I'd Rather Be High: Issa's Sunday Service, #169

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"Just remember, duckies, everybody gets got"

David Bowie's new album, The Next Day, defines one very courageous way to head off into the sunset: with guns blazing. This is his most vibrant writing in many a year and nothing he turns his lens on is spared the fixed glare of intense, informed scrutiny. 

Today's song, "I'd Rather Be High," touches a lot of bases and, if it doesn't make it all around, it most certainly comports itself well.  The lit allusion comes in the first line with the introduction of Vladimir Nabokov (not his first appearance on the Sunday Service) - a number of his novels reference Gruenwald (The Gift and King, Queen, Knave, to name two). Here is an interesting paragraph from an article entitled "Nabokov's Berlin:"

It so happened that four bestselling German novels set in Berlin were written in the late 1920s, at the same time as Nabokov’s King, Queen, Knave the German translation of which was not a bestseller. They were Menschen im Hotel by Vicky Baum, Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, Fabian by Erich Kästner and Bruder und Schwester by Leonhard Frank. There is much more of Berlin to be seen in King, Queen, Knave than in any of them. Döblin’s extraordinary novel has more of the city only insofar as it has its idiom and its way of thinking; in this sense it is a close-up while Nabokov’s fiction stays at a neutral distance. But Döblin’s city itself is reduced to a few blocks between Alexanderplatz and Rosenthaler Platz. Döblin lived not far away, and I believe Nabokov never ventured into those proletarian quarters. Nabokov's Berlin by contrast is the "Russian Berlin" of Wilmersdorf, Charlottenburg and Schöneberg, the city center and the city's parks and forests, notably the Grunewald.

Of course, I'm more intrigued by the sun-licked Nabokov himself - what, oh what, can you mean, Mr. Bowie? 

Oh, you mean that.

Beyond the lit allusion, there is a lot more to chew on here, as in many of the songs on this solid new album. The persona, and Bowie always has so many, is of interest, and what he is after, via that persona, is interesting, indeed. The lyrics are worth contemplation.  


I'd Rather Be High

Nabokov is sun-licked now
Upon the beach at Gruenwald
Brilliant and naked just
The way that authors looks

Clare and Lady Manners drink
Until the other cows go home
Gossip till their lips are bleeding
Politics and all

I'd rather be high
I'd rather be flying
I'd rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns 
on those men in the sand
I'd rather be high

The Thames was black, the tower dark
I flew to Cairo, find my regiment
City's full of generals
And generals full of shit

I stumble to the graveyard and I
Lay down by my parents, whisper
Just remember duckies
Everybody gets got

I'd rather be high
I'd rather be flying
I'd rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns 
on those men in the sand
I'd rather be high

I'm seventeen and my looks can prove it
I'm so afraid that I will lose it
I'd rather smoke and phone my ex
Be pleading for some teenage sex
Yeah

I'd rather be high
I'd rather be flying
I'd rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns 
on the men in the sand
I'd rather be high


Finally, Mr. Nabokov himself should have his say and here he is, in all his opinionated, loathing glory. This is the BBC documentary Life and 'Lolita." Enjoy. 

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

Ominaeshi by Koizumi

graveyard--
all alone a maiden flower
twisting

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 169 songs

Antonio Machado, Issa, and the Return of the King

Cover by Oberc

As time and tide permit, I've been trying to get a hold of and read some of the volumes suggested for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list. This week, via the wonder that is interlibrary loan, I received The Sea and the Honeycomb: a Book of Tiny Poems, edited by Robert Bly. I've enjoyed much of what I've read; a great many of the poems are translations by Bly himself, occasionally with a collaborator.

The poems that struck me immediately were translations of the work of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado. I've run into his work before and enjoyed it, particularly the shorter poems. Here are a couple of Bly's translations:


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It is good to know that glasses
are to drink from;
the bad thing is not to know
what thirst is for.

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If it is good to live,
then it is better to be asleep dreaming,
and best of all,
mother, is to awake.

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Another excellent poem from this collection is by, of all people, Vladimir Nabokov:


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Only the birds are able to throw off their shadow.
The shadow always stays behind on earth.

Our imagination flies:
we are its shadow, on the earth.

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Finally there are a few poems by the delightful Issa, our patron; though I've seen this one translated differently, I like the starkness of this rendering:


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Why mention people?
Even the scarecrows
are crooked.

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The Sea and the Honeycomb is out of print and if you want a copy of your own, it will cost you via amazon's used market or my favorite virtual source for used books, abebooks. Some of the Bly translations are available in The Winged Energy of Delight, a volume of selected translations. The Issa and Machado are there but since the later's poems are part of a larger work, they are not indexed and one has to leaf through. But they are there, along with an incredible cross section of great poets. Here is the contents page plus a generous preview of the poems, courtesy of HarperCollins.

Since this blog takes its name and inspiration from the master poet Issa, I've tried to provide many different translators takes on his work (the Issa link above is new and different). Here is a translation from a master in his own right, Cid Corman, with a very different approach to another familiar Issa poem:


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Only one guy and
only one fly trying to
make the guest room do

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I've begun preparing the contributor copies of the new issues, #'s 163 & 164, for mailing and I'm hoping that they will begin to go out over the next two weeks. In the meantime at flashback central, here are a couple of little pieces from Lilliput #85, originally published in January 1997:



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Cutting

My father leans close
to my ear, a root beer
barrel rattling over
back teeth, he fumbles
against the rust clasp
on a blue plastic case,
scissors and black combs
within clear pockets.

Mark Forrester

Oh, Cowboy,

you climb up my tree,
wake all the bats.

Lindsey Royce

Why We Never Got Rid of the Poodle
----We Found at Blue Stem Lake

We are all of us
sparrows
in winter branches
without names.

Greg Kosmicki

Dear Don:

More threats. More haiku.

John Cantey Knight

N. B.

Life is like
nothing else.
Exactly.

Cid Corman

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Finally, to close out with a smile, below you will find the Monday edition from a relatively new comic strip, Lio. Lio is about a little boy with a mighty attraction to the macabre: zombies, monsters, aliens etc. are all regularly, and happily, featured in this generally amusing strip. This week takes it to another level with a homage to the greatest comic kid of all-time, Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes. Below, Lio is once more messing with the mystic, with results that will delight comic fans everywhere:




I'm a sucker for cartoon strip (as opposed to comic/graphic novel) crossovers.


Till next time:

Don

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