The Mnemosyne Monthly: Poem Forty-Four (Evening Chant) and TIferet Talk with Natalie Goldberg

Photo by Kevin Moul

Tomorrow I will have the great fortune of speaking with author, poet, teacher, and painter, Natalie Goldberg about her forthcoming book, The True Secret of Writing for Tiferet Talk. Goldberg is the author of the seminal writing books Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind, Thunder & Lightning, and Old Friend from Far Away, which, together with her life-changing workshops, have rent open the landscape of creativity and inspired a revolution in the practice of writing in this country. Goldberg’s own gorgeous creative works include the novel Banana Rose; the memoirs Long Quiet Highway and The Great Failure; and the painting and poetry books Living Color, Top of My Lungs, and Chicken & In Love. 

Goldberg’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and her extraordinary teaching methods have drawn students from across the globe. The True Secret of Writing, due for release 3/19/13, is the capstone to four decades of Goldberg’s teachings and reveals newly-developed methods not found in Goldberg’s previous books.

Of The True Secret of Writing, Noah Levine states, “Natalie Goldberg has done the unthinkable, she has shared the secret teaching. The buddhas of time immemorial are rejoicing and the literary bodhisattvas are smiling in silent approval. Read this book, then write a revolutionary manifesto!” 

In celebration of this interview, I'd like to do something a little different with Mnemosyne this month and memorize a chant instead of a poem. Mnemosyne started because I was so in love with certain poems that I wanted to bring them into my breath and being. I wanted to feel them in the beats of my heart. I feel the same way about this chant, "Evening chant," which is a traditional opening for mediation sessions and which has many variations. I like Goldberg's version the best of any I've heard, because it is more immediate and visceral than the others.  

Enjoy!                                            

I beg to urge you everyone:

Life and death are a Great Matter
Awaken, awaken, awaken
Time passes quickly
Do not waste this precious life

(Natalie Goldberg's version of the Evening Chant, written on the wooden han)

The Mnemosyne Monthly: Poem Forty-Two (Doolittle)

Orchard

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

As noted last week, The Mnemosyne Weekly has now become The Mnemosyne Monthly, and we're moving right along to the forty-second poem. What a joy it's been to carry these poems around through my days, pulling them deeper and deeper into my being until they reside among the internal resources I can call on for wisdom and beauty. With the new monthly format, I'm looking forward to even greater intimacy with the poems.

This week's poet, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) was recommended to me by my friend R Jeffreys of The Write Step. I've been somewhat familiar with H.D.'s work in anthologies, but this past weekend I sat down and read my first full H.D. collection, the salty, blossoming Sea Garden, from which I selected this beautiful poem, "Orchard." 

Enjoy!

Orchard

By H. D.

I saw the first pear
As it fell --
The honey-seeking, golden-banded,
The yellow swarm
Was not more fleet than I,
(Spare us from loveliness)
And I fell prostrate
Crying:
You have flayed us
With your blossoms,
Spare us the beauty
Of fruit-trees.

The honey-seeking
Paused not,
The air thundered their song,
And I alone was prostrate.

O rough-hewn
God of the orchard,
I bring you an offering --
Do you, alone unbeautiful,
Son of the god,
Spare us from loveliness:

These fallen hazel-nuts,
Stripped late of their green sheaths,
Grapes, red-purple,
Their berries
Dripping with wine,
Pomegranates already broken,
And shrunken figs
And quinces untouched,
I bring you as offering.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Forty-One (Zagajewski)

I'd like to dedicate this week's Mnemosyne Weekly to the victims and survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and their families and friends. The poem, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” written by one of my grad school professors, Adam Zagajewski, ran on the final page of The New Yorker's 9/11 issue. Though it was written a year and a half before the attacks, it became the most well-known poem cited in relation to the tragedy. Now that we are once again blindsided by the agonizing symptoms of a mutilated world, I think again of this poem.

According to The Daily Beast, "'Try to Praise the Mutilated World' recalls a trip Zagajewski took with his father through Ukrainian villages in Poland forcibly abandoned in the population transfers of the post-Yalta years." No stranger to tragedy himself, Zagajewski was just an infant when his family was deported from their home, thus beginning a state of exile that would become a motif in both his life and his poetry. Bless him for transforming his experience into art.

As I memorize this poem this week, I'll be thinking of the community of Newtown, Connecticut, and sending prayers for healing.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

By Adam Zagajewski


Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Eight (Adair)

Photo Credit: ESA/Hubble

A star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud

This week's poem, "Riding a Koan," by Virginia Hamilton Adair, moves me for so many reasons. I love the way it sustains the extended metaphor through flights of fancy and torrents of weather and words, connecting the poet and the koan more and more concretely to the elements until the boundaries break down and the koan itself disappears.

In the end, she is alone, and there is work to be done. Regular life. The literal. What a journey she takes us on in so few words.

Adair's personal and professional life are an inspiration. She published poems in magazines in her twenties (1930's and 40's), and unhappy with the publishing world, discontinued publishing for fifty years. She did not publish again until the 1990's, and her first book came out when she was eighty-three years old and blind. She'd been writing the whole time. In fact, she'd been writing since she was two years old, but the thing is that she wrote for herself and for her own sensibility.

Adair's husband committed suicide in 1968, and many of her poems deal with that loss and loneliness in a powerful, understated way that I admire, sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly, as we see at the end of this poem.

And finally, I'd like to mention how well her poem fits with this blog's background image and theme of unbridling the muse, or in this case, the koan.

Virginia Hamilton Adair

Riding a Koan
By Virginia Hamilton Adair

My koan waits
unsaddled, unbridled
tied to nothing.

I mount and ride
out of the map
into a tangle of stars.

Currents of grass
move through me,
and the scented rain.

I peer through snow
dust, fire, tornadoes,
into the vulture's eye.

Suns stampede
cantering through me
in my thicket of bones.

My koan whisks away
flies and words
finally, itself.

The earth opens
like a beak
through which I sing.

Alone on the prairie now
sod to cut
a well to dig.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Seven (Reznikoff)

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth 

by Jennie A. Brownscombe

This week for Mnemosyne I've selected, "Te Deum," a simple little poem of praise in honor of Thanksgiving. The poet, Charles Reznikoff  lived from 1894 - 1976 and was an objectivist, which means he was part of a group of second-generation Modernists whose tenets were to treat the poem as an object, and to emphasize the poet's clear view of the world, intelligence, and sincerity.

In case you're not familiar with the term "Te Deum," it's an early Christian hymn of praise. The title is taken from the opening Latin words, "Te Deum laudamus," or "Thee, O God, we praise."

I'm attracted to this poem because of the humility and gratitude of the speaker and because it's a perfect poem for reciting at the table.

I hope some of you choose to memorize it with me this week, and I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Charles Reznikoff

photo by Abraham Ravett

Te Deum 

by Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories

I sing, 

having none, 

but for the common sunshine, 

the breeze, 

the largess of the spring. 

Not for victory 

but for the day's work done 

as well as I was able;

not for a seat upon the dais 

but at the common table.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Six (MacLeish)

A Black Bird With Snow Covered Red Hills

by Georgia O'Keeffe

Well, we've all got our ideas about what a poem should be--at least in my fantasy world, where everyone cares about poetry enough to debate the topic. In this week's selection, "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish,we have a poem about what a poem should be. And though I'm not in full agreement, I do admire what MacLeish says, and, even more, I love the way he says it--the images and metaphors, the sections, the clean lines and flighty couplets--all inspire a sense of quiet beauty. And, I'm sure you can tell by the O'Keeffe pairing what one of my favorite couplets is: "A poem should be wordless /As the flight of birds."

It will be rather a long poem to memorize, but it will be worth it. Enjoy!

Archibald MacLeish

Ars Poetica

By Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Five (Millay)

Nana

Édouard Manet

Oil on Canvas, 1877

This week's poem, "First Fig," by the ever clever Edna St. Vincent Millay, is quite different from the other short poems I've memorized in that the others have had a zen sort of quiet, and a modest, internal spaciousness, whereas Millay's feels packed to bursting with wit. You may have noticed that my aesthetic leans in two very distinct lyrical directions--the short, quiet meditation that I just mentioned, and the dense, image-rich metaphorical poem. Millay's, obviously, is neither. Nor do I currently subscribe to the sentiment in Millay's poem. But with each posting I make, I learn. And there are a couple of things I want to learn from Millay this week--the brevity of cleverness built into the very sounds of words, and such perfect marriage between content and form--

Edna St. Vincent Millay 

photo by Arnold Genthe

First Fig

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Four (Rengetsu)

Image by 松岡明芳

Poem by Ōtagaki Rengetsu

I found this week's poem in a beautiful little book called Lotus Moon: The Poetry of the Buddhist Nun Rengetsu, translated by the Eastern philosophy professor, John Stevens. The poet, Ōtagaki Rengetsu lived from 1791 – 1875 and was known not only for her poetry, but also for excelling at pottery, painting, calligraphy, dance, sewing, and martial arts. How lovely it is to imagine her seduced from the convent walls and out onto the lawn by by a simple, unknowing maple leaf--all that blazing color in such bright contrast to her black robes. Though she was accomplished in many fields, and no doubt a sophisticated intellect, in this poem she is as lovely, simple, and innocent as a deer drawn to a berry bush.

As a Nun Gazing at the Deep Colors of Autumn

by Ōtagaki Rengetsu

Translated by John Stevens

Clad in Black Robes

I should have no attractions to

The shapes and scents of this world

But how can I keep my vows

Gazing at today's crimson maple leaves?

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Three (Nye)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Onions

I'm always a fan of that which praises something humble--in this case, the onion of Renoir's still and of Naomi Shihab Nye's beautiful poem, "The Traveling Onion." Leave it to a poet to look at a passage in a cookbook, and from it, create something so full of depth and beauty--so simultaneously simple and complex. The onion, the stew, the efforts in the kitchen--these may all be transient--but the poem is forever.

The Traveling Onion

Naomi Shihab Nye

“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship — why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-Two (Sōin)

Martin Johnson Heade

Blue Morpho Butterfly

This week's selection is a haiku from the collection Japanese Haiku by Peter Beilenson. The poem is by Nishiyama Sōin, a Japanese poet of the early Tokugawa period. Sōin lived between 1605 and 1682 and was a samurai retainer before he began to pursue poetry. As with much Asian poetry, so much is said in the silences, and we are shown how easily, simply, and gracefully on can exhibit brilliance.  

                                                                 Life? Butterfly

                                                                 On a swaying grass

                                                                 That's all ...

                                                                 But exquisite!

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty-One (Cisneros)

Painting: The Clown and the Tightrope Walker by Herbert Schondelmaier

Little Clown, My Heart

Sandra Cisneros

Tonight Sandra Cisneros is reading in Houston, and though I intended to go, it turns out I cannot make it after all. So here's my consolation to myself: I get to memorize "Little Clown, My Heart." I only discovered and read this poem a week ago, and I fell instantly in love with its rollicking stunts and jumps--with the humor, the sorrow, and the joy--the amazing imagery and energy--the eyes-closed leaps of creativity. I would have loved it no matter what, but I loved it even more due to the fact that it came to me in a serendipitous way: Just two days before I found Cisneros' book, I'd written a poem about death in which the predominant metaphors and images were circus and carnival related. So, as soon as I saw this poem, I knew I was meant to buy the book and share the poem here. I hope some of you will join me in memorizing this one. 

The Ever Beautiful Cisneros

Little Clown, My Heart

Little clown, my heart,
Spangled again and lopsided,
Handstands and Peking pirouettes,
Back flips snapping open like
A carpenter's hinged ruler,

Little gimp-footed hurray,
Paper parasol of pleasures,
Fleshy undertongue of sorrows,
Sweet potato plant of my addictions,

Acapulco cliff-diver corazón,
Fine as an obsidian dagger,
Alley-oop and here we go
Into the froth, my life,
Into the flames!

"Little Clown, My Heart" is the first 

poem in the collection Loose Woman.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Thirty (Strand)

Mark Strand

Keeping Things Whole 

"Keeping Things Whole," is one of Mark Strand's most frequently anthologized poems, and it's easy to see why. In so few words, he accomplishes not only his own fascinating meditation on self, emptiness, identity, and more; in koan-like fashion, he also invites readers to their own meditations on these subjects. The speaker may embrace change and continue moving to keep things whole, but we are left feeling that, however clever, this is not the entire answer. The emptiness that has become the speaker's identity moves forward in space and time, impacting, always, the next field and leaving behind it not only a return to wholeness but a trail of questions too. 

Photo of Mark Strand by Lilo Raymond

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

From Sleeping with One Eye Open, Also found in Selected Poems

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Six (Wilbur)

Richard Wilbur

"Apology" 

From Things of This World

I've long admired Richard Wilbur's beautiful poetry, which is playful, formal, and perfectly polished. This poem, which I pulled from New and Collected Poems, but which originally appeared in Things of This World, is a little more whimsical than the typical Wilbur poem, so if you aren't familiar with his work, I urge you to take a look at one of his books to bask in his incredible range. Almost two years ago, David Orr of The New York Times Book Review stated, "At 89, Richard Wilbur still cuts a straight path through the shifting landscape of American poetry." How true this is!

And for your enjoyment, here is a link to Wilbur reading "Apology": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdfuFI6TPKY.

Have a great week!

                 Apology

A word sticks in the wind's throat;

A wind-launch drifts in the swells of rye;

Sometimes, in broad silence, 

The hanging apples distil their darkness.

You, in a green dress, calling, and with brown hair, 

Who come by the field-path now, whose name I say

Softly, forgive me love if also I call you

Wind's word, apple-heart, haven of grasses.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Five (Rukeyser)

Muriel Rukeyser

"The Sixth Night: Waking"

From Out of Silence

Sometimes it only takes a few words to make a stunning poem that shoots into the heart of truth. These poems seem to roll into the waking world as if from a dream--effortless and surreal. Bless Muriel Rukeyser for this one!

If you're not familiar with Rukeyser's work, she was an extraordinary poet and human being. She was also a reporter and political activist, and she's known for her poems about feminist issues, social justice, and equality. 

In an interview with the Paris Review, former US Poet Laureate William Meredith said, "She was a very amazing human being and any traces of honesty in my life come from having seen how beautifully honest she was in administering her life and her poetry without any separation—you couldn't get a knife between the two things with her."

This poem, though short, so perfectly exemplifies the central role that poetry played in Rukeyser's life and what her poetry meant to other people. I hope you will join me in memorizing it this week!

The Sixth Night: Waking

That first Green night of their dreaming, asleep beneath the

   Tree,

God said, "Let meanings move," and there was poetry.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Four (Jeffers)

"Praise Life"

Robinson Jeffers

First, just let me say that, without question, there should be more postage stamps of poets. I'm sure all of you reading this entry would agree--and you might even tell me that there should be more magazine layouts, billboards, coffee cups, and t-shirts too. I wholeheartedly concur. But more importantly, we should be reading poems and carrying them with us in our hearts and minds. 

This week, I'll be carrying "Praise Life," by Robinson Jeffers, with me wherever I go.  "Praise Life" strikes me because it reminds me that anguish and despair are a very true and intrinsic part of this glorious thing we call life. Every time I think I'm so happy that I can never feel low again, some deep sorrow drops into my life to remind me that I am not immune--that, really, every moment carries the twin seeds of suffering and joy. Yet, like Jeffers, I choose to make the brave decision to praise life anyway and to remember, even when I'm happy, that suffering exists and needs our care and compassion.

Praise Life

This country least, but every inhabited country
Is clotted with human anguish.
Remember that at your feasts.

And this is no new thing but from time out of mind,
No transient thing, but exactly
Conterminous with human life.

Praise life, it deserves praise, but the praise of life
That forgets the pain is a pebble
Rattled in a dry gourd.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Three (Berry)

Wendell Berry

"The Peace of Wild Things"

Photo Credit: Dan Carraco

I believe in serendipity, destiny, and what is meant to be. Not too long ago my friend Paula Todd King suggested this poem for The Mnemosyne Weekly, and then, last week, for Tiferet Talk, I interviewed Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who told me that it's one of her favorite poems. Next, my boyfriend walked up to me with a printed out copy of the poem to suggest that I use it for Mnemosyne. At that point, I was already sold, but to top it all off, my Facebook friend, Corey Mesler, posted a list on my wall yesterday of people who share my August 5th birthday, and Wendell Berry was on it! So, here it is, the much beloved, highly recommended "The Peace of Wild Things." The poem comes from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. 

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-Two (Divakaruni)

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

"The World Tree"

from Leaving Yuba City

Just a couple of hours ago, I had the most exhilarating conversation with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni for Tiferet Talk. If you were not able to listen live, I urge you to listen to the archive as soon as possible. She said the most beautiful things about the importance of telling stories and building communities. As well, in honor of her recent novel, One Amazing Thing, she shared with us a truly amazing story from her own life. What a gift this interview was!

Needless to say, I've chosen one of Divakaruni's poems to memorize this week. It comes from the collection Leaving Yuba City, which was published in 1997 and encompasses a variety of topics. Here's a blurb from Booklist: “Everything Divakaruni touches with her exquisitely sensitive writer’s mind—whether it’s a memory, or a scene between wife and husband—turns to gold. She demonstrated her mastery of the short story in Arranged Marriages, and of the novel in The Mistress of Spices , and now shows her mastery of poetry in this bittersweet volume, her third collection. Each of her lyrical and haunting poems opens slowly, like a flower, then rapidly picks up speed and intensity until it glows like a meteor as it plunges into the deepest recesses of the heart. Divakaruni begins with devastatingly eloquent evocations of a sorrowful childhood in Darjeeling, then moves on to imaginative and compelling poems inspired by the photographs of Raghubir Singh, paintings by Francesco Clemente, and films by Indian directors, including Satyajit Ray and Mira Nair. In the final section, she dramatizes the circumscribed lives of persecuted Punjab farmers who immigrated early in this century to Yuba City, California. Strongly narrative, shimmeringly detailed, and emotionally acute, Divakaruni’s poetry embraces pain and beauty in its affirmation of grace."

I hope you enjoy the poem and the interview as much as I did!


The World Tree

The tree grows out of my navel. Black
as snakeskin, it slithers upward, away
from my voice. Spreads
across the entire morning, its leaf-tongues
drinking the light. It bores its roots
into my belly till I can no longer tell them
from my dry, gnarled veins. And when it is sure
I will never forget the pain
of its birthing, it parts its branches

so I can see, far
in that ocean of green,
a figure, tiny and perfect, pale
as ivory, leaning
on his elbow. He looks down and I know
that mouth, those eyes. Mine.
I raise my arm. I am calling
loud as I can. He gazes
into the distance, the bright, rippling
air. It is clear
he sees, hears nothing. I continue
to call. The tree grows and grows
into the world between us.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Twenty-One (Lorca)

Federico García Lorca

"Farewell"

Translated by W. S. Merwin

Here's a gorgeous little poem by Federico García Lorca. What hunger for life he conveys, even in death! And so much is said with just a few simple images. It's like the first and last stanzas are the balcony doors swung open, and the stanzas between them are a glimpse into an exotic, yet familiar, realm. I can see the gauzy curtains blowing in the wind, the corpse listening from the bed. 

If you are new to Lorca, his full name is Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca, and he was a Spanish poet and playwright and part of a group of avante-garde artists known as Generación del 27, which included Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel and other notables. Lorca lived from 1898 - 1936. 

If you're new to the blog, you might want to look at the first Mnemosyne Post to find out what this project is all about.

Enjoy!

Despedida

Si muero,

dejad el balcón abierto.

El niño come naranjas.

(Desde mi balcón lo veo).

El segador siega el trigo.

(Desde mi balcón lo siento.)

¡Si muero,

dejad el balcón abierto!

Farewell

If I die, 

leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.

(From my balcony I can see him.)

The reaper is harvesting the wheat.

(From my balcony I can hear him.)

If I die,

leave the balcony open.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Nineteen (Valentine)

Jean Valentine

"Night"

Join me this week for a journey into Jean Valentine's Home Deep Blue to memorize the poem "Night." I read this piece for the first time just a few days ago and was awestruck by it. The first two lines and the last line, in particular, render me captive of the moment, delightfully bound to the girl, the poet, the train--to the sticky, crooked wonder of it all.

If you're not familiar with, Jean Valentine, she has published eleven collections of poetry, won numerous awards, and taught at several colleges and universities, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, and Columbia University.

Of her poetry, Adrienne Rich says, "Looking into a Jean Valentine poem is like looking into a lake: you can see your own outline, and the shapes of the upper world, reflected among rocks, underwater life, glint of lost bottles, drifted leaves. The known and familiar become one with the mysterious and half-wild, at the place where consciousness and the subliminal meet. This is a poetry of the highest order, because it lets us into spaces and meanings we couldn't approach in any other way."

If you're new to the blog, you might want to look at the first Mnemosyne Post to find out what this project is all about.

Night

From this night on God let me eat

like that blind child on the train

touching her yogurt as I'd touch a spiderweb

the first morning in the country--sky red--

holding the carton and spoon to her mouth

with all her eyeless body, and then

orientally resting, the whole time smiling

a little to one side of straight ahead.

The Mnemosyne Weekly: Poem Seventeen (Sappho)

Sappho

Willis Barnstone

I was overcome by a wild sort of joy earlier in the week when I realized that if I ever get stranded on an island or out at sea without (God forbid) any books, the Mnemosyne poems could be my constant companions. If I ever get put in solitary confinement, locked in a mental institution, lost in the desert--whatever happens--I have these poems with me now, just as I have my own hands and feet. And I believe they would be just as useful.

My selection this week is a powerful Sappho poem translated by Willis Barnstone. Just for fun, here is a link to grouping of different translations of this poem: http://www.sappho.com/poetry/sappho2.html. See which one you like best. I chose the Barnstone translation because, for me, the compactness of lines and language intensifies the punch of desire.

If you're not familiar with Sappho, she was an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos (630/612 - 570).

As well, if you're new to the blog, you might want to look at the first Mnemosyne Post to find out what this project is all about.

Seizure

To me he seems like a god
as he sits facing you and
hears you near as you speak
softly and laugh

in a sweet echo that jolts
the heart in my ribs. For now
as I look at you my voice
is empty and

can say nothing as my tongue
cracks and slender fire quick
under my skin. My eyes are dead
to light, my ears