Don's Blog Further In 12-25-21

Merry Christmas. Here is another poem by Tomas Transtromer.

FURTHER IN

It's the main highway leading in,
the sun soon down.
Traffic backs up, creeps along,
it's a torpid glittering dragon.
I am a scale on that dragon.
The red sun all at once
blazes in my windshield,
pouring in,
and makes me transparent.
Some writing shows
up inside me--words
written with invisible ink
appearing when the paper
is held over a fire.
I know that I have to go far away,
straight through the city, out
the other side, then step out
and walk a long time in the woods.
Walk in the tracks of the badger.
Growing hard to see, nearly dark.
Stones lie about on the moss.
One of these stones is precious.
It can change everything.
It can make the darkness shine.
It's the light switch for the whole country.
Everything depends on it.
Look at it . . . touch it . . .

Tomas Transformer

Translated by Robert Bly

I have an urge to pick up stones that "can make the darkness shine". They grace my

gnome garden. For instance - a magical reddish stone with light stripes from the banks of the  

Thelon River - and many more.

Don's Blog The Tree and the Sky

This poem by Tomas Transtromer, Swedish Nobel laureate, was sent to me years ago by my brother.

The Tree and the Sky 

There's a tree walking around in the rain

it rushes past us in the pouring grey.

It has an errand. It gathers life 

out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear
nights waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space. 

Tomas Transtromer

Translated by Robin Fulton

Don's Blog Sunset 12-21-21

As the days start to lengthen again the sunsets will occur later also. We all are amazed by the image of sunsets.

Here are some sunset quotes from various poets collected by my teacher Chris Fahrenthold.

And the sun, as it always does,

   dropping into its slot without a click [The Other Side of the River]

Sunset. The sky, over Arkansas, inflames

Like the new flesh in a scar [The Bolivar Letters]

The weightless, unclarified light from the setting sun

Lies like despair on the ginger root [Depression Before the Solstice]

The flash from the setting sun

Is more than a trick of light, where half-life

Is more than just a watery glow

   and everything's fire… [Going Home]

Sun like an orange mousse through

A snowfall of trumpet bells on the oleander [Dog day Vespers]

Already sundown has passed you and follows me up the road,

Color of dragonfly wings [Three Poems of Departure]

Sunset like a girl's robe falling away long ago…[T'ang Notebook]

Sunset like carrot juice down the left pane of the sky

Into the determinacy of somewhere else  [Arkansas Traveler]

Down below Prato, the sun was lowering its burned body

Into the shadows [A Journal of True Confession]

Sunset again: the color of rose leaf and rose water

 [Journal of the Year of the Ox]

The sun set like a coffin

Into the grey Pacific [Tennessee Line]

Sky white as silk

  opening mirror cod-sprung in the west,

Sunset like dead grass [Poem Half in the Manner of Li ho]

High-Fifing in charlottesville,

Sunset heaped up, as close to us as a barrel fire [ The

Appalachian Book of the Dead]

Orange Crush sunset over the Blue Ridge [A Short History of the Shadow]

the Indian paintbrush sundown [Buffalo Yoga Coda III]

Sunset soaks down to the last leaves of autumn trees [The

Gospel according to St. Someone]

Lagoon light, sunset and cloud blaze,

  red of the cardinal entourage [Rosso Venexiano]

Cloud-gondolasfloating in with the east-moving wind-waters,

Black-hulled and gilt-edged,

   white on white up above, smooth pole.

Later, the sunset, flamingo, great bird of passage [Nostalgia  III]

Sunset sheen like old wax on the steps into the sky [La Dolcemara Vita]

The slit wrists of a sundown

   tincture the western sky wall [Scar Tissue]

Sunset, line like a long tongue-lick above the Blue Ridge,

Mock orange, then tangerine,   then blush [Littlefoot, part7]

As the sun goes down.

What small light there is drains off into its spikiness.

And glows like a severed head against the darkness [Littlefoot, part30]

Don's Blog -Poetry

Several years ago I was invited into a Poetry group at the Green Center in University City. Despite its pretentious name,

The Green Center Tea Society,   I went and was hooked. The teacher was Chris Farenthold, who taught poetry at a local college. 

He awakened my interest in an area of literature of which I was unaware. We read his selected poems and discussed them.

We also learned about poetry itself. Here is one of his contributions.

from "The Poem as Journey"

by Charles Wright

"Poems are not just about journeys, of course, they are journeys. Like any organism, the good poem is a self-contained adventure, 

both physically and metaphysically … without the interior journey the exterior one is impossible. (32)

At the heart of every poem is a journey of discovery. Something is being found out. Often the discovery is merely technical. …

From time to time the discovery is spiritual, a way of looking at the world that affects the way we lead our lives, or how we think of them.

Poems that cause us to say, after having read them, "Oh, that's nice," or "Ummm, not bad," do not participate in this voyage of discovery. 

No matter how new their paint job is, no matter how sharp and crisp their sails, they never get out of the harbor. The journey belongs to others.

(32-3)

There is a kind of spatial negation, a visual power in absence that painters understand and employ, and which I'm interested in poetically.

Its a sort of white hole that has a kinetic draw to it that the lines of the poem float on and resist. Part of my interest in the dropped line for

me is that it sets up for me a bit of this power field within the line itself; a rhythmic jolt sometimes might appear, small as it is, that kicks the line and the poem along , keeping it alive over the top of a force that would founder and sink it at any time. But everybody knows this. You

keep the composition apart just a little to let this energy in and to, and to let the poem in and out of the energy generated by this emptiness.It's all about the same thing, the power  and domination of what's not there, the energy of absence. (173)"

Here is an example of "dropped lines":

  A dropped line is a line which is broken into two lines, but where the second part is indented to remain sequential visually. For example, in the poem "The Other Side of the River" by Charles Wright, the first and second lines form a dropped line, as do the fourth and fifth lines:

  It's linkage I'm talking about,

  and harmonies and structures,

  and all the various structures that lock our wrists to the past.

  Something infinite after everything appears,

      and then disappears.

  — Charles Wright, The Other Side of the River

So,  those dropped lines and indentations are part of the purposeful structure of the poem - very interesting for a neophyte.

  

Don's Blog Bob Dylan 12-18-21

Bob Dylan's lyrics won him a Nobel Prize several years ago. Here is one of his songs that you may not know.
I have never been a fan of Bob Dylan's voice so here is an exceptional rendition of the song by Miley Cyrus.
My favorite stanza goes

"But I'll see you in the sky above,
In the tall grass, in the ones I love,
You're gonna make me lonesome when you go."

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwje6cXZnoPvAhUBVN8KHdidDQUQ3ywwAHoECAIQAg&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DI2wvaWTTmz8&usg=AOvVaw1-EfBbCdnnJCljked9rBl9

Don's Blog - Casualty by Seamus Heaney 12-17-21

For some time I have been looking at the issue of violence .This poem is out of season but then violence is never in season.

In the poem "Casualty", Seamus Heaney elegizes a 'drinking  friend' who has been lost in the vicious cycle of violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970's.

For background, on January 30, 1972, later called Bloody Sunday, British troops killed13 unarmed Catholic civil rights marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland. That week the Catholic Provisional IRA declared a curfew to honor the dead. On Wednesday of that week Heaney's friend,Louis O'Neill, broke his own group's curfew to go out drinking and was killed by a bomb in a crosstown bar. He was a casualty to the violence of his own people. The issue of what to do about violence is unanswerable but its need to be addressed is unquestionable.

"Casualty" by Seamus Heaney

I

He would drink by himself

And raise a weathered thumb

Towards the high shelf,

Calling another rum

And blackcurrant, without

Having to raise his voice,

Or order a quick stout

By a lifting of the eyes

And a discreet dumb-show

Of pulling off the top;

At closing time would go

In waders and peaked cap

Into the showery dark,

A dole-kept breadwinner

But a natural for work.

I loved his whole manner,

Sure-footed but too sly,

His deadpan sidling tact,

His fisherman's quick eye

And turned observant back.

Incomprehensible

To him, my other life.

Sometimes, on the high stool,

Too busy with his knife

At a tobacco plug

And not meeting my eye,

In the pause after a slug

He mentioned poetry.

We would be on our own

And, always politic

And shy of condescension,

I would manage by some trick

To switch the talk to eels

Or lore of the horse and cart

Or the Provisionals.

But my tentative art

His turned back watches too:

He was blown to bits

Out drinking in a curfew

Others obeyed, three nights

After they shot dead

The thirteen men in Derry.

PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,

BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday

Everyone held

His breath and trembled.

II

It was a day of cold

Raw silence, wind-blown

surplice and soutane:

Rained-on, flower-laden

Coffin after coffin

Seemed to float from the door

Of the packed cathedral

Like blossoms on slow water.

The common funeral

Unrolled its swaddling band,

Lapping, tightening

Till we were braced and bound

Like brothers in a ring.

But he would not be held

At home by his own crowd

Whatever threats were phoned,

Whatever black flags waved.

I see him as he turned

In that bombed offending place,

Remorse fused with terror

In his still knowable face,

His cornered outfaced stare

Blinding in the flash.

He had gone miles away

For he drank like a fish

Nightly, naturally

Swimming towards the lure

Of warm lit-up places,

The blurred mesh and murmur

Drifting among glasses

In the gregarious smoke.

How culpable was he

That last night when he broke

Our tribe's complicity?

'Now, you're supposed to be

An educated man,'

I hear him say. 'Puzzle me

The right answer to that one.'

III

I missed his funeral,

Those quiet walkers

And sideways talkers

Shoaling out of his lane

To the respectable

Purring of the hearse…

They move in equal pace

With the habitual

Slow consolation

Of a dawdling engine,

The line lifted, hand

Over fist, cold sunshine

On the water, the land

Banked under fog: that morning

I was taken in his boat,

The Screw purling, turning

Indolent fathoms white,

I tasted freedom with him.

To get out early, haul

Steadily off the bottom,

Dispraise the catch, and smile

As you find a rhythm

Working you, slow mile by mile,

Into your proper haunt

Somewhere, well out, beyond…

Dawn-sniffing revenant,

Plodder through midnight rain,

Question me again.

Candids at Christmas Time 12-15-21

Here is our new tablecloth with a small Jan-decorated Christmas tree, vase, wine bottle, and gourd with dried celosia.

A lit-up Mabel is dressed in my mom's opera gown - festive.

Early this morning noticed that the kids are growing up.

They are still quite inquisitive.

Don's Blog The Thinker as Poet

Todays offering requires time and thought but can be rewarding. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger approached 'thinking'
something as a 'being with' or a 'dwelling in' the subject. He searched not for answers but rather a deeper path to the next question.

Dons Blog - Only a little bird knows and she's not talkin' 12-13-21

In the days when garden's are dreaming I will be providing fare in another form.
The first one is a poem, Unter der Linden, written by Walther von der Vogelweide,
a medieval German poet and singer of love songs (Minnesinger).

Under the lime tree

Under the lime tree
On the heather,
Where we had shared a place of rest,
Still you may find there,
Lovely together,
Flowers crushed and grass down-pressed.
Beside the forest in the vale,
Tandaradei,
Sweetly sang the nightingale.

I came to meet him
At the green:
There was my truelove come before.
Such was I greeted —
Heaven's Queen! —
That I am glad for evermore.
Had he kisses? A thousand some:
Tandaradei,
See how red my mouth's become.

There he had fashioned
For luxury
A bed from every kind of flower.
It sets to laughing
Delightedly
Whoever comes upon that bower;
By the roses well one may,
Tandaradei,
Mark the spot my head once lay.

If any knew
He lay with me
(May God forbid!), for shame I'd die.
What did he do?
May none but he
Ever be sure of that — and I,
And one extremely tiny bird,
Tandaradei,
Who will, I think, not say a word.

Don's Blog - Neighborhood Drama 12-7-21

Jan and I were having a chili dinner last night when we could no longer hear each other talk. There was a
loud rumbling sound like a locomotive over our head. And then it didn't stop and it went on for more than 10 or more minutes.
We knew what it was from the last time - a helicopter was circling right over us with the noise getting
louder and then slightly less loud and then louder again and it just kept on. The last time it happened was several years ago
and the police were searching for some perpetrators.

About this time we got a call from our friends on the other side of the County Park next door. They said they weren't sure what
was going on but there was the helicopter and multiple lights flashing in the park around the Frank Lloyd Wright House and the surrounding woods. They wanted to make sure we were all right and suggested we lock our doors. Jan called next door to let them know.
Our next door neighbor had been out in the freezing cold on his back patio smoking and having a glass of wine. A young girl came running by and disappeared into the park. He called the Kirkwood Police who responded immediately. He talked to them and found out that the girl was a 12 year old runaway. The helicopter continued to circle using its very bright searchlight as those on the ground combed the woods behind our house (using my paths) using bright flashlights.

Using searcher dogs the police were able to find the girl unharmed in a rest room of the nearby St. Gerard Church. Everyone was relieved. That's all we found out so far. Its interesting how quickly the situation in our heads changed from possible danger to us to concern for a young runway girl whose name we did not recognize. What a drama on Pearl Harbor Day.

Then we finished dinner as the neighborhood.