I got Tamas Panitz’s poems Blue Sun a few weeks ago but didn’t get a chance to get into it until last night. Good stuff—I’ll try to write a proper review in the next week, but until then, here’s Charles Stein’s blurb, via publisher Inpatient Press:
The splitting of historiography into a brash imposition of history as ontology, history as willfully configurative, history as but a wistful desideratum — leaves the archetypal self little choice but to hive in the lucubrations of a poetry questing for self and history. Panitz’ book enacts such a questing. Its voice would be master of its walk to the extent that even in addressing another it might be strictly about its own business: a panoply of poetic measures, variable tactics of order, the exploration of ontological imponderables. The smartness of its utterance throughout is instructive and – something not so common these days – provides a species of written speech that will repay proper study.
From The Unknown University, the complete poems of Roberto Bolaño. From New Directions and translated by Laura Healy.
“May-Day” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,
And troops of boys
Shouting with whoop and hilloa,
And hip, hip three times three.
The air is full of whistlings bland;
What was that I heard
Out of the hazy land?
Harp of the wind, or song of bird,
Or clapping of shepherd’s hands,
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply ‘t was the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain’s shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even unto May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel’s pettish bark,
Or clarionet of jay? or hark,
Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,
Steering north with raucous cry
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down
In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lonely lakes to men unknown.
Come the tumult whence it will,
Voice of sport, or rush of wings,
It is a sound, it is a token
That the marble sleep is broken,
And a change has passed on things.
Continue reading ““May-Day” — Ralph Waldo Emerson”
From Joseph T. Shipley’s The Origin of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. I’ve found the book indispensable for years now—its discursiveness is a lunatic joy to get lost in. Anyway, the above passages extend/unwind from the root ap/apo; I found it while looking up the eytmology of poseur.
“The Scripture of the Golden Eternity”byJack Kerouac
1
Did I create that sky? Yes, for, if it was anything other than a conception in my mind I wouldnt have said “Sky”-That is why I am the golden eternity. There
are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one, one golden eternity, One-Which-It-Is, That-Which- Everything-Is.
2
The awakened Buddha to show the way, the chosen Messiah to die in the degradation of sentience, is the golden eternity. One that is what is, the golden eternity, or, God, or, Tathagata-the name. The Named One. The human God. Sentient Godhood. Animate Divine. The Deified One. The Verified One. The Free One. The Liberator. The Still One. The settled One. The Established One. Golden Eternity. All is Well. The Empty One. The Ready One. The Quitter. The Sitter. The Justified One. The Happy One.
3
That sky, if it was anything other than an illusion of my mortal mind I wouldnt have said “that sky.” Thus I made that sky, I am the golden eternity. I am Mortal Golden Eternity.
4
I was awakened to show the way, chosen to die in the degradation of life, because I am Mortal Golden Eternity.
5
I am the golden eternity in mortal animate form.
6
Strictly speaking, there is no me, because all is emptiness. I am empty, I am non-existent. All is bliss.
7
This truth law has no more reality than the world. Continue reading ““The Scripture of the Golden Eternity” — Jack Kerouac”
