I don't remember when or how I first ran into Blaise Cendrars. One of the first things of his that I read was the poem "Easter in New York." * It hit me hard. Hard enough that I wrote a long poem called "Easter Morning" which still occasionally rears its head up out of the muck of my subconsciousness.
And I recently purchased his Complete Poems, but didn't know when I'd get around to reading it. As I became frustrated with and bored by St. Augustine'sThe City of God, however, my eyes fell upon this beauty...
xxx + 392 = 422 pages
* "In 1912, at Easter, I was starving in New York, and had been for a number of months. From time to time I took a job, by force of necessity, but I didn’t keep it a week and if I could manage to get my pay sooner than that I quit sooner, impatient to get on with my sessions of reading at the central public library. My poverty was extreme and every day I looked worse: unshaven, trousers in corkscrews, shoes worn out, hair long, coat stained and faded and without buttons, no hat or tie, having sold them one day for a penny in order to buy a plug of the world’s worst chewing tobacco." (from an interview in The Paris Review)
Day 1 (DDRD 2,661) February 11, 2025
Read to page 12.
I actually read to page xx yesterday...to make up for the fact that after reading a mere 5 pages of The City of God, I ran aground and really HAD to look elsewhere for pages to read. So I didn't get out of the introductory stuff (IS) until today. The IS was fascinating, though. One of the things mentioned was La Fin du monde filmée par l'Ange Notre-Dame (The End of the World Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame), which I found online (albeit in French) here:https://collection.artbma.org/objects/34433/the-end-of-the-world-filmed-by-the-angel-of-notre-dame
I also had my appetite whetted for Cendrars' four volume memoir cycle:
L'Homme foudroyé (1945, Denoël) / Novel / English (1970); Spanish (1983)
La Main coupée (1946, Denoël) / Novel / (in French) / English (Lice, 1973 / The Bloody Hand, 2014[21] ), Spanish (1980)
Bourlinguer (1948, Denoël) / Novel / English (1972); Spanish (2004)
Le Lotissement du ciel (1949, Denoël) / Novel / English (1992)
Unfortunately, not all of them are available in English...and some are really, really expensive (as in hundreds of dollars). And none of them are available on Internet Archive.
Today I read the long poem "Easter in New York," and it dazzled me all over again. It also made me want to dig up the poem I wrote which was inspired by it. That could be quite the archeological dig, though. We'll see how that goes.
It felt really good to read this today. It was actually exciting, and I really needed that.
Day 2 (DDRD 2,662) February 12, 2025
Now check THAT 👆out: 2, 2, & 2. Oh, and 2 & 2. It's a sign. Of what, I don't know, but SUREly a sign of something or other, right?
Read to page 32.
Today I read (for the first time) "Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France." It was a loose narrative about a train journey from Russia to France...while the poet reminisced about his past life, especially the women who had inhabited it. My favorite lines were
"All the women I've ever known appear around me on the horizon
Holding out their arms and looking like sad lighthouses in the rain...."
When I looked it up on Wikipedia to see what I could see, I found out that the poem originally appeared like this:
Which (1) measures 200 x 35.6 cm and (2) is housed at the Princeton University Art Museum. So maybe a visit is possible? Time will tell.
Of course, poetry is not as physically dense on the page as prose...so I might read a bit more later after I finish my dad duties for the day.
Later...
Yep. Read to page 50...all of which (33 to 50) was encompassed by one poem, "Panama." Strange, strange poem. Near the end it was interrupted by an ad for the city of Denver. Which reminds me: somewhere in the introductory material it claimed that the cut-up method of writing was first done by Monsieur Cendrars. Hmph. Suck on that, William S. Burroughs.
Day 3 (DDRD 2,663) February 13, 2025
Read to page 80, which encompassed "Nineteen Elastic Poems." Have to confess that I didn't get much out of these, but it was interesting to see that one of them (at least) was clearly a "cut up" composition...possibly the first?
Later...
Read to page 100, then went back to re-read "Easter Sunday." This time around a line caught my eye:
Still, Lord, I took a dangerous voyage
To see a beryl intaglio tanglio of your image." (5)
I had no idea what a beryl intaglio was, so I Googled and found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1fgv742/this_is_the_earliest_depiction_of_the_crucified/?rdt=44030
I don't know how they knew that this was specifically an image of Jesus, but I'm going to try to find out.
I'm also thinking that it would be a pretty good idea to read "Easter Morning" once every day. Like a prayer.
Speaking of which, here are some teeth:
"Evil has made your Cross into a crutch." (8)
What do you think about that?
Day 4 (DDRD 2,664) February 14, 2025
Read to page 143.
Charles Bukowski is the most readable poet I've ever encountered. I've actually sat down with one (maybe more, but I have a clear memory of one) and read it all the way through. Blaise Cendrars isn't THAT readable for me, but he's not far off of it. And part of the "problem" with Cendrars is that he's writing from a context I haven't lived, alluding to things (like a beryl intaglio) which I've never heard of.
Day 5 (DDRD 2,665) February 15, 2025
Read to page 173. "Travel Notes": strange group of poems. Two of them about toilets.
Day 6 (DDRD 2,666) February 16, 2025
Read to page 203. You know, these poems have been okay for the most part, but nothing (so far) has grabbed me the way that " Easter Morning" did. What's up with that? And there are several times when I've been offended by or put off by things in the poems: shooting an elephant, throwing a lamb into the ocean for a shark to eat, some near racist and misogynistic comments. Unless something changes, I won't be needing any more Blaise Cendrars after this. (But oh, that "Easter Morning.")
Later....
I watched the 2020 documentary The New Corporation. Decided (1) I need to see if the ACLU office in Louisville needs any volunteers, (2) my next DDR must be something timely and political and feisty, something like
Mmm-hmm.
Day 7 (DDRD 2,667) February 17, 2025
Read to page 227 and had a surprise: page 228 is blank, and pages 229 to 354 are in French! Hmpf. That was unexpected. So it's on to page 355 for Translator's Notes on the Poems (to 382), then Select Bibliography (383 to 384), then Index stuff (385 to 392), then Voila! C'est fini! And I'm thinking that I should be able to do that today and move on tomorrow morning.
Very exciting!
According to the Translator Notes, "News Flash" might be the first Found Poem. Add to this that "The Trans-Siberian" might have been the first Book as Art Object m,and that earlier, someone referred to send drawers as having written the first cut up poem and he becomes a pretty large figure in modern poetAdd to this that the trans-Siberian might have been the first book as our object, and that earlier, there was the suggestion that Cendrars created the first Cut Up Poem, and he becomes a pretty large figure in modern poetry.
And done. 354 - 228 = 126. So I actually only read 422 - 126 = 296 pages. For the record.
This book was pretty okay. None of the poems were bad. But all but one did very little for me and will exit my intellectual digestive system without having been affected --and without affecting me--whatsoever. 🌽
The one (👆), of course, is "Easter Sunday." That is a great poem. But I think that's all you need of Cendrars. Sorry, Blaise.
No comments:
Post a Comment