how-vintage

Rilke's The Panther

2005-07-07T05:28:00.000-07:00

Rainer Maria Rilke's The Panther

His tired gaze -from passing endless bars-
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world.

His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable.

But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Octavio Paz- Between Going and Staying

2005-07-07T05:24:00.000-07:00

Octavio Paz's "Between Going and Staying"

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Translated by Eliot Weinberger

Dickinson's biography

2005-04-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father and mother were both what we would today call "distant." Her brother, Austin, was bossy but ineffective; her sister, Lavinia, never married, and lived with Emily and was protective of the much shyer Emily.

While signs of her introspective and introverted nature were apparent early, she traveled from home to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, an institution of higher education founded by Mary Lyons. Lyons was a pioneer in women's education, and envisioned Mount Holyoke as training young women for active roles in life. She saw that many women could be trained as missionary teachers, especially to bring the Christian message to American Indians.

A religious crisis seems to have been behind young Emily's decision to leave Mount Holyoke after a year, as she found herself unable to fully accept the religious orientation of those at the school. But beyond religious differences, Emily also apparently found the social life at Mount Holyoke difficult.

She returned home to Amherst. She traveled a few times after that -- once, notably, to Washington, DC, with her father during a term he served in the U.S. Congress. But gradually, she withdrew into her writing and her home, and became reclusive. She began to wear dresses exclusively in white. In her later years, she did not leave her home's property, living in her home and garden.

Her writing did include letters to many friends, and while she became more eccentric about visitors and correspondence as she aged, she had many visitors: women like Helen Hunt Jackson, a popular writer of the time, among them. She shared letters with friends and family, even those who lived nearby and could visit easily.

She fell in love with several men over time, though never apparently even considered marriage. Her close friend, Susan Huntington, later married Emily's brother Austin, and Susan and Austin Dickinson moved to a home next door. Emily and Susan exchanged ardent and passionate letters over many years; scholars are divided today on the nature of the relationship. (Some say that the passionate language between women was simply an acceptable norm between friends in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; others find evidence that the Emily/Susan friendship was a lesbian relationship. I find the evidence ambiguous at best.)

Mabel Loomis Todd, a descendent of John and Priscilla Alden of Plymouth colony), moved to Amherst in 1881 when her astronomer husband, David Peck Todd, was appointed to the faculty of Amherst College. Mabel was twenty-five at the time. Both the Todds became friends of Austin and Susan -- in fact, Austin and Mabel had an affair. Through Susan and Austin, Mabel met Lavinia and Emily.

"Met" Emily is not exactly the right description: they never met face-to-face. Mabel Todd read and was impressed by some of Emily's poems, read to her by Susan. Later, Mabel and Emily exchanged some letters, and Emily occasionally invited Mabel to play music for her while Emily observed out of sight. When Emily died in 1886, Lavinia invited Todd to attempt to edit and publish the poems Lavinia had discovered in manuscript form.

Dickinson's Success is counted sweetest

2005-04-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

Success is counted Sweetest- Emily Dickinson

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated-dying
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

John Donne's holy Sonnets

2005-04-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

Holy Sonnet X: Death, Be Not Proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which yet thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must low
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Anne Michael's Flowers

2005-04-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

Anne Michael's "Flowers"

There's another skin inside my skin
that gathers to your touch, a lake to the light;
that looses its memory, its lost language
into your tongue,
erasing me into newness.

Just when the body thinks it knows
the ways of knowing itself,
this second skin continues to answer.

In the street - cafe chairs abandoned
on terraces; market stalls emptied
of their solid light,
though pavement still breathes
summer grapes and peaches.
Like the light of anything that grows
from this newly-turned earth,
every tip of me gathers under your touch,
wind wrapping my dress around our legs,
your shirt twisting to flowers in my fists.

W.H. Auden Stop all the clocks

2005-04-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

W.H. Auden's 12th poem

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good

Alvin Pang's Other Things

2005-04-01T04:39:00.000-08:00

Alvin Pang- "Other Things"

To buy a potted plant is to admit both faithlessness and need.
To water the plant, perhaps daily,
perhaps once in a while when you remember and the
leaves start to droop, is as close to love as it gets.

Other things mean other things.

To light a lamp is to hide darkness in the same closet as sleep,
along with silence, desire, and yesterday's obsessions.
To read a book is to marry two solitudes,
the way a conversation erases and erects,
words prepare for wordlessness, a cloud for its own absence, and snow undresses for spring.

The bedroom is where you left it, although the creases and humps
on the sheets no longer share your outline and worldview.
In that way, they are like the children you never had time for.

A cooking pot asks the difficult questions:
what will burn and for how long and to what end.

TV comes from the devil who comes from god who comes and goes as he pleases.
To hide the remote control in someone's house is clearly a sin,
but to take the wrong umbrella home is merely human.

The phone is too white to be taunting you. The door you shut stays shut.
The night is reason enough for tomorrow, whatever you believe.

Remember, the car keys will be there after the dance.
Walls hold peace as much as distance. A kettle is not reason enough for tears.

The correct answer to a mirror is always, yes.

Marjorie Evasco's Elemental

2005-04-01T04:36:00.000-08:00

Elemental - marjorie evasco

There is a season to this ripening
the way sap of tree rises to fulfill fruit of the topmost branch,
or the motion of jasmine climbing trellises
to show off a single blossom at new moon tide
In my garden bamboos arch over patch of grass,
river stones, upturned earth.
Alone where weeds grow wildest, I think:
How the golden skin of mango broke between your teeth;
how you swallowed the seamless sky over Siquijor,
you body becoming an entire land I could intimate black moons from,
taste of earth, rush of river songs, smell of air before rain,
spray of flowers with strange names.
Yes, there is Reason for this ripening.
You are goldened by my tongue.

Billy Collins "On Turning Ten"

2005-04-01T04:30:00.000-08:00

Billy Collins "On Turning Ten"

The whole idea of it makes me feel

like I'm coming down with something,

something worse than any stomach ache

or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--

a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche,

a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,

but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one

and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.

But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.

At four I was an Arabian wizard.

I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.

At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window

watching the late afternoon light.

Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house,

and my bicycle never leaned against the garage

as it does today,all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,

as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.

It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,

time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe

there was nothing under my skin but light.

If you cut me I could shine.

But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,

I skin my knees. I bleed.

matsuo basho - many, many things

2005-03-31T05:28:00.000-08:00

Haiku

How many, many things
They call to mind,
These cherry blossoms.

ezra pound "in a station at the metro"

2005-03-31T04:28:00.000-08:00

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.