Pride of Man: Issa's Sunday Service, #39

John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service






Trimmer, non-ugly version


This week's Issa's Sunday Service selection is from one of my favorite bands from the 60's, for which I took a lot of riding from my friends: Quicksilver Messenger Service. The song is the opening cut of their debut album and was written by musician/actor Hamilton Camp. It's another LitRock song that takes its storyline from the Bible; it's lead guitar line, by the late John Cipollina, comes directly from heaven, no intermediary necessary, thank you very much.

The lyrics are simple yet powerful. Quicksilver's take matches that power; as a folk tune, it has a different kind of power. Still, it works just fine both ways. Here's Gordon Lightfoot's version for comparison. And here are those lyrics:



Pride of Man

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Can't you see that flash of fire ten times brighter than the day
And behold the mighty city broken in the dust again
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Babylon is laid to waste, Egypt's buried in her shame
Their mighty men are beaten down, their kings have fallen in the ways
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Terror is on every side, though the leaders are dismayed
Those who put their faith in fire, in fire their faith shall be repaid
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again

Turn around, go back down, back the way you came
Shout a warning to the nations that the sword of god is raised
On Babylon that mighty city, rich in treasure, wide in fame
It shall cause thy tower to fall and make it be a pyre of flame
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again

Oh thou that dwell on many waters, rich in treasure, wide in fame
Bow unto a god of gold, thy pride of might shall be thy shame
Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again

And only God can lead the people back into the earth again
Thy holy mountain be restored, thy mercy on thy people Lord



For a taste of what the band was like at its peak, here they are covering Bo Diddley's Mona with a two guitar attack and lots of groovy dancing!





You will notice that the Grooveshark widget, above, has gotten decidedly ugly. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it at the moment; perhaps I'm just caught between changes or the GS people are just looking for some more real estate. All I can say is that you should have seen it before I edited it down. However, working with the old lemonade from lemons theory, I am going to try the reverse and whip up a giant widget covering all the songs featured to date. Stay tuned. (*** The decidedly less ugly version became available, so I've posted it side-by-side above ***)


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This week's selection comes from Lilliput Review #61. While looking through this issue, I was struck by the presentation of art and poems over these two pages so thought, for a change, I'd scan them in for perusal. The poems are "How She Slumbers" by Albert Huffstickler and "After Sex" by John Grey. On the left, the artwork is Huff again and Guy Beining on the right.


Click the image to read poems & see artwork close-up




And the final words to Master Issa:

wind blows--
the wild boar's sleeping face
so innocent

Issa
translated by David G. 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

R. H. Blyth's Haiku

Last night I wandered from my previously stated purpose of mining R. H. Blyth for more Shiki translations and sat down with the 1st volume of R. H. Blyth's 4 volume Haiku, opening it up to the preface and beginning to read. I was positively knocked out; it is, simply, transcendent. I've plumbed these 4 volumes over the years for many of the hundreds and hundreds of poems by acknowledged Japanese masters of the haiku, by poet and by season (the later being the general schema of the volumes). Let me let Blyth speak for himself:

-----

The history of mankind, as a history of the human spirit, may be thought of as consisting of two elements: an escape from this world to another; and a return to it. Chronologically speaking, these two movements, the rise and fall, represent the whole of human history; and the two take place microcosmically many times in peoples and nations. But they may be thought of as taking place simultaneously or rather, beyond time, and then they form an ontological description of human nature.

-----There seems to me no necessity, however, to make a Spenglerian attempt to show from historical examples how there has been a movement towards ideas, ideas, abstractions; and a corresponding revulsion from them. In our own individual lives, and in the larger movements of the human spirit these two contradictory tendencies are more or less visible always, everywhere. There is a quite noticeable flow towards religion in the early world, and in the early life of almost every person,-and a later ebb from it, using the word "religion" here in the sense of a means of escape from this life.

-----The Japanese, by an accident of geography, and because of something in their national character, took part in the developments of this "return to nature," which in the Far East began (to give them a local habitation and a name) with Enô, the 6th Chinese Patriarch of Zen, 637-713 A. D. The Chinese, again because of their geography perhaps, have always had a strong tendency in poetry and philosophy towards the vast and vague, the general and sententious. It was left, therefore, to the Japanese to undertake this "return to things" in haiku, but it must be clearly understood that what we return to is never the same as what we once left, for we have ourselves changed in the meantime. So we go back to the old savage animism, and superstition, and common life of man and spirits and trees and stones,-and yet there is a difference. Things have taken on something of the tenuous nature of the abstractions they turned into. Again, spring and autumn, for example, non-existant, arbitrary distinctions, have attained a body and palpability they never before had. We also, we are the things,-and yet we are ourselves, in a perpetual limbo of heaven and hell.

-----It was necessary for us to prostrate ourselves before the Buddha, to spend nine long years wall-gazing, to be born in the Western Paradise. But now, no more. Now we have to come back from Nirvana to this world, the only one. We have to live, not with Christ in glory, but with Jesus and his mother and father and brothers and sisters. We return to the friends of our childhood, the rain on the window-pane; the long silent roads of night, the waves of the shore that never cease to fall; the moon, so near and yet so far; all the sensations of texture, timbre, weight and shape, those precious treasures and inexhaustible riches of every-day life.

-----Haiku may well seem at first sight a poor substitute for the glowing visions of Heaven and Paradise seen of pale-lipped asceties. As Arnold says:

----------Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
----------How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!

Haiku have a simplicity that is deceptive both with regard to their depth of content and to their origins, and it is the aim of this and succeeding volumes to show that haiku require our purest and most profound spiritual appreciation, for they represent a whole world, the Eastern World, of religious and poetic experience. Haiku is the final flower of all Eastern culture; it is also a way of living.

There are some deep, even ticklish and, occasionally, seemingly nonsensical waters to navigate here. Be that as it may, my thought is sit at the feet of a master and learn. If there is anyway for someone from the West to understand what haiku actually means in Japanese culture, this is it. No matter whether you agree or disagree with Blyth; there is just too much here not to revel in. Admittedly, this is the beginning of a potentially long, four volume journey but I'm hoping to see it through in '09. I have a feeling I'm going to need a good deal more of pluck than lucky, but I'll just have to see. And I'll report back.

Here's a couple of poems I came across this week worth a gander:

Mary Oliver's Morning Poem

Jane Kenyon's Taking Down the Tree

The Oliver poem is an outgrowth of all the reading I've been doing for the 3 Poems discussion group; it is a good one, really representative of all her work. If ever there was a poet constantly working and reworking the same territory, it is Mary Oliver and, despite what many critics have to say, this is just why she should be cherished. She points to nature in its myriad manifestations and takes from it a solid, spiritual, all-encompassing world view.

Not too shabby.

For more on Oliver, check out my post on Eleventh Stack dealing with her best collection, the audiobook entitled At Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver.

The Kenyon poem nails what many of us will be doing over the coming days and weeks, taking down the tree. In this piece, Kenyon harkens back to the pre-Christian tradition of the solistice tree and its original purpose, something we all know and feel on an instinctual level but rarely articulate. Darkness, be damned.

Right now, I'm reading poetry volumes by Richard Brautigan, Robert Bly, and James Wright in preparation for featuring work that has been selected for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list (183 and counting - will we make to 200?). Three poems from the Wright volume, The Branch Will Not Break, have already posted. In addition, I'm reading From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright from Lost Hills Books for a future print and possibly blog review. Like so much tree tinsel, the Blyth volume has distracted me from Matsuo Basho: The Master Haiku Poet by Makoto Ueda, which I will be getting back to I hope.

If I'm not careful, I'm gonna run out of bookmarks.

This week's dip into the Lilliput archive comes from October 1994, with a nifty, if slightly faded cover by the irrepressible Wayne Hogan. Hope something grabs you here.

Cover art by Wayne Hogan

As This Morning

we have forgotten so much:
how afternoon light
will warm us. the
way our bodies are.
how fingers will move
into a shadow so
slight, there is
hardly room for
the world.

Mike James

After Sex

I watch her getting dressed.
She dips her head slowly,
her hair flops away
from the crown
in a swirling semaphore
of golden petals.
Clothes float up from the floor
like butterflies.

John Grey

Monoepic

Wonder.

Richard Kostelanetz

and O
------how he loved is tenderness
-------------when he touched her

John Elsberg

November Sunday Madonna

curls into herself,
the last leaf
on the maple
wind blown
and twitching
still holding on

Lyn Lifshin

¶writing is motionless
-when I am done.
-my shadow
-on the path of the path.

Scarecrow

best,
Don