tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post494201108056808754..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: In the Shadows of the White House RuinsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-64460392438629863022011-06-19T08:04:59.808-07:002011-06-19T08:04:59.808-07:00be tween Ryokan & Ikkyu .... D.H. Lawrence
...be tween Ryokan & Ikkyu .... D.H. Lawrence <br /><br />... what else is needed ?<br /><br />(sorry, sort of about the absence of the two "-" s above the letters)<br /><br />((from Ikkyu's CROW<br /><br />"you poor sad thing thinking death is real<br />all by itself"<br /><br /><br /><br />&<br /><br />"only a kind deadly sincere man<br />can show you the way here in the other world"<br /><br />&<br /><br />"I'd love to give you something<br />but what would help?"<br /><br />& one more... I promise:<br /><br />"it's logical: if you're not going anywhere<br />any road is the right one"<br /><br />&/and<br /><br /><br />""I'm eighty still alive looking up every night<br />snapping my fingers at time at the promise of love"<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />these guys including DHL did not differentiate<br /><br />the internalized & made "it" justwhatitis: subjectiveEd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-80001523372505723752011-06-19T07:45:58.717-07:002011-06-19T07:45:58.717-07:00Great conversation, inspired these:
On first re...Great conversation, inspired these:<br /><br /> <br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-first-reading-rainbow.html" rel="nofollow">On first reading The Rainbow</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/parts-of-unseen-r-h-blyth-lawrence-and.html" rel="nofollow">Parts of the Unseen: R. H. Blyth: Lawrence and Eastern Culture</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-12394204251589561112011-06-18T12:57:21.417-07:002011-06-18T12:57:21.417-07:00yeah this Dalai Lama is a real 'hoot'
pu...yeah this Dalai Lama is a real 'hoot'<br /><br />punc-lines to his jokes/stories are de<br />livered<br />with<br />Perfect Timing<br />& (always) a 'twinkle' in his voice<br /><br /><br />& message<br /><br />remind me to tell you my<br /> Dalai Lam story<br /><br />it includes The Warrior Nun<br /><br /><br />(Tee See your word ver today is<br /><br />"pater" Walter Pater was no slouch, either.Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-64598947632921556012011-06-18T12:46:39.719-07:002011-06-18T12:46:39.719-07:00Perfect connection, Ed, of DHL and Blyth ...
Whi...Perfect connection, Ed, of DHL and Blyth ... <br /><br />Which reminds me of the conversation between the Dalai Lama and Bill Moyers at an outdoor festival when Moyers noticed a fly worrying about and lighting on the Dalai Lama and he asked him about his composure and the DL said (paraphrasing from memory):<br /><br />"It is like with the mosquito. It comes, it is hungry, it takes a little bit. Good. Takes too much - " Swat.<br /><br />And his whole-hearted, beautiful laugh ... <br /><br />A little satori for me that day.Issa's Untidy Huthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07352841590717991698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-85236378826598640462011-06-18T10:54:41.661-07:002011-06-18T10:54:41.661-07:00the mosquito know
is at the bottom of here:
ht...the mosquito know<br /> is at the bottom of here:<br /><br />http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/lawrence.htmEd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-24567073971763796882011-06-18T10:48:16.322-07:002011-06-18T10:48:16.322-07:00as I re:visit
I recall his
"the mosquito k...as I re:visit <br />I recall his <br />"the mosquito knows ...." poem<br /> as i recall recalling additional info<br />not necessary<br /> he wrote it nearing/contemplating his own death...<br /><br />sort of alongthelines to which (Blyth/haiku), "sorties")<br /><br />DW speaks this poem is ...Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16276441489091520322011-06-18T10:34:25.408-07:002011-06-18T10:34:25.408-07:00Lawrence just always has overwhelmed me. He is a ...Lawrence just always has overwhelmed me. He is a poet, plain and simple. Some people who never write a word are poets.<br /><br />He will always be recognized as a novelist but he will always be a poet to me (even in his novels,short stories, essays etc.) I think of Hesse this way. I think of Eugene O'Neill this way. Funny.<br /><br />I went through a white-hot period of reading Lawrence in my 20s. I was very resistant at first, being a male feminist of the 70s. So I remembered, shame-faced, my reaction while reading your tale of the poet who stomped off. <br /><br />He turned my head around quick.<br /><br />I can pick up any work by him today, 40 years later and it as if I've been reading him the whole time. His voice ... it is immediate.<br /><br />I remember yelling back at the page with his essays. He outraged me but much much more. He touched me at, to risk a Laurentian analogy, the molten core. He may be the first writer that I felt was in the very room with me while I was reading. I still feel this way about him.<br /><br />People often misunderstood him because he talked in metaphor, he talked in symbols. The pure poet. I imagine it all just shined through his very pores.<br /><br />You mention his use of repetition. It was transcendent. His essay on Melville - one would be hard put to call it prose, especially its final pages. On Poe, he saw him, his own direct antithesis, for exactly who he was, marvelously. His tussle with Whitman makes the WWF look like kindgergarten stuff. The whole Studies in American Literature should be required reading, to be a poet, to be a reader, to be alive.<br /><br />Why aren't I reading him right now?<br /><br />Our mutual friend, Mr. Blyth, knew Lawrence well if I recall from his haiku associations.<br /><br />Tossing this off quickly at lunch at work to again say thanks for the poem (I'll be on to Hummingbird, probably in the morning). I've gotten overheated as I usually do, as I did the very first time I encountered Lawrence. Love him for his flaws, love him for his virtues.<br /><br />In for a penny, in for a pound.Issa's Untidy Huthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07352841590717991698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-63631329990363711842011-06-18T05:16:32.490-07:002011-06-18T05:16:32.490-07:00Don,
So glad to hear you too are so deeply affect...Don,<br /><br />So glad to hear you too are so deeply affected by Lawrence. (I should have guessed, you are the bellwether.) Something in the poetry speaks so much more directly than anyone else's has ever done: it may be the rhythms, the obsessive use of repetition, the invested sense that the cosmic (yes) and the common (the psyche, no one escapes it) must always demand our attendance... and then too, the willingness also to divest, to drift away. Still in his twenties here, he writes with a power of experience and intuition that seem so much older. Perhaps it's impossible to avoid feeling the fate of an early mortality, at least as the encroaching shadow of the ultimate seriousness of all things. To feel at the same time the ultimate this-too-will pass of all things... maybe this is more difficult. But the participation in the suffering of being human, the tensions attendant thereto: most poets have a way of dodging or ignoring or sublimating these things (if indeed they feel them at all). With Lawrence, though, the intensity remains constant.<br /><br />With the years, he seems better and better, even as his "influence" is difficult to make out in the present landscape. There was an occasion, oh perhaps a quarter-century ago now, when I happened to be in the company of two other poets when the subject of Lawrence's work (the novels in this case) came up. One of these poets, now ranked among The Greats, grew increasingly flushed and agitated, and finally got up and left the room with a decisive flourish, as if to say, I will NOT be in a space where that monster is being spoken of. At the time I couldn't fathom the sources of this reaction. Later on, I guess I could.<br /><br />In any case, DHL was an odd bird, certainly not a cuddly one, but always sticking his beak into the ancient sweet and sour poetic wells; and one can't help loving him for it.<br /><br />His insight into the creaturely will never cease to inspire; the creaturely abides and survives, if it's lucky; and then again, as he sometimes reminds, perhaps the luck is all ours.<br /><br />Even in this coldest of springs, that life continues. Morning temps still in the forties, but here with us once again is that undaunted whizzing wizard, <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/d-h-lawrence-humming-bird.html" rel="nofollow">Humming-Bird</a>. <br /><br />(We have the Ana's strain, not the incredible long-beaked Ecuadoran kind, which seems properly archaic, as in DHL's scary and riveting vision...)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-71962010381134225162011-06-17T13:44:18.173-07:002011-06-17T13:44:18.173-07:00Images and words of the oppressors ... and then th...Images and words of the oppressors ... and then there is this cosmic Lawrence. <br /><br />He has us down, he's always had us down, and he will never let us up until we realize.<br /><br />"We walk in our sleep, in this land,<br />Somnambulist wide-eyed afraid.<br />We scream for someone to wake us<br />And our scream is soundless in the paralysis of sleep,<br />And we know it."<br /><br />... and we know it.<br /><br />Very powerful, Tom. DHL has always had that all-encompassing power to just shut me up.Issa's Untidy Huthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07352841590717991698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-23489096848126837102011-06-17T06:14:23.193-07:002011-06-17T06:14:23.193-07:00Tom,
Thanks for all this investigation of such thi...Tom,<br />Thanks for all this investigation of such things -- "there are different words for. . . ."<br /><br />6.17<br /><br />first light coming into fog above still<br />black ridge, moon to the left of branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> other repetition, precision<br /> compared to summary of<br /><br /> drift into meanings of word,<br /> place of, on all sides<br /><br />cloudless blue sky reflected in channel,<br />line of 5 pelicans gliding toward ridgeSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-5999334832920445612011-06-17T01:47:45.439-07:002011-06-17T01:47:45.439-07:00Thanks, friends.
Yes, chasing the ancient enemy ...Thanks, friends. <br /><br />Yes, chasing the ancient enemy into the caves and fastnesses where you dare not go, then starving them out, a heroic and time honoured invading power's strategy. <br /><br />Trying to imagine that winter, the band of Navajo in their last sanctuary, locked inside the great caƱon wall, the low voices of the chiefs and headmen echoing, firelight and flickering shadows across the dark quicksand declivities within the ruins of the houses of the Ancient Ones who left so long ago -- perhaps these people's ancestors, perhaps the enemies of their ancestors...<br /><br />And yes, as Barry points out, the notable invocation by Brigadier Gen. J. H. Carleson of the helpfully admonitory snows, divine heralds of the wrath of righteous judgment -- again a time honoured strategy, making sure it's plain to your audience back in the capitol that their (and your) gods are 100% on your side. <br /><br />Rhetorical in this case, but as we are continually learning all over again, a bit of fine language always helps to grease the wheels of the imperial machinery.<br /><br />The clincher though has to be that unarguable Yankee bottom line: "you can feed them cheaper than you can fight them".TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-302390637862525692011-06-16T23:50:19.752-07:002011-06-16T23:50:19.752-07:00' ... soon be carried to a final result.' ...' ... soon be carried to a final result.' Chilling echos ricocheting around those last houses and this extraordinary post. 'As soon as the snows of winter admonish them ...' - ah to be a blood-soaked bureaucrat and speak in the very cadences of the Lord! 'Practical-- practicable--and humane'. It's an education, Tom.Barry Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02121653352771218338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50094333615829932352011-06-16T12:43:06.020-07:002011-06-16T12:43:06.020-07:00An outstanding post, Tom & Angelica
all's...An outstanding post, Tom & Angelica<br /><br />all's well, BobBob Arnold / Longhousehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00016178166202192089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54465830688546912242011-06-16T07:34:58.491-07:002011-06-16T07:34:58.491-07:00well
everybody knows that our policy has always b...well<br /><br />everybody knows that our policy has always been:<br /><br />"might makes right & and 'praise the lord and pass the ammunition'"<br /><br />.. it s the Way of the World / the Way of ReligionEd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.com