酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

A Smiling Graduation Photo

I wish I were you
A smiling graduation photo
Forever frozen
In a glorious moment
But I go on living
In gravity-defying thought
Like a plastic bag
Whirled by the wind
Struggling in mid-air
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

A Smiling Graduation Photo

I wish I were you
A smiling graduation photo
Forever frozen
In a glorious moment
But I go on living
In gravity-defying thought
Like a plastic bag
Whirled by the wind
Struggling in mid-air
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[非马]

I like the second poem better, especially its last two lines.

Somehow "Out of nothing" made me pause a little. Do you think "Out of nowhere" might work better?

[[FFFFFF]]

I like the second poem better, especially its last two lines.

Somehow "Out of nothing" made me pause a little. Do you think "Out of nowhere" might work better?

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

Grey Light Piercing through The Emigrants*

Refracted in Sebald's melancholic prism
The light, like the pain, is quite grey
The color of deteriorating houses
Of abandoned graveyards, of estranged lives
That end long before death comes
Numb greyness lowers over the black-and-white photos
Scattered throughout The Emigrants
As it does over the characters who people it
Unfinished spectral beings, scared, sapped
Hopelessly and futilely homesick


* This series of poems is inspired by my reading of W. G. Sebald’s novel entitled The Emigrants. I drew some key ideas about the role of photos in "memory work" from his work and from his critics’ viewpoints.

The Emigrants is a 1993 novel by German writer W. G. Sebald, a novel in which Sebald portrays poetically the lives of four different characters. It employs a four-part structure, revolving around exiled German Jews whose displaced and tragic lives are set against the spectre of the Holocaust. As with most of Sebald's work, the narratives are hybrids, composites of fiction, personal histories or life stories, fragments of history, and anecdotal information; more interestingly, the text includes many black and white unlabeled photographs which become the sites of memory.

In The Emigrants, Sebald attempts to retrace the paths taken by four men, respond to the coincidences that inform a life, and the decisions circumvented, made, or not fully understood: “We take almost all of the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.” None of the four exiles experienced the Holocaust directly. Yet as they tell their stories, giving voice to previously repressed memories, it becomes clear that the residual impact of the atrocities, to a large degree, has determined or shaped the ways in which they have lived their lives.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Grey Light Piercing through The Emigrants*

Refracted in Sebald's melancholic prism
The light, like the pain, is quite grey
The color of deteriorating houses
Of abandoned graveyards, of estranged lives
That end long before death comes
Numb greyness lowers over the black-and-white photos
Scattered throughout The Emigrants
As it does over the characters who people it
Unfinished spectral beings, scared, sapped
Hopelessly and futilely homesick


* This series of poems is inspired by my reading of W. G. Sebald’s novel entitled The Emigrants. I drew some key ideas about the role of photos in "memory work" from his work and from his critics’ viewpoints.

The Emigrants is a 1993 novel by German writer W. G. Sebald, a novel in which Sebald portrays poetically the lives of four different characters. It employs a four-part structure, revolving around exiled German Jews whose displaced and tragic lives are set against the spectre of the Holocaust. As with most of Sebald's work, the narratives are hybrids, composites of fiction, personal histories or life stories, fragments of history, and anecdotal information; more interestingly, the text includes many black and white unlabeled photographs which become the sites of memory.

In The Emigrants, Sebald attempts to retrace the paths taken by four men, respond to the coincidences that inform a life, and the decisions circumvented, made, or not fully understood: “We take almost all of the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.” None of the four exiles experienced the Holocaust directly. Yet as they tell their stories, giving voice to previously repressed memories, it becomes clear that the residual impact of the atrocities, to a large degree, has determined or shaped the ways in which they have lived their lives.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Lake]

I am becoming to like your poems more.

I stumbled at this line As it does over the characters who people it .

[[Lake]]

I am becoming to like your poems more.

I stumbled at this line As it does over the characters who people it .

[Champagne]

[[Champagne]]