a poem

The Music Box

Music of Japan. Parsimoniously
from the water clock the drops unfold
in lazy honey or ethereal gold
that over time reiterates a weave
eternal, fragile, enigmatic, bright.
I fear that every one will be the last.
They are a yesterday come from the past.
But from what shrine, from what mountain’s slight
garden, what vigils by an unknown sea,
and from what modest melancholy, from
what lost and rediscovered afternoon
do they arrive at their far future: me?
Who knows? No matter. When I hear it play
I am. I want to be. I bleed away.

by Jorge Luis Borges
1899–1986

 Translated from the Spanish by Tony Barnstone
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Translator's Note: Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges was unapologetic about his sonnets. He liked his rhymes to be true, and he liked to create sentences the size of stanzas in order to emphasize the sonnet’s modular structure. Borges also made it clear that he expected the same dedication and craft from his translators, that he did not want his sonnets translated into loosened form or into free verse. (His comment on such translations was simple: “Try harder.”)

My love affair with Borges’s sonnets goes back to my earlier love affair with his fabulist fiction. I love how he uses the sonnet as a machine for thinking, for literary and philosophical games, and I love finding the poems populated by my old friends: the tigers, riddles, labyrinths, and mirrors that recur so often in his prose. Borges is not merely a philosophical poet; he is a visionary one. When the poet addresses “the One Who is Reading Me,” his imagination travels to the future, where a marble tombstone awaits the reader. Paradoxically, the reader is posited to be a dream of time, a changing river draining irreversibly toward the sea (death), and yet also invulnerable because of the certainty that he or she will become dust: who can kill the dust?

In “Music Box,” the dripping golden music carries the poet’s imagination to a past Japan of mountain shrines and unknown seas, and in that astral projection the poet finds himself bleeding away into time, like music. How else to capture this vision except in the music box of the sonnet, whose hidden gears turn to make the music chime and keep time?

Of course, we can’t keep time in a box; time has a box prepared for us. Understanding this is what allows us to value what life we have. My father tells a story about Borges. One day the great man was walking down the streets of Buenos Aires when a man rushed up to him and exclaimed, “Borges, you are immortal!” Borges, with his characteristic dry wit, replied, “Don’t be so pessimistic.” —Tony Barnstone



This poem originally appeared in the March 2012 issue of Poetry magazine




8th Anniversary Open Studios



Flyer
Directors of Santa Monica Art Studios Yossi Govrin and Sherry Frumkin are pleased to announce the 8th Anniversary Celebration of their project of artist studios and exhibition space in an historic 22,000 square foot hangar.

Event:
Saturday, October 13th from 6 to 9 pm 
Sunday, October 14th from 1 to 5 pm

More than 36 painters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors and mixed media artists will open their studios for the event.

Artists include: Francisco Alarcon, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Fariba Ameri, Krista Augius, Janet Bothne, Gregg Chadwick, Lauren Chase, Claudia Concha, Lola del Fresno, Wendy Edlen, Susan Feldman, Karen Florek, Mitchell Friedman, Judith Golden, Yossi Govrin, Rachel Grynberg, Amy Jean Boebel, Sally Lamb, David Leeds, Maddy Le Mel, Luigia Martelloni, Christine McLaughlin, Jackie Nach, Sabine Pearlman, Kathy Peck, Olaf Pooley, Richard Rogg, Paula Rosen, Linda Sher Salzman, Gwen Samuels, Rachel Shultz, Diane Silver, Pamela Simon-Jensen, Doni Silver Simons, Julie Weiss, Karen V. Woo and Joan Wulf.



Santa Monica Art Studios
3026 Airport Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Phone: 310.397.7449 Fax: 310.397.7459

a poem

UNFLEDGING

Hold the bird in the left hand, and commence
to pull off the feathers from under the wing.
Having plucked one side, take the other wing
and proceed in the same manner, until all the feathers
are removed.
- Mrs Beeton’s Household Management



I raise Paisley wounds,
spill yellow pollen of fat.
This is reversing time, like a vandal

who scores shellac blooms
from a soundbox, tightening to snapping
the strings of a lute.

As if I scraped a poem’s lard
from vellum. As brattish
as kicking a cat.

In pale skin are magnolia buds:
the muscles that worked wings,
but I’ve undone the wings,

gripping each pinion
as if to slide home the marriage ring
and never dream of flying again;

I’ve plucked the eyed, seed feathers,
the chicky down, the fine human hair
like first casing of mushroom spawn,

the long quills that striped across
the evening sun this week,
trembling in the rainstorm’s target.
© 2005, Jen Hadfield
From: Almanacs
Publisher: Bloodaxe, 2005

I Am Vertical


"But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimallight of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me."

by Sylvia Plath





“In A New York Minute” by Roger Guetta


“In A New York Minute” by Roger Guetta

(9/11 Tribute)

In a heartbeat, we entered the realm of the melancholy,
In a wink of an eye, we found ourselves at the edge of the abyss,
In a sneaking suspicion, we uttered true lies.
In a moment in time, we lost our balance,
In a glimmer of hope, we were swept away,
In a last gasp, we grew weary,
In a lasting desire, we lay naked,
In a sequence of events, we lost our rhythm,
In making due, we compromised our dignity,
In a New York minute, we faced unspeakable truths,
In a split second, we accommodated a solemn thought,
In a broken promise, we understood our fragility,
In a slim chance, we rolled snake eyes,
In a forced grin, we encountered our double,
In a double take, we fixated our eyes on the sublime,
In a round about way, we made peace with ourselves,
In a false step, we heard ourselves falter,
In dire straights, we rebounded to live another day,
In resisting temptation, we became God’s savior,
In seizing the moment, we set the record straight,
In tempting fate, we lagged behind the running pack,
In tuning in, we arrested our development,
In twisting the truth, we fell prey to untold misery,
In breaking new ground, we lost our footing,
In flirting with disaster, we landed on our asses,
In a solemn oath, we deceived our own shadows,
In the eye of the storm, we captured our enigmatic spirits,
but lost them again during the calming,
In the depths of despair, we muscled our way to the front of the line,
In a stroke of luck, we lived the moment,
In a silent prayer, we forced a smile,
In a lingering thought, we assumed the position,
and didn’t dare lift a finger
In calculating our every move, we faced our shortcomings,
In sensing danger, we reached in our pockets and made no sudden moves,
In embracing religion, we became zealots,
In rejecting religion, we became careful,
In acts of generosity, we let things slide,
we let them slip,
we let them sail,
never asking anything in return,
In fine form, we insulted a humble soul.
The humble soul remains us.

Quebec/Canada

courtesy of the The Juice Bar

a poem

This Was Once a Love Poem


by Jane Hirshfield

This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.

It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.

Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.

Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.

IT spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.

The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.

Yes, it decides:
Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.
When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them—one, then another—
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.

PRECIPICE



"The border
of a thing.

Its edge
or hem.

The selvage,
the skirt,

a perimeter’s
trim.




The blow
of daylight’s

end and
nighttime’s

beginning.



A fence

or a rim,
a margin,

a fringe.
And this:

the grim,
stingy

doorstep
where

the lapse
of passage

happens.
That slim

lip of land,
the liminal

verge
that slips

you past
your brink.

Where
and when

you
blink."

© 2011, Jill Alexander Essbaum
From: Poetry, Vol. 197, No. 4, January, 2011


Yossi Govrin - Artist

Last Wednesday I took a drive over to Santa Monica Art Studios to sneak a peak at the LA Mobile Arts Festival.  I had the pleasure of running into Yossi Govrin as he was placing his art work outside the door of his studio.  He took me inside and showed me a family of immense human statues adorn with chandeliers a sight of such whimsy and modern art my heart almost stopped beating.  He was kind enough to let me take his picture among his treasured work.  Thank you Yossi, it was an enormous pleasure for me. 



"Yossi Govrin has exhibited nationally and internationally, working in multiple media. In the "Night Watch" series the sculptures relate directly to "human conductivity" and are made from hemp and cement; emphasizing the transient nature of humans and their environment, and a single mold reflecting our common origin. The added elements such as chandeliers, stones, and rope reintroduce the sense of individuality and uniqueness and resonate across cultural and national boundaries. These themes are revisited in his other series of work, such as "Sky Dancers", and "Random Flight".
He has been awarded numerous commissions, among them a monument in honor of the late Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin (installed in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv City Hall, the site of the Prime Minster's assassination) and the bust of General James H. Doolittle, placed at the Santa Monica Museum of Aviation.
ARTIST STUDIOS/ ARENA 1
In 1985 Yossi Govrin conceived and designed his first art center, the Santa Monica Fine Art Studios, located at 1834 Franklin Street. It arose out of a personal need to obtain a work space with a sense of community that is inspiring, supportive, and dynamic. Thus the 10,000 sq.ft studio was created to include 35 artist studios, workshops/lectures as well as annual exhibitions.
Another dream in the making for many years, was that of an exhibition space devoted to cutting edge contemporary art, with an invitational curatorial program. A place to exhibit local and international artists, and to be a catalyst and educational tool for the center and for the art community in large. This became Arena 1, the gallery situated in the midst of the spacious artist studios. In 2003, Yossi Govrin was joined by Sherry Frumkin to create the new and exciting Santa Monica Art Studios, located in the heart of Santa Monica Airport."









Additional pictures from,  http://yossigovrin.com/
Text from,  http://www.santamonicaartstudios.com/yossi_bio.htm

Santa Monica Art Studios
3026 Airport Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Phone: 310.397.7449 Fax: 310.397.7459
Public Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 12 to 6