Wislawa Szymborska

[from Wislawa Szymborska's Monologue of a Dog, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, 2006]

Puddles

I remember that childhood fear well,
I avoided puddles,
especially fresh ones, after showers.
One of them might be bottomless, after all,
even though it looks just like the rest.

I'll step and suddenly be swallowed whole,
I'll start rising downwards
then even deeper down
towards the reflected clouds
and maybe farther.

Then the puddle will dry up,
shut above me,
I'm trapped for good -- where --
with a shout that never made it to the surface.

Understanding came only later:
not all misadventures
fit within the world's laws
and even if they wanted to,
they couldn't happen.

Monologue of a Dog

Joseph Brodsky

[from Joseph Brodsky's Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986]

art, especially poetry, differs from any other form of psychological activity precisely because in it everything -- form, content, and the very spirit of the work -- is picked out by ear. . . . verse meter is the equivalent of a certain psychological state, at times not of just one state but of several. The poet "picks" his way toward the spirit of a work by means of the meter.

The above by no means signifies intellectual irresponsibility. Exactly the opposite is the case: rational enterprise -- choice, selection -- is entrusted to hearing, or (putting it more clumsily but more accurately) is focused into hearing.

. . . it is the second, and not the first, line that shows where your poem is to go metrically. It also informs an experienced reader as to the identity of the author, i.e., whether he is American or British (an American second line, normally, is quite bold: it violates the preconceived music of the meter with its linguistic content; a Briton, normally, tends to sustain the tonal predictability of the second line, introducing his own diction only in the third, or, more likely, in the fourth line. Compare the tetrametric -- or even pentametric -- jobs of Thomas Hardy with E. A. Robinson, or better still, with Robert Frost). More importantly, though, the second line is the line that introduces the rhyme scheme.

. . . in a poem, you should try to reduce the number of adjectives to a minimum. So that if somebody covers your poem with a magic cloth that removes adjectives, the page will still be black enough because of nouns, adverbs, and verbs. When that cloth is little, your best friends are nouns. Also, never rhyme the same parts of speech. Nouns you can, verbs you shouldn't, and rhyming adjectives is taboo.

. . . Whenever you are going to use something pejorative, try to apply it to yourself to get the full measure of the word. Otherwise your criticism may amount simply to getting unpleasant things out of your system.

. . . A stanza, you see, is a self-generating device: the end of one spells the necessity of another. This necessity is first of all purely acoustical and, only then, didactical (although one shouldn't try to divorce them, especially for the sake of analysis). The danger here is that the preconceived music of a recurrent stanzaic pattern tends to dominate or even determine the content. And it's extremely hard for a poet to fight the dictates of the tune.

The eleven-line-long stanza of "September 1, 1939," is, as far as I can tell, Auden's own invention, and the irregularity of its rhyme pattern functions as an anti-fatigue device. Note that. All the same, the quantitative effect of an eleven-line-long stanza is such that the first thing on the writer's mind as he starts a new one is to escape from the musical predicament of the preceding lines.

Less Than One: Selected Essays

Marina Tsvetaeva

Joseph Brodsky's essay "Footnote to a Poem" discusses Marina Tsvetaeva's elegy for Rilke. This fine essay and others on Akmatova, Auden, and Montale, appear in Joseph Brodsky's Less Than One: Selected Essays, 1986.

The poem's been translated, but I don't have and haven't read a translation except for the short bits in Brodsky's essay. The poem is unbelievable in the original. No, I don't read Russian. I copied the poem's Russian text from this Web link and cannot attest to its accuracy. Try reading it aloud -- zlachnom -- / (Zlachnom -- zhvachnom) meste zychnom, meste zvuchnom -- do you need to know what that means?

Novogodnee

S Novym godom -- svetom -- kraem -- krovom!
Pervoe pis'mo tebe na novom
-- Nedorazumenie, chto zlachnom --
(Zlachnom -- zhvachnom) meste zychnom, meste zvuchnom
Kak Eolova pustaya bashnya.
Pervoe pis'mo tebe s vcherashnej,
Na kotoroj bez tebya iznoyus',
Rodiny, teper' uzhe s odnoj iz
Zvezd... Zakon othoda i otboya,
Po kotoromu lyubimaya lyuboyu
I nebyvsheyu iz nebyvaloj,
Rasskazat', kak pro tvoyu uznala?
Ne zemletryasen'e, ne lavina.
CHelovek voshel -- lyuboj -- (lyubimyj --
Ty.) -- Priskorbnejshee iz sobytij.
-- V Novostyah i v Dnyah.-- Stat'yu dadite?
-- Gde? -- V gorah. (Okno v elovyh vetkah.
Prostynya.) -- Ne vidite gazet ved'?
Tak stat'yu? -- Net.-- No...-- Proshu izbavit'.
Vsluh: trudna. Vnutr': ne hristoprodavec.
-- V sanatorii. (V rayu naЈmnom).
-- Den'? -- Vchera, pozavchera, ne pomnyu.
V Al'kazare budete? -- Ne budu.
Vsluh: sem'ya. Vnutr': vsЈ, no ne Iuda.

S nastupayushchim! (Rozhdalsya zavtra!) --
Rasskazat', chto sdelala uznav pro...?
Tes... Ogovorilas'. Po privychke.
ZHizn' i smert' davno beru v kavychki,
Kak zavedomo-pustye splЈty.
Nichego ne sdelala, no chto-to
Sdelalos', bez teni i bez eha
Delayushchee!
Teper' -- kak ehal?
Kak rvalos' i ne razorvalos' kak --
Serdce? Kak na rysakah orlovskih,
Ot orlov, skazal, ne otstayushchih,
Duh zahvatyvalo -- ili pushche?
Slashche? Ni vysot tomu, ni spuskov,
Na orlah letal zapravskih russkih --
Kto. Svyaz' krovnaya u nas s tem svetom:
Na Rusi byval -- tot svet na etom
Zrel. Nalazhennaya perebezhka!
ZHizn' i smert' proiznoshu s usmeshkoj
Skrytoyu -- svoej eya kosnesh'sya!
ZHizn' i smert' proiznoshu so snoskoj,
Zvezdochkoyu (noch', kotoroj chayu:
Vmesto mozgovogo polushar'ya --
Zvezdnoe!)
Ne pozabyt' by, drug moj,
Sleduyushchego: chto esli bukvy
Russkie poshli vzamen nemeckih --
To ne potomu, chto nynche, deskat',
VsЈ sojdet, chto mertvyj (nishchij) vsЈ s®est
Ne smorgnet! -- a potomu chto tot svet,
Nash,-- trinadcati, v Novodevich'em
Ponyala: ne bez-, a vse-yazychen.

Vot i sprashivayu ne bez grusti:
Uzh ne sprashivaesh', kak po-russki
Nest? Edinstvennaya i vse gnezda
Pokryvayushchaya rifma: zvezdy.

Otvlekayus'? No takoj i veshchi
Ne najdetsya -- ot tebya otvlech'sya.
Kazhdyj pomysel, lyuboj, Du Lieber,
Slog v tebya vedet -- o chem by ni byl
Tolk (pust' russkogo rodnej nemeckij
Mne, vseh angel'skij rodnej!) -- kak mesta
Nest', gde net tebya, net est': mogila.
VsЈ kak ne bylo i vsЈ kak bylo,
-- Neuzheli obo mne nichut' ne? --
Okruzhen'e, Rajner, samochuvstv'e?
Nastoyatel'no, vsenepremenno --
Pervoe videnie vselennoj
(Podrazumevaetsya, poeta
V onoj) i poslednee -- planety,
Raz tol'ko tebe i dannoj -- v celom!
Ne poeta s prahom, duha s telom,
(Obosobit' -- oskorbit' oboih)
A tebya s toboj, tebya s toboyu zh,
-- Byt' Zevesovym ne znachit luchshim --
Kastora -- tebya s toboj -- Polluksom,
Mramora -- tebya s toboyu, travkoj,
Ne razluku i ne vstrechu -- stavku
Ochnuyu: i vstrechu i razluku
Pervuyu.
Na sobstvennuyu ruku
Kak glyadel (na sled -- na nej -- chernil'nyj)
So svoej stol'ko-to (skol'ko?) mil'noj
Beskonechnoj ibo beznachal'noj
Vysoty nad urovnem hrustal'nym
Sredizemnogo -- i prochih blyudec.
VsЈ kak ne bylo i vsЈ kak budet
I so mnoyu za koncom predmest'ya.
VsЈ kak ne bylo i vsЈ kak est' uzh
-- CHto' spisavshemusya do nedel'ki
Lishnej! -- i kuda zh eshche glyadet'-to,
Prioblokotyas' na obod lozhi,
S etogo -- kak ne na tot, s togo zhe
Kak ne na mnogostradal'nyj etot.
V Bellevyu zhivu. Iz gnezd i vetok
Gorodok. Pereglyanuvshis' s gidom:
Bellevyu. Ostrog s prekrasnym vidom
Na Parizh -- chertog himery gall'skoj --
Na Parizh -- i na nemnozhko dal'she...
Prioblokotyas' na alyj obod
Kak tebe smeshny (komu) "dolzhno byt'",
(Mne zh) dolzhny byt', s vysoty bez mery,
Nashi Bellevyu i Bel'vedery!

Perebrasyvayus'. CHastnost'. Srochnost'.
Novyj God v dveryah. Za chto, s kem choknus'
CHerez stol? CHem? Vmesto peny -- vaty
Klok. Zachem? Nu, b'et -- a pri chem ya tut?
CHto mne delat' v novogodnem shume
S etoj vnutrenneyu rifmoj: Rajner -- umer.
Esli ty, takoe oko smerklos',
Znachit, zhizn' ne zhizn' est', smert' ne smert' est'.
Znachit -- tmitsya, dopojmu pri vstreche! --
Net ni zhizni, net ni smerti,-- tret'e,
Novoe. I za nego (solomoj
Zasteliv sed'moj -- dvadcat' shestomu
Othodyashchemu -- kakoe schast'e
Toboj konchit'sya, toboj nachat'sya!)
CHerez stol, neobozrimyj okom,
Budu chokat'sya s toboyu tihim chokom
Stkla o stklo? Net -- ne kabackim ihnim:
YA o ty, sliyas' dayushchih rifmu:
Tret'e.
CHerez stol glyazhu na krest tvoj.
Skol'ko mest -- zagorodnyh, i mesta
Za gorodom! i komu zhe mashet
Kak ne nam -- kust? Mest -- imenno nashih
I nich'ih drugih! Ves' list! Vsya hvoya!
Mest tvoih so mnoj (tvoih s toboyu).
(CHto s toboyu by i na massovku --
Govorit'?) chto -- mest! a mesyacov-to!
A nedel'! A dozhdevyh predmestij
Bez lyudej! A utr! A vsego vmeste
I ne nachatogo solov'yami!

Verno ploho vizhu, ibo v yame,
Verno luchshe vidish', ibo svyshe:
Nichego u nas s toboj ne vyshlo.
Do togo, tak chisto i tak prosto
Nichego, tak po plechu i rostu
Nam -- chto i perechislyat' ne nado.
Nichego, krome -- ne zhdi iz ryadu
Vyhodyashchego (neprav iz takta
Vyhodyashchij!) -- a v kakoj by, kak by
Ryad voshedshego?
Pripev izvechnyj:
Nichego hot' chem-nibud' na nechto
CHto-nibud' -- hot' izdali by -- ten' hot'
Teni! Nichego, chto: chas tot, den' tot,
Dom tot -- dazhe smertniku v kolodkah
Pamyat'yu darovannoe: rot tot!
Ili slishkom razbiralis' v sredstvah?
Iz vsego togo odin lish' svet tot
Nash byl, kak my sami tol'ko otsvet
Nas,-- vzamen vsego sego -- ves' tot svet!

S nezastroennejshej iz okrain --
S novym mestom, Rajner, svetom, Rajner!
S dokazuemosti mysom krajnim --
S novym okom, Rajner, sluhom, Rajner!

VsЈ tebe pomehoj
Bylo: strast' i drug.
S novym zvukom, |ho!
S novym ehom, Zvuk!

Skol'ko raz na shkol'nom taburete:
CHto za gory tam? Kakie reki?
Horoshi landshafty bez turistov?
Ne oshiblas', Rajner -- raj -- goristyj,
Grozovoj? Ne prityazanij vdov'ih --
Ne odin ved' raj, nad nim drugoj ved'
Raj? Terrasami? Suzhu po Tatram --
Raj ne mozhet ne amfiteatrom
Byt'. (A zanaves nad kem-to spushchen...)
Ne oshiblas', Rajner, Bog -- rastushchij
Baobab? Ne Zolotoj Lyudovik --
Ne odin ved' Bog? Nad nim drugoj ved'
Bog?
Kak pishetsya na novom meste?
Vprochem est' ty -- est' stih: sam i est' ty
Stih! Kak pishetsya v horoshej zhisti
Bez stola dlya loktya, lba dlya kisti
(Gorsti).
-- Vestochku, privychnym shifrom!
Rajner, raduesh'sya novym rifmam?
Ibo pravil'no tolkuya slovo
Rifma -- chto -- kak ne -- celyj ryad novyh
Rifm -- Smert'?
Nekuda: yazyk izuchen.
Celyj ryad znachenij i sozvuchij
Novyh.
-- Do svidan'ya! Do znakomstva!
Svidimsya -- ne znayu, no -- spoemsya.
S mne-samoj nevedomoj zemleyu --
S celym morem, Rajner, s celoj mnoyu!

Ne raz®ehat'sya -- cherkni zarane.
S novym zvukonachertan'em, Rajner!
V nebe lestnica, po nej s Darami...
S novym rukopolozhen'em, Rajner!

CHtob ne zalili, derzhu ladon'yu.--
Poverh Rony i poverh Rarogn'a,
Poverh yavnoj i sploshnoj razluki
Rajneru -- Mariya -- Ril'ke -- v ruki.

Bellevue
7 fevralya 1927

Less Than One: Selected Essays

Julio Cortazar

[from Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers edited by Charles Simic and Mark Strand, 1985]

The Lines of the Hand

From a letter thrown on the table a line comes which runs across the pine plank and descends by one of the legs. Just watch, you see that the line continues across the parquet floor, climbs the wall and enters a reproduction of a Boucher painting, sketches the shoulder of a woman reclining on a divan, and finally gets out of the room via the roof and climbs down the chain of lightning rods to the street. Here it is difficult to follow it because of the transit system, but by close attention you can catch it climbing the wheel of a bus parked at the corner, which carries it as far as the docks. It gets off there down the seam on the shiny nylon stocking of the blondest passenger, enters the hostile territory of the customs sheds, leaps and squirms and zigzags its way to the largest dock, and there (but it's difficult to see, only the rats follow it to clamber aboard) it climbs onto the ship with the engines rumbling, crosses the planks of the first-class deck, clears the major hatch with difficulty, and in a cabin where an unhappy man is drinking cognac, and hears the parting whistle, it climbs the trouser seam, across the knitted vest, slips back to the elbow, and with a final push finds shelter in the palm of the right hand, which is just beginning to close around the butt of a revolver.

Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers

Robert Duncan

[from Robert Duncan's "From a Notebook," The Poetics of the New American Poetry, edited by Donald Allen and Warren Tallman, 1973]

I am willing to pursue this art in search of itself, because for the time I have shaken off the insistent hounds of the critical posse. I have returned to the privacy of my craft and find that if I am my own judge I will allow the full play. As far as I can go gives me life again on the page.

. . . I have not time to solicit the good opinion of those who feel chummy: I have no time for the possibilities of success. Each fulfillment precludes it.

And a sense of perspective again -- that making history, even writing a great poem, is out of the way. I don't want it. When I turn to my own vein, I see it is all very questionable -- but the full joy of dancing there is enough.

The Poetics of the New American Poetry

Charles Olson

[from Charles Olson's essay "Projective Verse," 1950]

Objectism is the getting rid of the lyrical interference of the individual as ego, of the "subject" and his soul, that peculiar presumption by which western man has interposed himself between what he is as a creature of nature (with certain instructions to carry out) and those other creations of nature which we may, with no derogation, call objects. For a man is himself an object, whatever he may take to be his advantages, the more likely to recognize himself as such the greater his advantages, particularly at that moment that he achieves an humilitas sufficient to make him of use.

It comes to this: the use of a man, by himself and thus by others, lies in how he conceives his relation to nature, that force to which he owes his somewhat small existence. If he sprawl, he shall find little to sing but himself, and shall sing, nature has such paradoxical ways, by way of artificial forms outside himself. But if he stays inside himself, if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share. And by an inverse law his shapes will make their own way.

Collected Prose

Gertrude Stein

[from Gertrude Stein's Narration, 1935]

Let's make our flour meal and meat in Georgia.

Is that prose or poetry and why.

Let's make our flour meal and meat in Georgia.

This is a sign I read as we rode on a train from Atlanta to Birmingham and I wondered then and am still wondering is it poetry or is it prose . . .

Let's make our flour meal and meat in Georgia.

Well believe it or not it is very difficult to know whether that is prose or poetry and does it really make any difference if you do or not know. This.

And so things moving perhaps perhaps moving in any direction, names being not existing because anybody can know what any body else is talking about without any name being mentioning, without any belief in any name being existing, I have just been trying to write the history of some one if his name had not been the name he had and I have called it Four in America and it is very interesting. You can slowly change any one by their name changing to any other name, and so slowly just knowing the name of anything and so making any one remember about such a thing the thing whose name its name anybody has happened to be mentioning cannot really very much interest any one, not really very much, and so perhaps narrative and poetry and prose have all come where they do not have to be considered as being there. Perhaps not I very much really very much think perhaps not, and that may make one thing or anything or everything say itself in a different way yes in a different way, who shall say, and all this now and always later we will come to say, perhaps yes, perhaps no, no and yes are still nice words, yes I guess I still will believe that I will.

You will perhaps say no and yes perhaps yes.

Narration, Four Lectures

Hart Crane

[the beginning of a letter sent in 1926 by Hart Crane to Harriet Monroe, from The Poetics of the New American Poetry, edited by Donald Allen and Warren Tallman, 1973]

Your good nature and manifest interest in writing me about the obscurities apparent in my Melville poem certainly prompt a wish to clarify my intentions in that poem as much as possible. But I realize that my explanations will not be very convincing. For a paraphrase is generally a poor substitute for any organized conception that one has fancied he has put into the more essentialized form of the poem itself.

At any rate, and though I imagine us to have considerable differences of opinion regarding the relationship of poetic metaphor to ordinary logic (I judge this from the angle of approach you use toward portions of the poem), I hope my answers will not be taken as a defense of merely certain faulty lines. I am really much more interested in certain theories of metaphor and technique involved generally in poetics, than I am concerned in vindicating any particular perpetrations of my own.

My poem may well be elliptical and actually obscure in the ordering of its content, but in your criticism of this very possible deficiency you have stated your objections in terms that allow me, at least for the moment, the privilege of claiming your ideas and ideals as theoretically, at least, quite outside the issues of my own aspirations. To put it more plainly, as a poet I may very possibly be more interested in the so-called illogical impingements of the connotations of words on the consciousness (and their combinations and interplay in metaphor on this basis) than I am interested in the preservation of their logically rigid significations at the cost of limiting my subject matter and perceptions involved in the poem.

This may sound as though I merely fancied juggling words and images until I found something novel, or esoteric; but the process is much more predetermined and objectified than that. The nuances of feeling and observation in a poem may well call for certain liberties which you claim the poet has no right to take. I am simply making the claim that the poet does have that authority, and that to deny it is to limit the scope of the medium so considerably as to outlaw some of the richest genius of the past.

The Poetics of the New American Poetry

Laura Riding (via Susan M. Schultz)

[from Susan M. Schultz's A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, 2005]

In response to such misinterpretations, Riding attempts to create a wedge between the poem and its interpreters. As she writes in Anarchism Is Not Enough (1928), "Poetry is . . . not concentrated on an audience but on itself." The poem, like a woman, is; it cannot be changed by its interpreter. This is the truth of the matter, for a poet obsessed with capital-T Truth. As we shall see, however, this wedge also creates the option -- or necessity -- of Riding's conceiving of silence as better than language. Silence, at least, cannot be so easily interpreted. In "Being a Woman," Riding describes woman as being like the moon, which though it has been interpreted by men, refuses to become that interpretation: "woman does not become what man variously 'makes' of her. So when a certain imaginative interpretation is put upon the moon's movements and prevails as a convention by which conveniently to describe the moon, the moon and its movements do not adapt itself to the interpretation; a new lunar manifestation would change the interpretation, but no new idea about the moon changes the moon."

A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (Modern & Contemporary Poetics)

Jean Valentine

[from Jean Valentine's Little Boat, 2007]

The Harrowing

The worn hands
spines         feet
                                 Even he
whose blank hand I held on to
for dear life
                                 phantom limb


On your sidewalk
walking past your café

the piano was being tuned, hard,
trying it, one note at a time

trying, walking outside of time
— was that the night —          & space


Blessed are those
who break off from separateness

theirs is wild
heaven.

Little Boat (Wesleyan Poetry)

Gaston Bachelard

[from Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, 1994]

Like friendship, words sometimes swell, at the dreamer's will, in the loop of a syllable. While in other words, everything is calm, tight. . . . Words -- I often imagine this -- are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in "foreign commerce," on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves -- this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low, is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.

The Poetics of Space

Francis Ponge

[Francis Ponge from Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers, edited by Mark Strand and Charles Simic, 1976]

Water [excerpt, Beth Archer, tr.]

LIQUID, by definition, is
that which chooses to obey gravity
rather than maintain its form, which rejects all
form in order to obey gravity --
and which loses all dignity because of that
obsession, that pathological anxiety.
Because of that vice --
which makes it fast, flowing,
or stagnant, formless or fearsome, formless and
fearsome, piercingly fearsome in cases:
devious, filtering, winding --
one can do anything one
wants with it, even lead water
through pipes to make it spout out vertically,
so as to enjoy the way
it collapses in droplets:
a real slave.


The Pebble [excerpt, Cid Corman, tr.]

The great wheel of stone seems to us
practically immobile
and, even
theoretically we can understand
only a part of
the phase of its very slow
disintegration.

So much so that contrary to
common opinion which holds
it in the eyes of man as a symbol of
endurance and impassivity,
you can say in fact that
stone,
never re-forming in nature, is
in reality the only thing in it that dies,
constantly.

[my line endings]

Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers

Raymond Carver

An unsigned New Yorker blurb on the Carver/Lish relationship. More interesting than the blurb are the Primary Sources listed underneath Carver's photo -- Carver's story, Lish's edits, samples of Carver/Lish correspondence.

W. G. Sebald

[W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, translated by Michael Hulse, 1998]

those who go in pursuit of herring have always relied on their traditional knowledge, which draws upon legend, and is based on their own observation of facts such as the tendency of the fish, swimming in even, wedge-shaped formations, to reflect a pulsating glow skyward when the sunlight falls at a particular angle. One dependable sign that herring present is said to be myriads of scales floating on the surface of the water, shimmering like tiny silver tiles by day and sometimes at dusk resembling ashes or snow. . . .

An idiosyncrasy peculiar to the herring is that, when dead, it begins to glow; this property, which resembles phosphorescence and is yet altogether different, peaks a few days after death and then ebbs away as the fish decays. For a long time no one could account for this glowing of the lifeless herring, and indeed I believe that it still remains unexplained. Around 1870, when projects for the total illumination of our cities were everywhere afoot, two English scientists with the apt names of Herrington and Lightbown investigated the unusual phenomenon in the hope that the luminous substance exuded by dead herrings would lead to a formula for an organic source of light that had the capacity to regenerate itself. The failure of this artificial light, constituted no more than a negligible setback in the relentless conquest of darkness. . . .

I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow.

The Rings of Saturn

John Ashbery

"Retro"

Louise Gluck

"Nostos"

Horace

[from David Ferry's The Odes of Horace, 1997]

ii.3 To Dellius

When things are bad, be steady in your mind;
     Dellius, don't be
Too unrestrainedly joyful in good fortune.
     You are going to die.

It doesn't matter at all whether you spend
     Your days and nights in sorrow,
Or, on the other hand, in holiday pleasure,
     Drinking Falernian wine

Of an excellent vintage year, on the river bank.
     Why is it, do you suppose,
That the dark branches of those tall pines and those
     Poplars' silvery leafy

Branches love to join, coming together,
     Creating a welcoming shade?
Haven't you noticed how in the quiet river
     The current shows signs of hurry,

Urging itself to go forward, going somewhere,
     Making its purposeful way?
By all means tell your servants to bring you wine,
     Perfumes, and the utterly lovely

Too briefly blossoming flowers of the villa garden;
     Yes, of course, while youth,
And circumstance, and the black threads of the Sisters
     Suffer this to be so.

You're going to have to yield those upland pastures,
     The ones you bought just lately;
You're going to yield the townhouse, and the villa,
     The country place whose margin

The Tiber washes as it moves along.
     Heirs will possess all that
Which you have gathered. It does not matter at all
     If you are rich, with kings

Forefathers of your pride; no matter; or poor,
     Fatherless under the sky.
You will be sacrificed to Orcus without pity.
     All of us together

Are being gathered; the lot of each of us
     Is in the shaking urn
With all the other lots, and like the others
     Sooner or later our lot

Will fall out from the urn; and so we are chosen to take
     Our place in that dark boat,
In that dark boat, that bears us all away
     From here to where no one comes back from ever.

The Odes of Horace: Bilingual Edition

Michael Ondaatje

[from Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero, 2007]

We returned to the car and drove towards Dému.

All my life I have loved travelling at night, with a companion, each of us discussing and sharing the known and familiar behaviour of the other. It's like a villanelle, this inclination of going back to events in our past, the way the villanelle's form refuses to move forward in linear development, circling instead at those familiar moments of emotion. Only the rereading counts, Nabokov said. So the strange form of that belfry, turning onto itself again and again, felt familiar to me. For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.

There was now not a single lit streetlamp in the villages we passed, just our headlights veering and sweeping along the two-lane roads. We were alone in the world, in nameless and unseen country. I love such journeying at night. You have most of your life strapped to your back. Music on the radio comes faint and intermittent. You are wordless at last. Your friend's hand on your knee to make sure you are not drifting away. The black hedges coax you on.

Divisadero