Category Archives: Poetry

The Oxford Project

I used to work for Peter Feldstein in the mid 1990s to help him manage a computer lab for the arts. His work is top-notch and he’s the nicest guy you could ever work for, so it’s great to see him get some well-deserved media attention [1]. His Oxford Project, listed in the Yahoo! most popular news stories today [2], humanizes a part of the world that some people will never be exposed to; it is a brilliant ethnographic tool.

In the current phase of his project, Feldstein has added a new twist, thanks to the help of friend Stephen Bloom, an author and journalism professor at the University of Iowa. Based on interviews, Bloom has crafted short narratives that lend a confessional, poetic and unvarnished dimension to the lives in Feldstein’s then-and-now portraits.

Way to go Peter! I really like reviewing the photos and I wonder if facial recognition technology would accurately predict the changes.

[1] Examples of recent stories:

I expect to see it on the Colbert Report or Daily Show soon.

[2] The BBC has “related” links and other helpful segues on their news pages, but for some reason Yahoo! does not even suggest than there might be an official project website. BoingBoing had to be told by a reader that they should link to the project site, but at least they did so. All very strange, considering the basic concept of hyperlinking versus traditional text…

The Poetry of Programming

While working on some Solaris 10 security recently I ran into an interesting article on the Sun site called The Poetry of Programming, which is an interview with Richard Gabriel, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems:

Writing software should be treated as a creative activity. Just think about it — the software that’s interesting to make is software that hasn’t been made before. Most other engineering disciplines are about building things that have been built before. People say, “Well, how come we can’t build software the way we build bridges?” The answer is that we’ve been building bridges for thousands of years, and while we can make incremental improvements to bridges, the fact is that every bridge is like some other bridge that’s been built. Someone says, “Oh, let’s build a bridge across this river. The river is this wide, it’s this deep, it’s got to carry this load. It’s for cars, pedestrians, or trains, so it will be kind of like this one or that one.” They can know the category of bridge they’re building, so they can zero in on the design pretty quickly. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

But in software, even with something such as Java 2, Enterprise Edition or the Java implementation (or almost any of the APIs we define), we’re rolling out — if not the first — at most the seventh or eighth version. We’ve only been building software for 50 years, and almost every time we’re creating something new. If you look at software developers and what they produce, if you look at their source code, the programs they make, and the designs that they end up creating, there is real variability. And some people are really good and others are not so good.

True, but that is also because software is not heavily regulated or disciplined. Not just anyone can be hired to build a bridge that millions of people will cross in the material world, but on the Internet people who are idealists and hacks can throw anything up and people will use it. I am not being critical of the latter situation, just pointing out that there is a much lower hurdle and so nothing to require the study of prior bridges (and their failures) before building another one. This is further compounded by the intellectual property movement that restricts source from view, whereas every inch of a bridge can be studied in detail.

Writing code certainly feels very similar to writing poetry. When I’m writing poetry, it feels like the center of my thinking is in a particular place, and when I’m writing code the center of my thinking feels in the same kind of place. It’s the same kind of concentration.

Ah yes, the same for all aspects of information technology. Poetry is mastery of a discipline. You might say Microsoft software, thus, is like supermarket checkout tabloids — all glam and glitz and very little to hang your hat on. We already look back at Windows 9x and agree, even Microsoft, that it was a train-wreck of an operating system. And for what it’s worth I met with Microsoft the other day for another review of Vista and a new browser that I’m not even allowed to give details on…let’s just say that some of their developers clearly don’t practice the poetry of programming.

Spanish Bombs

by The Clash

Spanish songs in Andalucia
The shooting sites in the days of ’39
Oh, please, leave the vendanna open
Federico Lorca is dead and gone

Bullet holes in the cemetery wall
The black cars of the Guardia Civil
Spanish bombs on the Costa Rica
I’m flying in on a DC 10 tonight

Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazon
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazon

Spanish weeks in my disco casino
The freedom fighters died upon the hill
They sang the red flag, they wore the black one
After they died it was Mockingbird Hill

Back home the buses went up in flashes
The Irish tomb was drenched in blood
Spanish bombs shatter the hotel
My senorita’s rose was nipped in the bud

Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazon
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazon

The hillsides ring with “Free the people”
Or can I hear the echo from the days of ’39?
Trenches full of poets, the ragged army
Fixing bayonets to fight the other line

Spanish bombs rock the province
I’m hearing music from another time
Spanish bombs on Costa Brava
I’m flying in on a DC 10 tonight

Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazon
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazon

Oh mi corazon
Oh mi corazon

Spanish songs in Andalucia, mandolina
Oh mi corazon
Spanish songs in Granada
Oh mi corazon
Oh mi corazon
Oh mi corazon
Oh mi corazon

~~~

Felt like I should review again and then post these lyrics after I finished my prior log entry.

Pequeno vals vienes (Little Viennese Waltz)

by Federico García Lorca
(June 5, 1898 — August 19, 1936)

Rough translation by Leonard Cohen (in 1998 for a song he called Take This Waltz on the album I’m Your Man)

En Viena hay diez muchachas,
un hombro donde solloza la muerte
y un bosque de palomas disecadas.
Hay un fragmento de la mañana
en el museo de la escarcha.
Hay un salón con mil ventanas.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada.

Este vals, este vals, este vals,
de sí, de muerte y de coñac
que moja su cola en el mar.

Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero,
con la butaca y el libro muerto,
por el melancólico pasillo,
en el oscuro desván del lirio,
en nuestra cama de la luna
y en la danza que sueña la tortuga.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals de quebrada cintura.

En Viena hay cuatro espejos
donde juegan tu boca y los ecos.
Hay una muerte para piano
que pinta de azul a los muchachos.
Hay mendigos por los tejados,
hay frescas guirnaldas de llanto.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals que se muere en mis brazos.

Porque te quiero, te quiero, amor mío,
en el desván donde juegan los niños,
soñando viejas luces de Hungría
por los rumores de la tarde tibia,
viendo ovejas y lirios de nieve
por el silencio oscuro de tu frente.
         ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals del "Te quiero siempre".

En Viena bailaré contigo
con un disfraz que tenga
cabeza de río.
¡Mira qué orillas tengo de jacintos!
Dejaré mi boca entre tus piernas,
mi alma en fotografías y azucenas,
y en las ondas oscuras de tu andar
quiero, amor mío, amor mío, dejar,
violín y sepulcro, las cintas del vals.
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost --
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws.

I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.

In the cave at the tip of the lily,
in some hallway where love's never been.
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
in a cry filled with footsteps and sand --
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take its broken waist in your hand.

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
with its very own breath
of brandy and death,
dragging its tail in the sea.

There's a concert hall in Vienna
where your mouth had a thousand reviews.
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking,
they've been sentenced to death by the blues.
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
with a garland of freshly cut tears?
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz, it's been dying for years.

There's an attic where children are playing,
where I've got to lie down with you soon,
in a dream of Hungarian lanterns,
in the mist of some sweet afternoon.
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow,
all your sheep and your lilies of snow --
        Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
with its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there, and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
to the pools that you lift on your wrist --
O my love, O my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
it's yours now. It's all that there is.


Are there popular bands today that would write a song like Spanish Bombs and mention a poet who was tortured and then murdered by a right-wing militia for his support of modernity in poetry, politics and morals? His only crime was to be outspoken about values that were not shared by a conservative and heavily armed group fighting for control of his country.

I remember mulling over Clash lyrics while in grad school with some folks who were working for Paul Preston. How places of great tragedy have turned into lazy drinking at a “disco casino” for British tourists.

The lyrics led me to Lorca’s poems and thus to a deeper understanding of life and civil war in 1930s Spain. It still gives me chills to listen and read about this period in time in Europe, not just because of social consciousness about incredible brutality against civilians but because of the sad similarity to world events unfolding even today. The Wikipedia explains the fundamental rift that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and that devastated the Spanish economy for decades:

During and in the wake of the war, the Nationalists carried out a program of mass killing of opponents where house searches were carried out, and unwanted individuals were often jailed or killed. Trade-unionists, known republican sympathisers and critics of Franco’s regime were among the first to be targeted. The Nationalists also carried out aerial bombings of civilian areas with the help of the German and Italian air forces.

[…]

Republican sympathizers proclaimed it as a struggle between “tyranny and democracy”, or “fascism and liberty”, and many young, committed reformers and revolutionaries joined the International Brigades, which thought saving the Spanish Republic was the front line of the war against fascism. Franco’s supporters, however, especially the younger members of the officer corps, viewed it as a battle between the red hordes of communism and anarchism on the one hand and “Christian civilization” on the other.