untitled

struck dumb
longer than Zechariah:
to verse, to sing, to pray --
impossible

then, no benedictus comes,
instead, at best,
a stunted lament:
a scratch on silence

(not speech, not song)
forced, discordant note
cracking the voice
that once could much but now

can nothing do

A arte de perder não é nenhum mistério

Someone made a YouTube video inspired by (the Portuguese version of) Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art."

(The music sounds familiar; is it Enya?)



And here is the original Bishop poem:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

More poetry in translation

A Brazilian poet has translated Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle "One Art" into Portuguese, retaining the structure and the rhyme. "The art of losing isn't hard to master" becomes A arte de perder não é nenhum mistério ("The art of losing is no mystery") -- still, a most skillful rendering.

Here, on one page, are Mr Britto's translation and Miss Bishop's original.

pentameters
(for exercise)

brave idols of a brazen summer
crushed

*

an excellence conceals itself
is mute

*

poets will die
their poems live
and grow

*

the risk of life, its crosses and its joys

*

our disconnected meditations laugh

*

pleasant will be each breath
when autumn comes

*

metropolis, thou many-mouthèd lout!

*

the quiet candles of an eastern church

*

admit not Broadway into Sunday Mass

*

grim entertainment of a needful task

*

pronounce the casual curse
and forfeit grace

*

etcetera begins the balladeer

Emily Dickinson
two poems


#1587

He ate and drank the precious Words —
His Spirit grew robust —
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was Dust —

He danced along the dingy Days
And this Bequest of Wings
Was but a Book — What Liberty
A loosened spirit brings —

_______________


#1585

The Bird her punctual music brings
And lays it in its place —
Its place is in the Human Heart
And in the Heavenly Grace —
What respite from her thrilling toil
Did Beauty ever take —
But Work might be electric Rest
To those that Magic make —

Poeta
by Alberto de Lacerda (1928-2007)


Ser poeta... é delirar,
Delirar alegre, ou triste,
Fazer versos é sonhar
Co' aquilo que não existe.

Ser poeta... é esquecer,
Da vida a realidade,
É, num abraço, abranger
O mundo e a eternidade.

Ser poeta, realmente,
É viver da ilusão
Nas horas de solidão,

É escrever o que se sente
Dando asas, livremente,
À nossa imaginação.


_______________


I know about ten words of Portuguese, and therefore cannot translate this poem in its entirety; but I like the way it sounds when I read it to myself.

Here is what Babelfish makes of it:

To be poet... is to be delirious, To be delirious glad, or sad, To make verses it is to dream Co ' what it does not exist. To be poet... is to forget, Of the life the reality, Is, in one hugs, to enclose the world and the eternity. To be poet, really, Is to live of the illusion In the solitude hours, It is to write what it is felt Giving wing, freely, To our imagination.

And here is an obituary for the recently deceased poet (mind the pop-up).

College students walk into a graveyard

as Theodore Roethke reads "The Waking":



(Note: The video begins with a period of silence; do not turn your volume too far up!)

Waste Land Limericks
by Wendy Cope (b. 1945)

I

In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyantes distress me,
Commuters depress me --
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

II

She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions --
Bad as Albert and Lil -- what a pair!

III

The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep --
A typist is laid,
A record is played --
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

IV

A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business -- the lot,
Which is no surprise,
Since he'd met his demise
And been left in the ocean to rot.

V

No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,
Then thunder, a shower of quotes
From the Sanskrit and Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you'll make sense of the notes.

_______________


Cope has also written these lines (seen at her Wikipedia page):

My true love hath my heart and I have hers
We swapped last Tuesday and felt quite elated
But now whenever one of us refers
To 'my heart' things get rather complicated.

And another Cope poem, "An Attempt at Unrhymed Verse," has been blogged at Enchiridion.

Eugenio Montale

From the Italian Nobel literature laureate (1975): Salt.

An excerpt:

starched consonants braid the tongue at its root

so all sense of who we are is lost to words,

and nothing that we know can be unravelled.

Even then, some vestige of the sea,

its plosive tide, its fretwork crests will surge

inside our syllables, bronze like the chant of bees.

Not all poetry gets lost in translation!

Saturday's, uhm, lovely, weather

It was 95 degrees in Boston. Tied a record for the date.

Just splendid.

Sixties today, though. Huzzah!

Ogden Nash on the martini
(spotted at Andrew Sullivan's blog)

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish that I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth --
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

Charles Martin: from poets.org

Here is a "political poem" that is a poem: Easter Sunday, 1985. I first encountered it in Phillis Levin's anthology of sonnets.

Mr. Martin is also, apparently, a translator of Catullus's poems.

Mark Strand on political poetry and rap

Am not the hugest fan of Strand, but for the most part I'm with him on this one. Most political poems are, indeed, ephemera. And what he says of rap is quite apt.

Discovered via the website of the Poetry Foundation.

One more

The Carpenters, yet again: "Hurting Each Other," 1971.

(I really like Karen's voice on this one ...)

Tracy Chapman

"You're the One," live, November 2003:

Song: "Good-bye, little yellow bird"

A nineteen-year-old Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane in the 1945 film version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray:

Another YouTube

The Carpenters perform Ave Maria, 1978.

Another quiz

You Are 4% Texas

Damn Yankee! You think the sun comes up just to hear you crow.

How Texas Are You?

I may be a damn Yankee, but even I know enough never to eat a cowpie.

The 1970s

Testing my ability to post a YouTube video. If it works, you should see/hear the Carpenters sing "Only Yesterday":

Quiz

You Are 70% Tortured Genius

You are smart. Brilliant in fact. And while it's a blessing, it's also a curse. Your head is filled with everything - grand ideas, insufferable worries, and a good deal of angst.

Are You a Tortured Genius?

Via Oblique House.