a blessed thing and continues to this day, is something I cherish.

The first "issue," which I put together in March 1989, was essentially a test run to see if I could actually do it and what it might look like if I did. For the test run, I printed up 10 copies of 7 of my poems in a 4.25 x 5.5" format which was to be the size for the first 8 issues, before switching over to the current 3.5 x 4.25." The cover is pictured above. I won't burden you with any of the work, which was in a slightly surreal style I was sporting at the time and, though I remember it fondly and still fall back on some its stylistic anomalies, is frankly painful to read beyond the circle of two it was intended for. Succinctly put, this was a set of poems for the woman I was dating who, happily, I married. Since I seem to be bandying about clichés, I'll avoid the next one and just say she's been there with me since the beginning and her understanding, care and support have been as important as any other element to make this work. It also helps that she's spent time as a proofer and has a high tolerance for bs.

You'll notice that the original title was Lilliput Revue. The title change came with issue #2, not because I wanted to change it, but because the artist, Bobo, incorporated a "new spelling" into the artwork for the cover and I didn't have the heart to ask him for a redraw. There is much to be said for serendipity and going with the flow. Here's the cover:

Well, appropriately enough, that's the short version of the 1st 20 years. Let the party begin. I intend to celebrate all year. I'm happy to say that the entire run of 168 issues is still in print and still available. The standard rate of 15 issues for $10 is applicable; however, if anyone is interested in the entire run, query me for special pricing. The email address is at the bottom of the right hand column. If there is any publisher out there that thinks a 20th anniversary collection of the best of Lilliput makes a lot of sense, I'm listening. Meanwhile, it's time to keep on keeping on. There's lots more to do.

This past weekend, I'm happy to announce, the contributor copies of the Basho Haiku Challenge Anthology went out and should begin arriving in a mailbox near you. The chapbook, which contains 25 poems by 19 poets, is now available for $3.00, postage paid. It far surpassed my expectations and I believe any regular reader of Lillie will find much to ponder over and enjoy.

In addition, yesterday the contributor copies of issues #167 and 168 went out in the mail. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be getting out the full run of subscription copies. Individual copies of both are available for $1.00 a piece.

The same price as it was going for in 1989.

Finally, if it's Tuesday, it's back issue archive day. In the inexorable march back in time, this week we arrive at October 1993. This issue, #49, was the second of two All Women issues. Here's a sampling of what you'll find there. Enjoy.





Cover me
I'm going out
to write
a poem. Keep
firing
over my head.

Karen Alkalay-Gut

Where once they lined up

according to size, your words come
muzzled, rushing straight out of
colonial history, Master

and slave.

Gayle Elen Harvey

Empowered

is to be filled with a tank of yes

seeing behind the light of morning stars

a readiness in veins, singing through
--bone and sinew

it is all I ever wanted and didn't want
--rolled into a tight cigarette
--smoked at the end of the day

-----------------Vogn

Always

I'll keep writing
these poems
in the dark
pretending you're
near me rain falling
on my lips this flower
budding for no other
girl somewhere
inside me
a song you'll
never understand

Gina Bergamino

Quasimodos

Because we are deaf and hear stone
we make the most unbearably beautiful music.

Lorene Moore

After Forgiveness

you only come
when trees lift their branches
to kiss my wounds

Vogn

Resurrection

If there is to be a second
coming I wish it would
be Chagall

Suzanne Bowers

Fairy Tales

An ever-ever land
where happy endings
hurtle off the pages
into the emergency wards
of
our lives.

Janet Mason

best,
Don

A Pair of Nines (Plus): Richard Brautigan, Galway Kinnell, and the Lilliput Archive

Cover by Bobo

Tuesday just seems to swing around before you know it, so it's time to dip into the Lilliput Back Issue Archive. Before hitting that, let's thread some loose ends into a post-modern early Valentine and, oh, yeah, supply an update on all things (Lilliput) print and publishable.

I've begun printing up the new issues and stuffing contributor envelopes, a process that usually takes about two weeks. Following that, regular subscription copies of issues #'s 167 and 168 will begin shipping, that's about 3 weeks out. That process takes about 4 to 6 weeks on its own.

Simultaneously, I've received the Basho Haiku Challenge chapbook proof back from the proofer. The usual bonehead typos and logistic hiccups will be corrected and copies will begin to print up and probably ship sometime around March 1st (yeah, that's simultaneous with the above - don't ask). Stay tuned for further updates.

Meanwhile, back on the blog front, while checking out the work of Langston Hughes, Galway Kinnell and, Richard Brautigan, all who had birthdays over the past 5 days, I ran across a pair of nines I thought I'd share:

Nine Things

It's night
and a numbered beauty
lapses at the wind,
chortles with the
branches of a tree

-giggles

plays shadow dance
with a dead kite,
cajoles affection
from falling leaves,
and knows four
other things.
One is the color
of your hair.

Richard Brautigan

9

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantilliations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away over the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps
taken
away from one's kind, toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in an exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

Galway Kinnell

Because the Tuesday post usually has a few general lyrical news items, here's one to turn Valentine's day, um, inside out:






Two accounts relating the above "phenomenon" may be found here and here. Though the NYT's use of the above cover is salacious (spell check read this as "delicious"), Guardian UK nearly trumped it with a nice panel from the original "Night of the Living Dead." Truly, after Zombie Haiku Miss Jane could not be far behind.

Any day now, someone is going to officially declare the zombie revival (un)dead. My apologies; things have been a bit jumbled around here the last few weeks, so it seems perhaps I best leave my mixed up holidays right here. But a little humor goes a long way when untangling thread.

This week's back issue is Lilliput Review #53, from February 1994. This issue had an extra 8 pages, for a truly brobdingnagian total of 24. I believe I've mentioned before that the further back in time I go, the more removed I feel from the type of work I look for now. The magazine has been something of a life journey, a lyrical journal composed with the words of others. Who I was 15 years ago is at once distinctly different and fundamentally the same as who I am today. Perhaps even the selections I make from the work back then are tinted by the way I see things now. It's been a long strange, trip, as the poet Robert Hunter said. Next month will be the 20th anniversary of the publication of the 1st issue of Lillie and I guess that has me looking back, as well as forward. For now, let's dip in and see what was happening 15 years ago this month, on the short poem front, through the lens of a particular small press editor.




Doubt Robbing Perfect Faith

in the woods

a caterpillar covering itself
with the scales of a lizard.

Vogn

-----/ self serving /
like a simile

Tolek

zapruder moment

---------------the
---------------heart
rears back,
---------------spraying
---------------pink
---------------sawdust.

-----------Joy Sawyer

Gum

everywhere in
the pink dress,
her body snaps

Chad Buser

Pissing and trembling -
laugh at me crickets

Issa

Separation(s)
---with apologies to Issa

After dinner,
empty wine bottles stand in judgment.
I relieve myself from your porch
and fall ass-backwards
over the moon.

Richard D. Houff

the water so smooth the moon touched it
like a face
touches a mirror

Thomas Wiloch

1565.

shaved the poet
in half-moon
with words of broken ice.

Guy R. Beining

Since this was such a large issue and the selection above comes from only the first half, I'll revisit #55 next week for the second half.

One final side note of interest: this was Issa's first appearance in a Lilliput publication.


best,
Don

Basho Haiku Chapbook Update and One From the Archive

Cover by Harland Ristau

I've begun simultaneously working on the forthcoming Basho Haiku Challenge Chapbook and the new issues of Lilliput Review. As with all the other things I try to do in tandem, they've become mixed together and so as a result work on both has slowed considerably (and, of course, there are also the small matters of this daily blog and all those snail mail poems - about 1,000 batches per year - to deal with). I originally hoped to get the new issues out by February first and had projected a January publication for the BHC Chapbook, but realistically I'm looking at a March 1st date for both. One and a half issues and the entire chapbook are in the preliminary layout stages - poems done, no artwork or covers - so slow and steady progress dictates the March 1st date. If I can get the chaps out sooner I will, but the issues won't begin to go out until the 1st.

Of note this morning, The Writer's Almanac has posted a fine poem by Elizabeth Alexander, who will be presenting a new poem today at the inaugural.

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves.
(though Sterling Brown said
"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'")
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overheard on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love
and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice
and are we not of interest to each other?

Elizabeth Alexander

Tuesday being the new Lilliput archive day and this being Tuesday, it's that time. This week's highlights come from issue #56, April 2004.





Stars Fading Over A Red Trace

light pierces
lacework of trees
igniting
the flame of day

his presence, always closest
in this defenseless hour

Vogn

Theatre Piece

You have only to put a pinhole
in the backdrop to create a star.
Of course, you won't see it
that way, but someone out front,
someone in the seventh row
on the aisle or high in the balcony
where the music and lines
seldom reach, will see it
for what it is, a star,
something to dream on.

Louis McKee

Word

Iris spins
wide to light,
pushes against
the pull to
cautious pinhole focus,
seeks out the word
blurring to flesh inside
the snow blind cave
in the skull.

Mary Schooler Rooney

The Way It Is

You languish in Gaia's apron pocket
chewing on the strings.

Winds are blowing through your oven
flattening your bread.

You herd with sheep in city streets,
followed by barking dogs.

Language is your Nemesis
Indian gift of the Gods.

Jane McCray

Poetry Begins

with the road gang on Route 6
repairing the pole smashed
on a Saturday night drag race
and a stray dog pissing
on the perimeters.

Ruth Daigon

Harley Time

Writing a poem
is like driving a motorcycle,
baby pigs in the side car,
while you try to keep
their little helmets on straight.

George Monagan

Finally, Ed Markowski sent this along in homage to this historic day. Enjoy.







best,
Don