Poem: Rita Dove

Rita Dove, in 2017
(from Wikipedia.com)

One of the highlights of my youth was working across the hall from Rita Dove (1952-), one of the great contemporary American poets. At that time she was the Poet Laureate of the US, and though I did not work for her or study under her, I did have to periodically consult with her on matters concerning a literary journal for which she served as a senior editor and which I was managing. As much by observation as by osmosis, I learned little tips and grace notes about how to deal with editors and contracts, how to navigate in the shoals of academe, and what dedication to one's art and career, within the context of the university, might look like. She was always warm and kind toward me, and though I have not had many interactions with her since, I will always remember that moment, and her and her husband, the writer Fred Viebahn, with great fondness.

My first introduction to Rita's work was Thomas and Beulah, the book that received the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. I was a senior in college, and like many, was amazed that a young Black woman writer had just won the Pulitzer in poetry--she was only the second ever, after Gwendolyn Brooks--which led me straight to the Grolier Book Shop in Cambridge to buy as many books of hers as I could afford. Her second book, Museum (Carnegie Mellon, 1983), differed from the tightly organized structure in Thomas and Beulah, a perfect volume; it was more like a conventional collection of poems, more wide-ranging in its focus, and a bit more expansive in its forms, though the sure eye and pen Rita brings to every poem in every book were evident in this one too.

I was especially fascinated by Museum's cover image, which, it turns out was by the German painter Christian Schad (1894-1982) in the counter-Expressionist, early Weimar-era style known as the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity. Think Max Beckmann, Georg Grosz, Otto Dix, and Rudolf Schlichter; Rita ended the collection with a poem exploring Schad's painting, the artist's process, and the figures contained within it and its depiction of difference.

This final poem, "Agosta the Winged Man and Rasha the Black Dove" is also meta-commentary in part on process and experience in writing poems, including this one, and a metonymic exploration of art-making as well. Yet again as in previous poems I've posted, this one reminds us that it is the canvas--the ground of the artwork--and the art work's subjects themselves, whose gazes are "merciless"; they see and show what the artist does not and yet does, intuitively, in the creation of the painting, and transform the artist, and the viewer, in the exchange.

"Agosta the Winged Man and Rasha the Black Dove" is a lyric poem, but it also paints a portrait, as Rita's work often does, in quick, precise, vivid strokes. There is no excess here, and yet her skill creates an aesthetic surplus, as Anne Carson once put it, of meaning. The poem itself is a model of objectivity, mirroring Schad's stylistic approach--his sharpened realism pressed beyond the observable. Yet it swerves away from mere description with notable subtlety. It also gives glimpses of a world that was on the precipice; just a decade and a half later, Berlin, and Germany, would be at war, on the cusp of one of the most abominable horrors, the Nazi Holocaust, that the human race has ever exacted on itself, and the diverse world we see in miniature here--Russian aristocrats, a Malagasy immigrant performer, Agosta himself--would be swept away with a severity and violence the poem hints at.  Look, it is saying, look closely. And note who and what are looking back at you. Pay attention.

Rita Dove, originally in Poetry, November 1981, from Museum, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Poetry, 1983. All rights reserved.

The Schad painting:

Christian Schad, Agosta, the Pigeon-Chested Man, and Rasha, the Black Dove, oil on canvas, 1929, Tate Modern.

Poem: Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Rilke

My very first post in 2005 was a notice about Jay Wright; my second offered a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a poet who needs little introduction, one of the most original versifiers in late 19th and early 20th century German-language and European poetry, a poet whose vision into the inner heart of things can often provoke a feeling beyond the limits of astonishment. Every so often I will read a bit of Rilke to disorient my sense of language, beginning with the German and then with English translations or, if it is simple enough, a rarity with Rilke, with my own English versions.

Take the poem below, its title declaring its aptness for this month's selections. It opens with the personification of the evening (Der Abend) changing its robes, which Stephen Mitchell adroitly translates as "puts on the darkening coat," held for it by a row of old trees, and then we get one of those abruptions Rilke is famous for--the semicolon, followed by the direct address, familiar, du schaust--you look, or watch, which of course you have already been doing, and before your eyes, as evening settles in, from you (von dir) the lands grow different (scheiden), or as Mitchell says, grow distant (distinct), one "himmelfahrendes" (traveling to the sky, to heaven) and one that falls (fällt)...okay, by this point, what began as a fairly simple conceit has turned into something quite strange. That is Rilke. He is already beyond the mere image, impression, vision, into something deeper, beyond.

By the second stanza you are utterly unsettled; the lands' departures have left you in nowhere, in a no-place, which is an inner space and outer one, one material as those houses but not those houses, and one like that feeling, barely expressible, that surges up to the sky, like, as he says, never losing the exactitude of the German rhymes, like a star (Gestirn). (There is also the play on the word "Stirn," which in German means "end," to which you have come though the scope of the poem bursts through the plane of the screen. And there is the repetition and echo of the opening line's Abend...wechselt [evening changes] in the final line's abwechselnd [alternated; taken turns].) Earthly, unearthly, at the same time. There are poets, and there are poets. And there is Rilke.

ABEND

Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewänder,
die ihm ein Rand von alten Bäumen hält;
du schaust: und von dir scheiden sich die Länder,
ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fällt;

und lassen dich, zu keinem ganz gehörend,
nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt,
nicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschwörend
wie das, was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt -

und lassen dir (unsäglich zu entwirrn)
dein Leben bang und riesenhaft und reifend,
so dass es, bald begrenzt und bald begreifend,
abwechselnd Stein in dir wird und Gestirn. 

EVENING

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees:
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressively to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Copyright © Rainer Maria Rilke. Translation © by Stephen Mitchell from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Poem/Translation: Paul Celan

The other day amid a river of tweets I spotted a mention of Paul Celan (1920-1970), and for reasons known only to the deeper currents of my mind, the following poem popped into my head. Almost like an automatism. I even tweeted in response: "Arnica, eyebright." The poem, as is probably well known, was Celan's response to an encounter with his old friend, the esteemed philosopher and Nazi Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). This Wikipedia entry sums up what went down:

On one of his trips, Celan gave a lecture at the University of Freiburg (on July 24, 1967) which was attended by Heidegger, who gave Celan a copy of Was heißt Denken? and invited him to visit his work retreat "die Hütte" ("the hut") at Todtnauberg the following day and walk in the Schwarzwald. Although he may not have been willing to be photographed with Heidegger after the Freiburg lecture (or to contribute to Festschriften honoring Heidegger's work) Celan accepted the invitation and even signed Heidegger's guest book at the famous "hut".

The two walked in the woods. Celan impressed Heidegger with his knowledge of botany and Heidegger is thought to have spoken about elements of his press interview Only a God can save us now, which he had just given to Der Spiegel on condition of posthumous publication. That would seem to be the extent of the meeting. "Todtnauberg" was written shortly thereafter and sent to Heidegger as the first copy of a limited bibliophile edition. Heidegger responded with no more than a letter of perfunctory thanks.

As the poet and critic Pierre Joris points out in his thorough account and translation, Celan, who survived the Holocaust, was expecting an apology, which he never received. The Wikipedia entry suggests Heidegger's indifference, his coldness, in response to the poem, which, at least to me, is unsurprising. He had by this point long retreated into a kind of mental Hütte, no? I won't attempt to interpret the poem, since Joris has already done so (as others, like Hans Georg Gadamer and John Felstiner have before), though I think that careful reading outlines the events clearly (deutlich) enough, but what strikes me so powerfully is the strangeness, the disorientation, the language almost aurally knotting itself; to give one example, there is the moment of hyperbaton at the end, with the humidity of the day, the dampness (from the heat, sorrow and disappointment, or, metaphorically, tears in the heart), preceding its qualification, an amplification (viel--very).  The entire poem feels this way, almost a bit dizzying, a record of--what?--a visit, but also a revisiting, a trip to the Death Mountain ("Todtnauberg") which leaves its grief-mark like the burst of the beautiful and haunting healing flowers'' names,"Arnika, Augentrost," or those ominous "star-dice" on the well's head--in part, as this poem.

Below is my translation, which is admittedly flawed, as my German is rather provisional (I studied it many years ago, in high school, after trying to teach it to myself), but where I think it works is that I have tried to capture not only the literal translation, with the nuances Joris suggests (and his reading was very helpful to me), but Celan's strange music, rendered into English. Rather than suggesting that you enjoy the poem, I'll say instead, read, and reflect.

TODTNAUBERG

Arnika, Augentrost, der Trunk aus dem Brünnen mit dem Sternwürfel drauf, in der Hütte, die in das Buch —wessen Namen nahms auf vor dem meinen?—, die in dies Buch geschriebene Zeile von einer Hoffnung, heute, auf eines Denkenden kommendes Wort im Herzen, Waldwasen, uneingeebnet, Orchis und Orchis, einzeln, Krudes, später, im Fahren, deutlich, der uns fährt, der Mensch, der's mi anhört, die halb- beschrittenen Knüppel- pfade im Hochmoor, Feuchtes, viel.

Arnica, eyebright, the drink from the well with the star-dice on top, in the hut, written in the book —whose name did it take down before mine—? written in this book the line about a hope, today, for a thinker's coming word in the heart, forest sod, ungraded, orchis and orchis, separated, crudeness, later, while driving, clearly, who drives us, the man, who is listening too, the half- trodden club- paths on the high moor, humidity, plenty.

Copyright © 2011, Paul Celan. Copyright © 2011, Translation by John Keene.