19 posts from March 2008

"I am an instrument in the shape

of a woman trying to translate pulsations

into images           for the relief of the body

and the reconstruction of the mind."

--from the poem "PLANETARIUM"

WomenOutside_09

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                                                                       Self Portrait

                                             No lay off from this condensery.--Lorine Niedecker

                                             Peach floor, pale yellow walls

                                             art teacher sits patiently

                                             waiting for end of hour.

                                             Be here in mundane space

                                             or fly away imaginary--I fly

                                             away, smoke a Rothman or

                                             Galoises on the Seine.

                                             Sky's cloudy grey back in art room

                                             pictures of van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso.

                                             My self portrait in colored pencil, cartoonlike,

                                             stares back.

                                             Lips funny shaped, nose nonexistent

                                             eyes electric blue, cheeks rosy--

                                             she wears fuzzy fuschia sweater

                                             hair pulled up in ponytail.

                                             She is me at 29, compassionate

                                             wanting to succeed, she is shy--

                                             I mean I, I drew this image

                                             I am the I of this portrait.

[In Yogic teaching Ida represents the feminine, left side of the brain, and the moon.  Pingala represents the masculine, the right side of the brain, and the sun.]

You enter a family gathering.  It is a funny family gathering as there has been a tragedy.  You quickly learn why.

Uncle Pingala:  Would you like to see photos from India?

[Uncle Pingala comes over to you with a gigantic digital camera that looks like the optiscope in the opthamologist's office.  Aunt Ida sits down missing the right side of her body almost entirely.]

Uncle Pingala:  This is Aunt Ida, she's only missing a few parts of her body.

You can't help but giggle because Aunt Ida is only missing a few parts of her body.  Just her right arm and right leg.  That's all.

 I woke this morning morning's mistress
       In gentle wonder spring addressed
            Spring in glory, spring a-gallop—
                  O sing of spring and live and dance!

The trees move with us and the greening
       Ever rolling hills come calling
               High there, beyond beyond the earthy red—
                         Ecstasy!  We swing out, we surrender
               As a cloud's puff smooths out and over:  light and free
   We cannot grasp it.  My heart and head try to hold it--
The hiding thriving mystery!

Sage verbage and cerebral art, pride, act, and pomp, here
           Break!  And the breath that emanates from spring then, infinitely
Lovelier and more vigorous, more airy than contained.

No doubt about it:  sheer air we breathe the breath of
          Spring, and orange-pink twinkles in the grass
Grow, shore themselves, and burst gold-vermillion.

Joan Mitchell    Painting by Joan Mitchell

http://www.artworkbysteve.co.uk/prints.html

She

She is always two blue eyes
She is never lost in sleep
All her dreams are light & air
They sometimes melt the sun
She makes me smile, or
She makes me cry, she
Makes me laugh, and I talk to her
With really nothing particularly to say.

       --from The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan

Uploaded on December 29, 2007
by Pavlunka

In This World Together

Society makes her bitter as

bitter flowers, bitterer, in fact

because she is made to succeed. 

Everyone makes her perform

and as she performs she ascends

an invisible ladder so high, so

high—but she would scoff at that and this

because she doesn’t understand it.

She hates a green prison and hates a green queen. 

She hates me

and I wanted to cry, but couldn’t due to

Gertrude Stein.  The poet-general. 

The one who wrote

A Completed Portrait of Picasso.

Now I’m writing my own portrait and I wonder

Will it be abstract or realistic?

Abstraction is unchartered nuns, no ones,

in pretty how towns.

Abstraction is Jackson Pollock

at the Tate (Katie’s poem)

painting his own anger.

You should have seen my sister’s anger—

she was shrieking she had to stay up late

and get up early to study.

Our grandmother was a Gertrude, Gertrude Zepeda. 

My sister vaguely looks like her with her

thin lips and raven hair.  And I don’t hate her.

My reaction to her is one of admiration and exasperation.

“Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”

My sister is obviously Jacob.

Why is this true?

I don’t know.  All I care about now

is the poem.

Jon once called what I do in my poems pedestrian.

So I thought about that for a while and I liked

what a critic said about a poet using her charm

to propel the poem.

My sister doesn’t have to use charm she

always comes clean.  No tricks up her sleeve.

I like mystery and keeping things

hidden so to produce an abstract image.

Not pedestrian. Spontaneous,

on the spot, going on one’s nerve, like jazz.

This isn’t a popular stance.

We are in a right-wing blowing wind

and crazy lives in a green prison.

Do I choose this?  Do I?  Or do You make me live here.

My sister keeps circulating. 

She runs around and around

she doesn’t want to get caught—

a butterfly dry and pinned.

“Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.”

I think of that when I think of her running.

Yoga teaches us to stop

at the first signs of pain.

I didn’t, but eventually I did

stop and I died a little.

The poem doesn’t die, it

lapses into melancholy

but I can bring it back with a shot

of something—maybe something freaky

like some allusion or memory

of speed riding a Munich train

my sister and I riding a Munich train 1999

“watching colors changing.”

My sister, cold and bitter, thin as a rail

and me, cold and sweet, thinking

of a machine made out of words

racing by, in the air, so high, so high—

 
October 2007