Dreaming

 

    I sat dreaming
    Till Jessica’s shrill
    Bark brought
    Me awake.
    I’ve never counted
    On the good will of
    Those who drive

    On the 405
    Worth having.
    They hurry ahead;
    So if I hang
    Back in my
    Cul-de-sac
    With images of

    Geese flying
    Obliviously past,
    What will it count?
    Or if I
    Busy myself
    With the dictates
    Of these dreams?

The Evangelists

    What of the others
    Left down below?
    We told each other
    We hadn’t power
    To save them all, nor
    Feed a multitude --
    Just these few

    Up here who we
    Could see in deck
    Chairs sunning themselves
    Like us shielded from the
    Push and pull
    Of faulty planning.
    We sighed at the others’

    End and drank the
    Dregs of
    Forgetfulness.
    We slept and had
    Nightmares, and
    Let our lives
    Slip away.

The poetry of Giacomo da Lentini

Giacomo da Lentini, The Complete Poetry translation and notes by Richard Lansing, publish by the University of Toronto Press in 2018

I wasn’t impressed with the poetry as translated by Lansing (Professor emeritus from Brandeis).  He has the scholarly qualifications, but his poetry seems pedestrian.  Of course, the original by Giacomo may be to blame, I don’t know.

An introduction was written by Akash Kumar (Assistant professor from University of California at Santa Cruz).

I was well into The Canzoni and Discordo when I learned that the latest scholarship indicates that this is actually a translation made by Giacomo of the Occitan canso ‘A vos, midontc, voill retrair’ en cantan” by Folquet de Marselha.  The translator Lansing implies this is an original poem of Giacomo’s and merely based upon the poem by the Occitan poet Folquet, but Akash Kumar in his introduction writes “We are confronted with an even more explicit moment of translation in the canzone Madonna, dir vo voglio, in which Giacomo translates the entire first two stanzas of Occitan poet Folquet de Marselha’s canzone . . .  But Giacomo does not merely turn one form of vernacular poetry into another; he works to create greater logical coherence in his canzone, transforms Folquet’s recourse to a philosophical principle into a zoological example from the natural world, and moves beyond the bounds of Folquet’s poem by adding three additional stanzas.”  So, I suppose, we are to take this as a case similar to Edward Fitzgerald’s in which he translated the poetry of Omar Khayam, but so improved upon the original that one loses sight of whatever it was that Omar wrote and admires what became of it in the hands of Fitzgerald.  But in the case of Folquet’s canzone, the Giacomo improvement isn’t clear to me and I can only judge by the poetry in English; which isn’t impressive (IMHO).

Why should we care about Giacomo of Lentini?  Because, according to Akash Kumar, he is the putative originator of the Sonnet.  Kumar finds a reference in Dante’s Purgatorio in which he credits the notaro [Giacomo was a notary in the court of Frederick II] , Dante himself, and one other with the creation of the new school of Italian poetry.
In the section Tenzoni I thought at first that Giacomo had written both sides of these debates, but not so.  The Abbot of Tivoli really did write the three sonnets that Giacomo responded to with sonnets of his own.  The same is true of sonnets written by Iacopo Mostacci and Pier de la Vigna (who achieved posthumous fame by being placed in the seventh circle of Hell by Dante for having committed suicide).  

I was finally appreciative of a few of the 38 sonnets written by Giacomo.  In sonnet 24, I was surprised to discover Giacomo exasperated:

My lady, your expression raised in me
The hope of gaining love and your good will,
. . .
But now you seem annoyed, so it is strange
That I, not having sinned, should make amends,
While you have seldom put your sail to use,
Just like a skipper who’s incompetent,
I really think it’s ignorance,
A knowledge lacking steadiness
That varies with each new caprice;
So you aren’t master of yourself
Nor of one in whom virtue’s firm,
And you won’t find true happiness.

In poem 30, Giacomo writes,
A love so noble seized my heart
That I despair of its success:
To choose to love a bird of prey . . .

And in poem 32, Giacomo writes
. . . But, Love in you I find the opposite,
Like someone who is full of perfidy,
Since at the start you don’t at all seem rank,
Then down the road you bare your evil hand:
You’re least endeared to those who serve you best,
So I declare you lord of treachery.

Most of the poems are properly admiring, and in accordance with the standards of Courtly Love, but in 36 I wonder if Giacomo doesn’t put himself at risk when he writes,
She has no fault of any kind
Nor any peer, nor ever had,
Nor will, such is her flawlessness;
I think if God had it to do,
He could not so engage his thought
As to create one just like her.

The Abigensian Crusades decimated Occitania between 1209 and 1226 and Giacomo would probably have been alive during at least the latter part of that crusade.  Other Crusades were to follow ending with one against Aragon in 1285.  So I wonder if an inquisitional priest wouldn’t have found fault with Giacomo for saying that creating a woman just like his love was something impossible for God to do.

The Latest Dig

    I stretched my hand out
    To where she was and
    Unlike in years before
    She let it hang, thinking
    As she did some long ago
    Thoughts, not seeing me
    As she would have once.

    On the cave floor
    Archaeologists found
    Innumerable bones, mostly
    The very young or old.
    The rest, the fit and healthy,
    Died somewhere else,
    Fighting to save

    The rest for here with
    Whatever serenity we
    Survive to pretend,
    Holding hands out
    To those needing
    To lie down here
    On the cave floor.

Gunfire

    Gunfire in the night has
    Ben Trembling and
    Jessica emitting shrill
    Piercing barks.  Duffy
    Watches me, alarmed.   
    I imagine moving
    Us somewhere else.

    I enlisted July third
    Or fifth in 1952.
    Susan died July
    Fourth, three years
    Ago.  A malaise
    Has me reluctant
    To leave the house --

    As when I throw darts
    And Ben lies down
    Beneath the board.
    My scores decay. I
    Strain to reach these
    Days for which
    I never trained.

Torchlight II

  

    I paint this glory
    I used to hunt, the
    Fleet of foot, the wise
    In their own defense.
    I prevailed time
    After time with this
    Very arm I paint with.

    Some came here to see,
    (They will not stay away)
    What I do here and say.
    I am bewitched they think.
    Perhaps, but look at
    All I’ve done.  I hold
    My torch up so they

    Can see.   They groan
    Weakly, backing away.
    I’ll not be with them
    Very long, giving as I do
    The remaining strength
    I have to she who
    Blesses my efforts.

Torchlight I

    I painted by torchlight
    In my cave, the
    Creatures I’ve seen in
    My long life.  My left arm,
    Crippled by a boar,
    My right must with my life
    Make these images

    On the cave walls
    Despite the elders who
    Claim a closeness to
    Gods greater than mine.
    What have they but
    Time and grayer beards?
    I have this right arm

    And the dreams given me
    By the goddess who lives
    Here calling as she does
    For me to show her what
    It's like outside, and the
    Creatures I’ve seen,
    As she sings.