Ground Beneath Her Feet: Issa's Sunday Service, #176

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Today's selection on the Sunday Service is "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" by U2, after the novel by Salman Rushdie of the same title. If you are so inclined, here is a great, laudatory review from the UKs Guardian of the Rushdie book.

For those who simply wish to imagine a way to follow Orpheus (Orphee) into the underworld, sans Mr. Rushdie's opus, one of my favorite scenes from modern cinema (which I'm sure I've cited before) might do the trick:


Another cinematic re-imagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice story that captures the viewer and won't let go is Black Orpheus (&, from that movie, a Paul Desmond rendition of the song Samba de Orpheu, which I can listen to anytime, night and day):


In an older Sunday post, T-Rex referenced the same myth. There has been a seeming infinity number poems and cultural references to Orpheus over the years: a brief, neat overview may be found here.

Of course, for poets and poetry lovers, Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus holds a special place. There are many translations available online and many more for purchase in the great wide tactile universe. For the curious, here are translations by Robert Hunter, Robert Temple, Howard A. Landman, and Ed Alexander (a pdf), 

Thanks so much to John Burroughs for suggesting "Ground Beneath Her Feet" for the Sunday Service ...

-----

Stereoscope by R. L. Young

temple grounds--
a snake too sheds
his worldly robe

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Dandy in the Underworld: Issa's Sunday Service, #84

What better way to start the New Year than with a trip to the Underworld?  If ever there was a patron saint of poetry (as well as music), Orpheus is certainly a leading candidate.  Though the reference to Orpheus in T. Rex's glam tune "Dandy of the Underworld" isn't overt - there are some who believe that it is after the Tennessee Williams play, Orpheus Descending - the reference to the Oz books of L. Frank Baum is, so it makes it onto the ongoing Litrock list.

As to the above portrait, well there's lots that could be said.  It is a portrait of Cosimo de'Medici as Orpheus by the Italian artist Agnolo Bronzino.  It resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and here's what they have to say.  Orpheus taming Cereberus on his way to rescue Eurydice, eh?  In celebration of a new ongoing era of peace and in the romantic spirit of a new marriage, you say?  Is that the bow of your lyre in your right hand, or are you just happy to see me, darling Orphée?  No, wait, do lyres even have bows? Not a liar, er, lyre, you say - a viola, perhaps, because, oops, it's too large for a violin and, oops, too small for a cello.  Somebody, help me out I'm lost in the underworld of my crass ignorance.

Glam rock, indeed.

In any case, there are innumerable references to Orpheus in poetry, way too many to recount.  There's a list someone ought to compile.  Of course, Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus is one of finest and most famous.

My favorite treatment is in film rather than verse because I am a stoned child of the 60s: Jean Cocteau's Orphée.  Here is the scene when Orphée is led into the underworld through a mirror.  Pre-digital, no doubt, but ingenious, lyrical, and mythic all at once, which is about as good a summary of the work of Cocteau as one might get.

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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #129, March 2003, and has a touch of myth to it; more precisely, it provides instructions on how to make myth real.     Go ahead, give it a try.

It's more than worth the effort.

Eureka
When you sense you are close
climb to a high place and look down
at eucalyptus groves and
Japanese maples of fire red.
Say the word eucalyptus out loud,
but say it in the Greek way:
Make it your mantra on the descent,
the red leaves your compass,
eucalyptus your song.

Lonnie Hull Dupont

No eucalyptus or Japanese maple, you say?  Lilac and ailanthus will do.





so is haiku hell
over that-a-way...
mountain cuckoo?

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Jean Cocteau, Harlan Ellison, & Cid Corman

This past weekend , I fell in love with Jean Cocteau.

I've always been infatuated with him, frankly. His film Orpheus (1949) is one of my all-time favorites; Beauty and the Beast, too, is a wondrous achievement. I had the opportunity to go back and take a look see at the other two films in the Orphic Trilogy (The Blood of a Poet (1930) and The Testament of Orpheus (1959)) and they are truly amazing and should be of great interest to poets as well as film buffs. The dvd versions I took out of the library had some first-class extras; in the case of The Blood of a Poet, the biographical documentary Autobiography of an Unknown, directed by Edgardo Cozarinsky, accompanying the main feature was every bit as entertaining, putting Cocteau's life and career in perspective with heavy doses of the lyric surrealism that infuses all his work. I actually enjoyed it more, it has a polished feel as a documentary that somehow Blood does not have as a film. In many ways, The Blood of a Poet is an early rehearsal for Orpheus; I would actually recommend watching the later first, though it comes "second" in the trilogy. This is not to detract from Blood: it is excellent.

Similarly, The Testament of Orpheus is something of an anomaly as a film. It might stand alone without Orpheus yet it is greatly enhanced by it. It is Cocteau's farewell to film and he gathers together his previous motifs, characters and even actors who played various roles to make his final artistic statement in the medium. There is much humor here; Cocteau himself becomes the main character in the film, a sort of time traveling Orpheus, stuck in modern times. It is nearly as good as Orpheus and a beautiful chronicle of the poet's journey. Another interesting extra is Villa Santo Sospir, which is a 16mm color film shot by Cocteau at the summer home of a friend. It has the feel of a combination home movie and travelogue and focuses almost entirely on the house, which Cocteau painted inside and out with his unique artistic creations, making it a work of art in and of itself. It must be seen to be believed. Here's a brief glimpse to get the flavor:






Sticking with the theme of the artist, a clip of the always provocative, incredibly original Harlan Ellison is making the rounds about the need for a writer to be paid for her/his work. Check it out:






There is, of course, no small irony that the circulation of this clip, an excerpt of the film Dreams With Sharp Teeth, is, perhaps, violating the very principle he so passionately (& profanely, bless him) espouses. So, that being said, the above is being passed along in the interest of the greater good, if there be such a thing.

And, yes, Lilliput being the micropress mag that it is, can only pay in the bane of the poet's existence, contributor copies. Sigh. The layers are thick.

Let the beatings begin.

Before getting to the Lilliput samples, one final bit of news. Longhouse Publishers of Vermont has issued a number of Cid Corman related items, including a new selected poems, The Next One Thousand Years, which I can't wait to see. Bob Arnold of Longhouse has sent along two of his delightful slip card productions of works by Cid: a Rumi translation ("What can I do - friends?) and a work entitled New Proverbs. Here are two from the master, resonating as his work always does:

Any moment
yields as much.


Don't ask more of yourself
than the mirror does.

Cover by Wayne Hogan

Continuing with the theme of the artist's plight and segueing from Wayne Hogan's beautiful cover above, here is the man himself, this time wielding the written word to speak, as always, directly to the point. From #97:



How To Be An Artist

Save all your
string. Save all your
empty paper cups.
Save all your missing socks.
Save all your wasted
words. Save all your Indianhead
nickels. Yes, especially
your Indianhead nickels.

Wayne Hogan

Regarding This Poem

The idea was to put
together as one compelling
composite all those parts you
said you particularly liked from
poems of mine you rejected over
the years but on second thought
would the conglomeration work as a
whole and besides you have a ten
line limit but don't think
that I haven't noticed
the exceptions.

Kenneth Leonhardt

Returning home

after long work
two corbies
and a dove
cut a pale sky.

A second dove
nowhere in sight,
the world is still
too dark. We must

begin again.

Jim Tolan

Obituary

cigar box
(shaken like a rattle):
shoehorn, stubby pencil,
cuff-link.

James Magorian

Till next Thursday,

Don

PS Don't miss Alicia Ostriker's devastating poetic observation of the American psyche, Fix, on today's The Writer's Almanac.