But as an opportunity to read and write more poetry, I'm going to try to post a new entry with a poem every day for a year. It will probably be the works of others for the most part, but I'll occasionally be egotistical and include some of my own writing. If there's one place you can expect shameless self-promotion it's the Internet.
And since I'm a sucker for dates and fitting your life to an arbitrary external rhythm, here's an obvious one to start the year off.
Archaic Torso of Apollo
Rainer Maria Rilke
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Lit Geek Alert
This is Stephen Mitchell's translation, because as much as I admire Galway Kinnell's philosophy towards translation and his own gifts as a poet, there's too much of Galway and not enough Rainer in his version.
I read this while getting my English undergrad from a small Christian college in Mississippi, and it just about blew my face off. Almost every line could be the title of someone else's poem; vivid descriptions leave an impression that will last long after you stop reading. And that's even before the final sentence.
The entire poem builds up to that grand statement, but so subtly you never see it coming, a bullet train with a silencer. Buddhist monks of the Zen persuasion spend hours meditating every day so that they can prepare themselves for a new perspective which will still come unexpectedly. A broom brushes a pebble which knocks against a wooden fence and then you reach satori and are enlightened.
You must change your life.
It's so simple you might hear it on a self-help audiobook. But now it's potent, urgent. I can't find a way around it. There's some real hard-won truths there that open a new realization.
I've always thought of poems as both sermons and prayers. I guess it's a by-product of having a minister father. This sermon always speaks to me, especially when half-hearted resolutions get made, Facebooked and broken every hour.
New Years happen every year. And every year you must change your life.
I read this while getting my English undergrad from a small Christian college in Mississippi, and it just about blew my face off. Almost every line could be the title of someone else's poem; vivid descriptions leave an impression that will last long after you stop reading. And that's even before the final sentence.
The entire poem builds up to that grand statement, but so subtly you never see it coming, a bullet train with a silencer. Buddhist monks of the Zen persuasion spend hours meditating every day so that they can prepare themselves for a new perspective which will still come unexpectedly. A broom brushes a pebble which knocks against a wooden fence and then you reach satori and are enlightened.
You must change your life.
It's so simple you might hear it on a self-help audiobook. But now it's potent, urgent. I can't find a way around it. There's some real hard-won truths there that open a new realization.
I've always thought of poems as both sermons and prayers. I guess it's a by-product of having a minister father. This sermon always speaks to me, especially when half-hearted resolutions get made, Facebooked and broken every hour.
New Years happen every year. And every year you must change your life.
No comments:
Post a Comment