Week 6: TOTEM / GUIDE

Bill Jensen, Raised Bristles, mixed media 2010-11

The starting point here (for this post) was something Gary Snyder once wrote--about the animals in early America--the way the salmon and the deer would appear at the edge of human settlements, eager to hear the music and stories that only people could make--to the point that they willingly gave themselves up to be eaten in return.

It's a complicated transaction, of course--a kind of musing on Snyder's part, cast almost in terms of myth--on the connection between nurture and poetry. On why we make anything at all--and why we find it beautiful to do so. On pleasure and meaning.

But it's also about apparent opposites--opposing realms which turn on being connected after all...

The Waking

Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

_____

Last night: Some thoughts about your notebooks. Then the poem by Robert Desnos (thank you Jeremy), coal and coral. The photograph by Robert Doisneau (Parisians at cafe bar), and the story from Odette Meyers (by way of Susan Griffin) about Desnos reading peoples' palms in the wagon. Friendships and losses, a blessing for Leah. Reading the Bear poem out loud--David Fisher... Connections back to Frida Kahlo, her self-image as wounded deer, and Titian's two paintings on the myth of Acteon, retold from Ovid...

Acteon the Hunter... Melampus, Ichnobates, Pamphagus, Dorceus, Oribasos, Nebrophonos, Theron, Laelape, Pterelas, Agre, Hylaeus, Nape, Poemenis, Harpyia, Ladon, Dromas, Canache, Sticte, Tigris, Alce, Leucon, Asbolus, Aëllo, Thoos, Lycisce, Cyprius, Harpalos, Melaneus, Lachne,  Labros, Argiodus, and Hylactor...

Meanings in names, meanings lost in names...
___

Also: To be resumed--old San Francisco, longshoreman's cap, Coit Tower, Bill Jensen, the power of Philip Guston's Nixon cartoon drawings, Eugene Boudin. Michael Sowa's Esterhazy. Dominique Goblet, Michael Snow, Ron Nagle, George Oppen...

(Milton Resnick, Ron Gorchov, Leon Golub..)

Ask...!