29 December 2010
28 December 2010
be gold. be home. be found.
thinking of what lies ahead. making real all the tales you have read.
your days out here are not alone. now you have a place to call your home.
as every snow fall comes to rest. each day will end in sunset.
i know that your days will be gold. before we fade as all of us grow old.
brand new footprints on this land. touching colors with your hands.
we look upon this new frontier. with mountains far and rivers near.
the wilderness your playground. now we rest with all our safety found.last days
24 December 2010
Lines for Winter
for Ros Krauss
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.
- Mark Strand
Night Ferry
Blood-drop, lung of fire setting past
the sea bell and wave; why am I separate
from that giant burrowing into further life?
The body breathes and rides
a heavy-netted ocean swollen
by the tide. Under the half-moon
it’s the lighthouse light that turns
the rest of me to early nightfall,
headland, home. I send it back,
a mirrored flickering across cold waters.
We allow ourselves the crest that breaks
above the surface then re-forms.
We make it human and we call it love.
This wintering is my own and not the world’s,
although the world is wintering.
- Peter Sacks
22 December 2010
1,000 illuminated poems
light in words
words in light
"With the installation 1.000 poems by mail, we wanted to illuminate the poetry and at the same time and ensure that the visitors actively enjoyed the installation.
To do this, we filled the garden with 1,000 white envelopes containing poems written especially for the occasion by the poets who participated in the festival.
The lit envelopes remained hanging in the garden for 3 days, serving as intimate illumination for the poetic festival. The last night, with light still in the interior, they were offered to the public as keepsakes, or better yet, for them to address to a loved one, to whom we would send the envelope.
With the intervention we wanted to look a little towards the past, in a nostalgic way and remember times in which important words travelled in envelopes.
We also wanted each person that read the poetic message, to think of an important person to whom they would like it to arrive.
We collected about 100 envelopes with addresses which we hurried to send to their recipients. Knowing that the letters arrived still illuminated filled us with joy."
To do this, we filled the garden with 1,000 white envelopes containing poems written especially for the occasion by the poets who participated in the festival.
The lit envelopes remained hanging in the garden for 3 days, serving as intimate illumination for the poetic festival. The last night, with light still in the interior, they were offered to the public as keepsakes, or better yet, for them to address to a loved one, to whom we would send the envelope.
With the intervention we wanted to look a little towards the past, in a nostalgic way and remember times in which important words travelled in envelopes.
We also wanted each person that read the poetic message, to think of an important person to whom they would like it to arrive.
We collected about 100 envelopes with addresses which we hurried to send to their recipients. Knowing that the letters arrived still illuminated filled us with joy."
19 December 2010
favorite music of 2010
1. menomena - mines
2. eluvium - similes
3. magic man - real life color
4. deftones - diamond eyes
5. gregory and the hawk - leche
6. future islands - in evening air
5. gregory and the hawk - leche
6. future islands - in evening air
7. gold panda - lucky shiner
8. ólafur arnalds - ...and they have escaped the weight of darkness
9. goldmund - famous places
10. toro y moi - causers of this
11. hauschka - foreign landscapes
12. jónsi - go
tracks of the year
07 December 2010
05 December 2010
I Trust Paul Celan
1.
Speak, you too,speak as the last one,
have your say.
Speak--
But do not separate the no from the yes.
Give your saying also meaning:
give it its shadow.
Give it enough shadow,
give it as much
as you know to be parceled out between
midnight and midday and midnight.
Look around:
see how alive it gets all around--
At death! Alive!
Speaks true, who speaks shadows.
But now the place shrinks, on which you stand:
Whereto now, shadow-stripped one, whereto?
Climb. Feel yourself upwards.
Thinner you become, unrecognizable, finer!
Finer: a fathom
along which it wants to descend, the star:
to swim down below, below
where he sees himself swimming: in the swell
of wandering words.
(translated by Pierre Joris)
2.
As for God, quoting Kafka:
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no."
("Sometimes God, sometimes nothing.")
(Jean Daive on Paul Celan)
3.
Is stammering a waste of words?
Yes and No.
28 November 2010
sunday reading
The woman in the wedding dress waiting for the bus is called Diane, and we lived in the same apartment building years ago. She was training to be a nurse, and I was in my final year of a PhD in ancient history. She lived across the hall, and we would drink chamomile tea together. Sometimes she would discuss her knowledge of hospital procedures. Other times, I would clumsily fight my way through a passage of ancient Greek or explain the significance of ancient bartering.
Sometimes we would hold hands for no reason or pet her cat at the same time. I had planned to fly to Athens and write my thesis, so the night before I moved out, we had a farewell dinner. After a long meal with wine and the retelling of old stories, we made a promise. With my elbows on the kitchen table, and her fingers skating across the vinyl, we agreed that if we were not married by the time we were forty, we would marry each other. Then we made love. I always wondered what happened to her. Los Angeles is a place of nightmares and fantasies.
-The World Laughs in Flowers, Simon Van Booy
27 November 2010
26 November 2010
The Ear is an Organ Made for Love
(for Me-K) It was the language that left us first.
The Great Migration of words. When people
spoke they punched each other in the mouth.
There was no vocabulary for love. Women
became masculine and could no longer give
birth to warmth or a simple caress with their
lips. Tongues were overweight from profanity
and the taste of nastiness. It settled over cities
like fog smothering everything in sight. My
ears begged for camouflage and the chance
to go to war. Everywhere was the decay of
how we sound. Someone said it reminded
them of the time Sonny Rollins disappeared.
People spread stories of how the air would
never be the same or forgive. It was the end
of civilization and nowhere could one hear
the first notes of A Love Supreme. It was as
if John Coltrane had never been born. - E. Ethelbert Miller
18 November 2010
the cult of mindy
two poems by Mindy Nettifee
The First Time
“…some people think the truth is the worst thing that can happen.
The truth is not the worst thing that can happen.”
-Tony Hoagland
The truth is not the worst thing that can happen.”
-Tony Hoagland
I.
The first time your heart was torn from your chest,
You thought you were dying.
You knew you could not live with the empty space.
So you replaced your heart with metaphors
And set out to create a world where the metaphor was unbreakable.
You thought you were dying.
You knew you could not live with the empty space.
So you replaced your heart with metaphors
And set out to create a world where the metaphor was unbreakable.
Now look what you’ve done—
You can’t breathe so you write.
You can’t hurt so you drink rum and pour our pirate chanties.
You can’t want revenge so you leave.
You can’t breathe so you write.
You can’t hurt so you drink rum and pour our pirate chanties.
You can’t want revenge so you leave.
II.
When I see you I have two thoughts:
You are the reason The Smith’s wrote songs,
And my god, you are beautiful.
You are the reason The Smith’s wrote songs,
And my god, you are beautiful.
You are so beautiful
Blinking stars go blind.
Blinking stars go blind.
But I can see this is going to get ugly.
The metaphors don’t make you feel whole anymore.
You sell out your deepest insecurities for a handful of laughs.
This life has you wound so tight you make grandfather clocks look relaxed.
You hold your body like banks hold money—all locked up.
Your shoulders are glass rocks waiting for the next attack.
The metaphors don’t make you feel whole anymore.
You sell out your deepest insecurities for a handful of laughs.
This life has you wound so tight you make grandfather clocks look relaxed.
You hold your body like banks hold money—all locked up.
Your shoulders are glass rocks waiting for the next attack.
But you’ve got it all wrong.
You don’t survive history.
History survives you.
History survives you.
There is no breakthrough without breakdown.
III.
If you’re going to break, shatter.
No explanations.
No limp-legged dog excuses.
No messing with this bullet proof vest fury
So popular with the cops and the presidents.
No explanations.
No limp-legged dog excuses.
No messing with this bullet proof vest fury
So popular with the cops and the presidents.
You’ve got to break like Texas.
You’ve got to take the pain from the safety valve of your heart
And return it to your fists.
Fight your better judgment ‘till you’re sinister again,
‘till your body remembers what it already knows how to do—
bend back
and manifest grief.
Scream torches ‘till you embarrass the enlightened.
You’ve got to take the pain from the safety valve of your heart
And return it to your fists.
Fight your better judgment ‘till you’re sinister again,
‘till your body remembers what it already knows how to do—
bend back
and manifest grief.
Scream torches ‘till you embarrass the enlightened.
Please. No more polite conversations with your death wish.
Give it something useful to do.
Change your life.
Give it something useful to do.
Change your life.
Cause I can’t stand to see you like this.
So blue, my eyes turn green in your presence.
Listen—you are so beautiful,
Grass pushes through sidewalk cracks just to kiss your feet.
So blue, my eyes turn green in your presence.
Listen—you are so beautiful,
Grass pushes through sidewalk cracks just to kiss your feet.
IV.
Maybe no one ever told you,
But the heart IS a metaphor.
Yours is growing so strong
You’ll have your rhythm back any day now—
But the heart IS a metaphor.
Yours is growing so strong
You’ll have your rhythm back any day now—
Loving like rumours spread.
Dreaming like lunatic spacemen jump from their suits.
Living like you never forgot how.
Dreaming like lunatic spacemen jump from their suits.
Living like you never forgot how.
---
After We Saw Kids Pointing At That Dead Baby Whale
Now that your beard is no longer a fashion statement,
but a crude three-dimensional graph illustrating
the number of years you pictured her lips while failing her.
Now that you've cried so hard and long the 4th Street
beggars are pressing quarters into your palms.
You know how good it can feel, in its own way,
to be so profoundly disappointed in yourself.
How strangely magnificent, to be this demolished,
to have taken it, as they say, like a man—on the chin, to the testicles—
to have tried to take a bite with your last dangling tooth of dignity
and come away starving and grinning and sobbing.
’Cause really, how much worse can it get?
Short answer: a lot worse.
Don't think about that right now.
You've broken all the promises you never made,
and few that you did, and they turned around
and broke you right back.
So be it.
From here on out you don't have to pretend
to be perfect, or whole, or even right.
Your eyes can take a vacation
from being windows to your soul.
You can hang out with the other war torn countries,
who you suddenly share a language with.
Poland will show you her scars.
Croatia will teach you card games so cutthroat
you won't be able to speak for days.
Iraq will start accepting your apologies.
It may not feel like it just yet
but you've stumbled upon a kind of freedom.
Your stomach now full of pride,
you can take your expectations off like clothes.
Stand outside in the cool night air
and show off your brand new shamelessness.
Howl if that's your thing.
Scare the neighbor's cat.
Breathe easy.
Notice the Moon's gained weight.
i was ten when i wrote my first poem
it's about the sun,
wind, trees, and flowers.
tomorrow i'll be reading my poems
for the first time here in the bay area.
they're about maps, lighthouses,
bird songs, and losing words.
13 November 2010
two poems
Poem
The heart’s the eye
we cry
the body through.
I want the word
for “to not
map, ever.”
- Graham Foust
---
Poem
You called, you're on the train, on Sunday,
I have just taken a shower and await
you. Clouds are slipping in off the ocean,
but the room is gently lit by the green
shirt you gave me. I have been practicing
a new way to say hello and it is fantastic.
You were so sad: goodbye. I was so sad.
All the shops were closed but the sky
was high and blue. I tried to walk it off
but I must have walked in the wrong direction. - Matthew Rohrer how to unplot a story
or
“There are some things one remembers
even though they may never have happened.”
- Harold Pinter
Light Travels
1
common time I follow you un- kept secret on a basic undersound 2
common time I follow you un- kept secret on a basic undersound
this is the first part of the rhyme allow for sequences of overheard
3 this is the first part of the rhyme allow for sequences of overheard close the curtains but playful elaborations of other- wise arrogant variations keeping the window open 4 close the curtains but playful elaborations of otherwise arrogant variation keeping the window open as it's wrong to shut one's eyes to dream it's raining while it is in fact raining 5
as it's wrong to shut
one's eyes to dream it's raining while it is in fact raining ears busied with hearing more than one voice the stream our tears unmirror 6 ears busied with hearing more than one voice the stream our tears unmirror or mere error as if naturally hard of divided noise rings in our fears 7 or mere error as if naturally hard of divided noise rings in our fears expands danger within our long thin hands contract across quiet gravel 8 expands danger within our long thin hands contract across quiet gravel
narrow fruit tin cans loss of the white of other eyes 9 narrow fruit tin cans loss of the white of other eyes song out of mind 10 song out of mind or am I tethered so blind a coloring of thought 11 or am I tethered so blind a coloring of thought intrinsically fuzzy the sound as pavement 12 intrinsically fuzzy the sound as pavement whereas tenses are a later development 13 whereas tenses are a later development limits of a body open sea the great sea journey 14 limits of a body open sea the great sea journey how different the grammars of to think or swim 15
how different the grammars of to think or swim reminiscence and extinction
- Keith Waldrop and Rosemarie Waldrop
09 November 2010
07 November 2010
06 November 2010
One Train May Hide Another
(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)
In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia
Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love
or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the
Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading
A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It
can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there. - Kenneth Koch
november
last year
i found myself in alaska
wanting to know
what does being cold mean
what does being cold mean
“If only I could see a landscape
as it is when I am not there.
But when I am in any place
I disturb the silence of heaven
by the beating of my heart.”
- Simone Weil, as quoted by Anne Carson02 November 2010
THE GIANTS WIN THE WORLD SERIES!
san francisco is under a GIANT cloud of pot smoke right now.
life is sweet.
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