The U.S. Mail on Thursday brought treasure. A book I had ordered, Collected Later Poems: 1988-2000, by R.S. Thomas, finally arrived. These are autumnal works from the last 12 years of the great Welsh poet-priest’s life. Published by Bloodaxe Books in 2004, the volume is beautiful -- the cover is a detail from John Knapp-Fisher’s painting “Sunset – North Pembrokeshire Coast – and substantial, like Thomas’ poems. Here are the concluding lines of “Homage to Wallace Stevens”:
“Blessings, Stevens;
I stand with my back to grammar
At an altar you never aspired
To, celebrating the sacrament
Of the imagination whose high-priest
Notwithstanding you are.”
Also in the mail was the summer issue of Raritan, sent to me by the journal at the request of James Marcus, proprietor of House of Mirth. In it is James’ translation of a brief piece, “Key West,” by the inimitable Aldo Buzzi. If you don’t know Buzzi’s work, I will say it is charming and learned in a way that resembles no other writer’s. It is digressive, droll, filled with acute detail and profound without ever taking itself seriously. Accompanying the piece is a drawing by Buzzi’s old friend, Saul Stenberg, whose work is at least as sui generis as Buzzi’s. Here’s a sample of James’ Buzzi:
“I came late to writing, so now, despite my age [he turned 90 in August], I can in a certain way consider myself a young writer, one who still learns by reading, not yet tired of learning. But nonetheless tired due to old age.”
Raritan is not available online, so please shell out $8 and enjoy Buzzi, Steinberg and Marcus, which sounds like a law firm or a vaudeville act.
ADDENDUM: Dave Lull reminds me that James has posted some of his other Buzzi translations here and here.
2 comments:
As for plugging along at the writing game at an advanced age,
"Lord let me never tag a moral to a tale, nor tell a story without a meaning. Make me respect my material so much that I dare not slight my work.
"Help me to deal very honestly with words and with people, for they are both alive. Show me that as in a river, so in a writing, clearness is the best quality, and a little that is pure is worth more than much that is mixed.
"Teach me to see the local color without being blind to the inner light.
"Give me an ideal that will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on the loom of the real.
"Keep me from caring more for books than for folks, for art than for life.
"Steady me to do the full stint of work as well as I can; and when that is done, stop me; pay what wages Thou wilt, and help me to say, from a quiet heart, a grateful Amen."
-- Henry Van Dyke, "A Writer's Request of His Master", preface to The Ruling Passion, 1901
Winter: Tonight: Sunset
Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road,
my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first
through the woods, then out into the open fields
past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop
and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue,
green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.
I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age
and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening
a prayer for being here, today, now, alive
in this life, in this evening, under this sky.
- David Budbill from "While We've Still Got Feet"
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