Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

This week the Iranian government hung one of my fellow countrymen because of unclear reasons. I decided to write a poem about it when i saw this picture, so here it is. This work is free of copyright so you can reproduce it wherever you want.

Let’s talk about the guy in the safari shirt.

This woman named Zahra was hanged
because she drank alcohol, or protested the government, it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter to them and it doesn’t matter to us.
Forget about Zahra. Focus on the chameleon in her hand,

can you see how it took the color of the street, can you see
the shopping bags, the guy in the safari shirt?

Let’s talk about the guy in the safari shirt.
He cannot be anything else

than a guy with a belly
in a too small safari shirt
even if he tries very hard

there will always be
a camera like this one
exposing him, in a way

he’s hanging just like Zahra was, it’s just that
he never drank alcohol, as far as we know,
and never protested anything either

and if it wasn’t for a stupid poet like me
no one would have ever noticed his demise

a thought that brings him great comfort
on a cold, distant evening in a room close
to where you are sitting now.

Martijn 29-01-2011

The Craft

You have found a stone.
But it is not your stone.
So you keep polishing and polishing.
The craft, you say, is to create a flawless stone
one indistinguishably remarkable.

But it’s not your craft, is it?
It is the found beast of an old tradition.
True, there are worse things in this world
than a couple of polished stones.

One day you will stretch out your hand
and offer us your perfect stone.
It will glow, in the middle of your palm
like a star only dreamed of by puppets.

You will stand in front of the mob,
expect nothing less than a crucifixion
or, at least, to meet the original stone
receiving its autograph on your corpse.

But no one moves. The crowds stare
only reminds you of the desert of birth.
You, who owns an invisible star, are
now at mercy of a nursing wasteland.

Square one, home of the creator.
But it’s not your square, is it?

It’s been around. In all its hidden glory.
In all its hidden glory. It’s been around.

Martijn 18-01-2011

What originally motivated you to begin writing poetry?

Girls. I thought it was a great way of impressing girls. Of course
later I found out that having an expensive mobile phone works much
better. The girl I wrote my first poem to just looked at me like I was
crazy. So I got the natural idea that I was probably not good enough
at it yet and started with the vain idea that i could improve these
skills. Of course later on I realized that having a crisp hundred
dollar bill sticking out of your breast pocket is much more effective
if you want to get interactive.

Are all of your poems kind of constructed around a main theme?

No. In fact if you investigate this idea closely you will see that
‘themes’ actually do not exist in the entire corpus of poetry. This is
because of the nature of poetry, which primarily is a tool that tries
to name the unnameable. You could, for example, claim lots of poems
have ‘death’ as a theme. But do they really? The theme itself is often
just a metaphor for something else. And death is an abstract concept,
in this case operating in the abstract environment of a poem. So what
exactly does it mean to call ‘death’ a theme? Nothing much on closer
investigation. A poet could really be talking about anything
imaginable and make it look like a poem about death. Don’t be fooled.
Poets are tricksters.

How do you feel poetry is beneficial to the world of literature, and
the world itself?

The world of literature kind of stinks. It’s full of fools who have
invested a lot of time in ‘cultural capital’ and are very hungry to
get returns on those investments in the form of recognition. Frankly,
only a complete moron would waste his precious time on this planet
with such insane people. In my opinion poetry wants to have little to
do with those people. The stuff they praise always seems pretty random
to me. They praise good stuff and they praise bad stuff, all is the
same to them. If you wanna write poems just keep out of the world
of literature that’s what I say.

As to ‘what beneficial effect does poetry have on the world’ I am not
at liberty to answer that question since this is one of our trade
secrets.

When you pull together a piece of poetry, is it all at once, or do you
begin a piece and return to it later?

In my opinion the most effective way of writing poetry is to get up at
0600 in the morning every day and write, write the poem until the
draft is finished. I have heard this from several great poets – early
in the morning the mind is the cleanest and its most easy to produce
poetry without the mind interfering with itself. Just do that every
day for a few years, then you have like a few hundred drafts. Then
reserve a month or two to rewrite about 50 or 60 good poems from those
hundreds of drafts. And there you go.

Do you have any big inspirations for your poetry?

How exactly does one measure the size of inspirations? How am i
supposed to know if an inspiration is big or not? Sometimes you feel
something, a little tickle in the back of your head. Sometimes you
feel an incredible urge. Is the last ‘bigger’ than the first? Better?
Hell if I know. Big inspirations, little inspirations, I do them all,
dude. I’m an omni-inspirationalist. In my opinion the whole world is
fabricated by inspirations. But now I am getting dangerously close to
those trade secrets again.

Thanks a ton once again, I know you’re likely very busy and It’s very
much appreciated.

Welcome, Lee. I wish you the best of luck with your project. Let me
close this interview with one of my favourite poems from Milosz, which
concerns some of the topics we touched in this interview:

A Confession (1985)

My God, I loved strawberry jam.
And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress’s neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognise greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I knew what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

Czeslaw Milosz

Stop it, Ron.
Stop torturing my website it did
nothing wrong. It isn’t even a poem
just a bunch of digits
in decent form.

I know, I know
you’ve been on the barricades yourself
and you have thousands of precious books
on your shelves but that’s no excuse
so stop it, Ron, my website
is very strong anyway.

My website will never succumb.
So you better give it up, Ron.

If everyone did like you, if everyone
would cherrypick poetry
then nothing, nothing at all
would be new and you know it

so stop it, Ron, stop the debut
of yourself at the expense
of my website. Stop it. Now.

Martijn Benders, 05-08-2010

Recently I purchased 8 collected works of various poets. I am of course still busy reading and interpreting these poems but I can already say that ‘New and Collected poems, 1931-2001′ by Czeslaw Milosz, published by HarperCollins.com is one of the best Collected works I have ever read, and in fact just might be the best poetry book I now own. I was already familiar with the work of Milosz but this book really demonstrates what an incredibly talented and diverse poet he was. I rate him far above any of his contemporaries, and anyone who loves great poetry simply can’t afford to have at least one of Milosz’s collected works (there are others) – what I can tell you though that this particular one is very complete, well edited and contains translations of over 20 different translators, which is usually a more safe choice than depending on a single translator. Milosz in my eyes was perhaps the most important European poet of the 20th century and he’s certainly my favorite. You can buy this work on Amazon for a meagre 13 dollars! I will cite one poem, under the poem is a link to purchase the book.

To my daimonion / Czeslaw Milosz

I.

Please, my daimonion, ease off just a bit,
I am still closing accounts and have much to tell.
Your rhythmical whispers intimidate me.
Today, for instance, reading about a certain old woman
I saw again – let us call her Priscilla,
Though I am astonished that I can give her any name
And people will not care. So, that Priscilla,
Her gums in poor shape, an old hag,
Is the one to whom I return, in order to throw charms
And grant her eternal youth. I introduce a river,
Green hills, irises wet with rain
And, of course, a conversation. ‘You know,’ I say,
‘I could never guess what was on your mind
And I will never learn. I have a question
That won’t be answered.’ And you, daimonion
Just at this moment interfere, interrupt us, averse to
Surnames and family names’ actualities,
Too prosaic and ridiculous, no doubt.

II.

My daimonion, it is certain that I could not have lived differently
I would have perished if not for you. Your incantation
Would resound in my ear, fill me,
And I could only repeat it, instead of thinking
About my bad character, the decline of the world,
Or about a lost laundry ticket.
And it seems that while others loved,
Strove, hated, despaired,
I have only been busy with listening intently
To your unclear notes, to change them into words,
I had to accept my fate, today called karma,
For it was as it was, though I did not chose it -
And get up every day to honor the work,
Even if there is no guilt of mine in it and no merit.

III.

Two five-year-old boys before a poster of a nightclub,
On which a buoyant girl adjusts her garter,
Say something to each other or just stare
At the saurian whiteness of the thigh.

Daimonion, remembering my childhood fears
On this earth of adults, I grasped who you are.

In their night of distant shooting, fires on the horizon,
Coarse laughter, grapplings, harsh breathing,
The heart of a child is troubled. And you, a wanderer,
Your pity is so strong that you avert your face.

You are a friend of the innocent and the defenseless
Who long for the Kingdom, as was that young rich man
So pure that he blushed hearing a lewd word,
And really suffered from it, and probably for that reason
After his short life, they raised him on the altars.

Czeslaw Milosz, from: ‘Facing the River’ published in 1995

Buy New and Collected Poems 1931-2001 by Czeslaw Milosz

…in other words the perfect day to invest in poetry. We at Loewak will soon open a special section of this site where you, stockholder or investor, can invest into one of the few clean and interesting markets left: the market of poetry. Expect impossible returns, expect a dead cat bouncing, if you waste your money anyway why not waste it on something with dignity? Poetry is the answer.

That’s exactly what I did today. I bought these poetry volumes:

New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 – by Cseslaw Milosz

The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987: Bilingual Edition

The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert

Selected Poems of Sandor Csoori

A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vicente Aleixandre

Perched on Nothing’s Branch – The poetry of Josef Attila

That should get me through this winter. Granted, these are rather ‘safe’ choices, but that’s what
we need in these times. Guaranteed investments. No surprises. World class poetry.