079 - A Poet's Funeral
It’s been a week where one’s body and its mind were at odds, a premise ripe for existential questions to torment one’s night. Late in an evening of one such day, I came to know that poet John Burnside passed away back in May. Out of an impulse I open my Kindle’s cart and find Finding Elvis waiting to be checked out. One should get to what one wants in time. But then, death my take the writer, but his words need an armageddon.
This is Bombay Daak’s seventy ninth issue, the tenth of its fifth season. Those are the numbers, the words now follow.
The other day, I found a browser window open with tabs of four poems, as if devoted to a mind-space of calm in an otherwise chaotic setting1:
A poem once written merges with the air, and it is everyone’s words. And the poets — magic creatures who can see the dimension of the realm of rhythms, the smiths upon the world’s anvil — move back into the obscurity, waiting.
For poems are the works of the obscure hand, always showing up in hours of need, but never quite otherwise seen, like the moon of a burning planet.
Brown sugar girl, with cappuccino eyes, brown sugar girl, with cappuccino eyes. I have been toying with these lines since 6 years now. Last week, I went to a bookstore, then walked to Woodside and sat on the bar till I finished it. It now sounds different.
Space for Burnside
Burnside’s poems deserve a space of their own.
They are not meant for a quick read in between things, or even on a park bench or a flight. It is a world of its own (although it is very much the world of ours), you need rockets and space ships I reckon, and a patch on the bright of the moon, and the sun’s warm distant glow, a chair would be nice, perhaps a rock to put the feet up on; and away from the earth where his words rested amongst its rivers and streets and yards, it is best to melt like some cosmic ice into them.
Don’t Bother the Poets
I once wrote a poem calling upon O’Hara, Gireesh and Nambisan as wells to draw from. So, unsurprisingly, what I wrote about poetry, and what one does with it, is in part drawn from Frank O’Hara’s mock manifesto, Personism:
But how can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? for death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don’t give a damn whether eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don’t need to, if they don’t need poetry bully for them, I like the movies too… 2
Poems have the liberty to be a conversation between two people, that others misunderstand, but make their own. And that is just another service the poet and his poem offers. 3
And with that in mind, dear reader, if you have made your way till here, this is the part of the poet’s funeral where people having rendered tears and eulogies, go back to the world they inhabit. Here’s some other things that found their way to me this week and the last:
Studio Yukiko and The Early Days of Flaneur Magazine - the German studio’s association with the Paris mag, both operating at a level beyond my comprehension
Kayaking Around Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands - A banter with a friend opened the door to a 15 year old past when I set life goals. It rekindled a lost spirit, and I have been on the lookout for possible adventures, thus this
Phrases for Hiring Committees to use Instead of “We’re a Family” - McSweeny’s because there is no other way to make sense of the world
History is more like Science Fiction than Fantasy4 - Ribbonfarm is almost as old as the internet for me, but rarely do I find Rao’s writing as accessible as this one
On cultivating creative spaces - Would you believe it if I said that in an obscure Kerala village, I woke up a little close to dawn, and went to my study desk, and opened my ipad, and typed - I wish to make more creative spaces in my life. Then this came my way months later
A Parade of Silly Beasts
Rainbow
Last Sunday, was until then annoyingly bright, sunny and humid, but as I was walking out of Lokhandwala backroad the heavens opened behind me, and ahead, this rainbow. I was listening to Sukiyaki5, and the world carried on its business, oblivious, or perhaps having lost interest in what was once beautiful and wondrous, even to them
Such chaos that I have a monthly reminder called Browsers and Bookmarks, just to clean up things. The browser Arc, however, archives all my aspirations of getting to my tabs one day (the last Thursday of every month), so don’t install that, or maybe you should precisely because
The best lines of this manifesto really are — As for their reception, suppose you’re in love and someone’s mistreating (mal aimé) you, you don’t say, "Hey, you can’t hurt me this way, I care!" you just let all the different bodies fall where they may, and they always do ‘flay after a few months. But that’s not why you fell in love in the first place, just to hang onto life, so you have to take your chances and try to avoid being logical. Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you.
I mean I have no reason to think Having a Coke With You is one of the best poems there is, but it is what I often find myself going back to. I am a straight man, and this is a love letter from O’Hara to Vincent Warren, but it suffices very well for my inclinations, and who is anyone to then say it isn’t the best poem that there is.
Which also showcases Bettany Hughes’ book on Istanbul
The title, as we know from Mad Men, means I look up when I walk