Rodin and Rilke and Destiny

I've been reading a lot of Rilke lately, and was remembering that in university I wrote a monograph about the relationship between Rodin and Rilke (Rilke was Rodin's personal secretary for a period.) It was Rodin who suggested that, as a cure for his writer's block, Rilke go to the Jardin des Plantes and study birds and plants and animals and write about them. Rilke's magnificient New Poems was the result, including his poems about the panther, the swan and the flamingos. Rodin's solution to not being able to create was to sit down and work. "Travailler, travailler, travailler!".

Part of my monograph was to chose several of Rilke's short poems, write my versions of them, then pair them with Rodin sculptures. I'm including one small poem with this post.

For over 30 years I've longed to see Rodin's work. I was in a local bookstore the other day and, lo and behold, I saw a poster saying the the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton is having an exhibit of Rodin's work until September. So I'll be there soon--I can't explain how much this means to me.

Make your home out of everything in this world,
no matter how hard.

What makes you think you can pick and choose
the strange stones of your destiny?

(Copyright 1975-2006, Allan Cooper)

Alma

The title of my new book has changed from It Doesn't Matter What the World Wants to The Alma Elegies. Gaspereau Press will be publishing the book in the fall of 2007. The first section is Blood-Lines, my first collection of poems which has been out of print for nearly 20 years. Encouraged by Harry Thurston, I decided to write a new sequence to go with it. Twenty years on I found myself dealing with many of the issues and concerns that first engaged me as a poet.

Blood-Lines was written in Alma, New Brunswick in the fall of 1978. In 1991, the old family home became available, and my wife and daughter and I moved here that September. I've always felt presences in the house--unexplained voices at night, conjunctions between the past and the present, as if a spirit suddenly entered the room and left again. In this place, months and years seem to peel away like old paint. My best poetry continues to be written here, and each day I'm grateful for having this ongoing connection with my past.

The other night I was thinking about the village, Alma, and the Spanish connection with this place--for Alma means soul in Spanish. So I decided to let some of those voices speak for this place, voices from the past, the voice of a well-known American poet (find him if you can), the voices of the natural world, and who knows what else. I whittled this small poem down to 8 lines. I like it because it's open-ended: you can read the poem backwards, start in the middle and read to the end and then start again.

ALMA

I am the love that's bound to find you

I am the wish, the dream, the river

I am the broken branch of willow

I am the sound, the voice inside you

I am the soul, the spout, the fountain

I am the seed that sleeps forever

I am the light, the field, the waking

Nowhere you go will you go without me


(Copyright 2006, Allan Cooper)