Welcome

Welcome to the 2013 Poetry workshop, Thessaloniki and Thassos. This workshop meets under a pergola with a view of the Aegean, or it meets in a café near the water's edge, or one overlooking a marble quarry. We take our breaks in the water. Our poems feast on the poems of the ancient and modern Greeks, and draw from the light around us, and the full sails. When we have finished talking and writing, we go out with Stomatis on his boat to catch the fish we might have for dinner. In the evenings, we listen to poetry read to us near an olive grove, and then we feast and dance in circles to Greek songs. Sometimes we are up very late, lighting fires on the beach, so in the morning we have our tea and coffee first, with cheese and hard rolls and yoghurt under the grape leaves. In the late afternoons we learn a little Greek, or we write in our notebooks or float in the water looking up at the small clouds. We write a lot without worrying about whether or not the writing is “good.” We know that whether it is as yet “good” or not, it is the seed of something, or it is what we had to have written before we could write something else. We play with our poems and move things around in them. We let some words go. They go, they come back. Sometimes we let a Greek poet say something, or we become a Greek poet ourselves. The assignment is to soak up the light, read what everyone writes, and learn about octopus. The assignment is to light candles, have a little psipouru or something else, and learn some dances. To say kalimera to everyone in the morning and Καληνύχτα when we go back to our rooms at night. We hope to leave with many pages of something or another, and to see our work in new ways.˜

We'll most likely be meeting on the lovely terrace at my house (up the road from where you'll be staying). The plan is to meet on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings there and to meet on Wednesdays at Beach Two for intensive writing mixed with private consultations.

The Poem of Address

The Mode of Address

Sometimes called the "epistolary" mode or the apostrophe, in this mode the poet addresses an "other," often a certain person, but sometimes the reader.

5. The Epistolary Mode, The Poem of Address

Cesar Vallejo

To My Brother Miguel

Brother, today I sit on the brick bench of the house,
where you make a bottomless emptiness.
I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama
caressed us: "But, sons..."

Now I go hide
as before, from all evening
lectures, and I trust you not to give me away.
Through the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.
Later, you hide, and I do not give you away.
I remember we made ourselves cry,
brother, from so much laughing.

Miguel, you went into hiding
one night in August, toward dawn,
but, instead of chuckling, you were sad.
And the twin heart of those dead evenings
grew annoyed at not finding you. And now
a shadow falls on my soul.

Listen, brother, don't be late
coming out. All right? Mama might worry.
Translated from the Spanish  by Robert Bly

Henri Michaux

I Am Writing to You from a Far-off Country

I
We have here, she said, only one sun in the mouth, and for only a little while. We rub our eyes days ahead. But to no purpose. Inexorable weather. Sunlight arrives only at its proper hour.

Then we have a world of things to do, so long as there is light, in fact we hardly have time to look at one another a bit.

The trouble is that nighttime is when we must work, and we really must: dwarves are born constantly.
II
When you walk in the country, she further confided to him, you may chance to meet with substantial masses on your road. These are mountains and sooner or later you must bend the knee to them. Resisting will do no good, you could go no farther, even by hurting yourself.I do not say this in order to wound. I could say other things if I really wanted to wound.


III.

The dawn is grey here, she went on to tell him. It was not always like this. We do not know whom to accuse.

At night the cattle make a great bellowing, long and flutelike at the end.
We feel compassionate, but what can we do?

The smell of eucalyptus surrounds us: a blessing—serenity, but it cannot protect us from everything, or else do you think that it really can protect us from everything?

IV.

  I add one further word to you, a question rather.

  Does water flow in your country too? (I don’t remember whether you’ve told me so) and it gives chills too, if it is the real thing.

   Do I love it? I don’t know. One feels so alone when it is cold. But quit otherwise when it is warm. Well then? How can I decide? How do you others decide, tell me, when you speak of it without disguise, with open heart?
V.

  I am writing to you from the end of the world. you must realize this. The trees often tremble. We collect the leaves. They have a ridiculous number of veins. but what for? There’s nothing between them and the tree any more, and we go off troubled.

  Could not life continue on earth without wind? Or must everything tremble, always, always?

   There are subterranean disturbances, too, in the house as well, like angers which might come to face you, like stern beings who would like to wrest confessions.

   We see nothing, except what is so unimportant to see. Nothing, and yet we tremble. Why?

Translated from the French by Richard Ellman

Wen Yiduo

Perhaps

Perhaps you have wept and wept, and can weep no more.
Perhaps. Perhaps you ought to sleep a bit;
then don't let the night hawk cough, the frogs
croak, or the bats fly.

Don't let the sunlight open the curtain onto your eyes.
Don't let a cool breeze brush your eyebrows.
Ah, no one will be able to startle you awake:
I will open an umbrella of dark pines to shelter your sleep.

Perhaps you hear earthworms digging in the mud,
or listen to the root hairs of small grasses sucking up water.
Perhaps this music you are listening to is lovelier
than the swearing and cursing noises of men.

Then close your eyelids, and shut them tight.
 I will let you sleep, I will let you sleep.
I will cover you lightly, lightly with yellow earth.
I will slowly, slowly let the ashes of paper money fly


Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Sze

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