Get your own Free Home PageWorkshop Report 2
July 2, 1995
.... .... ... . .. ..... . . . . . ... . ... .. . . . . . . ..... ... .
. . .. .... ...... ..... .. . . . .... ...... .... ... . . . ......
Georg Trakl (1887-1914)
Is so capable of intensive feeling. You hear his words screaming or whispering. Typical unidirectional genius, one theme, recurring again and again, a short life lost in drugs and war, incapability to survive, the little "educational" value of his poetry. His poetry's intense beauty and his profound sense for reality are indirect condemnation of human mental inertia and the immoral pattern of human life.
Is this his best poem? (Remember, the poetry of any poet is reducible to one masterpoem)
Ein Winterabend
Wenn der Schnee ans Fenster faellt,
Lang die Abendglocke laeutet,
Vielen ist der Tisch bereitet
Und das Haus ist wohlbestellt.
Mancher auf der Wanderschaft
Kommt ans Tor auf dunklen Pfaden.
Golden blueht der Baum der Gnaden
Aus der Erde kuelem Saft.
Wanderer tritt still herein;
Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle.
Da erglaenzt in reiner Helle
Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein.
A Winter Evening
When the snow falls against the window, the evening bell rings a long peal, the table is prepared for many, and the house is well provided. Many on their wanderings come on dark paths to th gate. The tree of grace blossoms golden out of the cool sap of the earth. The Wanderer quietly steps inside; pain had petrified the threshold. There in pure radiance bread and wine are glowing on the table.
- This plain prose translation is not by me. if you can read the German original you will find it much superior to the English version -
The death of poetry !
I have the feeling that poetry as we have known it until now is dead. Like the case of inventions, they impress you in the beginning, later you are indifferent, and then you are bored by their presence. So poetry is becoming a boring creature.
A list of boring things in contemporary poetry (Arabic and non-Arabic), including my own attempts in poetry:
1. Lyricism
2. The clever surprising closing lines of poems (poet as magician reserving
the climax to the end, emotional orgasm.) They are boring in poems exactly
as the climax in stories.
3. The Beat generation didn't achieve the renovation it hoped to achieve
(disorganized religious sect?). How boring to hear this again and again.
4. Considering poets a special/rare/queer/valuable species/asset.
5. Poets considering themselves a special species (look how they pose for
portraits to be published with their works: one is photographed from a
frog eye's view with her/his favorite cat; the other looking from behind
a splittered glass pane; or another in black leather with an expression
of global pain, etc..) Boring, boring. Oh, and these are the youngest!
6. All inherited techniques from the past are de facto boring.
7. Boring is the lack of sense for reality and for history by most poets.
No perspectives, not even an illusion, Doom's Day fellow sufferers.
8. Poets are glued to the past, real conservatives, while others just ignoring
everything and starting from 0 and writing schoolchildren poems.
Art in general is in a bad shape, including the novel; music in general, including rock, let alone the opera. The innovative spirit of Elvis Presley has reached its final destination and consumed its flame. What next?
One good thing about young novelists( 40 years and below): they have killed the old storyteller and replaced him by a sort of journalist-novelist (see some short stories by British young authors such as Hanif Kureishi, Ben Okri, Lawrence Norfolk, Kazuo Ishiguro, Will Self, Jeanette Winterson.)
And, yes The Jurassic Park is a good novel. Am I saying that our hope of innovation in the arts, including poetry, lies in mass culture products? Are these the new avant-garde, the most dynamic experimental space? Please, fasten belt and don't fall from your armchair, the answer might indeed be: yes.
And thus, poetry needs to become a mixture of media and languages. (No I don't mean readings in TV or the repulsive illustrated poems (vulgarization of poetry) or that dinosaur called concrete poetry or some multimedia trick. No, I simply don't know yet what exactly I am talking about. It is sort of there and not there, this next damned paradigm.
Dead poet dilemma
The poet dies. He was only capable of writing about one fraction of the themes he would have liked to write about. He remains a stranger in nature. His futile attempts to deal with time. Is this a theme for a poem?
Lost Arab girl
Is the girl who was muted and made dumb after birth. She never learns the language. She is lost for the language.
Lost language
A poem, already three pages long. Unable to go back to it. Is there any sense in writing down this tragedy of a lost language? *
And when exhausted, I retreat to Anton Chekhov's garden.
Anwar Al-Ghassani
alghassa@cariari.ucr.ac.cr
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Code: WR70295 Disk: Workshop Reports 1\File: WR-2\ 817 words
Get your own Free Home Page