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

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* Paul Engle - BEATS  copryright 1950 by Paul Engle.    Reprinted from THE WORD OF LOVE  by 
Paul Engle,   by permission of  Random House, Inc.