Other People’s Poetry

by Gerhard Ruhm

 
Flower Piece
for gunter brus

 

the tulip shits on the lawn
the violet farts in the gardener’s hand
the forget-me-not vomits into the tissue paper
the pink sucks on it stem
the orchid masturbates between the lady’s fingers and drips on her sleeve,
the rose stinks of sweat and menstrual blood
the snow drop snots on the flesh tablecloth
the lily pisses in the vase
the hyacinth belches

 

 
Translation from the German by Rosmarie Waldrop

 

Other People’s Poetry: Luciano Iacobelli

Two Poems:
 

      End of the Line

      Night Walk

 

 
 
Luciano Iacobelli is a poet, playwright and visual artist. In 1986 his first play, The Porch, was staged in Toronto. In 2000 he founded Lyricalmyrical Press, a grass-roots publishing company specializing in handcrafted chapbooks. More than 80 books have appeared under this imprint, many by very young writers whose work he has nurtured throughout his career as a creative writing and literature teacher at SEED, Toronto’s oldest public alternative school. Author of 7 chapbooks, The Angel Notebook, his first full-length poetry collection, was published in March of 2007 by Seraphim Editions.

 
 

Other People’s Poetry

 
Second Series

 
Yannos Ritsos 1909-1990
 

14.

In the white egg,
a yellow chick
a blue song

26.

The new moon
hides up its sleeve – you saw it? –
a knife

52.

Naked, astride an elephant,
the moon crosses the river.
Dewdrops shimmering at its feet.

61.

Guatemala, Nicaragua, Salvador.
Where did so many bodies go? On a tree, wind-swept,
a pair of worn trousers.

63.

Where is the time to light a cigarette,
to look at a star, to speak with a turtle,
to scratch your nose, and fart?

80.

Seek not, want not, be not.
I bite – he says – a bitter apple.
Freedom

104.

They tagged you an illiterate, those idle bureaucrats.
Unaware how on arid islands you memorized
the twelve Gospels of the Struggle.

 

 

eight point proclamation of the poetic act

– h.c artmann (april 1953)

 

there is a premise which is unassailable, namely that one can be a poet even without ever having written or spoken a single word.

 
however the prerequisite is the more or less felt wish to act poetically. the alogical gesture can itself be performed such that it is raised to an act of outstanding beauty, indeed to poetry. beauty is however a concept which is here allowed a greatly enlarged field of play.

 
1) the poetic act is that form of poetry which refuses to be quoted second hand, that is to say, it rejects every mediation be speech, music or the printed word.

 
2) the poetic act is poetry for the sake of pure poetry. it is pure poetry and free of all ambition for recognition, praise or criticism.

 
3) a poetic act will perhaps only come to the attention of the public by accident. that is however but one case in a hundred. on account of its beauty and integrity it must never subsume itself to the intention of becoming public, for it is an act of the heart and of pagan modesty.

 
4) the poetic act is very consciously extemporized and anything but a mere poetic situation which in no way requires a poet. every idiot can land in such a situation without even noticing it.

 
5) the poetic act is the pose in its noblest form, free of every vanity and full of joyous modesty.

 
6) among the most admirable masters of the poetic act we count in the first rank the satanic-elegiac c. d. nero and above all out lord, the philosophical-human don quixote.

 
7) the poetic act is completely void of material value and thus from the very start it never conceals the bacillus of prostitution. its unalloyed accomplishment is purely simply noble.

 
8) the complete poetic act, recorded in our memories, is one of the few riches which we can in fact carry with us without fear of it being snatched away.