NOTHINGNESS & GOD

WHAT POETS KNOW

Between chaos and night, by turns
the nothingness



©2015 Fundamental Darkness stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
#micropoetry #mpy #poetheme : between #mythopoetics #vss #2lines #lines #amwriting #poetry





notes

Credits


1. The collage image "Chaos" is  from Ovid, "Metamorphoses".

2. The collage image, "Night" is a painting by August Raynaud.

OF CHAOS, EROS & EARTH: ‘A Crown Of Gold’ Is A Curious Work

William Etty, Pandora Crowned by the Seasons, 1824

…the Olympian carpenter, created a ‘crown of gold’ …On it was much curious work, wonderful to see; for of the many creatures which the land and sea rear up, he put most upon it, wonderful things, like living beings with voices: and great beauty shone out from it. –Hesiod, Theogony

DICKERSON: People basically on the left and right feel like the system is rigged and that the wealthy have the upper hand.

NOONAN:  … it's interesting that they're talking about this. And I think it has to do with the fact that people in America understand that the poor now are stuck in a way they haven't been in the past and have various reasons that they can't rise, and somebody's got to look at that, because it's kind of unAmerican that you can't rise, you know. So, it's an essential issue.

-CBS News, Face the Nation Transcripts February 1, 2015

“To Pandora, the earth, because she bestows all things necessary for life."
                             -note attributed to Hipponax on Aristophanes' The Birds

SUPPOSE THE GOD OF LOVE WHO DIED DRAWS US, SUPPOSE THE CHASM DRAWS US IN TO SHAPE THAT; SUPPOSE

people must rise
their rhythm of arisen
must rise; give up a crowning ghost

indeed, a cold old mist
already shades in their
movements the older ones

long gone
run on―Pandoran;
numen

is a hissing hostess
a deep nature
twinkling

& you are not what happens
but here, in your ghost
you are this golden guest


©2015 EarthRise stephaniepope mythopoetry.com


notes

1. For an interesting turning of the myth of Pandora see http://pandoras-box.hubpages.com/hub/The-Story-of-Pandoras-Box

2. For the “EarthRise” image— the Earth rising over the moon's horizon as seen firsthand by the 1968 Apollo 8 crew see http://www.space.com/24038-nasa-recreates-apollo-earthrise-video.html

3. For the Face The Nation transcripts see http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-february-1-2015-graham-durbin-baker/

4. For the acoustic image, “ghost-host-guest” see David L. Miller, “Hells & Holy Ghosts: A Theopoetics Of Christian Belief” New Orleans: Spring Journal, p.109.

GAS CHAOS & SNOWMEN

UNPOWERS & STRANGE ATTRACTORS

                           ~for Ric

snow on fire cleave the tongue
gas, fruit hanging in the
five-fold vegetal soul

the animal spirit locally unstable
a touch of coal to its lip
a taste of shit in the vowel
of its throat, eternal lovers

drawn in to draw out whole
the story rising in
primeval emptiness unsensed

& it works upon our eyes undoing
& we SEEd again in the nothing
that is not there nothing that is


©2015 Honeymoon Grammar stephaniepope
#ohjDailyWords #ohj #mythopoetics #micropoetry




notes

1. The etymology of gas and chaos

gas (n.) 1650s, from Dutch gas, probably from Greek khaos "empty space" (see chaos). The sound of Dutch "g" is roughly equivalent to that of Greek "kh." First used by Flemish chemist J.B. van Helmont (1577-1644), probably influenced by Paracelsus, who used khaos in an occult sense of "proper elements of spirits" or "ultra-rarified water," which was van Helmont's definition of gas. Modern scientific sense began 1779, with later specialization to "combustible mix of vapors" (1794, originally coal gas); "anesthetic" (1894, originally nitrous oxide); and "poison gas" (1900). Meaning "intestinal vapors" is from 1882. "The success of this artificial word is unique" [Weekley]. Slang sense of "empty talk" is from 1847; slang meaning "something exciting or excellent" first attested 1953, from earlier hepster slang gasser in the same sense (1944). Gas also meant "fun, a joke" in Anglo-Irish and was used so by Joyce (1914). As short for gasoline, it is American English, first recorded 1905.

chaos (n.) late 14c., "gaping void," from Old French chaos (14c.) or directly from Latin chaos, from Greek khaos "abyss, that which gapes wide open, is vast and empty," from *khnwos, from PIE root *gheu- "to gape, yawn" (cognates: Greek khaino "I yawn," Old English ginian, Old Norse ginnunga-gap; see yawn (v.)). Meaning "utter confusion" (c.1600) is extended from theological use of chaos for "the void at the beginning of creation" in Vulgate version of Genesis (1530s in English). The Greek for "disorder" was tarakhe, however the use of chaos here was rooted in Hesiod ("Theogony"), who describes khaos as the primeval emptiness of the Universe, begetter of Erebus and Nyx ("Night"), and in Ovid ("Metamorphoses"), who opposes Khaos to Kosmos, "the ordered Universe." Meaning "orderless confusion" in human affairs is from c.1600. Chaos theory in the modern mathematical sense is attested from c.1977.


2. For snowmen see Wallace Stevens, The Snowman

3.  For the central image of the first three lines see the  January 20^th 2015 poem, Mechanical Bulls by Richard Lance Scow Williams

photographs of a cactus
fruits of orange & yellow
taken with a cellphone
the ice on the ground
she sews wool pants
pieced from ones
bought at Goodwill
we watch McCabe &
Mrs. Miller a perfect movie
said Roger Ebert—saddest movie
he ever saw—Leonard Cohen music
she had never seen it—i dreamed a metal

buckle was lodged above my pubic bone as if it were a skull of a bull the shape of a woman’s
reproductive organs—the ovaries fallopian tubes & uterus a history of bulls—secrets of death & birth how Goethe thought five-pointed stars were the preferred shape all of nature there are no sheriffs in this new town a church no one attends is burning fire orange & yellow strips of air pay attention to your violence the machine on the ice mechanics of time Einstein & trains smoke of flesh lugubrious songs of gamblers & whores—i want to see snow in bloom heroes must be fed to time her eyes upon the dimming light her head upon his shoulder life cradles sorrow in a bed of joy the chorus watching the credits roll

© 2015 Richard Lance Scow Williams January 20 mechanical bulls