A FRIENDLY REPARTEE ABOUT FOUND POETRY
My comment on the Found Poem and citation of one of Christopher Levenson’s poems led to a fine discussion via email about what exactly constitutes this kind of poetry. Christopher quite rightly pointed out a certain looseness in my definition. I quote:
“I hope you won't think me picky if I say that, as far as I am concerned, (unfortunately my bible on such matters, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, doesn't have an entry on Found Poems) it is not a found poem. For me a found poem is one that is composed exclusively of words, phrases or sentences taken from a non-poetic context and never intended as poetry (such as a public announcement, a tourist brochure,a questionnaire) that nevertheless in the eyes of the poet contains lines that are poeticallty suggestive. All the poet does is to n o t i c ethe ambiguities or other poetic potentials in the non-poetic texts, in the same way that the convoluted pipes of a natural gas installation might be seen by a sculptor as a kind off unintended sculpture and, if mountain on a stand would be viewed as such. The only real found poem I ever found was 'The Beaufort Scale' (published in a mag decades ago) which gives the definitions of various force winds. The closest I come to the form otherwise is in a poem "From a Romanian Phrase Book" (published in The Journey Back, 1986), which uses almost entirely actual phrases that I found in such a book but rearranges their order and repeats one or two, so as to subvert for surreal, satiric effect the self-importance of such books:
"A child has fallen in the water.
It can't be repaired.
Do you have one in a different colour?
Must I stay in bed? these sheets are dirty.
You're hurting me.
Will you come and see me again?
This is the only room vacant.
How much do I owe you?
I have lost my luggage, passport, travellers' cheques,
There's no plug in my washbasin,
There's no toilet roll in the lavatory.
Is there any danger of avalanches?
A child has fallen in the water.
My appetite's gone."
So Prague 1987 does not for me fall anywhere near this category but simply records aspects of an actual experience: the posters for U2 and the Police, the dead swan and the remark about Kafka all actually existed and happened and needed only to be juxtaposed with other actual events, such as the chamber concert to create a specific unreal atmopshere. But this is in fact my normal way of writing poetry, by starting from a specific incident or scene or spoken statement and then trying to suggest further dimensions of meaning.”
to which I replied
Christopher, I meant that you found the materials of the poem from a journey to Prague, the U2 poster, Lennon lives, and the 300 Kafkas in the phone book. One aspect of your poetic talent is seeing the surreal, ironic, strange in these elements and noting them down in a poem. Certainly, if all poetry comes from experience, whether lived or read about, then all poetry is found.
You are of course quite right to say that the found poem is assembled from already available materials. I guess I felt here that you had assembled your poem together from precisely such materials.
All the Best
Indran
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
THE FOUND POEM AND CHRIS LEVENSON
The found poem is a delightful subset of the poetic art. Poets wake up every morning hungry for images. They scour nature programs, read newspapers, comb their pets, anything to tease out some reminiscence, or to enable themselves to describe the sometimes human-like behavior of a centipede in its inexorable march towards a leaf. We are an anthropomorphic lot, blessed (or cursed) with a fertile imagination but unwilling to engage in countless hours of patient study of an amoeba under a microscope. We are not scientists. Yet, we cite Freud at every pause—“that the poets always knew’—meaning the Greeks, who gave us Oedipus and Cassandra and the battle for Troy where gods and men worked together and at cross purposes.
I have gone far afield just to say that each time we write we need to trammel this exceeding imagination, this bountiful garden gone to seed. Why blinker the beast, make it follow our will? Therein lies the rub, the eternal and unanswerable question that rises in conversation between the wild horse and its domesticated brother or sister. The found poem offers a detour from this debate, a chance to find wonder in the odd fish served in reality’s basket. English and Canadian poet Chris Levenson produced a fine example of the found poem in “Prague, 1987,” one of the precise, lyric beauties of his 1990 collection HALF TRUTHS.
PRAGUE, 1987
Now for the first time I see them
in daylight, the statues on the Charles Bridge—
abolished ikons persisting—the Hradcin castle
blurred by scaffolding and rain, the narrow
stairways between old, half-derelict hostelries,
and they are grey: it is not time alone
that wears down the roofs, files away
at the wrought-iron bars of palace gates, and chokes
with cobwebs and dead leaves the once bright fountains.
A dead swan drifts upon the Vltava.
We walk through drizzle to the Maltese Church,
among the baroque impedimenta hear
a string quarter play Haydn, Mozart, Ravel
with, outside, thunder continuo.
in the heart of the Old Town, “Lennon lives”
on several walls, posters announce U2 and The Police;
I ask the hotel receptionist where Kafka’s house is
and I am handed a telephone book: “You look him up,” he says,
“There are over three hundred Kafkas in Prague.”
-- Chris Levenson, from Half Truths, Wolsak & Wynn, 1990
Oh to be the 301st Kafka in Prague or anywhere and receive a call from the poet hungry for an image. My mere presence is enough. I just need to be found. Under K.
I have gone far afield just to say that each time we write we need to trammel this exceeding imagination, this bountiful garden gone to seed. Why blinker the beast, make it follow our will? Therein lies the rub, the eternal and unanswerable question that rises in conversation between the wild horse and its domesticated brother or sister. The found poem offers a detour from this debate, a chance to find wonder in the odd fish served in reality’s basket. English and Canadian poet Chris Levenson produced a fine example of the found poem in “Prague, 1987,” one of the precise, lyric beauties of his 1990 collection HALF TRUTHS.
PRAGUE, 1987
Now for the first time I see them
in daylight, the statues on the Charles Bridge—
abolished ikons persisting—the Hradcin castle
blurred by scaffolding and rain, the narrow
stairways between old, half-derelict hostelries,
and they are grey: it is not time alone
that wears down the roofs, files away
at the wrought-iron bars of palace gates, and chokes
with cobwebs and dead leaves the once bright fountains.
A dead swan drifts upon the Vltava.
We walk through drizzle to the Maltese Church,
among the baroque impedimenta hear
a string quarter play Haydn, Mozart, Ravel
with, outside, thunder continuo.
in the heart of the Old Town, “Lennon lives”
on several walls, posters announce U2 and The Police;
I ask the hotel receptionist where Kafka’s house is
and I am handed a telephone book: “You look him up,” he says,
“There are over three hundred Kafkas in Prague.”
-- Chris Levenson, from Half Truths, Wolsak & Wynn, 1990
Oh to be the 301st Kafka in Prague or anywhere and receive a call from the poet hungry for an image. My mere presence is enough. I just need to be found. Under K.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
AFTER THE PARTY (In Memoriam: Anura Bandaranaike)
We suffer the loss, try to incorporate the legacy into our lives and then go with eating and drinking, loving and sleeping. Let us remember Anura's great heart as we move on trying to wend our way through the chaos of modern Sri Lanka.
AFTER THE PARTY
-- in Memoriam: Anura Bandaranaike
I remember an evening
flavoured by my mother’s
cooking, bringing
two smart patriots
together, to speak
about devolution
not yet realized,
accommodate
what makes sense
seeing the island
from afar, the only
way forward,
two dear friends
who met then
for the first time.
Now, one is laid
to rest, and
the other engages
readers still
to think afresh
about slow or fast
bombs, double-speak,
cynical tongues, how
to bring more than
twenty five years
of war to an end
before all our parties
break up and families
gather, with shot-gun
shells and confetti
to scatter, at weddings
held on holy ground
beside gravestones
where fathers and
brothers, mothers
and sisters are buried.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, March 16, 2008
AFTER THE PARTY
-- in Memoriam: Anura Bandaranaike
I remember an evening
flavoured by my mother’s
cooking, bringing
two smart patriots
together, to speak
about devolution
not yet realized,
accommodate
what makes sense
seeing the island
from afar, the only
way forward,
two dear friends
who met then
for the first time.
Now, one is laid
to rest, and
the other engages
readers still
to think afresh
about slow or fast
bombs, double-speak,
cynical tongues, how
to bring more than
twenty five years
of war to an end
before all our parties
break up and families
gather, with shot-gun
shells and confetti
to scatter, at weddings
held on holy ground
beside gravestones
where fathers and
brothers, mothers
and sisters are buried.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, March 16, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
THE LOST POEM-- for Paris Hilton
I found this poem the other day composed a year ago, forgotten in a misplaced archive of the home computer. Paris Hilton’s brief dalliance with incarceration led me to reflect on writing behind bars, within earshot of the jailer’s keys.
ON RESERVE AT THE LIBRARY
Miss Hilton’s jail time journals
may be read in this syllabus along
with the Diary of Anne Frank and
human landscapes described
on cigarette papers by Turkish
poet Nazim, not to mention U's
letters after reading Twenty
Love Poems for the first time
thanks to the Red Cross. Am
moved by the transformation
after twenty days deprived
of free walking in New York
or Sunset Boulevard or
the Champs Elysee, to know
the Bible belongs also to Paris
and she has no favorite passage;
she will now use fame to raise
awareness of cancers that afflict
women, breast in particular,
not any desire to highlight
hair and ride elevators up
to studios where she will
record the 500th episode
of the long-running reality show
that does not belong to me,
distracted by Gramsci,
lean-boned and bearded
on the book jacket
of my friend’s master class
in making social sense.
I will read him too once
I’ve finished Gibbon’s
history of the Romans
and Mandela’s letters
from Robben Island.
So much to absorb
in the words of tragic heroes,
big men and women,
and now Paris poised
to sweep them all off
the bestseller lists
if only in my lifetime.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam c) 2008
ON RESERVE AT THE LIBRARY
Miss Hilton’s jail time journals
may be read in this syllabus along
with the Diary of Anne Frank and
human landscapes described
on cigarette papers by Turkish
poet Nazim, not to mention U's
letters after reading Twenty
Love Poems for the first time
thanks to the Red Cross. Am
moved by the transformation
after twenty days deprived
of free walking in New York
or Sunset Boulevard or
the Champs Elysee, to know
the Bible belongs also to Paris
and she has no favorite passage;
she will now use fame to raise
awareness of cancers that afflict
women, breast in particular,
not any desire to highlight
hair and ride elevators up
to studios where she will
record the 500th episode
of the long-running reality show
that does not belong to me,
distracted by Gramsci,
lean-boned and bearded
on the book jacket
of my friend’s master class
in making social sense.
I will read him too once
I’ve finished Gibbon’s
history of the Romans
and Mandela’s letters
from Robben Island.
So much to absorb
in the words of tragic heroes,
big men and women,
and now Paris poised
to sweep them all off
the bestseller lists
if only in my lifetime.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam c) 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
VANCOUVER: A POEM by George Stanley
VANCOUVER : A POEM BY GEORGE STANLEY
I took George Stanley’s new collection to New York in early May and read it on the subway, and propped up in bed. I spoke of it to my friends. I asked one to bring me a copy of Williams’ Paterson as Stanley pays homage to that major candidate for the last century’s long poem prize at the beginning of this first great urban poem of the 21st century.
I took George Stanley’s new collection to New York in early May and read it on the subway, and propped up in bed. I spoke of it to my friends. I asked one to bring me a copy of Williams’ Paterson as Stanley pays homage to that major candidate for the last century’s long poem prize at the beginning of this first great urban poem of the 21st century.
In the end my friend forgot Paterson but no matter. We will read Paterson again, as we should Baudelaire’s poems about Paris, to appreciate fully aspects of Stanley’s master work.
I write of mastery because this poet beguiles us with puppetry whose strings we cannot see no matter how hard we try. We are enthralled by the light touch, the inviting language, the confidence. He starts the poem “there is more here than memory.” That line tricks with its apparent simplicity. What more is there? Ideas? Action plans? He then tells us: “I am not a man & this is not my city.”
If not a man, then what, whom? If not his city, then whose?
In this first entry about Stanley’s poem— I do not intend to distil all of my thinking in one blog post—I reproduce an amazing passage to give you an idea of Stanley’s approach and preoccupations. I am also re-reading the poem and find that almost every word and pause has become vital for me, something that happens very rarely in reading a book of poems.
I cite the passage from Section 10, page 72.
“Safe in the city. Safe because of being in the city, place, & knowing all these things to relate to other things, that don’t change, but of course they change & then in between what they were & what they will be there’s a vacant lot, but it’s not a vacant lot like in childhood, you could play in, & make part of the place you were, it’s behind a fence, & now you’re old, & you look through the fence that some younger people have put up, to make it safe for you, & you hope (& it’s an angry hope, & it’s a desperate hope), you hope that really will be (you, that pronoun you hope you are, hope that really will be, & you will be (& then you look sort of shyly away, up the Drive---& all the other old people are there too (where the bank, or the coffee shop, or the bookstore, or the social service agency used to be), next to the fence, standing in ones, look past them & the city goes on & on, outside time, up & down & over small hills, until it gets to the natural line, the water. “
There are a thousand ways to skin a blackbird. The most direct requires seizing a knife, tearing a hole in the skin and starting to peel. That knife appears in the phrase “a vacant lot.” Its tactile, desolate image follows dubitative this and that about place and change. Yet great poetry is made from yoking together the contrast between the music of thinking (this and that) and the graphic image (vacant lot). Stanley knows how to mix the ingredients.
Shall I put my lands in order, I am tempted to ask. There is a lot of Tom Eliot informing this passage. “Between what they were and what they will be” evokes Time Past, Time Present, Time Future from the Four Quartets….and from the Preludes we see old women gathering fuel in vacant lots.
Stanley would agree that Eliot lived still at a time when the poem had some weight, could tweak history. He also wants us to recall il miglio fabbro, the deluded old Lear, Ezra Pound, imprisoned, facing charges of treason, who wrote in 1948 in Canto LXXXI: " Pull down thy vanity/Thou art a beaten dog/beneath the hail/A swollen magpie in a fitful sun/Half black, half white/Nor knowst’ou wing from tail/Pull down thy vanity.”
For Stanley that plaintive cry becomes “& it’s an angry hope, & it’s a desperate hope.” An old man , he sits, in a dry month, among other old men, beside a fence, alone, The various buildings that once occupied the site have gone--the bank, coffee shop, bookstore, social service agency—leaving a vacant lot beside the old men and beyond the small hills, the natural line, the water.
Remember Williams:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Who are today’s chickens? In what space do they cluck? How shall we disappear? By leaning against a fence encircling a vacant lot?
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Who are today’s chickens? In what space do they cluck? How shall we disappear? By leaning against a fence encircling a vacant lot?
c) 2008 Indran Amirthanayagam Lines cited from Vancouver; A Poem, New Star Books, c) 2008 George Stanley.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
A LA PORTE DE LA FETE: Un Poeme de Indran Amirthanayagam
Avec l’édition de cet poème je voudrais souligner mon compromis avec la langue française. Une langue pourrait devenir raide pour la faute d’exercice. On doit se promener tes langues tous les jours comme si elles étaient tes chiens ou tes enfants ou tes idées. Une idée fermée dans la tête ne vaut rien. Une langue tuée par la faute de volonté de son être-humain est une perte d’éclairement pour le monde entier. Je vous salue en français.
À LA PORTE DE LA FÊTE
Un jour
je déménagerai
sans aucune
ceremonie,
je ne la
permetrai pas;
mais
je comprends
qu’un être humain
a besoin
de fetes,
de rites
de passage,
pour dire
a ses amis
que c’est réel
la blessure
et la memoire,
que nous
ne devons pas
le laisser partir
sans un essai
de plus
contre la règle
de nos vies:
tout marche
partout,
l’eau change
sa forme,
le sang s’arrêtera
de couler
seulement
à la derniere fête,
qui pour certains
n’est pas si grave,
un moment
pour faire
la connaissance
d’une future copine,
pour boire
avec des amis
et passer la nuit
sans être seul
avant cette
présence étrange
qui nous ouvre
la porte
quand nous sortons.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam c) 2008
À LA PORTE DE LA FÊTE
Un jour
je déménagerai
sans aucune
ceremonie,
je ne la
permetrai pas;
mais
je comprends
qu’un être humain
a besoin
de fetes,
de rites
de passage,
pour dire
a ses amis
que c’est réel
la blessure
et la memoire,
que nous
ne devons pas
le laisser partir
sans un essai
de plus
contre la règle
de nos vies:
tout marche
partout,
l’eau change
sa forme,
le sang s’arrêtera
de couler
seulement
à la derniere fête,
qui pour certains
n’est pas si grave,
un moment
pour faire
la connaissance
d’une future copine,
pour boire
avec des amis
et passer la nuit
sans être seul
avant cette
présence étrange
qui nous ouvre
la porte
quand nous sortons.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam c) 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
WHEN THE WIND HURLS STONES (For Manik Sandrasagra, in Memoriam)
When wind hurls stones,
picks up straw houses,
When earth rumbles,
splits, buries buildings,
When bomb sends bus
flying in Colombo Fort,
When a good man,
precise thinker, reader
of ola leaves and
digital text, gives way
--his body opened
before surgeons--
and we try
to make sense
out of nonsense,
to understand
the boil on the brain,
the blocked artery,
the alarming message:
"surgery did not
go well. We must pray."
He told me
he missed an earlier
Fort explosion
by a minute.
He had just driven
through the round-about.
Today, another bomb,
and in a surgeon's ward,
I don't know where,
in Singapore or Colombo,
we ask for doctors
we can trust, but even
the trusted are not God,
are subject to human
vanity and uncertainty.
Perhaps there is no human
way to cope, except
with hands flailing,
to cut all parties down,
in grief's general cacophony,
in the general madness
of endless war and endless
explosions in the Fort,
and hearts blocked up
in millions of bodies
on all the continents,
and we're left with words,
funeral orations, memories
of the soul freed now
who made our lives
glad for a time.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, May 17, 2008
picks up straw houses,
When earth rumbles,
splits, buries buildings,
When bomb sends bus
flying in Colombo Fort,
When a good man,
precise thinker, reader
of ola leaves and
digital text, gives way
--his body opened
before surgeons--
and we try
to make sense
out of nonsense,
to understand
the boil on the brain,
the blocked artery,
the alarming message:
"surgery did not
go well. We must pray."
He told me
he missed an earlier
Fort explosion
by a minute.
He had just driven
through the round-about.
Today, another bomb,
and in a surgeon's ward,
I don't know where,
in Singapore or Colombo,
we ask for doctors
we can trust, but even
the trusted are not God,
are subject to human
vanity and uncertainty.
Perhaps there is no human
way to cope, except
with hands flailing,
to cut all parties down,
in grief's general cacophony,
in the general madness
of endless war and endless
explosions in the Fort,
and hearts blocked up
in millions of bodies
on all the continents,
and we're left with words,
funeral orations, memories
of the soul freed now
who made our lives
glad for a time.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, May 17, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
GUY AMIRTHANAYAGAM: COMMITMENT IN LITERATURE
The text of a speech delivered as an invited delegate to the International Writers Conference held in association with the Edinburgh Festival in Edinburgh, U.K. (August, 1962)
The problem posed by the title seems to me an artificial one. Whether the writer deals primarily with his inner life or the world around him, in so far as he is a human being, he is committed the moment he begins to write. The writer uses words, and since words have meanings, he cannot conceivably avoid saying something meaningful about himself or the world in which he lives, unless he chooses to write nonsense. This may seem an unduly banal or simplified way of putting it, but the writer is immersed in the human situation or predicament; that is, after all, the pre-condition of writing, pre-philosophical, pre-epistemological, if you like.
I think 'commitment' is a live issue only for academicians, professors of literature and the clearly minor writers who have the time to bother with issues divorced and separate from the fervid agitation of creativity which should generate their work. I don't think the great writers ever raised the problem in this form, or judged themselves in relation to the extent to which they were "committed." That we should busy ourselves with the question is itself a major sign of cultural decadence and moral confusion.
Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Dickens--how would you see them in regard to this business of commitment? The writer should speak the truth and if in the process he concerns himself with, say, politics and has said the truth about it, he is worth reading, at least for his acumen in affairs of state.
However, you cannot dismiss writers who wrote without the least shade of a political thought, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, or even T.F. Powys in this century as uncommitted and therefore inferior writers. It is rather like the position of the neutralist nations in the 'cold war.' If we in Ceylon are not committed to one of the power blocs, this does not mean that we are not committed: on the contrary we are so fully committed to the human situation in 1962 that we feel the only way we can help avert or at least protest against the possibility of man's suicide, is by being aggressively neutral.
Should a writer express the spirit of his age? Of course, whether he likes it or not, he will be conditioned by the times in which he lives but the particular age of history in which he lived does not altogether determine either the content or the form of his art. If the age in which he lives is given to trivial and worthless concerns, we do not require of the writer that his work merely reflect his triviality and worthlessness: what is valuable in a writer is not merely what he absorbs from his age, but what he, deriving from his own imagination and inner resources, contributes to transform and embed the reality he has encountered. Historians of literature may read a novel in order to discover in it a faithful mirror of its time, but a man interested in the novel and in life will read it for what it has to say directly to him and for what is valuable in it for all time.
Last afternoon there was considerable discourse about 'roots'; it ws said that a writer's work would sicken and die if he cut himself away from his roots. It is healthy and stabilising to discover and ground oneself in one's 'roots' but surely the quality of the roots in question affect the quality of the work. A great writer should be able to grow his own roots wherever he goes and if he cannot, obviously he should not travel.
I was astonished that a great poet like Hugh McDiarmed should be such a stubborn simpleton as to advocate so passionately a complete commitment to an elementary ideology and an inhumane closed system. Shouldn't we learn to cope not only with international but even with cosmic man? The little white rose of Scotland is a beautiful flower and has inspired great poetry, but is that all there is to proclaim? Will it bloom in outer space?
The problem is as simple as it is profound. The writer is a human being, more gifted, more aware but also more normal than the human average. It is the balanced normality of the writer that I wish to stress: a writer is committed to his craft, to himself, to the woman or women he loves, to his family and friends, to his country, to the world, to God or the lack of God, to death--why then discuss this problem of 'commitment' in such an external, such a superficial way?
Great art is not propaganda, not escapism, not even accomplishment; it is an act of radical seriousness forged in passionate logic, wrought out of the mind, the emotions and the blood of man.
--Guy Amirthanayagam c) 2008, Estate of Guy Amirthanayagam.
In collaboration with my siblings, I am preparing a volume of Selected Writing of Guy Amirthanayagam under the title "The Unplanned Flower". I will write further about this as the book takes shape.
The problem posed by the title seems to me an artificial one. Whether the writer deals primarily with his inner life or the world around him, in so far as he is a human being, he is committed the moment he begins to write. The writer uses words, and since words have meanings, he cannot conceivably avoid saying something meaningful about himself or the world in which he lives, unless he chooses to write nonsense. This may seem an unduly banal or simplified way of putting it, but the writer is immersed in the human situation or predicament; that is, after all, the pre-condition of writing, pre-philosophical, pre-epistemological, if you like.
I think 'commitment' is a live issue only for academicians, professors of literature and the clearly minor writers who have the time to bother with issues divorced and separate from the fervid agitation of creativity which should generate their work. I don't think the great writers ever raised the problem in this form, or judged themselves in relation to the extent to which they were "committed." That we should busy ourselves with the question is itself a major sign of cultural decadence and moral confusion.
Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Dickens--how would you see them in regard to this business of commitment? The writer should speak the truth and if in the process he concerns himself with, say, politics and has said the truth about it, he is worth reading, at least for his acumen in affairs of state.
However, you cannot dismiss writers who wrote without the least shade of a political thought, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, or even T.F. Powys in this century as uncommitted and therefore inferior writers. It is rather like the position of the neutralist nations in the 'cold war.' If we in Ceylon are not committed to one of the power blocs, this does not mean that we are not committed: on the contrary we are so fully committed to the human situation in 1962 that we feel the only way we can help avert or at least protest against the possibility of man's suicide, is by being aggressively neutral.
Should a writer express the spirit of his age? Of course, whether he likes it or not, he will be conditioned by the times in which he lives but the particular age of history in which he lived does not altogether determine either the content or the form of his art. If the age in which he lives is given to trivial and worthless concerns, we do not require of the writer that his work merely reflect his triviality and worthlessness: what is valuable in a writer is not merely what he absorbs from his age, but what he, deriving from his own imagination and inner resources, contributes to transform and embed the reality he has encountered. Historians of literature may read a novel in order to discover in it a faithful mirror of its time, but a man interested in the novel and in life will read it for what it has to say directly to him and for what is valuable in it for all time.
Last afternoon there was considerable discourse about 'roots'; it ws said that a writer's work would sicken and die if he cut himself away from his roots. It is healthy and stabilising to discover and ground oneself in one's 'roots' but surely the quality of the roots in question affect the quality of the work. A great writer should be able to grow his own roots wherever he goes and if he cannot, obviously he should not travel.
I was astonished that a great poet like Hugh McDiarmed should be such a stubborn simpleton as to advocate so passionately a complete commitment to an elementary ideology and an inhumane closed system. Shouldn't we learn to cope not only with international but even with cosmic man? The little white rose of Scotland is a beautiful flower and has inspired great poetry, but is that all there is to proclaim? Will it bloom in outer space?
The problem is as simple as it is profound. The writer is a human being, more gifted, more aware but also more normal than the human average. It is the balanced normality of the writer that I wish to stress: a writer is committed to his craft, to himself, to the woman or women he loves, to his family and friends, to his country, to the world, to God or the lack of God, to death--why then discuss this problem of 'commitment' in such an external, such a superficial way?
Great art is not propaganda, not escapism, not even accomplishment; it is an act of radical seriousness forged in passionate logic, wrought out of the mind, the emotions and the blood of man.
--Guy Amirthanayagam c) 2008, Estate of Guy Amirthanayagam.
In collaboration with my siblings, I am preparing a volume of Selected Writing of Guy Amirthanayagam under the title "The Unplanned Flower". I will write further about this as the book takes shape.
Monday, May 5, 2008
NEW YORK
I have been walking and riding the subway in New York over the last few days. Have read from The Splintered Face and seen old friends. I have also noticed the orgy of lights at Times Square and am thinking we must find a way to reduce the footprint cast by those beams. The city has been sweet, sun lit and throbbing with its constant energy. The surprise meetings also delight...today by chance with Roberto Echavarren, the writer resident now in Montevideo, in town to lecture....we drank coffee in the Village and caught up with our lives since our last meeting at the Poesia de las Americas conference at College Station, Texas in April 2007.
I visited the Strand and picked up Allen Ginsberg's last book, a nice first edition, Death and Fame. I also met Valentine Daniel for the first time. Daniel is a legendary figure among the congoscenti...author of Charred Lullabies, his study of nationalist violence in Sri Lanka. Daniel is revising a long poem. I was thrilled to find that we agreed on getting rid of false barriers between areas of expression, that poetry can be another way to truth, as valid as the fieldwork of the anthropologist.
Tomorrow I read at the Asian American Writers Workshop at 7 pm. I will greet you there.
I visited the Strand and picked up Allen Ginsberg's last book, a nice first edition, Death and Fame. I also met Valentine Daniel for the first time. Daniel is a legendary figure among the congoscenti...author of Charred Lullabies, his study of nationalist violence in Sri Lanka. Daniel is revising a long poem. I was thrilled to find that we agreed on getting rid of false barriers between areas of expression, that poetry can be another way to truth, as valid as the fieldwork of the anthropologist.
Tomorrow I read at the Asian American Writers Workshop at 7 pm. I will greet you there.
Monday, April 28, 2008
CARTA: UN POEMA DE INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM
CARTA
Dile que espero su carta,
que hay unas burbujas
que salen de las aguas termales
duranguenses y no sé
cómo describirlas,
digo, de manera cientifica,
formal, de la Real Academia.
Dile que no quiero
llevar los 20 volúmenes
o el compact por todos lados,
que hace falta su lectura
de mis manos, de las ideas
americanas
de mi papá adoptivo.
Dile que eligió bien
la novia bailarina,
bailan así sus versos
a un tiempo nuestro,
fracturado, con saltos
pero con una línea
inteligible.
Dile que los extraño,
y a mi no me molesta
si algún critico comenta
sobre los sentimientos
crudos de esta poesía
de amistades. Dile
que la muerte y el mar
son compañeros
de los poetas románticos
y no nos da vergüenza
reconocerlo
esta tarde de espera
cuando un avión
ha llevado a mi familia
a otra ciúdad, otro mar,
y no hay manera
de contactarlos—
no quiero decir celulares—
dile que un pasajero
en un avión vuela
en otro mundo
de espera y de tiempo
suspendido. Dile
que me gustaría
que todos los aviones
aterrizaran al lado mio
y sus miles
de amores hambrientos
se reunieran a la vez
con sus pares.
Dile que me gustaría
que me escribieras
en ese avión una carta
antes de aterrizar
para leérmela.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, c) 2008
Dile que espero su carta,
que hay unas burbujas
que salen de las aguas termales
duranguenses y no sé
cómo describirlas,
digo, de manera cientifica,
formal, de la Real Academia.
Dile que no quiero
llevar los 20 volúmenes
o el compact por todos lados,
que hace falta su lectura
de mis manos, de las ideas
americanas
de mi papá adoptivo.
Dile que eligió bien
la novia bailarina,
bailan así sus versos
a un tiempo nuestro,
fracturado, con saltos
pero con una línea
inteligible.
Dile que los extraño,
y a mi no me molesta
si algún critico comenta
sobre los sentimientos
crudos de esta poesía
de amistades. Dile
que la muerte y el mar
son compañeros
de los poetas románticos
y no nos da vergüenza
reconocerlo
esta tarde de espera
cuando un avión
ha llevado a mi familia
a otra ciúdad, otro mar,
y no hay manera
de contactarlos—
no quiero decir celulares—
dile que un pasajero
en un avión vuela
en otro mundo
de espera y de tiempo
suspendido. Dile
que me gustaría
que todos los aviones
aterrizaran al lado mio
y sus miles
de amores hambrientos
se reunieran a la vez
con sus pares.
Dile que me gustaría
que me escribieras
en ese avión una carta
antes de aterrizar
para leérmela.
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, c) 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
ON READING FROM THE SPLINTERED FACE: TSUNAMI POEMS
On Readings from The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems
The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems began its tour of the world on the outskirts of London, in Kingston, where I read from the book for the first time in January on the way to my first home, the island now known as Sri Lanka. There I launched the book at the Galle Literary Festival. I then took it to Seattle, to Elliot Bay Books, in early March and last week to the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library.
Now, the story turns to New York in May. And the campaign has not gone on too long, not to worry.
The first New York reading promises to be a bit light hearted and optimistic given that it will take place in a laundromat.
Here are a few lines I sent the organizer for use on their website.
I began to use public laundries when I moved to New York, to East 4thStreet in the scruffy, bathroom in the kitchen, Pyramid Club-hopping days....At the time I realized I had to bring my socks to the local stream where instead of rocks to lay down clothes I was obliged to place them on benches and wait my turn while somebody else spun their week's whites dry. I would bring a poetry volume with my clothes and read and imbibe the starchy and powdered air (and look around a bit for a female with whom I could exchange a furtive glance or perhaps a few words about Constantine Cavafy.) Then I entered washing machine and later the dryer and closed my poetry volume and put it inside the hot and sweet smelling bag of newly-minted linen ready for the week and further chance encounters with poetry and its lovers.
The reading is on Sunday May 4 between
4-5pm at Klean and Kleaner, 173 East 2ndStreet between Ave A/B—
On Monday May 5, I will read with other poets in the West Village
at the
Cornelia Street Café, between 6 and 8 pm
29 Cornelia Street
And on Tuesday May 6, I will read from The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems at 7 p.m. at The Asian American Writers Workshop,
16 West 32nd Street Suite 10A NY NY 10001.
I look forward to giving these poems the works. Cheers.
The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems began its tour of the world on the outskirts of London, in Kingston, where I read from the book for the first time in January on the way to my first home, the island now known as Sri Lanka. There I launched the book at the Galle Literary Festival. I then took it to Seattle, to Elliot Bay Books, in early March and last week to the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library.
Now, the story turns to New York in May. And the campaign has not gone on too long, not to worry.
The first New York reading promises to be a bit light hearted and optimistic given that it will take place in a laundromat.
Here are a few lines I sent the organizer for use on their website.
I began to use public laundries when I moved to New York, to East 4thStreet in the scruffy, bathroom in the kitchen, Pyramid Club-hopping days....At the time I realized I had to bring my socks to the local stream where instead of rocks to lay down clothes I was obliged to place them on benches and wait my turn while somebody else spun their week's whites dry. I would bring a poetry volume with my clothes and read and imbibe the starchy and powdered air (and look around a bit for a female with whom I could exchange a furtive glance or perhaps a few words about Constantine Cavafy.) Then I entered washing machine and later the dryer and closed my poetry volume and put it inside the hot and sweet smelling bag of newly-minted linen ready for the week and further chance encounters with poetry and its lovers.
The reading is on Sunday May 4 between
4-5pm at Klean and Kleaner, 173 East 2ndStreet between Ave A/B—
On Monday May 5, I will read with other poets in the West Village
at the
Cornelia Street Café, between 6 and 8 pm
29 Cornelia Street
And on Tuesday May 6, I will read from The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems at 7 p.m. at The Asian American Writers Workshop,
16 West 32nd Street Suite 10A NY NY 10001.
I look forward to giving these poems the works. Cheers.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
MARTIN LUTHER KING: A POEM
Remembering Martin Luther King 40 years later.
OLD KING
What if King wore mirrors,
and they refracted the bullet,
and he did not fall
into Jackson or Young’s arms?
What if he drove out
of Memphis in a car
cleaned of Hoover’s bugs
to meet Coretta
and father another child?
What if he grew old
watching Americans
wild-eyed, dancing,
reconciled, beside
cherry blossoms
blooming, one spring
day on the Mall?
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, April 4, c) 2008
OLD KING
What if King wore mirrors,
and they refracted the bullet,
and he did not fall
into Jackson or Young’s arms?
What if he drove out
of Memphis in a car
cleaned of Hoover’s bugs
to meet Coretta
and father another child?
What if he grew old
watching Americans
wild-eyed, dancing,
reconciled, beside
cherry blossoms
blooming, one spring
day on the Mall?
-- Indran Amirthanayagam, April 4, c) 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
WILL READ FROM THE SPLINTERED FACE, AT VANCOUVER'S PUBLIC LIBRARY, APRIL 16
This Splintered Face will be on display April 16 at the downtown branch of the Vancouver Public Library at 350 Georgia in the Alma Van Dusen and Peter Kay Rooms. Come to hear the Canadian launch of this new book, starting at 7.30 pm that evening.
Monday, March 24, 2008
SOBRE TRADUCCION, CON TRES POEMAS DE VIVIMARIE VANDERPOORTEN
Presento tres poemas de la srilankesa Vivimarie VanderPoorten. Subí uno de ellos a mi blog cuando regresé de Sri Lanka en enero. Ahora bautizo mi primer ensayo publico en la traducción del inglés al español con estos tres hermosos textos de su poemario nothing prepares you.
Hay tantas ideas curiosas y acontecimientos extraños que surgen cuando uno empieza la aventura de traducir un poema. Por ejemplo, debemos decidir guardar en el lenguaje de llegada la ortografia y relación idiosincrática que tiene un poeta con su idioma. Cada poeta sufre la tentación de romper las reglas, ver el idioma como debe ser, una energía dinámica, cambiante. Asi, escribo el titulo del libro en minúsculas y utilizo mayúscula al principio de cada verso de una de las traducciónes. Para hacerlo y asi respetar las decisiones de la poeta tuve que dejar a un lado mis propias prácticas de poeta.
Tal vez para algunos lectores este planteamiento es igual de extraño que la decisión original de la poeta. ¿A quién importa una mayúscula? me preguntan varios líderes de nuestras sociedades, presidentes, alcaldes, médicos, abogados, científicos, todos que son responsable desde la Iluminación para asegurar al ciudadano común y corriente que el mundo va bien y se conduce hacia un futuro más justo, intelegible, con salvavidas para todos y las demás criaturas , y también para los árboles y las plantas acuáticas…
Mi pregunta es sin duda retórica y evasiva, pero útil. Si, importa la Mayúscula. Sí importan las reglas de ortografía desarrolladas a lo largo de la historia. Y sí, importa que estas reglas sean creativas, que vayan hacia la luz y el agua como toda buena planta y además acepten la adición de un gene extraño extraido de un pez o un tomate. Y de ahi crecerá un nuevo árbol, un nuevo poema, el poema traducido y orgulloso de andar fuera del laboratorio de Mary Shelley or de Leticia Damm (mi maestra, que me ayudó con estas traducciones).
En otro momento llevaré este texto al inglés y al francés, además de reflexionar más sobre el arte misterioso, y nada menor, ni traidor, de la traducción. Un abrazo.
MAPAS
Perdida
en el viaje confuso
hacia la madurez
no había mapas para mostrarle el camino
solo una maraña de rutas sin letreros
encrucijadas sin flechas.
Sin mapa
ella tomó la ruta
que le pareció familiar,
que parecía ser la correcta—
“Cásate con un buen hombre que te cuide.”
Ahora, abusada y vieja
a los veintiséis años
le pregunta al adivino arrugado,
el profeta de futuros, vidente de destinos,
qué ve en los callos de su palma:
Dice con un suspiro
“Hay tantas líneas,
tienes muchas preocupaciones—
y demasiadas penas del corazón…
Estas líneas son como calles
en una ciudad
sin mapas. “
-- Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c) 2008 traducción Indran Amirthanayagam
MAPS
Lost
on the
confusing journey to adulthood
there were no maps to show her the way
only a mass of roads without signboards
crossroads without arrows.
Having no map
she took the road
that looked familiar
sounded right -
"marry a good man who will take care of you"
Now, abused and old
at twenty six
she asks the wizened fortune teller,
predictor of futures, seer of fates
what he sees in her callused palm:
He says with a sigh
"There are so many lines,
you are having so many worries -
have too many heartaches. . .
These lines, they're
like roads in
a city without maps".
--- c) 2008 Vivimarie VanderPoorten
DECRETO NISI
Hoy un juez
en una corte mohosa
Deciderá
que no podemos más vivir juntos,
tú y yo.
Declarará nuestro matrimonio
Terminado, nos transformará
en extraños. Otra vez.
Eres valiente al presentarte.
Amigas solícitas—
abogados—
me dijeron que No Fuera.
Asi, oculto a
miradas lujuriosas
(suponiendo, con manos sobre bocas)
y fuera de la vista
del Estado invasor,
tengo tiempo para recordar
algunos tiempos cuando la pasamos bien.
Paises visitados, millas recorridas al volante, vida salvaje
en bosques quietos
comidas compartidas, momentos tiernos,
incluso risas .
Basta de eso.
Ahora, como no puedo abondanarte de mala fe,
Y el adulterio no es más una crimen que podemos cometer,
Tal vez podamos ser amigos otra vez.
-- Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c) 2008 traducción Indran Amirthanayagam
DECREE NISI
Today a judge in a musty courtroom
Will decide that
we can no longer live together,
you and i.
He will declare our marriage
Terminated,
Transform us into strangers. Again.
You are brave to be there.
Solicitous girlfriends-
lawyers-
told me Not to Go.
So, hiding away
from lecherous glances
(surmising, behind hands over mouths)
and out of sight of
invasive State,
I have time to recall
some good times we had.
Countries visited, miles driven, wild life watched in still
forests
meals shared, moments of tenderness,
some laughter, even.
But enough of that.
Now, since I cannot desert you maliciously,
And adultery is no longer a crime we can commit,
Perhaps we could be friends again.
--c) 2008 Vivimarie VanderPoorten
VISITA A LOS GIGANTES
En la primera escapada ese verano
A Giant’s Causeway
Restos de una antigua erupción volcánica
Subiendo esas losas octagonales
Perfectas,
Contemplando la precisión
De forma,
Llena de asombro ante el mundo natural,
Me preguntó una hermosa familia perfecta
De cuatro, turistas de Estados Unidos,
De donde venia yo:
Les contesté
“En qué parte de Africa está?”
Entonces les expliqué
Que es la isla
En forma de una lágrima
junto a la costa de la India:
No les dijé
Que tenia un pasado espléndido
Pero ningun futuro,
Que su rico suelo
Está manchado de sangre,
Y que hay desesperanza
En los ojos
de sus niños.
Cuando me preguntaron
“¿Entonces, como es?”
Les dije solamente
“Es mi tierra.”
--Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c 2008 traducción Indran Amirthanayagam
VISITING GIANTS
On the first outing that summer
To Giant’s Causeway
Remnant of an ancient volcanic eruption
Ascending those perfect
Octagonal stones
Contemplating precision
Of shape
Full of wonder at the natural world,
I was asked by a
Perfectly beautiful
family-of-four,
- tourists from America
where I was from:
I answered.
“Which part of Africa is that?”
So I explained
That it’s the island
Shaped like a teardrop
off the coast of India:
I didn’t say
That it has a splendid past
But no future
That its rich soil
Is drenched in blood
And that there’s hopelessness
In the eyes
of its children.
When they asked me
“So what’s it like”
I only said
“It’s home”
-- c) 2008 ViviMarie VanderPoorten
VISITA A LOS GIGANTES
En la primera escapada ese verano
A Giant’s Causeway
Restos de una antigua erupción volcánica
Subiendo esas losas octagonales
Perfectas,
Contemplando la precisión
De forma,
Llena de asombro ante el mundo natural,
Me preguntó una hermosa familia perfecta
De cuatro, turistas de Estados Unidos,
De donde venia yo:
Les contesté
“En qué parte de Africa está?”
Entonces les expliqué
Que es la isla
En forma de una lágrima
junto a la costa de la India:
No les dijé
Que tenia un pasado espléndido
Pero ningun futuro,
Que su rico suelo
Está manchado de sangre,
Y que hay desesperanza
En los ojos
de sus niños.
Cuando me preguntaron
“¿Entonces, como es?”
Les dije solamente
“Es mi tierra.”
--Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c 2008 traducción Indran Amirthanayagam
VISITING GIANTS
On the first outing that summer
To Giant’s Causeway
Remnant of an ancient volcanic eruption
Ascending those perfect
Octagonal stones
Contemplating precision
Of shape
Full of wonder at the natural world,
I was asked by a
Perfectly beautiful
family-of-four,
- tourists from America
where I was from:
I answered.
“Which part of Africa is that?”
So I explained
That it’s the island
Shaped like a teardrop
off the coast of India:
I didn’t say
That it has a splendid past
But no future
That its rich soil
Is drenched in blood
And that there’s hopelessness
In the eyes
of its children.
When they asked me
“So what’s it like”
I only said
“It’s home”
-- c) 2008 ViviMarie VanderPoorten
Monday, March 17, 2008
ON ISLANDS, CAVAFY AND JEN HADFIELD
ON ISLANDS , CAVAFY AND JEN HADFIELD
I have been searching for islands since I left Ceylon in 1969. Ceylon no longer exists and not because of a rising ocean. Even the ravenous Tsunami of 2004 has gone back to its lair and islanders are picking up flotsam and getting on with their lives. What else are we supposed to do? Birth, love, death, a glance back sometimes, and blinkered, hatted, we march ahead
When I left the island I did not realize I carried it with me. I think of Cavafy and his bitter poem called The City, that “you will find no new lands, you will find no other seas/The city will follow you. You will roam the same/streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods.” Cavafy becomes even more acerbic as the poem goes on. He says “there is no ship for you, there is no road.” (translation: Rae Dalven)
But of course there is always a ship, always a road. Like Auden’s “poetry makes nothing happen,” Cavafy’s powerful melancholy challenges us. But we do not have to listen. We can choose to ignore the poets' instructions.
And so can all musicians, painters, playwrights, every manner and species of artist fit for the new Ark. If we take Auden and Cavafy to the letter we would pack up our pencils and laptops and disappear. Even Kilroy would not choose to go for a walk.
In the course of my walking about, and thanks to writer Marie Carter, I came across poems of Jen Hadfield. Hadfield lives in the Shetland Islands. But she wanders about Canada in some of her latest book Nigh-No-Place. Spending time with her poems has taken me on a most pleasant journey, past Ithaca and back. She says in “No Snow fell on Eden,” “Eve knew no one who was dying/Adam never sat up late, drinking and crying.”
That is a beaut of a rhyme and full of the sadness of cold and remote climates. Hadfield has a deft ear for the sounds of windswept places. “I will meet you at Pity Me Wood./I will meet you at Up-To-No-Good./I will meet you at Stank, Shank and Stye./I will meet you at Blowfly.”
She has a wicked sense of humor and an ear tuned to fine lilts and jigs in the English language. Here is
I have been searching for islands since I left Ceylon in 1969. Ceylon no longer exists and not because of a rising ocean. Even the ravenous Tsunami of 2004 has gone back to its lair and islanders are picking up flotsam and getting on with their lives. What else are we supposed to do? Birth, love, death, a glance back sometimes, and blinkered, hatted, we march ahead
When I left the island I did not realize I carried it with me. I think of Cavafy and his bitter poem called The City, that “you will find no new lands, you will find no other seas/The city will follow you. You will roam the same/streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods.” Cavafy becomes even more acerbic as the poem goes on. He says “there is no ship for you, there is no road.” (translation: Rae Dalven)
But of course there is always a ship, always a road. Like Auden’s “poetry makes nothing happen,” Cavafy’s powerful melancholy challenges us. But we do not have to listen. We can choose to ignore the poets' instructions.
And so can all musicians, painters, playwrights, every manner and species of artist fit for the new Ark. If we take Auden and Cavafy to the letter we would pack up our pencils and laptops and disappear. Even Kilroy would not choose to go for a walk.
In the course of my walking about, and thanks to writer Marie Carter, I came across poems of Jen Hadfield. Hadfield lives in the Shetland Islands. But she wanders about Canada in some of her latest book Nigh-No-Place. Spending time with her poems has taken me on a most pleasant journey, past Ithaca and back. She says in “No Snow fell on Eden,” “Eve knew no one who was dying/Adam never sat up late, drinking and crying.”
That is a beaut of a rhyme and full of the sadness of cold and remote climates. Hadfield has a deft ear for the sounds of windswept places. “I will meet you at Pity Me Wood./I will meet you at Up-To-No-Good./I will meet you at Stank, Shank and Stye./I will meet you at Blowfly.”
She has a wicked sense of humor and an ear tuned to fine lilts and jigs in the English language. Here is
Thou Shalt Want Want Want
It is in heaven as it is on thy neighbour’s deck—
a plume-tailed cat, a noodle-legged tin table.
You will covet your neighbour’s horse
and you will covet your neighbour’s land.
You will covet your neighbour,
crawling the apex with a blue tarp in tow.
You will covet bandshaws and braziers,
longbows and throwing knives,
parlour guitars,
shovels snuffling three feet of snow.
You will covet your neighbour,
planting a spittoon for the rain to hawk into.
You will covet your neighbour, hunched over the piano stool
to hammer out the wild, piratical waltzes.
You will covet polkas, quails,
painted pitchforks, a picket fence, a Dutch barn.
a chafing dish, a bain marie,
a kid, a civet, a trivet;
you must have a bodkin, an empire pram.
Thou shalt want want want.
You will covet your neighbour’s ass.
Thou shalt covet Warmbloods,
Arabians.
--c) 2008, Jen Hadfield, from Nigh-No-Place ( BloodAxe Books )
If I may be so bold: I covet the poetry of Jen Hadfield.
a plume-tailed cat, a noodle-legged tin table.
You will covet your neighbour’s horse
and you will covet your neighbour’s land.
You will covet your neighbour,
crawling the apex with a blue tarp in tow.
You will covet bandshaws and braziers,
longbows and throwing knives,
parlour guitars,
shovels snuffling three feet of snow.
You will covet your neighbour,
planting a spittoon for the rain to hawk into.
You will covet your neighbour, hunched over the piano stool
to hammer out the wild, piratical waltzes.
You will covet polkas, quails,
painted pitchforks, a picket fence, a Dutch barn.
a chafing dish, a bain marie,
a kid, a civet, a trivet;
you must have a bodkin, an empire pram.
Thou shalt want want want.
You will covet your neighbour’s ass.
Thou shalt covet Warmbloods,
Arabians.
--c) 2008, Jen Hadfield, from Nigh-No-Place ( BloodAxe Books )
If I may be so bold: I covet the poetry of Jen Hadfield.
Friday, March 7, 2008
LAUREN MENDINUETA: SEIS POEMAS
Fue dificil para mi hacer una selección de la poesía de la colombiana Lauren Mendinueta por haber tenido que elegir entre tantos poemas poderosos. Recien descubrí su voz y sus intereses y he estado leyendo sus poemas durante días y noches sin fin. Lee muy bien y de tradiciones unidas por su concentración en el oficio solitario y sin compromiso del monje poeta. Me dió gusto ver el poema dedicado a Thomas Merton, el monje que fue el guia de Ernesto Cardenal en el monasterio de Gethsemane en Kentucky. Además Merton era un poeta político y filosófico, uno de los mejores anunciadores de esos años de profetas, de los sesentas de Bob Dylan y Allen Ginsberg y John Lennon. Hay varios poemas sobre el oficio del poeta, la poesía, la creación y la muerte en la antología Poesia en si misma que reune versos escritos durante 10 anos (1997-2007). En fin decidí presentar seis poemas con mi recomendación sin reserva de buscar este libro y otros de la poeta radicada ahora en Portugal.
RELATO DE VIDA
Antes de estos poemas
la claridad de los astros.
En otro tiempo En otro lugar
la transparencia de la música
dentro de mí.
Me deslicé
entre las piernas de la tierra
y al primer aniversario
le siguieron otros.
La tarde se volvió
una estación pequeña del día.
La memoria me dice que existo
y aunque soy un punto
sobre la tierra
no me encontraré en los mapas.
Soy sana
como un árbol en el cementerio.
Estoy hecha
de la más antigua levadura
y sin dificultad me multiplico.
Mi descendencia tiene las manos desnudas
y anudadas a la tristeza.
Ignoro completamente mi destino
a pesar de llevarlo indeleble
en las líneas de las manos.
EL CLIMA DE LAS CAMPANAS
No distingo un golpe del siguiente o el anterior,
y si escuché una campana en Paris
lo mismo la recuerdo como si fuera en Barranquilla.
¿Qué cosa distingue un aire de otro?
¿Qué sonido volará hasta lo que soy
para dar cuenta de lo que he sido?
Soy la mujer que más he detestado,
incapaz de hacerlo como lo merezco,
me detesto con tibieza.
Hay un repicar de nada contra nada,
un clima de campana en mi oído.
EL ÁRBOL DE ORO
El árbol de oro transforma la apariencia del paisaje.
Lo que nosotros llamamos naturaleza está ahí,
pero la vida del árbol le trajo un relieve,
una claridad que antes no tenía.
Crecen en sus ramas resplandores sin sol,
y sus altas luces obligan a mirar hacia arriba,
hacia la amplitud del cielo,
que él, con la delicadeza de sus hojas, resalta.
Su firme presencia
hace visible el espacio invisible del aire.
REPRESENTACIÓN TEATRAL
Los telones de la realidad
se levantan temblorosos
sobre mi enlutado país.
Un coro de espectadores,
la vida del mundo,
espera el inicio de la representación,
pero no escuchará el parlamento de tanto actor,
ni verá sus bocas enormes
que se abren en un gesto desesperado;
sus ojos vacíos, de invitado importante,
no verán el fondo.
Sólo el recuerdo intemporal conoce los libretos.
Porque lo sabe, la memoria calla lo perdido.
Estoy aquí sobre el escenario y sufro:
nada sé del anónimo silencio
que ignoro otra vez.
VIDA MONACAL
RELATO DE VIDA
Antes de estos poemas
la claridad de los astros.
En otro tiempo En otro lugar
la transparencia de la música
dentro de mí.
Me deslicé
entre las piernas de la tierra
y al primer aniversario
le siguieron otros.
La tarde se volvió
una estación pequeña del día.
La memoria me dice que existo
y aunque soy un punto
sobre la tierra
no me encontraré en los mapas.
Soy sana
como un árbol en el cementerio.
Estoy hecha
de la más antigua levadura
y sin dificultad me multiplico.
Mi descendencia tiene las manos desnudas
y anudadas a la tristeza.
Ignoro completamente mi destino
a pesar de llevarlo indeleble
en las líneas de las manos.
EL CLIMA DE LAS CAMPANAS
No distingo un golpe del siguiente o el anterior,
y si escuché una campana en Paris
lo mismo la recuerdo como si fuera en Barranquilla.
¿Qué cosa distingue un aire de otro?
¿Qué sonido volará hasta lo que soy
para dar cuenta de lo que he sido?
Soy la mujer que más he detestado,
incapaz de hacerlo como lo merezco,
me detesto con tibieza.
Hay un repicar de nada contra nada,
un clima de campana en mi oído.
EL ÁRBOL DE ORO
El árbol de oro transforma la apariencia del paisaje.
Lo que nosotros llamamos naturaleza está ahí,
pero la vida del árbol le trajo un relieve,
una claridad que antes no tenía.
Crecen en sus ramas resplandores sin sol,
y sus altas luces obligan a mirar hacia arriba,
hacia la amplitud del cielo,
que él, con la delicadeza de sus hojas, resalta.
Su firme presencia
hace visible el espacio invisible del aire.
REPRESENTACIÓN TEATRAL
Los telones de la realidad
se levantan temblorosos
sobre mi enlutado país.
Un coro de espectadores,
la vida del mundo,
espera el inicio de la representación,
pero no escuchará el parlamento de tanto actor,
ni verá sus bocas enormes
que se abren en un gesto desesperado;
sus ojos vacíos, de invitado importante,
no verán el fondo.
Sólo el recuerdo intemporal conoce los libretos.
Porque lo sabe, la memoria calla lo perdido.
Estoy aquí sobre el escenario y sufro:
nada sé del anónimo silencio
que ignoro otra vez.
VIDA MONACAL
El alma es un cristal y la divinidad su brillo.
Ángelus Silesius
En el claustro de la memoria
los monjes caminan con hábitos ondulantes como el agua,
no puedo verlos pero escucho la vocación de las olas.
La adoración exige templos y deberes,
un canto que narre a quien lo escuche
la gloria que asoma en lo real.
En el silencio del deambulatorio
la paciente maduración de la hoja
que abandona el árbol,
deseosa de entrar sola en el misterio.
Para Thomas Merton
VISITA TURÍSTICA
Estoy en medio de una Acrópolis nunca visitada.
Aquí, señores, en Atenas,
existió cuanto el hombre creyó posible:
La civilización, decrépita hoy, pavoneándose
más espléndida que ninguna antaño.
Me estremece saber que fue diseñada noble,
astuta como Cécrope,
útil para el culto y propicia para el cuerpo
de los graciosos adolescentes griegos.
Todo esto fue antes de que yo caminara entre sus ruinas.
Me sobrecoge lo que en la Acrópolis ya no es,
y me siento aún más pequeña
perdida en mi insuperable condición humana.
Me conmueve la armonía de sus formas,
me intimida la grandeza de sus espacios,
pero lo que más me asusta es el tiempo
que como un niño la derribó a patadas.
c) 2008 Lauren Mendinueta
Ángelus Silesius
En el claustro de la memoria
los monjes caminan con hábitos ondulantes como el agua,
no puedo verlos pero escucho la vocación de las olas.
La adoración exige templos y deberes,
un canto que narre a quien lo escuche
la gloria que asoma en lo real.
En el silencio del deambulatorio
la paciente maduración de la hoja
que abandona el árbol,
deseosa de entrar sola en el misterio.
Para Thomas Merton
VISITA TURÍSTICA
Estoy en medio de una Acrópolis nunca visitada.
Aquí, señores, en Atenas,
existió cuanto el hombre creyó posible:
La civilización, decrépita hoy, pavoneándose
más espléndida que ninguna antaño.
Me estremece saber que fue diseñada noble,
astuta como Cécrope,
útil para el culto y propicia para el cuerpo
de los graciosos adolescentes griegos.
Todo esto fue antes de que yo caminara entre sus ruinas.
Me sobrecoge lo que en la Acrópolis ya no es,
y me siento aún más pequeña
perdida en mi insuperable condición humana.
Me conmueve la armonía de sus formas,
me intimida la grandeza de sus espacios,
pero lo que más me asusta es el tiempo
que como un niño la derribó a patadas.
c) 2008 Lauren Mendinueta
Monday, March 3, 2008
JUAN CARLOS GOMEZ RECINOS, CUATRO POEMAS
Juan Carlos Gomez Recinos vive en Colima, México. No conozco sus lares pero he vivido y viajado en otras tierras mexicanas y estoy seguro que si los poetas que he encontrado y que se han convertido en mis amigos podrían agarrar aún una porción mínima de la visión y energía de este poeta natural, ambiciosa, listo para abrazar de nuevo al mundo con una retórica aprendida de los grandes, de Neruda principalmente, de Borges…no habrá necesidad para llorar sobre la muerte del poeta y su evicción de la plaza pública. En unas semanas van a ser editados sus primeros dos libros ¡Imaginate, gemelos y a los veinti- tantos años…y premios…y pronto una editorial….y lectores en todas partes! Le felicito a Juan Carlos Gomez Recinos, la poeta igual de ésplendida Ana Gabriel, su esposa y co-conspiradora en el arte medicinal de mantener sano, y salvo de extinción premadura, la poesía y sus poetas. Aqui van cuatro poemas de uno de estos nuevos libros “Art Poetica.”
Los enamorados lloran como ausentes,
anticipando el último día.
Hoy los vi en la horizontal isla,
con los ojos interrogados, con sus baúles viejos.
Son vistosos al sentir la primavera,
hacen el amor ebrios, con pájaros y flores,
se reconocen en un incendio sinfónico,
en el nimio litoral de sus acompasados sexos.
Se funden en un Adán y Eva,
a goterones lentos, zumbando su dulce alegría.
*
Conviene que la sombra
escuche la voluntad del relámpago,
con su silencio espeso.
Te recuerdo al amanecer del día,
inmóvil como las estrellas,
con salvajes besos que se anclan
a mi nuca, y débilmente, esta noche
de palabras confusas, necesita
de poetas y biógrafos.
*
Esto es mi carne temblando,
extraviada en tu cuerpo.
Hay peces sin escama,
palabras, voces nocturnas
empapadas de licor.
Tus ojos parecen practicar
su vuelo, en mi atento silencio.
*
Tu vientre:
ciudad y templo,
río y cascada.
Eres relámpago de colibrí.
Mis palabras cantan tu nombre
en silencio, y un Dios justo
entra en este poema.
De mi oficio, tu nombre,
mis ojos ciegos.
La noche tiembla desnuda
tu ausencia, en un perpetuo
planeta inocente, persigue tu carne.
-- de Art Poetico, c) 2008 Juan Carlos Gomez Recinos
Los enamorados lloran como ausentes,
anticipando el último día.
Hoy los vi en la horizontal isla,
con los ojos interrogados, con sus baúles viejos.
Son vistosos al sentir la primavera,
hacen el amor ebrios, con pájaros y flores,
se reconocen en un incendio sinfónico,
en el nimio litoral de sus acompasados sexos.
Se funden en un Adán y Eva,
a goterones lentos, zumbando su dulce alegría.
*
Conviene que la sombra
escuche la voluntad del relámpago,
con su silencio espeso.
Te recuerdo al amanecer del día,
inmóvil como las estrellas,
con salvajes besos que se anclan
a mi nuca, y débilmente, esta noche
de palabras confusas, necesita
de poetas y biógrafos.
*
Esto es mi carne temblando,
extraviada en tu cuerpo.
Hay peces sin escama,
palabras, voces nocturnas
empapadas de licor.
Tus ojos parecen practicar
su vuelo, en mi atento silencio.
*
Tu vientre:
ciudad y templo,
río y cascada.
Eres relámpago de colibrí.
Mis palabras cantan tu nombre
en silencio, y un Dios justo
entra en este poema.
De mi oficio, tu nombre,
mis ojos ciegos.
La noche tiembla desnuda
tu ausencia, en un perpetuo
planeta inocente, persigue tu carne.
-- de Art Poetico, c) 2008 Juan Carlos Gomez Recinos
Thursday, February 28, 2008
WORDS FOR A PRESS CONFERENCE, GALLE, JANUARY 16, 2008
I returned from Sri Lanka last month. At the Galle Literary Festival I was asked to speak to reporters about the relationship of the festival to Sri Lankan readers and writers abroad. Here are my remarks:
Words For a Press Conference, Galle, January 2008
At times I have trouble in the diaspora. I don’t know all the rules. There are so many groups gathered in the world’s cities. Do we share the same mother? Have we been weaned to long for the same distant father? I have been asked to reflect on the possibilities that this festival engenders for Sri Lankan readers and writers throughout the world. I remember sitting in my office at the Embassy in Abidjan one morning in 1998 when I got a call from the front desk. A countryman had come to visit. Out of the blue. He invited me to his flat in Treichville. On the wall I saw the blue sea off Trincomalee and the curries were finely spiced, lentiled and mutton hot. The young men in that flat arrived via the Middle East; had stowed away on ships bound for the remote West African coast where another Tamil representing the United States had come to rest.
How to make sense of these multiple loyalties, carrying cards from birthplace, landing status in one of the Schengen countries, the euro? How about—in dancing with locals-- forgetting slowly that jarring speech, treacle and curd, called the mother tongue?
But we are here to celebrate a different mother. Yes, we are children of many diverse parents. This particular long haired beauty rode a white horse stark naked into my dreamery. Godiva, Mary Queen of Scotts, Twiggy. But the sexual is only a partial answer to the pleasures of exile, the adoption of the new tongue. Certainly, for many of us it has been a very old tongue, passed down from missionary teachers through generations, or whipped up by a dedicated colonial servant. But the language has been made Ceylonese, jellied up in a Christmas cake or a bruda, pickled by Malays. I put my poems in the dickey the other day along with my sarong. But I forget. I need to return to the island to stock up on the Sri Lankan English language.
So this festival can encourage the return of the island’s diasporas, to have them come back for cutlets and tea, to walk upon Galle Face Green, to visit the bird sanctuaries and climb Adam’s Peak.
But then how to fend off the accusation of being a tourist, a visitor in one’s own country? I wish rather that we would be made to feel at home, our Sri Lankan roots honored with national identity cards, recognition that even living abroad we are welcome and continue to be citizens of this island.
Another ideal I wish to pursue is the notion of the Garden of Eden, paradise on earth. In 1948 we numbered 8 million; we have doubled that and continue on the way up—around 20 million according to Wikipedia. At the same time, we cull our elephants, shoot monkeys, scissor thalagoyas, and keep cobras at bay. We grow our own ecologists, and persevere in trying to keep some of the other species alive, but we cede our tropical hard woods to the top bidder. There is of course a defensible logic to development, the need to feed and clothe and prosper. Yet, in this conference dedicated also to reflection on the climate, let us think about Sri Lankans abroad and how we can help in the preservation struggle, contribute a bit of Sri Lankan sun vision to the ecological challenges of our host countries.
So many words….we will hear a lot these days. Not enough I say, not enough colored by the particular variant of English modified on a tear of the Indian Ocean-- this Ceylon, this Sri Lanka we love and want to see at peace with itself. Let us work to make that peace. Let us remove from the stage the possessed beast whirling and whirring in a fevered dance trying to find and eat its own tail. Let us make commerce with metaphors, and let us talk sense, and over drinks, nonsense.
-- c) 2008 Indran Amirthanayagam
Words For a Press Conference, Galle, January 2008
At times I have trouble in the diaspora. I don’t know all the rules. There are so many groups gathered in the world’s cities. Do we share the same mother? Have we been weaned to long for the same distant father? I have been asked to reflect on the possibilities that this festival engenders for Sri Lankan readers and writers throughout the world. I remember sitting in my office at the Embassy in Abidjan one morning in 1998 when I got a call from the front desk. A countryman had come to visit. Out of the blue. He invited me to his flat in Treichville. On the wall I saw the blue sea off Trincomalee and the curries were finely spiced, lentiled and mutton hot. The young men in that flat arrived via the Middle East; had stowed away on ships bound for the remote West African coast where another Tamil representing the United States had come to rest.
How to make sense of these multiple loyalties, carrying cards from birthplace, landing status in one of the Schengen countries, the euro? How about—in dancing with locals-- forgetting slowly that jarring speech, treacle and curd, called the mother tongue?
But we are here to celebrate a different mother. Yes, we are children of many diverse parents. This particular long haired beauty rode a white horse stark naked into my dreamery. Godiva, Mary Queen of Scotts, Twiggy. But the sexual is only a partial answer to the pleasures of exile, the adoption of the new tongue. Certainly, for many of us it has been a very old tongue, passed down from missionary teachers through generations, or whipped up by a dedicated colonial servant. But the language has been made Ceylonese, jellied up in a Christmas cake or a bruda, pickled by Malays. I put my poems in the dickey the other day along with my sarong. But I forget. I need to return to the island to stock up on the Sri Lankan English language.
So this festival can encourage the return of the island’s diasporas, to have them come back for cutlets and tea, to walk upon Galle Face Green, to visit the bird sanctuaries and climb Adam’s Peak.
But then how to fend off the accusation of being a tourist, a visitor in one’s own country? I wish rather that we would be made to feel at home, our Sri Lankan roots honored with national identity cards, recognition that even living abroad we are welcome and continue to be citizens of this island.
Another ideal I wish to pursue is the notion of the Garden of Eden, paradise on earth. In 1948 we numbered 8 million; we have doubled that and continue on the way up—around 20 million according to Wikipedia. At the same time, we cull our elephants, shoot monkeys, scissor thalagoyas, and keep cobras at bay. We grow our own ecologists, and persevere in trying to keep some of the other species alive, but we cede our tropical hard woods to the top bidder. There is of course a defensible logic to development, the need to feed and clothe and prosper. Yet, in this conference dedicated also to reflection on the climate, let us think about Sri Lankans abroad and how we can help in the preservation struggle, contribute a bit of Sri Lankan sun vision to the ecological challenges of our host countries.
So many words….we will hear a lot these days. Not enough I say, not enough colored by the particular variant of English modified on a tear of the Indian Ocean-- this Ceylon, this Sri Lanka we love and want to see at peace with itself. Let us work to make that peace. Let us remove from the stage the possessed beast whirling and whirring in a fevered dance trying to find and eat its own tail. Let us make commerce with metaphors, and let us talk sense, and over drinks, nonsense.
-- c) 2008 Indran Amirthanayagam
Will Launch The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems in the US, at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, March 1, 7.30 pm
Elliott Bay Books sent me the following. If you're to be in Seattle this weekend, do come:
INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM Saturday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Noted poet, essayist, and U.S. Foreign Service Officer Indran Amirthanayagam makes his way down from his present north-of-the-border Vancouver home to give his first U.S. reading for his newest collection, The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems (Hanging Loose). Born in Sri Lanka, raised in London and Hawai'i, he is a poet who writes in English, French, and Spanish, has been published in the U.S., Mexico, and Sri Lanka, and whose accolades include a fellowship with the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Paterson Prize, a U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture award for his translations of the work of Manuel Ulacia, and more.
"These poems both about those who died in, and those who survived the Tsunami of 2004, memorialize with anger and beauty one of the most devastating tragedies of our time. In its largeness of heart, bold artistry, and admireable desire to bear witness, Amirthanayagam's consoling, life-affirming, and triumphant volume reminds me of Neruda's great Residence on Earth." - Jaime Manrique.
INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM Saturday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Noted poet, essayist, and U.S. Foreign Service Officer Indran Amirthanayagam makes his way down from his present north-of-the-border Vancouver home to give his first U.S. reading for his newest collection, The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems (Hanging Loose). Born in Sri Lanka, raised in London and Hawai'i, he is a poet who writes in English, French, and Spanish, has been published in the U.S., Mexico, and Sri Lanka, and whose accolades include a fellowship with the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Paterson Prize, a U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture award for his translations of the work of Manuel Ulacia, and more.
"These poems both about those who died in, and those who survived the Tsunami of 2004, memorialize with anger and beauty one of the most devastating tragedies of our time. In its largeness of heart, bold artistry, and admireable desire to bear witness, Amirthanayagam's consoling, life-affirming, and triumphant volume reminds me of Neruda's great Residence on Earth." - Jaime Manrique.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
TROIS POEMES DE JOANNE MORENCY
J’ai connu Joanne Morency à Trois-Rivières l’année dernière pendant le festival international de poésie qui est célébré dans cette ville chaque septembre. Nous nous sommes rencontrés dans un parc où quelques jeunes étaient en train de présenter des poèmes « hip-hop ». Les poètes se reconnaissent dans les parcs publics. Il y a des signes formels : les cahiers, les lunettes, le visage béni par la lumière intérieure. Et l’on trouve aussi ce désir d’apprendre les secrets du langage, de saisir l’esprit dans les mots qui prennent leur vol comme le petit oiseau que j’ai vu ce jour-là, assis sur le trottoir, objet de la sympathie humaine jusqu'au geste de lui donner une petite tasse d’eau. À ce moment-là de rapprochement humain, l’oiseau s’enfuit, bondit vite comme une illumination d’idée, une épiphanie.
Dans les poèmes de Joanne Morency, je trouve un lien très beau entre le langage et les inquiétudes de l’humanité, entre les mystères des mots et les charpentiers, les poètes qui doivent saisir l’esprit du bois, pour faire des oiseaux, petits ou pas, afin que nos enfants puissent jouer, pour toujours, dans un écosystème balancé.
Extraits de : Qui donc est capable de tant de clarté ? de Joanne Morency, Prix Piché de Poésie 2007, dans « Poèmes du lendemain 16 », Écrits des Forges, 2007
-----------------------
j’ai vidé mes boîtes
une à une
de chaque petit morceau d’autrui
il n’y a pas de porte entre les idées d’en arrière
et celles d’en avant
la nuit
les gens se déplacent à leur insu
j’envoie les changements d’adresse
* * *
la seule idée d’un mouvement
façonne l’espace autour de soi
le vent
même s’il l’ignore
obéit aux branches
dans une maison
sans murs ni plafond
des mains se sculptent un homme
j’assiste à la multiplication
* * *
quand la noirceur tourne sur elle-même
il n’y a qu’à sauter de montagne en montagne
mais comment distinguer
le haut
du bas
dans le ciel ?
il arrive que l’on tombe en haut
* * *
Dans les poèmes de Joanne Morency, je trouve un lien très beau entre le langage et les inquiétudes de l’humanité, entre les mystères des mots et les charpentiers, les poètes qui doivent saisir l’esprit du bois, pour faire des oiseaux, petits ou pas, afin que nos enfants puissent jouer, pour toujours, dans un écosystème balancé.
Extraits de : Qui donc est capable de tant de clarté ? de Joanne Morency, Prix Piché de Poésie 2007, dans « Poèmes du lendemain 16 », Écrits des Forges, 2007
-----------------------
j’ai vidé mes boîtes
une à une
de chaque petit morceau d’autrui
il n’y a pas de porte entre les idées d’en arrière
et celles d’en avant
la nuit
les gens se déplacent à leur insu
j’envoie les changements d’adresse
* * *
la seule idée d’un mouvement
façonne l’espace autour de soi
le vent
même s’il l’ignore
obéit aux branches
dans une maison
sans murs ni plafond
des mains se sculptent un homme
j’assiste à la multiplication
* * *
quand la noirceur tourne sur elle-même
il n’y a qu’à sauter de montagne en montagne
mais comment distinguer
le haut
du bas
dans le ciel ?
il arrive que l’on tombe en haut
* * *
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