poetry | Richibi's Weblog

“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, II) – Ovid, 110

_________

Jove “sigh’d;” if you’ll remember, “nor

longer with his pity strove; / But kindled

to a wrath” which was worthy of him

Then call’d a general council of the Gods;

Who summon’d, issue from their blest abodes,

And fill th’ assembly with a shining train.

Jove calls the gods together to discuss

the abhorrent conditions on Earth, who,

upon being summon’d, leave their blest,

or blessed, homes, and fill Jove’s

assembly hall with their glittering train,

their advancing pageantry

A way there is, in Heav’n’s expanded plain,

Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below,

And mortals, by the name of Milky, know.

when the skies are clear in Heaven’s

expanded plain, its wide expanse,

mortals can see the Milky Way

The ground-work is of stars; through which the road

Lyes open to the Thunderer’s abode:

this Milky Way is paved with stars, which

lead to Jove’s, the Thunderer’s, domain

The Gods of greater nations dwell around,

And, on the right and left, the palace bound;

the dwellings of the gods who represent

the greater nations of the era, of Rome,

for instance, or Greece, surround,

encircle, the Thunderer’s abode, his

palace

The commons where they can: the nobler sort

With winding-doors wide open, front the court.

the more common gods, those of

lesser nations, live where they can,

while the winding-doors of the nobler

gods, doors which can be activated

mechanically, on hinges, though

perhaps here divinely, stand wide

open for this colloquy, this exalted

conference, before the celestial

court

This place, as far as Earth with Heav’n may vie,

I dare to call the Louvre of the skie.

if one were to compare [t]his place

this court, to anything on Earth, have

it vie with, one would liken it, Ovid

there’s evidently an anachronism

here since the Louvre didn’t exist at

the time of Ovid, so that the translators

have replaced the “Palatia” of Ovid’s

original Latin, which refers to the

Palatine, the most central of Rome’s

Seven Hills, where imperial palaces

were built at the time of Augustus,

63 B.C. to 14 A.D., which is to say

during Ovid’s time, 43 B.C. to

17 /18 A.D., by this relatively more

recent palatial residence, the Louvre,

in order to make the text more

contemporary, like settings and

attire are used in Renaissance

art to kindle the viewer’s sense

of connection

see, for instance, above, where

Veronese depicts the scene of Jesus

attending a marriage at Cana, a village

in Galilee, and transforms water there

into wine to accommodate a shortage,

midst Roman, note, rather than Galilean,

trappings, splendour

When all were plac’d, in seats distinctly known,

And he, their father, had assum’d the throne,

seats distinctly known means the

traditionally assigned places, with

Jove, “their father”, at the head of

the convocation

Upon his iv’ry sceptre first he leant,
Then shook his head, that shook the firmament:

leant, or leaned, [t]hen shook his head

in revulsion

Air, Earth, and seas, obey’d th’ almighty nod;
And, with a gen’ral fear, confess’d the God.

the elements, “Air, Earth, and seas“,

acknowledge, or confess’d, the God,

with quivering anxiety

At length, with indignation, thus he broke
His awful silence, and the Pow’rs bespoke.

Jove, after a silence, bespeaks, or

addresses, the assembled Pow’rs,

the other divinities

R ! chard

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“Metamorphoses” (The Brazen Age / The Iron Age ) – Ovid

_______

To this came next in course, the brazen age:
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet…

brazen, of brass, the pride, and collective

title, of the military, not to mention of

industrialists, CEOs, still

yet…., or the Iron Age, follows

Hard steel succeeded then:
And stubborn as the metal, were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.

remember conscience, from the Golden Age,

now, during this Iron Age, “fors[aken]”

Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew.
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:

note “sails” here, a perfect example of a

metonymy, where the word means not

only the cloth, the canvas that catches

the wind, but also its larger self, the

ship, which benefits from that integral

propulsive action, like the body the

heart

Trees, rudely hollow’d, did the waves sustain;

hollowed out trees could manage to

remain above the water, could float

E’re ships in triumph plough’d the watry plain.

our archetype here would again be Columbus,

however ignominiously

Then land-marks limited to each his right:
For all before was common as the light.

though all land had earlier been common,

available to all to freely enjoy, now fences,

signposts prohibited collective access

Nor was the ground alone requir’d to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share,

crooked, awry, disproportionate

But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digg’d from her entrails first the precious oar;

“greedy mortals”, mining, not only from

“the ground alone”, but from the earth’s

very “entrails”, her “oar”, or ore

Which next to Hell, the prudent Gods had laid;
And that alluring ill, to sight display’d.

the “prudent Gods” had set the precious

metals near that unholy place to ward off,

however ineffectually, eventually, potential

pilferers, plunderers

Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold:

or again “***Truth, modesty, and shame,* *the***

***world forsook: / Fraud, avarice,* *and force,***

their places took.“, lines 3 and 4 from the

top

And double death did wretched Man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betray’d,

double death, assault and betrayal, invade,

become components, properties, of Man

Now (brandish’d weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands;

immoralities follow

No rights of hospitality remain:
The guest, by him who harbour’d him, is slain,
The son-in-law pursues the father’s life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife.
The step-dame poyson for the son prepares;
The son inquires into his father’s years.

the stuff, at present, of all of our arts and

literature, of our collective consciousness,

we are the Iron Age

where

Faith flies, and piety in exile mourns;
And justice, here opprest, to Heav’n returns.

“justice” has flown, fled, to Heaven,

to our universal, and grievous,

distress

R ! chard

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Metamorphoses (The Silver Age) – Ovid

___________

the good times wouldn’t last, however,

discord among the gods would bring

But when good Saturn, banish’d from above,
Was driv’n to Hell, the world was under Jove.

Saturn, god of plenty, had presided over

Jove, or Jupiter, god of thunder, was

king of the gods

there would be consequences for this

disarrangement, this strife

Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell’d by gold.

silver might not have been gold, but it

was still better than brass, as, later,

we’ll see

Then summer, autumn, winter did appear:
And spring was but a season of the year.

by casting Saturn into the Underworld, Jove

set off the cycle of the seasons, whereby

Saturn, clutching his way back to the realm

of the deities, after his initial fall, would inspire

regeneration, the return of springtime, for a

while, before being ousted again, and again,

and again

The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarg’d the bad.

in keeping with the suns “oblique[ ]”

progressions, not parallel, not at

right angles

Then air with sultry heats began to glow;
The wings of winds were clogg’d with ice and snow;

the emergence of heat and cold

And shivering mortals, into houses driv’n,
Sought shelter from th’ inclemency of Heav’n.

Those houses, then, were caves, or homely sheds;
With twining oziers fenc’d; and moss their beds.

oziers, or osiers, shrubs of which the

branches have traditionally been used

to make baskets, basketry

Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labour’d first beneath the yoke.

not to mention Man, the advent of agriculture,

toil

R ! chard

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“Metamorphoses” (The Golden Age) – Ovid

**“Field of Poppies“ (1873)**

_______

once the Creation is complete, Time

becomes one of its components, ages,

or eras, or epochs ensue giving credence

to the fact of an evolutionary process,

instead of stasis a continuation of the

inner workings of primordial Chaos still

roils, bristles, but among more orderly

elements now

so that the first age, The Golden Age,

is positively blissful

The golden age was first; when Man yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:

Evil was not yet even a concept

And, with a native bent, did good pursue.

a native bent, naturally, by instinct, inately

Unforc’d by punishment, un-aw’d by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;

therefore

Needless was written law, where none opprest:

where no one offended, laws were

unnecessary

The law of Man was written in his breast:

a function of his emotions

No suppliant crowds before the judge appear’d,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard:

suppliant crowds, petitioners for justice

But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.

**remember conscience, something that too**

often now has fallen, it seems, by the

wayside

though we’re a long way off at present,

admittedly, from the Golden Age

The mountain-trees in distant prospect please,

please is a verb here, as in the mountain-trees

bring pleasure

but

E’re yet the pine descended to the seas:

***E’re,* or before, the pine trees *descended,***

grew closer to, gravitated toward, the water

compare here, ” About her coasts, unruly

waters roar; / And rising, on a ridge,

insult the shore.”, from earlier, where

***“water vies with* earth for its place *upon***

the strand”

instead of water, Earth encroaches here,

an equally formidable opponent

E’re sails were spread, new oceans to explore:

E’re, or before, ships set out to conquer,

see Columbus for the archetypal example

And happy mortals, unconcern’d for more,
Confin’d their wishes to their native shore.

a world without an economy

No walls were yet; nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet’s angry sound:

drums and trumpets at any distance

would’ve been cause for alarm, or at

the very least caution

Nor swords were forg’d; but void of care and crime,

**note the negative no, nor, nor hammered out**

through the last three verses, describing by

omission the state of the original age,

what there was not

The soft creation slept away their time.

soft creation, not inclined to struggle

The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovok’d, did fruitful stores allow:

Content with food, which Nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;

the subject here throughout is the “teeming

Earth”, the Earth, metonymized, becomes

**earthlings – therefore “they” replaces**

“teeming Earth” as subject in the last two

lines – who’d feed on wildings, uncultivated

plants, crab apples, for instance, strawberries

Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnish’d out a feast.

Cornels, shrubs

The flow’rs unsown, in fields and meadows reign’d:

flowers bloomed unbidden, covering fields

I watch the cherry blossoms grace our

streets with their opulence as I speak,

decking our April days with springtime,

**“still, even thousands of years later“,**

a remnant, a bequest, of that golden

past

And Western winds immortal spring maintain’d.

like very Paradise, stretching into even

immortality

In following years, the bearded corn ensu’d
From Earth unask’d, nor was that Earth renew’d.

renew’d, tilled, harvested

From veins of vallies, milk and nectar broke;

valleys engender streams that create

the conditions for milk and nectar

And honey sweating through the pores of oak.

or our own indigenous syrup of maple

R ! chard

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Puccini on poets

“Cigarette La Bohême“ (1879)

Théophile Steinlen

______

with a friend today over lunch I told
her that we’d watched, my mom and
I and a mutual friend, “La Bohème“,
an Australian production of it, Baz
Luhrmann directing, a man we both
knew, at my place last Sunday, we
were all wowed by it, I extrapolated

the only opera I’ve ever seen, she
said, was “La Bohème“

where did you see it, I asked, and
when

with my first husband, she replied,
in Vienna

was it wonderful, I inquired

it was, she answered, I had on a
long dress, my husband was in
coat and, essentially, tails, we
walked up a very long staircase,
I remember

coincidentally, the first time I’d
seen “La Bohème“ was also in
Vienna, I can’t remember the
staircase, couldn’t remember what
I wore, can’t even remember where
I was sitting, what I remember, as
though through a telescope, darkly,
was Mimi and Rodolphe looking for
the key she’d lost, on their knees
on the floor, in the dark cause her
candle ‘d gone out, he’d put his out
surreptitiously too to join her

your little hand is so cold, he sings,
when he, unforgettably, finds it

in this production, Rodolphe has
found the key but conceals it
from Mimi until she sees it in his
eyes, he pretends to return it but
instead manages to hold her
hand

your little hand is so cold, he
sings, again unforgettably

there’s nothing to fear, he
continues, the moon is out, let’s
get to know each other

who am I, he asks, to start the
conversation, I am a poet, he
declares, and proceeds to tell
us what it is to be a poet

you’ll be utterly enchanted

tell me about a world, I ask,
without poets, tell me about
a world without poetry

where would we be without
dreamers, I wonder, where would
we be without dreams

watch here, and wonder

Richard

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November 12, 2016

“Medea” – Euripides

“Medea“ (1898)

Alphonse Mucha

____________

catching up on my Greek tragedies
for a course I’m following online, I
happened upon this marvel

Medea, by Euripides, was written
in 431 BCE, the next significant
playwright in world history was
Shakespeare, the Dark Ages had
been “Dark” indeed, it took a
Renaissance, in fact a new
flowering of Greek and Roman
arts and institutions to get us
moving forward again, you’ll
notice how much of Euripides
there is in Shakespeare, not to
mention in the French Classicists,
Racine and Corneille

none of these, incidentally, have
yet been equalled, never mind
surpassed, except by maybe
Anton Checkov, the superb
Russian playwright

Zoe Caldwell won the 1982 Tony
Award for best actress for her
incarnation of Medea, she was
up against Katharine Hepburn
and Geraldine Page, no less,
among other distinguished
luminaries, this is, in other
words, no ordinary performance,
watch her turn a mere script,
however incandescent, into a
set of spoken arias worthy of
the most celebrated divas

everyone else in the play is also
strong, excellent, impeccable

note the application of the three
unities, of time, place, and action,
there is no set change, everything
takes place within 24 hours,
according to the dictates of the
very plot, the action surrounds
the expulsion from Corinth of
Medea and her two, and Jason’s,
sons, the restrictions of the form
put the tension, the drama, utterly
in the hands of the poet, the
success of the work depends not
on stunts, special effects, but on
words, poetry

Aristotle says in his “Poetics“,
section I, part VI, “The Spectacle has, indeed, an
emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts,
it is the least artistic, and connected least with the
art of poetry. … Besides, the production of
spectacular effects depends more on the art
of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.”

the three unities have no room,
therefore, for “Spectacle“, their
product must be reflections of
the poet’s humanity, heart,
straight through, if s/he can,
to ours

Richard

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October 30, 2016

what is poetry

“The Poetess“ (1940)

Joan Miró

_____

when Aristotle “proceeds to declare the
parameters of “Poetry” for the ages“, his
definitions of the various poetic
“manner[s] or mode[s] of imitation”
have already been established, his
categorizations are not unlike Darwin’s
categorizations of the species during
a much later age, Aristotle was a natural
scientist much more than he was our
notion of an abstract philosopher, he
traded in facts rather than in the
esoteric musings that Plato, for
instance, pursued, Virtue, Justice,
the Good, his conclusions were more
verifiable

Kant, incidentally, is also famous for
following a similar form of investigation
as he attempted, nearly, for most,
inscrutably, to categorize the elements
of our faculty of understanding

a side story

Kant had stated that at birth we already
have within our perceptual framework
implicit understanding of space and
time, these are not learned through
experience but are already
incorporated within us, he said

many years ago, coming out of a
week-long coma, not knowing where
I was but alone, at that point even
just my consciousness, cause my
body, were it there, would’ve been
under the immaculate white sheets
I could see that would’ve been
shielding my legs

I looked around, could gather motes
upon rays of light that were entering
from what appeared to be a window
on the right, behind sheer white
curtains stirred by a soft breeze,
whirling the shimmering particles
alive in the light before me like
miniature spinning galaxies moving
at the pace of their own infinity

there was no sound

white walls around me stood utterly
still in the purview of my perception,
a door, also white, stood opposite
me on the opposite wall

where am I, I wondered, could this
be heaven, an afterlife, I might’ve
died, I thought, marvelling, no fear,
regret, nothing other than curiosity,
absorption, fascination

I tried to answer my question, where
am I, two dimensions, I figured
after having watched Terence Stamp
exiled by Marlon Brando to a flat
intergalactic window pane in
“Superman“, I hadn’t excluded this
eventuality, however ingloriously
transcendental, as a possible
outcome, I might be in a world with
only two dimensions, height and
width, no depth yet without more
investigation, experience

ergo, Kant, I concluded, was wrong,
our knowledge of space is not inborn
but a product of time and thought like
everything else

later, the white door on the far wall
opened, and a nurse walked in, also,
incidentally, in incandescent white,
and I understood I was alive

Aristotle suggested that our original
double instincts towards poetry were
our propensity to imitate, children
imitating their parents’ even
idiosyncratic mannerisms, for
instance

and rhythm, repetition, preludes to
order, coherence

those two

poetry, I read, is expression
reflecting the heartbeat, essentially,
in all its myriad representations

Richard

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October 25, 2016

“To One Who Loved Not Poetry” – Sappho

“In The Days Of Sappho“ (1904)

John William Godward

_________

if I digressed towards “Tragedy” in my
most recent chat about poetry, I perhaps
blurred the fact that there were several
kinds of poetry Aristotle was speaking
about, but that all had the essential
elements of both rhythm and
representation, the idea that a poem
was a reproduction of something
that was not itself, a retelling

some of these rhythmic utterances
were “tragedies“, others were mere,
indeed, verses without much of an
agenda other than being the replication
of something with rhythm the poet
wanted to promote

o, what a beautiful morning, two dactyls
and a trochee, for instance, the poetic
meters that describe – ta da da, ta da da,
dah dah – the natural music of that
exclamation

and that can be a poem

here’s one of Sappho‘s, who lived
sometime between 630 and 612 BCE
to around 570 of the same, of course,
era, famous for being from the island
of Lesbos, yes, Lesbos

it is “To One Who Loved Not Poetry“

“Thou liest dead, and there will be no memory left behind
Of thee or thine in all the earth, for never didst thou bind
The roses of Pierian streams upon thy brow; thy doom
Is now to flit with unknown ghosts in cold and nameless gloom.”

so there, she says, I think, and all in iambic
octameter, eight times ta dah

I preferred not to use one of her more
flirtatious, therefore controversial,
utterances, for fear of skewing to
another, however compelling,
discussion

maybe next time

Richard

psst: the Pierian Spring was a spring in
Macedonia sacred to the Muses,
the source of inspiration for
science, then, as well as the arts

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Category: poetry

“The Marriage at Cana“ (1563)

_________

Jove “sigh’d;” if you’ll remember, “nor

longer with his pity strove; / But kindled

to a wrath” which was worthy of him

Then call’d a general council of the Gods;

Who summon’d, issue from their blest abodes,

And fill th’ assembly with a shining train.

Jove calls the gods together to discuss

the abhorrent conditions on Earth, who,

upon being summon’d, leave their blest,

or blessed, homes, and fill Jove’s

assembly hall with their glittering train,

their advancing pageantry

A way there is, in Heav’n’s expanded plain,

Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below,

And mortals, by the name of Milky, know.

when the skies are clear in Heaven’s

expanded plain, its wide expanse,

mortals can see the Milky Way

The ground-work is of stars; through which the road

Lyes open to the Thunderer’s abode:

this Milky Way is paved with stars, which

lead to Jove’s, the Thunderer’s, domain

The Gods of greater nations dwell around,

And, on the right and left, the palace bound;

the dwellings of the gods who represent

the greater nations of the era, of Rome,

for instance, or Greece, surround,

encircle, the Thunderer’s abode, his

palace

The commons where they can: the nobler sort

With winding-doors wide open, front the court.

the more common gods, those of

lesser nations, live where they can,

while the winding-doors of the nobler

gods, doors which can be activated

mechanically, on hinges, though

perhaps here divinely, stand wide

open for this colloquy, this exalted

conference, before the celestial

court

This place, as far as Earth with Heav’n may vie,

I dare to call the Louvre of the skie.

if one were to compare [t]his place

this court, to anything on Earth, have

it vie with, one would liken it, Ovid

says, to the Louvre

there’s evidently an anachronism

here since the Louvre didn’t exist at

the time of Ovid, so that the translators

have replaced the “Palatia” of Ovid’s

original Latin, which refers to the

Palatine, the most central of Rome’s

Seven Hills, where imperial palaces

were built at the time of Augustus,

63 B.C. to 14 A.D., which is to say

during Ovid’s time, 43 B.C. to

17 /18 A.D., by this relatively more

recent palatial residence, the Louvre,

in order to make the text more

contemporary, like settings and

attire are used in Renaissance

art to kindle the viewer’s sense

of connection

see, for instance, above, where

Veronese depicts the scene of Jesus

attending a marriage at Cana, a village

in Galilee, and transforms water there

into wine to accommodate a shortage,

midst Roman, note, rather than Galilean,

trappings, splendour

When all were plac’d, in seats distinctly known,

And he, their father, had assum’d the throne,

seats distinctly known means the

traditionally assigned places, with

Jove, “their father”, at the head of

the convocation

Upon his iv’ry sceptre first he leant, Then shook his head, that shook the firmament:

Upon his iv’ry sceptre first he leant,
Then shook his head, that shook the firmament:

Air, Earth, and seas, obey’d th’ almighty nod;
And, with a gen’ral fear, confess’d the God.

At length, with indignation, thus he broke
His awful silence, and the Pow’rs bespoke.

To this came next in course, the brazen age:
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet…

Hard steel succeeded then:
And stubborn as the metal, were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.