Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Friday 16 December 2011

Ed Sanders: What is contentedness?

.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/View_from_Shore_Road%2C_Magnolia_MA.jpg/683px-View_from_Shore_Road%2C_Magnolia_MA.jpg

View from Shore Road, Magnolia, Massachusetts
: photo by John Phelan, May 2008




What is contentedness?
Well, first of all
you have to ignore the
Dada Alarm Clock
2nd you have to forget about
the word "ignore"
& 3rd you have to like
being a piece of
breathing driftwood
& 4th: you have to
embrace fleetingness
while storing




a.m.
staring at the roily ocean
10-7-11
Bass Rocks
Gloucester




http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Fitz_Henry_Lane_-_Brace%27s_Rock.jpg/1024px-Fitz_Henry_Lane_-_Brace%27s_Rock.jpg

Brace's Rock, Brace's Cove, Gloucester, Massachusetts
: Fitz Hugh Lane, 1864; image by Oxxo, 29 October 2009 (Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago)

File:LaneFitzHughBracesRockEasternPointGloucester.jpg

Brace's Rock, Eastern Point, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Fitz Hugh Lane, c.1864; image by Tetraktys, 27 January 2009 (National Gallery of Art)

10 comments:

TC said...

"The best poet mind of my generation"

And see also:

Ed Sanders: Light Show of the Gods

Ed Baker said...

of mine too!

OPPS
we of the same
Age

the one jus be:fore this present
one
which I call:

The Age of Huh?

and this guy

Hugh
ain't no 'slouch' with a brush
& his palette


either!

aditya said...

Ahh this is great.

Embrace forget ignore

Dada Alarm Clock rang once but time, inspite of whatever one chooses to believe, is not circular. It is .. elliptical.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

"being a apiece of
breathing driftwood"

"embrac[ing] fleetingness
while storing" --

Thanks for these 'words to live by' (Fitz Hugh Lane must have found something of that "contentedness" at Brace's Rock, once upon a time. . .).

12.16

light coming into sky above still black
ridge, white gibbous moon beside branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

is something different from
“subject,” essence of

painting drawn across cloud,
time of day, as usual

shadowed canyon of ridge across channel,
white cloud in pale blue sky on horizon

ACravan said...

embrace fleetingness
while storing

Those Fitz Hugh Lane paintings.

Wow.

Curtis

TC said...

To embrace fleetingness while storing elliptical present time of day in the Age of Huh is no mean trick for sure.

Ed and Miriam went to Bass Rocks for a weekend in October to celebrate their 50th (speaking of no mean trick).

Ed's sane and fruitful longevity as an artist (and human) must attest to good character as well as country living.

He continues to please the Muse, while gentle Miriam crosses the road to feed corn to a hungry herd of deer (who otherwise are busy dodging the brave white weekend hunters from Brooklyn), every day in the life.

Ed Baker said...

speaking of deer...

Sligo Golf Course is about a mile & an half fro me

since this article

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/montgomery-
hunts-for-solution-to-managing-deer-population/2011/11/15/gIQAQVnDRN_story.html
the county has decided to let police sharp=shooters starting net week
shoot the deer

give the meat to the local soup kitchens

used to be
a single deer provided meat for a family of four for
an entire winter.

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

Aye, to be "a piece
of breathing

driftwood" that would surely be
enough to flee

the world's confining
embrace.

TC said...

Vassilis,

The driftwood proposition, yes... those lines have been reverberating here in the dark these past two nights. Detachment, flotation, deep breathing, leaving the universe to do with us what it wilt. As of course it will do anyway, whether we accept it, or go out kicking & screaming.


Edster,

That loops us back to here.

And also to this other meditation upon the hunt, which calls out the "managers" by their proper name: Homo Necans: Man the Killer.

"Managing" the "population" of other species, a concept illustrative of human arrogance and hubris.

The hunt turned the Garden into an imperial bloodsport arena. You can smell dying Empires from miles away. I learned this as a kid, sniffing the death and fear in the air on summer nights, west of the stockyards in a city built on a river of animal blood.

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Wonder full Sanders. Thanks.