Hiroshima Mon Amour

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Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

Hiroshima Mon Amour

#1 Post by Bernie01 » 15 Aug 2017, 20:17

Revision

6:30.

Morning.

The clock rings in English.

Out of the shower I am clean
as newly printed Yen from Dai-Ichi.

To smell like her when alone I add
a drop of perfume she favors.

I watch her wake, talking in sunlight,
lips decorous as a flag.

I slide down my glasses, watch her stir
coffee. The knife and napkin folded
with sentiment, a water jug shimmers
like Osaka castle viewed in a train window.

Her bald lunar dome ready for a film role.

Amid a street scene of rusted food trucks,
ramen stalls and squid salesmen, she pulls
a red obi sash over her face. She looks
like an American bandit.

Above us,
a fireworks banner, café smoke drifts free
and homeless.

We pile into an underground Hot Jazz Club,
friends surround her, the saxophone player
falls silent.

J'adore her peony lips.

We jitterbug, we shag, hands and arms
sweaty, we sail together.

Bird and Flower, unwilling to speak.

We glimmer like sun on wings of a B-29
advancing from great height.











Original

6:30.

Morning.

The clock rings in English.

Out of the shower I am clean
as Yen issued from Dai-Ichi.

I add a drop of Osmanthus
to smell like her when I walk
faceless in the street.

I slide down my glasses
to watch her stir coffee.
Her knife and napkin
folded with sentiment,
a water jug shimmers
like Osaka castle viewed
through a train window.

I slide down my glasses
to watch her stir coffee,
lips decorous as a flag.

She’s cut off her hair,
the bald lunar dome ready
for a film role.

She is an Isamu Noguchi
sculpture

Amid a street scene of rusted
food trucks, ramen stalls
and squid salesmen, she pulls
a red obi sash over her face.

Above us, a fireworks banner
and café smoke drift homeless.

We pile into an underground
Hot Jazz Club, friends surround
her, the trumpet player is silent.

J'adore her peony lips.

We jitterbug, we shag, hands
and arms sweaty, we sail
together. A bird and flower
unwilling to speak.

We glimmer like sun on wings
of advancing American B-29's.





Music group Hiroshima---1980-2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwBt4Z1mTbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe9vWtw ... -h2InLgSU5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wflg1gk ... UFyFhc9G5V

Kenneth2816
Posts: 1619
Joined: 01 Jun 2008, 09:17

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#2 Post by Kenneth2816 » 25 Aug 2017, 00:35

Hard subject but you do a fine job creating the innocence that is to be obliterated shortly.

IMHO you may have a tad many Japonica references. Every one knows where Hiroshima is. 2 or 3 to center the piece, acknowledge the culture is sufficient.

The last line is powerful and there simply is no way to avoid its predictability.

I love the contrast between the American narrator and the archetypal Japanese woman.

Tough topic because it's difficult to make it gresh, but you manage it.

Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#3 Post by Bernie01 » 25 Aug 2017, 02:13

Kenneth---

terrific.

cut some geo identifiers...LOL.

screened for speed reading. a more natural voice.

very much appreciated your comment. so easy to become so absorbed in your own POV you can no longer clearly see how the poem fits with others.


bernie

Michael (MV)
Posts: 2154
Joined: 18 Apr 2005, 04:57

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#4 Post by Michael (MV) » 25 Aug 2017, 05:26

 
Hi bernie,

just saw this movie last summer

love among the ruins

love is indestructible

hence the potency in the duality of thay finale image


there are no curtains
only calls

8)

Michael (MV)

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

FranktheFrank
Posts: 1983
Joined: 02 Mar 2016, 18:07
Location: Between the mountains and the sea

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#5 Post by FranktheFrank » 25 Aug 2017, 10:06

I love everything Japanese
whatever they do they do to the extreme.
I went there stayed a day, mesmerized,
Japanese women look into your soul and smile.

So for me this is brilliant
without making crossword meanings
it is a book of unfolding
pages, one by one we dwell

on the heady pictures
the spash of red
on skin, opal coloured
the smell of musk

the clock that tells the time in English
so funny. What a start to a poem
The judge will read that line
scratch his head and bellow a laugh.

It's a love story of course.
The hero tells us the fine detail,
he's born again, every detail new
and like Blackthorne in Shogun
who finds the rain very fine tonight.

Transposed into a different world
where everything expands into deeper meanings
that he had ever experienced before.

Every word placed carefully
like a Japanese teahouse
that makes us bend down to enter.

The poet tells us the history
of that strange people
how they were tamed by the power
of the Americans, something they
understands, power and beauty
with the silver B-29, amazing.
Not sure if 'American' is needed,
what else could a B-29 be.

He tells us they love fish,
with two words, squid salesmen.
Succint is not the word,
and he shags his way through the poem
politely.

My nom for this month.

Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#6 Post by Bernie01 » 25 Aug 2017, 20:22

Frank---

agree about removing the word American before B-29.

when i was a kid just starting my journalism career---i arranged a one-on-one interview with former President Truman...

he ordered the Hiroshima raid.

his words have stayed with me all these years.

thanks for this terrific review.



bernie

FranktheFrank
Posts: 1983
Joined: 02 Mar 2016, 18:07
Location: Between the mountains and the sea

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#7 Post by FranktheFrank » 25 Aug 2017, 23:14

You interveiwed Truman?
Amazing.

You have so much to tell Bernie,
Tell it.

Kenneth2816
Posts: 1619
Joined: 01 Jun 2008, 09:17

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#8 Post by Kenneth2816 » 26 Aug 2017, 16:51

Well done Bernie. Clean rework.

Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#9 Post by Bernie01 » 26 Aug 2017, 22:52

Michael---

you said:

there are no curtains
only calls


i love that line.

thanks for your look at Hiroshima.

Kenneth---

thanks for your updated comment.

Frank---

yes, i yearned to be an enterprising newspaper man---before False News. I had a wonderful interview with former President Truman---my editor (who had nothing to do with setting up the interview) wanted to focus on Hiroshima. well, he was the boss. so, I centered my interview around Truman's ordering of the atomic bomb. P. Truman's comments stay with me to this day---he said two million American servicemen would have died if we had invaded the Japanese home islands.

he expressed no regrets----after all, he was the American president.

many years later---i used the following line in a public reading of poetry at a local university:

The body is a Hiroshima of itself
famous before it was placed
into magazines and newspapers.


after i sat down, Anne Sexton suddenly appeared. She had won a Pulitzer and said she found the line fascinating. and, to the irritation of her touring group, she sat with me for a half-hour brain storming how the poem should continue. we never finished the poem.

she was open and you might have thought we were old friends.

she was willowy, delicious and beautiful. however, i was in the middle of a divorce and unable to think of anything else.

including poetry. i had taken a poetry class when the class i wanted was filled and my professor picked me to read at a large conclave. That event on campus attracted Ms. Sexton. i was a journalist, not a poet. it was a lark.

and so Hiroshima stayed in my mind. also Ann Sexton who two-years later put on her mother's old fur coat and asphyxiated herself. she was 47.

many years later, a woman who looked like Ann, sat down next to me in an airport lounge as we awaited our delayed flight from San Francisco back to Los Angeles. Self confident, beautifully dressed, and sophisticated she took my breath away.

I ask if she would give me three minutes to make my case. a case for giving me her telephone number. She said yes. we have been seeing each other now for the last two years.

Hiroshima Mon Amour is one of her favorite films.

President Truman. the 1959 Resnais film Hiroshima Mon Amour, and Ann Sexton. the tale of a poem that has taken 40 years to write.

thanks for asking.


bernie




.

FranktheFrank
Posts: 1983
Joined: 02 Mar 2016, 18:07
Location: Between the mountains and the sea

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#10 Post by FranktheFrank » 27 Aug 2017, 02:29

Isn't life grand Bernie
and we can write about it
and put in our poems.

I think you should write as you have been doing so
I love them, your glimpses into life.

Yes, but how to unfold that mystery in life
and the attraction of the genders,
the courage to act when our knees knock.

Isn't life grand.

Bernie01
Posts: 777
Joined: 30 Jul 2015, 11:14

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#11 Post by Bernie01 » 27 Aug 2017, 20:29

Frank---

oh, you bet.

my dad cheerfully going to the Santa Fe to weld and work with steel, cheerful and well admired and loved by by everyone. including my little daughter who followed him around helping him water, feed the chickens and gather a few fresh ears of corn for supper.

oh yes. life is just wonderful---and i said that even near death with my bad liver as i waited for a transplant and turned a brilliant shade of yellow---no guarantee a healthy liver would arrive with my name on it.

oh yes, poor and less poor. interviewing Louis Armstrong---interview a crazy kid and fellow university student who murdered his family one evening---church going, non drinker and studious. never a negative peep from him. i called him the nicest boy in Kansas. the title stuck, even as they put him in the gas chamber.

oh yes, life when you travel to paris, but third world countries also. so deep in Morocco there is only travel by foot or horse cart.

oh yes.

oh yes. life. i cherish it for myself and others.

your mother, sister and relatives, my three Vietnamese god children---with me now 25 years.

stand up comedy on local stages---even after bombing badly.

american football, played badly, but with an open heart thrilled for the competition and comradeship.

a woman with a beautiful heart and a forgiving nature.

oh yes, Frank, you said it. life is grand.


bernie

Michael (MV)
Posts: 2154
Joined: 18 Apr 2005, 04:57

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#12 Post by Michael (MV) » 31 Aug 2017, 19:37

surfacing this poem, b/c it has received an IBPC nom-nod for September

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6667

Let's focus on narrowing down to the 3

Thanks

Michael (MV)

FranktheFrank
Posts: 1983
Joined: 02 Mar 2016, 18:07
Location: Between the mountains and the sea

Re: Hiroshima Mon Amour

#13 Post by FranktheFrank » 01 Sep 2017, 13:00

Bernie has indicated a different poem for September is his prefered choice,
so I remove the nom for this poem.
Hope that helps.

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