Seamus Heaney 1939-2013

Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born at Mossbawn farmhouse between Castledawson and Toomebridge, County Derry, he resided in Dublin until his death.

From "Digging"

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Death of a Naturalist 1966

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Mercy

"The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.

"They are both contained in the traditional three aspects of the Dharma path: wisdom, meditation, and morality. Wisdom is intuitive knowledge of the mind of love and clarity that lies beneath one's ego-driven anxieties and aggressions.

"Meditation is going into the mind to see this for yourself - over and over again, until it becomes the mind you live in. Morality is bringing it back out in the way you live, through personal example and responsible action, ultimately toward the true community of all beings."

- Gary Snyder

Poetry rocks russia

Greetings,

The passing of Mr. Voznesensky creates new opportunity and awareness for poets with courage and voice. Poets speak in the atmosphere of intimidation and menace. 

Here is a NYT piece on Russian poetry.

...Here is Pushkin’s poem “Good for the Poet Who ...,” a bitter satire of writers who would curry favor with rulers, in a translation by Yevgeny Bonver:

Good for the poet who applies
His art in royal chambers’ splendor.
Of tears and laughter crafty vendor
Adding some truth to many lies,
He tickles the sated taste of lords
For more greatness and awards.
And decorates all their feasts,
Receiving clever praise as fees ...
But, by the doors, so tall and stout —
On sides of stables and backyards —
The people, haunted by the guards,
Hark to this poet in a crowd.

Now there’s a declaration of independence.

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Metta.

Delightful dangerous literature - 2666

Draw, paint, sing, dance, write, disappear.

Tell me a secret, poet. Reveal your wandering verse, your free form exile. There is no salvation.

Not too detached. Not too sentimental. We are surrounded by androids. Give the zombies simple stuff. Let them wrap their minds around artificial entertainment instruments in their operating rooms. Cut them open.

How do we measure their emotional receptivity? How do they establish meaning inside the daily, brutal violence?

Rolling and tumbling. A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned. People take themselves way too serious. The art and elements of a Japanese folding screen - shapes, edges, designs, natural free form.

Tell me why you loved being a campground guard in Costa Brava, Spain. Was it the night, the dark? The ghosts from your childhood? Yes, I imagine it was all the ghost children, all the dead women in Ciudad Juarez. All the unclaimed corpses. All the young girls. Never identified. Never claimed. Forgotten forever.

How you turned to writing fiction to support your family, your children. How you said you would have rather been a detective instead of a writer. How they are related. How you realized your literary life in Spain after Chile, Mexico and lost highways along your way. Wandering. Literature, the abyss.

You created a new novel form before passing on. Thank you. 2666.

Creating literature is a dangerous occupation. Silence exile and cunning.

Metta.

A Tomato Based Culture

From Fujian, China to Ankara, Turkey (a kind of fowl) to Bursa along the Silk Road with Doner and Pide, all the sliced and diced tomatoes, all the bamboo baggage filled with laughter and forgetting inside the smashing of utensils and wash and wear drip dry neon holiday flashing factories along metro subway tracks where world weary

pedestrians completing a simple sentence with a full plate of delicious shoppers dancing inside fire breathing ovens stoking love's fires before racing home to mother, father, sister, brother all wearing traditional anxiety values around heavily medicated ma-scared necks handing someone change, your fragile receipt for paying

at the cosmic bowling alley for strikes and spares and did you know the great father liberator has a train car parked forever at the main station, a gift from Adolph, the Further and it was all imaginary, this T place where idle men stood around looking bored and unemployed, uneducated drinking brown tea

after artfully massaging a microscopic silver spoon around the rim, deep into the universe of sugar stars clanging metal against a small glass destroying cubes manufactured in a filthy factory - so an inspection engineer whispered in her strict confidence - don't use the sugar she whispered across a plate of pasta on a chilly Ankara night before they went to a wedding in Ulus, the ancient Roman village, deep in an underground cavern filled with musicians, dancers, and children

gypsies played anvils

far away from shy lovers holding hands under the table inside the rising sun of their desire, their passion for yawning bamboo chairs where two elderly women in multi-hued headscarves smoked exploding drops of water from plummeting icicles onto tiled roofs above the cafe where a ghost scribbled in shadows burning his fingers to see the why eye and the falling water drops were music to his ears

Metta.