Published on August 25th, 2009 by Malachi
In preparing my “Pangur Ban” workshop for Thursday, I’ve been googling all over the place. And that research has taken me to many different places, some informative, some not; some repetitive; some greedily plagiaristic. Many prosaic. And some…quite poetic. One in particular, in a blog (entitled, I think, “Alien in the World” –or was it “Aliens…”?) explored some questions of provenance connected with “Pangur Ban” –the poem, the poet, the various manuscripts –and did it in a wonderful way.
POEM: “Gasp! Inspire! Expire! –go breathless!” The Last Gasp? To expire– life takes your breath away. What is that expiration date?
There is lot of wordplay in and around that word, “Gasp” and we’ve been having fun with that. Originally, I had given a couple of GASP examples from my own recent past: (you will probably recognize the first one from my recent Garden Notes.) 1. I gasped when I saw my first Morning Glory bloom just a few days ago. I had more or less given up on them flowering (–perhaps I had planted them too late?–) and then, one morning –there it was, just one bloom, a glorious purple with a beautiful texture, clean and cool! 