I haven't posted an entry about our regular reading at the Prairie Lights Bookstore or Shambaugh House for four weeks now. The primary reason: a writer admonished me for being 'Conradian' when I referred to one continent using an adjective five tones deeper than my sun kissed peau. This triggered my bitchy entries on minding one's own business and advising people who can't respect my opinion to shove artichokes into their orifices. And I didn't mean it to be kinky. But enough of that for now, unless someone out there really wants to pick a catfight.
I find it a grave injustice not writing about the readings these past two Sundays. The poets are marvelous, and, in my opinion, among the finest in our batch.
Let me start off with Nikola Madzirov, a Macedonian poet, essayist and translator, who read his poems last Sunday. The author of five collections of poetry, including Relocated Stone, which won both the Huber Burda Poetry Award and the Miladinov Brothers Award in 2007, his works have been translated into dozens of languages. "I am a refugee," he would tell us, "that's what Madzirov means, homeless." Whether it's literal or figurative, perhaps it's one of the motivations why Nikola's poetry is anchored on subjects like migration, rootedness, separation and memory.
In Perfection is Born, he writes
I want someone to tell me
about the messages in the water in our bodies,
about yesterday’s air
in telephone booths,
about flights postponed because of
poor visibility, despite
all the invisible angels on the calendars.
The fan that weeps for tropical winds,
the incense that smells best
as it vanishes – I want someone to tell me about these things.
I believe that when perfection is born
all forms and truths
crack like eggshells.
Only the sigh of gentle partings
can tear a cobweb apart
and the perfection of imagined lands
can postpone the secret
migration of souls.
And what can I do with my imperfect body:
I go and I return. Go and return
like a plastic sandal on the waves
by the shore.
Agnes Lam, a poet, essayist and literary critic from Hongkong, gave us an equally delightful feast of poetry this afternoon. With her lilting voice, she took us to geographies of imagination that are truly worth visiting.
In April moon, a poem inspired by one of Mark Malby's photographs, she reflects
How many times
have we missed such a moon
or other realities not quite
claiming existence for themselves?
You saw it, cherished it
enough to take its picture.
And then she proceeds with the lines
Surely you did not know then -nor did I-
you would share your remembrance with me today.
If Time did not travel from the past to the present,
if it were to move instead from the future to the past,
then perhaps we would both know we were to meet, that one reason
you saved your vision that evening was for me to greet this moon today...
Her words are intoxicating. But my favorite poem from the selection that she read would be Rendezvous with glow worms. I almost choked on my tears when she read the lines
Perhaps the worms know there are
other caves, other colonies
of their kind. Perhaps they wonder not
as they die before ever
leaving this cosmos lit by their
loves. In their innocence, they need not
yearn to travel to beyond
this cave, this charmed existence of
darkness, light, love, death, darkness, light, love...
...to another space afar
where stars are born, where a day is
as a million years, a million years,
a day, where angels can love
without mating. There is no end
to love, no distance, no longing, if
time does not exist.
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