Month: January 2008

12 Easy Steps Toward a Stronger, Better Clerihew

dr phil wiki commons1. Wake up with an overwhelming urge to write 2 clerihews, one on Jacques Derrida, the other on Willy Loman.

2. Remind yourself: no urges are strange. And, after all, there are many things that are even more absurd than clerihews. Consider writing an essay on why no urges are strange.

3. Check for Derrida and Loman in Henry Taylor‘s absorbing collection of clerihews. Find the one on Derrida:

Jacques Derrida
forgot where he’d–ah,
then he remembered:
deconstructed need not mean dismembered.

4. Relax, it’s still morning and half your work has already been done by Henry Taylor.

5. Read Henry Taylor’s book in its entirety. Twice. Memorize Taylor’s clerihew on Preston Sturges:

Preston Sturges
was subject to urges
whose nature and history
remain shrouded in mystery.

6. Relax. The day’s not half done and all you’ve got to do is write a clerihew on Willy Loman.

7. So what would Bruno Latour think of Taylor’s clerihew on Louis Pasteur?

Louis Pasteur
kept his libido astir
by pretending to disrobe
in the presence of a microbe.

8. Notice that Latour and Pasteur might be solid clerihew material. Jot that down somewhere.

9. While still pondering, entertain thoughts of grandeur (Latour-Pasteur-grandeur and ?)…Write a proposal for a book of clerihews, one for each of the knights mentioned in Mallory’s Morte D’Artur. (At least we’d find out how many there really were.)

10. Now it’s getting late. Begin to panic on the Willy Loman clerihew.

11. Scale down the book idea. One clerihew. About a man named Skarphéðinn.

12. Time’s up. Don’t give up. Feed the cats. Then write:

Willy Loman,
a broken showman,
quietly died and barely knew
how fit he was for the clerihew.

Right. OK, your turn.

Charles Baudelaire: “L’Invitation au Voyage”

sailboats at sunset

Photo credit: Sailboat at sunset by villoks

L’INVITATION AU VOYAGE
Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D’aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Des meubles luisants,
Polis par les ans,
Décoreraient notre chambre;
Les plus rares fleurs
Mêlant leurs odeurs
Aux vagues senteurs de l’ambre,
Les riches plafonds,
Les miroirs profonds,
La splendeur orientale,
Tout y parlerait
À l’âme en secret
Sa douce langue natale.

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l’humeur est vagabonde;
C’est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu’ils viennent du bout du monde.
–Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entière,
D’hyacinthe et d’or;
Le monde s’endort
Dans une chaude lumière.

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

—Charles Baudelaire

Continue reading “Charles Baudelaire: “L’Invitation au Voyage”” →

John Ashbery: “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror”

parmigianino_selfportrait-reduced.jpg

Photo credit: Wiki commons image of Parmigianino’s painting

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (“Parmigianino,” born 11 January 1503)

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together
In a movement supporting the face, which swims
Toward and away like the hand
Except that it is in repose. It is what is
Sequestered. Vasari says, “Francesco one day set himself
To take his own portrait, looking at himself from that purpose
In a convex mirror, such as is used by barbers . . .
He accordingly caused a ball of wood to be made
By a turner, and having divided it in half and
Brought it to the size of the mirror, he set himself
With great art to copy all that he saw in the glass,”
Chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection once removed. Continue reading “John Ashbery: “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror”” →

Wife of Dunash: “Will Her Love Remember?”

anonymous-moche-reduced.jpg

WILL HER LOVE REMEMBER?
 Will her love remember his graceful doe,
her only son in his arms as he parted?
On her left hand he placed a ring from his right,
on his wrist she placed her bracelet.
As a keepsake she took his mantle from him,
and he in turn took hers from her.
Would he settle, now, in the land of Spain,
if its prince gave him half his kingdom?

–Wife of Dunash ben Lavrat (Andalusia, 10th century)

Translation by Peter Cole

Photo credit: Anonymous by Moche
Continue reading “Wife of Dunash: “Will Her Love Remember?”” →

Sterling A. Brown: “Return”

any random street corner any random city

RETURN

I have gone back in boyish wonderment
To things that I had foolishly put by….
Have found an alien and unknown content
In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky
Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours
Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously
Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers,
That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly.

Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed
Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song
Bursting from out the thick-leaved oaken shade,
There I have lain while hours sauntered past—
I have found peacefulness somewhere at last,
Have found a quiet needed for so long.

—Sterling A. Brown

Photo credit: any random street corner, any random city by Brian McLeod.

Boris Pasternak: “Venice”

venice 5 mins later (Layters)

Venice

The clatter of a cloudy pane
Awoke me in the small hours.
It hung in a gondola rank
And vacancy weighed on the oars.

The trident of hushed guitars
Was hanging like Scorpio’s stars
Above a marine horizon
Untouched by the smoking sun.

In the domain of the zodiac
The chord was a lonely sound.
Untroubled below by the trident,
The port moved its mists around.

At some time the earth had split off,
Capsized palaces gone to wrack.
A fortress loomed up like a planet;
Like a planet, houses spun back.

And the secret of life without root
I understood as the day surfaced:
My dreams and my eyes had more room
To grope on their own through the mist.

And like the foam of mad blossom
And like the foam of rabid lips
Among glimmering shadows broke loose
The chord that knew no fingertips.

—Boris Pasternak (1914)

Translation by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France

Photo credit: venice 5 mins later by Ron Layters.

Mark Strand: “Eating Poetry”

bookshelf with dog

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

—Mark Strand
Photo credit:  bookshelf spectrum, revisited by chotda.