Ear to the Canvas
THE GLOVE OF TIME BY EDWARD HOPPER
True I am but a shadow of a passenger on this planet
but my soul likes to dress in formal attire
despite the stains.
She walks through the door.
She takes off her glove.
Does she turn her head.
Does she criss her leg. That is a question.
Who is speaking.
Also a question.
All I can say is
I see no evidence of another glove.
The words are not a sentence, don't work on that.
Work on this.
It is not empty time, it is the moment
when the curtains come blowing into the room.
When the lamp is prepared.
When light hits the wall just there.
And the glove?
Now it rose up - the life she could have lived (par les soirs bleus d'ete).
It so happens
paint is motionless.
But if you put your ear to the canvas you will hear
the sounds of a terribly good wheel on its way.
Somewhere someone is travelling toward you,
travelling day and night.
Bare birches flow past.
The red road drops away.
Here, you hold this:
evidence.
It so happens
a good evening glove
is 22 centimeters from hem to fingertip.
This was a glove "shot in the back"
(as Godard said of his King Lear).
Listening to his daughters Lear
hoped to see their entire bodies
stretched out across their voices
like white kid.
For in what does time differ from eternity except we measure it?
- Anne Carson
This poem by Anne Carson is linked to Edward Hopper's famous painting "Automat, 1927" in the title, and touches on both Carson's ideas of time as a parenthesis, a formality, an accessory of eternity - and the painter Edward Hopper's hung narratives, his famous still scenes, paintings that catch and hold a moment of life in suspended view. Reading this poem for me is like falling into the wake behind a moving boat. The froth of the ripples, the spreading disturbance of words and ideas, the patterns of strokes created by the words and the poet, catch us, soak us, and soon shimmer over our heads as we sink into the stillness. What is this stillness? The stillness of everything. The inside out of Carson's "Glove of Time." The voice of Hopper's canvas.
This is National Poetry Month, and if you have not already made friends with a book of poems, I urge you to do so. Emily Temple posted a list of "50 Essential Books of Poetry That Everyone Should Read" (April 7th, Flavorwire.com, http://flavorwire.com/449473/50-essen...).* While by no means complete, missing many favorites of mine, and without the collectible quirks that make poetry personal to each reader, this list comprises a foundation to begin an avid reader's bookshelf collection. Poetry books, like friends, are indispensable in my view. Poems can be invited for long chats, fill a blue evening, lift a trodden heart. Poetry is another set of senses to experience the world and ourselves. This list is just one place to begin.
I invite you to find a poem this week. Befriend the new way in which poetry opens what we see and hear. Enjoy where the poem takes you. Where the words end and your thoughts continue.
*Poets mentioned in Temple's list: Adrienne Rich| Allen Ginsberg | Anne Carson | Cathy Park Hong | Charles Simic | Corey Van Landingham | Elizabeth Bishop | Emily Dickinson | Frank O'Hara | Frederick Seidel | Galway Kinnell | John Ashbery | John Berryman | John Donne | Josh Bell | Louise Gluck | Mary Oliver | Lyn Hejinian | Marie Howe | Mary Karr | Maya Angelou | Natasha Trethewey | Nikky Finney | Ovid |Pablo Neruda | Rita Dove | Robert Hass | Seamus Heaney | Sharon Olds | Shel Silverstein | Sylvia Plath | T.S. Eliot | Terrance Hayes | Tracy K. Smith | Wallace Stevens | William Carlos Williams | William Shakespeare | e.e. cummings | John Keats | Langston Hughes | Robert Frost |Walt Whitman | and others...
True I am but a shadow of a passenger on this planet
but my soul likes to dress in formal attire
despite the stains.
She walks through the door.
She takes off her glove.
Does she turn her head.
Does she criss her leg. That is a question.
Who is speaking.
Also a question.
All I can say is
I see no evidence of another glove.
The words are not a sentence, don't work on that.
Work on this.
It is not empty time, it is the moment
when the curtains come blowing into the room.
When the lamp is prepared.
When light hits the wall just there.
And the glove?
Now it rose up - the life she could have lived (par les soirs bleus d'ete).
It so happens
paint is motionless.
But if you put your ear to the canvas you will hear
the sounds of a terribly good wheel on its way.
Somewhere someone is travelling toward you,
travelling day and night.
Bare birches flow past.
The red road drops away.
Here, you hold this:
evidence.
It so happens
a good evening glove
is 22 centimeters from hem to fingertip.
This was a glove "shot in the back"
(as Godard said of his King Lear).
Listening to his daughters Lear
hoped to see their entire bodies
stretched out across their voices
like white kid.
For in what does time differ from eternity except we measure it?
- Anne Carson
This poem by Anne Carson is linked to Edward Hopper's famous painting "Automat, 1927" in the title, and touches on both Carson's ideas of time as a parenthesis, a formality, an accessory of eternity - and the painter Edward Hopper's hung narratives, his famous still scenes, paintings that catch and hold a moment of life in suspended view. Reading this poem for me is like falling into the wake behind a moving boat. The froth of the ripples, the spreading disturbance of words and ideas, the patterns of strokes created by the words and the poet, catch us, soak us, and soon shimmer over our heads as we sink into the stillness. What is this stillness? The stillness of everything. The inside out of Carson's "Glove of Time." The voice of Hopper's canvas.
This is National Poetry Month, and if you have not already made friends with a book of poems, I urge you to do so. Emily Temple posted a list of "50 Essential Books of Poetry That Everyone Should Read" (April 7th, Flavorwire.com, http://flavorwire.com/449473/50-essen...).* While by no means complete, missing many favorites of mine, and without the collectible quirks that make poetry personal to each reader, this list comprises a foundation to begin an avid reader's bookshelf collection. Poetry books, like friends, are indispensable in my view. Poems can be invited for long chats, fill a blue evening, lift a trodden heart. Poetry is another set of senses to experience the world and ourselves. This list is just one place to begin.
I invite you to find a poem this week. Befriend the new way in which poetry opens what we see and hear. Enjoy where the poem takes you. Where the words end and your thoughts continue.
*Poets mentioned in Temple's list: Adrienne Rich| Allen Ginsberg | Anne Carson | Cathy Park Hong | Charles Simic | Corey Van Landingham | Elizabeth Bishop | Emily Dickinson | Frank O'Hara | Frederick Seidel | Galway Kinnell | John Ashbery | John Berryman | John Donne | Josh Bell | Louise Gluck | Mary Oliver | Lyn Hejinian | Marie Howe | Mary Karr | Maya Angelou | Natasha Trethewey | Nikky Finney | Ovid |Pablo Neruda | Rita Dove | Robert Hass | Seamus Heaney | Sharon Olds | Shel Silverstein | Sylvia Plath | T.S. Eliot | Terrance Hayes | Tracy K. Smith | Wallace Stevens | William Carlos Williams | William Shakespeare | e.e. cummings | John Keats | Langston Hughes | Robert Frost |Walt Whitman | and others...
Published on April 10, 2014 21:00
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