Skip to content

Categories:

“Island and Figs”

The sky
on and on,
stone.
The Mediterranean
down the cliff,
stone.
These fields,
rock.
Dead weeds
everywhere.
And the weight
of sun.
In the weeds
an old woman
lifting off
snails.
Near
two trees
of ripe figs.
The heart
never fits
the journey.
Always
one ends
first.

Posted in Gilbert, Jack, Poetry.

By chris
8/15/2005

12 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Ron said
    on 10/4/2005

    I don’t think that this example can be considered poetry in the strict sense. The only part that makes sense and reflects a poetic understanding is the last sentence. Even that leaves one with a sense of having read that before. It is lacking in passion and novelty.

  2. chris said
    on 10/4/2005

    We can do this all day. I disagree. Granted, the poem is 40 years old, but it needn’t be.

    I’m tired of your whining– do you have any examples of something you *do* like to offer up? Or are you just a trolling Sillimanite? If the latter, I’ll start deleting your comments. If the former, cough it up. It’s easy to complain…

  3. chris said
    on 10/4/2005

    Also, who’s interested in “poetry in the strictest sense” except tired pedants?

  4. Ron said
    on 10/6/2005

    How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
    and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
    God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
    get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
    to which nation. French has no word for home,
    and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
    in northern India is dying out because their ancient
    tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
    vocabularies that might express some of what
    we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
    finally explain why the couples on their tombs
    are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
    of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
    they seemed to be business records. But what if they
    are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
    Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
    O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
    as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
    Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
    of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
    pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
    my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
    desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
    is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
    no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

    Jack Gilbert the forgotten dialect of the heart

  5. chris said
    on 10/6/2005

    Good call… this is actually another of my favorite Gilbert poems…

  6. Ron said
    on 10/6/2005

    It is beautiful. I understand the angst in the expression of language; the terrible tension between depth of expression and clarity of meaning. Remembering that the words we write are first and foremost language, simple communication between one sentient being and another, not knowing if the other will understand or accept or be uplifted by what we have passed on.

  7. Ron said
    on 10/15/2005

    Chris could you define for me what a “trolling Sillimanite” is? And why is it that you diislike him/them so much, that you are prepared to delete their posts. That sounds a bit undemocratic. Or is democracy not permissible in poetry?

  8. Chris L said
    on 10/15/2005

    A trolling sillimanite is a follower of Ron Silliman’s poetics of exclusion where the premise seems to be: there is only so much attention to go around, so it isn’t enough to share what I like, I must denigrate what other people like. A kind of elevation of oneself by stepping on the heads of others.

    There are plenty of places for that kind of discussion (including at the Cosmopoetica Blog). This just isn’t the place for those agendas. This is a place to share things that move me and encourage others to ednjoy the same (or point me to other things I might like). It’s not a workshop or a contest where someone has to win…

    Winning and losing do happen on the blog, though :)

  9. Ron said
    on 10/17/2005

    Thank you for that. My own understanding is that the mind of man is only very lightly used on a day to day basis. However there is a unknown capacity there running in the background which is capable of deep and profound thinking. What Ron is trying to do is to use that capacity by stimulating it with his method of writing, hence producing a new synthesis of meaning and comprehension. This is not much different from the method that you are promoting: that is a method of writing which stimulates the everyday mind to get into contact with the deeper but also much higher capacities for thought and enjoyment running in the background of the mind. I believe that if you both could revise your semantics and rhetoric you would find a great deal of common ground.

  10. Ron said
    on 10/18/2005

    Chris I don’t think you have the courage to comment on my comments in case you have to admit that Ron Silliman does have a point of view that is the other side of the coin that you are tendering. As in physics there must be a TOE, Theory of Everything for poetry.

  11. chris said
    on 10/18/2005

    Oh, I’ll comment– I just don’t have time right now. I think you give Ron way too much credit for his self-aggrandizement and claim-staking, just as you do the received knowledge that there must be a TOE (in physics or in poetry).

  12. Ron said
    on 10/18/2005

    Good on you mate. I like your reply. have a good evening. Am looking forward to your comments.

Some HTML is OK

(required)

(required, but never shared)

or, reply to this post via trackback.