tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post3114867636195142062..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Wallace Stevens: Startled by a flight of birdsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-71254747996389574892012-06-11T11:31:11.630-07:002012-06-11T11:31:11.630-07:00Simply beautiful. It puts me in mind of two poems ...Simply beautiful. It puts me in mind of two poems (translations mine)<br /><br />My Earlier Life (Baudelaire)<br /><br />I've been home a long time among the vast porticos, <br />Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires, <br />Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold <br />Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires. <br /><br />The swells' overwhelming accords of rich music, <br />Heaving images of heaven to the skies, <br />Mingle in a way solemn and mystic <br />With the colors of the horizon reflected by my eyes. <br /><br />It was here I was true to the voluptuous calm, <br />The milieu of azure, the waves, the splendors, <br />And the nude slaves, all impregnated with odors, <br /><br />Who refreshed my brow with waving palms <br />My only care to bring to meaning from anguish <br />The sad secret in which I languish. <br /><br />Memory (Excerpt) - Holderlin<br /><br />But it is rich,<br />Full of dark light,<br />This fragrant cup <br />Of sleep; it's sweet <br />Under the shadow of slumber.<br />It's not good to think<br />The mortal is soulless. <br />But it’s good to converse<br />In the voice of the heart<br />And hear much as love emerges<br />And acts, occurrences happen.<br /><br />But where are my friends? Bellarmin<br />With his companion? Some are afraid<br />To go to the source;<br />Where the wealth begins,<br />In the sea. They,<br />Like painters, pull together <br />The beauty of the Earth and disdain<br />War not winged, and <br />Live for years alone, below<br />The leafless mast, where night does not shine through<br />The city's festivities,<br />Nor its strings and indigenous dances.<br /><br />But now the Indians are<br />The people left,<br />There on the airy spit, <br />And mountains of grapes fall<br />To the Dordogne, which along<br />With the mighty Garonne <br />Empties to the sea<br />That comes from the stream. Abounding,<br />It gives memories to the waters,<br />And to the lovers' eyes entwined,<br />But what remains, the poet finds.WAShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10403669322174979974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-48806616754774295912012-06-09T10:32:06.174-07:002012-06-09T10:32:06.174-07:00The gods may be gone, but we are still here to pop...The gods may be gone, but we are still here to populate our ghost towns. In imagination at least; still thinking that if we hang around the vacated sites long enough, something might even happen. Absence makes the heart grow full with longing for that darn something. <br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/susan-kay-anderson-out-in-bodie.html" rel="nofollow">Susan Kay Anderson: Out in Bodie</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-43014748850980639182012-06-09T10:24:45.788-07:002012-06-09T10:24:45.788-07:00yeah ... & again:
"it is as if ...&q...yeah ... & again:<br /><br />"it is as if ..."<br /><br />when the artist / poet discovers that<br />ego is merely an invention & then<br />in the dropping of (that) blockage<br />takes off upon his own trail ...<br />minus the Credentialists' Baggage<br /><br />as if<br />there was / is no tomorrow !<br /><br />now reading poems of Frank O'Hara<br />& am suddenly struck that he too<br /> is Magic.<br /><br />as Yeats put 'it' :<br /><br />"don't be a magician <br />be<br />magic"<br /><br />now to keg-up the new batch of beer we've brewed ... it shld be ready<br />to drink next Saturday. Y'all drop<br />on over for a frosty mug... yuh hear ?Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-14060323952802951382012-06-09T10:00:12.353-07:002012-06-09T10:00:12.353-07:00Steven Ratcliffe points to the contingency of the ...Steven Ratcliffe points to the contingency of the matter, the ‘as if.’ There’s an absence of certain things— like mementoes—things not there, yet called into being by Stevens from his ‘abodes of the imagination’ and his ‘memories of places that never existed.’ We begin to wonder. We are looking into Stevens world, but from our own; or maybe it’s the other way round. This is one of the most appealing things about this piece.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-86879594585265889412012-06-09T07:54:34.696-07:002012-06-09T07:54:34.696-07:00Tom,
One hears Stevens' voice intoning these ...Tom,<br /><br />One hears Stevens' voice intoning these syllables -- <br /><br />"What was most extraordinary is that they left no mementoes behind, no thrones, no mystic rings, no texts either of the soil or of the soul."<br /><br />"It is as if we had stepped into a ruin and were startled by a flight of birds that rose as we entered."<br /><br />6.9<br /><br />light still coming into sky above black<br />plane of ridge, moon across from branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> the thought of being shaped,<br /> change in any way but<br /><br /> the other, asked who it was,<br /> continued there in it<br /><br />wingspan of tern lifting from sandspit,<br />moon in cloudless blue sky above pointSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-81137683639510538282012-06-09T00:04:53.156-07:002012-06-09T00:04:53.156-07:00Thank you for reminding us that Stevens is one of ...Thank you for reminding us that Stevens is one of our necessary angels.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-8344385249571399082012-06-08T14:30:21.193-07:002012-06-08T14:30:21.193-07:00Darn, I thought something was going to happen.
Out...Darn, I thought something was going to happen.<br />Out in Bodie<br />the road still existed<br />out to the mine shaft<br />blowing about in the sun.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47568938875699170112012-06-08T11:06:45.843-07:002012-06-08T11:06:45.843-07:00It's not such a great surprise, when one think...It's not such a great surprise, when one thinks of it, that the gods should have taken themselves off as we entered. One has experienced that sort of thing before, and it would be dishonest really, to deny the meaning of it to oneself.<br /><br />And this is perhaps more responsibility than we ought to have been left with:<br /><br />"There was always in every man the increasingly human self, which instead of remaining the observer, the non-participant, the delinquent, became constantly more and more all there was or so it seemed; and whether it was so or merely seemed so still left it for him to resolve life and the world in his own terms."<br /><br />So there we have it. We can't chase off something that was already gone.<br /><br />As a raw and vile youth (1967) one took part in a collaborative poem with a fellow callow contender for the laurels. In this poem God dares enter the picture, but is affrighted, as vampires are meant to be by whatever it is, crucifixes, silver stakes & c.<br /><br />The poem in question reacts to the divine intervention with predictable rudeness:<br /><br />"Smuh!<br /><br />God get out of here<br /><br />And he runs off chirping and chucking into his handbag."<br /><br />Now one can only call that bit inhospitable.<br /><br />The poem in question goes on to add:<br /><br />"What is happening here<br /><br />is that the brain tissue is momentarily<br /><br />a noodle."<br /><br />That bit proves to have been prescient beyond its years.<br /><br />Perhaps even Stevens did not phrase the central pathos here as well as Hazen has done:<br /><br />"...the melancholy recognition that humankind feels okay to be all-there-is."<br /><br />And yes, oh yes, "That last image is haunting and dream-like."<br /><br />Also affecting to dwell upon this:<br /><br />"...while we may work towards a resolution of life, it's not clear that this is a possibility."<br /><br />And it's clearer every day now that this is not clear, and that it is growing unclearer with the hour.<br /> <br />Still one struggles on, as though there were not another option. The memory aflutter with phantom gods.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-58512967623115637952012-06-08T08:41:26.416-07:002012-06-08T08:41:26.416-07:00"...all there was or so it seemed..." Th..."...all there was or so it seemed..." The seeming is important, I think. <br /><br />And while we may work towards a resolution of life, it's not clear that this is a possibility.<br /><br />Part of my trouble is I'm not so sure what my own terms are.<br /><br />To be somewhere between being and seeming...Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-42121432619854148112012-06-08T08:14:52.656-07:002012-06-08T08:14:52.656-07:00Ah, brilliant! I'd never read this, and am now...Ah, brilliant! I'd never read this, and am now frantically searching for a full copy. Elsewhere I'm planning a reading group on "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," and am thinking right now that this would be very good to incorporate.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-36008095991117333042012-06-08T07:22:06.413-07:002012-06-08T07:22:06.413-07:00This will last. Six decades on, reading this, we c...This will last. Six decades on, reading this, we can still live the experience that Stevens lived that day he stepped into the ruins and the doves rose up and vanished: an essential honesty of mind and heart, the feeling of awe before wild nature; and the melancholy recognition that humankind feels okay to be all-there-is. That last image is haunting and dream-like.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-64410540673293810402012-06-08T07:11:34.490-07:002012-06-08T07:11:34.490-07:00that opening (& then to the end of) of the
sec...that opening (& then to the end of) of the<br />second x-cerpt:<br /><br />"It is as if ... ."<br /><br />brought tears to my eyes<br />-all three of them..<br /><br />& then to read his USE of<br /><br />"It was as if..." again and a<br />gain in first passage WOWOW !!<br /><br />I particularly PAR-TICK-YOU-LARILY<br />appreciate that last compound-complex<br />(complex-compound?) sentence/thought of<br />second piece.<br /><br />time for this My-Me to jump back<br />into a cpl of Master Poets ...<br /><br />one now new to me and then back into<br />Stevens... <br /><br />wasn't he an insurance salesman ?<br /><br />(the other one was a clerk (or something) at<br />MOMA...Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-82676233438504972822012-06-08T06:32:41.926-07:002012-06-08T06:32:41.926-07:00As always Tom, apt and moving selection of word an...As always Tom, apt and moving selection of word and image. Provocative in the best sense.Lallyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05310472614196384595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-66648240423192467462012-06-08T06:06:44.504-07:002012-06-08T06:06:44.504-07:00Very inspiring. Especially like the ghost town pic...Very inspiring. Especially like the ghost town picture coming immediately after the final words...Jonathan Chanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03647746685252448938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-22915797486509729492012-06-08T05:47:29.009-07:002012-06-08T05:47:29.009-07:00I tried to get the bailiffs in on old Yahweh but h...I tried to get the bailiffs in on old Yahweh but he was having none of it. That's the last time I go with Descartes et Fils.<br />Such prose isn't possible any more, I fear.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-74263151420726187702012-06-08T05:35:36.421-07:002012-06-08T05:35:36.421-07:00I'm amazed at the poetry & prose differenc...I'm amazed at the poetry & prose difference in this remarkable man-- almost two people!Conrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.com