Early Poetry Friday: Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo

This is one of my favorite poems. All because of the killer last line. (More on that later.)

Photo from the official site of the musée du Louvre.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

the rest is here. (Then come back and tell me what you think of that last line. I have it taped to my laptop, and every day I look at it and it speaks the truth to me.)

----Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The original poem in German, as well as a different translation, is here.

Poetry Friday is hosted by Stacy at Some Novel Ideas.  I'll try to check in as I can around my school visits and book panels for The Virginia Festival of the Book. 

Poetry Friday: Rilke's Autumn Day

Today's Poetry Friday post is courtesy of my agent, Tina Wexler. Not only does she do all the Super Agent stuff, like sell my books, read my drivel and suggest ways to make it not drivel, make me laugh, and ask after my family, she also has an MFA in Poetry. It's one of the reasons I chose her to represent me. Not to sell my poetry, but to have someone with a poetry-loving ear close by.

Yesterday, she sent me a notice from Shelf Awareness about a new North Point Press book of Rilke poems, a bilingual collection titled simply The Poetry of Rilke.  This was the accompanying poem, from the book:

Autumn Day
by Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Edward Snow

Lord: it is time. Your summer was superb.
Lay your shadows on the sundials,
and in the meadows let the winds go free.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them only two more southern days,
urge them on to completion and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house will never build one now.
Whoever is alone now will long remain so,
will stay awake, read books, write long letters
and wander restless back and forth
along the tree-lined streets, as the leaves drift down.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day.

Poetry Friday: How surely gravity's law

I didn't find this poem; it found me, wandering about, searching far and wide for something to post. "What are you doing, way out here and alone?" it scolded me.  So I came back and sat inside it for awhile.

From Rilke's Book of Hours

(as translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

How surely gravity's law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of the smallest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing---

each stone, blossom, child---

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we each belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth's intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God's heart;

they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by its founder, Kelly Herold,  at her new blog, Crossover.  So glad you're back, Kelly!

In Case You're Asleep Today

I'm still in the throes of work (plus I took a three day YogaFit workshop) so I find that I have nothing for you but another Rilke quote. But believe me, it's a spit ball right between the eyes.

"The admiration with with art hurls itself upon things (everything without exception) ought to be so impetuous, so forceful, and so radiant that the object has no time to recall its ugliness or depravity.” --- from the book, The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke, edited and translated by Ulrich Baer.

P.S. There's a blurb on the back of this book that reads: "Boy, Rilke is a kook. [...] I have to say that I love his point of view." ---Gus Van Sant, director of Good Will Hunting and My Own Private Idaho.

Rilke: Building the cathedral

"When writing poetry one is always assisted and even carried away by the rhythm of all things outside, for the lyric cadence is that of nature: of the waters, the wind, the night. But in order to shape prose rhythmically, one has to immerse oneself deeply within oneself and detect the blood's anonymous, multivaried rhythm. Prose is to be built like a cathedral:  there one is truly without name, without ambition, without help: up in the scaffolding, alone with one's conscience."  ---Rainer Maria Rilke

Gee, Rilke, thanks for the encouragement. 

A Certain Day

Variation on a Theme by Rilke
by Denise Levertov

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

The other pen

Rilke had two pens: one for writing letters and paying bills, and one for his "real work" of poetry and novels. Guess which one got used the most? (Hint: Rilke penned an estimated 11,000 letters, about 7,000 of which are in print, mostly in German and French.)*

Before he died, he did realize that his letters had become an essential part of his life's work and gave permission for them to be published. But it got me wondering.

Which of our words written with "the other pen" are more powerful than we ever guess?

I'm thinking of an appreciation letter I wrote to my son's first grade teacher, which she later told me stayed on her refrigerator all year.

I'm thinking of the notes my mother wrote in the margins of a paperback copy of A Circle of Quiet.

I'm thinking of the message someone handed my daughter at school on 9/11/2001, letting her know that her dad had survived the attack on the Pentagon.

Rilke filled his pens with ink. We charge our laptops.
He wrote letters. We write email and blog posts.
He wrote novels and poetry. Some of us do that, too.
Everyday we ink and tap and send out words.
After that, who knows?

For as Rilke wrote in one of his "other pen" letters, "...our life is vast, and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry."


*From the introduction to "The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke" edited and translated by Ulrich Baer.

Necessity

"A work of art is good
if it has grown out of necessity."
---Rainer Maria Rilke

I've been thinking about that statement since I read it yesterday morning. Does my writing grow out of necessity? Or I could also ask: is my writing necessary?

From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:

Main Entry:

¹nec·es·sary

Etymology:

Middle English necessarie, from Latin necessarius, from necesse necessary, probably from ne- not + cedere to withdraw

Date: 14th century

1 a: of an inevitable nature : inescapable b (1): logically unavoidable (2): that cannot be denied without contradiction c: determined or produced by the previous condition of things d: compulsory2: absolutely needed : required

I think the part of the definition I identify with the most is: "that cannot be denied without contradiction." My writing isn't required or inevitable; but if I avoid or deny it, I find that my life starts to become one big contradiction of everything I value.

"Not + withdraw" is pretty powerful, too. Writing is engagement with the world, even as it is done in solitude.

And you?

Poetry Friday: In widening circles

After an intense week of revisions, I'm grateful for the balm of Poetry Friday. Last week, I was late. (Really late. I posted my poem on Monday of this week.) This week, without an original poem, and without much time, I was worried I would have nothing to post at all.

Then I opened Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

From The Book of a Monastic Life

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

---Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I want the story I'm revising to be a falcon, a storm, and a great song. I want to give myself to it. And yet, I circle, and circle.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Elaine at Wild Rose Reader. She is also interviewing Paul Janeczko!