Archive for January, 2010

Door Adam Bertocci (gevonden bij That Shakespearean Rag)

WALTER
I speak of this other man, Sir Geoffrey of Lebowski. Is not thy name, sir, Geoffrey of Lebowski? To be or not Lebowski, that is the question; I see we still did meet each other’s man. Shall we not make amends? A gentleman of high sentence ought to be of unsequestered location, possessed of resources fit to restore a thousand rugs from vile offence. He’s not well married that lets his wife a borrower be, such that men gravely offended bespoil another man’s rug. Be I wrong?

THE KNAVE
No, but verily—

WALTER
Be I wrong?

THE KNAVE
Yea, but verily—

WALTER
That rug, in faith, tied the room together, did it not?

THE KNAVE
By my heart, a goodly rug.

DONALD
And in most miserable tide did this rogue besmirch it.

WALTER
Prithee, Donald! Thou too eagerly hold’st the mirror up to nature.

THE KNAVE
My mind races; I might endeavour to seek this gentleman Lebowski.

DONALD
His name is Lebowski? Verily, ope thine ear; that is thy name, Knave!

THE KNAVE
On good authority; and his nobleness must oblige. His wife taketh up quarrel and borrows, and they bespoil my rug.

WALTER
Marry, sir, my heartstrings do you tug;
They urinate upon thy damnèd rug.

[Exeunt severally]

- –

‘Or El Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.’

Het loopt van minuut 35 to 45.

Hij vertelt over hoe hij werd veroordeeld tot poëzie (zoals Leonard Cohen zei ‘Poetry is not a choice it’s a verdict.’);

over het waarderen van ‘moeilijke’ poëzie door de klank voorang te geven over de betekenis. Half grappend citeert Ashbery hier Oscar Wilde, ‘”take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.” En voegt daar aan toe, ‘Take care of the sound and the sense will take care of itself.’

Verder heeft hij het over hoe hij zijn toekomstige vrienden  Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara ontmoette en over de oorsprong van de term New York School;

over het feit dat hij nooit werd verkozen tot Poet Laureate zegt hij, ‘It would’ve been a lot of work’;

over publicatie (en daarbij verdere canonisatie) van zijn werk door de Library of America, ‘I’ll just work from within to reform the establishment.’

En nog een citaat over jawel, de fameuze poetische ‘eigen stem’, en de schoonheid van Amerikaans engels:

‘I like listening to what people say on the street, where you overhear some remarkable things, i’ve never had a distinct sense of what it’s like for me to be talking that why I guess my poems get overtaken by other people talking with and at each other … I likew the vagaries and excess of American speech as well as its occasional precision. There is something very touching for me the way we try to communicate important things to each other, usually fail and come back to the original subject matter, maybe..’

Verkeerde vraag? Vermoeide vraag? Hoe dan ook een vraag die George Quasha stelde en compileerde als een reeks videoportretten van meer dan zestig (voornamelijk) Amerikaanse dichters. Waaronder Caroline Bergvall, Charles Bernstein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Fisher, Carla Harryman, Susan Howe, Joyce Carol Oates, Leslie Scalapino, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten.

Met de onvermijdelijke one-liners. Charles Bernstein: ‘Poetry is like coffee, it keeps you up. But if you drink it too much you tend to fall asleep.’

Mikhail Horowitz, ‘Poetry is philosophy slipping into something a little more comfortable…Poetry is the fondling of correspondences … Poetry is a legal, immoral, fattening, possibly addictive, occasionally anti-semantic, and the last best hope of the soul.’

Romana Huk, ‘Poetry is a movement, a mode of encounter and is ethical in that sense. Poems are exhausting, poems make you move and recognize that you use language to move’