After seeing yesterday’s posting of the Eastern Redbud in full rapture, my friend Sally Reed reminded me of this exquisite and sensual poem by Neruda: Every Day You Play Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water. You are more than this white […]
Art/Language
Stoppard Marathons, Theatrical Extremes and Other Joys
So much good commentary is available online about Tom Stoppard’s trilogy, Coast of Utopia, so I won’t spend time here rehashing the larger context of the play and its subject matter. Instead I’ll be blatantly bloggish and personal and just say that I was in an altered state through the entire 12 hour marathon. (Still […]
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Lots of Language, and Not
I’m off to New York for the “Coast of Utopia” 3 play marathon on Saturday. Given Stoppard’s legendary love of words (“He uses too many!” says my friend Joseph Gifford), here’s a poem to commemorate the other end of that spectrum, where language is underspoken and unfinished… Ars Poetica would it wake the drowned out […]
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Rilke: Pushing Through
It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone; I am such a long way in I see no way through, and no space: everything is close to my face, and everything close to my face is stone. I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief so this […]
Ahmad Shamlu: This Crow
I Am Still Thinking About This Crow I am still thinking about this crow that with its pair of black scissors— by two brisk swishing sounds— cut an aslant arc on the matte paper of the sky over the toasted wheat farms of the Yush valley; I am still thinking about this crow that facing […]
Piraha, Language and Be Here Now
The article in the New Yorker by John Colapinto about the Amazonian Piraha tribe (also referenced in the April 17 posting below) is provoking thinking from a whole variety of viewpoints. A Google search produces a range of responses to the article from linguists, sociologists, anthropologists, generic bloggers, and even Taoists. What seems to have […]
Breaking Through Language and Visual Hegemonies
Jim Coleman (of Nightingale at Large fame) made the following comment to an earlier post on Ocularcentrism. His insights are too provocative to lay hidden in the folds of this blog: I wanted to be sure you noticed …the article in the April 16th New Yorker by John Calapinto on the language of the Piraha, […]
Mark Strand: A Suite of Appearances
A Suite of Appearances In another time, we will want to know how the earth looked Then, and were people the way we are now. In another time, The records they left will convince us that we are unchanged And could be at ease in the past, and not alone in the present. And we […]
Strange Writings and Star-Charts
Stone Go inside a stone. That would be my way. Let somebody else become a dove Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth. I am happy to be a stone. From the outside the stone is a riddle: No one knows how to answer it. Yet within, it must be cool and quiet Even though a […]
Ramanujan as Poet: Watching for the Last Step That’s Never There
The multifaceted Ramanujan (see my earlier posts about him) is also a poet. This poem continues to explore many of the same themes as his essay, “Is there an Indian way of thinking?” Chicago Zen i Now tidy your house, dust especially your living room and do not forget to name all your children. ii […]