From "Preludes" by T.S. Eliot

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

[...]

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.


Eliot, T.S. "Preludes" from The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1980, 12-13.

from "Flying Man" by Rabindranath Tagore

I feel the age we live in is drawing to a close - 
   Upheavals threaten, gather the pace
      Of a storm that nothing slows.

Hatred and envy swell to violent conflagration:
   Panic spreads down from the skies,
      From their growing devastation.

If nowhere in the sky is there left a space
   For gods to be seated, then, Indra,
      Thunderer, may you place

At the end of this history your direst instruction:
   A last full stop written in the fire
      Of furious total destruction.

Hear the prayer of an earth that is stricken with pain:
   In the green woods, O may the birds
      Sing supreme again.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. "Flying Man" in Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, 113.

from Flute-Music by Rabindranath Tagore

   Kinu the milkman's alley.
      A ground-floor room in a two-storeyed house,
Slap on the road, windows barred.
   Decaying walls, crumbling dust in places
         Or stained with damp.
            Stuck on the door,
         A picture of Ganesa, Bringer of Success,
               From the end of a bale of cloth.
      Another creature apart from me lives in my room
                  For the same rent: 
                     A lizard.
            There's one difference between him and me:
                   He doesn't go hungry.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, 96.

from Shah-Jahan by Rabindranath Tagore

          O human heart,

     All that you gather is thrown

To the edge of the path by the end of each night and day

   You have no time to look back again,

       No time, no time.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, 78.

From Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva by Rabindranath Tagore

Clouds show a rainbow,
Gardens show flowers.
The roar of Creation
Resolves into music.

Tagore, Rabindranath translated by Radice, William. "Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva" Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005, 46.

Stanza Sunday: from A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the world’s broad field of battle,
   In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
   Be a hero in the strife!

Longellow, Henry Wadsworth. from "A Psalm of Life", Accessed on July 26, 2015, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173910

Avant-Garde Poetry and Information Overload

Avant-garde poetry may have a small role to play in our understanding of global information flows—on the other hand, the avant-garde has always aspired to be predictive, to keep up with the present, to stay ahead of history. The avant-garde’s attempts to maintain critical distance from mainstream bourgeois values may be grandiose and hyperbolic, but the questions raised by avant-garde movements should not be dismissed as nihilistic or unrepresentative of larger social developments. To adapt a question posed by Lyn Hejinian—“Isn’t the avant-garde always pedagogical?”—I would ask: “Isn’t the avant-garde always technological?” Much of the work of the twentieth-century avant-garde was extremely self-conscious of the rapid changes in technologies of communication and data storage. From Dada photomontage to hypertext poetry, avant-garde methodology has been deeply concerned with remediation and transcoding—the movement from one technological medium or format to another. As Brian Reed has recently written, “poetry is a language-based art with a penchant for reflecting on its channels of communication.” For Reed, poetry “offers unparalleled opportunities for coming to grips with the new media ecology. Poets, as they experiment with transmediation, serially bring to light each medium’s textures, contours, and inner logic.” While poetry may seem the most non-technological of literary genres, over the past century poets have frequently been obsessed with the changing nature of information and its dissemination. The news that there is more news than we can process is not so new; while avant-garde poetry may not figure prominently in the global information glut, the global information glut figures prominently in avant-garde poetry.

Stephens, Paul. "Stars in My Pocket Like Bits of Data" Guernica, July 15, 2015, Accessed on July 20, 2015, https://www.guernicamag.com/features/stars-in-my-pocket-like-bits-of-data/

Stanza Sunday: from The Fall of Tenochtitlan

Weep, my people:
know that with these disasters
we have lost the Mexican nation.
The water has turned bitter,
our food is bitter!
These are the acts of the Giver of Life . . .

León-Portilla, Miguel. "The Fall of Tenochtitlan" The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006, 146.

Stanza Sunday: Breakfast by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,

Because the shells were screeching overhead.

I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread

That Hull United would beat Halifax

When Jimmy Stainthorpe played full-back instead

of Billy Bradford. Ginger raised his head

And cursed, and took the bet; and dropt back dead.

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,

Because the shells were screeching overhead.

Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson. "Breakfast" Accessed on July 12, 2015, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/248532

Stanza Sunday: from The Fête by Charlotte Mew

To-night again the moon’s white mat
     Stretches across the dormitory floor
While outside, like an evil cat
     The pion prowls down the dark corridor,
     Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spiteFor getting leave to sleep in town last night.But it was none of us who made that noise,
Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies
Out of the ivy—he will say it was us boys—
     Seigneur mon Dieu: the sacré soul of spies!
     He would like to catch each dream that lies
      Hidden behind our sleepy eyes:
Their dream? But mine—it is the moon and the wood that sees;
All my long life how I shall hate the trees!

Mew, Charlotte. "The Fête" Accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243438

Stanza Sunday: Los Perros Románticos by Roberto Bolaño

En aquel tiempo yo tenía veinte años

y estaba loco.

Había perdido un país

pero había ganado un sueño.

Y si tenía ese sueño

lo demás no importaba.

Ni trabajar ni rezar

ni estudiar en la madrugada

junto a los perros románticos.

Y el sueño vivía en el vacío de mi espíritu.

Una habitación de madera,

en penumbras,

en uno de los pulmones del trópico.

Y a veces me volvía dentro de mí

y visitaba el sueño: estatua eternizada

en pensamientos líquidos,

un gusano blanco retorciéndose

en el amor.

Un amor desbocado.

Un sueño dentro de otro sueño.

Y la pesadilla me decía: crecerás.

Dejarás atrás las imágenes del dolor y del laberinto

y olvidarás.

Pero en aquel tiempo crecer hubiera sido un crimen.

Estoy aquí, dije, con los perros románticos

y aquí me voy a quedar.

Bolaño, Roberto. The Romantic Dogs "Los perros románticos" New York: New Directions Books, 2006, 2.

Stanza Sunday: from An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind:
But ALL subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The general ORDER, since the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, "An Essay on Man." New York: Signet Classics, 2003, 91

Stanza Sunday: from Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun by Walt Whitman

Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet by the woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your cornfields and orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets - give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes - give me women - give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day - let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows - give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching - give me the sound of the trumpets and drums!
(The soldiers in companies or regiments - some starting away, flush'd and reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such life for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torchlight procession!
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded,)
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus,
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass, "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun." New York: The Modern Library, 1993, 391-92.

Stanza Sunday: from Preludes by T.S. Eliot

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

Eliot, T.S. "Preludes." The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980, 13.

Assadymandias

Their faces were plastered on billboards and car-stickers with slogans such as al-Assad ila al-abad (Assad for eternity).  

"Stones that speak." The Economist. May 30th - June 5th, 2015, Accessed on June 1, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21652254-syrias-famous-ruined-roman-city-has-meant-many-things-many-people-stones-speak

Stanza Sunday: from A not admitting of the wound by Emily Dickinson

A not admitting of the wound
Until it grew so wide
That all my Life had entered it
And there were troughs beside - 

Dickinson, Emily. "A not admitting of the wound." Accessed on May 31, 2015, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246448

Stanza Sunday: from "Lenox Avenue: Midnight" by Langston Hughes

The rhythm of life

Is a jazz rhythm,

Honey.

The gods are laughing at us.

Hughes, Langston. "Lenox Avenue: Midnight." The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: First Vintage Classics Edition, 1995, 92.

Stanza Sunday: from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you. 

Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself." Accessed on May 17, 2015, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174745

Stanza Sunday: from Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 by William Wordsworth

                                          Nor perchance,

If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

Wordsworth, William, and Appelbaum, Stanley, ed. English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology, "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798." Mineola, New York: Dover Thrift Editions, 1996, 28-9.   

I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Balance Sheets

Today Messrs. Stubbington and Berthelsen of The Wall Street Journal seamlessly weave an allusion to Eliot's The Waste Land into the opening paragraph of their story about the April markets. It takes a rare journalistic talent to fit high modernism into a financial news analysis piece. They should be applauded. Too bad they couldn't find a way to work in dried tuber futures. 

April proved a cruel month for investors in financial markets, many of whom had bet the U.S. dollar would continue its march higher, oil prices would fall further and the rally in bond markets around the world would gain steam. 

Stubbington, Tommy and Berthelsen, Christian, "Global Markets Rattled as Turnaround Whips Investors," The Wall Street Journal., May 1, 2015, accessed May 1, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/stock-markets-fall-as-turnaround-whips-investors-1430436783