Favorite Poem Blog Week 11
Many years ago, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, I happened onto a photography exhibit of Milton Rogovin’s work. I didn’t know about him at the time, but he’s been a favorite since. A Buffalo, NY, native, Rogovin is noted for chronicling the lives of poor and working class people there. In one study, he visited the same families three times each, at 10 year intervals. The results were amazing.
He died in 2011 at the age of 101. Here’s a link to the NYT obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/arts/design/19rogovin.html
And you can see more about Rogovin at the website: https://www.miltonrogovin.com/
At the museum I learned that in the late 60’s he had been invited by Pablo Neruda to visit Chile and to tour the island of Chiloe which is still now, for the most part, pristine (I’ve been there), but at that time was even more so.
I wondered what the result of that collaboration had been and discovered a book, Windows That Open Inward: Images of Chile (White Pine Press, 1999). In the introduction to the book, there is a reproduction of the handwritten invitation that Neruda sent to Rogovin in 1966. Windows, is one of my favorite books, and I revisit it often. You can still find used copies on line for under $20. No matter how many Neruda books you have on your shelf, this one would be a nice addition.
This week’s poem, “Too Many Names”, is included in that book. It was first published in, Extravagaria (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972) and it contains the most favorite of all my favorite lines from Neruda:
“They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and of Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it is without a name.”
Here’s the full poem. See you next week.
Too Many Names Pablo Neruda
Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.
No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and of Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it is without a name.
When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell.
It is so long, the spring
which goes on all winter.
Time lost its shoes.
A year is four centuries.
When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not while I slept?
This means to say that scarcely
have we landed into life
than we come as if new-born;
let us not fill our mouths
with so many faltering names,
with so many sad formalities,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much of yours and mine,
with so much of signing of papers.
I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, bring them to birth,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crepitant fragrance.