I saw the best peacocks of my generation

Encontré esto en LL

Con la pintura me pasa lo mismo que con la poesía: siempre quiero dejarla y ella nunca me deja. Por más que quiero, no me deja. ¡Cuántas veces he sentido que es la hora –por fin– del adiós, y resulta que me tiene deparada otra sorpresa!

Hace algunos años fueron las naturalezas muertas vivísimas de Picasso; hace pocos años fueron las naturalezas quietas de Matisse; ayer, algunos pequeños cuadros magistrales de Klee; hoy, las flores de Kiefer en su Bohemia junto al mar.

Y frente a este campo de flores –o desde el campo mismo– llega la legendaria ballena de Jonás para hacer de nuevo su trabajo: me devora, me asimila, me transforma, y vuelvo a quedar tocado por el rayo del arte, la pintura, la poesía.

¿Cuántas veces no me ha pasado lo mismo? Y yo tan necio, tan grandilocuente, tan teatral. Sí, sobre todo, tan teatral. Tratando siempre de dar el golpe maestro y conseguir la salida espectacular de la escena propinando la puntilla.

¿Y cuántas veces –por más que me choque admitirlo– estos mismos excesos de pomposa retórica no me han costado a final de cuentas muy caro? Un sobreesfuerzo vital que no consigue sino exacerbar las contradicciones y el dolor.

Pero a pesar de los tiempos oscuros la vida es un milagro: un campo de flores que el artista ha pintado para reavivar nuestra esperanza. He aquí –como dice Nietzsche– “cosas buenas, perfectas... cuya áurea madurez cura el corazón”.

Hoy, frente a la Bohemia que yace junto al mar, comprendo con los ojos abiertos: la obra está cumplida. En este campo minado de ceniza, las joyas vivas de un tierno salmón se abren paso a la gloria de la luz bajo el cielo oscurecido. ~

Last two...

The original images are from Buckmister Fuller.

El famoso blackbird?

This is a colaboration between JIS, Jose Davila and myself, we did it like a year ago for a magazine called Codigo 06140

Wallace Stevens, the Peacocks' Poet

Domination of Black

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry—the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Lecture 5: Poetry, Thought, Feeling (the Mind & the Body—Stevens & Ginsberg)

“The poem is the cry of its occasion,” wrote Wallace Stevens.

What are we? Are we mind, body, soul? Some combination of these parts? Some other kind of whole?

Perhaps it depends on the occasion, the moment we’re asking the question.

In poetry, there are moments of intellectual reaction to chaos and disorder, to volatility and instability. Wallace Stevens can be said to be of this moment: the mind thinking through itself, seeking order in the medium of its reality, language.

There are other moments of a visceral reaction against order and conformity, against the madness of reason. Allen Ginsberg is definitely of this moment: the vitality of the whole individual resisting constraint, repression, and fear in the psychic medium of linguistic imagination.

Just an effort to stir the dialogue

Love after love

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


Derek Walcott

Do you consider this a "relieving" poem? Why?

...Bukowski in Zapopan Lectures...

Keith Jarrett, the improvised Paris Concert

I'm posting here a part of Keith Jarrett's Paris Concert, one of his totally improvised piano solo concerts. As I said yesterday, his stance about improvisation seemed to me very similar to that of Olson, I mean, fidelitiy to the work for the sake of the work (poetry or music): image leads to a further image almost like a causal necessity, and, for Jarrett, music blossom for itself so he just need to follow the path the music itself dictates. Again, necessity, continuous and anonymity of the author. All this idea as oposed to that of the totally preconceived en closed work of art. Hope this could be useful (and correct) Garrett.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVgkiVWeiSU

On form and matter (again)

In 1939, José Gorostiza published one of the most interesting poems ever written by a mexican poet, "Muerte sin fin". It has been studied ever since by thousands of writers and philosophers to be.
In the first part of the poem, appears the connection between matter and form: water and vase.

(...)me descubro
en la imagen atónita del agua,
que tan sólo es un tumbo inmarcesible,
un desplome de ángeles caídos
a la delicia intacta de su peso,
que nada tiene
sino la cara en blanco
hundida a medias, ya, como risa agónica,
en las ténues holandas de la nube
y en los funestos cánticos del mar (...)

(...)No obstante -oh paradoja- constreñida
por el rigor del vaso que la aclara
el agua toma forma.
En él se asienta, ahonda y edifica,
cumple una edad amarga de silencios
y un reposo gentil de muerte niña,
sonriente, que desflora
un más allá de pájaros en desbandada.
En la red de cristal que la estrangula,
allí, como en el agua de un espejo,
se reconoce;
atada allí, gota con gota,
marchito el tropo de espuma en la garganta
¡qué desnudez de agua tan intensa,
qué agua tan agua, (...)

(...)¡Más qué vaso -también- más providente
éste que así se hinche
como una estrella en grano (...)

(...) tal vez esta oquedad que nos estrecha
en islas de monólogos sin eco,
aunque se llame Dios,
no sea sino un vaso
que nos amolda el alma perdidiza,
pero que acaso el alma sólo advierta
en una transparencia acumulada
que tiñe la noción de El, de azul.

¡Poet!

Lecture 3: The Form of Poetry (the Laws of the Art—Auden & Olson)

We assume that a writer has something to say—does he or she? We assume that there is a content, message, or meaning to a poem, to poetry, and to poetic endeavor—what is meaning? what is poetic endeavor? what is a poem? But while engaging the question of meaning and intention in relation to the art of poetry, we will assume that there is motivation on the part of the individual poet to write, and hence we are going to focus on writing as such, as an art.

We begin with the premise that poetry is first of all an art which uses language as its medium—that is, that poetry is not a thing for ornamenting thoughts, feelings, or sentiment. Hence we’ll be looking into the laws of the art and the techniques of poetry. The emphasis of this lecture, then, is going to be on craft, but not on the traditional sense—this will not be about verse forms (prosody) and poetic language, poetic “images,” or the poetic turn of phrase, but rather about ideas of poetic form and, as Charles Olson wrote,

“FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT.”

OLSON vs AUDEN este jueves!

Jose Juan Tablada / Poemas-dibujos- Haikus

EL PAVO REAL


Pavo real, largo fulgor,
Por el gallinero demócrata
Pasas como una procesión...

poetry...

Me Peacock

What's riches to him
That has made a great peacock
With the pride of his eye?
The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
And desolate Three-rock
Would nourish his whim.
Live he or die
Amid wet rocks and heather,
His ghost will be gay
Adding feather to feather
For the pride of his eye

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). From Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1916.

Pavo Real en movimiento...

Aqui va otro pavo real

Aqui va otro pavo real:

Francis Alÿs; "El señor Pavoreal representará al señor Alys en la 49 Bienal de Venecia", 2001

VA de nuez!

Enter the Mystics

Excerpt from the Coplas of Juan de Yepes, a.k.a. San Juan de la Cruz

Entreme donde no supe
y quedéme no sabiendo
toda ciencia trascendiendo.

Yo no supe dónde entraba
pero cuando allí me vi
sin saber dónde me estaba
grandes cosas entendí
no diré lo que sentí
que me quedé no sabiendo
toda ciencia trascendiendo.

De paz y de piedad
era la ciencia perfecta,
en profunda soledad
entendida vía recta
era cosa tan secreta
que me quedé balbuciendo
toda ciencia trascendiendo.

Estaba tan embebido
tan absorto y ajenado
que se quedó mi sentido
de todo sentir privado
y el espíritu dotado
de un entender no entendiendo
toda ciencia trascendiendo.

El que allí llega de vero
de sí mismo desfallece
cuanto sabía primero
mucho bajo le parece
y su ciencia tanto crece
que se queda no sabiendo,
toda ciencia trascendiendo.