Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 03:01:47 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Poems

Started by Smeraldina Rima, October 01, 2017, 01:25:33 AM

Previous topic - Next topic
Beautiful video, thank you.

Larkin is through to the next round.

#91
Larkin is having second thoughts about the talent show element. He wonders if poetry and show business aren't more like odd socks than matching ones.

Have a listen to this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBLxyTFDxE - performance of Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath at the 2012 X Factor final, notable for the reaction of Simon Cowell afterwards - an hour long shrug.

What do we think? Has the poetry-showbiz collab GONE TOO FAR?!

Speaking of Larkin on X Factor makes me think of his poem High Windows competing with a section from JH Prynne's book The Oval Window.

Both seem to be about, in part, two different kinds of thoughts colliding in the same mind- in the Larkin, a mean-spirited and ugly rant gives way to a spiritual revelation. In the piece by Prynne, abstract thoughts on Chinese communism take place while walking through a serene landscape.
I think JH Prynne wins this round, is it a yes from you Cheryl?

High Windows
BY PHILIP LARKIN

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's   
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,   
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—   
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if   
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,   
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide   
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide   
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:   
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.


from The Oval Window
by JH Prynne

Now the willows on the river are hazy like mist
and the end is hazy like the meaning
which bridges its frozen banks. In the field
of view a prismatic blur adds on
rainbow skirts to the outer leaves.
      They appropriated not the primary
conditions of labour but their results;
       the waters of spring cross under
the bridge, willow branches dip.
       The denial of feudalism in China
aleays leads to poitical errors, of an
essentially Troskist order:
      Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.
The red candle flame shakes.


#93
Do you have the annotated edition? I've scanned the notes for that poem, showing the different poems and books incorporated, here and late in the book especially from Among the Flowers, 'Lois Fusek's translation of Chao Ch'ung-tso's tenth-century anthology of Chinese tz'u poetry'.




Click to enlarge. I don't have that anthology but this is another interpretation I've found of the poem providing the first line:

Within the crystal curtain, a glazed pillow.
Warm fragrance bring dreams — ducks embroidered on the cover.
The willows on the river are like mist,
Geese fly under a waning moon.

Lotus root fibres, the autumn colour is light.
The man-shaped head ornament is cut zigzag.
The locks on her two temples are barred by fragrant red.
The jade hairpin on her head sway in the wind.


From The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry by Hans H. Frankel.

Prynne was once on an episode of Masterchef and read Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners" on Chinese televison. I think he also appeared on a Chinese gameshow but can't find any evidence of that now.


Prynne reads "Cocaine" by John Wieners

For I have seen love
and his face is choice Heart of Hearts,
a flesh of pure fire, fusing from the center
where all Motion is one.

And I have known
despair that the Face has ceased to stare
at me with the Rose of the world
but lies furled

in an artificial paradise it is Hell to get into.
If I knew you were there
I would fall upon my knees and plead to God
to deliver you in my arms once again.

But it is senseless to try.
One can only take means to reduce misery,
confuse the sensations so that this Face,
what aches in the heart and makes each new

start less close to the source of desire,
fade from the flesh that fires the night,
with dreams and infinite longing.


Prynne slightly changes two words in his reading, 'is' to 'his' and 'sensations' to 'sensation'.


From Peter Riley's Pennine Tales:


Quote from: Scarlet Intangible on July 27, 2020, 09:45:50 AM
Emily Dickinson

This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond -
Invisible, as Music -
But positive, as Sound -
It beckons, and it baffles -
Philosophy, dont know -
And through a Riddle, at the last -
Sagacity, must go -
To guess it, puzzles scholars -
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown -
Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies -
Blushes, if any see -
Plucks at a twig of Evidence -
And asks a Vane, the way -
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -
Strong Hallelujahs roll -
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul -

Emily Dickinson. Herbarium, [18--] (MS Am 1118.12) Unfinished; nothing is known of its history. Complete color digital facsimile available without access restrictions.



Discover Emily Dickinson's Herbarium: A Beautiful Digital Edition of the Poet's Collection of Pressed Plants & Flowers Is Now Online


It looks quite like the Stars in their Eyes set on 'The Listeners' video, so maybe he was being Walter de la Mare for one night only. I've not seen these annotations, so thanks very much. I've got the big collected poems that Bloodaxe put out in 2005, but I always thought The Oval Window stood out as the best work in that book and I'm pleased to see it it's been singled out in this way. Though I guessed the lines about communism had been sampled from somewhere, I'm still surprised to see that pretty much the whole thing is a collage- funny that the only substantial original bit, the prismatic blur is such a Prynne kind of phrase that it fools you (me) into thinking if the whole piece is unified. (Obviously there are other bits in the Oval Window where he uses discontinuity as a technique, like the description of a violent attack followed by the bland distant tone of a business news piece). Do the annotations throw any light on the bits that read like a technical manual?

To give Larkin a bit more 'airtime' in this thread, here's a documentary I watched the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdeEFErYVtk


There's a few readings from him in it, and a bit in the middle where we see the book he wrote 'The Whitsun Weddings' in, with him retracing the writing of it.

Just read the phrase 'po biz' in a short story by Lorrie Moore. Odd coincidence.

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on July 30, 2020, 01:25:27 AM
Do the annotations throw any light on the bits that read like a technical manual?

Some of the main sources are An Introduction to Database Systems, C.J. Date; Concepts of Classical Optics, J.D. Strong; and The Elements of Programming Style, Kernighan and Plauger.

The sources for the 'description of a violent attack followed by the bland distant tone of a business news piece' are The Times and the Financial Times:



These are the main two newspapers used concentrating on the same part of August 1983. 'Smartly clad they could only panic' is annotated: "The Times, 22 August 1983, reporting a ZZ Top concert at Castle Donington's 'Monsters of Rock' festival: 'ZZ Top are a sight for sore eyes; they are smartly clad in pastels, absurd pink guitars and extravagantly styled beards, which is not to say that they are hell bent on pastiche; they are all excellent musicians with a total command of the blues based Texan boogie tradition.'"

Thanks. Looking at it again, maybe there's not that much of a contrast between the two bits.  Although the last stanza feel like he's parodying the FT a bit, and although the shifts in tone maintain the feeling of a mind that refuses to stick to one position or style of talking, that can't say something without wanting to undermine the saying of it,  maybe there's something straightforwardly earnest about that page, ultimately not that far from sentiments you might get in a newspaper leader article. An individual terrible violent incident leads on to refelections about a nation losing its grip, its moral fibre, that sort of thing.
The scale of the sampling/plagarism is really interesting, I guess I have a romantic streak that really beleives in individual genius and authorship and thinks there's something a bit off here,  but at the same time, the power he gets out of the technique is undeniable. It makes me want to have a go as well....

Quote from: Scarlet Intangible on July 30, 2020, 09:54:49 AM
To give Larkin a bit more 'airtime' in this thread, here's a documentary I watched the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdeEFErYVtk


There's a few readings from him in it, and a bit in the middle where we see the book he wrote 'The Whitsun Weddings' in, with him retracing the writing of it.

Thanks, I'll give it a watch. Though I really like Larkin, I did enjoy this 1980s film attacking him by Terry Eagleton
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hxxd3fbLgFs
I think even people who love Larkin would understand that there's something brilliant here, that poetry was once, not so long ago considered such a vital thing that there was an audience for this kimd of programme debating and critiquing work on TV. Modern arts programmes seem only to exist to promote stuff.

I really enjoyed the Cocaine poem by John Wieners linked to above, so honest and direct. I'd never heard of him before and was pleased to learn that his stated modus operandi was 'I try to write the most embarrassing thing I can think of', which is spot on, really.

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on July 31, 2020, 10:22:24 PM
Thanks, I'll give it a watch. Though I really like Larkin, I did enjoy this 1980s film attacking him by Terry Eagleton
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hxxd3fbLgFs
I think even people who love Larkin would understand that there's something brilliant here, that poetry was once, not so long ago considered such a vital thing that there was an audience for this kimd of programme debating and critiquing work on TV. Modern arts programmes seem only to exist to promote stuff.


I'm nowhere near mesmerised by his writing, but his voice is true, and he wrote a few poems I like. I think an equivalent in painting might be Edward Hopper; there's something there that connects, but it doesn't dazzle (unlike a Van Gogh, or, in poetry, Emily Dickinson). Maybe it's something to do with 'realism'. My favourite stuff tends to twist 'reality' into something else.

'When he died in 1985, Larkin left British poetry sick and wheezing in the casualty ward of modern culture.' That made me laugh. Eagleton really took a flick knife to this one.

Yes, but... it's fair to say a good bit of his stuff veers away from the austere, realistic, depressive tone of his most famous work into symbolic and expressionist territory, e.g. these lines from Livings, which are a bit hard to square with his morose public persona.

Seventy feet down
The sea explodes upwards,
Relapsing,to slaver
Off landing-stage steps-
Running suds, rejoice!

Rocks weithe back to sight.
Mussels, limpets,
Husband their tenacity
In the freezing slither-
Creatures, I cherish you!/i]

Good point, and my impression of him is from the more famous poems (I haven't read much else).

Even some of Van Gogh's early stuff has an 'austere, realistic, depressive tone' (e.g. The Potato Eaters), but you could say that that was before he found his 'voice', so to speak; it's not the style that springs to mind when I think of him.

I'm interested to know whether that poem is one of Larkin's earlier or later works, but not enough to google it.

Want to share this by Peter Orlovsky, who I just found out about yesterday. I think others might like the playfulness of it and spirit behind it:


SECOND POEM

Morning again, nothing has to be done,
maybe buy a piano or make fudge.
At least clean the room up for sure like my farther I've done flick
the ashes & butts over the bed side on the floor.
But frist of all wipe my glasses and drink the water
to clean the smelly mouth.
A nock on the door, a cat walks in, behind her the Zoo's baby
elephant demanding fresh pancakes-I cant stand these
hallucinations aney more.
Time for another cigerette and then let the curtains rise, then I
knowtice the dirt makes a road to the garbage pan
No ice box so a dried up grapefruit.
Is there any one saintly thing I can do to my room, paint it pink
maybe or instal an elevator from the bed to the floor,
maybe take a bath on the bed?
Whats the use of liveing if I cant make paradise in my own
room-land?
For this drop of time upon my eyes
like the endurance of a red star on a cigerate
makes me feel life splits faster than sissors.
I know if I could shave myself the bugs around my face would
disappear forever.
The holes in my shues are only temporary, I understand that.
My rug is dirty but whose that isent?
There comes a time in life when everybody must take a piss in
the sink -here let me paint the window black for a minute.
Thro a plate & brake it out of naughtiness-or maybe just
innocently accidentally drop it wile walking around the
tabol.
Before the mirror I look like a sahara desert gost,
or on the bed I resemble a crying mummey hollaring for air,
or on the tabol I feel like Napoleon.
But now for the main task of the day - wash my underwear -
two months abused - what would the ants say about that?
How can I wash my clothes - why I'd, I'd, I'd be a woman if I did
that.
No, I'd rather polish my sneakers than that and as for the floor
its more creative to paint it then clean it up.
As for the dishes I can do that for I am thinking of getting a job in
a lunchenette.
My life and my room are like two huge bugs following me
around the globe.
Thank god I have an innocent eye for nature.
I was born to remember a song about love - on a hill a butterfly
makes a cup that I drink from, walking over a bridge of
flowers.

Dec. 27th, 1957, Paris



I'm tempted to say it's like a collaboration between Lewis Carroll and Jack Kerouac. I just did. I don't know.

I really want to read the collection it comes from but it seems quite rare and expensive and I am a peasant.

Does anybody know any similar(ish) poems to this?



I found this film, narrated by Allen Ginsburg, with him and other poets in. I will watch it later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEWvJ0jpPpw

Besides poets associated with the San Francisco Renaissance (there maybe Philip Whalen) I think you might like going back to William Carlos Williams or across on the interstate free disco to the New York School poets; and going on what you were saying before about a dazzling twisting of reality then try John Ashbery, he's different. You could look up "Daffy Duck in Hollywood". There's an anthology called The New American Poetry 1945-1960 with a lot of stuff in it, namely new American poetry from the years 1945 to 1960.

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on August 08, 2020, 12:31:24 PM
There's an anthology called The New American Poetry 1945-1960 with a lot of stuff in it, namely new American poetry from the years 1945 to 1960.


Haha. I like you. Can I just borrow your brain for like a week to syphon all the poetry knowledge out of it? No, not syphon - duplicate. I will give you it back in the condition I found it.

Twit 2

Quote from: Scarlet Intangible on August 08, 2020, 09:21:39 AM
Does anybody know any similar(ish) poems to this?

Frank O'Hara and CK Williams (mentioned previously) are worth checking out.

As you mentioned a poetry doc, it's worth getting Samuel Menashe's (my favourite American poet maybe) complete poems on Bloodaxe, as it comes with a DVD documentary about him where he reads his poems aloud by heart. You can watch a bit here:

https://youtu.be/nvcW4dHmulE

WS Merwin also has a similar spiritual intensity, but less compressed, more flowing:

QuoteListen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

I think I've posted that before, but I lose track as there's been a few of these poetry threads over the years.

I am saying thank you for posting the sprawling brilliance of that poem.

Just checked the Tao Lin thread again and you did indeed say three of these names to me before. I will pay attention this time.

Maria Johnston shared this poem and advertisement of Michael Longley's new book from the newspaper and it made me think of the candlelight master and Longley-head, Twit 2:



It brought me to read some of the poems on the classical Japanese poetry website wakapoetry.net.

These are thirteen tanka written in praise of sake by Ōtomo no Yakamochi's father Ōtomo no Tabito:

驗なきものを思はずは一杯の濁れる酒を飮むべくあるらし

sirusi naki
monö wo omopazu pa
pitötsuki nö
nigoreru sake wo
nomubëku aru rasi
   
Insignificant things
Think of them not;
A single cup of
Cloudy wine...
That's what you should drink.

酒の名を聖と負ほせしいにしへの大き聖の言の宣しさ

sake nö na wo
pidiri tö oposesi
inisipe nö
opoki pidiri nö
kötö nö yorosisa    

Wine is wisdom
So said the sage,
The ancient
Great Sage
What an excellent word!

いにしへの七の賢しき人たちも欲りせしものは酒にしあるらし

inisipe nö
nana nö sakasiki
pitötati mo
porisesi monö pa
sake ni si arurasi    

The ancient
Seven wise
Men too
Desired something:
It was wine, it seems.

賢しみと物言ふよりは酒飮みて醉ひ泣きするしまさりたるらし

sakasimi tö
monö ipu yori pa
sake nomite
weinaki suru si
masaritarurasi    

Rather than
Speaking wise words,
Drinking wine,
Weeping drunkenly
That seems far better.

言はむすべ爲むすべ知らず極まりて貴きものは酒にしあるらし

ipamu sube
semu sube sirazu
kipamarite
topotoki monö pa
sake niarurasi    

What to say and
What to do: I know not.
The greatest
Most excellent thing
Is wine, I'd say.

なかなかに人とあらずは酒壺になりにてしかも酒に染みなむ

nakanaka ni
pitö tö arazu pa
sakatupo ni
narinitesi ka mo
sake ni siminamu    

I'll not be a man
At all:
A wine jar
I'll become, maybe
And soak in wine.

あな醜賢しらをすと酒飮まぬ人をよく見ば猿にかも似む

ana miniku
sakasira wo su to
sake nomanu
pito wo yoku miba
saru ni ka mo nimu    

Oh, how ugly!
People seeking wisdom and
Not drinking;
Look on them well
Don't they seem like monkeys?

價なき寶といふとも一杯の濁れる酒にあにまさめやも

atapinaki
takara to ipu to mo
pitotuki no
nigoreru sake ni
ani masame ya mo

Priceless
Treasures, you say
A single cup
Of cloudy wine:
Better by far, say I.

夜光る玉といふとも酒飮みて心を遣るにあにしかめやも

yoru pikaru
tama tö ipu to mo
sake nomite
kökörö wo yaru ni
ani sikame ya mo    

Night shining
Gems and
Drinking wine
To cheer oneself:
Which is better, I wonder?

世閒の遊びの道に樂しきは醉ひ泣きするにあるべくあるらし

yo nö naka no
asobi nö miti ni
tanosiki pa
weinakisuru ni
arubëkarurasi    

Out in the world
On the path of pleasure
One refreshment:
Drunken weeping,
That's what it must be.

この世にし樂しくあらば來む世には蟲に鳥にも我れはなりなむ

könö yo ni si
tanosiku ararba
komu yo ni pa
musi ni töri ni mo
ware pa narinamu    

In this world of ours
If only I can have fun
In the life to come
An insect or a bird
That's what I'll become!

生ける者遂にも死ぬるものにあればこの世なる閒は樂しくをあらな

ikeru pitö
tui ni mo sinuru
monö ni areba
könö yo naru ma pa
tanosiku wo arana    

Living people
Will eventually die.
Such are we, so
While in this world
Let's have fun!

默居りて賢しらするは酒飮みて醉ひ泣きするになほしかずけり

moda worite
sakasirasuru pa
sake nomite
weinakisuru ni
napo sikazukeri    

Silently
Seeking wisdom:
Will never match
Drinking wine and
Drunken weeping.

Twit 2

#112
Ooh, thank you, I would have missed that. "Marram glass" is on the banned list [nb]Paterson wryly alludes to an unofficial list of words and phrases that have been used so much in recent poetry that they have passed into cliche. Use with caution.[/nb], though. It's Longley so he's allowed. I could read his Japonisme for ever as I just adore his poetry.

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on August 08, 2020, 12:31:24 PM
Besides poets associated with the San Francisco Renaissance (there maybe Philip Whalen) I think you might like going back to William Carlos Williams or across on the interstate free disco to the New York School poets; and going on what you were saying before about a dazzling twisting of reality then try John Ashbery, he's different. You could look up "Daffy Duck in Hollywood". There's an anthology called The New American Poetry 1945-1960 with a lot of stuff in it, namely new American poetry from the years 1945 to 1960.
John Ashbery's book of essays pointed to me towards this poem by John Wheelwright, 'Death at Leavenworth' (scroll up a bit from the link), mostly a very direct mediation on a friends death, possible suicide, but with a very head-scratchingly strange image in the middle

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=v_jUItArBnUC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=supra+sensual+moths&source=bl&ots=YfzqZjE5BV&sig=ACfU3U1rSKKjoDQUdCzlquKS3ssuGNkf6g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3ou-t4JDrAhWTi1wKHdqiCUMQ6AEwD3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=supra%20sensual%20moths&f=false

I have just discovered this poet - W.S. Merwin; has anyone heard of him?

There's a fascinating and charming chat with him here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYgiBlyS_Jw


As well as reading poems, he talks about the environment, gardening, poetry etc.

(Seems like a great yt channel too, with lots more conversations with writers.)

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 10, 2020, 05:59:13 PM
John Ashbery's book of essays pointed to me towards this poem by John Wheelwright, 'Death at Leavenworth' (scroll up a bit from the link), mostly a very direct mediation on a friends death, possible suicide, but with a very head-scratchingly strange image in the middle

Thanks. I kept reading this thinking it would come out more clearly.



I wonder what the first iambic pentameter beginning with 'perhaps' was, and the first as a first line. I can't find any in indexes of Shakespeare's sonnets and Donne's poems. The supra-sensual moths remind me of the metaphysical poets, as in Donne's "The Canonization":

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
         Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
         And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
                The phœnix riddle hath more wit
                By us; we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
         We die and rise the same, and prove
         Mysterious by this love.


And the dashes connect it to Emily Dickinson:

My Cocoon tightens — Colors tease —
I'm feeling for the Air —
A dim capacity for Wings
Demeans the Dress I wear —

A power of Butterfly must be —
The Aptitude to fly
Meadows of Majesty implies
And easy Sweeps of Sky —

So I must baffle at the Hint
And cipher at the Sign
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clue divine —


The list below is from a short open access essay called Emily Dickinson's Arthropods in American Entomologist:





So from the mould
Scarlet and Gold
Many a Bulb will rise —
Hidden away, cunningly, From sagacious eyes.

So from Cocoon
Many a Worm
Leap so Highland gay,
Peasants like me,
Peasants like Thee
Gaze perplexedly!

Twit 2

Quote from: Scarlet Intangible on August 11, 2020, 08:32:43 PM
I have just discovered this poet - W.S. Merwin; has anyone heard of him?

Quote from: Twit 2 on August 08, 2020, 08:02:59 PM

WS Merwin also has a similar spiritual intensity, but less compressed, more flowing:

QuoteListen
with the night falling we are saying thank you...

:)

Merwin was a great translator, too. His translation of Neruda's "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" is wonderful. And of course, his translations of Antonia Porchia's aphorisms, which I highly recommend.

#117
Yes I did that on purpose as a kind of wink to you (a joke; a jest; a failure). I am only reading him because you posted that poem the other day. I'm really liking him, particularly one called St Vincent's.

Seeing all those dashes in Emily Dickinson's poems made me think of telegraphs and I was pleased to find this picture of her writing on a blank telegraph slip

https://images.app.goo.gl/643Pd4xr7QAuMUod6