Nightfall of the Iguana, Part 2

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, #Neruda, blacklisting, Canadian poet, Cold War, Elaine Stirling, poetry translations, Spanish medieval fixed verse, Waldeen

~~a trilogy of glosas~~

Someone who waited for me among violins
uncovered a world like a buried tower,
its spiral sunk beneath all
the hoarse, sulphur-covered leaves.

—from “The Heights of Macchu Picchu”, Pablo Neruda,
in his epic, Canto General; translation by Waldeen

~~~

Welcome to the board game, Self Creation.
I am Spartacus—like you, a former slave.
I’m here to walk you through the spaces
and the rules. First, you choose a playing piece:
preacher, prisoner, jailer, free. I heard you right?
You’ve chosen free? I am surprised, since
all I’ve heard about you says you feel oppressed
by governments, economy has jailed you, and
you’ve smothered happiness to combat violence.
Someone who waited for me among violins

gave me your name, suggesting you were ready
for Self Creation. Hell, who am I to disagree?
All right, you’re free! That means you move
around, above, and through whatever contradicts
freedom. Confront, you lose 100 chips. Complain
(the hamster wheel), forfeit a turn. Smell a flower,
go again. Overstating what you think, demanding
others say they’re sorry flips you into preacher
mode…oh, look! You’ve won a super power,
uncovered a world like a buried tower.

Now, we’re into deeper levels. See those cogs
and screws? Play them wrong, you’ll drop
into this oubliette, forget we ever met, until
you see Kirk Douglas playing me. You’ll
scratch your head, think, what the heck?!
At this stage, every rise and every fall
is measured by emotion of the here and now.
Focus toward the joy, momentum must ensue.
Despair will do the same, except the game
will spit you out. A dizzied slug, you’ll crawl,
its spiral sunk beneath all

the free and moving parts you built
and played so well. At this point, I will
be what you have chosen to believe—a heel
poised to squash you. My creator, Howard Fast,
blacklisted as a red, he got the royal squash, but
flattened, grabbed the BE FREE card. Reprieves
lie under every tragedy, you see. Howie moved to
Hollywood, grew rich as shit. McCarthy, playing
jailer, to this very day, haunts and heaves
the hoarse, sulphur-covered leaves.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016
Author’s Note: I noticed, post-posting, that there’s an extra line in the 3rd stanza, which the handful of glosa writers will undoubtedly notice. I’m going to leave it…because I’m pretty sure that some glosa in my past was short one line, and these things even out.

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Nightfall of the Iguana

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, #CantoGeneral, #PabloNeruda, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Spanish medieval fixed verse, Waldeen

Photo by Will Baxter/for The Wall Street Journal

~~a trilogy of glosas~~

The American-born dancer and choreographer known as Waldeen (1913-1993) was among the first—and, in my opinion, best—translators of Pablo Neruda’s epic, Canto General. When Neruda arrived in Mexico in 1940 as Chile’s consul general, Waldeen was already well established as the director of her own dance school in Mexico City. Poet and dancer became lifelong friends.

Both the Canto and Waldeen’s translations remained virtually unread for decades in North America, thanks to the Cold War and fear of all things leftish. Happily, the complete 1950 chapbook, Let the Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems, is now available online as a pdf, for those who’d like to read and know more.

Here, at Oceantics, I’ve developed an inadvertent tradition of closing the old year and opening the new with glosas, a medieval Spanish form with homage to a greater poet at its center. Over the next few days, I will post three glosas, with lines borrowed from Neruda’s Canto, all translations by Waldeen. The title of the trilogy comes from a poem within the Canto, “Some Beasts”.

I hope you enjoy “Nightfall of the Iguana”.

~~~

Give me your voice and the strength of your buried breast,
Walt Whitman, and the solemn roots that are your face
so as to sing of these reconstructions!
Together we will pay homage to what arises…

—from “Let the Rail Splitter Awake”, Pablo Neruda
Translation by Waldeen

~~~

A tattered deck of fifty-two lies scattered
in an alley behind the Government House.
Peer close, you’ll see. Face cards are scrubbed clean,
suits obliterated, numbers bleed, too thin
to read. I’m told they are apologies, not weeks,
shuffled and dealt routinely to the poorly dressed
committed activists each morning gather
them, assess the hands that cut and undercut
and from the bloodiest, demand arrest.
Give me your voice and the strength of your buried breast,

for if you don’t, if you, the partial deaf
continue to parlay in tonal motion ranges
of the one-note flute, I will fall away.
I must, for each of us, is pied and born
to play toward vast significance, adjusting
turn by turn through private grace
to seeds and shoots we placed ahead of us
in pre-born times, I didn’t question. Now
I choose deliberately condition, person, place,
Walt Whitman, and the solemn roots that are your face.

Come on, is it so hard to comprehend
that ease of mind and spirit are the wiser lead?
I have, by flabby habit, held a stopwatch to your
pace and watched for stumbles, cracks and
proofs of inconsistency. Looking back, I turn
myself to salt, am peppered by obstructions.
Ceilings made of trash are worse than glass.
They obfuscate, rain sticks and stones I can’t
recall as thrown by me. We need new instructions
so as to sing of these reconstructions!

For the building’s going on all around me—boom to
boom, regroup, I pause but never bust, when learning
to be serious regarding us as one magnanimous
and upward thrust, salubrious, percentages up-end,
odds even, then surpass. A rubber duck in mighty seas,
she’s surface prone or floating, has no terror of surprises.
Tankers in the Bosphorus collide, the whale informs
the stork who rides the dreaming tides, disclosing
from the future what our never-ending prize is.
Together we will pay homage to what arises…

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

We are family, Dytiscidae…

Tags

#AlainCDexter, #bringingbacktheglosa, #thistooshallpass, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, Spanish medieval fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

Alive, we are like a sleek black water beetle
skating across still water in any direction
we choose, and soon to be swallowed
suddenly from beneath.

—“Night”, Robert Bly

~~~

Have you lost count of your senses?
Someone who loves you long ago made certain
you had five on each hand
and five, wiggling, on each prehensile
pinkening foot. Symbolic and prime
you burst from cramped and pensive foetal
with a joyful cry—I am arrived!
And not just to mark time or fulfill
biology. You and I intended joy, full
alive, we are like a sleek black water beetle.

Surface creature, you can smell the deep
and dip your skinny feet wherever taste
and fancies send you, yet a surfeit
skim, some oily practicality, pollutes,
lopping like a fisher’s scaling knife
permitted from forbidden. Vivisection
of the vastness of the sparkling neural
universe within has become the gauge
by which we sniff another’s misattention,
skating across still water in any direction,

frantic, fearing too much clamour and
the probability that all accelerates
toward more of better, more of worse. Appetites
of yesterday, I eschew, convinced through
dimming, wrongly disavowed sixth sense that
someone’s making off with mine & ours. Hollowed
by the scummy years of digging in & digging up,
asphyxiating from de-oxygenated history,
desire, healthy-gilled, moves on. Hallowed
we choose, and soon to be swallowed

this moment and the next, we entertain
dread for sake of conversation. Final breath
the switch that flips dusk to dawn, you and I
enter, one by one, the ark, the mothership.
We all must board that skiff eventually.
Why should I care if the pH of your belief
is pond sludge to my frisky brine? Some
silver, shiny, passing school that’s learned
to count past five will snatch both joy & grief
suddenly from beneath.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Dytiscadae: predaceous water beetles
The gorgeous image of a pond surface comes
from http://www.miriadna.com.

Studio of the Mind

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Hope Mirrlees, narrative poetry, Spanish medieval fixed verse

Yesterday, while sketching rough lines for the poem you’re about to read, I was pondering the strange nature of blogs. Oceantics has been up and running since September 2012. I’ve posted 476 poems, more or less. What began as something like a dare, then a showcase, has settled into my favourite phase yet, a studio. I post poems here. I try stuff out. The most grindingly awful, I have the freedom to delete. Most, though, have stayed. I’m more in love than ever with the craft of poetry, particularly the privilege of the glosa. Someday, in the ethers, wherever we go after this, I want to bear hug the Spanish courtier who developed this awesome form. I kid you not—the glosa transcends time/space and lets you party with any poet who ever lived.

In the following glosa, I have refracted the poet’s lines to create new end words. Hope Mirrlees won’t mind; she was a great rule breaker. Scarcely known now, Hope was the author of Lud o’ the Mist, a book that inspired some of today’s most successful fantasy novelists, including Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett. Fyfield Books has published her collected poems, from which the following quatrain has been borrowed.
~~~
…a weight of glory so immense / as to appal and freeze
the mortal sense is true in poetry as well
as true in fact. / It can occur both after
and before / the one unchangeable and strict event.

—from “A Portrait of the Second Eve Painted in Pompeian Red” by Hope Mirrlees

What have you seen today?
The blind man at the caravanserai inquires.
Murder, theft, I say, endless dunes,
monotony. A date pit cracks my tooth.
I wake. It was a dream, though I still feel
the grit behind my lids. My world, by degrees,
creeps in: laptop, tablet, ipod, phone. I can’t
leave well enough alone. Popping time-released
gel caps, my shoulders ache with strange dis-ease,
a weight of glory so immense as to appal and freeze.

He reappears in scrubs, pushing
a mop outside the ICU. What have you
seen today? A kind soul, I say, paid this
forward, a venti low-fat caramel latte…
unexpected funds. Guess I’m sort of shallow.
He shakes his head. There is a smell
to presence that you mask and hold at bay,
a musk enticing as a wedding night you chase
and lose and crave what you could once foretell.
The mortal sense is true in poetry as well.

Where deepest violence now blinds, imagination,
fierce desire rise and skip ahead. They’re carving
beyond tragedy new sites. The never searched,
no precedent or archives, is where those angels
of great scholarship assemble to assist, whispering,
Exchange your weary vehemence for rapture.
We’ll provide the evidence both spendable
and luscious. Let darker realms be as they are.
The ultra-rational cannot abide our laughter
as true in fact. It can occur both after

and the during, as your friend, whose Stage IV
illness took her, came to know in final breaths.
Grief angered and engulfed me, but worse,
I also saw, as if I’d grown a multitude of eyes,
more of rage’s like and weight rush in,
barbaric, howling, overwhelming, hell-sent—
until I heard her voice. Not so. You do not have to
breathe your last to know the only destination’s love.
Everyone is light refracted, pretending death, bent
and before the one unchangeable and strict event.

~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2016
A note about the image: I don’t know which Pompeian red painting captured Hope Mirrlees’s imagination, but I like to think it might have been this one. A caption, borrowed from Mauricio Naya’s “Muralis” on Pinterest, states: A new study by Italy’s National Science Foundation (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) has determined that the famous “Pompeian red,” the brilliant red coloring many of the famous frescoed walls of Pompeii, was actually ochre/yellow. According to the study, the yellow color was rendered intense red by the hot gasses emitted during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

2016, the first 720 minutes

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, #HappyNewYear, Canadian poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elaine Stirling, glosa, Spanish medieval fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

But then it does not matter. Strange how few,
after all’s said and done, the things that are
of moment. Few indeed! When I can make
of ten small words a rope to hang the world!

—from “Interim”, Edna St. Vincent Millay

The year is new. I have not found
a meme or dubious quotation yet to press
upon the friends I mostly haven’t met.
There’s been no sunset at this longitude,
only rise through which I slept and dreamed
of small regrets. I should get out and do,
but what? One friend is on a plane,
another has six horses to attend. The one
who’s dieting thinks she must lose a size or two,
but then it does not matter. Strange how few

the options seem when the calendar
is fresh, and life and death do not hang
in the balance. I could be content,
pursue new lines of thought, imagine
worlds that might have been, and could be still.
If I’m unfed, one day, by images of war,
infernos, floods, and raging politics,
would I be less a worthy citizen? Would my
withdrawal wound the Senate, leave a scar?
After all’s said and done, the things that are

would be such anyway, or could it be—
strange brew—that my continued
observation seeps like mustard gas
into habitual, low-lying banks of thought
where greenery and possibility once
flourished? Oh, give my head a shake!
Go play outside. Fresh air will do you good.
Inspiration didn’t come back then—I swam
in it, a dolphin, flippered, finned, with no mistake
of moment. Few indeed! When I can make

of this day a borderless idea that the planet
will outlive my worry, longevity’s irrelevant,
that those in little boots with flashing lights,
absorbed in making snowmen, are more
worthy of my admiration than the crumbling
antiquated systems that confused and whirled
me from frivolity to lockstep, then perhaps
I will have made some worthy contribution,
after all, an original pattern knit and purled
of ten small words, a rope to hang the world—

a bright infinity scarf to warm this good New Year!

Happy 2016!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Lovers & Clairvoyants, Despairers & Thieves, 2015

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, narrative poem, New Year's Eve prophecies, Silvina Ocampo, Spanish medieval fixed verse

Last year on this day, December 31, I danced a glosa, “there are no lost amigos”, with Jack Kerouac from his Book of Sketches. The poem still reads well, and much of it came true—as poems ought to, on this most prophetic occasion. This year, two female poets blend their say with mine. The first is Silvina Ocampo, an Argentine contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges. “The range of her spirit is much greater than my own,” says Borges generously of his friend in a preface to her short story collection, Thus Were Their Faces. Ocampo was also a clairvoyant, which makes the writing of this New Year’s Eve glosa all the more enchanting.

~~~

I have received it all. Oh, nothing, nothing is mine.
I am like the reflections of a gloomy lake
or the echo of voices at the bottom of a blue
well when it has rained.

—from “Song” by Silvina Ocampo, translated by Jason Weiss

I wonder if you’ve noticed, says the tall
thin man to me at the bar, that far less
oxygen is breathed globally on New Year’s
Eve than any other night—until the sex,
of course. They’ve measured it. We
suspend respiration from a fear of time
passing. Brain cells die from forced inebriation.
We greet the new year stupider. That’s why
I only drink soda and thousand dollar red wine.
I have received it all. Oh, nothing, nothing is mine.

He doesn’t know I came with you. You’re mingling
somewhere so I listen to his hypotheses.
They ramble from a scorched dead Earth
to why his mother shelled her peas
to Patsy Cline and BBC, no other.
He grabs my arm. Oh, look, the flake
is here! Comes every year, tells fortunes
by your posture. Snap! I straighten,
nearly wrench a shoulder. Great.
I am like the reflections of a gloomy lake,

deep, and only vaguely fascinating. I sidle
over, do not catch her name. She’s Kola Sami,
Lapp, born on some Arctic fjord. You’re bored
too easily, she says. All that you once could see,
that saw you back, you’ve stopped believing.
Wait around for others to establish what is true,
and then you preach it, divide yourselves
between the ones who drink and screw and those
who wish they could. If you don’t dissolve the glue
or the echo of voices at the bottom of a blue

mood, nothing will ever arrive to improve.
She vanishes into the crowd with a whiff
of salt spray and spruce. A Canada goose
calls to her mate from the head of a V
in the moment you appear. Let’s get out of here!
We drive through empty streets until nothing remains
of old anxieties. Above the lake stir Northern Lights,
phosphorescent green. You are lovers, I hear the Sami
say. Be that, no other, as an overflowing, unrestrained
well, when it has rained.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

They Tried to Burn My King Today: a Glosa in 3 Parts

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Anatolian legend, Elaine Stirling, glosa, King Croesus of Lydia, mythology revisited, narrative poetry, Spanish medieval fixed verse

They tried to burn my king today.
They built the pyre thrice the height
of men, in mockery of his grand station.
With care, they spaced the costly cedar
cords, marched disloyal factions of our court
to desert cells to interrogate and starve.
The conquerors, for all their nubile spies
and numbers, could not see the flaming twists
of wind their actions stirred along the wharf.
Take your thwarts, oarsmen, it’s time to carve…

To threads of silk, my heart is torn.
Our bed of down, by now, will grace
some harem’s chamber, stripped of gold
perhaps, the jewels pried, replaced
with paste. What need have shallow bowls
for authenticity? With a single toll of bells,
entire populations roll like hungry dogs
for bone. My king and I spoke often
with the harbour god of this, who spells
new sea-lanes through the breasting swells.

We lay in wait, the crew and refugees
inside a cove until the smoke rose high
and black in coils across unguarded sky.
All eyes would now be turned to watch
the immolation of the world’s richest,
most contented man. Their hearts like coals
were shriveling, throats envy-choked. Our captain
gave the sign: unfurl the sails. We slipped like
eels to open sea, rode easily the tides and folds.
Wild gales no longer avalanche the shoals.

An inky strip of cloud informed my soul
that naked flame had reached my lover’s
back. A pair of black-capped terns swooped
low to tell me he’d cried out. I echoed him.
I know that sound! The captain saw my tears.
A kindly man, he from his steering swerved
to comfort me, and this I took with grace
to hide the joy beneath my sorrow. No one
could know my sweet king’s verve
or harrow the rigging of a sailor’s nerve.

to be continued…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of Croesus on the Pyre, Attican amphora, from Wikipedia

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for awhile, glosas will be nothing new to you. One of my goals is to restore this glorious Spanish medieval form to appreciative modern audiences. My novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo, creeps into the darkest mysteries of the glosa. My compatriot of sorts, Alain C. Dexter, published a whole book of them called Dead to Rights. And while we’re on the topic of self promotion, please take a peek at my newest novel of mystery and magical realism, Daughters of Babylon.

Now I should like to give credit to two other poets, without whom this glosa could not have been written. Antipater of Sidon lived in Greece in the 2nd century. His poem, “The Bidding of the Harbor God”, forms the tenth line of every stanza and drives the glosa’s rhyme scheme. The beautiful translation of his poem is by Sherod Santos, an American poet and author of Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. Thank you, both!

Tidings

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Antonio Machado, Elaine Stirling, Luis Quintanilla, poetry, Spanish artists, Spanish medieval fixed verse

Learn how to hope, to wait for the turning of the tide
in the same way as a boat beached up on the shore
and if the tide leaves without you do not be disillusioned.
Everyone who waits knows that victory will be his.

“Consejos”, Antonio Machado,
translation by Paul Quintanilla, © 2014

~~~

I bring you a new language
from the interstice between conflict
and that blunted state too quick to reek
like bony cold fish soup left in the sun
that you call peace. Fashioned from platonic
solids, places, things, these words with pride
shall rest upon your tongue, content as sea
anemones to bask and watch for cause
to speak. Meanwhile, upon this crest abide.
Learn how to hope, to wait for the turning of the tide.

I bring you a new state
beyond the perforated battle lines
punched into sand and mind when you were
not yet old enough to contradict divide
and conquer. Leys and laws of yesteryear
are washed away. This higher floor
derives no strength from soapboxes,
stands firm, regenerates anew each day
and welcomes tidal rests, awaiting more
in the same way as a boat beached up on the shore.

I bring you a new nation
sea to brilliant sea and towering
with stalls of spice and fruits heaped high
and every stage of life enjoyed. No mothers
forced to choke down bile, a flag placed in her
hands as substitute. All danger repositioned
to adventure with the certainty that we’ll come
round again, while Nature’s high, as stimulant,
appeases every curiosity our eager hearts envisioned
and if the tide leaves without you do not be disillusioned.

I bring you a new love
unlike those who from their
spindly cynics’ perches feign a tolerance
for visions of utopia you’ve dreamed since
infancy. This love, like you, has jettisoned
paralysis of hope. He’s unafraid—his kiss
you know by heart, his signature’s right here
by yours, a declaration marked to reunite you
at tide’s turning where you’ll both remember this:
Everyone who waits knows that victory will be his.

~~~

The experience of writing a glosa is always magical for me, but never has it crossed so deeply into the realm of enchantment as this one. The crown stanza by the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado is excerpted from a biography about an equally great Spanish artist, Luis Quintanilla. Machado, a mentor and friend, gave this poem to the young painter in a bar in Segovia, saying he’d thought of him while writing it.

Waiting at the Shore: Art, Revolution, War, and Exile in the Life of the Spanish Artist Luis Quintanilla was written by his son, Paul, and published in 2014 by Sussex Press. If you’ve ever wished you could have lived in Paris during La Belle Epoque, befriending Hemingway, rubbing shoulders with Picasso and Modigliani; been commissioned by the Duke of Alba to paint frescoes for his palace; fought against Fascists in the Spanish Civil War; called the greatest artist of your time, only to be exiled, forgotten, and after your death to be remembered again…

I cannot recommend Paul Quintanilla’s book highly enough, and I thank him for permission to use his father’s painting as the cover for this glosa.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
“Docked Fishing Boat”, oil on canvas, by Luis Quintanilla
from the website dedicated to his work, http://www.lqart.com