Pier Giorgio Di Cicco is by all measures my favorite living poet. His poetry is custom tailored to everything I seek to read, know, and feel for my well-being. An italian born Canadian who lives in Toronto now serving as a priest; he is called Priest George I have read. I wish to meet him before he leaves for Heaven.

he fell into my arms and said

(excerpt)

1he fell into my arms and said

2"sometimes god takes what we love most. he knows best".

3i agree.

4so I made up something as i buried his grandchildren.

5i said, "god wants us to love him unconditionally";

6to get too tired to be angry; to love him

7the way my friend zorab goes into the niagara gorge

8to look for messages in bottles. he hates god, but finds hope.

9you get thankful for anything

10he doesn't take: breath, sight,

11memory, until they're taken. then you're thankful

12for death.

13such gratitude, taking everything for

14granted, your ski-doos, your anger, sorrow;

15even fear; you fork

16over every feeling to him.

17today i am thankful for anything,

18even the cold glance of

19those who do not love me. it's an experience.

20my novice master used to say he couldn't be

21hurt anymore. me? i collect every sight and sound i'll

22miss in my final moment.

23today i buried four children. i don't know what the weeping

24was about; i held the

25grandfather's head to my own, like a

26horrified brother faced with an

27unconditional god. it was like holding my own head.

28his brain, his love, his faith, my own -- and

29doing what we do best -- living in spite of him.

30until he opens the screen door and says, come in;

31the day of streets and leaves is over.

32lay your head to rest, and put away

33the likeness of the day.

None Shall Pass

I wouldn't say it is my all time favorite hip hop song because it is, in my opinion, impossible to know that -- but I would easily put it in the top ten: Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass. This song is flawless -- the lyrics are incredible, the flow is impeccable, and the rhymes are nothing short of impressive. And now, my dear friends and throngs of loyal readers of this informative and timeless blog, a talented DJ named Tor, has done us the favor of remixing this song, among others, over Sufjan Steven's classic album, Illinoise. The Remix album is aptly titled Illinoize. This one is instant vintage.

Escape from the Poppy Field

CHARLES SANTORE - Escape from the Poppy Field from L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of OZ, Random House, 1991.

The Seven Ages

Here is a poem by the well-accomplished poet, Louise Glück. It is called The Seven Ages and it is the title poem of her eleventh book. It is the cold distant eye of nostalgia on a life full of living. In a way, this whole brief beginning of eternity is only a dream from which we wake when we die. It is useless to try and consume a world we will leave so swiftly. "This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." - King Solomon


THE SEVEN AGES

In my first dream the world appeared
in the salt, the bitter, the forbidden, the sweet
In my second dream I descended

I was human, I couldn't just see a thing
beast that I am

I had to touch, to contain it

I hid in the groves,
I worked in the fields until the fields were bare --

time
that will never come again --
the dry wheat bound, caskets
of figs and olives

I even loved a few times in my disgusting human way

and like everyone I called that accomplishment
erotic freedom,
absurd as it seems

The wheat gathered and stored, the last
fruit dried: time

that is hoarded, that is never used,
does it also end?

In my first dream the world appeared
the sweet, the forbidden
but there was no garden, only
raw elements

I was human:
I had to beg to descend

the salt, the bitter, the demanding, the preemptive

And like everyone, I took, I was taken
I dreamed

I was betrayed:

Earth was given to me in a dream
In a dream I possessed it

- Louise Glück

Lesende

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. In 1994 he painted Lesende (Reading) which I had the privilege of viewing in the San Francisco MOMA. At first, second, and third glance, you would swear this piece is out of place on a floor full of paintings. Lesende resembles a handsome photograph of a twenty-something woman, surely a muse by the strange and subtle beauty she carries, reading a newspaper. The Reader is in fact Richter's wife as I later learned. It shocked me to learn it is a painting. This is a painting so realistic, so finely done that I couldn't help but stare until all else drifted out of my mind. Many of the paintings I enjoyed that day were evocative and impressive but this piece seemed impossible. The talent necessary to create this painting is staggering.
The image itself settles in with a spirit of certainty. There are moments when I look around at a room or at a person and all things freeze still and even in the very moment I am aware that my mind is attaching this glimpse to an entire chapter of my life. This painting proves that such a fleeting, rare, and ethereal awareness can be captured by a painting.

You Swan, Go On

The latest song to earn the instant vintage mantel in my heart is a very short acoustic jam called You Swan, Go On by Phil Elvrum's (or Elverum) Mount Eerie. On the actual recording, appearing on the newest Mount Eerie release, Lost Wisdom, has accompaniment from his co-worker, Julie Doiron (of Erik's Trip, Phil's favorite group I read somewhere). This song exemplifies brevity. That said, I don't want to taint it with my rambling. I have a video of Phil Elvrum performing it live and the lyrics below. Absorb, Enjoy, Dissolve.



As good as I could possibly imagine my life getting, it did
After I met you
The way you reached inside my chest and pulled out things and sent them off in breaths blew
And as good as it got with all the layers peeling off, and though I writhed
I could not upset you
With your hand down my throat you held on to my heart and pumped blood through

And then "it's time to go" you said, "it's time to go out
You little gray goose
Get out from under my wing" you said "you swan, go on, go out, you're turned loose"

oh so it's over
oh so we died
oh so your hand on my heart pumping blood went limp and oh, I fly
Oh swan inside.

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is a woman whose control of words stuns me into silence. Her poems strike a balance between availability and timelessness that is difficult to find in the convoluted verse of most living poets worth mentioning. A particular poem, Rage, about a man and his daughter whom he has molested, has taken an important place in the library of my mind. It is an unforgettable portrayal of the inner workings of two people forever sullied by an unforgettable treason upon morality. It is a simple reminder when post-modernism tries to separate action from consequence by trying to hoodwink morality with a romanticized preference for 'relativism'.

Rage
- 1986

          You are the dark song
          of the morning;
          serious and slow,
          you shave, you dress,
          you descend the stairs
          in your public clothes
          and drive away, you become
          the wise and powerful one
          who makes all the days
          possible in the world.
          But you were also the red song
          in the night,
          stumbling through the house
          to the child's bed,
          to the damp rose of her body,
          leaving your bitter taste.
          And forever those nights snarl
          the delicate machinery of the days.
          When the child's mother smiles
          you see on her cheekbones
          a truth you will never confess;
          and you see how the child grows--
          timidly, crouching in corners.
          Sometimes in the wide night
          you hear the most mournful cry,
          a ravished and terrible moment.
          In your dreams she's a tree
          that will never come to leaf--
          in your dreams she's a watch
          you dropped on the dark stones
          till no one could gather the fragments--
          in your dreams you have sullied and murdered,
          and dreams do not lie.

Mary Oliver

Love It All

So much is consumed by such a prosaic maxim: Love It All.

Rejoice, brethren.


Joe Gurba

Promenade

Since becoming decidedly self-involved, starting a blog seems like a natural development in the life and times of Joe Gurba. I have named the blog thus because I have been giving serious thought to changing my name to Calvin St. Calvin. And since this really is for an audience of one (myself) I figured the title appropriate. I will use this podium to either pontificate shamelessly or engage in biting diatribes concerning individual people, songs, pieces, works, events, or places that light my wick.
All that said, forgive me. Forgive me. Reader, if you are there, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I love the sound of my own voice. So much.

Let the most likely short lived and soon to be neglected 'blog' adventure begin!

Today I was grabbed by the ankle by a particular painting. The author of this piece is Marc Zakharovich Chagall, a Russian Jew from Belarus and naturalized in France. He was prolific and we will leave it at that.

This painting is titled The Promenade. The gentleman is Chagall himself and the woman is Bella, his wife, whom he had married in 1915. The Promenade was painted in 1917-1918. Chagall was overjoyed, jubilant, and his life was built in rejoice. The bright colours are so bold and intelligent. But above all, the image conveys such mystic romanticism evocative of a waking dream, lucid and exuberant.

The Promenade strikes me to the quick. It is in this moment meeting me exactly where my life resides. I am to be married in a few short months and my Bella, Bethany, seems to want to pull me into the very ether of joy. There has been such an undoing between myself and world's worries on her account. I feel as if I am coming unpinned from the turf and given over to a view possessed by stronger colour, stronger senses, and more formidible existance. In a word: floating. The Promenade isn't a painting that will fling someone into this majestic hinterland, no, not by any means. The Promenade is a painting for those of us who have been so fortunate as to taste and see this sort of contentment.

Joe Gurba