One must feel how the birds fly

Here is a beautiful quote from Rainier Maria Rilke :

“For verses are not, as people imagine, simply feelings (those one has early enough), -they are experiences. For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.” -Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

I see photography as a means to gaining the experiences required to write poetry. Some times photography acts an experience in itself , opening up vistas hitherto unknown . In the process of gathering material for photography one ends up collecting experiences which are later converted into poetry.

” For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities,men and things,one must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning “

Just check how the poet has captured the crows flying in the following lines:

Kintyre by Alexandra Ekkelenkam
in these days I rise
rise
with crows
dawn on their feathers
screeching
copper on metal throats
cutting through clouds
awakening
awakening the grey sun
whilst I rise
rise
painted wrists flapping
catching air between fingers
dropping Memory
into an ornate lake

“Mirror” by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful-

The eye of the little god, four cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The words are beautiful and crisp :

I am silver and exact.

Later,

Now I am a lake.

”I am silver and exact” is an extremely pretty usage .And very crisp . A similar usage comes later in the poem:

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

A concrete noun(faces) combined with an abstract noun (darkness) makes for an interesting usage .

The other beautiful images are :”unmisted by love or dislike”(A mirror’s reflection is impaired by mist),”most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall(when there are no faces the mirror reflects the wall during the day and darkness at night),”in me she has drowned a young girl(the lake or the mirror have seen the “death” of the young girl and her transformation into an old woman),”like a terrible fish (old age rises above the reflection in the lake as an ugly fish rises above the waters).

“There’s a certain slant of light ” by Emily Dickinson

 

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance

On the look of death.

 

 

 
The poem by Emily Dickinson talks about the somber mood of a winter afternoon which is oppressive and hangs like death. The cathedral tunes are heavy enough and  like them the winter evening slant ,instead of flooding the place with orange light ,has filled it with gloom. The despondency is beyond amelioration as though it has come from the heavens and the seal seems  irrevocably fixed.

 While the poem is about death and is pretty gloomy,  the imagery in the last stanza is brilliant. ‘When it comes, the landscape listens and shadows hold their breath “- is a pretty evocative image. The beauty of the image is achieved through humanizing abstract entities like “a certain slant of light”,” landscape”,” shadows”. The last line “it is like the distance/On the look of death” is another highly visual image referring to the blank stare of a dead person which appears focused on a  far  away thing.

 

 

 

 

Rilke’s letters to a young poet

In his 3^rd letter to the young poet Rilke talks about literary criticism. Read as little of criticism as possible, he advises the young man, because such opinions are partisan or  petrified opinions devoid of life.

 Works of art are of an infinite solitude and no means of approach is as useless as criticism .Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

 The words are beautiful and ring so true. Criticism  reduces a work of art to a lifeless entity capable of being dissected publicly for its merits and demerits. The appreciation of art can only be done through an exquisite sensibility born out of love and feeling, not through ratiocination. Wordsworth has defined poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings .Our response to poetry should therefore be guided by feelings and not by intellect.

 Rilke advocates patience in fully arriving at the beauty of a work of art as no  amount of intellect helps to guide us through the essential beauty of the work without a sensibility born of love and feeling:

“Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating…”

“Talking in bed ” by Philips Larkin

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

“Dark towns heap up on the horizon” is a highly imaginative image which has drawn me towards this poem.The other pretty image is “the wind’s incomplete unrest builds and disperses clouds in the sky”.”Words at once true and kind”  immediately followed by ” or “not untrue and not unkind” is cleverly cynical adding a bit of flippancy to the dialogue between the lovers.

Kintyre by Alexandra Ekkelenkamp

in these days I rise
rise
with crows
dawn on their feathers
screeching
copper on metal throats
cutting through clouds
awakening
awakening the grey sun
whilst I rise
rise
painted wrists flapping
catching air between fingers
dropping Memory
into an ornate lake

“Screeching copper on metal throats “is an exquisite image,almost onamatopoeic.Till I read this poem a while ago I did not know that the image , a variation of which has been used by me in one of my poems earlier,could occur to somebody else.”Dawn on their feathers” is another pretty image.But the most beautiful image is that of “painted wrists flapping ,catching air between fingers”.How evocative !

“Let’s you and I sit down”-Nona Sepakova

Let’s you and I sit down, two elderly sprites.
In the kitchenette drinking coffee.
Wherever you look – magical trophies:
A white coffee pot, blue plastic mugs,
A decorative board for bread.
And on the finger, a little ring with amber,
And the storm clouds of a newly constructed sky
Over this peopled wasteland.

This is the same Waste Land which T.S.Eliot spoke of ,when April,the cruellest month bred lilacs out of the dead land ,mixing memory and desire and stirring dull roots with spring rain.The two elderly spirits(spirits!) sit here drinking coffee amongst the magical trophies collected in their youth while storm clouds gather in a recently constructed sky.

“GREYBIRD “- a poem in Tamil by Revathy translated by N.Kalyanraman

The tree’s shadow

Sat still beneath its canopy

Like a Greybird

As if she wished to snatch and carry away even

The protracted silence of the street,

A girl came down sweeping

It was here that He’d asked me to wait,

Had asked my love too

The sweeper-girl

Went away long ago, taking

The silence with her, while she kept

Turning back to stare at me

Darkness has now begun to stream down

Like tears.

Enchanted and fearful,

Like a body ready at last to arrive

At its own flowering, I wait

Here . . . he walks in from afar,

Like a laden cloud about to unburden

Itself of rain At this unbearable joy,

Red stars have begun to spring in my body

The tree, though, Is still; not perturbed in the least—

Like a Greybird

The tree’s shadow sat still beneathe its own canopy like a grey bird .It is as though the wind in the tree is playing with its shadows which are the autumn leaves of yesterday’s thoughts. The tree cannot even do this because the girl came in to sweep away the dry leaves No longer is silence of the streets.It was here he came like a laden cloud about to unburden its rain .Darkness came down in streams . The tree remained like the greybird.

The poet uses exquisite imagery reminiscent of the romantic poetry.Images like “the grey bird “, “red stars spring in the body” “like a laden cloud unburdening itself of rain” are skilfully crafted usages which would surely be even more pretty in the original Tamil version.

“I open my heart” by Carl Newlen

I open my heart

(because I didn’t know what you feared I feared everything -
thought ‘a cold swift river emptying into nothing’ -
too afraid to lose you as you were and I as I am

because it felt like endlessness when I looked at you last,
I thought ‘bury these notes in a box in the earth and turn away’ -
remember you as you were, I as I am

because now I know, and like the past we are not ending -
we ended,so forget I said forever, then begged for a moment -
but oh how it was! – you as you were with me as I am

because I don’t know what to feel this far from your life -
through the window I watch that tree the wind keeps batting around -
so worn out and still I am far from anything)

and let you go.

A good poem .Barring the opening line and the fragment of line at the end everything is in parenthesis.Everything needs to be told in explanation. It is as though whatever needs to be told is only a little ;it is the annotation that finally makes it stand on its own.Watch that tree the wind is batting around .Watching ,the poet still is far from anything.

“A Walk” by Rilke

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

The poet is walking towards the hill but his vision reaches the hill far ahead of the physical distance covered by his feet. The inner light of the hill grasps his own soul and transforms it spiritually much before his own inner luminescence reaches it. It is as though the hill is making a gesture of kinship with him in response to his own gesture. All that he feels is the gentle wind touching his face.

Here, sensory impressions are used to create beautiful images. The hill is personified attributing to it human qualities such as “charges”, “gesture”, “grasping”. A beautiful combination of the visual and tactile elements recreates the situation in which the poet re-experiences the intensity of the moment as “emotion recollected in tranquility