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Saturday 27 June 2009

THE SONG OF THE CASTAWAYS






Born in Montbéliard, 11 November 1952,
Jean-Michel Maulpoix has published poetry,
including A History of blue, the writer imagined,
Public Domain, and not on snow,published
in the Mercure de France. He also published critical studies on Henri Michaux, Jacques Réda and René Char,
as well as testing general poetic
(including poetry nevertheless poetry as lovepoetry and Du). Her writing, which constantly interact prose and poetry,
claiming volontiers a "critical lyricism.
Jean-Michel Maulpoix directs the quarterly journal of literature
and criticism New Series (ed. Field valley Seyssel 01420)
Alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud,
modern literature, and author of a doctoral thesis on state
"notion of lyricism, he teaches modern poetry at the University
of Paris X-Nanterre where He also hosts a team of research
entitled "MonitoringoFcontemporary poetry -
------- photo Tony Elieh






"The song of the castaways
Poem extracted from « Dans l'interstice » (« Through the chinks… »
by Jean-Michel MAULPOIX, & Fata Morgana, publ., 1991
Translated by Catherine Wieder

We are the wrecked castaways of language
To and fro do we wander from one country to another, clinging on to the floated woods of our
phrases
Such are the remains of an old vessel crashed so long ago
But desire still plots whilst we ship adrift
And sculpt in those planks statuettes of sirens with blue hair
And go on singing with those very same lungs

Let us repeat the sea
Do not bring any stupid trial to the blue

The sea, clinging on to the sea
Shivers and slides on the sea
Its movements of a skirt,
its blows of the shoulders, its redundancies
And all this blue coming to us on the wide flats of the sea
We like the way the small craft passes and goes
Swaying from one wave to another, dancing its fluttering turmoil to meet the sea again
And its weird jingling sound
When music unfolds itself on the huge score of the sea


The sea mingles with the sea
Mixes its lakes and puddles
Its ideas of gulls and foams
Its dreams of seaweeds and cormorants
With its heavy blue chrysanthemums from the open sea
With clumps of forget-me-nots on the white walls of the islands
With the bruises of the horizon
With switched off light-houses
With the dreams of the unfathomable sky

The sea is a fallen blue sky
Long ago did the sky indeed lose its keys in the sea
Under which suns should we from now on lose ourselves ?
On which shoulder will we rest the fever of our wet head ?
Our dreams are birds' feet on the sand
Fragments of nails cut a few inches away from the sea
We burn on the beach huge heaps of corpses
Since such are the words with their bones and smokes

Heaps of thighbones and metacarpusses
A pyre of sweet-smelling blades of grass and crackling powders
A dry meadow would be kindled next to the sea
High flames headlong jumping among the brooms
And all of a sudden a woman's chest erected in the spluttering
Offered to that mad love
Throwing towards heaven the long moan
Of he who scorched his heart

Alone, does he walk towards her, on the narrow granite jetty
Embarking his perishable body towards nothing
She remains the huge lying shape, running towards him
Throwing towards him her flurries and petticoats

Lo ! here does he stand,
He the small man, standing up straight on the dyke with his pencil
Tightly pressed against her, but apart
Both so close and yet losing sight of each other
Pressing on to each other, their hearts badly anchored

The blue bathes a little that small body of a man
The blue catches him in its nets
A speck of flesh or chip of bashful love
A tuft of light between his palms
Stained with deep ink
Lips tightly closed by the wave
Muted, having nothing to reply to the open blue
Voiceless in the water's maze
Why can't we put out our roots in the sea
As drowned men and weeds do ?
We would easily carry on our shoulders

The never fading blue sky
Which however dreams of colours and hues
And the lukewarm wool of the foams
And the poisonous fruits of the open sea
In which no human lip did ever bite
Thus would we return to the infinite garden

We won't fill the sea with our tears
We'd rather support with our songs the efforts of the storms
Throwing their cries and leaches on to our heads
And when our watery eyes no longer see anything
We'll know better still what the sea is
The scales covering our hearts will have fallen
And our nacreous skin will at last be so white
That we would no longer fear the mad love of the sirens

Cheers to the skies of the open sea
So will we drink from chalices and ciboriums
Gluttunously will we drink the sea
No water will ever quench our thirst
We are thirsty of the salt
Our lips are greedy
In the blue sea, it's always Sunday
When gold fishes kneel

Since the days when the floodtide started carrying us
We started a liking for eternity
Water has gotten into our head
And crystal droplets in our blood
We hardly remember our fellow creatures
Whose gardens fade
And whose children grow
Our heart is so blue.

Saturday 20 June 2009

A STRANGE SHEPHERD




Elşen Hudiyev

Elşen Hudiyev or Elshen Khudiyev (born 1980) is Turkish contemporary poet and essayist. After receiving his degree in Political Science and International Relations from Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences of Bosphorus University , he worked different positions but never reached stable life. His early works proved to be premature, but later especially with the series of "Abnormal Poetry" he achieved deep emotional, symbolic and pessimistic style. Mainly concerns with global problems rather than local, he writes in turkish and very rarely in azeri. His poetry mainly based on free verse, however he had some haiku and sonnets too. He is important literary figure because his poetry can described as 'new wave poetry of Azerbaijan' and he is the second poet afterHuseyn Javid writing in turkish rather than native azeri language. In his prose he touches problematic issues such as prejudice, lie and another human controversies. Although he is arguing that his essays are non-philosophical, some deep philosophy sacred behind his plain dialogue based essays. In this manner his works look like a catechisis book of humanism.
A Strange Shepherd
I do not want the storm, composure
worse.
I can not love the sun, the nigh
will bring heartbreak.
To cry of joy was the last point
Loneliness disgust, love severe pain.

Do you have that, do you have that,
it is a human?
All things are separate from the
middle.

Not a mite on black and white,
What in the dark, keep the light
quark

I was crying with joy when you wrap.
I wanted to like the light of the
sun,
Night when you cried.

I was alone in the night searching
for you.
Night storm was more than alone.
I was alone when the sun yellow.

Monday 15 June 2009

SUNDAY EVENING


--Johan on Couch, 1925 - Edward Weston photo


Sunday Evening
Toni Davis (Aus) Catherine Mair (NZ)
aiming the fly spray at the curtain
I cough and the shadow rises feeling
the flush of wine in my cheeks
fluttering downwards to old drunkedness
still zooming above our heads & the unwashed dishes
another day settles around the sink
resting her head on the old woman's crocheted rug
darkness descends and the start of a dream

Tuesday 9 June 2009

LITTLE FLY



Little Fly

Thy summers play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath;
And the want
of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

Friday 5 June 2009

MYSTERY...


JIMENEZ DEREDIA

Thursday 4 June 2009

TRISTAN TZARA


























The Great Lament Of My Obscurity Three


by Tristan Tzara



where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the
in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies
my son
my son
let us always shuffle through the colour of the world
which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouth
our legs are stiff and knock together
our faces are formeless like the stars
crystal points without strength burned basilica
mad : the zigzags crack
telephone
bite the rigging liquefy
the arc
climb
astral
memory
towards the north through its double fruit
like raw flesh
hunger fire blood


Tristan Tzara (April 16, 1896 - December 25, 1963) is the pseudonym of Sami Rosenstock, born in Moinesti, Bacău, Romania. A poet and essayist who lived for the majority of his life in France, he is known mainly as a founder of Dada, a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts.


Tuesday 2 June 2009

TAKAKO ARAI













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When the Moon Rises

It is the night shift in an abandoned spinning
factory
There is only a single light bulb here
The spools of thread turn by themselves
Click goes the bobbins
Changed by the machines
It has already been a decade
Since this place shut down
But when the moon rises, it begins to work
Its strange automation
They say soon after the war
A factory worker’s hair got tangled
In the machines, killing her
There are things that float here
But this is not the work of ghosts
No
In the factory
There are peculiar habits
That is what I mean
Peculiar habits remain here
An old lady who spun thread
For forty-four years here
Still licks her index finger and twists
Even on her deathbed
She cannot escape that gesture
That must be true in the netherworld too
Since threads are so infinitely thin
The gestures sink into the bodies
Of those who manipulate the machines
They possess them Look
How the raw silk thread
Is pulled smoothly
From the factory woman’s fingers
Then dances endlessly
The factory is that way too
The axle of the spinning whee
Remembers
The molecules of steel
Hang their heads in the
Direction in which they spin
Then get caught up
Clanging emptily
When the moonlight pours in
It is not just the tide that is full
Emptily
Emptily
The spinning wheels spin
The threads swim
Through the abandoned factory

Translation by Jeffrey Angles