An Introduction to Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda: Romantic, Radical & Revolutionary

in Literature, Poetry | July 31st, 2019

Does pol­i­tics belong in art? The ques­tion arous­es heat­ed debate about cre­ative free­dom and moral respon­si­bil­i­ty. Assump­tions include the idea that pol­i­tics cheap­ens film, music, or lit­er­a­ture, or that polit­i­cal art should aban­don tra­di­tion­al ideas about beau­ty and tech­nique. As engag­ing as such dis­cus­sions might be in the abstract, they mean lit­tle to noth­ing if they don’t account for artists who show us that choos­ing between pol­i­tics and art can be as much a false dilem­ma as choos­ing between art and love.

In the work of writ­ers as var­ied as William Blake, Muriel Rukeyser, James Bald­win, and James Joyce, for exam­ple, themes of protest, pow­er, priv­i­lege, and pover­ty are insep­a­ra­ble from the sub­lime­ly erotic—all of them essen­tial aspects of human expe­ri­ence, and hence, of lit­er­a­ture. Fore­most among such polit­i­cal artists stands Chilean poet Pablo Neru­da, who—as the TED-Ed video above from Ilan Sta­vans informs us—was a roman­tic styl­ist, and also a fear­less polit­i­cal activist and rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

Neru­da won the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1971, and, among his many oth­er lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments, he “res­cued 2,000 refugees, spent three years in polit­i­cal exile, and ran for pres­i­dent of Chile.” Neru­da used “straight­for­ward lan­guage and every­day expe­ri­ence to cre­ate last­ing impact.” He began his career writ­ing odes and love poems filled with can­did sex­u­al­i­ty and sen­su­ous descrip­tion that res­onat­ed with read­ers around the world.

Neruda’s inter­na­tion­al fame led to a series of diplo­mat­ic posts, and he even­tu­al­ly land­ed in Spain, where he served as con­sul in the mid-1930s dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War. He became a com­mit­ted com­mu­nist, and helped relo­cate hun­dreds of flee­ing Spaniards to Chile. Neru­da came to believe that “the work of art” is “insep­a­ra­ble from his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text,” writes author Sal­va­tore Biz­zarro, and he “felt that the belief that one could write sole­ly for eter­ni­ty was roman­tic pos­tur­ing.”

Yet his life­long devo­tion to “rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideals,” as Sta­vans says, did not under­mine his devo­tion to poet­ry, nor did it blink­er his writ­ing with what we might call polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. Instead, Neru­da became more expan­sive, tak­ing on such sub­jects as the “entire his­to­ry of Latin Amer­i­ca” in his 1950 epic Can­to Gen­er­al.

Neru­da died of can­cer just weeks after fas­cist dic­ta­tor Augus­to Pinochet seized pow­er from elect­ed pres­i­dent Sal­vador Allende in 1973. Today, he remains a beloved fig­ure for activists, his lines “recit­ed at protests and march­es world­wide.” And he remains a lit­er­ary giant, respect­ed, admired, and adored world­wide for work in which he engaged the strug­gles of the peo­ple with the same pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty and imag­i­na­tive breadth he brought to per­son­al poems of love, loss, and desire.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pablo Neruda’s His­toric First Read­ing in the US (1966)

Pablo Neruda’s Poem, “The Me Bird,” Becomes a Short, Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

The Lost Poems of Pablo Neru­da: Help Bring Them to the Eng­lish Speak­ing World for the First Time

Hear Pablo Neru­da Read His Poet­ry In Eng­lish For the First Time, Days Before His Nobel Prize Accep­tance (1971)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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A 9th Century Manuscript Teaches Astronomy by Making Sublime Pictures Out of Words

in Art, Books, Poetry | July 23rd, 2019

Con­crete or visu­al poet­ry does not get much respect these days. Terse­ly defined at the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion as “verse that empha­sizes non­lin­guis­tic ele­ments in its mean­ing” arranged to cre­ate “a visu­al image of the top­ic,” the form looks like a clever but friv­o­lous nov­el­ty in our very seri­ous times. It has seemed so in times past as well.

When Guil­laume Apol­li­naire pub­lished his 1918 Cal­ligrammes, his major col­lec­tion of poems after he fought on the front lines of the first world war, he includ­ed sev­er­al visu­al poems. Crit­ics like Louis Aragon, “at his most hard-nosed,” notes Stephen Romer at The Guardian, “crit­i­cized it sharply for its aes­theti­cism and friv­o­li­ty.”

Apol­li­naire also wrote of war as a daz­zling spec­ta­cle, a ten­den­cy that “raised the hack­les of crit­ics.” One can see there is moral mer­it to the objec­tion, even if it mis­reads Apol­li­naire. But why should visu­al poet­ry not cred­i­bly illus­trate phe­nom­e­na we find sub­lime, just as well as it illus­trates pot­ted Christ­mas trees?

Indeed, the form has always done so, argues pro­lif­ic visu­al poet Karl Kemp­ton, until it took a “dystopi­an” turn after World War I. In his vast his­to­ry of visu­al poet­ry, Kemp­ton reach­es back into ancient Bud­dhist, Sufi, Euro­pean, and Indige­nous cul­tur­al his­to­ry. Forms of visu­al poet­ry, he writes, “are asso­ci­at­ed with ongo­ing tra­di­tions and numer­ous unfold­ing path­ways trace­able to humankind’s ear­li­est sur­viv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion marks.”

Not as ancient as the exam­ples into which Kemp­ton first dives, the pages here from a man­u­script called the Aratea nonethe­less show us a use of the form that dates back over 1000 years, and incor­po­rates “near­ly 2000 years of cul­tur­al his­to­ry,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review. “Mak­ing use of two Roman texts on astron­o­my writ­ten in the 1st cen­tu­ry BC, the man­u­script was cre­at­ed in North­ern France in about 1820.”

The text that has been arranged into images wasn’t orig­i­nal­ly poet­ry, though one might argue that arrang­ing it thus makes us read it that way. Instead, the words are tak­en from Hygi­nus’ Astro­nom­i­ca, a “star atlas and book of sto­ries” of somewhat uncer­tain ori­gin. The poems in lined verse below each image are by 3rd cen­tu­ry BC Greek poet Ara­tus (hence the title), “trans­lat­ed into Latin by young Cicero.”

If this feels like hefty mate­r­i­al for a lit­er­ary pro­duc­tion that might seem more whim­si­cal than awe-inspir­ing, we must con­sid­er that the manuscript’s first—and nec­es­sar­i­ly few—readers would have seen it dif­fer­ent­ly. The text is a visu­al mnemon­ic device, the red dots show­ing the posi­tions of the stars in the con­stel­la­tions: an aes­thet­ic ped­a­gogy that threads togeth­er visu­al per­cep­tion, mem­o­ry, imag­i­na­tion, and cog­ni­tion.

“The pas­sages used to form the images describe the con­stel­la­tion which they cre­ate on the page,” the Pub­lic Domain Review writes, “and in this way they become tied to one anoth­er: nei­ther the words nor the images would make full sense with­out the oth­er to com­plete the scene.” We are encour­aged to read the stars through art and lit­er­a­ture and to read poet­ry with an illus­trat­ed mytho­log­i­cal star chart in hand.

The Aratea is a fas­ci­nat­ing man­u­script not only for its visu­al­ly poet­ic illu­mi­na­tions, but also for its sig­nif­i­cance across sev­er­al spans of time. Its phys­i­cal exis­tence is nec­es­sar­i­ly tied to the British Library where it resides. One of the institution’s first arti­facts, it was “sold to the nation in 1752 under the same Act of Par­lia­ment which cre­at­ed the British Muse­um.”

“Part of a larg­er mis­cel­lany of sci­en­tif­ic works,” includ­ing sev­er­al notes and com­men­taries on nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy, as the British Library describes it, the medieval text uses clas­si­cal sources to con­tem­plate the heav­ens in a form that is not only pre-Chris­t­ian and pre-Roman, but per­haps, as Kemp­ton argues, dates to the ori­gins of writ­ing itself.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Fan­tas­ti­cal Illus­tra­tions from the 13th Cen­tu­ry Ara­bic Man­u­script Mar­vels of Things Cre­at­ed and Mirac­u­lous Aspects of Things Exist­ing

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Joy Harjo, Newly-Appointed U.S. Poet Laureate, Reads Her Poems, “Remember,” “A Poem to Get Rid of Fear,” “An American Sunrise” and More

in Poetry | June 26th, 2019

In Car­olyn Forché’s stun­ning new mem­oir, What You Have Heard is True, the poet and activist makes a sad obser­va­tion about poet­ry in Amer­i­ca. When it is “men­tioned in the Amer­i­can press, if it is men­tioned, the sto­ry begins with ‘Poet­ry doesn’t mat­ter,’ or ‘No one reads poet­ry.’ No mat­ter what is said. It doesn’t mat­ter.”

But of course, Forché believed poet­ry mat­tered a great deal—that we need it in the strug­gle “against for­get­ting,” a phrase she took from Milan Kun­dera for the title of an anthol­o­gy of the “poet­ry of wit­ness.” Poets resist injus­tice and inhu­man­i­ty, she says “by virtue of recu­per­at­ing from the human soul its nat­ur­al prayer and con­scious­ness.”

Such a poet is Joy Har­jo, new­ly appoint­ed Poet Lau­re­ate in the Unit­ed States, the first Native Amer­i­can woman to hold the post. Har­jo asks us to remember—to remem­ber espe­cial­ly that the grand sweep of his­to­ry can­not sev­er us from the nat­ur­al world of which we are an inex­tri­ca­ble part, and which is itself the source of “the dance lan­guage is.”

Remem­ber the plants, trees, ani­mal life who all have 
      their
tribes, their fam­i­lies, their his­to­ries, too. Talk to 
      them,
lis­ten to them. They are alive poems.

The stargaz­ing, tree-hug­ging exhor­ta­tions in “Remem­ber” are rad­i­cal state­ments in every sense of the word. Maybe poet­ry doesn’t mat­ter much to most Amer­i­cans. We can­not, as William Car­los Williams wrote, “get the news from poems,” and our hunger for fresh news is nev­er sat­ed. But maybe what we find in poet­ry is far bet­ter suit­ed to sav­ing our lives, offer­ing a release, for exam­ple, from fear, as Har­jo speak/sings in her charis­mat­ic per­for­mance from HBO’s Def Poet­ry Jam in 2002.

Har­jo remem­bers the hor­rors her ances­tors endured, and tells the fear that fol­lowed through the cen­turies, “I release you. You were my beloved and hat­ed twin. But now I don’t know you as myself.” A mem­ber of the Muskoke/Creek Nation, Har­jo was born in Tul­sa, Okla­homa in 1951 and earned her MFA from the Iowa Writ­ers Work­shop in 1978. She went on to pub­lish sev­er­al books of poet­ry and non­fic­tion and win mul­ti­ple pres­ti­gious awards while also per­form­ing poet­ry across the coun­try and play­ing sax­o­phone with her band Poet­ic Jus­tice.

Her soul­ful deliv­ery con­veys a fun­da­men­tal­ly Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence of the strug­gle against era­sure, a strug­gle against pow­er that is waged, as Kun­dera wrote, with the weapon of remem­ber­ing. Echo­ing Langston Hugh­es, Har­jo weaves the sto­ry of her com­mu­ni­ty back into the coun­try’s past and its present—a sto­ry that includes with­in it demands for jus­tice that will not be for­got­ten. Poet­ry should mat­ter far more to us than it does. But those who hear the country’s newest Lau­re­ate may find she is exact­ly the fear­less voice we need to remind us of our unavoid­able con­nec­tions to the past, the earth, and our respon­si­bil­i­ties to each oth­er.

Har­jo stopped by the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets this month in cel­e­bra­tion of her appoint­ment. Just above, see her read “An Amer­i­can Sun­rise.” “We are still Amer­i­ca,” she says, “We / know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die / soon.”

These read­ing will be added to the Poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mary Oliv­er (RIP) Read Five of Her Poems: “The Sum­mer Day,” “Lit­tle Dog’s Rhap­sody in the Night,” “Many Miles” and “Night and the Riv­er”

“PoemTalk” Pod­cast, Where Impre­sario Al Fil­reis Hosts Live­ly Chats on Mod­ern Poet­ry

An 8‑Hour Marathon Read­ing of 500 Emi­ly Dick­in­son Poems

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Patti Smith’s New Tribute to the Avant-Garde Poet Antonin Artaud

in Life, Music, Poetry, Psychology | May 27th, 2019

The force of Artaud, you couldn’t kill him! — Pat­ti Smith

Found sound enthu­si­asts Sound­walk Col­lec­tive join forces with the God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith for “Ivry,” the musi­cal trib­ute to poet and the­ater­mak­er Antonin Artaud, above.

The track, fea­tur­ing Smith’s hyp­not­ic impro­vised nar­ra­tion, alter­nate­ly spo­ken and sung over Tarahu­mara gui­tars, Cha­pareke snare drums, and Chi­huahua bells from Mex­i­co’s Sier­ra Tarahu­mara, the region that pro­vid­ed the set­ting for Artaud’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal The Pey­ote Dance, has the sooth­ing qual­i­ty of lul­la­bies from such pop­u­lar children’s music Folk Revival­ists as Eliz­a­beth Mitchell and Dan Zanes.

We’d refrain from show­ing the kid­dies this video, though, espe­cial­ly at bed­time.

It begins inno­cent­ly enough with mir­ror images of the beau­ti­ful Artaud—as the Dean of Rouen in 1928’s silent clas­sic The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc, and lat­er in the pri­vate psy­chi­atric clin­ic in Ivry-sur-Seine where he end­ed his days.

Things get much rougher in the final moments, as befits the founder of the The­ater of Cru­el­ty, an avant-garde per­for­mance move­ment that employed scenes of hor­ri­fy­ing vio­lence to shock the audi­ence out of their pre­sumed com­pla­cen­cy.

Noth­ing quite so hairy as Artaud’s vir­tu­al­ly unpro­duce­able short play, Jet of Blood—or, for that mat­ter, Game of Thrones—but we all remem­ber what hap­pened to Joan of Arc, right? (Not to men­tion the gris­ly fate of the many peas­ants whose names his­to­ry fails to note…)

In-between is footage of indige­nous Rará­muri (or Tarahu­mara) tribes­peo­ple enact­ing tra­di­tion­al rit­u­als—the mir­rors on their head­dress­es and the film­mak­ers’ use of reflec­tive sym­me­try hon­or­ing their belief that the after­life mir­rors the mor­tal world.

“Ivry” is the penul­ti­mate track on a brand new Artaud-themed album, also titled The Pey­ote Dance, which delves into the impulse toward expand­ed vision that pro­pelled the artist to Mex­i­co in the 1930s.

Pri­or to bring­ing Smith into the stu­dio, mem­bers of Sound­walk Col­lec­tive revis­it­ed Artaud’s jour­ney through that coun­try (includ­ing a cave in which he once lived), amass­ing stones, sand, leaves, and hand­made Rará­muri instru­ments to “awak­en the landscape’s sleep­ing mem­o­ries and uncov­er the space’s son­ic gram­mar.”

This mis­sion is def­i­nite­ly in keep­ing with Smith’s prac­tice of mak­ing pil­grim­ages and col­lect­ing relics.

The Pey­ote Dance is the first entry in a trip­tych titled The Per­fect Vision. Tune in lat­er this year to trav­el to Ethiopia’s Abyssin­ian val­ley in con­sid­er­a­tion of anoth­er Smith favorite, poet Arthur Rim­baud, and the Indi­an Himalayas, in hon­or of spir­i­tu­al Sur­re­al­ist René Dau­mal, whose alle­gor­i­cal nov­el Mount Ana­logue: A Nov­el of Sym­bol­i­cal­ly Authen­tic Non-Euclid­ean Adven­tures in Moun­tain Climb­ing end­ed in mid-sen­tence, when he died at 36 from the effects of tuber­cu­lo­sis (and, quite pos­si­bly, youth­ful exper­i­ments with such psy­choac­tive chem­i­cals as car­bon tetra­chlo­ride.)

You can order Sound­walk Collective’s album, The Pey­ote Dance, which also fea­tures the work of actor Gael Gar­cía Bernal, here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Antonin Artaud’s Cen­sored, Nev­er-Aired Radio Play: To Have Done With The Judg­ment of God (1947)

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Dictionary of Words Invented to Name Emotions We All Feel, But Don’t Yet Have a Name For: Vemödalen, Sonder, Chrysalism & Much More

in English Language, Film, Life, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology | April 30th, 2019

Philoso­phers have always dis­trust­ed lan­guage for its slip­per­i­ness, its overuse, its propen­si­ty to deceive. Yet many of those same crit­ics have devised the most inven­tive terms to describe things no one had ever seen. The Philosopher’s Stone, the aether, mias­mas—images that made the inef­fa­ble con­crete, if still invis­i­bly gaseous.

It’s impor­tant for us to see the myr­i­ad ways our com­mon lan­guage fails to cap­ture the com­plex­i­ty of real­i­ty, ordi­nary and oth­er­wise. Ask any poet, writer, or lan­guage teacher to tell you about it—most of the words we use are too abstract, too worn out, decayed, or rusty. Maybe it takes either a poet or a philoso­pher to not only notice the many prob­lems with lan­guage, but to set about rem­e­dy­ing them.

Such are the qual­i­ties of the mind behind The Dic­tio­nary of Obscure Sor­rows, a project by graph­ic design­er and film­mak­er John Koenig. The blog, YouTube chan­nel, and soon-to-be book from Simon & Schus­ter has a sim­ple premise: it iden­ti­fies emo­tion­al states with­out names, and offers both a poet­ic term and a philosopher’s skill at pre­cise def­i­n­i­tion. Whether these words actu­al­ly enter the lan­guage almost seems beside the point, but so many of them seem bad­ly need­ed, and per­fect­ly craft­ed for their pur­pose.

Take one of the most pop­u­lar of these, the invent­ed word “Son­der,” which describes the sud­den real­iza­tion that every­one has a sto­ry, that “each ran­dom passer­by is liv­ing a life as vivid and com­plex as your own.” This shock can seem to enlarge or dimin­ish us, or both at the same time. Psy­chol­o­gists may have a term for it, but ordi­nary speech seemed lack­ing.

Son­der like­ly became as pop­u­lar as it did on social media because the theme “we’re all liv­ing con­nect­ed sto­ries” already res­onates with so much pop­u­lar cul­ture. Many of the Dictionary’s oth­er terms trend far more unam­bigu­ous­ly melan­choly, if not neurotic—hence “obscure sor­rows.” But they also range con­sid­er­ably in tone, from the rel­a­tive light­ness of Greek-ish neol­o­gism “Anecdoche”—“a con­ver­sa­tion in which every­one is talk­ing, but nobody is listening”—to the major­ly depres­sive “pâro”:

the feel­ing that no mat­ter what you do is always some­how wrong—as if there’s some obvi­ous way for­ward that every­body else can see but you, each of them lean­ing back in their chair and call­ing out help­ful­ly, “cold­er, cold­er, cold­er…”

Both the coinages and the def­i­n­i­tions illu­mi­nate each oth­er. Take “Énoue­ment,” defined as “the bit­ter­sweet­ness of hav­ing arrived in the future, see­ing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.” A psy­chol­o­gy of aging in the form of an elo­quent dic­tio­nary entry. Some­times the rela­tion­ship is less sub­tle, but still mag­i­cal, as in the far from sor­row­ful “Chrysal­ism: The amni­ot­ic tran­quil­i­ty of being indoors dur­ing a thun­der­storm.”

Some­times, it is not a word but a phrase that speaks most poignant­ly of emo­tions that we know exist but can­not cap­ture with­out dead­en­ing clichés. “Moment of Tan­gency” speaks poignant­ly of a meta­phys­i­cal phi­los­o­phy in verse. Like Son­der, this phrase draws on an image of inter­con­nect­ed­ness. But rather than tak­ing a per­spec­tive from within—from solip­sism to empathy—it takes the point of view of all pos­si­ble real­i­ties.

Watch the video for “Vemö­dalen: The Fear That Every­thing Has Already Been Done” up top. See sev­er­al more short films from the project here, includ­ing “Silience: The Bril­liant Artistry Hid­den All Around You”—if, that is, we could only pay atten­tion to it. Below, find 23 oth­er entries describ­ing emo­tions peo­ple feel, but can’t explain.

1. Son­der: The real­iza­tion that each passer­by has a life as vivid and com­plex as your own.
2. Opia: The ambigu­ous inten­si­ty of Look­ing some­one in the eye, which can feel simul­ta­ne­ous­ly inva­sive and vul­ner­a­ble.
3. Mona­chop­sis: The sub­tle but per­sis­tent feel­ing of being out of place.
4 Énoue­ment: The bit­ter­sweet­ness of hav­ing arrived in the future, see­ing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.
5. Vel­li­chor: The strange wist­ful­ness of used book­shops.
6. Rubato­sis: The unset­tling aware­ness of your own heart­beat.
7. Kenop­sia: The eerie, for­lorn atmos­phere of a place that is usu­al­ly bustling with peo­ple but is now aban­doned and qui­et.
8. Mauer­bauer­trau­rigkeit: The inex­plic­a­ble urge to push peo­ple away, even close friends who you real­ly like.
9. Jous­ka: A hypo­thet­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion that you com­pul­sive­ly play out in your head.
10. Chrysal­ism: The amni­ot­ic tran­quil­i­ty of being indoors dur­ing a thun­der­storm.
11. Vemö­dalen: The frus­tra­tion of pho­to­graph­ic some­thing amaz­ing when thou­sands of iden­ti­cal pho­tos already exist.
12. Anec­doche: A con­ver­sa­tion in which every­one is talk­ing, but nobody is lis­ten­ing
13. Ellip­sism: A sad­ness that you’ll nev­er be able to know how his­to­ry will turn out.
14. Kue­biko: A state of exhaus­tion inspired by acts of sense­less vio­lence.
15. Lach­esism: The desire to be struck by dis­as­ter – to sur­vive a plane crash, or to lose every­thing in a fire.
16. Exu­lan­sis: The ten­den­cy to give up try­ing to talk about an expe­ri­ence because peo­ple are unable to relate to it.
17. Adroni­tis: Frus­tra­tion with how long it takes to get to know some­one.
18. Rück­kehrun­ruhe: The feel­ing of return­ing home after an immer­sive trip only to find it fad­ing rapid­ly from your aware­ness.
19. Nodus Tol­lens: The real­iza­tion that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you any­more.
20. Onism: The frus­tra­tion of being stuck in just one body, that inhab­its only one place at a time.
21. Libero­sis: The desire to care less about things.
22. Altschmerz: Weari­ness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same bor­ing flaws and anx­i­eties that you’ve been gnaw­ing on for years.
23. Occhi­olism: The aware­ness of the small­ness of your per­spec­tive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

How a Word Enters the Dic­tio­nary: A Quick Primer

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Billy Collins Teaches Poetry in a New Online Course

in Online Courses, Poetry | April 19th, 2019

In its lat­est release, Mas­ter­class has launched a new course, “Bil­ly Collins Teach­es Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry,” which they describe in the trail­er above and the text below. You can sign up here. The cost is $90. Or pay $180 and get an annu­al pass to their entire cat­a­logue of cours­es cov­er­ing a wide range of sub­jects–every­thing from film­mak­ing (Wern­er Her­zog, David Lynch, Mar­tin Scors­ese), to act­ing (Helen Mir­ren) and cre­ative writ­ing (Mar­garet Atwood), to tak­ing pho­tographs (Annie Lei­bovitz) and writ­ing plays (David Mamet). Each course is taught by an emi­nent fig­ure in their field.

Known for his wit, humor, and pro­found insight, Bil­ly is one of the best-sell­ing and most beloved con­tem­po­rary poets in the Unit­ed States. He reg­u­lar­ly sells out poet­ry read­ings, fre­quent­ly charms lis­ten­ers on NPR’s A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion, and his work has appeared in antholo­gies, text­books, and peri­od­i­cals around the world.

Called “America’s Favorite Poet” by the Wall Street Jour­nal, Bil­ly served two terms as U.S. Poet Lau­re­ate and is also a for­mer New York State Poet Lau­re­ate. He’s been hon­ored with the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poet­ry and a num­ber of pres­ti­gious fel­low­ships. He’s taught at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, Sarah Lawrence, and Lehman Col­lege, and he’s also a dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. Now he’s teach­ing his first-ever Mas­ter­Class.

In his Mas­ter­Class on Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry, Bil­ly teach­es you the build­ing blocks of poems and their unique pow­er to con­nect read­er and writer. From sub­ject and form to rhyme and meter, learn to appre­ci­ate the plea­sures of a well-turned poem. Dis­cov­er Billy’s phi­los­o­phy on the craft of poet­ry and learn how he cre­ates a poet’s per­sona, incor­po­rates humor, and lets imag­i­na­tion lead the way. By break­ing down his own approach to com­pos­ing poet­ry and enjoy­ing the work of oth­ers, Bil­ly invites stu­dents to explore the gifts poet­ry has to offer.

In this online poet­ry class, you’ll learn about:
• Using humor as a seri­ous strat­e­gy
• The fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of poet­ry
• Billy’s writ­ing process
• Turn­ing a poem
• Explor­ing sub­jects
• Rhyme and meter
• Sound plea­sures
• Find­ing your voice
• Using form to engage read­ers
• The visu­al dis­tinc­tions of poet­ry

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ani­ma­tion of Bil­ly Collins’ Poet­ry: Every­day Moments in Motion

Stream Bil­ly Collins’ Album, The Best Cig­a­rette, Free Online

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

 

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700 Years of Persian Manuscripts Now Digitized and Available Online

in Archives, Art, Books, Literature, Poetry, Religion | April 5th, 2019

Too often those in pow­er lump thou­sands of years of Mid­dle East­ern reli­gion and cul­ture into mono­lith­ic enti­ties to be feared or per­se­cut­ed. But at least one gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion is doing exact­ly the oppo­site. For Nowruz, the Per­sian New Year, the Library of Con­gress has released a dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of its rare Per­sian-lan­guage man­u­scripts, an archive span­ning 700 years. This free resource opens win­dows on diverse reli­gious, nation­al, lin­guis­tic, and cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, most, but not all, Islam­ic, yet all dif­fer­ent from each oth­er in com­plex and strik­ing ways.

“We nowa­days are pro­grammed to think Per­sia equates with Iran, but when you look at this it is a mul­ti­re­gion­al col­lec­tion,” says a Library spe­cial­ist in its African and Mid­dle East­ern Divi­sion, Hirad Dinavari. “Many con­tributed to it. Some were Indi­an, some were Tur­kic, Cen­tral Asian.” The “deep, cos­mopoli­tan archive,” as Atlas Obscura’s Jonathan Carey writes, con­sists of a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of manuscripts—only 155. That may not seem par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant giv­en the enor­mi­ty of some oth­er online col­lec­tions.

But its qual­i­ty and vari­ety mark it as espe­cial­ly valu­able, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of much larg­er bod­ies of work in the arts, sci­ences, reli­gion, and phi­los­o­phy, dat­ing back to the 13th cen­tu­ry and span­ning regions from India to Cen­tral Asia and the Cau­cus­es, “in addi­tion to the native Per­sian speak­ing lands of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajik­istan,” the LoC notes.

Promi­nent­ly rep­re­sent­ed are works like the epic poem of pre-Islam­ic Per­sia, the Shah­namah, “likened to the Ili­ad or the Odyssey,” writes Carey, as well as “writ­ten accounts of the life of Shah Jahan, the 17th-cen­tu­ry Mughal emper­or who over­saw con­struc­tion of the Taj Mahal.”

The Library points out the archive includes the “most beloved poems of the Per­sian poets Saa­di, Hafez, Rumi and Jami, along with the works of the poet Niza­mi Gan­javi.” Some read­ers might be sur­prised at the pic­to­r­i­al opu­lence of so many Islam­ic texts, with their col­or­ful, styl­ized bat­tle scenes and group­ings of human fig­ures.

Islam­ic art is typ­i­cal­ly thought of as icon­o­clas­tic, but as in Chris­t­ian Europe and North Amer­i­ca, cer­tain sects have fought oth­ers over this inter­pre­ta­tion (includ­ing over depic­tions of the Prophet Moham­mad). This is not to say that the icon­o­clasts deserve less atten­tion. Much medieval and ear­ly mod­ern Islam­ic art uses intri­cate pat­terns, designs, and cal­lig­ra­phy while scrupu­lous­ly avoid­ing like­ness­es of humans and ani­mals. It is deeply mov­ing in its own way, rig­or­ous­ly detailed and pas­sion­ate­ly exe­cut­ed, full of math­e­mat­i­cal and aes­thet­ic ideas about shape, pro­por­tion, col­or, and line that have inspired artists around the world for cen­turies.

The page from a lav­ish­ly illu­mi­nat­ed Qur’ān, above, cir­ca 1708, offers such an exam­ple, writ­ten in Ara­bic with an inter­lin­ear Per­sian trans­la­tion. There are reli­gious texts from oth­er faiths, like the Psalms in Hebrew with Per­sian trans­la­tion, there are sci­en­tif­ic texts and maps: the Rare Per­sian-Lan­guage Man­u­script Col­lec­tion cov­ers a lot of his­tor­i­cal ground, as has Per­sian lan­guage and cul­ture “from the 10th cen­tu­ry to the present,” the Library writes. Such a rich tra­di­tion deserves care­ful study and appre­ci­a­tion. Begin an edu­ca­tion in Per­sian man­u­script his­to­ry here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

15,000 Col­or­ful Images of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Online, Cour­tesy of the British Library

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

800+ Trea­sured Medieval Man­u­scripts to Be Dig­i­tized by Cam­bridge & Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ties

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti Turns 100: Hear the Great San Francisco Poet Read “Trump’s Trojan Horse,” “Pity the Nation” & Many Other Poems

in Audio Books, Poetry | March 24th, 2019

It has been a sea­son of mourn­ing for lit­er­a­ture: first the death of Mary Oliv­er and now W.S. Mer­win, two writ­ers who left a con­sid­er­able imprint on over half a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can poet­ry. Con­sid­er­ing the fact that found­ing father of the Beats and pro­pri­etor of world-renowned City Lights Book­store, Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, turns 100 on March 24th, maybe a few more peo­ple have glanced over to check on him. How’s he doing?

He’s grown “frail and near­ly blind,” writes Chloe Velt­man at The Guardian in an inter­view with the poet this month, “but his mind is still on fire.” Fer­linghet­ti “has not mel­lowed,” says Wash­ing­ton Post book crit­ic Ron Charles, “at all.” If you’re look­ing for him at any of the events planned in his hon­or, City Lights announces, he will not be in atten­dance, but he has been busy pro­mot­ing his lat­est book, a thin­ly-veiled auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el about his ear­ly life called Lit­tle Boy.

In the book Fer­linghet­ti describes his child­hood in images right out of Edward Gorey. He was a “Lit­tle Lord Fauntleroy” in a Bronxville man­sion 20 miles out­side New York, an orphan tak­en in and raised by descen­dants of the founders of Sarah Lawrence. “His new guardians spoke to one anoth­er in court­ly tones and dressed in Vic­to­ri­an garb,” notes Charles. “They sent him to pri­vate school, and, more impor­tant, they pos­sessed a fine library, which he was encour­aged to use.”

The poet would lat­er write he was a “social climber climb­ing down­ward,” an iron­ic ref­er­ence to how some peo­ple might have seen the tra­jec­to­ry of his career. After serv­ing in the Navy dur­ing World War II, earn­ing a master’s at Colum­bia, and a Ph.D. at the Sor­bonne, Fer­linghet­ti decamped to San Fran­cis­co, and found­ed the small mag­a­zine City Lights with Peter D. Mar­tin. Then he opened a book­store on the edge of Chi­na­town to fund the pub­lish­ing ven­ture.

The shop became a haunt for writ­ers and poets. Fer­linghet­ti start­ed pub­lish­ing them, start­ing with him­self in 1955. The fol­low­ing year he gained inter­na­tion­al infamy for pub­lish­ing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (hear Gins­berg read the poem in ’56). The book was banned, and Fer­linghet­ti put on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. If any­one thought this would be the end of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, they were mis­tak­en.

He has pub­lished some­where around forty books of poet­ry and crit­i­cism, nov­els and plays, been a pro­lif­ic painter for six­ty years, as well as a pub­lish­er, book­seller, and activist. He does not con­sid­er him­self a Beat poet, but from his influ­en­tial first two books—Pic­tures of the Gone World and 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind—onward, Ferlinghetti’s philo­soph­i­cal out­look has more or less breathed the same air as Gins­berg et al.’s.

Quot­ing from Coney Island, Andrew Shapiro writes, “he coun­seled us to ‘con­found the sys­tem,’ ‘to emp­ty out our pock­ets… miss­ing our appoint­ments’ and to leave ‘our neck­ties behind’ and ‘take up the full beard of walk­ing anar­chy.’” He is still doing this, every way that he can, in pub­lic read­ings, media appear­ances, and a can­ny use of YouTube. His is not a call to flower pow­er but to full immer­sion in the chaos of life, or, as he writes in “Coney Island of the Mind 1” in the “ver­i­ta­ble rage / of adver­si­ty / Heaped up / groan­ing with babies and bay­o­nets / under cement skies / in an abstract land­scape of blast­ed trees.”

Fer­linghet­ti urged poets and writ­ers to “cre­ate works capa­ble of answer­ing the chal­lenge of apoc­a­lyp­tic times, even if this mean­ing sounds apoc­a­lyp­tic… you can con­quer the con­querors with words.” Despite this stri­den­cy, he has nev­er tak­en him­self too seri­ous­ly. Fer­linghet­ti is as relaxed as they come—he hasn’t mel­lowed, but he also hasn’t need­ed to. He’s a loose, nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller and come­di­an and he’s still deliv­er­ing sober, prophet­ic pro­nounce­ments with grav­i­tas.

See and hear Fer­linghet­ti take on con­querors, bul­lies, and xeno­phobes, under­wear, and oth­er sub­jects in the read­ings here from his through­out his career, includ­ing a full, 40-minute read­ing in 2005 at UC Berke­ley, below, an album of Fer­linghet­ti and Ken­neth Rexroth, above, and at the top, a video made last year of the 99-year-old poet, in Lady Lib­er­ty mask, read­ing “Trump’s Tro­jan Horse” under a grin­ning, gray-beard­ed self-por­trait of his younger self. Hap­py 100th to him. “I fig­ure that with anoth­er 100 birth­days,” he says, “that’ll be about enough!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Reveal­ing the Beat Poet’s Cre­ative Process

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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