Art, Poetry, Writing

Hospital, doggerel antidote – what is truly great

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Bradley: His Book, 1896, by William Henry Bradley, NYC Metropolitan Museum of ArtHad a spare hour yesterday, spent it writing in a hospital cafeteria. My first productive period in a month and a half. Felt good to be in a hospital out of volition. No cause to visit anyone, or to get treatment. No vigil. Taking agency against amoral Nature. Did you feel the burn, there, physical entropy? Did ya? Sure, the eventual victory will be yours, but to rage, RAGE against the dying of the light, yesterday gave off a lovely light.

A couple lines of musty doggerel yesterday stuck in my head yesterday. In the gym today, I tried to find something to chase that away. Scanning my iPod, found “Seascape” by Stephen Spender. The catch? The track is named “Seascape” on the iPod, but it was “I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great” that I listened to over and over. Let that be a warning about the integrity of bootleg poetry tracks downloaded during the Napster heyday of 2000-01.

I Think Continually Of Those Who Were Truly Great
Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

Poetry, Reading, Writing

Origin of “text”

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On a lark, I looked up the word “text” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here’s what that Good Book gives as the origin:

“Etymology: < French texte, also Old Northern French tixte, tiste (12th cent. in Godefroy), the Scriptures, etc., < medieval Latin textus the Gospel, written character (Du Cange), Latin textus (u-stem) style, tissue of a literary work (Quintilian), lit. that which is woven, web, texture, < text-, participial stem of tex-ĕre to weave."

I had never thought of text as a tissue or something that is woven into a tissue. It always seemed a linear train of words flopped one over the other, then stacked sheet over sheet. Or typed up and pasted in. A product to be stored. Had never considered it as a planned fabric both lateral and longitudinal. I like that very much.

Art, History, Politics, Reading, Writing

Gore Vidal now through the door marked “exit”

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I’ll miss this guy. He was sometimes full of horseshit, but when others claimed he was full of horseshit often they were proven to be wrong. So allowance must be given.

He tended to bring out the worst in people who weren’t confident in themselves. Interviewers/journalists suffering from what Harold Bloom would call the anxiety of influence got con-testy with Vidal, which he would detect and throw back. The best interviewers were fine in their own skin and ended up in decent conversations or giving him good setups for his lapidary phrases and tales.

He loved his country, his republic, with a deep love that meant always wanting better, and wanting to ward off its perceived decline by calling out when it had more pomp than substance. No, that’s way too buttery. He saw our country as a Miss Havisham, and described her past charms and decay in great and savage detail. If he had a magic wand to restore her vitality he would, but he knew woefully no such wand was available.

Feeling sore about both Vidal and Christopher Hitchens dying within a year of one another. I doubt I’ll be as deeply eager what any other public figure, or eager to be suprised by what any other public figure thinks.

Chronically elegiac with a zest lit from a core of hope.

Art, Poetry, Writing

From lump to bean

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A book of Anne Sexton poems have been on my nightstand for about a year. I can only read 1-2 poems at a time before saturation. On those nights, chances run high I’ll dream about Sexton. Mostly her voice and sitting around in living rooms and dining rooms. Don’t even know what we talk about. Tried to write her back, with Father’s Day on my mind.

Women are born twice, men once.

But for us, son, the drying off is slow.

From lump to sapling to tree to bean.

And in between we watch and attend.

Watch clumsiness turn to grace to poise to squeezing life out again.

Help from the outside, only let in in small ways.

We are builders and servants, boasters and protectors.

Anne, what would you have made of us

Had you seen us grow from lump around again to bean? Seen us

Fuller, slower than invaders and thralls.

Between you and your slender friend in a Boston cab,

Breaking away from Lord Lowell. Brobdingnag jokes.

You both would catch in my eyes when I saw you as vessels.

As I would see in yours whether I was politic and small or rescuer and hunter.

Consigning you to gray sparking damp clouds would not happen on my watch.

Talking with trained strangers and medicinal minuets probably would.

Son, see how a poem to you turns to apostrophe

Of desire and dreams and duties?

Those are all of the things we do.

Do not let them be all the things you are.

Do not be afraid to take taxi cab rides alone.

Do not take all of your taxi cab rides alone.

Poetry, Writing

Beats

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Giving semi-solace to mock sadness during a fast song.

Salmon, smoked salmon, on that salad, please (as a smart choice).

Shiva playful poses through a mist frosted bathroom’s glass pane.

Hard plastic inside soft plastic rattling of kinship to say hey, me too.

The drawer openings and closings, faucet openings and closings, day over day would hit a rhythm more measured than the most meticulous drummer. Not a rhythm that shakes the world, but a pulse.

Poetry, Writing

Hill of beans

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We are a speck
On the Earth which is a speck
In the Solar system
A speck in a galaxy
Which is a speck in space among other galaxies
In a universe of light matter that is a speck amid dark matter.

Our primate brains seek patterns and causes and effects and correlations.
Loads of primate brains throw a god(s) speck in there
Because they need a speck traffic cop directing these fluffy materials.

Speck and space and Ur-space.
Makes our speck to speck clinging and latching
Everything we can have. Statistically nothing.
But two specks are larger than one speck.

Poetry, Writing

Do not go. I must go.

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Do not go.
I must go.
“You don’t have a complex, you have a cathedral.” said over the shoulder.
Not so. Simple.
It was shelter.
It was guileless.
It was free.
It was us.
It was me.
We know this.
Do not go.
I must go.

Poetry, Writing

Be witching.

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Darting through the sky dragging trails of coal black smoke.

Sometimes with letters, most often circles.

At times the trail is blinding magnesium crackling and sizzling with an odor that makes the teeth hurt.

Then I land, dismount the broom. Look to the skies and see other letters, other circles.

Higher in elevation from where I patrolled, less fresh.

I used to fly lower altitude, more often I tilt upwards to try the cooler air and better view.

Walking on, I see other circles, faded but over my station. For my notice?

Some a pungent bilious green, hopefully dispersed before they catch the breeze on earth. Birds and bugs dropping unconscious before then. Take shelter under a tree.

How many heartbeats do we have? Is it vain to take to the skies? Vain to scan upwards for messages and deeds? Tough to take direction (or evasion) when there are errands to do.

Beasts of the field spend all their heartbeats doing their duty, consuming, sleeping, excreting.

Beasts of the field do not look to the skies, or take to the skies, from compulsion.

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