María Castro Domínguez's Blog, page 5

Poetry with onions

Amazing how much poetry an onion can give. Here are two poems by different poets, Carol Ann Duffy and Miguel Hernández both inspired by onions and love.
Valentine - Carol Ann Duffy





Nanas de la cebolla (Lullaby of the onion) de Miguel Hernández
Cancionero y romancero de ausencias, 1942



La cebolla es escarcha
cerrada y pobre:
escarcha de tus días
y de mis noches.
Hambre y cebolla:
hielo negro y escarcha
grande y redonda.
En la cuna del hambre
mi niño estaba.
Con sangre de cebolla
se amamantaba.
Pero tu sangre,
escarchada de azúcar,
cebolla y hambre.
The onion is frost,closed and poor:frost of your daysand of my nights.Hunger and onion:black ice andbig, round frost.
In the cradle of hungermy child lay.With onion bloodhe was suckled.But your blood,frosted with sugar,onion and hunger.

Monika Umba’s unconventional animation of “Bluebird“ a poem by Charles Bukowski

Monika Umba’s unconventional animation of “Bluebird“ a poem by Charles BukowskiBelow, you can watch Umba´s animation. I feel it makes for quite a challenging image-read.



According to Colin Marshall:"Without any words spoken on the soundtrack and only the title seen onscreen — a challenging creative restriction for a poetry-based short — Umba depicts the narrator’s “bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.” But the narrator, “too tough for him,” beats back the bluebird’s escape with whiskey, cigarettes, and a policy of only letting him roam “at night sometimes, when everybody’s asleep."
Here´s the poem: Freedom: Bluebird by kelogsloopsthere's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up? 
you want to screw up the
works? 
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe? 
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?  Charles Bukowski

Lovers by Moniza Alvi

Moniza Alvi
BiographyMoniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and came to England when she was a few months old. She grew up in Hertfordshire and studied at the universities of York and London. 
Lovers                                                    
Fortunate souls have countless lovers.
The silver birches love them.

The fat sizzling in the pan.
The alphabet loves them, even the rarer letters,

and the vacancies between words.
The heroic titles of books love them.

The doorknobs and switches.
The paint thinner, the smear of apricot jam.

And the bubble harbours rainbow lights
for them and swells like a soul itself,

adored, buoyant, doomed to reach
perfection - just before it bursts.

The Tables Turned BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

On April 7, 1770, William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England.Wordsworth’s most famous work, The Prelude (1850), is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of English romanticism.  For Wordsworth poetic composition was a primary mode of expression; prose was secondary. Wordsworth seems to have written prose mostly in order to find a structure for his poetic beliefs and political enthusiasms. Poetry, according to Wordsworth, should be written in “the real language of men,” is nevertheless “the spontaneous overflow of feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
The Tables TurnedBY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;Or surely you'll grow double:Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun above the mountain's head,A freshening lustre mellowThrough all the long green fields has spread,His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:Come, hear the woodland linnet,How sweet his music! on my life,There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!He, too, is no mean preacher:Come forth into the light of things,Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,Our minds and hearts to bless—Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal woodMay teach you more of man,Of moral evil and of good,Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;Our meddling intellectMis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;Close up those barren leaves;Come forth, and bring with you a heartThat watches and receives.

Portrait of a Woman, by Wislawa Szymborska

When I´m feeling  down Wislawa brings me back up, that´s the magic that dwells in her poetry.

Wisława Szymborska  won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. The Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” Another exceptional poet. Her poems will always transcend.


 Portrait of a Woman, by Wislawa Szymborska
She must be a variety.
Change so that nothing will change.
It's easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot.
Her eyes are, as required, deep blue, gray,
dark, merry, full of pointless tears.
She sleeps with him as if she's first in line or the only one on earth.
She'll bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive, but gives the best advice.
Weak, but takes on anything.
A screw loose and tough as nails.
Curls up with Jaspers or Ladies' Home Journal.
Can't figure out this bolt and builds a bridge.
Young, young as ever, still looking young.
Holds in her hands a baby sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for some trip far away,
a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka.
Where's she running, isn't she exhausted.
Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn't matter.
She must love him, or she's just plain stubborn.
For better, for worse, for heaven's sake.

'Order of Perception: West Kimberley' by Les Murray

   
like usual Carcanet and of course Les Murray comes up with the very best poetry. Just read the near-rhyming last couplet of his poem 'Order of Perception: West Kimberley'Les Murray was born in 1938 and grew up on a dairy farm in Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales. He studied at Sydney University and later worked as a translator at the Australian National University and as an officer in the Prime Minister's Department. Since 1971 he has made literature his full-time career, publishing over 30 books and receiving numerous awards, including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Petrarch Prize, the Mondello Prize and The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.


'Order of Perception: West Kimberley' by Les Murray Water like a shambles of milk at the end of the Wet
crowding down an ironstone flumein the continent's roared walls
Two pinholes in Englandshine their name on two lands
this one has inverted boab treesflowering on plateaux
and water aerating its atomsin the ocean's pumped comb 
From Waiting for the Past published this month by Carcanet Press

Poem by María C. Domínguez

Wartime rural piece
no-body in land
piled logs nesting neat
against farmhouse walls
tilled fields under
tilted sun empties
breach of those
who have done their labour
hung up their tools and quietly left
a land barren unchanged forever
missing a conversation© María C. Domínguez

James Tate

ObituaryJames Tate, who has died aged 71, was one of the most original and inventive American poets of his era, whose sense of humour and love of the tall story calls to mind an earlier Missouri-born master of the fable, Mark Twain.
Even though there are other poems of Tate which I prefer, like "A Vagabound" and "Poem To Some Of My Recent Poems", I couldn´t help including this one because of  NASA´s first mission to Pluto .JamesTate´s new book is out soon, unfortunately his last.
Poem by James Tate
The Icy Mountains of Pluto
A Sunbeam JourneyHow big is this great universe?
How far do the stars traverse?
Let us think in terms of sunbeams’
Travel-time on the photon streams.

Beams seen from Pluto at night
Take five-and-a-half-hours at the speed of light.
Just think of crossing the Milky Way
In a rate-per-second of one-eighty-six K,

Would take thousands of years to span
This misty nebulae admired by man.
But it’s a mere fraction of size,
Galaxies seen in distant skies.

From our perspective down here on earth
Of the universe and its unknown girth,
Infinitely larger than it appears—
To cross it would take millions of years!

How can we, God’s created, keep pace,
With the enormity of trackless space?
Overwhelmed by its massive magnitude,
We simply savor it with awe-filled gratitude.

Writers and poets take special delight
In capturing these dazzling scenes at night
Transfixed with keyboard, or hand-held pen,
Mesmerized by galactic adrenalin.

"Out" in Bareknuckle Poet Journal of Letters

You can read "Out" together with four other of my poems in Bareknuckle Poet Journal of Letters


OutLast summer
he left at siesta time
when the air puffs clouds of steam    
the city floats and
dead flowers dream
astonished insects bang around and
no one sees nobody
sins are dormant.
His mouth full of words
he left the bed
unmade pillows, repentance ruffled, dragging a duffle bag
back leaving a grubby trail.

Five Poems by María C. Domínguez in Bareknuckle Poet ~ Journal of Letters.

I´m really  happy to have five of my poems featured in Bareknuckle Poet ~ Journal of Letters. It goes without saying that it´s one of my preferred top list contemporary literature/art magazines.Here´s just a taster of one of my poems. Infamous famousjust another day in this moulding city
sitting between aseptic blue
row on row of the naked tube tattooed infamous for the day headlines say
naked me they could see but I dreamed my limbs dressed and pure
robed in gold sturdy my chest embraced my dignity best
Warrior-old famous down to the soul I waged a regal war
free to do as I ruled among metal city where my feet are dignified.......