The Kindergartener and the Grad Student

I've been thinking that I'd like to not post poems on here every time, and so I was trying to come up with some witty commentary on world happenings of late or link to some obscure "what will they think of next" tidbit.

However, when I headed off to lunch/coffee today I happened to pick up Fernando Pessoa's "A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe" (see previous post). This book was referred to me by my ex-roommate's heroine-addict kinda boyfriend - and I have to say it kinda blows my mind.

I read somewhere that Pessoa is referred to as Portugal's top three poets, as he had a habit of writing from different alter-ego's. The poem that I opened to today happened to be written by one named Alvaro de Campos and is called "Salutation to Walt Whitman." Pessoa is one of the juiciest, most exuberant poets I've read (not that I know anything about poetry, really) - but he seemed to possess in one fingernail clipping more punch and lust for/satiation with life than anyone I can think of.

A brief excerpt:
"I salute you, Walt, I salute you, my Universal brother,
Forever modern and eternal, the singer of concrete absolutes,
passionate mistress of the scattered universe,
great homosexual who rubs against the diversity of things,
sexualized by stones, by trees, by people, by professions,
full of lust for passing bodies, chance encounters, mere observations,
champion of the material substance of all things,
my glorious hero who goes into Death skipping
greeting God with shouts and roars and squeals!
...Homer of the elusive carnal flux,
Shakespeare of sensations that were beginning to run on steam,
Milton-Shelley of Electricity on the horizon!
Incubus of all gestures,
Inner spasm of all outer objects,
Pimp of the whole Universe,
Slut of all solar systems, pansy of God!"

This monstrous and effusive pace continues for 18 pages:

"I know that the way I sing of you isn't by singing of you,
but so what?
I know it's by singing of everything, but to sing of everything is to sing of you.
I know it's by singing of me, but to sing of me is to sing of you.
I know that even to say I can't sing is to sing of you, Walt...
To sing of you,
to salute you,
I'd have to write the supreme poem
which, more than any other supreme poem, would embrace in a total synthesis
(based on an exhaustive analysis)
the whole Universe of things, living beings and souls,
The whole Universe of men, women and children,
The whole Universe of acts, gestures, feelings, thoughts,
The whole Universe of the things mankind makes
and the things mankind experiences...
You sang everything, and in you everything sang -
Magnificent whorish receptivity
of your sensations with their legs wide open
to the outlines and details of the whole universe."

Dude needs to take a breath.

Awhile back, I wrote my own (comparatively) diminutive and sheepish poem, inspired when I (forever whatever reason?) gave my younger sister a copy of his Leaves of Grass for Christmas last year - and snuck several bites of it before passing it on. He was never someone whose influence I really ever felt during school, etc. - though I've been reading some Emerson, Thoureau and the like and really enjoy his all-encompassing (is there any other way to be?) approach somehow fused with the poetic.

Ode to Walt

Sensuous contaminants
lap against the pane of my consciousness
that great lady S.S.I.M. anchored resolutely in an endless sea
of vacuous energy (and as-yet unclassified monsters)
deep beneath the oil slicks and incendiary relations.
The steadfast vessel sits with composite id
between the glowing buoys -
those corporeal effigies of:
black/sink/fire holes
the precipice
and demons to come.
But I know not timorous fear or palpitation,
nor do I seek to assign blame or name the lineage of these portents,
for I see the captain
“my captain”
stands perpetually on guard
shadowed and laconic
yet ever-readily poised to guide her majesty
across indolent chasms, echelons and that evasive time
leaving nothing but pulsating warmth
dissolved in her wake.


And in completely unrelated news:
China's cracking down on internet porn:
Story

They're already more productive than the U.S. - they're now officially going to obliterate our GDP!