November 2013 – Page 7

November 11, 2013 by Dave Bonta

George Szirtes on disaster poetry and Twitter

Natural disasters (and I don’t discount the possibility that human actions in terms of climate change might have been a contributing factor) are different from war. In war there are sides. There are no sides in natural disasters. We are all on the same side. It is not this or that human action we are looking to enter, but the great familiar yet unknown: our sense of being in a world that is not comprehensible to our consciousness.

[…]

The question of evanescence. Why bother with a medium [Twitter] that eats itself as soon as arrived. Why insert these texts (poems, anecdotes, enigmas, proverbs, incidents) into the fabric of general conversation? This perhaps is the most pertinent question in respect of literature. I would argue that evanescence is our human lot and that even literature takes its place among the other activities of life. I can save the texts of course, but their very nature is to be born out of immediate obsolescence. It is not so much a question of what it is like to be within that immediate obsolescence but what it is to have been within it then moved out. I don’t really know the answer to that.

November 11, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Elegy, with lines from e.e. cummings

This entry is part 14 of 28 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2013

(Tacloban City, Philippines)

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands: but I do not agree. Time, perhaps, has the illusion of small hands. Time is made of wings we cannot see or feel even if they brush against our faces in the dark. In the daytime, they take the shape of pauses, those moments we think we have forgotten something important and we retrace our steps. Somewhere in the mind, the sound of a shutter clicking open and close. Warnings and sirens, and then the wind: rising, insistent, forcing open all closed doors, all shelters. The pictures show how, before it made landfall, the storm was a magnitude of elegiac proportions: its one eye did not blink, so bent it was on bearing down with the unbearable weight of its sadness. No, this rain did not have small hands. But the child did, the one whose frail body spun like a compass needle wrenched free of its battered case. Let me go, and you live, she said to her mother, before the current took her. None of this is metaphor. Ten thousand lives did not shut very beautifully, suddenly, or close like roses.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

November 10, 2013November 13, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Encounters with the Neolithic (1)

Avebury, early July. A sweltering day in a landscape made of chalk. I’m not sure about mad dogs, but the Englishmen and women were very much out in force. Not to mention a whole lot of foreign tourists, including at least one American. The Neolithic is more popular than ever these days. Continue reading “Encounters with the Neolithic (1)”

November 10, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

At the Hoop Tavern

Lay long in bed this morning though an office day, because of our going to bed late last night. Before I went to my office Mr. Creed came to me about business, and also Mr. Carter, my old Cambridge friend, came to give me a visit, and I did give them a morning draught in my study. So to the office, and from thence to dinner with Mr. Wivell at the Hoop Tavern, where we had Mr. Shepley, Talbot, Adams, Mr. Chaplin and Osborne, and our dinner given us by Mr. Ady and another, Mr. Wine, the King’s fishmonger. Good sport with Mr. Talbot, who eats no sort of fish, and there was nothing else till we sent for a neat’s tongue.
From thence to Whitehall where I found my Lord, who had an organ set up to-day in his dining-room, but it seems an ugly one in the form of Bridewell.
Thence I went to Sir Harry Wright’s, where my Lord was busy at cards, and so I staid below with Mrs. Carter and Evans (who did give me a lesson upon the lute), till he came down, and having talked with him at the door about his late business of money, I went to my father’s and staid late talking with my father about my sister Pall’s coming to live with me if she would come and be as a servant (which my wife did seem to be pretty willing to do to-day), and he seems to take it very well, and intends to consider of it. Home and to bed.

I went to dinner with
the king’s fishmonger,
who eats no sort of fish
and sent for a tongue.
The ugly bride was busy
at cards. The lute came
to live with me as a servant.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 9 November 1660.

November 10, 2013November 10, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Chance: The Last Six From a Tarot

This entry is part 13 of 13 in the series Chance: A Poetic Tarot

Let me be quick
to rise when the world
is slow, when the bird
tarries in the guava tree.

The women used to sit one
behind each other on the steps:
talking, cleaning lice
from their hair.

In town after town tonight,
streets are heavy with grief,
lined with bodies
of the drowned.

The moon says, I am not
a gypsy with a crystal
ball. I am not the cold
coal burning in the grate.

I shine my light
through every
unbearable
field.

Only a fool would save
the drink umbrella.
Only a fool would dance
at the brink of the world.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

November 9, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

In the country of the rat

This morning Sir Wm. and the Treasurer and I went by barge with Sir Wm. Doyley and Mr. Prin to Deptford, to pay off the Henrietta, and had a good dinner. I went to Mr. Davys’s and saw his house (where I was once before a great while ago) and I found him a very pretty man. In the afternoon Commissioner Pett and I went on board the yacht, which indeed is one of the finest things that ever I saw for neatness and room in so small a vessel. Mr. Pett is to make one to outdo this for the honour of his country, which I fear he will scarce better.
From thence with him as far as Ratcliffe, where I left him going by water to London, and I (unwilling to leave the rest of the officers) went back again to Deptford, and being very much troubled with a sudden looseness, I went into a little alehouse at the end of Ratcliffe, and did give a groat for a pot of ale, and there I did shit. So went forward in my walk with some men that were going that way a great pace, and in our way we met with many merry seamen that had got their money paid them to-day.
We sat very late doing the work and waiting for the tide, it being moonshine we got to London before two in the morning. So home, where I found my wife up, she shewed me her head which was very well dressed to-day, she having been to see her father and mother.
So to bed.

In the country of the rat
I give a groat for a pot
and shit in it,
waiting for the moon.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 8 November 1660.

November 9, 2013November 9, 2013 by Luisa A. Igloria

Chance: Six More From a Tarot

This entry is part 12 of 13 in the series Chance: A Poetic Tarot

Fishing boats
and trawlers,
broken masts
and mains—

What’s more
inexhaustible
than what can’t
be controlled?

Salt crusts, split beams
and backyard shrines:
ledger of the lost
along the seawall.

Every stone
will bear a name,
a list that will
go on and on—

Trestle and bridge,
fountain from which
the water has fled:
yet we are all drenched.

Someday you’ll go on hands
and knees, peer through
the stained glass of
the miniature church.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

November 9, 2013November 9, 2013 by Dave Bonta

My experiment with “videopoetry karaoke”

I have an essay up at Voice Alpha, “Reading poetry with video: some first impressions.” Inspired by a terrific live videopoetry performance I saw this past August at the Filmpoem Festival in Dunbar, Scotland, I wanted to try and do something similar: what I call, for lack of a better term, videopoem karaoke. I finally had a chance on Wednesday, and it seemed to go pretty well. Photos and a full report at the link.

November 9, 2013May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Deconversion

(Office day). This day my father came to dine at my house, but being sent for in the morning I could not stay, but went by water to my Lord, where I dined with him, and he in a very merry humour (present Mr. Borfett and Childe).
At dinner: he, in discourse of the great opinion of the virtue—gratitude (which he did account the greatest thing in the world to him, and had, therefore, in his mind been often troubled in the late times how to answer his gratitude to the King, who raised his father), did say it was that did bring him to his obedience to the King; and did also bless himself with his good fortune, in comparison to what it was when I was with him in the Sound, when he durst not own his correspondence with the King; which is a thing that I never did hear of to this day before; and I do from this raise an opinion of him, to be one of the most secret men in the world, which I was not so convinced of before.
After dinner he bid all go out of the room, and did tell me how the King had promised him 4000l. per annum for ever, and had already given him a bill under his hand (which he showed me) for 4000l. that Mr. Fox is to pay him. My Lord did advise with me how to get this received, and to put out 3000l. into safe hands at use, and the other he will make use of for his present occasion. This he did advise with me about with much secresy.
After all this he called for the fiddles and books, and we two and W. Howe, and Mr. Childe, did sing and play some psalmes of Will. Lawes’s, and some songs; and so I went away.
So I went to see my Lord’s picture, which is almost done, and do please me very well.
Hence to Whitehall to find out Mr. Fox, which I did, and did use me very civilly, but I did not see his lady, whom I had so long known when she was a maid, Mrs. Whittle. From thence meeting my father Bowyer, I took him to Mr. Harper’s, and there drank with him. Among other things in discourse he told me how my wife’s brother had a horse at grass with him, which I was troubled to hear, it being his boldness upon my score.
Home by coach, and read late in the last night’s book of Trials, and told my wife about her brother’s horse at Mr. Bowyer’s, who is also much troubled for it, and do intend to go to-morrow to inquire the truth.
Notwithstanding this was the first day of the King’s proclamation against hackney coaches coming into the streets to stand to be hired, yet I got one to carry me home.

Ice is a house I could
not stay in, the answer to
a tune I never hear.

Tell me how I promise forever
in the present, with fiddles and songs
and an old horse at grass.

Which trouble
is the truth, coming into the streets
to stand?

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 7 November 1660.

November 8, 2013November 8, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Ancestral photography

Alastair Cook prepares wet plate to photograph Marc Neys — Alastair Cook prepares a wet plate to photograph Marc Neys

The photographer dons safety glasses and blue rubber gloves. His friend the other photographer takes his glasses off and sits for his tintype, the back of his head pressing a cup to the wall. In his lap, the tilted reflector like an absent-minded mirror that has forgotten how to hold an image. Meanwhile, the wet plate primed with chemicals slides into the camera and waits for the takeaway, its quick supper of shadows.

Assistants hold a black cloth behind the sitter’s head. The photographer assumes his crouch, a red hood cloaking his moment of intimacy with the camera. Only the bellows and brass eye protrude, like the horse-skull head of a Mari Lwyd without the grin.

To a sitter who has practiced meditation, the enforced and urgent stillness feels familiar.

finished tintypes sit in water — finished tintypes of me and Marc sit in the water

Then follow the photographer down to the darkroom and watch your face emerge like Lazarus from the murk. Warm colors appear dark and cool colors light, due to the wet plate’s appetite for blues. No negative intercedes.

The details are so fine and the eyes so strange, you startle. You have seen this face before in a gilt frame. Except that your ancestors wore high, starched collars to try and hide the shame of sunburnt necks, and here you are in t-shirt and ball cap, wearing an expression you can’t begin to read.