Last Night's Show

Last night was a lot of fun--I really appreciate the care with which many of you hung your work--the exhibition looked good! Plus it was a pleasure to meet you friends and relations--several people came up and introduced themselves. Do encourage your interested friends to be in touch with me about next semester.

And I learned some good stories--one from Jesús in particular--who told me that his first piece (TOUCH) the tide-pool collage--came for the day he'd proposed to his lady friend. It didn't occur to me at the time to ask why that one was such a special start--but I think the story points to what we all need to find in everyday experience (okay, sometimes not so everyday!) that leads to making beautiful, meaningful work. If you think back over our weeks together, I think you'll see that when a piece really works there's almost always this kind of concordance. The moments when one becomes aware of--begins to follow-- something special...something felt and understood. The GRACE being that each of us recognizes the moments individually--but that they can be shared what we create...

So, I thank you for a wonderful semester!

Week 10: BLESS / SOAR

George Inness, November--Montclair, oil on canvas, 1893

How It Is

This is how it is --

      One turns away
      and walks out into the evening.
      There is a white horse on the prairie, or a river
      that slips away among dark rocks.

     One speaks, or is about to speak,
     not that it matters.

     What matters is this --

It is evening.
I have been away a long time.
Something is singing in the grass.


Peter Everwine

Last night, as I was sleeping
by Antonio Machado
English version by Robert Bly
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
      Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
      Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
      Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
- See more at: http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/blog/2012/04/23/antonio-machado-last-night-as-i-was-sleeping-2/#sthash.4TmuCjmM.dpuf

Week 9: BEGIN

Albert Pinkham Ryder, Evening Glow, The Old Red Cow, oil on canvas, 7-7/8 x 9 inches, mid-1870's

Begin, as in begin again... Ryder painted this when he was just a little older than those of you in the group. It's in the Brooklyn Museum. What do you make of the title? It relates to many of the things we've talked about this semester... Note the size--and how he uses the materials (oil on canvas)...

______

The Flower-fed Buffalo 
Vachel Lindsay
 

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring

In the days of long ago,

Ranged where the locomotives sing

And the prairie flowers lie low:—

The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass

Is swept away by the wheat,

Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by

In the spring that still is sweet.

But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring

Left us, long ago.

They gore no more, they bellow no more,

They trundle around the hills no more:—

With the Blackfeet, lying low,

With the Pawnees, lying low,

Lying low.

Vachel Lindsay, "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes" from Going-to-the-Stars. Copyright © 1926 by Vachel Lindsay.  Reprinted by permission of Estate of Vachel Lindsay.

There's a version on Caedmon records with Vachel Lindsay himself reading the poem. Hearing his voice clarifies the meaning. Here's a link to an mp3 of the recording: https://berkeley.box.com/s/l5u82v3l48hi376xam6u

Vachel Linday (1879-1931)wrote the poem towards the end of his life; Ryder (1847-1917) made the painting closer to the beginning. Something also to consider...

Week 8: REVEAL

Milton Resnick, The Judgement of Paris, arcylic, gouache and ink on board, 1991

C.P. Cavafy
Ithaca
Rae Dalven translation

When you start on your journey to Ithaca,
then pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
Do not fear the Lestrygonians
and the Cyclopes and the angry Poseidon.
You will never meet such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your body and your spirit.
You will never meet the Lestrygonians,
the Cyclopes and the fierce Poseidon,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not raise them up before you.

Then pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many,
that you will enter ports seen for the first time
with such pleasure, with such joy!
Stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,
and pleasurable perfumes of all kinds,
buy as many pleasurable perfumes as you can;
visit hosts of Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from those who have knowledge.

Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for long years;
and even to anchor at the isle when you are old,
rich with all that you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have taken the road.
But she has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not defrauded you.
With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience,
you must surely have understood by then what Ithacas mean. 

Week 7: MEND

Susan Rothenburg, Ring Necks, Covering, oil on canvas, 2011

The new word is MEND (with a nod towards hope and/or aspire...)



 As I Walked Out One Evening
 W.H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

Week 6: LODGE

 

Jane Freilicher, Dark Afternoon, oil on linen, 2001

The new word is LODGE. Maybe with a trace of erase...   Or source.  What makes something solid, stay put. And yet, the absence of that very possibility...

______


The Day Lady Died
 by Frank O'Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days

                                                        I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books.

Week 5: RAISE

Edward Krasinski, Dzida, 1964 (photo Eustachy Kossakowski)

From a Photograph
George Oppen
 

Her arms around me—child—

Around my head, hugging with her whole arms,

Whole arms as if I were a loved and native rock,

The apple in her hand—her apple and her father,

                   and my nose pressed

Hugely to the collar of her winter coat—. There

                   in the photograph

It is the child who is the branch

We fall from, where would be bramble,

Brush, bramble in the young Winter

With its blowing snow she must have thought

Was ours to give to her.

George Oppen, “From a Photograph” from New Collected Poems. Copyright © 1962 by George Oppen. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.