"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"
"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"
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.
|
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