LPS Blahticles

Wisdom from the cradle From Christoph Metcalf

Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:44:50 +0100

Here are some examples:

“Give me my tools and I will launch my boat.”

“Who can compete with righteousness? It creates life.”

“My things changed things.”

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's embrace.

“It is a thing of short duration.”

“If the lion heats the soup, who would say "It is no good"?”

“Give out only half a loaf voluntarily!”

“Don't pick things now; they will bear fruit later.”

“When he walks on the streets no one greets him. And when he comes home to his wife, "Bad Name" is what he is called.”

“The songs of a city are its diviners.”

“Beer is a bull. The mouth is its stairway.”

“He is at ease, he is pleased, he makes a living, he offers a prayer.”

“Marrying is human. Having children is divine.”

“I looked into the water. My destiny was drifting past.”

“What kind of a scribe is a scribe who does not know Sumerian?”

“The scribe trained in counting is deficient on clay. The scribe skilled with clay is deficient in counting.”

“The fox could not build his own house, so he got a job at his friend's house as a construction worker.”

“My donkey was not destined to run quickly; he was destined to bray!”

“One does not marry a three-year-old wife, as a donkey does.”

“The good thing is the beer. The bad thing is the journey.”

“For his pleasure he got married. On his thinking it over he got divorced.”

“‘I will go today’ is what a herdsman says; "I will go tomorrow" is what a shepherd-boy says. "I will go" is "I will go", and the time passes.”

“There are bitter tears in human flesh.”

“Fools are the ribcages of heroes.”

“The manicurist is himself dressed in dirty rags.”

"’I'm going home’ is what he prefers.”

“To appreciate the earth is for the gods; I am merely covered in dust.”

“In respect of both expenditures and capital goods, the arse is well supplied.”

“The arse breaks wind; talking produces excessive words.”

“The sun never leaves my heart, which surpasses a garden.”

“Youthful vigor has left my loins, like a runaway donkey.”

“Don't choose a wife during a festival!”

Technology and poetry -By Hannah Silva

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:29:20 +0000

“Technology should be seen merely as a means to an end, not an end in itself.” (Dixon 2007, p.6)
In issue 47 of Tears in the Fence Adam Fieled states: “I think the whole idea of a poet-with-a-notebook-or-folder standing before a crowd is obsolete, more or less. it’s terminally uninteresting 75% of the time.” He goes on to suggest that “multi-media may be the answer.” (2008 p.119)
If some poetry readings are so ‘terminally uninteresting,’ perhaps this explains why viewers are pleased with anything that breaks expectations. Amy King says she soaks up even “amateurish…conscious attempts to perform.’’ However, I’m not sure that multi-media can help that 75%, except as slight relief and novelty value, or as distraction from the poet. However for the 25% who manage to be interesting on their own in front of a crowd, multi-media can push their work even further, to exciting, new areas of multi layered composition.
In Steim, the electronic media centre in Amsterdam, I took part in a research with an actor, two directors and a composer (2004).1 We were working with two programs: Big Eye2 and body sensors (Body-Synth). Accelerometers were attached to different parts of the body of the dancer/actor: the wrist, the ankle and the forehead. As she moved the part of her body with the attached sensor (in this case an accelerometer), it sensed change in speed producing an electric discharge. These voltaic discharges were transmitted to a midi system that translated them into a midi signal. The midi signal then was read by the computer and a sound was triggered. She triggered sounds that were pre-programmed by the composer. These sounds were recorded during her previous improvisations, and included footsteps, whispers, laughter, claps, words and phrases. The sound of the footsteps was lowered several octaves to create a very strange ostinato. She composed sound and text using her body, creating her own soundtrack that she could respond and add to, both physically and vocally. She would not have been able to create such a complex and exciting score if she was not such a highly trained performer. Her craft provided her with the tools needed to make the technology come alive. One of the most important of which was a strong sense of timing, demonstrated by accurate physical impulse to the musical and textual stimuli, and ability to work not only in response to the soundscape, but also against it. She was working as a dancer/actor, composer and writer simultaneously.
Poetry performance has low or no budget. Usually the only form of technology used is a microphone and PA system. Any poet who uses a microphone engages with technology. Here are some thoughts on how technology can affect/be incorporated within poetry performance, beginning at the basic level, and continuing to a hypothetical ideal in which budget is not an issue.
Microphone
Bookshop style and very small scale poetry readings often do not use microphones, whereas within the performance poetry world, they tend to be a given. I’ve seen excellent poets so afraid of the microphone that they would rather not use it and risk not being heard than have to deal with it. When I first started performing my poetry I was also afraid of the microphone- so I got hold of a microphone and practiced with it. I discovered how much it can enhance poetry performance.
The microphone amplifies the voice, but initially, the voice is amplified by the body. It is useful to practice both with and without the microphone. Ideally the microphone is not depended upon, but used as another tool within the performance, to enhance the technique that is already there.
A microphone does not have to be used continuously. It can emphasise certain words, or parts of words. Speaking close to an SM 58 can bring out the bass tones of a female voice, enriching it. The microphone can accentuate words that are repeated, or words that the poet wrote in a different font. It can amplify very small articulations, inhalations, the sounds in between speech that otherwise would be imperceptible, enhance the texture and colour of consonants: fricatives, palatals, occlusives, labiodentals, to name a few. (In some of my pieces I use articulation techniques coming from playing a wind instrument.)
The position of the performer in relation to the microphone influences the dynamic and quality of sound. The performer can adjust this relationship to the microphone on the spot, to avoid forcing their voice when striving for different dynamic levels.
The microphone can be hand held, used with a stand, hung from a ceiling, swung through space…
Soundtracks
Using several layers on a soundtrack, an experience similar to that of reading a piece on the page can be evoked- the associations that might arise when reading are created through sound (for example children’s laughter, a busy street, a melody in the distance.) By panning sound from one speaker to another, there is a sense of movement through space. With a good sound system, and more than two speakers, sound panned in stereo can be perceived as surround sound. (In the absence of the necessary technology, another trick is to create two stereo tracks in which sound is panned to Left and Right on each, and play them simultaneously, channelled to two separate sets of speakers.)
The poem becomes multi-dimensional. The listener is provided with a rich soundscape which opens up more possibilities for interpretation. The sound on the recording and the live voice can meld into each other so they become indistinguishable. Timing can be slightly displaced. A duet can take place through the interweaving of different layers.
Recording software such as Protools can be used as a compositional tool. For instance, I reverse words using Protools, this reveals the tiny sounds that are necessary to give an effective impression of speaking in reverse – so that the performer appears to be swallowing their speech. Protools can help the poet to learn how to accurately speak in reverse. When reversed words are recorded and reversed again, the result is speech that sounds just slightly wrong, but very interesting. Recording software enables the poet to write and edit out loud.
I create predominantly vocal soundtracks using protools. (I used to use garage band and got some good results with it) I layer rhythmic patterns, vocal sounds, passages of text, and sometimes incorporate extracts of music, sounds from the street, and other poetry recordings. I manipulate the sounds using special effects such as reverb and echo, and use editing tools to cut up words into fragments.
It is also possible to collaborate with a composer, who creates soundtracks for the poet, in response to a poem, concept, or, as in Birth of a Poet, the badly received collaboration between novelist, Kathy Acker, theatre maker, Richard Foreman, composer Peter Gordon and the painter David Salle; artists can work separately, only bringing together their material at the last minute. According to critic John Rockwell Birth of a Poet was a ‘mess’: “with much of the text fragmented and orated at a constant hectoring level of amplified volume, it sounds pretentious and confused.” (1985)
The web has made it easy for artists to collaborate when living in different cities, and even countries, but comes with its own problems. A collaborative process in which artists are only brought together for the performance event by-passes the difficulties and compromises that take place during intense collaborations, compromises that are necessary if the piece is to become coherent, the disciplines working together in complex and innovative ways, rather than competing against each other for the audience’s attention.
Video projection
Video material can be created in conjunction with the poem, as illustration of the poem, or as a separate layer that combines with the text to create meaning. Final Cut Pro is one of the best video editing programs -however it is expensive. Other free video editing programs can also create good results. A slideshow of photos is very simple and can be effective. Poetry performances are usually not very well lit, by using a projector, the atmosphere and light within the performance space can be improved.
Theatre companies such as The Wooster Group have been experimenting with projections and video since the eighties. Initially their director, Elizabeth LeCompte, took inspiration from the experience of channel flicking. Twenty years earlier, cut-up writing techniques were being put in practice by writers such as William Burroughs. LeCompte’s approach to video mirrored the cut-up techniques used in writing. This cut-up flicking channel technique is still in use, I’ve seen it recently by Earthfall dance company (2007) and the Big Art Group (2006). When using fragmented visual material in combination with text, the viewer looks for connections between the two, and finds ways to create their own montage of meaning. It is possible to provide the viewer with unusual links and associations, to contextualise the material within a particular time. However this ‘channel flicking’ fragmented effect has been used for decades and does not have the same impact as it did in the eighties, especially when it is not done in an extremely crafted way – by this I mean that the juxtapositions within the material need to be carefully selected, the relation of the material to the live performance should be dramaturgically coherent, and if the video material is to be mirrored on stage, it needs to be executed as well as the Wooster Group achieves with Hamlet (2006) and their past work.
The Wooster Group’s production of Hamlet (2006) left behind their earlier aesthetic. They projected Richard Burton’s interpretation of the role in the 1964 production and simultaneously re-created it live, complete with distorted voice and jumps in continuity. The use of projection revealed the intertextuality of the production. As well as being projected at the back of the stage, they projected onto chairs and pillars around the space. The writer and theatre maker, Tim Etchells, provides his interpretation of the event:
• The tape - imperfect, flickering, pixelating, jumping. He wants the past to speak. To speak to him. To speak through him to us. It's a tough call. On the bare stage of the beginning of the piece it's almost a joke, a farcical demand, but it’s a joke that over a stubborn two and a half hours becomes sonic/video-mixing poetry, gets somewhat mired in its observance of theatrical-narrative, and at times gets to be a tangible theatrical achievement. (Etchells, 2007)
Complicite’s recent production, A Disappearing Number (2008) used projection as stage design; the actors moved the screen around to create different sets, back projection changed the audience’s perception of space. Indian karnatic music represented mathematical formulas. Projected equations and words were given voice by the performers, as rhythmical patterns. There were constant jumps between semiotic fields, from music to textual montage to mathematics.
This quote sums what I perceive to be the most coherent way of approaching the combination of text and image:
• [Words] would be redundant in film if they were used as a further projection from the image. However, if they were brought in on a different level, not issuing from the image which should be complete in itself, but as another dimension relating to it, then it is the two things together that make a poem. (Deren, 1963 cited Ieropoulos, online)
Live Sampling- Digital Media
Using real-time editing tools the poet can compose live, using sound and video. They can create layers of text by recording themselves and then speaking live over the top. They can distort and change the pitch and quality of their live voice using MIDI pedals. They can trigger pre-recorded samples, music, sound, text or video. Sensors attached to their body could be used to trigger sound. The audience can be involved in the writing process, by triggering words as they walk over a floor with touch sensitive sensors within it. Speakers can surround the space, sound can be split up into multiple parts, creating an immersive atmosphere.
Some programs that could be used to create the above results include: LISA, MAX MSP BIG EYE, VNS, BODY-SYNTH.
In the usual low budget poetry events it is impossible to use complex technology, unless all equipment needed is owned and controlled by the poet. Theatres with larger technical facilities would provide a better venue for this work. It is more likely that this experimentation could take place as funded research, in which the poet can work in conjunction with a composer, musician and video maker (for example). Centres like Steim, Amsterdam can provide the equipment and facilities needed for artists who apply for residences there.
Technology on its own is not enough, it needs to be used with the same amount of discernment that the poet uses when choosing words. Using technology requires a technique similar to that of the composer. It needs to be treated as a layer within a larger composition, it cannot be placed on top of something that already exists in its entirety, or repeat what is already present. Technology is another layer of performance, it is another discipline, and it needs to be woven into the larger composition without dominating the poetry, but helping it to achieve its potential in performance. A poet who engages with technology becomes a multi-disciplinary artist, and the disciplines need to work together to create the poem. Theatre director and writer, Richard Foreman explains that the task of the theatre maker is “to create a complex composition that helps the spectator realize that many different meanings are available in any chosen perceptual experience.” (1992, p.52)
One of the great things abut poetry performance is that it relies on the voice and the poetry of the poet. However, digital media could extend the reach of poetry performance, bring it to new audiences and raise its audience’s expectations. Using technology within poetry performance is pointless unless the performer has the craft required, technology should not be a crutch, but a tool to help the poet put across the richness of their work. To return to the initial quote: “Technology should be seen merely as a means to an end, not an end in itself.” (Dixon 2007, p.6)
REFERENCES

Live Writing by Hannah Silva

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 15:14:57 +0000

Sitting at the back of a large auditorium I watched the dancers with binoculars. As I watched, a stream of words were pulled from my imagination, as if from a typewriter. The patterns that I saw on stage suggested images, ideas and concepts, and converted into poetry…I could almost see the words exiting my brain in a thin trail, and afterwards I wrote them down. That day set a standard in terms of live performance. I like to play an active role as a spectator, I like to become a silent collaborator, to write in my imagination as I watch.

Poetry performance is not as spectacular as dance. It does not use stage design, lighting, music, and complex choreography. It relies on the presence and the poetry of one performer. How can the poet provide the spectator with the same imaginative stimulus that I experienced when watching dance? How can the poet engage the spectator so that they listen actively? – so that through their imaginations, they take part in the act of writing. How can the poet retain the excitement that they must have experienced when writing the poem, as they read it in performance?

Performance poets present their material so often that there is a risk their renditions become automatic and habitual, or in the worst case, they fall into the same patterns of intonation used by many others, becoming so predictable that it causes the listener to switch off. ‘Page-based’ poets often read as if bored of their material, in the ‘weather report drone.’ (Fieled 2008, p.119) One of the fundamental problems for an actor is to discover ways in which to make their performance fresh each time, each night. How can a writer or poet perform their text as if they are discovering it for the first time – as if they are writing live?

The experience of reading a poem on the page is very different to that of hearing it in performance. When reading in our heads we might misread words, then realise our mistake, but still retain in our imaginations a trace of the misread image. The writer might provide us with many possibilities through their use of space on the page; we might not read across the page, but down it, we might jump from one corner to another, we might be able to read one poem in many different ways, resulting in a layering of meanings. The writer might include images or non-verbal material within their poetry. The shape of the poem on the page adds another layer to our interpretation and of course the images that are evoked when reading poetry and the way we hear the words spoken in our heads as we read are influenced by who we are - our own thoughts and experiences.

Given the above, it is not surprising that often a poet reading their own work out loud at a reading does not hold the same magic as when we read it on the page for ourselves. When a poet reads we hear the author’s voice, and it may be very different to how we heard their words in our imaginations. The interpretation becomes definitive, fixed. There is not the time to misread, re-read and pause while we think. Sometimes the poet’s voice renders their words too human, too personal, and prevents the poetry from existing autonomously. On the other hand we might have the opportunity to hear it as the writer intended, in their voice. When the writer is famous, there is some added excitement of celebrity around the occasion. It can become more about their personality than their poetry.

When poetry is assumed to be written in the first person, and therefore in the writer’s voice, portraying their thoughts, experiences and beliefs, they are imagined to be ‘themselves’ in a performance situation. They give the spectator an insight into who they are. Adam Fieled comments that this kind of writing, which typically uses the ‘epiphanic I’ is better suited to performance because “at least we can tell what’s going on, make sense of the poem.” (2008, p.119)

Some writers say that they avoid ‘performing’ and rehearsing their readings, as their writing ‘speaks for itself.’ Some suggest that any attempt at performance is self-conscious, and draws attention to the performative ideas and ego of the performer, and away from their words. How is it possible for a piece of writing to ‘speak for itself’ when it is being read by its author? The moment the written word is spoken it is no longer on the page, it is ‘spoken word.’ The writer cannot withdraw themselves from their work, cannot present their work to an audience without interpreting it, therefore the writing never ‘speaks for itself.’

How can a writer ‘just read’ during a reading? How can they keep all attention focused on their writing and language whilst preventing the spectator from thinking about something else, being distracted by the other spectators, or the reader’s dress sense, or slight cough, or nerves, or the noise that the paper makes, or the feedback from the microphone? Are all of the above part of the joy of live performance, or distractions that make it impossible to concentrate on the text? Or both?

Miller says that “the literal act of reading the words of a script does not constitute a performance.” (cited Whitmore p.15) This may be true, but the poet must find ways of making the act of reading a performance. Techniques coming from acting could help. I am not suggesting that poets should ‘act’ their writing. Many poets have found that actors in fact ruin their work. ‘Acting’ can be seen as negative, demonstrated by sayings such as ‘putting on an act’ – acting is associated with faking, it can be seen as contrived and unnatural, which is why many acting techniques are aimed at ‘non-acting’ – and provide actors with methods and exercises which help them to embody their role and words. Ultimately the performer must be excellent at faking truth. As George Burns joked: “The most important thing about acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you have got it made.” (cited Hall, 2000, p.15)

Fieled comments that many poets read their work “in a ‘weather report’ drone” and asks: “how can poets develop performance techniques that will reduce the ‘snooze’ factor?” (2000, p.119)

Through my experience of acting and training with Philip Zarrilli at Exeter University I’ve learnt to listen to the words as I speak them, to discover the words as if for the first time, to almost taste them, and to use imagery to activate myself as a performer with the ultimate aim of rendering my presence on stage completely alive, even when I am still. This does not only apply when playing a character, in fact these were the most important elements I focused on when playing the ‘figure’ within Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis –a piece that to me felt as much poetry as it was a play. By experiencing the words and images as they are spoken, the process of writing becomes live, the performer discovers it as they speak.

Some awareness of the visual element of a poetry performance can make a big difference, even at the most simple level. It helps if the performer adjusts the stage setting for their individual needs – for example by sitting on a chair rather than standing, holding the microphone rather than struggling with a stand, positioning the chair nearer to the light so that they do not squint. I have seen Philip Kuhn read from a scroll, as he read it unrolled in front of him. This is a very simple and effective performance device that does not need rehearsal.

Of course the Dadaists, sound poets such as Bob Cobbing, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets such as Charles Bernstein, and early innovators such as Antonin Artaud pushed the boundaries of poetry performance and played with the use of voice and sound, resulting in exciting work– but there is little evidence that this strand has continued to be developed and refined.

“For abstract work, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E work, etc., there’s nothing for the listener to hold onto, no thread to move him or her from one place to another.” (Fieled, 2000, p.119)

I’ve experienced listening to work that just seems like random words linked together, read in a drone. There is nothing to grasp onto, and yes, I’ve been more entertained by the performance poets who tell a story and invest themselves in their performances and the act of communication.

If innovative poetry is to be done justice in performance, the poet needs to work on their delivery, as much as on their writing. If they break syntax, meaning, expectations, the epiphanic I, and use other procedural writing devices on the page, in performance they need to avoid unintentionally putting the syntax and sense back together; instead working with the breaks in meaning, translating broken syntax into broken intonation, space on the page into space in performance, words in italics into words spoken without the microphone…for example.

I am not saying that every poet should rehearse and engage in vocal and actor training. Some poets are completely engaging and probably not aware of how and why. They may think that they do not perform, but are in fact natural performers.

There is no precedent of a technique for performing poetry, or any methods of training. However this may be needed to enable innovative writing to fulfil its potential in performance, and for the voice/text experimentation of innovators such as Antonin Artaud to be pushed further. In the absence of a narrative thread, the performer’s presence, their use of voice, intonation, and timing, amongst other elements, enable the writer to actively engage the spectator in their work.

When the poet puts their writing before their nerves, listens to the words as they say them, sees the images as they are evoked, and allows their words enough space to exist with the spectator, then the writing will become live, the poetry will be the only element present in the space with the audience… the writer will disappear.

REFERENCES

The Critic, Poet and Reader

Tue, 6 Jan 2009 12:36:43 +0000

“THE CRITIC, LIKE THE POET, CAN BRING ONLY FINITE RESOURCES TO THE INFINITY OF DISCOURSE”
Stephen Hinds 1998 Allusion and Intertext p51

Kenneth Patchen

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:28:04 +0000

Kenneth Patchen

TECHNOLOGY + POETRY

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:49:06 +0100

After some discussion with Miss Silva after LPS02 - we decided that it’d be a good idea to see if we can get together a little series of blahticles on “Technology and Poetry”.

Can the use of technology bring extra elements into play that extend the possible media for the translation of Poetry into, well,.. “poetry”? Or is it just a gimmick? Some poets sample sound, some images. Wood carvings were “the deal” for a while... Send us a blahticle (original post) to:
londonpoetrysystems@gmail.com
to get the discussions started..
O, and Guy seems to be giving away all our secrets at the moment on:
http://thinkdemux.com/2008/08/21/how-to-vj-5/

Keep in touch!

h

DYLAN THOMAS on performance

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:50:59 +0100

“And all that a reader, aloud of his own poems, can hope to do is to try to put across his own memory of the original impulses behind his poems, deepening maybe - and if only for a moment - the inner meaning of the words on the printed pages. O, how I wish I could agree whole heartedly with that, let alone hope to achieve it.

But the danger - for what a reader, aloud of his own poems, so often does is to mawken or melodramaticize them, making a single simple phrase break with the tears or throb with the terrors from which he deludes himself the phrase has been born.

There is the other reader, of course, who manages - by studious flatness, semi-detatchement, and an almost condescending undersaying of his poems - to give the impression that what he really means is great things but my own.”

MARCEL DUCHAMP: “A Very Definite Theory..”

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:21:12 +0100

A work of art exists only when the spectator has looked at it - until then it is only something has been done, but might disappear and no-one would know about it. But the spectator consecrates it by saying: “This is good. We’ll keep it.” And the spectator, in that case, becomes posterity and posterity keeps museums full of paintings...

[from interview recorded by Richard Hamilton, London, 1959]

Gregory Corso - I am 25

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 16:48:26 +0100

I am 25

With a love a madness for Shelley
Chatterton Rimbaud
and the needy-yap of my youth
has gone from ear to ear:
I HATE OLD POETMEN!
Especially old poetmen who retract
who consult other old poetmen
who speak their youth in whispers,
saying:--I did those then
but that was then
that was then--
O I would quiet old men
say to them:--I am your friend
what you once were, thru me
you'll be again--
Then at night in the confidence of their homes
rip out their apology-tongues
and steal their poems.

Blahticle 4. Shepherds with no Sheep: A note on Caeiro’s “O Guardador de Rebanhos” - By Henry Stead

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:43:57 +0100

In a few of the previous blahticles the genre of pastoral poetry has come up, and for this reason I’ve revisited this poem now, which I first came across a few years back.
Even though I wanted to write about more modern poetry this time, reading The Keeper of Flocks threw me back in time to Vergil’s Georgics - and, I’m afraid, I think it’s important to follow this connection through. The allusive play between texts here is not overbearing, or essential for comprehension or appreciation. Pessoa’s writing is as beautiful with or without its intertextual play. A bonus, therefore, and not an entrance fee (cf. Ricks, Allusion to the Poets 2000).
When I hit the lines of The Keeper of Flocks (in bold above) about peaceful thoughts becoming less peaceful if they’re aware of their peacefulness, I had the sensation like I’d read it before, somewhere else. First came this fantastic flood of recognition, then I was swamped by thoughts of Vergil’s Arcadia. Much of this may simply be the result of the preconditioning knowledge that these poets were both working within the same poetic genre. If that’s the case then perhaps it is an unintentional “allusive tunnel”. But, surely, a tunnel cannot be “unintentional”?.. A tunnel is dug by someone, whether that be me or the poet. In any case, this connection that I experience between the two texts works like a “tunnel” and to assess whether it was created by me alone, or with the help of the poet, we ought to examine its lighting. The brighter the tunnel, the stronger the connection. However, sometimes an alluding poet - for a number of reasons - may want to keep the tunnel dimly lit. I think that here, through Alberto Caeiro, Pessoa adopts a highly intricate allusive manner so as to give the impression that he has no interest in Vergil’s poetry but uses his Georgics as a source text all the same.
(I apologize if any of the terms or metaphors I use are a little cloudy or technical. If they need an explanation please ask for it in a comment. I’d be grateful for any help in cleaning up my expression on this topic)

Before diving into the specific points of possible allusion that have supported or refuted this hunch, I’ll quickly introduce the poem a little. Even if you’re not convinced by my reading of this poem, I hope you’ll find it an interesting comparison. I’d very much like to know what you think about these kinds of allusions, ones that cannot be absolutely proven to be the product of an intentional pen. Does it even matter if they’re intended or not? As long as the tunnel exists and sense and sentiment flow between the texts, who cares if the poet intended it or not? I think I do..

Pessoa, it is said, was challenged to write a pastoral poem. He responded to this challenge with the pen of one of his heteronyms - the plain-speaking poet, Alberto Caeiro. The whole idea of pastoral is soaked through with deception. It’s founded upon the idea of the “shepherd poet” - something that, to my knowledge, has rarely - if ever - existed. The shepherds in these poems, though, are literary “shepherds” and in their rural idealism and under their shady boughs lie some of the most beautiful lines of verse and smuggled-in social criticism in any literary form. The poet frequently exposes his disingenuous craft for what it is - tugging us back constantly to ourselves, as readers, and our world, as social beings, when we fall into dreaming of our fictional lives as reed-tooting farm-hands.
Alberto Caeiro, or Fernando Pessoa, in this poem exposes his conceit from the very start. “I’ve never kept flocks,” he admits, “But it’s like I’ve kept them. / My soul is like a shepherd, / it knows the wind and the sun / And it walks with the Seasons, / Following and seeing.” He tells us that it’s all in his imagination. A little later he talks about his readers:

Here Pessoa creates the bread-’n’-butter idyllic setting - locus amoenus - of bucolic verse. He soaks these lines in broad nostalgic references to thoughtless infancy, bound to hook us all - even if we never did wear a cotton smock. It does what it intends: to create the idyllic, whilst simultaneously betraying the artificiality of it. Just as he is not a keeper of sheep, he is certainly not the “ancient tree”. He is, though, a poet with a remarkable talent to create an atmosphere usually induced by some kind of suspension of belief, without straying into fiction. He sits on his fence of desire and the possible: “I hope they think”, “It’s like I’ve kept them”...
The word “antiga” / “ancient” in line 61 is a kind of portal word, like the word “quondam” (once) in Latin poetry. It coats all that follows with a distant, semi-mythic glaze. It’s a bit like cutting to a black and white in film, I guess.
The translation I have enjoyed reading the most and use in this blahticle is that of Chris Daniels in a copy called: The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro (Shearsman Books - 2007).
Section 12 of Caeiro’s poem goes:

These lines appear to suggest that Caeiro didn’t read Vergil at all, which would make it impossible for him to allude to his writings. But, this just cannot be true! First, Caeiro was not a person at all but one of Pessoa’s fictional heteronyms. Pessoa created this alter-ego called Alberto Caeiro and gave him a specific personality, morality and style of poetry. He published poems in his name and even wrote criticism of his other selve’s work. The fact that the pastoral persona within Pessoa’s heteronymic persona, Caeiro, tells us in a poem that he doesn’t read Virgil - has more of the effect of bringing Vergil closer into this poem, illuminating the tunnel even more, than shutting him out. Although the poet seems to be trying to throw us off the scent, for whatever reason, Vergil’s text is now even closer. This may well also be intentional.
If this is a little hard to swallow then we’ll look at some other possible connections between the work of the two poets.
The term Daniels has translated into “pipes” (avenas), I’d say, is also specifically Vergilian. It could only have been written by someone who has read Roman pastoral in the original. When you look up “pipe” in the English-Portuguese dictionary, avena comes up nowhere. It is, however, in the Portuguese dictionary with a note saying that it’s a specifically poetic term for a reed-pipe. Since I’m not Portuguese, I couldn’t say for sure, but I bet it’s an unusual word. But, again, I could well be wrong.. For me it belongs specifically to Vergil’s second line of Eclogue 1: Siluestrem tenui Musam meditaris auena.. - “You contemplate the Woodland Muse with your slender reed pipe..”

“My mysticism is not wanting to know.
It’s living and not thinking about it.

I don’t know what Nature is: I sing her.
I live on top of a knoll
In a lonely whitewashed house,
And that’s my definition.”
(Daniels - section 30)

The part where Caeiro writes: “I sing her” is, to my mind, another indicator of play with its Vergilian source. Though not probably exclusively Vergilian, the expression of “sing[ing] her” - and not singing a song about her - is something else that makes me question Caeiro’s statement about not reading Vergil. Is this perhaps the way they say it in Portuguese? Maybe they just don’t use that qualifying preposition, where modern English does? I don’t know.. But the only place where I’ve come across it is in Vergil’s early poetry. The fact that Daniels left it this way suggests to me that he wanted to leave this mode of expression the same. It maintains a suggestive ‘otherness’. It’s a peculiarity of language that lets you know you’re reading a text that is somehow foreign, derivative.

The annotated manuscript of Pessoa’s O Guardador de Rebanhos, a copy of which can be found in the British Library, reads:

“Os meus pensamentos sao contentes.
So tenho pena de saber que eles sao contentes,
Porque, se o nao soubesse,
Em vez de serem contentes e tristes,
Seriam alegre e contentes.”

In the manuscript the word contentes is scribbled in over the top of the scratched-out word innocentes. This was a slight surprise when what I’d originally read was “peaceful”, but it strengthened my hunch about the Vergilian allusion. Fortunatos, the word form the Georgics is closer to contentes than “peaceful”. I wonder if Vergil’s fortunatos translates into Portuguese as contentes, like in English the word tends to be translated as “happy”, rather than “fortunate”. (If anyone knows please tell me). I imagine “peaceful” was chosen primarily to allow for “happy” to be used for alegres in line 25, where the potential unknown thoughts are described as alegres e contentes.
The thought process involved in Pessoa’s changing from innocentes to contentes could be interesting. Could Pessoa have changed it to illuminate further the allusive tunnel that exists between his text and Vergil’s. This cannot be proven, but in my view the evidence points that way.

I was first reminded of the Georgics when reading The Keeper of Sheep because the ideas expressed in these two passages mirror each other very closely. In the Georgics, Vergil writes that the farmers are happy, but that this happiness would be “too great” it they knew how lucky they were. When he writes this he does so from the position of a Roman city dweller, who does not live “procul discordibus armis” - far from discordant weapons - but right in the thick of a civil war. The farmers in his Arcady live from the land on “facilem victum”, for which they don’t have to work, but the land itself offers up freely. Here Vergil contrasts the beautiful simplicity of the idyllic countryside with the complexity and corruption of contemporary Roman life, from which - he tells us - the goddess Justice herself has fled. If the shepherds could hear the clashing of weapons and began counting their blessings, I wonder why they would be “too” happy? One explanation is simple and idiomatic: that “too happy” means “very happy” - like the Italian expression “troppo buono!”, which has been welcomed into daily parlance from its origin in food advertisements. Also, though, if you are aware of fortune - you are necessarily aware of someone else’s misfortune. Perhaps it is this that Vergil meant to convey. In any case, I think, it’s the negative idea of their being too much happiness to bear that attracted Pessoa to these lines of Vergil to use in his pastoral poem.
In O Guardador de Rebanhos there’s the idea that if only the un-shepherd poet was unaware of his happy thoughts then they would not be happy and sad, but simply happy. Knowledge brings with it sadness. The poet is in the same fix as the farmers. They are sad because they’re aware of their fortune. Through self-awareness Pessoa’s happiness is corrupted. Like in Keats’s Lamia, the distance between the innocent world of sensation and the complex world of knowledge / reality is a key theme for both these pastoral poems.