The Poem Returning As An Invisible Wren To The World By Larry Levis

The Poem Returning as an Invisible Wren to the World

BY LARRY LEVIS (1946-1996)

Once, there was a poem. No one read it & the poem

Grew wise. It grew wise & then it grew thin,

No one could see it perched on the woman's

Small shoulders as she went on working beside

The gray conveyor belt with the others.

No one saw the poem take the shape of a wren,

A wren you could look through like a window,

And see all the bitterness of the world

In the long line of shoulders & faces bending

Over the gleaming, machined parts that passed

Before them, the faces transformed by the grace

And ferocity of a wren, a wren you could look

Through, like a lens, to see them working there.

This is not about how she thew herself into the river,

For she didn't, nor is it about the way her breasts

Looked in the moonlight, nor about the moonlight at all.

This is about the surviving curve of the bridge

Where she listened to the river whispering to her,

When the wren flew off & left her there,

With the knowledge of it singing in her blood.

By which the wind avenges. By which the rain avenges.

By which even the limb of a dead tree leaning

Above the white, swirling mouth of an eddy

In the river that once ran beside the factory window

Where she once worked, shall be remembered

When the dead come back, & take their places

Beside her on the line, & the gray conveyor belt

Starts up with its raspy hum again. Like a heaven's.

***

Writing is interesting and transformational.

I write first for myself. I was talking to my wife last week … and she was saying, “Why. Why this, why that?” She would say in letters, “You’re still writing. You write all the time. Just keep writing”, and I would reply. “I’m afraid if I stop I won’t do it anymore.” And she said, “Well, why? What are you afraid of?” And I said, “Well, writing keeps me feeling good about myself, keeps me feeling alive, keeps me …,” and the I said, “It’s the only thing that keeps me interested”… Suddenly everything comes back and it’s at once crystal clear and also meaningless: that tree disguised in shadow in summer, sunlight on a doorstep that transforms it into a threshold of desire and then of loss, just the pure phenomenon. (My italics. P.93, The Gazer Within)

Comments

Philip Levine's Acid Rage - They Lion (lie and) Grow

THEY FEED THEY LION by Philip Levine (1968) Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow. Out of the gray hills Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties, Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps, Out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch, They Lion grow. Earth is eating trees, fence posts, Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones, "Come home, Come home!" From pig balls, From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness, From the furred ear and the full jowl come The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose They Lion grow. From the sweet glues of the trotters Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower Of the hams the thorax of caves, From "Bow

From Academy to the Street, From Poetry To Prose

From academy to the street, from poetry to prose - Nicanor Parra – ‘My own antipoems use this blank verse. I’ve often been asked what an antipoem is and the most frequent response I’ve given, without realising what I was saying is – “an antipoem is quite simple a dramatic utterance”, and a dramatic utterance, we would have to add, is a Shakespearean blank verse. Or rather, it is a hendecasyllable that lengthens and shortens, and that oscillates between the academy, the street and the fairground. I’ve always worked with these elements: I’ve even managed to combine verse with eleven syllables and one with one syllable, and verses with prose. I thought it was a great invention of mine, but the Elizabethans were already working with these methods – Shakespeare used them in King Lear , where a large percentage of the work is written in prose, without us fully knowing what is verse and what is prose. This is very important: we could say that they are prosaic verses, or poetic verse’

The Strange and Compelling Inner Life of Clarice Lispector

Dedication - Cuando a la casa del lenguaje se le vuela el tejado y las palabras no guarecen, yo hablo When the house of language has its roof blown off and words do not shelter, I speak - fellow Latin American writer and contemporary, Alejandra Pizarnik, "Fragmentos para dominar el silencio” (Fragments to overcome silence) --- “ALL THE WORLD BEGAN WITH A YES. ONE MOLECULE SAID YES TO ANOTHER MOLECULE and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort” - From The Hour Of The Star (1977) --- When I read Clarice, I’m reminded of Montaigne - "I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself … I roll about in myself” Maurice Merleau-Ponty described Montaigne as someone who put "a consciousness astonished

Aporetica

Search This Blog