Humberto Ak'abal

I came across Humberto Ak'abal in a long gone copy of "the 90s", a little magazine published by Robert Bly.

And, I am in love with these little, mysterious poems. I wish, I wish, I wish my spanish was better, and I would myself translate a book, or all there was, into english. Is anyone out there up to the challenge? I wish I could write this way. . . 

Here are two poems from his website; 

Early Hours

In the high hours of the night

stars get naked

and bathe in the rivers

Owls desire them; 

the little feathers on their

heads

stand up. 

*******

Prayer

In the churches

you can only hear the prayer

of the trees

converted to pews. 

Reading through Spicer writing through Lorca

Long silence, wind over frozen lakes. 

Solid snow mounds in a walmart parking lot. 

Ive been reading the collected Jack Spicer. There was only one time in my entire undergraduate career that I went in the rare-books room of the library in Pittsburgh. I'm not even sure how I came to it, though Im guessing through some scrap in the great collection, "That Voice That Is Great Within Us". 

Anyhow, it seemed the only way to get my hands on more Spicer poems was in this lonely, frightening, excitingly off-limits and secluded room. I was buzzed through the locked doors, asked the person manning the desk for the book, they went and retrieved it. 

It was a letterpress, handmade book, bound in heavy red vellum. Im not even sure what it was called. I remember anger, and drunkeness, and a wonderful sense of the poems surety as they spiraled out of control. There were strange lists, things about baseball, and other miscellany. I think maybe mostly the name ignited something in me. Jack Spicer...thats what I wanted to be, red faced, drunk, righteously pissed off and overly smart. At least thats how I imagined it. 

Now the whole shebang is collected. Im especially drawn to the "After Lorca" section, and specifically the letters written from Jack, who describes the ideal state of a living poet as "like someone dead" to the fully dead Lorca. 

Excerpt; 

"...Others pick up words from the street, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!" What does one do with all this crap? 

Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to 

I repeat - the perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary. " 

and this; 

Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else

 a translation for Ebbe Borregaard

The  pine needles fall

Like an ax in the forest. 

Can you hear them crumble

There where we are sleeping? 

The windows are close to the wall

Here in the darkness they remain open. 

(When I saw you  in the morning

My arms were full of paper.)

Five hundred miles away

The moon is a hatchet of silver. 

(When I saw you in the morning

My eyes were full of paper.)

Here the walls are firm

They do not crumble and remain certain. 

(When I saw you in the morning

My heart was full of paper.)

Five hundred miles away

The stars are glass that is breaking. 

The windows sag on the wall

I feel cold glass in the blankets. 

Child, you are too tall for this bed. 

The pine needles fall

Like an ax in the forest. 

Can you hear them crumble

There where we are sleeping? 

Jack Spicer

Itimiable Quartet

Let us now extol the virtues of a magical pairing.

Smoked ham + Gruyere + Cornichons + Good Real Mustard

Its hard to improve something that comes together seemingly so naturally. You have the landscape (and here were talking about the mountains of eastern france, western switzerland) which inform your process. Pigs eating in the valley, slaughtered in the fall, meat smoked for storage pre-refrigeration. Cows pasturing all summer, higher and higher in to the mountains, eating a specific and beautiful array of plants and flowers. Controlled spoilage = fantastic cheese. Same for the tiny cucumbers youre putting into a slow death (pickling).

So yeah, this is my favorite sandwich for the late fall / early winter. Go to the store, get a baguette and these 4 items, and prepare for a killer sando, sanctioned by the laws of the earth!

If your in NE, mpls, youve got to know that Surdyks deli is just Killing It, by making this sandwich for you, for under 5$. For real. Top Notch. Add bechamel sauce to make it a bit fancier / messier, and you have a Croque Monsieur.


BAH!

The Gate

by Marie Howe

I had no idea that the gate I would step through

to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made. He was

a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,

done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold

and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.

And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.

And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.

Silencio

A little quiet around here. Abby and I have been moving into our new (first) house, which is a lot of things; terrifying, electric, echo-y, paint-y, warm, on a hill, made of brick, and house-like. All of which is to say the poems have been a bit slow of late.

I have been taking the bus more, which has enabled me short bursts of reading time. Currently under eye is "The Nine Gates; entering the mind of poetry". Pretty good book of essays regarding craft, etc. All grist for the mill. Its lead me, primarily to want to ACTUALLY read Yeats. Something I've just been putting off...its like Dylan, or the Beatles or something. Like you feel the impact has fully integrated into the culture, so whats the point of listening / reading. . . until you actually DO and realize what a buffoon you were before.

For now, how about a we talk about that wonderful cheese up above? Its called Sottocenere, comes from the area around Venice in Italy, and is a cows milk cheese with Truffles. It is covered in a protective and georgeous ash coating, and wrapped in twine. The ash was / is used to protect the cheese as it aged from pests, oxygen, etc, and also to convey subtle spices into the cheese; clove, pepper and some others are crushed into the ash. Try grating a bit on pizza or pasta for a really decadent twist.

Two Poems in Progress

After the Book Fair

1.

All the trees, unpruned

send up their trunks and canopy.

I want to learn what the beaver

knows, asleep under the frozen lake

all winter.

You look in one eye, and see grieving.

You look in the other eye, and see ruin.

No more need for speaking.

Asleep through a civil war, you dreamed

brothers falling from the bridge to the Old City.

I fall asleep watching the late news,

a thin trickle of sweet crude

tendrils from my ear. In my dream,

I am listening to snow, but cannot pass

through the cloud to where the cemetery

grass is growing.

I'll feed there for twenty centuries, on my knees.

2.

An old woman shaking her cane

at a beautiful black squirrel. He shimmers,

carries on the heavy task of storage.

Dogs in the dog-run with specialty diets,

pissing in bronze woodchips.

The river here collects our medicine,

and all over town descends a strange calmness.

Narcotic dreams unbidden, Mothers of the dark

silenced by pixelated birds. Crows

gather on the dutch elm outside my window.

We are desperate for forgiveness.

Six Syllabics

A group of ravens is called

an unkindness. Now they roost,

darkening the tree outside

a window in my first cold

home. I can feel them speaking,

though mistake it for warning.

Months later, in another

city, a volary flies

the skeleton of a black

infinity pattern. I

know now how this world will end.

A new season, the early

adopters matching their hubs

to their rims, weaving fixies

through cars filled with men in blue

suits and ties the color of

corn-silk. I want to be those

fathers and I want to be

their frames. Some perfect nights the

hangover doesn't even

enter the picture. Beneath

the music, a great beating

of wings.

Two Things

I've done it. I've joined "the book". Friend me or poke me, have your way with me, distress my images, blog about it, see it THERE! I am on facebook.

Related; Im going to try to see how to link this blog to facebook. Technology.

Third, secret thing. Been writing more, and going to start posting more works in progress. Heres a poem about food. Or something.




Thistle Rennet


Old Portuguese wine makers needed a way
to filter the juice, to deepen the grape
and discovered the extractive property of egg-whites.
Wine pouring through a net of embryo,
but what to do with all of the yolk?
Pastries every morning dusted with cinnamon in Lisbon.

On the white rock terraces, no calves,
thin herds, shepherds found a plant to save their milk.
Thistle in a goat-skin, warm sheep's milk in the sun,
pressed into golden coins; Evora.
Later miners would use these waxy pucks
to trade for skins of thick port wine,
faces covered in ash, tired muscles sinking
yellow teeth into the bitter yellow rind,
a spicy tang, and then the mellow of milk-fat
rounding, pressed to the roof of the mouth,
syrupy wash of the wine, musty
sheep and dust smell in their beards.

Oh I want to go back past the radio,
I want to dance with an unphotographed woman.
I want my hair slick with olive oil in the fall,
wiry arms thankful for the sun on my flock,
wine by my side, greater mysteries asleep in the stones

New Year

New Year, new BLOG.

Im hoping to actaully keep updating this thing in 2008. Some projects = lots of new poems, thoughts on reading, etc.

Also, Im planning on going back over the past YEAR of food and wine magazines that Ive collected and working on them. That is, every month I circle at least 7 recipies to try, but then the magazines seem to end up in a pile under my desk. So, Im going to break out and cook every recipie Ive circled over the last year. Im hoping to cover 2 months of magazine per actual month-time.

Now, how do I add links to fellow blog dudes out there? Rob? Ian? Ellen?

HIT me.

BC