Image, Myth and Metaphor in Post-Industrial Landscaping: Edric Mesmer in Conversation

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Jared Schickling


Image courtesy of Ami Lake

Edric Mesmer’s of monodies & homophony won the 2014 Outriders Selection, selected by Jerry McGuire, and was published in 2015 by the Outriders Poetry Project. The following interview took place over email and across neighbouring counties during the summer and fall of that year.

Jared Schickling: I am wondering, at this early stage, what materials or ideas you were developing to write of monodies & homophony? There is an erudition about these poems that, I think, speaks to your work as an archivist. Its encyclopedic lexicon and concrete sound-play suggest a Language inheritance, but there is also a deep and constant attention cast toward physical nature, particularly water, which seeps in everywhere. As the sensations of this non-human world arrive at the reader refracted through the prism of your language formations, the visual glimpses or traces that remain seem stereoscopic, especially across pages. There is a third element tying the room together, mythopoesis, which also litters your work.

Edric Mesmer: of monodies & homophony is very much a ‘so far’ book, collecting what I’d been at work on that didn’t seem it should be thrown away at that time (though already I’d make different choices). Imagery of water comes by way of memory, as well as by readerly acquisition. Like many who grew up in coastal areas (for me, Lake Erie, the Niagara River, the Erie Canal), water imagery feels immediate. Then there is – pointed out to me by a friend – the Homeric, handed down by way of modernism. (Reading H.D. early on helped inform this.) Let’s see what else I can say, being unused to talking about my own writing.

I don’t work as an archivist but as a cataloger for a poetry archive, so collecting and description become concerns: What gets remembered? How and by what framework is what’s saved made discoverable? And how do we possibly account for – ingest, digest, condense – the multifarious cadences currently emitting? I don’t think that is an answer to anything more than what keeps me writing.

Questions like the above are also inflected by gender, and I think this fits, stereoscopically, with myth. Mythopoesis is a means by which we get at archetypes, by which we play with shared and competing notions. It interests me even more now it’s become ruinous – myth itself is fragmentary as far as currency. I don’t know if you find this in teaching, but while I was adjuncting I was very often explaining any mythic allusion that cropped up, which seemed interestingly circular. It’s no longer a given vocab or set of symbols; not even the Freudian.

I guess I would ultimately like to think of these poems as sonar, a means to outline the shape of matters otherwise hard to get at; and that may speak to what you say of a stereoscopic quality too: how only the outline, shape, volume of our deepest submergences may be known to us. Datum is cumulative from intake to intake, sample to sample. It seems to me watery imagery is one potential vocabulary for new ways of knowing – of saying – to continuously seep in while reworking a given set of images, an idea, a moment.

JS: Can you say more about myth becoming ‘ruinous?’ I get its lack of currency, that it no longer taps a ‘given’ worldview or language (especially in the undergraduate classroom). But why ruinous? I am curious as it bears on another question I want to ask, about possible symbols and significations in your book.

EM: During work this week, on break from cataloging, I walked down to sit near LaSalle, the manmade drainage lake that keeps the university less marsh-like; there are your ruins, in Hellenic columns! – talk about appropriation: The building once serving as downtown Buffalo’s Federal Reserve Bank at Main and Swan Streets had been constructed to resemble an ancient Greek temple. After the bank building was demolished, the pillars were transported to the university, where they were reconfigured into an amphitheater. They continue to allude to cultural capital (an inadvertent pun) while serving a new if fragmentary purpose, as ruins.

Myths may work like metaphor; Tzvetan Todorov puts it that ‘mythology is at once general and particular, it is and it signifies’ (quoted in See; italics in original).1 In this fashion, it has what I think of as a cultural materiality, a symbolic value in conjunction with its metaphorical function – and the mytho-metaphor is able to function even if only partially. The reader encountering a poem like ‘Cascadence’ doesn’t have to know the references for the poem to work, but certainly the knowing of these enhances the pleasure of the poem. By that I mean: any shared set of signs acting as a parameter thrown open to designate a space for reference to be at play. For example, people who don’t speak the same language certainly share in humor together in other (nonlinguistic) ways, but it isn’t perhaps as frequent or as nuanced as those within the same language, where a different kind of referencing takes place. One’s not better than the other; I am merely offering mythopoesis as one such parameter. (As is ‘the canon,’ as are episodes of Seinfeld, and so on.) Even as each parametric space opens, one may desire to exceed that limit.

Why I came to use myth is probably more related to my reading, likely fostered by the interests of those teachers who taught me Greek mythology. I have come to see this ruinous mythic referent as another tool (vocabulary; lexicon; parameter) by which to communicate. Thoughts, feelings, complexes can be reached through the use of mythopoesis as it can through pathos, also through politics or landscape; in most cases of an image-complex, these possibilities are overlapping and intersecting.2 And perhaps it is leaving us…’As we leave now the shore of the textual’ (‘After Monica Angle’s Division of Water’).

(A visit to the MoMA a few winters back offers another answer: my friend Judy and I were looking at modernist collages, full of aging newsprint; I said how odd it seemed to look at these and think of the newspaper as something we are drifting away from. Judy said: this might also signify the moment when newsprint becomes interesting again … and so with myth.)

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Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged , ,

6 Poems from Juan Diego Otero’s Los Tiempos del Ruido

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Joel Scott

It’s not easy to relate the tumult and commotion of that night; only that prosopopoeia, with which the preachers represent to us the day of judgement, can present us with some explanation of what physically occurred on the night of the terror: all of the people out of their houses, out of fear they would collapse. Some half-dressed, as they were in their lodgings; others entirely naked because they were already in bed, and everyone groaning and crying out for mercy, running aimlessly through the streets. Nobody knew where they were going, because nobody knew where they were. Everybody cried out to heaven, because they could see that the earth was lost to them.1

-Joseph Cassani, 1741.


No es fácil referir la turbación y conmoción de aquella noche; sólo aquella prosopopeya, con que nos representan los predicadores el día del Juicio, puede presentarnos alguna explicación de lo que físicamente sucedió la noche del espanto: la gente toda fuera de las casas, por el temor de que se venían abajo. Unos medio vestidos, como estaban en sus posadas; otros enteramente desnudos porque estaban ya acostados; y todos gimiendo y clamando misericordia, discurrían sin tino por las calles. Nadie sabía dónde iba, porque nadie sabía dónde estaba. Todos clamaban al Cielo, porque veían que les faltaba la tierra.2

Joseph Cassani, 1741.


Origami

This city has not dared
to let itself be perforated by a metro.

Perhaps out of fear of mixing together
the noise that it holds in its entrails:
we know that it’s not the same noise
in the centre and on the periphery.

Or rather out of fear of finding itself exposed
in the map of its routes,
the folds that give form
to a paper beast.


Portal

Standing in the centre like this,
directly beneath the shower,
a water-shadow is projected over the tiles,
an inverted mould made of drops
that I delay in the falling:
the space that I occupy
and that deprives me of its transparency.

Cleanliness, of course, is a motive, but I suspect
that if I return each day, it is in search of another gift:
only within the untraceable perimeter
of the drops in descent, do reliable ideas occur to me,
the little clarity that each day reserves for me
arrives as if fallen from the sky;
but from much lower, from a hand or two above my head.

Maybe the rain irrigates thought
in more elevated minds; mine,
alien as it is to the tongue of the clouds,
resigns itself to turning the tap
in order to disperse the lines of the argument,
conjuring away the machinations of the giants
and going over, drop by drop
all the forms of falling.


Zenith

Since I fell from that branch
I stumble more frequently;
the fall, instead of making me more careful,
has strengthened my affinity with the ground.

And although I still haven’t freed myself
of the shame when there are witnesses,
I feel that the blow does me well:
I regather myself, limb by limb
and confront gravity from below:

it’s healthy to collapse, when the self
has walled itself into a tower
that points toward the head.


Turin, 1889

A horse isn’t like a dog.
In the one, estrangement limps,
the distance from wildness
has thinned out in its face;

in the other, however, in the horse,
or rather before the other,
at an inch from its flat brow,
a ravine opens up in space
which separates us from its breath,
and thwarts the desire
to touch it:

nobody knows where
the focus of its eyes converge,
the weight that it bears on its back
is not ours.


Hypothesis

1.
The ideas are not ours, but from some neighbour,
and on a lower floor he drains them
not realising that they will climb
up to my shower through the piping.

2.
Thinking falls lightly under the shower
due to some kind of resonance,
as one string moves the other
when the same note tunes them.

3.
It is no more than that old educational virtue of water,
that taught us to measure the volume of bodies
and the impossibility of twice drenching
the same bodies in the same waters.
A lesson of change, and one of permanence:
in the middle, the coast on which thought breaks.

4.
The ideas aren’t from some neighbour, but rather from
all the bathers that have existed, for water,
as well as communicating web
is also memory.


Origami

Esta ciudad no se ha atrevido
a dejarse horadar por un metro.

Tal vez por miedo a entremezclar
el ruido que guarda en las entrañas:
se sabe que no es el mismo ruido
en el centro y en la periferia.

O bien por temor a verse expuesta
en el mapa de sus rutas,
los pliegues que conforman
a una bestia de papel.


Portal

Parado en el centro así,
justo debajo de la ducha,
se proyecta una sombra de agua sobre las baldosas,
un molde invertido hecho de gotas
que demoro en la caída:
el espacio que ocupo
y me priva de su transparencia.

La limpieza, por supuesto, es un motivo, pero sospecho
que si regreso a diario es en busca de otro don:
sólo en el perímetro intrazable
de las gotas al caer, se me ocurren ideas de fiar,
la poca claridad que cada día me reserva
me llega como caída del cielo;
pero de mucho más abajo, a un palmo o dos de mi cabeza.

Tal vez la lluvia riegue el pensamiento
en mentes más altas; la mía,
ajena como es a la lengua de las nubes,
se conforma con girar la llave
para desperdigar las líneas de la argumentación,
escamotear el discurrir de los gigantes
y recorrer gota por gota
todas las formas de caer.


Cenit

Desde que caí de esa rama
me tropiezo con más frecuencia;
la caída, en vez de volverme cuidadoso,
ha estrechado mi afinidad con el suelo.

Y aunque aún no me he librado
de la vergüenza cuando hay testigos,
siento que el golpe me hace bien:
recogerme miembro a miembro
y confrontar la gravedad desde la base:

es sano derrumbarse cuando el ser
se ha emparedado en una torre
que apunta a la cabeza.


Turín, 1889

Un caballo no es como un perro.
En éste cojea el extrañamiento,
la distancia de lo salvaje
se ha adelgazado en su mirada;

en aquél, en cambio, en el caballo,
o más bien delante del mismo,
a una pulgada de su frente plana,
se abre un barranco en el espacio
que nos separa de su aliento,
y hace imposible el anhelo
de poder tocarlo:

nadie sabe dónde converge
el foco de sus ojos,
el peso que carga en el lomo
no es el nuestro.


Hipótesis

1.
Las ideas no son propias, sino de algún vecino,
y en un piso inferior las desagua
ignorando que han de trepar
hasta mi ducha por las tuberías.

2.
El pensar cae ligero bajo la ducha
por un fenómeno de resonancia,
como una cuerda mueve a la otra
cuando las templa el mismo tono.

3.
No es más que la vieja virtud educativa del agua,
que nos enseñó a medir el volumen de los cuerpos
y la imposibilidad de mojarlos dos veces,
los mismos cuerpos en las mismas aguas.
Una lección de cambio y una de permanencia:
en medio, la costa donde rompe el pensamiento.

4.
Las ideas no son de algún vecino, sino de todos
los bañistas que ha existido, pues el agua
además de red que comunica,
es también memoria.



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2 Poems by Olga Orozco

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Peter Boyle

Cartomancy

The dogs that sniff out the lineage of ghosts,
listen to them barking,
listen to them tear apart the drawing of the omen.
Listen. Someone approaches:
the floorboards are creaking under your feet
as if you will never stop fleeing, never stop arriving.
You seal the doors with your name written
          in the ashes of the past and the future.
But someone has come.
And other faces have breathed your face’s image off all the mirrors
and you’re nothing more than a candle that’s torn apart,
an underwater moon invaded by struggles and triumphs, by ferns.

Here lies what is, what was, what will come, what may come.
You have seven answers for seven questions.
Your card which is the sign of the World shows this:
on your right the Angel,
on your left the Demon.

Who is calling? Who is calling from your birth all the way to your death,
with a broken key, with a ring buried years ago?
What creatures are gliding above their own footsteps like a flock of birds?
The Stars light up the enigmatic sky.
Yet what you want to see can’t be looked at face to face:
its light belongs to a different kingdom.
And it’s still not the hour. And there will be time.

Better to decipher the name of the one who enters.
His card is the Madman’s with his patient net for catching butterflies.
He is the eternal guest.
He is the imagined Emperor of the world who lives inside you.
Don’t ask who he is. You know him
for you’ve looked for him under every stone and in every abyss.
The two of you sat up together waiting for the arrival of a miracle:
a poem where everything would be all of this and also you –
something more than all of this –
But nothing has come.
Nothing that’s any more than just these sterile words.
And maybe it’s too late now.

Let us see who is seated here.
The woman who is wrapped in linen and caws
while she weaves and unweaves your shirt
has the black butterfly for a heart.
Yet your life is long; its chord will break far, very far from here.
I read it in the sands of the Moon where your journey is written,
where the house is drawn where you drown like a pale stretch mark
in the night spun from great spider-webs by your Death, the spinner of your thread.
Yet beware of water, love and fire.

Beware of love, the one thing that remains.
For today, for tomorrow, for after tomorrow.
Beware for it shines with the dazzling light of tears and swords.
Its glory is the Sun’s, just as much as its furies and its pride.
But you will never know peace
for your Strength is the strength of storms and Restraint weeps, its face to the wall.
You will never sleep side by side with happiness
for in all your steps is an edge of grief that foretells crime or farewells,
and the Hanged Man announces to me
the terrifying night that is your destiny.

Do you want to know who loves you?
The one stepping out to meet me comes from your own heart.
Masks of mud are shining over his face; under his skin
flows the pale shadow of every solitary watcher.
In his one life he is here to live a procession of lives and deaths.
He came to learn horses, trees, stones
and was left weeping over every shameful act.
You have raised a wall to protect him
but you never wanted the Tower that now surrounds him,
the silk prison where love jangles the keys of an incorruptible jailer.
Meanwhile the Cart waits for the signal to leave:
day’s appearance in the clothing of the Hermit.
But it’s still not time to turn your blood into the stone of memory.
The two of you lie there still in the constellation of the Lovers,
that river of fire that flows by consuming time’s belt
as it consumes you,
and I dare say you both belong to a race of shipwrecked mariners
who drown without salvation or any breath of hope.

Now cover yourself with the breastplate of power or forgiveness,
                    as if you knew no fear,
for I’m going to show you the one who hates you.
Don’t you hear her heart beating like a darkened wing?
Like me, can’t you see her brushing your side with a fistful of frost?
It’s her, the Empress of all your broken homes,
she who casts your image in wax for the ritual sacrifices,
who buries a dove in the shadows so the air in your house will grow dark,
who blocks your steps with branches from a dead tree, with
                    shrunken fingernails, with words.
She hasn’t always been the same woman, but whoever she may be it’s her
for her power lies simply in this: to be other than you.
That is her spell.
Though the Conjuror may roll the dice on the table of destiny
and your enemy knots your name thrice on a hostile rope,
at least five of us know the game is useless,
the triumph no triumph –
only the luckless man’s sceptre given to him by the homeless King,
the boneyard of dreams where the ghost of the lover who refuses to die
                    goes on wandering.

You will stay in darkness, you will stay alone.
You will stay exposed to the heart’s wild rages, ready to wound
                    the one who kills you.
Don’t invoke Justice. The serpent has taken refuge on its empty throne.
Don’t try and find your talisman of fish-bones
for the night is long and your hangmen are many.
Since dawn their purple blood has muddied your threshold,
has marked your door with the three ill-omened signs
in spades, in hearts, in clubs.
Cruelty has locked you inside a circle of spades.
With two discs of hearts, eyelids coated in flaking scales
                    have cunningly annihilated you.
Violence has traced a blue lightning bolt on your throat with its wand of clubs.
And meanwhile they stretch out the mat of burning coals for you.

And now the Kings have arrived.
They come to fulfil the prophecy.
They come to inhabit the three shadows of death that will
                    accompany your own death
until the Wheel of Destiny spins no more.


Animal that breathes

          To breathe in and breathe out. Such is the strategy in this mutual transfusion with the whole universe.
          Day and night, like two spongy organisms glued to the wall of the visible by this double rise and fall of the breath that upholds the cosmogonies in mid-air, we expand and contract, the universe and I. On my side I take it in as blue sky, I exhale it as an excretia of mist and then once more breathe it in. In its turn it incorporates me into the whole mechanism, then expels me into that alien wild element which is my own, the threshold’s sharp edge, and then once again it breathes me in. We survive together at the same distance, body against body, one in favour of the other, one at the expense of the other – something more than witnesses – just as in a siege, just as in certain plants, just as in the secret, like with Adam and God.
          Who would pretend to be the winner here? One mistake would be enough for our fates to be swapped for the gliding of a feather across the immense void. My pride is so focussed on the clarity of its wild devotion, on my unequal side of the coin – so weak and doubtless essential – it swells in proportion to its smallness.
          I fulfil my role. Like a cautious polyp I preserve my modest place. With great difficulty I stand on tiptoe on some windowsill to find a level of exchange appropriate for low flying, a point where I might relinquish my own construction with dignity.
          Weaker than my eyes, faster than my hands, further off than the gesture of another face this wrong-headed nose that suddenly strips me of the smooth patience of my skin and hurls me into the world of others, always unknown, always the outsider.
          And nevertheless it precedes me. It cloaks me with apparent solidity, ideally rock-like, and then lays me bare to the winds that invade over a few precarious, vulnerable ditches scarcely defended in trembling and suspicion.
          And so, with no further ado, poking my nose into old habits and dangers, glued like a dog to the heels of the future, I pile up cloud-like ghosts, haloes instead of blessings, the useless fluff accumulated in nostalgic ports, in floating cities that threaten to return, in gardens smelling of the crazed memory of a promised paradise.
          Ah, lethargic perfumes, traces left by rain and bodies, trails of breath that, like some asphyxiating rope, coil round the throat of my future.
          Little by little a volatile alchemy builds up in the cracks, evaporating the years’ hardened condensations. It digs me out and suffocates me, breathes me out in great clear breaths that are the bloodless form of my final skeleton.
          And though the mutual transfusion with the whole universe goes on, I know that “there, in that place, in the dark moss I am mortal, and in my dreams a beast’s snout sniffs endlessly”, a relentless snout drawing the breath out of me, right to the very last stench.

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from Marosa di Giorgio’s Funeral carriages laden with watermelons

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Peter Boyle

          What a strange species is the species angel. When I was born I heard them say “Angel”, “Angels”, or other names. “Spikenard”, “Iris”. Foam that grows on branches, the most delicate porcelain increasing all by itself. Spikenard. Iris.
And in the dogs’ eyes, too, there are angels.
          Oh they were tall, wearing feathers and gauze, long long wings, grey eyes. They used to accompany us to school (each of us had one), to the girls’ dance, to my successive parallel weddings, I knew the number already.
          Where the bridegrooms were lizards, eucalypts or carnations.
          And to the great wedding with the Cat Montes; my mother was frightened and took my hand, and papa didn’t dare go.
          They flew all around nearby. The entrance to the grove, the kitchen, the oven with small skulls inside, with captured doves.
          They were present at the ceremony and the rites.
          And with their silent power they saved me.

*        *        *

          I stood motionless, with my long red curls, in the gardens of uncle Juan; next to me, bloodroots and everlastings, also reddish.
          Those who went past me thought I was a doll, a painting, an angel, one of the many angels always to be found in rosebushes and nests. And they looked at me with a certain seriousness and devotion. And all around there were nesting boxes with eggs of varying size, all extremely delicate. I saw miraculous things flickering.
          And I wanted to move, to go away; but no one called me, because no one believed in me,
          … no one calls me,
          night is about to fall.
          And I remain motionless.
          Inside my white dress, inside my red hat.

*        *        *

          The wasps were extremely delicate. Like angels, many of them fitted on the head of a pin. All of them resembled young ladies, dancing teachers. I imitated their murmuring rather well. They circled the apple’s white flowers, the quince’s ochre flowers, the pomegranate’s hard red roses. Or in the tiny fountains where my cousins, my sisters and I gazed at them, our hands on our chins. Compared to them we were giants, monsters. But the most wondrous thing was the cartons they made; almost in one stroke, their palaces of thick grey paper appeared, among the leaves, and, inside them, plates of honey.
          Meanwhile, the lizard continued hunting for hen’s eggs, warm tidbits; snakes blue as fire crossed the path, curly, delicately crafted carnations, looking like bowls of fruit and rice, shot up.
          The world, all of it, welcoming, magical.
          And one face, separated, the only one painted, walked among the leaves, eyes downcast, red mouth open.
          And when it had already gone by
          it walked past one more time.

*        *        *

          When I was an owl I observed everything with my hot and cold pupil; no being, no thing was lost on me. I floated above anyone walking by in the fields, my double cape open, my white legs half open; like a woman. And before I gave the petrifying scream, all fled to the gold mountain, to the mountain of shadows, saying: And that thing in mid-air like a star?
          But also, I was a girl there in the house.
          Mama kept the mystery to herself.
          And looked at God, weeping.

*        *        *

          Along the wire fences, glittering sinister spiderwebs. These weavers respond to the world with their silverwork. And Luck places gems and pearls with absolute certainty; only where they should go.
          Along the wire fences are the remains of weasels and hummingbirds (which have come to rest here, in their nocturnal flights).
          And a cloud drifts down, calm and hard working, like a woman, a real person; it steals some things, some remnants. It leaves others. Snails (they disappear quickly into the field). And a diminutive angel that we bring home and give a name to, Lilam. It is like a delicate doll, with tiny gold wings and hair the same. It’s there, motionless, for hours, above the furniture. Or it flies on the breezes from the rooms, before our dazzled gaze.

*        *        *

          During the night I heard a noise. I knew something had changed in the garden. I went there, in the greatest darkness. I waited trembling. At dawn I saw what it was. A butterfly was being born. I wanted to protect it, to bring it inside, before the degenerate men who are always about could appear. But who can embrace a butterfly, who can carry a soul in their hands? Then, I noticed its wings stretch upwards, growing visibly, black, purple; turning into pink sacred diamonds. Now other people had stopped, just nearby, motionless with horror. On its wings it had snow-coloured stripes, with confused stories, written or painted, that everyone was trying to decipher. And the wings rose between the trees, I don’t know how, sprinkled with precious stones; the wings reached the sun; and in the following hours, days or months, since we’d lost the idea of time, there was always a kind of mist, a soft darkness. I tried to go, I took my things and left the garden. But along the road they stopped me, telling me I must go back, since I was the one who had discovered this.
          And so, by night, I hear the murmuring, the buzzing, and at dawn I see the wings rise, black, purple, golden and pink, with stories of saints inscribed against the light.

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George Seferis’s ‘On a Winter Ray’

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Vrasidas Karalis


Image courtesy of sefaria.com

George Seferis was born 1900 in Smyrna, modern Turkey and died in Athens, Greece, in 1971. He is considered as the most important modernist innovator in modern Greek poetry. His collections include Mythistorema (1935), Book of Exercises (1940), Logbook I (1940) and Thrush (1947). He received the Nobel Prize in 1963 for ‘his eminent lyrical writing.’ Before his death he published the Three Secret Poems (1966). The present translation of the first part of the Three Secret Poems wants to maintain the density of the original with its allusive character and elliptical syntax. The poems represent the complete liminality in linguistic expression and probably the most effective articulation of Seferis’ perception of ‘pure poetry.’


ON A WINTER RAY

A.

Leaves of rusting tin
For the humble mind facing the end;
Sparse glimmerings.
Leaves whirling with seagulls
Furious at winter.

As an ache is released
Dancers became trees
A dense forest of naked trees.


B.

Burning the white seaweeds are
Old Women rising without eyelids
forms that danced once
Flames of marble.
Snow clothed the world.


C.

The comrades made me crazy
With compasses, sextants, magnetic needles
And telescopes that magnified things—
Better to have stayed away.
Where such paths will take us?
Yet that day which dawned
Perhaps wasn’t smothered yet
With a fire in a ravine like a rose
And a sea of ether at the feet of God.


D.

Years ago you said:
“Deep down I am a matter of light”.
Even now as you rest
On the broad shoulders of sleep
Even when they drown you
In the lethargic bosom of the sea
You search for niches where blackness
Frays and does not endure
You grope for the spear
Destined to pierce your heart
And open it to the light.


E.

Which murky river conquered us?
We collapsed at the deep.
The current runs over our heads
winding inarticulate reeds;

The voices
Under the chestnut tree became pebbles
And children throw them away.


F.

Soft breath and another breath, storm
As you leave the book
And shred useless papers of yore
Or you bow to see in the meadow
Insolent centaurs galloping
Or green amazons sweating
In all corporeal curves
When challenged at jumping and wrestling.

Jubilant storms at dawn
As you thought that the sun rises.


G.

Flame is healed by flame
Not through moments dripping
But in a flash, instantly;
As desire that fused with another desire
And stayed transfixed
Or as
musical rhythm echoing
There at the centre like a statue

Unshakeable.

This breathing is not a passageway
The dominion of thunder.



ΠΑΝΩ ΣΕ ΜΙΑ ΧΕΙΜΩΝΙΑΤΙΚΗ ΑΚΤΙΝΑ

Α΄

Φύλλα από σκουριασμένο τενεκέ
για το φτωχό μυαλό που είδε το τέλος·
τα λιγοστά λαμπυρίσματα.
Φύλλα που στροβιλίζουνται με γλάρους
αγριεμένους με το χειμώνα.

Όπως ελευθερώνεται ένα στήθος
οι χορευτές έγιναν δέντρα
ένα μεγάλο δάσος γυμνωμένα δέντρα.


Β΄

Καίγουνται τ’ άσπρα φύκια
Γραίες αναδυόμενες χωρίς βλέφαρα
σχήματα που άλλοτε χορεύαν
μαρμαρωμένες φλόγες.
Το χιόνι σκέπασε τον κόσμο.


Γ΄

Οι σύντροφοι μ’ είχαν τρελάνει
με θεοδόλιχους εξάντες πετροκαλαμήθρες
και τηλεσκόπια που μεγαλώναν πράγματα—
καλύτερα να μέναν μακριά.
Πού θα μας φέρουν τέτοιοι δρόμοι;
Όμως η μέρα εκείνη που άρχισε
μπορεί δεν έσβησε ακόμη
με μια φωτιά σ’ ένα φαράγγι σαν τριαντάφυλλο
και μια θάλασσα ανάερη στα πόδια του Θεού.


Δ΄

Είπες εδώ και χρόνια:
«Κατά βάθος είμαι ζήτημα φωτός».
Και τώρα ακόμη σαν ακουμπάς
στις φαρδιές ωμοπλάτες του ύπνου
ακόμη κι όταν σε ποντίζουν
στο ναρκωμένο στήθος του πελάγου
ψάχνεις γωνιές όπου το μαύρο
έχει τριφτεί και δεν αντέχει
αναζητάς ψηλαφητά τη λόγχη
την ορισμένη να τρυπήσει την καρδιά σου
για να την ανοίξει στο φως.


Ε΄

Ποιός βουρκωμένος ποταμός μάς πήρε;
Μείναμε στο βυθό.
Τρέχει το ρέμα πάνω απ’ το κεφάλι μας
λυγίζει τ’ άναρθρα καλάμια·

οι φωνές
κάτω απ’ την καστανιά γίναν χαλίκια
και τα πετάνε τα παιδιά.


ΣΤ΄

Μικρή πνοή κι άλλη πνοή, σπιλιάδα
καθώς αφήνεις το βιβλίο
και σκίζεις άχρηστα χαρτιά των περασμένων
ή σκύβεις να κοιτάξεις στο λιβάδι
αγέρωχους κενταύρους που καλπάζουν
ή άγουρες αμαζόνες ιδρωμένες
σ’ όλα τ’ αυλάκια του κορμιού
που έχουν αγώνα το άλμα και την πάλη.

Αναστάσιμες σπιλιάδες μιαν αυγή
που νόμισες πως βγήκε ο ήλιος.


Ζ΄

Τη φλόγα τη γιατρεύει η φλόγα
όχι με των στιγμών το στάλαγμα
αλλά μια λάμψη, μονομιάς·
όπως ο πόθος που έσμιξε τον άλλο πόθο
κι απόμειναν καθηλωμένοι
ή όπως
ρυθμός της μουσικής που μένει
εκεί στο κέντρο σαν άγαλμα

αμετάθετος.

Δεν είναι πέρασμα τούτη η ανάσα
οιακισμός κεραυνού.



Posted in TRANSLATIONS | Tagged ,

Review Short: Luke Fischer’s The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the New Poems

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Paul Hetherington

The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the New Poems by Luke Fischer
Bloomsbury 2015

Rilke’s poetry is known for its brilliance and individuality and, to an extent, for its variability. His early work is largely of a neo-Romantic and religious temper, suffused with generalisations and subjective gestures that frequently strain after significance. Nevertheless, he produced some important early poetry, most notably in his three-volume Book of Hours. In these works, ways of seeing, perceiving and understanding the world are already critical questions for him. However, had these poems been all he left to posterity, he would not now be a household name.

Continue reading →

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , ,

Review Short: Astrid Lorange’s How Reading is Written: a brief index to Gertrude Stein

Posted on November 1, 2015 by John Hawke

How Reading is Written: a brief index to Gertrude Stein by Astrid Lorange
Wesleyan University Press 2014

Walter Benjamin once suggested that there were two ways in which to misinterpret the writings of Kafka: either by ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural’ explanation. If Kafka’s works have the appearance of parables, the only clue to their solution is that it will be precisely what is not overtly communicated – they are parables, in Adorno’s words, ‘the key to which has been stolen’.

Continue reading →

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , , , , , ,

Galaxy of Crumbs

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Jakob Boyd

gotta drop the fryers tonight
in the stainless silver chaos
of the salt machine

they chirp demented
during dinner rush with
nuggets of chicken mush
chips and burnt breadcrumb

as the teens make snapchats
and suicide pacts

I twist the red lever
in the metal guts
coke colour oil drains
a galaxy of crumbs
sinks and collects
into little black dunes

like a nightmare beach
fizzing and chattering

someone calls
the new kid
a faggot

in heat proof gloves
I sweep the crumbs in to
the hole with a steel stick
and flush them out
with a gravy jug

a kitchenhand
tells a story
about the ecstasy
last night

I take the oil cart
to the bin room
the wobbling blue wheels
skidmark kitchen tiles

a cashier bitches
over headset
about a customer
with an accent

I plug in the plastic snake
pump the oil
into the vat
in a moment
of peace

I get a new thing of oil
like a box of wine
full of thick piss
100% canola
australian made
I punch it open
unplug the yellow cap
and a lemon waterfall
fills the fryer
and heats up clean
like a golden bath

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

After a Quote by Reznikoff

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Justin Lowe

when I read a poem like this I often turn the page.
there appears to be no texture, no colour
only the music of someone biting an apple.

when I read a poem like this,
it occurs to me that my clothes are beginning to sag,
that the neighbour’s dog is at the garbage again.

a banality as clipped as this
will surely go a long way,
it will pass from hand to hand like a fairground token,

people will express gratitude,
aware of its utility within the confines
of a place stood outside care and time.

that is the poem’s only gift to the world.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

The A-Team

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Gordon Shrubb

(Recorded for the archives in the Air and Space Drama Museum.)


I worked the wings during NASA Theatre’s early days. My boss, Dr Randy Lovelace and his mate, General Flickinger, expanded NASA’s first space play, Round the World in 80 minutes, to include ‘astronettes’.

The auditions starred Jerrie Cobb, with world aviation records for speed and altitude. Talent scout and financier, Jackie Cochran, assembled twelve others backstage, much more than ‘soft recreational equipment’. The women sweated the same dress rehearsals as the men for centrifuge ego-forces, monologue in a darkened theatre, lung capacity, pain tolerance for bad reviews, and equilibrium recovery.

The Mercury 13 women outsang and outdanced the Mercury 7. If the A-Team had been monkeys, Chris Kraft, the Flight Director, would have had them centre-stage on the launch pad. The NASA Boys’ Club blacked out the pizzazz of the star-spangled vaudevillians Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, and Laura Ingalls.

All-American hero, John Glenn, piloted drama critics at a Congressional performance in 1963 against women getting a gig on the big space stage. No kitchen or laundry graced the space capsule’s control deck for weightless women to display their talents.

Jerrie Cobb, Wally Funk, and Jerri Truhill could never launch their names in lights. The Capitol reviewers declared the NASA Playhouse an all-male revue without any transvestite sideshow. Those astral-dazzling women fell to earth. No cow jumped over the moon, or onto it.

In 1998, Senator Glenn, 77, gazumped the surviving Mercury 13 in another coup-de-théâtre via Space Shuttle Discovery touting the old NASA box-office rationale of propagating Apollo while obliterating his twin sister, Artemis. ‘One small step for a man …’ says it all.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

My Caesar

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Simeon Kronenberg

He noticed me in the line up and winked, smiling.
Then he moved on to greet the rest of the men.
But when we returned to our fires, his equerry came, panting:

“Come son, he wants to meet you, come now.”

I’m a farm boy and I know what’s what but I was shocked
by this directness. The man didn’t seem to care about everyone
watching us, even though my compatriots laughed and jeered:

“Keep your back to the wall boy, don’t let him get behind you.”

The equerry dismissed them with a contemptuous hand, pulling
at my sleeve with the other. I burned red, but I went with him anyway
and walked through the huge throng of men, lazing in the purple evening,
swilling new wine given to them as reward for a long campaign.

Finally, we reached the main tent, as big as a Roman villa and ringed
by braziers, guards’ faces bronzed and shining in the heat of a score
of torches. He was inside, tended by slaves. I found him reclining
on a divan, chewing at a leg of rabbit:

“What’s this?” he said as we entered. “Ah yes, my fair boy. Come sit with me, eat.”

I took the couch next to his and was given wine and food, but I watched him
even as I ate. His face was tanned from the march, his eyes keen, in wrinkled
pockets of dry skin, like agates in dust. And he watched me too, curious
and enjoying the novelty.

For me, used to hard bread and barley porridge, the scent
of rabbit and olives and good wine was almost too much,
I forgot myself and my nervousness and ate greedily,
rich juices streaking my hands and my face.

After a while, filled with wine and food – then carefully
washed by his slaves – I went to work on him, sweating.

He wanted soldier’s cock, so he had mine. It was awkward
and shuffling at first and he was not interested in returning
pleasure, all he wanted was to be turned over and fucked
but we managed it. And after I did him, like a sheep,
he seemed satisfied enough.

Later, I went back to my platoon and to my pallet and slept,
but restlessly, my head was still dizzy with wine, my hands
remembering the dry and sinewy touch of him.

During that long march home, he called me back
many times and I became used to the equerry’s near-nightly
nudging to leave my comrades for my commander’s bed.
(And, you should know, in exchange for these services,
I was given money and promised more).

One night my friend Lepidus, a handsome young legionnaire
from Osteia, about my own age, was invited to join us,
so we both fucked him, slaves watching while we took turns,
the stars and moon wheeling above in the night as if in a great, black cave.

But now, home again on my mother’s farm, I wonder what the point
of it all was. I fetch water for pigs, chop wood for her poor fire and yoke
the bull to the plough and it’s as hard as ever and thankless.

He’s dead, murdered they say, by his friends in the senate,
my hopes with him. The stupid fuck, who couldn’t see
what would happen if he called himself Caesar?

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Neighbours

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Georgia Cloepfil

Someday we will be sitting on our porch like they are. Your hand will be on my lap. We will both be staring forward. Then I will be looking at you. A sideways glance. What will we be talking about? We will be so tired from the day. You’ve slipped your shoes off at the heel. What will we talk about? Occasionally I will let out a chuckle and run a hand through my hair. You will take your hand back. You will join it with your other and lean forward firmly onto your knees. My book is dog-eared on the table between us. My glasses are tangled on the top of my head. More laughter and what are we talking about? Our hands are our own. Folded, holding each other, keeping each other busy. Do we talk about today? About yesterday? Tomorrow? Do we talk about the passing of time. I was I and you were you. Are we silent, then? Do we hear time pass? See it? If we knew true silence we would be like the porch itself – never speaking, always watching. Our silence is different. It creeps up our bedpost, fries itself on our pans, billows through the heating vents.

We brush our teeth with it.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Pine

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Rowan Middleton

The driver stops and jumps down from his cab.
Men wander round the side of the scaffolding,
help him loosen the grey tarp that covers
the straw-coloured stack.

We balance the lengths
on our shoulders, trudge through mud and drizzle
battens bouncing with each step until
the lorry rattles off into the fog.

The others pick up trowels or carry blocks,
slosh through water on the concrete screed.
I rifle through the stacks with tape and pencil,
feel the knots where branches arched above stumps.

I tick each bundle off. In the van’s headlights
I see the stacks, wrapped in black plastic
like draped coffins, waiting to become a roof.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

News from the Farm

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Jacob Edwards

Jill e-mailed me just yesterday:
the weather’s dry; so, early starts
for Marsh to irrigate—
an icy play down by the creek
in freezing cold and wet and dark
to fetch the old machine.
The oats are growing well, though, Jake:
we baled six acres Friday last—
a bright and sunny day.

This morning: fog, as thick as thieves.
The cats lie stricken on the carpet
by the glass door, east-
ward clustered, peering: where’s the day?
I’m waiting, too, with washing; tasked
to dart out at first ray.
Beyond, the tractor lectures me—
a spectral putter; there goes Marsh:
he starts up, disappears.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Flying In, Southside

Posted on November 1, 2015 by David Eggleton

At Mangere the airport welcomes you to Middle Earth,
coasting on a jet’s wing and a karakia,
but the industrial parkland unfolds as generic,
though ’nesian mystics harmonise snatches of melody
on Bader Drive by the fale-style churches of Little Tonga,
all the way round the Town Centre to busy Pak’NSave,
from whose carpark the Mountain looks back, submerging.

Manaia sail across blue heaven to catch day-dreams;
they glide like slo-mo fa’afafine above South Auckland:
the big box stores, all in orange green yellow or red,
as big as aircraft hangars in this polycotton lavalava
wraparound hibiscus paradise of Pap’toe,’Tara, Otahu —
the happy coin marts, the fly-by-night clearance outlets,
the stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap, plastic whatnot bins.

A pearl nacre overcasts closed abattoirs of Southdown,
colonial headquarters of Hellaby’s meat empire,
shunting yards of Otahuhu Railway Workshops.
Two-dollar leis sway outside shops on Great South Road.
There’s Fiji-style goat curry and Bollywood on screens,
kava, taro, fish heads on ice, hands of green bananas —
no sign of Sigatoka blight amid tart tangelo pyramids.

The suburban origami of bungalow roofs is folded over,
under the warmth of ‘Mangere’/‘lazy wind’: so hot and slow
it barely moves the washing on thousands of clotheslines.
Planes touch down; sirens yammer through the tail-backs;
Macca’s golden arches sweat the small hours,
and a police chopper after midnight bugs the sky;
weaving back and forth over quiet streets of Manurewa.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Aquarium

Posted on November 1, 2015 by John Upton

She recognises me and mocks my work
with her own lithe labour, arms like kisses on the
glass. Smooth as oil
she copies my mop and wringer, slipping her body through
a narrow ring of rubber,
eight handshakes but no hands and yet slim fingers slipping,
sloping elaborately –
she’s a bag of brimming slosh and muscle, swimming.
Love was never like this. She
waits each day, we work, we talk, our conversation
is stately, balletic,
hung with dangling cephalopodic undulations.
If alarmed
she writes her name in water. Food-grifter, shape-shifter,
she paces my walking
powered in the stroll by her three hearts.
My mopping done,
I pass on, she observes me to the aisle-end. Left alone,
she’ll adjust her mantle
like a nun, then settle in a corner on a vigil,
a huddle of knots, in wait.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Square Peg

Posted on November 1, 2015 by James Lucas

I spent my twenties writing stories, trying
to wait tables. I waited tables like
Rabelais and Orwell wrote of shagging—
unconvincingly. I’d not aspired

to waiting tables. I waited tables like
Pollock juggling scotch bottle and dentist drill—
catastrophically. I’d not aspired
to moussing innocent bystanders: they watched

Pollock juggling scotch bottle and dentist drill
transfixed, as if he were intending
to mousse innocent bystanders: they dodged
lap-slop horrors that defied dry-cleaning

transfixed, as if I was intending
(as Rabelais and Orwell wrote of shagging)
to let slip horrors that defied dry-cleaning:
I spent my twenties writing stories, trying.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

more work needed to make a dadaist poem

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Julie Chevalier

with apologies to Tristan Tzara

take newspaper & scissors
you’re on your way up the purple mountain
sometimes you have to cheat

choose an article the length of your intended
you know how it is
by mistake you sit in the laughing carriage

unhorsed among damp mohair sculptures
cut the words into a bag & shake them, arrange
words in the order they escape from home

water slips down the softest window
substitute better words
change an ending or two

endowed with a bag lady sensibility
copy conscientiously a vale of tents
sliding superfluous words

behind barricades
the poem will be beyond the understanding
of the uninitiated, but charming like you

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Chemistry

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Carly-Jay Metcalfe

Dismantling your form as you stand in the wake of white laminate,
everything takes its place as arable desire crunches under my downy boots.
I say ‘hello’ like an apology – not wanting to be a duchess of regret
(yes, I am familiar with the dogged predictability of losing)
so I look to the hem of your lips and move up to settle
on the southern tip of your nose;
soft patches of confessional skin a tourniquet to any rind of hope.
red ink, black ink, blue ink
I wager that there is grace in shutting up.

On my chart of the east, clouds chafe the sky,
my piano moaning like a bird on its last flight.
My body rushes; keening at you like you’re a finish line,
and as I usurp ribbons of catastrophe the dog pack has pinned to my chest,
I see you as a remission, where you become one long fortnightly saudade.

Gales of laughter rip through us as we fox away time.
With my foot in the door, I bury myself in busy snatches of air
where you tease me over the lure of peeling foil
before I scatter shards of pills under my tongue
but not before drawing your face into the bough of my hands;
my fingers trumpeting urgency.

I do not trust myself to hear the lilt in your voice
or to feel your hands under my caul,
for there are sounds that tumble out of my mouth
like small hymns that run in time with your easy slouch
best I learn how to pray

Meet me at the river where water
slips around our shadows like outposts of hope.
Stuck in the gullet of splitting winter winds
we are already a dirge of soupy stares and epistolary flesh
upon which I shall starve my curdling belly;
the biggest surprise being that you even remembered my name.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Compost

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Helen Parsons

When I lift the lid of the bin and see
the flick and coil of worms
as they dive from the light
my heart is lifted

and as I sit at my desk it comforts me
to think upon their quiet continual digestive work

the way they turn a mess of matter into earth,
the way that dead and failed and fragmentary things
can be transformed into fertility.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

In the Ear of the Journeyman

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Ross Jackson

minus this workload established status is a mirage but with a daily ten kilometres up and down gravel maybe you’re on track to maintain a spot in the squad if you don’t expire sometime soon granted it’s a lot to do with pain this daily dose along limestone

trails but it’s also about kilometres in the legs developing a decent engine for the midfield you’ll need to dig in if you want to remain a valued player well after this preseason you’re sure to remember that twice round the Zamia Trail makes ten

kilometres which must be run in less than forty minutes so show us how much you really want an extended contract it’s not as if you’re a superstar and should the shadow of your future arthritic self stand in the way you’ll just have to run through it after this

we’ll jog to Mc Gillvray Oval where there’ll be ten twenty metre sprints interspersed with less than thirty seconds recovery time sharp circle work for an hour before we do weights and now as you run past enjoy views of the sea snatched between tortured

banksia along the ridge line then slip down the dip past thorny yellow acacia where even if you can do with a piss you must give it a miss for more squirts of daily dose as pink and grey clowns look down their beaks and screech from trees intertwined with

bridal creeper and if in the sandy vale the windblown veldt grass bends your thoughts to barefoot running in Kenya wind your way up deep green hills planted with coffee in deep red soil till you reach the pine plantation of an imaginary Olympia where you’ll

give each tree a perfect hip and shoulder before the turn to the Lookout and if the senior coach instructs you to shirtfront the trunk of a tuart you better damn well do it come on sprint the last hundred you’re weak as piss and should you pike out let the

team down squib a hit when under a hospital handpass and if you get cut during the season for dropping a mark in the goal square then don’t come squealing to me in the meantime don’t bloody well forget that at five you’re getting another injection of juice

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Vacuum

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Russell Coldicutt

At the end of the world, will anyone think
of the man in the infomercials
who demonstrates the suction
power of vacuum cleaners?

I think about this often, of the different
ways we might finish
our sentence; perhaps a nuclear cloud

will engulf us and I’ll say
‘look, the house wears the smoke
like sweatpants’. I suppose
we won’t get to choose who shares
in our personal apocalypse.

I’ll probably fumble my lines.

Will the television networks still operate?
I hope so. I’d like to turn on the TV
and find an advertisement to fall asleep to.
To invest my last moments in thinking
about a man with an American accent
who I’ve never met. With such faith
in his vacuum cleaners how can he help
but lift the weight from the world.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Postgraduate Finesse

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Sam Riviere

An anonymous email to inform me of my absence on the shortlist

No interviews

When my statements are this unmagical

I think of the greengrocer watching clouds clear and reconvene

The rains lowering again

Over the unobtrusive roofwork of a Saturday

The decking patterns jazzing

And the unbelievable odour of sugar

As another plane goes over

The object’s dimmer

Which makes even fewer than last year

The ends these applications labour

I don’t remember it or my CV records an erosion so gradual

Or else the damage is a ready-made

Anyway I’m working on it

As an artificial ruin

All the inconsequent follies standing there in Times New Roman

I was halfway up a mountain on my way to a Greek monastery

When my alma mater called

An undergraduate asking for donations

From a campus of sensational brutalism

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged

Discovered in a Rock Pool

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Peter Boyle

A star-shaped object rising up
out of the water – five
wavering arms, five
spokes of a chariot wheel, five
curved cylinders, at their centre
a cluster of grey barnacles, small pearls, a silver light,

the water that drips from them
heavy with salt, oxidized
incrustations. A star tiara
from a drowned mermaid, the wheel
of some vast chariot washed up.
And, as it breaks the surface, this sharp sudden

fragrance like plants
left too long in narrow vases, the water
like urine drained out of dried twigs.
The wheel is a ghost of a wheel.
The fiery chariot’s return to
the kingdom of salt. And everything

shrinks and is less than a token
miniature apple, a walnut placed
as a skull-shaped offering on an
altar to placate the goddess of devouring.
Effigies stored in a rock pool.
This is surely someone’s

childhood not mine. Such simple things
might be placation or destruction. Starfish
or a galaxy intact
as its detritus. Burnt out. Cooling off,
cooling off in a solution
of brine and midday sun.

— Whom do you seek?
The woman at the centre of the starfish-wheel asks me.
— I am after another life.

Posted in 71: TOIL | Tagged