Plowmen and donkey drivers - Kabbalistic wise men

The following 2 stanzas are part of a series of poems in Pardaes Dokkumen, in the section Plowmen at Faer. Donkey drivers and other lowly tradespeople appear in the Zohar occasionally, often as messianic figures or hidden holy men. You can decide for yourself who they are here:

Plowmen Hav Taelz

A donkee driver sed,
“I met a plowman reterning frum feeldz,
“Hu sed, ‘This partikkuler vallee a fludz,
     “‘And the oxxen ar serlee and I hav plow
     “‘The muk and klay intu thik slerree.
     “‘Up tu my waest I hav groen and drivven
     “‘The beests, foemen at nostrel and kikken;
     “‘The plow in my handz a sord tu the erth.
     “‘That iz the Torrah ov my narro vale.
     “‘The ferro ar fludden and no wun dissern
     “‘The seed frum the staen in the eenkee lien
     “‘I skrach on a serf a this limminal feeld.’”

A wotter kareyer then pord iz dreenk,
“I met a plowman a reternen frum feelz.
“He sez, ‘For jennerratenz I the plow this expanz.
     “‘My ling ar groen in its oxxide dust.
     “‘In morning iz sault iz kurst on my iy.
     “‘My fout print pressen in dune and drift.
     “‘My skin a reenkelz az my plowwen reenkelz.
     “‘Wut I du tu the lan, it duz tu me.
     “‘That iz the Torrah ov this endless ekspan.
     “‘The sun and the wind strips us ov breth.
     “‘We kut owwer ferro; it shaeps ar deth’”

Watchmen

Battle not with monsters
Lest ye become a monster,

And if you gaze into the abyss
The abyss gazes also into you.

Nietzsche, as quoted in Watchmen, p.28

Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Part 6

I began my epic, 6 part poem, The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming in the early 1990's, and completed almost all of the writing by about 2000. I also completed fair copies of the first 5 books by about 2000. However, Book 6, set in the Shoah (the Holocaust), remained as a rough copy only. I continue to work on it. The following poem, written in 2004, was an attempt to pull the poem's many strands together into a narrative ending, while allowing the poem's non-narrative threads to defy a sense of completeness.

In this scene you will find the main character on the run from the nazi death-grip. One thing you will need to know: she was asked to carry a Torah scroll to the Yishuv (Jewish settlements) in Palestine. She accepted this burden unwillingly, and to cope with its weight, and as a layer of protection, she wrapped it around her body. Thus her comment in this scene:
          “I kan unrap this parchmen skin,
          “Remoov it, re-roel it, delivver it. Dun!”

And thus...

Sleeping by Day, Nietmaerz all Nite

Nite and its deth dans. The dog men sirkel,
The tooth men, the slavver men,
The howling, rifel, toyfel men.
Heer the skreem, the long traen rumbel.
A berd skreechez and the aer iz torn
By a fleeting, fluttering fether. It fallz.
A flashlite bliendz her; deth skwod and deth grip...

She waeks. The sun iz glaring thru the brush
Krying, “Jew, Jew!” It points and akkuzez,
Ware she kerl, bareed in a mownd a ded leef.
Slolee she ternz, but the leevz erupt
In kersez and showting. She frezez. The throng
Ov akkuzerz tern mute. Thaer deth-state prevaelz.
Thay retern tu thaer erth, tu thaer fodder-land dreemz.
The wind lifts them and kareez them awway,
Skipping down a kartpath allong a feeld.
Thay flutter akross a swampee streem,
And intu the owtskerts ov a haf-bernd town.
All iz kwiyet. Aproeching its senter,
Oeld men on bieks, wimmen kriskrossing
The streets, peering in windo, smoking.
The smellz ov koffee and baking bred
Leenger in the aer. Awtum leevz
Liften by a gust ov wind, ar kareed...

She openz her iyz, liez still, liez bareed
In the mustee leevz. The sun haz driften
Far tu the west. Now klowdee, now windee,
The forres iz all allive, arrussel.
Konfuezd, she slolee emerj frum leef-tume.

On a distant hill a minnerret and dome.
The aer iz worm. She kannot understan.
But az sleep a-faden, she rememmer. Yes!
She wuz krossen frum Libnon intu Gallallee.
She evaded the Brits and the Arab zhendarmz.
A Jewish settelmen shoud not be far.
Stund, exxosted, she lay bak down.

She theenks, “I kan unrap this parchmen skin,
     “Remoov it, re-roel it, delivver it. Dun!”
She woud reech tu her aenkel but all she kan du
Iz groen and seenk bak in shrowden leevz.*
                    * Eeka d’omray “dreemz;”
                    * Eeka d’omray “lievz.”

She waeks wuns mor, kerreld in her dreemz,
Her greefs, her kersez, her proffettek hope.
Rapt in her Torra, its sollewbel eenk
Smeerz in her skin, so intu her Seel.
Yet tu go on, she knoez not how far.
The darkness, the embedden Prezzens, it kawlz.

Spiritual Assents

The following is from Pardaes Dokkumen, Plowmen at Faer.

Breeng Forth Maze frum the Feel
               Roesh Khodesh Adar tu Shuvvuwoet, 5765

A skriber wuns sed tu sum men in Pardaes:
The trueth e full ov hewman debree
Like the Addom in yu that iz ballas yur Seel;
Wut part iz karben, wut part khorbon*?
                    * Hebrew: burnt offering
Wut part taken, wut part tekun**?
                    ** Hebrew: repair/re-form
Wut part bane, wut part bone***?
                    *** utherz say “bonay”, Hebrew: build

The trueth iz a thred, it maezlike weev
Akross the mobeyus warp ov yur Addom
And its Shaddiy Seel, wun an the same.
Thro off this worp; unwaev* yur sellz!
                    * utherz say “unweev”
And then kan yu tell me hu yu ar?
And then kan yu tell me wy yu ar heer?
Kan yu even tell me if yu ar heer?

Learned at a Facing History seminar

As a teacher, one of the most important resources and teaching methods I have encountered is the Facing History and Ourselves approach (http://www.facing.org/home). They describe themselves as "Helping classrooms and communities worldwide link the past to moral choices today."

In an online seminar I am currently taking with them I came across the writings of Eboo Patel, an American Muslim from India. Among his many accomplishments, he is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core. I don't often post other people's writings here, but this little anecdote is worth repeating many times. He writes:

When I was in college, I had the sudden realization that all of my heroes were people of deep faith: Dorothy Day, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, the Aga Khan. Moreover, they were all of different faiths. A little more research revealed two additional insights. First, This reading contains excerpts from Eboo Patel’s, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. religious cooperation had been central to the work of most of these faith heroes. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. partnered with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the struggle for civil rights. Mahatma Gandhi stated that Hindu Muslim unity was just as important to him as a free India. Second, each of my faith heroes assumed an important leadership role at a young age. King was only twenty-six years old when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. Gandhi was even younger when he started his movement against unjust laws in early-twentieth-century South Africa.

. . . In high school, the group I ate lunch with included a Cuban Jew, a Nigerian Evangelical, and an Indian Hindu. We were all devout to a degree, but we almost never talked about our religions with one another. Often somebody would announce at the table that he couldn’t eat a certain kind of food, or any food at all, for a period of time. We all knew religion hovered behind this, but nobody ever offered any explanation deeper than “my mom said,” and nobody ever asked for one.

This silent pact relieved all of us. We were not equipped with a language that allowed us to explain our faith to others or to ask about anyone else’s. Back then, I thought little about the dangers lurking within this absence. A few years after we graduated, my Jewish friend reminded me of a dark time during our adolescence. There were a group of kids in our high school who, for several weeks, took up scrawling anti-Semitic slurs on classroom desks and making obscene statements about Jews in the hallways. I did not confront them. I did not comfort my Jewish friend. I knew little about what Judaism meant to him, less about the emotional effects of anti-Semitism, and next to nothing about how to stop religious bigotry. So I averted my eyes and avoided my friend, because I couldn’t stand to face him.

A few years later, he described to me the fear he had experienced coming to school those days, and his utter loneliness as he had watched his close friends simply stand by. Hearing him recount his suffering and my complicity is the single most humiliating experience of my life. I did not know it in high school, but my silence was betrayal: betrayal of Islam, which calls upon Muslims to be courageous and compassionate in the face of injustice; betrayal of America, a nation that relies on its citizens to hold up the bridges of pluralism when others try to destroy them; betrayal of India, a country that has too often seen blood flow in its cities and villages when extremists target minorities and others fail to protect them. My friend needed more than my silent presence at the lunch table.

Pluralism is not a default position, an autopilot mode. Pluralism is an intentional commitment that is imprinted through action. It requires deliberate engagement with difference, outspoken loyalty to others, and proactive protection in the breach. You have to choose to step off the faith line onto the side of pluralism, and then you have to make your voice heard. To follow Robert Frost, it is easy to see the death of pluralism in the fire of a suicide bombing. But the ice of silence will kill it just as well.

Atternen Jewz

This from 3/22/10, 7 Nissan 5770, week ov Tzav, continues to explore the place of the Jew in consciousness. "The Jew" is such a mythically charged idea that to understand anti-Semitism (and certain aspects of philo-Semitism) requires more, much more, than just a knowledge of politics, history, and religions.

I Am In Yuez

I am in yuez, but I am not yuez.
I the standen az the dorren yur Seel.

Wen yu open that dorz, yu a let me inz.
     The vizhennaerz ammung yuez, report ov my seez.
     “O wunness o goudness o divvine harmenneez!”
Wen that dorren openz all ov itsell,
     I louks inside an shout akross yur waeslanz
     Reporten sumz ov my seez in yu.

Trembenz and wunderz shake yur grownd.
Yu kannot a standen tu my ups and downz.
     An Aenjel a Deth I am for the dyen.
     Hu groen week, say I korrup thaer kine.
     Thay see almoes nuthen, the massez a bliend.
     Hu aspiyern tu Godz kallen me saevyaer.
     Hem standen in Tempel kallz me khuvvaer*.
                    *Hebrew for 'friend' or 'partner'

I dreamed I was the Eternal Jew

This vignette for Miths a the Atternen Jew was composed using a collection of dream images from the last 3 nights: mountains as collections of female bodies and their defilement, hawks on the ground willing to be petted, cats that obey like dogs but look like rats...
I sketched this out tonight, so it's totally raw and unreflected, unedited, unrefined.

I, the atternen Jew attunen
Tu yu, my temperen boddeez.
Untuend we ar tu the seelee dans,
The misstep, pushstep, feerstep tunen;
All bruzen, kissen, grabber tuch:
All tern awway unfeelen much
Ov all em densen krowden dansee wayz.

Owt uppon the windee hiets
I push my way, I klimen slip.
Heer the hillz a skulpten song,
A Greeshen korrus, bak tu bak,
Bellee bellee, arm in arm.
A rownd an soft an perfek karvz
Ov brest an cheek a lip an thi.
A shudderree ov pinee need,
Ov meddo dansen bumbelbee,
Ov larksperr an shooten star.
Thaer haer ablone, theze windee hiets,
Dellakkut thaer wiendee harts:
Mownten like a krowd a nuden wimmen.

How the buffallo in herden tramp
The roden trak, the trampel manz
Dig an plow an ragged skar.
O theze wimmen! All thaer bewteez
Dragd in harroez, stript an ript.

An then the rapenz tern awway.
Dun thaer wermee deedz.
In werdee legelleze thay say,
     “Nuthing harmd. Soon forgot.
     “An all theze bewteez wuns aggen will song.”

But I, the ternen Jew, I heerz
The silens in the kavvern hillz,
The hoks affonnen like a dog,
The kro, he fat; obedeyen rat.
I seez the tromma stichez
On a pale an blochee skinz.
I the witness; I the tellz.
An yu, my boddeez, all ov this
Yu knoez, yu seez, yu heerz,
Even in yur bitterress deny.

Rethinking Grammar

I was sitting on the bus going to work, annotating George K. Anderson's The Legend of the Wandering Jew. My mind drifted away from the text, to my act of annotation, and from there to the grammatical form of the word “annotation.” It's a simple word, a noun. And of course, a noun is a person, place, thing, state, or quality; or more fully, as most dictionaries will remind you, the subject or object of a sentence that can be modified into plural and possessive. But that definition hardly begins to describe the grammatical function that the word “annotation” implies.

Consider. It's root is “note”, , which can be either a noun or a verb, but in this case I'll call it a noun. However, by adding the prefix “an-” it is transformed into a verb, which is thence retransformed back into a noun with the suffix “-tion”! Those ambiguities and transformations all are processed instantly by our minds, and are equally instantly ignored as we read a sentence with the word “annotation” in it.

Now, I ask you, is “annotation” a noun, and if so, what is a noun?!

The more I explore stevespell, the more I realize that the apparently strange and foreign grammars and constructions embedded in it, such as noun-verbs like “annotaten”, are neither strange nor foreign. We simply choose to ignore the complexity that already exists in the language. In actuality, like the quantum mechanical electron, our words are constantly changing forms and states, and we are hard-pressed to know when they're particles and when they're waves and when they're something else entirely.

Of course, back here in the real world, my 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Newton, will wag her crooked finger in my face and scold me with nary a second thought, “I'll have none of that, young man! A noun is a noun, and you better be able to diagram it correctly on the next test, or you'll be back in the corner sitting by yourself again!”

Another thing Mrs. Newton doesn't know: I like sitting by myself.

Quantum Mechanics and Language

Upon reading David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order.

From the first paragraph of Bohm's introduction to Wholeness and the Implicate Order, I realized that what he was theorizing about in this book, published in 1980, I was concurrently developing in my poetry since the mid 70's. You can find many of my short essays on language and consciousness on this blog or at my website, shivvetee.com. If you are unfamiliar with my thoughts on this topic, I suggest you begin with a pleasant and easy little essay, “Wy I Rite So Funnee” at:
Wy I Rite So Funnee
If you want to then go deeper, you can explore some of the labels on this blog, such as 'complexity,' 'phenomenology,' and 'poetics,' or you can jump right to this link which is a partial summary of my various posts:
Literary Complexity

Bohm's path emerged from quantum mechanics; mine from phenomenology and consciousness, but both of us realized the necessity of interdisciplinary analysis. My ideas have been greatly influenced by the development of quantum mechanics over the 20th century, as Bohm's have been by phenomenology and the philosophy of consciousness.

Consider this statement by Bohm, who is widely regarded one of the Illuminati of quantum mechanics:
"It is clear that in reflecting on and pondering the nature of movement, both in thought and in the object of thought, one comes inevitably to the question of wholeness or totality. The notion that the one who thinks (the Ego) is at least in principle completely separate from and independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly embedded in our entire tradition.... But this confronts us with a very difficult challenge: How are we to think coherently of a single, unbroken, flowing actuality of existence as a whole, containing both thought (consciousness) and external reality as we experience it?" (Bohm, p. x of Introduction, 1981 paperback, Routledge, Kegan, Paul Ltd.)

He then goes on two pages later:
"In chapter 2 we go into the role of language in bringing about fragmentation of thought.... We then inquire whether it is possible to experiment with new language forms in which the basic role will be given to the verb rather than the noun. Such forms will have as their content a series of actions that flow and merge into each other, without sharp separations or breaks." (ibid, p. xii)

Now consider this excerpt from my mid-80's essay, “Wy I Rite so Funnee”:
"My second intention with stevespell was more ambitious and radical. I wanted to develop a grammar in which subject and predicate, object and action were merged. I had heard that this was possible in Sanskrit, and it seemed intuitively right to me. Surely, the actor and the action are not two separate things, but aspects of one thing.... Perhaps our language was creating unnatural distinctions between actor and action, or between past, present, and future."

In chapter 1, p. 9, Bohm explores his first love, quantum mechanics.
"In a more detailed description the atom is, in many ways, seen to behave as much like a wave as a particle. It can perhaps best be regarded as a poorly defined cloud, dependent for its particular form on the whole environment, including the observing instruments. Thus, one can no longer maintain the division between the observer and observed (which is implicit in the atomistic view that regards each of these as separate aggregates of atoms)."

Here we see the confluence of quantum mechanics and consciousness in two important areas.

First, Bohm, working from Heisenberg, says that, in atomic spaces, the act of observation affects what is observed. We see this in precisely the same way phenomenologically. The act of self observation modifies what is observed (our thoughts). The closer we observe ourselves, the more completely our act of observation is what we see, obscuring and obstructing a free flow of thought. This is a precise corollary to Heisenberg's principle that when we observe phenomena at the atomic level, the more accurately we desire to know where a given object is, the more inaccurate our understanding of where it is going.

Second, just as at atomic level observation we see the breakdown of the “division between the observer and observed,” so we see in consciousness that there is no clear division between individuals. This is quite obvious by observing the transmission of emotion from one person to another. An individual shouting angrily at another causes an immediate and visceral reaction, usually either anger or fear in like measure. This transmission is not based on proximity, and can be verbal or non-verbal. Two people shouting at each other will each become increasingly disturbed, while an onlooker, to whom their anger is not directed, can observe dispassionately. I have also often observed in myself, when sitting silently with someone who is extremely anxious, that although I am not consciously aware of their anxiety, I will find myself inexplicably anxious, inexplicable, that is, until I ask them, “are you anxious or nervous?” Their answer almost always confirms that what I am feeling is their emotion!

I will offer one more example of the confluence between quantum mechanics and consciousness using Bohm's observations as a starting point. On pp. 9-10 he says:
"What is needed in a relativistic theory is to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or 'building blocks.' Rather, one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes. Thus,... instead of thinking of a particle, one is to think of a 'world tube.'
This world tube represents an infinitely complex process of a structure in movement and development which is centred in a region indicated by the boundaries of the tube. However, even outside the tube, each 'particle' has a field that extends through space and merges with the fields of other particles."

Let me now rewrite the second paragraph, speaking of human beings rather than atomic particles:
"This human body represents an infinitely complex process of a structure in movement and development which is centred in a region indicated by the boundaries of the body. However, even outside the body, each 'ego' has a field that extends through space and merges with the fields of other egos."

These overlapping fields are not limited to atomic and subatomic particles and emotional sensitivities. I would posit that the very nature of consciousness is represented better by behaviors described by quantum mechanics than by any Euclidean or Newtonian model. Therefore, time, also must be understood in a quantum mechanical way, since time is a product of consciousness. While the ego is focused into a present moment, that looks back into a past and forward to a future, human consciousness itself is not so bounded. Events of the past can have a profound effect on present behavior without there being any direct series of causal connections. Consciousness connects past, present, and future into a single interactive continuum with multiple, direct causalities.

Our language is structured to make concrete distinctions between objects, between objects and the actions that connect them, and between moments in time. These distinctions can be a helpful artifice, but they misrepresent the true behavior of objects in motion (events in time), and thought (consciousness). Bohm postulates a more active, fluid, verb-based language, but that is insufficient. Stevespell attempts a more comprehensive interleaving of objects, events, and time periods. I would call it a quantum mechanical language, which attempts to represent the more complex, non-Euclidean, interactive causalities operating in the human observation of the mental and physical worlds.

In sum, as we begin to peer into the atomic world, where matter “sublimates” into energy and energy “condenses” into matter, we are also observing the workings of consciousness as it articulates the foundations of space-time. This more accurate observational ability that evolved in the 20th century, shattered our ancient world-views (Aristotelian, Euclidean, Newtonian). Now we are beginning to understand that our further development is inhibited by our language, which also needs to evolve to represent this new, subtler understanding of our world.

Wy I Rite So Funnee

This pleasant little essay, entitled "Wy I Rite So Funnee" was my first statement about the transformations I'm applying to the English language, and was written sometime in the mid 1980's. You can find it on my website, www.shivvetee.com, but since I'm reorganizing that site, I thought I'd post it here too, because I'm going to make reference to it in my next post.

Wy du I rite so funnee?

This question has been asked of me consistently, since I began altering standard spelling and grammar back in the mid 1970's. It has been asked politely and it has been asked with expletives undeleted. Readers and editors have been offended and confused by it, as well as delighted by it. A friendly but critical colleague from the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange dubbed it “stevespell” many years ago, and that has become my preferred name for it.

Sometimes I feel I am hewing the words out of wood or stone, rough approximations to a deeper, more accurate language. Sometimes I feel like I am taking the “found art” of English, and refining and polishing it. Sometimes the words are like very soft clay in my hands, oozing through my fingers. Sometimes the words are like nuggets of gold discovered as I sift through gravel and fast running water. Stevespell has allowed me to discover new words, new meanings in words, and new relationships between words, and it has become one of the modalities of my creativity.

I realize that to many readers, my language appears idiosyncratic, obscure, and nearly impenetrable. Yet, when I am writing, I feel like I am speaking in an “English” that underlays the infinite variations and personal morphologies that are illusorily lumped together into a single language. People question stevespell, as if “English” were a pre-existing, complete, and unalterable phenomenon in nature, and I am breaking the rules. I am not breaking the rules; I am discovering them; I am extending them.

Here’s the metaphor that I keep coming back to: most people think of words as if they were bricks. They think of words as hard, clearly shaped, baked clay units. They’re made in some factory somewhere – doesn’t matter where or with what clay – to be used to build permanent things. I think of words as soft clay, easily shaped and re-shaped, mostly used to build impermanent things in impermanent and poorly designed ways. It is the rare structure, indeed, that survives these harsh conditions that we build in.

I have two friends in Provincetown, Conrad and Anne, who are among the most beautiful people in the world. One of the tricks Conrad likes to play on the world is to sculpt in brick, in ways that appear to defy gravity. When you see these sculptures, you are forced to wonder: are these “bricks” really styrofoam, or are they real bricks somehow being held up with invisible wires? You bricklayers, when was the last time you made a brick float in air?

Stevespell evolved organically. You can find two relatively early examples of it in the Reading Room on my website, shivvetee: the poem In the Harvest ov Nations and the story “A Pilgrimmage to Mecca.” Compare those writings to In the Ruwenz ov the Tempel, I Herd...! At least to me, the language in them seems so normal, so unadventurous. To my eyes they also lack a certain sparkle and intensity. And yet, those writings, too, generated questions and controversy not unlike what I hear regarding my most recent work.

My earliest intention was two-fold. First, I wanted to normalize English spelling to spoken English. This seemed easy to accomplish, in my naivete. I soon discovered that I wasn’t the first to try such a project. For example, the Chicago Tribune attempted to partially normalize English, only to be booed into submission. On top of that, normalization presented all kinds of new problems. Conjugational and etymological continuities often had to be stretched or abandoned. And what was I to do with regional and national accents? If a written-spoken normalization had been my only motive, I too would have quit the project. But that is not the case. By the way, if you study the evolution of my spellings you will see that I have progressively moved towards a normalization that reflects my accent.

My second intention with stevespell was more ambitious and radical. I wanted to develop a grammar in which subject and predicate, object and action were merged. I had heard that this was possible in Sanskrit, and it seemed intuitively right to me. Surely, the actor and the action are not two separate things, but aspects of one thing. Later, when I began to learn Hebrew, I saw how root words and the absence of written vowels were used to create dynamic, interweaving structures of sound, meaning, and perspective. But English, and most European languages, don’t have (or don’t focus on) these kinds of conceptual tools. Perhaps our language was creating unnatural distinctions between actor and action, or between past, present, and future. So I began to work the clay, and I found that the possibility of merging noun and verb in English was waiting patiently just below the surface. Actually we are doing it all the time! Colloquial usage commonly slurs the “ing” verb form into “in,” as in “I’m goin’ to the store.” Superimpose this on the form that converts a verb into a noun using “-ence” (as in “transcend” to “transcendence”), and, presto, yu ar the transenden ov normel Eenglish!

Critics pointed out to me two other inter-related and important effects of stevespell. First, it forced them to read more slowly. This really annoys a lot of people. We have so much to do, and so much to read, we don’t have time to crawl along, actually paying attention to individual words. But just a second. That’s precisely what poetry is about! It’s about paying attention to each word; hearing them, considering them, going back and reading phrases again and maybe even again, slowly proceeding, and ohmigosh, actually enjoying the sensuality of language. I hope you speed demons don’t have sex the way you read, trying to get done as quickly as possible. I much prefer to read slowly, sensuously, seductively engaged with each word.

The other complaint I got, a complaint by another poet, mind you, was that my poetry forced him to read my work aloud if he wanted to understand it. Darn, that annoyed him. Say what?? That too is exactly what poetry is about: hearing the words, speaking the words, creating not a fleeting shadow of a thought as you rush on through a zillion words a minute, but resonating the words through the very bones of your body, from the chest outward. I remember a wicked northeaster on Cape Cod one February. I was living alone in my parent’s cottage on the beach. The waves were thundering, battering the seawall mercilessly; the wind was howling furiously and pummeling the walls. The curtains were swaying and the cracks in the walls were whistling, and me, I was reading Blake’s Jerusalem, screaming it at the top of my lungs, for hours, until the storm faded around dawn. It was one of the most glorious nights of my life. And I swear, Willy B. was right there with me belting it out, the two of us laughing till we could hardly breathe, then reading on.

So, you’re not breaking my heart if you have to read slowly, and if you even have to read my poetry aloud to get it. That’s what you’re supposed to do with poetry.

There is at least one more effect intended by stevespell. Poetic language has ebbed and flowed for thousands of years between the use of heightened, formal language, and the use of colloquial, simplified language. Often, when language is used to convey a sense of the sacred, it tends towards the formal, and this may easily become awkward or stilted. Nonetheless, I want to separate my poetry from mundane and secular literature. Whether or not I succeed and achieve a sense of the sacred in my poetry is for you to decide, but that, too, is part of my intention.

symmetry

This is a fragment from a long meditation on symmetry, which will be included The Pardaes Dokkumen, a manuscript I hope to soon complete.

epigraph:
The hardest part of preparing for the days of Redemption is the need to break every symmetry, responding to each energy not with its opposite and not in kind, but by dissipating what is negative and amplifying what is positive.

How kwiklee the eevning disroebz the morning,
Hu but momentz befor had rizzen frum her bed.
     Like a chield hu seez her destin huzban,
     He iz just a littel boy on hiz way tu skool;
     Now beneeth the khoupa* he take her hand.
                              * marriage canopy
So haz the eevning taken my hand
And led me intu the shaddoez ov God.

Myth of the Eternal Jew, 2

This little excerpt for Miths ov the Ternel Jew shines a light on the scene where the cobbler who offers Jesus a drink, goes back to work as Jesus continues on his way to Golgotha:

... And the Messiya sit in iz dark vawlt,
Iz tap, tap, tap on the soel;
Iz stich on stich, bienden the layerren pees,
Thong in hand, song an song,
Kobbelz he all day az the rabbel showt
An stomp in its serkus wayz.
Thay follo the Eterna Jew up the street
Tu woch him dy, hung on a pole,
Woch him dy intu life.

Look and Feel of Pardaes Dokkumen

While composing Pardaes Dokkumen, I have simultaneously been formatting it in a way that gives it a personalized manuscript feel, perhaps along the lines of Kelmscott Press and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Publishing online strips nearly all the formatting from the work. To give you a little preview of the actual text, I have prepared a jpeg of a page of the manuscript. Here it is, but to actually read it, you'll need to click on it. When it comes up in a new window, run the cursor over it, and click again to zoom in:

Kristallnacht remembered

Tonight is the night in 1938 when the German high command convinced itself that it could do anything to Jews and other minorities in its midst, and the world would do nothing to stop it. Tonight is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the euphemism for the state-sponsored pogrom against German and Austrian Jews on Nov. 9 and 10 of 1938.

On Nov. 9, 2001 I led a city-wide commemoration of Kristallnacht in Victoria, BC, Canada. The following were my opening remarks. Although eight years have passed, my concerns are precisely the same today as they were then.

Tonight is the 63rd anniversary of Kristallnacht. In the past I have tried, in these opening moments, to welcome you, and thank you for understanding why it’s so important to remember Kristallnacht, and the Shoah. In previous years that might have been necessary, since the reality of Kristallnacht seemed so removed from our lives here in Victoria.

But this year, unexpectedly, shockingly, the differences between Kristallnacht and this moment are not so different. Once again we see hatred becoming the dominant ideology of a people. I am forced to conclude that, having failed to see and address the rising tide of hatred in the Muslim world, I/we have failed to truly learn the lessons of Kristallnacht. In 1932 the signs were plain to see and the world ignored them, and good Germans ignored them or made excuses for them. We have done the same, and good Muslims have done the same. And throughout the 30's the free world tried to appease and make concessions to the rising tide of nazism. It made good economic sense, and of course one had to be politically realistic.

And the same is true in this era. We have not wanted to believe the depth and the extent of the envy and hatred that has deeply damaged the Muslim world. We have become used to, and desensitized to the accusations, and curses, and tirades, made by ideologues. We have watched, mute or unconcerned, as the gorgeous melody and poetry of the call to prayer has become a call to hatred and to war. We have somehow come to sympathize with, or at least accept as a valid side to the argument, the claim that the Muslim people are victims, and the problem is Israel.

The problem is not Israel, and the problem is not the United States. The problem is the ideology of envy and hatred that has been carefully nurtured in the Muslim world for most of this century.

And so we looked on the events of Sept. 11, much as the world looked upon Kristallnacht in 1938, wondering, how could this happen. And in that cold November in 1938, the dangerous slope into world war turned icy and inevitable. I do not know if we are on an equally icy slope into world war right now, but if there is still a way to turn back, it must begin now. It must begin by helping moderate Muslims, who love and value democracy and multi-cultural respect, to reassert their primacy in the world-wide Muslim community.

Jews and Christians cannot go into the mosques to redirect the nature and quality of the dialog. We don’t have that authority. Only Muslims can do that. Christians and Jews cannot speak for Islam in the Muslim media. Moderate Muslims must do that. And it is not enough if they simply make their voices heard; they must take control of the debate.

If there is a Muslim in this congregation, hear me. You are not only our last hope; more importantly, you are your own people’s last hope. Germany’s name has been forever besmirched because of it’s ideology of hatred. Don’t let that happen to your faith. In the name of God, defend your honor not with hatred and violence, but through an ideology of peace and mutual respect. And may it be God’s will.

Jerusalem

Remembering Blake’s Jerusalem, and Islam’s Jerusalem, and our Jerusalem of the Zionist dream, I remember my Jerusalem, she to whom I’ve been married these 33 years now, as of 10/30/2009, my wife, my Nancy.

While reading S.Y. Agnon’s Betrothed, I wrote the following on pages 82 and 83 this morning, responding to, “The Consul was very pleased with [Jerusalem]. True, what he had seen with his own eyes was unlike the Jerusalem of legend or the Jerusalem of his imagination.... But since one did not really know where to make a start, or how to proceed in the way of reform, it was best to leave Jerusalem as she was.”

I have loved Jerusalem all the days of my living.
I loved her when I rejected her
And I loved her before I knew her.
She who lay with me in other worlds
She called to me here, and I sought her out.
Oh Jerusalem, your loving fills me.
I who was tossed as the seaweeds on the shore
Have been carried by your tides
To great depths. I who am but a grain of sand,
Now storm-tossed out to sea, there
You and my Maker are merging into One.