Tag Sagittarius

* rivers, Jim Harrison & you

José Angel Araguz 3 Comments

In a life properly lived, you’re a river. You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it; you can’t figure out a banal game plan applicable to all situations; you just have to go with the “beingness” of life, as Rilke would have it.

Jim Harrison

*ain't life Rio Grande*

*ain’t life Rio Grande*

Jim Harrison is one of my gurus.  His work opens me up every time I return to it.  There is a directness to his writing, a feeling of having whittled one’s self down to the essential.  Being a poet of rivers myself, his words above are kindred.

He may also be the closest we have to that other great poet of rivers, Li Po, who, legend has it, died embracing the moon – at least the reflection of it he saw one night on the face of a river.

In the following poem, from his book Saving Daylight, Jim takes us a littler further down the river, to where we may have been all along.

Water – Jim Harrison

Before I was born I was water.
I thought of this sitting on a blue
chair surrounded by pink, red, white
hollyhocks in the yard in front
of my green studio.  There are conclusions
to be drawn but I can’t do it anymore.
Born man, child man, singing  man,
dancing man, loving man, old man,
dying man.  This is a round river
and we are her fish who become water.

***

Happy watering!

Jose

* Mary Oliver, William Blake & the friday influence

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

Blake Dying – Mary Oliver

He lay
with the pearl of his life under the pillow.

Space shone, cool and silvery,
in the empty cupboards

while he heard in the distance, he said,
the angels singing.

Now and again his white wrists
rose a little above the white sheet.

When death is about to happen
does the body grow heavier or lighter?

He felt himself growing heavier.
He felt himself growing lighter.

When a man says he hears angels singing,
he hears angels singing.

When a man says he hears angels singing,
he hears angels singing.

night startled by the lark - wiliam blake

night startled by the lark – wiliam blake

This week on the Influence: Mary Oliver!

I picked this poem up at work while shelving Mary Oliver’s latest book, A Thousand Mornings.  

The words stopped me as I shelved.  There is simplicity in this poem that is akin to still life painting – but a poet’s take on it.  A moment – a dying moment – as still life.

She conjures much with little.  From pearl to space to her choices in colors – all of it culminates into the hanging presence of Blake’s hearing angels singing. 

There’s not much to do once you get into this kind of moment in a poem but acknowledge it.

Blake’s relationship with the angels takes me back to being 18, sitting in Dana Levin’s Form and Theory class, her introducing a Blake poem, prefacing it by saying This guy saw angels in the trees!  

Being, again, 18, I was like – yes, of course, totally – eager to understand and see them too.

Seeing the angels in this poem is another lesson.  Oliver’s repetition in the last two couplets – their very emphasis on Blake’s words – drives home to me how all a poet can do is tell what they see, how they see it.  And all that’s needed to honor this seeing is to listen.

Happy listening!

Jose