Fleurs du Mal Magazine
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Hélène
Azur ! c’est moi… Je viens des grottes de la mort
Entendre l’onde se rompre aux degrés sonores,
Et je revois les galères dans les aurores
Ressusciter de l’ombre au fil des rames d’or.
Mes solitaires mains appellent les monarques
Dont la barbe de sel amusait mes doigts purs ;
Je pleurais. Ils chantaient leurs triomphes obscurs
Et les golfes enfuis aux poupes de leurs barques.
J’entends les conques profondes et les clairons
Militaires rythmer le vol des avirons ;
Le chant clair des rameurs enchaîne le tumulte,
Et les Dieux, à la proue héroïque exaltés
Dans leur sourire antique et que l’écume insulte,
Tendent vers moi leurs bras indulgents et sculptés.
Paul Valéry
(1871-1945)
Hélène
Poème
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Chickamauga
One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure; for this child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest—victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors’ camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.
The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. The man loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely, as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver’s art. Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with illogical ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied. Finding a place where some bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way across and fell again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary foe, putting all to the sword.
Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to his base of operations. Alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like one, the mightiest, he could not
curb the lust for war,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror—breathless, blind with tears—lost in the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away was a strange, muffed thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature’s victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother’s heart was breaking for her missing child.
Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of the evening was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he had rested, and he no longer wept. With some blind instinct which impelled to action he struggled through the undergrowth about him and came to a more open ground—on his right the brook, to the left a gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees; over all, the gathering gloom of twilight. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. It frightened and repelled him; instead of recrossing, in the direction whence he had come, he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal—a dog, a pig—he could not name it; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing to their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. But something in form or movement of this object—something in the awkwardness of its approach—told him that it was not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the long menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him were alive with them—all moving toward the brook.
They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in pairs and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as one could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.
Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an elder observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though unfamiliarly clad. He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this—something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements—reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father’s negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement—had ridden them so, “making believe” they were his horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride. The man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw—from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child; the child, terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it and took a more serious view of the situation. And so the clumsy multitude dragged itself slowly and painfully along in hideous pantomime—moved forward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a sound of going—in silence profound, absolute.
Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. It struck the creeping figures and gave them monstrous shadows, which caricatured their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with which so many of them were freaked and maculated. It sparkled on buttons and bits of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the child turned toward the growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible companions; in a few moments had passed the foremost of the throng—not much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march, conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that his forces did not straggle. Surely such a leader never before had such a following.
Scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroachment of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the leader’s mind, were coupled no significant associations: an occasional blanket tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound together with a string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a broken rifle—such things, in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the “spoor” of men flying from their hunters. Everywhere near the creek, which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden into mud by the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in the use of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both directions; the ground had been twice passed over—in advance and in retreat. A few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in thousands. Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and reforming in lines, had passed the child on every side—had almost trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not awakened him. Almost within a stone’s throw of where he lay they had fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, “the thunder of the captains and the shouting.” He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory.
The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek, reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood; the less desperately wounded had stained them in crossing. On them, too, the child now crossed with eager steps; he was going to the fire. As he stood upon the farther bank he turned about to look at the companions of his march. The advance was arriving at the creek. The stronger had already drawn themselves to the brink and plunged their faces into the flood. Three or four who lay without motion appeared to have no heads. At this the child’s eyes expanded with wonder; even his hospitable understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as that. After slaking their thirst these men had not had the strength to back away from the water, nor to keep their heads above it. They were drowned. In rear of these, the open spaces of the forest showed the leader as many formless figures of his grim command as at first; but not nearly so many were in motion. He waved his cap for their encouragement and smilingly pointed with his weapon in the direction of the guiding light—a pillar of fire to this strange exodus.
Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of woods, passed through it easily in the red illumination, climbed a fence, ran across a field, turning now and again to coquet with his responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling. Desolation everywhere! In all the wide glare not a living thing was visible. He cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. He ran about, collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he flung in his sword—a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His military career was at an end.
Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire plantation, with its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He recognized the blazing building as his own home!
For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin. There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman—the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles—the work of a shell.
The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries—something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey—a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.
Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.
Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914)
Chickamauga
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More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bierce, Ambrose, Bierce, Ambrose
Madonna
Hoe minzaam heeft uw kozend woord geklonken
Uw zilvren woord, maar al te goed verstaan!
‘k Zag in uw oog een glimlach en een traan,
Blauw bloempje, waarin morgenparels blonken;
Gij wijst mij naar de moedermaagd, ik waan
Mij in aanbidding voor haar weggezonken…
Daar voel ik me eindeloozen vreê geschonken:
Ik zie naar haar – Mathilde, u bid ik aan:
Gij, die de moeder mijner liefde zijt,
Zijt moeder Gods, want God is mij de liefde:
U zij mijn hart, mijn vlammend hart gewijd!
Een kerk rijst allerwegen aan uw zij –
O, deernisvolle ziel, die niemand griefde,
O, mijn Madonna! bid o bid voor mij!
Jacques Perk
(1859 – 1881)
Madonna
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Anacreontic
On the tender myrtle-branches,
In the meadow lotus-grassed,
While the wearied sunlight softly
To the Happy Islands passed,
Reddest lips the reddest vintage
Of the bright Aegean quaffing,
There I saw them lie, the evening
Hazes rippled with their laughing.
Round them boys, with hair as golden
As Queen Cytherea’s own is,
Sang to lyres wreathed with ivy
Of the beautiful Adonis
(Of Adonis the Desired,
He has perished on the mountain,)
While their voices, rising, falling,
As the murmur of a fountain,
Glittered upwards at the mention
Of his beauty unavailing ;
Scattered into rainbowed teardrops
To the at ai of the wailing.
Digby Mackworth Dolben
(1848 – 1867)
Anacreontic
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Digby Mackworth Dolben
The 2020 Virtual Brooklyn Book Festival will be the 15th anniversary of free literary programming!
This fall an array of national and international literary stars and emerging authors will participate as part of a Virtual Festival including Sigrid Nunez, Lee Child, Salman Rushdie, Mia Couto, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Joyce Carol Oates, Adrian Tomine, Emily St. John Mandel, Claudia Rankine, Edmund White, Marie Lu, Colson Whitehead, and more.
Plus independent publishers, literary magazines, and literary organizations will be showcased in our Virtual Literary Marketplace starting August 15.
Each year the Festival also includes a week of Bookend events — see them virtually this year from locations all over the city. This year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Bookends!
At Children’s Day, more than 50 authors will participate in a full day of author readings and performances, workshops, activities, and book signings — all virtual.
Some of the children’s authors in 2020 are Max Brallier, Tami Charles, Ben Clanton, Chris Grabenstein, Carlos Hernandez, Oliver Jeffers, Varian Johnson, Meg Medina, and R.L. Stine.
About the Brooklyn Book Festival: The Brooklyn Book Festival was launched in 2006 to address the need for a major literary event that embraced the diverse constituencies of New York City. The Festival’s mission is to celebrate published literature and support the literary community through programming that connects New York City readers with local, national, and international authors, publishers, and booksellers. To this end the festival develops original programs that are hip, smart, and diverse and collaborates to present free and low-cost programming including the Festival Day, Bookend Events, YA Outloud, and the BKBF Children’s Day. BKBF is presented by the non-profit Brooklyn Book Festival, Inc. and the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council.
The Festival is proud of its roster of supporters including the Amazon Literary Partnership, the Baillie Gifford Non Fiction Prize, the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office, Brookfield Properties and J.P. Morgan Chase, Con Edison, Disney, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Kirby Family Foundation, Little A, the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Members Brad Lander, Stephen Levin and Carlos Menchaca, NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund in New York Community Trust, New York State Council on the Arts, Lit Tap, NYU. The Festival’s media sponsors include C-SPAN, Book TV, the New York Review of Books, and WNYC.
Be sure to visit www.old.brooklynbookfestival.org or check out the official Facebook page, follow the Festival on Instagram (@bkbookfest), on Twitter (@BKBF), and past Festival photos on Flickr.
2020 Brooklyn Book Festival
Sunday, October 4 = 10am — 8pm
Virtual Festival Day
Saturday, October 3 = 10am — 4pm
Virtual Children’s Day
Saturday, October 3 = 1pm — 6pm
Y.A. Out Loud
September 28 — October 5
Virtual Bookend Events
Confirmed Authors Festival 2020: Salar Abdohbv – Aria Aber – Ayad Akhtar – Becky Albertalli – Rochelle Alers – A. Andrews – Diannely Antigua – Zaina Arafat – Will Arbery – Derf Backderf – Brit Bennett – Carl Bergman – Marie-Helene Bertino – Mark Bibbins – Chelsea Bieker – Betsy Bird – Eula Biss – Max Brallier – Libba Bray – Bill Buford – Susannah Cahalan – Patrice Caldwell – Ada Calhoun – Kacen Callender – Maisy Card – Veronica Chambers – Ruth Chan – Tami Charles – Lee Child – Dave Chisholm – Ben Clanton – Brandy Colbert – Zoraida Córdova – Eduardo C. Corral – Mia Couto – Mike Curato – Angela Dominguez – Sophie Escabasse – Debbi Michiko Florence – Nick Flynn – Curdella Forbes – Carolyn Forché – Gilbert Ford – Kelli Jo Ford – Lauren Francis-Sharma – Marcial Gala – Matt Gallagher – Camryn Garrett – Sasha Geffen – Nelson George – Hafizah Geter – Julia Gfrörer – Paolo Giordano – Chris Grabenstein – Isabel Greenberg – Chris Grine – Kristen Gudsnuk – Romesh Gunesekera – Shawn Harris – Mike Hawthorne – Carlos Hernandez – Amy Herzog – Cathy Park Hong – Mark Honigsbaum – Kiku Hughes – Michael R. Jackson – Victoria James – Oliver Jeffers – N.K. Jemisin – Beverly Jenkins – Kim Johnson – Leah Johnson – Varian Johnson – Tayari Jones – Wayne Jordan – Stephanie Kelton – Jessica Kim – Lily King – Peter Kispert – Yusef Komunyakaa – Andrew Krivak – Ryan La Sala – Stephan Lee – Attica Locke – Marie Lu – Alain Mabanckou – Deborah Madison – Maureen Mahon – Kevin Noble Maillard – Ricardo Alberto Maldonado – Emily St. John Mandel – Ilana Masad – Janae Marks – Bernice L. McFadden – Karen McManus – Juana Medina – Meg Medina – Fernanda Melchor – Colin Meloy – Maaza Mengiste – Kate Messner – Adrienne Miller – Lydia Millet – Jonah Mixon-Webster – Marcus J. Moore – John Murillo – Daniel Nayeri – Emily Nemens – Andrés Neuman – Kevin Nguyen – Lynn Nottage – Sigrid Nunez – Joyce Carol Oates – Tracy O’Neill – Tochi Onyebuchi – Claribel Ortega – Carey Pietsch – Rory Power – Claudia Rankine – Raúl the Third – Calvin Reid – Kiley Reid – Jared Reinmuth – Justin A. Reynolds – Hallie Rubenhold – Salman Rushdie – Kate Elizabeth Russell – Joe Sacco – Aisha Saeed – Jerry Saltz – Maria Scrivan – Tariq Shah – Kevin Sherry – Adania Shibli – Curtis Sittenfeld – Bishakh Som – Mika Song – Leslie Stein – R.L. Stine – Emma Straub – Brandon Taylor – Emily Temple – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Héctor Tobar -Adrian Tomine – Laura van den Berg – Juan Pablo Villalobos – Ivan Vladislavić – Karolina Waclawiak – Kawai Strong Washburn – Jesse Wegman – Edmund White – Colson Whitehead – Rick Wilson – Alexis Wright – Shannon Wright – Yao Xiao – Bianca Xunise – Gene Luen Yang – Brigit Young – Lidia Yuknavitch – Kate Zambreno –
Brooklyn Book Festival Announces: 15th Anniversary Will Be An All-Virtual Festival
• https://brooklynbookfestival.org/
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Poetry. California Interest. Chicanx Studies. In his debut short collection, poet Alan Chazaro takes us from the moonlit Bay Bridge to dark Oakland bars to tire shops to backyards to the fireworks and dirt paths of Mexico City.
Chazaro’s speakers battle to find internal truths in a world defined by external opposition. Here, we glide from Frank Ocean to 80s synthpop, from Half Moon Bay to Athens, from Oscar De La Hoya to Wolverine. This is a collection about navigating multiple worlds, about traversing from boyhood into manhood. In poems that crackle with “scorpions in the dark” and “Lauryn Hill’s voodoo” and “fat / Adidas laces and barbershop fades,” Chazaro explores what it means to curate a sense of self as a millennial first-generation California Chicanx writer. His speakers are driven by a desire to control their identity in a world where they haven’t been able to control much else—as the children of immigrants, as the occupants of ever-shifting spaces, as bodies that belong and don’t belong.
Structured like a rap mixtape, each poem on the “track list” is an ode to some vibration of memory, sound, or Chazaro’s native Bay Area landscape. THIS IS NOT A FRANK OCEAN COVER ALBUM, just as we are not ever actually ourselves—but a collection of fragments from our component influences and cultures, a reflection of the choices we make in search of a more genuine self.
“I say fuck
because it feels right
about now,
and I say love because
what wrong
could it bring?
I haven’t shot a pistol
since my stepdad
flung his Desert Eagle
from the bedroom and took us
to burst freedom as kids.”
• Winner of the Spring 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition
• Alan Chazaro is the author of THIS IS NOT A FRANK OCEAN COVER ALBUM (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and PIÑATA THEORY (Black Lawrence Press, 2020). He is currently an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, a columnist at Palette Poetry, and is raising money for NBA arena workers during COVID-19.
Alan Chazaro
This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album
2019
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
ISBN: 978-1-62557-825-9
Poetry
Paperback
Pages:40
Price: $ 9.95
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, Archive C-D, Archive C-D
Wiedersehen
Dein Schreiten bebt
In Schauen stirbt der Blick
Der Wind
Spielt
Blasse Bänder.
Du
Wendest
Fort!
Den Raum umwirbt die Zeit!
August Stramm
(1874-1915)
Wiedersehen
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More in: Archive S-T, Archive S-T, Stramm, August, Stramm, August, WAR & PEACE
Love
Hush, hush, O wind!
Between the leaves jou creep.
You grope like something blind.
The tree tops as they sleep,
The standing spears of grass,
You’ll touch them when you pass.
Still, still, O love!
My need awaits your dower,
My foolish heart your power;
Though sorrow dawn anew
I may not strive with you.
Cromwell, Gladys
[1885-1919]
Love
(Poem)
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell
Cassandra
Of all the luckless women ever born,
Or ever to be born here on our earth,
Most pitied be Cassandra, from her birth
Condemned to woes unearned by her. Forlorn,
She early read great Ilium’s doom, and tried,
Clear-eyed, clear-voiced, her countrymen to warn.
But–she Apollo’s passion in high scorn
Had once repelled, and of his injured pride
The God for her had bred this punishment,–
That good, or bad, all things she prophesied
Though true as truth, should ever be decried
And flouted by the people. As she went
Far from old Priam’s gates among the crowd,
To save her country was her heart intent.
Pure, fearless, on an holy errand bent,
They called her “mad,” who was a Princess proud.
“Alas, the City falls! Beware the horse!
Woe, woe, the Greeks!” Ah! why was she endowed
With this sad gift? Able to pierce the cloud
That veils the future,–in its wasting course
She could not stop the storm. Bitter the pain
When those she loved and trusted–weak resource–
Her prophecies believed not; when the force
Of all her pleading spent itself in vain.
Poor Maid! She knew no greater agony
When dragged a slave in Agamemnon’s train.
And though she fell–by Clytemnestra slain–
She smiled on Death who eased her misery.
For oh–what grief to one of faithful heart
It is–to know the evils that must be.
Helpless their doom to make the imperilled see,
Unskilled to shield them from the fatal dart!
Helen Leah Reed
(1864–1926)
Cassandra
(Poem)
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More in: #More Poetry Archives, Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R
The Lion
I feel the lines of yellow sunli^t bum
My body, alternating with each bar
Of shadow. Captive in my cage, I yearn
For the large river where somnambular
I drank at twilight, listening lest some star
Betray me quenching the salt blood. But far
Is the cool river! Golden sun-streaks bum
Athwart my body, in between each bar
Of shadow. Now I range in circular
Pursuit of my own power, now taciturn,
I lie. My refluent sinews fetters are ;
And with reverberant fires, I lash, I spurn
This body which the yellow sun-streaks burn:
My passion mocks these lines of cinnabar.
Cromwell, Gladys
[1885-1919]
The Lion
(Poem)
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2020 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize!
These are finely crafted poems that reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of poems that reflect on just what paradise might be. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go.
Roger Robinson’s range is wide: the joys and pains of family life; the ubiquitous presence of racism, both subtle and unsubtle; observations on the threatening edge of violence below the surface energies of Black British territories in London; emblematic poems on the beauty and often bizarre strangeness of the world of animals; quizzical responses to the strange, the heartening, and the appalling in incidents or accounts of incidents encountered in daily life; reflections on the purposes and costs of making art, as in fine poems on a George Stubbs’ painting, John Coltrane’s Ascension and cocaine. Not least, in the sequence of poems that reflect on the meanings of the Grenfell Tower fire, Roger Robinson finds ways to move beyond a just indignation to uncover the undertones of experience that bring us nearer to the human reality of that event.
The collection’s title points to the underlying philosophy expressed in these poems: that earthly joy is, or ought to be, just within, but is often just beyond our reach, denied by racism, misogyny, physical cruelty and those with the class power to deny others their share of worldly goods and pleasures. A Portable Paradise is not the emptiness of material accumulation, but joy in an openness to people, places, the sensual pleasures of food and the rewards to be had from the arts of word, sound and visual enticement – in short an “insatiable hunger” for life. The poems express a fierce anger against injustice, but also convey the irrepressible sense that Roger Robinson cannot help but love people for their humour, oddity and generosity of spirit.
These are finely crafted poems, that reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of poems that reflect on just what paradise might be. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go.
• Roger Robinson is a writer and performer who lives between London and Trinidad. His first full poetry collection, The Butterfly Hotel, was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize. He has toured extensively with the British Council and is a co-founder of both Spoke Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Kitchen.
• Review by Bernardine Evaristo for the New Statesman on Wednesday, November 13, 2019: “A Portable Paradise (Peepal Tree Press) is the fourth poetry collection by Trinidadian-British poet Roger Robinson. It’s also his finest, ranging from the most breath-taking poems about the Grenfell Tower fire to the most exquisitely moving poems about the premature birth of his son, who had to fight for his life in an incubator. His poems are deep, mature, moving and inventive.”
A Portable Paradise
Roger Robinson (author)
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd
ISBN: 9781845234331
Number of pages: 144
Dimensions: 206 x 135 mm
Paperback
Published: 08/07/2019
£9.99
# new poetry
Roger Robinson:
A Portable Paradise
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
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Con Large Comme Un Estuaire
Con large comme un estuaire
Où meurt mon amoureux reflux
Tu as la saveur poissonnière
l’odeur de la bite et du cul
La fraîche odeur trouduculière
Femme ô vagin inépuisable
Dont le souvenir fait bander
Tes nichons distribuent la manne
Tes cuisses quelle volupté
même tes menstrues sanglantes
Sont une liqueur violente
La rose-thé de ton prépuce
Auprès de moi s’épanouit
On dirait d’un vieux boyard russe
Le chibre sanguin et bouffi
Lorsqu’au plus fort de la partouse
Ma bouche à ton noeud fait ventouse.
Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880 – 1918)
Con Large Comme Un Estuaire
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