Friday 15 June 2012

THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM

     
Wallace Stevens' first published volume of poems (pub. Alfred A. Knopf in 1923) was called Harmonium. There are many famous poems within; Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, Fabliau of Florida, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, The Emperor of Ice-Cream etc., etc..

Yesterday I went to visit The Emperor of Ice-Cream and I found him, as you can see, hard at work in his ice-cream palace. He was, as you may just be able to make out, busily whipping his concupiscent curds. I asked him if I could take his photograph and he replied, after a moment's hesitation in which he looked me up and down: Of course!

The Emperor

The poem is already somewhere else on this blog but to save the reader the trouble of looking it up here it is again:

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's papers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come 
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.


The Emperor's Palace

The Emperor's ice-cream

Stevens has been very clever in his construction of this poem which is about a wake.

Let be be finale . . .

I remember my granddad laid out in the parlour in Wales with his relatives around, the old ones sitting wherever they could find a perch, the younger end not quiet knowing what to do or how to behave

the wenches dawdle . . .
the boys bring flowers . . .

and everyone nibbling on dainty triangular sandwiches from a large blue plate on the Welsh dresser.

The aunts took turns at going to and fro with a large black teapot. And another someone, an uncle of mine I believe, poured generous tots of whisky into crystal glasses for the men.

There may even have been a cigar or two on fire, certainly many cigarettes were in evidence.

We didn't cover grandad's face with an embroidered sheet as in the poem but copper coins were placed over his eyes, presumably so that he couldn't see us.

And so I think it is with Wallace's embroidered sheet.

spread it so as to cover her face . . .

It's to cover the dead woman's face so that she cannot see the party enjoying themselves with ice-cream and cigars.

Call the roller of big cigars . . .

When the old person finally dies the death should be seen as part of the natural course of events. We should not perceive it as tragedy. A long life is a cause for celebration and reflection.

she embroidered fantails once . . .

And really, there is no mystery about this poem,  for death's cold hand will grasp us all.

how cold she is, and dumb . . . 



Now you should read the poem again but this time substitute the last two lines in the first verse with the last two lines in the second verse and vice-versa and see where that leaves you.

If you want to discover more about The Emperor of Ice-Cream check out George Szirtes' website for the day before yesterday.


Thursday 14 June 2012

Research and Dalit Literature




       The second part of the quote featured today on the Poet-in-Residence header is from the poem Listen Brahmin by Malkhan Singh featured on the front cover of the Spring 2009 edition of Research. The other part of the header is my personal take on Malkhan Singh's words; a reflection, if you like.

I think all readers of Poet-in-Residence will agree with me that the words of Listen Brahmin provide a wonderful cover for the journal.

There is, as it happens, an article of my own in this edition of Research and that is how I came to receive a free copy sent through the post all the way from India.

Research was founded by Prof. Dr. Shankar Narain Prasad (1932-2004) Head of the Dept. of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Commerce at Manipur University, Imphal. The editor today is Dr. Vandana Datta of the Dept. of English, College of Commerce, Patna Magadh University.

You may be wondering what Dalit Literature is all about. You may never encountered the term before.

This edition of Research opens the door and opens with a quote from Sharan K Limbale's "Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature" (www.vedamsbooks.com) -

         Dalit Literature represents a powerful, emerging trend in the Indian literary scene. Given its overarching preoccupations with the location of the Dalits in the caste-based Hindu society, this literature is by nature oppositional. With the growing translation of works by Dalit writers from various regional languages into English, Dalit literature is poised to acquire a national and international presence as well as to pose a major challenge to the established notions of what constitutes literature and how we read it.


Dr. Vandana Datta explains in his editorial that Dalit literature is primarily a literature of protest against the age-old tortures and humiliations that the lower castes have had to undergo at the hands of the upper caste Hindus. Form and aesthetics take a back seat, the focus being on content. Without mincing words and with all the suppressed anger of centuries they speak of the sufferings inflicted on them and seek ways to escape the rigid caste system. 


In my next post I will talk about ice-cream. 

And in a future post I shall return to the subject of Dalit Literature.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

haiku



in the quiet corner

the unopened book


the light still burning


___________________________________________________________________
gw photo:  Superflex / Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary - Augarten, Vienna

Monday 11 June 2012

Sculpture? It's only natural


Gargano

The artist may spend his whole life banging away with hammers and chisels on stones and rocks to achieve fame and fortune and/or make his personal statement about something or other which troubles his mind or which delights him or at least pleases his sense organs, normally his eyes. Or he may not. He may end his life in a garrett with the barrel of a pistol inserted between his lips. Either way, it's not the recommended way to spend a life. And the risk of lung disease from the dust particles inhaled over many years is enormous. But they go on. And meanwhile Nature the sculptor goes on too. Creations made by wind, sun and rain are everywhere to be seen. The human sculptor cannot hope to match or exceed them and yet he always goes on. A force drives him. He knows not from where it comes. He only knows that he must and will, whatever the physical cost to his health and sanity, obey. And so it is also with poets, painters, composers and all the other disciplines of art. Governments and regimes come and go. They rise and fall. They dictate and un-dictate. The true artists go on and on and on . . .  as they must. And as they always will.

Destiny of Gustinus Ambrosi (1893-1975)


destiny n (pl -ies) 1 the power or agency held to determine the course of events, fate
(Penguin Concise Dictionary)

 'Man and his Destiny'

This powerful and anguished work is by Gustinus Ambrosi and is from the year 1920. It is currently displayed in the Ambrosi compound in Vienna's Augarten park where the poet and sculptor Ambrosi lived and worked from 1957 until he took his own life in 1975.

Ambrosi's original studio, given to him for life in 1913 by the Emperor Franz Joseph I was situated in the Viennese Prater, where the famous Ferris Wheel featured in the classic Orson Wells film of Graham Greene's The Third Man turns even today.

The studio was badly damaged during World War II and demolished in 1945. 

The deaf sculptor Ambrosi was in essence a chameleon and after the fall of the Habsburg dynasty he "smoothly and quickly adapted to each rising power" in turn, to quote researcher Oliver Rathkolb. These "rising powers" included the First Austrian Republic, Austro-Facism, the Thousand Year Reich, the Allied Powers, and the Second Austrian Republic.

Ambrosi had no fear of dictators, or anybody else for that matter. In 1924 he travelled to see Mussolini in Italy and created a bust of El Duce. This work is also to be seen at the Augarten exhibition.

In 1937, on returning to Vienna from Switzerland, he was picked-up by the Gestapo and questioned regarding newspaper articles he had written against "the megalomania of nationalism". He was released, having offered the excuse that he must have had an "aberration". Subsequently he applied to join the Reich Literature Chamber.

And so the chameleon survived those dangerous years. After the war he was speedily de-Nazified, announcing that his "circle of most intimate friends" included the likes of Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Wolfgang Korngold and others, and that he had "always been an enthusiastic Austrian."
_______

See also 'Royal Cows in the Augarten Park' and 'A Walk in the Augarten Park' (previous posts - 2nd and 3rd below) for more information on this topic.


Saturday 9 June 2012

Thinking outside the (egg)box


Is this chicken a dinosaur?

There's an age old riddle and it is this: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The question may be answered by supposing that today's chickens are descended from yesterday's dinosaurs. If this is the case the answer must be the egg.

The evolution of the chicken and that of many species of birds struggling to adapt to the modern world and a rapidly changing environment is still proceeding, whereas the egg was always there.

The weather continues.

Friday 8 June 2012

Royal cows in the Augarten park



These two cows in the city of Vienna's Augarten park are called Ritta (l) and Hektor (r) and they are said to be direct descendants of the sculptor Gustinus Ambrosi's original and "most beautiful" Fleckvieh cow which hailed from what is today the upmarket ski-resort of Kitzbühel in Austria.

In 1942 Albert Speer, the Reich's Minister of Armaments and War Production commissioned a marble sculpture to be called Maiden with Cow for the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin as part of Adolf Hitler's dream of Germania. The work was to be conceived as a counterpart to an existing sculpture Youth with Bull by Louis Tuaillon.

Ambrosi was ordered to find a suitable cow.

After searching farms of the Tirol  he finally found a beast of "proportions . . . not easy to find again". The cow, which was to be his model, was called Queen (Königin). 

Ambrosi made several plaster models to show Speer. These can be seen today in the Gustinus Ambrosi Museum in the Augarten.

"This is a cow that in the mayhem of the war caught the gaze of Ambrosi, possibly Speer, and maybe even Hitler and caused them to feel compassion and concern on its behalf" according to the booklet accompanying the Ambrosi exhibtion.

The animal was not slaughtered when the project failed to come to fruition. Perhaps it's life was saved because of a letter written by Ambrosi in February or March 1945 where he begs the authorities for "an additional 300M a month" to sustain the animal.

Whatever the true facts of the story we can today visit the Augarten and see for ourselves the direct descendants of the Queen of the thousand year Reich.


the QUEEN

Thursday 7 June 2012

A walk in the Augarten park









I believe there are 6 World War II flak-towers still to be seen in Vienna. These two are in the Augarten, a walled park with flower beds and long tree-lined avenues. It lies close to the city centre.

The Augarten Park was given to the Viennese people by Emperor Joseph II, a far-sighted son of the Empress Maria-Theresia and probably the most progressive and intelligent of all the Habsburgs, for the public's enjoyment and recreation.

Today in the park there are several cafes and bars, one is the Bunkerei  (the Bunker). Also to be found are the Augarten Porcelain Museum, the Gustinus Ambrosi Museum, and two Austrian cows, Ritta and Hektor.

Notwithstanding the Emperor's dedication which I believe is inscribed somewhere in stone the Vienna Boys Choir is today firmly at home in the park in spite of sit-down protests from the Augarten outdoor cinema public and others which required police intervention.

There was also a barrage of press criticism in respect of the choir's unfortunate oversight regarding the obtaining of certain planning permissions; however the Sängerknaben, as the boy songsters are called, are not unique in this respect as you can see from the pictures above.

You can read the story of Gustinus Ambrosi (1893-1975) and meet the two cows in forthcoming posts.


Wednesday 6 June 2012

Ray Bradbury


Ray Bradbury (91), the author of Fahrenheit 451 and We Sing the Body Electric died in California yesterday, Tuesday, according to an item on today's Breaking News at Yahoo!

By way of tribute to the genius and memory of Ray Bradbury a post of mine which first appeared in January 2008 on Poet-in-Residence and which features a poem written in 2005 titled We Sing the Body Electric, the first poem in my pamphlet Mavericks, is now available to read here.

Ray Bradbury was a rare talent. I suspect he's now on his way to a rendezvous with the likes of Arthur C Clarke, Jules Verne and H G Wells.

Bon voyage sir! 

United Kingdom v. Republic of Kafka


This short piece was prompted by a discussion going on over at George Szirtes' blog about the value or otherwise of the constitutional monarchy in the United Kingdom.

My first thoughts are that the constitutional monarchy and parliamentary system that exists in the United Kingdom is good and right for the nation.

I feel that there is something of a refreshing openness about the way things are done in the UK.  In particular I like it that Members of Parliament are responsible to their constituencies and return to them at periodic intervals to hold surgeries and to explain to the electorate living there what is going on and why and also to be available to address local issues. I really like this. It's an important and vital service and a safety valve. It's a point of contact which operates both ways; it's like the circulation of blood in the human body which goes from the top down and at the same time from the bottom up if you like a metaphor.

In the imaginary Republic of Kafka the system is very different. Lists of anonymous names are circulated at election times. Parties are voted for. Coalitions are cobbled together after weeks and months of wrangling. The ones who finish third can be the leaders. It happens. The whole business is like a body in continual need of blood transfusions. And this happens; anonymous ministers materialize and disappear with alarming regularity.

When things go wrong in the Republic of Kafka parliamentary investigations take place behind closed doors; there are 3 or 4 such investigations going on or just finishing even as I write these words. The outcomes of these investigations will not be clear  and the good people of the Republic will not even get to see the questions and answer sessions on TV.

The President of the Republic of Kafka is elected by the parliament which as I have explained is an election of party lists. No individual is ever responsible to any constituency and so there is no way-in and no face to face feedback for the average person.

To me as a poet the UK's constitutional monarchy is like a butterfly whilst the imaginary Republic of Kafka  is like a moth. The first flies in the broad light of the day and the other flies in the darkness.


Tuesday 5 June 2012

Nuclear rods? "We throw them in the sea"


Revealing and worrying words, which serve here to illustrate the hidden processes at work and the dangers inherent in the nuclear energy industry, were published in a press interview with journalist Freda Meissner-Blau (84) in the Austrian newspaper Presse am Sonntag on 3rd June 2012 under the banner Letzte Fragen (Last Questions) by reporter Bettina Steiner.

Translation here:

I was a translator for the nuclear industry in Paris . . . they wanted to sell graphite-type atomic reactors in England and Germany and I had to translate the product description. Therefore they assigned to me two engineers to explain the words not to be found in any lexicon. One day I asked: What do you actually do with the spent fuel rods? One said only: "Stupid question" and slammed the door behind him. The other told me they were looking here and there to find a solution. "At present we do it like this," he explained, "A robot cuts up the fuel rods and we put them in liquid glass which is then covered with steel and then cover the steel with concrete. Then we throw them in the sea." How long will it hold? "We can't test that in the laboratory" but he thought it was "500 years." That was the end of my translating career with the atomic industry.


a nuclear-free beach . . . for now

Monday 4 June 2012

haiku




and still the lizard


by the shoreline


marks  time in the sand


Sunday 3 June 2012

The Chernobyl Cloud



Twenty-six years after the first radioactive rains from Chernobyl fell on the greater part of Europe the final restrictions on sheep movement at the hill farms of Wales have now been lifted.

Unfortunately for some us living elsewhere in Europe not all administrations and governments have been as diligent as the Welsh in tackling the Chernobyl problem or in giving the appropriate advice to the public.


Saturday 2 June 2012

No Comment



true artist travels light


with
scissors 
paints
and cloths 
brushed
into
the travel bag 
of dreams 

let out of school 
the apparition moves 
within 
the silver 
surface 
of the mirror's 
geometric 
spirit 

and
hard 
below 
the murderous sky  
the times 
transfix
another 
light 
in s-
pace