Gertrude Stein: A Very Valentine

Gertrude Stein (født 3. februar 1874 i Pennsylvania, USA - død 27. juli 1946 i Paris) var en amerikansk forfatter og med-katalysator for utviklingen av moderne kunst og litteratur. Hun tilbrakte det meste av sitt liv i Frankrike. Fra 1909 og til sin død bodde hun sammen med Alice B. Toklas i 27 Rue de Fleurus. I 1920-årene ble stuene i denne leiligheten deres et kjent samlingssted for forfattere som Sherwood Anderson og kunstmalere som Pablo Picasso.

“Portrett av Gertrude Stein” av Pablo Picasso, 1903, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (Da en bekjent bemerket at Gertrude Stein ikke liknet på portrettet sitt, svarte Picasso: “Hun kommer til å gjøre det.”)

“A Very Valentine” er et kort dikt inkorporert i en tekst som etter hvert har fått tittelen “A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson". Og dette korte diktet er - tror jeg nok en kan si - very, very Gertrude Stein:

A Very Valentine

Very fine is my valentine.
Very fine and very mine.
Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.
Very fine is my valentine and mine, very fine very mine and mine is my valentine.

En liten animasjon hvor vi hører Stein lese dette diktet fins her.

Og hele hennes “A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson” kan høres her.

Steins mest siterte linje er nok: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”

Mer om Gertrude Stein: 

på engelsk Wikipedia

og på Poetry Foundation.

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Barnas Poet Laureate i Storbritannia

Poeten og barnebokforfatteren Michael Rosen (født 7 mai, 1946 i London) er Storbritannias femte Children´s Laureate. Rosen, som selv er av jødisk avstamning, deltok 10. januar i år under en protest mot bombingen av Gaza - med et nyskrevet dikt: 

Nettstedet hans fins her.

Og en liten kampanje-snutt han lagde i forbindelse med “Sommerens leseutfordring” 2008:

Og - tatarataaaa: The Michael Rosen Rap -



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John Updike

John Updike (18.mars,1932 - 27.januar,2009) skrev ikke bare romaner og noveller - han skrev også dikt. Her er to eksempler fra Collected Poems 1953-1993 :

Ex-Basketball Player

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,
Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth’s Garage
Is on the corner facing west, and there,
Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.

Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps—
Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.
One’s nostrils are two S’s, and his eyes
An E and O. And one is squat, without
A head at all—more of a football type.

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.
He was good: in fact, the best. In ’46
He bucketed three hundred ninety points,
A county record still. The ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.

He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,
But most of us remember anyway.
His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.

Off work, he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette.
Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.
Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods
Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers
Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

(Skrevet i 1954)


Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market -
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

(Datert 24. januar, 1990)

Og her er Updike i samtale med "The Book Review"-redaktøren Sam Tanenhaus, oktober 2008:




Noen Updike-sitater:

"Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity . . . any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it, or better."

"Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn." 


"I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them." 


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Ted Koosers brukbare dikt

Her er et av mine yndlingsdikt av Ted Kooser, poeten som vokste opp i "min" barndomsby, Ames, Iowa (og var US Poet Laureate 2004-2006) - tittelen på dette blogginnslaget henspeiler på det han med et lite smil forteller etter at han har lest ferdig diktet:




At the Cancer Clinic

She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

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(Fra Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004)

Mer om Ted Kooser fins på denne bloggen 15. juli, 2008.

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I dag skjer det!

Fra kl. 17:29 direkte på NRK2 (og CNN, BBC, m.v., samt mange nettsteder) kan vi se denne historiske begivenheten direkte. Barack Obama innsettes som president i USA! 

Og rett etter innsettelsestalen, leser poeten Elizabeth Alexander et dikt hun har skrevet for anledningen.

 

Det er ingen selvfølge at en president velger å be en poet lese et dikt under sin innsettelsesseremoni. Bare tre ganger tidligere har det hendt; Robert Frost under John F. Kennedys innsettelse i 1961, Maya Angelou under Bill Clintons første innsettelse i 1993 og Miller Williams under Bill Clintons andre innsettelse i 1997.

På nettstedet for innsettelsen av Barack Obama kan vi lese dette om Elizabeth Alexander.

Og her er et ferskt og interessant intervju med Elizabeth Alexander - i Houston Chronicle, 19. januar, 2008.

Da Elizabeth Alexander fikk Jackson Poetry Prize 2007, kvitterte hun med å lese et av sine dikt som nettopp omhandler poesi; “Ars Poetica #100: I believe” (Ars Poetica = veiledning i diktekunsten) :





Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students,

is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves,

(though Sterling Brown said
“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”)

digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,

emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find

in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God

in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.

Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love,

and I’m sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other?

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Det blir spennende å høre det nye diktet hennes i dag!

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Og her er det:

Praise Song for the Day
A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

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Og her på programmet "The Colbert Report" diskuterer hun Praise Song for the Day - og forklarer forskjellen på en metafor og en løgn:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Elizabeth Alexander

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Colbert Report Tickets

Paul McCartney Appearance
More Funny Videos

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There is only one danger for you here…

The Soldiers in the Garden
Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973

After the coup,
the soldiers appeared
in Neruda’s garden one night,
raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
From the bedroom window
they could have been
the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
back from the sea to finish
plundering the coast.

The poet was dying;
cancer flashed through his body
and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
Neruda faced him and said:
There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
apologized to señor Neruda
and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
The lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.

For thirty years
we have been searching
for another incantation
to make the soldiers
vanish from the garden.

Martín Espada,

fra The Republic of Poetry (Norton, 2006)

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Apropos Israels invasjon i Gaza i natt

Her er en interessant artikkel: “The Dialogue of Poetry: Palestinian and Israeli Poets Writing Through Conflict and Peace” av Yvette Neisser. (Dessverre er den for lang til å oversette til norsk akkurat nå.)

Mens jeg lette etter denne artikkelen, kom jeg over disse to graffiti-verkene av Banksy, riktignok på muren i Vestbanken:

“Muren, Betlehem” 

Foto: Markus Ortner, 2005 (og med nedlastningstillatelse)


Og kom til å huske på en bok jeg ble litt klokere av:

After the Last Sky
- foto-essays av Edward W. Said og Jean Mohr


Alt mens jeg innimellom fulgte med på BBC - og da datt plutselig denne linjen ned i huet på meg - håper jeg siterer den rett her:

"A gun is something that makes a hole in people.” 

Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions)

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GODT NYTT ÅR, FOLKENS!

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God Jul, Verden!

Ja, nå synger mange mennesker rundt omkring på deg! Her er noen eksempler:

L'enfant au tambour - Jairo

“L'enfant au tambour” er den franske versjonen av "Little Drummer Boy." Den har et noe annet innhold, en annen historie, enn den engelske versjonen. Selv syns jeg den franske teksten er finest. Direkte oversatt til engelsk (men ikke helt identisk med Jairos versjon):

On the road
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Little drummer goes
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
He feels his heart beating
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
To the rhythm of his steps!
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Ram Pam Pam Pam
Ram Pam Pam Pam
Oh! Little child
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Where are you going?

Yesterday, my father
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Followed the drummer
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
The soldiers' drummer
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Ram Pam Pam Pam
Ram Pam Pam Pam

I want to give him for his return
My drum
All the angels
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Took their beautiful drums
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
And told the child
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Your father is back!
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
Ram Pam Pam Pam
Ram Pam Pam Pam
And the child woke up
Pa Ram Pam Pam Pam
On his drum.





Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt

Aja Apinotci Jesus - Gerald Paquin

(Gerald Paquin er Anishinabe-Canadisk)

Feliz Navidad - Jose Feliciano

Dette innslaget er fra Feliciano´s julekonsert i Denmark i 1973 - og innholder en liten hilsen til - (næ, dét vil jeg ikke røpe :)





Tirunelveli (Tamilsk) - Augustin John og Roja Onru

Tradisjonell sang og dans - Ndare - fra Kinyarwanda (Rwanda) - Sandra K - i forbindelse med julefeiring





Russisk julesang - Villancico Ruso





Julenissen har gått seg bort i bushen og lærer å danse tradisjonell wanga i Wadeye, Northern Territory, Australia - William Parmbuk & The Belyuen Mob





Samle reinsdyr - Ulla Pirttijärvi (som er fra Utsjoki i Finland)

Fant ingen innslag med julesanger på samisk på YouTube - men Rudolf hvisket meg i øret at han syns denne her er veldig fin :) (bilder fra Finnmark og Troms)






John Lennon - Happy Christmas


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solsnutimene

få ligge under denne varme dyna, lytte
til de myke lydene der ute, havet
som høres ut som en fjern motorvei
nattbussen som nærmer seg, brummer 
gjennom svingen ved Nordtun, øker fart forbi
jordet til Gunstein, huset til Berly, suser videre
ned Flakan mot fyret, den late applausen
fra takrenna over vindfanget, duringen
fra kjøleskapsmotoren, lyden av
gråt? filler´n, opp og hente
Jordkloden, legge den forsiktig
ned i senga, bre godt over den, stryke den
over kinnet, sette seg her i gyngestolen
rett ved siden av, nynne ei vuggevise med tusen
vers, ett for hvert språk den minnes gode ting med
og vonde, for hvert gulv den har å vaske, for hver
vedkubbe den må bære, for hver dag som likner natt
og hver natt som likner dag, våke over den
helt til det nye morgenbarnet kommer akende ned
Kvernhusåsen, oppdager Jordkloden, oj!
er den til meg? virkelig? løfter den
opp, rister litt i den, kjenner på det skjøre blå
innpakningspapiret, håperhåperhåper
og napper i sløyfebåndet

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en nattdag fikk hun det for seg

at hun skulle lufte et av skjelettene i skapet

personbilene strutset seg

lastebilene dobbelakslet seg

flyene fikk flyskrekk og måtte holde hender

kreaturene hoppet av kloden

menneskene prøvde å følge etter

og så ringte skapbestyreren

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There´s a hole in the bucket

Her er en av mine yndlingsfolkeviser, den som som Harry Belafonte og Odetta (Holmes) gjorde stor lykke med i Carnegie Hall i 1960. Visa har røtter helt tilbake til 1700-tallet (Tyskland) - og har vandret gjennom tid og rom og utviklet seg.

Teksten i Harry Belafonte & Odettas versjon:

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.

Well fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Well fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, - fix it.

With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza?
With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, with what?

With a straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
With a straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, with a straw.

But the straw is too long, dear Liza, dear Liza,
The straw is too long, dear Liza, too long,

Cut it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Well cut it, dear Henry, dear Henry, - cut it.

With what shall I cut it, dear Liza, dear Liza?
With what shall I cut it, dear Liza, with what?

With an axe, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
With an axe, dear Henry, dear Henry, with an axe.

The axe is too dull, dear Liza, dear Liza,
The axe is too dull, dear Liza, too dull.

Sharpen it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Well sharpen it, dear Henry, dear Henry - hone it.

On what shall I sharpen it, dear Liza, dear Liza?
On what shall I hone it, dear Liza, on what?

On a stone, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
On a stone, dear Henry, dear Henry, on a stone.

But the stone is too dry, dear Liza, dear Liza,
The stone is too dry, dear Liza, too dry.

Well wet it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Well wet it, dear Henry, dear Henry, - wet it.

With what shall I wet it, dear Liza, dear Liza?
With what shall I wet it, dear Liza, with what?

Try water, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Try water, dear Henry, dear Henry, - use water.

In what shall I fetch it, dear Liza, dear Liza?
In what shall I fetch it, dear Liza, in what?

In a bucket dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
In a bucket dear Henry, dear Henry, in a bucket.

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.

I dag fikk jeg oversendt en artig animert framføring av denne visa - som en viss ung venn nylig fant på nettet. Nå KAN det tenkes at han sendte denne til meg fordi han mener det er en…eh, likhet (??!)…mellom undertegnede og dama her!

(Hmf ! :o)

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