Great Poem: "'Had I not been awake...'" by Seamus Heany

'Had I not been awake'
by Seamus Heaney

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence;
Had I not been awake I would have missed it

It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
Afterwards. And not now.

Great Poem: "The Dawn" By Federico Garcia Lorca

It amazes me that this poem was written 80 years ago, and it still has so much insight into the New York of today. It's truly a great poem.

The Dawn

BY FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA

The New York dawn has

four columns of mud

and a hurricane of black doves

that paddle in putrescent waters.

The New York dawn grieves

along the immense stairways,

seeking amidst the groins

spikenards of fine-drawn anguish.

The dawn comes and no one receives it in his mouth,

for there no morn or hope is possible.

Occasionally, coins in furious swarms

perforate and devour abandoned children.

The first to come out understand in their bones

that there will be no paradise nor amours stripped of leaves:

they know they are going to the mud of figures and laws,

to artless games, to fruitless sweat.

The light is buried under chains and noises

in impudent challenge of rootless science.

Through the suburbs sleepless people stagger,

as though just delivered from a shipwreck of blood.

Great Poem: "Barges on the Hudson" by Babette Deutsch

Barges on the Hudson

BY BABETTE DEUTSCH

Going up the river, or down, their tuneless look

Is of men grown poorer who, though ageing, wear

Some majesty of the commonplace. Old barges

Are cousin to those whom poverty becomes—

To late November, the north, nightfall, all the

Deprived whom increment of loss enlarges.

They have no faces, have no voices, even

Of their own selves no motion. Yet they move.

With what salt grace, with a dim pride of ocean

Uncompassable by a fussy tug,

Prim nurse that drags or nudges the old ones on.

They must borrow their colors from the river, mirror

The river’s muddy silver, in dulled red echo

A sundown that beds in soot. Their freight, rusty,

Faded, cindery, is like the past

The charwoman deals with. Yesterday’s business

They carry with the dignity of the blind.

By night the river is black, they are black’s shadows

Passing. The unwrinkled stars dispute that darkness

Alone with a lantern on a one-eyed spar.

Great Poem: "The Spring Campaigns" by Julio Martinez Mesanza

The Spring Campaigns

Other men remember the false gardens
of love, and the days they were in love
or thought they were in love, and others
the books they read as children, books that marked
their lives forever, though they couldn't know
in those days how the real world operates.
And all of them take comfort in this way
and even grow enthusiastic when
they realize that memory can shape
itself at will and provide the things
that love and books and gardens can't provide.
I remember what I didn't undertake:
more than anything, the spring campaigns.

Great Poem: "1999" by Kevin Gonzalez

It's been awhile... enjoy this poem by Kevin Gonzalez.

1999
by Kevin Gonzalez

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.

50 worst pop lyrics of all-time

I'm glad this was included: 

"I'm down on my knees, searching for the answer… Are we human or are we dancer?" 

A shocker from Gallup

Grizzly Bear singing "Two Weeks" live

Man, these boys can harmonize... 

Scenes From The Wire: Bubbles Walks Through Hamsterdam

This may be the most intense scene in all five seasons of The Wire. It shows Bubbles, a heroin addict, walking through the legalized drug zone at night. Frightening stuff.

Great Poem: William Carlos William's "A Love Song"

Another beauty by WCW.

A Love Song
By William Carlos Williams

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

Eddie Murphy in "White Like Me"

I was watching the SNL short special last night and saw this for the first time. Hilarious. Just watch the way Eddie Murphy walks as a white man.

Grizzly Bear sings "Two Weeks" with chick from Beach House

I wish the recording was better, but this is still cool.

Great Poem: Ezra Pound's "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter"

I can't believe I've never read this one, but it's something else. Enjoy. 


The River-Merchant's Wife
By Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Critics' Pick: A.O. Scott reviews "The Graduate"

A.O. Scott does a little 3-minute soundbyte about "The Graduate" on the New York Times website. If you're a fan of the movie it's worth a watch. It's probably the best movie about being young and in your 20s that I've seen. It's a classic. 

Great Poem: Michael Blumenthal's "And Here You Are"

When I was an undergrad, Michael Blumenthal was teaching poetry writing. Unfortunately, I never got to take him. It's a shame, he's a wonderful poet. Just check this out. 

And Here You Are

By Michael Blumenthal

It's such a relief to see the woman you love walk out the door 
some nights, for it's ten o'clock and you need your eight hours 
of sleep, and one glass of wine has been more than enough

and, as for lust—well, you can live without it most days and you 
are glad, too, that the Ukrainian masseuse you see every Wednesday 
is not in love with you, and has no plans to be, for it's the pain

in your back you need relief from most, not that ambiguous itch, 
and the wild successes of your peers no longer bother you 
nor do your unresolved religious cravings nor the general injustice

of the world, no, there is very little that bothers you these days when 
you turn, first, to the obituaries, second to the stock market, then, 
after a long pause, to the book review, you are becoming a good citizen,

you do your morning exercises, count your accumulated blessings, 
thank the Lord there's a trolley just outside your door your girlfriend 
can take back home to her own bed and here you are it is morning you

are alone every little heartbeat is yours to cherish the future is on fire 
with nothing but its own kindling and whatever it is that's burning 
in its flames isn't you and now you will take a shower and this is it.

Great Poem: Billy Collins's "Marginalia"

I'm not always the biggest Billy Collins fan but this poem's wit made me laugh. Favorite line: "And if you have managed to graduate from college/without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"/in a margin, perhaps now/is the time to take one step forward."

Marginalia by Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - "Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like why wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. "Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. "Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird signing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- "Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Or maybe this is the best hockey goal ever...

The best hockey goal ever?

This goal by Alexander Ovechkin may just be the best goal I've ever seen scored. I'm not sure there is another player in the NHL who scores this one. 

Hauschka - Morgenrot

Beautiful stuff... 

Hauschka - Morgenrot from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.

True Friendship

Great Poem: William Carlos Williams "To a Poor Old Woman"

And here is my favorite William Carlos Williams poem...

To a Poor Old Woman
by William Carlos Williams
munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her

HBO Gives David Simon another show

Just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, I heard this news: 

It might not pay off in Emmys, but we're excited anyway! HBO has ordered the first nine episodes of Treme, the new project from Wire creator David Simon, according to Vulture buddy Nikki Finke. Treme, set in post-Katrina New Orleans, centers on a group of jazz musicians, though Simon has promised he'll make the Big Easy look just as bad as Baltimore by training his lens on the city's corrupt government and public-housing controversies. It stars Simon acolytes Wendell Pierce, Clarke Peters, and Melissa Leo, and will almost certainly be awesome.

Great Poem: C.P. Cavary's "Since Nine--"

I kind of dig this poem...curious what people think.


Since Nine—
by C. P. Cavafy
Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

Half past twelve. The time has quickly passed
since nine o'clock when I first turned up the lamp
and sat down here. I've been sitting without reading,
without speaking. With whom should I speak,
so utterly alone within this house?
The apparition of my youthful body,
since nine o'clock when I first turned up the lamp,
has come and found me and reminded me
of shuttered perfumed rooms
and of pleasure spent—what wanton pleasure!
And it also brought before my eyes
streets made unrecognizable by time,
bustling city centres that are no more
and theatres and cafés that existed long ago.
The apparition of my youthful body
came and also brought me cause for pain:
deaths in the family; separations;
the feelings of my loved ones, the feelings of
those long dead which I so little valued.
Half past twelve. How the time has passed.
Half past twelve. How the years have passed.

Great Poem: William Carlos William's "The Red Wheelbarrow"

Slowly but surely this is turning into a poetry blog, it seems. But it's probably what I love most in this world, so I think it will continue to be a poetry blog with a few random links here and there.

Anyway, here's another WCW classic. As I said about another WCW poem, I did not understand the brilliance of this poem until I aged. But now I realize that WCW challenges us to do through the use of line breaks and rhythm is to savor each image. He wants to look at each image in the poem and movement of the poem and appreciate it just for the language and nothing else. So try reading it aloud and slowly. Savor each syllable and and be in the moment with it. 

The Red Wheelbarrow

By William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Why President Obama needs to tweet more often

Oh lord, what is the world coming to:

In his first 100 days in office, Barack Obama has updated his Twitter account only twice. I voted for the guy, but I can’t stand by while President 2.0 throws away the
online cred he built during last year’s campaign.

Two weeks ago, the daytime-TV host Oprah Winfrey and the second-tier celebrity Ashton Kutcher drew national attention — Ms. Winfrey for using Twitter on her show, Mr. Kutcher for collecting a million followers at twitter.com. No one seems to have noticed the president has racked up a million followers without even trying. Imagine if he posted something!

The standard excuse made by Obama apologists — “he’s too busy” — is at best naïve. More often, it’s dishonest. The president records a five-minute video every week. Anyone who’s done video knows a five-minute clip takes a lot more than five minutes of preparation, shooting, and reshooting. A few days ago, Oprah figured out Twitter live on camera in less time than it takes Mr. Obama to explain PAYGO in this week’s address.