about paul engle ( usa)
about paul engle, an american poet
Lời dẫn:
... có hai giáo sư đều viết văn, làm thơ - một là giáo sư Lloyd Fernando ( đại học Malaysia ) tôi đã có đôi dòng giới thiệu, ông là người viết tựa tập ' Asian morning, Western music , poems by The Phong - hai, giáo sư Paul Engle của đại học Iowa ( Mỹ ) , từng giữ vai trò chủ tịch International WritingProgram ( Iowa, USA ), ròng rã viết thư mời tôi trong vòng 4 năm liền ( 1966-1970) sang Iowa tham dự trại sáng tác, 4 lần đều bị tòa đại sứ Mỹ ở Saigon từ chối cấp visa . Trong sổ ghi chú riêng của tôi ghi chép - có đôi dòng tiểu sử ( ông này có tên trong WHO' S WHO IN AMERICA ) - cùng đôi bài thơ của ông, tiện dịp - tôi cho post trên blog thằng phảigió - mời đọc giả đồng lãm.
ThếPhong.
PAUL ENGLE was born in Cedar Rapido, Iowa in 1908, dead , March 22, 1991) . After study and travel in Europe as a Rhodes Scholar, he returned to the State University of Iowa, where he directs its program in creative writing. He is also known as a novelist, critic and editor : American Song ( 1934) ; Corn ( 1938); West of Midnight ( 1941) ; American Child ( 1945 and 1956); Word Love ( 1956); Poems in Praise ( 1959) ..." ...He is perhaps best remembered as the long-time director of the Iowa's Writer Worship and as founder of the International Writing Program ( IWP), both at the University of Iowa ". ( from VIKIPEDIA ...)
B E A T S *
by Paul Engle
I
That was a shocking day
When we watched, lyric prone
The two trout siddle under
The underwater stone ;
When we saw there beyond
The heldge of hardy thorn
The eager touching summer
Luring the lifted corn;
When down the slope the two
Running red fox dared
Daylight in their need,
Poised, aloof and paired;
When cardinals from green
Willovs, with red cries,
Scarlet screen of bird
Plunged in our pool of eyes;
For me, merely woman
And man, did not believe
Living things could love
Wholly, and not grieve ;
For love had always been
A nimble animal
That could lure innocence
Or lewd on its belly crawl;
By snarl, by sensual cry
Lover lived, but in a cage,
Barred by my own tight pride
And your rehearsed pure rage;
Pride, pride that would not let
Self give up utterly,
Rage, rage that self would give
Itself up utterly.
They leapt at us like fire
And burned us without blame,
Defied us with delight,
And shamed our human shaw.
II
We have seen animals,
Finned, furred and feathered, move
From their straight corses, curve
I write one line of love .
Fish, fox and cardinal,
Unreasonning and quick,
Proved one and one are one
By plain arithmetic .
They shocked us with their proof
Those pairs of parrallel
Loves that met and merged
Our own fused futures tell ;
Each in the other's view -
Two lines of living light -
Will bend through the bent eyes
One ecstacy of sight .
Our shattered parralles
Of rigid rage and pride
Will bend in one live length
Closer than side by side
P.E.
That is a favorite poem because it makes an effort of mimic its intensity of feeling with an intensity of poem. The poem says that the animals which it describes :
" Proved one and one are one / By plain arithmetic ".
So the writing also tries to become one with the felt idea which it tries to express.
Love is a triumph over all obstacles, including opposites. The stanzas make their own attempt to triumph over artificiality of rime, meter and formal rythm, by making strong and spontaneous emotion not only survive these hazards, but in a sense depend on them. Thus the notion of opposites is not only the theme of the poem, but also its manners .
This poem was a trouble to write but also a pleasure. It was a temptation not to give in too much to the playing on words, and yet in some stanzas that same lightness was crucial to the meaning.
" Defied us with delight / And shamed our human shame ".
One of the allurements in the writing was the contrast between the two sections, also a part of the concept of opposites. The first section moves more more rapidly, is more precise, mor concrete, more physical, more sensual. The second is more deliberate, more general, more abstract .( wicked word) . This is the sort of thing which fascinates the poet, often to his gret distress, to his great distraction.
The first section offers a satatement, the second section offers a mathematical restatement of the same idea . The first section offers proof that love can merge two people, the second offers and prophecy that it will . This working of plain details in one hand ( the fish, the corn) with generalization on the other is also a part of the opposites in resolution which the poem attempts to prove.
I also have a fondness for the poem because it came with a larger group of poems, all of them variations on the theme of love, published as a book The word of love. Looking at it again, I remembered the compulsion of working every evening of a spring season in Louisiana ( Baton Rouge ) when the urgent emotion demanded that language be put under control.
All of the above sounds too cold - blooded. I hope that the poem defies the explanation.
[]
PAUL ENGLE
---
* Paul Engle - BEATS copryright 1950 by Paul Engle. Reprinted from THE WORD OF LOVE by
Paul Engle, by permission of Random House, Inc.
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