Towards the Splendid City

" I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I, in my turn, will avoid giving any advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a drop of supposed insight. When I am recounting in this speech something about past events, when reliving on this occasion a never-forgotten occurrence, in this place which is so different from what that was, it is because in the course of my life I have always found somewhere the necessary support, the formula which had been waiting for me not in order to be petrified in my words but in order to explain me to myself.

During this long journey I found the necessary components for the making of the poem. There I received contributions from the earth and from the soul. And I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained - man and his shadow, man and his conduct, man and his poetry - by an ever-wider sense of community, by an effort which will for ever bring together the reality and the dreams in us because it is precisely in this way that poetry unites and mingles them. And therefore I say that I do not know, after so many years, whether the lessons I learned when I crossed a daunting river, when I danced around the skull of an ox, when I bathed my body in the cleansing water from the topmost heights - I do not know whether these lessons welled forth from me in order to be imparted to many others or whether it was all a message which was sent to me by others as a demand or an accusation. I do not know whether I experienced this or created it, I do not know whether it was truth or poetry, something passing or permanent, the poems I experienced in this hour, the experiences which I later put into verse.

From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny..."

- Pablo Neruda, Nobel Prize Lecture , 1971

Note: Read the full lecture at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-lecture-e.html

Me Imperturbe

" Peace by Neha"

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,

Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things,

Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,

Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought,

Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland,

A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,

Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies,

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

- Walt Whitman ( from Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman. Brooklyn: Fowler & Wells, 1856)

Cannery Row

Canned by Neha

" CANNERY ROW in Monterey, California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and the scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses..."

"How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the one, the habit and the dream- be set down alive? ", asks author John Steinbeck after a brief introduction to the beautiful poetic prose that is Cannery Row. The story takes the reader through the streets of Cannery row, its people : Doc - the marine biologist , the fountain of philosophy, art and science who has done something nice for everyone at Cannery Row and for whom everyone at Cannery Row want's to do something nice , Lee Chong and his grocery store - the lifeline of Cannery Row's paraphernalia, Mack - the leader of a small group of men ( call them bums or call them free spirits) who have in common no family, no money and no ambitions beyond food, drink and contentment, Dora - the owner of the bear flag restaurant ( which is not a restaurant as you'd find!) , the male Gopher waiting to welcome his dream lady Gopher at his perfect residence on the vacant lot on Cannery Row and myriad of other incredibly interesting and quirky characters.

I love Cannery Row. For beginners, I am enchanted by my copy of the book which I picked from an old used book store I discovered. The store has three floors filled with books of all sizes, colors, shapes and languages. As I entered on a Sunday afternoon , the sleepy fan was making its usual rounds while its slow moving sound brought home a familiar comfort of tropical kind. And there it was - Cannery Row waiting for me to pick it up. The copy I found ( or rather which found me) was published in 1963 , 18 years after the book's first publication in 1945. The pages are yellow and it smells musty ...a bit like Cannery Row itself I like to think. The story of Cannery Row is a dream. Yet, it is so real. It is comical. Yet, it is deeply philosophical ( from beer milkshakes to moral, physical and aesthetic effect of Model T Ford on the American generations to beards to fortune to misfortune to surprise to frogs and rattlesnakes). The words sing and paint at the same time - a treat for an art lover .

The story has parallel themes with Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men ( which was written in 1937 and which I confess I also deeply love!). The misadventures of men of Of Mice and Men are of a different kind yet they evoke similar emotions as the men of Cannery Row. They have no family and share a deep camaraderie. They want a li'l place of their own where they can belong. While for Lennie and Milton ( in Of Mice and Men), it remains a distant dream which lives in their heart, Mack and the boys of Cannery Row are lucky in having made their home at the Palace Flophouse. Such must have also been the camaraderie between Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts, the marine biologist on whom the Doc's character is based and to whom Steinbeck Dedicated the Cannery Row saying " For Ed Ricketts, who knows why or should". I love the Doc. Who doesn't. He's kind, eccentric and mysterious. I love when he reads the Black Marigold's , a 11th century love poem called Caurapañcāśikā written by an Indian poet, translated from Sanskrit by E Powy's Matherrs. A poem which only makes him more mysterious.

In a journal entry in 1938, Steinbeck wrote " In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other. " And so it is with Cannery Row. It is honest and compassionate. Read it !

Notes: Read the Black Marigold translation here http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/bilhana/index.htm