Comments on: A Squared-Off Landscape Representing the World http://therumpus.net/2009/10/a-squared-off-landscape-representing-the-world/ Books, Music, Movies, Art, Politics, Sex, Other Sun, 27 May 2012 03:50:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Keith Krugerud http://therumpus.net/2009/10/a-squared-off-landscape-representing-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-21246 Keith Krugerud Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:42:37 +0000 http://therumpus.net/?p=37111#comment-21246 I always like to find other individual views to my favorite poets. It is what makes the art so invaluable and ever so meaningful. I agree with your views on the cyclical life and universal feelings and activities every human being experiences. Yes, she gives the collective “you” a voice. But, on the contrary, these poems are very much about the coping and the contemplating of death and uncertainty. In the eyes of death and uncertainty, it no longer matters if you are male or female, we all fear with anxiety that which is unknown. Therefore, she gives everyone and “all men” a voice, since death truly awaits “us” all. All of these poems consist of a speaker in the reflecting tone, where through this mirror image of her life that death beholds before her, or better yet, through “the via negativa”, she learns to appreciate her life in positive ways. She comes to understand how precious all things, family, A Village Life are to her, and, in the perspective of loss, she comes to understand how these things fill in that gaping loss as well as fill her life with wonderful meaning. In the end, and “like the Buddhists” she tells us all that “we should make a habit or reminding ourselves that everything we do or see is a dream or bardo, an intermediate state. If we contemplate deeply on this truth, we will surely succeed in dealing with the bardo after death.”1 This, indeed, becomes the central theme throughout A Village Life: the reminding and the “facing death” of death; the understanding that I am dying and drifting into absence a little more each day as my soul begins to borrow a little more presence. This is why, like a theosophist, she “believes in the mountain” as opposed to the Virgin. The mountain, as an image of her Self, is a metaphor she can comprehend. Her soul is the very presence of life. The Virgin, on the other hand, is a metaphor that is too abstract for anyone to comprehend. That is why the Virgin fails to heal the soul in the end. Like Death in the abstract, the Virgin in the abstract only crushes the soul into more traumata. In her last poem, understand the beautiful, peaceful yet simple nirvana she sees in her self through the reflection of the sun from the rays of the moon (her soul), as if this tranquility could continue to grow her life in “abundance” here and now on earth. 71Tulku Thondup, Peaceful Death: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook, Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2005, p. 42. I always like to find other individual views to my favorite poets. It is what makes the art so invaluable and ever so meaningful. I agree with your views on the cyclical life and universal feelings and activities every human being experiences. Yes, she gives the collective “you” a voice. But, on the contrary, these poems are very much about the coping and the contemplating of death and uncertainty. In the eyes of death and uncertainty, it no longer matters if you are male or female, we all fear with anxiety that which is unknown. Therefore, she gives everyone and “all men” a voice, since death truly awaits “us” all. All of these poems consist of a speaker in the reflecting tone, where through this mirror image of her life that death beholds before her, or better yet, through “the via negativa”, she learns to appreciate her life in positive ways. She comes to understand how precious all things, family, A Village Life are to her, and, in the perspective of loss, she comes to understand how these things fill in that gaping loss as well as fill her life with wonderful meaning. In the end, and “like the Buddhists” she tells us all that “we should make a habit or reminding ourselves that everything we do or see is a dream or bardo, an intermediate state. If we contemplate deeply on this truth, we will surely succeed in dealing with the bardo after death.”1 This, indeed, becomes the central theme throughout A Village Life: the reminding and the “facing death” of death; the understanding that I am dying and drifting into absence a little more each day as my soul begins to borrow a little more presence. This is why, like a theosophist, she “believes in the mountain” as opposed to the Virgin. The mountain, as an image of her Self, is a metaphor she can comprehend. Her soul is the very presence of life. The Virgin, on the other hand, is a metaphor that is too abstract for anyone to comprehend. That is why the Virgin fails to heal the soul in the end. Like Death in the abstract, the Virgin in the abstract only crushes the soul into more traumata. In her last poem, understand the beautiful, peaceful yet simple nirvana she sees in her self through the reflection of the sun from the rays of the moon (her soul), as if this tranquility could continue to grow her life in “abundance” here and now on earth.

71Tulku Thondup, Peaceful Death: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook, Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2005, p. 42.

]]> By: Mark Pritchard http://therumpus.net/2009/10/a-squared-off-landscape-representing-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-11518 Mark Pritchard Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:56:43 +0000 http://therumpus.net/?p=37111#comment-11518 I adore Louise Glück's work. So glad to see it getting attention. I adore Louise Glück’s work. So glad to see it getting attention.

]]>