Cameo Appearance

I've mentioned Chales Simic before in my blog as one of the poets that I'm working with for my thesis. Well This is one of the poems I'm working on. And for those of you who don't know, Simic recently was named Poet Laureate.

Cameo Appearance
by Charles Simic

I had a small, nonspeaking part
In a bloody epic. I was one of the
Bombed and fleeing humanity.
In the distance our great leader
Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,
Or was it a great actor
Impersonating our great leader?

That’s me there, I said to the kiddies.
I’m squeezed between the man
With two bandaged hands raised
And the old woman with her mouth open
As if she were showing us a tooth

That hurts badly. The hundred times
I rewound the tape, not once
Could they catch sight of me
In the huge gray crowd,
That was like any other crowd.

Trot off to bed, I said finally.
I know I was there. One take
Is all they had time for.
We ran, and the planes grazed our hair,
An then they were no more
As we stood dazed in the burning city,
But, of course, they didn’t film that.

Fugue

Fugue
By Andrei Codrescu
Here is a project: Reread everything you've ever read, look again at all the art works that you once had strong opinions about, listen again to the music that had such existential meaning back when all questions were grave and all answers were poetic, see again all the movies that once made an impression on you. Of course, you'd have to have another life just about the size of the one you already had to do such a thing. You barely have time to reread a few snippets from books now and then, and that's only because you recommended them to somebody and want to make sure that you remembered right. So, let's face it: You'll never again read the books that formed your young intellect; you'll never see again the art that was so important to you back when; the weight of the music you once worshiped has evaporated like an old perfume; you won't have time to review the movies that made you feel so smart, even if they do show up on the old movie channel. Besides, even if you set out to undertake such a project, another difficulty looms: You barely remember those books and their authors, those artists, those musicians, those actors and directors. But suppose that you were, like me, an inveterate list maker and you have 100 diary books in which you recorded everything you read, saw and heard, and what you thought about it. And suppose that you'll actually read those hundred diaries and make it through them without throwing yourself off a cliff. Well, then, as your mad project progresses, you'll need a hundred new diary books to write down everything you read, see and hear in order to compare your maturity to your youth. And if you do use those old diaries as guides and actually embark on such a journey, you would have to begin exactly in the middle of your middle-age, so that you can run again through your whole intellectual life (or all life, for that matter) to prove a point: Did you know instinctively more when you were young than you know now? To answer this question you would, in effect, suspend your life in the middle and start from the beginning. Of course, you don't know when the middle of your middle-age is. Nobody does, but you can look at yourself from the outside, like an insurance company, and make a guess. You make a bet: it will cost you all the rest of your life anyway, whether it's the middle or not. And then, when you're finished with the 100 new diary books, you put them alongside the 100 old diary books, close your eyes and die. Somebody else will have to answer that question, because you won't live long enough to compare the 100 diaries written by an adolescent and a youth with the 100 diaries written by an old fool to answer a question he cannot answer. As to what kind of thinking this is, it's called a Fugue. You run away as many times as you can from your themes until they bring you back up in stronger and stronger chains. The art of the Fugue, once practiced by the baroque masters, is all the rage today in art, politics, style, films. Drop whatever you're doing and run. But look, you can't get out of the frame, you're always inside a new world in your old mind. And then notice, please, that everything you thought you knew is wrong is wrong, but you already knew that, didn't you?

via: gambitweekly.com

This Is Just To Say

This is a much anthologized poem by William Carlos Williams, one of the modern greats. This is the kind of poem that sticks with you, or at least with me. I think of it often and feel my own mischievousness.


This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

You Wear Me Out: Country Feedback remarks

ok. This is a post on a post, but for some reason I couldn't add my comments to the song and this was the best version YouTube had to offer. Anyway. Good ole Country Feedback. This is the first and only song I ever learned how to play on guitar and have since forgotten how to play on guitar. Not my gift, what can I say? Still a great song though.

R.E.M. _ Country Feedback

Design

Design
by Robert Frost
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

The Elephant Is Slow To Mate

The Elephant is Slow to Mate
by D.H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse
and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.
So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.