Anny Ballardini and Baudelaire

Happy Birthday


As the poet said, "It's easy to be a Romantic if you don't have to mind the evidence." But what if the evidence won't ignore you, but rather, it "minds" you incessantly with its brute obtrusion, distensions of  ego, chaos of meager lusts, whiny confusions, etc.? At such a crossing of the possible and actual, one of the most abiding fountains of grace has its source (which Baudelaire, perhaps, gives voice to, especially when seen set against the draining realization--implicit in the poem's final word--of what is, even as it includes him). Add to the grace of one who fronts this stupidity without losing an inner openness or willingness or love for existence, another: that others love one for it! An abundance of abundances, like a billowing of birthdays, the best one might expect. Of certain note in the world even (especially) against the resounding emptiness after the death of a beloved parent.

(There are lines in Anny's poem which strain the meter on Emily's popped-top-of-head test.)

THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A RESEMBLANCE

IN MY MIND

                                               --Anny Ballardini

Baudelaire and my father

One dandy the other simple

One Parisian the other a New Yorker lover of mountains

Why did I look for my father in Baudelaire

For Baudelaire in my father?

Est-ce le spleen?

Does it imprint people like color

A scent you breathe where

There’s the stagnant paradox

Of an excess of love?

Silent sorrow

Gentle hidden painful retraction

When

Faced [over and over again] with insensitive distance

From the freezing surrounding outside

The selfish gratuitous disregard of their need

Struggling alone in their abÎmes

Angst

Who and how could [I] ever fill

Cross through, reach out/into _ grasp

Their one Truth

Clashing

Against

By my father mystified in a sublime Je crois

By Baudelaire in L’Art

*chant*

Irony by Baudelaire

Ironical hinting by you, my Father

My accomplice

Happy Birthday

July 2, 2011

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MUSIC

          --Charles Baudelaire

Music doth oft uplift me like a sea
     Towards my planet pale,
Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity
      I lift my wandering sail.

With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee,
      And through the cordage wail,
I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me
     Beneath her sombre veil.

I feel the tremblings of all passions known
     To ships before the breeze;
Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown

     I pass the abysmal seas
That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair
      Of my despair!

(from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire, edited by James Huneker)

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Short bio:

Anny Ballardini lives in Bolzano, Italy.  She grew up in New York, lived in New Orleans, Buenos Aires, Florence, completed her studies with an MFA at UNO, University of New Orleans.  A poet, translator and interpreter, she recently won a scholarship for a PhD in English at the U of Verona, she also teaches high school; edits Poet’s Corner, an online poetry site; and writes a blog: Narcissus Works.  She has translated several contemporary poets into Italian and English.  Her collections of poetry: Opening and Closing Numbers, was published by Moria Press in 2005; Ghost Dance in 33 Movements by Otoliths appeared in print in 2009.