| Sunday, August 22, 2004 |
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Writing poems in English is fucking easy.
Writing good poems in English is fucking hard.
Speaking in English is fucking easy.
Speaking creatively in English is fucking hard.
50% of the English words come from Latin.
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posted by MORGAR @ 6:50 AM  |
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| The Black Growth |
I found animals
Picking up stones
On the sides of the road.
When you die,
Consciousness,
Remember this humble body, and this bold soul,
Remember they’ve been always loving you,
Remember strikes oh oh
You are part of the triangle of life.
Consciousness, body, soul.
What is it about America that brings to my heart such amounts of melancholy?
Bridles,
Deaf bridges
On line
Regurgitate trucks of sand. Local pain.
What is this tragedy? Not understandable
To steal is a bit bitter.
Consciousness, remember the flavor of emotions, body cry big boats non-soul
Bi-loneliness. Cerebral sadness—dead punk—Spanish flowers.
Hesitate
Existing or not
yes No
no Yes
Go on
Pretending what I am not.
Hypocrisy indolence karma
I could go on.
I could pretend.
But last day
I could not stand the eyesight
of the black growth of hatred
and indifference.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 6:44 AM |
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| Tuesday, August 17, 2004 |
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There is something better than a poem --its offspring.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:23 PM |
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Due to the tremendous noise in my room, I feel compelled to write these lines. This is why: my bath is broken, with philosophical and intellectual consequences. I do not really know why, but I love these words, I mean, philosophical, intellectual, and so on. Nietzsche wrote once that you have to be careful with words such as “phenomenon”, because they have powerful and magic properties. I guess that’s why. Anyway, it is better to spit neurons than sweating sperm through your ears – maturity – youth – etcetera – domus. Ecce homo, here he comes, let’s clap – clap clap clap. I would never cease: Ecce homo! Sorry: Ecce Homo! So I was checking out the American National Anthem’s lyrics. Look at the prepositions: by, at, through.
Oh, say can you see, BY the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed AT the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, THROUGH the perilous fight,
This is a Swiss clock! Well, I guess it would make more sense twilight’s “first” gleaming… I do not know. But it is intense, this anthem:
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
It makes me thing of bombs and destruction, rain and storms, nuclear thoughts, invisible fights. There it is not Ecce homo, but Ecce Domo, and, and the superflag always waving. If I were American… well, I am not. I just try to talk about nations without arising excessive pro and anti-American passions. It’s just very boring. And the truth is like a stone. So I might ask for lyrics in the Spanish national anthem. Actually, I would like to write the lyrics. Why not? Secular discussions spur people to make comments.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:21 PM |
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The inhabitant of the desert will walk for centuries.
He will find a wall,
He will stop,
He will place his hands on the wall.
But he will run back,
when he looks twice,
when he sees the truth:
a hundred of human hands are holding the wall on the other side.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:19 PM |
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| Claustrophobia |
Samuel Beckett: 'I used to lie down on the couch and try to go back in my past. I think it probably did help. I think it helped me perhaps to control the panic. I certainly came up with some extraordinary memories of being in the womb. Intrauterine memories. I remember feeling trapped, of being imprisoned and unable to escape, of crying to be let out but no one could hear, no one was listening. I remember being in pain but being unable to do anything about it. I used to go back to my digs and write notes on what had happened, on what I’d come up with. I’ve never found them since. Maybe they still exist somewhere. I think it all helped me to understand a bit better what I was doing and what I was feeling'. If consciousness is the main difference between humans and animals and, thus, a symbol and symptom of intelligence, prenatal memories are a product of golden minds. Womb womb womb jail jail jail. Sam, dearest, the womb is a small prison… But look at us now, look at me now —I cannot move the earth and the bird corpses in my stomach the mush the stench why why why because because reality why why why because because because the sky is a bigger prison than the womb. Was it black, I would be happy —but it is light(l)y blue.
Your crown etcetera.
I do believe in our incapability to define emotions.
The grammar of consciousness.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:18 PM |
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| driving towards Los Angeles |
It brings with it snails on the road say Yes say yes
Grey in California hits the multisuns say no say No
With you
Cars praying
Sleep over
Walk in
I stole the grey heart of California say Yes say yes
Albeit
—phone call Garmor say no say No—
brainwashing
mental dead
mind decadence say Yes say yes
Here on 101
crying
Here on 101 say Yes say yes
me to hit other roads
Here on 101 say No say no
101 on 101 on 101
I build a ladder
in order
in order to
crawl towards my non-intended God
28-6-04
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:15 PM |
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| human's conception of space |
Rhinoceros meets giraffe
giraffe touches butterfly
butterfly loves parrot.
Who understands these minds?
Man.
Old man life.
Sheer shoes in open chest
Low blind mind
Even if
Please a space to die
But if
Between life
Not exactly
Only a space to die
Not to exist
Lives
mainly.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:14 PM |
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| just a blanket |
The baby is crying between your legs
in the monster you have you are cries cries cries
me deaf poisoned Gods spiting voices on my lungs
soft orange bulls are to epilepsy no epilepsy no but anesthesia
give me a fucking break
I found boredom in your forehead godless boredom
not unhappiness yet but boredom
uncomfortable write the lakes slapping who cares about tears
insane rhythm
—maybe—
reading nails cleaning a prophetic dream
grab your empty bottle fingers along waters I know
some relief
excessive to feel
etcetera
if you are baby you are unconscious you don’t know pain love death
when I was older it happened but stones were hard before arrows of rice and blood
the mush
the stench
no smell
no life no
ataraxia
collapsed minds desert
bisolitude
licking licking licking the hell
silenceness
the thief of stones
so
but when
undoubtedly
you remain
give me the intensity of the unreadable
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:13 PM |
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A leaf falls.
Finally
his body is yours.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:12 PM |
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| political heresy within science |
Don’t get closer to me.
No truce war of books
the white disease
clash-thinking
remains
jam-packed.
I put you in the shedder:
One can hear bones breaking watermoon red
lake nails thicker
compost
frustrated project of domination.
The mush recomposes in you nightmare.
I put you in the shedder again:
One can hear the sweet annihilation of your
heart juice of heart.
The mush turns in you.
Relocation of pain
matterless
real pathos within
crowbar
local semi-independence
put in the shedder again
the dream builds you back
containment thus upon
crock crock crock
violent violins waters contemporary stricken
bridles
interrupted flow
self-imposed intellectual genocide.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:09 PM |
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| Rationality II: The Window and the Valve |
The representation of passions is one of the vital functions of literature. Love and power are omnipresent throughout Western literature. They both have something in common, namely the will of possession. I argue that possession is an obsession both in Whitman and in Dickinson; however, Whitman’s modus operandi is inclusive while Dickinson’s poetic possession is rooted in exclusion. In the title of my paper, the window is symbol of Whitman’s openness while the valve represents Dickinson’s closeness. I will argue that this difference is due to different theories of love and, thus, dissimilar concepts of possession. I would like to analyze this phenomenon through three elements regarding the action of love: scope, discrimination and intensity. Whitman’s all-embracing love attempts to expand to the whole of humankind. Its scope knows no limits. “I am large, I contain multitudes” (Whitman 85), he says. Possession in Whitman’s poetry is not unilateral and instrumental, but somewhat based on a cyclical conception with its roots in nature and with reminiscences of Eastern philosophy. “The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; / And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, / And such as it is to be of these more or less I am.” (Whitman 40). Reciprocity is based on question and answer; transmission and reception; action and passivity. All humans tend inward to Whitman; he tends outward to them. Although poetry is still inevitably an individual experience, Whitman desires to collectivize his feelings beyond all boundaries. Whitman is the violator of limits. “Unscrew the locks from the doors! / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!” (Whitman 48). The common pattern in his lines is excessiveness. He does not understand passion as a tension between licentiousness and restriction but as a simple explosion of sentiment. His love attempts to expand even to the realm of inanimate objects. The consequence of this phenomenon is what I would like to label as “innocent sacrilege”. He deliberately and without malice trespasses forbidden boundaries. The Bible teaches us that a sacred and magic space exists, as opposed to a profane territory: “And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). Whitman infringes these laws, and that is why I argue that he commits a sacrilege. Besides, he attempts, consciously or unconsciously, to homogenize space and replace limits with global sexuality. Walt Whitman makes no discriminations. “They young fellow drives the express-wagon …. I love him though I do not know him” (Whitman 37). Here love comes before experience, thus loosing its value for the receptor. His message is universal and the beloved shares his condition with everyone. He is no more and no less than anyone is. This is the effect of homogenization. His poetry is a roller, for it reduces humankind to a compact, auto referential, self-loving mass.Critics and scholars think of Whitman as a democratic poet. However, he is the central figure in the decision-making of his conception of love. In other words, he does not take into consideration the will of people. “The farmboy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,” (Whitman 82). Not only does he love the farmboy, but also he assumes the farmboy loves him back. He arrogates the boy’s right of decision. “The young mother and old mother shall comprehend me,” (Whitman 82). In this case, he steals the other’s comprehension. However, the extreme manifestation of this pattern is the following lines, “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels …. I myself become the wounded person,” (Whitman 63). He delocalizes pain from its natural space and relocates it in his own body. Real individual pain is unable to reproduce itself; its duplication contradicts the very principles of human feelings. It is one of our ultimate rights, one that no one can take out from us; namely, the right to suffer, Dickinson’s “Right of Frost” (Poem 640). The scope of Whitman’s potential possession, as I argued before, is immense. This should result in a weakening of its intensity, but it does not. His voice remains in the center of lyrical creation. “A call in the midst of the crowd, / My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.” (Whitman 73) He is not invisible; he is the origin and ending of human flow, the center of his own sexual mystification, the unintended God of a particular metaphysics of love. The issue of possession in Dickinson is radically different. Her area of poetic action is smaller but more intense. “The Soul selects her own Society— / Then—shuts the Door—” (Dickinson, Poem 303). She closes the doors that Whitman tries to open; she regulates the flow of emotions through inclusion and exclusion. She uses a metaphor particularly pertinent for my argument: “Then—close the Valves of her attention— / Like Stone—” (Dickinson, Poem 303). Whitman does not know about valves. Dickinson’s opacity is often due to her tendency to obstruct passageways of interpretation. She hides behind the stone. This creates an altogether obsessive atmosphere, a tension that produces the real poetry where the unutterable finally ends written on the paper. “It has no Future—but itself— / Its Infinite contain / Its past—enlightened to perceive / New Periods—of Pain” (Dickinson, Poem 650). Here pain feedbacks itself; it contains itself. The mere use of the pronoun “itself” demonstrates it. Pain is a convulsed snake trying to bite its own tail. This endogamy results in a concentration of sentiment, power, and self-possession. Dickinson even conceptualized her views of the artistic activity: “This was a Poet—It is That / Distills amazing sense / From ordinary Meanings—” (Dickinson, Poem 448). Writing is a distillation. Intensity derives from conceptual and intellectual compression. Words are jails each one with an enormous power inside. This might be another reason for the use of capital letters in some of Dickinson’s words. Although we hardly ever know whom Dickinson is referring to by “You”, we find in her poetry a will to discriminate and isolate her from the rest. The fact that she differentiates several identities is demonstrated by her use of comparatives, even when it is not grammatically correct: “Though I than He—may longer live / He longer must—than I— / For I have but the power to kill, / Without—the power to die—” (Dickinson, Poem 754). Another example of isolationism: “So we must meet apart— / You there—I—here— / With just the Door ajar / That Oceans are —and Prayer— / And that White Sustenance— / Despair—” (Dickinson, Poem 640). It is a paradox to see how her coldness, distance and loneliness produce a high level of intimacy and intensity in her lines. What links the writer to the reader is the common experience of pain, the “Right of Frost” (Dickinson, Poem 640), the ocean of solitude that all of us experience in a higher or lower degree. Although Dickinson epitomizes herself and her relationship with a religious “You”, she is not, like Whitman, the center and origin of possession: “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun— / In Corners—till a Day / The Owner passed—identified— / And carried Me away—” (Dickinson, Poem 754). Who is the owner? Dickinson accepts without remorse that somebody owns her. Sometimes this acceptance even becomes resignation, maybe even a Christian one. However, she is also an active character in her poetry, as one can observe in this anaphor, “Mine—by the Right of the White Election! / Mine—by the Royal Seal! / Mine—by the Sign in the Scarlet prison—” (Dickinson, Poem 528). Here possession is an obsession, but the object of desire is only one, a huge and unbearable one, as opposed to Whitman’s disseminating concept of possession. In sum, I have reviewed both writers’ conception of possession through their theories of love. I have analyzed how each writer attempts to destroy and preserve the walls of their egos. “I anchor my ship for a little while only,” (Whitman 61), says the democratic poet. He wants no rest. As opposed to that, the use of dash in Dickinson puts possession into brackets, and opens an intellectual forum for reflection and pain. Whitman’s strife for inclusion opens hearts to the grass; Dickinson’s dashes and reclusion close hearts in the sea of their own blood.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:07 PM |
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| The product of racionality. Essay -- The Ladder and the Muse |
I argue that both Douglass’ and Melville’s works have a liberating power entrenched in the use of language. However, they differ in the nature of this power —the former is political while the later poetic. In the title of my paper, the ladder symbolizes the ascension from barbarism to civilization in Douglass; while the Muse refers to the poetical enchantment of Melville. I will try to validate this argument through two specific elements; the relationship between civilization and barbarism, and the conception of the sea. Eventually, I will tie these two apparently non-related components together in order to support my main thesis. The dichotomy civilization-barbarism is a central theme in both Douglass and Melville. I do not refer to them as isolated monads —in Leibniz jargon— but as a gradual continuum. The way in which the writers focus on this duo reveals to us the limits within the struggle for freedom is taking place, and thus determines the kind of power required to transform either the political or linguistic system. Frederick Douglass depicts the relationship between civilization and barbarism as a hierarchical structure, which brings an ideological content to both The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Heroic Slave. The former describes the long journey of an individual from barbarism, which is slavery, to civilization, which is freedom. Douglass forms his personality through experience and knowledge, and his story even has somewhat novelistic turning points one example being the fight with his master. Homer teaches us that personality is the collection of decisions in life. A parallel can be drawn between the Odyssey and the steps towards humanization in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. As Aristotle explains in Politics, “man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain … the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust.” Language is the tool which permits Douglass to become human and get away from slavery —it is, thus, a political and even biological tool as one can see in this metaphor: “This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me the more valuable bread of knowledge” (Douglass, 1984:51). In this quotation, language is the bread of the intellect. The struggle for freedom is portrayed in an evolutionist fashion. Slaves are usually represented as a tribal, primitive society. “This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon” (Douglass, 1984:28). They are supposed to be inferiors because the institution of slavery has removed their humanity and the tools to achieve it: language, knowledge, and dignity. “Mr. Williams speaks of 'ignorant negroes,' and, as a general rule, they are ignorant” (Douglass on-line: Part IV). While one can see Douglass’ long struggle in The Narrative, in The Heroic Slave we find Madison Washington to be a character without psychological evolution. Since the beginning, Madison is not a slave: “His words were well chosen, and his pronunciation equal to that of any schoolmaster. It was a mystery to us where he got his knowledge of language; but as little was said to him, none of us knew” (Douglass on-line: Part IV). Also Washington’s words are a proof of the sphere to which he belongs. “If I am shot, I shall only lose a life which is a burden and a curse. If I get clear …, liberty, the inalienable birthright of every man, precious and priceless, will be mine. My resolution is fixed. I shall be free.” (Douglass on-line: Part I). This kind of logical chain is a part of the very foundations of Western civilization. While Eastern thought was born in the mountains and developed a contemplative philosophy, Western Civilization was born in the Mediterranean and owns the rationality of the mathematical movement of the waves which is x thus y. Madison Washington’s syllogism is a clear example —he is already on the top of the pyramid of civilization. Here I just try to describe Douglass’ Weltanschauung, but I do not necessarily agree with it. In sum, I argue that language is a political tool in Douglass. And as the Spanish poet José Ángel Valente states, “politicized literature is reduced to its mere instrumentality —slave of the Intention and its themes, absorbed in the ideological superstructure” (Valente, 1971). This is not to underestimate the value of Douglass’ works, but to underline that his intention is mainly political and thus farer from the sphere of artistic creation. The purpose is another, clearly perceived by Wendell Philips in the letter which precedes The Narrative: “I am glad the time has come when the ‘lions write history’”. (Douglass, 1984:14). That is, it is time for the oppressed to write history. It is crystal clear that this is a political purpose. Melville does not describe civilization and barbarism, but draws a landscape in which both clash and are mixed up. His aseptic language is not neutral, but poetical. His coldness is thus comparable to the cerebral poetry of Jorge Luis Borges or to some works of Samuel Beckett. His approach to reality plays with perspectives like the best painters do. He is a romantic —that’s why antithesis and irony are so common in his narrative. Reading him is intellectually stimulating: “Captain Delano, unwilling to appear uncivil even to incivity itself, made some trivial remark and moved off” (Melville, 1942:121). As Octavio Paz brightly writes, “irony is the great romantic invention —love for the contradiction we all constitute and consciousness of this contradiction” (Paz, 1990). Irony in Melville is bitter and its negative condition impregnates his whole work. This is not to say that Herman Melville lacks political purposes —he does not. Benito Cereno is full of relations of power and political messages. But although we can clearly perceive the clash between barbarism and civilization, we are not sure of what to think. Who are the barbarians? Who are the civilized? And what is more important, who retains the “moral” superiority? My opinion is that Babo retains it. However, one can create a lot of arguments against this opinion. Why? Because Benito Cereno is mainly a poetical masterpiece, and it is open to different interpretations. I understand poetry in the broad sense of it being an all mysterious verbal mechanism capable of producing silence. At the end of the story, Benito Cereno says something very similar to Douglass’ perspective on slavery. “‘Because they have no memory,’ he dejectedly replied; ‘because they are not human’” (Melville, 1942:183). In each line of Benito Cereno we can recognize the hand of the genius painting the wild thoughts of characters that more than individuals are archetypes. The paradox is that they are all a mistake, except for Babo, who does not talk at all except in his role of pretended servant. My interpretation is that silence is the negation of civilization and barbarism, of language and slavery. It is the absolute negation and romanticism was the last absolute negation. Since I have been talking about abstractions as civilization or barbarism, I would like now to come up with a concrete example to show the different nature of Douglass’ and Melville’s language. Both The Heroic Slave and Benito Cereno narrate a shipboard rebellion. But whereas Douglass’ ship is a platform for political freedom, in Melville it has poetical implications. This is due mainly to the circumstances. How can a slave focus on the beauty of the ships? “Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.” (pp74). One can see that because of his condition of slave he is not able to enjoy of the spectacle of life. However, Melville makes a lot of digressions and is imprisoned by the beautiful jaws of the sea. “The living spectacle it [the ship] contains, upon its sudden and complete disclosure, has in contrast with the blank ocean which zones it, something of the effect of enchantment. The ship seems unreal (Melville, 1942:99). We are facing different styles. We are facing two writers with different conceptions of life and art, mainly due to their personal experience. I whish I could ask them: what is a ship? Fernando Pessoa says that “a ship seems to be an object which goal is to sail; but its goal is not to sail, but to land in a port. We find ourselves sailing, without the idea of the port in which we should find refuge. […]: to sail is necessary, to live is not necessary” (Pessoa, 1986). Some ships do not think of sailing as its purpose but as a means to land. But some of them sail, and sail, and sail, and they are a beautiful picture. Landing is instrumental; sailing is artistic. Douglass’ goal is to land; Melville’s goal is to sail.
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| posted by MORGAR @ 2:03 PM |
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| About Me |
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![]()
Name: MORGAR
Home: India
About Me: Soy periodista y me gusta la poesía. Trabajo en la India.
See my complete profile
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