rene char
Hello, blogworld. Rogger the Blogger here. Who, as you see, has been away for a time. But, he has been reading, and in fact stumbled into translations of Rene Char recently, one of which gave him the best poetry jolt he's had in some time. The translator is Susanne Dubroff, and the poem in question opens with these lines:
"You feel pressed to write
As if you were behind in life"
Rushing to catch up to the present, you might say. A feeling, I'm sure, more common than any of us would like. The presentation of a fixed condition, always about to reach the receding shirttail of the faster racer. But, then, what would it be like to be "ahead in life?"
I hope to have more to say about Char when I finish reading the book.
posted by roger mitchell @ 11:51 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hey Roger--nice to run across you, blogwise.
I don't have too much to say about Rene Char, it's been awhile since I went trolling in the New Directions Selected, but I can definitely identify with the lines you quoted. Maybe it has something to do with my inability to address the social, political, & spiritual concerns of the day.
On the other hand, it seems to me like being ahead in life is a feeling that belongs to what poetry can do for us, to throw us out of the way of the explosion while still having a sense of it, a second to breathe, an exhilaration before the gravity of all things comes to re-assert itself.
Chariots--
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