30 Apr 2004
Yesterday, Separate, in the Evening.
At last! The last wretched day of National Poetry Month!
This is the last poem you are going to be made to read. And it is good. It’s the only one I can think of in which the speaker pines for a beloved he hasn’t met yet. Although he announces that he has given up waiting for her, and how it is ridiculous because he doesn’t know anything about her (“I don’t even know what songs / would please you”), the last few lines indicate that despite the fact that she hasn’t shown up yet, he still really does have hope. . .
Be gone, National Poetry Month!
You who never arrived
Rainer Maria Rilke
You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don’t even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me– the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods–
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house–, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,–
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening. . .
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
April 30th, 2004 at 9:02 am
That last line just leaves me cold. I mean, “Translated by Stephen Mitchell,” all italicized like that? I mean, what is RMR trying to say to us?
April 30th, 2004 at 9:26 am
Sha ha ya ma.
April 30th, 2004 at 9:36 am
A fitting end to NPM. Beautiful and, I’d say, spot on.
April 30th, 2004 at 11:09 am
Sally, have you heard of/do you like Gaspara Stampa?
April 30th, 2004 at 12:42 pm
yesterday i proclaimed Poetry the lowest form of art.
April 30th, 2004 at 12:56 pm
“One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Pack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur ‘aptest eve’:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
‘Invisible priest’; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry ‘stanza my stone’?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.”
WS
April 30th, 2004 at 1:06 pm
I love the word “peevish.” In fact, I am feeling peevish today, so I am glad to come across it.
jp!, the highest form of art for you is the comic book. Of course you hate poems!
April 30th, 2004 at 2:34 pm
Don’t let him trick you. He LOVES this one comic that is a near-verbatim adaption of the “Ring of the Nieblung.”
April 30th, 2004 at 6:14 pm
yeah, Ring of the Nieblung IS pretty good. i guess i like epic poems like the works of Homer…but yeah, on smaller scale, poetry is the lowest of the “traditional” forms of art.
I’m not counting some creepy acts you guys do in the privacy of your own homes. heh.
April 30th, 2004 at 6:25 pm
man, i hated poetry month as much as the next guy, but “poetry is the lowest of the ‘traditional’ forms of art” is just utter BS.
playing the spoons on street corners is lower than poetry, at the very least.
May 1st, 2004 at 9:47 am
i meant form of art not type of performance. I’d still hold poetry lower than its contemporaries. i guess i’m splitting hairs here.
May 1st, 2004 at 10:16 am
jp!, what you need is a good lesson in the science of poetry. I think you would have more respect if you saw how, for a lot of poets, there is a lot of math and planning going on.
And gclark, what about all those emails about how much you were enjoying poetry month? You are a reverse snob.
Leave poetry month alone. It’s over now. Everyone can stop crying.
May 1st, 2004 at 10:35 am
When is national reference book month?
May 1st, 2004 at 1:55 pm
National Poetry Month was so unbearable we’re going to make May the “Complain Incessantly About ‘National Poetry Month’ Month.”
I really did sort of enjoy it, though. Next time I feel like reading a new poet, I’m going to mine the archives for some of sally’s recommendations.
May 2nd, 2004 at 8:00 am
I was just giving you guys a little shit earlier. I go back on forth on poetry. Sometimes it sounds so canned and false to me, and other times really great. Strangely, I tend to like poets who were also playwrights or novelists, that kind of thing.
I really love this one John Updike poem, “Ex-Basketball Player,” kind of like a prequel to Rabbit, Run. Just thought I’d share.
What month is May? National Rock and Roll month?!
May 2nd, 2004 at 8:58 am
Hey, that Updike poem is good. I haven’t read that in a long time.