KEEPING BUSY
July 4, 2017

Mimi liked the Phillies. She would sit in her chair in the living room and listen to every game on her small transistor radio. But her hands were never idle. As she listened, her hands were ever busy, crochet and needlepoint always making something. Most of her creations ended up as gifts for some occasion or another, otherwise we would have run out of room for them all.


This was a busy household. Roland once lamented in a letter that between Alan’s motorcycle, Bill and Sarah’s models and other projects, he had been run out of his own basement. He clamped a board to a windowsill in the living room and used it as a workbench for his own creations.

This is how families amused themselves 100 years ago, or at least it is what my family did.

When ownership passed to my father, he still stayed busy in the basement and that is where I learned to use and love tools. Growing up, we were always building something; tree forts, go-carts and other products of our imaginations.

There was another remnant of the past that I was occasionally subjected to. The Jingle Club. It was devised as a way to keep the kids home and off the street and guests were always welcome. At one time, around my grandfather’s youth, the club met weekly. A word would be distributed for the next meeting and all invited would write a poem using that word. Some were submitted using pseudonyms and those present would try to guess the author.

As that generation grew up, the club disappeared but was revived for a time by my grandfather and again during my youth although meetings were much less frequent. I quite honestly, hated it. The attendees were mostly older than me and far more literate. With age, I have become a pretty good story teller but never mastered poetry beyond the occasional Haiku.

Here is a sample from 1975, a meeting I did not attend as I was preoccupied with other endeavors of youth.

Preferences
Jeanne K. Hunn
Written for the “Jingle Club”, June 22, 1975

There was a river rat who loved water, wind and sailing
One day his boat upset and swamped but the salt continued bailing
He drifted seaward on the tide, his efforts faint and failing
When a stinkpot entered on the scene and viewed the frantic bailing

The nasty, nasty motorboat spewed gas, smoke and confusion
But offered the sailor a length of line, damaging his delusion.
That yachtsmen are a different breed not worthy of one’s friendship
The stinkpotter gave a helping hand, so draw your own conclusion

We’re not so different after all, but in our choice of locomotion
The sailor enjoys a silent ride, one filled with deep emotion
While the yachtsman travels speedily, soaking up the scene
The sailor glides by quietly in a state of bliss serene

To each his own now I say
Merit hath these two
Why not call a truce today
And let us ride with you.

make
way

breathe

endless river

connect
to crows

see them
still

in sickness's song

come
covered in crows

eye
to
eye

regard

face
living

souls
swim

out there
in here

beaten
by birds
dreaming

dead
dreams
dead

dreams
of dawn

dawn
cannot come

write words
with wolf

remember
breathing remember

heirs
in hell

scratching score
on skin
bleeding into
beak

before you
believe

sounds
so shrill
now you

know night's
knot

come
breathe

breathing
bird
breathe
beast

breathe

breath

breath

he
re
th
ere

so
breathe

breathe

bathe bird
in blood

ancient
arcade

opens
now

this moment
passing

quickly so
quickly

song
you breathe

breathe
bird's
song

breathe

breathe

blessed
bones of bird

bones
of

bird

come
close
to
crow

come
close

closer

breathe

breathe

death dark
ebony sea

who
followed you
to furnace

who

who

who

what of wing's
weigh

who whom
here
howls

howling
within

stone

prayer
perishes

here
prais

pause
between breaking
btraking

betwenn

branch
& branch

talk
talk
to twigs

walk

walk

to her
whomever
bird
bends
her
head
towards

touch
breath

if that

if
that

inferred
in immersion

call

call

call out
name

number

time turning

seas turning

you turning

into time

time entering time

night
after night

vanish

set
shadow free

what
of wing’s
wheels

wonder
so tired
of waiting

to
go

with remains

birds
bring
with beak

breaking

we are
breaking
apart

apparition
assembling

it all

back
again

constructing
song from string

believe

in birds
drifting
down

descent
dead divined

océan’s
offering

banquet
beasts
burn

for silhouettes

for song

under tiger’s breath
condemned choir
comes

comes
to
chant

mute

breath
in black

seas

horse
hears

fall
for her

in deep

painting - ©jack chevalier - burning bridges 2009

death still
life

blood burning
mouth

lips
once kissed
teach torment

in valley
sugar
& spice
slaves

(slaves sing
through this
threnody)

so serpent said

narrator
not here
in hell

you
&
you
who
i & i
who

who

who
taught you terror
wait
under tree

for your shadow
speaks
with other
tongue

tongue tells
death diligent

kiss horizon
before
it end so

just so
it ends

it ends so

hear horse
praying on precipice
calm as night

still as night
night still
as death

last vigil
so sweat
secret
body of earth
cold

so cold

you turn back
to sea

turn back
to sea
run

silent as birds
breaking

in heaven
absence
& ash
blood knows

drink from pool
memory
of blood

in no time
it ends

it ends
listen to horse
as it follows
you in valley

go

go for gloves
so stained

you have forgotten
where you are

echo betrays
so stones sing
song of songs
savage flowers
feed

(god gone
with captain
on ghost
ship)

nature knew
from beginning
being becomes beast

beast from beast

forgotten ferocity
of embrace

(ships sail)

timber
& chains
skin
& song

night
on knees
now
& forever

go to garden
no

no

no

go to garden
abandon all
that
is not great
so small

so small

since setting
off

off
since you came
into being

hands of storm
held tight

go to garden
collect leaves

if it is
last thing
mud makes

vein to vein
wind
& rain

light from sea
darkens
day ends

days
at an end

over
& done

but you knew
that

when horse heaved
tremble
tumult tender

serpent pities plea
out of breath
broken
slaves
& spice

turn your back
to sea

souvenance

serpent speaks
so softly

so softly

irrevocable

sleep gone
once
& for all

silence sense
less
breath

last dance

smell shadow
is it not
forbidding
forgetting not
at hand

(débris defines divine)

so saliva
sea
sperm
& sweat
stains

death being
being

run to ravine
run

sleep sense
less

source
sugar
& slaves
vein to vein

go to garden
go

close
so close

go to garden
speak to stones

there being
no promised land

go to garden
speak to stones
sing

painting - © Luciano Prisco figures walk. 2020

Asked here in an interview about my relation with poetry of the English language. i replied very quickly, none.

Not now, or of my time or even of the last century. Dylan Thomas & Hart Crane, Ed Dorn but very little else & these three are very singular poets other than that William Blake but he is beyond language, any language, dead or living. Milton i love for his fanaticism

The real influences were always elsewhere, from the first, Mayakovsky, Hikmet, Vallejo, Ungareyy, Quasimodo, Elytis, Ritsos, Darwhich, Dalton, Pizarnik, Rozewicz - from the Arab & Latin American worlds, so many, from the ancients to the present

Tony Harrison, I respect enormously but feel little affinity but posses so much respect for his implacability, like his countryman Edward Bond. their sublime work tells the lie that political work cannot be important work. both of them surpass almost all others in their language.

I cannot understand, really cannot understand why Irish poets for example never wrote one thing, not one line that alluded to the dirty blanket or hunger strikers or the hundreds of the gross miscarriages of justice - not one word. a crude mind might say, there publishers were english publishers but I know it goes deeper than that - though none of them had any difficulty in identifying with Eastern European comrades - they learnt from Nabakov, Naipaul, & Milosz - that western elites love silence in their poets & so they followed that, to the letter

In any case, for a young poet, Mayakovsky, Hikmet & Vallejo were what Walter Benjamin demanded writers to be - teachers. these poets taught how a poetry could possibly speak, how it could talk to people & talk to souls, living & dead. pasolini & adonis also taught that, but perhaps in a more deflective way.

I reminded the interviewer that the poetry of the oppressed had been my real teacher & why, even sick I remain committed to working in those communities. It is those who are close to the margins who really teach the function of language, in all its forms & in all its spheres, from the brutal to the abstract - how polyphony & discontinuity connected runs like like the Tigris & Euphrates, through it. It is this community who took me back to childhood, not in any psychoanalytic way but in a fundamental way to the imagery of my troubled, troubled childhood, prelanguage, what images remained & so it was little surprise to see these images reappear when i did a close reading of the preislamic poets before beginning to write the 'improvisation for the memorial to the abolition to slavery'.

These images, always there, give life when i am so close to death or reminded of its caress, of its contours each & every day

Clearly, the interviewer, who was asking imagined i would praise the great depth of the english language. I did not. I could not. that is not my truth. My work from 14 years of age to this moment has been to tear that language apart with all the art i possess, with all the force i am am able,to encircle my art - so that even if it comes from a dead language, it attempts to answer the wrongs of my culture & under the influence of my latin american brothers & sisters, suggest that another world is possible

I have always felt a special affinity with the poetry of the shtetl & of the ghettos, what victims & survivors did to language, their own & others has had a profound affect on me as a man, perhaps as a poet. It is a point of pride to me that my French editor who introduced my work to France also introduced the work of paul celan to a French public

The translator of my poem, Bateau Bleu, Thomas Harlan, a German writer & French film maker became from that moment until his death in 2010, two decades, my closest collaborator. Sometimes this life is organic, truly organic. October, that symbolic month, in many ways, became more symbolic because of his death. It remains a difficult month for me, i feel i lost my twin, a twin who taught me again, rigor & effort, the truth that the work is the most important living fact of our lives.