Friday, February 25, 2011

Meta-lect 42 (Quirquincho)



25 February 2011. Sun amidst rain...or...

The fate of the quirquincho. But can such an adorable creature have a fate? This small, wiggly being--mammalian, they say--held in the right hand, gently, by it's implacable back. The combination of shell plate and fur--a few bristles, that is, and a shaggy hairy row along bottom of shell. Carapace--the shield or covering, as with Ulysses. A rounded banner of bronze--bas relief--and the story of all time...

(for Leonard)

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Meta-lect 41 (Peludero)



24 February 2011. Gray slanting rain, as predicted. A woman's voice...

Too many associations. But can that ever be? Loss of a neighbor, Hal--his one-time trap set, hidden away behind upstairs screen--sounds of dance bands from long ago. On the road, Evanston, Granite City, Champaign... Indian chiefs and fox trots, a warm smile... The need to speak...

* * *

Peludero, where we began. A small creature with hard shell--mammalian, a tiny nurser when young, evolving into this desert brute. Marsupial--the southern line. Tierra del Fuego and above...

The Antipodes...

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Meta-lect 40 (Jaime Dávalos)



23 February 2011. Sun, misty sky, late morning...

From the sands of Salta to Albany nails, Joi, that would be, here on Solano, where a pleasant Vietnamese woman of middle years with alert eyes and a very deft touch applies silk and super-glue to the offending item--la uña de la chacarera--a guitar player's middle nail. In the old days it was the thumb--pulgar--favorite of Celedonio Romero, and then of course Diego. Down stroke of those bulerias falsetas, off-beat accents a lo gitano, life in between the seams...

Jaime Davalos again, listening to his songs late in the evening, an old recording, made in a concert in Salta. His rapport with his listeners--subtle criollo asides--bien entendidos, si no mas...

La quebrada...

Meta-lec t 39 (Pato Sirirí B)



22 February 2011. Beautiful and fresh sunny morning. Yesterday, late afternoon--snow on the hills behind Oakland, white...

Jaime Dávalos, from a live recording, early 1960s? In Salta--a child of the mountains. Writer of songs, and a poet, like his father (in his own words--"un homenaje a mi padre, quien me espera bajo de la tierra.") Yet here: Pato Sirirí. A river song. Patient, whistling call of a water bird, in the night--"que de noche pasa..." Dark head with striking white face, white blaze on dark breast.

Jaime. Image of fire, the three of them, seated around the fogón, even if it's indoors, even if it's been filmed--still the chance to feel something of his spirit--the spontaneous intelligence of his words... Su pasión...

"Poesía que nombra como ninguna las cosas de la tierra, sin gastados lugares comunes, con las palabras del alma..."



* * *

(Note: The last line quoted from an anonymous admirer of Dávalos, posted on line)

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Meta-lect 38 (Pato Sirirí)



17 February 2011. Rain times rain. Hello from Mo in 7-Eleven, "200 per cent"...

Dictions and evasions. The Southern Cross. A shy girl (not unlike the young gull) in Andean cap with dangling flap, beautiful round eyes, by the waterside, singing these verses from Jaime Dávalos, half a century before...

Pato Sirirí, que de noche pasa.
¿Adónde te vas buscando amor?
Las estrellas son rumbos de tu raza,
por eso en el río persigues reflejos
de la Cruz del Sur.

Pato Sirirí, debajo la luna,
barco de papel que en elcielo va.
En el espinel, pescador de estrellas
yo busco una de ellas, que alumbra
mi Pato Sirirí

Si algún día vuelves
y como el sauce me ves llorando
es que una estrella vivo esperando
que con el canto se encienda en mí.

También el río, buscando cielo
siempre se aleja
y aquí en la orilla solo me deja
tu silbo errante
Pato Sirirí

* * *

Pato Sirirí, Jaime Dávalos

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Meta-lect 37 (Santiago)



16 February 2011. Rain in slanting sheets... Then a moment's sun...

Santiago. Inevitable changes. Changes? Inevitable?

Article on Yeats in middle of the night, black anodized flashlight, arm slightly cramped under the covers. Someone's elaborate conceits on times long ago. The Irish wars, questions of force, views strongly held, fought for, abandoned. Compromise--but not in the poem. For what is a poem?

Pictures and paintings--the Charlie Rich recordings, his last. Billboard on I-80, approach to Bay Bridge, San Francisco to Reno. Mane of gray silver gray hair, leaning into the piano. Back to a sharecropper's shack, border of Texas and Arkansas, when he was a boy. Piano pushed in on one wall. Work hats on nails in an array just above. A teacher...

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Meta-lect 36 (La Atamisqueña)



15 February 2011. Warm gray skies--rain here, then gone, then back again...

La Atamisqueña--una chacarera, resolana santiagueña--the mysteries of Domingo Aguirre, blind musician, la arpa, his narrow fingers recorded long. In the company of Andrés Chazarreta--el patriarco del folklore argentino, su Conjunto de Arte Nativo. But whose arte and whose nativo? Atamísqui que misquiáta...me átas el corazón. Something rather of the earth--coplas de sol--me han de upáyar los requérdos...y el verso núevo vuelvó a escuchár...

Gansos libres, buscando dulzúras...tus glorias víven en él lugár...

La mujér atamisqúeña
entre sus pénas tejé un amor...

Monday, February 14, 2011

Meta-lect 34 (Towhee)



14 February 2011. A universal day-late valentine, in the rain. Downward mist, on mansard roof. Umbrella...

As in Axel Corti's film, set in 1940, when actor Johannes Silberschneider wanders the arcades of Paris, stopping to open his black parapluis--inside which are displayed a set of ties--each one for sale--while the man alongside--a potential customer--opens his own black umbrella to same...

Sensibility of Mittleuropa...

While here, the fluffy chicks enjoy a moment of freedom. That would be freiheit--the sound "eye" not an "ee" (and in any case, frieheit looks like some Berlin wunderkammer version of Taco Bell...)

Nabakov in the spring. Traipsing the fields of Switzerland, umbrella in hand. Or butterfly net, rather. With similar results--freedom becoming the recognition of necessity...

Towhee, a beautiful friend...

Friday, February 11, 2011

Meta-lect 34 (Your Breakfast, Sir--envelope view)

Meta-lect 34 (Your Breakfast, Sir)


11 February 2011. Dentista. La limpia, con Lilly--on a sunny morning. L's note, on yellow post-it--Mubarack is gone...

Happinesses. "Your breakfast, Sir..." The Biltmore Hotel, downtown LA, with my Dad, also on a sunny morning--the dusty palm trees on Pershing Square. That would be 1958? (Why is everything 1958?) Covered plates--pewter tops over thick porcelain, white cloth napkins, and the formality of a waiter. "Your breakfast, Sir..." Jump to Warszawa, a decade later. Hotel Polonia, heavy plates, no palms. But the same waiter, cloth over his arm, back slightly bent, impassive face, a distinguished profession of sorts... One of the oldest...

Lilly's face, from Mexico, beautiful middle brown, fine forehead, her dark eyes appearing over the white mask, like something out of Satjait Ray. India, China, Kamchatka, the Bering Sea...

"Finally we are free..."

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Meta-lect 33 (Instructional)



10 February 2011. And a sunny day it is...

Winged creature on white floor board, gothic symmetry in morning light... ends and beginnings. As with the Frank O'Hara poems...a playful anything, then something, then back again...

Instructional. The road crew returns. High on a road in the Sierras. Or, high in the Sierras on a road. Wait, we'll never get this right. Let's just say: small chickens. A child's architectural garden, with white paper crowns and a spot of gold.

Permissions and detachments--the security of a data base.

Love...


* * *

(for Angie)

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Meta-lect 32 (Slon)



9 February 2011. Sun. We're getting perhaps too fond of this...

I smile--but for an elephant without a home? No, that can't be. More, an elephant whose home is too small. Apartment, rather. The bumpy head, unfolding trunk. But why an apartment for an elephant in any case? Such an existential creature--a creature with such an existence. Eucalyptus leaves, pulled down by the branch-full, winding paths through rambling brush, the occasional water-hole, a nice bath. Smells of the African veldt. Veldt? A Dutch word, hmmm...

An elephant song. Something pounding. But graceful, too. In 9/4 I think...

A somber delight...

Metalect 31 (For Po-Chü-I)



8 February 2011. Sunny, but still February... Large youth with smooth cheeks, stubble chin, orders pack of Marlborough (some other detail included) and a Gizmo (wrong name) lottery ticket. His beautiful, narrow-faced lady sitting outside, half-light, in seat of waiting SUV...

Mo in the aisles amidst boxes of Peeble-O's. Mary-Lou's and Granny Pokes (invented inventory--products from the American heartland). Manager and stocking clerk. "Also cashier..." "But your customers love you..." Eyebrows raised...

Maybe a gift instead. The Year of the Rabbit, for example, or Atchafalya, for Princess N (yesteday), with elaborate note about Tolstoy's description of Pierre Bezukhov, and how the word "tolstoj" has been tendentiously translated.. (After seeing the plump English ceramic alligator on N's side table.) The available paths--we don't even choose them. More a matter of saying no...or, better, yes...

This morning. Master Po. That phrase of his. "What's the use." Or was it James Wright's? Either way, it's pure Po Chü-I. Neither fatalism nor resignation. More a kind of whistful delight in the present. What better reward...?

Metalect 30 (Atchafalaya)



7 February 2011. Warm and sunny day, go figure... T-shirts and flip flops... Tiny whirling creatures in late afternoon light...

A question of the precise choice of words. Tolstoy, for instance. His description of Pierre, in the Russian--tolstoj molodoj chelovek--which Garnett takes as "a stout young man," as do the Maudes. But Pevear and Volokhonsky say "fat." S. imagines their conversation: "Now Richard (voice rising), in Russian it says fat! (However, S. has also told us that she also describes Tolstoy himself--his writing, that as--as the sound of an elephant approaching. So let's consider the attitude here. I understand her adamance--and the need for the freedom of the translator (in an absolute sense). Nonetheless, we're dealing with Tolstoy--and his Pierre-- one of the great and transcendent creations of character in the history of the writing of the world (Babel's phrase)--so the adjective matters. And who is Pierre? (Everyone, in the end, must revere him--or is it just me?) The price of the word fat (with it's connatations in English of roundedness, deracination and even an absense of sex--no doubt lost on the Russian ear (no matter how perfect one's acquired English)--where stout implies layers--coverings--in the Russian meant quite literally (layers of skin, or another material)--and a certain stiffness. Read masculinity. The price--the months wandering in the Russian winter, a prisoner of Napoleon's army in retreat, his feet exposed, body covered with lice (Tolstoy notes that their profusion keeps Pierre warm)--the presence of Platon Karataev, and a kind of impossible awakening--to himself and to the world. But of course, all this is too easy to say--for one would really have to suffer--live through--such an experience--to write these words.

To grow...

(for Princess N.)