Kind machines.
Author: Nada Gordon
skirt artist
entertainer
ESL teacher
poet
Today Ululations is all about me. Because it’s my birthday. I was born exactly two weeks after “I Want to Hold Your Hand” hit number one.
This is not perhaps the most flattering picture, but I am managing to show off …
–my tattoo
–my anklet
and
–my birthmark, all at once.
[photo courtesy of ROOTHEE(tm), otherwise known as: “the talented, exquisite, hilariously funny and incredibly friggin’ smart Ruthie Goldberg.” ^o^]
So in honor of me and my irrevocable birth, I quote this poem-parable by Franz Kafka.
THE CELL“How did I get here?” I exclaimed. It was a moderately large hall, lit by soft electric light, and I was walking along close to the walls. Although there were several doors, if one opened them one only found oneself standing in front of a dark, smooth rock-face, scarcely a handbreadth beyond the threshold and extending vertically upwards and horizontally on both sides, seemingly without any end. Here was no way out. Only one door led into an adjoining room, the prospect there was more hopeful, but no less startling than thatbehind the other doors. One looked into a royal apartment, the prevailing colors were red and gold, there were several mirrors as high as the ceiling, and a large glass chandelier. But that was not all.
I do not have to go back again, the cell is burst open, I move, I feel my body.
Melodrama is a word I warm to. I don’t much desire it in life, although it does make itself known there on occasion. I crave it in art.
WordNet calls melodrama “an extravagant comedy in which action is more salient than characterization.”
The 20th century suffered from an absence or denial of melodrama. I think it’s time to bring it back. To what extent, though, is melodrama, with its, as Wayne Turney puts it, “crude colors, violent contrasts, [and]… plethora of exciting events,” tenable in the verbal arts of today?
In what forms is poetic melodrama possible? It is not hard to see aspects of melodrama in 19th century Victorian and Romantic verse. But are there any forms of poetry that are seemingly antithetical to melodrama that are in some instances actually rife with it?
What about a haiku, for example? Aren’t haiku supposed to be serene and placid celebrations of stillness? And if so, how would you describe haiku like these:
Full moon light the liquid is inhaledWhite sadness is a white beak opening
Canna already kindled excape
Tadpoles clumped dark time
My isolation’s unlit warship has escaped
Neckless solitude the chicken runs
Black poppy seeds ——-escape in confusion
Inferiority complex———–rain soaked noises
Aesthetics of fire ————– paint out the sun
Inside a zero on tiptoe screaming
These delicate Molotov cocktails of high impact melodrama were written by Kakio Tomisawa (sometimes spelled Tomizawa) and translated by the poet Steven Forth. They were published in Issue 13 of Joseph Simas’ Moving Letters pamphlet/magazine in 1989. I had nearly forgotten about these poems and how much I like them until Gary and I cleaned out our bookshelves several weeks ago. I set the magazine aside, wanting to write about the poems for Ululations, and then forgot about it for a while in the whirl of the holidays.
Tomizawa Kakio
Every time I read these poems I feel that they are strong, largely because they overstate their case. They don’t entirely break the rules of haiku, though. In most of them, there is some indication of a human being responding to something from the natural world. They are emotional (most theories of haiku say that it should be emotional — although not, perhaps, as in these poems, at the expense of restraint and subtlety). They are epiphanic and compact. I haven’t read them in Japanese, so I’m not sure how traditionally they scan, but in English, rhythmically, they certainly sound like haiku.
Novice haiku readers may be interested to learn that in fact the seventeen-syllable, three-line construct we are accustomed to calling a haiku is in fact a convention of English haiku translation. In Japanese, a haiku is more likely to be only one line, with a built-in semantic turning point or points. These translations are possibly more faithful to the original form of the poems.
The poems are differently energized than a usual haiku, however, with a kind of violence and weirdness that seems to me melodramatic in the way that, say, Artaud is melodramatic.
They demand, or are evidence of, a kind of tortured engagement with the world and with materials.
From a dramatic point of view, sturm und drang is simply more interesting than placidity. I mean, I wouldn’t mind listening to Phillip Glass if I were mellowing out in a sauna somewhere (as if I ever get a chance to do such a thing!) — but as I’m snaking and elbowing my way through the city I’m much more likely to be listening to Najat (also spelled Nagat)– a decidedly melodramatic Egyptian singer — on my IPod. I am better stimulated by, and thus better served by, a kind of melodrama.
Here are some selections from Tomisawa’s comments on poetry, Chronos’ Tongue, also translated by Steven Forth:
A withered branch and a trumpet are not in themselves related. The relationship in this lack-of-relationship makes it possible to construct an intense image; it is necessary to understand what this relationship is.Poetry is fundamentally ‘obscure,’ Haiku poets who cannot understand this ‘obscurty’ are limited, by force of habit, to ‘persuasion.’
*
Haiku is not ‘conception’; not more than ‘paroxysm.’
*
I do not find original theories, nor the theories of haiku poets, nor theories of seasonless haiku, nor social theories of any use. I only pray that one person may, as the fruit of anger, from delusion, through tears, overcoming grief and joy, finally breathe deeply the open reach of the atmosphere, that is all.
Melodramatic statements, perhaps, and even quaintly Dadaist — but I love the ring of them.
A couple of links for the curious:
http://www.big.or.jp/~loupe/links/ehisto/ekakio.shtml
This is Ululations in mourning.
O Nature, most impartial, most awesome terrorist…
Jack and Ange.
I can speak only for myself, but I am imbued very happily in masterpieces of transcendent dance, music and film.
Imbued very cheaply, too, I might add.
Bollywood DVDs now run about 3 for $10.
CDs of Asha Bhosle and Chitti Babu are usually about $5 apiece.
My raks sharqi classes are $105 for a ten-class card.
The trick is obviously to GET OUT OF EUROPE!
Europe was never that interesting anyway, except in how it used the materials it robbed from “the East.”
Ange, I’m not arguing for mass culture per se as high art. I detest American mass culture and avoid it at all costs. But there are other mass cultures that are very very wonderful indeed.
And frankly, I’ll take V, Shantaram over Balanchine ANY day. Or Guru Dutt over… I don’t know… Donald Judd.
Hmm. I’m not convinced that an oeuvre consisting mainly of recombinations of observed sensory details and labored puns is exactly… Blakean.
But to me, Ron is very closely allied to URIZEN.
rest in light
l isten very attentively to all sounds
i s silent or prolongs sounds
g enerated, notation becomes
h e may prolong a silence
t emporal holes — durations in which readers keep silent
I’ve written a “simple test of a good writer” but it’s too cynical to post even here. If you’re curious, I’ll send it to you.
Found Abecedarian Poem in an Amazon.com Review of The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson
Aardvark, Botulism, Cup Cake, David (Elizabeth), Enzymes, Fat-Tailed Sheep, Gender/Sex and Food, Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, Ice Cream Sundae, Jewish Dietary Laws, Kangaroos, Lobscouse, Microwave Cooking, Norway, Offal, Puffin, Queen of Puddings, Roti, Scurvy, Termite Heap Mushroom (or Taillevant), Umeboshi, Vegetarianism, Washing up (a very elegant little article), sadly no X, Yin-yang, and Zabaglione.
(yay!)
Otohime 