Η προσμονή του Νίκου Καββαδία

Παιδί ήταν ακόμη, δεκάξι-δεκαεφτά χρονών, όταν έγραψε το ανέκδοτο ποίημα που ακολουθεί ο Νίκος Καββαδίας. Στίχοι που μέσα από την Καβαφική τους επιρροή, στην απλότητα και στη μελαγχολία, κρύβουν ίσως μιαν πρώτη ερωτική απογοήτευση του νεαρού ποιητή. Ο Καββαδίας δεν έχει βρει ακόμη τη φωνή, τη δική του στην ποίηση. Θα περάσουν δύο χρόνια προτού μπαρκάρει στο φορτηγό "Άγιος Νικόλαος". Δύο χρόνια για να αρχίσουν οι λέξεις να ποτίζονται με την αλμύρα της θάλασσας, να φωτίζονται από τα φανάρια των καταγωγείων και των μπουρδέλων, να διπλώνονται και να στριφογυρίζουν μέσα στο παραλήρημα της κουφόβρασης και του τροπικού πυρετού, να δοκιμάζονται στην αβεβαιότητα "της θολής γραμμής των οριζόντων". Δύο χρόνια για να έρθει τελικά, με τη μορφή ενός απέραντου γαλάζιου, η κυρία που πρόσμενε σε αυτό το ποίημα ο νεαρός Νίκος Καββαδίας. Όταν ήρθε συνοδευόταν και από μία άλλη κυρία, την ποίηση. Την πραγματική, δική του ποίηση που έμελλε να του προσφέρει πολλές εφήμερες χαρές. Ήταν η εμπειρία θαρρώ που έφερε τέλος στην προσμονή και το γεγονός ότι ο έφηβος είχε πλέον ανδρωθεί με το πέρασμα του χρόνου. Ακόμη και μέσα στη βαθιά νύχτα δεν έδειχνε πια για παιδί.  

Για μια κυρία

Σήμερα η μέρα πέρασε όπως και πάντα θλιβερή.
Βραδιάζει, τώρα σήμανε το αντικρινό ρολόι.
Κι εμείς, που μας εγέρασαν τόσοι που πέρασαν καιροί,
μετράμε των αμέτρητων λαθών το κομπολόι.


Και μια κυρία προσμένουμε που είπε πως θα ΄ρθει μια βραδιά,
έστω και μιαν εφήμερη χαρά για να μας δώσει.
Προσμένουμε... όμως δεν θα ΄ρθει, γιατί μας πέρασε παιδιά
κι έχει βαθιά νυχτώσει.  

The Other Lives Live in Luxembourg

Hailing from Stillwater, Oklahoma, the indie band "Other Lives" gave an intimate, stellar performance on the 18/06/2012 at the small Luxembourg club "Exit 7". They played for an hour and a half in front of an audience of maybe around 100 enthusiastic fans. From the first song one had the feeling that this would be a memorable night. The bond between the artists and the audience was already there from the start. How can one not fall for the beautiful voice of  Jesse Tabish as he sang “...But it feels like forever, When your mind turns to fiction...”. And it’s true. Watching the film snippets projected on the screen behind the group as they

played, one had the impression that this was the true soundtrack to Steinbeck’s Grapes of wrath. These were tunes that were once whistled in the dark, forgotten alleys of the great depression. But then the music would expand and the cello, the violin and the trumpet would spread the word and the songs would drift across vast fields of wheat, where people once worked the land and lived their decent, hard lives struggling against the forces of nature. These were, once upon a time, the other lives. 

Listen to:

Other Lives - For 12

Δύο ποιήματα του Άρη Αλεξάνδρου (1922-1978)

Το μαχαίρι
Όπως αργεί τ' ατσάλι να γίνει κοφτερό και χρήσιμο μαχαίρι
έτσι αργούν κι οι λέξεις ν' ακονιστούν σε λόγο.
Στο μεταξύ
όσο δουλεύεις στον τροχό
πρόσεχε μην παρασυρθείς
            μην ξιππαστείς
απ' τη λαμπρή αλληλουχία των σπινθήρων.
Σκοπός σου εσένα το μαχαίρι.


Ποίημα της συλλογής «Ευθύτης οδών» (1959)


Θα Επιμένεις
Όσο ψηλά κι αν ανεβείς εδώ θα παραμένεις.
Θα σκοντάφτεις και θα πέφτεις εδώ μες στα χαλάσματα

χαράζοντας γραμμές
εδώ θα επιμένεις δίχως βία
χωρίς ποτέ να καταφύγεις στη βολική απόγνωση
                                 ποτέ στην περιφρόνηση

κι ας έχουν σήμερα τη δύναμη εκείνοι που οικοδομούνε ερημώσεις
κι ας βλέπεις φάλαγγες ανθρώπων να τραβάν συντεταγμένοι
για το ξυλουργείο
να δέχονται περήφανοι
την εκτόρνευσή τους
και να τοποθετούνται στα αυστηρά τετράγωνα
                                  σαν πιόνια.

Εσύ θα επιμένεις σαν να μετράς το χρόνο με τις σειρές
                                  των πετρωμάτων
σάμπως νάσουν σίγουρος πως θαρθεί μια μέρα
όπου οι χωροφύλακες κ' οι επαγρυπνητές θα βγάλουν τις στολές
τους.

Εδώ μες στα χαλάσματα που τα σπείραν άλας
θέλεις δε θέλεις θα βαδίζεις
υπολογίζοντας την κλίση που θάχουν τα επίπεδα
θα επιμένεις πριονίζοντας τις πέτρες μοναχός σου
θέλεις δε θέλεις πρέπει ν' αποχτήσεις έναν δικό σου χώρο.


Δημοσιεύτηκε στη συγκεντρωτική έκδοση Ποιήματα «1941-1974», Εκδόσεις Ύψιλον

"4 A.M" by Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961)

"4 A.M" By Kenneth Fearing

"It is early evening, still, in Honolulu, and in London, now, it
must be well past dawn;
But here, in the Riviera Cafe, on a street that has been lost and
forgotten very long ago, as the clock moves steadily toward
closing time,
The spark of life is very low, if it burns at all.


And here we are, four lost and forgotten customers in this place
that surely will never again be found,
Sitting, at ten-foot intervals, along this lost and forgotten bar,
(Wishing the space were further still, for we are still too close
for comfort)
Knowing that the bartender, and the elk’s head, and the portrait
of F.D.R.,
(All gazing at something of interest beyond us and behind us,
but very far away)
Must somehow be aware of us, too, as we stare at the cold
interior of our lives, reflected in the mirror beneath and in 
back of them.


Hear how lonely the radio is, as its voice talks on, and on, un-
answered;
Notice how futile is the nickel dropped in the juke-box by a 
customer,
How its music proves again that one’s life is either too humdrum
or too exciting, too empty or too full, too this, too that;
Only the cat that has been sleeping in the window, now yawning
and streching and trotting to the kitchen to sleep again --
Only this living toy knows what we feel, knows what we are,
really knows what we only think we know.


Soon, too soon, it will be closing time, and the door will be locked;
Each of us will be alone, soon, with something ravaging for
a name --
(Our golden, glorious futures, perhaps).
Lock the door now and put out the lights, before some terrible
stranger enters and gives, to each of us, an answer that is
the final truth.


They say the Matterhorn at dawn, and the Northern Lights of
the Arctic, are things that should be seen;
They say, they say --------- in time, you will hear them say anything,
and everything.
What would the elk’s head, or the remote bartender say, if they
could speak?
The booth where last night’s love affair began, the spot where
last year’s homicide occurred, are empty now, and still."

When I read this powerful poem by Kenneth Fearing, the Nighthawks of Edward Hopper came flying in and the Riviera became Phillies. Kenneth Fearing was a pulp fiction writer, an editor and one of the best poets of the American Depression era. In this poem it’s getting late. These are the wee hours that the trembling voice of Junior Wells reluctantly pronounces in the opening bars of the classic blues song. But this bar is closing and the remaining customers are going to have to face the truth about themselves and their lives. Alcohol can no longer be consumed. It can no longer cloud the mind and dull the senses. The poem is straightforward and uncompromising in its depiction of that moment of lucidity between drinking bouts of which Fearing himself was no stranger. But it takes some guts to write a poem such as this one and Fearing was not scared. In 1950 during the time of the infamous communist witch hunts, he was subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C.; when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party, he replied, "Not yet." 


Listen to:

Junior Wells (ft. Buddy Guy) - In the wee hours

Ο Γεώργιος Βιζυηνός και ο ρυθμός του κόσμου

Ή ώρα ήταν προχωρημένη μέσα στη νύχτα όταν ακούστηκαν οι κλειδαριές να κλειδώνουν η μια μετά την άλλη. Ένα-ένα, τα παράθυρα του «Φρενοκομείου ΖΩΡΖΗ ΚΑΙ ΤΑΡΣΗΣ ΔΡΟΜΟΚΑΪΤΟΥ» σκοτείνιαζαν. Οι ασθενείς, διασπαρμένοι στις 110 κλίνες του Ιδρύματος, έπεφταν να ξεκουραστούν από της μέρας την φορτωμένη ασυνεννοησία και την αέναη πάλη με την φωτεινή σύγχιση και τη ξένη ρουτίνα στην οποία είχαν τελικά υποκύψει. Που και που, από κάποια κλίνη, ακούγονταν ομιλίες και όχι και τόσο σπανίως, καμμιά κραυγή ερχόταν στα καλά του καθουμένου να διαταράξει την ησυχία.

O Γεώργιος Βιζυηνός, σηκώθηκε από το κρεβάτι του και μέσα στο αμυδρό φως που έμπαινε απ' το παράθυρο βρήκε ένα χαρτί και με μεγάλη δυσκολία έγραψε μερικούς στίχους που του προσφέρθηκαν έτοιμοι. Αισθανόταν μεγάλη θλίψη τις τελευταίες ημέρες. Το ανεκπλήρωτο πάθος του για την μικρή Μπετίνα τον είχε αφήσει μισό άνθρωπο. Ακόμη και η σκέψη του μεταλλείου του στο Σαμάκοβο δεν ήταν πλέον ικανή να τον ανασύρει προς το πάνω. Όλα είχαν αλλάξει. Δεν τον πιστεύανε πια όταν τους μιλούσε. Τον αγνοούσαν όταν τους φώναζε. Κι αυτό το σκοτάδι που κατέκλυζε τα πάντα. Δεν υπήρχαν χρώματα στο σκοτάδι. Όλα τα ρουφούσε το μαύρο. Το μολύβι άφησε καινούργια ίχνη πάνω στο χαρτί...
....
Σὰν μ᾿ ἁρπάχθηκε ἡ χαρὰ
ποὺ ἐχαιρόμουν μιὰ φορὰ
ἔτσι σὲ μίαν ὥρα...
μέσ᾿ σ᾿ αὐτὴν τὴν χώρα
ὅλα ἄλλαξαν τώρα!


Κι᾿ ἀπὸ τότε ποὺ θρηνῶ
τὸ ξανθὸ καὶ γαλανὸ
καὶ οὐράνιο φῶς μου,
μετεβλήθη ἐντός μου
καὶ ὁ ρυθμὸς τοῦ κόσμου.
...

'Εγραψε και μερικούς άλλους στίχους πριν το μολύβι γλυστρήσει από το παγωμένο χέρι του και κυλήσει στο πάτωμα. Όμως αυτοί οι δύο τελευταίοι στίχοι, γραμμένοι από έναν άνθρωπο που είχε από καιρό χαθεί (σύμφωνα με τα ιατρικά δελτία και τους ανθρώπους που τον επισκέφτηκαν στο Άσυλο) είναι συγκλονιστικοί στην διαύγεια τους. Ποιός θα μπορούσε να εκθέσει την διατάραξη της ψυχικής υγείας πιο καίρια και συνάμα πιο ποιητικά; Ο Βιζυηνός διαπιστώνει ότι "μετεβλήθη εντός μου και ο ρυθμός του κόσμου”.

Αυτός ο αποσυντονισμός του εσωτερικού κόσμου του ποιητή με το εξωτερικό περιβάλλον, εκφράζεται σαν μια έλλειψη φωτός που πάλαι ποτέ πήγαζε από το πρόσωπο ενός νεαρού κοριτσιού. Αδυνατεί λοιπόν ο ποιητής να ακολουθήσει τον ρυθμό της εναλλαγής της μέρας με τη νύχτα, τον ανοιξιάτικο ρυθμό που ανασταίνει την φύση, αδυνατεί πλέον να συλλάβει τον παλμό της ζωής, αυτό το κύμα που με κάποιο τρόπο μας σπρώχνει πάντα μπροστά στο χρόνο. Σαν να σταμάτησαν όλα σε μιαν ώρα. Ακίνητος, ο Γεώργιος Βιζυηνός απέμεινε να κοιτά προς το παράθυρο με μάτια που απλώς γυάλιζαν αντανακλώντας το χλωμό φως της σελήνης. Μιας σελήνης που συνέχιζε να πορεύεται στον ουρανό ακολουθώντας τον ρυθμό του κόσμου.

Την επομένη μέρα το πρωί, ο γιατρός αποφάνθηκε ότι ο ασθενής Γεώργιος Σύρμας, γνωστός και ως Βιζυηνός, απεβίωσε σε ηλικία 47 ετών λόγω "προϊούσας γενικής παράλυσης".

BLU - A follow-up of a graffiti phenomenon

In 2009, I had an entry in my blog about graffiti coming alive. The graffiti artist “Blu" was featured in this entry. Three years later Blu is still going strong and I decided to re-visit his work after my fellow blogger ,that rare reader, brought one of his works to my attention. Don’t forget to click on the link at the end of the page to visit Blu’s own site.  

Blu’s site of graffiti wonders

"The Darker Sooner" by Catherine Wing

Catherine Wing is a poet from Louisville, Kentucky. In this poem what struck me was the way the letter “r” emerges in the words used, becoming the dominant driving force that moves the poem forward. Everything starts to quietly resonate as if a purring engine has been switched on the moment you start reading the first line of the poem. Every carefully chosen word is a tremor and you slide. You start to find the “r” even in words that do not contain it. Is it the “r” that makes darker black? Is it the “r” that makes sooner so eminent? So close? How can one letter be so powerful? How can a poem be so beautiful? 


The Darker Sooner


Then came the darker sooner,
came the later lower.
We were no longer a sweeter-here
happily-ever-after. We were after ever.
We were farther and further.
More was the word we used for harder.
Lost was our standard-bearer.
Our gods were fallen faster,
and fallen larger.
The day was duller, duller
was disaster. Our charge was error.
Instead of leader we had louder,
instead of lover, never. And over this river
broke the winter’s black weather.

Listen to:

Doves - Darker

The Suggestive World of Nikita Nomerz

The Fire In The Eyes

Nikita Nomerz is a russian graffiti artist with a predilection for revealing the hidden faces of derelict buildings and abandoned structures in Russia. Every ruin hides a story and a character that is struggling to be free. Sometimes what is missing is a mouth here or a pair of eyes there and an old building is transformed into a laughing giant or a toothless character right out of Alice’s Wonderland. To see the potential in what the others despise and ignore. To complete what is suggestive. To reveal. They say that the eyes are the windows of the soul and the mouth is the door. If that is the case, Nikita Nomerz is not only giving these relics of a bygone age a new lease of life transforming them into works of art. He is in fact giving them a soul.   

Big Brother

Open Your Eyes

Riverman

Watcher Man

Just Smile

Underground Dweller

Toothyman

The Tower Man in Perm

The Faces

Visit Nikita Nomerz’s blog

Talk about the weather with Marin Sorescu on a Lorry

The vinyl spins and the red lorry, or yellow lorry, I can’t remember now, tries to start its engine. It takes a crackle here and a few thundery gasps of oil and gasoline there, and we are on the move. The track playing on the radio is "Talk about the weather” by this post-punk group with the strange name. What a coincidence then that the battered book with the fading cover on the side seat, is also called "Let’s talk about the weather... and other poems” (1985) by Marin Sorescu. An important Romanian poet and a leading literary figure of his generation, Sorescu was the master of the sarcastic and the awkward. His existentialist themes worked well both at a universal and subjective level and his irony and sense of the absurd were brought forward in a simple and accessible language. The Nobel writer Seamus Heaney pointed out in his introduction to Sorescu's "Hands Behind My Back" (1991), that behind the author's subversive "throwaway charm and poker-faced subversiveness, ... there is a persistent solidarity with the unregarded life of the ordinary citizen, a willingness to remain at eye-level and on speaking terms with common experience”. Sorescu's words had the power to penetrate beyond all veils and curtains transparent or iron. The following three poems are gems in a treasure filled chest that is worth rediscovering. 


Getting used to your name
(Translated by Gabriela Dragnea, Stuart Friebert and Adriana Varga)


After you've learned to walk,
Tell one thing from another,
Your first care as a child
Is to get used to your name.
What is it?
They keep asking you.
You hesitate, stammer,
And when you start to give a fluent answer
Your name's no longer a problem.


When you start to forget your name,
It's very serious.
But don't despair,
An interval will set in.


And soon after your death,
When the mist rises from your eyes,
And you begin to find your way
In the everlasting darkness,
Your first care (long forgotten,
Long since buried with you)
Is to get used to your name.
You're called--just as arbitrarily--
Dandelion, cowslip, cornel,
Blackbird, chaffinch, turtle dove,
Costmary, zephyr--or all these together.
And when you nod, to show you've got it,
Everything's all right:
The earth, almost round, may spin
Like a top among stars.


It's Been a Day
(Translated by C. Iliescu)


You're coming home
A bit worn out,
But satisfied.
Satisfied as a tram ticket
Showed to the collector
And punched exactly in the right place.


You've been unwinding generously
During the whole day,
And now you gather again, little by little,
You are waiting to rewind
And you return, you return from everywhere,
You return and you're never ending.


It's been a day like any other,
Full of achievements,
No sooner did you arrive at work,
Than you began to spread your own activity
On table, chairs, and telephone
And all surrounding objects meant for that.


You also faced some other tasks:
You asked for and you offered cigarettes,
You shook hands with at least one hundred fellows
Anticipating questions like «How are you?»
Before they had the possibility to ask you,
Thus managing to place them
In a position of inferiority.
And obviously you spoke all day, as usual,
Within the limits of the Current Romanian Language Dictionary,
Five thousand words or so.


And now while you are picking up the rust
From the key you forgot in your pocket,
The pebbles which got into your shoes,
Have now, one by one, slunk also in your soul.
And are so strangely jingling there,
Thus, now your children will have one more toy to rattle.


Even your nerves
Which have been so artistically twisted
All day long,
Will be in such a glorious way used by them
As a new buzzer for the paper kite.
In a few minutes, the kite will be joyfully hoisted
Over your house,
Signalling to the Cosmos that still,
Life does exist on Earth in spite of all,
and it's exploited to the maximum.


Perpetuum Mobile
(Translated by C. Iliescu)


Between people's ideals and their fulfillment
There will always exist a difference in level,
Which surpasses the highest waterfall.


Nevertheless we can use rationally
This fall of expectations by building on it
Something like a hydroelectric power station.
With the energy obtained this way,
Even if we can't do more than light our cigarettes,
Still, this is quite something,
As while we smoke,
We can seriously,
Think of even greater ideals.

Listen to:

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk about the weather

John Fowles and the last sentence

John Fowles (1926-2005) wrote “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” in 1969. The novel, which begins with a Thomas Hardy veneer and a Victorian feel to it, soon mutates into an existentialist exercise with a modernist choice of alternative endings. It catches you almost unprepared as it lifts the boundaries, blending the past and the present and suddenly all is swept away and what remains is a distilled perception of the human condition. For example, in a sudden epiphany moment, Charles realises that man has in fact entrapped himself in a vicious cycle of his own making. Existentialist writing was never so thrillingly engaging and poetic:
       
“In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal. Time was a great fallacy; existence was without history, was always now, was always this being caught in the same fiendish machine. All those painted screens erected by man to shut out reality - history, religion, duty, social position, all were illusions, mere opium fantasies." 


And exactly like that, like a flash of black lightning, certain passages in the book leap out by their sheer beauty and philosophical insight. John Fowles ends the novel with the following sentence. A last sentence that is supposed to bring closure. But in the hands of a great novelist this closure is all encompassing and we are left with the sense that the novel ends with a grand opening. Here it is: 


“ He walks towards an imminent, self-given death?  I think not; for he has at last found an atom of faith in himself, a true uniqueness, on which to build; has already begun, though he would still bitterly deny it, though there are tears in his eyes to support his denial, to realize that life, ... is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the city’s iron heart, endured. And out again, upon the unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea."