VTIAGGIARE PER CONOSCENZA

Quando viaggiamo lontano, osserviamo molte cose

Come un aquilone che vola alto, legato con uno spago

Questo era un modo per essere sani, ricchi e saggi

Le persone vanno a dormire presto per viaggiare a lungo e si alzano presto

Nei tempi antichi, la conoscenza non era libresca

Il saggio viaggia giorno e notte, a differenza di un pigro

Ibn Battuta, Vasco D’Gama e il famoso Gulliver

Tutti erano fonti di conoscenza, tutti erano viaggiatori

Viaggiare in treno è sempre stato affascinante per me

Mi piace osservare fiumi, colline e pianure che si muovono

Viaggiare con tutti i membri della famiglia è una benedizione

Andare in vacanza d’estate e tornare durante i monsoni

Viaggiare ci insegna a prenderci cura gli uni degli altri

Sviluppa lo spirito di squadra, il senso dell’amore e della cura

La vita è anche un lungo viaggio pieno di gioia e dolore

Fallo ora, se vuoi; chi ha visto il domani?

Originally composed English: 

……

TRAVELLING FOR KNOWLEDGE

When we travel far, we observe lots of thing

Like a highflying kite, which is tied with string 

This was a way to be healthy, wealthy and wise

People sleep early to travel long, and early rise

In ancient times the knowledge was not bookish

Wise man travels day and night, unlike a sluggish

Ibn Battuta, Vasco D Gama and famous Gulliver

All were sources of knowledge, all were traveler

Travelling has been fascinating to me by trains

I enjoy watching moving rivers, hills and plains

Travelling with all family members is like a boon

Go in summer vacation and return in monsoon

Travelling teaches us to take care of each other

It develops team spirits, sense of love and care

Life is also a long journey full of joy and sorrow

Do it now, if you wish; who has seen tomorrow

Dr. Perwaiz Shaharyar

Editor, NCERT, New Delhi, INDIA

The esteemed and Hon’ble global poetess Maria Miraglia translates from English to Italian language the poem of Dr. Perwaiz Shaharyar.

She is the Literary Director of the Pablo Neruda Cultural Association and Founder of the World Foundation for Peace. She is an intellectual, high-caliber academician and highly meritorious translator by her passion for literature and culture. She is a multilingual translator especially for poetry, which has been her all time favourite.

POETRY AS A PROPHETARY

(Prophetaries, Poetaries, Comedaries…these words are used in the manner of Monasteries).

Doctors use appliances 

And medicines 

To cut and paste 

Body parts in an attempt 

To restore health 

Of their patient. 

Men suffer as much in body 

As in their minds

Which too need surgery 

For which  they visit 

Hospitals called Prophetaries

Where skill doctors heal patients with words. 

Many patients go to Poetaries

Where Poets hold mushairas

And big dramas are played

To effect catharsis

So that men emerge from this experience 

Fully catharised

Their mental balance restored.

Some Comediaries also offer

‘Sukoon’ (peace)  to tortured souls

Who laugh their viles away

The magic wand of satire  and pun

Makes the evil spirits

On the run 

Leaving men happy and asmile.

Poems are surgical strikes

From the skies like lightning.

In their flash things can be seen better 

And the thunder drowns the pain

Of the surgery

Which proves to be a waterloo

For the bivouacs of Evil

Sea

To express your pain

And your joy in the salt water..

Like a fairy of good luck

He will listen to you.

She will weave coral and shells

She will make a festive wreath.

And it will take the pain away

In the abyss

But the wish

He will bring it to you.

With foams

And fast waves

To talk to the sea

As if someone were yours

He will receive sorrows and joys.

He will travel them.

And like a little child’s desires

He will make them happen.

It will bring loved ones closer to you.

Will hide secrets

To love the sea

He has the ability to make children,

Andres

To learn not to fear responsibility

To care about the family

But respect the sea.

More than your life

Because when he becomes stubborn

A ship turns upside down

And then

Only the Virgin Mary can redeem us

I’d rather have the sea as a friend…

To make me laugh

To move forward

And she

Melodically to sing

In every white-clad wave that breaks on the pier…

To talk to the sea

When are you?

You won’t be alone.

She knows from experience

A man is without a voice

But he cares.

And he knows

That time is turning back

And all wounds will close.

Good things will come.

And people will love each other.

When the ship reaches land.

©®Eva Petropoulou Lianou

“”””””

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Poem recitation

Sea

Dimitris Fileles

Vice President of Pen Greece

Vernon Frazer’s concrete poetry collection “Nemo Under the League” recalls Jules Verne’s underwater sea exploration journey in its title. Like Captain Nemo, Frazer’s poems probe lesser-explored and lesser-mapped areas: aesthetics and the subconscious. Black, white, and grey text, text boxes, lines and shapes appear on the page with the focus more on the aesthetic effect of each composition than on the literal meaning of the words. 

The phrases and their arrangement on the page may seem random at first glance. However, there’s usually a directionality to pieces, such as “Blocking the Inevitable” which guides viewers’ eyes to the right, and “Reflection Locked in Reflection,” which follows a diagonal or elliptical path to suggest light bouncing off a mirror. 

Sometimes the images evoke clip art, as in “Desire After the Elms,” or comic books, traffic lights, or even soup cans, as in “Career Moves.” Or even art deco motifs, as in “Birthing an Ungiven Given.” The text will occasionally relate to the title or presumed theme of the poem (such as “hordes of insufficient data” in “Finding a Reaction” and “overblown deduction guides tax the patience excessively” in “In Charge of What Follows”) but tangentially, creating the effect of a composition inspired by the idea rather than the linear development of a thought. 

At times, while reading, I speculated on what colors and shades Frazer would choose had he decided to incorporate colors. Sometimes my mind suggested possible shades of deep blue, or vivid orange, or light green. The monochromatic feel works, though, to focus attention on the words themselves as the artwork rather than splashy colorful shapes. 

In some pieces, “Flayed Nerve Endings Frayed” and “Reeling Toward the Reel” text itself forms into oval egg shapes or curlicues. Elsewhere, words appear in mirror images of themselves, vertically, diagonally, penetrated by arrows. Words become not just representatives of images or ideas, but as images and design implements themselves, while remaining readable. 

The very last poem in Frazer’s collection, “The Transverse Clatter Balcony,” ends with text cascading down to the end of the lower right of the page. It reads “the last word … cast overboard … definition matter … soaked … in the lumbago sea with Carthage.” Words and meaning are not impermeable or permanent here, but forms of matter subject to the weathering of time, nature and history. 

I recently came across Dr. Leonard Shlain’s The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, in which the cultural anthropologist argues that the development of abstract, linear, alphabet-focused language rewired human brains and changed ancient societies. These changes brought about modern technologies but also fostered war, competition and hierarchy, religious extremism, legalism, and the subjugation of women and the natural world. As an author himself, Dr. Shlain advocates, not for the eradication of books and alphabets, but for greater balance between holistic, image-focused understanding and reductionist, linear ways of making meaning. 

Vernon Frazer’s Nemo Under the League represents an effort at re-calibrating that societal balance by integrating words and images inextricably. It’s worth a read, or a perusal!

How do you match up the words you use to their backgrounds? Is there a pattern, or do you choose what feels right each time? 

It seems different each time, but I probably work with several patterns that I’ve acquired from doing the work.

Even in these pieces, which involve composition, improvisation always plays a role at some point, directing me to choose what, basically, feels right at the time I’m writing it. During improvisational thinking, more elaborate plans do emerge: I can see a full page design or pattern of several pages at times.

What makes a word interesting to you? Sound, shape, length? 

Sound is probably the foremost. Sometimes I feel like a jazz musician whose instrument is language. Generally, when I have difficulty finding the right phrase, I choose the one that sounds the most musical to my ears.  It almost always turns out to be the best choice. Sometimes working with the shape of a letter or word leads to a phrase, a verse or a visual pattern.

Would you ever work in color? What inspired you to choose a black, white, and gray color scheme? 

My equipment and the economics. My old color printer used an ink cartridge for every page I printed and the cost of printing a color book would make the sale price too high. Over the years, technology changed many things, as we all know. Ten or fifteen years ago, I talked about trying to do this work in color but my life didn’t make it a priority. When I joined the C22 Poetry Collective a few years ago, their aggressive experimentation led me to try it. So, I wrote a color book called SIGHTING I did that’s online, but not yet officially published. It’s officially coming out May 7.

When words occur to you, how do you decide whether to put them into a concrete poem or free verse? 

More my mood in the moment, I’d say. When I feel I’m starting to stagnate, I’m more likely to do a concrete poem or a multimedia video to relieve my dissatisfaction. Those are the most demanding, after all. Sometimes I write textual poems because I don’t want to meet a more demanding challenge. Nothing is entirely easy, but some days I want to work in a different way, say, strictly with text and either a projective or left-margin pattern. Each method plays a role in my life.

Do you have any other writers or artists who have inspired or influenced you? Anyone whose work you find especially interesting? 

I have many influences and hope I’ve made something of my own from all that I’ve learned. Jack Kerouac started me as a writer at 15. William Burroughs and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 shaped my prose style. Until age 36, I aspired to be a novelist. But Charles Olson was an early influence at 15 and a major influence on my poetry until about 1988, when my style changed considerably. Peter Ganick introduced me to language and visual poetry. I absorbed many writers he published. My writing began to reflect the experimental work bassist Bertram Turetzky exposed me to in the mid-60s, when I studied bass with him. Peter’s publications revived those interests. Then, Steve McCaffery and bp Nichol influenced my work around 2002. I’ve read and absorbed many others; I was a literary omnivore.

Vernon Frazer’s Nemo Under the League is available here from the publisher.

Unbreak His Heart

He used to think

That he’d need

To find a woman

To unbreak his heart

But now he knows

That only he

Can do that.

Taylor Dibbert is a poet in Washington, DC. He’s the author of, most recently, “Takoma.”

Potato Popo

They give him 30 days in San Ber’dino

– Frank Zappa, San Ber’dino

“The suspect’s head looks like a potato,” types a patrolman.

The AI surveillance of San Ber’dino porches

train on adversarial images of potatoes,

earthy spuds with loam nuggets in their clogged pores,

roots creeping and skins greening

during their pantry stowaway concealments.

Every potato is a precious snowflake individuality incarnate.

Albert’s potato-shaped-universe could bang big over and over

and every time a different holographic mass would unfold

from the same unevenly distributed infinite premise.

The engineers who programmed the surveillance doorbells

used the same algorithm God did: deus machina, code is law.

The AIs try to generate the suspect’s potato.

They instead create inflationary suspicions mapped by reticulating splines.

San Ber’tato streets ravel like knitting around porch AI.

The Riemann-Gauss asymptotes of suspects arrive in police blotters

in batches of infinitude.

San Par’tato police BOLO infinite no-knock warrants,

wake the judges at 3am to cut a potato stamp like a grade schooler.

The judge’s inkpad runs dry.

With starchy stamps and fingerpaints he authorizes

the generative algorithms into creation.

The Popo pop potato people throughout the Pan-Par’tato suburbs.

One for the chair will fry. Another scallops a scapegoated caseload casserole.

One baked gives up his dealer. Many are mashed, hugging their ribs.

The suspect is still not drawn from the deck of possible perps.

The suspect is hidden in the precinct 52 Factorial

the faces of the public stare at curbside handcuffs, at spud-gun gunpoint.

The Pot’tato Popo having transformed the city of San Ber’dino

into the lumpen image of their search algorithms.

Terry Trowbridge’s poems are in Pennsylvania Literary Journal, MasticadoresUSA, Poetry Pacific, Carousel, Lascaux Review, Carmina, untethered, Progenitor, Miracle Monocle, Orbis, Pinhole, Big Windows,Muleskinner,Brittle Star, MathematicalIntelligencer, Journal of HumanisticMathematics, New Note, Hearth and Coffin, Beatnik Cowboy, Delta Poetry Review, Stick Figure, miniMAG, and 100+ more. His litcritis in BeZine, Erato,Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, StudiesinSocialJustice, Rampike, Seeds, and The/t3mz/Review.  His Erdösnumber is 5. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first 2 writing grants.