Resounding echoes in other poetry

From Frances Densmore's Chippewa Music:

The Sky Will Resound

it will resound finely
the sky
when I come making a noise


Because I read the Neruda first, this reminds me of something from The Book of Questions, it is here someplace, but let me transcribe it below, though I doubt it will make sense to anyone but me.

XLIX

When I see the sea once more
will the sea have seen ornate seen me?

Why do the waves ask me 
the same questions I ask them?

And why do they strike the rock
with so much wasted passion?

Don't they get tired of repeating
their declaration to the sand?


The sky resounding with the questions of the sea?  I am not sure what brought these two together in my mind, but I did think of the Neruda when I read Densmore piece.  Minds are odd and they forge connections were they will.  Densmore is the earlier work, so what reminding me of which should probably be reversed, but I read one well before I read the other, and that is the timetable I am working through.  I can say one thing with certainty though, the connection has nothing to do with alcohol, as there was no consumption of such.

Slow reading, but Poetry shouldn't be rush read

I finally finished Danez Smith's "[Insert] Boy" and was as impressed at the end as I was at the beginning.  Perhaps Neruda's "Book of Questions" wasn't the first, but in Smith's poem "Song of the Wreckage" he echoes Neruda with a series of questions.  The last three:

Who do the ants think has the best meat?

Please, will you show me something beautiful?

If I play dead, will I be acting my age?

While this Song near the end is one of the longest, if not the longest poem, in the book, I couldn't help stop and pause at these lines, especially the final one.  The entire collection deals with the gay black (african american) experience, and let me say, that his poems give an entire different light to the gay black versus gay white experience.  Aspects I could relate to, and others just moved me, and made me regret that we live in a society where such a loss of life is considered normal.  When this happened, I don't know, but too often the proof is in the newspapers, and it is an unpleasant truth, one that most Americans would pretend didn't exist.  While everyone is agreement that "Black Lives Matter," and most would argue the "ALL Lives Matter," what those people who insist on ALL are missing is that White Americans are much more "agreeable" to allowing a Black person die at the hands of the law or a vigilante than we are a White person, hence the emphasis that Black lives do matter, regardless of the indifference of Whites.  If it takes a protest to get notice, then by all means, get a protest going.  It is unfortunate that today's resurgence is just a repeat of history, and as a country we really haven't learned squat.

More Neruda, but there is so much and it is so good.

Pablo Neruda isn't the only poet I read, but I guess with so much of his stuff around, I find that I read it frequently, so find all sorts of things to mention.

“That time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.”

Excerpt From: Pablo Neruda. “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda.”

While I know romance novels are generally not well written, there are many that are, or if they are not, at least they contain something that will send you somewhere else looking for what they mentioned.  R. Cooper's "A Boy and His Dragon" mentions Neruda's love poetry, and while it isn't the reason I discovered Neruda, I rather like that "low" genre fiction can with reference poetry and if done well, it doesn't seem to be striving.  Oddly, though I don't think this poem was referenced in the book, it does fill in a good deal of the book.  When you go looking for nothing, you get everything, which is one way to look at love.  I think every blind date is gone into with low expectations, so if something is found, and if that something is everything, then there you have it.  I like this little fragment from Morning. Sonnet IV, 100 Love Sonnets, as it says something about more than love.

Ahh, the new year and more resolutions not to keep.  While not specifically spoken, I decided that this year I would read a bit more poetry.  To read more poetry means that you also reflect on and want to share that poetry, and I will attempt, though I doubt my efforts will last long, to update this blog a bit more regularly.

This evening I was reading Pablo Neruda's "The Book of Questions," translated by William O'Daly, and in poem VIII, I discovered the following lines:

Do tears not yet spilled
wait in small lakes?

Or are they invisible rivers
that run toward sadness?

I am still working out what I think of these lines, but I found them evocative, and wanted to post.

One thing that came to mind is the finite-ness of the small lake versus the perceived infinity of rivers, or the release of limited tears, like a dam overflowing due to a specific event, over the constant crying of someone who can not get over an event, whether loss of a loved one or some other traumatic event.

Perhaps not the most joyous thoughts for the new year, but when reading poetry randomly, rather than choosing a certain theme, you don't always get happy.