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Oceantics

~ because the waves and tumbles of life are only as serious as we make them.

Oceantics

Monthly Archives: November 2014

Alice & Morley

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Canadiana, Narrative poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alice Munro, Canadian literature, CanLit, Elaine Stirling, Ezra Pound, Morley Callaghan, narrative poetry, Nobel Prize for Literarture

Morley Callaghan (1903-1990)

Morley Callaghan
(1903-1990)

The one who’d win the Nobel Prize for Lit’-
rature once rode the clanking subway when
she spotted Morley Callaghan, alone
and looking frail. She went over to sit
by him. I’m Alice M. We meet again!
Are you quite well? Are you on your way home?
He tipped his hat. Matter of fact, the doc
is where I’m heading.—I’ll come with you then,
she said, a writer famed to one renowned.
I’ve nowhere else to be till two o-clock.
This chance to talk, she thought, won’t come again.
Here’s someone who sold poetry to Pound
and, boxing, once knocked Hemingway out cold!
He’ll think me kind, she hoped—old Morley, hah!
He looked her in the eye. You call yourself
a writer? Alice stammered, I-I’ve been told…
The feisty man of letters muttered, Bah!
Despite his aches and pains, he squared himself.
Would you like to know what I don’t much like
about your little stories? And Alice,
good Canadian, said, yes, please, thank you.
And thus, two writers known for wit and bite,
came to know each other better sans malice,
gifting us this story, I’m sure is true!

Alice Munro, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature

Alice Munro, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature

This wonderful anecdote about two of Canada’s pillars of literature was the first reason I had to buy Douglas Gibson’s book, Stories About Storytellers. It features a new introduction by our very own Alice Munro, since she won the Nobel Prize in 2013. At the time of the subway incident, sometime in the mid ‘80s, she’d already won the Governor General’s Award three times.

Morley Callaghan, though, had been a legend way longer. A novelist, short story writer, playwright, TV and radio personality, he’d been part of the great gathering of writers in Paris in 1929. A member of the Order of Canada, he had won every book award our country had to offer. His spirit, I hope, you can glean from the poem. I love that, for Morley—and for Alice, too—it’s all about the craft.

There’s another happy piece to this tale. Three generations on, Callaghans still carry the torch of literature for Canada and the world as publishers of Exile: The Literary Quarterly, thriving since 1972. The first Exile magazine had only four issues in the late 1920s. These included two poems by a then unknown 25-year-old Canadian named Morley Callaghan. The publisher was Ezra Pound.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

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La Mentora

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, influence of female Latina poets, poetry

BA 1940s

If you are unwilling
to allow the habitation
of your poems by any passing
lout or prima donna, if your turns
of phrase do not double, at the very
least, as empty shelves and foot baths,
if your rhyming does not pling
like raindrops on the tin roof
of a deep blue riverboat,
then do not be surprised
when, upon your demise,
they biodegrade and find
new lives as the daydreams of
some unfulfilling lover.

If, on the other hand,
you craft your verse with
pumpkin seed and ivy,
if you lock your doors and windows
against creeping clichés, which,
after all, are nothing more
than calloused feet longing
to feel pebbles and broken
glass again—if you can, for once,
allow a poem to be done,
forget its name and reason so severely that
to come upon it in some future decade
is to fall upon your knees and view
the world anew, then, perhaps,
you will be worthy of that place
reserved for those
we used to call Immortals.

~~~

If you’ve been a writer of any stripe or genre for awhile, the time may come—I think it ought to—when you’re sick of the sound of your own voice. That may be why I wandered recently into the poetry stacks of the main reference library of my city. The title of an obscure book caught my eye first, and then the poetess whose name lodged like a stowaway at the back of my brain.

I’m going to devote a few Oceantics posts to her work one of these days, though it’s impossible to say when. Not much of her poetry has been translated, and I find the experience of reading her in English 1000 times paler than scrumbling through the original. Not that the translations aren’t sublime, but…how shall I put this?…it’s like the difference between hearing that your great uncle loved walking through woods, and doing it yourself and getting caught in blackberry brambles during a thunderstorm. I haven’t had this much fun (while writing) in ages!

Today’s poem, “La Mentora”, Spanish for female mentor, may give you an idea of her persona. This is my poem, influenced by her. I’m not being deliberately mysterious in withholding the poet’s name, though I am, out of respect for her work, being deliberate. The accompanying image is by the great Argentine photographer Horacio Coppola who died in 2012 at the age of 105! Imagining him and her meeting in some Buenos Aires pastry shop in the 1940s, the small hairs on the back of my neck tingle. Oh, to have been an Argentine fly!

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Dead Poets Rising: 3 Triolets

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Ferguson Missouri, form poetry, triolet

ferguson

I

Dead poets rising from the fissures in the heartland
are taking up their posts in the New Democracy.

I see William with his tyger playing leapfrog with a lamb;
dead poets rising from the fissures in the heartland.

Langston’s got a jazz club; Sappho’s in the band.
Walt’s put final touches on the “Resurrected Song of Me”.

Dead poets rising from the fissures in the heartland
are taking up their posts in the New Democracy.

II

Such flippancy, a founding father mutters,
while fires throughout his constitution rage.

Justice must not stoop for poets, sons, and mothers!
Such flippancy, a founding father mutters.

Whatever truths your bleeding hearts uncover
will not shake the bulwarks of this profit-raking age.

Such flippancy, a founding father mutters,
while fires throughout his constitution rage.

III

And still the poets rise from grave and ash
with law books writ in sonnet and fine verse.

Minds slowly rouse while antiquated systems crash,
and still the poets rise from grave and ash

to found a willing, new majority through brash
and hopeful rhyme, true reason to disperse.

And still the poets rise from grave and ash
with law books writ in sonnet and fine verse.

~~~

The image of Ferguson, Missouri, to which I dedicate these verses, comes from http://www.mumpsimus.com where Langston Hughes’s haunting poem, “Let America be America Again” accompanies more beautiful photographs. Every voice and every image matters.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Ocean Cruise Kind of Day

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry, sonnet

721

I’m having an ocean cruise kind of day,
upper deck and first class, south Pacific
breezes lifting my hair, bare toes, tonic
with a splash of gin, nothing much to say.

To bask within this luxury’s no trick;
life’s a daily voyage that I beckon.
Choice of mood is easy, I just check in
thoughts that aggravate and carry no stick.

Hackers, slackers, whiners, they all reckon
they’ll feel better on perpetual offense.
Me? I prefer cool deck rails to a fence.
Sea turtles know when to pull their necks in.

Every view brings something to adore;
at every port, I know that I’ll love more.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Exhilaration: A Pantoum

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry

rising star

I line the walls inside my head
with those who live the way I see myself
at best, with talent and potential glowing
leave the rest like comet dust to flow behind

with those who live the way I see myself
I hold long private conversations
leave the rest like comet dust to flow behind
and grow my own trajectory

I hold long private conversations
in the fields of no regret
and grow my own trajectory
from heartwood of experience and trust

in the fields of no regret
I meet with whom I please to learn
from heartwood of experience and trust
to ride the crests of deep success

I meet with whom I please to learn
at best, with talent and potential glowing
to ride the crests of deep success
I line the walls inside my head.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of Rising Star from QAuZ
on deviantART

The Problematic Existence of Lydia Nogales, Part II

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Essay & Poetic Translation

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alain C. Dexter, Elaine Stirling, heteronyms and why we use them, Lydia Nogales, poetic mystery, Raul Contreras, Salvadoran poetry, Spanish to English translation

lydia nogales image

Penumbra

The sister with no name, the sister
who crosses all paths,
she told me once that flesh
can never be converted to essence,
that only the spirit succeeds
in ascending to the altitude that dreams,
that in every hidden pain
a star ignites the crying out,
that pure crystal of the deep pond
is broken thus in curling waves,
yes, beneath the shade of forest
early leaves kiss each other,
that some days are curdled by shadows
and nights that blind.
The sister with no name, the sister
whose hands are made of wax
told me that at the sound of rain
sick roses grow delirious,
that wind, cloud and sunbeam
seek each other, touch, and are ignited,
that the river who loses its banks
at the end of the road finds them,
that in all things is hidden
a divine and eternal soul,
that there’s something better than forgetting:
the cold quietude of the stone,
that the sleeping water of the pond
ignores the thirsty sand,
that only while in form
does sojourning light palpitate.
The sister with no name, the sister
who affirms and denies all things
spoke to me of eyes without light,
she spoke to me of steps with no path,
of loathing returned to ash,
of the pallid kiss that freezes,
of a nocturnal sunrise that only
clear pupils contemplate,
of the interior howl, of the teardrop
fallen to earth.
The voice of the sister with no name,
her red eyelids burn me,
my hands, dyed by the moon
tremble like bird’s wings;
my mouth is knotted to silence,
the crazy question seals me.
What happens after anguish?
Who lays out his sign in the fog?
Where is life extinguished,
and where does life begin?
Behind the invisible curtain,
what is there to hope for?
The sister with no name, the sister
of momentary silken contact,
the sister who knows everything
does not know how to voice her reply.
An echo of sad music
smudges the blue of her absence;
a faint tick-tock in the shadow
pushes the rolling hours.
Prison that holds my anxieties!
Dread of the night that’s coming!
I don’t see the sister with no name,
but she is nearby…
The dawn, the dawn, the dawn!
I felt her opening a door…

The poem you’ve just read, published in El Salvador in 1947, was written by a woman who didn’t exist. Her name was Lydia Nogales. As her poems continued to land on the desks of befuddled editors at La Tribuna, her identity took on flesh. She was being read, her name spoken across Central America and in Argentina, Peru, Spain. Men and women of letters were accusing each other of being Lydia Nogales. Some poets claimed to have seen her in person, this woman who didn’t exist.

While months of debate turned into years, the Spanish-speaking world was reaching consensus. “She has to be a woman. She can’t be a man! She writes like a woman…so feminine!” El Salvador’s esteemed poetess, Claudia Lars, wrote a tribute in verse to her poetic sister, adding, “Lydia Nogales lives and will live forever in her magnificent sonnets. By virtue of her verse, she has taken her place, definitively, in our poetry and in the poetry of America…in the field of true art (and I, too, entered that field barefoot and reverent) there are no rivals or competitors. There is inspiration, beauty, a message from the divine or the occult, a broad light or small for this stubborn night of the world…”

How strange it must have felt for the creator of Lydia Nogales to stay silent while people claimed that poor Lydia lay dying in her home near the volcano Lamatepec. How strange it must have felt to watch his literary reputation eclipsed by something that began as a lark, a trick, perhaps, to play on his local compatriots. For Raúl Contreras, a 51-year-old poet, staid, conservative, a member of the Salvadoran Academy of Language, had created a being greater than himself. He had created Lydia Nogales.

Not until November 3, 1954, seven years after the publication of her first sonnet, was the identity of the poetess revealed. Hugo Lindo, her first champion, spoke at a conference in Santiago, Chile, of “the beautiful reality” that finally, after years of debate and speculation, has culminated in the absolute affirmation that Lydia Nogales is Raúl Contreras.

Contreras, for his part, quietly admitted to the authorship by submitting an anthology to his publisher, which included a sonnet by Lydia Nogales, entitled “The Useless Journey”. Whether there was rancor or humiliation in the wake of the disclosure, I don’t know. Some time later, Contreras described Lydia as “someone who existed without existing”. He called her his spiritual daughter.

I’d like to close this piece with two thoughts. One, I feel a kind of sadness, knowing that Lydia Nogales can never really take her place among the great female poets of the twentieth century, even though, for seven years, she was one. Then again, I realize that Raúl Contreras must have been a magnificent man to be brave enough, in a culture larded with machismo, to rise above and find his Lydia Nogales. We all move within a greater version of ourselves; not all of us are able to give it voice.

Finally, I would like to leave you with the tribute that Claudia Lars wrote to her poetic sister, when Lydia Nogales still breathed and vitalized the world. English translation first, followed by the original Spanish. You will also find the Spanish version of “Penumbra”, enneasyllabic and sublime, by Lydia Nogales.

Girl of the word of pure water
open rose, sudden and weightless;
lonely sister, the colour of snow,
changing your whiteness to live flame.
I am here, with your initial sweetness
with your age and no yesterday, perennial and brief;
and within the interior heaven that your voice disquiets,
I raise the palm branch of virtue and height.
Giving my golden bee, my dense grape,
I left by blood the immense land
suffering the question and the throb.
Does the ash in what has died illuminate?
Strange bride of awakened love
I am the lover of love that sleeps!

Niña de la palabra de agua pura.
Abierta rosa, repentina y leve;
hermana soledad, color de nieve,
cambiando en llama viva su blancura.
Estoy aquí, con tu inicial dulzura,
con tu edad sin ayer, perenne y breve;
y en cielo interno que tu voz conmueve,
alzo la palma de virtud y altura.
Dando mi abeja de oro, mi uva densa,
fui por la sangre de la tierra inmensa
sufriendo la pregunta y el latido.
¿Alumbra en la ceniza lo que ha muerto?
i Extraña novia del amor despierto,
yo soy la amante del amor dormido!

~~~

Raul Contreras (1896-1973)

Raul Contreras (1896-1973)

Penumbra

La hermana sin nombre, la hermana
dijo una vez que la carne
jamás se convierte en esencia,
que solo el espíritu logra
subir a la altura que sueña,
que en cada dolor escondido
enciende su llama una estrella,
que el puro cristal del estanque
en ondas rizadas se quiebra
si, bajo la umbría del bosque,
las hojas tempranas lo besan,

que hay días cuajados de sombras
y noches que ciegan.
La hermana sin nombre, la hermana
que tiene las manos de cera,
me dijo que, al son de la lluvia,
deliran las rosas enfermas,
que el viento, la nube y el rayo
se buscan, se tocan, se incendian,
que el río que pierde su cauce
al fin del camino lo encuentra,
que en todas las cosas se oculta
un alma divina y eterna,
que hay algo mejor que el olvido:
la fría quietud de la piedra,
que el agua dormida del charco
ignora la sed de la arena,
que solo palpita en la forma
la luz pasajera.
La hermana sin nombre, la hermana
que todo lo afirma y lo niega,
me habló de una fuente imposible
que calma las bocas sedientas;
me habló de los ojos sin lumbre,
mehabló de los pasos sin huella,
del ascua tornada en cenizas,
del pálido beso que hiela,
de un alba nocturna que sólo
las claras pupilas contemplan,
del grito interior, de la lágrima

caída en la tierra.
La voz de la hermana sin nombre
los párpados rojos me quema;
mis manos, teñidas de luna,
como alas de pájaro tiemblan;
atada al silencio, mi boca
la loca pregunta me sella:
¿qué sigue después de la angustia?
¿quién traza su signo en la niebla?
¿en dónde se apaga la vida
y en dónde la Vida comienza?
Detrás del telón invisible,
¿hay alguien que espera?
La hermana sin nombre, la hermana
de leve contacto de seda,
la hermana que todo lo sabe,
no sabe decir su respuesta.
Un eco de música triste
empaña el azul de la ausencia;
un fino tic-tac en la sombra
empuja las horas que ruedan.
¡Prisión que retiene mis ansias!
¡Pavor de la noche que llega!
No veo a la hermana sin nombre,
Pero ella está cerca…
¡La aurora, la aurora, la aurora!
Sentí que se abría una puerta…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
The beautiful painting of a Salvadoran woman is by the artist Karlisima.

Elaine Stirling is the author of the novel Daughters of Babylon and the novella Dead Edit Redo. She is also the creator of the heteronym/pseudonym Alain C. Dexter who published a book of glosas, medieval form poetry, called Dead to Rights.

The Problematic Existence of Lydia Nogales

15 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Essay & Poetic Translation

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Claudia Lars, Elaine Stirling, essay, heteronyms and why we use them, Lydia Nogales, poetic mystery, Salvadoran poetry, Spanish to English translation

anonymous writer

On Sunday, June 22, 1947, a sonnet appeared in the Arts & Letters section of La Tribuna, the daily newspaper of El Salvador. Perfectly constructed in rhyme and meter, the poem was dedicated to the most famous of El Salvador’s poetesses of that era, Claudia Lars. The writer of the poem was Lydia Nogales, a woman whose work might have gone unnoticed that first time around, had there not been an embarrassing typo in the title. Instead of “Holocausto”, it had been typeset as, “Olocausto”. In addition, one of the country’s great literary critics, Hugo Lindo, had published an article alongside the debut submission, lauding the “gargantuan lyricism of Lydia Nogales”. Only problem was, no one had ever heard of her.

Now, for this to be the least bit of interest to us yeah-whatever, superbly worldly, 21st century readers, you’ll want to imagine society as it existed in a small, Latin American country just after WWII. Conservative, parochial, chauvinistic to a fault, the literary circle of El Salvador was small. To the country’s credit, Salvadorans enjoyed a higher than average number of poets per capita, poetesses included, and they were excellent. Poets around the globe knew and respected Salvadoran literary outpourings. But within the nation, suddenly, out of thin air, appears this full-blown poetic, feminine voice. The questions swirling in parlours and tea salons must have run along the lines of: “Whose wife is she? What kind of husband allows his woman to reveal such things?”

Ten days later, Hugo Lindo was joined by two peers, Alberto Guerra Trigueros, and Manuel José Arce y Valladares, in devoting a full page article to the poetic mastery of the mystery woman. All of them wanted to know, who is this Lydia Nogales, “mature, perfect, fine, a master of inquiry into truth, the tremors of emotion, and the technical demands of verse?”

Lydia Nogales responded by sending a longer, more complex poem—a triptych entitled “Dance of the Hours”—to Arce y Valladares along with a photograph. One can imagine the collective masculine swoon. The image showed a mestiza woman about 24 years old with a glorious abundance of black hair, fearless eyes, and a mysterious smile. At this point, another of El Salvador’s admired poets, Raúl Contreras, said he recognized the woman in the portrait. Lydia Nogales was the daughter of a socially respected couple in San Salvador, whose identity he had promised to keep secret.

The plot thickens, and of course, she strikes again! This time, Lydia Nogales sends a long enneasyllabic poem called, appropriately, “Penumbra”. Enneasyllabic means that each line contains nine syllables, a fairly rare occurrence in Spanish poetry. It’s most often seen in traditional oral verse, where repetition supports accompanying music and dance. The clues piled up. Someone with such an intimate understanding of Salvadoran rural culture could only be…

And this is when things got really crazy. All the male poets of the Arts & Letters circle began accusing each other of being the real Lydia Nogales. The accused went out in search parties to villages and towns, hoping to unmask the real poetess whose understanding of the classics defied logic—and whose earthiness, let’s face it, bordered on the unseemly.

Over the next few years, while rumours ebbed and swirled, Lydia Nogales continued to produce stellar work, and she became famous around the world. One of her biggest supporters was Claudia Lars, the Salvadoran poet to whom Lydia dedicated her first sonnet. Ms. Lars was, at this time, living in the United States and following the Nogales mystery with great fascination. Contrary to gossip mongers, however, Claudia Lars did not view her compatriot with envy or resentment. In fact, she wrote a poem in honour of Lydia Nogales. I will post Claudia Lars’s tribute in Part 2 of “The Problematic Existence of Lydia Nogales” where I conclude the story.

Meanwhile, I offer here the first two poems of Lydia Nogales in order of their appearance 67 years ago. The translation to English is mine, followed by the original Spanish. I have not attempted to replicate the original rhyme and meter. My thanks go out to the late Francisco Andres Escobar for his excellent article on Lydia Nogales and The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, 4th Edition, for wakening me to the wonders of Salvadoran poetry.

~~~

Holocaust

Light that in solitude ripens ice.
River bed of thirst and curve that it initiates.
Magnet of perfection that lifts and propitiates
the inaccessible beam of my desire.
I don’t know, if in my holocaust, pleasure is grief,
a dart that wounds or a wing that caresses.
A vertex of light? A novice sunrise
tattooed by horizons for its flight?
Ardent at the root: my sound intact
filters a brightness of lantern yet to be
on every thorn of the abstract rosetree,
and in vertigos of abysses and of height
pain burns me, sealing the pact
of ash with pure ember.

Holocausto

Luz que en la soledad madura el hielo.
Cauce de sed y curva que se inicia.
Imán de perfección, que alza y propicia
el faro inaccesible de mi anhelo.
No sé si, en mi holocausto, el goce es duelo,
dardo que hiere o ala que acaricia…
¿Vértice de la luz? ¿Alba novicia
tatuada de horizontes para el vuelo?
Ardiente en la raíz; mí son intacto
filtra un claror de lámpara futura
en cada espina del rosal abstracto.
y en vértigos de abismos y de altura,
se me quema el dolor, sellando el pacto
de la ceniza con la brasa pura.

~~~

Dance of the Hours

I

The sign of departure…but when?
The inexorable flight…but how?
My wings are still made of lead
and he who awaits my arrival is still waiting.
Thus whoever laughs, is thereby singing
the useless part of life that I take on.
If now and then the garden appears,
I give my sweet wisdom to the roses.
Because I know that the time is opportune,
spread out toward sun, wind and moon,
I await miraculous signs…
and before the fragile fear of leaving
I entertain the deception of life
sowing stars and weaving roses.

II

Weaving roses and sowing stars…
but deception hooks up with vision,
like sound, in the dawn that blunts,
the clear tints and beautiful shadows.
In this openwork of my actions
entangled between my hands is the question:
Who gave me the song? What voice points me
toward the good road and the golden footprints?
I don’t take notice if this lamp that burns
—a sad lamp with cowardly light—
will illuminate my ice in the void…
I only know that, spread out toward sun and wind,
across the dance of hours I feel
the illusion still sings, and the song is mine.

III

The song is mine and the illusion still sings…
I pulse in my veins and in my thirst foaming.
Vertical desire, that subtracts and adds
the shout that rises from the mud,
and the lead of my wings is not magnetized…
and a double eagerness of transparency and mist
crystallizes my voice, when the humidity
of silences oozes from my throat.
The song is mine…luminous shadow
net for the nocturnal butterfly
that, in deliriums of sunlight, awaits the flame!
How can I leave if the flight intimidates?
I don’t know. But I test the departure
dressing the illusion in wings made of wax…

Danza de las Horas

I

El signo de partida…pero ¿cuándo?
El vuelo inexorable…pero ¿cómo?
Todavía mis alas son de plomo
y el que espera mi arribo, está
[Esperando…
Así como quien ríe, así cantando
la parte inútil de la vida tomo.
Si algunas veces al jardín me asomo,
mi savia dulce a los rosales mando.
Porque sé que la hora es oportuna,
tendida al sol, al viento y a la luna,
aguardo las señales milagrosas…
y ante el frágil temor de la partida,
entretengo el engaño de la vida
sembrando estrellas y tejiendo rosas.

II
Tejiendo rosas y sembrando estrellas…
Pero el engaño a la visión se junta,
como son, en el alba que despunta,
claros los tintes y las sombras bellas.
En este deshilar de mis querellas
se enreda entre mis manos la pregunta:
¿quién me dio la canción? ¿Qué voz me
[apunta
el buen camino y las doradas huellas?
Yo ignoro si esta lámpara que arde
– lámpara triste de una luz cobarde –
alumbrará mi hielo en el vacío…
Sólo sé que, tendida al sol y al viento,
sobre la danza de las horas siento
que aún canta la ilusión, y el canto es
mío.

III

El canto es mío y la ilusión aún canta…
Pulso en mis venas y en mi sed espuma.
Anhelo vertical, que resta y suma
el grito que del barro se levanta.
y el plomo de mis alas no se imanta …
y un doble afán de transparencia y
[bruma
cristaliza mi voz, cuando rezuma
humedad de silencios mi garganta.
El canto es mío… ¡Sombra luminosa,
red para la nocturna mariposa
que, en delirios de sol, la llama espera!
¿Cómo partir si el vuelo me intimida?
No sé. Pero yo ensayo la partida
poniendo a la ilusión alas de cera…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

A Sonnet for David Sedaris

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

American humorist, David Sedaris, Elaine Stirling, homage, poetry, sonnet

Davidsedaris

I met a kind and famous person yesterday
of whom sonnets, I suspect, have not been written.
He’s a humourist, but I’d put generous way
before funny, and he’s hilarious, bitten
with a curiosity of plagueful proportions.
Disciplined observer, he walks miles picking up
trash from the roadsides and loves his true vocation
of wanting to know more and telling. Yes, his cup
is filled to overflowing, and I’ve found so few
examples of true modesty in lives of wealth,
though I’m seeing more of them. I’ll know what to do
when the grand wave flows over me. Financial health
like any sport is best played with a heart serene
and eyes alive in expectation of the green.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
The wonderful photo of David Sedaris comes from The Guardian.

Ten Soldiers

08 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Narrative poetry

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Armistice Day, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, family history, internment of Italian-Canadians, narrative poetry, November 11, Remembrance Day, sonnet, Veteran's Day, WWII

Paavo soldier

For my uncle, Johannes Paavo (“Call me J.P.”) Kaskela (1923-1985)

I

Ten soldiers stand upon a hill, not quite
at ease, a row in shadow, uniformed.
Arms across each other’s shoulders, rifles
lie in heaps upon the ground, I wonder
if that is a crime. Something feels not right,
as though somebody has been misinformed.

A bugle plays a distant taps, stifles,
though not quite, the scratch of match. I blunder
forward toward the light; I recognize that
face, though he is younger now, and blond. Come
closer, says the soldier in the center.

Meet my friends, Giuseppe, Klaus, and Lom Sat,
over here, Vasily, Che, Wonder Bun—
we call him that cuz his dad’s a baker.

II

My uncle stops me halfway up, though I
can see the soldiers clear enough, ten guys
just barely men in khaki, olive, brown,
black. From all the fronts, they are enemies.
Welcome, kid, to the Hill of Do or Die.
As you can see, it’s not much of a prize.

Why are you there? I ask. The muddy ground
sucks at my feet. Flags hang from leafless trees:
rising sun; Union Jack; the red, white, green
of Italy. To keep the shame away,
he says, from those who still remember us.

I’m not ashamed! I’m proud of all you’ve been
through, what you’ve done!—Then, we’re winning. Today,
we’re gonna show you what’s more dangerous.

III

The ten soldiers leave their weapons behind
and lead me to barracks of cold red brick.
They joke and shove as brothers do, until
we step inside. On every ragged cot,
entire families huddle, heads down—blind
to us, civilians, they look thin and sick.

Worse, all mouths are gagged, every voice made still.
How do they eat? I ask.—They don’t. You’re not
seeing people. This is love of country,
everyone’s birthright, turned Prisoner of War,
choked by labels of coward and treason.

I was Giuseppe’s guard; Lom Sat, sentry
to Neville and the Aussies. Ask what for,
and they take you out back, end of season.

IV

You’ll hear lots today about sacrifice,
the men, the boys and gals who bravely died.
I tell you now, the ones who lived, we had
it worse. Wonder Bun and me were neighbours
till the war. We tipped outhouses, stole ice,
but his last name was Capelli—fate fried.

People think vets don’t talk because war’s bad.
That’s only part of it. What sticks like burrs
is how we’re trained to shut our hearts, pretend
our orders aren’t stupid, wrong, and then
get bits of ribbon pinned—for what? Silence?

Go now to the cenotaph. My dead friends
will thank you, but remember what we ten
have shown you today. None of war makes sense.

~~~

My uncle served in WWII at the Canadian Armed Forces base in Petawawa, Ontario, as a guard to Allied prisoners of war. All these years, we assumed, because no one talked about it, that the POWs were captured German soldiers. Thanks to my sister’s research, we have since learned that the prisoners were Italian-Canadian civilians, interned as enemy aliens, just as Japanese-Canadians were interned in western Canada.

Our uncle was the gentlest soul imaginable. He was an artist, a comic, an all-round fun guy who had no quarrel with anyone. I can only imagine how he felt as a soldier, being forced to treat his own countrymen as enemies. On this Day of Remembrance, I think if Uncle Paavo were here, he would say something like, “Call nobody a coward. Call no one a traitor. We do things because we think we have no choice. Everyone deserves to love his country. I loved mine.”

Here is a painting by my uncle of the outside of the Petawawa camp.

Paavos Petawawa painting

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Eager

07 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry

wave3

Eager is the flow that comes
to me at night in a Panama hat
with tickets for two on a steamer

Eager is the tip of the curl
of a wave incoming
that can only be felt
by the pull of the sand
in a silence that drowns
all the chasers, lamenters
who squander their days
as if they were down
to their last three cents
and a shell game
for peanuts
is all that remains

Eager surrounds me
by day in a torus
a roll made of sparks
like a solar flare bagel
that shoots from its center
an endless succession
of any which way that I look
to the best of the people
and places I meet

till the rest
falls away

and a language I think
may be dolphin picks up
and I hear in the spaces
between…

this was never
a test, I have nothing
to learn but the spelling
of sight, touch, taste,
sound and the intricate
sea scent of eager

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

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