"wild starlight"

It is no wonder that in a book of poems entitled Light-crossing Michael Redhill makes us attentive to starlight.

starblown night, scattered salt thrown for good luck over a shoulder

That was from "Night Driving"
This is from "Mahoney Point"

But the Milky Way is a chalk mark
erased against blackness

And the title to this blog entry is derived from the final words of "Allen's Hill": wild starlight.

What is remarkable for me in these examples is the pairing of a celestial figure with a human gesture. In some ways, one would expect such treatment to result in a domestication of the phenomenon. However, the impulsiveness of the gesture releases a sort of sublimity.

And so for day 1874
30.01.2012

A Constellation of Lilacs

A single line by Ferenc Juhász from "Crown of hatred and love" in The Boy changed into a Stag: Selected Poems 1949-2967.

The lilacs are creatures guided by other stars.

And a few sprigs from James Schuyler "Hymn to Life" in the collection of the same name.

And that Washington flower, the pink magnolia tree, blooms now
In little yards, its trunk a smoky gray. And soon the hybrid azaleas,
So much too much, will follow, and the tender lilac. Persia, we
Have much to thank you for, besides the word lapis lazuli.

Amy Lowell devotes some attention to the geographic dispersion of lilacs over New England by way of comment on their roots.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

Genus Syringa

Which leads to a poem by John Ashbery "Syringa" in Houseboat Days which muses upon the stars: "Stellification / Is for the few, and comes about much later / When all record of these people and their lives / Has disappeared into libraries, onto microfilm." And as tempting it would be now to invoke digital rot, we must remind ourselves that Eliott Carter set the poem to music — a different sort of starification.

And so for day 1720
29.08.2011

Con Stellations

Souvankham Thammavongsa in Small Arguments has a number of portraits of fruit. This one is not there. It shines in another galaxy. It comes from an earlier chapbook Still Life and provides a lovely coda to the suite of poems gathered therein.

"A Starfruit" has an epigraph from Nietzsche: "One must still have chaos within oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

Its constellation is bounded / to ground / where you can reach / without the earn of sky // When you do this / time will be no birds / who will lose their navigation, / no boat will run off course, / no light lost to some farmer // There is no consequence / when you offer to plate / the stars / that do not come / from sky, from a chaos within

The "earn of sky" — one yearns for it. Like a debt balanced out.

And so for day 1469
21.12.2010

Beyond the Light Pollution

D.G. Jones gave us stars by fire

Li Bai (Li Po) gives us stars by water.

In sunshine, Censer Peak breathes purple mist.
A jutting stream, the cataract hangs in spray
Far off, then plunges down three thousand feet —
As if the sky had dropped the Milky Way.

"The Waterfall at Lu Shan" rendered into English by Vikram Seth in Three Chinese Poets.

The enjambement "hangs in spray / Far off" gives to the piece the added frisson of proximity to the precipice.

And so for day 350
29.11.2007

Sidereal Aspirations

Robin Skelton ends the last of the four sections of "Four Inscriptions" in Landmarks with an appeal beyond the vagaries of posterity.

No-one is listening.
It does not matter.

I am making something
for far stars.

This reminds me of a poem by Li Bai (Li Po) "Drinking Alone with the Moon" where the speaking voice is left by itself when moon and shadow depart and in this rendering by Vikram Seth (Three Chinese Poets) left to anticipate a meeting far off among the stars of the Milky Way.

Let's pledge — beyond human ties — to be friends,
And meet where the Silver River ends.

Tone between the two poets is different but the sentiment to look to the future despite prospects is the same.

And so for day 349
28.11.2007

Cinders Rising

There is in D.G. Jones A Throw of Particles a poem called "Heavens". It is a short poem but it opens up to words beyond. It begins with stars and carries on in opportunities of conversation that are ironically circumscribed.

The ferocious stars
keep their distance, become
a conversation piece

The phrase "ferocity of the stars" has been encountered in "Dance Steps" earlier in the collection. There one is treated to the cliche image of sparks flying from a fire into the night sky yet the reader is left with more than the canopy of stars to contemplate.

[...] Dance
then, the bonfire whirling
fossils to the black stars

One recalls Joni Mitchell's Woodstock and its reference to billion year old carbon

And so for day 337
16.11.2007

Stellifications

Dr. Selia Karsten marries the world of art and pedagogy. She has a keen design interest in stars. See http://www.astralsite.com/.

With her in mind I collect mentions of stars in the poems I read. For example Amy Lowell's epithet "comrades of the stars" to describe primroses. Here are two others that sit nicely side-by-side. The first is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is fitted with stars, invisible by day

And something more recent is the conclusion to "Quails" by Meg Kearney

the sailor who sees farthest
bows before the bevy of quails

rising reluctant but steady
toward their memories of stars.

And with that phrase "memories of stars" I am reminded of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" and its lines about being stardust.

And so for day 330
09.11.2007