ADVENT SECTION - INTRODUCTION

ADVENT


elles viennent
autres et pareilles
avec chacune c’est autre et c’est pareil
avec chacune l’absence d’amour est autre
avec chacune l’absence d’amour est pareille
Samuel Beckett



I’m breaking the strict flow of the book by stepping in today to introduce briefly the final section of Nightingales in a Stateside Zoo.  As you can see, the final section is titled “Advent”—my timing as far as the blog posts go not being ideal, or at least no seasonal, but there you have it.  The section in the book, & really ever since the sequence was composed in 1986 thru early 1987 has had an epigraph that is a short French poem by Samuel Beckett.  Beckett also wrote an English version of this (at least I'm 99% sure of that), but I don’t have it on hand, so I’ll produce the following, from memory & I hope not too much as my own translation:

they come
different and the same
with each it’s different and the same
with each the absence of love is different
with each the absence of love is the same

That’s very close, I think, to his English version.  Anyway, it’s a beautiful poem—I chose the epigraph well, if I do say so!

The Advent poems themselves were written for the most part in November & December of 1986, & to some extent in early 1987.  The series was originally conceived as 24 poems taking a reader through the Advent season, with various feast days being marked (like St. Lucy’s & the Annunciation—represented here respectively by “Another St Lucy” & “Moving Pictures & Other Conceptions”).  The Sundays were to be represented by the poems with refrains, but only two of these were ever completed (“The Patience Song” & “A Little Night-Music”).  All in all 18 poems were completed (more or less.)

Again, looking back over 25 years, these poems now strike me—at least the best of them—as the best work I did in Charlottesville.  They were overall a happy combination of a structure that interested me, & a verse form with which I was comfortable, all falling into place by accident (?) with some episodes, encounters, etc. in my life that inspired me.

The first poem in the section will post this coming Saturday. Advent is as I mentioned the book’s final section; from here on out I won’t be posting photos with the poems.