Friday, February 21, 2025
D+106
1864 1st US Catholic parish church for black worshippers was dedicated in Baltimore
1965 Malcolm X was shot dead by Nation of Islam followers in New York
1975 Watergate figures John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman & John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2½-8 years for conspiracy and obstruction of justice
2014 President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama
2023 Joe Biden vowed unwavering support for Ukraine in a speech from Warsaw Castle
In bed at 9:30, awake at 3:30, and up at 4:10. 13°, wind chill 4°, expected high of 27° and low of 10°
Prednisone, day 306, 5 mg., day `17, Kevzara, day 3/14. 2.5 mg. prednisone at 4:50 a.m. and 3:50 p.m. Other meds at 6:15 a.m. Trulicity injection at 6:10 a.m.
Telling Headlines and sub-heads. From the current New Yorker:
(1) "The Trump Administration Trashes Europe and NATO; Speeches delivered by J. D. Vance and Pete Hegseth were not just verbal lashings of America’s allies but a wholesale rejection of eighty years of U.S. foreign policy." By Dexter Filkins
(2) "We’d Never Had a King Until This Week: Donald Trump tries to overturn the most basic meme of American history.: By Bill McKibben
(3) "Distraction and Doomscrolling Under Trump 2.0: The first time around, the President’s bad deeds galvanized people on social media. This time, they’re looking to “flush out their brains.” By Kyle Chayka
Is this or isn't this a poem? This writing by Frank O'Hara
Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it
. . . . . . . .
About a week ago, I pulled off my out-of-the-way bedroom bookcase The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara moved it to my throne room, a/k/a my bathroom. I've been browsing in it while seated on the throne, wondering why his seemingly thousands of poems are called poems. He was a member of the "New York School" in the 1950s and 1960s and highly regarded as a poet, painter, and curator at MOMA. What is it that makes his writings poems?
In his preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth defines poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquillity." He defines a poet as someone who can see the world differently from other people and who can express this vision in their writing. Wordsworth believes that the subject matter and language of poetry should be drawn from everyday life, as this is where and how the poet can connect with his/her audience. For Emily Dickinson, poetry was something that made her body" so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." For Dylan Thomas, poetry was something that makes you "laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.”. According to Robert Frost “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” T.S. Eliot says “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” My favorite definitions are Carl Sandburg's:
And 25 more (!) leading me to think that looking for a definition of poetry is like looking for a definition of pornography, a futile effort though, like Potter Stewart, "I know it when I see it" or, perhaps more accurately for poetry, I know it when I feel it. I'm reminded of the story told of Picasso who, when asked what one of his paintings meant, said "You might as well ask a bird what his song means."DEFINITIONS OF POETRY by Carl Sandburg
1. Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.
2. Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.
3. Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, ‘Listen!’ and ‘Did you see it?’ ‘Did you hear it? What was it?’
4. Poetry is the tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes.
5. Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, cross-lights, and moon wisps.
6. Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.
7. Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.
8. Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not yet a number for.
9. Poetry is an echo asking a shadow dancer to be a partner.
10. Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air.
11. Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.
12. Poetry is a fossil rock-print of a fin and a wing, with an illegible oath between.
13. Poetry is an exhibit of one pendulum connecting with other and unseen pendulums inside and outside the one seen.
I am not a painter, I am a poet.Why? I think I would rather bea painter, but I am not. Well,for instance, Mike Goldbergis starting a painting. I drop in.“Sit down and have a drink” hesays. I drink; we drink. I lookup. “You have SARDINES in it.”“Yes, it needed something there.”“Oh.” I go and the days go byand I drop in again. The paintingis going on, and I go, and the daysgo by. I drop in. The painting isfinished. “Where’s SARDINES?”All that’s left is justletters, “It was too much,” Mike says.But me? One day I am thinking ofa color: orange. I write a lineabout orange. Pretty soon it is awhole page of words, not lines.Then another page. There should beso much more, not of orange, ofwords, of how terrible orange isand life. Days go by. It is even inprose, I am a real poet. My poemis finished and I haven’t mentionedorange yet. It’s twelve poems, I callit ORANGES. And one day in a galleryI see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
Running errands and great sights this afternoon. I drove up to Port Washington to drop off the donations I tried to drop off on Sunday when they were closed. Then I went to Costco, filled up my gas tank, and drove away without replacing the gas cap. I noticed the sound of the gas cap bouncing off the outside of the car as I drove away, stopped and replaced it. Executive function? Cognitive decline? Dementia? Then I went to Meijer's in Grafton to get some CBH and other stuff but stuck out on the CBH, none on the shelf. On Highway C between St. Vinnie's and Costco, I saw a huge aggregation of Canada geese feeding on one farm field and a huge flock of wild turkeys feeding on another farm field. I thought about stopping and taking photos but didnt do it. I wish I had, especially the wild turkeys. What a sight. Maybe 50 birds, maybe 60 or 70.
No comments:
Post a Comment