Homer and the Hebrew Bible

April is National Poetry Month (all who knew that please give a show of hands). As postmoderns, we are poetically illiterate. We have exchanged poetry for technology, finding an almost romantic inspiration in the great god html. I would ask this question fist, for those who would be willing to respond in the comments section: who still composes with a pen? I don't. I write everything (except notes, and the occasional journal entry) digitally, and find when writing longhand that I'm dealing with an awkward medium. For me, there is an added element of creative editing when being able to delete obtuse nonsense that has just vomited out of my head.

Nevertheless (getting back to my point), if you were to give a sweeping title to western culture, it could be something like The Muse and the Poet. Abraham and Moses had Yahweh, Homer had Zeus and Achilles, and later poets played with the great ideas of Reason and Beauty to describe the complex relationship between their words and their inspiration. Without a doubt, the origin of western verse lies with the ancient god of the Levant and the scribe of the fall of Troy, and their memesque swimming through the rivulets of the occidental stream.

Both Yahweh and Homer would take center stage in any play depicting the protagonist of western verse, the hero of writ and wit. One could readily imagine a tragedy by Aeschylus or Sophocles that pitted Homer against YHVH, as if one were enlightened reason and the other were strict faith. But the Tetragrammaton wasn't entirely faithful, and Homer was but a minstrel, orally memorializing the past. And yet, because they both continue to intrigue our collective imagination so many thousands of years later, they must have symbolized some internal process that we all are looking for: the meeting of the lover and the beloved.

So, in recognition of the long and complex history of western verse, and the end of National Poetry Month, I'd like to offer another example of the simple but intriguing process of inspiration (this time with a bit of political garnish). Without further adieu.

fish and wine

the sickness,
came slowly; day in and day out the nine and eleven
made war. the eleven and nine roared with lungs, loud;
the thickness of their tone,
the fire and the smoke, they allowed.
the breaths we take, we thank nine and eleven;
three and three multiplied;
one and ten, acting
terrified: it is a mental sickness,
like heaven.

she drank wine.
and smoked a fish for her trek.
she could almost taste the fish as it smoked;
too,
the wine went well with the fish smoking.
the fish lived once.
and once caught the taste of wine from wine coated cheese.
it was on a hook, the wine coated cheese.
there was hope,
before, then.

the path,
she would take,
on her trek,
would take her by the river,
on a certain day,
when nine and eleven worked;
we can almost remember her,
but for all those
who she is a symbol for.
but oh the fish and wine!
and wo! the hook.

rr zollinger c2007

Poetry in Synchrony

Guest Poet: Shari Z.



In the triskaidekaphobia post, I brought you the poetry of the illustrious RR. Now, I would like to share with you the work of one of the few people I know who has her ear to the pulse of the planet, Shari Z. Following are two recent compositions that she was so generous to share.

The first is Pantoum, and has its stylistic origin in Malaysian poetry. In a Pantoum, the second and fourth lines of each stanza are reproduced as the first and third of the next. The second poem We Never Did Become Friends is more subtle, and seemed to me like an arrow rushing through a small golden hoop. My ears were left ringing.

Enjoy.

Pantoum

Her pain was so purple, the daughters cried.
And father fell white like blossoming plum.
She bloomed thistle from an organ
that a wetland wouldn’t waltz.

And father fell white like blossoming plum
into a tumble that forced bend and snap;
that a wetland wouldn’t waltz.
We climbed through the forsythia for help.

Into a tumble that forced bend and snap
she coiled her belly and whimpered distress.
We climbed through the forsythia for help
to green grass doctor and hyacinth nurse.

She coiled her belly and whimpered distress,
calling for opium’s cloud and thunder
to green grass doctor and hyacinth nurse.
They pulled the weed and planted daffodils.

Calling for opium’s cloud and thunder
she bloomed thistle from organ.
They pulled the weed and planted daffodils.
Her peace so pointed, the daughters cried.

................................................

We Never Did Become Friends

Three
clotheslines
strung
through
your
living
room
is
odd

So
is
six
plus
one

Like sevens
you
are
back doors
alleyways
cellars

Unlike evens
two
six
eight
I un-enter you
straight

................................................

Shari Zollinger, ©2007

Triskaidekaphobia

Or Paraskavedekatriaphobia, if you dare.


Happy Friday-the-13th, a Triskannual first here at Esoterica Obscura. I hope to stimulate your metaphysical appetite, and make you want to dine with the very man who started this 700 year-old Fri-13th cottage industry, Jacques De Molay, once Grand Master to an obscure kind of warrior monk of the middle ages. De Molay is blamed for wedding the young lovers, Friday and 13. Not much is

known of Jacques DeMolay's childhood, except that he was born in the year 1244 in an area called Vitrey, Department of Haute Saone, France. but what is known is that in 1265 at the age of twenty-one, he joined the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar were an organization sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church in 1128 to guard the road between Jerusalem and Acre, an important port city on the Mediterranean Sea. The Order of Knights Templar participated in the Crusades and earned a name for valor and heroism.

The Templars, who I really don't want to elaborate on presently, were a band of medieval knights who defended pilgrims on their journey to and from the holy land. Much has been published on their supposed connections to the holy grail, and their foreshadowing of late medieval groups like the Scottish Rite and or course the Masons. While there is some truth to these ties, the actual history is relatively obscured by the enormous amount of conjecture being peddled like nickel t-shirts at the corner market...so engage the filters when researching this stuff.

But, we do know that on Friday October 13, 1307, an order was put out by the Pope via the King of France to seize and capture the individuals and assets of the Knights Templar. On that day Molay was arrested in Paris. Reportedly, while being burned at the stake Molay cursed: Pope Clement, Chevalier Guillaume de Nogaret, King Philippe, before a year, I am ordering you to appear before the tribunal of God. Cursed you will all be! Cursed until the 13th generation!'

But the story doesn't stop there. Legend has it that during the days of the French Revolution, nearly 500 years after de Molay's death, an anonymous man from the crowd jumped onto the guillotine just as Louis XVI had been decapitated, dipped his hand in the king's blood, and cried: 'Jacques de Molay, tu es vengé!' (you are avenged).

Western culture has since developed a complex mythology surrounding Friday-13th, that much is certain.

So what of the day itself? Friday is an Anglo-Saxon word derived from the Goddess Frigg (the word in Old English is frigedæg). Frigg was the Germanic Goddess of beauty, and as the Anglo-Saxons were of Germanic origin so kept the mythology of the tribes out of which they originated. Another example of this use of Germanic pantheistic figures in days-of-the-week is the god Woden, who presides over the middle of the week, namely Wednesday.

The number 13 has historically been associated with the feminine, though I'm not entirely sure why. It is considered unlucky in part because of Judas being the 13th guest at the last supper. I would assume that the taboo has a much longer history than is seen through Christianity, regardless it remains obvious Christianity played a large role in popularizing the darkness and enigma that now surrounds, like a Grecian death mask, this number.

13 is our alter-ego, our pandering tiptoe over the darkness of life. 13 takes from us our banishing, and most of the time keeps them well entertained. But we chuck our baggage into that dark corner knowing full well that every now and again we'll be reminded of it, like every Friday the 13th, and that's why this is an auspicious day; we don't let ourselves face the shadow often enough. So, in celebration of facing the grist and ripping it with your canines like the jerky it is, I offer you a contextually perfect poem, composed by the illustrious RR.

earth. worms. contexts.

what is that?

over there beyond that obstacle, beyond that obtrusion?
where is it at specifically in relation to the present location?
how could i measure that,
taking also a measure of the context of it?
"i know that beneath that is something solidified."
"i think that defines its own category;"
"do you think that?" that said.

ultimateification: "when hegel missteps to avoid nietzsche tripping."

that thirteenth day in the sequence of days.
on that day the certain earth,
understood, and occurred tersely,
intensified by taciturnacity, and
perspicacity. i could have said it happened rapidly;
unslowly,
as morning broke breadge, like a bread which doubled as a bridge,
quite quickly like the quivering hummingbird wing, in a wedge.
like cutting warm mayonnaise with a long slice of frozen butter-
the set of sub variables in a category, with an edge.
(one can not ultimateificate and not speak of quivering wings, nor pledge:)
like a black cat or a hedgehog in the morning on the ledge.

a cup of coffee on a table. a white plate with warm toast not on a table.

four billion years and thirteen days ago: a vista of stark simplicity,
the faintest image blasts its way across the vast vista:
a tumble weed the size of a speck of sand seen from the moon,
with binoculars,
like nocturnal wading birds on the edge of a dark sea:
the faintest image of a white plate of warm toast on the black canvas of
the night sky.
there is a white cloud in that sky making the perfect likeness
of drifting steam from warm toast on a white plate.

the view of earth from a place by a thing not capable of conceiving of a place like
earth.

a thing sees, because it can see,
though not beyond that obtrusion,
because it is an obstacle.
though in relation to the obstacle, on a certain day,
it may use the obstacle to bend light
and see things beyond the obtrusion,
relate said thing to its present location.
it is so far away, but it is constant.
sometimes it glows green.
"what is the color green, that it should glow in such a state?",
i thought on it's behalf.
"alkd twe skeiroqw[ tyopaeqiunse" it said.

a cloudy day in context.

it could have been beneath a big montana sky,
or any other sky just as large
in any other place.
and,
it could have been on any day where not a cloud in the sky was seen.
on just such a day,
an earthworm made its way nonchalantly through a good patch of soil,
and sort of had an epiphany.
encouraged, the worm wended its way through the rich loam...
and composed a poem.
at the end of the poem,
there was a new category for poems, defined by the worm's understanding.

true blue

true blew true-blue to who knew true blew true to.
true-blue flew true to who flew true to true-blue.
who flew to true blue?
who blew true blue?
who knew true blue?

ultimate realifying is a pot roast in the oven.
a riddle tinctured in a clue. the rind of a watermelon latent in a seed.
a coriolous storm. today it is the subtraction from context,
of earth and the worm thirteen strands woven
to a game a glass and a beade.

copyright 2007 rrz

Enjoy, and don't let the ghouls get you down.