TWO BROTHERS

One brother is rich and selfish, the other is poor and noble-hearted. When the poor brother helps a little swallow with a broken leg, he's rewarded in an extraordinary manner. What's growing inside those giant pumpkins anyway...? A tale of brotherly love and hate from ancient Korea. Based on the Pansori tale 'Heungbu and Nolbu', this first appeared in Horizon Review.

Now available as a high quality PRINT BOOK or as a
FREE E BOOK (click above) or on MOBIPOCKET

Or read it right HERE (no flash required)

Happy Poetry Day!

It seems that Britain is a 'poetry nation' (whatever that may be...), having declared this National Poetry Day, Amazing Grace is determined to make a contribution. Here it is then:

Bolshie Kids and Christian Soldiers

Open publication - Free publishing - More theatre

The stories of two remarkable young people, Agnes and Lawrence, as told in these classically structured verse dramas, are now published as a beautifully crafted print book by Andromache Books. You can get your copy HERE. Or enjoy the free E book by clicking on the little book.

I AM AMAZED

Today I am truly amazed at the REVIEW of SCARABOCCHIO, a 'quantum novel' by yours truly, that has appeared in SEIN UND WERDEN. Written by the mysterious and beautiful (judging by her WEBSITE) V. Ulea, author of THE SNAIL and ABOUT ANGELS, ABOUT GOD, ABOUT POETRY, this review is not your usual wham bam thank you ma'am, but a long, thoughtful critical essay that engages with the text on at least as many levels as its author once did in writing it. It would seem that serious literary criticism, along with serious literature, has mostly migrated to the vast and friendly virgin pastures of cyberspace, where there is world enough and time to indulge in such forgotten rituals as thought, philosophy, reflection and in depth analysis. My thanks to the Professor (for she is indeed a Professor at U Penn) for her many illuminating insights, as well as her generosity of spirit.

From A Quantum Fugue of the Lilies: Exploring the Depths of Scarabocchio

A Review by V. Ulea in Sein und Werden

Scarabocchio is a remarkable work by a remarkable writer. This masterful, stunningly imaginative, polyphonic piece is a harmonious unity of thought, imagery, and a unique technique. It's a quantum fugue of shocking philosophies, odd lives and wild experiences woven into historical times, artistic movements, and personal fates. Its richness is inexhaustible, its depths are bottomless. This is a living universe of manmade forms, flourishing and metamorphosing - a genuinely Goethean synthesis of art and nature. One who ventures to embark on the journey along the "mythopoëic sea" should remember that "there is no road back through the woods from knowledge to original innocence". It's a non-Euclidean reading that requires non-Euclidean thinking. As Goethe once said to Eckermann, who expressed his admiration with Wilhelm Meister, "My dear young friend … I will confide to you something which may help you a great deal. My works … are not written for the multitude, but only for individuals who desire something congenial, and whose aims are like my own."

VOYAGE TO THE MOON

Nobody who was there will ever forget it - the day men walked on the moon. Mere poetry is inadequate to express the enormity, the wonder of it. Forty years ago I was a fourteen-year-old girl, I sat with my family round a small black-and-white TV set and watched those ghostly figures in their ungainly suits bouncing like happy bunny rabbits across the screen. They are on the moon... And forty years later it doesn't really matter that there was nothing up there after all, that we found only rocks and dust and desolation - all that matters is the fact of it. We came in peace for all mankind.

I turn to the words of the men who made it there and back, a piece of 'found poetry' if you like, culled from the NASA Mission Transcripts. For another take, this time from the ground, see HERE.

APOLLO 11 – THE JOURNEY OUT

[From the NASA Onboard Voice Transcription]

It just feels like we're going around upside down

Focus is on infinity

Jesus Christ, look at that horizon!

Isn't that something?

God damn, that's pretty; it's unreal.

Get a picture of that.

Ooh, sure, I will. I've lost a Hasselblad ....

Has anybody seen a Hasselblad floating by?

It couldn't have gone very far –

big son of a gun like that.

Trees and a forest down there

it looks like trees and a forest or something

Looks like snow and trees.

Fantastic. I have no conception of where

we're pointed or which way we're going

or a crapping thing, but it's a beautiful

low pressure cell out here.

Yes, I didn't know when the hell we were airborne

I just took his word for it. It was sure shaking,

rattling, and rolling, son of a bitch!

Boy, look at that ... crater

Hope none of those meteors come by right now

Well, where's the freaking earth going to be now?

I 'm confused.

God, look at that moon l

Fantastic. Look back there behind us

sure looks like a gigantic crater

Look at the mountains going around it

My gosh, they're monsters

Yes, there's a moose down here you

Just wouldn't believe.

Yes, there's a big mother over here, too.

Come on now, Buzz,

don't refer to them as big mothers

Give them some scientific name.

It sure looks like a lot of them have slumped down.

A slumping big mother.

Hmm - here comes the moon.

Really beautiful.

Hey, you-

I wonder where we are.

We're going to stop here pretty soon, right?

Boy, there must be nothing more desolate

than to be inside some of these small craters

these conical ones

People that live in there probably never get out.

Boy, look at that big mother coming up there.

Looks like we're heading for –

... over the horizon.

Oh, that is weird –

that crazy moon out there again, huh?

Funny-looking thing.

Doesn't it look like some of these crater walls

had scallops inside like a design in a fan –

like feathers

Seashells

Like seashells - very pretty, very symmetrical.

Where the hell is the horizon with the world coming

over it? I guess it's behind us, huh?

Houston, Columbia. Do you read?

Sure seems like we're going the wrong way.

Coming down already.

And, one thing I'd appreciate if you could - see

if you could - find the -

What?

The map.

Hear that, too, huh?

Sounds like wind whipping around the trees.

40 feet, down at 30 . . . down at 15 . . .

400 feet down at 9 . . . forward . . .

350 feet down at 4 . . .

300 feet down 3 1/2 . . .

47 forward . . . 1 1/2 down . . . 13 forward . . .

11 forward? coming down nicely . . .

200 feet, 4 1/2 down . . .

5 1/2 down . . . 5 percent . . .

75 feet . . . 6 forward . . .

lights on . . . down 2 1/2 . . .

40 feet? down 2 ½ kicking up some dust . . .

30 feet, 2 1/2 down . . . faint shadow . . .

4 forward . . . 4 forward . . .

drifting to right a little . . . O.K. . . .

Houston - Tranquility Base here.

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.

Look at that, would you? Look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

Pretty good.

A thing of beauty is a Joy forever.

What they saw:

Follow the flight of Apollo 11 HERE

Picture: from Le voyage dans la Lune, Georges Méliès, 1902

Violins Make Me Nervous

 

Something about that sound they make - so like crying but not crying, so like singing but not singing, so like a cat in heat but no it's not a cat in heat either. It's a nervous violin, when it's not a sentimental one, it's sometimes irritating, sometimes of an unearthly beauty. It took mankind thousands of years to bring it to perfection - the violin. Why did we bother? 

The Violin - A Little Bit Nervous
Vladimir Mayakovsky

The violin got all worked up, imploring
then suddenly burst into sobs,
so child-like
that the drum couldn't stand it:
"All right, all right, all right!"
But then he got tired,
couldn't wait till the violin ended,
slipped out on the burning Kuznetsky
and took flight.
The orchestra looked on, chilly,
while the violin wept itself out
without reason
or rhyme,
and only somewhere,
a cymbal, silly,
kept clashing:
"What is it,
what's all the racket about?"
And when the helicon,
brass-faced,
sweaty,
hollared:
"Crazy!
Crybaby!
Be still!"
I staggered,
on to my feet getting,
and lumbered over the horror-stuck music stands,
yelling,
"Good God"
why, I myself couldn't tell;
then dashed, my arms round the wooden neck to fling:
"You know what, violin,
we're awfully alike;
I too
always yell,
but can't prove a thing!"
The musicains commented,
contemptuously smiling:
"Look at him-
come to his wooden-bride-
tee-hee!"
But I don't care-
I'm a good guy-
"You know, what, violin,
let's live together,
eh?".

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg


Скрипка и немножко нервно

Скрипка издергалась, упрашивая,
и вдруг разревелась
так по детски,
что барабан не выдержал:
"Хорошо, хорошо, хорошо!"
А сам устал,
не дослушал скрипкиной речи,
шмыгнул на горящий Кузнецкий
и ушел.
Оркестр чужо смотрел, как
выплакивалась скрипка
без слов,
без такта,
и только где-то
глупая тарелка
вылязгивала:
"Что это?"
"Как это?"
А когда геликон -
меднорожий,
потный,
крикнул:
"Дура,
плакса,
вытри!"-
я встал,
шатаясь полез через ноты,
сгибающиеся под ужасом пюпитры,
зачем-то крикнул:
"Боже!"
Бросился на деревянную шею:
"Знаете что, скрипка?
Мы ужасно похожи:
Я вот тоже
ору -
а доказать ничего не умею!"
Музыканты смеются:
"Влип как!
Пришел к деревянной невесте!
Голова!"
А мне - наплевать!
Я - хороший.
"Знаете что, скрипка?
Давайте -
будем жить вместе!
А?"

1914


Jon Rose Plays a Fence (this will make you nervous too)




Read more about the weird beauty of violins in Music for Glass Orchestra

Picture: Blue Violinst, Marc Chagall, 1923/4

The Big Bad Wolf

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? I am, for one. Nowadays you won't see a wolf in the quiet and civilised countryside of western Europe, but there was a time - oh! not all that long ago either, when the fierce and beautiful creatures had us for lunch.  In the more out-of-the-way parts of the world that sort of thing is still sometimes possible. 'The wolf is at the door' we continue to say, when we mean the last extremity, and our folktales are strewn with the remnants of men, women and children 'thrown to the wolves.' Here is a tale from Willa Cather's My Antonia that made my hair stand on end when I first read it as a little girl living in Manhattan, where the only wolves I had to fear were those that roamed the dark forests of my imagination. This tale is told by the old Russian, Pavel. He is one of the sledge drivers at the head of a large wedding party, and they are making their way back to the groom's house on a winter night, when they are attacked by a pack of wolves.


The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had too much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming together. There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A black drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them.


Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control-- he was probably very drunk--the horses left the road, the sledge was caught in a clump of trees, and overturned. The occupants rolled out over the snow, and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks that followed made everybody sober. The drivers stood up and lashed their horses. The groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest-- all the others carried from six to a dozen people.


Another driver lost control. The screams of the horses were more terrible to hear than the cries of the men and women. Nothing seemed to check the wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear; the people who were falling behind shrieked as piteously as those who were already lost. The little bride hid her face on the groom's shoulder and sobbed. Pavel sat still and watched his horses. The road was clear and white, and the groom's three blacks went like the wind. It was only necessary to be calm and to guide them carefully.


At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously and looked back. 'There are only three sledges left,' he whispered.


'And the wolves?' Pavel asked.


'Enough! Enough for all of us.'

[One after another the many sledges glide off the slippery road and into the jaws of the wolves, until at last there is only one sledge left. Suddenly you realise the actual meaning of that common phrase 'to throw someone to the wolves.']

When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel realized that he was alone upon the familiar road. 'They still come?' he asked Peter.

'How many?'

'Twenty, thirty--enough.'

Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavel gave Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge. He called to the groom that they must lighten-- and pointed to the bride. The young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her away. In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered exactly how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching in the front seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed was a new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever heard it before--the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringing for early prayers.

One of our most underrated writers, that consummate stylist Robert Louis Stevenson, has written in his delightful Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes of a wolf who became a local legend. 

Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveller's advance; and you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe, and not meet with an adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever- memorable BEAST, the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and children and 'shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty'; he pursued armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for that. 'Though I could reach from pole to pole,' sang Alexander Pope; the Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf, they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie Berthet has made him the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do not wish to read again.

No consideration of the wolf is complete without mention of that greatest of all wolf tales, How Saint Francis Tamed the Very Fierce Wolf of Gubbio,  and 'Se non è vero, è ben trovato!' The people of the town of Gubbio are being terrorised by 'a fearfully large and fierce wolf which was so rabid with hunger that it devoured not only animals but even human beings.' Saint Francis hears about it, and decides to have a little chat with Brother Wolf. The people beg him not to go, certain that the wolf will devour him as well, but Saint Francis was never the man to turn back once he had got the bit in his teeth.  He marches right up to the that wolf's door.

Then, in the sight of many people who had come out and climbed onto places to see this wonderful event, the fierce wolf came running with its mouth open toward St. Francis and his companion.

The Saint made the Sign of the Cross toward it. And the power of God, proceeding as much from himself as from his companion, checked the wolf and made it slow down and close its cruel mouth.


Then, calling to it, St. Francis said: "Come to me, Brother Wolf. In the name of Christ, I order you not to hurt me or anyone."

It is marvelous to relate that as soon as he had made the Sign of the Cross, the wolf closed its terrible jaws and stopped running, and as soon as he gave it that order, it lowered its head and lay down at the Saint's feet, as though it had become a lamb.


Pictures: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge et le Loup, engraving by Gustav Doré,1832-1883, St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio, fresco in the Church of San Francesco at Pienza, 14th century

Pen Pusher's Poetry of Place Competition

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

 - Dreamland, Edgar Allen Poe

Our good friends at Pen Pusher Magazine are running a poetry competition. Poets are invited ro submit 'one original poem about where you live'. I'm not surre exactly where Poe's poem about Dreamland would fit on the poetry map, but I'm sure he'd be a hit at the Latitude Festival, holding his peculiar own with the likes of Mr. Motion and Mr.Armitage. If you'd like to enter, the deadline is 3rd July.
My own contribution: ATLANTIS 

Picture: Illustration for Dreamland by Edmund Dulac, 1882-1953

Un Petit Chose ou Trois

When it all gets to be a bit much (it's all a bit much at times, is it not?) I head for la civilsation, c'est-à-dire la douce et belle France, cher pays de mon enfance imaginaire. This time I'm heading south to Languedoc, land of the misty mountains and crumbling castles, of the troubadours and jongleurs, where the cathedrals resemble fortresses, and Crusader knights once sang for their stern ladies of impossible love.

Non chant per auzel ni per flor
Ni per neu ni per gelada,
Ni neis per freich ni per calor
Ni per reverdir de prada;
Ni per nuill autr'esbaudimen
Non chan ni non fui chantaire,
Mas per midonz en cui m'enten,
Car es del mon la bellaire.

I do not sing for bird nor for flower
nor for snow nor for frost
nor for cold, oh no!, nor for heat
nor for the meadows that turn green again;
no: no other marvel
I sing, or ever did sing,
but my lady, in whom I am well pleased
for she is the most beautiful woman on Earth.
 - Raimbaut d'Aurenga  ENTIRE TEXT

The same esprit de chevalier breathes from the pages of Alphonse Daudet's childhood memoir,  Le Petit Chose, a book that every French schoolchild knows, but that remains largely ignored among the barbarians of the Anglo-Saxon world. It begins like this:

Je suis né le 13 mai 18..., dans une ville du Languedoc où l’on trouve, comme dans toutes les villes du Midi, beaucoup de soleil, pas mal de poussière, un couvent de carmélites et deux ou trois monuments romains.

The young hero, known as 'Daniel Eyssette', passes an idyllic childhood playing at 'Robinson' (as in 'Crusoe') in the large garden of his father's (failing) factory with his loyal parrot. When the family business collapses, they are forced to decamp to the dirt and cold of Lyon, where the young Daniel, small, frightened, badly dressed in an old-fashioned 'blouse', is christened by his schoolmates 'le petit Chose'. In this luminous passage, he says good-bye to the village one last time:

Or ; savez-vous quel est ce quelqu’un de la ville que le petit Chose veut voir avant de partir ?C’est la fabrique, cette fabrique qu’il aimait tant et qu’il a tant pleurée !... c’est le jardin, les ateliers, les grands platanes, tous les amis de son enfance, toutes ses joies du premier jour... Que voulez-vous ?Le cœur de l’homme a de ces faiblesses ; il aime ce qu’il peut, même du bois, même des pierres, même une fabrique... D’ailleurs, l’histoire est là pour vous dire que le vieux Robinson, de retour en Angleterre reprit la mer, et fit je ne sais combien de mille lieues pour revoir son île déserte.

Do you know who this 'somebody of the town' was, that le petit Chose wanted to see before he left? It was the factory, that factory that he'd loved so much, cried for so much... it was the garden, the workshops, the great plane trees, all those friends of his childhood, all his early joys... What can you say? The human heart has its weaknesses; a man loves what he can, even wood, even stones, even a factory... Elsewhere, you can read the story of how the old Robinson, after his return to England took to the sea once more, and travelled I don't know how many thousand leagues to see his desert island once again.

(translation by Grace Andreacchi)

There's a sad and funny surprise in store for le petit Chose, but I won't spoil it for you. Get hold of a copy and read it for yourself. Meanwhile, I'm off to see ma douce France again. So it's all aboard for the Eurostar! 'Oui, je t'aime/ dans la joie ou la douleur...'

Free audio books of Alphonse Daudet

Picture: Pauvre Ecolier, Antonio Mancini, 1852-1930

The Art of Storytelling

Russian-American artist Alexandra Rozenman has a wonderful exhibit opening 4th June in Washington, DC. Alexandra's art is rich and evocative, surreal and mysterious - she leads us into a labyrinthine dream world of dark fairy tales. Alexandra and I are collaborating on a book to be published by Andromache Books next fall, putting stories and poems together to create an eloquent dialogue in two media. A visit to this show is highly recommended! There not many artists working today who combine such fine draughtsmanship with such a strange, dark imagination.
More info HERE