Sunday, October 23, 2011

Poetry, Love and Vulnerability

Okay so the weekend's theme seems to be poetry.

This blog post Everything Moves to Live by Xeni Jardin at the Poetry Foundation web site is awesome.

It's partly a meditation on a movie, Alphaville, a science fiction film I've never seen, but sounds fascinating (and not just because of the synchronized bathing beauties!)
Love is illegal in the dictatorship of Alpha 60. Expressing grief, desire, or tenderness, even reading poetry, these are all crimes punishable by death—specifically,  staged executions in which prisoners are lined up and shot on the edge of a swimming pool filled with with synchronized Busby Berkeley-style bathing beauties.
And partly a meditation on poetry, two poets in particular - Argentinean poet Jorge Luis Borges and his contemporary, the French surrealist Paul Éluard.  I had never heard of the latter (and one of his books is called Capital of Pain - need to check that out)...


but this poem ----

Because I love you, everything moves
We must advance to live
Aim straight ahead toward those you love
I went toward you, endlessly toward the light
If you smile, it enfolds me all the better
The rays of your arms pierce the mist
from Éluard’s 1924 work, “Mourir de ne pas mourir” (“Dying Of Not Dying”)


Of this Jardin remarks - 
They express for me, better than my own words can, what it means to submit to the vulnerability that love requires. They capture what it means to accept that control and order are illusion, never mind what technology promises; chaos and chance are the magic in intimacy. They remind me of the eventuality of pain that any deep bond with another person entails, no matter how rich and blissful the sweet parts are.
Control and order are an illusion.  Particularly regarding agency over your own body.  I agree with every syllable of her observation and love the poem too.  


In the movie, poetry is what transform darkness into light.  Jardin calls poetry (and I love this too)-
command-line prompt of the human operating system

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