patrickkanouse.com Blog

Some David Jones

While reading the Preface of David Jones’s The Anathemata, I found some very interesting passages, which I quote here.

I believe that there is, in the principle that informs the poetic art, a something which cannot be disengaged from the mythus, deposits, matiere, ethos, whole res of which the poet is himself a product.

My guess is that we cannot answer the question, “What is poetry?” (meaning, What is the nature of poetry?) without some involvement in this mythus, deposits, etc.
…
The poet is born into a given historic situation and it follows that his problems – i.e., his problems as a poet – will be what might be called “situational problems.”

I am sure there will be more as I work my way through the Preface.

Anniversary

Today is the 7th year of our wedding (and no, no 7-year itches!). It’s been a fantastic time, and I’m married to an amazing woman. Many years ago I shared a poem of Octavio Paz’s with her that I thought was romantic, caught a bit of what I was feeling, and caught a bit of what I hoped she was feeling. It has long remained a touch point for us.

Counterparts

In my body you search the mountain
for the sun buried in its forest.
In your body I search for the boat
adrift in the middle of the night.
Complimentarios

En mi cuerpo tú buscas al monte,
a su sol enterrado en el bosque.
En tu cuerpo yo busco la barca
en mitad de la noche perdida.

This poem has always impressed me in its compactness, its simplicity, yet its fullness of meaning and emotion and beauty is stunning. My wife has always impressed me with her intelligence, sensitivity, creativity, ability to love, delightful laugh, love of music, and on and on. All in one person. Amazing.
Happy anniversary my love!

Foundation and Beyond

I recently grabbed some used copies of the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. I have not read these since high school. In fact, I have never read Prelude to Foundation or Forward Foundation, which I will read this time (and in the “historical” order). I am not sure what I am expecting, other than a dip into a formative series of books I read when younger (last year, I revisited Loren Eiseley’s The Immense Journey, which resonated very strongly with me in college and I plan on revisiting Jose Ortega y Gasset’s Man and People).

I think every reader comes to moments in his or her life when he or she wants to revisit some of those things. I don’t think I will be as awed by Asimov today as I was in high school, but I also do not expect to be disappointed (when I read Robert Ludlum, I knew I was not reading very well-written prose, but then I was not reading The Holcroft Covenant for that…still, the difference between Asimov and Ludlum was clear to me even then, just as James Joyce’s prose is clearly different than Asimov’s to me now).

Books were, for me, my great escape. I could never express enough to the authors I read in my high school years the joy they gave to me, the hopes they inspired, nor the dreams they helped ferment. Poetry became my specific love, but without the Hardy Boys, Asimov, Clark, and, yes, even Ludlum, my appreciation for Hart Crane, George Seferis, W.B. Yeats, David Foster Wallace, Shakespeare, etc., would never have had a chance.

James Agee and Samuel Barber

I think one of my favorite pieces of music is Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Given the recent summer-like heat this June, many aspects of this work seem relevant.

In particular, I love Naxos’s recording sung by Karina Gauvin. The text is based on James Agee’s essay (though some call it a prose poem). The full Agee essay is well worth reading, but below is the text of Barber’s song. The music captures beautifully Agee’s nostalgia for a time past, when things seemed simpler, purer, and thus more worthwhile. It captures a very specific time of day and laments the passing of this (”and who shall ever tell the sorrow”). And Gauvin’s voice annunciates clearly the words while maintaining the emotional longing behind each phrase. Wonderful music.

It has become the time of evening when people sit on their porches,
rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street
and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees,
of birds’ hung havens, hangers.
People go by; things go by.
A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt;
a loud auto; a quiet auto;
people in pairs, not in a hurry,
scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually,
the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk,
the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising its iron moan:
stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan
and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past,
the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks;
the iron whine rises on rising speed;
still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell;
rises again, still fainter, fainter, lifting, lifts, faints forgone: forgotten.
Now is the night one blue dew.

Now is the night one blue dew,
my father has drained,
now he has coiled the hose.
Low on the length of lawns,
a frailing of fire who breathes …
Parents on porches: rock and rock.
From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.

On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts.
We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there …
They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet,
of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all.
The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near.

All my people are larger bodies than mine, …
with voices gentle and meaningless like the voice of sleeping birds.
One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home.
One is my mother who is good to me.
One is my father who is good to me.
By some chance, here they are, all on this earth;
and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth,
lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,
oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble;
and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to be.
Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her:
and those receive me, who quietly treat me,
as one familiar and well-beloved in that home:
but will not, no ,will not, not now, not ever;
but will not ever tell me who I am.

Father’s Day

I have posted my new monthly poem, which features a poem dedicated to my father. Appropriate for Father’s Day, I thought. Happy Father’s Day!