National Poetry Month
Apr. 8th, 2004 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vulgarweedI've considered the first lines of this one for my epitaph.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower... (Dylan Thomas)
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
This is one of the Thomas poems I can recite from memory. He has been a huge influence on all my writing, particularly in use of language, so counter-intuitive or para-intuitive that it raises goosebumps when it clicks into place. I think I've always liked his neo-mythical short fiction--see the stories in Adventures in the Skin Trade--just a tiny bit better than his poetry. He was a very aural writer; it seems to me that sounds of words suggest their use to him as much or more than meaning. I really dig that, since that's how I read (even when I'm reading "silently," it's really not. I move my lips when I read, I know -- to enjoy the words.)
I used to be pretty active in the performance-poetry scene, and one of the most important things I learned from it was how much I simply enjoy reciting, performing poetry as music. Sometimes I'd do "covers," and I found then I enjoy reading aloud others' poetry at least as much as my own (I always tried to write for musicality then, but I'm obviously not as good at it as gajillions of poets); one of my most-cherished "peak experiences" was when a friend and I duetted on "Howl" to pay tribute when Ginsberg died. Yes, all of it. The sounds, the rhythm and roll and cry of it, was truly a sort of ecstasy of the intelligence.
I'd love to bring back a sort of bardic poetry-chanting circle that didn't have the cult-of-personality sort of crap so common to perf-po when everybody's doing their own stuff and being competitive about it -- I'd like to really focus on the art of performance of others' work. Kind of like the way the art of interpretation in singing has been undermined and underrated by the expectation that "real artists" write all their own material.
Oh, and a big Happy Birthday to the Man in My Life (MIML)! Here's to many more, kitty!
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower... (Dylan Thomas)
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
This is one of the Thomas poems I can recite from memory. He has been a huge influence on all my writing, particularly in use of language, so counter-intuitive or para-intuitive that it raises goosebumps when it clicks into place. I think I've always liked his neo-mythical short fiction--see the stories in Adventures in the Skin Trade--just a tiny bit better than his poetry. He was a very aural writer; it seems to me that sounds of words suggest their use to him as much or more than meaning. I really dig that, since that's how I read (even when I'm reading "silently," it's really not. I move my lips when I read, I know -- to enjoy the words.)
I used to be pretty active in the performance-poetry scene, and one of the most important things I learned from it was how much I simply enjoy reciting, performing poetry as music. Sometimes I'd do "covers," and I found then I enjoy reading aloud others' poetry at least as much as my own (I always tried to write for musicality then, but I'm obviously not as good at it as gajillions of poets); one of my most-cherished "peak experiences" was when a friend and I duetted on "Howl" to pay tribute when Ginsberg died. Yes, all of it. The sounds, the rhythm and roll and cry of it, was truly a sort of ecstasy of the intelligence.
I'd love to bring back a sort of bardic poetry-chanting circle that didn't have the cult-of-personality sort of crap so common to perf-po when everybody's doing their own stuff and being competitive about it -- I'd like to really focus on the art of performance of others' work. Kind of like the way the art of interpretation in singing has been undermined and underrated by the expectation that "real artists" write all their own material.
Oh, and a big Happy Birthday to the Man in My Life (MIML)! Here's to many more, kitty!
