"La Pologne? La Pologne? Isn't it terribly cold there?" she asked, and then sighed with relief. So many countries have been turning up lately that the safest thing to talk about is climate.
"Madame," I want to reply, "my people's poets do all their writing in mittens. I don't mean to imply that they never remove them; they do, indeed, if the moon is warm enough. In stanzas composed of raucous whooping, for only such can drown the windstorms' constant roar, they glorify the simple lives of our walrus herders. Our Classicists engrave their odes with inky icicles on trampled snowdrifts.
The rest, our Decadents, bewail their fate with snowflakes instead of tears. He who wishes to drown himself must have an ax at hand to cut the ice. Oh, madame, dearest madame."
That's what I mean to say. But I've forgotten the word for walrus in French. And I'm not sure of icicle and ax.
"La Pologne? La Pologne? Isn't it terribly cold there?"
"Pas du tout, " I answer icily.”
Wisława Szymborska, Vocabulary, from Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, trans. Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh
"Madame," I want to reply, "my people's poets do all their writing in mittens. I don't mean to imply that they never remove them; they do, indeed, if the moon is warm enough. In stanzas composed of raucous whooping, for only such can drown the windstorms' constant roar, they glorify the simple lives of our walrus herders. Our Classicists engrave their odes with inky icicles on trampled snowdrifts.
The rest, our Decadents, bewail their fate with snowflakes instead of tears. He who wishes to drown himself must have an ax at hand to cut the ice. Oh, madame, dearest madame."
That's what I mean to say. But I've forgotten the word for walrus in French. And I'm not sure of icicle and ax.
"La Pologne? La Pologne? Isn't it terribly cold there?"
"Pas du tout, " I answer icily.”
Wisława Szymborska, Vocabulary, from Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, trans. Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh
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David Bernstein
Pauline Oliveros in the studio at the San Francisco Tape Music Center with Buchla 100-series modular synthesizers
1966
[x]
Pauline Oliveros in the studio at the San Francisco Tape Music Center with Buchla 100-series modular synthesizers
1966
[x]
❤5
“Thinking is trying to think the unthinkable: thinking the thinkable is not worth the effort. Painting is trying to paint what you cannot paint and writing is writing what you cannot know before you have written: it is preknowing and not knowing, blindly, with words. It occurs at the point where blindness and light meet. Kafka says — one very small line lost in his writing — “to the depths, to the depths.”
— Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
— Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
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“These dreams: what we are when we are no longer ourselves: our survivings. Prophets of our traces, of our ultimate metamorphoses. Self-portraits of our future phantoms.”
— Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
— Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
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A Christmas Poem
The sadness of fêtes, chorals, windows, lights
and children's eyes, wide open with great wonder,
my driftwood, tell, how stale became bread bites
when crusty pleasures had been torn asunder?
Our mouths turned death into liquid whey,
nothing belonged to us from concert halls.
Horses are cold, harnessed to a fast sleigh,
they want to go and break through snowy walls.
Let's end the liturgy! We've prayed enough,
enough we've burned in Him, to no avail,
till we fell down like a poor epitaph
for lonely holes, where all our dreams turned stale.
The church calms the organ and grows arcane
where our faith shone so bright not long ago.
My driftwood, tell me, where'll you change your train,
when the point is reached with nowhere to go?
Jiří Orten, The Christmas Poem, from Jiří Orten, Selected Poems, trans. Josef Toms
The sadness of fêtes, chorals, windows, lights
and children's eyes, wide open with great wonder,
my driftwood, tell, how stale became bread bites
when crusty pleasures had been torn asunder?
Our mouths turned death into liquid whey,
nothing belonged to us from concert halls.
Horses are cold, harnessed to a fast sleigh,
they want to go and break through snowy walls.
Let's end the liturgy! We've prayed enough,
enough we've burned in Him, to no avail,
till we fell down like a poor epitaph
for lonely holes, where all our dreams turned stale.
The church calms the organ and grows arcane
where our faith shone so bright not long ago.
My driftwood, tell me, where'll you change your train,
when the point is reached with nowhere to go?
Jiří Orten, The Christmas Poem, from Jiří Orten, Selected Poems, trans. Josef Toms
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