·:[ Stephen Vincent ]:·
• • • • •

Sappho & Walking Theories are taking a biz/vac break - back on Monday May 2.

yes! radiant lyre speak to me
become a voice

Ann Carson

I took my lyre and said:
Come now, my heavely
tortise shell: Become
a speaking instrument

Mary Barnard

I am not some old shellfish:
You, Sylvia, can still bang me to pieces.

Stephen Vincent

Go, ponder!

See entry for “April 21″ (below) for process of what’s going on in what I am - for lack of a better term - callling an “antonymical” translation of Ann Carson’s translation of the Sappho.

98.

Against my father

In his folded age

His hands tar purple

Fingers and body so thin

The waves in his silver hair

An emblem to his son

A horse once rode there

A sail – to be more true –

Rippled similar

In the starboard tack

Spangled off the near coast

The City now darkens.

98. (Carson)

]for my mother

in her youth it was a great

ornament if someone had hair

bound with purple-

a very great ornament indeed

But for the one who has hair yellower

than a pinetorch

crowns

of blooming flowers

and just late a headbinder

spangled from Sardis

]cities

(If you are looking for “Walking Theories 1 - 10″ go down to the previous entry, Thanks).

I have been on a little “antonymical” translation binge with Ann Carson’s translations of Sappho. I find the Carson intriguingly fidel - as say compared to Mary Barnard who I find “imagist” (as in Pound) compelled to make tight, formally effective poems, which they are often are. Where the Carson, I find myself wanting to turn the work upside down and pull up another - dare I say “parallel” universe - or, in keeping with the “Walking Theories” - another place to let the language walk and be surprised at itself.

Here goes a couple: Will be happy to get your responses (Stephen Vincent )

60.
(Sappho - Ann Carson)

]having encountered
]wants
]accomplish the plan
]I call out
]to the heart all at once
]all that you wish to win
]to fight for me
]by the wanton one persuaded
]but yes you know well
]
]

(Stephen V)

To Stephanie

Over there, a limited estate

And no companions

And, what can I say,

Prowling the coastline

A harpoon without pity

She rides a horse

With silk on the saddle.

63.
(Carson)

Dream of black
You come roaming and when sleep

Sweet god, terribly from pain
To hold the strength separate

But I expect not to share
Nothing of the blessed ones

For I would not be like this
Toys

But may it happen to me
All

(Vincent)

Rope the Oak tree
Brave one

Gather bitter lemons
And then some

And for you
Lay away

Shut up
Speak to no one

I will arrive
Rude, crude

You will be the last,
Burnished.

+++++

That’s it.

Walking Theory #1:

“Of King Leire and of the answer of his youngest daughter
that graciously was married to the King of France…How King Leire
was driven out of his land through his folly and how Cordelle
his youngest daughter helped him in his need.”
from the Brut Chronicle, 1453

Driven out to walk. No kingdom, look closely. New Kingdom:
looking.

Walking Theory #2

Walking is a weaving thing. Feet the pedals. Eye the needle. Rhythm. Breath.
Rhythm. Word. Image. Thought. Erase. Twine. Word. Image. Pedal. Twine. Eye. Pedal. Woven. Erase. Continue.

Walking Theory #3:

Empathy, the conical empathy of looking into smoky white & blue wisteria, the golden flower bells –dracaena - hanging downward, upturned edges slightly wrinkled, withering; the Vietnamese woman with solid red silk and transparent featherweight pale green and red “screen” scarves (sparsely budded with yellow, red and gray tufts) in front of the beet red Victorian:

Empathy in the ear, the poet on the hill over black coffee in a transparent glass cup, a triangular homemade golden scone, late white morning light, the revelation of the lung in “final stage’, a mortality on the edge of each breath, the clarity, the voice speaking in absolute strength:

Empathy the walk walking down hill and up-hill, in-take and out, each step, one after another - the conical eye, the turned measure - a breath, a prayer.

Walking Theory #4:

Acknowledge juxtaposition, mourning dove mocking bird, shape sound,
alphabet character, melody blood:

Release ten-fold, the robin on the trolley track, the crow caw stuck in the throat, the here gone, the inside character, the old flame froze, defrost, walk harder, don’t bend to break, the cloven stairwell, one level to the next, each side “interesting”:

Envelop the eye in architecture, the “bastard beaux art” house circa 1930; most great art “Beau & bastard”, she might say, you might say, the feet walking say nothing:

Walking willful and drawn, the spiral steps a call, a choice; one circles the upside-down star bell, dracaena, golden:

Writing, an alphabet, juxtaposed – double helix in the stairs’ upward spiral – A over B, B over A – walking to receive her.

Walking Theory #5

Engage the highest hill in the neighborhood - early morning may be best - it’s spring the flowers an orchestra – gold, lavender, white, pale blue, the reds are coming – the dotted eye, the whimsical up and foot-push upon push insistent:

Bowels, interior plumbing all a-flower - houses alight in white and peach - up the hill, the stairway over Sanchez & Liberty, sun splashed bronze City Hall dome in gold filigree framed by oak and arbor, “By these truths ‘we’ stand,” continue:

Near top is construction, open studs, new wings, new views, poetry into vision into architecture:
“A big job?”
“No, a big job is one year, this is six months.”

Walking into structure, walking away, walking over the top, turn down the steep hill into theory, into reflection, into imagination, theory a,b, c, is cancelled by theory x,y,z, is keep moving, love is loving the felt body moving, is she at the intersection of Church & 21st., the red purse with vertical white straps, the dark top, the jeans about the thighs, the structure moving south, the walk going east and down, beauty envelopes the palette, one by one, love is a corner crossing.

Walking Theory #6

In the land of low go lower than low until tongue touches salt, wave and light
cast and slashed through the high natural bridge of stone and platinum. Make a bride of her, horse feathers and trotting by wing, this is the dream life that supercedes:
In the land of low, call it poetry, slash its throat, let the blood rumble, let thistle tear at skin, let waterfall beckon, let diamonds fry in circuits, let double helix, arcade of oak, champion the tongue.

Let language roll through tempest, trembled and stroked. Let the mate be the body risen, torn and awoke.

Walking Theory #7

Engage the market, the farmers’, the absence yet of apricots, the plenitude of strawberries, the extended season of mandarins, the “I put plastic over the trees. We start November 1st and go into April. The rain can’t attack the sensitive skins.“

Engage the baby Araucana, three white and light brown speckled chicks in gold hay in a half-opened cardboard box. “No, they’re not for sale. I bring them for the children.”

Engage the eggs: blue, brown & white - in the palm - cool & tight.

Engage global warming, “In early March, those two weeks, I was really worried, 201 local heat records broken, my skin turning patchy and red. ”

Engage tangents. “Do you remember ‘The Weekend,’ the Goddard film? Backed up cars, picnics and Frisbees on the road for miles, everyone pretending to be oblivious to the smoldering wreckage, the burning metal, rescue of dead and wounded. Global warming?

Engage the green asparagus’ pale stems, the purple ‘Sicilian’ artichoke petals, the brisk white coarse cauliflower, the white, yellow and red corrugated chard stalks, the deep red or pale orange beets, the vigorous & tender leaves.

Engage the organic, insist on organic, ask for a deal, the “regular customer” discount on “the organic.”

Engage the golden wild iris, its triple burnished yellow petal & comb, its two singular violet-red velvet droopy tongues. Indulge. Buy two bunches.

Engage, look, inquire closely, each step a piece of major media – the fog shrouds the western horizon, the summer early this year. Engage the site/sight’s immediacy – the strawberries. Select, simplify, refine. Throw it back up on the monitor – digit by digit. Project outward, be global. Retake the day, the hour, the minute, the second.

(Walking Theory #8
Metaphysics = visual only, See Slight Publications)

Walking Theory #9:

Witness. Feed the Witness:

*

Socialist Health Care
Please!!

*

FUCK YOUR JOB

*
Don’t
Hold Grudges

*
Morning Graffiti on the Trolley Causeway
Concrete Wall between Liberty and 20th Streets.

(See Slight Publications for digital images of grafitti)

Walking Theory #10

Walk poverty an architecture to look
Closely her gray synthetic leather purse
Shreds into loose shingles the heart
Let loose among buildings without trees
The lobbies of the dead, people who learn
Variously to struggle with reason against
What no witness will confess an architecture
Born deadly, the empty Sunday playground
blue, yellow, and red structures,
A vacuum unbound, wall-to-wall piss,
The street stutters, step-by-step, who can account
The decorum of the poor, good-bye rhetoric, the desperate,
what can the poem do, walking, step by step,
witness, suffer, hope.

(To be continued)

“Walking Theory” pieces are graciously supported by a commission from Slight Publications (Chris Sullivan, Publisher).
http://www.8letters.blogspot.com/
Theories at Slight Publications are occasionally supported by the publisher’s visuals and commentary.

kari edwards is graciously hosting:

you are invited to a night of dialogues and work…
please, join our special quests as they lead a discussion and read from 
& display their work:

*****writers*****
Chris Nealon
Tanya Brolaski
Stephen Vincent

*****art work by*****
Tanya Hollis
Fran Blau

Aprial 17, 2004
7: 30p.m.
3435 Cesar Chavez, # 327
San Francisco, CA 94110

Please Bring A Piece Of Work To Share, A Manifesto To Read, A Thesis To
Divulge, A Concept To Offer… This Night Is About The Dialogue…. And
Seeing Where We Are / (Going)…

what does community mean in an age of post-post modern high anxiety?