The loss of paint on panel

At the end of Jared Carter’s poem “At the Sign-Painter’s,” he explains why he liked these men best of all the laborers he met, accompanying his father on his rounds:

For the wooden rod with its black knob resting lightly
Against the primed surface, for the slow sweep and whisper
Of the brush—liked seeing the ghost letters in pencil
Gradually filling out, fresh and wet and gleaming, words
Forming out of all that darkness, that huge disorder.

I felt nostalgia for the loss of finger-touch with stuff we make for a living. A sign maker now works with mouse and keyboard, tweaking pixels on a glass screen – no more “the slow sweep and whisper / Of the brush.” The signs themselves are made at many removes, the “fresh and wet and gleaming” paint now applied in the invisible sanctum of an industrial ink-jet printer.

Some few people still manipulate their work: chefs, the cutters of hair, surgeons, those who care for children and the sick. A blessed few, though not financially; except for surgeons, most are paid minimum wage.

The rest of us have to wrestle meaning out of the “huge disorder” with tools that are themselves intangible, information worker implements operated with plastic prostheses.

----

The poem appears on p. 172 of Fifty Years of American Poetry, New York: Harry N Abrams, 1984. It originally appeared in Work, for the Night is Coming, 1980.

Poetry Corner

In Memoriam Netscape Navigator, Internet Browser

So. Farewell
Then Netscape
Navigator.

You lingered
Much longer
Than we expected –

With your air
Supply
Cut
Off.

eJ Thribb (2 ¾) (internet years)

(For work by E.J. Thribb, see Private Eye.)

Wang Wei

Wang Wei is one of China’s greatest poets (and painters), the creator of small, evocative landscape poems that are steeped in tranquility and sadness. More than that, though: while the poems are about solitude rooted in a serious practice of ch’an meditation, Wang worked diligently as a senior civil servant all his life.

I found his work via review of Jane Hirshfield’s wonderful collection After. David Hinton’s selection of Wang Wei poems is beautifully wrought. The book is carefully designed, and the Introduction and Notes are very helpful.

Wang’s poetry gives no hint of the daily bureaucracy that he must have dealt with. It’s anchored in his hermitage in the Whole-South Mountain, which was a few hours from the capital city where he worked. Wang was born in the early Tang dynasty to one of the leading families. He had a successful civil service career, passing the entrance exam at the young age of 21 and eventually serving as chancellor. His wife died when he was 29, at which point he established a monastery on his estate. He died at the age of 60.

Deer Park is one of his most famous poems. Here’s Hinton’s translation:

No one seen. Among empty mountains,
hints of drifting voice, faint, no more.

Entering these deep woods, late sunlight
flares on green moss again, and rises.

(For more translations, see here and here.)

Wang’s work shows that one can make spiritual progress while also participating in society. One does not have to give up the daily life and become a monk, though it’s surely important that one’s mundane activities make a contribution to the good of society.

balloons at twilight
I make the promise again
to go up come Spring

power lines crackle
feeling what I barely see
the first morning mist

The importance of reading less

It must be almost a year since my boss said to me in passing

When I fly these days
I no longer try to read
I just sleep, or think

(Just a chance remark, said lightly in passing, but haiku - who knew?)

It's becoming steadily more meaningful to me. Though I never catch up with all the reading I could do, it's so often a convenient excuse for not thinking. (My body doesn't tolerate any excuses for not sleeping.) Now that I make myself think more, or just allow my mind to wander, I've discovered the unexpected pleasure of stumbling over my own ideas.

frantic grey sine wave
squirrel across a parched lawn
stops - poised - a fir cone

summer morning run
into dawn, no sunshine yet
warm days losing light

Ellensburg week-end

lemonade, latte, scones
festival jazz Sunday brunch
sheltering in shade

we sit, listen, sway -
working along asphalt's edge
ants, oblivious

Outside

blinks in the half-dark
always at my gaze's edge
wow, they're real - fireflies!

if you sent you mail
asking for a quick meeting
would you say OK?

sparrows don't worry
about realizing their dreams
at least, I hope not

Fake Band Names

Peter Rinearson put me onto Brian Whitman's Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names. It's a useful resource if you can't think of a name for your band, though if you can't think of a silly name for a band, you probably shouldn't have one. It's even better as a Random Grin Generator. And it's a great way to generate haiku:

rotator landing
dandelions onto hull
smoker betrayal

Southeaster

All day, and into the night, and all day today
The blowing fills the bowl of bay and mountains

Haphazard spray scraped off the sea
Pine trees roaring hoarse

Aspirin

my belly is full
but my mouth is still hungry
a leaky sieve

When I get a headache, I know that my eyes are strained, I haven't been sleeping enough, and it's time to take some ibuprofen.

When I'm hungry, I know it's time to eat.

I only know my soul is starving when I notice, at length, what is not happening. I haven't written haiku for too long. That means that I have not seen reality for a long time. Even realising that my heart is empty doesn't help much; forcing something out leaves an ashen and fatty taste.

A lost web

In 1998 I went on a mid-life crisis road trip. I made a web journal of the journey. I tried to find the web recently, and couldn't. My sense of loss was profound. In musicals, people break into song at moments of profound emotion; I try to write poetry.

copied and archived and backed up
so many times
it disappeared

a stand-in for a memorable journey
a trusted pointer
though unvisited

my thoughts drain into its loss
its referent
now unreachable

I've just come back from a week in an immersion training course: the "Power Lab". It's a social simulation where participants live out the roles of being at the top, middle and bottom of a society. It was held up in the mountains - it was cold! Each society works out differently; ours managed to avoid a revolution through art. Some haiku came of it:

piebald mountain egg
feldspar and mica and quartz
a granite pebble

lime green lichen
tendrils of symbiosis
algae and fungus

food, bed, deception
something blossomed in the frost
no cowabunga

again the full moon
aloof and impudent both
springs itself on me

empty air appears
winter's first cold breath
whites away distance

Lost in Translation

a haiku in one hour and forty two minutes

the feeling looking out of a taxi, jet lagged, without bearings

a reminder of a memory that isn't yours

wondering if life will get any easier. No. Yes.

the neon jitter of a grimy city, seen through a window, muffled

trying to sleep in a rich hotel room, with crisp soft sheets

a mood savoured, wistfully

middle age, his exhaustion stronger than his libido

recognizing something that you haven't seen

5-7-5 for autumn

'
every morning
the sun's back a bit later
from his southern love