Neglecting Cendrars


I feel I have been neglecting my Cendrars for too long. The iconoclastic poetry of the man with one arm has always fascinated me deeply. He is the first real modernist in a way. No wonder Henry Miller worshipped him. Reading him in translation is always tricky. He masters French in a way that makes my heart rejoice.



Journal

Christ
There goes another year in which I haven’t thought about You
Since I wrote my penultimate poem Easter
My life has changed so much
But I’m the same as ever
I still want to become a painter
Here are the pictures that I’ve done displayed here on the walls this evening.
They reveal to me strange perspectives into myself that make me think of You.
Christ
Life
See what I’ve unearthed
My paintings make me uneasy
I’m too passionate
Everything is tinted orange.
I’ve passed a sad day thinking about my friends
And reading my diary
Christ
A life crucified in this journal that I hold at arm’s length.
Wingspans
Rockets
Frenzy
Cries
Like a crashing aeroplane
That’s me.
Passion
Fire
A serial
Diary
No matter how much you try to stay silent
Sometimes you have to cry out
I’m the other way
Too sensitive
                                      

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visceral Anne Sexton

Image
I love visceral poets. I love poetry made of flesh and bones, of marrow and heart. And pain. I was seventeen when I first read a poem by Anne Sexton. It was love at first sight. I could not help reading all she wrote from then onward and being so devastated by her words and life. I still retain the magical power with which a sentence of that poem hit me: "My mouth blooms like a cut." If only my verses could be as powerful as this! Anne remains a spirit guide.
Read more

Wearing Poetry

Image
Yes, I proudly wear poetry. Every time I watch my ring I rejoice because those lines were written for me and no one else owns a more precious jewel. It is not the silver that makes it precious, but the beauty of the words that were chiseled on it. More so, it is the meaning of those six lines--that are the final stanza of a longer poem--that move me and remind me how incredible fortunate I am. Nothing like those words. They burn in me like an inextinguishable fire every day.  
Read more

Recalling Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Force of the Past

Image
Today is Pasolini's 36th death anniversary. He was brutally killed on the night of November 2, 1975 in still unclear circumstances and found the following morning by a blue collar on his way to work. Pasolini is possibly Italy's most important poet after Dante. An amazing intellectual who truly loved the lowest classes, which he celebrated in his deeply profound novels and poems. As Jack Hirschman points out, his three initials stand for "Passion, Provocation and Prophecy." This is so true.  I wish to celebrate Pasolini posting Orson Welles' reading one of his poems of which I am also including a translation. "I am a Force of the Past" roars Pasolini. No, he is much more than that. He is still today a Force of the Present and of the Future too.  I am a Force of the Past. My love lies only in tradition. I come from the ruins, the churches, the altarpieces, the villages abandoned in the Appenines or foothills of the Alps where my brothers once l...
Read more