Poetry Reading: Ted Kooser

The charming and humble Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate 2004-2006, and master of the metaphor.


Selecting A Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

Jim Carroll Interview on Today Show Discussing School Violence & The Basketball Diaries

In this 1999 interview, the late, great Jim Carroll discusses the relationship between violence in schools and the influence of movies and literature.

Purity means that you always have something up your sleeve, that you have something you've earned, that you have something to move toward, that your vision is intact. Purity, to me, exists within states of what would be thought of as impure. You can live within a state of total decay. You can live in that state and still be totally pure if your vision remains intact, if you know that you've go to keep moving ahead because you haven't reached that light yet, the light at the end of the tunnel.

~ Jim Carroll

LRR Summer Issue Now Live

I am pleased to say the Summer issue of Loch Raven Review is now live.

The issue features poetry by Sara Bernert, Jenn Blair, Janet Butler, Clay Carpenter, Holly Day, Nina Forsythe, Howie Good, John Grochalski, Catherine Hartlove, Chuck Levenstein, Mark A. Murphy, Constantine Pantazonis, Michael Pedersen, Erik Richardson, John Riley, S. Thomas Summers, and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub; an essay by Dan Cuddy on Baltimore poet Clarinda Harriss: A Baltimore Treasure; four poems by Bertolt Brecht translated by Jim Doss; and fiction by Danny Birchall, Elizabeth Costello, and Tom Sheehan.

Check us out at http://www.lochravenreview.net.

Spring 2009 Loch Raven Review Now Live

The Spring 2009 issue of Loch Raven Review is now live. The issue features:

Poetry by Bob Bradshaw, Dan Cuddy, Dawn Dupler, Liz Gallagher, Bernard Henrie, Guy Kettelhack, Larry Kimmel, Andrea Potos, Casey Quinn, Doug Ramspeck, Paula Ray, Oliver Rice, Michael Salcman, Arthur Seeley, KH Solomon, and Ray Templeton.

Fiction by Stephanie King and John Riebow.

Five poems by Ernest Bryll translated from the Polish by Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka and a story by Al Mahmud translated from the Bengali by Ahmede Hussain.

Christopher T. George interviews C.E. Chaffin and reviews Chaffin's Unexpected Light: Selected Poems and Love Poems 1998-2008, while Dan Cuddy weighs in on Stranger At Home, An Anthology: American Poetry With An Accent, edited by Andrey Gritsman, Roger Weingarten, Kurt Brown, and Carmen Firan.

As a taster for what's in the issue here is a powerful little poem by C.E. Chaffin:

Baby

It's 4:30 AM, pitch-black and cold.
I spoon against your body
wishing there were no cotton
to separate us, not even skin.

I want to crawl up your tunnel
and hide deep in your belly
before the sun exposes me.
Let me re-gestate, please.

Maybe this time it will be better,
maybe this time I won't end up
clinging to you like a life raft
in the shipwrecked night,
forty and terrified.

If you should wake
and want to make love
I may stay inside forever.

C.E. Chaffin

How to capture and record streaming internet audio in Linux

For this exercise, lame, sox and mplayer will be used to capture audio from the streaming internet feed of Washington, DC based radio station WMAL. First, save the following script into whatever bin directory you feel comfortable with under a name such as record.sh:

#!/bin/bash
#
# record.sh
#
# Use mplayer to capture the stream
# at $STREAM to the file $FILE
#
# example: record.sh my_radio_show 60 mms://someserver.com/stream

DIR=/home/jim/Music/PodCasts #directory where to save the file
TEMPDIR=/tmp

# Don't edit anything below this line
#######################################################
DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d` # Save the date as YYYY-MM-DD
YEAR=`date +%Y` # Save just the year as YYYY
NAME=$1
DURATION=$2 # enough to catch the show, plus a bit
STREAM=$3
TEMPFILE=$TEMPDIR/$NAME-$DATE
FILE=$DIR/$NAME-$DATE # Where to save it

# Capture Stream
mkfifo $TEMPFILE.wav
mkfifo $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav

# The lame settings below are optimized for voice encoding
# The sox command below strips out any silent portions
lame -S -a -m m --ty "$YEAR" --vbr-new -V 9 --lowpass 13.4 --athaa-sensitivity 1 \
--resample 32 $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav $FILE.mp3 >/dev/null &
sox $TEMPFILE.wav -c 1 $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav \
silence 1 0.2 0.5% -1 0.2 0.5% >/dev/null&
/usr/bin/mplayer -really-quiet -cache 500 \
-ao pcm:file="$TEMPFILE.wav" -vc dummy -vo null \
-noframedrop $STREAM >/dev/null&

sleep 5
# get the pid of all processes started in this script.
PIDS=`ps auxww | grep $TEMPFILE | awk '{print $2}'`

# the & turns the capture into a background job
sleep `echo ${DURATION}*60 | bc` # wait for the show to be over
kill $PIDS >/dev/null # kill the stream capture
rm $TEMPFILE.wav
rm $TEMPFILE-silenced.wav


I wish I could claim this nifty little script as my own creation, but I found it somewhere on the internet and modified it to suit my own needs.

This script can be invoked using the command:

/home/jim/bin/record.sh Ric_Edelman 120 http://citadelcc-WMAL-AM.wm.llnwd.net/citadelcc_WMAL_AM

where the first parameter is the name of the radio show, the second the number of minutes to record and the third the URL of your favorite radio stream.

After testing to ensure everything works properly, it is time to set up the crontab entries for recording your shows. I use gnome-scheduler so I don't miss a show no matter what I'm doing:



The details of how one recording is set up:



Hope this proves useful.

Inaugural Publication of Loch Raven Press at Amazon -- Sandy Lyne's In the Footsteps of Paradise

The inaugural publication of Loch Raven Press, In the Footsteps of Paradise by Sandford Lyne is now available from amazon.com.

Sandy Lyne worked for years as a Kennedy Center Partner in Education teaching children and writing teachers throughout the United States and beyond. His collections of poems by young people, Ten-Second Rainshowers (1996) and Soft Hay Will Catch You (2004), were published by Simon and Schuster. His Writing Poetry from the Inside Out: Finding Your Voice Through the Craft of Poetry was published posthumously in May 2007 by SourceBooks Inc. of Napierville IL. Sandy's own poems appeared in the anthology Quickly Aging Here, Some Poets of the 1970's, edited by Geof Hewitt (Doubleday/Anchor, 1969), in small chapbook editions, and in numerous journals, including The American Poetry Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry East. Sandy Lyne passed away on February 7, 2007.

I provided the following blurb on the back cover:

Guided by an inner light throughout his career, Sandford Lyne has written complex poems of the human heart in a deceptively simple, accessible language. These poems are filled with the love of plain speech, the search for wisdom and redemption, the willingness to let the sublime enter everyday life, and the belief in the sacredness of the word. As a Kennedy Center Fellow, Lyne taught poetry writing to over 50,000 young people and teachers, and influenced many lives beyond his calling. Though this book is tinged with grief, it ultimately affirms the joy of being alive and passing on the love of language to the next generation.

SOME PRAISE FOR SANDY'S POETRY:

"I am repeatedly struck by the range of poems in this collections: the psychological range, the poetic range, the imaginative range. These are poems that could have been written anywhere and they are, in fact, written at different stages of Sandy’s life and of the different physical places he lived in. They are poems of youth and poems of maturity. They are poems of leaving and poems of arriving. They are poems of large vacant spaces in our lives and poems about the ways love fills those places. Whatever they are in the shapes and turns they take, they are always poems centered in and sung from the geography of the human heart.”
– Darrell Bourque, Louisiana Poet Laureate, 2007-2008

“Sandy’s poems surfaced from depths where words can’t go. His calling and art was to dive and live at such silent, potent depths, and to translate their soul-refreshing stillness into poems that join you wherever you may sit; that say, unmistakeably, ‘Friend.’ A fluid living calm still clings to these soulful surfacings. He wanted you to have them and here they are at last.”
– Geoffrey Oelsner, author of Native Joy: Poems, Songs, Visions, Dreams

----------------

For those who enter the weekly poetry challenges at the Wild Poetry Forum, you might remember a word-group poem of Sandy's that was used about a year ago:

Emperor Children Fireflies Moon

1.

The emperor is in the garden.
He came there to admire the moon,
as emperors do.
His children hide there,
covering their laughter with their hands,
wishing not to be seen.
They, too, came out for the moon,
but they also came to catch the fireflies.

2.

The moon is emperor tonight,
slowly crossing the garden
of the sky,
no children to accompany him,
an emperor alone.
Perhaps he came to play with
the starry fireflies.

3.

How sad the emperor seems tonight,
and lonely as the distant moon.
The burdens of ruling are great,
and assassins could be anywhere.
He remembers his days as a child
when his only care
was catching fireflies in the summer night.

4.

The emperor invites the children
to his summer garden.
They think he wants them
to admire the moon.
No, he wants them to teach him
their art of catching fireflies.

5.

I want to grow up to be
the emperor of my life someday.
I want someone to love me, to think
that I’m the sun and moon.
But I will never outgrow
the job of catching fireflies
in the summer nights.

6.

No moon tonight.
No matter.
Let him sleep,
that golden emperor
of the summer night.
I will be like children
happy in the dark,
their hearts made bright
in chasing fireflies.

7.

Winter night, so cold
the emperor moon
a frozen statue
in the glistening sky.
Icicles hang from
the pagoda roof,
twinkling here and there
like summer fireflies.
Here, too, the snowman
left by playing children
to help us forget, for now,
the joys of summer days.

8.

My father thinks he’s emperor
of our house.
His watch is ruler of his days.
He whistlers from the porch
to call me in.
It’s time, he thinks.
No moon tonight to give away
my hiding place.
I’ll come in soon, but for awhile
I want to linger—
and you can guess—
the summer night is full of fireflies!

9.

Enough fireflies in my jar—
in the darkness of my room
they’ll replace the summer moon.
It’s good to be a child, I think,
to play, then sleep,
and be the emperor of my dreams.

---------------------

I hope some of you will find this book of interest and worthy of a read.

How to Stream Bloomberg TV on Linux

In my quest to get Microsoft and paid software in general off of my computer, I've been continually frustrated in trying to play Bloomberg TV on my Linux installation because their website uses a proprietary Microsoft codecs for sound. I've tinkered around enough now to find a solution to this problem. In VLC media player or MPlayer (my preferred approach) open network site mms://wmslive.media.hinet.net/Weblive_Bloomberg_600

Here's what it looks like:

The Way the Game is Meant to be Played

Outdoors, in the elements, on grass. Not on artificial turf, not indoors, or any other venue designed to give the home team an advantage.


Need I say more. Go Green Bay!

Bye-bye, Windows

For several years now I've been toying with open source software on some on my low-end computers to see if they had enough functionality to replace Microsoft Windows. In particular, I've been looking at different Linux distributions. Recently, I installed Ubuntu 7.10 ("gutsy gibbon") on my AMD 1800 machine. By today's standards, this is a very slow machine, but gutsy performs well on it, and I think I have finally found what I am looking for-- a viable Windows alternative that isn't Apple. I use Open Office to replace Microsoft Office, and Amarok and Mplayer to replace Windows Media Player. And I have my own web server, database and media server running on the same box.

I didn't care much for the default "human theme" in Ubuntu with its 70's-ish orange and brown color scheme. I customized the look and feel closer to my liking:



Then onto the other technical challenges--- loading my iPod



editing images



watching movies (Full Metal Jacket-- Hoo Ra)



running IE on Ubuntu so I can make sure my web sites account for the IE bugs



For those interested in giving Ubuntu a try, a Live CD is available for download from ubuntu.com. For those who like a more windows-centric look and feel there's the KDE based variant Kubuntu at kubuntu.com. And for truly low-end computers that can barely run XP and couldn't even begin to think about running Vista, don't turn them into a boat anchor, try xubuntu instead at xubuntu.com; it just might breath some life back into an antique.

Winter 2007 LRR Now Online

Better late than never! And with a new look and feel! The Loch Raven Review Winter 2007 issue is now live. Go to http://www.lochravenreview.net.

The issue features poetry by Gary Blankenship, Jim Corner, William Doreski, Michaela A. Gabriel, Clarinda Harriss, Deborah P. Kolodji, Tammy Ho Lai-ming, David W. Landrum, Danilo Lopez, Steve Meador, Corey Mesler, Mary E. Moore, Shawn Nacona Stroud, S. Thomas Summers, Thane Zander; an essay by Dave Eberhardt and Dan Cuddy; fiction by William Reese Hamilton, Fred Longworth, Randy Rohn, Deborah C. Strozier, Howard Waldman; book reviews by Dan Cuddy, Jim Doss and Christopher T. George. A number of Wild regulars on the list for this issue.

Please note that we are now accepting submissions for the Spring 2008 issue, which posts in March, with a submission deadline of February 28th. Our reading period is February 15th to March 15th.

Best regards

Chris George and Jim Doss, Editors
Loch Raven Review
http://www.lochravenreview.net

Fall Loch Raven Review Now Online

The Loch Raven Review Fall 2007 issue is now live.

The issue features poetry by Bob Bradshaw, Mary Susan Clemons, Lisa Janice Cohen, Jim Corner, Richard Fein, Allen Itz, Guy Kettelhack, Morgan Lafay, David W. Landrum, Charles Levenstein, Chris Mooney-Singh, Mary E. Moore, Charles Musser, Michael North, Ashok Niyogi, Constantine Pantazonis, Don Schaeffer, Shawn Nacona Stroud, S. Thomas Summers, Ray Templeton; translations of Cristina Rascón Castro by Toshiya Kamei, Federico García Lorca by Catherine Chandler, and Sofía Ramírez by Toshiya Kamei; an interview with Teresa White by Christopher T. George and Lisa Janice Cohen; an essay on "Performing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl by Gregg Mosson; fiction by Semia Harbawi, Barry Judson Lohnes, and Tom Sheehan; and book reviews by Jim Doss and Christopher T. George.

Enjoy! Please note that we are now accepting submissions for the Winter issue, which posts in December, with a deadline of November 30. Our reading period is November 15 to December 15.

Best regards

Chris George and Jim Doss, Editors
Loch Raven Review
http://www.lochravenreview.net

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Last night while browsing around the TV channels, I found a documentary I've been wanting to watch but could never locate at the movie rental store. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man is a fairly recent homage to Cohen the songwriter, and to a lesser degree Cohen the poet. Cohen has been a figure that has fascinated me since the middle 1970's. The film centers around a concert honoring Cohen where various other artists perform his material. Interspersed between the concert footage are snippets of interviews with Cohen and some of his admirers in the music industry. I must confess I had not heard of any of the concerts artists before and after listening to a couple of their versions of Cohen's songs, it was hard to listen to any more. There were no transcending performances like Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah," where the artist equaled or exceeded the master himself. I quickly learned to use the fast forward feature to get to the meat of the documentary-- Cohen himself. Anyone who has read a book of Cohen's poetry will quickly notice the incessant drone of I, I, I, I on every page. But what this documentary needed was more Cohen, more interviews, more Cohen performances, more friends and admires speaking about Cohen, and less concert footage. The undisputed highlight of the documentary was the end where Cohen sang "Tower of Song" backed up by U2. That was certainly a mind-blowing moment. The film is definitely worth watching. My disappointment had nothing to do with Cohen, or the quality of his songwriting, but how the concert versions of the songs paled in comparison to the originals, which I have listen to repeatedly over the years.

Cal's Day

In a month that has seen two more scandals in professional sports— an NBA referee betting on playoff games that he was officiating, and Michael Vick stupidly put his career and endorsements in jeopardy with his fighting pit bull kennel (folks, you can’t make this stuff up and expect anyone believe it)— it is great to see two consummate professionals like Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. They are such anomalies and anachronisms in today’s game—role models you’d want your kids looking up to, hard workers who believed in the proper preparation, students of the game whose egos were in check, who respected the integrity of the game, who still realized that baseball is a team sport and they are part of the team. The turn out in Cooperstown was phenomenal, and these two guys deserved all the honors and accolades they received.

Coincident with his Hall of Fame induction, Cal also published a book this year called: Get in the Game: 8 Elements of Perseverance That Make the Difference. My kids bought a copy for me on my birthday, and I just finished reading it. I won’t give away what the 8 Elements are, but this book is Ripken’s formula for success built from his life experiences and his extraordinary family, starting with his lessons from his Dad, Cal Sr. The book is both well-written and well thought-out, and a lot of old fashioned values are laid out that could use some dusting off in our “immediate gratification” society. Besides the personal stories and glimpses into Cal’s upbringing, I enjoyed the parallels drawn in the book between Cal and Lou Gehrig. The similarities in work ethic and devotion to the game are uncanny. I heartily recommend this book to all sports fans, and anyone interested in succeeding in life.

Finger Exercises: Some Misc. Senryu

Whenever I suffer from writers block I like to do something to try to get the creative juices flowing again. Most of the time I try to break out by writing some senryu or tanka. These exercises seem to do trick, and occasionally might produce a decent piece of writing.


*

thumping of a fetus' heart—
the soon-to-be father
checks his own pulse

*

a knock at the door—
the simple hello
that means so much more

*

that wild whisker
the razor always missed
finally snipped by his new bride

*

spent shotgun shells
scattered in the field—
the sting of nettles on bare legs

*

the clap of the screen door—
visitors are applauded
both coming and going

*

tossed into the bushes
the empty pint
searches for a buddy

*

written in salt
on the diner table
a lady's name again and again

*

rain for a week straight
the mushrooms taller
than my wife's prized flowers

*

outside the courthouse
blind justice
covered in birdlime

*

a shovelful of dirt
to see where I came from
know where I'm going

*

© 2007 by Jim Doss

Translations: Rilke: Sonnets to Orpheus, FIrst Series

Many people have translated Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus over the years taking varying degrees of liberties with the text. Over the next several months I am going to attempt my own versions of The Duino Elegies and The Sonnets. I make no claims to be able to carry rhythm or rhyme from one language to another. My goal is to try to capture the meaning of the original in as simple a manner as possible without lapsing into revisionism.




Sonnets to Orpheus, First Series

1.

There a tree ascends. O pure transcendence!
O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear!
And all was silent. But even in that concealment
a new beginning, hint and metamorphosis preceded.

Animals gather out of stillness from the clear,
disentangled forests, out of dens and nests;
and it was apparent their inner silence
arose not from cunning or fear,

but out of listening. Roar, cry, growl
seemed small in their hearts. And where before
hardly a hut stood to take this in,

a shelter built from their darkest desire
with an entrance of trembling timber,—
there you erected for them temples in hearing.



2.

And barely yet a girl, and stepped forth
from this united bliss of song and lyre
and shone clear through her veil of spring
and made herself a bed in my ear.

And slept in me. And everything became her sleep.
The trees, which I always admired, this
tangible distance, the felt meadow
and every amazement which filled me with awe.

She slept the world. Singing god, how did
you perfect her so that she did not desire
to be awake first? See, she arose and slept.

Where is her death? O, will you invent
this motif further before your song consumes itself? -
Where does she sink to from me?… barely yet a girl …



3.

A god can do it. But, tell me, how can
a man follow him through the narrow lyre?
His mind is forked. At the junction of two
heart arteries stands no temple for Apollo.

Singing, as you teach him, is not desire,
not the touting of another achievement.
Singing is Being. Easy for a god.
But when do we exist? And when does he

turn the earth and stars toward our being?
Young man, it means nothing that you love, even
if your mouth is pushed open by your voice,-- learn

to forget that you sing out. It trickles away.
True singing is a different kind of breath.
A breath around nothing. A gust in god. A wind.



4.

O you tender ones, step at times
into the breath that is not meant for you;
let it part at your checks,
behind you it trembles, then joins again.

O you blessed ones, o you who are healed,
in whom the beginning of hearts appears.
Bows for arrows and the arrow’s targets,
your tear-stained smile always glistens.

Don’t be afraid of suffering, the weight,
give it back to the earth to lift:
the mountains are heavy, so are the seas.

Even as children you planted trees
that before long became too heavy for you to bear.
But the air… but the spaces….



5.

Erect no monument. Just let the rose
bloom each year to remind us of him.
Because it’s Orpheus. His metamorphosis
to this and that. We should not strive

after any other name. Once and for all
it’s Orpheus if there’s song. He comes and goes.
Isn’t it enough that now and then he can
outlive the bowl of roses by a few days?

O how he must pass away so you’ll understand!
And even he too was afraid of his passing.
While his word transcends the moment,

he’s already there, where you can’t accompany.
The lyre’s lattice does not constrain the hands,
And he obeys, even as he trespasses.



6.

Is he a native? No, out of both
realms his vast nature grew.
The expert who wants to bend willow branches
must first know the root of the willow.

When you go to bed, don’t leave bread and milk
on the table; they attract the dead—
But under the meekness of the eyelid
let him, the conjurer, mix

their looking into all that’s seen;
and let the magic of fumaria and rue
be as true to him as the clearest chord.

Nothing for him can spoil the genuine image;
be it from graves, be it from rooms,
he praises ring, bracelet and jug.



7.

To praise, that's it. Called to praise
he emerged like ore from the stone’s
silence. His heart, o perishable wine press,
one of man’s inexhaustible wines.

Never does the voice break down into dust
when seized by the divine example.
All becomes vineyard, all becomes grapes,
ripened in his sensitive south.

Neither mold in the crypts of kings,
nor a shadow that falls from the gods,
punishes him for the praising lie.

He is one of the enduring messengers
who still hold bowls of praiseworthy fruit
far into the doors of the dead.



8.

Only in the space of praise may the lament
walk, the nymph of the weeping spring,
watching over our rainfall
so that it will be clear on the same rock

which supports the gates and the alters. -
See, around her tranquil shoulders the feeling
dawns that she was the youngest
in mind among the siblings.

Rejoicing knows, and longing allows, -
Only the lament still learns; with girlish hands
she counts the ancient evils nightlong.

But suddenly, askew and unpracticed,
she holds a constellation of our voice
in the heavens, unclouded by her breath.



9.

Only he who already raises the lyre
among shadows
may anticipate repaying
the endless praise.

Only he who ate the poppy
of the dead
will never again forget
their softest tone.

Though the reflection in the pond
may often blur before us:
know the image.

Only in the double realm
do voices become
eternal and meek.



10.

You, who never leave my senses,
I salute you, antique sarcophagi,
whom the happy waters of Roman days
flows through like a meandering song .

Or those so open like the eye
of a gladly awakening shepherd
- inside full of stillness and honeysuckle -
abuzz with enraptured butterflies;

all who are spared doubt,
I salute you, the reopened mouths
who already knew the name of silence.

Do we know it, friends, do we not?
Both shape the indecisive hour
in the face of man.



11.

Look at the heavens. Is there no constellation called "Rider?"
Because this notion is strangely ingrained in us:
this earthly pride. And another one,
whom he drives and reins in and that carries him.

Is it not so, pursued and then restrained,
this sinewy nature of being?
Way and turning. Yet just a nudge instructs.
New expanses. And the two are one.

But are they? Or don't both believe in
the way they take together?
Nameless they separate for table and pasture.

Even the starry joining deceives.
Still, let’s be happy for a while
to believe the figure. That’s enough.



12.

Hail the spirit which may connect us;
for we live truly in figures.
And with tiny steps the hours pass
alongside our actual days.

Without knowing our true place,
we act as if we actually interacted.
Antennae feel antennae,
and the empty distances borne...

Pure tension. O music of the powers!
Isn’t it through casual interchange
that each disturbance is diverted from you?

Even when the farmer cares for and works
where the seeds transform themselves into summers,
he never does enough. The earth just gives.



13.

Plump apple, pear, and banana,
gooseberry... All of these speak
in the mouth of death and life... I guess...
read it in the countenance of a child

who tastes them. This comes from far.
Do they slowly grow nameless in the mouth?
Where otherwise words existed, find discoveries
from of the flesh of fruit, astonishingly freed.

Dare to say what you name the apple.
This sweetness which first concentrates
around, in tasting gently intensifies,

to become clear, awake, and transparent,
double meaning, sunny, earthy, native: -
O experience, feeling, joy, - immense!


14.

We’re involved with flower, grape leaf, fruit.
They don't speak just the language of the years.
Out of darkness a colorful display rises
and perhaps has the gloss of jealousy

of the dead, who strengthen the soil.
What do we know of their part in this?
It has long been their way to fertilize
the clay with their free marrow.

Now ask yourself only: do they do it gladly? …
Does this fruit, a work of heavy slaves,
thrust up clenched to us, to their masters?

Are they the masters, who sleep beside the roots,
and grant us out of their abundance
this hybrid between brute strength and kisses?


15.

Wait ... that taste ... it's already flown.
... just a little music, a stamping, a humming:
girls, in their warmth and silence,
dance the savor of fruit experienced!

Dance the orange. Who can forget,
how drowning in itself, it struggles
to deny its sweetness. You’ve possessed it.
It deliciously transforms itself into you.

Dance the orange. The warmer landscape,
cast it out of you, so it ripely lights up
in the air of home! Radiant, reveal

fragrance after fragrance! Create a kinship
with the pure, resistant rind,
with the juice that happily fills!


16.

You, my friend, are alone, because ...
With words and pointing fingers, we
gradually lay claim to the world,
even its weakest, most precarious part.

Who points to a smell with fingers? -
But of the powers which threaten us,
you feel many ... You know the dead,
and are frightened before their spell.

See, now we must bear the bits
and pieces together, as if they were the whole.
To help you will be hard. Above all:

don’t plant me in your heart. I would grow too fast.
But I'll guide my master's hand and speak:
Here. This is Esau in his fur.


17.

At bottom the ancient, tangled
root of all things
that have grown, the hidden source
they’ve never seen.

Helmet and hunter’s horn,
sayings of elders,
men in brotherly rage,
women like lutes ...

Pressing branch on branch,
not one of them free ...
One! o ascend ... o ascend ...

But still they break.
However, this one at the top
bends itself into a lyre.


18.

Do you hear the New, Master,
droning and throbbing?
Prophets come
to extol it.

No hearing's much good
in all this ruckus,
but still that machine part
wants to be praised now.

See, the machines:
how they spin and avenge,
and disfigure and weaken us.

Their power also comes from us,
they, without passion,
operate and serve.


19.

The world also changes rapidly
like the shape of clouds,
all perfect things finally
fall back to the oldest.

Over the flux and change,
wider and higher,
your prelude still endures,
god with the lyre.

We don't understand suffering,
love hasn’t been learned,
and what's veiled to us in death

is never revealed.
Only the song above the land
blesses and celebrates.


20.

But you, Master, o what should I dedicate to you?
Say it, you who taught the creatures to hear.
My remembrance of one spring day,
it’s dusk, in Russia -, a horse...

Across from the village the white horse came,
a rope on one front fetlock,
to be alone at night on the meadow;
how the curls of his mane beat

in time with his high spirits
during the crudely restrained gallop.
How the fountains of stallion blood leaped!

He felt the vastness, and whether!
he sang and he heard - the cycle of your myth
was sealed in him.
                             His image: I consecrate.


21.

Spring has returned again. The earth
is like a child who knows poems;
many, so many! ... For the discomfort
of long study she wins the prize.

Her teacher was strict. We liked the white
in the beard of the old man.
Now, when we ask her what blue
and green are called: she knows, she knows!

Earth, on vacation, you’re lucky, play
with the children. We want to catch
you, happy earth. The happiest win.

O, which teacher taught her all those things,
and what’s long been imprinted on the roots
and entangled stems: she sings, she sings!


22.

We’re the drivers.
But the measure of time
seems like a trifle
in what always remains.

All that hurries
will be over already;
unless the Lasting
initiates us first.

Boy, don’t spend
your courage on speed,
not in the pursuit of flight.

All is at rest:
darkness and light,
bloom and book.


23.

O only then, when flight
will no longer rise
into the silent heavens
for its own sake, self-reliant,

so that in unobstructed profile,
like a successful instrument,
it may play darling of the winds,
confidently swaying and slim -

not until a pure Where
of swelling machines
prevails over youthful pride

will that one, overhasty from victory,
closing in from the distances,
be what he alone flies.



24.

Should we reject our age-old friendship,
the great undemanding gods, because
the hard steel we produce doesn't know them,
or seek them suddenly on a map.

These enormous friends, who receive the dead,
do not mingle anywhere near our gears.
We hold our banquets far away -, our baths,
secluded, and we always outdistance

their slow messengers. Lonelier now, one completely
dependent on the other, without knowing each other,
we no longer blaze a trail with beautiful meandering,

but as straightness. Only in boilers
do the former fires burn and lift the ever larger
hammers. But we dwindle in strength, like swimmers.


25.

But you, now you, I knew you like a flower
whose name I can’t recall, still I’ll remember
once more and show you to them, wrested from us,
bright playmate of the unconquerable cry.

Dancer first, who suddenly paused, body full
of hesitation, as if her youth were cast in bronze;
mourning and listening -. Then, from the great creators
music fell into her transformed heart.

Sickness was near. Already seized by shadows, the blood
pulsed, darkened, but like a fleeing suspect,
it burst forth in its natural spring.

Again and again, interrupted by darkness and collapse,
it gleamed earthly. Until after terrible throbs
it stepped through that hopelessly open door.


26.

But you, divine one, still resounding to the end
when the swarms of spurned maenads attacked,
drowned out their shrieks with Order, you beautiful god,
as amid the destroyers your edifying song ascended.

None could demolish your head or your lyre,
despite how they wrestled or raged;
and touching you, all the sharp stones they hurled
at your heart became gentle and gifted with hearing.

Finally they tore you apart, driven by vengeance,
but your sound lingered in lions and cliffs,
in trees and birds. You still sing there.

Oh you prodigal god! You infinite clue!
Only because hatred finally scattered your dismembered body
are we now hearers and a mouth for nature.




© 2007 by Jim Doss

Summer 2007 LRR Now Online

The Summer issue of the Loch Raven Review is now online.

This issue features poetry by Kate Bernadette Benedict, Annie Bien, Laurie Byro, Antonia Clark, Dan Cuddy, Claudia Gary-Annis, Conrad Geller, Mitchell Geller, Tim Kahl, Guy Kettelhack, David W. Landrum, Mercedes Lawry, Francis Masat, Steve Meador, Michael Monroe, Gregg Mosson, Michael North, Kenneth Pobo, Nicholas Ripatrazone, K. A. Ryan, Janice D. Soderling, Karen Stanley, Shawn Nacona Stroud; translations of Isolda Dosamantes, Victoria Guerrero, and Estrella del Valle by Toshiya Kamei; fiction by Dawn Dupler, David W. Landrum, Barry Lohnes, Christine Purcell, and Terry Sanville; book reviews by Jim Doss and Christopher T. George.

This is another great issue, and we hope you will stop by for a visit.

Jim Doss & Chris George, Editors

Spring 2007 Issue of the Loch Raven Review

The Spring issue of the Loch Raven Review is now online.

This issue features the poetry by Penny August, Sandy Sue Benitez, Jason Biederman, Gary Blankenship, Bob Bradshaw, Jared Carter, Jim Corner, Susan Culver, Adam Elgar, Allen Itz, Thomas Jardine, Charles Levenstein, Sabyasachi Nag, Michael North, David Nourse, Stuart Nunn, Kathy Paupore, Kenneth Pobo, Don Schaeffer, S. Thomas Summers, Ron Wallace, Marceline White, Wiltshire; interview with Charles Levenstein by Christopher T. George; translations of Hugo Ball by Jim Doss; an essay by Gary Blankenship; fiction by Charles Levenstein and Oliver Murray; and reviews by Jim Doss, Christopher T. George and Deborah P. Kolodji.

This is another great issue, and I hope you will stop by for a visit.

Translations: Kurt Schwitters: Three Poems

Here are my translations of several poems by Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948). Schwitters was primarily an artist, one of the twentieth century's masters of collage. Occasionally he penned a few verses and hung out with some of the Berlin Dadaist. Schwitters thrived on public opposition. In January 1937 Schwitters fled to Norway, and in the same year, his Merz pictures were included in the Nazi exhibition of degenerate art (entartete Kunst) in Munich. Unable to live in Germany, he immigrated to Norway, then to England. A sampling of his art can be found at http://kurtschwitters.org


To Anna Bloom

Oh you, beloved of my 27 senses, I love you!
You, yours, you yourself, I you, you me, ---- we?
That, incidentally, does not belong here.
Who are you, countless broads? You are, are you?
People say you would be.
Let them say they can’t find the church steeple.
You wear a hat on your feet and walk on your hands,
you walk on your hands.
Hello, you red clothes sawed into white pleats.
Red I love Anna Bloom, red I love her.
You, yours, you yourself, I you, you me, ---- we?
That, incidentally, belongs in the cold embers.
Anna Bloom, red Anna Bloom, what are people saying?
               The grand prize question:
               1. Anna Bloom has a screw loose.
               2. Anna Bloom is red.
               3. What color is the screw?
Blue is the color of your yellow hair,
red is the color of your green loose screw.
You plain girl in everyday dress,
you lovely green animal, I love you.
You yours, you yourself, I you, you me, ---- we?
That, incidentally, belongs in the ember box.
Anna Bloom, Anna, A----N----N----A!
I drizzled your name.
Your name drips like soft tallow.
You know it Anna, you already know it,
You can be read from the back also.
And you, you most marvelous creature of all,
You are the same from the back as the font:
A------N------N------A.
Tallow trickled fondling my back.
Anna Bloom,
You drippy animal,
I-------love-------you!


You

You,
Unknown woman,
I love you.
I have never seen you
And know you.
I love you,
Because you are one of those
Who I understand,
Who forgives me all this.
All this, what I do and what I think
Filled with love
And good luck.
You, unknown woman, you weigh on my dreams, my longings.
And once I find you,
Then,
Yes, then??
The world is large and deep.
You weigh on my dreams,
You,
Only you!



Banalities from the Chinese

Flies have short legs.
Haste makes waste.
Red raspberries are red.
The beginning is the beginning of each end.
The beginning is the end of each beginning.
Banality becomes each citizen.
The middle class is all citizens’ beginnings.
Citizens have short flies.
Spice makes short jokes out of rice.
Each woman has an apron.
Each beginning has its end.
The world is full of smart people.
Smart is dumb.
Not everything that is called expressionism is expressive art.
The smart are still dumb.
The dumb are smart.
The smart remain dumb.


© 2007 Jim Doss

A Christmas Poem

I wrote this for a contest on Wild Poetry Forum as a poem about work using the technical details of the job in the poem. Of course, I've never done this, and the poem didn't meet the parameters of the contest, but sometimes the imagination runs wild.


Waiting for the Second Coming


The cattle are lowing
but there’s no baby in the manger. Christmas day
dawns cold and bright without a star to follow
or Wise Men who come trudging over the whitened

hills. All I see are the swaying backsides of Guernseys,
tails flicking flies out of habit. They waddle
like old ladies answering the call of church bells
weary from lugging oversized purses

filled with life’s necessary nothings.
They stare in wide-eyed astonishment
that I’ve left the warmth of the house, presents
unopened under the tree as the others snore

snugly in their beds. The suck-suck sound
of my rubber boots in the mud draws them
closer. I lead them one by one into the stalls,
smear antiseptic on the udders, attach

the metal fingers. Liquid rushes through tubing
as the gentle massage begins and the collection tank
fills. I listen to the vacuum motor’s whir,
unthinkingly replace one cow with another.

If there’s a Messiah born on this day,
surely he would be here, nestled dryly
in the loft, adored by his teenage parents,
who have fled their own Caesars and Herods,

I want to rise from this damp straw
that smells of shit, urine and sour milk
to behold the radiance of his face,
the peaceful reassurance that miracles await.

But I’m afraid all I’d find is two scared children
holding a screaming baby, the bloody
afterbirth matted in the hay, a beat-up
Volkswagen hidden behind a clump of evergreens,

and their eyes begging the blessing of my silence.
As the last udder is emptied, a halo
of light descends from the loft window
to circle my thorn-crowned head, and it is finished.

© 2006 Jim Doss

LRR: Winter Issue Now Online

The Winter issue of the Loch Raven Review is now online.

It features poetry by Penny August, Linda J Austin, Gael Bage, Annie Bien, Gary Blankenship, Beau Blue, Graham Burchell, Laurie Byro, Mary Susan Clemons, Lisa Janice Cohen, Jim Corner, Alba Cruz-Hacker, Dan Cuddy, Michaela A. Gabriel, Liz Gallagher, Jude Goodwin, Jason Huskey, Allen Itz, Deborah P. Kolodji, Morgan Lafay, David W. Landrum, Jack McGeehin, Corey Mesler, Greg Mosson, Cynthia Neely, Nic Sebastian, S. Thomas Summers; an essay by Laura Polley; fiction by Jónas Knútsson and Oliver Murray; and reviews by Jim Doss and Christopher T. George.

Happy reading!