12.23.14

Three poems by R.A. Villanueva


Archipelagic

Not vinegar. Not acid. Not
sugarcane pressed to mortar by
fist, but salt: salt, the home taste; salt,
the tide; salt, the blood. Not Holy

Ghost, but a saint of coral come
to life in the night crossing a
field of brambles and thorns, the camps
of pirates beat back to the bay

with hornets. Not Santo Niño.
And not a belt of storms, but this:
girls singing, an avocado
in each open palm, courting doves;

a moth drawn to the light of our
room you take to be your father.

Ditching


Lately it appears the water
has been waiting for us to keep trying

to make it across. The rivers
and trenches glossed with light

know we are so relentless as to plan
for catastrophe, layering backup

upon reserve. A pilot could suffer
an aneurysm mid-flight and pass

quietly without panic in the cabin,
his crew gathering themselves to

drape him across the floor. A flock
of geese might cascade into our engines

and still the plane will float its way
downstream towards the Battery.



Muse


Nightfall: pirate boy steps off the pier &
into the thick flashes of the newsmen

not at all like the others who hang their
coats from their foreheads or hood their faces

before hearings. He is smiling broadly
upon first meeting a mustered crowd lit

scattershot by the gaffers & grip crews.
Better to be here on this continent

of oaths & anthems & spit than a body
washed ashore, pockets stuffed with ransom?

is what they want to ask him as one, fit
voice—better alive, mocked by frogmen & our

sharpshooters than tagged & shelved in the holds
of a frigate moored off the coast of home?

I stole this biographical information from "The Best American Poetry", because no matter how I paraphrase it, the information will be basically identical: "R.A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. A founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, his honors include the 2013 Ninth Letter Literary Award for poetry and fellowships from Kundiman and The Asian American Literary Review. His writing has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including AGNI, Bellevue Literary Review, The Common, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives in Brooklyn and is a Senior Lecturer at New York University."

Here's a great interview with the author about Reliquaria: article. His voice is intriguing. 

12.21.14

It appears as though I have run out of things to say.

I'll work on that.

12.15.14

belated weekend words for you:

9/22/14

We carefully paper over

our knots and flaws,

scrape flat the corners

and hope no one’s watching--

lose the key to the room--

spend all time forgetting.

We papered over the subway tunnels

with the trappings of good intent

and prohibit entry with the same

public service announcements.

Just like the wooded lot whose power poles

are plastered with “public land use notice”

and the denuded stumps and stubble

surround a house that’s not a hole.

The chimney, solitary, still upends

a lot platted out with orange tape;

the ivy covering pretends

it’s not the next thing to be razed.

We cover the art of the street

only if its not to our taste,

to protect the structure of the city

the cracks are filled in with paste.

I propose a moratorium on harsh:

not memory,  not it’s rosy glassed-in cabinet,

harshness of judgement and concern,

eternal personal admonishment.

12.9.14

It always seems that I come upon artists as they are leaving the world. Part of it is that I am not exposed to new work as much as I'd like. (recommendations to that end are welcome) Mark Strand died last week, a Canadian-born US Poet Laureate from the 90's and Pulitzer prize winner in 1999. His New York Times obituary marks him as a contemplative, meditative artists, seeking to define the spaces we inhabit and the meta-spaces around them. Initially thinking himself a visual artist, he attended Antioch college and Yale, and then studied in Florence on a Fulbright scholarship. A good passage:

His career took off when the celebrated poetry editor Harry Ford accepted his second volume of poems, “Reasons for Moving,” at Atheneum, which went on to publish the collections “Darker” (1970), “The Story of Our Lives” (1973) and “The Late Hour” (1978). To critics who complained that his poems, with their emphasis on death, despair and dissolution, were too dark, he replied, “I find them evenly lit.”
Interviewed in The Paris Review by the actor Wallace Shawn in 1998, Mr. Strand described his poetic territory as “the self, the edge of the self, and the edge of the world,” what he called “that shadow land between self and reality.” The severe economies of his early work, however, led to frustration and its “bleak landscape” came to feel repetitive.

Let's get to the work. The Remains


I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.
What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.
My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds.
How can I sing? Time tells me what I am.
I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.


Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in 
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole


Lines for Winter

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are. 


As you can see, it is really easy just to post these poems and let them speak on their own. The pace is so measured, but without dragging. In The Remains, the repetition and salient verbs keep things moving as the speaker completes each action. In the subsequent poem, the lines don't have periods at the end of verses to punctuate, but allow the words to spill over. This does slow the work a little, but pulls the eye to the next line. The third is distinct in that it mixes enjambment, lines ending with periods, and the stair-stepping phrases. I feel like all these works exist in the same "universe" like a comic book, and can be read together and interchangeably because of their tone.  I'm sure if I thought better about it, I could come up with much more interesting commentary about the plight of the speaker in these situations, but all I can think about right now is how lovely they are to the ear. I'll give them due diligence in their time. 

12.3.14

I enjoy conversations that take you places. Not necessarily anything meaningful, mind you, but the kind that makes you think, "how did I get to this topic?"

This morning my spouse wondered aloud, "How did the thumbs'up become the symbol for hitch-hiking?" Initially he had said "universal", but I found out it actually isn't, due to the thumb being a rude gesture in several cultures. I followed this lovely rabbit hole to a Slate article, identifying the symbol's American origins and popularity coming with the rise of the automobile. It had some great literary references, from various magazine articles to The Grapes of Wrath and Looney Tunes. One of the citations was from a poet, Vachel Lindsay, who I had never heard of. I guess that isn't very strange, as author TR Hummer points out in another Slate article: "Even dedicated readers of poetry in our own time can be divided into two groups: those who know Vachel Lindsay and his work, and those who don’t. When I was in my teens and 20s, the first group was by far the larger; now the latter is, and the difference in magnitude between them seems to grow exponentially with every passing year."

Apparently Lindsay fell out of favor in the way some do, because his work is now considered overtly racist. Many books/authors/pieces of that time fell into this category, because unfortunately racist attitudes weren't considered incorrect. Whether he was intentionally or unintentionally racist, his work seems to have fallen out of favor in schools. (We still read Rudyard Kipling, T.S. Eliot, and Orson Scott Card, at least in my childhood, so the wand of favor doesn't seem to be particularly consistent, but that's another thing). The article features this poem from Lindsay: Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket



I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies—
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
So he will be, though law be clear as crystal,
Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony.

Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.


Here is another I liked, in a similar vein of dissatisfaction with our society.



The Voice of a Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

We find your soft Utopias as white
As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
How human breasts adore alarum bells.
You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
I’d rather brood in bloody Elsinore
Or be Lear’s fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
Promise us all our share in Agincourt
Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
That future ant-hills will not be too good
For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
Promise that through to-morrow’s spirit-war
Man’s deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate
Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday.
Never a shallow jester any more!
Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain.
Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise
And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain. 


Do you think we ought to stay away from artists or art that doesn't gel with our current mores? Or ought we to challenge ourselves and look towards context, see if there is something to be learned from work we don't agree with? 

12.2.14

Now that it's December, I can enjoy Christmas-themed things without being upset about Christmas creep. (It bothers me so much that I become very grinchy about it). I heard "Christmas in the trenches" today, which is the absolute saddest because it's true. Of course it made me think of the well-known poems of WWI, which I think I've talked about before, but I can't remember. Here are the song lyrics, by John McCutcheon:

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool,
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung,
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.

As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht," "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.
"There's someone coming towards us!" the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure coming from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode unarmed into the night.

Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men.

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wondrous night
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for evermore.

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.

This song is very poetic to me, since its delivered in an earnest and not sappy-smarmy way (at least, the version I heard), which can be hard to come by in holiday music. There is a clear story line, and the story (which is true; I definitely recommend Silent Night: The Remarkable 1914 Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub) gets down to the very heart of human emotion. In a lot of ways, it is similar to the work of the War Poets, most of whom weren't soldiers by any stretch of the imagination, but educated men, artists, teachers, etc who were thrown into the Great War. One of the most famous (well, at least one of his poems can be considered one of the most famous) of the war poets was Wilfred Owen, author of Dulce et Decorum est. He wrote many poems about the war, and tragically died just a week before the armistice after making it through shell shock and various war hospitals previously. His background included music, from his parents, and he was influenced by other poets of the day, including Sigfreid Sassoon, who he met at the hospital. Here's the piece:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, 
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs 
And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots 
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; 
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, 
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; 
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, 
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . 
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, 
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. 
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, 
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 
Behind the wagon that we flung him in, 
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, 
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud  
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 
To children ardent for some desperate glory, 
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est 
Pro patria mori.

11.30.14

Weekend Words

9/19/09

Starting over

As an extension of being

has allowed me to continue to pretend.

Despite their orders

I have been secretly breathing

life into what was meant to end.

I am promised

peace after the fire

and a glorious rebirth--

It feels dishonest

to think this new ease of living

comes on its own, or comes first.

Starting over

begins at a dizzying count

resetting the measure to nothing,

But the blanked-out lack

is no comfort

in un-learning loving.