This echantress just released her second CD. It's selling well. She's plays solo and composes her own music. Hypnotic and rhythmical, as well as lyrical in style. I attended a concert of hers recently and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Yes. Very much so.Painting: Arthur in Avalon
Sir Edward Burne-Jones
I have always loved the Pre-Raphaelite painters . . . lots of flowing lines & rich colors.
ReplyDeleteThe colors are gorgeous.
ReplyDeletenot pre-Raphaelite, but...
ReplyDelete". . . . Song so black it
burnt
my lip. . . Tore my throat as I
walked up Real Street. Raw beginnner,
green
attempt to sing the blues. . ."
(from Nathaniel Mackey)
and ". . . . English which is like a howl, or a shout, or a machine-gun, or the wind, or a wave. It is also like the blues."
(from Kamau Brathwaite)
ooooo Juju!
ReplyDeletevery nice. gotta go find out more about these guys.
Juju, what a great surprise.
ReplyDeleteTore my throat as I
walked up Real Street.
English which is like a howl, or a shout, or a machine-gun, or the wind, or a wave. It is also like the blues."
This is amazing. It just happened to me out in the world. And in, too. I got that feeling of angst and thought about my next moves. It can't be avoided, all this stuff.
This is good. Thanks for your intuition mixed with your talent.
Another thing, O literate one.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting and the timing perfect. I used to have goddess images as a child wanting to be the perfect dream girl. Then I got into the depths of the blues and ran into difficulties mixing them. I have beautiful poetic songs, but I've been trying to decide whether or not to let these go and stick to simplicity and just get down. I'm at a crossroads.
Very very interesting. I don't identify with the musician pictured, but I would listen to her music when in the mood, and applaud her skill.
Nathaniel Mackey
ReplyDeleteNational book award winner in 2006.
Been working on same poem for 20 years.
Both poets are, ah, no words, too good. thank you again
This is really it. To stay isolated in my monk's world of purity or hit the dirty streets, kicking through the trash.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to do well. I wonder if your height helps, and your whole presentation. Maybe that would work. To decide on on an image and go out as the Leo actress insitinctively does, in costume and character.
The impact you made when you entered the room that night didn't diminish. So there must be some something required to back up the entrance. Maybe just staying in character.
Been working on same poem for 20 years.
ReplyDeleteOMG> One of my favorite topics. Goethe and the 20 years of Faust. But this tops that.
This is wonderful. I know exactly what he's doing.
neith, thanks for looking up Mackey -- a while ago I read a phrase of his "discrepant engagement" in a book called "A Nomad Poetics" by Pierre Joris. I was so taken with it -- have to quote a little here -- "It is an expression coined in reference to practices that, in the interest of opening presumably closed orders of identity and signification, accent fissure, fracture, incongruity, the rickety, imperfect fit between word and world. Such practices highlight -- indeed inhabit -- discrepancy, engage rather than seek to ignore it. Reccalling the derivation of the word discrepant from a root meaning 'to rattle, creak.' I relate discrepant engagement to the name the Dogon of West Africa give their weaving block, the base on which the loom they weave upon sits. They call it the ''creaking of the word.'"
ReplyDeleteI didn't track down Mackey's work then, but today came across a fragment of the poem I quoted in another book of literary criticism, Poetic Investigation, by Paul Naylor And the fragment blew me away -- I didn't know Mackey was a National Book award winner -- but I did know I had again stumbled on someone amazing. I'm going to quote the whole fragment as I like it so much.
Cramped egg we might work our
way out of, caress reaching in
to the bones underneath.
Not even
looking. Even so, see
thru.
Watery light we tried in vain
to pull away from. Painted
face,
disembodied voice. Dramas we
wooed, invited in but got
scared of. Song so black it
burnt
my lip. . . Tore my throat as I
walked up Real Street. Raw beginnner,
green
attempt to sing the blues. . .
(from a 1993 book called "School of Udhra)
(and unfortunately I probably will lose the proper spacing of the poem when it posts.)
I don't as yet have any of his books -- but I know I have to get one.
And I love Pre-Raphaelites too. I think it doesn't have to be either/or, but the tension between.
imperfect fit between word and world.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that a definition of life?
I didn't know him, juju. Good addition.
Yes, the spacing got lost which is really too bad -- its a big part of the poem -- "not even", "thru", "face", "burnt" and "green", way out on the right margin, lots of breath before "caresss", before "painted", before "song", before "tore".
ReplyDeleteHe kind of expresses how I feel about life. That we're in the birth canal.
ReplyDeleteAnd I meant thanks Tseka for looking up Mackey
ReplyDeleteYou can get more space to work with if you go to the page that has the post alone. The comments are spaced differently.
ReplyDeleteif you click on the time at the bottom of the post it will take you to the page. Good for poetry.
ReplyDeletejust below the fold are some clickable excerpts of Mackey's work. I noticed the spacing immediately Juju. It draws one into the rhythm beautifully.
ReplyDeleteKamau Brathwaite used similar with periods in the middle of words to stop our flow just a little, a calypso.
Very unique and wonderful i have been enjoying this.
This is very odd i previewed and tested the link and everything was fine. What can we call this but merc retro?
ReplyDeleteWell! even more peculiar it takes you to the page on Mackey. so.... vagaries of blogger? oh my.
ReplyDeleteThank you tseka -- finding him was like what my friend called "a good stumble." The book I've just begun, Poetic Investigations, talks much more about Mackey and Brathwaite. But of course the best is just going to the source. And yes the link worked.
ReplyDelete