De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Elizabeth Alexander werd geboren op 30 mei 1962 in New York. In januari van dit jaar had zij de eer een gedicht te mogen voorlezen bij de inauguratie van de nieuwe VS-president Barack Obama.  Zie ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2008 xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Stravinsky in L.A.

In white pleated trousers, peering through green

sunshades, looking for the way the sun is red

noise, how locusts hiss to replicate the sun.

What is the visual equivalent

of syncopation? Rows of seared palms wrinkle

in the heat waves through green glass. Sprinklers

tick, tick, tick. The Watts Towers aim to split

the sky into chroma, spires tiled with rubble

nothing less than aspiration. I’ve left

minarets for sun and syncopation,

sixty-seven shades of green which I have

counted, beginning: palm leaves, front and back,

luncheon pickle, bottle glass, etcetera.

One day I will comprehend the different

grades of red. On that day I will comprehend

these people, rhythms, jazz, Simon Rodia,

Watts, Los Angeles, aspiration.

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students,

is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves,

(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”)

digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,

emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find

in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God

in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.

Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,

and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

Elizabeth Alexander (New York, 30 mei 1962)

De Afro-Amerikaanse dichter Countee Cullen werd geboren als Countee LeRoy Porter op 30 mei 1903. Zie ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2008.

Youth Sings a Song of Rosebuds

Since men grow diffident at last,

And care no whit at all,

If spring be come, or the fall be past,

Or how the cool rains fall,

I come to no flower but I pluck,

I raise no cup but I sip,

For a mouth is the best of sweets to suck;

The oldest wine's on the lip.

If I grow old in a year or two,

And come to the querulous song

Of "Alack and aday" and "This was true,

And that, when I was young,"

I must have sweets to remember by,

Some blossom saved from the mire,

Some death-rebellious ember

I Can fan into a fire.

Countee Cullen (30 mei 1903 – 9 januari 1946)

De Mexicaanse dichteres Pita Amor (pseudoniem van Guadalupe Teresa Amor Schmidtlein) werd geboren op 30 mei 1918 in Mexico-Stad. Zie ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2007.

Las amargas lágrimas de Beatriz Sheridan

1

You drink pure arsenicon

your long telephone,

on your bitter telephone

you breathe only cyanide.

Your tense difficult destiny

is a kiss of lethargy,

as the hell that I bear

is hellish and is mature.

When you raze the glassware,

you invent storms,

rolling around on the floor

you set the heavens to mourn.

And that so fatal kiss

was your lethal sentence

Poem XVII

From my spherical idea of things,

spring my anxieties and woes,

since geometrically, I think as equal

on the large scale and small, because by being

they are of equal importance; by existing

their sizes do not have proportions,

since they are not measured by their dimensions

and they only count because they are total

although spherically unequal.

Vertaald door Emily Hind

Pita Amor (30 mei 1918 – 8 mei 2000)

De Vlaamse dichter en schrijver Emmanuel Hiel werd geboren in Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde op 30 mei 1834. Zie ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2008 en ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2006 en ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2007.

Haar lied is lang verzwonden

Haar lied is lang verzwonden;
Mijn hart is ongerust,
Maar van zijn leed bewust
Gevoelt het bittre wonden…
Haar lied is lang verzwonden,
Mijn hart is ongerust.

Het gloeit nog, als de vlamme,
Voor haar, die mij verliet;
O, kon haar spottend lied
Mijn hijgend hart verlammen…
Maar ’t gloeit nog als de vlamme,
Voor haar, die mij verliet.

Wat blijft er mij nu over,
De wanhoop of ’t plezier?
Plezier door schuimend bier!
Of smart door mingetover!...
Wat blijft er mij nu over,
De wanhoop of ’t plezier?

Emmanuel Hiel (30 mei 1834 - 27 augustus 1899)

De Surinaamse jurist, schrijver en politicus Eduard Johan (Eddy) Bruma werd in Paramaribo geboren op 30 mei 1925. Zie ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2008.

Uit: Basya Pataka

“Well, you see, the song that you've heard here is ‘ningi ningi ba busara.’ It's not only nowadays that women run off from their husbands. Long ago there was an overseer called Basja Pataka. The now dilapidated plantation is somewhere in the lower Commewijne. Now, there was a police outpost at Kunofru.10 Well, there you had the most fear-inspiring place, where slaves were sent to be broken in. If you were an evil slave, then they sent you to Kunofru to be tamed. They put a bridle in your mouth so that you could pull the pontoon filled with cane. The overseer at that place was called Basja Pataka. Well, Basja Pataka! Ho! Pataka! That is something! When he is alive and you joke with him, then he bites you in a terrible manner. When he is dead, he still bites you. For if you have a dried pataka and your hand should accidentally come near the teeth, then he's at you at once. Even if you eat him up, still he bites you. Therefore a pataka is a terrible thing, and that man was a terrible negro. Therefore he assumed the name Pataka, and when he became overseer, all the people called him Basja Pataka.”

Eddy Bruma (30 mei 1925 – 6 november 2000)