Frances, you got me thinking. I have not really discovered how to write "about" trauma, but I know that I got stuck in a deep trauma frequency in 2008 and the climb out was long, and I'm still not out. None of us, I dare say, will ever be "out." What we have is a chance to speak openly to one another about it. Not the "events" but the frequencies. In Tranströmer, I find a trauma-free frequency. It's like he is part of a mountain, speaking to us. The stillness is so calming to me. He wanted less than nothing to do with the literary world.
I guess you already know this author; Peter Levine : Waking the Tiger but I liked this one more : In an Unspoken Voice. This is a nice meeting place for the traumatized to shake it off and go on creating beauty in life as beauty is the anti-dote to all this ugly destruction, Grüß Gott!
Yes, Peter Levine is one of those people who totally changed the course of our understanding. I used to do the Bercelli exercises but got lazy about it. I'm very interested in trauma "release," and I think trauma is a killer that we still don't quite talk about but should. I appreciate totally traumatized people.
"Come to me, for I am as full of contradictions as you."––my ear that's better. Poetry is never "done." At some point you stop, print what you got, move on to the next one. I can finish a poem written years ago, and when I come across it again I immediately want to start editing, changing. But I restrain my eraser and pencil––no.
That first line is nice. I give it mystic meaning in that this world is not our true home. Always liked Dickinson and Poe. For me, sometimes Susie Day comes up with words that are poetry.
Out of which book of translations in english is this coming ?
Have been reading translations in Dutch over the years. There is the blend of chilling mystery, sometimes breadth of distant mystical observation and at the same time tense perseverance of the human sparkle.
Wow! Gracias from a warm heart, may you have a lovely day where the birds chirp and the sun shines at some point and the light comes through the cracks into your heart, may you feel the warmt and hugged and cared for by that which made us all, the bigger picture, the real father and the real mother, why would we go to a party at all where we are not wanted? Better to be by yourself and or with just one real friend which may be a pet, pray for the children, always, Grüß Gott.
"I know very little about poetry, and don’t like most of it, or maybe it’s above my head."
I tend to agree, especially regarding Shakespeare, but hopefully my most recently published poem is straight-down-the-line accessible with no messing. And with audio in my best Russian accent too.
Perfect expression of the feelings so many are feeling today. Always pleased to discover a new writer, especially through another (very poetic) writer. Thank you.
Requiem. The old woman in the bread line turns to the poet and says: "And can you describe this?" The power says "I think I can," and a faint smile appears on what was once the woman's face. That's all paraphrased, from memory. She was so stunning with these encounters between humans.
I copied out many of her poems when I was 18. I'm now reminded of how - apposite is a snatch of Mandelstam's poetry composed when in solitary - for Julian Assange. "You have left me my shoe size on earth. But still my mouth moves in the silence."
Joseph Brodsky said that Nadezhda, Osip's wife, committed all of his poetry to memory lest the written copies be seized by Stalin's boys.
For me, the way you write is pure poetry. It is a joy to find that, despite all the trauma, you continue anyway.
Frances, you got me thinking. I have not really discovered how to write "about" trauma, but I know that I got stuck in a deep trauma frequency in 2008 and the climb out was long, and I'm still not out. None of us, I dare say, will ever be "out." What we have is a chance to speak openly to one another about it. Not the "events" but the frequencies. In Tranströmer, I find a trauma-free frequency. It's like he is part of a mountain, speaking to us. The stillness is so calming to me. He wanted less than nothing to do with the literary world.
I guess you already know this author; Peter Levine : Waking the Tiger but I liked this one more : In an Unspoken Voice. This is a nice meeting place for the traumatized to shake it off and go on creating beauty in life as beauty is the anti-dote to all this ugly destruction, Grüß Gott!
Yes, Peter Levine is one of those people who totally changed the course of our understanding. I used to do the Bercelli exercises but got lazy about it. I'm very interested in trauma "release," and I think trauma is a killer that we still don't quite talk about but should. I appreciate totally traumatized people.
"Come to me, for I am as full of contradictions as you."––my ear that's better. Poetry is never "done." At some point you stop, print what you got, move on to the next one. I can finish a poem written years ago, and when I come across it again I immediately want to start editing, changing. But I restrain my eraser and pencil––no.
Ogden Nash revisited?
My love is large, but not indiscriminate, Celia Farber I love you.
Yes, discernment is key at all times and in all decades, thanks for that one line, Grüß Gott.
My experience has been that children rarely wait for a school bus quietly.
Stop Here On Red
What do you say when your top bomb expert demolishes the myth?
Shows how re-bars stripped clean must point away from truth?
Local stations report in the afternoon unexploded devices
still being removed, yet no mention on the national news at six?
What's to think when the debris pile just doesn't stack up?
When the hole is too small, the brand new hardened concrete walls
too thick and many for a carbon nose cone, the targeted accountants
too well-placed and unlucky to make suspected wrong-doing stick?
Doesn't even one impossible maneuver of a question banked hard
in its descending corkscrew still smolder in the back of your mind?
Setting stone? Wetting a line? The patsy, never closer than three feet,
the kill-shot behind the right ear and powder burns on the collar,
he's paraded each decade to upgrade our denial. It's embarrassing
what selected psychopaths achieve. Corporations are people.
Chemtrails only vapor clouding uncommon air. They scritch like nails
down the gray slate sky, these stupidly explained- away traumas.
Signs say stop here on red. Wait for pilot car going your direction.
I'm waiting for anyone credible to explain how steel-framed markets implode
like volatile skyscrapers and perps all go free. How sagging backpacks
hide pressure cookers. How the FBI lists no murders, Sandy Hook, 2012.
...And when the talk goes to world events; the face elicits a vacant stare,
with the eerie words, "I'm not paying attention".
So much of what you say resonates deeply with me. God be with you.
That first line is nice. I give it mystic meaning in that this world is not our true home. Always liked Dickinson and Poe. For me, sometimes Susie Day comes up with words that are poetry.
https://tinyletter.com/Snidelines/letters/the-storm-in-gaza-ericka-huggins-and-the-right-to-remain-ridiculous
Thanks for sharing !
Out of which book of translations in english is this coming ?
Have been reading translations in Dutch over the years. There is the blend of chilling mystery, sometimes breadth of distant mystical observation and at the same time tense perseverance of the human sparkle.
Peter, I forgot to say, I realize: It's from Robin Fulton's translated Tranströmer called "The Great Enigma."
Thanks !
Wow! Gracias from a warm heart, may you have a lovely day where the birds chirp and the sun shines at some point and the light comes through the cracks into your heart, may you feel the warmt and hugged and cared for by that which made us all, the bigger picture, the real father and the real mother, why would we go to a party at all where we are not wanted? Better to be by yourself and or with just one real friend which may be a pet, pray for the children, always, Grüß Gott.
I love love love this!
🤗✨💖
Joanie, “too thick to catch meaning”. That’s exactly the feeling I get when I read or listen to so much poetry.
Thomas Tranströmer -- excellent choice.
"I know very little about poetry, and don’t like most of it, or maybe it’s above my head."
I tend to agree, especially regarding Shakespeare, but hopefully my most recently published poem is straight-down-the-line accessible with no messing. And with audio in my best Russian accent too.
You can find it here:
https://joshuabondpoetry.substack.com/p/dicators-blues
Perfect expression of the feelings so many are feeling today. Always pleased to discover a new writer, especially through another (very poetic) writer. Thank you.
Poignant, Celia. Obrigado. 🇧🇷
Prayer is hope.
You can really feel the cold in that. It's like standing in line at a prison where you can't do anything but survive, and hope to get through it all.
Made me think of Anna Akhmatova's poem written of her waiting in line in Stalin's Russia, to try and give some provisions to her son in jail.
Requiem. The old woman in the bread line turns to the poet and says: "And can you describe this?" The power says "I think I can," and a faint smile appears on what was once the woman's face. That's all paraphrased, from memory. She was so stunning with these encounters between humans.
I copied out many of her poems when I was 18. I'm now reminded of how - apposite is a snatch of Mandelstam's poetry composed when in solitary - for Julian Assange. "You have left me my shoe size on earth. But still my mouth moves in the silence."
Joseph Brodsky said that Nadezhda, Osip's wife, committed all of his poetry to memory lest the written copies be seized by Stalin's boys.