A delayed thanks to Stephen and Doug for their positive response to my text
via Jonas Mekas. I wanted to establish whether Mekas' poetry (which after
40 years familiarity with his writing I suspected might exist but couldn't
confirm) was accessible to potential readers after he surprised me by
mentioning that his first book of poetry was published in Lithuania when he
was 14. He also announced that he wouldn't be reading any of his poetry
during his presentation at the Hirshhorn museum, because at age 83 he still
wrote poetry only in Lithuanian (if I heard correctly). Now I'm virtually
certain that Mekas' poetry is available to readers in at least two
volumes. First, from Black Thistle Press, with a foreword by Czeslaw
Milosz, a Lithuanian text with an English translation of two sequences by
Mekas, "There Is No Ithaca: Idylls Of Semeniskiai & Reminiscences",
published in 1996. Second, "Daybooks 1970-1972", published perhaps a year
ago by Brenda Iijima at Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs.
Stephen, I enjoyed your phrase "smack on", which evoked "gobsmacked"
and "spot on", but which I couldn't remember encountering as you use it.
Online I discover one claim that it's the American equivalent of "spot on".
Doug, Jonas Mekas describes his films as diaristic journals and his
shooting as comparable to the playing of an improvising jazz musician.
Whatever discourse there is certainly strikes one as fragmented at first,
but sometimes an extended sequence of such fragments, such as (within the
film "Walden") Mekas' visit with Stan & Jane Brakhage & their 5 children at
home in the mountains above Boulder, coalesce to provide me with the best
image I ever had of Brakhage's home movie aesthetic.
|