----- Original Message -----
From: "kasper salonen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: "Tlaloc and the Tiger"
this is very entertaining, & the insight it offers is mild enough to not
cause a ruckus in the narration but still available & interesting enough to
work. religious legend (represented almost manically) vs. scientific status
description (represented coolly, as something beautiful but boring but '
calming'). fun poke too, centerting on the moon Titan (because these gods
presented [are they native american?] have counterparts in antiquity). the
capitalisation is apt, it becomes both frighteningly loud & a little
comical. the language you've used is just prosaic enough in a descriptive,
regular way to afford the narrator's POV, while there are poetic turns of
phase sprinkled very sparsely.
it's a great poem, to put it simply; immensely enjoyed!
KS
Kasper, thank you for a close thoughtful reading! Actually the poem is
based on a painting I've had with me all my life. By Julio de Diego, a
Spanish Republican who fled to Mexico. Tlaloc was the Aztec god of rain,
spring, harvests, hurricanes, floods, and drought. Extremely fearsome; the
more I researched him the more ghastly sense his observances made (including
the horrors I mention - collecting in bowls the tears of children to be
sacrificed to him). I wanted to challenge myself w/ an ekphrastic poem that
could live apart from its painting. Some of my friends haven't liked it but
for you, at least, I succeeded. The catalyst - the distancing mechanism -
was two photos of Titan, taken by the Cassini probe, in the current issue of
Discover magazine. They show what are apparently 20 methane lakes around
the north pole of Titan. Unsettling images - so familiar, yet so much an
inversion of our world. I hadn't consciously thought of Titan in (Greek)
mythology. --- Thanks again - Fred
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