March 2008

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Raven

March 26, 2008

after Wallace Stevens

I
When Noah’s ark alit on the mountain,
The first thing he sent out
Was the raven.

II
I talked amongst my selves
Like a coffee klatsch
Of three ravens.

III
The raven flew down to its dead dinner
Chilled by autumn winds.

IV
The god and goddess
Are one.
The god and goddess and a raven
Are just too much.

V
I do not know which more pierces me,
The rasp of trickery
Or the rasp of hunger,
The raven cawing
Or just before.

VI
Trees filled the bay window
With shifting shadows.
The light crossed it,
To and fro.
The raven,
Hiding in a branch,
Drew a ray of darkness.

VII
O footballers of Baltimore,
Why do you imagine merchandised birds?
Do you not see how the raven
Flits around the wallets
Hiding in your pockets?

VIII
I know great tales
And speak in golden voices;
But raven knows
That he and I
Share the same dinner.

IX
When the raven made its nest,
It found itself
At the center of the world.

X
At the sight of ravens
Flying under full moonlight,
Even the Goths of Santa Cruz
Would put down their lattes.

XI
She drove to Los Angeles
In a red chariot.
Once, looking in the side mirror,
She mistook
The stuffed animal in the back window
For a raven.

XII
The waters have dried up from the earth.
Raven has returned to Noah.

XIII
It was night all the time.
It was dark
And it was going to stay dark.
The raven flew
And returned with the sun. ©2008 Carol Gunby

Myth and Modern Life

March 24, 2008

Disclaimer: Not the official entry for this week (official entries will all be found under the ‘School’ category, for those who are playing along at home).

Now, then. (And what an odd turn of phrase that is, by the way…suggesting a conflation of past & present that feels very familiar.) Since I have a dreadfully long commute (45-60 minutes each way), I spend a lot of time in the car with my iPod. Goddess bless the podcast revolution, because as much as I love music, and that’s a lot, having whole radio shows and other interesting intellectual tidbits to listen to during that time has (I firmly believe) saved my mind from becoming some kind of grayish polenta. So, since in the vernacular of The Tipping Point I’m a Maven who loves to share information, here are a couple of great, mythologically-relevant podcasts I’d recommend.

  • Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason – Six episodes. I think this ran on PBS TV a couple of years back. They have streaming video of all of the interviews as well as downloadable audio, and what interviews! Jeanette Winterson on Atlas and the Old Testament, Will Power on translating Oedipus to hip-hop, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood on the stories of religion….and a bunch more.
  • Radio Lab – I mentioned this one a few posts back, and it’s rapidly become one of my favorites. While the show deals with ostensibly science-related topics (a lot of neurology in particular), there is always a strong sense of humanity and story. The series is ongoing, and I’d highly recommend a few shows in particular to get you started: Sleep, Memory and Forgetting, and The Ring and I.

And that’s all I’ve got for tonight. Back to the books!

Latest from Twitter

March 19, 2008

Jenny Holzer’s latest twitter: MYTH CAN MAKE REALITY MORE INTELLIGIBLE

So true, eh? And Twitter is the perfect platform for her art, in so many ways (follow her now: jennyholzer). At least I’m assuming it’s her; we never do know for sure…

Being Chosen

March 11, 2008

Raven, trickster, appears

behind the oracular candy bar,

dark sweet thing,

brings fire, light, creation itself

a gift

to the myth-hungry two-legged

who come up out of mud,

crying in darkness

Stolen from the Sky Chief, this light,

by playing the innocent;

a pine needle in the right girl

becomes a baby boy:

the Chief’s grandson.

His glowing toy: our sun,

and his message to me,

“Be not confined

by what you seem to be.” ©2008 Carol Gunby

Raven is the mythological figure that chose me in class through a numbered candy bar drawing, and he’ll be showing up here a lot, I think, as I try to figure out what he might mean for me. I’m still learning about him; there are a lot of raven stories in Native American traditions of the Pacific Northwest, where he roughly parallels the Southwest’s Coyote as a trickster figure. He has a different energy about him, though, something more brooding and dark (think Edgar Allen Poe vs. Wile E. Coyote for general associations). Maybe he’ll have something interesting to say to my inner goth.

I also can’t help but think of the Raven character in a play I saw a few years back called Bright River, which was a deeply imaginative redressing of Dante’s Inferno in modern clothes (consider Purgatory as a Greyhound Bus depot). The raven, like all the characters in the play, has a chance to tell his story, and his plaintiveness in recounting his childhood in a prison gave me a new perspective on these dark birds. While the play’s no longer being performed live as far as I know, I would really recommend getting the CD at the link above; the storytelling is superb, and so is the music that accompanies the tale.

Residential Recap

March 9, 2008

So, the promised recap of my first week of school. I drove down to Santa Barbara on Saturday, with all of my books, shiny new pencils, the laptop, etc. I almost went and bought Pee Chee folders out of nostalgia, but based on the amount of reading, am glad I went with the 3″ binder [...]

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