We
carry within us
the
secret of oceans swims
in our night,
the deep sky
of our lust for
life, tongue mouth
kiss skin
breast we
rise crying
out for
the shore to
be born.
Hughlings Himwich
maritus, pater, magister
Favorite Links
David Chalmers: Fragments of consciousness
The New York Review of Books
Poetry 180
The Secret of Oceans
"What the Sirens Sang" by Patrick Cook
What the Sirens Sang
>
> To H.H.
>
> Navigavit quidem non ut Palinurus, sed ut Ulysses: immo velut nempe Plato.
> — Sir Thomas More, Utopia
>
> Come, then O great Odysseus,
> Come, you man of many turns.
> Wisest of the Greeks is Odysseus,
> Well-skilled in arts of peace and war,
> A hero blown from windy plains of Troy.
> Crafter of the horse, craftiest of Greeks,
> Well-beloved of the wise goddess.
>
> Rest, then O great Odysseus,
> Rest here upon these rocks.
> Sail no more into rosy-fingered dawn,
> Our weary hero from the gates of Troy,
> Much buffeted on the sea, you suffer, Odysseus.
> From the unrelenting wrath of cruel Poseidon,
> Harsh master of this wine dark sea,
> You suffer long indignities.
> It is not right that such as you should suffer.
>
> Come, then O great Odysseus
> And we shall crown you with laurel
> And pour forth libations and
> You shall be King over
> These rocks and not over these alone,
> For we can grant dominion over all,
> Even over the churning sea of time.
> Come hither, come home.
> These rocks shall be Elysium for you.
>
Violence by Gregory Djanikian
Sometimes it can't be avoided maybe in the repose of your garden No need to bring up bombs bursting It's among school children now, Inside, your daughter is locking No one immune here, no one In the garden, you're deadheading And if anyone asked you now Above you, purple bruising the edges In another moment, someone Nothing seems so improbable Here's the night full of stars.
even though you might decline
the invitation to step outside—
sometimes you are outside
among rose petal and fern, but the whole
unvarnished spectacle of do
before you're done unto unfolding
as spider devours beetle, beetle, aphid,
and the cat red in the tooth and claw.
in synch or the rockets' red glare
or every laser fescue pointing out
all that's erasable, good-bye good-bye.
maybe even in your neighbor's house,
eating ravenously at his table,
agreeing with everything he says.
all the basement windows, your son
is drawing a truth machine to zap
the bad from the good, and when
your wife comes home to tell you
of a small injustice she's endured,
the arrow of your steely retribution
thwunks into a soft, imagined heart.
merely a small flash in the pan:
everything hugely combustible.
lilies, the petals spiraling down
like crushed wings, and your fingers,
steeped in pulp, are turning yellow,
orange, incarnadine, damage
creating its own aesthetic,
painting itself on your skin.
you'd confess you're damage, too,
you're for wreckage of heart and bone
wrenching out the smallest penance.
of the sky. Even the heavens.
might come looking for you,
touch you on the shoulder
and you'd flame up.
as the world of a few minutes ago.
Behind each one, the darkness
you can never see.
Thalassa by Louis MacNeice
Run out the boat, my broken comrades;
Let the old seaweed crack, the surge
Burgeon oblivious of the last
Embarkation of feckless men,
Let every adverse force converge --
Here we must needs embark again.
Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades;
Let each horizon tilt and lurch –
You know the worst; your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church –
But let your poison be your cure.
Put out to sea, ignoble comrades,
Whose record shall be noble yet;
Butting through scarps of moving marble
The narwhal dares us to be free;
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is life. Put out to sea.
Gregory Corso
|
Gregory Corso, 1930-2001 by Robert Creeley Gregory Corso died last night (January 17), happily in his sleep in Minnesota. He had been ill for much of the past year but had recovered from time to time, saying that he'd got to the classic river but lacked the coin for Charon to carry him over. So he just dipped his toes in the water. In this time his daughter Sherry, a nurse, had been a godsend to him, securing him, steadying the ambiance, just minding the store with great love and clarity. He thought she should get Nurse of the Year recognition at the very least. There's no simple generalization to make of Gregory's life or poetry. There are all too many ways to displace the extraordinary presence and authority he was fact of. Last time we talked, he made the useful point that only a poet could say he or she was a poet -- only they knew. Whereas a philosopher, for instance, needed some other to say that that was what he or she was -- un(e) philosophe! -- poets themselves had to recognize and initiate their own condition.
There are several quick websites that help recall him now. One gives a
brief biography and discussion of a few of his poems:
Another, more usefully affectionate, is taken from Ed Sanders' The
Woodstock Journal. It was Lawrence Ferlinghetti who had suggested last
summer that a spate of respects might help cheer Gregory in his illness --
and that they were certainly well merited:
A third, which includes some previously noted, is The Museum of American
Poetics. There's a 'streamable' video available there of Gregory reading
at Naropa , if you can get the sound clearly:
Lots of us propose to be poets but who finally stakes all, or just takes
all, as being that way? In my life time only Robert Duncan could be his
equal in this way. It was honor indeed to have had his company.
See also: "Gregory Corso, a Candid-Voiced Beat Poet, Dies at 70" (New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/19/national/19CORS.html
The Whole Mess ... Almost
Just an additional note with respect to Gregory Corso's sad death: "A wake here in NYC Tuesday aft & eve (January 23rd) on Bleeker Street, directly across from the house where he was born. Italian gov't gave permission for his ashes to be interred in the English cemetery in Rome with Shelley." -- RC
|
Gregory Corso: Protestant Cemetery Rome
Spirit
is life
it flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea.
Click on picture for larger image.
Sorting It Out by Philip Booth
At the table she used to sew at,
he uses his brass desk scissors
to cut up his shirt.
Not that the shirt
was that far gone: one ragged cuff,
one elbow through;
but here he is,
cutting away the collar
she long since turned.
What gets to him finally,
using his scissors like a bright claw,
is prying buttons off:
after they've leapt,
spinning the floor, he bends
to retrieve both sizes:
he intends to
save them in some small box; he knows
he has reason to save; if only he knew
where a small box
used to be kept.
Philip Booth
July 9, 2007
Philip Booth, a Shy Poet Rooted in New England Life, Dead at 81
By ROJA HEYDARPOUR
Philip Booth, a poet known for his explorations of existence and New England in an intense, sparse style, died on July 2 in Hanover, N.H. He was 81 and had split his time between Hanover and Castine, Me., for many years.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his daughter Carol Booth.
Mr. Booth wrote 10 books of poetry, including “The Islanders,” “Weathers and Edges,” “Letter From a Distant Land” and “Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999.” He also wrote a book of essays about writing poetry called “Trying to Say It: Outlooks and Insights on How Poems Happen.” He received recognition and honors from many institutions, including Guggenheim, Rockefeller and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.
The sense of privacy that made poetry lovers appreciate Mr. Booth’s work ultimately cost him fame. He spent hours upon hours writing and revising in his room, Ms. Booth said, drawing material from deeper and deeper within his emotional landscape. He rarely traveled on book tours or did readings for large groups.
Stephen Dunn, a former student of Mr. Booth’s and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, wrote in an e-mail message after Mr. Booth’s death, “Booth’s quest was to deepen as opposed to range widely, and in that sense he was a poet of consciousness, even when his subject seemed to be the dailiness of Castine or the vagaries of sailing.”
Philip Edmund Booth was born in Hanover and spent most of his life there and in Castine, the city where his mother grew up and where he first learned to sail. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and married Margaret Tillman in 1946.
In addition to his wife, of Hanover, and his daughter Carol, of Amherst, Mass., Mr. Booth is survived by two other daughters, Margot, of Austin, Tex., and Robin, of Rowe, Mass.; and a sister, Lee Klunder, of Hartland, Vt.
He received his bachelor’s degree in English at Dartmouth, where he studied under Robert Frost, and a master’s degree in English at Columbia University. He later taught English at Bowdoin College and Wellesley College in the 1950s but spent the majority of his career at Syracuse University, where he was a professor, a poet in residence and a co-founder of the graduate program in creative writing.
In a poem called “First Lesson,” Mr. Booth wrote to a daughter:
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
A Codex by W.S. Merwin
It was a late book given up for lost
again and again with its bare sentences
at last and their lines that seemed transparent
revealing what had been here the whole way
the poems of daylight after the day
lying open after all on the table
without explanation or emphasis
like sounds left when the syllables have gone
clarifying the whole grammar of waiting
not removing one question from the air
or closing the story although single lights
were beginning by then above and below
while the long twilight deepened its silence
from sapphire through opal to Athena"s iris
until shadow covered the gray pages
the comet words the book of presences
after which there was little left to say
but then it was night and everything was known
(This poem appeared in NYR Vol. LIV, No. 12)
