inspiration: la closerie des lilas

la closerie des lilas. may 23, 2011

© anita aguilar

i've fallen into an unfortunate pattern on tuesdays at work. it goes something like meeting-meeting, meeting-meeting-meeting. by the time night falls, i am burning for inspiration.

on a walk home some months back, i tried to think of ways to re-align "the tuesday" so that ended on a finer note. i remembered: tuesday nights in paris were open poetry night for hemingway and his coterie at la closerie des lilas. fantastic-- i'd make it my poetry night, too.

in that spirit, i wanted to structure it toward writers that had some connection to the place. naturally, i started with hemingway. his verse, at least from what i could find online, is pretty awful, or at least not what i cared for, sort of cold and aggressive. i tried others from an earlier time (appollinaire, andre salmon) but didn't get much of a feeling for their work either (too weepy, too structured, too not-translated-into-english). it was a disappointing start. but it felt like a good exercise and i've kept it up (while giving up on the closerie-specific writers). in that way it's become my own "open" poetry night.

here's a favorite, writing-related one from last night. hope you like it.

on punctuation

not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it is
a period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty

-by elizabeth austen via the writer's almanac

read a good poem: the white

These are the moments

before snow, whole weeks before.

The rehearsals of milky November,

cloud constructions

when a warm day

lowers a drift of light

through the leafless angles

of the trees lining the streets.

Green is gone,

gold is gone.

The blue sky is

the clairvoyance of snow.

There is night

and a moon

but these facts

force the hand of the season:

from that black sky

the real and cold white

will begin to emerge.

--Patricia Hampl via the writer's almanac

photos © anita aguilar

read a good poem: the antilamentation

"regret nothing."

***

nyc, jan 2010.

photo © anita aguilar

***

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

--dorianne laux via the writer's almanac, march 7, 2011

read a good poem: waving goodbye

the lovely natalia vodianova in "brief encounter."

photographed by annie leibovitz for vogue, feb 2010 issue.

i have this thing about goodbyes-- not just the breakup goodbye or the big bon voyage.
sometimes the common ones get to me.

i'll go a few extra blocks out of my way to walk a friend to her subway stop or the bus station.

there have been times, after having friends over after a party or a visit, when i'm not quite ready to close the door. literally. i'll tiptoe out into the hallway, peek my head around the corner for a quick chat, until the elevator picks them up.

i've been known to stand a bit too long on the platform.

maybe hang on a little tighter and linger a little longer than i should.

i suppose i'm greedy for extra moments?

***

i read this poem for the first time many months ago and remembered it today.
"this small flag" leaves me on the brink every time, "when the space gets too large for words."

i hope you like it.

***

Waving Goodbye


Why, when we say goodbye
at the end of an evening, do we deny
we are saying it at all, as in We'll
be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in,
somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends,
telling us the same things, go on disappearing
beyond the porch light into the space
which except for a moment here or there
is always between us, no matter what we do.
Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens
when the space gets too large
for words – a gesture so innocent
and lonely, it could make a person weep
for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown
voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel
patting and stroking the growing distance
between their nameless ship and the port
they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always
remember, and just as urgently, Always
remember me. It is loneliness, too,
that makes the neighbor down the road lift
two fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes
day after day on his way to work in the hello
that turns into goodbye? What can our own raised
fingers do for him, locked in his masculine
purposes and speeding away inside the glass?
How can our waving wipe away the reflex
so deep in the woman next door to smile
and wave on her way into her house with the mail,
we'll never know if she is happy
or sad or lost? It can't. Yet in that moment
before she and all the others and we ourselves
turn back to our disparate lives, how
extraordinary it is that we make this small flag
with our hands to show the closeness we wish for
in spite of what pulls us apart again
and again: the porch light snapping off,
the car picking its way down the road through the dark.

-by Wesley McNair via The Writer's Almanac, April 29, 2010.

read a good poem: things i didn’t know i loved: after nazim hikmet

metronorth...winter 2010

I always knew I loved the sky,
the way it seems solid and insubstantial at the same time;
the way it disappears above us
even as we pursue it in a climbing plane,
like wishes or answers to certain questions—always out of reach;
the way it embodies blue,
even when it is gray.

But I didn't know I loved the clouds,
those shaggy eyebrows glowering
over the face of the sun.
Perhaps I only love the strange shapes clouds can take,
as if they are sketches by an artist
who keeps changing her mind.
Perhaps I love their deceptive softness,
like a bosom I'd like to rest my head against
but never can.

And I know I love the grass, even as I am cutting it as short
as the hair on my grandson's newly barbered head.
I love the way the smell of grass can fill my nostrils
with intimations of youth and lust;
the way it stains my handkerchief with meanings
that never wash out.

Sometimes I love the rain, staccato on the roof,
and always the snow when I am inside looking out
at the blurring around the edges of parked cars
and trees. And I love trees,
in winter when their austere shapes
are like the cutout silhouettes artists sell at fairs
and in May when their branches
are fuzzy with growth, the leaves poking out
like new green horns on a young deer.

But how about the sound of trains,
those drawn-out whistles of longing in the night,
like coyotes made of steam and steel, no color at all,
reminding me of prisoners on chain gangs I've only seen
in movies, defeated men hammering spikes into rails,
the burly guards watching over them?

Those whistles give loneliness and departure a voice.
It is the kind of loneliness I can take in my arms, tasting
of tears that comfort even as they burn, dampening the pillows
and all the feathers of all the geese who were plucked to fill
them.

Perhaps I embrace the music of departure—song without lyrics,
so I can learn to love it, though I don't love it now.
For at the end of the story, when sky and clouds and grass,
and even you my love of so many years,
have almost disappeared,
it will be all there is left to love.

--Linda Pastan

via the writer's almanac, may 27, 2010

read a good poem: (celebrating ee cummings' birthday)

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

--ee cummings
from 100 selected poems
bio from poets.org
today's writer's almanac notes (do read "i like my body." i like that one, too)


****

"bikini, moscow, 1959." william klein. via the laurence miller gallery.

read a good poem: "tossing and turning"

untitled, #1447-a, 1996. by todd hido. via the rose gallery, santa monica, ca.

The spirit has infinite facets, but the body

confiningly few sides.

There is the left,

the right, the back, the belly, and tempting

in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,

that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation

in one or another arm.

Yet we turn each time

with fresh hope, believing that sleep

will visit us here, descending like an angel

down the angle our flesh's sextant sets,

tilted toward that unreachable star

hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence

dreams and good luck flow.

Uncross

your ankles. Unclench your philosophy.

This bed was invented by others; know we go

to sleep less to rest than to participate

in the twists of another world.

This churning is our journey.

It ends,

can only end, around a corner

we do not know

we are turning.

"tossing and turning" by john updike, from collected poems 1953-1993.
via the writer's almanac, feb 19, 2009.


i hadn't read any of john updike's work until this poem, today. i had made a plan to, though, after reading this recent tribute by my favorite writer...i'm getting excited all over again.

i love "unclench your philosophy" -- those few words stayed with me all morning.

"uncross your ankles" is a pretty great line, too.

right after i read the poem, i did a quick search for a photo that might be suitable.
i happened upon todd hido's work--i love the moodiness.
if you're interested, here is a link to more of his photos on the rose gallery site and on the stephen wirtz gallery site.
i also found an interview from 2007, where he discusses his book, between the two. i enjoyed reading his thoughts on portraiture and the book editing process.
here's a taste:

re: his focus, and his portraits of women...

To me it is no mystery that we can only photograph effectively what we are truly interested in or -- maybe more importantly -- are grappling with. This is often an unconscious process. Otherwise the photographs are merely about an idea or a concept; that stuff eventually falls flat for me. There must be something more, some emotional hook for it to really work for me. I tend to photograph things I've had problems with or I have struggled with, stuff that used to keep me up at night. It's the same process with my photographs of houses -- they are about recognizing some mysterious element of my childhood.

I've read that sources of terror in childhood often become sources of attraction in adulthood. I've found that true. It's disturbing to me how many of the models remind me of past women that have been in my life -- not in terms of how they look but in terms of who they seem to be underneath their surfaces. There is a familiarity to them, something that resonates, something kind of troubled about them that is very recognizable to me. It is endlessly fascinating and utterly simple as to why we gravitate to what we do. Of course this is not stuff that I've worked out completely, which is precisely why it's engrossing to me. That is why I do it. That is the focus.

re: editing the book with chris pichler of nazraeli press...

The editing process is part of making the work. I gather up the images I am interested in and then start to lay them out using just a standard book dummy, weaving the images together over a long period of time. With Between the Two, it took about three years of constantly shuffling unpublished work in with new images that I was making on a weekly basis. There was real joy in leaving the darkroom and stopping by the copy shop to make Xeroxes in order to slide them into the dummy, seeing if they fit in someplace. Sometimes the images would work, and sometimes they don't. But almost every image I've made in the last few years was tried out. Some were perfect and added just what I needed and others I've saved for the next project, whatever that may be!

want more? here's a link to the full interview, between hido and darius himes ...

read a good poem: "coming home"

martha's vineyard. 2005.

i imagine us seeing
everything from another place
the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea...

believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves...

the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.

"coming home" by mary oliver, from dream work.
© the atlantic monthly press, 1986.
via the writer's almanac, feb 11, 2009