Karen Russell quote

Re-reading Karen Russell's Swamplandia! and just had to share this:


“But in fact I was like Ossie, in this one regard: I was consumed by a helpless, often furious love for a ghost. Every rock on the island, every swaying tree branch or dirty dish in our house was like a word in a sentence that I could read about my mother. All objects and events on our island, every single thing that you could see with your eyes, were like clues that I could use to reinvent her: would our mom love this thing, would she hate it? For a second I luxuriated in a real hatred of my brother.” 
-Karen Russell, Swamplandia!

Quote

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Oscar Wilde

Four Skinny Trees

An excerpt from "The House on Mango Street", one of my favorite books

Four Skinny Trees

     "They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who
understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like 
mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted 
by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny just sleeps and doesn’t 
appreciate these things.
      Their strength is their secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the
ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their
hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is 
how they keep.
      Let one forget his reason for being, they’d all droop like tulips in a glass, 
each with their arms around the other. Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. 
They teach.
      When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing 
against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to 
look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do 
not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be."

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” 
― Pablo Neruda, Love: Ten Poems

Poem

"Small gestures 
are like smoke, a slight breeze causes a drifting
and we are bare again...uneternal."
-Michael McClure


Just thought this was beautiful...

Larry Levis

I love Larry Levis. For some weird reason his poetry sometimes reminds me of Pablo 

Neruda's--long, winding, loose but at the same time concise in its specificity. 

But Levis differs from Neruda in an important way; Neruda writes about fullness where 

Levis writes about absence. And this is partly what is so haunting about his work. 



"Sometimes, I go out into this yard at night, 
And stare through the wet branches of an oak 
In winter, & realize I am looking at the stars
Again. A thin haze of them, shining 
And persisting."

-from "Winter Stars"




Also:



"Then, everything slept.

The sky & the fields slept all the way to the Pacific,

And the houses slept.

The orchards blackened in their sleep,

And, outside my window, the aging Palomino slept

Standing up in the moonlight, with one rear hoof slightly cocked,

And the moonlight slept.

The white dust slept between the rows of vines,

And the quail slept perfectly, like untouched triangles.

The hawk slept alone, apart from this world. . . .

. . . And the prostitutes slept, as always,

With the small-time businessmen, their hair smelling of pomade,

Who did not dream.

Dice slept in the hands of the town’s one gambler, & outside

His window, the brown grass slept,

And beyond that, in a low stand of trees, ashes slept. . . . 
"

-from "The Cry"

And just to contrast, here's Neruda:

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood. 

Pablo Neruda

While Neruda looks at what is there (love), Levis prefers tackling what's unsaid, unseen, etc. "Sometimes, I go out into this yard at night,/...and realize I am looking at the stars/Again" 

On a more technical level, in terms of language, you can see that they both use a lot of repetition, Neruda's "waiting to not waiting for you", and Levis's "Standing up in the moonlight.../
And the moonlight slept." This repetition lends a flow to the otherwise long, winding verse. (You can see this more clearly in some of Neruda's other poetry, I chose this example more for the subject than the structure.)

Random connection, I know. But it's kind of fun to contrast them. 

Break from writing

So... I accidentally posted this to my class blog yesterday. Yeah... technology and I don't get along all the time. 


My excuse last night for posting it was that the kids were very "direct" in their language... but I'm not going to lie. It doesn't have a lot to do with poetry. But it's a nice break from it. Or work, or whatever you're doing. 

This one's my personal favorite. : ) 

http://www.boredpanda.com/honest-notes-from-kids/