Filed under: poetry
Here is the companion to the thing I recently posted, “Washington Avenue Bridge.” I wrote this in April of 2008, and haven’t really changed it since, which is probably why I don’t like it as much as the other one. Again, please don’t reprint.
Crossing Back
I drove across the bridge
Sore against Gilberts and Gehrys
There were pools in the potholes and
The metal beams and pavement
Were glazed with rain
water
It was not a place for words
That exist on a page of a book or a screen or a
Sheet of paper that would have been plastered
Face down to the wet road (though you’d still
Be able to read the bleeding purplish ink backwards through
The paper’s translucent blank backside)
I don’t have a huge backlog of interesting things that I’ve written myself, but every once and a while I’ll try to post something original on here. Hopefully it’s a feature that is both novel and non-embarrassing enough to continue.
Filed under: poetry
In my desire to be as much like the protagonist of Joyce’s “A Little Cloud” as possible, I got really poetically emotional while walking across a bridge and decided to write a poem about it. I wrote this in December 2006 and revised it recently. I also wrote a companion piece in the spring of 2007 that I’ll probably put on here later.
For some backstory: John Berryman, who wrote the compelling Dream Songs, committed suicide by jumping off of the Washington Avenue bridge in the 1970s. This poem is sort of an homage to Berryman, both in the liberties it takes with language and the restrictions it places upon it. I’d also like to think that he would subscribe to the outlook that the poem takes.
Washington Avenue Bridge
Above the city I saw a patch of light:
The tireless multitudes had teemed their way
onto a low-hanging cloud.
The light once came from above:
Saint-Rémy skies swirled with heavenly riches,
an old order brushstrokes faithfully relate.
But new light comes from below;
it has a more human glow.
Flinging out our restless motion we create
A shining decision-cloud of our switches.
It could not have been too loud:
The sharp breath drawn that cold January day
for John Berryman, the coming on of night.
[Please don't reprint this, not that it's any good anyway.]
Filed under: blog goings on
Sorry for messing with the layout a lot lately. I’m semi-settled on the current look, and I hope everyone likes the new colors and fonts. It should make things a bit easier on the eyes.
I’d appreciate feedback about the background color (it’s light yellow right now) and the striped image right above the “Categories” in the sidebar. If you consider yourself a great graphic designing mind, I could use some opinions on how that stuff looks.
Finally, I decided to commandeer an old class project to make a less organized BLOG! for myself. If you really want to hear the less coherent thoughts that I decide to type out, you can visit the link in the sidebar under my name.
From Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, section one (“Food”).
ROASTBEEF.
In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.
Very well. Certainly the length is thinner and the rest, the round rest has a longer summer. To shine, why not shine, to shine, to station, to enlarge, to hurry the measure all this means nothing if there is singing, if there is singing then there is the resumption.
The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. The difference is that a plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thickness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd. It does not mean that there are tears, it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome, it means no more than a memory, a choice and a reëstablishment, it means more than any escape from a surrounding extra. All the time that there is use there is use and any time there is a surface there is a surface, and every time there is an exception there is an exception and every time there is a division there is a dividing. Any time there is a surface there is a surface and every time there is a suggestion there is a suggestion and every time there is silence there is silence and every time that is languid there is that there then and not oftener, not always, not particular, tender and changing and external and central and surrounded and singular and simple and the same and the surface and the circle and the shine and the succor and the white and the same and the better and the red and the same and the centre and the yellow and the tender and the better, and altogether.
Considering the circumstances there is no occasion for a reduction, considering that there is no pealing there is no occasion for an obligation, considering that there is no outrage there is no necessity for any reparation, considering that there is no particle sodden there is no occasion for deliberation. Considering everything and which way the turn is tending, considering everything why is there no restraint, considering everything what makes the place settle and the plate distinguish some specialties. The whole thing is not understood and this is not strange considering that there is no education, this is not strange because having that certainly does show the difference in cutting, it shows that when there is turning there is no distress.
In kind, in a control, in a period, in the alteration of pigeons, in kind cuts and thick and thin spaces, in kind ham and different colors, the length of leaning a strong thing outside not to make a sound but to suggest a crust, the principal taste is when there is a whole chance to be reasonable, this does not mean that there is overtaking, this means nothing precious, this means clearly that the chance to exercise is a social success. So then the sound is not obtrusive. Suppose it is obtrusive suppose it is. What is certainly the desertion is not a reduced description, a description is not a birthday.
Lovely snipe and tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkning drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea, all the stouter symmetry.
Around the size that is small, inside the stern that is the middle, besides the remains that are praying, inside the between that is turning, all the region is measuring and melting is exaggerating.
Rectangular ribbon does not mean that there is no eruption it means that if there is no place to hold there is no place to spread. Kindness is not earnest, it is not assiduous it is not revered.
Room to comb chickens and feathers and ripe purple, room to curve single plates and large sets and second silver, room to send everything away, room to save heat and distemper, room to search a light that is simpler, all room has no shadow.
There is no use there is no use at all in smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual.
Why should that which is uneven, that which is resumed, that which is tolerable why should all this resemble a smell, a thing is there, it whistles, it is not narrower, why is there no obligation to stay away and yet courage, courage is everywhere and the best remains to stay.
If there could be that which is contained in that which is felt there would be a chair where there are chairs and there would be no more denial about a clatter. A clatter is not a smell. All this is good.
The Saturday evening which is Sunday is every week day. What choice is there when there is a difference. A regulation is not active. Thirstiness is not equal division.
Anyway, to be older and ageder is not a surfeit nor a suction, it is not dated and careful, it is not dirty. Any little thing is clean, rubbing is black. Why should ancient lambs be goats and young colts and never beef, why should they, they should because there is so much difference in age.
A sound, a whole sound is not separation, a whole sound is in an order.
Suppose there is a pigeon, suppose there is.
Looseness, why is there a shadow in a kitchen, there is a shadow in a kitchen because every little thing is bigger.
The time when there are four choices and there are four choices in a difference, the time when there are four choices there is a kind and there is a kind. There is a kind. There is a kind. Supposing there is a bone, there is a bone. Supposing there are bones. There are bones. When there are bones there is no supposing there are bones. There are bones and there is that consuming. The kindly way to feel separating is to have a space between. This shows a likeness.
Hope in gates, hope in spoons, hope in doors, hope in tables, no hope in daintiness and determination. Hope in dates.
Tin is not a can and a stove is hardly. Tin is not necessary and neither is a stretcher. Tin is never narrow and thick.
Color is in coal. Coal is outlasting roasting and a spoonful, a whole spoon that is full is not spilling. Coal any coal is copper.
Claiming nothing, not claiming anything, not a claim in everything, collecting claiming, all this makes a harmony, it even makes a succession.
Sincerely gracious one morning, sincerely graciously trembling, sincere in gracious eloping, all this makes a furnace and a blanket. All this shows quantity.
Like an eye, not so much more, not any searching, no compliments.
Please be the beef, please beef, pleasure is not wailing. Please beef, please be carved clear, please be a case of consideration.
Search a neglect. A sale, any greatness is a stall and there is no memory, there is no clear collection.
A satin sight, what is a trick, no trick is mountainous and the color, all the rush is in the blood.
Bargaining for a little, bargain for a touch, a liberty, an estrangement, a characteristic turkey.
Please spice, please no name, place a whole weight, sink into a standard rising, raise a circle, choose a right around, make the resonance accounted and gather green any collar.
To bury a slender chicken, to raise an old feather, to surround a garland and to bake a pole splinter, to suggest a repose and to settle simply, to surrender one another, to succeed saving simpler, to satisfy a singularity and not to be blinder, to sugar nothing darker and to read redder, to have the color better, to sort out dinner, to remain together, to surprise no sinner, to curve nothing sweeter, to continue thinner, to increase in resting recreation to design string not dimmer.
Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.
The sooner there is jerking, the sooner freshness is tender, the sooner the round it is not round the sooner it is withdrawn in cutting, the sooner the measure means service, the sooner there is chinking, the sooner there is sadder than salad, the sooner there is none do her, the sooner there is no choice, the sooner there is a gloom freer, the same sooner and more sooner, this is no error in hurry and in pressure and in opposition to consideration.
A recital, what is a recital, it is an organ and use does not strengthen valor, it soothes medicine.
A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.
Pride, when is there perfect pretence, there is no more than yesterday and ordinary.
A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison. Calmness, calm is beside the plate and in way in. There is no turn in terror. There is no volume in sound.
There is coagulation in cold and there is none in prudence. Something is preserved and the evening is long and the colder spring has sudden shadows in a sun. All the stain is tender and lilacs really lilacs are disturbed. Why is the perfect reëstablishment practiced and prized, why is it composed. The result the pure result is juice and size and baking and exhibition and nonchalance and sacrifice and volume and a section in division and the surrounding recognition and horticulture and no murmur. This is a result. There is no superposition and circumstance, there is hardness and a reason and the rest and remainder. There is no delight and no mathematics.
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
-Keats, “Ode on Grecian Urn”
I get that feeling every once and a while, as I’m sure everyone does. I get it when I think if that faintly falling snow at the end of “The Dead,” the raining flowers in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the last movement of Brahms’s Violin Concerto. It must be the sublime, because it transcends appreciation and exists in the realm of the wordless. It is tears in the corners of eyes, hair raised on the back of the neck.
The only thing like it is the feeling of simple possibility that the beginning of a truth suggests. I conflate the mere insinuation of further truth with that sublime feeling. When I’m on on the brink of learning something, things I already imbue with the weight of importance I also lend an optimistic completeness. Yet those things also remain transcendent, unable to be fully possessed. I’m reminded of a line from Hart Crane’s “Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge:” like a movie that runs all hours, things are “never disclosed,” but are still “hastened to again.” The promise of coming full circle brings us back to something that can never be complete.
That sublime feeling must be part confusion, because central to it is a contradiction. We stand in front of a thing to be known, thinking that a proper delineation between thing and not-thing is all that is required to get our hands around it. But we also anticipate those spiny borders between thing and not-thing, the places where we lose our place, find a new origin, begin again, double back. Each possibility is equally tantalizing; each possibility echoes the other and creates that feeling.
The point of origin is the place where we comprehend both the boundaries and where we will break them. It is where incomplete completeness is possible. It is not truly a beginning, but as Derrida said, an “event,” a “rupture and a redoubling.” It calls on itself just as it calls us to press forward.
I get that sublime feeling in the search after truth, because each attempt is a brilliant compression of living contradiction, which might be the most beautiful truth and true beauty of all.
