Started a book which comes out next year, 'Dark Sparkler' by Amber Tamblyn, a collection of poems inspired by actresses who died young. Not sure it entirely works, but when it does it's pretty good.
Jayne MansfieldYour neck was a study of the asterisk,the silken shape of Sanskrit,the sucker punch of succulents.Your neck a thinning glacier,fine as the grind of a blade curve,soft as a k in a known wordlong as they say about slow burns.Your neck the place where pearls retiredbelow the face your girls admired.Your neck was a fortune you did not spend.Your neck is what they’ll remember the most.Your neck in the end.
Your neck was a study of the asterisk,the silken shape of Sanskrit,the sucker punch of succulents.
Your neck a thinning glacier,fine as the grind of a blade curve,soft as a k in a known wordlong as they say about slow burns.
Your neck the place where pearls retiredbelow the face your girls admired.
Your neck was a fortune you did not spend.Your neck is what they’ll remember the most.Your neck in the end.
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Friday, 12 September 2014 00:09 (nine years ago) link
ugh
been thinking ed dorn's gunslinger was lookin interesting
but hearing him read it, is just
the educated coastal elite tone of voice and enunciation patterns from the old dayz always irritate the hell out of me
you can hear dorn trying to get into the vernacular he wrote on the page, but he's so… uptight… that he can't commit to it, he just rushes whenever he has to drawl a little or drop some word endings
― j., Sunday, 14 September 2014 04:14 (nine years ago) link
vindicating
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Sunday, 14 September 2014 11:01 (nine years ago) link
from what i know of the book proper, i would still check gunslinger out
i mean i hate (dislike) the way wcw reads his own poetry too so
― j., Sunday, 14 September 2014 17:23 (nine years ago) link
Osip Mandesltam by James Greene. This poem is in a diff translation I found online:
A Greek flute’s theta and iota –as if words weren’t enough for the ear –un-carved, and unaccountable,ripened, toiled, crossed the frontier.Impossible to leave it behind:clenched teeth can’t deny it,the tongue can’t prod it into line,the lips can’t dissipate it.The flautist knows no peace –it seems to him he’s alone,that he formed his native seafrom lilac clay, long ago.With distinct, ambitious murmur,relentless remembering lips, hehastens to gather the sounds,cherish them, neatly, stingily.Later we’re unable to repeat him,clods of clay in the palms of the sea,and when I’m filled with the ocean,my measure can only be disease.And my lips are unable to sing,there is murder too at the root.Involuntarily, waning, waning,I diminish the power of the flute.
Impossible to leave it behind:clenched teeth can’t deny it,the tongue can’t prod it into line,the lips can’t dissipate it.
The flautist knows no peace –it seems to him he’s alone,that he formed his native seafrom lilac clay, long ago.
With distinct, ambitious murmur,relentless remembering lips, hehastens to gather the sounds,cherish them, neatly, stingily.
Later we’re unable to repeat him,clods of clay in the palms of the sea,and when I’m filled with the ocean,my measure can only be disease.
And my lips are unable to sing,there is murder too at the root.Involuntarily, waning, waning,I diminish the power of the flute.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 20 September 2014 08:55 (nine years ago) link
grabbed maggie nelson's *bluets* which is weird but quite lovely
also got *the art of the sonnet* which is a wonderful little various artists critical examination
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 20 September 2014 18:28 (nine years ago) link
Poem
Though we seek always the known absoluteOf all our days together, love will not occurFor us. Love is a fact Beyond the witches wood of facts that isOur sorcery's domain. And though we mayCharm lion into squirrel, push back the sea,Love is made outlaw, set beyond all art,The ultimate error of our reasoning.
But when I see you walking or catch your faceEdged with the season's most erratic leavesLove grows superfluous, and I look at youAs I would look at flowers. Our only need:The sympathy of darkness for the seed.
― schlump, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 03:09 (nine years ago) link
the first poem john ashbery ever published, as 'joel michael symington'
― schlump, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 03:10 (nine years ago) link
i really liked bluets; i read it after reading some anne carson because max had talked about her on ilx, looking for something that was mentioned in the same breath. i think carson is a tough comparison - because the precise-almost-strict tone reads ever-so-slightly fussily in others' work, like the nelson book, & doesn't at all in carson's - but i liked it a lot. i wrote her an e-mail maybe a year later to ask whether it was through her or some interview or something that i'd heard this story about the colour blue that i couldn't get out of my head; it was about an old artisan, centuries ago, renown for his work with stained glass, but most particularly for the nonpareil blues he would incorporate into his windows. he was sought after, and expensive, & ended up the artist of many & varied famous stained glass designs; something written down or remembered said that he was unique in sourcing incredibly exotic materials, crushed sapphires, with which to work, & that remnant scraps of his invoices detailed the materials he used. & then, centuries later, more recently, a portion of the windows had somehow been tested to gauge its composition, & the tests revealed the materials involved, none of which were sapphires, crushed or otherwise. he had used whatever he had used & billed for crushed sapphires, this poetic & expensive reimbursable. i was sure i'd heard the story in an aside during an interview or an unpublished bluet or something, but i hadn't, & she wrote back to say she didn't know either, & i still can't remember where i heard the story, what exactly its tethered to in my mind if not this catalogue of devotional historical uses of the colour blue.
― schlump, Wednesday, 1 October 2014 03:21 (nine years ago) link
schlump - perhaps from Michael Taussig, What Color is the Sacred?(haven't read the whole book, but from what I recall, that sounds like a story that might appear in it)
― Vomits of a Missionary (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 7 October 2014 03:41 (nine years ago) link
reading Rumi because I never really have
surprised at how affecting some of it is, the translation is really refreshingly contemporary & almost shades into something like Sexton at times
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 7 October 2014 17:28 (nine years ago) link
"a"
― j., Tuesday, 7 October 2014 19:27 (nine years ago) link
I own the uneecummings version: "A"
― Aimless, Tuesday, 7 October 2014 19:32 (nine years ago) link
― j., Tuesday, October 7, 2014 7:27 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
oh yo how is this
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 7 October 2014 20:25 (nine years ago) link
i sent lj todesfuge and demanded he start reading celan
― Mordy, Tuesday, 7 October 2014 21:06 (nine years ago) link
Howard Moss. Graceful to a fault blank verse.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 October 2014 21:12 (nine years ago) link
well hoos i don't know, i have read zukofsky a bit for many years, because of all the wcw/pound/objectivist/langpo connections, but never gotten too into him save for enjoying his lyrics. got inspired to pick up "a" again and with some more herrick in me and a different feel for voice in the intervening years i enjoy him more and care less about the allusiveness/opacity. the structures seem plainer now but i think maybe much of 'anew' (except for '80 flowers' haha) will still seem more approachable, if you haven't read him. lovely love songs. then again there's a lotta marx in "a" - half of one installment is built out of quotes - so if you're you…
the personal centeredness does seem to make "a" more friendly than 'paterson' or the cantos, even if it's caught up with private inscrutables.
― j., Tuesday, 7 October 2014 21:35 (nine years ago) link
xp Celan is okay, but I have my doubts sometimes about his translatability
― Vomits of a Missionary (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 8 October 2014 02:39 (nine years ago) link
obv reading celan in translation can never be the same as reading him in german but there are some v good bilingual editions (the felstiner is my favorite) and i think his words are powerful enough to survive translation + carry meaning.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 October 2014 02:50 (nine years ago) link
It is also possible that I just don't "get" him & the fault is not translation... idk. Iirc, Hamburger makes a big deal out of his 'minor language' characteristics, though I could barely explain what I/he means by that.
"Todesfuge" is definitely one of the better ones I've read, though... I remember reading another longer poem of his (I forget the title) that came into focus for me when I realized it was structured almost like the camps, with a fence around it warning "KEEP OUT"
― Vomits of a Missionary (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 8 October 2014 03:00 (nine years ago) link
found the poem I was thinking of--"The Straitening"--my past self may have badly misread it
as far as "untranslatability", though, I was thinking of stuff like the stammering in "Tübingen, Jänner"
― Vomits of a Missionary (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 8 October 2014 03:31 (nine years ago) link
i may be getting more of an assist than i appreciate from my meager german, but i do think the breathturn stuff is gettable enough in translation to be read. it may take some repetition, to allow things to accrue.
― j., Wednesday, 8 October 2014 21:04 (nine years ago) link
celan seems kind of the epitome of a translatable poet
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 9 October 2014 17:55 (nine years ago) link
cynicism and disgust are the universal language
― Aimless, Thursday, 9 October 2014 18:07 (nine years ago) link
I'm not sure I read Celan as cynical as much as wounded and skeptical, but disgusted, sure. I feel like the Felstiner, Hamburger, and Pierre Joris translations, along with the ready availability of bilingual editions, have given me a beginner's purchase on Celan's writing, but my German is too weak for me to know quite what I'm missing.
― one way street, Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:20 (nine years ago) link
Returning with relish to Jack Spicer:
We proclaim a silent revolution. The poems above our heads, without tongues, are tired of talking to each other over the gabble of our beliefs, our literary personalities, our attempts to project their silent conversation to an audience. When we give tongue we amplify. We are telephone switchboards deluded into becoming hi-fi sets. The terrible speakers must be allowed silence. They are not speaking to us.
― one way street, Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:26 (nine years ago) link
Funny I order a copy of the Celan/Bachmann correspondence from my library. For people in London the Anselm Kiefer show has a big engagement with Celan's poetry.
Joseph Brodsky - a selection on Penguin. Didn't really find a way in, which is a shame as I love his essays.
Currently reading Canti by Leopardi and liking lots of it (tr. Jonathan Galassi). Terrific quotes from his letters and Zibaldone form part of the annotations, which I must investigate next year.
Ungaretti (tr. Patrick Creagh).
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 12 October 2014 12:48 (nine years ago) link
I was trying to figure out why none of the translations of "Tübingen, Jänner" quite lived up to the one in my head, and so I checked when I went home and it turns out it was actually a partial translation which appears in the text of (the English translation of) Enrique Vila-Matas's Bartleby & Co., which was perhaps the first place I ever encountered Celan('s writing):
If a manif a man cameif a man came into the world, today, withthe patriarchs' beard oflight: he could only,if he spoke of thistime, couldonly stutter, stutteron ononly only.
― Vomits of a Missionary (bernard snowy), Monday, 13 October 2014 02:12 (nine years ago) link
that's nice, & bartleby & co is a cute bookrushing & sleepy so will try to post again once i've actually seen the book you mentioned, bernard, but just wanted to say thanks for yr reply about my colour mystery!, i really appreciate it, & though i haven't read the book it sounds really up my street, & could still be an original source of somebody's since-transmitted anecdote. thanks.
― schlump, Monday, 13 October 2014 06:07 (nine years ago) link
swung by the library and got a seidel, james merril, and patrick rosal's boneshepherds which is pretty mellifluous
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 13 October 2014 15:45 (nine years ago) link
urgh, i had just about managed to forget about the existence of frederick seidel
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 13 October 2014 16:00 (nine years ago) link
yeah i really thought grabbing a selected would surface the stuff that made his acclaim make sense--outside a small handful though, i'm seeing very little magic and lots of sneering self regard
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 13 October 2014 18:26 (nine years ago) link
I think he has a sharp sense of rhythm at times, but I tend to find his poetic persona tiresome and his tone too predictably "edgy"--basically challops in couplets that flirt with doggerel.
― one way street, Monday, 13 October 2014 18:31 (nine years ago) link
yeah i appreciate his rhythm but he just doesn't really say anything worthwhile most of the time imo
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 13 October 2014 18:41 (nine years ago) link
idk i think you need to be totally prepared to immerse yrself in white upperclass id to get anything out of it and even then
people have told me i'm oversimplifying
i read like three collections. i think the selected might be a worse way to go; it's not like it's hard to read, and i think the internal logic of the collections is one thing that helps them seem like they're doing a thing
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 13 October 2014 20:35 (nine years ago) link
seidel ain't never showed me nothing I couldn't live without
― Aimless, Monday, 13 October 2014 20:38 (nine years ago) link
Having recently purchased an ex-lib copy of Cool, Calm and Collected, the collected poems of Carolyn Kizer (Copper Canyon Press, 2001), I spent about an hour and a half last night reading her poetry. It's both personal and personable. Her poems have a strong voice and a measure of self-deprecating humor (with a mere hint of wit). On the whole I found her company quite congenial and pleasant.
― Aimless, Friday, 17 October 2014 01:33 (nine years ago) link
Manley Hopkins.
The good times are here agane.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 21 October 2014 12:09 (nine years ago) link
lol
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 21 October 2014 15:54 (nine years ago) link
more like:
No, no, the great good, the ab-solute good – say it – good times!Here you are. Agane!
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 21 October 2014 15:56 (nine years ago) link
Needs more diacriticals but otm
― one way street, Tuesday, 21 October 2014 18:07 (nine years ago) link
I've hung out with the author and so am biased, but I'm enjoying Diana Hamilton's chapbook from 2012, "Okay, Okay," a series of collage-based prose poems about women weeping in public, gendered affects, the online culture of advice, the emotional claustrophobia of offices, &c.:
What a great way to not be taken seriously! Try pinching yourself behind the knee or biting your lip. Go to a bathroom stall. When you come out with red puffy eyes, andswollen face, blame it on allergies. Go somewhere like an empty park and shout as loud as you can, “I think I need Conflicting Parts Integration!” So, why are you hypersensitive?The next time something that you will cry over occurs tell that person that if they ever do something like that to you again that you will kill them. Play to their desireto end the situation. I’m not that creative with my words maybe you can better express but look at them like an animal. Of course, deny your threat if questioned. Emotionslead that we are anthropomorphic. Not only will it make you feel better, it’ll make people less uncomfortable.
― one way street, Tuesday, 21 October 2014 21:07 (nine years ago) link
randomly picked up a used copy of Jorie Graham's selected poems ('96), but apart from a couple of poems ("Fission" and "From the New World") I'm not sure I Get It -- any fans here?
― Vomits of a Missionary (bernard snowy), Thursday, 23 October 2014 11:40 (nine years ago) link
got The Essential Etheridge Knight in the mail, really enjoying some of it so far.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 23 October 2014 14:55 (nine years ago) link
I sold off my Geoffrey Hill last weekend. I couldn't derive any pleasure from any of his poems. Neither sensual pleasure nor intellectual pleasure.
― Scapa Flow & Eddie (Aimless), Thursday, 23 October 2014 15:55 (nine years ago) link
Four Greek Poets collection (includes 2x nobel prize winners on this, I clearly needed to bump up my quota of Nobel Prize winners this week!)
Somwhat more seriously I can't quite get into Cavafy. Fairly dry set of historical poems, or maybe its the selection. Seferis and esp Elytis I like.
John Donne selection. Onto some Hardy and Lawrence next.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 28 October 2014 10:11 (nine years ago) link
Went through most of Blake. Just Jerusalem left now. I read Keynes's old Penguin text during the day then look at the Complete Illuminated Books in bed at night. This is the life!
― woof, Tuesday, 28 October 2014 10:22 (nine years ago) link
Cavafy's amazing imo – I'd blame the translation, but i think that edition would be the Keeley/Sherrard ones, which I've always liked. This website gives a good selection.
(Seferis has never really taken for me, & I don't know the other two in that volume)
Oh, also started reading The Faber Book of Twentieth-Century German Poems, ed by Hofmann – it's terrific. Did you recommend this to me, xyzzzz? It feels very you…
― woof, Tuesday, 28 October 2014 10:58 (nine years ago) link
but re Cavafy I am a sucker for poised reflective historical melancholia.
― woof, Tuesday, 28 October 2014 10:59 (nine years ago) link
Yes I did pick The Faber Book, saying there were a ton of copies of it at Judd for 3.95 (now no more as you all took advntage of my tip).
Thanks for the Cavafy webpage. It is Keeley/Sherrard. I'll investigate and re-read that essay by Brodsky again.
Elytsis's Body of Summer:
A long time has passed since the last rain was heardAbove the ants and lizardsNow the sun burns endlesslyThe fruit paints its mouthThe pores in the earth open slowlyAnd beside the water that drips in syllablesA huge plant gaze into the eye of the sun.Who is he that lies on the shores beyondStretched on his back, smoking silver-burnt olive leaves?Cicadas grow warm in his earsAnts are at work on his chestLizards slide in the grass of his armpitsAnd over the seaweed of his feet a wave rolls lightlySent by the little siren that sang:" O body o summer, naked, burntEaten away by oil and saltBody of rock and shudder of the heartGreat ruffling wind in the osier hairBeneath of basil above the curly pubic moundFull of stars and pine needlesBody , deep vessel of the day!"Soft rains come, violent hailThe land passes lashed in the claws of snow-stormWhich darkens in the depths with furious wavesThe hills plunge into the dense udders of the cloudsAnd yet behind all this you laugh carefreeAnd find your deathless moment againAnd the sun finds you again in the sandy shoresAs the sky finds you again in your naked health."
Who is he that lies on the shores beyondStretched on his back, smoking silver-burnt olive leaves?Cicadas grow warm in his earsAnts are at work on his chestLizards slide in the grass of his armpitsAnd over the seaweed of his feet a wave rolls lightlySent by the little siren that sang:
" O body o summer, naked, burntEaten away by oil and saltBody of rock and shudder of the heartGreat ruffling wind in the osier hairBeneath of basil above the curly pubic moundFull of stars and pine needlesBody , deep vessel of the day!
"Soft rains come, violent hailThe land passes lashed in the claws of snow-stormWhich darkens in the depths with furious wavesThe hills plunge into the dense udders of the cloudsAnd yet behind all this you laugh carefreeAnd find your deathless moment againAnd the sun finds you again in the sandy shoresAs the sky finds you again in your naked health."
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 28 October 2014 12:51 (nine years ago) link