Wislawa Szymborska: "One hole in the net"

Thursday, July 2nd, is the birthday of the fine Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska. Wikipedia characterizes her work as follows:

Szymborska frequently employs literary devices such as
irony, paradox, contradiction, and understatement, to
illuminate philosophical themes and obsessions.
Szymborska's compact poems often conjure large
existential puzzles, touching on issues of ethical import,
and reflecting on the condition of people both as individuals
and as members of human society. Szymborska's style is
succinct and marked by introspection and wit.

This is absolutely true and so cold as to convey nothing of the feel of her work. What is missing is the deep running emotion; time and again, I find myself deeply moved by her words. The imprint of 20th century European history is the touchstone of much of what she does, as with nearly all Eastern European poets.

Here's a poem to that point:



Children of Our Era

We are children of our era;
our era is political.

All affairs, day and night,
yours, ours, theirs,
are political affairs.

Like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin a political cast,
your eyes a political aspect.

What you say has a resonance;
what you are silent about is telling.
Either way, it's political.

Even when you head for the hills
you're taking political steps
on political ground.

Even apolitical poems are political,
and above us shines the moon,
by now no longer lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Question? What question? Dear, here's a suggestion:
a political question.

You don't even have to be a human being
to gain political significance.
Crude oil will do,
or concentrated feed, or any raw material.

Or even a conference table whose shape
was disputed for months:
should we negotiate life and death
at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile people were dying,
animals perishing,
houses burning,
and fields growing wild,
just as in times most remote
and less political.

Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

And here is the personalizing of the political which reveals the emotion beneath:




Could Have

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

Wislawa Szymborska
trans. by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

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Some quick notes of interest:

outlaw poetry and free jazz network has reprinted
a review I wrote for The Small Press Review of the
book/dvd d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution
book, edited by Larry Smith and Ingrid Swanberg.
The review is at the bottom of the post.

A new companion journal to daily haiku entitled
daily haiga is set to launch today. Check it out.

The Smoking Poet has put out a call for poems.
Frankly,most work they use is much longer than
the Lillie focus but, then again, whose isn't. They
also use fiction, reviews, flashfiction, and book and
cigar (!) reviews. Why not air out some of your
longer work here? Submission guidelines.

There is a new website with the complete list,
plus links, to the songs featured on the weekly
postings from Best LitRock Songs from Issa's
Sunday Service. The site will be updated weekly.

As mentioned in Ron Silliman's blog, there is an
interview up at Capital City Weekly with Alaska
poet Ken Waldman, whose work has appeared a
number times in Lilliput, as well as being featured
in a few posts here at Issa's Untidy Hut. Cheers,
to Alaska's fiddling poet!

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

Cover by Bobo

This week's featured issue is #22, from May 1991. I've mentioned in a few previous posts, the further back we go, the more removed I feel. However, I've found this little issue packed with poems that still resonate for me today. Here are a handful:

budding leaves

how much
life loves
life!
a wreath
of over-
ripe history
decays
and drains
downward.
feeding tap
roots with
bombings,
war.

Deborah Meadows

Disaster

Last night the past broke
and there was history
all over the cellar.
You should have seen it -
Rome was here, Greece was there,
Egypt floated near the ceiling--
finally I had to
call a historian:
and you know what they charge
for emergencies.

Gail White

the dead walk the earth

walking thru minefields of my desire
my boots slosh & leak blood

I've become my own ghost

no shadows where I run the nights thru
the taste of the blade in my throat
& the silence of the dead

I slip my fingers thru a mirror
& pull out the beating heart
of a man I once knew so well

that I killed him

Bill Shields

Influences Carried By The Wind

Not the least demonic would have you think
your face doesn't look like a face,
or you have none: it never bloomed.

Beatrice George

in the thicket no one
knows about
trees budding bright

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Thoughts on Poetry for Lifelong Learners

Cover by Bobo

I'm still in the process of getting the new issues out, with about half the run in the mail so far. I've been a bit bogged (should that read: "blogged"?) down with a variety of projects all seeming to come together at once, including another introduction to poetry class next week, this time for Oasis lifelong learners. So, the rest of the run will be going out during April before I start it all over again with two new issues.

Meanwhile, Curtis Dunlap over at Blogging Along Tobacco Road has put together a blurb/review, with a few poems from each issue of #167 & 168. It's a nice little sampler; hats off to you, Curtis.

I'm mixing things up a bit for this introductory poetry session ("How to Read Poetry [& Why]" is the session title), adding a few new poems, both less and more challenging. In the past I've used Billy Collins's "Introduction to Poetry" in my preliminary remarks to help assuage any lyrical apprehension, as well as opening with James Wright's "The Jewel" and 4 or 5 poems by Issa. To ease folks into the poem section, this time I'll be opening with "The Lanyard" by Collins, a poem many non-poetry reading people respond to positively in an emotional way, which is the exact point where I try to make a connection for them to the world of poetry. Next I ramp it up with "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver, a decidedly better poem that provokes a similar reaction, so the easing in continues. I thought it might be good to show folks that they can "get" Shakespeare, so I'll be using three poems in tandem: Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"), Howard Moss's modern take "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day," and Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). This may be a bit risky; in the past, my primary intent was to provoke discussion. Since I've had only partial success with that, this time I thought exposure to work might be a good approach. Since it's a bit of gamble that I might lose them with the bard, I'm hoping the bridge of Moss's poem will do the trick:


Howard Moss's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"

Who says you're like one of the dog days?
You're nicer. And better.
Even in May, the weather can be gray,
And a summer sub-let doesn't last forever.
Sometimes the sun's too hot;
Sometimes it is not.
Who can stay young forever?
People break their necks or just drop dead!
But you? Never!
If there's just one condensed reader left
Who can figure out the abridged alphabet,
-----After you're dead and gone,
-----In this poem you'll live on!

We'll see how that goes; the trick I think is in the recitation and I'm planning to use my best Jersey accent to get this one over. I'll be rounding the class out with "Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same" by Robert Frost (a big favorite of mine), "Filling Station" by Elizabeth Bishop and, if there is time, "Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon, and "maggie and milly and molly and may" by E. E. Cummings.

This week's taste from the Lilliput Review archive goes back to March 1993. I've noticed that the past three issues have the Royal portable typeface, so we are into the pre-computer era. At this time, I would type each poem up individually, cut it out into tiny pieces and place them carefully on blue lined graph sheets. If line lengths were problematic, I'd need to reduce the size via the copy store, bumping the darkness so everything more or less matched. Once the art and words were laid out to my satisfaction (this was simultaneously painstaking and pain-inducing, kneeling on the floor with glue sticks or elmer's etc.), it was off to the copy shop to get it all printed up. The lack of control at this point was really an issue. I'd run off 200 double-sided copies and sometimes they would be too dark or too light, depending if the underpaid copy shop person gave a shit that day. Then there were the inevitable typos, misalignments etc, not as instantly corrected as today.

I'm down with the PC era, though some of the quaintness and required skill-set have disappeared. Well, enough with the nostalgia, here's three poems from #41:




Lucky Life

you know how the
dead never plant their faces
against the windows you look out of
and how even when
you're up high
you don't think about gravity

John Grey

3/27/92 - a brief interlude

my shadow. . .
pinned to the wall

with knives
of skin

Bill Shields

at the nursing home
-----wound around the alarm clock
---------the dusty cord

Patrick Sweeney

Finally, yesterday was the birthday of a long-time sentimental favorite of mine, William Wordsworth. Since my favorite Wordsworth is a little too long for here, let's let Issa have the final word: this one's for you, William -

there's a house!
a field full
of daffodils

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Gerald Stern on W. H. Auden

Cover by Oberc

This past Sunday, February 27th, was the birthday of a personal favorite here at Issa's Untidy Hut: Gerald Stern. Stern was born in Pittsburgh, which has been my home for the last 18 years, and lives in New Jersey, where I was born and raised. Much of our non-mutual time was spent in the same haunts in Jersey, New York, Philly, and Pittsburgh. His imagery is familiar, I might almost say familial, an imagery that is spot-on in both detail and emotional sagacity. I won't belabor the point, as I've covered much of this territory in past posts.

Happy birthday, Gerald. Wishing you all the happiness you have so generously given others in the sharing of your work and life.

Yesterday, I noted the recent anniversary of W. H. Auden's birth. I thought it might be nice to dovetail these birthdays together with a poem by Gerald Stern in memory of W. H. Auden. It's a bit longer than I usually post here, but a lyrical, insightful homage.

In Memory of W. H. Auden

I am going over my early rages again,
my first laments and ecstasies,
my old indictments and spiritualities.
I am standing, like Schiller, in front of Auden's door
waiting for his carved face to let me in.
In my hand is The Poem of My Heart I dragged
from one ruined continent to the other,
all my feelings slipping out on the sidewalk.
It was warm and hopeful in his small cave
waiting for the right word to descend
but it was cold and brutal outside on Fourth Street
as I walked back to the Seventh Avenue subway,
knowing, as I reached the crowded stairway,
that I would have to wait for ten more years
or maybe twenty more years for the first riches
to come my way, and knowing that the stick
of that old Prospero would never rest
on my poor head, dear as he was with his robes
and his books of magic, good and wise as he was
in his wrinkled suit and his battered slippers
—Oh good and wise, but not enough to comfort me,
so loving was he with his other souls.
I had to wait like clumsy Caliban,
a sucker for every vagueness and degeneration.
I had to find my own way back, I had to
free myself, I had to find my own pleasure
in my own sweet cave, with my own sweet music.
--Once a year, later even once a month,
I stood on the shores of Bleeker and Horatio
waving good-bye to that ship all tight and yare
and that great wizard, bobbing up and down
like a dreaming sailor out there, disappearing
just as he came, only this time his face more weary
and his spirit more grave than when he first arrived
to take us prisoner on our own small island,
the poet I now could talk to, that wrinkled priest
whose neck I'd hang on, that magician
who could release me now, whom I release and remember.

Gerald Stern

And, since it is his birthday, here's a beautiful, touching, resonant, celebratory, and tragic piece of wonder, that high steps to all the right notes, perfectly pitched:




The Dancing

In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a postwar Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop — in 1945 —
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing — in Poland and Germany —
of God of mercy, oh wild God.

Gerald Stern

Though all of us wish an end to the long, senseless wars that rage on, perhaps none of us will ever dance as those who danced on that day in 1945.


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If it's Tuesday, it's time for a dip into the Lilliput Review Back Issue Archive. This week it's issue #51, from December 1993. As I've mentioned previously, the further back in time we go, there is a noticeable change in tone and approach. This issue, I think, reflects this more than most. The sampling opens with a powerful piece by the excellent poet and Vietnam vet, Bill Shields.

dead poem #9

in the night
I'm my dream

my enemy

rabid dogs
suck my wet fingers

headless children sit in a circle
of chairs around my bed stomping their feet

as the mattress burns
the worms flow

my face
fills

out

Bill Shields

what dostoyevsky might have meant

-----------as
-----------dead dogs die

-----------let's
-----------shiver

-----------for
-----------them

------------Todd Kalinski

Orphans Adopting Themselves

from our fathers
we inherit feet
from our mothers
long arms

we walk away
always reaching back

Robert S. King

So It's Sometimes Said

Big Apple celebrityites
are to the ontological plenitude
of quotidian propinquity as
Arnold Schwarzenegger (minus
Great Garbo) are to the
ruck of humanity. Or so
it is sometimes said.

Wayne Hogan

Listening
Where there is nothing to hear
And no listener

James J. Langon

Issue #51 was dedicated to the memory of frequent contributor and correspondent during Lillie's first four years, Beatrice George. It's been almost 16 years since her passing.

This is still for you:

Something in the slight spring
of the branch
as the bird
alights —

best,
Don

"I come like Water, and like Wind I go"

Today is the anniversary of the passing of Thelonious Monk, on February 17th, 1982, arguably the single most creative keyboard composer and player in the history of jazz. I'm not exactly sure who might argue with that: devotees of Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Fats Waller and a handful (or two) others no doubt.

For me, however, he's the one. Let's see - Monk on piano, Mingus on bass, Jones on drums, Ornette on alto, Trane on soprano/tenor, Miles on trumpet, composing duties shared equally - that should cover it. Away with the fantasy, however: here's the real deal.

I promised, or perhaps threatened, more highlights from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, which I was much taken with in a recent reading. Background highlights may be found in the previous post. For now, here's a thick, lyrical stew of death, booze, ennui, and love, not necessarily in that order.

Please use your hands.

And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
---Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend—ourselves to make a Couch—for whom?

Alright, maybe the annotating isn't quite over. Notice the words that he capitalizes. That capitalization is not largely gratuitous. Particularly, in this quatrain: Room, Summer, Couch, and Earth. And, also, what is not capitalized: we and whom.

Ok, I'll try to refrain from refraining.

24.

Ah, make the most of what we may spend,
Before we, too, into the Dust descend;
---Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

25.

Alike for those who for To-day prepare,
And those that after some To-morrow stare,
---A Muzzeín from the Tower of Darkness cries,
"Fools, your reward is neither Here nor There!"

26.

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so wisely—they are thrust
---Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

27.

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
---About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door that I went in.

28.

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
---And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd—
"I come like Water, and like Wind I go."

29.

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
---And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

30.

What, without asking, hither Whence?
And, without asking, Whither hurried hence?
---Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence.

Well, it seems there must be a part three, because I could go on forever, but Omar says no! Since it is a little early for a Cup of Wine (No, again!), it seems it's time to turn to the Lilliput archival selections. This week's selection comes from December 1993, 15 plus years ago. Whatever were we up to then, eh?

Cover by Guy Beining

dead poem, #8

when the poets talk of flowers
I want them placed on their banal graves

big bloody hearts
hanging from a copperhead's mouth

a SASE
attached

Bill Shields

Early Robins

Orange breasted buddhas
test their beaks
against
the frozen earth

Bart Solarczyk

In A Time of Human Savagery

Woman in a blue car
holds a white flower
to her pink face

She breathes the flower,
eyes closed,
waiting to make her turn

Leaves open their arms
and fly wild onto the wind

Nothing can stop the world.

christien gholson

Becoming

white blossoms
& cranberry glass
the night more wild
than the red blood
of Egypt
each leaf
is not
what it
seems

Gina Bergamino

from Interweavings II

geovoidl

Richard Kostelanetz

Turner's Song

The player dances his keys
with pale tarantula hands.
His music moves into
the night where its staves melt
in the madness of the rain.

Gordon Grice

January 29th 1986

Winter is like losing
your luggage in Newark

Arthur Winfield Knight

Desacralizing
----sacralizing
Time into the serpentine
weaving of Café Latté
saxophone Kanishiwa
one month away
from
Spring

Hugh Fox

Finally, something of an update: I've printed the Basho Haiku Challenge chapbooks. This coming weekend, I hope to put a good dent into cutting, folding, collating, and stapling the contributors run of 50 or so. The new issues, 167 and 168, are also coming along nicely and all should begin to go out on time (well, that's a rescheduled on time) around March 1st.

And, then, perhaps daffodils.

spring begins--
sparrows at my gate
with healthy faces

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don