The Poetry Cosmos

[page]

That's awful. I hope she's okay. The poem is impressive indeed, Jeff! Thank you for sharing.

[page]

Last week one of my favourite poets/musicians died, Thé Lau. I've translated one of his:

Open

The sky gets dark,
the moon appears,
but I don’t get drunk;
since there’s something that strikes harder,
that júst doesn’t disappear.
The moon climbs,
the world cracks.
And I get more deaf,
hear my own words fall,
but no one gets hit
and I look for the word that opens all.

And I say
Open, open, open, it must be..
Open, open, open, it must be..

The lights burn,
and heaven watches
to see a change;
since there’s too much longing,
too little time.
And the moon climbs
and my world cracks
and I get more deaf
since I hear the words fall
but no one gets hit
and I look for the word that opens all.

And I say
Open, open, open, it must be.
And I open, open up for you,
so open up to me..

But it stays shut
it smokes and is silent
and it still believes
that it’s unjust
a coward gets none.
it’s unjust..

And I say
Open, open, open, it must be.
And I open, open, open, me to you
Open, open, open, it must be
so open, open, open, you to me..

Thé Lau – Open (translation to English: page )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSWNrJtwNW0

Raw, hoarse and tender.. no one like him, R.I.P. Thé.
 

Edited June 29, 2015 by page

[page]

A year ago I wrote this:

"no words,
no way,
no one,
can say;

no words
express,
except,
explain;

no words
for how
we feel
today;

at loss
for words,
our loss
remains...

© page 2014
My thoughts, my prayers and my respects go to those people who have lost someone dear in this horrible incident.
sincerely, page"
"These past few days I've been meaning to write something to capture what I feel inside. We are all in shock here, it is beyond my comprehension this what happened. There is really nothing I can say, so this is my feeling of being powerless. I do not want to start a political thread about who is to blame or what, just a respect for those who died.
In my poem I use the word "except" and maybe you thought I meant "accept", because we won't accept this obviously, but what I meant is that there are no words that can protest, object enough to this.
A feeling of mute overall. "

This horrible event happening with the MH17 at the 17th of July 2014.

A year has passed. In love and respect, we remember...
sincerely page

Edited July 16, 2015 by page

[jazzbo]

It all boils down to fear and love.

In the bottom of the pan,

Fear and love.

Your love is helping me

Scrape out the fear.

 

Edited August 27, 2015 by jazzbo

[Joe]

Hi all.

Happy to announce that my debut volume of poetry, THE HABILIMENTS, will be available for purchase later this month.

Here's what the publisher, Apostrophe Books, has to say about the collection.

"An odd paradox underlies all of the poems in THE HABILIMENTS: the 'habiliments' or 'clothing' of the title refers simultaneously to dressing and stripping bare. The accouterments, costumes, objects, and trappings in which we construct identity are woven into a tapestry of memory, dream, forgetting, and, ultimately, grief. Milazzo uses allusion, antimeria, neologisms, conversions, and logical disruptions, as well as a deep attention to the elusive uncertainties of language to explore how words simultaneously succeed and fail to express emotion, describe reality, or make sense of our relationship with others. Quotidian reality wears a new syntactical and semantic garb as each poem seems to unravel language and a circadian rotation of "dreams": ambiguously of sleep, of aspiration, of nonsense, of the fantastic, or of the banal. If Milazzo's poems are a kind of 'dream song,' they are constructed in radically different ways than John Berryman's (though there are formal echoes of that poet's phantasmagoric layers). In these dream songs, Berryman's angst and sorrow collide with John Ashbery's metaphysics of erosion, Rosmarie Waldrop's semantic drifting, and John Yau's surreal atmospherics."

More information about the book can be found via its distributor, SPD. http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780979362774/the-habiliments.aspx  ... Or at Goodreads, if you are active on that platform: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29395188-the-habiliments

 

[HutchFan]

Congrats, Joe! Looks & sounds fascinating.  

[Joe]

3 hours ago, HutchFan said:

Congrats, Joe! Looks & sounds fascinating.  

Thanks!

 

[HutchFan]

Just read some of the poems in your preview here.  Wonderfully evocative stuff.  

One line that caught my eye: I dug how you used the image of a hi-hat cymbal closing to convey disappointment, disapproval, pain. Nice. Never would have thought of that.  

 

[Joe]

On 3/10/2016 at 0:02 PM, HutchFan said:

Just read some of the poems in your preview here.  Wonderfully evocative stuff.  

One line that caught my eye: I dug how you used the image of a hi-hat cymbal closing to convey disappointment, disapproval, pain. Nice. Never would have thought of that.  

 

Thanks so much for the close reading! If you visit my personal website, you can find additional links to poems from this collection (as they appear in the pages of various literary journals).

http://www.slowstudies.net/jmilazzo/the-habiliments/

[page]

Wow, awesome! Congratulations, Joe. Hope to get there someday myself. Looking forward to reading yours.
regards, page

[jazzbo]

For some reason this is one of my favorite songs, and seems like a poem to me.

 

"Mississippi"
Bob Dylan

Every step of the way, we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is piling up, we struggle and we stray
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape

City's just a jungle, more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away
I was raised in the country, I been working in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before
Don't even have anything for myself anymore
Sky full of fire, came pouring down
Nothing you can sell me, I'll see you around

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well, the devil's in the alley, mule's in the stall
Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all
I was thinking about the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie's bed

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand and some won't
Last night I knew you, tonight I don't
I need something strong to distract my mind
I'm gonna look at you 'til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following the southern star
I crossed that river just to be where you are
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast
I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me

Everybody's moving, if they ain't already there
Everybody's got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waiting to be kind
So give me your hand and say you'll be mine

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long.

 

[mjzee]

An Ode to Bankston, My Gruff, Poetic Boss - WSJ

[ejp626]

I just read through Elise Partridge's The If Borderlands (NYRB Poetry), which includes all 3 of her published collections and a handful of unpublished poems.

One of my favorites was "Alternate Histories" (originally published in The Exiles' Gallery):

If they had straightened, not veered,
if they'd caught the night ferry.
If the Consul's clerk had replied,
if west-running tracks had cleared.

If she'd taken the hallway stairs.
If he hadn't missed the warning
while he whistled at tea.
If they'd walked home late from the fair.

 

Edited May 6, 2017 by ejp626