Tableau I
, in which we are all gummy bears
competing with each other
on the birthday table of a child
who has yet to be diagnosed colorblind
All about: death
Reading: Stagnant water by Wen Yiduo
Chinese poet Wen Yiduo (1899-1946) was assassinated by the Kuomintang. According to many, he was an important figure in Chinese intellectual life. He "Wen never resolved the conflicts that existed within him: The elitist and the proletarian, the scholar and the activist, the traditionalist and the innovator, the personal man and the public man, fought ...
Reading: La fausse morte by Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry (1971-1945) I found a short poem in a remarkable translation by Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody: The Faux Death Humble, tender, against the charming tomb, ______Unfeeling monument That out of shadows, leavings, offered love ______Conjures your weary grace, I fall, dying against you, dying — Yet, No sooner fallen across the low grave Whose lawn littered ...
Reading: The drowned woman by Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes (1930-1998). British giant of poetry. Married twice with ladies who committed suicide, then a third time to live a quiet rural life until his death from cancer. Very prolific. Today I want to read this poem about a drowned woman, published 1957, six years before Plath's suicide at age thirty, which charges it ...
Reading: Beautiful Youth by Gottfried Benn
German poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) supported Hitler when he came to power, but changed his mind after the 'night of the long knives'. Still, he was naive enough to join the Wehrmacht, where some officers respected his disaproval of the regime. I don't care too much about the details, but it wasn't pretty. The nazis, ...
Reading: Do not go gentle… by Dylan Thomas
Today a poem that people like myself can't hear anymore, so often has it been repeated and analysed. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) wrote this for his ailing father. I found a formal analysis online, that is devoid of passion and reminded me why I am doing this. Poetry gets so boring if you must interfere with ...
Reading: Yet to die. Unalone still by Osip Mandelstam
Here is a pretty translation I found of a poem by Osip Mandelstam (1891 - 1938), one of Russia's acclaimed anti-formalist (Acmeist) poets along with Akhmatova, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva. This was written in 1937: Yet to die. Unalone still. For now your pauper-friend is with you. Together you delight in the grandeur of the plains, And ...
Reading: To Death by Anna Akhmatova
Today I read fragment number 8 from the cycle 'Prologue', called 'To death' by one of the most famous Russian poets of the twentieth century, Anna Akmatova (1889-1966) in a translation by A.S. Kline . Translations of a lot of other Akhmatova poetry is also available on his website. To Death You’ll come regardless – ...
Great was that chase with the hounds for the unattainable meaning
of the world.
And now I am ready to keep running
When the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death.
- Czesław Miłosz
Reading: I hear that the axe has flowered by Paul Celan
Today, let's dive into a mysterious poem by the great Paul Celan, in a translation by Michael Hamburger. I hear that the axe has flowered I hear that the axe has flowered, I hear that the place can't be named, I hear that the bread which looks at him heals the hanged man, the bread ...
Reading: L’Orangerie by Yves Bonnefoy
The French poet Yves Bonnefoy (1923-2016) published major collections of poetry throughout his livetime. He lived, and died, in Paris in 2016. Today, I read a poem headed 'L'Orangerie'. I didn't like the English translation by Galway Kinnell so I have improved it. As usual, here's the poem: THE ORANGERY Thus we walk on the ruins ...
real hypochondria
I created this illness
together with histamines
and B lymphocytes
to you, I imagine the pain
worse: you nod and I recoil
I have no heavens to curse
and shallow is the temptation of the soil
The gizzard of Halcyon
The world is a forest we cheapskate light on the forest floor high above flies the body of the bird of cool. We fools look up to see if she's gone halcyon, junky of the cloudless skies deal me more words, I want to play. I want to prove I'm here I want the spirits ...
On people who live on in our dreams
I dreamt that the late British American public intellectual Christopher Hitchens was walking next to me. He was bald, like in the last months of his life when he underwent chemotherapy, but appeared in excellent health and was obviously not aware of his impending death. The image was so vivid that I could see the ...
Miles Davis
Floating on the invisible surface of a sea I hear music playing on the coastline somewhere to my right. They are playing jazz. I know some time I was expected there but I move away from the shore towards the silent starless sky Everywhere on my left. The shore bends itself towards me. It gives ...