Hermann Hesse: Poem for a Friday Afternoon

Photo by 8#X

The First Flowers
 
Beside the brook
Toward the willows,
During these days
So many yellow flowers have opened
Their eyes into gold.
I have long since lost my innocence, yet a memory
Touches my depth, the golden hours of morning, 
And gazes brilliantly upon me out of the eyes of flowers.
I was going to pick flowers;
Now I leave them all standing
And walk home, an old man.

- Hermann Hesse 
  translated by James Wright

This poem comes from a collection selected and translated by esteemed American poet, James Wright. Though a relatively brief selection of his works (and a selection from that selection may be found here), the poems all center around one of Hesse's, and James Wright's, important themes: the concept of home. 

Coincidentally, something I'm reading for a bookclub I'm in deals with the spatial aspects of the house and the broader concept of home. 

Or, maybe not so coincidentally.

The Hesse volume has been around and in print since the early 70s and is available both in inexpensive used copies from abebooks and new copies from the same source (priced lower than that big box website). And, though this is not a small press item, shopping at abe supports independent booksellers, used, rare, and new, which is a nice thought to end the week on.


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

 Photo by Tanaka Juuyoh

in a village of people
they grow crooked...
field chrysanthemums

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Leonard J. Cirino: 1943-2012

I'm sorry to report, another fine small press poet has died: Leonard J. Cirino.  Over the years, I've published a few pieces by Leonard in Lilliput Review.  He was unique; what appealed to me about his work was a lyrical quality that displayed a fine mix of detail and philosophy, with a faintly Eastern sensibility.  Indeed, he loved the classic Eastern poets, as in the following:



The Road Going Nowhere after So Chongju

The road going somewhere always leads to an end.
Sadness, like a red blossom, also comes to an end.
The limbs of a willow bend to the stream, the moon
descends. Sorrow, an ache laced with opium, and joy
that never ends. The floating worlds go on in a dream.
What of the taste and stiff scent of blood?
Its stain? The road long coming home?

                Leonard J. Cirino   
                Lilliput Review, #176

The poet and friend of Leonard, RD Armstrong, has done a fine tribute over at the Lummox Writers' Press Club.  Check it out if you get a chance, it's a fine modern elegy.  In addition, listen to Leonard  being interviewed by RD over at Blog Talk Radio on The Jane Crown Show or via the following widget:

A couple of Leonard's poems, the first from his last book and the second, originally published in America back in 2007.


Forty Years of Nightmares
   Here the clouds are great churches – Deborah Diggs
 
Judged harshly by my enemies, I say,
Let them cast the first stone. I’ll know
the last judgement when my time comes;
with the clouds and seas as my proper
form of worship, along with the streams,
mountains, the trees and stones.
I never had to stay in the dark of my room
or stand in a corner. Life never punished me
until madness ran amok with my body,
my brain. i could have been Frida
struck by a bus, or Deborah falling,
jumping from the stadium’s heights.
Let them cast lots among the shadows like ghosts.
I know my place in the dark and the light.

    from Leonard's last book The Instrument of Others
   Pygmy Forest Press





Accept the Gift A Letter to James Wright, Deceased

Like snow, the poem breaks into petals
and crystals, sharp things like stilettos.
It is just now April, or mid-May,
the shadows of flowers lie neglected
in the garden while cedar and fir hang
lovely in the long-gone frost of March.

Why does it take some happiness
and a loneliness one can only cry for
to make these poems? I’m sorry you had
the gift. It makes for a miserable life.

How Ohio lived in you, your verse freed
and standing on its own, like a colt,
or an orphan removed from the nest
only to have its illusions shattered
in the world wide enough that you can’t
know yourself, or any part but Ohio,
and all things west, north, south, the distance
from home one calls a map of the earth.

Published in America Magazine April 30, 2007

Leonard reading "I Dream Your Voice":





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

And these 3 are for Leonard.  I believe he would like them very much ... rest in peace.


Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.  
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moons young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

James Wright

Saying Good bye to MenHao-jan
at Yellow Crane Pavilion

You said goodbye at Yellow Crane Pavilion
and sailed west, down into the valley
through the flowers and the mist of spring
until your lonely sail vanished
in the blue sky's horizon.

and I was left watching the river
flowing gently into heaven

Li Po
translated by Sam Hamill

nightingale
you're growing old...
but what a voice!

                    Issa
                    translated by David G. Lanoue




best,
Don

Wednesday Haiku will return next week.

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Tom Waits and Two James Wright Poems

I was reminded of this Tom Waits song from a recent Facebook posting and it immediately put me in mind of two James Wright poems, one for obvious reasons, the other maybe not so obvious.  In any case, I'm thinking out loud here: Merry Christmas, good holidays, and Happy New Year, folks.  









Two poems by James Wright

Hook
   I was only a young man
  In those days. On that evening
  The cold was so God damned
  Bitter there was nothing.
  Nothing. I was in trouble
  With a woman, and there was nothing
  There but me and dead snow.

  I stood on the street corner
  In Minneapolis, lashed
  This way and that.
  Wind rose from some pit,
  Hunting me.
  Another bus to Saint Paul
  Would arrive in three hours,
  If I was lucky.

  Then the young Sioux
  Loomed beside me, his scars
  Were just my age.

  Ain't got no bus here
  A long time, he said.
  You got enough money
  To get home on?

  What did they do
  To your hand? I answered.
  He raised up his hook into the terrible starlight
  And slashed the wind.

  Oh, that? he said.
  I had a bad time with a woman. Here,
  You take this.

  Did you ever feel a man hold
  Sixty-five cents
  In a hook,
  And place it
  Gently
  In your freezing hand?

  I took it.
  It wasn't the money I needed.
  But I took it. 

   In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse 
   in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river
I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.

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

Finally, a poem from issue #51, back in 1993, by the fine poet, Christien Gholson, to commemorate the day today.  It was #18 in the "Brobdingnag Feature Poem" series, in which the editor slips in a little something beyond the normal ten-line constraint.  Enjoy.

Sudden Compassion in the Alley Behind

      The Apartment, Christmas Day

  The Lords of Trash

   ride the beerbox skidding across black ice.

  Their laughter calls down the dead

  who will not accept their death,

  waiting behind black windows made of sudden crow wings.

  They tumble into the world

  and enter the bodies of flying ragleaves,

  freed from the ice, tossed blind

  back up through the black crow windows

  without a sound.

  Everything is alive like a merciful warning.

  Alive!

  Even those souls gnashing each other

  behind sudden dark windows, desperate

  to finish something that's already finished.

  The tossed leaves shimmer over starlings

  praising the chimney smoke that warms them

  and the leftover smoke opens its mouth,

  drinking down the seed husk coins

  the sparrow let fly onto the wind.

New Year's day -

everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

Issa

translated by Robert Hass

By way of explanation, under the classical calendar in Japan, New Years is later in the year, about the 2nd or 3rd week in February, around the coming of spring.    Also, it is tradition that everyone celebrated their birthday on New Years.  Issa's undercutting of tradition here is really his poetic signature.

And quite funny.

Happy Christmas all, and, for the coming New Year, may you feel about average.


best,
Don

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James Wright Trashes Allen Ginsberg

Recently, I listened to a reading by James Wright at the Guggenheim Museum on March 20th, 1964.  On this occasion, he read two of well-known poems from The Branch Will Not Break: "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" and "Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join me."

He introduces "Lying in a Hammock ..." in this manner:

"Robert [Bly] and I were down there [at William Duffy's farm] and I was trying to write a review of a bad book.  One thing led to another and I finally wrote a bad poem about not being able to write the review and got drunk and hungover and then wrote this, or part of it, on the back of it:"

        Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm
        in Pine Island, Minnesota

            Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
            Asleep on the black trunk,
            Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
            Down the ravine behind the empty house,
            The cowbells follow one another
            Into the distances of the afternoon.
            To my right,
            In a field of sunlight between two pines,
            The droppings of last year's horses
            Blaze up into golden stones.
            I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
            A chicken hawk floats over, looking for a home.
            I have wasted my life.

                     James Wright

He then says, by way of introducing the next poem:

"That really was a bad book because it was full of screams and exclamation points.  I think I'll read the poem about being unable to review it:"

        Depressed By A Book Of Bad Poetry, I Walk
        Toward An Unused Pasture And Invite
        The Insects to Join Me

            Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone,
            I climb a slight rise of grass.
            I do not want to disturb the ants
            Who are walking single file up the fence post,
            Carrying small white petals,
            Casting shadows so frail I can see through them.
            I close my eyes for a moment, and listen.
            The old grasshoppers
            Are tired, they leap heavily now,
            Their thighs are burdened.
            I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
            Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
            In the maple trees.

                James Wright

There is a pause, and then he says, with more than a hint of sarcasm:

"I saw the best crickets of my generation
starving hysterical naked ..."

Followed by brief, sporadic laughter.

This, I believe, says a lot about the state of American poetry at that time; as in society, there was a deep contentious divide between the old and the new; so too with poetry.  Ironically, Wright himself had been considered, justifiably, a departure from the old.  But things were changing at lightning speed.

As anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows, I love the work of both Wright and Ginsberg.  This reading, however, gives a little context to the cultural history of "Howl" and how very courageous and revolutionary Ginsberg was with the publication of his work in general and "Howl" in particular.

Since it would be hardly fair to leave it there, representing one point of view, let's finish with this:










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

The feature poem this week is by one of the best kept secrets in the Pittsburgh poetry world: Bart Solarcyzk. I've published more of his straightforward, resonating short poems than most anyone I can think and intend to keep doing just that till he runs dry or screams uncle.   This one, from Lilliput Review #126, July 2002, is a gem of miniature narrative, re-imagining only slightly a scene familiar to many a devotee of Chinese lyrics in general and Li Po, in particular.  Enjoy.

Li Po

A hat full
of wine
by the river

my face

the moon
in my hand.

Bart Solarcyzk

hazy moon in the pine--
passing through
passing through

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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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.

Georg Trakl and James Wright

I mentioned in last week's post on James Wright's "Milkweed" that, while doing some research, I discovered Wright's love for the work of Georg Trakl. I recently finished Trakl's Autumn Sonata: Selected Poems, translated by Daniel Simko, and I thoroughly understand Wright's attraction. Here's a standout poem that shares a tonal quality similar to Wright:

In Springtime

Snow sank softly from the dark footsteps.
In the shade of a tree
Lovers raise their rosy eyelids.

The dark calls of sailors are always followed
By stars and night;
The oars beat softly in time.

Soon the violets will begin to blossom
By the crumbling wall,
The lonely man's temples softly turn green.

Georg Trakl

The nature imagery is reminiscent of work in The Branch Will Not Break. The closing revelation is not, however, typical of Trakl and, in this case, really stands out. Like all great poets, Trakl works the same territory over and over, tilling and re-tilling his garden to bring forth myriad varieties of the genus lyrical. Some images are so constant as to be all pervasive: a deer, tentative and feeding at forests' edge; the sound of bells, blending together as they fade; the clarity of twilight; autumn's pervasive sadness; the sensed presence of the dead, all around us; small details of village life, with human activity strangely absent; and a deep, resonant melancholy.

I was totally taken over by this work. It dominated me for the last few weeks and, though it is as different from my own as possibly could be imagined, it stimulated me to write and write and write. Wright of The Branch Will Not Break shares with Trakl the approach of recording in detail, imagistically, what is about him. In Wright, it gives the sense of the present moment, of seeing what the poet sees as it is observed. With Trakl, there is a sense of the eternal quality of what is observed. A denouement often results from these images of Wright; with Trakl, normally the images and tone are the end in and of themselves. Wright's images aren't in any sense repetitive; Trakl's are very much so and, though this might challenge the modern reader, it is this repetitiveness that gives them their eternal, immortal quality. Trakl's work is predominately in the 3rd person, Wright utilizes a 1st person persona in many cases, particularly in Branch. Both share a quality of sadness that occasionally implies unnamed, past transgressions. The flawed quality of human nature is never far from the surface in the work of both these fine poets. Here is another haunting piece by Trakl:




Hohenburg (Second Version)

No one at home. Autumn fills the rooms;
Moon-bright sonata
And the awakening at the edge of the twilit forest.

You always think of the white face of mankind
Far from the turmoil of the times–
A green branch bends willingly over the one dreaming.

Cross and evening.
The star of the one singing embraces him with purple arms
As it rises to the empty windows.

Therefore, the stranger trembles in the darkness
As he softly raises his eyelids over a human shape.
In the distance, the silver voice of the wind in the hallway.

Georg Trakl

I've yet to read the twenty poems by Trakl translated by Wright and Robert Bly (pdf file). I am looking forward to it very much. I'll close these thoughts with Wright's poem, "I Was Afraid of Dying." The library poetry discussion group I co-moderate will be considering three poems by James Wright next week, which I am also looking forward to. It will be difficult, indeed, to keep my enthusiasm for his work in check. I have a feeling others will match it.





I Was Afraid of Dying

Once,
I was afraid of dying
In a field of dry weeds.
But now,
All day long I have been walking among damp fields,
Trying to keep still, listening
To insects that move patiently.
Perhaps they are sampling the fresh dew that gathers slowly
In empty snail shells
And in the secret shelters of sparrow feathers fallen on the
------earth.

James Wright

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



The submission period for the 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge has ended and the response was excellent. This year there are 99 entries from all over; the UK, Eastern Europe, Japan, and New Zealand are all well represented, as well as the US. The total is close to 500 haiku. Last year there were 34 entries with around 150 poems. So, the reading period has begun and it will be taking quite some time, no doubt.

I'll keep everybody posted on my progress.




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This week's featured issue of Lilliput Review is #153, from November 2006. Enjoy.

Vespers

In this life where, from the womb,
---we step from dark to darkness,
what joy when a few fireflies
---rise up
------------to light our way.

Dan Stryk

Black Bread
-- found phrase (after a poem by Anna Akmatova)

Made of tears, blood and bile, mixed to
a paste of black sorrow and yeasty obedience,
you rise like an envelope full of stale air.
Pounded, meek and quiet into a mass of hope,
fibrous connections tearing, kneaded
again and again, torn and prayered, cornered.
I taste your salty promises of flesh and suckle
the finger offered. I breathe the moist air
made of grief tissue. I eat the corpse proffered.

Lita Sorenson

Credo

Never turn away from
a blessing,
no matter how
severe

Greg Watson

full moon
half moon

I
just don't know

Ed Baker

And Issa's parting word(s) ...







in every direction
ten thousand blessings...
croaking frogs

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

James Wright: Milkweed

While doing research at the library on James Wright for a forthcoming poetry discussion, I've discovered many things. First and foremost, I've connected with some poems that I hadn't previously, such as "A Prayer to the Lord Ramakrishna." In addition, I've been reading lots of criticism, the Paris Review Interview, and pieces of memoir. In a chapter from his book, American Poetry: Wildness and Domesticity, Robert Bly talks about Wright and their relationship and how he sees his friend's work. The lens Bly uses is, as is often the case, a large and refractive one; his debt to Jung is obvious and, on my part at least, frankly welcome. On occasion, this approach does lead to some fantastically awry notions, yet he ventures into new territory with fresh eyes and always has something interesting, often profound, to say. More often misinterpreted than misinterpreting, Bly's only "problem" is he frequently spoke in metaphors that appalled the dull-minded literalists of this world.

I'll side step for the moment his in-depth "analysis" of the poetry and recount an incident he relates as it informs one of the strange and wonderful poems in The Branch Will Not Break. Here is the poem:

Milkweed

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.

James Wright

There is such an air of mystery one forgets sometimes that what is happening is very real. The poem itself might serve to sum up the entire quest which is The Branch Will Not Break. Early on in the book, the poet is striving to find himself, is lost, trying to understand how this happened and what is his relation to the world. The event is chronicled beautifully in "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island Minnesota." In turning to nature, the poet does find himself in the world relative to what surrounds him. And here in "Milkweed," this revelation is reprised with a stunning lyrical beauty.

I read this poem many times and, as a writer, kept thinking of the final 3 lines as an analog for the writing process itself and, of course, they are. But they are first and foremost a lyrical depiction of a very real event: the bursting of a milkweed pod by the poet. This poem has threads that lead back to other major poems in the volume. The images themselves, the surrounding fields, the lumbering animals, the small house may all be found in "Lying in ... ." The wild gentle thing, the small dark eyes, seem at once to recall the pony in "A Blessing" and the poet's cherished secret in "The Jewel." The 3 final lines echo the haiku-like succinctness of the final 3 lines of "A Blessing", and all 3 poems share variations of a powerful revelation in the final lines.

Bly jokes in his essay that Wright's bursting of the milkweed seed pod might not have been the best thing for the surrounding fields but, as he says, never mind that for the moment.

For the moment, indeed. For myself, lyrically speaking, the delicate seeds scattering on the wind all gather together as the poems in The Branch Will Not Break, one of the 20th century's finest volumes of poetry. It never ceases to shake me, to touch me, to move me as deeply as the written word ever has.

A second thing I've discovered while doing background work was James Wright's love of the poet Georg Trakl (this link is a pdf document for those who avoid such things). And he has passed it on. I'm hooked. But I'll save that for a future post.


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This week's featured issue is #155 of Lilliput Review from 2007. Here are 5 very brief poems that reach for it all. Enjoy.





April morning-------the crow too-------has a song

Stanford Forrester

snowy road
wind picking up
our footprints

Dorothy McLaughlin

digging
& squirrels
digging too

John Martone

---There was this moment
in the middle of my life -
--------roses in the skinny limbed tree

Ron Price

violet dusk
the old, slow
aching toward

Sean Perkins

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Saturday midnight is the deadline for the 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge entries so, procrastinators, start your engines.

While polishing up this post this morning, Curtis Dunlap i.m.ed me to let me know he was reprinting an Albert Huffstickler poem from a back issue of Lillie. Here is the link; check out the lovely photo of Huff. And in related Huff news, Felicia Mitchell has started a Huff page on Facebook on which lots of remarkable things are being shared.

now I watch
with careful attention...
autumn dusk

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Random Notes: James Wright, Kerouac, Jane Campion's Keats

In preparation for a session of the 3 Poems By ... discussion group, I've been reading all things James Wright. Could I have a better job, getting to research one my favorite poets in preparation for a work project? And the things I've learned.

I mostly detest reading about poetry. That's not a hard admission, though it is a bit of a damning one. In any case, I am beginning to realize how wrongheaded that is. Here is a quote I ran across in a Paris Review interview with Wright (a .pdf) from 1972:

"Tolstoy was asked in a letter by a pacifist group if he could give them a definition of religion and, if he could do that, to explain to them the relation between religion, that is, what a person believes, and morality, that is, the way he acts in accord with some notion of how he ought to act. Tolstoy worried about this letter, and as I recall it, he said: 'I can only go back to myself. I look around myself and I see every year that, no matter what people do to themselves and to one another, the spring constantly renews itself. This is a physical fact, not a metaphysical theory. I look at every spring and I respond to it very strongly. But I also notice that every year the spring is the same new spring and every year I am one year older. I have to ask the question: What is the relation between my brief and tragic life and this force in the universe that perpetually renews itself? I further believe that every human being asks this question. He cannot avoid asking it-it is forced upon him. And his answer to that question is his religion. If he says the relation between me and this thing is nothing, then his religion is nihilism. As for morality, what ought I to do? I wish I knew.' That was a great letter."

The understatement of that last line, though it doesn't quite have the sheer power of "I have wasted my life", packs a considerable wallop. Interestingly, the quote was in part in reply to a question asking Wright's opinion of the poet John Berryman, whom he greatly admired.

Though one might be tempted to write it off to the interviewer's observation that a jug of wine, which needed to be refilled, sat between them during the interview, really it is the poet's natural inclination to inform her/his topic obliquely, metaphorically, if you will. James Wright considered himself a teacher first and one mustn't argue with a writer's opinion of himself. Perhaps he was a teacher first, but his instincts are purely lyrical.

I highly recommend this interview to anyone with the least attraction to his work. PC, it ain't, but insightful it is.




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



Today is the anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac, variously attributed to alcohol, ulcers, or the swallowing of a piece of tin from a tuna top; a subtle combination of all three probably did the deed. At least that was my understanding. Gerald Nicosia succinctly summarizes: Jack Kerouac died on October 21, 1969 “of hemorrhaging esophageal varices, the classic drunkard’s death."

As is the case when remembering him, I like to pull his Book of Haikus off the shelf and randomly open it. Typically, the facing pages contain a total of 6 to 8 poems and I always find at least one that grabs me.

Bluejay drinking at my
---saucer of milk
throwing his head back

Missing a kick
---at the icebox door
it closed anyway

Lonesome blubbers
---grinding out the decades
with wet lips

Ah, the birds
---at dawn,
my mother and father

A current pimple
---In the mind's
Old man

Here's a online selection of his haiku for those craving more. Jack's work in the form is better than I ever imagined it might be. The relationship between the direct pointing of haiku/zen philosophy and first thought, best thought, is as natural as might be.



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The new Jane Campion movie on John Keats, is getting high grades from folks I talk to. Ron Silliman has a fine tuned take this week over at his blog. Here's the trailer:






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As of this writing, entries for the 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge (scroll down here for prize update) have already handily surpassed last year in number. Keep 'em coming, folks: there is still 10 full days before the deadline.



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From this week's featured issue, Lilliput #156, a sequence of poems from the middle section. Hope you enjoy them.





far
from the hurricane's path
farther from myself

Robbie Gamble

upturned shells
cup the receding tide...
still not over you

Jeffrey Stillman

Love Song #22

Your absence
lengthens like a shadow
in the afternoon sun

Martha J. Eshelman

a seagull
atop each post
their different looks

Peggy Heinrich

And a final note from Issa:

even for winter's withering
an indifferent face...
sea gull

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

James Wright: A Prayer To The Lord Ramakrishna (II)

A Prayer To The Lord Ramakrishna

I.
The anguish of a naked body is more terrible
To bear than God.
And the rain goes on falling.

2.
When I stand up to cry out,
She laughs.
On the window sill, I lean
My bare elbows.
One blue wing, torn whole out of heaven,
Soaks in the black rain.

3.
Blind, mouth sealed, a face blazes
On my pillow of cold ashes.

4.
No!
I kneel down naked and ask forgiveness.
A cold drizzle blows into the room,
And my shoulders flinch to the bone.
You have nothing to do with us.
Sleep on.

James Wright

I spent the last few days working on this poem and had an entire post ready to go and trashed it. Here's how it started out:

As many of you know, James Wright is one of my favorite poets, as is his son, Franz. One shared element in the work of both is the ambiance of mystery, the element of the unexplainable; this is, for me, the essence of poetic experience, exploring beyond the known. I've read many of James Wright's poems multiple times, but ran across this one recently in one of my periodic revisits to his work. Since one volume or the another (or the complete poems) is always by my bedside, these visitations are quite frequent (yes, I have all the individual volumes as well as the complete work - if I have to explain this to you, chances are you'd never understand).

I really didn't remember reading this piece previously, which is odd since I've an interest in Eastern culture including Hindi religion. Sometimes a creative work "comes to you" only when you are ready for it, and in that sense it seems I've never read this poem before.

Where to start? It is something of a perfect little jewel, no pun intended. It is enigmatic; it dazzles in its depth and brilliance. It is for me nearly inexplicable and yet positively alluring.

What followed was the issue. I began to pry the poem apart as if with a crowbar and I made the kind of mess one would expect to make with a crowbar and a poem. I talked of the poems three characters, of the significance of the "blue" wing, of a profound existential experience, and wondered why the poem was excluded from the Robert Bly and Annie Wright edited Selected Poems. The conundrum presented by the last two lines is positively gripping. Pronouns, and their reference, play a big part. I compared it in tone to one of Edward Hopper's portrayals of solitude and that it provokes a forlorn feeling almost too much to bear. Then I began to puzzle over Krishna versus Lord Ramakrishna and watched as my exegesis just came undone and I realized that there was more thinking to do, indeed.

So, rather than heave the whole overboard, I thought I would send it your way virtually unsmudged. The poem is too good not to share, too good to let go by the boards. Rather than bludgeon it senseless to everyone's profound distress, I thought I'd just let it be.




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


This week's feature issue is of Lilliput Review is #161 from March 2008, which may also be viewed in its entirety here. Enjoy.



all along
----these pines
--------showing you how

John Martone

beside the snow bank
wind ruffles the feathers
of the dead sparrow

Jack Watson

#2

Asking poems which among
The wildflowers
Denies its red color?
So why in spring do I feel
Like a sinful girl?

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

And, of course, last word to the master:







cuckoo--
is this rain falling
only on me?

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

James Wright:: "The Mini-Series"

In a past post, I believe I mentioned the fact that Wesleyan University Press has issued a teeny version of perhaps my favorite book of poetry, The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright. It occurred to me I didn't show how teeny it is, so here it is above. It is a hardcover and I just weighed it on my mail scale: 1.1 ounces. I have the ability to have this with me at all times and usually do. It weighs less than my mp3 player, fer chrissakes, and though that has over 900 songs, the set of songs is no where near as lyrical as these 43 poems. Or nearly as boring. How can you get bored with 900 songs?

That's another story, for 21st century historians to cogitate. I'm afraid the verdict will not be good.

So while I have it in hand, literally, let me share another little gem from this groundbreaking volume. Besides being a lyrical poet of the first order, Wright was an accomplished translator. I will forever be in his depth for his translations of Hermann Hesse, in the volume simply entitled Poems. Though narrow in scope, Wright strictly selected work concerned with what might loosely be described as "homesickness," a theme the two poets shared. It is nonetheless a valuable collection, one of only a few in English by the prolific poet, Hesse (yes, we have lots of his great fiction, but a truly miniscule amount of his poetry - if there are any translators out there who want to see Hesse's work see the light of day, I'm interested).

In a footnote to the following translation, Wright says: "These three stanzas are from Goethe's poem Harzreise im Winter. They are the stanzas which Brahms detached from the poem and employed as the test for his Alto Rhapsody of 1869."

Three Stanzas From Goethe

That man there, who is he?
His path lost in the thicket,
Behind him the bushes
Lash back together,
The grass rises again,
The waste devours him.

Oh, who will heal the sufferings
Of the man whose balm turned poison?
Who drank nothing
but hatred of men from loves abundance?
Once despised, not a despiser,
He kills his own life,
The precious secret.
The self-seeker finds nothing.

Oh Father of Love,
If your psaltery holds one tone
That his ear still might echo,
Then quicken his heart!
Open his eyes, shut off by clouds
From the thousand fountains
So near him, dying of thirst
In his own desert.

Goethe
translated by James Wright

The subject, tone, and even style perfectly fit the poems this translation is surrounded by in The Branch Will Not Break. As with Hesse, it shows how a translator/poet, in a sense, makes another's work his own.

So if you'd like something to carry along while waiting around for your front-end to be aligned, your wisdom teeth to be extracted, or your boss to stop talking, this tiny little volume may do the trick. I purchased it directly from Wesleyan University Press (see "teeny version" link above) but be forewarned: they charge an outrageous amount to ship it. Though my amazon link boycott stands and I like to buy direct from small presses when I can, you can get it from amazon at a slightly less outrageous rate. Search via isbn (978-0-8195-6841-0) to make sure you get the right version.

No matter what the size, this is a near perfect book of poems.

best,
Don

Good News and Good News

James Wright

Well, there is good news and then there is good news. The primary good news appears to be that, for now, the computer troubles I was having are in the rear view. The other good news, which is really bad news that I choose to view as good news, is I've fallen considerably behind in putting together cogent thoughts for posts and so today I'm going to simply post a poem from one of the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list.

This is the well I've gone to perhaps the most from that list and I do intend to move on but it's time for one last poem. This, from James Wright's The Branch Will Not Break:




I Was Afraid of Dying

Once,
I was afraid of dying
In a field of dry weeds.
But now,
All day long I have been walking among damp fields,
Trying to keep still, listening
To insects that move patiently.
Perhaps they are sampling the fresh dew that gathers slowly
In empty snail shells
And in the secret shelters of sparrow feathers fallen on the
----earth.

James Wright

More soon,
Don

James Wright: "In Response to a Rumor ..."

Bridgeport, Ohio and Wheeling Island

Here's another poem from James Wright's Selected Poems, from the Near Perfect Poetry list. It comes from the volume Shall We Gather at the River (as opposed to Above the River: The Complete Poems).

This is quintessential Wright; it breaks your heart in such a lovely, human way. It is at once the product of its time and the place of its inception and, somehow, ubiquitous, touching tenderly each and every soul that lets it in.



Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse
in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned

I will grieve alone
As I strolled along, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.

I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
in Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
to find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.




You might want to check out an earlier version of the Selected Poems at google books: Collected Poems. Have a great weekend.

best,
Don

From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright

A new book for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list is From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright from Lost Hills Books of Duluth, Minnesota. I've been discussing two Wright books quite a bit lately: The Branch Will Not Break and Selected Poems and this book came as both a surprise and a revelation when I received it to review for The Small Press Review.

Frankly, I didn't have much hope. Books of homage are rarely up to the original and, so, what's the point, really? A writer such as James Wright might best be honored with a lyric rather than an elegy. As I say in my review "if there must be homage, let there be mystery, let there be revelation." And so there is, and then some.

Right out of the box, the first poem, by W. S. Merwin, nails it:

James

News comes that a friend far away
is dying now.

I look up and see small flowers appearing
in spring grass outside the window
and can't remember their name.

W. S. Merwin

I read that and thought, "time to close the book, it can't get better than that." In fact, there couldn't have been a truer assessment; yet, there were many poems that are up to Merwin's high standard set here. Galway Kinnell and C. K. Williams both have outstanding work here. Stanley Plumly has two excellent pieces. In an endnote, Robert Bly observes that the essence of Wright was his ability to transform a moment, to illuminate that transcendence, and the best work in this collection emulates Wright's strength without being derivative. Perhaps it is the highest honor of all to take the approach of another and to make of it something new. It is not a matter of style or allusion or voice; it is a matter of epiphanic moment. It is revelation.

In this collection, the occasional flat piece is the exception not the rule; the most critical I can be is to say perhaps the proliferation of horses throughout is unfortunate, but that is hardly fair since, in one particular sense, it is not so much what you say as how you say it. In "Two," Christina Lovin perfectly captures that moment, a la "The Blessing," when man meets nature and suddenly blends, realizing her/his place "in the family of things" as Mary Oliver so succinctly puts it. Instead of two horses, there are two deer, culled from seven by a cougar:




from Two

----------------There are two: just enough to take care
of the business of grooming. They stand neck-to-neck,
each licking, nuzzling, teasing the ticks and lice from the other's
coarse fur, enjoying the comfort, the contact, as horses do.
As humans do. As do you; as do I. Touch me here, then,
softly as deer's breath. I will touch you there, where
your mother held you in her arms, your neck against her shoulder.
Not where the raging fire begins, where undergrowth sparks
and catches and we are lost in its blaze. No, here,
where the hushed forest opens and the two quiet bodies
have disappeared into the green darkness within.

Christina Lovin

Ellen Seusy, too, finds an analogous moment in the seemingly pedestrian act of walking scraps out to the compost heap in the back yard:




from The Compost Bin

At the edge of the light, I look down,
then step into Ohio's dark night,
into what used to be forest.

The yard is quiet. This cold walk through the dark
takes me far. Who knows what will bloom
from what I bring. At the wooden bin

I tip the bowls onto the snow-covered compost.
Chemistry is going on in there
that I don't understand; pink peonies

could come from this decay. Sometimes
I wish not to go back, but to stay out
by the soft-armed hemlocks

out here by the compost bin,
this hearth way in the back of the yard,
and deep inside, the fire that no one's lit.

Ellen Seusy

Helen Ruggieri's poem is pure revelation, "The Kind of Poetry I Want," taken from a line by Wright in a direction he probably wouldn't have imagined and which he would have highly approved:




from The Kind of Poetry I Want

I want poetry from a woman who smiles with her teeth
you know her - she thinks like a man

I want poetry damp and shady:
trillium, bracken and fern

The kind of poetry I want takes my shape
not even knowing my name ...

Helen Ruggieri

This is just a dip into a fine collection of work that resonates just as Wright's best work does. Though it a quote from Wright himself, I'm not sure the title exactly captures the feel - perhaps "To the Other World" might have worked better, or even "Between Worlds" - but, in any case, this is a fine bit of business. As I said in closing my SPR review, "Since all these poets stand in unison, let one of their own stand for all. Listen to the close of "The Voices" by Michael Dennis Browne:"

from The Voices

From where I stand now,
I cannot see any singer,
but looking across the years,
listening in ways learned
only from them,
I can hear all the song.

Michael Dennis Browne

I can't think of a better analogy for poetry itself, its history, its tradition, what it is, and what it may be.

Revelation, indeed.




best,
Don