Poem-A-Day: In Betweenness by Pierre Joris

January 22, 2014 In Betweenness by Pierre Joris   is it a good thing to find  two empty pages between the day  before yesterday & yesterday  when trying to make room  for the blue opera afternoon  of today a sunday like any sunday  in may?  there is no one could tell  or judge though my own  obsession with the in between  should dictate the answer  & thus let me rejoice at being able  to insert today between the  day before yesterday & yesterday as if it were the yeast of night  allowed these spaces to open  (do not say holes to grow)  in the spongy tissue of this  my papery time-space discon-  tinuum--  leaven of earth leaven of writing  of running writing to earth  in these in betweenesses that now  please as much as the opera in ear  that asks que dieu vous le rende dans  l'autre monde but the desire is to stay right  here in this world this in between even as  the sound changes the radio sings son  vada o resti intanto non partirai  di qua  exactly my feeling sheltered on these  pages now filled and pushing up against  yesterday      Copyright © 2014 by Pierre Joris. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem  "The concept of the in-between (between languages, places, cultures, states of being or, better, becoming, etc.) has been core to my poetics. The title of my next book, Barzakh, is the Arabic word that describes the realm of 'In-betweenness' (same realm that the Tibetan Bardo Thödol or The Egyptian Book of the Dead explore) & quotes Ibn Arabi, the great Sufi mystic, as saying that finally, actually, 'there's only in-betweeness.' And thus it is also the pattern or weave of our daily life--an occasion of which the poem tries to explore." --Pierre Joris   Most Recent Book by Joris Meditations on the Stations of Mansur Al-Hallaj (Chax Press, 2013)         Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.     Pierre Joris is the author of numerous books of poetry and translation, most recently Meditations on the Stations of Mansur Al-Hallaj (Chax Press, 2013). He teaches poetry and poetics at SUNY Albany.     Related Poems Meeting and Passing by Robert Frost Slur by Jacek Gutorow  Manifest Destiny by Cynthia Lowen  __________________________ Love reading Poem-A-Day? Help support it today.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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