Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
JUST FOR FUN
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Read Me a Poem Sing Me a Song
Ode to My Right Hand (written with my Left Hand) by Antonella, 7th February 2018*
Dear Right Hand
I am sorry for ignoring all your hard work
Alas! Only now that you are out of commission
I do recognise your worth
From rolling up the shutter to cleaning my teeth
From writing to washing up
You are indispensable!
Now enjoy my praise and the well deserved rest.
May you get well soon!
* Apparently the poet took her inspiration from real events in her life: a cat’s bite the preceding day -> infection -> doctor that day, insisting on antibiotics, and even a bloody brace.
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by Antonella, 7th February 2018*
Dear Right Hand
I am sorry for ignoring all your hard work
Alas! Only now that you are out of commission
I do r..."
Oh no, Antonella! My husband had a similar, albeit more prosaic, experience following shoulder surgery. Try opening a jar. :)
Get well soon!
Karen wrote: "Oh no, Antonella! My husband had a similar, albeit more prosaic, experience following shoulder surgery. Try opening a jar. :)Get well soon!"
Thank you, it's already better, I'm typing with two hands now ;-)
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by Antonella, 7th February 2018*
Dear Right Hand
I am sorry for ignoring all your hard work
Alas! Only now that you are out of commission
I do r..."
Oh no!
(But how very clever you are, Antonella! Is it translated from the original Italian?) :-D
Josh wrote: "Is it translated from the original Italian?"No, I've read in the critical edition that it was written directly in English ;-).
Antonella wrote: "Ode to My Right Hand (written with my Left Hand) by Antonella, 7th February 2018*
Dear Right Hand
I am sorry for ignoring all your hard work
Alas! Only now that you are out of commission
I do r..."
Sorry to hear about the injury! But so cool that you turn it into inspiration. Just, please, don't make a habit of getting injured for inspiration, yes? ;-)
Calathea wrote: "Sorry to hear about the injury! But so cool that you turn it into inspiration. Just, please, don't make a habit of getting injured for inspiration, yes? ;-)"I went today to the doctor. She said it is going good and I can stick to the 5 days antibiotics.
Apparently I'm making a habit of getting bitten by my cat, and it is always the same situation: he straying out of his allowed place on the sofa, me putting him in his place, he reacting because he doesn't know what I want...
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by Antonella, 7th February 2018*
Dear Right Hand
I am sorry for ignoring all your hard work
Alas! Only now that you are out of commission
I do r..."
Oh dear! I wish you a speedy recovery — what a cool poem though! I'm trying to adopt your poetical attitude when I hurt my leg the next time... :-)
From the end of the film «The Shape of Water» (2017) by Guillermo del Toro:Unable to perceive the shape of You,
I find You all around me.
Your presence fills my eyes with Your love,
It humbles my heart,
For You are everywhere.
There are mainly three ideas around about it: a Guardian review quotes the Persian poet Sanai (XII century), some people mention Rumi and another review says: «Though he doesn’t remember exactly where the verse came from, del Toro remembers reading it in a book of Islamic poetry, found in a bookstore he’d frequent before going on set to film».
Anyway here there are lots of mainly short poems by Sanai, like:
The way is not far
from you to the friend:
you yourself are that way:
so set out along it.
And here for free the first book of his main work, The Enclosed Garden of the Truth, a religious work containing also little parables.
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Unable to perceive the shape of You,
I find You all around me.
Your presence fills my eyes with Your love,
It humbles..."
Wonderful! Thank you for sharing this and all the links, Antonella.
I still haven't seen The Shape of Water... but I'm looking forward to do so in the near future.
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I went today to the d..."
Yeesh. Bad kitty. :-/
Today is World's Poetry Day, but also in Italy the day to remember people killed by mafia and the European Day of Early Music, because it is Bach's birthday.Anyway here some Emily Dickinson:
Witchcraft was hung, in History,
But History and I
Find all the Witchcraft that we need
Around us, every Day -
All of Dickinson's poems legally and for free for ex. here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12242/...
Travel Tickets by Samih Al-Qasim (1939-2014)The day I’m killed,
my killer, rifling through my pockets,
will find travel tickets:
One to peace,
one to the fields and the rain,
and one
to the conscience of humankind.
Dear killer of mine, I beg you:
Do not stay and waste them.
Take them, use them.
I beg you to travel.
((translated by A.Z. Foreman))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samih_al...
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The day I’m killed,
my killer, rifling through my pockets,
will find travel tickets:
One to peace,
one to the fields and the rain,
and one
to the con..."
Beautiful and heartbreaking.
Antonella wrote: "Travel Tickets by Samih Al-Qasim (1939-2014)The day I’m killed,
my killer, rifling through my pockets,
will find travel tickets:
One to peace,
one to the fields and the rain,
and one
to the con..."
Thank you, Antonella! I liked it a lot! <3
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The day I’m killed,
my killer, rifling through my pockets,
will find travel tickets:
One to peace,
one to the fields and the rain,
and one
to the con..."
Oh my God.
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Anyway here some Emily Dickinson:
Wi..."
Mistress Dickinson indeed.
Not exactly a poem, but a friend share it this morning and I liked it a lot. There's no translation into English, at least I haven't found one, so I translated it myself, sorry for the mistakes :)ILUMINAR EL MUNDO – Sergio Carrión (“En un mundo de grises”)
“Hay caricias que duran incluso después del roce. Hay, a veces, personas a la que la distancia no puede separar. Y escalofríos provocados por el calor de un abrazo. Aún hay sonrisas de esas que parecen cualquier otro amanecer. Algunas noches tengo la sensación de que el camino corto también puede ser el correcto. Que, por una vez, la felicidad no depende de llegar a ningún sitio, sino de disfrutar del lugar en el que estamos. Solo hay que cerrar los ojos, cerrarlos con fuerza y acordarse de lo bonito. De la brevedad, del detalle, del momento. No se puede vivir como aquel que no recordó darse una oportunidad para ser feliz. Y agarrarse a la esperanza. Agarrarse con fuerza a las ilusiones. Y seguir. Seguir, parar, tomar aire. Respirar. Mojarnos bajo la lluvia. Y nunca, nunca, creer que las cosas que se derrumban no pueden levantarse de nuevo. Nunca creer que lo triste durará más que nuestras fuerzas. Quizá el problema sea que miramos el cielo por la noche y nos parece que ya no hay demasiadas estrellas. Que algo se apagó hace tiempo y que nada luce igual. Pero no lo olvidéis. No olvidéis hacer brillar vuestros ojos. Que nadie nos quite, nunca, el derecho de iluminar un poquito el mundo”.
LIGHT UP THE WORLD by Sergio Carrión (“En un mundo de grises”)
“There’re some caresses last even after the touch. There're, sometimes, people the distance can not separate. And shivers caused by the heat of an embrace. There are still some smiles that look like any other sunrise. Some nights I have the feeling that the short road can also be the right one. That, for once, happiness doesn’t depend on arrive to any place, but enjoy the place we’re in. You only have to close your eyes, close them tightly and remember the beautiful things. The shortness, the detail, the momento. You can not live like one who did not remember giving himself an opportunity to be happy. And hold onto the hope. Hold onto the dreams tightly. And go on. Go on, stop, breath. Breath. Get wet in the rain. And never, never, believe that things that collapse do not rise again. Never beleive that the sadness will last more than our strength. Maybe the problem is that we look at the sky at night and we think there are not too many stars. That something extinguised time ago and nothing is the same. But do not forget. Do not forget make your eyes shine. Let no one take away, never, the right to light up the world a little.”
That's beautiful, thank you for sharing and for taking the time to translate!
Antonella wrote: "That's beautiful, thank you for sharing and for taking the time to translate!"I'm glad you like it :D
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..."
I like this so much, Rosa!
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..."
Thank you for sharing this with us in both languages, Rosa.
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..."
Beautiful and inspiring. Would like to reclaim something of that wonder.
I'm happy the three of you have liked it! :) For me was an inspiring text to start the day :D
Thanks for sharing, Rosa. That's lovely. And good work on the translation. :)
This is to hear and to watch, but it is poetry, so I put it here (and a half minutes):Liam Neeson reading Seamus Heaney poetry
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Liam Neeson reading Seamus Heaney poetry"
The gorgeous simplicity that can only be achieved by an artist who really knows what he's doing -- that would be Neeson and Heaney both.
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Liam Neeson reading Seamus Heaney poetry"
Mesmerizing. Thank you so much for sharing this, Antonella.
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The Oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid, and hesitating.
The rain comes down in a torrent sweep
And the nights smell warm and pinety,
The garden thrives, but the tender shoots
Are yellow-green and tiny.
Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,
Streams laugh that erst were quiet,
The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue
And the woods run mad with riot.
(I would love to be out of the city right now...)
Josh wrote: "Summer In The South - Poem by Paul Laurence DunbarThe Oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid, and hesitating. ..."
Gorgeous imagery. Thanks, Josh.
Mod
The Oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid, and he..."
:-) It's lovely, isn't it?
What's happening in Italy (closure of the ports to refugees rescued by humanitarian ships) is awful. I don't know if poetry can help now, but it gives you another point of view... Psalm by Wisława Szymborska (1976)
Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
how much desert sand shifts from one land to another;
how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
in provocative hops!
Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
or alights on the roadblock at the border?
A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop bobbing!
Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant
between the border guard's left and right boots
blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and "Where to?"
Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn't that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?
And how can we talk of order overall?
when the very placement of the stars
leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?
Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
as if they hadn't been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.
((Translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh))
what they did yesterday afternoon by Warsan Shirethey set my aunt’s house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?
i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like:
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.
later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.
Somali-born Warsan Shire is the one who wrote «You have to understand / that no one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than land.»
More about her for ex. in this article from «The New Yorker».
Mod
they set my aunt’s house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
..."
I don't think that poem can be read without tears.
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Josh wrote: "I don't think that poem can be read without tears. "Especially if you think that her inspiration was from a real fact...
Josh wrote: "I think there are basically two kinds of people in the world. Those who look at others suffering and think Thank God that's not us. And those who look at others suffering and think We need to help."True words. And no need to guess which ones constitute the majority now :-(.
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Honestly, I don't think that is how the majority of people feel. I think most people feel instant sympathy and the desire to help. Maybe that sounds naive, but I believe that is the human instinct. I think our society is becoming warped and so a lot of people have developed a circle-the-wagons mentality, but I think that actually goes against the grain of what it means to be human.
Josh wrote: "Antonella wrote: "Josh wrote: "I think there are basically two kinds of people in the world. Those who look at others suffering and think Thank God that's not us. And those who look at others suffe..."Usually I'm the one preaching about the innate goodness of human beings ;-). I'm very upset about Italy at the moment, so don't mind me.
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Thank you for the poems, Antonella. They are reminders of shared humanity.
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I don't blame you though. Now days I often feel almost overwhelmed at how much bad news there is -- so many examples of stupid, cruel human behavior. But I still believe this is not our natural first instinct.
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I'm having super weird dreams right now too!
A Poem by Nichita Stănescu (1933-1983)Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn't you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichita_...
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Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn't you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?...
http://..."
Awww!
Antonella wrote: "A Poem by Nichita Stănescu (1933-1983)Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn't you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?...
http://..."
That put a smile on my face. It's lovely, thank you, Antonella :)
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I just recommended Heaven's Coast to someone who had read Call Me by Your Name, described it as one long love letter, and wanted something with similarly beautiful writing.
Well anyway, this inspired me to reread some of Doty's work. Here's a little something found in Deep Lane: Poems.
ARS POETICA:
14th Street Gym
Beauty that does not disguise the wound,
but reads through the lack it marks:
the one-armed man lifts himself again
on the assisted pull-up machine,
sleeve of-sparrows?-and morning glories
swelling with each upward pull.
In the locker room, I praise his ink
and he turns-to thank me, and so I'll notice
(what you can't restore, inscribe)
the blue wing needled on the socket.
Jordan wrote: "I'm not always big into poetry, despite taking two classes in it in college. But, I read Mark Doty's memoir Heaven's Coast: A Memoir many years ago and completely fell in love with it..."Thank you. Could you explain the last line, please?
Mod
I love this imagery, and the angelic thoughts it brings. Also, that the guy is not giving up on life despite his setbacks. He might not have an arm, but he can have a wing instead. :-)
Jordan wrote: "The man had a blue wing tattooed where his shoulder socket was, in place of the arm he’d once had. I love this imagery, and the angelic thoughts it brings."
Thank you, now I've got it. It is a beautiful poem.
Q&A with Josh Lanyon
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O Brîsind Sîn Me / The Rain Is Me
(20..."
oh, I LOVE this!