Walking Through Central Park One Day, I Stop to Admire My Surroundings

A walk like running
my mind through

A projector

flickering slicing

what would be

the persistence of vision. Needling

my own veins, I open up one day

into everything and everything begins

to look the same. Nothing looks the same

as it did before I was aware of colors

and before they began to run down

the sewer drains. Into my grid

of tunnels they flow invisibly familiar

below the surface. These trees were

put here by someone else anyway.

They did not grow naturally where they are now standing.

Yet, they do grow and they are still alive.

Shedding their foliage they are reborn each Spring

Not to say anything of the sidewalks slicing through the green

That sit just as naturally as the trees.

Without The Ones You Will Have Ten

perception without concept is blind; concept without perception remains empty - Immanuel Kant

Six hours to get to
You. The number twelve like some center
On an ethereal clock

A halved circle with a diameter determined
By an equation I never learned

Ignoring the rest of the orbit. An invisible line like a knife.

The hands turn
Sequentially locked clock–
Wise.

They row slowly over the face
Of the time they tell. Not even sure what

They are actually saying.

It is just a representation of something

They do not, and perhaps never will, understand.

Movement defined by what they cannot define. Yet how
Often does time say things it doesn't mean?

Even when the hands are lined-up bottom-to-top (or is it center-out down-and-up?)
They are still pointing in different directions.
A high wire spectacle you can only see with binoculars
Nobody has ever survived to cross.

Besides, who ever believed in time travel?

But I suppose there is the second hand to consider

In a lemon of a car stuck
At a gas station slowly filing up with regular,
(gas prices are outrageous these days)
I will not make it
Until midnight.

This car gets terrible mileage, I wish I had
A decked out Delorean that ran on garbage.

And yet, I make the journey. At least the scenery is nice.

I'll have to fill up two more times.

I never thought
To take the clock off the wall
Open it up and turn
The hands with my hands

A Way With Words

Are all ways always
.......... If
..... and when
... Time in time
. Weighs all ways.
.... Balancing

All
Possibilities possibly possible

........................is always all ways
If there is only (if there I am only)
One
Way, the way
To take and to take
...............................a way takes away
The weight of
Some of all

The ways. Yet it does not take too much. If drawn in all
the right directions. Coloring is done
On the outside
Of the lines

Quartered into
Quatrains and Quartets.

What if there is eight ways,

Is my quality
.....................being

quelled by a quiver full of arrows?

Are all ways always only one I
Want or will
time tell what will be

the weight of all

the ways with words

I told time and time told
me, scolding me,
telling time took
away all ways.

Yet it kept one which will be
the way which will
Take away

Me. Re-
Do
a way with words?
Are................words away
......From me?

Does the melancholy music betray, my sweet?
Or is
.......... It
...................the music I
.....................................seek. to cast
.................................................away the world of
......................................words, would that not be
what I need...

"Quiet rambler!" says the samurai slicer

Quieting the silencer.

Revision of Untitled

What love is, is

Not what I –

What I
...........have been looking for
............................................But
...........will be looking for.

All this is, is

What I will
Always want

But is not
....................Love
What I called

It? Love is
............not what

You wanted. "But I,

Untitled 9/23/07

What love is, is
not what I
have been but
will be looking for.

All this is, is
what I will
always want
but is not love
what I called
it? Love is
not what
you wanted. But I,

poor-will-whip boy

I.

my mind is a whip-
poor-will into shape
after pulling back and snap-
ping me into life. That bird
so often sits upon
the window sill: yet I cannot see
I can only hear his sweet song
And when it chooses to sing
the darkness flees into
an openness that I cannot quite address
openly
So I try at least to skitter free
not smashing windows
nor looking through them
Although the world outside is
My museum
That you may enter with
Paid donation that I
Usually just give a couple pennies
Nothing that could
possibly put me in the poor house
For I have no willingness
To support the arts
Rather than to walk around dim halls
Quietly
Expressing gratitude for how they inspire me
Rather than giving them anything
Other than what I am looking for
I only pass through the exhibits
I pre-planned on the itinerary from the map
That I was given when I entered
the museum.
Strange artifacts I have no use for
I discard with my eyes
Paying closer attention
To the Rodins, Buddhas and Cezannes
Samurai Swords and Guns
I ignore the Americana
I hit the Beats that I intend
Confessionalist Postmodern Man
I have grown not just stark
But also raving, pusillanimous and mad
The building shards and splinters
below my thumb and hand
But I do not smash states
I incubate Them
inside my head
Yet that bird is still perched upon my cheek
Whistling forcing a
ref-lex-icon o'graph of sweet speech
To each of the things I choose to be viewing
My slang slings each thing upon myself
like violence done upon up-in up-off
with sling shot loaded like a catapult
to launch full force onto a lovers legs
to hobble their appendage indexes
into a sling made with straight boards
and bandages
setting the bone the way
You would like them to walk or wake
Strings strung on each finger tip
Making sure the style they hold a pen
Rubbing off calligraphic sin
Portending to glove the mannequin
He was not god merely
Maudlin

II.

Now Poor Will
Whipman
Thought he could become an every day
Steer driving
man he had no use
For museums
Or even mausoleums
He could desecrate
those graves where foolish men locked themselves
He had too much to do too much land to till
Too many bull he had to steer
His herd mentality did not mean
He would see what others would see
But rather he had steers to feed
He had many, many mouths
To feed none
of which would grow
such seed from visiting any monastery
bric-a-brac of bricolage
He carries round the field now in a sack
Splaying fields with fruit and branch
He fashions machinations with his hand
Rather than using brush or pen
He would rather go to galleries
And piss or spray paint on
All the sculptures and or the paintings
Telling them to till
His land

III.

round and round
the merry-go
round
I do not get up
I just sit down
I do not stop it step on
the playground
I just keep spinning
spinning, spinning
spin-art whimsy wishing
Cap-
rice cap-
sizing my
capitulating coercive desiring to con
dense the world around

IV.
Me.

I do not starve because I am artist
I am an artist because I starve
It's not because I make art, I don't
but because
someone stole my life and turned it into a poem
particularly myself
It was me in which he or she wrote and I was brought
to a grocery store named life
and the florescent lights paled my image
to what I actually was before they drooped
A shoal upon their subject
I would rather have gone to a market to purchase fresh vegetables
and fruits
than be commodified by commodities
whether through words or through frames
I do not need glasses to see nor do I need paint
Like those lens technician stands they have at places like BJs
Wholesale that sells in bulk
or Walmart which isn't even a grocery store

Another Experiment

I like hiding things I write under the word experiment as if to validate it!

This is crap, but I'd rather include the crap than filter it out. I have always subscribed to the "throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks" ethic. Since whatever doesn't stick and ends up on the floor or in a waste bin is still part of the larger picture. And the stuff I am happy about might benefit from whatever shit does not stick. And besides, another persons wall might be a lot stickier than mine.


A train to school
at one time
brought me to New
York City. Now it keeps me in New
Jersey. There is nothing new for me
About NJ
Transit
It is only right to abbreviate it need I be reminded
Where I am
By the snake that squirms across the tracks
That keep me firmly planted in
the state that
I
was born
and have always lived
in except for those two
semesters I spent in North
Carolina and New York
But those were minor distractions
from the larger homogenized picture
I still got to each by train
Whether Amtrak or NJ Transit
Funny how my in state
Takes me to that new place
yet
Only to return
me once again
From where I came from
I have only myself to blame

Published detractions from tracks I've worked on
because mistakes can still be made
and I
only read the editorial section

"...A translation comes later than he original, and since the important works of world literature never find their choosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life." - Walter Benjamin


Here is a good article on the the art of translation:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15984

"A. Translation is the art of revelation. It makes the unknown known. The translator artist has the fever and craft to recognize, re-create, and reveal the work of the other artist. But even when famous at home, the work comes into an alien city as an orphan with no past to its readers. In rags, hand-me-downs, or dramatic black capes of glory, it is surprise, morning, a distinctive stranger. The orphan is Don Quijote de la Mancha in Chicago."

Critical Analysis

Ok, so I said I would attempt an analysis of the Rilke poem I posted, Early Apollo. I have my own presumptions considering the meaning of the poem but that doesn't necessarily mean they are final or subject to change.

As a disclaimer, I would like to remind you that this poem is a translation so an analysis considering specific word usage is not really possible. I can only give a general analysis concerning the purported meaning of the poem rather than how it was conveyed formally.

Once again, here is the poem:

As sometimes between the yet leafless branches
a morning looks through that is already
radiant with spring: so nothing of his head
could prevent the splendor of all poems

from striking us with almost lethal force;
for there is yet no shadow in his gaze,
his temples are yet too cool for the laurel crown,
and only later from his eyebrow' arches

will the rose garden lift up on tall stems,
from which petals, loosened, one by one
will drift down on the trembling of his mouth,

which now is yet quiet, never-used, and gleaming
and only drinking something with its smile
as though its song were being instilled in him


I will begin with the title and the first stanza, at least for now, and focus primarly on that for this post.

Firstly, the title of the poem is "Early Apollo"

Apollo was a greek and roman diety who was the "prophectic diety of the Delphic Oracle" and "was the archer-god of medicine and healing, light, truth, archery and also a bringer of death-dealing plague." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo)

Also, within literature and philosophy Apollo is one half of a literary concept of Apollinian vs Dinonysian. Within this dichotomy, Apollo (or Apollinian) means the following:

the dream state, principium individuationis (principle of individuation), plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian)

One could consider "Early Apollo" to mean early Apollionian impulses in art. As a concept Apollo represents the individuation of an idea into a concrete art form. That is, the materialization of an idea or a feeling into a work of art. Early Apollo could mean an artist still in the gestating period of becoming an artist. Or they are an amateur artist or an artist in training.

It could also be a young version of the God, Apollo. However, Rilke had written another poem for the same book (New Poems) called "Archaic Torso of Apollo" which although bearing the name of the same God was written about a sculpture that was not a representation of that God. In fact, the sculpture Rilke wrote about was called "A Youth at Miletus".

One would imagine that Rilke was not writing about the God, but a conceptualization of the God that he applied to the sculpture. Which in itself would seem contradictory if he was applying the idea of Apollo to something that was already a material, or visual, art work. However, this concerns the poem Archaic Torso of Apollo, but one wonders if Rilke did not apply the same idea to the earlier poem in the book. They are definitely related to each other in more than just their name sake, but also in the fact that in the separate halves of New Poems each begins the section it appears in.

And also considering that the intent of New Poems was to write poems that were supposed to be "thing poems" (an idea that was directly influenced by the sculptures of Auguste Rodin) or to reflect thingness by harnessing the true essence of each thing through words. One is lead to speculate if Early Apollo was in fact written about another sculpture. Of course, it may well have been but I do not have that information and I am merely lead to assume that it was very likely.

On to the first stanza:

As sometimes between the yet leafless branches
a morning looks through that is already
radiant with spring: so nothing of his head
could prevent the splendor of all poems

"As sometimes between the yet leafless branches"

This line already says a lot. It is very dense in very few words. "yet leafless branches" implies a time before the branches will become leafless, possibly late summer before the beginning of autumn. Something happens ocassionaly between these branches that are not yet leafless but will be leafless soon, or at least eventually. Leafless also implies death or possibly ven nakedness. When planets or trees die in the fall and winter they shed their leaves or flowers. If they are not yet leafless but will be soon, then they must be reaching a time when they will lose their leaves or flowers. This could mean either drawing closer to death or old age or both.

"a morning looks through that is already
radiant with spring"

A morning looks through that is already radiant with spring. The first line sets up a period of time before the branches are leafless yet already a morning has begun that signals the arrival of spring. I believe this reinforces the hypothesis that the time alluded to in the first line is immediately before the beginning of the fall. However, although the arrival of fall would imply death and the loss of trees leaves a morning is already coming through that already predicts the coming of the next season.

Spring is the season or renewal, resilience, rebirth and birth in general. Life returns after it has been hibernating during the cold autumn and winter. So if those months or seasons of death have not even begun and a morning (which itself is a renewal, or a beginning of life) has already begun to shine through the branches that eventually will become leafless one imagines a cyclical process of death and rebirth. The speaker predicts before the death even occurs that it will ultimately lead to a rebirth into a more realized form.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, radiant could mean sending out light, burning brightly, or expressive of lively joy or hope. As meantioned earlier, Apollo was the God of Light. And in literature he was the god who characterized the formal aspect of art. Thus it could mean the realization of a birth (ie Spring) through the formalization of a work of art. To harness light into an individuated material work of art.

The rebirth is already predicted before the death even occurs as if to anticipate it or to be aware of the cycle. It is the morning and the spring that characterize the light, however. Light is never implicitly stated but it is suggested in a morning looking through "yet leafless branches". Also, morning is personified in the sense that is "looks through" the "yet leafless branches and it is the morning that is radiant with spring. The morning, this beginning of a new day, which however is still before the death or the renewal, is what is anticipatory in the line. Let us suggest that this morning before the eventual death is either a movement or a style of either a group of artists or a single artist. You can assume that the next level is already foreshadowed within the movement or style that preceeded it. As if it is new movement or this new style is directly related to whatever came before it. That although the old movement might die it is still responsible for what is to come next. It is from the ashes of whatever is facing death that something will be born. It is through the "yet leafless branches" that "the morning is already radiant with spring".

Something new is coming whose influence is derived from something on the verge of death.

"So nothing of his head
could prevent the splendor of all poems"

Two possible definitions for Head that might fit the context of the poem are:

"As the seat of mind, thought, intellect, memory, or imagination" (OED)

"As a part essential to life; hence, in phrases, = life." (OED)


Paradoxically, this could mean that through the formation of the poem as an embodiment in and of itself, the individuals intellect, memory or imagination are not equally projected upon it. Rather, while the poem is imbued with life it is the embodiment of light rather than the motivations of the writer. The light, as characterized through morning and spring is given form when it travels through the "yet leafless branches". The light itself is given a form other than itself when it is alluded to through both morning and spring. the spring is "radiant" so it is a Spring of light, a renewal or a birth through light and light is given form when it shines through the branches.

The poem, as the embodiment of a thing or an object is not comprised by the individual intentions of the artist. Rather, it stands alone and becomes a thing-in-itself. The splendor of the poem is no longer in the intent of the artist. It has its own essence.

Also, if the time the poem suggests is in fact the end of summer and the beginning of autumn this could mean where the poets intent ends, dies, and how through the rediscovery of the poem as a thing-in-itself meaning is reborn. There is a disconnection between that life at the end of Summer and the beginning of Spring. yet it is that very summer that anticipates the arrival of spring. As if in the creative process of writing the poem the author expects his or her own meaning to die before it meets the audience or the reader. That meanining is reborn through the discovery of the poem, yet its "Head" does not affect how the poem is understood. It's "Head" the life it was imbued with through the artist does not affect how the reader is affected by the poem.

It is the arrival of a new art form that views the poem as a thing-in-itself and anticipates a disassociated relationship between artist and audience.


Bleh. ok, I'm done for the night. This is the first time I have ever put this kind of analysis down on anything. I have always interpreted poems in my head or through spoken word, but I never actually typed it out or wrote it out on my own.

This is my own personal interpretation of the poem thus far. There may have been quite a few things I missed or did not pick up on and for that I apologize. This is how I view the poem. I am still new at this yet I hope with time and effort my abilities continue to evolve.

I will continue with the rest of the poem once I have time.

When it comes to poetry, only emotion endures - Ezra Pound

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act - Marcel Duchamp

Experiment in stream of concious with minimal editing

Sometimes Bananas

Spread across
Four rooms
like
chunky peanut butter smoothed upon
couches far
too large for infants
There is no sweetness come to bear.
Except
Sometimes Bananas
maybe sliced and placed
upon the stale sheets
of bread that are the cushions
that fill the couches frames
One couch in one room
Folds out into
A bed
I watch On Demand
I talk on AIM
I hold a guitar in my hand
And play without rhythm
With a pick flicking the wiry strings pulled taunt spuriously
Passing my eyes like orbs into the stone wall of the television
screen. As if two holes were carved to hand them to whatever laid beyond the static
My hands rattled as if paddling
The string instrument. Intoxicated
but zombie like the sound
just happens
yet seems to travel like a 4x4
over rocky terrain
There is no one to talk to through the computer yet I keep it open in
one of those rooms
When I decide to include something like bananas
I take a single one from the fruit bowl
peel back the ripened brown spotted
yellow skin and slice it with
the same knife I spread the
sticky peanut butter. Eating only
the tip before eating the sandwich
Then I devour everything whole
Without Prejudice

When you place banana slices into peanut butter
They maintain the integrity of their shape
but their gooiness seems to fuse with the sticky muckiness
of the sludgy substance that clings to your teeth
Until washed away
by something like milk or cranberry juice

Three Songs

I flip a lucky for every pack
Like looking for hope in a heart attack
Stared into the void
Now it's staring back

I'm looking for love but on my terms
Cause there's no other love that I've learned
But I pale to the sun and I'm gonna get burned

The tunnel I'm in aint got no light
Been suffering from its vision all my life
I just want one thing is that too much
For someone to save me before I move on

I'm looking for love but on my terms
I'm looking for a love that's gonna kill my soul
Cause it's a love that no one else has known

I want a savior that aint jesus
Cause I've never been that religious
But if there's one thing I believe in
It's that one day love will save me

Maybe I just want love to kill me

*

I am the living incarnation of
getting put through hell
Like looking for love
Like water from a well

I keep trying to draw it out
Each time I come up short

But with each tug of the rope
I'm starting to choke
I am dying of thirst
I am dying of thirst

Something always goes wrong
When you try too hard
When feel too much
Even after love is gone

I am the living incarnation
Of getting put through hell
Like starting a fire
in a forest in dry weather

I keep trying to put it out
Which each turn of the wheel

I just end up fanning flames
Burning the house down
Walking away
I am burning up
I am burning up

Something always goes wrong
When you try too hard
When you feel too much
Even after love is gone

Like trying to light a fire
In the dead of winter

For one who doesn't love me
For the one whose gone away
There aint nothing I can do or say

As an addendum:


For the sake of completeness, I will also be cross-posting many of the poems and lyrics I am personally happy with from my old livejournal.

Also, to clarify I will be attempting to do critical reading and analysis of poems I enjoy. I feel I have done this a lot for quite sometime but it always stays within my head. I'm sure if I made a more concerted effort to materalize my thoughts on certain works i will find new meanings and elaborate on old discoveries. Besides, it is a good mental exercise considering this is something we are learning to do in my Principles of Literary Study course. Although I have always read deeply into many things I feel many things may have been lost on me and this class will help to increase my abilities in reading.

It also doesn't hurt that I have access to the Oxford English Dictionary online now which is so comprehensive it's intimidating.

I will also try to post photographs I have taken.

Once I have time I will talk about and attempt to an in-depth analysis of the poem Early Apollo.


Also, if possible I will post links to articles concerning poetry, theory, philosophy, etc that I find interesting.

New Blog

I am primarly making this to post things I write. Which means for the most part poetry, lyrics and songs. However, it could also include reviews of films, analyses of other authors poems or works of art, etc. I wanted to extricate myself from my old Livejournal blog. LJ began as more of a diary for me but after some years I began posting mostly lyrics or poetry. I felt like starting fresh with a new journal or blog that did not house remnants of a bygone era of my life.

To begin, here the poem that the blog is named after.


Early Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke


As sometimes between the yet leafless branches
a morning looks through that is already
radiant with spring: so nothing of his head
could prevent the splendor of all poems

from striking us with almost lethal force;
for there is yet no shadow in his gaze,
his temples are yet too cool for the laurel crown,
and only later from his eyebrow' arches

will the rose garden lift up on tall stems,
from which petals, loosened, one by one
will drift down on the trembling of his mouth,

which now is yet quiet, never-used, and gleaming
and only drinking something with its smile
as though its song were being instilled in him.

translated by Edward Snow