There is a motionless tree
There is a motionless tree
there is another that moves forward
a river of trees
pounds at my chest
The green swell
of good fortune
You are dressed in red
you are
the seal of the burning year
carnal firebrand
star of fruit
I eat the sun in you
The hour rests
on a chasm of clarities
The birds are a handful of shadows
their beaks build the night
their wings sustain the day
Rooted at the light's peak
between stability and vertigo
you are
the diaphanous balance.
Monday, 31 December 2007
and what i didn't like
i watch a lot of films, a lot of bad films. i like them. when i go to the cinema to see whatever big movie's coming from, usually, america i sit down, engage my brain in neutral and suddenly i'm a kid again. same with sentimental movies. my days of caning it are a long way behind me so the emotional lability i had then is absent but i like a bitof sentimentality on a sunday afternoon, where children are innocent and everything works out alright.
so i've got a wide scope of viewing. and tolerance. i've watched films with great titles like mansquito and frankenfish which will never trouble my critical psyche. i've even watched catwoman. i even watched the legend of bagger vance god help me! and it wasn't pleasant. but all of these pale into insignificance next to my top three. maybe it's because i had high expectations of them. could be. but it's most likely they were just rubbish
sunshine. sneaks in at number three because it was the last awful film i watched. i saw danny boyle interviewed abourt this and he said making a sci fi film he felt the presence of all those other sci fi films. probably because he's tried to include them. dull, dull, dull. probably contains a good film but they obviously couldn't be bothered to make it
but it was far better than -
revolver. a film so bad you could be forgiven for thinking you were having a brain haemorrhage while watching it. you don't expect much from guy ritchie and anything with jason statham in it's only going to have a passing acquaintance with a quality called acting but even then. truly, truly awful.
but the winner by a country mile is -
the fountain. i could happily kick darren aronofsky in the face all day for making me waste two hours of my life on this. staggeringly bad and sunk under so much pretension it doesn't take even a second to recognise its own awfulness. i could start a campaign to burn every copy of this in order to preserve the cultural gene pool and not feel a shred of guilt. i can't say any more. even now it makes me too angry
special mentions -
which just goes to prove each to their own. perfume, which i liked most of, gets in here because t's reaction to it was so splendidly negative. i can't even joke about it without risking a smack in the mouth
so i've got a wide scope of viewing. and tolerance. i've watched films with great titles like mansquito and frankenfish which will never trouble my critical psyche. i've even watched catwoman. i even watched the legend of bagger vance god help me! and it wasn't pleasant. but all of these pale into insignificance next to my top three. maybe it's because i had high expectations of them. could be. but it's most likely they were just rubbish
sunshine. sneaks in at number three because it was the last awful film i watched. i saw danny boyle interviewed abourt this and he said making a sci fi film he felt the presence of all those other sci fi films. probably because he's tried to include them. dull, dull, dull. probably contains a good film but they obviously couldn't be bothered to make it
but it was far better than -
revolver. a film so bad you could be forgiven for thinking you were having a brain haemorrhage while watching it. you don't expect much from guy ritchie and anything with jason statham in it's only going to have a passing acquaintance with a quality called acting but even then. truly, truly awful.
but the winner by a country mile is -
the fountain. i could happily kick darren aronofsky in the face all day for making me waste two hours of my life on this. staggeringly bad and sunk under so much pretension it doesn't take even a second to recognise its own awfulness. i could start a campaign to burn every copy of this in order to preserve the cultural gene pool and not feel a shred of guilt. i can't say any more. even now it makes me too angry
special mentions -
which just goes to prove each to their own. perfume, which i liked most of, gets in here because t's reaction to it was so splendidly negative. i can't even joke about it without risking a smack in the mouth
but my favourite of favourites
of course it's bachelard who doesn't really fit into the other categories. i can't even remember how i came across him now. i think i was reading something about epicurus, a reading that's gone on hold since, but i'm not sure
other philosophical ramblings included the usual la rochefoucauld, which i continue to enjoy, attempts at pascal, where i failed again. i did, for old times sake, reread some hakim bey who's still very, very funny even if he didn't mean to be. i read more baudrillard as i'm cycling under a baudrillarian team name which'll be arousing some comment no doubt later in the month. me, i don't see it as being anything like as good as the telly savalas players club, who surely have the best team name in scottish cycling. i enjoyed mac auge and am quite into certeau so far.
critical theory's raised its head again due to work at the university so am currently preparing myself for a reacquaintance with althusser, lukacs and kristeva (figure that out if you can!). not that it'll make any more sense than michel foucault with whom i'm finishing the year. i read madness and civilisation and i have the same sense as when i'm off on one and people say to me - please stop now, you're talking bollocks. i'm reserving judgment for the time being
anyway, why bachelard? maybe because the poetics of space talked about home and maybe that's more of an area of concern to me than i previously thought it'd been. or maybe i just needed a mode of thinking about it. which bachelard provided in spades. and unlike normal philosophical reading (except epicurus and la rochefoucauld) it made me feel good. i wanted to sit outside on the steps and think about it. when i was cycling i carried his voice in my head. where was i? what was i doing? what was it evoking? i felt in touch with something beautiful.
so that's my favourites of the year. tomorrow i think it may have to be the things that were least liked....
other philosophical ramblings included the usual la rochefoucauld, which i continue to enjoy, attempts at pascal, where i failed again. i did, for old times sake, reread some hakim bey who's still very, very funny even if he didn't mean to be. i read more baudrillard as i'm cycling under a baudrillarian team name which'll be arousing some comment no doubt later in the month. me, i don't see it as being anything like as good as the telly savalas players club, who surely have the best team name in scottish cycling. i enjoyed mac auge and am quite into certeau so far.
critical theory's raised its head again due to work at the university so am currently preparing myself for a reacquaintance with althusser, lukacs and kristeva (figure that out if you can!). not that it'll make any more sense than michel foucault with whom i'm finishing the year. i read madness and civilisation and i have the same sense as when i'm off on one and people say to me - please stop now, you're talking bollocks. i'm reserving judgment for the time being
anyway, why bachelard? maybe because the poetics of space talked about home and maybe that's more of an area of concern to me than i previously thought it'd been. or maybe i just needed a mode of thinking about it. which bachelard provided in spades. and unlike normal philosophical reading (except epicurus and la rochefoucauld) it made me feel good. i wanted to sit outside on the steps and think about it. when i was cycling i carried his voice in my head. where was i? what was i doing? what was it evoking? i felt in touch with something beautiful.
so that's my favourites of the year. tomorrow i think it may have to be the things that were least liked....
Sunday, 30 December 2007
what i read and what i saw
unlike the old site i don't keep the book diary here any more but i do write it down so, as it's that time of year here's the highs and lows.
reading wise i'm finishing on a bit of a high with Geert Mak's In Europe. It is not, as it has received some criticism for, a history book, more a travel journal based around the idea of a history of the twentieth century. it's at its best when it's him getting to talk to very old people about their experiences and reflecting on it but does lag a bit when it gets too historical - people should know the broad scope of this stuff. that said there are great wee details - the wspu had a bombing campaign pre-WWI. Don't quite know how that passed me by! but anyway
top three non fiction
Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett. yes, there's probably better histories of spain but i haven't read them this year and most of what i have read centres around catalunya or andalucia so i don't know super much about the subject. this reminded me of why i wanted to know more and why i really should go back and travel more
Persian Fire by Tom Holland There's many reasons why i didn't go to see 300 - too big, too stupid, too homoerotic - but mainly because i read this in the early part of the year and that was quite enough. prior to this you could've balanced my knowledge of things persian on the head of a pin but that's been well sorted out now. great topic, great narrative, every page was interesting. for some it might be surprising, yes there were empires and colonialism that didn't originate in europe. funny that.
You Must Like Cricket? by Saimya Bhattacharya. rightly this should be under sports books but that's just a category too many. basically this is about cricket, india, why people assume that all indians like cricket and what it is to be an indian who really does. up until recently, when the government did the dirty on non-european doctors in training, i worked with a lot of indian doctors. so much so that when i had to go back and work with the uk version i found it all rather odd. so reading this was like hanging out with those old workmates, male and female, something about the way he writes, a manner of expression that seems so familiar (and one of the reasons i read churumuri) and these days so absent. i liked this so much i nearly emailed him to tell him. a great, funny book even if you don't like cricket. and a sight more informative about india and pakistan than anything the bbc's provided recently
Honourable mentions to
Duende by Jason Webster which really should be up there but then it'd be a top five. spain again, this time about flamenco, guitar playing, gypsies, drugs and all manner of nonsense. even if it isn't all true it should be. brilliant
Down and out in Paris and London by George Orwell who was writing about crap jobs before douglas coupland had even been dreamt about. a must read for anyone who's ever worked in a proper kitchen.
Stone Voices by Neil Ascherson. mainly because i spend a lot of time in argyll around a lot of the sites his mum's friends discovered.
top three fiction
it has to be said i was toiling a bit for this as it's been a bit of a thin year for me for fiction but here they are
book of the year - The Rider by Tim Krabbe. yes, it's about cycling but, in the sense that literature should take you somewhere, if there's another book that gets you into the head of a cyclist i've yet to read it. nothing happens, there's just a guy on his bike, racing, very little intro and almost no ending. there's no end to the critical bollocks you could spout off about this book but i shan't. it doesn't need it.
The Goodbye Kiss by Massimo Carlotto. bored by fat american books (more to come later, oh yes) i happened upon this. a bad man does bad things and gets away with it. i don't normally like crime fiction but this did alright by me. like watching a black and white movie from the fifties. pity i can't read italian though as i think it's all that's in translation
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak which i got in a sale and never read for ages but when i did i was really into it. but not in the way i was into the the rider. it didn't make me think but what it did do was absorb me and credit to it for that
honourable mentions. there are none. the year has been characterised by being bored with fiction and i've read far too much at the expense of non-fiction in an effort, i think, to find something that's actually good that's been written in maybe the last fifty years. good effort then by steven milhauser but why bother reading more than one short story collection, there's ideas, a bit of language and then it's the same old same old. as for the rest. pardon me while i hit myself in the face with a kitchen tap rather than yet another piece of uk fiction written by guardian readers for guardian readers about either relationships and/or finding oneself. please god, never again
and while i'm at it. boys books from america. yes i'm sure your very big book does have a very direct relationship to your very small penis. but it does keep the draughts out. or i could hit myself in the head with it out of utter useless boredom. and no, you are not a university professor worried about tenure, a sports writer or someone who works in advertising, just someone who is boring me. is your name DON DELILLO? if so, please go away. thank god, i say, for susan sontag, who i read very, very slowly in order to counter the effects of all the testosterone. hope, in america, your name must be woman on this year's form. honestly, by september i started looking at books in terms of author gender and country of origin just so that i could avoid them
top films (that are actually good)
Joint Security Area. i'm not even going to attempt to write it in korean. anyway it's a film about borders, about their stupidity etc etc (insert your particular critical hobby horse here). it is brilliant. very different from the vengeance trilogy but with the same eye for the moral within the story. naturally it's getting remade in america. about the border between mexico and the us. i would rather gouge out my own eyes.....
lovers of the arctic circle. i think this is probably my favourite spanish language film. maybe it's the scandinavian connection. i'm not even going to tell you what it's about. just go and buy it.
la jetee. yes, it's old and yes, some might even argue it's not a film as such. but it's my blog and i say it is. splendid. and yet, despite all the internet what we get is the likes of this. which is funny (top stupid lyrics of the year) but not la jetee. marker is like a wake up call. get busy!
special mentions. gwyneth paltrow might be blander than a bland thing in real life but Proof, her and anthony hopkins in a film about maths, it's all good. and then her again with a pre-007 daniel craig in sylvia. about poetry. and she dies. cheery. hopkins is an autopilot in The World's Fastest Indian but i don't care. Similarly The New World survives the Colin Farrell effect but then i go to see a film called terence malick paints a fence. which some naysayers state is pretty much the same thing. slander, i say.
top films (that aren't good)
a category in which america, more or less, is without equal
blades of glory. funniest and most watched film of the year and, i think, one i've only watched sober once. has to be film of the year really. i make no apologies. and it does make a good double bill with talledaga nights. save me oprah winfrey
transformers. giant killer robots. what's not to like? sure it would've been cooler had it been all gundam and japanese but this makes up for it with its howling stupidity. and the ending is so toe curling it'll make you cry.
banlieue 13. just for the parkour if nothing else. and the plot. the banlieue is sealed off and in the grip of drug lords. corrupt politicians want to keep it that way. only our free jumping heroes can save the day. all muscle. zero brain. laugh out loud funny
special mentions (which are actually good so can't be categorised with the above)
little miss sunshine. 2nd funniest film of the year. and ample argument for why pageants are evil
stranger than fiction. will ferrell does metafiction!! well, yes he does and his blankness works well. good performances too by emma thompson and dustin hoffman. not as good as it could've been but still pretty good
reading wise i'm finishing on a bit of a high with Geert Mak's In Europe. It is not, as it has received some criticism for, a history book, more a travel journal based around the idea of a history of the twentieth century. it's at its best when it's him getting to talk to very old people about their experiences and reflecting on it but does lag a bit when it gets too historical - people should know the broad scope of this stuff. that said there are great wee details - the wspu had a bombing campaign pre-WWI. Don't quite know how that passed me by! but anyway
top three non fiction
Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett. yes, there's probably better histories of spain but i haven't read them this year and most of what i have read centres around catalunya or andalucia so i don't know super much about the subject. this reminded me of why i wanted to know more and why i really should go back and travel more
Persian Fire by Tom Holland There's many reasons why i didn't go to see 300 - too big, too stupid, too homoerotic - but mainly because i read this in the early part of the year and that was quite enough. prior to this you could've balanced my knowledge of things persian on the head of a pin but that's been well sorted out now. great topic, great narrative, every page was interesting. for some it might be surprising, yes there were empires and colonialism that didn't originate in europe. funny that.
You Must Like Cricket? by Saimya Bhattacharya. rightly this should be under sports books but that's just a category too many. basically this is about cricket, india, why people assume that all indians like cricket and what it is to be an indian who really does. up until recently, when the government did the dirty on non-european doctors in training, i worked with a lot of indian doctors. so much so that when i had to go back and work with the uk version i found it all rather odd. so reading this was like hanging out with those old workmates, male and female, something about the way he writes, a manner of expression that seems so familiar (and one of the reasons i read churumuri) and these days so absent. i liked this so much i nearly emailed him to tell him. a great, funny book even if you don't like cricket. and a sight more informative about india and pakistan than anything the bbc's provided recently
Honourable mentions to
Duende by Jason Webster which really should be up there but then it'd be a top five. spain again, this time about flamenco, guitar playing, gypsies, drugs and all manner of nonsense. even if it isn't all true it should be. brilliant
Down and out in Paris and London by George Orwell who was writing about crap jobs before douglas coupland had even been dreamt about. a must read for anyone who's ever worked in a proper kitchen.
Stone Voices by Neil Ascherson. mainly because i spend a lot of time in argyll around a lot of the sites his mum's friends discovered.
top three fiction
it has to be said i was toiling a bit for this as it's been a bit of a thin year for me for fiction but here they are
book of the year - The Rider by Tim Krabbe. yes, it's about cycling but, in the sense that literature should take you somewhere, if there's another book that gets you into the head of a cyclist i've yet to read it. nothing happens, there's just a guy on his bike, racing, very little intro and almost no ending. there's no end to the critical bollocks you could spout off about this book but i shan't. it doesn't need it.
The Goodbye Kiss by Massimo Carlotto. bored by fat american books (more to come later, oh yes) i happened upon this. a bad man does bad things and gets away with it. i don't normally like crime fiction but this did alright by me. like watching a black and white movie from the fifties. pity i can't read italian though as i think it's all that's in translation
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak which i got in a sale and never read for ages but when i did i was really into it. but not in the way i was into the the rider. it didn't make me think but what it did do was absorb me and credit to it for that
honourable mentions. there are none. the year has been characterised by being bored with fiction and i've read far too much at the expense of non-fiction in an effort, i think, to find something that's actually good that's been written in maybe the last fifty years. good effort then by steven milhauser but why bother reading more than one short story collection, there's ideas, a bit of language and then it's the same old same old. as for the rest. pardon me while i hit myself in the face with a kitchen tap rather than yet another piece of uk fiction written by guardian readers for guardian readers about either relationships and/or finding oneself. please god, never again
and while i'm at it. boys books from america. yes i'm sure your very big book does have a very direct relationship to your very small penis. but it does keep the draughts out. or i could hit myself in the head with it out of utter useless boredom. and no, you are not a university professor worried about tenure, a sports writer or someone who works in advertising, just someone who is boring me. is your name DON DELILLO? if so, please go away. thank god, i say, for susan sontag, who i read very, very slowly in order to counter the effects of all the testosterone. hope, in america, your name must be woman on this year's form. honestly, by september i started looking at books in terms of author gender and country of origin just so that i could avoid them
top films (that are actually good)
Joint Security Area. i'm not even going to attempt to write it in korean. anyway it's a film about borders, about their stupidity etc etc (insert your particular critical hobby horse here). it is brilliant. very different from the vengeance trilogy but with the same eye for the moral within the story. naturally it's getting remade in america. about the border between mexico and the us. i would rather gouge out my own eyes.....
lovers of the arctic circle. i think this is probably my favourite spanish language film. maybe it's the scandinavian connection. i'm not even going to tell you what it's about. just go and buy it.
la jetee. yes, it's old and yes, some might even argue it's not a film as such. but it's my blog and i say it is. splendid. and yet, despite all the internet what we get is the likes of this. which is funny (top stupid lyrics of the year) but not la jetee. marker is like a wake up call. get busy!
special mentions. gwyneth paltrow might be blander than a bland thing in real life but Proof, her and anthony hopkins in a film about maths, it's all good. and then her again with a pre-007 daniel craig in sylvia. about poetry. and she dies. cheery. hopkins is an autopilot in The World's Fastest Indian but i don't care. Similarly The New World survives the Colin Farrell effect but then i go to see a film called terence malick paints a fence. which some naysayers state is pretty much the same thing. slander, i say.
top films (that aren't good)
a category in which america, more or less, is without equal
blades of glory. funniest and most watched film of the year and, i think, one i've only watched sober once. has to be film of the year really. i make no apologies. and it does make a good double bill with talledaga nights. save me oprah winfrey
transformers. giant killer robots. what's not to like? sure it would've been cooler had it been all gundam and japanese but this makes up for it with its howling stupidity. and the ending is so toe curling it'll make you cry.
banlieue 13. just for the parkour if nothing else. and the plot. the banlieue is sealed off and in the grip of drug lords. corrupt politicians want to keep it that way. only our free jumping heroes can save the day. all muscle. zero brain. laugh out loud funny
special mentions (which are actually good so can't be categorised with the above)
little miss sunshine. 2nd funniest film of the year. and ample argument for why pageants are evil
stranger than fiction. will ferrell does metafiction!! well, yes he does and his blankness works well. good performances too by emma thompson and dustin hoffman. not as good as it could've been but still pretty good
Thursday, 27 December 2007
les murray
i met les murray a few years ago and found him a fine fellow. as far as i know he' s still alive and i hope he's going strong. i haven't posted anything by him for ages so here's this..
To Fly in Just Your Suit
1.30 p.m. On the poet's farm, Bunyah, New South Wales
Humans are flown, or fall;
humans can't fly.
We're down with the gravity-stemmers,
rare, thick-boned, often basso.
Most animals above the tides are airborne.
Typically tuned keen, they
throw the earth away with wire feet
and swoop rings round it.
Australian magpies, listening askance
for their food in and under lawn,
strut so hairtrigger they almost
dangle on earth, out of the air.
Nearly anything can make their tailcoats
break into wings.
To Fly in Just Your Suit
1.30 p.m. On the poet's farm, Bunyah, New South Wales
Humans are flown, or fall;
humans can't fly.
We're down with the gravity-stemmers,
rare, thick-boned, often basso.
Most animals above the tides are airborne.
Typically tuned keen, they
throw the earth away with wire feet
and swoop rings round it.
Australian magpies, listening askance
for their food in and under lawn,
strut so hairtrigger they almost
dangle on earth, out of the air.
Nearly anything can make their tailcoats
break into wings.
Saturday, 22 December 2007
john donne
it being the shortest day and all. not that st lucy is cheery story but it does mean the days are getting longer!
A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day
Being the shortest day
’Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,
The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
The worlds whole sap is sunke:
The generall balme th’ hydroptique earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the beds-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with mee, who am their Epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new Alchimie.
For his art did expresse
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse:
He ruin’d mee, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have;
I, by loves limbecke, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have wee two wept, and so
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two Chaosses, when we did show
Care to ought else; and often absences
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing, the Elixer grown;
Were I a man, that I were one,
I needs must know; I should preferre,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; All, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew.
You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne
At this time to the Goat is runne
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since shee enjoyes her long nights festivall,
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call
This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this
Both the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.
A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day
Being the shortest day
’Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,
The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
The worlds whole sap is sunke:
The generall balme th’ hydroptique earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the beds-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with mee, who am their Epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new Alchimie.
For his art did expresse
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse:
He ruin’d mee, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have;
I, by loves limbecke, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have wee two wept, and so
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two Chaosses, when we did show
Care to ought else; and often absences
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing, the Elixer grown;
Were I a man, that I were one,
I needs must know; I should preferre,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; All, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew.
You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne
At this time to the Goat is runne
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since shee enjoyes her long nights festivall,
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call
This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this
Both the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.
Thursday, 20 December 2007
paul celan
Wie du dich ausstirbirst in mir:
noch in letzten
zerschlissenen
Knoten Atems
steckst du mit einem
Splitter
Leben
How you die out in me:
down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you’re there, with a
splinter
of life
translation (I think) is Michael Hamburger but if it's rubbsh and i'm doing a disservice to his memory then it's probably been me
noch in letzten
zerschlissenen
Knoten Atems
steckst du mit einem
Splitter
Leben
How you die out in me:
down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you’re there, with a
splinter
of life
translation (I think) is Michael Hamburger but if it's rubbsh and i'm doing a disservice to his memory then it's probably been me
W. B. Yeats
somone had a birthday recently and as it i missed it then, this belatedly, is for you. it comes from yeats' play the beauty of emer and i'm always surprised it's not better known
‘A woman’s beauty is like a white’
A woman’s beauty is like a white
Frail bird, like a white sea-bird alone
At daybreak after stormy night
Between two furrows upon the ploughed land:
A sudden storm, and it was thrown
Between dark furrows upon the ploughed land.
How many centuries spent
The sedentary soul
In toils of measurement
Beyond hearing or seeing,
Or Archimedes’ guess,
To raise into being
That loveliness?
A strange, unservicable thing,
A fragile, exquisite, pale shell,
That the vast troubled waters bring
To the loud sands before day has broken.
The storm arose and suddenly fell
Amid the dark before day had broken
What death? what discipline?
What bonds no man could unbind,
Being imagined within
The labyrinth of the mind,
What pursuing or fleeing,
What wounds, what bloody press,
Dragged in to being
This loveliness?
‘A woman’s beauty is like a white’
A woman’s beauty is like a white
Frail bird, like a white sea-bird alone
At daybreak after stormy night
Between two furrows upon the ploughed land:
A sudden storm, and it was thrown
Between dark furrows upon the ploughed land.
How many centuries spent
The sedentary soul
In toils of measurement
Beyond hearing or seeing,
Or Archimedes’ guess,
To raise into being
That loveliness?
A strange, unservicable thing,
A fragile, exquisite, pale shell,
That the vast troubled waters bring
To the loud sands before day has broken.
The storm arose and suddenly fell
Amid the dark before day had broken
What death? what discipline?
What bonds no man could unbind,
Being imagined within
The labyrinth of the mind,
What pursuing or fleeing,
What wounds, what bloody press,
Dragged in to being
This loveliness?
anna akhmatova
I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead
I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?
All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.
No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
Me more, not
Even the one who betrayed me to torture,
Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.
I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?
All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.
No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
Me more, not
Even the one who betrayed me to torture,
Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.
osip mandelstam
A flame is in my blood
A flame is in my blood
burning dry life, to the bone.
I do not sing of stone,
now, I sing of wood.
It is light and coarse:
made of a single spar,
the oak’s deep heart,
and the fisherman’s oar.
Drive them deep, the piles:
hammer them in tight,
around wooden Paradise,
where everything is light.
A flame is in my blood
burning dry life, to the bone.
I do not sing of stone,
now, I sing of wood.
It is light and coarse:
made of a single spar,
the oak’s deep heart,
and the fisherman’s oar.
Drive them deep, the piles:
hammer them in tight,
around wooden Paradise,
where everything is light.
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
william carlos williams
it's funny the way that doing something as a reaction to someone else can often getyou into a poem you previously didn't like. as it is with me and carlos wiliams. not a fan i have to say but post black bicycle i find i'm getting it more. so i really enjoyed sorlil's suggestion of the following
To a Poor Old Woman
munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her
You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
To a Poor Old Woman
munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her
You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
william carlos williams
this poem may look vaguely familiar.....
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
and a for instance
no i'm not finished yet
years ago, someone stuck one of my poems up on the their website, didn't ask permission but told me i the passing. not a problem. the subject was partick thistle and its concern was folk like douglas gordon who, to me at any rate, affected an allegiance to the club.
anyway some time later it was picked up by the club forum and put up on the web again, without my permission. most of the comments were along the lines of who is this wanker but a few people got into it, and suggested renaming the team bus. in all cases it was a real laugh and surely the only time i will get the opportunity of having a supporters bus name after one of my poems
in wendy cope's world this never would have happened. in the real world i talked about their club, they talked about me, we all talked to each other and never would have done so otherwise. in my world i like to think that this is how poetry works....
years ago, someone stuck one of my poems up on the their website, didn't ask permission but told me i the passing. not a problem. the subject was partick thistle and its concern was folk like douglas gordon who, to me at any rate, affected an allegiance to the club.
anyway some time later it was picked up by the club forum and put up on the web again, without my permission. most of the comments were along the lines of who is this wanker but a few people got into it, and suggested renaming the team bus. in all cases it was a real laugh and surely the only time i will get the opportunity of having a supporters bus name after one of my poems
in wendy cope's world this never would have happened. in the real world i talked about their club, they talked about me, we all talked to each other and never would have done so otherwise. in my world i like to think that this is how poetry works....
wendy cope
is someone who won't be appearing on here anytime soon courtesy of recent comments on copyright. Slightly more rational follow up than i'm capable of can be found here
it seems profoundly shortsighted to me to start this nonsense about poetry when most people don't buy it, bookshops don't stock it and it's reasonably troublesome to get it published. I can't imagine how i'd have even heard of half the modern poets i have if it hadn't been for their work being posted on the internet on blogs and sites just like this one. i hope in some small way to have got more people to read nordbrandt for instance and i'm reasonably confident i have.
what next i wonder, cope certainly hints at it, performance rights? one of the joys of poetry is being able to read it out loud (though not in britain). with your mates. and one of the reasons back when i was organising readings, that i used readers rather than poets is that quite some amount of the time they're rubbish at it
t, more intermittently these days, keeps at me to do more, publish more but my reasons for not doing so are always brilliantly shown at any reading, event where clusters of these cope types congeal together. which, incidentally, is why i'm still in the hospital rather than teaching. why would i encourage children to involve themselves with lot? wankers
here's a wonderful quote from the comments from the above which i'm posting without asking and says all too much for me about the state of british arts. don't publish, don't show, don't mix and you won't have to associate yourself with these idiots. or leave.
British poetry is amateurish, always gotta be a pun for fun, contented to be third rate rhymers pumped up by the drips who write for this rag and actively exclude, ignore and fear the genuine souls pointing out the uncomfortable truth, that most of those feted are fakers and have as much presence as a vacuum. The British obsession with "light verse" is laughable and her work will be forgotten as soon as the armies of publicist promoting them stop and puff up the next wet drip to come out of the sausage factories. The rebels who get square before they are thirty. Utter tripe, "astonished pavements" and all the half arsed cack that comes out their cake holes should be prosecuted under the trade descriptions act..Wendy Cope, do us a favour and shut yer whining gob..slop slob silent the force it came and divorced me from sense and serenity shrouded in the evensong at St Hildas. Top table neo-liberal-knobs. Come the revolution at Faber and Faber, axe 'em from the catalogue and sing of the joys of being a middle aged moaner, string up their shoddy verses, the worst poets since the Edwardian lot; a straight faced pout, a snoot cocked steely glare at the oinks who dare to suggest they are not magi, but woefully inadequate shysters, the absence of a smile, the O so superior tint, no egalitarian vibe in a monarchist mindset..
lovely.
it seems profoundly shortsighted to me to start this nonsense about poetry when most people don't buy it, bookshops don't stock it and it's reasonably troublesome to get it published. I can't imagine how i'd have even heard of half the modern poets i have if it hadn't been for their work being posted on the internet on blogs and sites just like this one. i hope in some small way to have got more people to read nordbrandt for instance and i'm reasonably confident i have.
what next i wonder, cope certainly hints at it, performance rights? one of the joys of poetry is being able to read it out loud (though not in britain). with your mates. and one of the reasons back when i was organising readings, that i used readers rather than poets is that quite some amount of the time they're rubbish at it
t, more intermittently these days, keeps at me to do more, publish more but my reasons for not doing so are always brilliantly shown at any reading, event where clusters of these cope types congeal together. which, incidentally, is why i'm still in the hospital rather than teaching. why would i encourage children to involve themselves with lot? wankers
here's a wonderful quote from the comments from the above which i'm posting without asking and says all too much for me about the state of british arts. don't publish, don't show, don't mix and you won't have to associate yourself with these idiots. or leave.
British poetry is amateurish, always gotta be a pun for fun, contented to be third rate rhymers pumped up by the drips who write for this rag and actively exclude, ignore and fear the genuine souls pointing out the uncomfortable truth, that most of those feted are fakers and have as much presence as a vacuum. The British obsession with "light verse" is laughable and her work will be forgotten as soon as the armies of publicist promoting them stop and puff up the next wet drip to come out of the sausage factories. The rebels who get square before they are thirty. Utter tripe, "astonished pavements" and all the half arsed cack that comes out their cake holes should be prosecuted under the trade descriptions act..Wendy Cope, do us a favour and shut yer whining gob..slop slob silent the force it came and divorced me from sense and serenity shrouded in the evensong at St Hildas. Top table neo-liberal-knobs. Come the revolution at Faber and Faber, axe 'em from the catalogue and sing of the joys of being a middle aged moaner, string up their shoddy verses, the worst poets since the Edwardian lot; a straight faced pout, a snoot cocked steely glare at the oinks who dare to suggest they are not magi, but woefully inadequate shysters, the absence of a smile, the O so superior tint, no egalitarian vibe in a monarchist mindset..
lovely.
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