Poetry

Yes, as my dear friend at Cheek reminded us all with a blunt instrument to the side of the head, it’s National Poetry Month. Despite what he thinks, or maybe this just means I’m not a “real” writer, I have never been a great lover of poetry. I have tried to love it. I have read it, and written it, but find reading it can be a chore and my attention span seems to last the length of a remote control-controlling 12-year old with Attention Deficit Disorder. I have tried to read old epics, a la Homer or those of Iceland, but again, find my mind drifting. A book of Yeats poems lingered by my bedside for a year and was dutifully taken up from time to time, hoping to find those lines that would stick. During a Scandinavian Tale & Ballad class I did find myself attracted to these valkyrie-like women in the poems who were kicking ass, usually by seeking some sort of revenge for wrongdoing done upon their honor.

Admittedly, I’ve always been slightly in awe of people who suddenly recite a couple lines of poetry during a poignant moment of love, danger, reflection. Okay, you usually see this happening only in literature or in the movies, or by someone who’s English, but it still impresses me.

I have been able to get into Pablo Neruda poems though. I like to read them in Spanish and try to be all sensual and pretend I really do understand what I’m reading. I read them slowly in English trying to mock the speed and flow of Andy Garcia, who recited my very favorite Neruda poem, “Tonight I can write the saddest lines,” on the Il Postino soundtrack. And a few times in the past, during overwhelming romantic moments when I had someone to recite to, I would call up and read a stanza onto his voicemail hoping he’d find it a nice change to the usual messages one has to retrieve. I think it was probably a better idea to me than to him.

Anyway, although I might have done it before, I am now going to write out my aforementioned favorite Neruda poem, Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Now, I’m writing this is English, which is a translation of the original Spanish, so you may find slightly varying versions of this in other places. Kudos to fellow blogger, papersnow for having the version I was looking for. Enjoy.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines
Write for example, ‘The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings’

Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky

She loved me and sometimes I loved her too
How could one not have loved her great, still eyes?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines
To think that I do not have her, to feel that I have lost her
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her
And the verse falls to the snow like dew to the pasture

What does it matter that my love could not keep her?
The night is shattered and she is not with me
This is all

In the distance someone is singing
In the distance, my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her

My sight searches for her as if to go to her
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night, whitening the same trees
We, of that time, are no longer the same

I no longer love her, that’s certain,
But how I loved her
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing

Another’s. She will be another’s.
Like my kisses before
Her bright body, her infinite eyes

I no longer love her, that’s certain
But maybe I love her
Love is so short, forgetting is so long

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
And these the last verses that I write for her.



*sniff*

Damn it, Keats

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THE WRITING LIFE: A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS (written by National Book Award Winners) Grade: B
- not a bad book, and certainly interesting (to me), but unless you’re really interested in the process of writing, give it a pass.

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So, the other night I read my first Keats poem ever. Not bad. Despite my almost violent love for the novel, I’ve never been a big fan of two other forms of writing: the short story and poetry. Sure, there are some of each that I enjoy, (I still get all dreamy like a 15 year old girl when reading Pablo Neruda), but overall I just can’t get into poetry. I’ve tried, but either I find it silly, boring, or confusing. Plus, I simply don’t think I have the patience for it. To me, poetry was a bit like reading Aristotle or Kant. (Most poetry) you can’t take it to the beach and read it casually while sipping your Mojito. It takes a focused and committed mind, something I sadly, have not always had. There’s a reason I love multitasking so much.

ANYWAY, the point of this, was after I read that first Keats poem (very nice, loves nature, la la la), it inspired me immediately to write this poem on the back of my dental bill which was on the floor next to my bed. I wrote this in about 2 minutes, so don’t expect … well, Keats. Maybe another reason I’ve never loved poetry is that I could never write it well, and that’s always bothered me…

For now the hour has advanced quite late
An exhausted body is my current state
And though it is to slumber I should go
I cannot part from this book so
My weary eyes are locked to the page
Though nervous mind frets on tomorrow’s rage
Of a morning body struggling to rise from bed
Feeling much too like a soul half dead
If I only I had not begun that Keats
I would not have felt such physical defeat
Of unrested spirit cursing the day
And seething with the work in the way
Before the rendez-vous with the pillow when
Be felt the full-length kisses of the sheets again
Until then I glare at dawn’s early light
And promise self to do what is right
And not read my Keats while I lie in bed
But when then is a fitting alternate?
To fill my dreams with Kafka, Kundera, or Woolf?
Perhaps I should just forget all books
And soak up the television’s rays
And dream instead of Happy(ier) Days

60 Second Poetry

Sometimes, even when I don't intend it, I find it impossible not to write and write and write. But no, I won't do it now! Instead I'm inserting another one of my "60-second poems." These are, obviously, poems I write in 60 seconds or less and usually adore. Ahhh love.....

Love comes in creeping
*bite chomp slurp*
You are nothing....
but...
a snack...a hors d'oeuvres..
wrapped in the embrace of its lips
The agony of its teeth
The sliding trauma of its throat
Until you are digested...
like all the others..
into the abyss of the intenstines.