Vanishing-Line - Brossura

Yang, Jeffrey

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1555975941 ISBN 13: 9781555975944

Casa editrice: Graywolf Pr, 2011

Riassunto

Night garden, moon
calendar, soft mint scent.
Warm wind, silent. Gold,
silver debris.
—from "Yennecott"

Jeffrey Yang's second collection of poems is an exploration of the various lines—horizon line, time line, blood line, poetic line—beyond which so much vanishes from sight, from memory. With historical documentation, lyrical association, and artistic virtuosity, Yang creates a collage of elegies, losses that are private and those that define our nation. Vanishing-Line is an ambitious book by one of the most fascinating new poets in America.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Jeffrey Yang is the author of An Aquarium. He is an editor at New Directions Publishing Corp. and lives in Beacon, New York. His translation of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo's June Fourth Elegies was published in 2012.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

Vanishing-Line

POEMS By Jeffrey Yang

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2011 Jeffrey Yang
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55597-594-4

Contents

Place.................................3Throne................................5Lyric Suite...........................23Two Spanish Poems.....................37Tide Table............................47Elegy for Ling........................57Yennecott.............................65

Chapter One

    Place

      to perceive
    a voice in the storm

    unwanted voice
    away from home

      wave-break

    vessel on vessel
    floating

    clouds clear wind

    starboard waves, no,
    whales approach

Throne

Have the poets left anywhere in need of patching? Or did you, after imaginings, recognize her abode?

—'ANTARA, 6TH CENTURY

    out of the dragon's mouth
    freed from the body of death
    in the grave in the sea

    cast out a fool, mere
    shadow puppet

    twice dead, son
    of the widow of Zarephath
    Elijah's resurrected

    city we would raze anyway
    over and again

    Medes, Babylonians

    lines burying lines
    of our existence


      * * *


    or was it Sin
    of the moon
    in his brothers' place

    on the hissarlik mound
    bound by Tigris and Khosr

    who changed the river's course
    for the palace on Kuyunjik

    city of 18 gates slaves built
    for his glory, Assur's,
    forms center and boundary

    two hundred years later its
    ancient name buried

    Xenophon passing thru thought:
    "Achaemenids destroyed this Medean city"


      * * *


    the actual dispersed
    in memories, legends
    and their exegesis, geographers
    or travelers, fragmented
    in earth annals, curls
    of a beard, palm's shade
    fish cloak, apkallu winged
    sage, guardian spirits
    scarab seal

    foundation deposits
    undeciphered till the 1850s

    while the pillage continues

    vaults lean against throne for profit
    avarice off the gold-standard


      * * *


    what Rawlinson Westmacott missed, beauty
    other than the Elgin marbles

    strange beauty in the service of power
    a renaissance

    Of Medici Angelico magi

    Sassetti's books plated
    à mon pouvoir ... à mon pouvoir ...

    omers of wine
    omers of first fruits

    cedar pine cypress
    carried from snow-capped
    Amanus, Baltai quarry
    a divine revelation

    Mosul marble alabaster
    mottled barley of Mt. Nipur,

    Kapridargilâ breccia, gi?nugallu
    of Mt. Ammanana

    presiding colossi, winged
    bull winged lion with
    human heads

    "as the bombs fell
    I ran thru the streets
    watching the bombs fall on TV"


      * * *


    carved on throne-room walls:

    I besieged, I conquered,
    I carried off the spoils

    armory making peace
    relative to power

    walked upon a river
    fish swimming inside

    Michael, how your lines surfaced
    The lines through these words

    form other, still longer lines


      * * *


    Izdubar begins empire

    and the banks a deluge of accounts

    poor commodities to depend upon
    forever unsettled, farmed humanity

    at the heart of history
    generations forced
    into wilderness
    camps, unable to wander

    that a world without guns
    would be a world without eternity
    power in the throne-room suite
    dispersed tragedy


      * * *


    library tablet found underground:

    dove sent forth returned
    swallow sent forth returned
    raven sent forth saw corpses
    it ate, then wandered away

    animals sent forth to the four winds
    I poured a libation, built an altar
    on a mountain peak, cut seven herbs
    placed reeds, pines, sigmar beneath

    the gods gathered at the burning
    the gods gathered at the good burning
    the gods gathered like flies over the sacrifice


      * * *


    define the four quarters of the earth
    as the Zagros mountains east and north
    arid plains south, west further

    to sea

    kings trace past the 21st century BC
    time's mirror sorrow

    mirage of space and boundary

    he proceeded "to break down
    every wall that seemed likely to contain
    relics of the past"

    scattered to the highest bidder


      * * *


    are those lotus blossoms
    patterning the pavement

    and the walls of gazelles and onagers
    urdimmu the lion-legged, eagle-footed
    djinn

    prisoners and deportees
    conifers and grapevines

    in a river valley between wooded mountains
    water sweeps waste heaps

    "conquest of my hands"

    not a window but a field


      * * *


    wall after wall of conquest

    power's assurance, tradition
    of self-glory

    temporal record spread
    thru the halls, publicity
    peace thru the threat of war

    laborers in turbans with earflaps
    tall headdresses of Phoenician women

    captives in animal skins
    spoils in transport, foodbearers

    carry the baskets, mold the bricks
    slabs sledge hauls with ropes

    horsemen and charioteers
    archers at siege at siege

    gateway bull:
    "From the upper sea of the setting sun ...
    to the lower sea of the rising sun ...
    made all the rulers of the world
    bow down at my feet"

    tribute from Hezekiah of Judah


      * * *


    "pious shepherd, fearful of the great gods"
    translated to
    "expert shepherd, favorite of the great gods"

    along with new bronze casts
    calmed the waters
    with canebrake swamps

    built aqueducts, canals
    orchards watered in summer
    in winter a thousand fields

    planted a cylinder
    of words

    prism of words

    language
    disintegrates
    like a crystal throne

    the pen moves without
    the hand knowing


      * * *


    rose

    leaves on a tomb

    foster favorable circumstances
    and your inclinations will bloom


      * * *


    temple ziggurat base built over
    to whom do we pray to

    ladder or shield

    Ishtar, daughter of Sin
    or Hea, of the flood of the sea

    Herodotus:
    "The shrine contains no image,
    and no one spends the night there except
    (if we are to believe the Chaldeans
    who are the priests of Bel) one
    Assyrian woman, all alone,
    whoever it may be
    that the god has chosen"


      * * *

by the river

in Nineveh, Austen Henry Layard, 1840:

"The site was covered with grass and flowers, and the enclosure, formed by the long line of mounds which marked the ancient walls of the city, afforded pasture to the flocks of a few poor Arabs who had pitched their black tents within it. There was at that time nothing to indicate the existence of the splendid remains of Assyrian palaces which were covered by the heaps of earth and rubbish. It was believed that the great edifices and monuments ... had perished with her people, and like them had left no wreck behind."

* * *

across the river

E. L. Mitford, 1840:

"Mosul is an ill-constructed mud-built town, rising above the banks of the Tigris, and backed by low hills; in the centre is a tall brown ugly minaret, very much out of the perpendicular; the in terior of some of the houses is faced with a trans lucent stone, called Mosul marble.... Part of the old Saracen walls still remain: they are very massive ... the ground between the walls and the town is occupied by stagnant pools, ruins and dead bodies of camels and cattle, which is enough to breed a pestilence; the bazaars are mean and dirty."

* * *

downriver

to Baghdad, George Smith, 1873:

"The city is large and principally built on the eastern bank of the Tigris; there are many fine buildings and large bazaars, and outside the town there are miles of gardens and abundance of productions. From my window in the Residency I enjoyed a charming prospect; immediately in front was a plantation with orange trees, vines, and sweet-smelling plants, beyond this a splendid view of the river Tigris then in flood, and on the other side of the water a grove of palm trees with a primitive Arab machine for raising water from the river to irrigate the ground."

* * *

at the river

in Baghdad, Gertrude Bell, December 7, 1917:

"The new régime promises well. I haven't seen General Marshall since I came back but he gives signs of being sympathetic towards our side of the game. It's as well, for we were running fast on to rocks, in my opinion ... The presence of an enemy is an essential element in battle. And we can't walk after him indefinitely because an army walks on its stomach. Vigorous steps have been taken to ensure a good harvest next spring—but that is not till the middle of April and meantime we are going to be hard put to it to get the civil population fed."

September 5, 1920:

"Over and over again people have said to me that it has been a shock and a surprise to them to see Europe relapse into barbarism. I had no reply—what else can you call the war? How can we, who have managed our own affairs so badly, claim to teach others to manage theirs better? It may be that the world has need to sink back into the dark ages of chaos, out of which it will evolve something, perhaps no better than what it had."

January 16, 1923:

"I don't feel reasonable myself—how can one when political values are as fluctuating as the currency? At the back of my mind I have a feeling that we people of the war can never return to complete sanity. The shock has been too great; we're unbalanced.... Niffar is by far the most striking site I've seen here ... you see in section age after age of civilization extending over a period of three or four thousand years. It's amazing and rather horrible to be brought face to face with millenniums of human effort and then to consider what a mess we've made of it."

* * *

    king falls to bishop

    bishop falls to caliph
    caliph falls to khan
    khan to sultan to sheikh
    to prime minister regent colonel brigadier
    general president
    these the descendents of power
    that vanish with place

    tho not the place
    in people, who live
    with the scattering
    invisible to history, inevitably
    transformed


      * * *


    in accord with the ancient books
    and the traditions of the past

    the monks called it Samarra,
    city of Shem, eldest son of Noah,

    and al-Mu'tasim, eighth Abbasid Caliph,
    bought the fertile land from the monks
    for his Turkish army, al-Mas'udi tells us,

    then some twenty years later, al-
    Mutawakkil built a palace there

    its design an army drawn
    in battle lines, the two wings
    right and left flanks connected
    by army center portico

    as the Nu'man king had constructed it
    in Hira [before Arabic, liturgy sung
    in Syriac] for "he had a passion for war ...
    wishing always to have it constantly in mind"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Vanishing-Lineby Jeffrey Yang Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Yang . Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Graywolf Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1555975941
• ISBN 13: 9781555975944
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 125
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile