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October 28 2010
On a Drop of Dew: Andrew Marvell
SEE, how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
(Yet careless of its mansion new,
For the clear region where 'twas born,)
Round in itself incloses ;
And, in its little globe's extent,
Frames, as it can, its native element.
How it the purple flower does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies ;
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light,
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls, and unsecure,
Trembling, lest it grow impure ;
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
(Could it within the human flower be seen,)
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves, and blossoms green,
And, recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away ;
So the world-excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day ;
Dark beneath, but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go ;
How girt and ready to ascend ;
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna's sacred dew distil ;
White and entire, though congealed and chill ;
Congealed on earth ; but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of the almighty sun.
Via luminarium.org
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
(Yet careless of its mansion new,
For the clear region where 'twas born,)
Round in itself incloses ;
And, in its little globe's extent,
Frames, as it can, its native element.
How it the purple flower does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies ;
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light,
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls, and unsecure,
Trembling, lest it grow impure ;
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
(Could it within the human flower be seen,)
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves, and blossoms green,
And, recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away ;
So the world-excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day ;
Dark beneath, but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go ;
How girt and ready to ascend ;
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna's sacred dew distil ;
White and entire, though congealed and chill ;
Congealed on earth ; but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of the almighty sun.
Via luminarium.org
October 25 2010
“ --it came to me that the reason to make things less plain in a poem is that only by getting the reader to participate in making the meaning does it become a poem. ”— Alice Fulton, from 'The Poet's Notebook'
October 23 2010
The Garden (excerpt), by Andrew Marvell; via 'The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy' anthology
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head ;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine ;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach ;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide :
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings ;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
October 16 2010
Language as Migration: An Interview with Mark McMorris; R A I N T A X I o n l i n e Winter 2008/2009
"I was really interested in poetic form, rather than in the transmission of a particular lived environment. This lived environment didn’t interest me that much. Vernaculars are indices of lived environments. Then you also have images, and you have a way of having your thoughts unfold, which is one aspect of vernacular. Okay, you have your vernacular, you have your images, and you have the problem that the poem takes up and handles. All of those things tell you are reading an American poem, a poem from the South, a poem from New Zealand, a poem from the Inuit, a poem from the Caribbean. None of those things interested me. Whatever the indices of a lived environment were, those did not interest me. What interested me was poetic form. The handling of language, or as Pound says “the dance of the intellect” on words. That’s what I was interested in. Why it interested me is because I felt it. The things I was reading were very compelling."Poets' Quarterly review of Entrepôt by Mark McMorris
"It is probably worth noting that an entrepôt is a trading post, a locus of exchange, a place populated by transients. It is, as McMorris stated in an interview in Rain Taxi before this book was completed, “a place that is in between other places.” Fittingly, the overall mood herein is one of transition, of displacement. (And this mood is heightened by the fact that many of the poems are presented as epistles to a character named Michael, as if they were dispatches from an expedition.) In any such environment, affection and conflict inevitably arise. And so it is in these poems: love and war are the yin and yang of human interaction."August 14 2010
“ In any such environment, affection and conflict inevitably arise. And so it is in these poems: love and war are the yin and yang of human interaction. ”— Poets' Quarterly review of Entrepôt by Mark McMorris.
Dear Michael (2); Mike McMorris (on Poets.org)
Mike McMorris is another new poet I've discovered via the anthology 'American Hybrid.' He has a new book of poems out this year, Entrepôt. Unfortunately not available on Kindle.August 08 2010
This is the best approximation I can do of the painting 'Door 84' by Dorothea Tanning. The right side is the cover to Alice Fulton's 'Felt' book. I couldn't find the original painting anywhere online, so I had to Photoshop it from Amazon's images from the book :/ Tanning is a pretty famous Surrealist painter, so I'm surprised this painting isn't online somewhere.
Joan Mitchell, White Territory; via UMMA Collections - American Art (best image I could find of this painting)
It inspired Alice Fulton's poem 'Close' - from her book 'Felt.'
== I miss you when I visit you ==
I stand too close == I see too much ==
August 07 2010
Alice Fulton is my new favorite poet!
I discovered her by chance today while reading random poets in an anthology called 'American Hybrid.'
I like the following extended quote, about what poets should aim for, from an interview in The Atlantic:
You can end up being didactic and polemical no matter what you're writing about. To avoid being stale and preachy or clichéd, the poet always needs to ask herself how to approach the world freshly and deeply. No matter what is holding your attention as a poet, you should always say to yourself, "How can I approach it so deeply that it becomes eccentric, idiosyncratic, and mine?"
Nothing is worse than a poem that's secondhand and cynical, a poem that was written to get into a certain magazine or for a certain market. But if one really engages with a subject, something quirky and strange—good strange—will come of it, whether you're writing about war or love. The other thing to think about is the language itself. When we worry about didacticism and the polemical, we mean that we don't want our writing to become simplistic or superficial like T-shirt slogans. A poem is inherently a layered text that has layer upon layer of meaning. You need to look for the language that is the most connotative and veiled and subversive
Reposted by
Lass
Lass
June 03 2010
Memory; W.B. Yeats; from The Wild Swans at Coole, 1919
One had a lovely
face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.
January 25 2009
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