Opposite City Lights bookshop in San Francisco is Vesuvio's
bar, where the 'beat poets' - an early form of the Hippies
- would huddle to discuss politics, art, writing, whatever.
A faded glory with colourful glass Tiffany lamps still lit
with gas, little round tables on stalks, the fssssssssk! of
the steamy coffee machine. No food. Here I met another travelling
poet called Stephen Roliton in about 1993, and we exchanged
poems.
This is his:
From the tiring light
to the mellow lit
the flame lights flicker
casting jewels on the cut glass
A self of poems is more than liquor
Black and pale yellow of
Coffee and Irish
Alan Neil and Jack Kerouac Street.
" You wanna lunch here - you bring your own."
- Stephen Roliton
I like it, and perhaps it tells you more about Vesuvio's
than I just have!
The first night I arrived in San Francisco there was a small
earthquake that coincided exactly with a couple making a lot
of noise in the bedroom next door. Here is my poem about that:
The Earth Moves
The earth moves
next door -
through
the paper
thin walls
Cries unobscured
By television
Lovers rattle and shake
Then -
a real earthquake
lampshade swinging
fear coming,
I'm under the door
Until - sudden silence
cries cease and
the shaking
stops.
- Jeli Lala
Later 'beatesque' poets include Patti Smith, one of the greatest
poets of our time, in my view. (Not Patty Smyth, that's someone
else). Patti Smith started as a poet and performance artist,
doing some very avant garde and fearless things. I love the
brutal honesty of her work. She first emerged in the nineteen
seventies.
She developed her songs from her poems. In performance, she's
amazing (I saw her at Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, a few
years ago, hung around like a teeny fan after, to meet her).
Watching Patti Smith is like looking at a witch channelling
power - she is just fire wired into spirit and she just pours
out her songs from some deep divine source. It's like seeing
a power station pouring out energy, quite amazing. The only
other person I've seen like this who can be such a conduit
for spirit is Mick Jagger. He is incandescent on stage too,
amazing firepower. We think we are watching pop stars but
actually we are watching shamen channelling spirit. Maybe
that's
what makes it so compelling.
The witchy 'Ghost Dance' is great- the chorus forms a repeating
chant which sounds like a coven of witches making plans for
immortality: "We shall live again, we shall live... "
Then it goes on "Peace to your brother, give and take
peace, / Tie-ee, tie-ah, it leaves two feet / One foot extended,
snake to the ground, / Wave up the Earth, one turn around...
We shall live again..." It sounds like a North Amercian
Indian chant and makes me think of the beautiful, bleak and
open lands around Taos, New Mexico, USA. Repetitive words
and beat become a shamanic meditation somehow, allowing us
to lose and leave ourselves, weaving our journey elsewhere,
reconnecting with ancestors and spirit.
Patti Smith's poetry includes what she calls 'babelogues'.
These are often riveting visions for the future of the planet,
delivered with intense power and emotion. This is from 'The
Gathering': "The / New Century awaits and how / shall
we slouch toward it. / What vows will we utter. What / fruit
shall we pluck from / perspiring limbs. And who will / be
first and who will be last / and will we do the right thing
/ or is there a right thing or just simply existence formed
and / reformed by our labors gathering" You really need
to read the whole thing though, to appreciate it.
Haiku Handbag
Digging around in the junk on the bedside table here in our
little room in Tabanan (with Cahya snoring away beside me
as I write this at midnight) I unearth a little book that
I really treasure. It's called 'Housebound in Nirvana' by
Brian Tasker, who is an enthusiast and expert on Japanese
Haiku poetry. It's a beautiful little hand-made book (I expect
he may have even made it himself) with a cover of raggedy
hand-made Indian paper, dark grey with light flecks, and tied
with carefully chosen multi-coloured white cotton string flecked
with red green and black. Inside, the light beige natural
paper displays mini verses that, again, chart the course of
a relationship.
My favourite stanza (if it comes up that rather grand term
as it is
deliciously bare) is:
'...your waist, enemy of snows,'
I think Brian has translated this from another source. I
don't even know what it means, but this phrase comes to me,
floats into my mind sometimes at odd moments when I'm not
really thinking at all, and I ponder it.
Does it mean her waist is warm and the snow would melt if
it touched her? Or, perhaps, that cold weather would somehow
abate in her presence? Or is it saying something abstract
about how the curve of her waist might be a fitting opponent
for the beauty of a snowy landscape?
This is what I love about poetry - only five words used,
and already they have provoked so much thought and intrigue
and consideration! One can also just appreciate the sound
and feel of the words, just how they are together, without
consciously striving for meaning. Enjoying them 'poetically'
in the pure sense.
Shards Of Poetry
In the front, the 'Housebound in Nirvana' book bears the
legend 'Fragments of an autobiography in Tanka, Haiku, and
other poems. Halloween 1988 - Spring 1991'. (You can see how
long I have guarded this book!) I like the way it says 'fragments'
- as this is often how I experience writing, myself - 'fragments'
of words jut like shards
'Looney Tune', pastel on paper, by Jeli Lala (c) 2000.
From The Ashram of Spiritual Jewellery and Art, Ubud.
of inscribed pottery from shirled desert sands, and I pick
them up and ponder them. Sometimes I put them onto a file
on my computer, called 'fragments'...
Often, just like real shards of pottery, they are in fact
ready pieces of something larger, ready to be fitted together
to form something useful - like a pot! I adore the magical
feel of this process. And you will know when you discover
true 'fragments' (in your own work, or in somebody elses)
- they just shine! They come from somewhere deeper, a greater
consciousness, and somehow we just tap in and effortlessly
pick them up.
Anyway, back to Brian - 'Housebound in Nirvana' cleverly
charts a relationship from its beginnings: 'Watching you sit
/ your legs / tangled in a web / of my desire...' through
a lyrical and delicious middle: ''arching / your slender bow
/ to my arrows / quivering' (pause a moment, and just savour
that) and: 'jigsaw / puzzle / to each other' (the later of
which I think is a brilliantly apt description of how new
lovers quizzically view each other, finding the similiarities,
the differences, the fit...it's really ... a puzzle!
Then, 'a pause in an argument / birdsong'. (It really captures
the silence, doesn't it?) And: 'Nothing can change / what
I feel / for you / nothing' captures his despair at losing
her. And ominously, with a twist: 'death beckons; / the beam
in the bedroom / that entranced us'. His tumbling son arrives
at the crucial moment, breaking the dark mood (and adding
a 'guilt' slant as the man remembers his love for his son)
and then finally, ending with acceptance and moving on to
Spring: 'Warm / sun on my back / May blossom'.
Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry that originated
as the 'opener' for longer verses but later took on a life
of its own. True Haiku maintains a set pattern, having lines
with a fixed number of syllables: five, seven, five. (Sometimes
in translation, or with artistic licence, the rules get bent
a bit). Also mandatory is a sense of time or season, often
hinted at by mention of nature, for example:
The first soft snow!
Enough to bend the leaves
Of the jonquil low.
- Basho
Basho (1644-1694) is perhaps the most well-known Haiku poet.
I love the feeling of surprise and freshness in this - so
typical of Haiku - almost as if he is seeing snow for the
first time. Basho means 'banana tree', and the poet rather
prosaically adopted this name when he moved to a banana shaded
shack in 1681. Poetic to the last, he wrote the following
as he lay dying:
Fallen sick on a journey
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor
- Basho
I like the see-saw of tension between the first part of the
poem - his physical torpor, and the second part - his mental
agility. Clever. (Haiku should encompass two ideas that can
stand alone like this, yet must somehow enrich each other.
This is known as 'cutting':)
This long recession:
At the end of my Tee-square
A spider starts work.
Brian Cater
Tanka
Tanka predates Haiku. It is similar yet follows different
conventions.
It's longer, lines with syllables of five, seven, five, seven,
and seven.
Being longer, it is ideal for capturing more of a complete
thought than Haiku, and indeed, has traditionally been used
as a kind of 'finale' to any given situation. In Edo (ancient
Tokyo) it seems that no event or party was deemed complete
until some refined person had written a Tanka about it!
Here is a modern one to ponder:
As if headed full steam
for the year's end
I wonder
if I ought not dust off
the old cushion and sit
-Sanford Goldstein
That one blows a bit off the dust off the corners of my mind!
Both Haiku and Tanka are very 'Zen' - they are full of spaces
and gaps into which the meaning can leach.
For me, writing poetry is a bit 'Zen', too - I just write
it straight off, and never really edit my poetry - I find
tweaking it too much usually just mucks it up! I only ever
might change one or two words, if I have to, and I try and
restrain myself even with that. I think if poetry becomes
'hard work' or 'too clever' (I HATE poetry that has loads
of show offy 'allusions' to look up, sorry!) then that shows
in the words and they just stop shining. Scratched from too
much polishing!
Finding Myself At The End Of A Pen
When I just 'don't know what to do with myself' - can't get
in touch with my own feelings, don't really understand what's
going on - I often use poetry. I just start writing and writing
whatever comes into my head (doesn't matter what - jumble
of thoughts, feelings, pick up the laundry, must buy pampers...)
then eventually, something shifts and often, poetry or a song
comes. It just splurges out on its own. And because poetry
is a way of 'talking about what's in between the lines, what's
unsaid', often I can express something ineffable, intangible,
that's been hanging around on the edges of my consciousness.
Which often creates a kind of 'Aha!'.
To give you an example, just before I came to Bali I did
some writing that
spontaneously turned into a song:
Come Into My Garden
Come into my garden, light a fire
To warm up all the seeds
That grow into the earth
Let's water them and watch the seedlings rising
Save me from this dark...
Bless me with a birth...
I really had no clue that I was so yearning for a child,
until I wrote this! I was so out of touch with my feminity
and inner 'Mother'. Writing poetry helped me discover what
I really wanted. And then I came to Bali and found it, in
my lovely husband and daughter.
I hope your poetry makes you lucky, too! - Or, at least,
helps you unearth what you really want!
Some websites you might enjoy are:
www.toyomasu.com/Haiku/ - good Haiku site with ancient and
modern examples.
www.americantanka.com - a site with thought-provoking and
relevant modern
tanka. http://eserver.org/poetry/ - (no 'www' on this one!)
a good general
poetry site.
NEXT ISSUE: A Million Miles From Here - Tales from the Cultural
Frontier,
Bali/London. Part I - The Leaving...
Jeli Lala created the 'Ashram of Spiritual Jewellery and
Art' at no. 1, Sukma St., Tebesaya, Ubud, with her husband,
Putu S. She has studied yoga and many other spiritual practices
for more than ten years. She writes "As a life-long artist,
I've been exploring my inner world since I was a child. In
this column, I will share some of my personal experiences
and spiritual methods - hopefully, you'll find this interesting,
and maybe it will give some ideas for your own journey"
Jeli welcomes comments and may be contacted on:
Email: jelila@jelila.com
Website: www.jelila.com or www.imagine-retreats.com
