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September 4, 2007
Two Ways of Saying the Same Thing
Two quite similar poems about the same thing:
Dark, Dark My Light, and Darker My Desire
The world is haunted
by shadows
flattened people and places
words spoken once
repeated endlessly
in a million places
all at once.What we see is not
real and all that is
real is haunted by the shadows
that change the warp and weft
of what is.We quote words we've
heard too many times
but never spoken
by a person--only
the words of colored shadows.
ShadowlandsWe live in the shadow of shadows
in the haunted specter
of what once was real
and has no substance even nowa world haunted by shadows
flattened people and places
that grow to be more real
than those we walk through every day.We listen to the words spoken
once and resounding
through the universe
filling up time and space.What we see is not now real
and it replaces what we
can touch as more cherished,
more worshipped, more respected.
As poetry, I don't suppose either is terribly good. I'm not pretending that. But I like the idea behind them enough to preserve them and perhaps work from them to a more robust representation of what is in my mind.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What Can Be Shown
Excerpt from a journal:
Either/Or
It seems there is a choice to live in fear,
regret, jealousy, and gradually
increasing bitterness, or to be alive,
casting habits of fear aside, become
open, outward, alive, loving, looking
for meaning beyond what most frightens me.
Fear is emptiness, the true death of trust,
or perhaps the knowledge that trust never lived.
I remarked to a correspondent that all of my prose is broken poetry, and that exalts my prose too much, but I hear within it the struggle to mean in the relationship of words by sound. There are echoes and echoing phrases and bells and drums within words that wrap the words around and make them mean. And so, I write what I must write and I recognize it for what it is--poor poetry, worse prose. But poetry is the exercise of control on language, it is the struggle for meaning in the mundane--it is the high frontier of communication and so, better to lose the struggle there than to never attempt it.
Boy that sound pretentious. It doesn't mean to be--but it's difficult to say in other words what is meant. I suppose each writer is stamped with the form most familiar, most comfortable, most reliable--for me, for better or worse, that form is poetry--and if I make a mess of it, well that certainly isn't the fault of the muse.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Aphorisms That Form a Whole
Call them a form of admonishment--a reminder. Nothing profound, but worth recording for reasons all my own.
Aphorisms
Powerlessness is bred of my motionlessness.
I fail because I do not, not because
I cannot. I have never tested "can."
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
From the Follow-Up
Despite my lukewarm review of The Monk Downstairs, I have continued with The Monk Upstairs. The passage below comes from a letter written by our monk, now a step-father, about teaching his step-daughter's communion class. (Let's not talk about divorce and remarriage in the Church--I'll get to that in my review.) Despite the errors, there is much good to be derived from reading.
from The Monk Upstairs
Tim FarringtonIt is a dauntingly difficult and delicate balance, and there is no way around the fact that for a child of that age, all this amounts to a sort of bait and switch anyway. With this first communion they are beginning a lifetime diet of a love so deep that, God willing, they will be strong enough to just keep walking into it when they realize that the torn and broken body, streaming with blood, nailed to that splintered wood on all those fearful icons, really is their own as well, that Love really does go through that death, and the Word through that suffering flesh, in order to be made real in this terrible world.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hymn
Listening to Ultravox, John Foxx, and other friends of other times. And this one struck me both lyrically and, far, far more, musically.
Hymn
lyrics by UltravoxGive us this day all that you showed me.
The power and the glory 'til thy kingdom come.Chorus:
Give us this day all that you showed me,
The power and the glory 'til thy kingdom come.
Give me all the story book told me,
The faith and the glory 'til thy kingdom comes.And they said that in our time,
All that's good will fall from grace.
Even saints would turn their face,
In our time.And they told us that in our days,
Different words said in different ways,
Have other meaning from he who says,
In our time.(Chorus)
And they said that in our time,
We would reap from their legacy,
We would learn from what they had seen,
In our time.And they told us that in our days,
We would know what was high on high,
We would follow and not defy,
In our time.(Chorus)
Faithless in faith.
We must behold the things we see.(Chorus - Repeat 4 times and fade)
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Quartet and Quintet
About half of the references to The Bridge Between refer to it as a work of the "Robert Fripp String Quartet" which, considering it is made up of five guitarists, makes it an improbably, but certainly Frippertronic title. However, the "album" cover correctly lists it as "Robert Fripp String Quntet."
And indeed, the album is played by a group of stringed-instrument players That the stringed instruments are guitars adds a certain interest to the work. Additionally, that these guitars sometimes end up sounding very much like a traditional string quintet, becomes even more intriguing.
I have liked nearly every musical mask Mr. Fripp has decided to wear--and heaven knows they are many--Fripp and Eno, King Crimson (multiple groups under a single name with a single continuing member), the String Quintet, Fripp and Summers, The League of Crafty Guitarists, Robert Fripp and David Sylvian--and session musician and producer on countless albums. In a sense Fripp (and Rick Wakeman) is the Dostoevsky of the musical world--not necessarily in terms of quality--though I do tend to like almost everything--but in terms of sheer temporal lobe epilepsy productivity. It's phenomenal. (As I said, Rick Wakeman is also way up there--I'm astounded by the number of albums he has with a group, solo, or contributing.) Truly tireless workers in the field.
At any rate, this was only to alert those who are even less alert that I have been over the past XX years that there is much good from the days of really fine music to be discovered. Before the tide of grunge swept in and removed the electroeuroboys from the stage there was Fripp. And after grunge had washed away, leaving in its wakes a certain grittiness and definitely a fabric that could use some bluing, there is Fripp, still moving along, still playing, still producing music, ambient and otherwise--grating, experimental, soft, delicate. All the textures of the musical world wrapped up in one continuously moving producer of gorgeous sound.
The String Quintet album is definitely worth more than one listen. Go and sample at Amazon, I suggest tracks 9 and 10. Passacaglia, track 9, manages to sound considerably like a harpsichord and 10, Threnody for Souls in Torment has me once again thinking about the religious theme that underlay much of what Mr. Fripp produces.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Body of Allusion
The text of one of my all-time favorite poem--posted or reposted. Magnificent and beautiful. I am often stunned by Roethke's poetry and I remember really disliking it when I first read it--go figure.:
In a Dark Time
Theodore RoethkeIn a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Correspondences
To make good sense of Roethke's poem, you may want to visit one by Charles Baudelaire, Correspondences, another translation of which is appended below.
Correspondances
Charles BaudelaireLa Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.
II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
— Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.Correspondences
Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphantThat have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.
Translation from this site q.v. for an interesting explicative note.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 5, 2007
The Monk Upstairs
The second novel in the series by Tim Farrington has most of the same shortcomings and virtues of the first. First tick off the transgressions--marriage, divorce, and remarriage without benefit of divorce, a certain haziness with regard to Rebecca and religion, use of contraception--not by the nominally Catholic Rebecca, but by Mike, the former Monk himself.
But the story is lovely if incomplete and oddly shredded around the edges. There are many events with no resolution, many mentions of things that seem to have no focus or purpose. For example, Phoebe, who has the ability to see only some people clearly sees Mike the Monk and Rory the Stoned Surfer very clearly, but almost no one else. What is the meaning of the equivalence in her vision? Why is the kitchen torn up in the first chapter, mentioned throughout the book, but never brought to repair? Why does Mike get so hung up on cremation, but continue to recite psalms in some version that is either the Douay Rheims or a poor imitation?
While I enjoyed both books, I have many reservations about both of them. Some of the focus on prayer is sharp and interesting--revealing. But most of the story is a froth of chaos, The author's purpose is not to present Catholic teaching, and yet in a book about a former monk, one would hope for a little more clarity on precisely what the Church teaches--there is none. The Author freely mixes archaic versions of scripture with contraception--lighting votive candles with marriage without benefit of annulment.
As much as I enjoyed some aspects of these stories, I can't recommend them. They are however an inspiration in that true prayer can inform a book and become even the matter of a book without the book becoming dull and pedantic. And perhaps that was Mr. Farrington's purpose--to lure people into a life of prayer; however, the lure is itself tainted--tainted to the point where the goal itself probably cannot be achieved.
But then, I shouldn't allow opinions on the matter of doctrinal correctness to interfere with my vision of the author. Shouldn't, but for good or ill, I'm afraid I do, and so my lack of endorsement here.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Reading too Much Roethke
Practical wisdom: Read not too much of poets inclined to depression and naturalism.
"I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. . ."
What waking and what sleep? What images
of all and nothing mixed, all one line one
meaning? The arrow through the small bedroom
with black-framed doors and yellow walls winds up
at here and now by the blue sea rising
only in memory. The sandcastle
crab scuttling through my earliest age,
and the dolphin and the shark that mark my
present time. A friend confided a ray
sounding spoke in salty dialect of
God who is not and hears not or does and
he instead does not hear.
[________________________] This slow waking,
this reach for light that comes when I go as
I am meant to, a sounding, surfacing--
grabbing hollow air to fill a hollow
man is all that moves me now, as I have
no motion that can be moved, no movement
that can mean or be or stay or away
drift--red autumn on dark water. Where I
found myself, between rock and water, soothed
and rounded by the cool swirl, made real by
the insects and fish that move with the true
motion of innocence, of what needs no
redemption because its only fall was my
own fall--pulled down in sullied brotherhood
and brought up again in light and darkness
that mix in the autumn waters of streams
that follow their own motion and make it
new.
{___} To join them then and there in the pools
where darkness cannot consume the light and
all motion moves in secret silence and
what is know is what is seen--innocence
is the unchurned, sun-warmed top twelve inches
still and moving where they must. An ending
that is not seen and so becomes a new
beginning that is.
__________________Full memory is
sorrow, an unending world of shadow
that shifts and shapes a life unlived but walked
through. Who I am and am to be is known
only in the motion I do not make.
I'd like to explain it, but any explanation would take far, far too many words and leave what is here spoken in ways that mean less while they say more.
And I should note that some lines were suggested, indeed nearly cribbed from a great underpublished poet friend of min, Jay Bradford Fowler, Jr. The world is a lesser place without him.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cold Truth
The cold light of truth in four lines from a poem.
from "The Imaginary Iceberg"
Elizabeth BishopWe'd rather have the iceberg than the ship,
Although it mean the end of travel.
Although it stood stock still like cloudy rock
And all the sea were moving marble.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 6, 2007
A Poetic Haitus
I had a poem to post today. Unfortunately, I left the notebook at home or in the car or somewhere, so it will have to wait--by which time I may have two or three. (I'm sure this has my loyal fan-base chortling with glee.)
But I did want to say something that has been much on my mind of late. It is an issue for which I do not have the answers, but to which I have been more and more exposed of recent date.
I have two friends who are retired. One of them received a legacy from his parents and was able to retire earlier than most of us. The other retired pretty much in the normal course of events. Both are having some serious problems with the health system. One friend has felt compelled to sell his home in order to bankroll any medical expenses he may have. He's had a couple of incidents in recent days--really very minor things, that have exposed him to the tremendous costs of lacking insurance.
The other finds herself in straightened means. She has a very limited income--social security and what retirement was not swept away by corporate greed, 9/11, and other market-effecting events. She confided that she is no longer buying diet sodas so that she can try to afford the medicine she needs to be alive and stable.
I know, diet sodas don't seem like a major issue. And I suppose they're not--but the point is not the diet sodas--it is the system of medicine in this country that demands from people sacrifices great and small. What is most bothersome to me is that both of these people have lived active, productive, lives--and yet they have less access to care than someone who has relied for years upon our social support systems.
I don't have an answer. I don't know the answer. But I do know that the problem faces all of us of limited means as we approach retirement age. Even people who would be classed as well-off might find themselves in dire straights as they approach the years in which medical intervention might become a more present reality.
We don't tend to think about it much, but this is another group of people who need our prayers, our support, and our active search for solutions. Instead, because they appear to be comfortably middle-class, they are forgotten and are reduced to selling houses and assets to make ends meet.
No plan I have heard thus far makes a dent in this major problem. The run-away costs of the medical industry produce rapidly escalating prices for even the simplest forms of care. Medicines, which are developed in large part through tax dollars, are outrageously priced from the get-go, "in order to recoup development costs." And yet pharmaceuticals firms are making record profits.
Perhaps this all argues for no attempts to sustain life at later stages--that pharmaceuticals and artificial treatments that lengthen life and alleviate suffering really aren't all that important. I don't think this is true. Certainly there is no "right" to good medical treatment--not in the very broad sense that people today use the word "right." But there is an imperative that people who are not in a place to afford life-saving or pain-alleviating treatments be given some support in receiving these things.
I keep thinking of the dictum--"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good mean to do nothing." The evil described here is a natural evil. I don't think there is a conspiracy among medical firms and pharmaceuticals firms to deprive people of necessary medicines and treatments. I don't think there is any intent to reduce people who have served us all well to poverty on the basis of their need for medical treatment. Nevertheless, it does happen. And it is long past time that it should have stopped. Socialized medicine is not the answer--it is a disaster in countries like Canada and Great Britain when it comes to urgently needed care. Certainly we should take more care to plan for catastrophic illness; but even as we say that, there is the need to recognize that many people don't have the means to get through the month, much less plan for what might happen to them when they're 50 or 60 or 70 years old.
It is incumbent upon us to help diagnose the problem accurately and suggest a viable solution--one that does not pile the entire care of those without treatment on the backs of people who are themselves struggling to make ends meet. What form this can take, I don't know enough to say. But I would be happy to work with those who do understand the problem well and help devise a viable solution. It is our awareness of a problem and our willingness to really work with one another to solve it that leads ultimately to resolution.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:15 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
R.I.P. Luciano Pavarotti
I'm sorry to hear of the passing of Luciano Pavarotti. While I have never been a profound fan of his voice; it was primarily his charisma and that of some fellow performers (Beverly Sills and others) that led to a brief, vibrant interest in opera, which has long since subsided to the present status-symbol supported institution that it has become. A man of great talent and tremendous personality, while he hasn't been very active in recent years, the loss of so great a talent is a loss for all.
"No man is an islande. . . "
"Goodnight sweet prince, may choirs of angels sing thee to thy rest."
And may almighty God receive him joyfully into his eternal home.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 7, 2007
Too Short a Respite
See, a hiatus doesn't last all that long--unfortunately for you.
Shantytown
People to throw
away; discards,
the world's refuse,
underfoot dirt,
dust, and sweepings.Intended as
temporary--
thrown together
in less time than
it took to think
of it, age-stained
before they're done,
designed to make
each feel smaller
that humanly
possible.
And more to come--beware.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack