Two Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli poems translated by Mike Stocks

Kiddiwinkies

Just listen to a mother talking crap:
the brat she drops has barely hit the ground
before she's bragging he's the best around,
and if you disagree you get a slap.

He knows who's who, his gifts run deep, he's full
of talk, he's right as rain, he stands apart---
he's lovely as a finished work of art
and packed with wonders, is this miracle!

In fact he'll be an ugly little monkey,
a stupid, floppy, whining, greedy critter
a dribbling stinking scabby nappy-shitter.

To mum, the gruntings of this tit-mad junkie
surpass the sweet songs of a West End name.
The mothers of this world are all the same.


The Life of Man

Nine months in a bog, then swaddling clothes
and sloppy kisses, rashes, big round tears,
a baby harness, baby walker, bows,
short trousers and a cap for several years,

and then begin the agonies of school,
the ABC, the pox, the six of the best,
the poo-poo in the pants, the ridicule,
the chilblains, measles, fevers on the chest;

then works arrives, the daily slog, the rent,
the fasts, the stretch inside, the government,
the hospitals, the debts to pay, the fucks...

The chaser to it all, on God's say-so,
(after summer's sun and winter's snow)
is death, and after death comes hell---life sucks.

Roberto Bolano poem

RESURRECTION

Poetry slips into dreams
like a diver in a lake.
Poetry, braver than anyone,
slips in and sinks
like lead
through a lake infinite as Loch Ness
or tragic and turbid as Lake Balaton.
Consider it from below:
a diver
innocent
covered in feathers
of will.
Poetry slips into dreams
like a diver who's dead
in the eyes of God.

Three pictures of Mandelstam

Ernest Fenollosa

Thus in all poetry a word is like a sun, with its corona and chromosphere; words crowd upon words, and enwrap each other in their luminous envelopes until sentences become clear, continuous light-bands.

My list of 20 poetry books that made me first fall in love with poetry

In one of Ron Silliman's recent links updates there was a posting for the above. Since looking at that I have found myself mentally compiling a list. Here it is (in no order, although the order tends to be fairly close to the order in which I read them, the first one I was 16 or 17):

-Dante "Inferno"
-Jim Carroll "Fear of Dreaming"
-Allen Ginsberg "Howl"
-Allen Ginsberg "Kaddish"
-Lawrence Ferlinghetti "A Coney Island of the Mind"
-Lawrence Ferlinghetti "A Far Rockaway of the Heart"
-Arthur Rimbaud "Illuminations"
-Arthur Rimbaud "A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat"
-Mina Loy "The Lost Lunar Baedeker"
-"Complete Poems of Hart Crane"
-Bob Kaufman "Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness"
-Gregory Corso "Long Live Man"
-"Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas"
-Federico Garcia Lorca "Poet in New York"
-Guillaume Apollinaire "Alcools"
-Andre Breton "Earthlight"
-"Selected Poems of Rene Char"
-"Selected Poems of Pierre Reverdy"
-"Collected Poems of Stephane Mallarme"
- Octavio Paz "Draft of Shadows"

I feel cheated. There are at least ten more books I can think of right off the top of my head that should be on here. The fact is that whenever I read a "miracle in words" I fall in love with poetry again.

Samuel Vasquez

To write poetry is to begin beyond all knowledge. One paints to see, one writes to hear. "One paints to know what painting is", one writes poetry to know what poetry is. The storyteller writes about what he knows, the poet writes to know. Poetry is the most extreme experience of language, and the requirement of maximum yield from the word takes place at the frontier where there is a tear in language itself.

Samuel Vasquez

Imagination is not an avoidance of reality. Imagination is a responsible (and committed) re-entry into reality, and in that re-entry the poet adds his poem to pre-existing reality making the poem a reality in itself.

Angel Crespo aphorisms

Poetry is like a needle in a haystack. When the poet finally finds it, he hides it again among the chaff.

Poetry is like a hunter who takes his hawk up to the mountain and then hunts it.

Poetry is like a field sown with wheat. The master comes and asks, "Who's the swine that got rid of the locusts?"

The poet is like a hunter who has a bow and rifle: he sends arrows into the air and then tries to shoot them down.

When the poet finds the penny, he feels poorer than when he was looking for it.

Imaginations doesn't invent images, but harmonizes them with the initial nothingness of the poem.

If you can call a butterfly a flying flower, can you call a flower a stationary butterfly? No. Poetry is not a roundtrip ticket.

New links

It has been quite awhile since I have updated my links. Several sites to add:


New European Poets blog http://neweuropeanpoets.blogspot.com/

Free Library Podcast (podcasts of events at the Philadelphia library, a recent Breytenbach lecture available) http://libwww.library.phila.gov/podcast/

11th century Japanese poetry manuscripts http://bunka.nii.ac.jp/SearchDetail.do?heritageId=87216

Muse India (wonderful online periodical devoted to Indian literature, with a strong emphasis on poetry. Special sections on poetry in Marathi, Indian English, Tamil, Gujarati, Manipuri and more) http://www.museindia.com/pissue.asp

Bookworm (Terrific program, over 900 shows archived including the past few years available as mp3 downloads. Eshleman, Ashbery, Coral Bracho have been a few of the guests) http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw

UniVerse: A United Nations of Poetry http://www.universeofpoetry.org/

Douglas Messerli's PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog started late in 2008 has the biographies, selected bibliography and in many cases several poems by 164 poets from around the world thus far http://pippoetry.blogspot.com/

Math formula for poetry

A=B at the same time that A does not equal B

I did this I did that in Chicago

Wednesday:

-Arrive at Midway around noon

-Check in to the Congress Plaza and then register

-Eat lunch at the Russian Tea Service & walk around in the rain

-Go to a reading sponsored by Action Books, Circumference, Drunken Boat, Jubilat, A Public Space & Words Without Borders. Saw Don Mee Choi & Kim Hyseoon, Daniel Borzutsky (read translations he is currently working on), Jennifer Scappettone (read translations of Amelia Rosselli), Annie Finch, Thom Ward, Suzanne Buffam, Srikanth Reddy, Arda Collins, Noah Eli Gordon, Ellen Dore Watson & Matthew Zapruder (read translations of Eugen Jebeleanu).

-Go to Myopic Books. Easily one of the finest poetry selections I have ever seen in a used bookstore, plus the hours are perfect for insomniacs (open until 130 am every night). I leave with Nina Cassian's Take My Word for It & Eric Basso's Accidental Monsters.

Thursday:

-First panel on aphorism. Fascinated by the translations of four Spanish aphorists translated by Steven Stewart.

-Second panel a reading from the collaborative project 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book. Readings by Dean Young, Christopher Merrill & Marvin Bell.

-Bought the only issue of Circumference I was missing for five dollars!

-Third panel a discussion of oracular poetry. Intrigued particularly by Patricia Spears Jones comments on druidic and Irish poetic traditions.

-Fourth panel on Multiformalism: Postmodern Poetics of Form. Hank Lazer. Susan Schultz, K. Silem Mohammad & Annie Finch. Easily the most combative event.

-Fifth panel a tribute to Albert Goldbarth. Goldbarth read a piece right at the end, really great.

-Sixth panel on the anthology American Hybrid. Fascinating talks by all involved but Cole Swensen and Forest Gander's remarks really stood out for me.

-Eat italian food & fall asleep early.

Friday:

-Go to the bookfair where at a huge discount I purchase David Huerta's Before Saying Any of the Great Words, Affonso Romano De Sant Anna's A Man and His Shadow, Astrid Cabral's Cage. Tomaz Salamun's There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair, With Everything We've Got: A Personal Anthology of Yiddish Poetry, Nicanor Parra's After-Dinner Declarations, Jordan Scott's blert, K. Silem Mohammad's Breathalyzer, Etel Adnan's Seasons, Dolores Dorantes sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and SEPTEMBRE, Valentina Saracini's Dreaming Escape, Samih Al-Qasim's Sadder Than Water, and a sampler of five Slovenian poets published by Ugly Duckling. The discounts on all of the books were so significant that all of these cost about one hundred dollars.

- Go to the Art Institute for a reading by Tomaz Salamun. Outstanding.

-Return to AWP for my first panel of the day. A reading from Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves.

-The next panel was really amazing. Tranlastions of works from Chile, Cuba and Mexico. The wonderful Mexican poet Laura Solozano kicked off the reading.

-Last panel of the day was a tribute celebrating Thomas James. Tracy Smith gave a fantastic presentation.

-At nine that night the Mandorla reading. Forest Gander read his translations of Bracho, Pura Lopez-Colome and a really great excerpt from an Uruguyan author whose name has unfortunately slipped my mind. Kent Johnson gave a great reading as well.

Saturday:

-The first panel of the day turned out well despite John Yau's absence. A discussion of ekphrastic poetry, Janee J. Baugher and Cole Swensen gave great presentations.

-The second panel a discussion on the difference between prose poetry & flash fiction. Justin Courter, author of one of the best novels I read the past year Skunk: A Love Story, had one of the funniest presentations.

-Third panel highlights were by far seeing John Bradley and George Kalamaras. They talked about the work of Gene Frumkin and Bert Meyers.

-The fourth panel I was mesmerized by Cass Dalglish's talk on cuneiform, especially her comments on Enheduanna who was the first poet in history to claim authorship of a text.

-The fifth panel consisted of more translators (Helene Cardona, Willis Barnstone, Martha Collins and Dennis Maloney). Maloney's reading of his translations of Japanese hermit Zen poets was really great.

-The last event of the day as a Tomaz Salamun reading. Although he read a few of the same pieces he'd read the day before at the Art Institute it was wonderful seeing him again.

Today:

- The Edvard Munch exhibit at the Art Institute which opened yesterday. Exceeded my expectations. As well as having an impressive number of his works I was finally able to see a few of my favorite artists-James Ensor and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

-Two issues of Banipal waiting for me when I arrived home.

Where I will be two weeks from now..

...in my hotel room in Chicago anticipating the first full glorious day of AWP.

Daniil Kharms translator interview

Shortly before my shift ended tonight I finished "Today I Wrote Nothing" by Daniil Kharms, translated by Matvei Yankelevich (one of the founders of Ugly Duckling). I first encountered, or rather was floored by, Kharms work three years ago. At the time there were only a few translated volumes, all out of print. The recent translations and publications of the Oberiu group stand as one of the most exciting and important events in poetry of the past few years.

A site I check almost daily for new poetry audio is http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onword/ Tomorrow night Yankelevich will be interviewed on Shaindel Beers program "Translated By". This isn't the first time that the same day I finished a book I noticed that the author was scheduled for an interview. Most recently this happened right after I finished Will Alexander's "Sunrise in Armageddon."

Eugene Ostashevsky discusses the Oberiu in show #151 here: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/XCP.html

and here is a link to twenty-four pieces by Kharms:

http://www.sevaj.dk/kharms/kharmseng.htm

Yang Lian

"...Inside and Outside of China, Inside and Outside of one's own languages---the real journey toward the open-ended question of Poetry-----POETRY IS"

C.P. Cavafy

As Long as You Can

And even if you cannot make your life what you want,
for as long as you can, at least
try to do this: do not trivialize it
in all the busy contacts of the world,
in all the swarm and gossip.

Do not trivialize it, hauling it,
roaming with it, always exposing it
to the pairings and relations
of everyday stupidity,
until it ends up irritating, stubborn as a beggar.

Inger Christensen poem on a building

Link to a larger version:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7aaWDpeQwNlPx7Fombkz17Wo4LJv_QAIOyQUm3kpR1cFcVKW5H-MTj0R41CPkmq7yoTochkojXf4zwPXojv6KOiW6jZV131y8lBjKFkQTRUm-WShdZyE5GZsZjYmaq8uBrHZWoFXYbmG/s1600-h/inger.jpg

AWP decisions

I am buying my plane tickets for AWP this week and when I just looked at the site I noticed that the off-site schedule has changed (it'd be worth the trip just for the off-site readings alone) Rabbit Light has been moved from Saturday to Friday. While this will let me go to the Best of Fence reading (K. Silem Mohammad and Peter Gizzi are the two readers at that event I am most excited about seeing) I am now faced with several difficult decisions to make Friday night. The main reason I want to go to the Rabbit Light is for Noah Eli Gordon and especially Abraham Smith's reading. Yet at the same time Dean Young & Eric Baus will be at a different venue (I have been reading a lot of Young's work lately. Friday I read "Skid" and the following day I reread "Embryoyo") and at another venue is a reading for Mandorla magazine with Kent Johnson as one of the listed readers! This isn't the first difficult decision I have had to made regarding this trip. In fact over the weekend I carefully wrote out a schedule so that I could better coordinate off-site events with the regular program.

I also noticed on the Art Institute's site that an Edvard Munch exhibit opens on Valentine's Day. Luckily I have not yet purchased my plane tickets so I am planning on returning later on the fifteenth so I can go see the exhibit. Once I return home there will be no shortage of readings for awhile. Four days after I return there is going to be a David Kirby reading, nearly two weeks later Aaron Kunin and Maggie Zurwaski, the following week C.D. Wright and a couple of weeks after that Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

AWP by plane, train or automobile

I will most likely NOT go to Berkeley in February to see Salamun, instead I have my eye on AWP Chicago. Not only will I still be able to see Salamun, but I will even be able to see two readings by him as opposed to one in Berkeley. Not to mention the scores of other writers that will be present I would LOVE to see. Plus it will actually be more affordable considering how much closer Chicago is to where I live.