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.

Week 4: Additional

Zhao Gan,  Early Snow on the River, detail from a handscroll, ca. 961-75

This goes better with the LiPo, of course, but it struck me that the Winslow Homer was a very American experience. So let's consider the two in relation to each other...

Week 4: WANDER / RETURN

Winslow Homer, Three Boys in a Dory, watercolor, 1873

Ezra Pound (translator)

          The River-Merchant's Wife (Li Po)

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
      As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Students' Online Notebooks

Lauren McQuiston              http://iamherenow2.blogspot.com/?view=magazine
Yan Huang                           http://yanxhuang.blogspot.com/
Jesús Camacho                    http://jcamachovs.blogspot.com/ 
Sophie Muschell-Horton     http://smh280.blogspot.com/
Justin Richardson                http://justinmichaelrichardson.blogspot.com   
Kent Wilson                         http://visualkent.blogspot.com
Stephanie Brucart                http://steph280.blogspot.com/
Jiewei Jian                           http://jieweijian.blogspot.com/
Zoe Shuyang Liang             http://zoeliang23.blogspot.com/

Week 3: HOLD

Southern Song Dynasty, 1227-1279

T'ao Ch'ien (365-427)
David Hinton translation


I live in town without all that racket
horses and carts stir up, and you wonder

how that could be. Wherever the mind
dwells apart is itself a distant place.

Picking chrysanthemums at my east fence,
far off I see South Mountain: mountain

air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
returning home. All this means something,

something absolute. Whenever I start
explaining it, I've forgotten the words.

Week 2: LONG

Llegando a Atamisqui

The new word is LONG. A physical dimension--and one that's psychological as well. I'd like you to explore how the two are related...

Rain

Peter Everwine

Toward evening, as the light failed

and the pear tree at my window darkened,

I put down my book and stood at the open door,

the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,

a smell of wet clay in the wind.

Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,

half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain

drummed against our tent, I heard

for the first time a loon’s sudden wail

drifting across that remote lake—

a loneliness like no other,

though what I heard as inconsolable

may have been only the sound of something

untamed and nameless

singing itself to the wilderness around it

and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father

and of good companions gone

into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain

and the soft lapping of water, and did not know

whether it was grief or joy or something other

that surged against my heart

and held me listening there so long and late.

Week 1: Additional

▶ Llegando a Villa Atamisqui - YouTube

Parallel music track, in and out: Atasmiqueña on a CD entitled, Before the Tango. The artist was Domingo Aguirre--a blind harpist in the conjunto of Andrés Chazarreta...The song is a chacarera, from the region of Santiago del Estero...

▶ Gia Ena Tango - Jesse/Celine - YouTube 

from Before Midnight, I believe--a film directed by Richard Linklater.