I am enraptured by this poem by Federico Garcia Lorca:
Arbolé, Arbolé . . .
Tree, tree
dry and green.
The girl with the pretty face
is out picking olives.
The wind, playboy of towers,
grabs her around the waist.
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies,
with blue and green jackets
and big, dark capes.
"Come to Cordoba, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
Three young bullfighters passed,
slender in the waist,
with jackets the color of oranges
and swords of ancient silver.
"Come to Sevilla, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light,
a young man passed by, wearing
roses and myrtle of the moon.
"Come to Granada, muchacha."
And the girl won't listen to him.
The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives
with the grey arm of the wind
wrapped around her waist.
Tree, tree
dry and green.
Don't you just love that "grey arm of the wind"? And why does picking olives sound so romantic? Where can I find some myrtle of the moon?
Lorca is a very big deal as a poet, but I had not read him until fairly recently. He was a contemporary of Salvidor Dali in Spain, and his life ended during the Spanish Civil War. Listen to this craziness:
"In 1936, García Lorca was staying at Callejones de García, his country home, at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was arrested by Franquist soldiers, and on the 17th or 18th of August, after a few days in jail, soldiers took García Lorca to "visit" his brother-in-law, Manuel Fernandez Montesinos, the Socialist ex-mayor of Granada whom the soldiers had murdered and dragged through the streets. When they arrived at the cemetery, the soldiers forced García Lorca from the car. They struck him with the butts of their rifles and riddled his body with bullets. His books were burned in Granada's Plaza del Carmen and were soon banned from Franco's Spain. To this day, no one knows where the body of Federico García Lorca rests."
Showing posts with label García Lorca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label García Lorca. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Does anyone ever say "no" when asked if they like music?
I am a sucker for strangers suddenly becoming united through a shared experience, especially when it involves music. Stopping to witness a busker outside a subway station playing classical pieces on a set of crystal water glasses or getting a karaoke serenade by an undercover Jewel, these equally thrill me. In this case (yes, it is a T-Mobile commercial), it's the welcoming of new arrivals at Heathrow airport with spontaneous singing.
It's just something that makes people pause in their everyday lives and connect with each other. It often results in the quick draw of a camera phone, but it also makes you glad to be alive.
In honor of the upcoming holiday season, here is a "Random Act of Culture" brought to you by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. (Did you know that their Macy's has the largest pipe organ in the world? )
The Guitar
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.
-Federico García Lorca
It's just something that makes people pause in their everyday lives and connect with each other. It often results in the quick draw of a camera phone, but it also makes you glad to be alive.
In honor of the upcoming holiday season, here is a "Random Act of Culture" brought to you by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. (Did you know that their Macy's has the largest pipe organ in the world? )
The Guitar
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.
-Federico García Lorca
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Why I love grocery shopping
Ever heard of the idea of eternal return? It has been referenced in countless works in pop culture. It's in The Matrix, Groundhog Day, and The Never Ending Story. It's in the first line of Peter Pan and a major theme of the excellent TV show Battlestar Galactica. It is the idea of cyclical patterns in the universe. "All of this has happened before and all this will happen again." Sounds very dramatic. And poetic.
In a similar way, it's like saying that history repeats itself. And in yet another way, it's like reading something from a long time ago and being surprised to learn that we can identify with it. I remember being shocked in reading The Canterbury Tales. Some of those characters could have made themselves at home at any trailer park. Because the way human beings behave now is not so different from the way they behaved hundreds or thousands of years ago. We are still innately selfish, we still make war, and we still do stupid things in the name of love.
So when I was reading this poem by Allen Ginsberg, his feelings about the world he was living in are not so different from the way people view the world today.
A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?
--Berkeley, 1955
To understand this poem, you have to understand that Ginsberg liked to invoke Whitman when he was writing. Whitman was almost like his muse, and Whitman's poems were usually of an observational nature. He connected to things, people, nature, which is what he's doing in the supermarket in this poem. He's interacting with the products, with the grocery clerks, while Ginsberg watches from a distance. Ginsberg feels disconnected from all these things going on around him and all the people. He can only connect with poets who have long since died (García Lorca was a Spanish poet who was murdered in the Spanish Civil War). At the end of this poem, Ginsberg longs for the past and these poets' idealized versions of it that they wrote about. In the supermarket, where he is "shopping for images" (Oh, Allen, I've been there), he is bombarded by the busyness, all the choices of "neon fruit," and "brilliant stacks of cans," but he can't find what he wants. He feels lonely and separate from the modern world.
Upon reading this, it made me think about how accurately that still portrays America today. We are often listening to our iPods or on our cell phones when we are shopping. We do this when we drive or ride the subway. We avoid connecting with the people around us, whether it's out of fear or selfishness. Sometimes if we're caught sitting at a table with a group of people all on their blackberries, we stop and reflect on this and someone will say that they yearn for a simpler time. What simpler time was that?
In a similar way, it's like saying that history repeats itself. And in yet another way, it's like reading something from a long time ago and being surprised to learn that we can identify with it. I remember being shocked in reading The Canterbury Tales. Some of those characters could have made themselves at home at any trailer park. Because the way human beings behave now is not so different from the way they behaved hundreds or thousands of years ago. We are still innately selfish, we still make war, and we still do stupid things in the name of love.
So when I was reading this poem by Allen Ginsberg, his feelings about the world he was living in are not so different from the way people view the world today.
A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?
--Berkeley, 1955
To understand this poem, you have to understand that Ginsberg liked to invoke Whitman when he was writing. Whitman was almost like his muse, and Whitman's poems were usually of an observational nature. He connected to things, people, nature, which is what he's doing in the supermarket in this poem. He's interacting with the products, with the grocery clerks, while Ginsberg watches from a distance. Ginsberg feels disconnected from all these things going on around him and all the people. He can only connect with poets who have long since died (García Lorca was a Spanish poet who was murdered in the Spanish Civil War). At the end of this poem, Ginsberg longs for the past and these poets' idealized versions of it that they wrote about. In the supermarket, where he is "shopping for images" (Oh, Allen, I've been there), he is bombarded by the busyness, all the choices of "neon fruit," and "brilliant stacks of cans," but he can't find what he wants. He feels lonely and separate from the modern world.
Upon reading this, it made me think about how accurately that still portrays America today. We are often listening to our iPods or on our cell phones when we are shopping. We do this when we drive or ride the subway. We avoid connecting with the people around us, whether it's out of fear or selfishness. Sometimes if we're caught sitting at a table with a group of people all on their blackberries, we stop and reflect on this and someone will say that they yearn for a simpler time. What simpler time was that?
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