Robert Bly: Growing Wings (a ghazal)

GROWING WINGS - Robert Bly

It's all right if Cezanne goes on painting the same picture.
It's all right if juice tastes bitter in our mouths.
It's all right if the old man drags one useless foot.

The apple on the Tree of Paradise hangs there for months.
We wait for years and years on the lip of the falls;
The blue-gray mountain keeps rising behind the black trees.

It's all right if I feel this same pain until I die.
A pain that we have earned gives more nourishment
Than the joy we won at the lottery last night.

It's all right if the partridge's nest fills with snow.
Why should the hunter complain if his bag is empty
At dusk? It only means the bird will live another night.

It's all right if we turn in all our keys tonight.
It's all right if we give up our longing for the spiral.
It's all right if the boat I love never reaches shore.

If we're already so close to death, why should we complain?
Robert, you've climbed so many trees to reach the nests.
It's all right if you grow your wings on the way down.

from My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy

Robert Bly has been working for quite some time in the ghazal form in English and this particular volume, My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy, is groundbreaking, transformative, and a pure thrill to read. 

The history of the form in English is not a long one. An informative article, though with no mention of Bly, may be found here (another interesting series of articles may be found at the aha poetry site). I believe Bly is helping to literally transform the ghazal itself in its English incarnation. 

For those who are unaware, ghazal in English is pronounced "guzzle" (with the g enunciated from the back of the throat) or haazal, if my ear is getting it right. You can hear it pronounced here. 

As with non-Japanese haiku, ghazal can become something different in another language (for example, Bly's renditions, which have something of the spirit and some of the conventions but also somthing all their own), related, perhaps running a parallel course. In any case, this interesting form certainly enriches English language poetry and can expand the palette for English language poets. 

For those who find the idea of these 'bastard ghazals', as Wikipedia describes them, unappealing, work that sticks a bit closer to the form may be found in the 1st English language anthology of ghazals, Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, edited by Aga Shahid Ali is an alternative (though, ironically, Wikipedia noted that only 1 in 10 of the poems in the anthology "observe the constraints of the form.")

All that being said, least I stray too far, My Sentence is a Thousand Years of Joy is a Bly volume to cherish. It is well worth space on any poetry reader's shelf.

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

Artwork by Enrico Manzanti from Pinnochio

when will it become

a cricket's nest?

my white hair

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Robert Bly: Turkish Pears in August

One gets the sense that in these his later years, Robert Bly is approaching his craft as a potter or a sculptor or even a mason: with his hands.

He is building poems.

This late reliance on form is intriguing and, in this case at least, its paid off, for Turkish Pears in August is one of Bly's finest works in years. Don't be mistaken: there are a few clunkers and no one can thud with such unsonorous resound as Robert Bly but, on the whole, this is fine stuff, indeed.

As you might guess, my feelings toward Bly run hot and cold. That being said, I always read him with great interest and feel he has produced some outstanding work through the years.

I should only be able to say that about more contemporary poets.

In his prefatory note, Bly explains his method and, though I have particular questions (the notion of "troubled speakers") about that method, I believe it is important to take the poet at his word and on his terms. From the preface:

A few years ago, I began to hear inside the stanza individual sounds such as in or air or ar call to each other. An er is a sort of being that cries out. What could we call a union of a consonant and a vowel? The word syllable is a ridiculous name for it; it's too Latinate and mute. These particles have more energy than the word "syllable" suggests. Hearing these cries put me into a new country of poetry. I was not hiking among ideas or images or stories, but among tiny, forceful sounds. What would happen if I adopted in or ar as the center of a poem? Decisions on content would then depend on that. I let that happen. For length, I settle on eight lines, which is larger than a couplet but smaller than a sonnet. Every poem, of course, has to have images and ideas and some sort of troubled speaker. But I began more and more to shift attention to the little mouths that cry out their own name. I eventually accepted ramage as a title for this brief poem. The word occasionally appears as the name of a movement during some French compositions for flute; it is related the the French noun for "branch." We can hear the root of that in "ramify." The tunings of these things is like tuning on horseback some sort of stringed instrument from the Urals. Each time you try to add one more of the chosen sound particles, new nouns abruptly enter the poem, and one has to deal with them.

Ok.

So that's the method and it is different. I've been through the collection 3 times and it is quite good, indeed, so Bly has struck on something, at least for himself, though I wouldn't be surprised if some others tried their hands at this. For me, it is all a bit foggy despite the positive results; perhaps I'm in over my under-educated head. Of course, I do hear and see echoes of sounds units throughout, eschewing the term syllable per request. But what the final sentence in the preface brings home to me, and is important to remember, is that all of this is a negotiation between the method, the sounds produced, and the images conjured in the poet's consciousness (I'd argue unconscious but, for the moment, only parenthetically) and the negotiation twixt all these elements results in the birthing, or perhaps breaching, of a poem.

So, enough of the man-behind-the-curtain, la-dee-da. As with any properly baked item, the proof is in the tasting, so here are a few well done pieces.

Orion The Great Walker

Orion, that old hunter, floats among the stars
Firmly... the farms beneath his feet. How long
It takes for me to walk in grief like him.
Seventy years old, and still placing my feet
So hopefully each night on the ground.
How long it takes for me to agree to sorrow.
But that great walker follows his dogs,
Hunting all night among the disappearing stars.

The Hermit At Dawn

Early in the morning the hermit wakes, hearing
The roots of the fir tree stir beneath his floor.
Someone is there. That strength buried
In earth carries up the summer world. When
A man loves a woman, he nourishes her.
Dancers strew the lawn with the light of their feet.
When a woman loves the earth, she nourishes it.
Earth nourishes what no one can see.

Of course the exact opposite of this particular poem may be easily argued, but this is Bly's poem, so we'll let him have his point. It is his, after all.

The Watcher Of Vowels

How lovely it is to write with all these vowels:
Body, Thomas, the codfish's psalm. The gaiety
Of form comes from the labor of it playfulness.
We are drunkards who never take a drop.
We all become ditch-diggers like Brahms.
No, no, we are like that astronomer
Who watches the great sober star return
Each night to its old place in the night sky.

This is the poem about method and intent and he pulls it off nicely. Any method that evokes "the codfish's psalm," sound-wise, has my endorsement, though Billy Collins might have something to say about meaning. But meaning here is secondary, as it is so often in poetry, and I believe that is the point. It is the sound first, meaning second, and, in this context, as a method Bly's may actually be seen as fairly traditional.

As a set, these poems treat the idea of grief again and again and, so, it seems to be what Bly himself brought to the table as he fiddled with the tools of his approach. Here is a beauty:

What Is Sorrow For?

What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse
Where we store wheat, barley, corn an tears.
We step to the door on a round stone
And the storehouse feeds all the birds of sorrow.
And I say to myself: Will you have
Sorrow at last? Go on, be cheerful in autumn,
Be stoic, yes, be tranquil, calm;
Or in the valley of sorrows spread your wings.

There are lots more fine pieces here, including the wonderful "The Big-Nostrilled Moose," "Turkish Pears," "Slim Fir-Seeds" and "Tristan and Isolde." So many fine pieces, indeed, that I'll be adding this book to the ever-expanding list of Near Perfect Books of Poetry. Not to end on too prosaic a note, here is the piece that is perhaps my favorite of the collection. Enjoy.

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitar all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his rum all day and is content.

best,
Don

Robert Bly: One Leg in the Bog

The new Robert Bly book is nothing short of exceptional.  Regular readers of this blog know I've had my issues with him over the years - it is hot and cold, no tepid Robert Bly for me.  What I love by him I love and Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey has some of his finest work.  Try this on for size:

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens 

  No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
  And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
  Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
  Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
  There is no end to our grumbling; we want
  Comfortable earth and sumptuous heaven.
  But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
  Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

                                              Robert Bly

The work here has a certain rhythm that seems to be influenced by the ghazal form he has been working in more and more in recent years. This time out the poetry seems less restricted in both subject and execution.

I hope to dip into this volume again for a future post, possibly as soon as next Friday.   For now, with other obligations pressing this coming week, I'll keep it brief and leave it here.


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


This week's feature is a pair of poems by two like minded poets: John Martone and Dennis Maloney.  They shared the same page of Lilliput Review, #167 back in March 2009.   Here is a joyful reprise.  Enjoy.

wind
thru

pines
thru

sleep 

   John Martone

If you're kin to the pine
You'll love long,
Glisten in the rain,
Be lively in autumn,
And beautiful in snow.

             Dennis Maloney

the scrawny pine, too
looks extravagant...
summer moon

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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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

Robert Bly's Near Perfect Book of Poetry, Part II

In an earlier post, I featured a couple of poems from Robert Bly's Silence in the Snowy Fields, which was reader selected for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list. I've got one more poem that particularly grabbed me that I thought worth sharing:

-----------------Late At Night
----------During A Visit Of Friends

-----------------------------I
We spent all day fishing and talking.
At last, late at night, I sit at my desk alone.
And rise and walk out in the summery night.
A dark thing hopped near me in the grass.

----------------------------II
The trees were breathing, the windmill slowly pumped.
Overhead the rainclouds that rained on Ortonville
Covered half the stars.
The air was still cool from their rain.

----------------------------III
It is very late.
I am the only one awake.
Men and women I love are sleeping nearby.

----------------------------IV
The human face shines as it speaks of things
Near itself, thoughts full of dreams.
The human face shines like a dark sky
As it speaks of those things that oppress the living.

Robert Bly

If you'd like to hear Bly read some of his recent work, check out this site.



best,
Don

Robert Bly: Writing Again

Photo by ecstaticist

A couple of weeks ago I did a post with a poem from This Tree Will Be Here For A Thousand Years (revised edition) by Robert Bly and mentioned I would be getting back to it. 

Back we are - here's another poem from that collection which I like very much.


Writing Again

   Oval
   Faces crowding at the window!
   I turn away,
   Disturbed— 

   When I write of moral things,
   The clouds boil
   Blackly!
   By day's end
   A room of restless people,
   Lifting and putting down small things.

   Well that is how I've spent this day.
   And what good will it do me in the grave?

        ~ Robert Bly 


Not unlike the part of the poem, "Women We Love Whom We Never See Again," I quoted previously, the opening here feels like we are in the other place, the land of dream, of archetype, of the subconscious.

And what of the title?

I suppose there are a lot of ways to read that last line, that question, and I would suggest that some of them are positive. But I'll leave that to you, the reader - is it something that feels negative, positive, indifferent? Just a conjurer's trick, or something more?

For me, the answer is in the first stanza.

The Month of the Grape Harvest by René Magritte (click to enlarge)

faces of devils
faces of foxes...
spring breeze

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Study for The Month of the Grape Harvest (click to enlarge)

best,

Don

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Robert Bly: Old Man Rubbing His Eyes - Small Press Friday

Artwork by Allbert Richter

I feel as if, over the years, over the decades, my mind and spirit have grown with the words of Robert Bly. Sometimes, I didn't understand them, sometimes they infuriated me, sometimes there was transference.

What an odd, beautiful way reading is to find a friend.

Dating all the way back to 1974 (Unicorn Press), though my copy is a 1987 reprint (Ally Press), the words of Old Man Rubbing His Eyes speak to me as powerfully as any other Bly collection, perhaps most powerfully of all.

There is an obliqueness, a slight off-centered quality to Bly's magic, an almost constant worrying over details, juxtaposed, not always related, striving for something beyond reach, something not even, or perhaps ever, known.

Which explains his late in life attraction to the ghazel form.

But this work has something of an Old World flavor, distinctly Western, yet mysterious as Eastern European poetry, and as forcefully real. Let's listen, let's see:


Writing Again

Oval
faces crowding to the window!
I turn away,
disturbed—

When I write of moral things,
the clouds boil
blackly!
By day's end
a room of restless people,
lifting and putting down small things.

Well that is how I have spent this day.
And what good will it do me in the grave?


What good, indeed, in the grave; but it does do some good now, no?


A Cricket In The Wainscoting

The song of his is like a boat with black sails
Or a widow under a redwood tree, warning
passersby that the tree is about to fall.
Or a bell made of black tin in a Mexican village.
Or the hair in the ear of a hundred-year-old man.


We've all heard that cricket in the wainscoting with its many songs and their singular message; cricket in the wainscoting, cricket in the wainscoting. 

Old Man Rubbing His Eyes is one of those poetry books that it is as impossible to describe as it is to excerpt. What is the point really? It is a book, and that book has a message. If forced to put it into words I might say -

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Pick it up and read it. Get it at the library (it's in 364, there must be one nearby you), buy it in an independent shop. It has something of the tincture of winter, the flavor of rich soil, the taste of ever-present death.

It is poetry.

Listen: there's an old man in the wainscoting.


-------------- 

 Photo by Matias Romero

in the stove,
a cricket singing,
singing

Issa
rendered by dw

best,
Don

   

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4 Poems: Kerouac, Bly, Orr, and Issa

Here are 4 poems, two by poets chosen from their books suggested for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry page. First, Jack Kerouac, from Book of Haikus:



Missing a kick
at the icebox door
It closed anyway

Jack Kerouac

Next, Robert Bly, from his first collection, Silence in the Snowy Fields:



"Taking The Hands"

Taking the hands of someone you love,
You see they are delicate cages . . .
Tiny birds are singing
In the secluded prairies
And the deep valleys of the hand.

Robert Bly

And here is Issa, who isn't on the list yet, but should be, in a Robert Hass translation:



All the time I Pray to Buddha

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.

Issa, translated by Robert Hass

Finally, poem-wise, a darkish little poem by Gregory Orr from the delightful collection Pocket Poems, edited by Paul Janeczko:



The Sweater

I will lose you. It is written
into this poem the way
the fisherman's wife knits
his death into the sweater.

Gregory Orr

And, finally, otherwise, another six titles have been added to the Near Perfect Books list: check it out.



best,
Don



PS If you would like to receive the two current issues of Lilliput Review free, just make a suggestion at the above Near Perfect Books link

Also, it was pointed out to me that I made a mistake listing the email address on the sidebars of both the blog and the homepage. The email, spelled out to avoid spam bots, is:

lilliput review at gmail dot com

Remove the spaces, replace at with@ and dot with . and you're good to go.

Issa's Sunday Service, #190: Sufjan Stevens, O'Connor, Springsteen, and Robert Bly

 In case of wonky widget, click here

There have been any number of songs with the title "A Good Man is Hard to Find," many that have no association with the writer, Flannery O'Connor.

Sufjan Stevens's version is definitely not one of them:
  

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Once in the backyard
She was once like me, she was once like me
Twice when I killed them
They were once at peace, 
they were once like me

Hold to your gun, man 
and put off all your peace
Put off all the beast
Paid a full of these, I wait for it, 
but someone's once like me
She was once like me

I once was better
I put off all my grief, I put off all my grief
And so I go to hell, I wait for it
But someone's left me creased 
and someone's left me creased

Bruce Springsteen has also expressed great admiration for the writer Flannery O'Connor, who was just last week referenced in a William Stafford poem. For all the details of the Springsteen connection, check out this article at Dappled Things entitled "Naming Sin: Flannery O'Connor's Mark on Bruce Springsteen." 

Here's the Boss with a live rendition of "A Good Man is Hard to Find," performed right here in Pittsburgh


A Good Man Is Hard to Find  (Pittsburgh)

It's cloudy out in Pittsburgh, it's raining in Saigon
Snow's fallin' all across the Michigan line
Well she sits by the lights of her Christmas tree
With the radio softly on
Thinkin' how a good man is so hard to find

Well once she had a fella
Once she was somebody's girl
And she gave all she had that one last time
Now there's a little girl asleep in the back room
She's gonna have to tell about the meanness in this world
And how a good man is so hard to find

Well there's pictures on the table by her bed
Him in his dress greens and her in her wedding white
She remembers how the world was the day he left
And now how that world is dead
And a good man is so hard to find

She ain't got no time now for Casanovas
Yeah those days are gone
She don't want that anymore, she's made up her mind
Just somebody to hold her as the night gets on
When a good man is so hard to find

Well she shuts off the TV and without a word
And into bed she climbs
Well she thinks how it was all so wasted
And how expendable their dreams all were
When a good man was so hard to find

Well it's cloudy out in Pittsburgh


As you may have noticed, the song has a sub or alternate title: "Pittsburgh." It seems that, beyond the title and its appearance as a line in the song, there is little here that relates to O'Connor except perhaps tone. At a Springsteen lyrics site (Lebanese!), Bruce is quoted about the song and he mentions the first time he met Ron Kovic, the author of "Born on the Fourth of July." 

If you haven't read the original, it's here - for how long, who knows.

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

I ran across this Robert Bly poem this morning in his collection Talking into the Ear of a Donkey - this is my 3rd or 4th time reading the book over the last 3 years or so and it just gets better and better. 

At first there didn't seem to be a connection to the above song, then I started to think more closely about the original story and it seems my mind is, as usual, making connections that on surface I'm not immediately aware.

It's life and life only:

Keeping Quiet

A friend of mine says that every war
Is some violence in childhood coming closer.
Those whoppings in the shed weren't a joke.
On the whole, it didn't turn out well.

This has been going on for thousands
Of years! It doesn't change.  Something
Happened to me, and I can't tell
Anyone, so it will happen to you.

Robert Bly

Photo by Danny Hammontree via fotor

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

swatting a fly
but hitting
the Buddha

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku.

20 Poems by Georg Trakl, translated by James Wright and Robert Bly

For translation, so below

A while back, I did a post on Georg Trakl, mentioning the translations by James Wright and Robert Bly, entitled 20 Poems (available online as a .pdf here). I've finally found the time to read through the translations a couple of times and my enthusiasm for his work is unabated.

The appeal to Wright and Bly is apparent; these two poets, known for their "involvement" in the deep image movement, find essential source material in Trakl's work. The poems revolve around the images, many of which appear as motifs, even in such a small selection of Trakl's work. The abiding feeling I get is one of evocation; the poems do not posit answer or philosophy or even present an open-ended question. It seems to me that they are really the stuff of archetype, a kind of dream-like essence that dwells firmly in the border between the conscious and unconscious. A dream-poetry, a Jungian poetry, probing into the uninterpretable human spirit.


In Hellbrun

Once more following the blue grief of the evening
Down the hill, to the springtime fishpond–
As if the shadow of those dead for a long time were
------hovering above,
The shadows of church dignitaries, of noble ladies–
Their flowers bloom so soon, the earnest violets
In the earth at evening, and the clear water washes
From the blue spring. The oaks turn green
In such a ghostly way over the forgotten footsteps
------of the dead
The golden clouds over the fishpond.

The best of Trakl's work is firmly grounded in nature; one thinks of Wright's The Branch Will Not Break, the most naturalistic of his works. In actual execution, the work itself feels closer to Bly than Wright; better than Bly, hitting a universal chord Bly frequently speaks of but doesn't quite achieve lyrically. This is, of course, strictly a matter of taste. Trakl's work is haunting and it lingers with me long after I've put it down and, siren-like, summons my return as to an elusive, spirit-infused wood.

What is hinted at in many poems is most explicitly sketched in the following, which conjures a sort of contiguous sense of all time. There is an historical tapestry here, yet that seems to be something of a background against which a larger story is unfolding, one that mixes equally the sadness and sweetness of existence itself.

Song of the Western Countries

Oh the nighttime beating of the soul’s wings:
Herders of sheep once, we walked along the forests
-------that were growing dark,
And the red deer, the green flower and the speaking
river followed us
In humility. Oh the old old note of the cricket,
Blood blooming on the altarstone,
And the cry of the lonely bird over the green silence
-------of the pool.

And you Crusades, and glowing punishment
Of the flesh, purple fruits that fell to earth
In the garden at dusk, where young and holy men
-------walked,
Enlisted men of war now, waking up out of wounds
-------and dreams about stars.
Oh the soft cornflowers of the night.

And you long ages of tranquility and golden
-------harvests,
When as peaceful monks we pressed out the purple
-------grapes;
And around us the hill and forest shone strangely.
The hunts for wild beasts, the castles, and at night,
-------the rest,
When man in his room sat thinking justice,
And in noiseless prayer fought for the living head
-------of God.

And this bitter hour of defeat,
When we behold a stony face in the black waters.
But radiating light, the lovers lift their silver eyelids:
They are one body. Incense streams from rose-
-------colored pillows
And the sweet song of those risen from the dead.

The overall mood is of dread, foreboding. All of history comes to Trakl's point in time; World War I and its coming horrors, of which he was a victim, are pre-figured here through the lens of history, yet Trakl is not after the political. The most salient point, his true focus, is humanness, human existence. There is a sense of loss: the loss of nature and a related innocence. Two of Trakl's poems I highlighted in an earlier post capture nature before this loss. Not many of his predominately naturalistic poems are contained in the selection by Wright and Bly, though naturalistic elements permeate the work throughout.

Just as Trakl's poems seem to dwell in a place between the conscious and unconscious, they also seem to inhabit an imagined space between the poems of Wright and Bly themselves. Here is the stuff of dreams, and something more:

In Venice

Silence in the rented room.
The candlestick flickers with silver light
Before the singing breath
Of the lonely man;
Enchanted rosecloud.

Black swarms of flies
Darken the stony space,
And the head of the man who has no home
Is numb from the agony
Of the golden day.

The motionless sea grows dark.
Star and black voyages
Vanished on the canal.
Child, your sickly smile
Followed me softly in my sleep.

The sense of foreboding in Trakl is the main focus of the 20 poems translated in this little collection. In "Birth," there seems to be a balance achieved between the prophetic and the pastoral; ironically that balance seems to be man himself.

Birth

These mountains: blackness, silence, and snow.
The red hunter climbs down from the forest;
Oh the mossy gaze of the wild thing.

The peace of the mother: under black firs
The sleeping hands open by themselves
When the cold moon seems ready to fall.

The birth of man. Each night
Blue water washes over the rockbase of the cliff;
The fallen angel stares at his reflection with sighs,

Something pale wakes up in a suffocating room.
The eyes
Of the stony old woman shine, two moons.

The cry of the woman in labor. The night troubles
The boy’s sleep with black wings,
With snow, which falls with ease out of the purple
-------clouds.

Perhaps the two threads of nature lost and coming dread are inextricably woven together. As with Wright's work, I want to read hopefulness in the natural world, even with its built-in dread, and not the loss of nature due to man's perception of being outside of or over nature. As with Wright, however, one doesn't get one's wish. What one does get is a unique, poetic panorama, a haunting vision that's is at once powerful, delicate and a thing of beauty: the poetry of Georg Trakl.

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

Pictured above is Trakl's grave marker, with his poem "Music in the Mirabell" inscribed in stone. As may become apparent in the poem, Mirabell is a garden. Here is an English translation of what is described as the "second version" by Alexander Stillmarker, in a volume I just purchased, Poems and Prose, published by Northwestern University.

Music in the Mirabell

A fountain sings. Clouds, white and tender,
Are set in the clear blueness
Engrossed, silent people walk
At evening through the ancient garden.

Ancestral marble has grown grey.
A flight of birds seeks far horizons.
A faun with lifeless pupils peers
At shadows gliding into darkness.

The leaves fall red from the old tree
And circle in through open windows.
A fiery gleam ignites indoors
And conjures up wan ghosts of fear.

A white stranger steps into the house.
A dog runs wild through ruined passages.
The maid extinguishes a lamp,
At night are heard sonata sounds.

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

I've been deliberating on what to feature from the Lilliput archives since, over the years, I've featured poems from the full run of regular issues in this blog,. Should I highlight "Brobdingnag" feature poems (poems over the usual 10 line limit), of which there have been 57 to date? Or perhaps poems from the 45 broadside issues, featuring the work of individual poets? Or perhaps poems from the 20 "Modest Proposal Chapbooks" that have seen the light of day? An interesting dilemma.

I decided to feature poems from the broadsides and leave the longer poems and chapbooks for some future time. So, here from the poet David Chorlton's 2008 Lilliput broadside, Venetian Sequence (Venice, twice in one post), is his poem "Of Sighs." The title refers to the famous bridge in Venice named "The Bridge of Sighs." The bridge was named by Byron, who helped popularize the myth that prisoners headed toward their execution got one final look at the lovely Venice through one of the bridge's small windows and sighed. David here extends the prisoner's imagined experience to what might be heard:

Of Sighs

From the sentence to the executioner
the way is short and the windows
on the bridge prevent the prisoner
from looking at his reflection
in the water below, although he can hear,
between the words of his accusers,
the murmur of the pigeons
nesting in the mane of a lion’s head.

For another poem from the 15 poem sequence, "Paganini," check out this post from when the broadside originally appeared in March 2008. For more info on Lillie broadsides, check here.

There have been many musical pieces referencing this famous bridge. In rock, there is Robin Trower's rendition. In folk, there is a song by legendary Ralph McTell, which seems only to be related to the bridge by title. Here is an instrumental by one of my favorite world fusion band's, John McLaughlin's Shakti:

And the master's final word:

a pigeon cries--
even deep in the Thousand Islands
it's Buddha's world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don


PS. For those of you receiving posts via email, you may not see icon for Grooveshark song (or YouTube videos in other posts). Just sayin' ... you might want to click through.

250 Near Perfect Books of Poetry

This weekend the "Near Perfect Books of Poetry" list hit the milestone number of 250. It all started back just two years ago and has grown to quite an expansive list. It even spawned a "German Near Perfect Books of Poetry" list. The last two volumes added this weekend were two books by Gary Snyder. Hard to believe the list had come this far without an appearance by one of the 20th century's predominant poets.

A nice byproduct of all this is I've given away hundreds of issues of Lilliput Review to those making suggestions for the list. The offer still stands - 2 free current issues of Lillie for a suggestion of a near perfect book of poetry. There are many poetry readers out there and, no doubt, some of you will notice that your favorite volume of poetry is not included. Here's the list. Something missing? Let me know, either via a comment or directly at "lilliput review AT gmail DOT com (spelled out to avoid pesky harvesting bots).

Certainly, when it comes to lists there is plenty to quibble about here. What this is intended as, however, is a resource for folks looking for some poetry to read that actually moved someone. Period. Nothing definitive. Do some titles not belong here? Sure. Are there monumental gaps? Absolutely no doubt. This is a reader created list and as such it comes, warts and all, without apology. It's a communal effort with the aforementioned byproduct: 2 free issues of a small press magazine that glories in the short poem.

Later this week, I'll be adding one of my "new" favorite books of poems, Paradise Poems by Gerald Stern. And, yes, I was moved.

The List

The Clean Dark by Robert Adamson

The Golden Bird by Robert Adamson

Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova

The Fall — Jordie Albiston

A Nostalgist's Map of America by Agha Shaid Ali

Chrysanthemum Love by Fay Aoyagi

The Double Dream of Spring by John Ashbery

Rivers and Mountains by John Ashbery

Some Trees by John Ashbery

Salute--to Singing by Gennady Aygi

Restoration Poems by Ed Baker

Pencil Flowers by Johnny Baranski

Back Roads to Far Towns by Bashô, translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu

Bashô And His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda

On Love and Barley by Bashô, translated by Lucien Styrk

The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire (any & all translations)

Weeping for Lost Babylon — Eric Beach

Actual Air by David Berman

The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan

Complete Poems, 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop

Silence In The Snowy Fields by Robert Bly

Turkish Pears in August by Robert Bly

Kerrisdale Elegies by George Bowering

The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan

Poems of Madness & Angel by Ray Bremser

Life Supports by William Bronk

Moment to Moment by David Budbill

The Last Night of the Earth Poems — Charles Bukowski

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski

Complete Poems by Basil Bunting

Dreaming of Robert de Niro — Grant Caldwell

Thirst by Patrick Carrington

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey by Hayden Carruth

Fear of Dreaming by Jim Carroll

Woman Haiku Master by Chiyo-ni

California Poems by James Koller

The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins

Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins

Selected Poems by Robert Creeley

Places/Everyone by Jim Daniels

Totem by Luke Davies

Forth A Raven by Christina Davis

And Her Soul Out of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Variations by Bill Deemer

Loba by Diane Di Prima (Wingbow, Penguin)

Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima

Griffon by Stephen Dobyns

Hello La Jolla by Ed Dorn

Small Favors by Barbara Drake

Space Before A by Barbara Drake

Streets of the Long Voyage — Michael Dransfield

Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry, tr. J. P. Seaton & D. Maloney

The Caged Tiger by Louis Dudek

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy

Roots and Branches by Robert Duncan

What Goes On: Selected & New Poems by Stephen Dunn

Miracles of the Sainted Earth by Victoria Edwards Tester

Things Stirring Together or Far Away by Larry Eigner

The World and Its Streets by Larry Eigner

Then, And Now by Ted Enslin

The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot

Prufrock and Other Observations by T. S. Eliot

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hand by Martin Espada

Tryst by Angie Estes

Donna Juanita and the Love of Boys, by Gabrielle Everall

Against the Forgetting by Hans Faverey

Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlighetti

The Whole Song: Selected Poems by Vincent Ferrini

Gathering the Tribes by Carolyn Forché

From the Country of Eight Islands, ed. by Hiroaki Sato & B. Watson

From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright, ed. by B. ---Hendrickson & R. Johnson

West-Running Brook by Robert Frost

A bud — Claire Gaskin

Poet in New York by Frederico Garcia Lorca (trans. by B. Bellitt)

Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert

Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg

The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

Insects of South Corvallis by Charles Goodrich

Without by Donald Hall

The Haiku Anthology, 3rd edition, edited by Cor van den Heuvel

Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison

Braided Creek: a Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser

book of resurrection by mark hartenbach

Essential Haiku edited by Robert Hass

Station Island by Seamus Heaney

My Life by Lyn Hejinian

Best of Adrian Henri

Barbarian in the Garden by Zbigniew Herbert

Phosphorus by Alicia Hokanson

Spring Essence by Xuan Hu'o'ng Ho, translated by J. Balaban

The Never Ending by Andrew Hudgins

Working on My Death Chant by Albert Huffstickler

Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

Crow by Ted Hughes

Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes

Tread the Dark by David Ignatow

The Dumpling Field by Kobayashi Issa, trans. by Lucien Styrk

A Few Flies and I: Haiku by Issa

Inch by Inch by Issa, translated by Nanao Sakaki

Jade Mountain: anthology of Chinese Poetry, ed. by W. Bynner

Lost World by Randall Jarrell

The Beginning of the End by Robinson Jeffers

The Book of the Green Man by Ronald Johnson

Hojoki by Kamo Chomei

The Ancient Rain by Bob Kaufman

Flowers of a Moment by Ko Un

Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac

The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go by Eliot Khalil Wilson

Knock Upon Silence by Carolyn Kizer

The Essential Etheridge Knight by Etheridge Knight

Three Way Tavern by Ko Hun

The Art of Love by Kenneth Koch

New Addresses by Kenneth Koch

Geography of the Forehead by Ron Koertge

Pleasure Dome by Yusef Komunyakaa

All This Everyday by Joanne Kyger

The Blood of the Air by Philip Lamantia

O Taste and See by Denise Levertov

The Sorrow Dance by Denise Levertov

What Work Is by Philip Levine

Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell

For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell

The Lost Lunar Baedeker by Mina Loy

Verso by Pattie McCarthy

Touch to My Tongue by Daphne Marlatt

dogwood & honeysuckle by john martone

ordinary fool by john martone

After All by William Matthews

The Nice Narrows: New and Selected Poems by Samuel Menashe

Asian Figures by W. S. Merwin

The Lice by W. S. Merwin

The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin

The Vixen by W. S. Merwin

At Dusk Iridescent by Thomas Meyer

Sixty-Seven Poems for Downtrodden Saints by Jack Micheline

Temple Dusk by Mitsu Suzuki

Cuttlefish Bones by Eugenio Montale

Forever Home by Lenard D. Moore

The Dillinger Books (various) by Todd Moore

Deadly Nightshade by Barbara Moraff

The Gallows Songs by Christian Morgenstern

Cloudless at First by Hilda Morley

Eyes: the Poetry of Jim Morrison

The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story by Rusty Morrison

Naked Poetry: Recent American Poetry, ed. by Stephen Berg

New American Poetry, 1945-1960, ed. by Donald Allen

Twenty Love Poems & A Song of Despair, Pablo Neruda tr. Merwin

Next Room of the Dream by Howard Nemerov

Call Me By My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh

Still Water by bpnichol

The Granite Pail by Lorine Niedecker

My Friend Tree by Lorine Niedecker

100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda

Collected Poems by Frank O'Hara

Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara

American Primitive by Mary Oliver

Dream Work by Mary Oliver

Owl and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver

West Wind: Poems & Prose Poems by Mary Oliver

Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love and Longing, translated by Sam Hamill

Why Not by Joel Oppenheimer

100 Poems from the Chinese, ed. by Kenneth Rexroth

The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds

Strike Sparks by Sharon Olds

The Distances by Charles Olson

In Cold Hell, In Thicket by Charles Olson

Spearmint and Rosemary by Charles Olson

The Ink Dark Moon by Onono Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, trans. by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

Primitive by George Oppen

The Yellow Floor by Gil Ott

Right under the big sky, I don't wear a hat by Hosai Ozaki, tr. Hiroaki Sato

Great Balls of Fire by Ron Padgett

Notes Towards a Family by John Perlman

Three Years Rings by John Perlman

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

Plath: Poems by Sylvia Plath (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

Collected Early Poems by Ezra Pound

The Yuan Chen Variations by F. T. Prince

Collected Poems by Sally Purcell

Droles de Journal by Carl Rakoski

Raising the Dead by Ron Rash

The Waiting Room at the End of the World by Jeff Rath

zen tele-grams by paul reps

The Heart's Garden, The Garden's Heart by Kenneth Rexroth

One Hundred Poems from the Chinese tr. by Kenneth Rexroth

Book of Images by Rainer Maria Rilke

New Poems (1908), the Other Part by Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Snow)

Uncollected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. by Edward Snow)

The Concrete River by Luis Rodriquez

Say Uncle by Kay Ryan

Rainswayed Nights by Max Ryan

Awesome Nightfall by Saigyo

Poems of a Mountain Home by Saigyo

The Kingdom by Frank Samperi

Quadrifariam by Frank Samperi

Spiritual Necessity by Frank Samperi

Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg

Investigative Poetry by Ed Sanders

Grass and Tree Cairn by Santoka, translated by Hiroaki Sato

The Morning of a Poem by James Schuyler

Buffalo Head Solos by Tim Seibles

Hammerlock by Tim Seibles

Selected Poems by Anne Sexton

The Sonnets by William Shakespeare

Itinerary by Reginald Shepherd

Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror by Nathan Shepherdson

Selected Poems by Masaoka Shiki

Axe Handles by Gary Snyder

Turtle Island by Gary Snyder

Elements of San Joaquin by Gary Soto

The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford

China Basin by Clemens Starck

Journeyman's Wages by Clemens Starck

Traveling Incognito by Clemens Starck

The Steel Crickert, variations/translations by Stephen Berg

The Color Wheel by Timothy Steele

Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

Bunch Grass by Robert Sund

New Math by Cole Swenson

Poems New and Collected by Wisława Szymborska translated by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh

View with a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska

Poems to Eat by Takuboku, translated by Carl Sesar

Memoir of a Hawk by James Tate

Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate

Collected Poems - Dylan Thomas

Bittersweet by James Tipton

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

Goodstone by Fred Voss

Argonaut Rose by Diane Wakoski

Cap of Darkness by Diane Wakoski

Collected Greed Parts 1-13 by Diane Wakoski

Inside the Blood Factory by Diane Wakoski

Helping the Dreamer by Anne Waldman

Hermit Poems by Lew Welch

The Hotel Wentley Poems by John Wieners

Scenes of Life at the Capital by Philip Whalen

Severance Pay by Philip Whalen

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Blues and Roots/Rue and Bluets by Jonathan Williams

Paterson by William Carlos Williams

Spring and All by William Carlos Williams

The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Sinking of Clay City by Robert Wrigley

Littlefoot by Charles Wright

The Beforelife by Franz Wright

Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright

The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright.

Selected Poems by James Wright

This Journey by James Wright

Radiant Silhouette by John Yau

The Tower by W.B. Yeats

Elegy on Toy Piano by Dean Young

River of Stars by Yosano Akiko, tr. S. Hamill & K. Matsui Gibson

Where Time Goes by Sander Zulauf

even Mount Fuji
makes the list...
New Year's inventory

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don