The Book of Delights, Ross Gay

Ross Gay opens The Book of Delights with: 

 

"It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study. A month or two into this project delights were calling to me: Write about me! Write about me! Because it is rude not to acknowledge your delights, I’d tell them that though they might not become essayettes, they were still important, and I was grateful to them. Which is to say, I felt my life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight. I also learned this year that my delight grows—much like love and joy—when I share it."

 

Things I Didn't Know I Loved, Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963)

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
                         and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
                         and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
                         lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
                                        to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
                                                          Koktebele
                               formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
                                        when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
                                       going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
   his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
      with a sable collar over his robe
   and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
   and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side

I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
                             or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
   be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
   well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
   say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
                             except the Sea of Azov
or how much

I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
   heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
   and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
   rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
   by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
   to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

"Drink my soul, as if with a straw", poem by Anna Akhmatova

 

[Immigration Headline], Javier Zamora

[byline]

Northern triangle—First, I lived near mud, there, I carved some things. Then, I found a well, yo soy un bicho migrante. I had to climb trees, find mollusks, made a knife to eat them raw. Later, later-later, I worried about firewood, pots to cook. I asked ¿Where did my parents go? ¿Where? ¿There? I walked to another tree, another shore ... ¿Where are they now? I carved more: my face, my parents’, an alligator’s, yo soy un bicho migrante. ¡But no! I got tired of waiting, of playing, I wanted to see more. I found a river, found a road. Found more like me, a bunch of us waiting for more of us to flee. A tribe. A small village, yo soy un bicho migrante. I saw there were rules, clothes kept dry in plastic bags, phone numbers written inside pants. They also made fire, carved things into the mud. Asked ¿De donde sos vos? I pointed: de allá. Said I didn’t have plans. They answered, ¡Bienvenido! Tapped their feet on the dirt, yo soy un bicho migrante. We walked on the road, then along the road looking for food. Through the forest, through the mountains, we looked for mud, for frogs, for—¡There! ¡There they are! We played our favorite game, until I got bored again. Yo soy un bicho migrante. Nights are boring. Fireflies ... boring. Stars, the moon ... Well ... I began to let myself think ... babosadas came to mind: countries, passports. Then, I walked away from everyone, got to a mountain, then another one. Got to a river where I saw rats. ¿Have you seen the tribe? ¿A savage bunch that makes fires from trash? In a hurry they chased after me. I ran north. Found a few others. Or, maybe it was just me. To eat you have to believe, they said. Handed me something in the dark. Yo soy un bicho migrante. Saw pizza in the dark, hamburgers, clouds maybe. Maybe clouds. I saw fireflies. Few days had passed. I felt like an empty road. I invented machines. Planes. Fast cars. I barely had time to learn their names. I barely had time to say goodbye. Yo soy un bicho migrante. Years later, I filled forms. Wrote my name & woke up in a bed that had traveled 56 days, 56 nights. Then, came an election. War. Kids kept coming, but I had to find work. Wrote so many books my hands got tired. Made alternatives for plastic. Someone separated people into groups. Trees were cut extinct. But I destroyed fences, jailed kings, invented a replacement for countries. We searched for 
purpose. Happiness. ¡Anyone could travel anywhere! We learned new languages. I had looked through the window I wasn’t supposed to. Yes, I looked. ¿What can I say? So I could be certain I looked & broke through. Yo soy un bicho migrante. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll return to that well & begin carving mud again. I’ll carve the whole world backwards. But no. Maybe not. Migrating has no beginning. No purpose. Yo solo soy uno de muchos bichos migrantes.

 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/javier-zamora

Elocutionists devised various notational systems to indicate pitch

 

Henry N. Day required that students be familiar with intervals

Henry N. Day required that students be familiar with intervals: major and minor seconds, major and minor thirds, and the tritone, fifth, and octave, and be able to produce them vocally at will.

As Joaquin does.

Fine with their poetry being disliked

Poets with that grounding did not necessarily want their poems to be ‘liked’ widely. In fact, some poets were perfectly fine with their poetry being disliked by certain people. 

 Cornelia Gräbner, about Spoken Word.