TEA LIKE  RIVER WATER

by Roger R. Angle

        I stir my tea now, and I am near

        73 years old, and I scoop up

        the swirling tea and it is the

        color of the Ninnescah River

        when I was a child. It is

        foolish now to remember my

        childhood so long ago.  

        I remember the water

        in the river by the

        cabin that is probably

        no longer there. I remember

        the sand and the trees like

        a jungle I ran through in my

        heavy boots. I remember

        they laced up high,

        I felt secure and strong

        in them. I would run through
        the jungle and climb the hill
        and run with the rabbits

        in the farmer’s field. I

        remember one time after

        a fire running through the

        stubble and the blackened

        earth and the black dust

        rising up, but I don’t

        run any more. I am

        about to be 73 next

        week, older than my father

        ever lived to be. He died at

        72 in a small apartment, shacked

        up with an 18-year-old girl. I

        met her once when they took me to

        lunch. He bought a Cadillac and

        a beautiful boat, a wooden

        Chris Craft, things he always

        wanted. Poor man, I feel sorry
        for him now. Too many years

        married to my angry mother,

        a nightmare for him

        and for me, too. Now

        I drink my tea and am

        glad to be living longer than he

        lived and happy I am not he,

        or anything like
        he used to be.  

July 28, 2011
Culver City, CA

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© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

A POEM

I haven't felt like blogging much lately, so here is a poem:

PRIMITIVE TIMES

                It’s strange, there’s only one

                room in the house where

                you can piss or take a crap.

                I long for more primitive times

                when you could piss in the

                river or dig a hole to take a

                crap, when you could

                chop down trees to build

                a fort and kill animals

                with a spear. I long for the

                taste of fresh red meat that

                I kill myself. The truth

                is I’m growing old, and I

                long for anything

                but this.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

LORCA AND I

Federico Garcia Lorca is my favorite poet, although I love others: Neruda, Rilke, even Borges, whom I think of mostly as a fiction writer.

Lorca has a poem that goes:

FAREWELL

If I die,
leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I can see him.)

The reaper is harvesting the wheat.
(From my balcony I can hear him.)

If I die,
leave the balcony open!

I am at a certain point in my life, where I think of this poem. I was just sitting outside, on the deck, like a balcony, drinking beer and reading Borges in the sun.

I've been an outdoor guy all my life, and I still love the outdoors, even if it is just sitting outside.

I am very fortunate to have passed this love onto my son and grandchildren, who all love nature, too.

I am fortunate, indeed.

If I die, leave the balcony open!

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

WHEN IS ART WORTH A DAMN?

Our criteria for art must be both subjective and objective.

As some great critic whose name I forget said, we don't spend the time to analyze something we don't admire.

First of all, I think, our admiration cannot come from what we tell ourselves. The power of the work must somehow come from the work itself.

I know it is fashionable these days for art critics and curators to tell us that limp, lazy, good-for-nothing art is somehow powerful and hip just because they say it is.

But I don't agree. If art is bad, it's bad. Period. that goes for music and sculpture and painting and writing and dance and any other art form.

Just because someone says it's art, that doesn't make it art.

So let's pick out some examples of good art and bad art and see if we can figure out why the good stuff is good, and why the bad stuff is bad.

First, let's compare two poems:

Gacela of Unforeseen Love - Federico Garcia Lorca
[trans. W S Merwin]

 

No one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb.
No one knew that you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.

 

A thousand Persian ponies fell asleep
in the moonlit plaza of your forehead,
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.

 

Between plaster and jasmines, your glance
was a pale branch of seeds.
I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say always,

always, always: garden of my agony,
your body elusive always,
the blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already lightless for my death.

Now let's take a look at "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer:

TREES 

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,	5
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.	10
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,	5
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.	10
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

I admire one of these poems greatly, and I despise the other one. Can you figure out which is which and why?

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca