Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Kevin Hughes on Free Verse

'Free Verse' and Punctuation

I have some beef with the popularity of so-called ‘free verse’ poetry. Whether that beef lies more with the naivety of its practitioners or with the form itself, I am undecided. Either way, the central problem is that its existence and popularity is due, in part, to something of a misnomer, and the result is that whole swaths of poets, new and experienced, stymie their own creativity through its overuse. For that matter, poetry as a species of art has suffered due to its overuse.

For the poets I have in mind, punctuation amounts to little more than a necessary evil, and its sparse appearance in poetry today, excluding maybe the comma, attests to poet’s indifference toward or outright dislike for it. Along with traditional forms, the presence of punctuation within the poem is believed to handcuff the variety and liberality (i.e. the free expression of creativity) of both the artist and the interpreter. Forget the use of periods and semicolons, they say; punctuation in free verse poetry carries the same burdens as traditional forms. When we (the free verse poets) do use punctuation, it’s only the comma, and even that we only do so reluctantly—knowing that without it the reader gets bogged down. The overuse of the comma, or even the mere presence of a period or a question mark, drags the skeleton out of the dirty, old coffin to put on display. Leave tradition where it belongs: dead and in the ground with Tennyson and Byron.

Poets who consciously operate with this mindset are the ones I have in mind. They are like that well-meaning atheist freshman sitting in the front row of her first 101 religion class: eager to reject the Judeo-Christian morals and values of her upbringing without realizing that the rejection itself is only possible, is in fact the manifestation of, the emphasis of particular aspects of those morals and values in the absence of all of the others. She hasn’t quite figured out yet that ‘you shouldn’t sleep around if you’re in a committed relationship’ is the 21st century American version of ‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife’. Just like the contemporary poet, she hasn’t quite realized that while her criticisms may be merited, they are incomplete.

I think it’s important to pause and point out that this thought process is rare. Thought processes in humans are rare in general and particularly rare in poets—who believe, rightly, that thoughts get in the way of words. The poets I’ve known (not that there are many in rural PA) rarely think about what they're doing at all. They just borrow the methods of their predecessors, unconscious of their own aesthetic. But even if ignorance is bliss, it is still optional. Two minutes into e.e. cummings, for example, is all it takes to recognize that he is cognizant of what he’s doing, and, moreover, part of what’s impressive about cummings’ writing is his cognizance. The same is true of, say, W.B. Yeat’s use of form. And yet, your average contemporary ‘it was weird watching my mom come to realize that she is a lesbian’ poet isn’t thinking like this--or perhaps at all. With a flourish of unconscious irony, she conforms to the nonconformists’ nonconformity.

I think part of the problem is that for today’s poets, the rejection of form—or punctuation in our case—is, or at its advent appeared to be, the final poetic achievement. The Form of the forms was not the Good—as Plato would have it—but the formless. The best punctuation was no punctuation, or the absolute minimum. When meaning is caged in by commas, periods, and question marks, interpretation is susceptible to old, overused, and oppressive tropes and sentence structures. Poetic invention itself is limited. The reduction of poetry to its minimal symbols (i.e. letters and line breaks) omits tradition’s prescriptivist and formalist tendencies. You can’t tell me where to end a sentence or a clause any more than you can tell me when to emphasize a syllable—not, anyway, without restricting my creative freedom. 'Free verse' begins to dominate the poetical landscape and, in almost indecipherable increments, each generation of ‘free verse’ poets grows less and less aware of why they even use it. 

Somewhere in that history the period dies alongside iambic pentameter because both are examples of creative limitation. New doorways of poetical achievement can’t be attained if we’re imprisoned by an old way of speaking. We know now, or Wittgenstein has taught us, that the limitations of structural and verbal prescriptivism betray a naive view of language. Every 7th grade English grammarian teaches his students nothing about the English language; he only barks on about English convention.

Ultimately, I think that the ‘free verse’ usurpation of traditional forms and punctuation in English poetry was fundamentally insightful, if still fundamentally naive. Though it’s true that prescriptivist and formalist tendencies in early poetry ‘held poetry back’, so to say; it’s equally true that the neglect of punctuation or form, or both, is itself demonstrably not free.

At bottom, the question we are asking is whether free verse can endure the limitations of punctuation and/or form without sacrificing its creative options. Is free verse actually imprisoned when its words come up against the prison bars of a question mark or a comma? Do form and punctuation hinder poesis?

This is a lot like asking why the Sistine Chapel ceiling should be limited to the dimensions of the Sistine Chapel building. It’s even more like asking why a triangle must be limited to having only three sides: the answer, put simply, is that a thing is only what it is precisely because of its limitations. The irony (or tragedy, if you prefer) of the popularity of 'free verse' poetry is that it isn’t free verse at all. It isn’t being what it supposedly is. It’s a square posing as a triangle: valuable in its own right but not a triangle. It's a misnomer that’s widely used for, as far as I can tell, one of three reason: 1) it’s easier to write and to learn how to write, 2) it fosters creative freedom, and 3), everybody else is doing it. The third in that list is especially true. Poetical debutants write free verse for the same reason a child picks his dad’s favorite basketball team. It’s all he knows. But by denying poets the freedom of including— at random, even— an instance of punctuational insight, a line of iambic pentameter, or even some as-of-yet-undiscovered syntactic or linguistic limitation, free verse poetry is only posing as free verse.

Okay fine, but this is just mincing words; free verse doesn’t mean free verse. So what? Didn’t we already establish that Webster’s prescriptivism betrays a naive view of language? Why apply it now? The meaning of a word, we remember, is its use. I agree. If the use of the moniker ‘free verse’ merely designated a type poetry that utilizes line breaks and sparse punctuation—or even arbitrary line breaks and excessive punctuation—then I would be content with this use. But this isn’t the use: it’s used, especially by new poets, to designate that form of poetry which is non-traditional, anti-form, and contra-conventional. Poets sitting in MLA seminars around the country consider free verse the formless, untethered poetical form, and often imagine this ‘fact’ a good enough reason to neglect the poetry of the predecessors of ‘free verse’ like Shakespeare and Byron.

What then, should the idea be to create a form that omits all forms and punctuation? This, like before, is a lot like saying that we should remove the Sistine Chapel building to make room for the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It’s probably not the best idea. You can't have a recognizable version of the one without the other. Too many of our artists fail to realize that a necessary condition of freedom is the access to limitation— a fact as true of life as it is of poetry. If the final poetical achievement lies with providing the poet with every creative option, limitation must be one of those options.

Take the ironic existence of line breaks so common to free verse poetry today. Their use betrays exactly the type of naivety I have in mind. Why bother having line breaks if not to force the reader to pause, however briefly, before moving to the next line? Aren’t line breaks vestiges of something older and, perhaps, wiser— the idea that the full length of the page doesn’t lend itself to emphasis in the way that concision lends itself to emphasis? Aren’t line breaks limitations that serve a function in the same way that, say, the limitations of the sonnet serve a function?

For that matter, even the space placed between two individual words is, as Koine Greek shows, itself a choice (however unconscious) that forces the poet and the interpreter into a way of writing and reading that is itself ‘conventional’ to the way of writing the English language. To the poet, the purpose of a space’s inclusion between two words has an equal, if opposing, function to its absence between two words: the former is clarity and ease and the latter is obfuscation and difficulty. Don’t we already know that both can serve the poet?

In other words, 'free verse' poetry cherry-picks line breaks and the occasional piece of punctuation from tradition and naively imagines itself free from that tradition. This is actual, empirical, anachronistic nonsense. Free verse isn’t antithetical to tradition or even meta-traditional; it’s entire identity is contingent on the tradition that started its line breaking, punctuation-having limitations. Free verse isn’t non-traditional: it’s piecemeal tradition.

What’s more, the bulk of today’s poetical debutantes borrow this artistic framework unconsciously and try to express new dimensions of poetical insight while enduring, unconsciously, the very creative limitations they believe to be freeing. Free verse is a linguistic prison so obscure and complete that its practitioners grimace in disgust or confusion at the work of, say, John Keats in the same breath that they praise the work of Charles Bukowski. And yet, both are geniuses precisely because they knew what they were doing with the given limitations they set themselves.

But wait, isn’t all this blather little more than a defense of avant garde poetry over and against free verse poetry? Not really. While avant garde poets dabble more in what 'free verse' might mean more if we took its definition more literally, there’s a very real sense in which the avant garde writer ignores, if not altogether avoids, traditional poetry, too. To be and to revel in the unorthodox or radical means to neglect or, more accurately, to reject that which is orthodox and traditional. But what I’m suggesting is subtler than free verse and avant garde; what I’m suggesting is something closer to what T.S. Eliot says about the total conversation of art occurring over time: that instead of rejecting orthodoxy, we create a neo-orthodoxy through new combinations of orthodoxy.

Like Eliot, I do not believe that poetry, or any art, occurs in a vacuum. The comma, too, we must remember, was an invention. The old voices and methods sneak their way into the new voices and methods (lousy or masterful) simply by virtue of having existed. The words, syntax, punctuation, and forms poets use (or neglect) today are older than the poets themselves, and it’s the neo-combinations (or neo-neglect) of those things which are overused and worn out that generate something new. Specifically, our up-and-coming poets could find the addition, even aggressive addition, of punctuation to their poetry freeing. No more of this ‘necessary evil’ nonsense. No more line breaking to let the reader catch their breath; consider the advantages of drowning. Turn punctuation and form from a necessary evil into an exercise in poetical neo-orthodoxy.

Of course, none of what I have to say here would matter if free verse poetry were only a subgenre of poetry. It would amount to little more than a misnomer practiced by a few, and what poetical insights that group had would be cherished for their own sake. But a misnomer practiced by the majority and, moreover, adopted by nearly every novice poet, generates legions of poets using squares when they think they’re using triangles. It creates legions of poets wholly and unequivocally naive to the one-dimensionality of their own aesthetic.

But I want more from poetry. Every poet who deserves the name wants more. Part of what it means to be a poet is to obsessively search out the as-of-yet undiscovered openings into reality. Poetic achievement amounts to turning the doorknob of words and having to brace from the brightness of the new sun waiting on the other side. Free verse helps and has helped us do this for a century now; but it is time to move onto new doorknobs and other suns.

- Kevin Hughes’s poetry and essays explore the cross-pollination of the subjects he teaches in college: English, philosophy, and religion. He holds an M.A. in philosophy and religion from The University of Pennsylvania and lives in East Earl with his wife and three children. Contact: kdhughesmail3@gmail.com  

Copyright©2017 Kevin Hughes – All Rights Reserved

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Poems of Witness by James K. Zimmerman

Enlightened Beings Lead the Way to Everlasting Life

By James K. Zimmerman
 9/5/17

a mouse in the claws of a ravenous
cat fears it will be devoured, be
no more, life extinguished, cannot
get away, prays to be released

so Buddhists in Myanmar rape
and murder Rohingya women
and men, thousands like pigs
in a slaughterhouse, mice
in a toxic hole, so they may know

the next world, next incarnation
will surely be better than this one
a paradise without fear, without
submission to allah, without
the need for daily prayer

they exterminate with infinite
feline compassion, knowing
that all beings can attain the peace
the selfless bliss of nirvana
release from attachment
to this body, this world, from
suffering, terror and blood

through the claws of their encrusted
knives they want Rohingya to see
that if there is anatta, if there is
no self, if there is anicca, if all
is impermanent, then a life lost
does not matter, a rape is only
a moment in time, a bludgeoning
is to awaken clarity, a decapitation
is an act of undying mercy

since life in this world is all
dukkha, all a matter of suffering
their lovingkindness leads them  
to give Rohingya children a chance
to contemplate loss of life
as a path to eternal freedom

and to learn that to sit on a pile
of bodies, lie in their mother's
lifeless arms, meditate on a pile
of skulls is a blessing, a step
toward the luminous light
of boundless love

_______________________
Paying Attention

By James K. Zimmerman

two cabbage butterflies dance, wings
tease and touch on the butterfly bush
on sweet pea flowers, fritillaries
honey bees nestle and drowse
a goldfinch dips and sings across the grass

in my hands, so hard to hold the beauty
the brilliant sun this afternoon
if I'm not in awe, I'm not paying attention

in my heart I hold a candle
for Heather Heyer, Tamir Rice
Terence Crutcher and Trayvon Martin
Eric Garner, Walter Scott
for Justine Damond, Michael Brown
Freddie Gray, too many more
too many more  

the heaviness, ocean of disbelief
flow of grief and blood

if you're not outraged, Heather said
you're not paying attention

a candle too for James Alex Fields
Timothy Loehmann, Betty Shelby
George Zimmerman, Daniel Pantaleo
for Michael Slager, Mohamed Noor
faceless hoards, too many more
too many more

the heaviness, ocean of disbelief
flow of otherness and guilt

if you're not outraged, Heather said
you're not paying attention

a candle in my heart in Charlottesville
Cleveland, Tulsa and Sanford
Staten Island, Charleston, Minneapolis
Ferguson and Baltimore, Orlando
and Dallas, too many more
too many more

cabbage butterflies dance, bees
hover, fritillaries drowse
a goldfinch dips and sings

if I'm not in awe, I'm not paying attention
if I'm not outraged, I'm not paying attention

if you're not outraged, you're not
paying attention

not paying attention


Copyright©2017 by James K. Zimmerman – All Rights Reserved

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Creation - by Gabriel Guerra

“Creation”

By Gabriel Guerra
(A poem for my dear mentor, Frank J. Macchiarola, 1941-2012)

I was a boy
I stood in the ocean
Daring it on, the waves crashing on me
The salt and sea life in my mouth, it tasted blue and yellow
I kicked at the waves, they made me laugh
Not even Alexander knew such hubris, waves' roar and soft hum its heart
It has beaten since that day, it never stopped even now
Since Alexander's day
The surf quickens and foams evanescence
A wave falls on me
It screams at me, I'm more determined

Then albatross silently floats
What is this creation? That challenges
She flies above its small head
Does it know?
She circles above it
It must know
This creature that battles
She makes another high circle
The waves roll up toward the dark - keep your place albatross!
The creation still struggles
She dives lower intrigued, It MUST know
She sees the creation struggle
Albatross leaves, and flies into the dark
Angrily she flaps wings of night
Its whisper falls on the head of creation

Copyright©2017 by Gabriel Guerra – All Rights Reserved

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Meteor Shower - Poems by Anne Whitehouse - a Review

Anne Whitehouse, Meteor Shower. 2016. Loveland, OH: Dos Madres Press. 86 pgs. $17.00. ISBN: 978-1-939929-60-0


Meteor Shower is a striking meditation on the passages of time and its connection with creativity. The book is broken down into six distinct sections, and each seems to entail an expansion or a broadening arc of concern and insight. In Section I, “A Girl Who Fell in Love with an Island,” the reader moves through moments trapped in time.  I was drawn in by two poems in particular here. “Fires of Youth” beautifully captures the essence of the section: “And when the raising of our children is over,/ and they set out on their own lives,/ we are aware of life passed as if in a dream--/our mortality, our lost vitality.” There is a longing to return to still life moments of the past, such as giving away dresses, filing away unreachable vacation scenes and seeing yourself as a ghost at age 27.  “One-Way Session” aptly captures a moment of transition.  It’s obvious there has been the death of a trusted marriage therapist in the opening stanza. The speaker senses: “From deep within/ I feel the release from/ that old way of being.” Whitehouse moves the reader into a bleaker journey at this point. We sense a break here coming, a movement into a difficult place of transition.

“The Eye That Cries” focuses on mourning.  It is a darker section of the collection, almost as if the poet is leading us downward, in order to move us upward as she proceeds. Poems here examine armed conflicts, suicides, and elegies. Some of the lines are beautiful and haunting. In “Mother of Suicides,” concerning mothers dealing with the deaths of children, the speaker seems to cry out:
            Worse than the dread were the discoveries.
            The nightmares have never gone away:

            What do you want from me?
            You were the one who left—
            Why won’t you let me go?
            Whatever I did that was wrong,
            I’m still paying for it.

The lines are painful, and like poems such as “LOL,” they seem consumed with dread.  The image of the lost marriage returns in “My Last Spring in My House and Garden.”  The speaker recollects a house she lived in for 35 years. The imagery is powerful and rooted. If she could, she “…would slip/ into the soil like a buried seed.” The poem plays on images of burial and uprooting. The speaker is blown far away from her home; her life is split by her broken marriage “…not cleanly,/ but with spikes and jagged edges.” It is poem of pain with the final image of the roots watered by tears, evoking the deep sadness of lost love.

In Section III “Moving,” the reader notices a subtle shift. Whitehouse seems to acknowledge loss, but there seems to be acceptance, a conscious step away from images of paralysis and drift. “Contraries” captures this well. It is a poem about recollecting a jellyfish’s sting. The speaker’s sister never ventures back into the ocean after the incident. The speaker insists on moving forward:
            Just imagine—not ever going under,
            always in air and not in water,
            never feeling the wonder
            of an alien element all around.

This captures a central idea in the grouping. There’s an acknowledgement of pain, but there’s a building on it, a movement forward. Two lines from “One Step Ahead” capture the sentiment as well: “…trying to dodge the traps ahead/ while fleeing the terrors behind.” The final poem of the section, “Delete, Delete,” portrays the everyday deletion of emails as a metaphor for the choices of things we cut and avoid, in order to live more fully in the present. 

In Sections IV and V, (The Mask and Grout Pond, respectively), I sense a shift into an almost-Zen appreciation of the present moment.  There seems to be more balance in these poems. They appear more whimsical and less occupied with the darkness of the past. For example, in “Less Impact,” we see this closing stanza:
            Relaxing my grip
            on the things
            of the world,
            I feel myself
            softening
            into the earth,
            dissolving
            into the air.

There is a clear echo of the imagery of Richard Wilbur’s poem, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” and yet Whitehouse’s poem pushes readers into the air, into dissolution.  The poems of “Grout Pond” continue to evoke the present moment in shadows, dust motes, light and insects. They lead the reader carefully into the final section of the collection, “Life’s Continuous Chain.”

The sixth and final section of Meteor Shower contains some real gems, which aptly close the arc of the book. “Calligraphies” and “Meteor Shower” are two fine examples to note here. “Calligraphies” was awarded the 2016 Songs of Eretz poetry prize. It is a persona poem about the speaker’s father collecting calligraphy in Quanzhou. When revolution comes he buries and finally burns his collection. But he continues to write calligraphy in the puddles on the ground. The poem contains meditations on the infinite and the elusive power of language and art. Much of it can be lost or remain invisible to the world. “Some mysteries are meant to be discovered,/some are meant to remain heaven’s secrets.” The poem traces a historical moment of conflict, but it shows the transcendent power to achieve immortality. In “Meteor Shower,” Whitehouse closes the collection with creating a simple, yet beautiful image of connection. “We,” perhaps the speaker and reader together, stare up at the stars from a blanket. It’s a simple act, filled with wonder, for as we look up at the dark, starry unknown, we seem to better understand our selves and our purposes.
            At every instant we are
            what we have been and will be,
            our forebears who live on in us
            we remember, we resemble.

“Meteor Shower” closes with a unique insight into the art of writing itself. “The deed was minimal, the words exact,/ and I needed a lifetime to say them.” It’s a beautiful capturing of the poet’s mission to observe and record minutely from a particular space in time, with eyes ever upward on the infinite beyond our reach.

Meteor Shower is truly a stunning and moving collection of poetry. The shifts from section to section show a beautiful trajectory, down into memory and loss, back into engagement with the present, and finally a movement upward towards transcendence and infinity. The poems grapple, often intensely with loss and dislocation, and yet there is a sense of purpose to the pain. As one line in “Creativity” captures well about the collection as a whole: “An accident will lead you to creation.”  Yes, indeed, it does. 

- Ian S. Maloney is Professor of English at St. Francis College, where he directs the St. Francis College Literary Prize.  

Copyright©2017 by Ian S. Maloney

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Tribute to Omer Hadžiselimović by Milorad Pejić


ABANDON ME NOT, WORLD!
(Omer Hadziselimovic 1946-2016, In Memoriam)

Abandon me not, world, do not leave, naïve swallow…  Omer’s death is more than two months old, but these verses by Miljkovic1 still drum in my head, and have been since the day that brief message arrived in November of last year (only three days before his final exit) that nothing more could be done. We had known each other for only four years, but our friendship was honest and deep, like a forty-year-old well. When, from time to time, I toss a memory pebble into it, a whisper of a distant water emerges. That is how I still communicate with Omer Hadziselimovic. I told him in recent days that I can’t come to terms with the void he birthed, that his absence from life is unexcused--and his death utterly unfounded.

We found each other late in life, under strange circumstances, and, like in that unforgettable Eugenio Montale poem, I can say that even so it has been short, our long journey, I still went, arm in arm with Omer, down a million stairs of his translator’s workshop. He led me into secret chambers, unlocked treasure trunks, entrusted me with valuable documents, taught me to love at least five American poets of whom I only knew before, but to whose poetry I am now addicted. Even my own poems are more recognizable to me today because of Omer; by translating them into English, he sharpened the farsighted focus on that one pair of my glasses:

                  FR. OMER

                       Dedicated to Omer Hadžiselimović

Just as we are soft when it comes to the faults
of our own children, I could not step back from
my poems and view them with objective eyes.
I was not capable of reading them as someone
else's until the time when, at a resting-place for
diligences, my path crossed with Fr. Omer's.

Fr. Omer sat in a darkened room going through
freshly arrived mail. Now and then, coughing
or putting down his monocle, he'd startle the flame
on the candle. He'd bring my letters to his ear
and listen to them for a long time before copying
them to the reserve language and arranging
them in a shoebox. Today I got the package
and am sorting the mail that has just arrived.
I'm bringing my poems to my ear and listening
to them for the first time as someone else.

He was born in 1946, and lived in Sarajevo until 1994. Majored in English and German, got his Master’s degree, then his doctorate, taught at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Sarajevo, and along the way was promoted to the top academic ranks. It was as if he didn’t remember any of it!  His academic interests centered around English and American history and American literature. I never asked questions! He lived through the two most difficult years of the Sarajevo siege. Never talked much about it! From 1994 on he lived in the United States, taught at Loyola University in Chicago, participated in a number of literary projects, wrote, translated, received several recognitions, awards… Never boasted! With Marko Vesovic, the best contemporary living expert on how to read poetry, translated to and from English. Totally opposite personalities, yet top notch translations… I, too, remember exchanging up to twenty messages with Fr. Omer before settling upon the perfect English words while translating some tough verses of mine. I don’t know how he had the patience, or how he could even put up with an English language ignoramus like me.

Plans are made to fail, and when I peer into my sehara2 filled with memories of Omer, the first thing I see is what’s missing: a planned reunion on Hvar in the summer of 2016, strolls along the plowed sea, hikes to the old tavern in the abandoned village of Humac … His Dina and Belma, so far away, whom he misses all the time, his Esma, always at his side, never whimpering. Who will translate this poetry for us now? Then again, haven’t we already translated everything, is there even anything left to say?

                 TYPESETTER

I have all the words, in all their nuances,
but there is nothing to speak anymore.

It's clear I'm in pitch darkness, the only
light - the eyes of keyholes. It's unclear
which side the precipices are on.

I have all the keys, I keep them in coded
safes. But I find it harder and harder to love:
there is no one to open them to anymore.

Omer has been dead for more than two months now, and I don’t know if his ashes have been given to the winds to scatter selflessly across continents. I haven’t asked! When you are dust in one place, you are dust everywhere. That way you’re returning home. Perhaps by the same road, carrying the same beauty and the same dangers so they can surprise you in an unfamiliar place.

Judging by the anachronistic moral principles he followed, Omer Hadziselimovic wasn’t really of this world. Rather, I would say that he belonged to another long-extinct human species, but somehow, like in a bad movie, accidentally slipped into the future. Now everything is in its right place again, and I believe that someone will soon stumble upon Omer’s stećak3 while wandering through some Bosnian Bogomil4 necropolis. And that, on that ancient stone, one will still be able to glimpse the fitting epitaph: He never said MINE or YOURS, never that icy word.5
______________
1 Branko Miljkovića post-World War Serbian poet who ended his own life aged twenty-seven.
2 Sehara, an artfully adorned box or trunk used for keeping the most precious belongings.
3 Stećak, medieval tombstones in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its neighboring countries.
4 Bogomils, members of the medieval Bosnian church, followers of the religious and political movement that originated in the tenth century as a response to the social stratification and as opposition to the state and church authorities.
5 Lightly modified verse of Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis
_______________    
Translated by Esma Hadziselimovic (Milorad Pejic’s poems translated by Omer Hadziselimovic)

▬▬▬▬▬▬

Milorad Pejić:

NE NAPUŠTAJ ME SVIJETE!
(Omer Hadžiselimović 1946-2016, Sjećanje)

Ne napuštaj me svete, ne idi naivna lasto… Omerova smrt stara je već više od dva mjeseca ali mi ovi Miljkovićevi stihovi jednako bubnjaju u glavi sve od onog trenutka kad mi je u novembru prošle godina (samo tri dana prije njegovog definitivnog odlaska) stigla ona kratka poruka da se više ništa za njega ne može učiniti. Poznavali smo se svega četiri godine ali bilo je iskreno i duboko naše prijateljstvo kao bunar od četrdeset godina. Iz njega se javi šapat daleke vode kad ubacim ponekad kamičak sjećanja. Tako još uvijek komuniciram sa Omerom Hadžiselimovićem. Rekao sam mu ovih dana da ne mogu da se pomirim sa prazninom koju je porodio i da je njegovo odsustvo iz života naprosto neopravdano i njegova smrt potpuno neosnovana.

Našli smo se pokasno u životu, pod sticajem čudnih okolnosti, i kao u onoj jednoj nezaboravnoj pjesmi Eugenia Montalea mogu reći da bilo je kratko naše dugo putovanje ali stigao sam ipak da, zajedno s Omerom, siđem makar niz milion stepenica njegove prevodilačke radionice. Uveo me u tajne odaje, otključao blaga, povjerio mi na čuvanje vrijednosne papire, naučio me da volim najmanje pet američkih pjesnika o kojima sam do tada samo znao a danas sam njihove poezije ovisnik. Danas su mi i moje vlastite pjesme prepoznatljivije jer mi je Omer, prevodeći ih na engleski, izoštrio dioptriju na onom jednom paru naočala za daljinu:

          FRA OMER
                             Za Omera Hadžiselimovića

Na isti način na koji smo bolećivi spram mana
vlastite djece, nisam se mogao odmaći od
svojih pjesama i sagledati ih očima objektivnim.
Nisam ih mogao čitati kao nečije druge
sve dok mi se jednom, na odmorištu diližansi,
putevi ne ukrstiše sa putevima Fra Omerovim.

Fra Omer je sjedio u zamračenoj sobi i prebirao
dospjelu poštu. Ponekad bi kašljem ili ispuštanjem
monokla poplašio plamen na svijeći. Prinosio je
uhu i dugo slušao moja pisma prije no što bi ih
prepisivao na rezervni jezik i slagao u kutiju
za cipele. Danas sam dobio paket i razvrstavam
prispjelu poštu. Prinosim uhu i slušam po prvi put
svoje pjesme kao neko drugi.

Rodio se 1946. i živio u Sarajevu sve do 1994. Studirao anglistiku i germanistiku, magistrirao, doktorirao, radio na Filozofskom fakultetu, dobio sva univerzitetska zvanja. Kao da ih se nije sjećao! Bavio se pretežno engleskom i američkom historijom i američkom književnošću. Nisam ga zapitkivao! Izdržao dvije najteže godine opsade Sarajeva. Malo je o tome pričao! Od 1994 živio u USA, radio kao profesor na Univerzitetu Loyola u Čikagu, učestvovao u mnogim književnim projektima, pisao, prevodio, dobio mnoga priznanja, nagrade... Nije se nikad hvalio! Sa Markom Vešovićem, za čitanje poezije najvećim živim ekspertom našeg vremena, prevodio je na engleski i sa engleskog. Dva različita temperamenta, vrhunski prevodi... Znao sam i sam sa Fra-Omerom razmijeniti i po dvadesetak poruka prije nego bismo pronašli pravi engleski izraz za poneku tešku riječ pri prevođenju mojih stihova. Ne znam kako je imao živce, ne znam kako me je, ovako nepismenog za engleski, uopšte trpio.

Planovi su da propadaju i kad zavirim u seharu uspomena na Omera vidim prvo ono što mi u njoj nedostaje: jedan dogovoreni susret na Hvaru ljeta 2016, šetnje kraj uzoranog mora, izlet do konobe u napuštenom selu Humac... Njegova Dina i Belma koje su daleko i koje mu stalno nedostaju, njegova Esma koja je stalno uz njega a ne kmeči. Ko će nam sada tu poeziju prevoditi na engleski? Ali zar nismo već sve preveli, zar je potrebno da se više bilo šta govori?

                                 SLOVOSLAGAR


Sve riječi imam, u svim nijansama,
samo nema više šta da se govori.

Jasno je da sam u mrklom mraku,
jedina svjetlost – oči ključaonica.
Nije sigurno s koje strane su ponori.

Imam sve ključeve, čuvam ih pod
šifrom u kasama. Samo sve teže
volim: nema više kome da se otvori.


Omerova smrt stara je više od dva mjesaca i ne znam još da li je njegov prah predan vjetru da ga nesebično rasprši po kontinentima. Nisam pitao! Jer svejedno je. Kad si prah na jednom mjestu – prah si svagdje. Na taj način vraćaš se kući. Možda istim putem, noseći sa sobom istu ljepotu i iste opasnosti da te u nepoznatu kraju iznenađuju.

Sudeći prema anahronosti moralnih principa koje je slijedio, Omer Hadžiselimović zapravo nije ni bio od ovog svijeta. Prije bih rekao da je pripadao jednoj drugoj, odavno izumrloj ljudskoj vrsti ali je nekim slučajem, kao u lošem filmu, upao u budućnost. Sada je opet sve na svom mjestu i vjerujem da će neko uskoro nabasati na Omerov stećak tumarajući po nekoj od nekropola bosanskih Bogumila. I da će se na tom davnom kamenu još uvijek moći razabrati urezan epitaf koji savršeno pristaje: Nikada nije rekao MOJE ili TVOJE, nikad tu ledenu riječ*.

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 * Neznatno modifikovan stih grčkog pjesnika Kostantinosa Kavafisa

All Work - Copyright 2017 by Milorad Pejic - All Rights Reserved