Edward Dorn's The Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2012), first selection (Early Poems, 1954-1960)

[from a poem on England...]



...the haggard
diaries of quickly here & there, like a blooded hound
with his leash in his own mouth, ringing

in the articulate air a cultural error.

*

The last gaze at stones in a calamine expanse

wherein dusty snow sifts her tin kiss to

                 tradition

                       here

                                  where

                                                 even Eros would be ill dressed.

 from "Relics from a Polar Cairn"

Today I am a vast dirge.

Today I have not flown....

*

Today I am impatient with small horrors.

from "The Revival"

Oh I love plants but where I am the weather

drives the birds away

*

Whorled, like a univalve shell

into herself,

early to bed, nothing

in her head, here and there

from "The Hide of My Mother"

...all in an enkindled February....

*

...at night too Pocatello wasn't Pocatello but a jewel

the red and the blue and bright amethyst, something you could never narrow down to gas in glass tubes.

*

...he went on anyway describing the possibilities, that's love

in the mist of indifference.

*

Everywhere I am, I feel I am everywhere else.

from "For Ray (the 6th)"

What a shock

to get over the embarrassment of using language.

That's why I write to you every day

I no longer have that tedious care.

the last lines of "The 7th"

As the expression goes, do yourself a favour, and buy Edward Dorn's The Collected Poems directly from the publisher, Carcanet Press. How could you regret it?

Anna Rabinowitz's The Wanton Sublime (Tupelo, 2006)

Anna Rabinowitz's third book of poetry, The Wanton Sublime, explores with vigor and precision the mythology and the person of Mary as the virgin mother. Here are some favourite passages:

(what dreams hammer to a stop--?)

from "Unarmed, unwarned..."

THE VERTIGINOUS THRILL OF EXACTITUDE STEALS AWAY

from "Quick"

                                                (O lassitude of folds unfolding)

*

HER EYES CANNOT DENY

THE OBLIGATION TO PERCEIVE AN OTHER

from "Speculum and Shade"

The divine descends as weather

     a sudden rain flecked with gold

     a chill plunged through smoldering, sparking fire

from "The divine descends as weather"

3. Mornings like this syllables spread their anarchies in the sun...

4. Mornings like this labor to archive subjects/objects of faith...

*

6. Mornings like this the labyrinth holds invention at bay--

MORNING AND MAZE ARE ONE

from "A Disquisition on Unbearable

Conundrums of Being"

his hearken creeps into me

*

Must I do what I have always done--

in a cold sweat and daring nothing,

acquiesce, grip his hand and bleed his way...

from "the Book of Mandate as Helotry"

Overbright

          Everbright

                    INCESSANT SCOUR OF LIGHT

from "A Prolegomenon of

Benedictine Liturgy as Peregrine Song"

In his eyes, pools of light map no pollution, only flame

In her eyes, no flecks, no threads mar the cobalt calm

     until his hail scumbles their surface

     What is she to make of it

from "It is time to speak of the lies"

For this I, Hekenus, said: your mysteries are not welcome

My mysteries I wield but will not yield

And so to me, tender of gardens, made he tender

And so by me was he denied

the last two stanzas of "Of Ubiquitous Will"

We are water

                                             we are wager

            we will be outlived by our intentions

from "The real, the true song"

Cut to her eyes fixed on definition

Cut to the sky attempting arrival

*

Cut to her soul which is body

           which is the dust

                      of an inescapable need

from "The Wanton Sublime"

 

My collaboration with Roddy Lumsden for Camarade 4

As videos of me go, I find this one on the more tolerable side. This one shows the results of my collaboration with Roddy Lumsden for Steven Fowler's Camarade 4, performed last night at The Rich Mix Foundation in London.

Of funerals and mortality

On Friday I attended my partner's father's funeral and wake in Suffolk, and as the minister earnestly reminded us, it was a time to think not only on the life of the departed but also on our own mortality. Since my parents' early deaths, I've been overwhelmed by the realization that all this knowledge, all this richness of experience, simply ends (as I am agnostic). I feel more pressure not only to lead an ethical life but also to be the person I aspire to be, as a partner, friend, writer, and teacher. I suppose that's why I came up with so many New Year's resolutions (perhaps aspirations is a better word)--I am painfully conscious of ways in which I want to improve. Perhaps this degree of self-criticism will ease as I become more accustomed to my parents' deaths, but I'm not sure I want it to. Perhaps having a keen sense of mortality, a sense that we lead only one life, offers the best way to achieve real happiness. I don't know.

Rae Armantrout's Next Life (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), second selection

Some favourite passages....



A promise that can only be kept
by being made and made again

last lines of "Promise"

The dream--a froth

of syllables and lights.

A lost

girl, cross

section of a girl,

who floats on the surface

tension between bed

rock 

and rising.

last section of "In Part"

As planets and protons

invent themselves by spinning,

so a mind

turns on itself

in a body's dark space

last section of "Pronouncements"

And someone will here set down

a diner or gas station

at a desolate crossroads

and tried naming it

to evoke

the whole human situation

while

satirizing

the impulse to do so

What that name will be

is the one thing we don't know

end of "Make It New"

We ought to be frightened

of the reconstituted

pronominal fizz

that invades us,

the waverly, weasely persistence

which, once we start to listen,

demands to be heard

end of "Again"

The present's chronic

revision

which a poem

reenacts.

from "Yoohoo"

When we wish for anything,

we also wish

for time to pass.

From this

we can infer

that time and wish are one

substance

or that we have caused them

to become enmeshed.

third section of "Propensity"

Rae Armantrout's Next Life (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), first selection

Here are some favourite passages--indeed, I have so many, I need to break them up into two posts!



Not getting lost
but looping
then extending myself

afresh,
starburst,

reversing myself
as if turning
to face a partner

last section of "Reserved"

(Echo persuades us

everything we say

has been said at least once

                                                    before.)

* * * 

Is it the beginning or end

of real love

when we pity a person

because, in him,

we see ourselves?

from "Two, Three"

Now's hopeful

pucker.

from "As (2)"

I have enough past

and future

to accompany me now.

from "Blur"

If each moment is in love

with its image

in the mirror of

adjacent moments

(as if matter stuttered),

then, of course, we're restless!

from "The Subject"

The very old man shuffles very slowly

not between

the white lines of a crosswalk

but down one of them.

Like a figure in a dream

his relation to meaning

is ominous

the last section of "Agreement"

On the radio with Horace

I did this recording oh so long ago, I only I remember it vaguely. It's not Ode 111, but Ode 11 from Book 1 of Horace's Odes. It's my translation from my days as an early PhD student (1998?) at UC Irvine. 

i.m. Ronald Lillistone, 28 August 1934-13 January 2012

A bit silly, I know, but this is my favourite of the photos I have of Ron Lillistone. 

Here's a more traditional photo. The man with his sons, Trevor and Malcolm. He brightened when either came into a room. 

Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, Chicago, 29 December 2012

 

A child's letter home

Someone please tell me other kids are this bossy.... I think I was about ten years old.