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* update & holiday greetings

José Angel Araguz 4 Comments

This week on the Influence: an update!

I have been busy the past two months applying to PhD programs.  The past two weeks especially were a crunch.  Preparing writing samples, writing soul-baring personal statements that also sound professional and career-oriented, the GREs – all of that plus the daily back and forth in my head about whether this is the right thing to do with my life and so on…

For these reasons, I’ve taken a more personal approach to the Friday posts during this time.

Expect a more familiar post next week.

For this week, here is my poem “These Streets” originally published in Tiger’s Eye Journal, the good folks who publish my chapbook, “The Wall”.

This poem is the first solid poem I wrote when I landed here in Oregon back in 2007.  You can see the young Jose face to face with the Pacific Northwest for the first time.

It’s also a ghazal, a form which you can find more about here.

Check it out:

***

These Streets – Jose Angel Araguz *

I know I am not the first to walk these streets;
Why, then, do I feel alone when I walk these streets?

Leaves shuffle and whisper overhead, trash cackles in the gutter;
What cold things would they say if they could talk, these streets?

The river roils against black, stripped banks;
What do they take, shift, shame and rock, these streets?

There are colors and lines that show the way for cars;
Why, then, my unmarked path? I, guideless, stalk these streets.

José — why shed questions like tears about these streets?
Sorrow, like oil, leaves its stain; blackness and iridescence mark these streets.

***

This past Wednesday I wrapped up the last of the applications – and suddenly it’s Christmas.  I’ve been to two holiday parties so far this month, which should have been a clue as to the time of season.  In the holiday spirit, here’s a sweet photo:

double shot of yin & yang

double shot of yin & yang

That’s me and my girl at a coffee shop.

As you can see, I’ve very much warmed up to the Pacific Northwest.

Happy holidays to you and yours!

– jose

* originally published in Tiger’s Eye Journal.

* John Ashbery, the pit & the friday influence

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Uptick – John Ashbery

We were sitting there, and

I made a joke about how

it doesn’t dovetail: time,

one minute running out

faster than the one in front

it catches up to.

That way, I said,

there can be no waste.

Waste is virtually eliminated.

 

To come back for a few hours to

the present subject, a painting,

looking like it was seen,

half turning around, slightly apprehensive,

but it has to pay attention

to what’s up ahead: a vision.

Therefore poetry dissolves in

brilliant moisture and reads us

to us.

A faint notion.  Too many words,

but precious.

***

This week on The Friday Influence: John Ashbery.

I continue to be stunned by what is in this poem, about time, about painting, vision, poetry.  How it all swirls on the many meanings of the word “precious” – valuable, sentimental, etc.  The conversational tone at the beginning gets the poem underway swiftly.  This intimacy tags you into the poem.  Ashbery handles heavy things lightly and gets you thinking before you catch yourself thinking.  A good poem by him can move the furniture around in the rooms of your mind.

Ashbery is one of those poets I come back to often, dip my head in to see what I can understand, and walk away when it gets to be beyond me.  He gets a bad rep for being difficult but I don’t think it is deserved.  There’s difficult for difficult’s sake.  Then there’s what you can’t help but write.  Ashbery’s best poems – and here  I mean the ones that have meant something to me as a poet/human being – show him to be always figuring something out, always trying to surprise himself (and the reader) with the poem.

Here’s a Charles Wright quote that I keep with me that taps into this idea:

The problem with all of us as we get older is that we begin writing as though we were somebody.  One should always write as if one were nobody…We should always write out of our ignorance and desire and ambition, never out of some sense of false well-being, some tinge of success.  There is no success in poetry, there is only the next inch, the next hand-hold out of the pit… *

I keep this quote with me because of the connection I feel with what it says, that feeling of writing poetry as a ongoing thing, a horizon you walk towards that grows a little farther the closer you get.  And so you keep walking, never fully arriving, never fully satisfied, but happy to be walking, wanting to see more.  There is always another poem to write.

Happy walking!

J

* Paris Review interview, The Art of Poetry No. 41