Some time ago, in the spirit of good fun, I asked the denizens of Harriet what was on their desks and – perhaps understandably – reaped few responses. What does it matter, the cluttered context in which a writer gets her writing done? Who wants to confess to the favourite Troll doll that stands watch over a keyboard? Nevertheless, I was happy to read the note that trailed a Geoffrey Brock translation, in the April issue of the print magazine:
“Many writers populate their desks with pictures and quotes, as if to make their work seem less solitary by giving them the feeling of being watched or addressed. When I was growing up, my father had a scrawled Machado quatrain (in Bly’s translation) taped up over his writing desk:
Mankind owns four things
that are no good at sea:
rudder, anchor, oars
and the fear of going down.
Though I didn’t fully grasp its meaning, I sensed that it contained a prodigious truth, and I understood that my father had it there as a kind of reminder, even a goad.”
Brock goes on to mention other writers and the various quotes and photos with which they fortify themselves. “Writers love such talismans,” he writes. “Some are words, some images.” The poem he translates, a sonnet by Franco Fortini, ponders a photo of Chinese workers, tacked to the sonnet’s speaker’s wall. The photo’s a kind of conscience.
I have no such photo, but Brock’s translation and its accompanying note got me thinking about the mantras I recall from time to time – the mantras which I can only recall since the curling Post-Its that surround me, a flaking wallpaper of the stuff, preserve no mantras, though they ought to (as it stands, future archaeologists are poised to learn much about my recent appointments and my inability to retain a phone number). But Eliot’s famous quote about what he learned from Laforgue and co. – “the business of the poet was to make poetry out of the unexplored resources of the unpoetical” – has clung, as has a more recent quote, by an American novelist and poet, known more in Canada, name of Richard Teleky: “poems have needs / that differ from poets’….”
I’m sure I’ve more, but quick, look around: which mantras or talismans are currently confronting you with the sheer fact of themselves – perhaps the way those Chinese workers in the photo are confronting Fortini’s speaker?
They look wary or ironic or tense.
They know I do not write for them. I know
they didn’t live for me. Yet sometimes I feel
I’m being asked for more candid words,
more credible deeds, by their doubtfulness.
Actually, those lines by Fortini, by way of Brock, wouldn’t make a half bad mantra for tacking to some wall….
Mantra tacked to my wall:
HOPELESS FUCKUP BEATNIK COCKSUCK MOTHERFUCK
NOGOOD BASTARD EAT SHIT RUN RABBITS
AND BARK AT THE MOON
Philip Whalen, from Highgrade–Doodles and Poems
It’s xeroxed in his hand and must have come to me via Joanne Kyger years ago. Talisman-wise, I have a new dowsing stone. And several artifacts (arrow points, scrapers, stone axes) culled from an ancient midden near the Medina River in Central Texas.
Posted By: Dale Smith on May 13, 2009 at 10:24 amReport this comment
Great mantra, that!
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 11:39 amReport this comment
Cavafy’s “Ithaka” … various bits of Spicer… W.S. Graham… Janet Frame… Delmore Schwartz’s poem on the Great American Word, Sure… & a recent translation of Hester Knibbe.
A tile from a cemented-over wall in a Boston Red Line tunnel; and a railroad spike from my hometown of Memphis. Also some spiders.
Posted By: Don Share on May 13, 2009 at 10:30 amReport this comment
I haven’t had a desk since I was a kid.
Posted By: Matt on May 13, 2009 at 10:39 amReport this comment
Me, neither. I have a broken door in the basement propped up on some junk.
Posted By: Don Share on May 13, 2009 at 11:00 amReport this comment
An Edgar A. Poe stamp.
Posted By: thomas brady on May 13, 2009 at 10:53 amReport this comment
Well, if we’re talking philately… Frank Sinatra stamp for me. And don’t tell me the dude wasn’t a poet! If the UK replaces The Queen with Dusty Springfield, she’s in, too.
Posted By: Don Share on May 13, 2009 at 10:59 amReport this comment
Hear hear!
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 11:39 amReport this comment
Johhny Mercer was the ‘poet:’
You’d never know it, but buddy I’m a kind of poet
And I’ve got a lot of things to say
And when I’m gloomy, you simply gotta listen to me
Until it’s all talked away
‘One For My Baby’–lyrics by Johnny Mercer
I’ve always been fascinated by ‘teams’ of music and lyric writers.
Wouldn’t it be funny to see something like this:
Lyrics by John Ashbery
Posted By: thomas brady on May 13, 2009 at 12:23 pmMusic by John Keats
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Thomas, this is a neat idea. We should all come up w/ unlikely pairings now…. With whom should we pair Poe?
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 1:44 pmReport this comment
A microscope and a compass.
Are there other people who don’t do any actual writing at their desk?
Posted By: Lavinia Greenlaw on May 13, 2009 at 11:16 amReport this comment
I write while riding trains during my commute… virtually never at a desk.
Posted By: Don Share on May 13, 2009 at 11:26 amReport this comment
I do a lot of writing on the go, too, in a notebook. But I type it up at my desk.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 11:28 amReport this comment
But the post is also about the mantras you carry around w/ you!
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 11:29 amReport this comment
My most prized art objects: Three stones my son brought back for me a couple years ago, from Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.
Kent
Posted By: Kent Johnson on May 13, 2009 at 11:27 amReport this comment
by the way, perhaps the greatest essay on talismans and poetic imagination is Mikhail Epstein’s “Thing and Word: On the Lyrical Museum,” in *After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism & Contemporary Russian Culture* (U. of Massachusetts Press, 1995).
Kent
Posted By: Kent Johnson on May 13, 2009 at 11:32 amReport this comment
Thanks for the reference, Kent! And is one allowed to take stones from there?!?
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 12:13 pmReport this comment
Tacked up over my desk is this poem by Dahlia Ravikovitch, translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfield:
THE END OF WAR
He came at midnight, both legs lopped off,
though his old wounds had long since healed.
He came through the third-story window–
I was struck with wonder at how he got in.
We’d lived through an age of calamity;
many had lost their closest kin.
In streets sown with shredded papers
the orphan survivors were skipping about.
I was frozen as crystal when he came.
Posted By: Miriam Levine on May 13, 2009 at 11:52 amHe thawed me like pliant wax,
altered me even as the pall of night
turns into the feather of dawn,
his bold spirit translucent a mist
that streams from the morning clouds.
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Thanks, Miriam.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 1:42 pmReport this comment
A postcard-size Russian icon of St. Michael, given to me by Elena Shvarts.
Some toy soldiers.
A small broadside of a tongue-in-cheek want-ad, written by young Ez Pound : “Poet Out of a Job”.
Tiny (original? unlikely – but looks like one) photo of same, in old age, found in 2nd-hand vol. of Cantos.
Tend to edit & print up things at my desk. Otherwise write elsewhere, in little notebooks, or with my beloved “Neo” – a little gray word-processor designed for elementary school students. Shows 4 lines on text on screen (1 quatrain). I can use it anywhere!
(I have a small very thing gold(?) ring on my keychain, which I found once on the street, in Fox Point, Providence, when I used to walk there daily, on my lunchbreak, composing lovelorn poem called “India Point”.)
Posted By: Henry Gould on May 13, 2009 at 11:55 amReport this comment
I like the rigour I assume that Neo inspires: one quatrain at a time.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 1:42 pmReport this comment
My friend made me a kind of Cornell box involving William Carlos Williams, which stands behind two Buddha Boxes. On top of the Cornell box are a paperback from 1902 called Card Tricks and How to Do Them, & Little Leather Library editions of Kipling & (ahem) Poe. A letter from Ange Mlinko has been sitting next to my computer for over two years because I wrote a good poem while it was there & I can’t be sure that’s it’s not a charm.
Posted By: michael robbins on May 13, 2009 at 1:34 pmReport this comment
Michael, yours is the superstition of the ballplayer who tucks his pants into his socks, one time, and gets a hit, and doesn’t untuck until his next hitting slump. (Apologies for the sports analogy; they can be awful, I know.)
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 1:41 pmReport this comment
(Which is a good thing, I think!)
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 6:45 pmReport this comment
You really do need to check out the Baseball Project (see http://www.stevewynn.net/volume_one_frozen_ropes_and_dying_quails.php).
From the opening track, “Past Time”:
When Campy Campaneris played all nine positions in a game. When Pete Rose demolished Ray Fosse he was never the same. 31 wins and an album on Capitol for Denny McLain. So long ago, so long, Pastime, are you past your prime? The DiMaggios, Shoeless Joe, Minnie Minoso, Yo La Tengo. Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox made the Sox go go. The sideburns of Pepitone and Oscar Gamble’s afro. So long ago, so long, Pastime, are you past your prime? One thing you can say about time is that it always passes. One thing you can say about the game is that it’s not getting any faster. You can get tangled up in a ball of rubber bands and twine, the cowhide and pine tar, snuff, spit and chalk dust lines. Two round-trippers and a no-hitter, that’s Rick Wise (not Bobby Wine). So long ago, so long, Pastime, are you past your prime?
Posted By: michael robbins on May 13, 2009 at 7:25 pmReport this comment
I know, I know. It sounds quite cool. I’m on it.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 7:58 pmReport this comment
The question of what talismans we carry around in our heads is similar to the question of lyrical-bits-in-daily-life that Annie asked recently, focussed on one’s everyday life as a writer.
In the library rec-room guest-bedroom at home I put up a post card of Joos van Cleve the Elder’s painting of St. Jerome in his Study, depicting the saint musing over an open book while pointing to a skull on his desk. For a while I really wanted a skull on my desk but never got one.
Here’s a nice bouquet of talismans:
Make a joyful noise, all the earth:
make a loud noise.
With trumpets and sound of cornet
make a joyful noise.
Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
Let the floods clap their hands:
let the hills be joyful together
– Psalm 98 (redacted)
The hills are alive. — Oscar Hammerstein II
Bring the noise. — Chuck D.
No sound is dissonant which tells of life. — Coleridge
Posted By: john on May 13, 2009 at 1:46 pmReport this comment
St. Jerome in his study! Great stuff, John. There are a number of versions of that study; here’s one I like:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CranachBrandenburgasJerome.jpg
How he got any work done there, I’ll never know!
Posted By: Don Share on May 13, 2009 at 2:58 pmReport this comment
Thanks, John. I didn’t mean to overlap w/ Annie’s post. I’m glad Chuck D. has provided a talisman.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 1:50 pmReport this comment
Thanks for the post, Jason — I don’t mind at all the overlap with Annie’s post. The focus on writing interests me.
Posted By: john on May 13, 2009 at 2:47 pmReport this comment
Me, too — perhaps too much at times. I’m a sucker for those Paris Review interviews, for insight into the nitty gritty.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 3:04 pmReport this comment
Talisman? A 4-inch high inukshuk, honouring an early, very modest, success.
Mantra? “…the wheel within the clay” by the late, great John Stewart.
Posted By: Colin Ward on May 13, 2009 at 5:43 pmReport this comment
And yet it’s the “early, very modest” successes that matter, right?
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 8:00 pmReport this comment
Jason:
And yet it’s the “early, very modest” successes that matter, right?
Especially so if those are all one has!
Maybe I peaked too early.
Posted By: Colin Ward on May 13, 2009 at 8:17 pmReport this comment
Whatever plateau you think you’re on is just prologue to the next peak!
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 13, 2009 at 9:20 pmReport this comment
menu from nyc pub called The Dead Poet, called “The Book of Verse” and adorned with Longfellow quote
Quote from Tao te Ching
Goddess Bast
Goddess Hathor
Toy pirate ship
plastic Pegasus model
whalebone owl fetish
Poetry Foundation Pegasus button
etc.
Posted By: Annie Finch on May 14, 2009 at 3:28 amReport this comment
Which verse of the Tao Te Ching?
Posted By: Gary B. Fitzgerald on May 14, 2009 at 7:51 amAnd which translation?
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Just curious (being nosy). That little book has made a great difference in my life.
Posted By: Gary B. Fitzgerald on May 14, 2009 at 11:19 amReport this comment
Well, okay then. Sorry to impose on you.
Posted By: Gary B. Fitzgerald on May 16, 2009 at 8:02 pmReport this comment
>Thanks for the reference, Kent! And is one allowed to take stones from there?!?
I don’t know what the “rules” are at present, Jason, but like Smithson’s other earthworks and site installations, Spiral Jetty was created as an entropic work. I’m sure Smithson would have approved of scruffy 22-year old poet-artists on a cross-country pilgrimage taking away a few small stones: a completely different thing than chipping off a piece of paint from a Corot at the Louvre.
All in the spirit of “site displacement”!
Kent
Posted By: Kent Johnson on May 14, 2009 at 10:30 amReport this comment
Now I feel self-conscious about all of that paint-chipping I do in galleries.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 14, 2009 at 10:36 amReport this comment
I might as well admit that I pocketed a small bit of gravel from Yeats’s grave once upon a time.
Posted By: Don Share on May 14, 2009 at 10:42 amReport this comment
Don Share said:
>I might as well admit that I pocketed a small bit of gravel from Yeats’s grave once upon a time.
Just more proof (if such were needed, with the forthcoming Conceptual/Flarf feature) that Poetry Magazine has been taken over by cultural hooligans.
Kent
Posted By: Kent Johnson on May 14, 2009 at 10:52 amReport this comment
I won’t even discuss my behavior in the vicinity of Jack Kerouac’s grave…
Posted By: Don Share on May 14, 2009 at 11:03 amReport this comment
Don, you can’t tease us like that.
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 14, 2009 at 11:38 amReport this comment
porcelain frog, 8 bottle caps (5 grey, one red, one green, one black), a stack of cd’s out of their case (iron & wine, janis joplin, cat power, josh rouse, the new dylan album), picture of my mother as a young woman from a jc penny sitting, church key, pearl necklace, enameled jewelry box with a troika scene, three pens, russian nesting doll, rubik’s snake, bookmark with portland’s eleven bridges, poetry books (kharms, metres, pessoa, tsvetaeva, kinnell), tony judt’s REAPPRAISALS, bartender manual, guide to contact juggling, instruction pamphlet for cigar box juggling, cellular phone, coaster, bulleit’s.
Posted By: james stotts on May 15, 2009 at 5:04 pmReport this comment
Interesting query, actually. It didn’t catch me until I made an association not so tangential. Around mid-century Roethke famously said that Goethe was a “thingy” poet. Goethe himself confessed to being as much late in life when he had his conversations with that literary wanna-be Eckermann. He told his sometime secretary, I figure with some exaggeration, that he always had to have a thing of his creations in front of him in order to make the poem. This rather puts a twist on the notion of talismans, right? Perhaps the thinginess of the object is what grounds some writers.
On my desk are two Goddess figurines, one to hold votary candles and the other contains lamp oil. Both are ceramic. One is a tall slender female figure. The other is as roundly proportioned as the Venus of Willendorf. They both raise their arms above them. The slender figure was given to me by a friend and she is green. The object actually incited a suite of poems. So I get what Goethe meant. But the real cache is on the top of a book shelf immediately behind me. Found and given things. Lots of stones and minerals. But other things too. Just things that perhaps ground me.
Terreson
Posted By: Terreson on May 17, 2009 at 3:00 pmReport this comment
James and Terreson, thanks for sharing your talismans. Quite interesting to hear what ‘grounds’ people…
Posted By: Jason Guriel on May 18, 2009 at 6:45 pmReport this comment