April is POETRY MONTH!

I have been away for far too long. Since April is National Poetry Month, in order to re-connect with that which I really love, I am planning on posting a poem each day. We'll see if this actually happens, but I think it's a good goal. Last night, I read "The Deleted World," translations/imitations of Tomas Transtromers' work by Robin Robertson. Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011. This edition, published in the U.S. last year (though in the U.K. in 2006) offers the original Swedish in facing pages to the English. I really appreciate it when translations do this; even though I can't read the original in any way, it's beautiful to see, and I can try and listen for the original sounds.

To Friends Behind a Border
I
I wrote to you so cautiously. But what I couldn't say
filled and grew like a hot-air balloon
and finally floated away through the night sky.

II
Now my letter is with the censor. He lights his lamp.
In its glare my words leap like monkeys at a wire mesh,
clattering it, stopping to bare their teeth.

III
Read between the lines. We will meet in two hundred years
when the microphones in the hotel walls are forgotton -
when they can sleep at last, become ammonites.


-Tomas Transtromer, tr. Robin Robertson

Suspended Animation // Circular Thought Processes

To be in suspended animation: life processes slowed, without being terminated, by external forces. The process of ideas slowed, without being terminated. The process of making decisions, slowed, without being terminated. 

There are no insights to offer, no stellar advice, no directions to follow. Or there are directions, I just don't know how to follow them. I don't have the right key, and I'm struggling not to fall into metaphor.

I am not sure about the motivation/functioning/forcing. If there is no clear beginning, how to begin in the first place, at the beginning? You say to begin in the middle, and lay out the path for me. But then we can't agree on how to move forward.

Abstractions to build a wall, distractions from the actual thing. Wondering how obvious to make the entrance, or allow you to enter in.

I don't understand why we can't have a conversation about this. We're coming from the same place, it doesn't have to be an argument. I'm just as confused as you are. And equally frustrated.

The test is to push through where others would falter and quit. It's not whether you have the dream or passion or not; it's whether you follow through with it, taking it further than the rest.

Too many different ways to go, and none looking promising. Well, at least not the one that I want to look promising.

Is the opposite of suspended animation resurrection? Or is it just forward momentum? 

Fragmentary thoughts leading in fragmented direction // cold feet // city of knots. Pop up advertisement: if you died today // who would take care of your family // ? // playing with lines // feelings twisted in my stomach // a rambling migraine // first right eye, then left // waiting for the phone to ring // rambling // rambling // rambling //

Words/Definitions/Sparkling Things

Which definition of languish is more appropriate for a blog?

-To fail to make progress or be successful - or -

-Suffer from being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation - that being the Internets, dear readers. Maybe here I'm referring more to the words, not the blog. Oh well.

Have you read The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester? No? You should. Really. The book came out a few years ago, but I only recently had the pleasure to read it. It's very well-written, and the story (true story!) is incredible. I mean, if you like words/dictionaries/defining things. One of the most prolific contributors to the first edition of the dictionary was an incarcerated murderer/madmen; the author can't definitively say for certain why he went mad, but one of the postulates is that he was traumatized from his time as a doctor in the Civil War, forced to brand deserters with a hot iron. It's really a tragic, touching story.

I love words/dictionaries/defining things. Growing up, my mother had a copy of the Compact Edition of the OED, complete with mini microscope to aid in reading the tiny, tiny print. I admit I didn't make as much use of it as I should have -- but it was a treasure.

Dismantling words, too. Misuse/abuse. Rhyming, spinning, sparkling things.

The Revisionist's Dream II

She dreamed and the dream was of language. She dreamt
words had yellow wings, had a thousand delicate fingers,
had big tusks, had balls - that their mutable voices rose
from some distance and carried to her on a blue wind. No.
She dreamed of water. She dreamed of a single bright leaf
tangled in a dark stream. She did. But you can't take
her literally, and the story changes all the time.
-Renée Ashley

something after a temporary halt

to resume. a space for critical thinking // cracked glass

glueing the city back together

i have decided to forsake, momentarily, capitalization here.

something meaningful, and full of meaning, from someone not me:

Any form of thought whatever requires a preparation by emptying one’s mind. You have to lance the cumulative abscess, since we know too much about everything. And there is nothing better than mindless diversions to rid us of that deadweight that crushes thought. Nothing like a good bout of obsessive gymnastics to dispel received ideas. The preparatives for thought are as mysterious as the preparatives for anger. - Jean Baudrillard

writing = thought // -distraction +mental stretching // incomplete equation

resuming a space for this preparative

hopefully you'll do some somersaults too

there are also older poems in past issues of online journals that i never posted about. read them:

Spiral Orb One - Window Conversation

Tattoo Highway 20 - I wanted to Write a Short Story

to be continued...

Waking Life

New poem up here:

Melusine

Read it! And while you're at it, read the rest of the current issue as well! :)

Hereing/Hearing Music

"On waking, the pattern of the dream fades, but its aura, ambience, timbre and tonality remain, though there is no image. It's the same with a piece of music. You have it in your mind, you can hear it mentally, but you can't summon it up as form. Or with a face, whose features and smile you can feel in a tactile way, but with no recall of what it looks like. Where on earth does this force of the dream register itself, this reminiscence without image?"
-Jean Baudrillard, Cool memories IV (51)

Please join me at a lovely concert this week:

FANTASIES AND SONGS:
NATHANIEL LANASA, SILVIE JENSEN, AND RICK QUANTZ

Wednesday, February 17 at 7PM
Bechstein Piano Centre
207 West 58th Street

Schubert: Der Wanderer
Schubert: Wanderer-Fantasy
Schumann: Kreisleriana-fantasies
Brahms: Viola Songs

Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano
Rick Quantz, viola
Nathaniel LaNasa, piano

Go to the Event Announcement at the Bechstein Centre website HERE.