I'd add this, which quite effectively for me inculcates the human and
the abstract with intellect, passion and humour.
Caleb
Hopkins Forest
I'd gone out
to get water from the well, near the trees,
and I was in the presence of another sky.
Gone were the constellations
there a moment before.
Three fourths of the firmament was empty,
the intensest black shone there alone,
though to the left, above the horizon,
in among the tops of the oaks,
there was a mass of reddening stars
like firecoals, from which smoke even rose.
I went back inside
and re-opened the book on the table.
Page after page,
there were only indecipherable signs,
clusters of forms without any sense,
although vaguely recurring,
and beneath them an abyssal white
as if what we call the spirit
were falling there, soundlessly,
like snow.
Still, I went on turning the pages.
Many years earlier,
in a train at the moment when the day rises,
between Princeton Junction and Newark,
- that is to say, two chance places for me,
two arrows fallen out of nowhere -
the passengers were reading, silent
in the snow that was sweeping the gray windows,
and suddenly,
in a newspaper open next to me -
a big photograph of Baudelaire,
a whole page,
as if the sky were emptying at the world's end
in recognition of the chaos of words.
I put together this dream and this memory
when I walked, all of one fall,
in woods where snow would soon triumph,
among the many signs we receive,
contradictorily,
from the world devastated by language.
The conflict between two principles,
it seemed to me, was nearing an end,
two lights were becoming one,
the lips of a wound closing.
The white mass of the cold was falling in gusts
on color, but a roof in the distance, a painted
board, standing against a gate,
was color still, and mysterious,
like someone coming out of a tomb, laughing,
and telling the world, "No, don't touch me."
Truly I owe a lot to Hopkins Forest.
I keep it on my horizon, in that place
where the visible gives way to the invisible
in the trembling of the blue in the distance.
I listen to it, amid other sounds,
and at times even, in summer,
kicking the dead leaves of other years
lying as if lit in the shade of oaks
grown densely among stones,
I stop: I believe that the ground is opening
to the infinite, that the leaves are falling into it
without hurry, or coming up again,
above and below no longer existing,
or sound, only the light
whispering of snowflakes that soon
multiply, draw closer, bind together -
and then I see again the whole other sky,
I enter for a moment the great snow.
Yves Bonnefoy
Translated by Pascale Torracinta and Harry Thomas
The Threepenny Review
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of MC Ward
Sent: Tuesday, 5 June 2007 1:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Lyric I
Prynne, who abandoned the lyric I long ago, shocks the
reader of _To Pollen_ with an instance of it . The
chapbook is also remarkable for the several uses of
"hurt" and "hurts." While still far from personal, _To
Pollen_ strikes me as unusually human.
What do others think?
Candice
--- Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks Joe! That's a good one. I really like Laura
> Riding, she's so spiky.
> Though I do find her introductions to her own work
> very hilarious...so much
> of that Nietzschean "Why I Am A Genius" stuff...
>
> xA
>
> On 6/5/07, Joseph Duemer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > I wanted to drop this into the mix regarding the
> "lyric I," impersonality,
> > abstraction, etc. Here is a poem by Laura
> > Riding<http://www.unc.edu/%7Eottotwo/partner.html>
> > :
> >
> > *AS TO A FRONTISPIECE*
> >
> > If you will choose the portrait,
> > I will write the work accordingly.
> > A German countenance
> > I could dilate on lengthily,
> > Punctilio and passion blending
> > To that slow national degree.
> >
> > Or, if you wish more brevity
> > And have the face in mind -
> > A tidy creature, perhaps American -
> > I could provide a facile text,
> > The portrait being like enough
> > To stand for anyone.
> >
> > But if you can't make up your mind
> > What poetry should look like,
> > What name to call for,
> > I think I have the very thing
> > If you can read without a picture
> > And postpone the frontispiece till later.
> >
> > That is, as you may guess,
> > I have a work but, I regret,
> > No preliminary portrait.
> > Yet, if you can forgo one,
> > We may between us illustrate
> > This subsequent identity.
> >
> > --
> > Joseph Duemer
> > Professor of Humanities
> > Clarkson University
> > [sharpsand.net]
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
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