May Day / Poetry Assembles

If you are in New York City, come to Union Square at 3:00 p.m.  Look for the noble statue of George Washington and some noble poets.

Bring a poem, of course, and participate in the Poetry Assembly, 3-4. Merge into other rallies and events.

Borges, my last of '11, my first of '12. "Someone," a poem

It seems the right thing, to remember the last poem I read in 2011, and to make it my first in 2012. It's from one of my bedside collections the past few months, Poems of the Night, a selection from three of Borges' books.

"Someone" ("Alguien" in Spanish) is from A Gift of Blindness, 1958-1977.

Like someone, I live with "reasons more terrible than a tiger." Please note and admire how Jorge Luis Borges defines our crouched fears as impossibly muscular.

This morning I jimmied a flyer for an Occupy Language event that will be held on January 26, 5-7:30, at the Bowery Poetry Club, and in hunting for a quote looked no further than James Baldwin. Every legend, moreover, contains its residium of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

"...to control..." the universe seems too colonial, but "describing it," is just the ticket, a ticket I buy. Borges describes.

Someone

A man worn down by time,

a man who does not even expect death

(the proofs of death are statistics

and everyone runs the risk

of being the first immortal),

a man who has learned to express thanks

for the days' modest alms:

sleep, routine, the taste of water,

an unsuspected etymology,

a Latin or Saxon verse,

the memory of a woman who left him

thirty years ago now

whom he can call to mind without bitterness,

a man who is aware that the present

is both future and oblivion,

a man who has betrayed

and has been betrayed,

may feel suddenly, when crossing the street,

a mysterious happiness

not coming from the side of hope

but from an ancient innocence,

from his own roots or from some diffused god.

He knows better than to look at it closely,

for there are reasons more terrible than tigers

which will prove to him

that wretchedness is his duty,

but he accepts humbly

this felicity, this glimmer.
____________
Jorge Luis Borges, A Gift of Blindness, 1958-1977, in Poems of the Night, Penguin, 2010. (Many translators are listed.)

As the Police Move in, so Does Poetry

The poet Sparrow, who ran for President
as a revolutionary communist
within the Republican Party

When I met with Stephen (see previous post), he streamed a video of the eviction from Zucotti Park. Yes, there were  policemen and women, there were batons at rest before the cops started moving in. There was the gloomy, cold night, odd city lights, confusion, taunts. And there was poetry.

Whatever was happening as part of the melee, Stephen J. Boyer was reading from the Poetry Anthology. The cops were standing at attention and Stephen was reading from the Poetry Anthology. The cops were rousting and Stephen was reading from the Poetry Anthology.

Among the poems he read, Stephen told me, were some by Sparrow, who, as I recall, stormed The New Yorker years ago, no small feat. So of course Stephen said "Sparrow" more than once. Later--the next day--I'm not sure, the police were calling him Sparrow. Not mocking. Identifying the poetry purveyor and acknowledging the flame of art burns a hell of a lot brighter than the quick, bitter triumph of violence.

Once policeman told Stephen he'd liked hearing the poetry read.  I'll try to get Stephen to post the video. I'm writing now so I don't forget. A major aim of Occupy Language is use poetry to disseminate ideas and also to disseminate poetry.  This here seems like a good enough example.

Maybe you'll come up with another way to disseminate.

Here's a terrific profile of Sparrow by Chris Dodge. In Utne. 

Marathon Reading of Bartleby the Scrivener. So far, no reaction from Police Commissioner Ray Kelly

I wonder what Mayor Bloomberg would have to say to Bartleby the Scriviner when up against his "flute-like" tone of voice and his "I prefer not to."

Bloomberg: "Well, he has the right to his opinion, I am a strong proponent of freedom of speech, but there's a point where you just have to get moving. And Bartleby has passed that point."

As for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly who I once admired for his intelligence and education, I don't know how he'd handle Bartleby. I hope even combat veteran Kelly would balk at throwing a net over the ginger-nuts eating scriviner.  Kelly, by the way, continues to have an intelligence of sorts and his accomplishments are many. His heart, alas, is shrinking.

Yesterday's marathon reading of Bartleby the Scrivener, by Melville, sparks these questions. Just a few blocks from Zucotti Park, at 55 Wall Street, an indoors public space which generously doesn't throw nets over anyone, so far, when used for committee meetings.The event fresh in my mind, it is easy enough to imagine Kelly and/or Bloomberg confronting the text. Hmmm.

Far better to imagine was the group of well more than fifty who gathered. And efficiently, as everything connected with Occupy Wall Street is organized and mannered. The reading took around two hours.

Thanks to Occupy Language, Melville House Publishers, Housing Works Bookstore and whoever else for sponsoring the event and for my portion which offered an insight into the narrator--alternately boastful but, in the light of morning, honest at his ineffectual efforts to move Bartleby.  "He was more a man of preferences than assumptions."

You and a whole bunch of others, Bartleby.