I remember reading Robert Creeley's poetry many years back and loving it and so have picked up 3 books of poetry by him today - Life & Death, Echoes, and If I were writing this.

Just one of his early poems for now...

Poem for D.H. Lawrence

I would begin by explaining
that by reason of being
I am and no other.

Always the self returns to
self-consciousness, seeing
the figure drawn by the window
by its own hand, standing
alone and unwanted by others.
It sees this, the self sees
and returns to the figure
there in the evening, the darkness
alone and unwanted by others.

In the beginning was this self,
perhaps, without the figure,
without consciousness of self
or figure or evening. In the
beginning was this self only,
alone and unwanted by others.

In the beginning was that and this
is different, is changed and how
it is changed is not known but felt.
It is felt by the self and the self
is feeling, is changed by feeling,
but not known, is changed, is felt.

Remembering the figure by the window,
in the evening drawn there by the window,
is to see the thing like money, is to be
sure of materials, but not to know
where they came from or how
they got there or when they came.
Remembering the figure by the window
the evening is remembered, the darkness
remembered as the figure by the window,
but is not to know how they came there.

The self is being, is in being and
because of it. The figure is not being
nor the self but is in the self and
in the being and because of them.

Always the self returns to, because of
being, the figure drawn by the window,
there in the evening, the darkness,
alone and unwanted by others.

Hmmm... There are some deep questions and ruminations about the self here but I am not sure I get the whole poem.

a great picture, which I call The Evolution of Self; © Alfredo Gomez Jr.

I'll try to post some of his more accessible poems in the days to come from the three books, which I hope to read in the next couple weeks.

For now, here is a quote from his poem that I had posted elsewhere and I had also excerpted lines from Creeley's poems as a prologue to a poem I wrote in 2005, which is when I first was introduced to his poetry through a book of selected poems - this one, if I remember right. (I believe there is a new book of collected poems this year, collecting poems from 1945-2005.)

Also a review of his work in the NYT and an interview with Creeley from 2003 after a reading at Emerson College here in Boston.

I remember reading Robert Creeley's poetry many years back and loving it and so have picked up 3 books of poetry by him today - Life & Death, Echoes, and If I were writing this.

Just one of his early poems for now...

Poem for D.H. Lawrence

I would begin by explaining
that by reason of being
I am and no other.

Always the self returns to
self-consciousness, seeing
the figure drawn by the window
by its own hand, standing
alone and unwanted by others.
It sees this, the self sees
and returns to the figure
there in the evening, the darkness
alone and unwanted by others.

In the beginning was this self,
perhaps, without the figure,
without consciousness of self
or figure or evening. In the
beginning was this self only,
alone and unwanted by others.

In the beginning was that and this
is different, is changed and how
it is changed is not known but felt.
It is felt by the self and the self
is feeling, is changed by feeling,
but not known, is changed, is felt.

Remembering the figure by the window,
in the evening drawn there by the window,
is to see the thing like money, is to be
sure of materials, but not to know
where they came from or how
they got there or when they came.
Remembering the figure by the window
the evening is remembered, the darkness
remembered as the figure by the window,
but is not to know how they came there.

The self is being, is in being and
because of it. The figure is not being
nor the self but is in the self and
in the being and because of them.

Always the self returns to, because of
being, the figure drawn by the window,
there in the evening, the darkness,
alone and unwanted by others.

Hmmm... There are some deep questions and ruminations about the self here but I am not sure I get the whole poem.

a great picture, which I call The Evolution of Self; © Alfredo Gomez Jr.

I'll try to post some of his more accessible poems in the days to come from the three books, which I hope to read in the next couple weeks.

For now, here is a quote from his poem that I had posted elsewhere and I had also excerpted lines from Creeley's poems as a prologue to a poem I wrote in 2005, which is when I first was introduced to his poetry through a book of selected poems - this one, if I remember right. (I believe there is a new book of collected poems this year, collecting poems from 1945-2005.)

Also a review of his work in the NYT and an interview with Creeley from 2003 after a reading at Emerson College here in Boston.

My blog this week in a cloud tag, via Wordle, which can create such a cloud for any website you want.

I am no art enthusiast nor do I write art/movie/book reviews well (a recent post by Amit comes to mind -- easy to critique; difficult to create, no?)... but thought I'd share a short review of an art exhibition I saw today.

I went to the Boston Public Library in Copley Square this afternoon and saw that they had an exhibition of drawings by Channing Penna on display at the BPL.

MOVINGLINE is the outcome of a seven-year exploration of the science and humanity of movement. With pencil, Channing Penna captures nature's energy, beauty, and rhythms in a series of sixty-seven drawings with accompanying prose. In this extraordinary body of work, the intimacy of her art is initially represented by images of crashing waves, birds in flight, and racing horses. Her pursuit of motion then evolves into renditions of dancers and musicians performing, and complex portrayals of the human face. Organic and surprising, Channing's drawings are unforgettable for the power of their line, the drama of their black and white compositions, and the innovation with which they are rendered.

And here is the artist's statement about the work. Some of the work from the exhibition can be seen in a recently released book or even at her website.

However, I think enjoying it at a public gallery gave me a whole different experience, which I would not have got if I had stumbled into the book or the website. In both cases, one would lose a lot without the scale and the ambiance of walking around a big room looking at the drawings. Also, with the website, one loses the impact of experiencing the pictures in combination with Channing's words and quotes which accompany each picture. In my opinion, the art and the words feed off each other and the words complement the art, instead of detracting from it. No doubt, the art can stand by itself but the words helped me understand the artist's thought process better and hence helped me appreciate it more.

From waves to horses to soaring eagles to doves and cranes (and even cranes of a different kind - see last picture in her online gallery), the drawings draw you into a world of motion (or should I say a whirl of motion), leaving the viewer breathless. And then she slows it down a bit with the portraits, also often portraying motion (especially liked the one with Seiji Ozawa conducting) but more cleverly, with the the human touch perhaps bringing it down to a quieter more reminiscing feel and a less ferocious end.

A wonderful exhibition. Half an hour or so of pure joy! Ferocious and full of life.

P.S. Some of her work is also in a Flickr album but I am not sure if this is someone who knows her who has put it up there with her permission.

--
Chaos is the law of nature. Order is the dream of man -- Henry Brooks Adams

Picture © Sarolta Gyoker, who posted it here.

This morning, I started reading Kundera's Slowness, a book I had kinda perused through some years back but not really read, and really enjoyed this wonderful paragraph:

"Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafing heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars? Have they vanished along with footpaths, with grasslands and clearings, with nature? There is a Czech proverb that describes their easy indolence by a metaphor: 'they are gazing at God's windows.' A person gazing at God's windows is not bored; he is happy. In our world, indolence has turned into having nothing to do, which is a completely different thing: a person with nothing to do is frustrated, bored, is constantly searching for an activity he lacks."

"Gazing at God's Windows" would make for a a great blog's title. :)

Picture © Sarolta Gyoker, who posted it here.

This morning, I started reading Kundera's Slowness, a book I had kinda perused through some years back but not really read, and really enjoyed this wonderful paragraph:

"Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafing heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars? Have they vanished along with footpaths, with grasslands and clearings, with nature? There is a Czech proverb that describes their easy indolence by a metaphor: 'they are gazing at God's windows.' A person gazing at God's windows is not bored; he is happy. In our world, indolence has turned into having nothing to do, which is a completely different thing: a person with nothing to do is frustrated, bored, is constantly searching for an activity he lacks."

"Gazing at God's Windows" would make for a a great blog's title. :)

John Ashberry, in an interview with Guernica magazine says:

Kenneth Koch’s poem "Fresh Air" is actually a kind of manifesto we all subscribed to. It talks about a Poetry Society where academic poetry is formulated that is disrupted by a kind of Batman-like figure called the Strangler, the enemy of bad poetry. I suggest you might take a look at it. One line in particular—someone gets up at the Poetry Society to read a poem that begins, "This Connecticut landscape would have pleased Vermeer," and the Strangler immediately strikes that line down.

I fear a lot of my poetry would have suffered a gruesome death at the hands of the The Strangler but given the amount of cr*p I see that gets published, especially online, as poetry, I wish there was a real Strangler to take care of bad poetry like this.

Also, at my cynical best, I too would agree with his opinion about political poetry preaching to the choir and not being too useful but like he says, poetry and words can goad you into awareness and other kinds of action...

My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are not the people who read poetry, unfortunately. Poetry not specifically aimed at political revolution, though, is beneficial in moving people toward that kind of action, as well as other kinds of action. A good poem makes me want to be active on as many fronts as possible.

... in addition to the obvious beauty of words being a "renovating virtue."

John Ashberry, in an interview with Guernica magazine says:

Kenneth Koch’s poem "Fresh Air" is actually a kind of manifesto we all subscribed to. It talks about a Poetry Society where academic poetry is formulated that is disrupted by a kind of Batman-like figure called the Strangler, the enemy of bad poetry. I suggest you might take a look at it. One line in particular—someone gets up at the Poetry Society to read a poem that begins, "This Connecticut landscape would have pleased Vermeer," and the Strangler immediately strikes that line down.

I fear a lot of my poetry would have suffered a gruesome death at the hands of the The Strangler but given the amount of cr*p I see that gets published, especially online, as poetry, I wish there was a real Strangler to take care of bad poetry like this.

Also, at my cynical best, I too would agree with his opinion about political poetry preaching to the choir and not being too useful but like he says, poetry and words can goad you into awareness and other kinds of action...

My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are not the people who read poetry, unfortunately. Poetry not specifically aimed at political revolution, though, is beneficial in moving people toward that kind of action, as well as other kinds of action. A good poem makes me want to be active on as many fronts as possible.

... in addition to the obvious beauty of words being a "renovating virtue."

Never heard of him before today!

The Swedish Academy on Thursday awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French novelist, children’s author and essayist regarded by some French readers as one of the country’s greatest living writers.

Bookies be damned, it is a Frenchman that wins again. That makes it 14 French, all men, in 108 years of Nobel awards. ( Not sure if the 14 includes 2000 winner Gao Xingjian, who is a Chinese-born French writer*.) There are 10 Americans in that list, it seems and there apparently is a bias against American authors at the Nobel committee, with the Nobel judge and permanent secretary Horace Engdahl recently saying in an interview:

“The US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

Oh well... my bet on John Updike or Phillip Roth winning one of these days is not going to happen, I guess! (Unless there is a wider backlash against Engdahl's words and so the Nobel committee hands one out next year to an American just to assuage things. Somehow, I doubt it. The Nobel committee cares too hoots about what the New Yorker or other Americans have to say about their choices...(and that's how it should be.)

Anyways, like Marco Roth writes in the Guardian: "The Nobel prize for literature doesn't really have much to do with literary excellence - and that's not a bad thing."... though calling it some irrelevant prize that clueless Swedes hand out does sound like a case of sour grapes and kinda undermines the fact that the Nobel, despite its roots in the literary hinterlands of Scandinavian backwaters, has become the most prestigious literary award.

We want the award to matter as though presented by angels rather than a few, imperfect Swedes with their own biases and tastes.
If we are shocked to discover that politics or some agenda external to mere aesthetics or "excellence", impinges on the judgment of literary work in an international context, we haven't been paying attention. The history of the prize is tied to Alfred Nobel's own broadly humanitarian aspirations to reward those who "have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind". Literature will always suffer from this kind of consequentialist standard, and the Swedes recognised this too.

--
* Coincidentally, I picked up Gao Xingjian's book of short stories: Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather at the public library yesterday.

Never heard of him before today!

The Swedish Academy on Thursday awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French novelist, children’s author and essayist regarded by some French readers as one of the country’s greatest living writers.

Bookies be damned, it is a Frenchman that wins again. That makes it 14 French, all men, in 108 years of Nobel awards. ( Not sure if the 14 includes 2000 winner Gao Xingjian, who is a Chinese-born French writer*.) There are 10 Americans in that list, it seems and there apparently is a bias against American authors at the Nobel committee, with the Nobel judge and permanent secretary Horace Engdahl recently saying in an interview:

“The US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

Oh well... my bet on John Updike or Phillip Roth winning one of these days is not going to happen, I guess! (Unless there is a wider backlash against Engdahl's words and so the Nobel committee hands one out next year to an American just to assuage things. Somehow, I doubt it. The Nobel committee cares too hoots about what the New Yorker or other Americans have to say about their choices...(and that's how it should be.)

Anyways, like Marco Roth writes in the Guardian: "The Nobel prize for literature doesn't really have much to do with literary excellence - and that's not a bad thing."... though calling it some irrelevant prize that clueless Swedes hand out does sound like a case of sour grapes and kinda undermines the fact that the Nobel, despite its roots in the literary hinterlands of Scandinavian backwaters, has become the most prestigious literary award.

We want the award to matter as though presented by angels rather than a few, imperfect Swedes with their own biases and tastes.

If we are shocked to discover that politics or some agenda external to mere aesthetics or "excellence", impinges on the judgment of literary work in an international context, we haven't been paying attention. The history of the prize is tied to Alfred Nobel's own broadly humanitarian aspirations to reward those who "have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind". Literature will always suffer from this kind of consequentialist standard, and the Swedes recognised this too.

--
* Coincidentally, I picked up Gao Xingjian's book of short stories: Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather at the public library yesterday.

Loved this....

We are all dreaming creatures who continually live in part in our dreams, dreams of what could be for ourselves and our children, even dreams of what is the case, dreams in which our husbands grow more charming, our wives more beautiful, our houses finer, our prospects richer than they are. Dreams in which our daily lives might be tolerable. To dream is to create.

According to a post at the New Yorker blog, Salman Rushdie said it in a lecture over the weekend on "the making of the Hamzanama, an illustrated manuscript created in the sixteenth Century under the Mughal emperor Akbar."

Apparently, Akbar commissioned fourteen hundred individual pieces of art (of which around 200 remain today) which narrate the " fantastical adventures and exploits of Amir Hamza, the uncle of the prophet Mohammed." Some of them were posted at the above New Yorker link and I am using one here (with full copyright to whoever owns them!) but there are a few more at that link that you can enjoy.

The palace depicted illustrates “the birth of a dream architectural style that became a reality,” Rushdie said.

It seems there is a recent translation, The adventures of Amir Hamza - Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami. (Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi.)

But before I ran into these links I had never heard of Amir Hamza and so I lead you to others who have done a great job of reviewing this book about a fascinating life. Read Jai Arjun's two wonderful posts at his blog and also William Dalrymple's review of the book in the NYT.

It seems the book is almost 950 pages and I doubt I will ever read it but I do want to some day soon read Dalrymple's recent book The Last Mughal: Fall of a Dyansty, Delhi, 1857.
It was received very well in India (and abroad too maybe) and considering I at least know something about the Mughals and the Mutiny of 1857, the detailed history of that period should make for very interesting reading. On the other hand, what I do not know about Amir Hamza could fill a book...a 950 page one! :)

Just read a NYT Sunday Book Review by Garrison Keilor of Julian Barnes's recent book Nothing To Be Frightened Of.

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him,” the book begins. Julian Barnes, an atheist turned agnostic, has decided at the age of 62 to address his fear of death — why should an agnostic fear death who has no faith in an afterlife? How can you be frightened of Nothing? On this simple question Barnes has hung an elegant memoir and meditation, a deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter.

As an agnostic myself, I think some day I will be in a similar position. For now, I muse about Death and my own mortality in the shadows of the grief of my own experience with it this year vis-a-vis my father's death earlier this year. His death made me more acutely aware not merely of my own mortality but also of path till that door is finally shut some day.

Or in Barnes's words:

For me, death is the one appalling fact which defines life; unless you are constantly aware of it, you cannot begin to understand what life is about; unless you know and feel that the days of wine and roses are limited, that the wine will madeirize and the roses turn brown in their stinking water before all are thrown out for ever -- including the jug -- there is no context to such pleasures and interests as come your way on the road to the grave.

The Dying Gaul, of which Lord Byron wrote:

He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low—
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one...
- Childe Harold, Canto IV (1818), stanzas 140-141.

So, what does it mean to die? What does it entail for those of us who do not believe in an afterlife? These are not questions that are as overwhelming as the 'What is the meaning of life' angst that 20-something year olds ponder about (sometimes!) but is as unanswerable as we muse over it in our late 30s (me) or early 60s (like Barnes.)

Related:

1) The book, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

2) Aubade a beautiful poem about mortality and death by Philip Larkin (from which I took the title of this post):

..
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare.
..

Kinda related:
a) A short story called Revolving Door by T. C. Forrester that I ran into this morning. (PDF at the bottom of the link has the story. The link itself is to an interview with the author.)
b) Julian Barnes had a short story, East Wind, in the New Yorker earlier this year.

Just read a NYT Sunday Book Review by Garrison Keilor of Julian Barnes's recent book Nothing To Be Frightened Of.

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him,” the book begins. Julian Barnes, an atheist turned agnostic, has decided at the age of 62 to address his fear of death — why should an agnostic fear death who has no faith in an afterlife? How can you be frightened of Nothing? On this simple question Barnes has hung an elegant memoir and meditation, a deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter.

As an agnostic myself, I think some day I will be in a similar position. For now, I muse about Death and my own mortality in the shadows of the grief of my own experience with it this year vis-a-vis my father's death earlier this year. His death made me more acutely aware not merely of my own mortality but also of path till that door is finally shut some day.

Or in Barnes's words:

For me, death is the one appalling fact which defines life; unless you are constantly aware of it, you cannot begin to understand what life is about; unless you know and feel that the days of wine and roses are limited, that the wine will madeirize and the roses turn brown in their stinking water before all are thrown out for ever -- including the jug -- there is no context to such pleasures and interests as come your way on the road to the grave.

The Dying Gaul, of which Lord Byron wrote:

He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low—
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one...
- Childe Harold, Canto IV (1818), stanzas 140-141.

So, what does it mean to die? What does it entail for those of us who do not believe in an afterlife? These are not questions that are as overwhelming as the 'What is the meaning of life' angst that 20-something year olds ponder about (sometimes!) but is as unanswerable as we muse over it in our late 30s (me) or early 60s (like Barnes.)

Related:

1) The book, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

2) Aubade a beautiful poem about mortality and death by Philip Larkin (from which I took the title of this post):

..
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare.
..

Kinda related:
a) A short story called Revolving Door by T. C. Forrester that I ran into this morning. (PDF at the bottom of the link has the story. The link itself is to an interview with the author.)
b) Julian Barnes had a short story, East Wind, in the New Yorker earlier this year.

As promised, Muddy Waters with Clapton, in a live performance of I'm a man in 1976.



And Clapton & Muddy Waters again in a live performance from 1978, with Standing Around Crying


Here's what Clapton had to say about Muddy Waters in a recent documentary: "The most important music of my life."



If God listens to and is inspired by Muddy Waters...what can we ordinary mortals do but watch and hear in awe and thank the real God (if she exists) for giving mankind music.

Just read about a South African jazz pianist, Bheki Mseleku, who died earlier this month from complications from diabetes . He was only 53.

Here he is playing Duke Ellington's famous tune Take the A Train, with Joe Henderson and others. (I always thought that piece was composed by Ellington. Wiki enlightens that it "is a jazz standard by Billy Strayhorn that was the signature tune of the Duke Ellington orchestra. "

Hear the amazing piano playing by Mseleku around 3:45 to 5 minutes or so. Especially amazing considering it seems he " suffered the lose of the upper joints of two fingers in his right hand from a go- carting accident" during his childhood. RIP, Mseleku.



Love the sound of the bass, as always too.. and there is a great bass solo right after the piano.

Here's Brubeck's quartet playing the same piece



and of course, one of Ellington ...



Awesome, to say the least!