Poetry Meme

I haven't written a poem in years, but this meme from Nezua stirred something deep inside, a long-neglected passion that still burns silent and hidden like a pilot flame. And so I'm taking up the meme:

The first poem I remember reading was...a poem in French. I attended elementary school in Montreal, Canada (junior high thru college was in California, professional life has been in NY and CT), and at the time Quebecois politics required that all public schools conducted class in French. I remember six lines:

Être ange
c’est étrange
dit l’ange
Être âne
c’est étrâne
dit l’âne

If you read some French but aren't fluent, the wordplay here is probably somewhat opaque; just know that "étrâne" is not a real word, it's the poet sliding into absurdism following the initial declaration by the angel. And I think that's why I still remember this poem, it opened my eyes to the strange malleable properties of language.

Now, being a thoroughly multi-cultural type (and I don't mean this in an ideological sense, I mean that my psyche is literally composed of multiple cultures, like all people raised in immigrant families), I feel that I should also mention the first poems I remember in English and Chinese. The first poem I remember reading in English is probably Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening". And in Chinese, it would have to be either Li Bai or Han Shan (though I don't read Chinese well enough to read poetry, so I'd either have to hear it read by one of my parents or read a translation).

I read poetry because...it makes more sense than prose. Don't get me wrong, I'm no enemy of the discursive intellect; logic and linearity can be very useful (for example, in my profession as a computer programmer). But in my view, logic is ultimately a heartbreaker when it comes to the big questions of life and death. Music and poetry access regions of the psyche and spirit that are impenetrable to the discursive intellect. Give me transcendence or give me logic.

A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem...Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass". Lao Tzu. Rumi. Mirabai. Langston Hughes. Theodore Roethke. "Four Quartets" by T.S. Eliot. Frankly there are too many to name. Am I allowed to refer to the 100,000 verses of the Mahabharata as "a poem"? Okay, I'll settle on a simple one from Li Bai:

You ask me why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.

The last time I heard poetry...in person, was at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village. Yes, it was slam night. And it was a blast: I clearly remember that the most petite frail-looking woman walked gingerly up to the microphone and unleashed a devastatingly-angry spittle-flying booming tirade against racist sexist capitalist oppression that had the audience gripping their tables. Then this huge football-player-looking guy walked up and read the most tender intimate romantic poem in a voice so soft and sweet that the room positively melted. A wild night.

If you count hearing poetry in movies, however, the last I heard came from Cameron Diaz in "In Her Shoes", a classic by the great e. e. cummings:

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                                       i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Comments

[nezua limón xolografik-jonez]

ah, man. this was great for so many reasons. first, you solved my other ee cummings question. second, you brought a soothing, beautiful energy to my screen. i LOVE that description of slam night with the two unexpected performers, and the explanation of the Frenchness of your first poem. and i totally agree about logic/poetry/music.

i'm glad you picked up the meeeem.

[Kai]

Thanks for the kind words, Nez, and the meeeeem. With mild embarrassment, I now notice that I failed to include any of the towering Spanish-language poets from Mexico and Chile and Cuba and Spain and ... but ya know, on second thought, I think I'll let you cover that. I'll stick to what I know. ;-)