The Demand to Stay
September 20, 2011 § Leave a Comment
More explicitly now than ever before, I’ve been turning back to the Minor Prophets. What began as an intellectual curiosity and an aesthetic catalog has taken too long – as it always does – to become the spear that skewers me through and demands ethical action, asks for something real on my part, more real than a few nice metaphors, at least.
In this the Minor Prophets hold sway because of their extremes, their emotions, the impulses and motivations, fears and faiths, that could only come out of them through the poetry they wrote. Habakkuk and Nahum are two of my favorite because even their reception of the prophetic word makes note of its human pain. Where the other prophets begin their records by explaining that “the Word of the Lord” came upon them, Habakkuk and Nahum use a word easily translated as burden. The Burden of Nahum. The Crushing Weight of Habakkuk. The Load I Cannot Carry But Must Carry. The Word I Cannot Speak But Must Speak. « Read the rest of this entry »
Under A Picture – Paul Celan
September 16, 2011 § Leave a Comment
You know the words, even an image. It’s almost something you can feel. You reach out, but it’s always a little further away. Always just outside a concept, just past the horizon.
Under A Picture – Paul Celan (trans. Michael Hamburger)
Swarm of ravens over a wheat billow.
Blue of which heaven? The higher? Nether?
Late arrow that the soul released.
Louder whirring. Nearer glow. This world and the other.
