Notes on Lima’s “Bright Blue Self-Portrait”

I thank the spiders’ webs and the circus dancers who stain our eyes with
Rapid movements and authorize our handcuffs to make no distinction
Between night and day or love and hate.
No one will know the sum of our arduous daily separations from bed to

Work. These pillars actually belong to you since I have not counted them
Or know any more than you do where they are or in what country they
Still exist. We can put all our concerns into a loaf of bread and French
Kisses, go to movies and watch the splashing milk on the screen imitate

The forest in the moonlight. Why all the fuss about the patrons becoming
Feathers, discharging their ideas of nobility on the evening news? There
Are no lights in the theater just soft snow from the balcony that is the
Little red schoolhouse where all this began.

Actually it was because of you I did not attend as often as I should have.
I was too embarrassed to face you across the clay modeling tables since I
Always felt like the clay in your hands was a cartoon version of my teen
Years, dear slippery-fish ladies of the sleepy west.

Don’t forget, my early life will be yours, too,
With its self-descriptions of poetic justice,
The tiny creatures we write about can describe themselves in the moss
We leave behind.

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[ Poetry Foundation ]

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D— Curious that the pillars are marked “these” and thus would have been close at hand, within view and maybe touch, but then the tail of the sentence denies knowledge of location. Maybe “these” because it’s in the mind, or on the table in a conversation. Or is it because they are still there somehow, his supports or foundations, but he also has no access or continued awareness of them?

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D— Inability to cope would indeed explain the discontinuities. Maybe some of these pieces belong together though. Could the theater (or schoolhouse) be housing the pillars? But if so, why would “these” be uncountable? The darkness? And since it’s the theater, might that (slightly) account for the shifting country/ies?

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D— And your word “faded”... could it be a set of photographs? That would multiply a single set of pillars. In which case, what is he handing over? The pillars, the pictures, or the memories (which could also be unreliable)?

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D— Another take on the pillars. One of the theories about the origin of the $ sign is that it was derived from the Pillars of Hercules. That might account for “counted” and for the insane mobility of these pillars.

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D— Also, the possibility that Lima might be addressing his child-self. But these lines—

Don’t forget, my early life will be yours, too,
With its self-descriptions of poetic justice,

These may point us to him in the act addressing his future self. Another thread-inspired possibility: he might be addressing his ideal self.

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D— I thought this self-portrait had some parallels with Rilke’s (I pasted Lowell’s translation below). Blue is here too, inside the eyes, as if a portrait within a portrait. Perhaps Lima is figuring himself as that scared blue child? The “opening animal” here is a beast of burden, but in Lima we have the spider, and tiny creatures toward the end. In both there is a sense of being controlled by external (but internalized) forces (in Rilke, the figure of the mule, the idea of servitude, of speech kept in; in Lima the handcuffs and “No one will know the sum of our arduous daily separations from bed to / Work.”)

Self-Portrait 

The bone-build of the eyebrows has a mule’s
or Pole’s noble and narrow steadfastness.
A scared blue child is peering through the eyes.
and there’s a kind of weakness, not a fool’s,
yet womanish––the gaze of one who serves.
The mouth is just a mouth . . . untidy curves,
quite unpersuasive, yet it says its yes,
when forced to act.  The forehead cannot frown
and likes the shade of dumbly looking down. 

A still life, nature morte––hardly a whole!
It has done nothing worked through or alive,
in spite of pain, in spite of comforting . . .
Out of this distant and disordered thing
something in earnest labors to unroll.

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D— There’s a theater, so maybe the “I thank” is like an acceptance speech (gone awry, berserk, or... interesting). Now if the “I thank” came from the schoolhouse, then maybe this a valedictory.

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D—  I thank the spiders’ webs and the circus dancers who stain our eyes with

And “stain” here would have been an easy substitute for “strain” and it did cause quite a strain whenever I come to read it, wondering if it’s a typo. Could there be others? If so, I’m thinking of “fathers” here:

Feathers, discharging their ideas of nobility on the evening news? There

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D— Maybe there’s a hint of clay tablets in “clay modeling tables”? And if we’re entertaining Moses, other ancient expressions of law and order, then, those really are for modelling.

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D— The West usually locate their exotica in the East. Edward Said built his discourse on Orientalism on that ground. The East is also known to have been characterized as “sleepy” say, “Sleeping Giant” as opposed to what might be a Western self-image of we have less resources, bitter weather, but we are untiring and industrious. There seems to be a reversal of these things here. The sirens, Odysseus, are at home, not far off in some uncharted land that have yet to taste your brand of clever.

Or, overreading in the morning. Have a nice day everyone.

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D— Food is Lima’s specialty, so that’s perfect context for his majors and minors in the fourth stanza of “Felonies and Arias of the Heart”. Remembering Corman now, and marking this movement toward “you” that begins at the third stanza.

I very much like the last stanza, would like to hug it, make a pillow out of his pieces of paper, the candor of a poet saying yes, you know, I’m doing this to make an impression on you, I’m throwing in some flashy history too, dear reader, forever desirous of your love and attention, signed.

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Cup, Koch in “Incidents of Travel in Poetry”

Need to attend to this a few more times, but what floated was Frank Lima’s depiction of Koch with a paper cup—

write poems about the notes in his life. Kenneth, on the other
hand, has a paper cup full of wonderful poems. He can write a
poem about a cathedral living in a paper cup. Kenneth travels
everywhere with his paper cup. At a certain time of day,
Kenneth finds room in his paper cup for perfect days and
perfect moments:

You could drink gallons (all your life) on the strength of just one cup—but a paper cup? I rather like the idea that Lima's poetry is a party arranged to contain Koch’s cup, a poetics that could itself contain a cathedral. It could also contain Koch himself, if we take the lines to mean: “He can write a poem about a cathedral [while] living in a paper cup”. What a nod to poetic compression, “a certain time of day” reduced further to just some space in a cup that magically contains choicest days and moments.

Paper was mentioned one other time, about a dozen lines before Koch. It was in connection with cummings—suspiciously spelled with the capital C—

Cummings’ poems appear unintentional on the surface, he did
not act like a drunken amputee at the dinner table and always
said pleasant things that came out of nowhere. His
conversation was experimental but logical and he investigated
words, mixing them on paper with a pencil.
etcetera after a few drinks. We move the sun to South

“Mixing” is a strange word to use, particularly in a passage that mentions drinking. Makes sense though, as Lima seems to be “mixing” (with) poets and people as cummings does with words, but this I-do-this-I-do-that-read-this-one-visit-that-other-one kind of note-taking employs patterns, overlapping motifs.

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Insight not only into Koch as a poet but also as a teacher. Precious stuff. Spiked by an intertext of the broken glass of “Between Walls”—very left field, but significant.

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We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joy
and call it art. We were piloted by Auden who became
Unbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into the

“We” might be Lima and a small band of poets (or Lima and one other “you”). Auden is a generation or two removed, Yeats about three or four. Auden’s the driver (though not a tour guide) and the path is Yeats. This sounds like a reading experience where a poet takes you to his or her influences (at least, to the figures he/she had to deal with on the way to something... what is this something? Auden’s still on the path, that seems notable).

steamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and ants
were waiting for him to unearth the sun in Elissa. The clouds
were as cool as a dog’s nose pressed against our cheeks. I
notice your eggshell skin is as creamy as a lion’s armpit as we
cross the horizon on strands of Yeats’ silver hair. There is a

Or, hair not as path but as a sort of magic carpet. Loving how the poem’s enjambed, it’s not a smooth ride, but it’s a real trip. That dog’s nose metaphor must’ve been done before, but not to the point of cliché, and not with clouds (as far as I know) so close to the cheeks. The lion’s armpit, now that’s a surprise. Cream and peril all in a line.

Plena

ni Frank Lima
aking salin


Buong araw akong naglalarong kunwa’y nalulunod
hinahanap-hanap ang usok
ng mga pilikmata at kupas na buhok
ang mga lilang anino ng dugo
at ang mga nalalabing guho ng kape
pero sa gabi
napapanaginipan ko ang huling pantig
sa puso ng aking ina
ang huling pulang kataga sa kanyang mga baga.