Charles Wright, “In Praise of Han Shan”
“Nothing’s undoing among the self-strung unfolding of things”
Sam Rasnake
@samrasnake.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.2K following 5.4K posts
Scribbler of words... Fallen Leaves (Ballerini Book Press, forthcoming), Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit), Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press), World within the World (Cyberwit), Inside a Broken Clock (Finishing Line Press).
![Osip Mandelstam, “Nowhere Air”
Like water trickling from the highest ice
Its bracing ache, its brain-shard sweetness,
Its nowhere air of utter now,
So my sigh has lost its source,
And I live by meanings I cannot comprehend,
For every instant I must taste the instant that I end.
[Tr. C Wiman]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreid45x3jhrmqwaurhd2x4wagmbdc4kj6bdf5edc5pxxuce6d65kdze)
![Cristina Peri Rossi
Which home is mine?
Where do I live?
My home is writing
I dwell in her like the house
of the errant daughter
the prodigal
who always returns to see familiar faces
the only fire that never dies.
My home is writing
house of one hundred doors and windows
alternately opening and closing
When I lose one key
I find another
when a window closes
I break down a door
[Tr. Elizabeth Rose]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreianhiaxdtocx7qphthp5viy3m6yiy7vqz4267jgyu373c6bpe2ojy)
![Po Chu-i
Ten thousand threads of thought, two sheets written:
before sealing them, I read them over, wonder if they’ll do.
The palace water clock has just sounded the fifth watch,
the lamp in the window, my one light, about to go out.
[Tr. Burton Watson; Painting by Wu Ynan Zhi]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreih3bmk5q4dnjgpvtwq647bm53maemxe3aeocebtqqcgp6h4dzpzoa)
![Uvavnuk
A Netsilik shaman, oral poet. No authenticated photo of her exists.
The great sea
frees me, moves me,
as a strong river carries a weed.
Earth and her strong winds
move me, take me away,
and my soul is swept up in joy.
[Tr. Jane Hirshfield; art: The Song of Uvavnuk by F Paul & N Caroline]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreifjalbvpmacf3rphikoxrmowrgcr2yb6etkbenw7xf573prig4zmi)
![Men in overalls the same color as earth rise from a ditch.
It’s a transitional place, in stalemate, neither country nor city.
Construction cranes on the horizon want to take the big leap,
but the clocks are against it.
Concrete piping scattered around laps at the light with cold tongues.
Auto-body shops occupy old barns.
Stones throw shadows as sharp as objects on the moon surface.
And these sites keep on getting bigger
like the land bought with Judas’ silver: “a potter’s field for
burying strangers.”
[Tr. Robert Bly]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreicwgi3hyjqgwgapy3nkzhbqqzx5qd6mukmcks2gyls6cxyoznfeqq)
![One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Miloš Forman, dir.
Easily one of Jack Nicholson’s most powerful performances, unforgettable really. The entire cast is in synch. It’s a powerful study of human psychology in terms of what society will and will not accept, as well as the measures employed to maintain control over what is acceptable. Jaime Rebanal writes in Cinema from the Spectrum: “If I were to the very impact that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had upon myself, I would be rambling forever. But I don’t really know how else I can put it, because the most that I know I can say is that I am truly grateful that this is a film that exists, for every rewatch I always question whether it really is something humanity as a whole had deserved. It feels so liberating to watch [the film], knowing that there are people around that are willing to listen to others who can never express themselves properly because of how society has treated them. And Miloš Forman never loses touch of that feeling of empathy which he shares for the mental patients, and it always makes me feel warm on the inside.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreibyfkqo6vbaasin654ucj2aadzcqwepdxzhtftm5otaosccqsdosq)
![Wislawa Szymborska
They must have been different once,
fire and water, miles apart,
robbing and giving in desire,
that assault on one another’s otherness.
Embracing, they appropriated and expropriated each other
for so long
that only air was left within their arms,
transparent as if after lightning.
[Tr. Cavanaugh & Baranczak]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreich4wjut5tnkvafserjk3rby5bdo2pp57o7czwi6qk7fkmr6brrmm)
![Contempt is a movie about making a movie of an epic story. The characters are mythic stand-ins but also have their own realities. This is Godard’s way of retelling Homer’s The Odyssey. All the mythic elements are evident in some form. The film begins with a narration of a scene, the film within the film: “The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world that corresponds to our desires.” This story works on a very large scale but also is successful with its intimate, almost claustrophobic scenes. Movie critic Adrian Martin writes, “Of all the sins in my life, this is one to which I will confess: I once screened Contempt to a group of film students in the version that circulated, years ago, on television – lacking most of its wide-screen image, palely coloured, indifferently dubbed and (in spots) brutally censored. Whatever my students saw in that class, it was not Le Mépris [Contempt] as the Nouvelle Vague wonderboy Jean-Luc Godard intended it to be seen in 1963. To finally encounter the film in its proper form, on a big screen, is a revelation and a pure joy. The richness of its colour, the nuances of the performances, the density of its multi-lingual soundtrack – not to mention the immensity of its ambition – at last become clear and palpable.” One of my favorite films. I love the story, the acting, the sweep of colors scene to scene, the smallness of characters against the grandness of the Mediterranean world of myth and reality.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreighz5n3jf6c33kc47lox33gu73frayzqqvghulajzuwfb6agy2w2a)
![Rainer Maria Rilke
Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.
When something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve.
[Tr. Stephen Mitchell]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreibi4mxqpmyjgez7eojojbajq5tcwmxef2iajn3djhhz43tzbock7m)
![Of his own films, Hitchcock liked Shadow of a Doubt the best. It’s one of his most personal movies. A film about family betrayal, about the intensity of living with the belief that danger is always present, that evil is too familiar. In an essay on the film, Sven Mikulec writes, “It’s somewhat surprising, some would even say remarkable, that at this very point in history [during World War II] Hollywood produced a film like this, as it portrays a typical American small town polished on the surface, seemingly full of innocent, kindhearted people, one of those ideal communities where everybody knows each other’s names, unexpectedly bring over apple pies and smile gently and warmly at each other in front of the church before the Sunday mass. But underneath this sugarcoated surface a psychopathic serial killer walks the streets, inhabits their dinner parties and sleeps in their rooms.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6yfkw6l57enjybdxgjnd5v4x/bafkreigwjvba7l4k74ewirwfrekbc6jdemkaxys7rxsj5xcvrq6gvxzhie)
