Cypress

ARK 34, Spire on the Death of L.Z.

[...]
to say then head wedded nail and hammer to the
work of vision
of the word
at hand
that is paradise,
this is called spine of white cypress
roughly cylindrical
based
on the principle
of the intervals between cuckoos
and molecules, and molecules
reechoing:
[...]

The spine of cypress in this poem by Ronald Johnson caught my attention in part because it reminded me of having recently read Alain de Botton on the cypresses in the paintings of Van Gogh and how the painting reorganized de Botton's sense of the landscape of Provence (and his general argument that good writing and innovative painting allow us to see anew):

It was a clear day, with a mistral blowing that ruffled the heads of the wheat in the adjacent field. I had sat in this same spot the day before, but only now did I notice that there were two large cypresses growing at the end of the garden, a discovery that was not unconnected to the chapter I had read the night before on van Gogh's treatment of the tree. He had sketched a series of cypresses in 1888 and 1889. 'They are constantly occupying my thoughts,' he told his brother. 'It astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them. The cypress is as beautiful in line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk. and the green has a quality of such distinction. It is a splash of black in a sunny landscape, but it is one of the most interesting black notes, and the most difficult to get exactly right.'

Alain de Botton, "On Eye-Opening Art" in The Art of Travel

It is with great joy that I came across another cypress later in ARK. It occurs suitably in a poem (ARK 75, Arches IX (from Van Gogh's Letters)) that stitches together quotations from the painter's letters.

[...]
a terrace with two cypresses
a nameless black
charged with electricity
[...]

Charged like a conducting spine.

And so for day 2248
07.02.2013

Given Stolen

Citation is a form of kleptomania.

gives, a note to envalue
the day, stolen

I like how the poet in these two lines balances out the beginning of giving with the concluding of stealing. Of course, what snagged my attention was the use of "envalue" and I was left hovering over what it is that contributed value and what it was that received it.

More context on either side is revealing but also conducive to less allusiveness...

around a gift the old stereo
gives, a note to envalue
the day, stolen

from notions of winter

George Bowering. Another Mouth. "Last Lyrics: From the Mystery".

Citations are a form of endowment.

And so for day 1194
21.03.2010

Cock Tail

Hung over: overindulged alcoholic poets as I have waded through two thick biographies:

• Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance by Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian
• City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara by Brad Gooch

Cure: hair of the dog (not more biographies but a return to the poetry).

First a jigger full of from Frank O'Hara "Meditations in an Emergency" [which excerpt forms the epigraph to Gooch's bio of the New York poet]:

I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.

Add one big ice cube chunk from Spicer's After Lorca

Dear Lorca,
When I translate one of your poems and I come across words I do not understand, I always guess at their meanings. I am inevitably right. A really perfect poem (no one yet has written one) could be perfectly translated by a person who did not know one word of the language it was written in. A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.

And why not add a garnish from Lorca "A Flood of Tears for Ignacio Sanchez Mjias" (translated by Carlos Bauer)?

At five in the afternoon

Stirred. Not shaken.

And so for day 1190
17.03.2010