28? another poem that isn't mine

To the Reader
Denise Levertov
As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,

and as you read, many gods
lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian
are watching the generations of leaves,

and as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages.

---

Almost done with Byatt's Still Life. I'll finish it tonight. I also bought a copy of Fingersmith by Sarah Waters for a friend and decided to reread that before I give it to her. One of the cover blurbs calls it "deliciously brazen," which is a perfect way of describing it. I am quite enthralled by Still Life right now, but ten pages of Fingersmith had me forgetting all about the romances of Frederica Potter. I have set it down regretfully, and will let myself tear through it as soon as I am done with Byatt.

19: one poem I wish had been written for me

No Te Amo
by Pablo Neruda

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

Sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

I Do Not Love You
by Pablo Neruda, trans. unknown

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

11: I even make lists from the heads of fictional people

(But this one is true.)

--I didn't mean to imply anything racist in my ire about red wheelbarrows. I can totally get into the Racial Other in literature! Post colonialist criticism is fun! But if you're going to make arguments for social commentary in WCW, at least do it in more convincing places. His poetry is ridiculously full of social commentary... But race in a poem about wheelbarrows and chickens!? I cannot accept it.

--My favourite teacher/mentor/surrogate mother thinks it's funny when I get irate about poetry, but I worry that it happens too quickly and frequently, and that because of this I should not study it. I try to see all possible interpretations as fairly as I can, to read within historical context, but in poetry I am too hasty to listen to my intestinal instincts when it comes to interpretation -- I fall in love and hate too quickly, I become stubbornly convinced of my own ideas and feelings. I love poetry, but maybe I love it too much to study it fairly. Or maybe studying it on graduate levels would ruin it for me. Sometimes I genuinely fear academia and what it has done to the way I read.

--This is why I am not studying creative writing: I feel too strongly about it in every way possible.

--I say "intestinal" instead of "gut" because "intestinal" is a much prettier and more interesting word.

--While I'm talking about poetry, may I ask a favour of any stray souls who take the time to read this? One of my friends says that she wants to read more poetry but doesn't know where to begin, so I am making her a home-made book of poems for christmas. I am trying to be varied and interesting in my selections, and my few delicious anthologies of international poetry help a lot in this, but all of the poems I am drawn to intestinally are really problematically morbid. Her father just died and I do not want to bombard her with sad poems. I won't leave them out, though; I hate it when people self-censor for sake of my fragilities, and so I refuse to do it myself, but god, I am so depressing in my taste! So will you give me a few suggestions? Sad things are good too. My only stipulation for this homemade anthology is truth. One of my favourite things about poetry is how searingly true it can be, and I want to convey this to her in the book because I want her to love poetry too, even if it is just a little bit.

--I am trying to learn how to bake a perfect loaf of bread. Homemade bread would be number one on my list of Things I Like if I bothered to order my lists. I yearn to be a breadmaster! So far I have wasted an immeasurable amount of raw ingredients and subjected my family to all sorts of awful and mediocre bread.

I don't think I express how thankful I am regularly enough. I'd make a list of things that I am thankful for if it weren't such an obnoxious cliche.

9: drying my salty braid

After checking my email, which is invariably the first thing I do upon waking, I told myself quite sternly that I could not do anything at all until I finished something. I allowed myself a cup of coffee before attacking Europe Central with determination.

And I finished it.

This is the part of the post that should, by rule and format, have a review of some kind, but I don't know what to say or how to say it, or maybe I just can't find the words to begin. It's an astounding book, half fact and half fiction. I had to read it slowly because it is so incredibly brutal. The San Francisco Chronicle said that it has the power to "put a few readers towards madness," and that's exactly how I felt when reading it. It's the most devastating book about World War 2 and Soviet Russia that I have ever read.

Especially interesting to me is its examination of the impact of war on artists. Characters include Kathe Kowitz, Dmitri Shostakovitch, and my own Anna Akhmatova. This gives me an excuse to post a poem rather than continue talking about books or war or myself, so here's an early poem by Anna Akhmatova, written long before Stalin destroyed her life.

I.

Bays cut into the low-lying shore,
All the sails were fleeing out to sea,
And I was drying my salty braid
On a flat rock a mile from land.
A green fish swam up to me,
A white gull flew up to me,
And I was daring, vexed and merry,
And completely unaware that this -- was happiness.
I buried my yellow dress in the sand
So the wind, or a tramp, wouldn't steal it away
And I swam far out to sea;
On the warm, dark waves I lay.
"At the Edge of the Sea," Anna Akhmatova 1914