Sea-Camel

No Painting Apocalyptic Enough

2005-02-16T02:22:00.000+01:00

And so it was very late at night, at the end of one of those days that just sits on your chest like that elephant of heart attack descriptions. It’s very late—when I usually write—sitting at my desk without distractions, worldly ones, but conspiracies abound to make one of those days even better, greater, though I assure you I am not schizophrenic as of yet (to my knowledge). I have always known that Little Emerson could not be trusted, especially when he’s reading Faust ad naseum. Little did I know you also cannot trust Blogger.

So I sit late at night, writing, something about the rumor of some future (in Galician), dark stuff, no doubt. I then go on into this raving rant, holier-than-thou speech. This is draft stuff that always goes into my notes—this endless pit of nonsense in my computer. (It’s so bad that my hard disk threatens—and, yes, I do hear its voice—to format itself if I don’t stop. So I write about my anger and the world and how poetry just isn’t the same without things being my way, apparently, no doubt, because I am an ILLUMINED one. This goes as a “draft” in blogger. All my pre-posts go into blogger as drafts because—and now you know why—I must edit my thoughts carefully. And so it stays a draft, but I go back, cause I can’t leave well enough alone, no sir. I change some things. I believe I added something as pastoral as “licking so much ass that the tongue ought to hurt.” (I’m not about to look up the exact definition of rudeness at this time.)

Morning finds me with this dumbfounded look when I see that my “draft” is not a draft. Not any more. I actually f****** posted this apocalyptic aberration. Not only did I post it, but C. Dale has already read it and has already commented on it. Shit! Resignation. He posted his comment in Spanish. There’s still time to undo, but no. Very little time passes when others make comments before I can delete my “draft”. And I delete it. Boy do I delete it! (People in my office: “Everything alright, Alberto.” Alberto stares at people. They go away.)

I found my post to be extremely insulting. Those who read it know this, though they were gracious enough to let it slide. (Those who haven’t read it can get a free copy from me by e-mail because I can’t do censorship, not even of the self-protecting kind.)

Yes. I am probably leaving the blog world, but surely for no reason involving the blogworld or other bloggers. And certainly not because of what hard-working poets are doing. I certainly did not want that to be the message and I certainly did not want to insult anyone. I came too damn close to that edge and I cannot allow myself to do that because I’m going through a bad time or cycle or moon phase, or simply because Taurus’ celestial horns have turned slightly askew on me.

My apologies to all the kind people who had enough sense to let this episode slide. It was an obnoxious, pretentious way to express my feelings, thoughts and frustrations. I am not being politically correct here; my thoughts, I think, are by now fairly well known and that won’t change. I simply apologize if I insulted anyone. No more Faust for the little fellow.

The House of Asterion

2005-02-08T01:27:00.000+01:00

A Casa de Astérion by Nuno Medeiros

I know they accuse me of arrogance, and perhaps of misanthropy, and perhaps of madness. Such accusations (for which I shall extract punishment in due time) are derisory. It is true that I never leave my house, but it is also true that its doors (whose number is infinite) are open day and night….Anyone may enter. [Jorge Luís Borges]

Excellent conversations all over Blogland. Concerns, concerns, concerns. (Rachmaninov playing in the background. I’m looking for desperate effect here guys.) But, really, some interesting stuff going around. Eddie Corral concerned over his manuscript possibilities (it’s almost there) and C. Dale giving some great advise on getting published. Bino’s to-do list I cannot do here, but here is my naïve question, as usual: in light of the existing immediacy offered by Internet, its far-reaching potential, is it possible to “publish” on the net maintaining the same quality standards that exist in print? Why can’t poetry, of all written literary media, find its respected place on the net thereby demystifying the publishing labyrinth?

I realize the economic implications involved in what I’m asking. Those implications draw a double-edged sword. On the one hand the big houses publish in order to make money or to win prices or to create prestige and, yes, eventually more money. Everyone knows that artistic merry-go-round. Fair enough. At the same time poetry, we hear, makes no money so publishers can’t afford to spend valuable resources on it. Fair enough too. So much fairness, in fact, that it all ends up being a game: there are only so many possibilities to publish and only so many poets that can be published. Supply and demand. Call the equation what you will. Since “getting published” is a game —one that requires a great deal of effort and a command of obstacle course rules as C. Dale and others have demonstrated— the best poetry may not necessarily be what gets published. (The one-handed clapping poet I’ll leave for another day.) Let’s not get all huffed and puffed here; not just yet, I haven’t thrown sand in anybody’s eyes. It just seems to me that the accomplishment of publishing has become more and more a career trail than an artistic one. Can a well-disciplined M.B.A. with a sure hand (a bit of compass, ruler and metronome) and that steady pulse for the line break have a better chance of getting published than the best crop reciting out of Iowa, Columbia or Timbuktu? You tell me.

Quality publishing on the net might be a solution. It should be the solution though it is of no interest that it be so at this time. Hard-binders and toilet-seat readers beware. In every country more and more people are trying their hand at poetry —poets being few and far between no matter what medium is involved— but those trying are beginning to do so by having their voices heard, literally heard, on the Internet. Why then so many submission rules for that poem on paper? Why so many restrictions? How many stamps must still be licked? I know: supply and demand. But if poetry is what it’s supposed to be, don’t laugh, that most special of arts, then why so many walls to climb, so many moats to cross? Yes, in this new millennium, most editors will not read three poems submitted via e-mail and assess them and reply to them in the time it should take (less than how many months?) because part of the game requires that you —desperate post office roamer— lick yet another stamp. It’s harder to reach the Ivory Tower than to write something worthy of it. Otherwise the song remains the same: Wake me up when this dream is over.

The Devil's Music

2005-02-02T01:01:00.000+01:00

Sergei Rachmaninov

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. [Goethe]

I know little about classical music. Little indeed. This prompted my friend Luís—who loves classical and particularly opera—to record for me some classical works that might be accessible to me “based on your personality,” he said. OK, I’m into Freudian approaches. And so we did. We went through Mahler’s “The Titan” in fairly good shape; Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Schumann’s Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 11, and a few others. All went well I must happily say. While the music at first seemed to my untrained ear to lack the passion of Bruce on the boardwalk, the strangeness of Floyd’s “Animals” or the psychedelic vision of Hendrix, overall this “classic”, sit-in-the-dark-study-stuff turned out quite promising and, ultimately, dangerous. The devil’s music, I’ve no doubt.

While listening to Rachmaninov for the past couple of weeks (cause Luís means business when he shares his passions), I suddenly had this urge to read Faust. I’d been through it years ago in English and so I thought why not give it a go in Spanish. So I began to read Fausto leisurely. Half-hour here, half-hour there. But this strange desire to read Goethe kept pushing and pushing at me. And I kept listening and listening to Rachmaninov; the reading feeding the music and the music the reading. How strange, no?

And then suddenly today I jumped on Google for no reason other than to know something about Rachmaninov. (The copy of the CD Luís made for me only had the picture cover of The Piano Concertos.) So what was the story behind them, I wondered? Interestingly —shockingly— I found this in reference to the First Piano Sonata:

The First Piano Sonata dates from 1907, only slightly earlier than the Third Concerto. Rachmaninov was characteristically modest about the work's prospects, stating that "no one will ever play this work because of its difficulty and length and perhaps too... because of its dubious musical merits." In fact the sonata is extremely interesting, not the least due to its hidden program. That the work was inspired by Goethe's Faust and that its three movements seek to portray in turn Faust, Gretchen (Margareta), and Mephistopheles was not revealed even to Konstantin Igumnov, who gave its first performances. Yet a number of musical ideas in this sonata can only be explained in terms of this program. For example, according to Rachmaninov scholar Barrie Martyn,

The Faustian motto with which the sonata opens consists of two elements: the first starkly arches the interval of a fifth in quiet questioning; the second, marked forte, peremptorily dismisses the preceding phrase and emphatically asserts a perfect cadence. The juxtaposition of abruptly contrasting dynamics and of doubt and certainty seems to reflect the struggle of opposing aspirations that goes on in the mind of Faust and Everyman.*

So there you have it. Mephistopheles at work; it wasn’t only Led Zeppelin that spoke the devil’s words in music, backwards. What messages lurk behind sound and cadence? Some of this —somewhere— has to do with poetry.

* Lyn and Lawrence Schenbeci, quoting, Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor. London: Scolar Press, 1990, p. 188.

Raising (minor) Poets

2005-01-28T01:27:00.000+01:00

Innocence by Ney Cardoso

I’ve been accused of popularity. I plead not guilty, but a jury of my peers must eventually decide. For the prosecution Bino and A.D. I speak to you, pro se. (“A defendant that represents himself has a fool for a client”. Anonymous.)

This is my case: Contrary to what many might believe the comments on my blog are “pushed up” because I reply to each commenter with an individual comment. If you divide the comments by two, members of the jury, you will find that I am not popular at all. It is not true that the bilingual thing raises the comment count. It is the trilingual thing that raises the count. I have one dear commenter, Aquí, who is a fine poet in the making, I might add, that I have discovered by my little self, that comments in Galician. That’s my mother tongue and although Aquí cannot speak English, he/she arms hir self with a dictionary to try and make me feel good. A nice person that Aquí. Unfortunately shi doesn’t comment often enough because hir’s too busy coming up with great metaphors. True that others, Bino and C. Dale, have commented in Spanish, but their very desire to comment in such a romantic language makes my case. Ask Neruda. (See, attached, Exhibit I.)

But my final defense shall be through the recited word. This is the only poem you shall read from me in this blog. So you must read it, members of the jury. You must read it all, out loud. It will hurt some sensibilities and if it weren’t so Frostian even C. Dale would pick it up for NER. Be brave folks, if Donald Justice can play why can’t I? (Sorry but I can’t do anything about the format on this blogger popular thing.) All is, of course, in good fun :-). I’m innocent, I swear. Just in case I plead mental insanity: Little Fucking Emerson did it.

Raising (minor) Poets

I’ve raised poets on my farm rhyming between house and barn.
Troops of poets run amok causing problems of pest control

and, later, serious spread of disease from overcrowding
(though it cleared the place of rats and vermin of the kind
that found poets gnawing on the wood of the fascia and the eave
barely visible from the creek—to see one dawn,
or was it a sunset reflected on the wall?)

Mind you, I’ve raised rats before;
all they gnawed was without cruelty.

Not worth catching and caging one of them or pairing two
should they proliferate and later think that they could sing
of heather blooming on my field to the mountain on the edge…

…imagine then the cacophony of distress
on a once quiet everlasting meadow.

By Little Fucking Emerson

Turtle Stones

2005-01-24T22:06:00.000+01:00

"Dark Reef" by Michael Cross

And we must begin now: by cunning, by consultation with the stars and conversations with the wind; by withdrawal if necessary—to a rock pile, or a woodland of stumps and ferns; to another place, one surrounded by bone and tissue, next door to a steady heart.” [“Roots”, John Haines, Quarry West 1 (Winter 1971-72.)]

It was obvious Sunday morning that something needed to be done about the turtles. My son Alberte, six, insisted that his turtles, one-year-olds, needed swimming room, next to the fish in his tank. My attempt to reason with him was to no avail; it was fine that they didn’t have brachia as long as they could swim as well as they did. “But, son, they need a resting place, a safe place to watch the day go by. They’re not fish.” He thought about it for a second, I saw it in his eyes, but knew better than to say it. (“No shit, dad. They’re turtles!”) But never mind, I knew, they either swam or sank.

I needed stones, say, palm-size, to put in the tank so the turtles could climb and rest. Why punish them swimming forever. Our beach, because it’s right there behind the house so the children insist that it is their place, an idea which I wasn’t about to counter, was filled with kelp, green and brown, from yesterday’s gale. Yesterday was winter. Today the season had changed, like the flip of coin, making us leave our jackets home. “We’re going rock-picking for the turtles,” my daughter Carme, seven, said to the neighbor, who didn’t know much what to say: “Seems like a good day for that.”

Watching the children on the beach, climbing rocks, dangerous ones for them—“bigger than Everest”—I sensed their feeling of place. The smell of salt and kelp; the kids’ tiny steps on the sand. The baby crabs. (Wordsworth’s “pleasure feeling of blind love, / The pleasure which there is in life itself.”) We picked small stones like Japanese gardeners considering curves and flat surfaces: tipping equilibrium from a turtle’s point of view. The children picked fine specimens, some like quartz, jagged and crystalline, others simply dark and round; little boulders tossed by many a storm.

We didn’t agree on the final count. “We don’t need so many. The turtles need room to swim in the tank.” Sure, dad.

I climbed the hill back to the house, a heavy load of stones tipping against my stomach and chest. The neighbor continued with his garden pruning. “Stones…for the turtles,” I said. “Sure, turtle stones,” he said, “nice day for that I suppose.”

Fear among the peerless

2005-01-23T01:52:00.000+01:00

James Ensor "Aux Masques"

Great post at Michael Hoerman’s Pornfeld (Tuesday, January 18). I’ll sabotage a small portion since I had the same note written down on my notebook that caused Michael intrigue. It was the following comment by Ron Silliman that raised both our eyebrows:

…anti-group behavior has never served any younger poet well…The tendency of so many younger poets has been to be militantly anti-group formation, yet in a field of literally hundreds upon hundreds of younger poets (say, under 40), it seems very clear that this strategy serves almost none of them well at all.”

Michael’s twist on this —his neuroeconomics discussion— deserves a careful read. You will find there that “male monkeys will pay in juice to see a picture of a high-ranking monkey, but must be given extra juice to be coaxed into looking at a picture of a monkey on the lowest rung of the social scale.” Translate that into the politics of poetry and see what you come up with. As a metaphor it works quite well and you need not be T.S. Eliot to bring this one home.

I happen to agree with Michael about his take on autodidact poets vs. academic poets, loners vs. groupies. None of the descriptions being derogatory, of course. But all of it also runs into previous discussions I’ve had with Bino Realuyo, Roger Pao, and A.T., among others, about the need (or not) for group formation in order to succeed in a poetry “career”. By group formation I also mean “cliques” or “clikes” (so A.T. can bang me right away). I’m not much into groups and their politics; e.g., recall the anthology “Asian American Poetry. The Next Generation”, edited by Victoria Chang and what that did to raise—aside from interest—a great deal of controversy and discontent. We heard about all kinds of things about that anthology—as we did from Houlihan on BAP 2004 —but little if anything on the poetry itself. Not something to write home about.

But reality also brings these issues into focus. Consider Charles’ recent posts about multiple submissions and rejections. Consider the reality of having your poetry given the minimum consideration when you are a nobody: a groupless poet without the necessary connections. Granted, we must consider in all of it the “quality” of what is being accepted or rejected (and the subjectivity of the taste with which you are judged), but it isn’t the same for C. Dale to get a 48-hour return on his submission as opposed to a two-month return for Charles. C. Dale is an established poet and editor, Charles isn’t. (Thus, multiple submissions are bad for some, good for others.) Likewise, consider what cutting down and careful definition can do for those yet to be published. Consider a narrower—by definition—anthology of Asian American Poetry vs. a mammoth BAP. Within the concentric circles of group definition narrowing the group is extremely effective. Belonging to a group is extremely effective.

So you’re right, Michael: “Naturally, it is disturbing to think of my diminished chances in a system where members of a group advance each other. But if everything I do, I do on merit alone, fuck it any other way.”

‘what's wrong’ fresh from wales

2005-01-20T21:23:00.000+01:00

"Looking Away" by Christine Hamm

On my mail box today Ivy Alvarez’s new chapbook —what’s wrong— together with a lovely personal note from the author. Lot’s of good reading: the story of Bill and Ann.

Most girls avoid Bill. They are wary.
You would. Not Ann….

Won’t give it away. No, no. Read it on your own people. Since I understand that Ivy will be in the States soon as a MacDowell Colony fellow in New Hampshire it will be a good chance for people to get a copy of this wonderful chap. Drop her a line. Congratulations, Ivy! Indefagetable. (With cover art by another fellow blogger: Christine Hamm.)

****

One of the many benefits of blogging is the opportunity to literally see and feel what people are doing at various stages of a work’s development. One thing no one can take away from the Internet is this ability to develop relationships across continents and borders. And to do so with such immediacy. During the past couple of weeks I have had the pleasure of reading and, in some cases, the opportunity to comment on some fine poetry in the making. (Ivy’s is a finished chap and she’s already moving on to other projects. Where does she get the energy?) But I also had the chance to read Suzanne Frischkorn’s ongoing work on “Drunk from the Storm” (I think I can give away the title) and Eduardo C. Corral’s full-length manuscript (untitled as of yet). What a pleasure to read and to comment and to have these poets share their work with such openness. My thanks to them.

Little Fucking Emerson

2005-01-16T23:14:00.000+01:00

Néstor M. Gulias

Been thinking again. This ought to do wonders for my readership, but being the sadistic blogger that I am, I shall not lie alone in misery. Interesting issues raised by blogistas Roger Pao and A.D., others I think as well (forgive me if names escape me) about the scorn felt when introducing themselves in public as “poets”. Roger talks of his near “shyness” when admitting his poetic interests in public—an Asian public which is often stereotyped as being into engineering, mathematics, medicine, etc., or otherwise into Kung Fu, Chinese food, or submissive prostitution ^*—and feeling that scorn which comes from hearing, and I paraphrase A.D.**: Aha, a poet? So what do you really do for a living? This is sad. Sort of what James Merrill felt but in reverse: “So what do I really do for a living? Nothing but I do write poetry in my spare time.”

So think about it. You are not alone. (Think scary. Spooky.) And if that doesn’t make you feel better, think again. My harsh side—that little long-nailed devil on my shoulder, the one Goethe fired—immediately says, with his usual suave sensitivity: “People are not asking you what you are, but what you do." Wow! Thus Spake Zarathustra. Think of it that way. It gives you leeway to lie or to tell the truth, the latter being reserved for existentialist liars. So, yes, “I’m a gigolo by night, a poet by day” is a more appropriate, indeed credible reply. (Don’t feel bad Roger, they used to think I did the hub-cap thing by night until the joke got tiring even to them.)

Truthfully, no one will believe you either way; that or they’ll think you’re part of the new breed of unemployed superhero coming to save Poetry America (though sadly that job has already been taken by the incombustible Joan Houlihan. The world is a sad place!) So you know where you stand. “No, you are not a poet, not until you are, for certain, a poet to yourself. Yes, that’s right,” the little bastard devil says, “the word poet when speaking of the self ought to burn your tongue.” Son of a….! “I heard that,” he replies, scratching his goatee. Isn’t he sweet? Little fucking Emerson. Sensitive as poet’s demands.

* Roger Pao: "Writing poetry" isn't an anti-Asian or anti-Asian American stereotype that I've ever witnessed being thrown around, like being an engineer, a math geek, or a computer nerd. It's not being a dragon lady, a kung fu master, a laundry person, a submissive prostitute, or a sushi chef either.

** A.D.: “At a new year's party I drew some odd looks after telling someone that I was a poet.”

“the sun is new each day”

2005-01-13T23:29:00.000+01:00

Fragment from Democritus & Heraclitus
by Rubens

Transcribed by Heraclitus (565 BCE) from the Hidden Scriptures of the Greek*:

When the flash shot through the last layers of cloud (noiseless) all the inhabitants
of the earth described it the same at the same time: Golden rush of fire. From here
only a handful of our people saw the flicker. The recordings of those last words—
Golden rush of fire—came later and later still as echoes from the void. Meaningless.
Like that earth we can see no more. After its usual investigation the Hon. Council
of the Learned pronounced: the wise finally agree—as poetry it was not worth it.

* Suggested Reading: Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. "Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Naive Metaphysics of Things." Exegesis and Argument. Ed. E. N. Lee et al. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973. 16-48.

The Bestest of the Best

2005-01-08T23:41:00.000+01:00

Quotation by Sabina Ivascu

Charles, the Therapist with a Dream Inside, got me thinking. He led me to an essay by Joan Houlihan criticizing Lyn Hejinian’s “Best American Poetry 2004”, which concerns one of my weaknesses: understanding the new, contemporary, avant garde, experimental poem. Call it what you will so you don’t get angry at me for using misnomers. There are truths in Hoolihan’s essay. Most, however, are more apparent than real. Houlihan quotes from two poems in the anthology to demonstrate that Hejinian has failed to pick the “best” poems of 2004. That, in effect, Hejinian has simply failed to define what “best” is. According to Houlihan the poems—many, many of the poems in the collection—the so-called “language poems” or “new writings” also fail to define themselves with sufficient grace to please her. Bottom line: Houlihan doesn’t know what these poems mean and she wants to. She desperately wants to know. And here Houlihan’s failure: since she is unable to know—something? what? what is it she so desperately seeks?—she turns on those that do know and ridicules them.

Perhaps there is a parallel, cult-like aura of inviolability protecting this new writing from critical inquiry: such writing, which verges on a kind of liturgy, comes with its own form of worship and its own tenets of faith. True believers do not question its methods; they accept its sacramental texts as the Word.

Now why won’t someone let Houlihan join in on the service? Houlihan’s disregard for the taste of others—hers is apparently all meat and potatoes—is disconcerting. Contrary to what she criticizes, it is she who comes across as the High Priestess of All Poetry. If the Priestess doesn’t understand it—if she hasn’t been invited to the New Language Prom—she is unable to consider the slight possibility that others have certain poetic values and taste. Is there nothing—nothing—at all of value that she can find in these poems? Not even a tiny word? A cool space? Houlihan fails the Wordsworth Test: she is unable to even consider that some poets—she is obviously not one of them—have to define the very taste by which they are to be judged. And here is where we must give Houlihan some slack: I don’t know whether the poems she questions meet the Wordsworth test. I don’t know that any do. I am not prepared to meet that task. I too struggle with some of those poems. Still I try not to let my limitations kill the taste of others, with a lot of salt, the kind you pour in open wounds.

One last thing. If so many people are writing this new, unintelligible poetry and so many reading it, and presumably liking it, shouldn’t we—the Non-Believers—at least step aside long enough to let poetic life take its course? There’s nothing really that new about this, about matters of taste, that is. Poetry comes and goes like traditional wind in sonnets. Let’s not try to bottle it and mark it neatly on a shelf. Come to think of it I’ll send Houlihan a subscription to Ron Silliman’s Blog. (He writes in tongues.)

Ultimate Acts of Transgression

2005-01-08T01:56:00.000+01:00

Cabral's Aniki Bóbó

Interesting table of contents over at the New England Review. (Thanks, C. Dale, for the reminder.) I was surprised, among other things, by the inclusion in this issue of some of Joao Cabral de Melo Neto’s poems (translated by Richard Zenith). I haven’t read these translations yet, but I have read the originals. Their inclusion in this Fall Issue therefore is significant to me for a number of reasons. Most importantly, perhaps, is the remembrance of “other” voices from other lands, of poetic echoes from other languages. Cabral, considered one of the most important Portuguese-language poets of the last century, represents the universal poet of “nowhere land”, of in-between styles, challenging norms and masters, be they social, political or poetical.

Though his concerns with technique dating back to the 1950’s in Brazil may now be taken for granted, he nevertheless represents the poet in transition, the searcher of new forms, the questioner of established style.[1] One of the poems appearing in NER, A Few Matadors[2], exemplifies his life-long battle with form and established poetic order. In that poem Cabral relies on the image and styles of several famed bullfighters to represent different ways of struggling with the poetic experience and, hence, life. He finally relies on the matador Manolete[3] to symbolize the boldest, life-on-the-blade’s edge, experience of the poet vs. established form. While the untimely death of the master bullfighter might seem a lacking metaphor for success in contemporary poetry, it nevertheless takes a true and transcendent turn in Cabral’s world—indeed in ours—where death, symbolic or otherwise, is worth its own price when the artist lives and dies according to what he preaches. Worth a read and plenty of exploration.

[1] Cabral, who purposely set out to write “unpoetic” poetry, did not wish to be included in what he defined as “the club of the lyrical ones.” His writing place was the “in-between space” between prose and poetry. See Sara Brandellero’s “In Between Wor[l]ds: the Image of the ‘entre-lugar’ in Joao Cabral de Melo Neto’s Agrestes”, Portuguese Studies, 18 (2002), 215-229. Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002.

[2] Cabral’s concern with poetic form is even exemplified by his choice of title. Alguns toureiros, meaning “A Few Matadors” or “Some Matadors”, depending on the translator’s choice, shows Cabral’s reliance on double meanings and subtlety. He may either be defiantly setting out to define the masters as “very few”, as they must be, or as “some” of many as they can be.

[3] Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez, nick-named “Manolete” (1917 – 1947), was killed by the bull “Islero” when he committed a technical mistake: he executed the kill too slow and Islero took his life. No surprise that Cabral thus chose Manolete; a master known for his austere, essential, dry and brave style, but nevertheless a man subject to the frailties of human error.

Natural Disasters of the Mind

2005-01-06T01:51:00.000+01:00

Gurinder Osan / AP

That something out of Dante’s Inferno can become too sentimental for words is no surprise. Tragedy, if I may borrow Patrick Rosal’s metaphor, requires a special “scream”. Not the scream of a rant, but that other scream, the one that travels in veins. Most poets are incapable of ever feeling the scream. It is not something they can prepare for. At the least hint of it, in fact, they will turn away digging for theories and methods, structures and forms. God forbid a tear. They no longer know how to write one. Traps of reason, natural disasters of the mind. Understood and forgiven when there is no thinking heart.

17 April 2003

2005-01-05T01:53:00.000+01:00

I said I’d pick one day from my notebooks, randomly, not just a day I might like. I thought this was the way to take Eduardo’s challenge. Turned out to be a shitty idea. The day in question --17 April 2003-- contains random poetry drafts. Shit! But those are the rules. Moroever, the drafts are in Galician so I have to translate, which is neither fun nor good, but something we multiple-personality folk must deal with. Three fragments:

Today is liberation day
for plants and flowers.
Started with open windows
letting branch air fill lungs.
Liberated throwing lilies
from rooftops. Busted pots!
Heard the breathing of roots.
Put my ear to the ground:
applauding blades of grass.

****

I took fear out of my body.
Took it with me for a row
in a night with no moon.
(Not a moonless night.)
I showed it phosphorescence
floating, passing, floating.
Blinked an eye to the sea.
(Calm fellow, no spume.)
We promised to take it all
and fear.

****

You make me laugh, child.
Bucket after bucket
emptying out the sea.
When the metal hits bottom
look to the sky. Deep.

Icarus (after the fall)

2005-01-02T03:35:00.000+01:00

Icarus by Sylvia Worthy

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

W.C.W.

I don’t love poets. I just love poetry. Poetry is beyond poets. Beyond the long-line, the surreal, the understand-it-all new formalist collection of well-rhymed l a n g u a g e poetry. Poets are grains of sand. Miniscule and irrelevant. Taking a bucket to ocean water, a poet—a good one—is only a bucketful. No more. So don’t rise too high—children of Icarus. Keep close to the ground, where you can see the sun rise from a safe distance. Then, melt, like ice-pop.

Splendor in the Can

2004-12-28T23:16:00.000+01:00

Snow Monkeys at Play in Autum by Minol Araki

“And this is because, today, I hurt with the mystery.”
Unamumo

We know monkeys can play the stock market with an almost equal precision to that of stockbrokers. We know further from the Japanese that monkeys can paint—abstract expressionism?—with equal pozazz to that of any human slashing away with a brush. Why even elephants can do that now. While this may prove certain Darwinian limitations, the entire theory of literary evolution may now be at stake.

Kenny Goldsmith, at least, is in the trying. As a professor of “Uncreative Writing” at Penn State he knows that evolution must essentially come to a halt. Hasn’t it already. Students in Goldsmith’s classes are “taught” to be “uncreative” because to be traditionally creative is boringly romantic, conventional and, yes, simply uncreative, traditionally speaking, that is. Goldsmith, rightfully, does not want his students to churn over that same old literary thing. That poem with a rhyme or, god forbid, that novel with a plot. I agree that if creative is boring then uncreative must be the way to go.

So how do you teach students to be uncreative and unoriginal in the contemporary way. Believe it or not such undertaking requires un-imagination. One way, why didn’t I think of it myself, is to have students watch Andy Warhol’s “Blowjob”—a film where only a man’s face in situ fellatio appears ripe and full of expression for thirty-five minutes—while the students churn away notes to later hand in as assignments. Talk about walking and chewing gum at the same time! (Goes to show you my own limitations: I’d have the students look at a can of Campbell’s Soup—all that red splendor—and have them write poetic recipes as an assignment. I’d give an A+ to any manuscript entitled “Splendor in the Can”).

Let’s face it, Goldsmith is right. We gotta teach kids to be unoriginal and uncreative. The contrary has already given wings to Goldsmith’s hypothesis. We must forever foster that inward, unconscious human ability to go beyond the boundaries of zero imagination. Nay! to the pundits. Who ever said originality cannot be taught? Question is: can it ever be learned?

Why should Ron Silliman, of all people, be suspicious of Goldsmith’s “uncreative position”. C’mon, Ron, it must be a question of your age. And, yes, as those thieving students at Penn State have been taught: we must all steal where we can.

Emerging Voices from the Oracle

2004-12-25T19:47:00.000+01:00

Oracle by Richard Baxter

Eduardo C. Corral posed an interesting question in his Asleep Inside an Old Guitar entry for December 21, “March Forward Christian Soldiers!” His question is sincere enough and significant enough to note here in full:

The University of Arizona is publishing an anthology of poetry by "emerging" Latino/a poets. And I've been asked to contribute. The anthology will consist of 24 poets, and each poet will have ten pages. Ten pages!! That's a lot of space to fill. I'm having a hard time picking which poems to send off to the editor. Should I just send in my greatest hits? Or should I try to form a narrative with my selection? Should I send in only those poems that touch upon "Latino" subject matter? And what the hell is Latino subject matter? Or should I close my eyes & throw a dart?

Eduardo received much wise advise from his readers. I, for one, was quite interested with his concern over “Latino subject matter”. What the hell is Latino subject matter?, he asks. I’m certain that there is no one simple answer. Only a Herculean thesis might attempt a crack at it. Of course, transposing the “Latino” with another group modifier, say “African American” or “Asian American” or “Blind American” tells even further about the purposes, noble or otherwise, about contemporary anthologies: lovely monsters of well-intention, confusion and the marketing of unfairness.

Sad, but true, that editors need such tools to bring us emerging voices from all corners of the world. Such cataloguing may be necessary assuming that Latin voices, for example, would go unheard without their accompanying and descriptive modifier. Worse, however, may be corralling a group of poets that may not deserve to be heard solely for their poetic worth, but rather for their collective vein and tag identifier. Does such group cataloguing bring forth emerging worthy voices or does it promote group mediocrity? And who is to know?

All of this may not be worth answering. A poetry anthology is a priori a failed attempt at truth by its very limitations. But what isn’t that is an anthology? The Best of This is never The Best of That. Or it may also be, however difficult, a noble effort to let us hear and know. Meantime we await the pronouncement of the Oracle.

Poetic Salads

2004-12-23T20:37:00.000+01:00

Salads, Sandwiches & Desserts by Wayne Thiebaud

Back from Mauritius today and what did I find in Baudelaire’s little island? Poetry in salads. That’s right. Beyond decadence, always a banquet, of sorts. Here is a list of salads from the L’Escale Restaurant in Port Louis:

Walt Whitman – Pan-fried prawns with salmon roe, fresh sprouts mesclun on whole wheat crostini with a grape seed vinaigrette.

Fernando Pessoa – Dorado carpaccio and tabouleth with fresh Italian parley and lemon juice.

Rainer Maria Rilke – Heart of palm tapenade, pan-fried scallops with a cold emulsified combava lime sauce.

Linh Dinh – Vietnamese rolls with smoked marlin and crispy seasonal vegetables.

Oscar Wilde – Layers of cream of sweet corn with fine herbs, home smoked dorado and a seaweed salad.

Edgar Allen Poe – Pressed swordfish and celeriac with dill flavored sour cream and crunchy whole wheat bread.

Shiki Masaoka – Thin strips of ahi tuna sashimi with mizuna salad and avocado.

Kenji Miyazawa – From the Bento box – a selection of sushi and sashimi.

Charles Baudelaire – Layers of pickled aubergine, mozzarella and pickled tomato salsa with thin slices of Serrano ham.

I should say one thing. I did not steal the menu. I was told to borrow it “discreetly” to share with all my poetry friends. Bon appetite! You are, of course, welcome to make your own favorite poet salad. Any recipes? If not you can alwyas stop at the Earth Cafeteria for that special snack.

Baudelaire Island

2004-12-11T01:12:00.000+01:00

Charles Baudelaire

I’m off to the Isle of Mauritius tomorrow, to that same island Charles Baudelaire visited in 1841. I’m not jumping ship like he did though every time I visit that tiny spot in the Indian Ocean (for work, not pleasure) I can’t help but think of Baudelaire. It’s a long plane ride from my neck of the woods so this time I promise to go through “The Flowers of Evil” up in the sky. Reading Baudelaire so high up always assures some sort of rough landing, but at least you’re sure to come down. (Travelling with Rilke, as I did once, makes you think of terrible angels too close to their home ground.)

I get to change planes in Paris so you never know if I could get a friendly Parisian to read me “Beauty” in the native tongue. And then there is always la Maurice where surely I can find a willing soul to recite a verse or two. How about “Á une dame créole”? Regardless, I’m sure to enjoy the book, again, and with some luck to be back home for Christmas. But you never know about islands, the way they float in those waters.

And just as a kick off here’s a July 5, 1857 review of "Les fleurs du mal" by Gustave Bourdin that appeared in the Figaro:

"[...] Never have such brilliant qualities been so madly wasted. There are times when one has doubts about Monsieur Baudelaire's mental state; there are other times when one doesn't have any doubts: most of the time, it is the monotonous and premeditated repetition of the same words, the same thoughts. The odious jostles against the ignoble; the repulsive joins with the foul. Never have so many breasts been bitten and even chewed in so few pages; never has there been such a parade of demons, foetuses, devils, chloroses, cats, and vermin.

This book is a hospital open to all the dementia of the spirit, all of the putridity of the heart; it would be one thing if it was meant to cure them, but they are incurable.

[...] one might understand if the imagination of a twenty-year-old poet had let itself be dragged down to such subjects, but nothing can justify a man of more than thirty for having published a book that gives publicity to similar monstrosities."

How shall I bear such decadence? Consider this my “Invitation to a Voyage”. See you around Christmas.

The Poet's Sad Countenance

2004-12-08T20:43:00.000+01:00

Don Quixote by Peter Bolton

No figure in fiction captures the spirit of the true poet as Don Quixote does. (Hamlet was a poet-prince so things came much too easy for him, like writing poetry on an everlasting grant, despite the pitfalls of that vision.) But not the Don. On he went—his sad countenance on a horse—alone against all odds. Giants? Why fear them despite defeat. Ridicule? Who was to judge. Don Quixote knew his calling and followed his quest. No poet has fought against obstacles, real and imaginary, as bravely as he has; no one could imagine so much, so greatly; not one of them could love friend or maiden as he did. (Romeo’s affair was mere infatuation compared to the Don’s quest for Dulcinea.) No poet—perhaps no hero—has tried harder against so many impossible tasks. And still he trots on the latest best-seller lists [1], unafraid of younger knights. To think some tried to save him. (When they searched the Don’s library to burn the books of chivalry that had caused his “illness” they were also wise enough to consider burning his books of poetry):

“These, as I take,” said the curate, “are not books of knighthood, but of poetry.”

“Oh, good sir,” quoth Don Quixote his niece, “your reverence shall likewise do well to have them also burnt, lest that mine uncle, after he be cured of his knightly disease, may fall, by the reading of these, a humour of becoming a shepherd, and so wander through the woods and fields, singing of roundelays, and playing on a crowd; and what is more dangerous than to become a poet? Which is, as some say, an incurable and infectious disease.”[2]

No. You cannot imagine what might have happened then.

[1] Don Quixote, appears in fifth place on the December 4, 2004 bestseller list compiled by ABC (a national newspaper in Spain).

[2] Don Quixote, Chapter VI, “On the Pleasant and Curious Search Made by the Curate and the Barber of Don Quixote’s Library”.

Dialogues

2004-12-07T21:21:00.000+01:00

The Death of Socrates by Jaques-Louis David

Phaedo: The poet Evenus asks what he is to do in the composing festival in honor of Apollo. Why, Socrates, he is to choose among many young poets and some are from his own school.

Socrates: And what troubles the fine poet Evenus?

P: That he may not choose right, Socrates, because he knows how his students sing and may prefer their song over those of others?

S: And what if he should, Phaedo?

P: That others may think it unfair.

S: Why should others doubt the virtues of Evenus? Is he not a qualified poet to make a choice that is appealing to him, regardless of whom he chooses?

P: But others may wish to know the criteria supporting his choice?

S: What criteria can he possibly propose, Phaedo, that may please all?

P: He cannot, Socrates, but he can choose not to judge, letting another worthy poet take his place.

S: And what criteria shall that other use that may please all?

P: That is the quandary, but he may yet ask his students not to sing at the festival should he decide to be the judge.

S: How is he then to choose the best song if not all songs from all are song?

P: Indeed, that is why he asks you to help him, Socrates.

S: I am not a poet though I sense that one need not be a poet to seek truth.

P: How is Evenus to find truth?

S: By listening to all the songs and choosing one that does justice to Apollo.

P: But how is he to know it is the one?

S: He is to know that it is one, a worthy one among many, else they shall all stop singing to Apollo.

P: But that cannot be, Socrates.

S: No. That cannot be, dearest Phaedo, so Evenus cannot but seek the truth. He already knows that no one song alone shall please Apollo best.

Cerberus

2004-12-06T01:15:00.000+01:00

Cerberus by Mikko S. Antonen

Poetry is a serious business. Unfortunately, the “business” part may be the only serious part of it nowadays. But it’s so serious—everything about it except the word—that watchdogs are necessary to keep truth on check. Underdog come to save poetry. That this has become a necessity, of sorts—and it appears important enough to the people at Foetry as not to be taken lightly—that serious issues on the state of contemporary poetry must be considered. Foetry writes:

One of the most common ways American poets publish a book is through open competition at some of the best-known presses. Many publishers require an entry fee, usually $20 to $25 per manuscript. With hundreds or even thousands of entries, a lot of money is involved.

And then it's a fair competition, right? Wrong.

Over and over again, judges often select their own students and friends, even when manuscripts are read "blind."

Should it be true—and what the hell, why not?—it is one of the most disappointing developments in modern poetry. Should we be content that at least something is developing? The rest still remains hidden truth in the interior of a conch shell in the depths of the Aegean.

Wisdom in Feathers

2004-12-04T23:16:00.000+01:00

Miguel de Unamuno

I don’t recall when or how I first made a connection between Miguel de Unamuno and the owl. I do recall that this connection was a childhood one; some book I saw around the house that had a picture of Unamuno that made me think he was an owl. It turns out that the owl is the symbol of wisdom in many cultures. Something to do with the owl’s stealth, its ability to see and survive in the dark. And ours are dark times aren’t they? Sometimes a child’s intuition travels in time.

My interest in Unamuno simply grew because my father liked his writings. Nothing like getting along with Dad on existential conundrums. In 1979 I began to read the Spanish philosopher in a beautiful hard-cover book—Obras Selectas de Don Miguel de Unamuno—which I bought myself in A Coruña during a summer vacation. At the stiff weight of 1,142 pages—not including red covers with golden trimming—I was afraid to even pick it up, let alone to scribble things in it. Nowadays I mark as I wish—something Dad would have despised—but which I think he would eventually understand considering the vastness of mystery to be unravelled. The book has survived remarkably well.

Understanding which Unamuno I'm reading is part of the pleasure and the mystery of reading him. He is unquestionably identified as a philosopher, the “Spanish philosopher of life”,[1] but then I find Unamuno the poet, the playwright, the novelist and, of course, the essayist. Yet, in the end, there is Unamuno the man, one of many men who tried to make sense of his existence: his coming to terms with life both intellectually and emotionally.

A wise man that man that looked like an owl. You didn’t think those were just feathers under his hat? Nowadays these wisdom things are rather simpler. You can go out and just get yourself some.

Writing in Sand

2004-12-03T01:00:00.000+01:00

Quill

Ron Silliman’s recent blog for 2 December is inspiring. Ron explains, among other things and interesting anecdotes (such as being bitten by a student over a writing assignment), how writing tools—quill*, pen, typewriter, computer—have affected the writing of poetry over the years, including his own, though his experience doesn’t include the quill as some of you pranksters might think.

Of all the writing tools, say, from quill to pen to machine, it is always fascinating to “see” how the screen has changed and altered the ultimate composition of poems on a page. Beyond the ills and cures of writer’s block, now more than ever we also find that the cure can in many cases be worse than the disease or result in new viral variations such as Writer’s Dyarrhea. That poems can be drafted or written in paper to be later transcribed to the computer screen to be shaped and twisted, perhaps tortured, can also result in a false sense of the malleability of poetic form. Sort of like the cross-examiner who asks the proverbial one question too many. The ease with which form can be altered on a page has been a great advance, but it may ultimately lead to the conclusion that the poem’s visual impact is to be as important as its meaning or inseparable from it. And such may be the case, but I wonder how many poems could be saved by that “Undue” editing button on Word ®. Kinda beats that old eraser on the typewriter or writing in the sand.

Can the poet over-edit his work as a result of the ease with which changes can be made on a computer? This is of particular concern to the Muse. She hardly edits and can’t stand Microsoft ®. An old fashioned but nevertheless Shakespearean interpretation.

* A quill was the hollow, rigid shaft of a bird’s feather. The word “pen” is derived from the Latin name for “feather”—“penna.” Shakespeare and other writers of his day used a variety of quills. If a writer’s pocket lacked jingle, he invested in a goose quill. If he could afford something better, he invested in a swan quill. Writers or artists who needed quills to produce fine lines purchased crow quills. Quills from ducks, eagles, turkeys, hawks and owls also served as “word processors,” producing plays, poems and sometimes revolution. Quills were the writing instruments of choice between 500 A.D. and 1850 A.D. Michael J. Cummings.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

2004-11-30T21:46:00.000+01:00

Here is a film directed by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni that is turning heads and raising humps. I haven’t seen it (other than a small, yet impressive clip), but I can’t help talking about my brethren camels. (In my neck of the woods it may take a year or two for this baby to arrive in the theatre!) And thus weeping Al shall await the arrival of the weeping camel. Anyway, it’s about time that we get some recognition on the big screen, though it may be nothing compared to the attention we're getting here in Blogland.

But seriously, listen to this by Emily Blunt:

The star of the film, a rather doe-eyed camel with a pinch of attitude, seems aware of her close-up and gives directors Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni an Oscar© caliber performance…deep, soulful and layered.

And he is a two-humped Bactrian camel he is. A star. Since I haven’t seen the film I’ll say no more about it. But if you’re into hearsay….

Incidentally, I do recall a muslin story about a crying camel. Does that ring any bells? I wonder if that has any connection to the idea behind this film.

Imagine the first poem...

2004-11-26T23:35:00.000+01:00

Animal theme cave-painting, Lacaux, France

Imagine the first poem. The very first one. The one they didn’t call a poem then. Wonder if it was about the night sky, its endlessness, or its frailty, all ready to come down outside the cave. No. That couldn’t be it. Too apocalyptic. Was it the one about the dying child—a mother lifting and watching his lifeless hand drop at his side? Was it about those first tears the gathered didn’t understand? No. That wouldn’t be it either. Too sentimental for post-modern Neanderthal poetry, ¿no? Was it about the sharpened lance; how it cut the finger of the hunter during sharpening, stone on stone? No. Ridiculous. Hard to know exactly how they cursed then. Was it the falling hair of the greatest warrior now sitting alone on the outskirts of that forest? No. Too fugit irreprabile tempus (stolen from Machado). Can’t put a finger on it. Just keep thinking about that naked child splashing on the lake, the first snow of winter, the very first smile.

But Catuxa[1] suggests it should be imagined this way:

The first first poem. The first one. There were no poems. The night sky, endlessness, frailty, falling-crushing outside cave. Apocalyptic. Dying child. Mother lifts hand, watches lifelessness. Tears from the gathered? Sentimental post-modern Neanderthals. No? Sharpened lance sharpening - sharpening - sharpening on stone. A cut finger—silence from non-existent curses. Falling hair, lonely warrior. Lost time—irreparably Machado. No. Understanding is never: naked, child splashing, lake, first snow, winter, first smile. Ever. The first.

[1] Catuxa de Palmeira is a Galician poet that recently presented the above two writings at a reading in Spain as examples of a concrete—give the reader all poem—in contrast to a more abstract work that allegedly “lets the reader / audience interact with the poem, thus making it the reader’s since it is no longer the poet’s once it leaves her control.”

Snow Amid Cadences

2004-11-24T21:52:00.000+01:00

Rhea & Chronus by Elsa Dax

I struggle endlessly with the concept of form vis-à-vis formlessness in poetry; the continuum from the palpable, understandable word to the abstract, disjointed use of it. The struggle—mine—is quite simple: it is a failure to understand how and why words register or do not register in my heart as expressions of sentiment. (Or, said another way, as symbols, icons, codes that spark in me: “feeling”.) It is what I come to poetry for; I seek no other form of enlightenment, no education, no M.P.A. It is not words themselves perhaps that cause such spark to occur or not to occur; it goes beyond my ability—limited or otherwise—to understand meanings from the interconnectedness of words, from their disjunctions, their cadences, silences?, their “throbbing”, as Ron Silliman might say. What is the structure, the unity, the magic that works the trick of feeling in me?

Am I the perusing man that in light of evolution stands flabbergasted at his lack of feeling before an abstract painting where the lines, the colors, the geometry do absolutely nothing for him? Or is “nothing” the “feeling” he is to walk away with? I’d say it is the feeling he is to walk away from. Am I she who dismisses a work’s abstractness because the brush strokes, harsh upwards, and the choices of color, clashing, come through the hand and mind of a monkey instead of a man with equal success? How facile and odious the comparison, but as Ramón del Valle-Inclán noted beware the day when poetry will simply be the setting down of one word after another, without more.

Juan de Mairena through the voice of Machado said that one of the most efficacious means by which art can be made not to change inside, in its interior and substance, is to renew it—or to scramble it—constantly on the outside. That being the reason why original artists would hang, if they could, the poets of a new generation, and why the newbies stone, when they can, their original predecessors.[1] This is true, it seems, of all generations, in all countries and cultures. Wordsworth was stoned in his day as was Whitman.

As I pondered in silence,
Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,
A Phantom arouse before me with distrustful aspect,
Terrible in beauty, age and power,
The genius of poets of old lands,
As to me directing like flame its eyes,
With finger pointing to many immortal songs,
And menacing voice, What singest though? It said,…[2]

Wordsworth himself said that “every writer, in so far as he is great and at the same time original, has the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed.”[3] So is the word that triggers no feeling in me today to shake the foundations of future generations tomorrow? I am the man who called Wordsworth a language poet centuries ago. Tendencies change, schools of thought dominate, then die. In the end we are left with the poem—dressed in sheep’s skin?—and the word: turned, tossed, washed, dried. Does one ever kill the father, his word,—tearing him to pieces—, as the Galician poet Rafa Villar said to his generation in the 1990’s?[4] And does the killing proceed, in part, in the form of formlessness and abstraction?

I’m gladly afraid the sonnet isn’t dead (anymore than the traditional novel or the three act play). Imagine our existence without the precise 22-minute sit-com; the Hollywood flick without the car chase; the rock ballad without the electric guitar solo. I feel safe. There can be no poetry without form, without minimal structure, i.e., the structure of a single word?, or taken to extremes, of a single “,” or, further, a single blank page?)—methodically placed between multiple blank pages—of a manuscript aptly titled “Snow Amid Cadences”. (Hasn’t this been written yet?) Extremes in form must necessarily threaten every art form and the reader’s ability to digest it.

I am therefore not bound by the chains of my ignorance. I may yet be saved. Though the muse may come to some “with a ruler, a pair of compasses, and a metronome”[5], I may also be bemused by the goddess that walks bare-ass naked in the woods flicking rose petals randomly. I remain willing to lick drops of dew from the cup of her hand. Shall I be enlightened or killed by poisoned dew?

[1] Juan de Mairena, Antonio Machado, Bibliotex, S.L., © 2001, p. 134.
[2] “As I pondered in silence”, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman.
[3] “Poets, Critics and Readers”, No Other Book, Selected Essays by Randall Jarrell. Ed. Brad Leithauser, © 1999, p. 225.
[4] In December 1996 Rafa Villar presented in Santiago de Compostela his lecture “Theory of Poetic Generations: To kill the father. To tear him to pieces and bury him in burned limestone so that the only remembrance that he will leave us will be the verses that inspired us.”
[5] Jarrell at 250.

ῥωμαῖος

2004-11-19T01:14:00.000+01:00

Camino

“…most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit.”[1]

In my case there is little choice in the given. I belong to the family of the Romeros and someone down the line started this, I presume, though perhaps not by the grace of God, but by the egging on of some devil, to move on, away from everything that is at it shouldn’t. Though she may have simply walked to think things through –“to contemplate”-- (were she no doubt worthier than I): “Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.”[2] True. Partly. I often ruminate, though I have seen other beasts—most quite more glamorous—capable of such feats.

I can’t escape from the past, from my family name and all the steps that have carried it here. It has come from “the Latin romaeus, and this from the Greek, ῥωμαῖος, literally, “roman”, name that was given in the Oriental Empire to occidentals who crossed in peregrination to the Holy Land and, in posterior dates, to the pilgrims of St. James and of Rome.”[3] And as far as I know at least one of us—my great grandmother—died on a road walking westward. I didn’t yet; made it at least to Santiago, yesterday. “Now I re-examine philosophies and religions, / They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the / spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.”[4]

[1] Walking, Henry David Thoreau.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Dictionary the Royal Spanish Academy, 22nd ed. 2001.
[4] “Song of the Open Road”, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1856.

Walking

2004-11-05T01:56:00.000+01:00

My Wheels

The last time I went for a walk I came back 20 days later. Nothing compared to my friend José; he came back two years later and got tired just shy of Finisterre. Then he went on—almost literally dragging himself—towards the end of the world. I was there, his witness. True and quite symbolic. José finally looked at the sea and threw his walking stick into the waves. Watched the wood float away like something he wanted to forget. And then he stopped walking.

Suddenly I got that walking feeling myself. Will follow José’s tracks like that other time I arrived dead at Burgo Ranero. (Thanks for the warm fire, José, “compañero”.) No other word I know, hearing it from you, describes friendship best. What will your smile do for me in this my season of cold and rain?

Green

2004-11-05T01:44:00.000+01:00

Don’t know. Seems my jeans tumbled on the sofa, one leg here, one leg there, wrinkling as I speak, bear more resemblance to truth than so much talk about pain and how terrible life is: in the city, in the suburbs, in the hawk’s nest. Words. Words. Words. Are they all the same? Their meaning, their order, their space? Is green “green” like in everybody’s everlasting valley or is “green I want you green” any different? Green fields, green grass, green money, green with envy: green with envy over the true poet’s green.

...cause the Seahorse was taken...

2004-11-05T01:17:00.000+01:00

Camel by Picasso

...and there was somethin' about ridin’ one of them little ones, right beneath the surface, though you had to hold tight to them tiny ears if you didn't wanna fall way down, down, down, till you hit the sand and blurred the crystalline quiet of the bottom deep. This makes you afraid now, which is why, older, unable to travel thus, you simply shudder at the muffled hiss of that wiry little body between your fingers. That’s right. That’s when you close your eyes and wonder for the last time. Remember what it was like, child?