Uncategorized – Page 213 – Planet of the Blind

Our balance…

Our balance is much like

a leaf stirred

in the middle of a forest–

explanation on both sides of the thing, halved

–Nilo Rauhala

(translated from the Finnish by SK)

Reading Sappho

By Andrea Scarpino

someone will remember us

I say

even in another time

Of Sappho’s writing: one complete poem and hundreds of fragments: torn pieces of papyrus—some found wrapped around Egyptian mummies—quotes included in ancient texts.

The ephemeral nature of art, time’s fickleness, a culture’s changing attitudes. Sappho translator Willis Barnstone writes, “But the best indication, perhaps, of the general availability of her works in the classical age lies in the number of quotations from her poems by grammarians, even late into Roman times, which suggests that both commentator and reader had ready access to the corpus of the work being quoted.” And, “About 380 C.E., Saint Gregory of Nazianzos, bishop of Constantinople, ordered the burning of Sappho’s writings wherever found.”

We can read Plato “virtually intact” and of Sappho, only pieces. A moment. A line. A breath.

I read and reread Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho. And I love the fragments, their expansiveness, how much can be said, deduced, understood with only a moment on the lips.

if not, winter

] no pain

I know what this means, exactly; I don’t need more narrative. How much a line of poetry can hold. How much of a story can be told without even one complete sentence. Or only one complete sentence:

Eros shook my

mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees

Doesn’t that say all that needs to be said?

Which is not to dismiss the sadness I feel for all those lost poems, the sadness that sexism and religious fervor nearly obliterated such a lovely voice. A voice deemed threatening.

At the end of his translation of Sappho’s work, Barnstone quotes from Stobaios’ fifth century Anthology:

“One evening, while drinking wine, the nephew of Solon the Athenian sang one of Sappho’s songs, and Solon liked it so much that he ordered the boy to teach it to him. When one of the company asked why he was learning it, he answered, ‘I want to learn it and die.’”

Can you imagine? A work so beautiful, sublime—lost to ash as libraries were burned to the ground, destroyed.

Again, Carson translates:

You got there first: beautiful [

and the clothes[

And I think, yes. To write with such richness that even a fragment, a torn piece of text, can say all that needs to be said. This should be each of our goals, shouldn’t it? To make every word count. To make every moment shine.

Quoting Myself, Better than "Selfies"

Lyric consciousness is “stripped” consciousness. The word is menacing because the world is invariably opposed to youth, sexual freedom, multi-racial identities, disabilities, the poor…

Autumn in the Boat

autumn in the boat

wind peaceful,

leaves and images falling–

I reckon every time

life forsakes me

clouds are bright

and there’s water on both sides…

–Niilo Rauhala

(Translated from the Finnish by SK)

Just Go On

I just go on writing poems. Shadows in the weeds. Everything fragrant. Late summer. In general my life has been composed of mistake after mistake. When I’m feeling kind toward myself I say this is “being human”–but every minute has a different name for sorrow. “What about joy?” you ask. Joy has ten fingers and once face. Peek-a-boo. A few thoughts in the morning garden. Miracle trees and clouds. I laugh like hell at a sparrow who looks like James Cagney. I’m blind. How do I know? I know.

I Mean What I Say

I’m writing today’s name:

broken footed table.

I carry the table into tomorrow’s garden

where sparrows walk over it.

Disability and the March on Washington

The poet Issa said “I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind” and today I’m waving my skinny arms. Waving and flapping. For I’ve just watched speeches from today’s “Fiftieth Anniversary” of Martin Luther King Jr’s march on Washington and Lordy I’m hearing from the MSNBC pundit crowd that nowadays civil rights means more than just our ethnic identity–it means LGBT and Latino. And no one says the “D” word. Disability wasn’t spoken from the rostrum or in the talking heads section. I was not surprised for neo-liberal culture has a hang up with disability and that’s nothing new. But I’m flapping out here in the wind. Will probably do it all my days.

As Issa would say: “before birth, after birth, that’s where you are now”–let’s just keep shining out here in the meadow like a red hot autumn chrysanthemum.