following up

some afterthoughts i've been having about that paul celan poem...

why does the last line, "it is time," have to be there? i don't like it. "it is time it were time" is not much stronger. i question the necessity of these two lines. they're too heavy handed for me, and don't do anything interesting. they're flat and feel like add ons and they're lame. get that shit outta here. 

the part of the poem i'm really digging is the line "we sleep like wine in the conches." that's beautiful. this image is completely invented; something i've never seen before or thought of, and yet when i read that line it's totally there. i can see the stillness, heaviness, thickness of the sleep. it's a perfect example of something abstract grounded in a concrete image. it works so well. it's especially nice because of the line that follows it: "like the sea in the moon's blood ray." i'm a really big fan of the double-simile when it's done right, and in this case i really think it is. the sea picks up on the conch, and the moon's blood ray picks up on the color of the wine. but, even though these two images "match" in a way, they are images of different things. in the second one, i see the sea still at night in the light of the moon. sometimes the moon is red? right? doesn't that happen? i'm not sure, but even if not, there's still something matchy-matchy about the sea under a blood ray and a pool of wine inside a conch shell. it's working. 

you my quiet, my open one, and-

tonight i bought the complete poems of paul celan (born paul antschel, apparently- thanks wikipedia.) most of my teachers have been recommending him to me for a while, so i'm here. he lead a pretty interesting life. paul celan (i'm so jealous of the name celan) was born in romania to a german speaking jewish family. both celan's parents were killed in concentration camps during world war II, which provides a good deal of subject matter for his poems.

"there is nothing on earth that can keep a poet from writing, not even the fact that he's jewish and german is the language of his poems." -paul celan

the book i bought has the german on the right side of the page and the english translation on the left. i wish i spoke german so badly. i want to understand how he's using the language. it's been suggested that some of the poems show a deep frustration and dismantling of german. i wish i could observe this better. imagine a poet who hates his own language, and yet is confined to it as a means to express himself. not that he only spoke one language. he also got down with russian, romanian, french and yiddish, but german was his first language- and thus the language of his poetry.

here is a poem by him. it's not my favorite, but it was my gateway poem in realizing that i liked him. so i think you guys might like it too. it's also a little lighter than some of his other stuff, which is pretty dark. enjoy.

Corona

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hands: we are friends.

From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:

then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,

in dream there is room for sleeping,

our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:

we look at each other,

we exchange dark words,

we love each other like poppy and recollection,

we sleep like wine in the conches,

like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street:

it is time they knew!

It is time the stone made an effort to flower,

time unrest had a beating heart.

It is time it were time.

It is time.