{"id":9827,"date":"2013-07-30T21:08:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T19:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=9827"},"modified":"2013-07-30T21:10:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T19:10:11","slug":"poems-by-michael-heller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=9827","title":{"rendered":"poems by Michael Heller"},"content":{"rendered":"

presented by Raluca Tanasescu
\nclick aici<\/a> pentru versiunea rom\u00e2n\u0103<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nMICHAEL HELLER <\/b>(b. 1937) is an American objectivist poet, of Jewish and Romanian origins, who has published over twenty volumes of poetry, essays and memoirs. His newest book is This Constellation Is A Name: Collected Poems 1965-2010<\/i>. Other recent works include: Eschaton<\/i> (2009), a book of poems, and Beckmann Variations & Other Poems<\/i>, a work in prose and poetry (2010). His collection of essays on George Oppen, Speaking the Estranged,<\/i> was published in 2008. An expanded edition was published in 2012. His many awards and honors include prizes from The New School for Social Research, Poetry in Public Places, the New York State CAPS Fellowship in Poetry, the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Prize of the Poetry Society of America, a New York Foundation on the Arts Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fund for Poetry. For many years, he was on the faculty of New York University and has taught at The Naropa University, The New School, San Francisco State, Notre Dame and other universities. His papers are collected in the Stanford University Libraries.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Autobiographia<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Weren\u2019t you given a text?\u00a0 To honor the congregation, the organ dulcet,<\/p>\n

the cantor\u2019s hum, hymnal of Europe\u2019s East, steps of sound made fugal<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but laden with a weariness (joy for another day), history transmogrified<\/p>\n

into plaint upon plaint, to be ushered into manhood, to be brought other\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Early on, the Shekinah gone into exile. Most of that century you saw<\/p>\n

not love but power, cruelty, the face which laughs against the sun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What could you do if you were not steeped in things like the others<\/p>\n

but merely walked to buy milk or bread,\u00a0 heaven above, earth below,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to visit the old streets, the elm\u2019s grainy seeds lying across paving stones,<\/p>\n

tourists milling and the Atlantic past the bridge brilliant as a sword cut.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saline, solute, salve, this art burning to base metal.\u00a0 What carries one<\/p>\n

who would sing a hymn but eddies of language–never the pure thing–<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

maelstroms and tidal pools, word-forms, the will hemmed in like an ocean<\/p>\n

to its basin,\u00a0 rhymed to the rack of its tides.\u00a0 The word\u2019s ring deflected<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

in the baffles of the city into space, echo bounced from storefront to tower,<\/p>\n

fading toward soundlessness–ear cupped to catch emptiness, translation<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to Paradise from which speech fled.\u00a0 Put down this cloth, said the rabbi.<\/p>\n

Cover the text and emplace the cap.\u00a0 Live neither in blacks nor whites.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Avert from the scroll\u00a0 rising above the earth, gaze upon limitless blue,<\/p>\n

the inventive weaving of clouds.\u00a0 Live straight ahead.\u00a0 Appearance<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

will be your pain and mentor.\u00a0 Be at the threshold, not at the Ark.<\/p>\n

And later,\u00a0 to go back to plucking a word from the weave,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

lam\u00e9, silver, deep magenta, designs mazed over the fold, lines and margins,<\/p>\n

and underneath, as though one sensed through flesh, the delicate structure<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

of beths and vavs on parchment, the inner and outer of secrets.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

On A Phrase of Milosz\u2019s <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nHe is not disinherited,<\/i>
\nfor he has not found a home<\/i>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He has found vertiginous life again, the words<\/p>\n

on the way to language dangling possibility,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but also, like the sound of a riff on a riff,<\/p>\n

it cannot be resolved.\u00a0 History has mucked this up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He has no textbook, and must overcompensate,<\/p>\n

digging into the memory bank if not for the tune<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

then for something vibratory on the lower end of the harmonics.<\/p>\n

He’s bound to be off by at least a half-note–here comes jargon<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

baby–something like a diss or hiss.\u00a0 Being is<\/p>\n

incomplete; only the angels know how to fly homeward.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet, once the desperate situation is clarified, he feels<\/p>\n

a kind of happiness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Later, the words were displaced and caught fire, burning syllables<\/p>\n

to enunciate the dead mother’s name.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Martha sounding then like “mother”)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wasn’t it such echoes that built the city in which he lives,<\/p>\n

the cage he paces now like Rilke’s panther?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He was not disinherited.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He was not displaced<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He is sentimental, hence he can say a phrase like his heart burst<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The worst thing is to feel only irony can save<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The worst thing is to feel only irony.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Lecture with Celan<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

How many know<\/p>\n

the number of creatures is endless?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So many know,<\/p>\n

only a gasp in their questions is possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All that fullness–<\/p>\n

of wounds that won’t scar over,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

pain’s grillework<\/p>\n

persisting in the memory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What sets one free<\/p>\n

within the sign and blesses the wordflow<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

without barrier?<\/p>\n

Not literature, which is only for those<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

at home in the world<\/p>\n

while air is trapped in the sealed vessel,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

contained in our<\/p>\n

containment, our relation to earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Omnivore language,<\/p>\n

syntax of the real, riddling over matter,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

more difficult to ken<\/p>\n

than the talmudic angelus. Thus what black<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

butterflies of grief<\/p>\n

at this leaf, at this flower? Already you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

have moved over ground<\/p>\n

beyond past and future, into a strange voicelessness<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

close to speech,<\/p>\n

both dreadful and prophetic–all else utility<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and failure. And now,<\/p>\n

the work builds to a word’s confines,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to a resemblance of lives<\/p>\n

touching the history of a rhyme between earth and dying.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Dialogue of Some Importance\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One’s hand. Its whole existence.<\/p>\n

Miniscule things it seeks to grasp.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the hand that moves to touch,<\/p>\n

lost by the mind before it moves,<\/p>\n

so who propels it thus?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Her nipple. A crumb. The furled edge of a tissue.<\/p>\n

Surely there is some charm to rolling bread<\/p>\n

into small resilient balls, casting them off<\/p>\n

the fingertips to squawking ducks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is it only an emissary,<\/p>\n

a move of a heart in flight,<\/p>\n

to mark where, in outward scenery,<\/p>\n

it seeks to lodge itself?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Often, I am swamped by incredible pleasure,<\/p>\n

by the wild connection a thing makes between<\/p>\n

my thumb and finger, as though desperately alive<\/p>\n

in some galvanic dance. Ouroboros tastes his own tail,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

self love? love’s self?<\/p>\n

who guides a hand knows<\/p>\n

the horror of attached.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but I have made deities<\/p>\n

out of the lint of carpets,<\/p>\n

metallic granules and snotballs,<\/p>\n

especially out of lost eyeglass screws.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

presented by Raluca Tanasescu click aici pentru versiunea rom\u00e2n\u0103   MICHAEL HELLER (b. 1937) is an American objectivist poet, of Jewish and Romanian origins, who has published over twenty volumes of poetry, essays and memoirs. His newest book is This Constellation Is A Name: Collected Poems 1965-2010. Other recent works include: Eschaton (2009), a book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[986,77],"tags":[1164,1123,998,799],"class_list":["post-9827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-38","category-english","tag-egophobia-38","tag-english","tag-michael-heller","tag-raluca-tanasescu"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-2yv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9827"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9830,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9827\/revisions\/9830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}