The poet Alexander Pushkin challenged twenty-one duels with no win. But just that one loss, put him under a cross. Perhaps, he'd have lived if his skin weren't so thin.
Pushkin Limerick
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Category Archives: Literature
Kafka Clerihew
The Bohemian writer Franz Kafka, more conflicted than Queen Jocasta, wrote tales, absurd -n- surreal... yet how factual they feel.
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BOOK REVIEW: Braided Creek by Ted Kooser & Jim Harrison
Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry: Expanded Anniversary Edition by Jim HarrisonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
20th Anniversary Edition Release Date: August 15, 2023
This is a twentieth anniversary re-release of a collection of short poems — on the scale of haiku or tanka — exchanged between Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison over many years. The poems are unattributed and, famously, literary critics who boldly proclaimed they knew which poems were written by which poet have been proven wrong.
While the length of the poems is similar to that of haiku and tanka, if one were going to categorize them in terms of Japanese verse, most would be more like senryū or kyōka (the poetic genres that match haiku and tanka [respectively] in form, but allow for humor, humanism, abstract metaphors, and freedom to deviate from juxtaposition of natural imagery.) But even that categorization would be deceptive because these poems tend toward a uniquely American voice.
That said, there are a few that fit the Japanese style well, e.g.:
In the morning light, / the doorknob, cold with dew.
Or,
The cups of the tulips / tip forward, spilling their snow.
There are also a few that are more like ko-an than like poems. (A ko-an is a Zen “riddle” designed to help practitioners break the hold of logic and reason on the mind. Typically, the ko-an looks like a question, but it can’t be thought out to an intellectually satisfying answer as most questions can.)
Is this poem a pebble, / or a raindrop coated with dust?
Or,
My wife’s lovely dog, Mary, kills butterflies. They’re easier than birds. I wonder if Buddha had dog nature.
But one hears an American voice in such examples as:
On my desk two / indisputably great creations: duct tape and saltine crackers.
Or,
Rowing across the lake / all the dragonflies are screwing. Stop it. It’s Sunday.
There are philosophical pieces, such as:
Only today / I heard / the river / within the river.
Or,
How tall would I be without my enemies to measure me?
This anniversary edition has a beautiful introduction by Naomi Shihab Nye and a brief epilogue by Kooser, but is otherwise the same.
If you like light and whimsical poetry that can make you laugh, or – sometimes – make you think, you should check out this collection.
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A Quick & Dirty Guide for Reading William Blake’s Prophetic Poetry
It’s been said that Blake’s poetry is nearly impenetrable. When people say this, they’re referring to a series of long poems that are often called Blake’s “prophetic books.” It’s not that people struggle much with Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, or The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I doubt anyone is stumbling their way through “The Lamb” or “The Tyger.” In fact, some of Blake’s poetry is highly readable for eighteenth century work.
The challenge is that Blake created his own mythology and he launches in with all these characters that have no sticking power for a reader. This is unfortunate as Blake remains well worth reading for his ideas, his language, and his sui generis worldview. [Even if he doesn’t win you over, Blake will give you something to think about that you’ve probably never considered before.] Blake’s mythology forces the reader to choose between a painstaking read (making notes, re-reading sections multiple times, stopping dead to make connections, etc.) or a casual read that misses most of what Blake is saying because it floats over the connections he is making.
As I’m re-reading Blake, I constructed a chart that helps me track who’s who and what each major character is about. I won’t claim it makes Blake’s prophetic work completely simple and transparent, but it has made reading it more productive and insightful. If you’re reading “Valas,” “Milton,” “Jerusalem” or any of the other prophetic books, I hope it will benefit you as well.
Em/F: these are emanations (i.e. characters that flow from the character from which the pointer originates.) Some refer to these as the feminine forms, hence the “F.”
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Five Wise Lines from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” [Plus Five Lines, More]
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
william blake
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
William blake
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
William Blake
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
William Blake
Exuberance is Beauty.
William blake
Without Contraries is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
William Blake
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
William blake
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake
I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He answer’d: ‘The same that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian.’
William Blake
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
William blake
NOTE: William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven in Hell” is available in many collections of his poetry, and is in the public domain and available via Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45315
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Five Wise Lines from Leaves of Grass
Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.
Walt Whitman, “miracles”
The American contempt for statues and ceremonies, the boundless impatience for restraint…
Walt whitman, “Song of the Broad-axe”
I exist as I am, that is enough. If no other in the world would be aware I sit content. And if each and all be aware I sit content.
walt whitman, “Song of myself”
I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
walt whitman, “song of myself”
If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred.
Walt whitman, “i sing the body electric”
NOTES: Numerous editions exist between the 1855 and 1892 (deathbed) edition. It’s available for free on Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322
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Five Wise Lines from Tagore’s Stray Birds
The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.
Stray birds — #48
By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
Stray birds — #154
The eyes are not proud of their sight but of their eyeglasses.
stray birds — #256
I carry in my world that flourishes the worlds that have failed.
stray birds — #121
Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning.
stray birds — #14
CITATION: Tagore, Rabindranath (1916), Stray Birds, New York: McMillan, 92pp.
Available on Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6524
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In Homage to Leaves of Grass
You're my Analects,
my Gita,
my Dao De Jing,
my sutras,
my Meditations,
and my Republic
all rolled into one.
You are the scripture by which I live.
You present a path to that rare place:
extreme confidence
which tears no one down,
but, rather, lifts all.
You achieve this by crushing
the ordinary.
Nothing is common.
Everything is a miracle.
(Even those leaves of grass
you repeatedly reference.)
No one is so rough
or promiscuous
or simple
as to be lowly.
Your author's unbridled enthusiasm
glowed with the insane confidence
of an adolescent boy,
but his awesomeness was never gained
by subtracting from others.
Rather by seeing the bright, beautiful spark
in each body,
mind,
pair of hands,
& burdened shoulder.
You are America,
the America we want to be.
The America that labors,
but which takes time to see
its natural wonders.
The America that heard what Jesus said,
and became less excelled at stone-throwing,
and more at cheek-turning.
The America that could see beyond dogma
and hard-edged tribalism,
and could learn from all the
grand & glorious people
who reached its shores --
So that we could be the best version of ourselves
through the strengths of all of us,
and not be stymied by missing
the great beauty & knowledge
among us.
You pair away the extraneous burdens
which tax the mind,
and show us what the world looks like
unfiltered.
You teach one to see a beauty
that is so well hidden
that its own possessor doesn't
recognize it.
You are the song of a life well lived.
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BOOK REVIEW: The Translations of Seamus Heaney by various [Trans. by Seamus Heaney / Ed. by Marco Sonzogi]
The Translations of Seamus Heaney by Seamus HeaneyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Release Date: March 21, 2023 [for the reviewed edition]
I’d read Heaney’s approachable yet linguistically elegant translation of Beowulf long ago, and was excited to see this collection of his translations coming out. The one hundred pieces gathered make for a diverse work, from single stanza poems to epic narratives and timed from Ancient Greece through modernity. The pieces include works from well-known poets such as Baudelaire, Cavafy, Dante, Brodsky, Horace, Sophocles, Ovid, Pushkin, Rilke, and Virgil. But most readers will find new loves among the many poets who aren’t as well-known in the English-reading world, including Irish and Old English poets. I was floored by the pieces by Ana Blandiana, a prolific Romanian poet who’s a household name in Bucharest, though not so well-known beyond.
I’d highly recommend this anthology for poetry readers. Besides gorgeous and clever use of language, the power of story wasn’t lost on Heaney and his tellings of Antigone (titled herein as “The Burial at Thebes,) Beowulf, Philoctetes (titled “The Cure at Troy,”) and others are gripping and well-told.
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BOOK REVIEW: A Beginner’s Guide to Japanese Haiku Translated by William Scott Wilson
A Beginner’s Guide to Japanese Haiku: Major Works by Japan’s Best-Loved Poets – From Basho and Issa to Ryokan and Santoka, with Works by Six Women Poets by William Scott WilsonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: March 28, 2023
This is a delightful, nicely arranged, and well-translated anthology of haiku. A couple things should be clarified off the bat, given the book’s title (particularly for haiku neophytes.) First of all, “Japanese Haiku” may sound redundant, but the point is that this collection is entirely haiku translated from the work of Japanese poets – historic and modern. There’s been a huge international production of haiku for quite a while, and even national sub-styles such as American Haiku, but this anthology includes none of that.
Secondly, one needn’t put too much stock in the “beginner’s” wording of the title. I understand their point. If you’ve done a lot of haiku reading, you will see quite a few familiar poems, and there are none of the related forms (e.g. tanka, kyoka, renga, haibun, etc.) However, with respect to the first point, the beauty of good poetry is that one can re-read it and get something new out of it each time, and this is especially true if it’s a different translation, which allows one to both take in something of the translator’s perspective as one applies one’s own. Furthermore, this book has many fine features that will particular benefit experienced and analytical haiku readers. For one, it has the original poem both in Japanese characters as well as Romanized phonetic Japanese. (The latter makes it easy to see how the poet worked sound and syllabic arrangement.) There’re also brief biographies for all the poets, which is both useful for knowing what informed their craft, but also interesting in that a surprising number of these haiku poets lived colorful lives.
There are three sections to the book that work in the direction of increasing levels of obscurity. It begins with the big four of haiku (Bashō, Shiki, Buson, and Issa.) Then there’s a section with a large number of notable, but not Bashō-level poets. Finally, there are lesser-known poets, many of whom were quite prolific and had unique takes on the form. The latter two sections include poets that span from the contemporaries of Bashō to twentieth century poets.
If you enjoy haiku, I’d highly recommend this collection. I learned more about suspensive form in haiku and the varying styles of free verse haiku poets in Japan just through careful reading.
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