Quivers... Fears... in the last post I was struck? struck sounds painfull, I was nuanced by the mention of "stoked fears"...
Psalm of David.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. 3 He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever (NKJV).
The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me; And if my ways are not as theirs Let them mind their own affairs. Their deeds I judge and much condemn, Yet when did I make laws for them? --Housman
The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach: The Ogre cannot master speech. About a subjugated plain, Among it's desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips. --Auden
The latter echoes Orwell strongly, in re language and tyranny.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
This happened in a shop in Tyneside NorthEast England, a woman walks into a hair stylist shop and takes up a chair and the stylist says, "What can I do fer ye, Sweetie?"
The woman answers, "I'll have a tight little perm please."
The stylist steps back, sets her hand on her hip and says, "Of course, let's see...
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry, still others of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the dark earth, but I say it's whatever one loves.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,--so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, "There is no memory of him here!" And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
A little something for Titus. Catullus nicknamed his mistress Lesbia. She dumped him for a certain Caelius, whom she later dumped and brought up on charges of trying to poison her.
Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia, that very Lesbia whom alone Catullus loved more than himself and all his own now at the crossroads and in alleyways retracts the foreskins of the noble descendants of Remus
There goes Egan, Whitney, Shearer and the kid called Mouse. The first men in the craft hold the net inside to prevent anyone from falling between the boat and ship. Your turn soon. A man behind you coughs. Another swears. The man you follow has a face like embalmed youth.
Page 122 [the end]....
You do not see the unwashed face of Private Whitney poke itself through the grass and survey the ground in clinical analysis, then wave to the other members of your squad emerging from the brush. You do not see him approach you at a crouch and look down at the hole in your side and lift up your left wrist and press his finger against it to detect a pulse. You do not hear Lieutenant Nixon come forward to the group and ask Whitney whether or not you're still alive.
"Lieutenant" he replies, "there is nothing moving but his watch."
"Beach Red" by Peter Bowman, 1945, a novel in prose poetry.
Made a loaf of bread that included leftover black bean dip sludge, turns out yeast love that stuff and the loaf turned out slightly darker than ordinary and very tall. It photographed well.
The page is viewed moderately and regularly, usually at least once a day from anywhere in the world, it tickles me to think of someone faraway interested in that.
I say at the bottom, "I invented this, you bastards, make me a millionaire right now!"
And I see that translated into Portuguese today, that and the, oh. my. god. part come out funny in Portuguese too.
I see both my reverence and sweary words translated and faithfully kept bold by html coding in several languages.
This is the debt I pay Just for one riotous day, Years of regret and grief, Sorrow without relief. Pay it I will to the end— Until the grave, my friend, Gives me a true release— Gives me the clasp of peace. Slight was the thing I bought, Small was the debt I thought, Poor was the loan at best— God! but the interest!
As every blossom fades and all youth sinks into old age, so every life’s design, each flower of wisdom, attains its prime and cannot last forever. The heart must submit itself courageously to life’s call without a hint of grief, A magic dwells in each beginning, protecting us, telling us how to live.
High purposed we shall traverse realm on realm, cleaving to none as to a home, the world of spirit wishes not to fetter us but raise us higher, step by step. Scarce in some safe accustomed sphere of life have we establish a house, then we grow lax; only he who is ready to journey forth can throw old habits off.
I got a phone call the other day, But little to my surprise, A bill collector was calling. And I began to realize.
“Hello, ma’am. I have a message for you.” The bill collector did say. “You’re late on your payment, send us this sum, And send it to us today.”
I hung up the phone while he was still talking, And walked away downhearted as all. I promised myself, the next time the phone rang, That I would not answer their call.
A few minutes later, I began to cry Remembering all the wrong things I’ve done. Accusing memories of sins I’d repented of And the very things I’ve been trying to shun.
Satan was dunning me for sins in my past, Just like the bill collectors do. Still wanting me to pay, with guilt to spare, When I know I’ve already prayed through.
So I started praying just once again, Like I was beating an old dead horse. Confessing my sins and problems to God, And with tears, was shedding remorse.
When I was finished praying, I heard a small voice Saying, “Condemnation can be cruel. Don’t worry, child, your account balance is zero, And your debt has been paid in full.”
His coffin was lowered deep into the ground, they sprinkled cold earth, tears fell without sound. From low in the grave echoed several loud knocks, seemingly coming from under the box. The mourners’ eyes widened, they turned tail and fled, fearing such noise would awaken the dead.
The graveyard fell empty, the rapping returned, now sorrow’s fresh roses lay withered and burned. A guttural voice mocked ‘Knock knock dear departed, I have come to complete the transaction we started’
‘What do you want?’a frail voice replied. ‘Please leave me in peace, I have only just died’
Malevolent laughter stagnated the breeze, all earthly sounds suffocated with ease. ‘It seems you’ve forgotten the tryst that was planned for the day your spent life was entombed in this land. To pay for your years of excess and deceit, you mortgaged your soul, I have the receipt.’
Amid cries for mercy, and spine chilling screams the casket’s wood splintered as Satan slipped through the seams.
And this, which I don't think I felt clearly until I read it at the bedside of my dying father:
"And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Those three poems bring tears to my eyes without fail, and I am not a crier.
For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night, For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children, The children spat-on at school. For the wrecked laboratory, The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst; For the temple-bells are callin', and it's there that I would be— By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
On the road to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay, With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay! Oh the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!
Or:
So I'll meet 'im later on In the place where 'e is gone— Where it's always double drill and no canteen; 'E'll be squattin' on the coals Givin' drink to pore damned souls, An' I'll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!
Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
(this is where you play "Auld Lang Syne" and it really brings down the house)
PS Something for Troop
Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old- This knight so bold- And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow- "Shadow," said he, "Where can it be- This land of Eldorado?"
"Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied- "If you seek for Eldorado!"
I kiss her moving mouth, Her swart hilarious skin; She breaks my breath in half; She frolicks like a beast; And I dance round and round, A fond and foolish man, And see and suffer myself In another being, at last.
Theodore Roethke
Freeman, that last one, Dylan Thomas, yes? that frequently pops into my mind, out of the blue.
When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
Pardon the egotism, but looking through my blog-notebook, I find the following poor misbegotten shard of broken, myopic prophesy, written a year and a half before Katrina:
A rising tide raises all boats In nature's riverland But here admidst dams, Diverting basins and Mounded miles The mighty dikes Raised against the whimsies Of Blind God Wealth The rising tides shall Benefit those that Design Deems due best. Locked within walls Of mounding logic The invisible hand strains Pushes and prods Closes into a fist. The river would go Whence the river wist And logic and design Only enrages the beast. Put your faith in walls And constraints against fate And the hundred year flood Will wash away all Little and great. And this prideful port Astride great waters And the complicit capital Far from the scene Shall both shattering shift Before roaring furies Of nature unleashed. And New Orleans dry And Baton Rouge drown By the hubris of wisdom And the pretension of power.
Sure on this shining night Of star made shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground.
-James Agee
That made me think of The Morning Watch, a short little novel I read when I was very young. I would like to read that again one more time. Thanks for reminding me of that.
""I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.""
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
Like one recumbent, so he stands; all sustained by his great will. Far withdrawn like mothers, when they suckle, and bound into himself like a wreath.
And the arrows come: now and now and as if they sprang out of his loins, ironly quivering with their free ends. Yet he is smiling darkly, and uninjured.
Only once a sorrowing grows big, and his eyes lie painfully bared, until they disavow something, as it were petty, and as though they scornfully let go the destroyers of a lovely thing.
Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by M.D. Herton Norton)
And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free hearted earth for mother, and God for father.
Suppose I say summer, write the word “hummingbird,” put in an envelope, take it down the hill to the box. When you open my letter you will recall those days and how much, just how much, I love you.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, And munch'd, and munch'd, and munch'd: 'Give me,' quoth I: 'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger: But in a sieve I'll thither sail, And, like a rat without a tail, I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
Here is the season to reap what was sown Here is the reason the high grass was mown Soon shall a cold sun collect on a summer's loan Now comes the road's son, stumbling, home.
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, And I lit the boiler fire; Some coal I found that was lying around, And I heaped the fuel higher; The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- Such a blaze you seldom see; And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, And I stuffed in Sam McGee.
I grow old … I grow old I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.
They came to tell your faults to me, They named them over one by one; I laughed aloud when they were done, I knew them all so well before, -- Oh, they were blind, too blind to see Your faults had made me love you more."
Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who were it proved he lies Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors' eyes; Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.
Oh I alway liked Norman. He's such a good writer. For my money maybe the best American writer of my generation. Bob D could really get under people's skin. Like trading a piece given to him from Warhol as a gift for a sofa.
I heard someone who met BD say if you're a fan, then don't meet him.
Let's face it, Bob and Norm both come up short on the scale of class from time to time but who cares? They're brilliant and entertaining. What more can ya want?
I've always been mildly proud of this one, if only because it was mercifully short while still containing a nice little allusion to Ballad of Reading Gaol:
The breeze screams reedy pain Never then, to lift again Brutal blue and tented high The skies beckon with baited lie The lifting rhythm, the twisting gyre Gone in a moment, and then the mire Hear now, the keening call A small brown thing's howl In heart-breaking harmony She and the wind sing elegy For her broken-winged memory.
I have from my Gallic ancestors the white-blue eye, the narrow skull, and the awkwardness in combat. I find my clothing as barbaric as theirs. But I don't butter my hair.
Writing verse in musical languages like French or Japanese is cheating, they already half-sing the most banal of sentiments into an unearned but lush lyricalism, and rhyme almost automatically. More impressive are the guttural Teutonic poets, who can carve their cracked coarse grammar and stop-start syntax into something sonorous and sweet.
I suppose this is why Japanese poetry emphasizes subtle allusive imagery and rigid syllable schemes.
phx: That's one of my favorite Yeats! I love the title too: "To a Friend Whose Work has Come to Nothing." It reminds me of a Shakespeare fave:
Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
—till at last The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers my peers,— How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years.
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”
A woman I met in college used to read that with me, and somehow she got me an autographed copy. Years later, I gave it to my best friend who was a lot like Brautigan in nature and appearance. I found him sleeping in front of the TV one day few years ago. He never woke up, and suddenly was gone. I gave it to a 70 year old man who was a good friend of ours and who insisted on living on the street his whole life. A few months later, he disappeared on a bicycle headed up the California Coast and never arrived at his destination. He's never been heard from since.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree : Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. (lines 1–5)
It's never been clear to me whether Trout Fishing in America was prose or poetry. Then again, it's never mattered to me. I just wanted to find that store where they sold lengths of trout stream by the foot. I guess that makes me Trout Fishing In America Shorty.
It doesn't hurt to call Brautigan's "Trout Fishing In America" prose poetry, but I don't think that's how Brautigan himself thought of it.
Another poet, Lew Welch, who reviewed TFIA when it came out, suggested that Brautigan had created a new form that we ought to call "brautigans." Unfortunately no writers rushed forth to write further brautigans, and I believe we are the poorer for it.
Or maybe we are fortunate, because I suspect it's hard to write a good brautigan, if you're not Richard Brautigan.
However he did write wonderful short pieces with ragged right margins which he called "poems." Here's a favorite:
The Memoirs of Jessie James
I remember all those thousands of hours I spent in grade school watching the clock waiting for recess or lunch or to go home. Waiting: for anything but school. My teachers could easily have ridden with Jessie James for all the time they stole from me.
I have no favorite verse to add and if I did it wouldn't be T.S. Elliot.
Between melting and freezing The soul's sap quivers.
I dislike his verb choice of "quiver." I would have chosen "quaver" instead (the two words are related) but quaver sounds like waver which is what people - who have souls - do. Plus I've seen viscous materials freeze and thaw and they never "quiver" like jello.
I have no idea what it means, a puzzle poem with some good-sounding lines that are also fun to say.
Lydia: That's the impression one gets from a Stevens poem, but don't try too hard to figure him out. He doesn't want you to. That's not the point of his writing.
His poems are not without rational meaning -- although he'll never say what and anything you come up with is fine by him -- but he is concerned with the total aesthetic effect, including very much your "good-sounding lines that are fun to say," and he denounces any effort to paraphrase him or find symbolism.
I puzzled over the poem below, which I love, and it haunted me. I have read Stevens' casual dismissal of his phrase "concupiscent curds" as "merely expressive." I have also read persausive analysis that the occasion of the poem is the death of a prostitute. However, the impact of the poem is not the occasion, but the glorious gaudy language all jammed together.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
John Grubby who was short and stout And troubled with religious doubt, Refused about the age of three To sit upon the curate's knee; (For so the eternal strife must rage Between the spirit of the age And Dogma, which, as is well known, Does simply hate to be outgrown). Grubby, the young idea that shoots, Outgrew the ages like old boots;
Simone Weil suffered from excruciating migraines, and used to recite one of two works, which she said helped to eventually dispel them: the Our Father (in Greek), and the 3rd George Herbert poem called "Love"
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here"; Love said, "You shall be he." "I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear, I cannot look on thee." Love took my hand and smiling did reply, "Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame Go where it doth deserve." "And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?" "My dear, then I will serve." "You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat." So I did sit and eat.
Yeats was a virgin until he was thirty. At the age of sixty, he was a silver haired Nobel Laureate and director of the Abbey Theater. He had a terrific sex life in his sixties. Not that many men have better sex in their sixties than in their twenties. Anyway, not so coincidentally, he was perhaps a greater lyric poet in his sixties than in his twenties......Some of his lines really stick with you and become part of your consciousness. Even if you forget the lines, they're part of you.
I THINK that I shall never hear A poem lovely as a beer. A brew that’s best straight from a tap With golden hue and snowy cap; The liquid bread I drink all day, Until my memory melts away; A beer that’s made with summer malt Too little hops its only fault; Upon whose brow the yeast has lain; In water clear as falling rain. Poems are made by fools I fear, But only wort can make a beer.
Oh, that's such a beautiful Frank O'Hara poem. He's one of my favorites, too.
Sorry for the delayed reply (had to go offline last night). Guess I'll catch you on the next poetry thread. (Would be cool to have a poetry/ literature post every once in a while... if you're taking requests, dear blog contributors?)
Or might add some stuff here later, if/ when I have more time. Ashamed to say, don't have poems memorized-- at least, not any favorites. And alas, currently away from (most of) my books (visiting family); the only poetry book with me is the Collected Wallace Stevens. And for some reason, it hurts my eyes (or some other part of me) a little to search for/through my favorite poems online, the screen rather than the page. So we'll see...
For now I just offer, not a favorite poem, exactly, but one I'm fond of, belonging to a favorite book of poems (John Berryman's Dream Songs).
It had come to mind recently-- reminded of it by "Bad Park You." And other recent blog themes. So, in honor of "Bad Park You":
Dream Song 20: The Secret of the Wisdom
When worst got things, how was you? Steady on? Wheedling, or shockt her & you have been bad to your friend, whom not you writing to. You have not listened. A pelican of lies you loosed: where are you?
Down weeks of evenings of longing by hours, NOW, a stoned bell, you did somebody: others you hurt short: anyone ever did you do good? You licking your own old hurt, what?
An evil kneel & adore. This is human. Hurl, God who found us in this, down something . . . We hear the more sin has increast, the more grace has been caused to abound.
yashu: Perhaps a ref back to TOP's "wound licking"?
I only know selections from Berryman's Dream Songs. Better than any poet he captures that weird, alcoholic, angsty depression of the fifties and early sixties I remember seeing in adults and not understanding when I was growing up.
Boomers are rightly criticized for their "follow your bliss" narcissism. God knows society has suffered from all their wrecked marriages and careless financial planning. But it makes more sense given the context.
We had seen our parents and their friends doing the right things (mostly) and so many of them were desperately unhappy, trapped in jobs, marriages, and social obligations that weren't working but in which they felt compelled to stay.
So the boomer kids vowed not to fall into those traps and we largely succeeded, except we found that the alternatives had pitfalls too.
yashu: A curiously conventional meditation for Stevens and with a science-fictionish theme. Thanks.
Picking up my copy of Stevens Collected, I notice how yellowed the paper is now, although it's only fifteen years-old and in a decent trade edition.
Looks like it's just you and me, but in case anyone's still lurking here's an old favorite that didn't make the cut into the poet's Selected, but I still love it and find that it works for most readers.
Tour
Enter this room, if you will, but silently. It will seem empty, but a white fox and a black fox are mating on the crimson rug. A number of gold appointments are featured in this room which you must not touch, and the furniture is too valuable to sit on, However, we do understand your wish to see this place, to breathe the incense, and to appreciate its tradition. If you are interested in the black fox or the white fox you may inspect them closely and ask me any questions you may have. Notice the vividness of this place and the faces that watch you from the corridor lamps. It is my pleasure that you are taking this tour. I will be happy to tell you whatever I know. I hope you will not be alarmed to learn that you may not leave this place again; because you have seen the black fox mate the white, and to satisfy your curiosity let me say, both animals are now dead.
Heh, deliciously creepy poem. A stylish, witty psychological horror story.
You're right, the Stevens I posted is probably his most conventional and "easiest" to read. Still one of the great short poems, IMO. That last line gets me every time (though its "meaning" is mysterious to me). Not sure I see the science fiction?
Will check into this thread again tonight, would love to read any more offerings, if you're so inclined. May proffer some more myself. (Probably mostly Stevens.)
Here's some William Carlos Williams.
William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe"
If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks again the yellow drawn shades,--
Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?
h, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.[
Never mind, I think I know what you mean. It's future projection, which (for us moderns, postmoderns, whatever we are) tends to have a science fiction feel.
Science fiction is the genre in which we ("we" contemporaries) tend to do our future projection (as opposed to, say, prophetic eschatology).
Interestingly, science fiction (even the most dystopic) offers an existential evasion of something, just as eschatology does. The thing about Stevens's poem-- one of the things that makes it great-- is that it doesn't evade, whatever it is. Can't quite put my finger on it.
Maybe Victorian poems have gone out of fashion, but I find that one-- read with fresh eyes-- as powerful as ever.
In fact, it strongly reminds me of Wallace Stevens. The encounter with the immensity of the ocean, and all that elicits and symbolizes. The melancholy of it, though not just melancholy, the complex mixture in that response-- e.g. pessimism, resignation, defiance, hope.
yashu: Yeah, the future. I saw "The Time Machine" when I was ten years-old and never got over it.
It was weird with the Stevens poem, in that I didn't know at first how far into the future the children are looking back at us. Set me in that direction and I'll be off a million years ahead.
Soon enough, though, Stevens makes it clear that he doesn't have anything nearly so fantastic in mind. However, reading it again, I suspect he is talking about how our descendants will read our poetry, with the usual provisos about Stevens and meaning.
Dear old Dr. Williams! One of the many things I love about him is the sense of total equality he grants the reader. He is not dictating to you from any height. He's sitting across from you at the kitchen table, offering you a glass of kool-aid. He makes fun of the idea of himself as a genius, though I'm sure he knew his gifts too. A humble poet. How rare!
rcocean: The story behind Invictus is quite moving. It was the poet's personal call to arms after having one leg amputated and being faced with the possibility of losing the other leg too.
I remember discussing this at TOP. Were you one of the commenters then?
yashu: I could do this all night and next morning. Sure, I've got another for you. I'm sure you know Mark Strand and maybe this poem too.
The Whole Story
How it should happen this way I am not sure, but you Are sitting next to me, Minding your own business When all of a sudden I see A fire out the window.
I nudge you and say, "That's a fire. And what's more We can't do anything about it, Because we're on this train, see?" You give me an odd look As though I had said too much.
But for all you know I may Have a passion for fires, And travel by train to keep From having to put them out. It may be that trains Can kindle a love of fire.
I might even suspect That you are a fireman In disguise. And then again I might be wrong. Maybe You are the one Who loves a good fire. Who knows?
Perhaps you are elsewhere, Deciding that with no place To go you should not Take a train. And I, Seeing my own face in the window, May have lied about the fire.
My favorite Stevens is the late Stevens, especially the long poems "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" and "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven," and some of the short poems from "The Rock." (Haven't quoted any of those yet here. Also tried to avoid the most famous poems.)
But to address deborah's original question (sort of). Not sure about "favorite," but the lines that come to me most often, in my everyday (or every other day) life, are probably from one of the first Stevens poems I ever read, "Sunday Morning":
Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.
Or moments from Keats, for example:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
Or passages from Rilke's Duino Elegies, such as
Yes--the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
I must to bed. Thanks creeley & others, twas a pleasure, and thanks deborah!
yashu: You certainly know your Stevens! You've picked some fine poems. It's interesting that you like his later work better. For most poets and writers the the early work is the best.
Mark Strand falls into this category. His later writing became smoother, more ornate and accomplished but lacked the explosiveness of his early poems.
Stevens was an important poet for John Ashbery. Although Ashbery is far more colloquial than Stevens, he still remains distant from the reader in a similar way, or so it seems to me. This is my favorite Ashbery:
Worsening Situation
Like a rainstorm, he said, the braided colors Wash over me and are no help. Or like one At a feast who eats not, for he cannot choose From among the smoking dishes. This severed hand Stands for life, and wander as it will, East or west, north or south, it is ever A stranger who walks beside me. O seasons, Booths, chaleur, dark-hatted charlatans On the outskirts of some rural fete, The name you drop and never say is mine, mine! Some day I'll claim to you how all used up I am because of you but in the meantime the ride Continues. Everyone is along for the ride, It seems. Besides, what else is there? The annual games? True, there are occasions For white uniforms and a special language Kept secret from the others. The limes Are duly sliced. I know all this But can't seem to keep it from affecting me, Every day, all day. I've tried recreation, Reading until late at night, train rides And romance. One day a man called while I was out And left this message: "You got the whole thing wrong From start to finish. Luckily, there's still time To correct the situation, but you must act fast. See me at your earliest convenience. And please Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it." I thought nothing of it at the time. Lately I've been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingering Starched white collars, wondering whether there's a way To get them really white again. My wife Thinks I'm in Oslo--Oslo, France, that is.
That elgaic Stevens piece "A Postcard From the Volcano" seems to be a call-out to the Pompeii ruins, and a contemporary evocation of that same spirit. It reminds me a bit of Benet's "Notes to be left in a cornerstone", which is far too long to quote here, but starts, memorably:
This is for you who are to come, with Time, And gaze upon our ruins with strange eyes
That elgaic Stevens piece "A Postcard From the Volcano" seems to be a call-out to the Pompeii ruins
Yes, good point. Which makes the title at once funny and deeply poignant. And places the reader in the positions of postcard addresser and addressee both, past present future. We are the children picking up bones, just as those bones will one day be ours.
creeley, what a great Ashbery poem. Haven't read enough Ashbery, but feel a strong affinity for much of what I've read so far. One poet (among many others) I 'd like to explore further.
Really enjoyed your selections. Many of them have a certain something reminiscent of a Kafka fragment/ parable.
Re favorite Stevens, and late vs. early. (Of course, all his great poetry is "late", in the sense that he was a late bloomer. There's no "young" Stevens; he's the great poet of old age.)
I have such a hard time with "favorite," when it comes to Stevens.
I feel closest to the late poems, the voice of the late poems-- philosophically, existentially, in sensibility. To paraphrase "Of Modern Poetry," that voice-- spare, austere-- speaks to me, in the delicatest ear of my mind. (Though I don't happen to be an old man.)
I studied philosophy, and my depressions appear to me as existential crises, so that may have something to do with it (and my love for Stevens overall). I have a penchant for philosophical, existential, metaphysical poems. (Though NB the "philosophy," theory, abstract ideas in Stevens' poetry are in a way the least interesting thing about it. That's not what I love about it. It's hard for me to articulate; I don't find him dry; he moves me.)
But! The early poems are so amazing. They have a strangeness, weirdness, oddity, otherness-- an imagistic vividness (almost luridness) and really compelling rhythmic musicality-- that's not there so much in the later poems. They're incantatory. And Stevens in his way is often funny-- but he's most funny (or most often funny) in his early poems.
PS IMO There's a lot of feeling, painful and passionate feeling in Stevens; but his poetry just doesn't wear it on its sleeve. It's understated, submerged, sometimes ironized-- but that irony doesn't annul it. It expresses it.
I agree with Helen Vendler that, strange as it sounds, he's a great poet of desire (even if it's "desire without an object of desire"). He's also a great poet of self-deprecation. So, a resolutely un-romantic romantic.
I cut my online teeth on one of those old bulletin-board groups, all ascii with not many topics, so the discussions remained alive for as long as anyone wanted to go at a particular topic.
I miss that. The blog style is zippier, but topics have a half-life of about six hours.
With a few exceptions I never found a way into Stevens. He just seemed opaque and sometimes I could hear the music but mostly I couldn't. I don't worry about that. There are many writers I catch on to later.
I do enjoy the parable / prose poem form. Borges and Kafka killed me at a young age. I also find that form communicates to civilians well. I like denser stuff too. Below is the first Neruda that got to me and still does.
People go on and on about Neruda, as he deserves, but they rarely mention "Residence on Earth," his monumental undertaking after "Twenty Love Poems." "Dead Gallop" is the first poem in Residence and I think it's perfect as the lead poem, but I have yet to see it anthologized or discussed.
DEAD GALLOP
Like ashes, like seas peopling themselves, in the submerged slowness, in the shapelessness, or as one hears from the crest of the roads the crossed bells crossing, having that sound now sundered from the metal, confused, ponderous, turning to dust in the very milling of the too distant forms, either remembered or not seen, and the perfume of the plums that rolling on the ground rot in time, infinitely green.
All that so swift, so living, yet motionless, like the pulley loose within itself, those wheels of the motors, in short. Existing like the dry stitches in the tree's seams, so silent, all around, all the limbs mixing their tails. But from where, through where, on what shore? The constant, uncertain surrounding, so silent, like the lilacs around the convent or death's coming to the tongue of the ox that stumbles to the ground, guard down, with horns that struggle to blow.
Therefore, in the stillness, stopping, to perceive, then, like an immense fluttering, above, like dead bees or numbers, ah, what my pale heart cannot embrace, in multitudes, in tears scarcely shed, and human efforts, anguish, black deeds suddenly discovered like ice, vast disorder, oceanic, to me who enter singing, as if with a sword among the defenseless.
Well now, what is it made of, that upsurge of doves that exists between night and time, like a moist ravine? That sound so prolonged now that falls lining the roads with stones, or rather, when only an hour grows suddenly, stretching without pause.
Within the ring of summer the great calabash trees once listen, stretching out their pity-laden plants, it is made of that, of what with much wooing, of the fullness, dark with heavy drops.
--Pable Neruda, "Residence on Earth" trans. Donald D. Walsh
Oh, so beautiful. Speaking of philosophical poems. There's a depth, wonder, immensity to that poem, which (to me) harks back to presocratic philosophy (who were also, primordially, poets).
But "philosophical" isn't quite the right word. It's like with Stevens. Poetry which addresses the mysteries philosophy does-- e.g. what it is to be, to be human, to be mortal, in the world, in time-- but not in the manner of philosophy, with its methods, concepts, answers. It probes, in the dark; articulates-- on this side and that of (beyond) concepts-- the experience. The intimacy of the experience. Or something like that.
I'm lucky I'm able to read Neruda fluently in Spanish (raised bilingual); in case anyone here knows Spanish or would like to sound some lines out, here it is in Spanish.
Speaking of Neruda and lines that come often to mind, "sucede que me canso de ser hombre…" sounds sometimes in my head, from the well-known (no doubt known to you, creeley) Neruda poem "Walking Around." One of my favorites from Neruda, though (thank god) this specific mood is one that very rarely afflicts me. (Heh, my moods of alienation tend to manifest themselves differently.) In Spanish here.
Walking Around
It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool. The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens, no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don't want so much misery. I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief.
That's why Monday, when it sees me coming with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline, and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, into shoeshops that smell like vinegar, and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of houses that I hate, and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything, I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with washing hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts from which slow dirty tears are falling.
Speaking of Borges, love him too-- his stories of course, but also his poems.
For example,
Limits
Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset, There must be one (which, I am not sure) That I by now have walked for the last time Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws, Sets up a secret and unwavering scale for all the shadows, dreams, and forms Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness, Who will tell us to whom in this house We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws And among the stacked books which throw Irregular shadows on the dim table, There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate, With its cement urns and planted cactus, Which is already forbidden to my entry, Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever And some mirror is expecting you in vain; To you the crossroads seem wide open, Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one Which has now been lost beyond recall. You will not be seen going down to that fountain Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian Said in his language woven with birds and roses, When, in the sunset, before the light disperses, You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake, All that vast yesterday over which today I bend? They will be as lost as Carthage, Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent Murmur of crowds milling and fading away; They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by; Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.
I cut my online teeth on one of those old bulletin-board groups, all ascii with not many topics, so the discussions remained alive for as long as anyone wanted to go at a particular topic.
I really like the message board format-- a commenter-driven genre, "commenter home" indeed. I used to lurk at the ILM (I Love Music) message board (originally populated by a group of British pop music critics), which expanded to include ILE (I Love Everything), and is now ILX (ilxor.com). Many of those conversations span months or years (with gaps that also last months or years). One of the most wide-ranging and best-working message boards I've ever seen. Still check in and browse/ search through the archives every once in a while.
The blog form is great, but it's more poster-driven than commenter-driven, and the specific thread conversations are so short-lived. This particular community is probably too small (and topics of interest too topical?) for a message board. Anyway, it's nice to see a conversation extend past its one-day shelf life, past the front page. Of course, conversations continue (or are reprised) over multiple posts, too.
yashu: One feature that I liked about my old bulletin-board was that lowly commenters could start topics. Also the hosts were more active in fostering conversation and putting out fires.
Thanks for what you said about Dead Gallop. I've been dying to have a conversation about that poem since I was 25. I couldn't tell you about the Pre-Socratics but my reading is close to yours. Neruda is speaking from the primordial source of creation. It's deep and he takes you there.
I also love the passionate way he uses surrealism -- it becomes far more than most of the clinical French exercises.
You are indeed fortunate to be bilingual. My father spoke Spanish before English. He didn't teach me because he didn't want me to be split as he was -- American father, Mexican mother. In addition to my heritage, Borges and Neruda are reason enough to learn Spanish. I may get to it yet.
Tell me about Neruda translations. I once heard from an indignant poet that she started translating Lorca and Neruda for herself because of Bly's "atrocities of meaning and gross errors...against the language of my mothers and fathers."
Personally I find Bly's translations bland and inartful. I can't believe that there isn't more music in Neruda. I enjoy Merwin's translations but I can tell that I'm getting a Merwinized version of Neruda.
Also, Bly in his time was perhaps the most prominent "community organizers" of American poetry, pushing it in SDS directions.
I do love "It Happens that I'm Tired of Being a Man" (how I remember the poem).
That was written in the early thirties as Europe was gearing up for the Spanish Civil War and WWII. I think it's very difficult for those of us who came later to understand that era.
Unfortunately, can't be much help on the subject of Neruda translations-- because (lucky me) I've always read him in Spanish.
But I just looked up the Merwin translation, and yes! much MUCH better.
Neruda is musical indeed, and delicious to read-- to hear/ speak in the mind or aloud. This poem in particular is very rhythmic-- at times has the pace, momentum, of a heavy walk.
Bly's translation is awkward, stilted; there's no pleasure in the sound or rhythm of it.
Interestingly, Merwin's seems to me closer to Neruda, not only in its rhythm, its swing, but also (often) in the exactitude/ literalness of its translation. (Usually, when it comes to translation, you have to choose one or the other; Merwin beats Bly at both.)
So let me post Merwin's (superior) translation:
Walking Around
It happens that I am tired of being a man. It happens that I go into the tailor's shops and the movies all shrivelled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan navigating on a water of origin and ash. The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud. I want nothing but the repose either of stone or of wool. I want to see no more establishments, no more gardens, nor merchandise, nor glasses, nor elevators. It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It happens that I am tired of being a man. Just the same it would be delicious to scare a notary with a cut lily or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear. It would be beautiful to go through the streets with a green knife shouting until I died of cold. I do not want to go on being a root in the dark, hesitating, stretched out, shivering with dreams, downwards, in the wet tripe of the earth, soaking it up and thinking, eating every day. I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes. I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb, as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses, stiff with cold, dying with pain. For this reason Monday burns like oil at the sight of me arriving with my jail-face, and it howls in passing like a wounded wheel, and its footsteps towards nightfall are filled with hot blood. And it shoves me along to certain corners, to certain damp houses, to hospitals where the bones come out of the windows, to certain cobbler's shops smelling of vinegar, to streets horrendous as crevices. There are birds the colour of sulphur, and horrible intestines hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate, there are forgotten sets of teeth in a coffee-pot, there are mirrors which should have wept with shame and horror, there are umbrellas all over the place, and poisons, and navels. I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes, with fury, with forgetfuless, I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopedic appliances, and courtyards hung with clothes on wires, underpants, towels and shirts which weep slow dirty tears.
The original is here, followed by various translations (Bly and Merwin & two others). Interesting to compare them. Just on the basis of a skim through, I prefer Merwin's to the others. It appears like the simplest translation-- yet it's also the most beautiful. And that's no simple achievement.
152 comments:
"But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling." Poe
I just riffed off your "soul" quote. I had to memorize The Raven in high school. It's a long mofo.
"Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."
Quivers... Fears... in the last post I was struck? struck sounds painfull, I was nuanced by the mention of "stoked fears"...
Psalm of David.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.
3 He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever (NKJV).
Favorite political lines:
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
--Housman
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among it's desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
--Auden
The latter echoes Orwell strongly, in re language and tyranny.
Wherever green is worn...
lie down in green pastures...
More baseball, less fighting.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
The tough part was picking just one stanza.
The night was dark;
the sky was blue --
down the alley
the Shitwagon flew.
A bump was hit,
a scream was heard;
someone was killed
by a flying turd.
-- Yeats
(I could be wrong about the author.)
This happened in a shop in Tyneside NorthEast England, a woman walks into a hair stylist shop and takes up a chair and the stylist says, "What can I do fer ye, Sweetie?"
The woman answers, "I'll have a tight little perm please."
The stylist steps back, sets her hand on her hip and says, "Of course, let's see...
I wondered lernley as a clerd..."
I see London
I see France
I see.......I hate poetry.
Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
-James Agee
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
--Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill
I bring an unaccustomed wine
To lips long parching, next to mine,
And summon them to drink.
-Emily Dickinson
"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree."
-- T. S. Eliot
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
-W.H. Auden
Geez. There sure is a lot of hostility to poetry here.
Gentlemen, there are reasons to dislike poetry. I know it was forced upon many young boys. I felt that way myself.
But for those of us who care about poetry, it is a meaningful experience, and it would be nice to have a little respect for that.
There are plenty of topics for clowning around. I don't think that's what Deborah had in mind, though.
@sydney
That gave me chills.
(And those feelings are why it didn't last forever, eh? :) )
I really prefer to hear it from the master - the original poet, painter, and the sublime author of both drama and serenity and all in between.
The Original
On Children
Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
I wrote this the other day:
WASTED TALENT
We climbed hills in search of mountains
We swam rivers in search of the sea.
We tore flesh from the heart of youth
And traded it for dull-edged swords.
We devoured the forest.
But came away with nothing but the silvery taste of hardship thick on our tongues.
We barked at lights grown dim and watched stars fade.
We dismantled our rose-colored glass-blowing machine.
We drank the saccharine blood of over-promise
And lay amongst the fallen leaves of long-lost accolades.
We clothed ourselves in second-hand souls
Sang dirges for Cadillacs, and dreamt every dream we knew.
And then we let go.
We were once.
We were fleeting.
We were gone.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
-W. Shakespeare
Darcy,
(And those feelings are why it didn't last forever, eh? :) )
Heh. Probably. Who could live with being someone else's God?
Which reminds me of another W.H. Auden line:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry,
still others of ships, is the most beautiful
thing on the dark earth, but I say
it's whatever one loves.
Sappho, Fragment 16
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-- John McCrae
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,--so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
A little something for Titus.
Catullus nicknamed his mistress Lesbia. She dumped him for a certain Caelius, whom she later dumped and brought up on charges of trying to poison her.
Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia,
that very Lesbia whom alone Catullus loved
more than himself and all his own
now at the crossroads and in alleyways
retracts the foreskins of the noble descendants of Remus
Catullus 58
Page 5....
There goes Egan, Whitney, Shearer and the kid called Mouse.
The first men in the craft hold the net inside
to prevent anyone from falling between the boat and ship.
Your turn soon. A man behind you coughs. Another swears.
The man you follow has a face like embalmed youth.
Page 122 [the end]....
You do not see the unwashed face of Private Whitney
poke itself through the grass and survey the ground in
clinical analysis, then wave to the other members of your squad emerging from the brush. You do not see him
approach you at a crouch and look down at the
hole in your side and lift up your left wrist
and press his finger against it to detect a pulse.
You do not hear Lieutenant Nixon come forward to the
group and ask Whitney whether or not you're still alive.
"Lieutenant" he replies, "there is nothing moving but his watch."
"Beach Red" by Peter Bowman, 1945, a novel in prose poetry.
Made a loaf of bread that included leftover black bean dip sludge, turns out yeast love that stuff and the loaf turned out slightly darker than ordinary and very tall. It photographed well.
The page is viewed moderately and regularly, usually at least once a day from anywhere in the world, it tickles me to think of someone faraway interested in that.
I say at the bottom, "I invented this, you bastards, make me a millionaire right now!"
And I see that translated into Portuguese today, that and the, oh. my. god. part come out funny in Portuguese too.
I see both my reverence and sweary words translated and faithfully kept bold by html coding in several languages.
And that's poetry.
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end—
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release—
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best—
God! but the interest!
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Steps, Hermann Hesse:
As every blossom fades
and all youth sinks into old age,
so every life’s design, each flower of wisdom,
attains its prime and cannot last forever.
The heart must submit itself courageously
to life’s call without a hint of grief,
A magic dwells in each beginning,
protecting us, telling us how to live.
High purposed we shall traverse realm on realm,
cleaving to none as to a home,
the world of spirit wishes not to fetter us
but raise us higher, step by step.
Scarce in some safe accustomed sphere of life
have we establish a house, then we grow lax;
only he who is ready to journey forth
can throw old habits off.
What do I owe to you
Who loved me deep and long?
You never gave my spirit wings
Nor gave my heart a song.
But oh, to him I loved,
Who loved me not at all,
I owe the little open gate
That led through heaven’s wall.
Sara Teasdale
There is a Destiny that makes us brothers;
None goes his way alone:
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.
I care not what his temples or his creeds,
One thing holds firm and fast--
That into his fateful heap of days and deeds
The soul of man is cast.
"A Creed" by Edwin Markham
PS: I don't seem to be able to control the formating of the lines, previously or on this one,...fat fingers or something. sigh.
I got a phone call the other day,
But little to my surprise,
A bill collector was calling.
And I began to realize.
“Hello, ma’am. I have a message for you.”
The bill collector did say.
“You’re late on your payment, send us this sum,
And send it to us today.”
I hung up the phone while he was still talking,
And walked away downhearted as all.
I promised myself, the next time the phone rang,
That I would not answer their call.
A few minutes later, I began to cry
Remembering all the wrong things I’ve done.
Accusing memories of sins I’d repented of
And the very things I’ve been trying to shun.
Satan was dunning me for sins in my past,
Just like the bill collectors do.
Still wanting me to pay, with guilt to spare,
When I know I’ve already prayed through.
So I started praying just once again,
Like I was beating an old dead horse.
Confessing my sins and problems to God,
And with tears, was shedding remorse.
When I was finished praying, I heard a small voice
Saying, “Condemnation can be cruel.
Don’t worry, child, your account balance is zero,
And your debt has been paid in full.”
His coffin was lowered deep into the ground,
they sprinkled cold earth, tears fell without sound.
From low in the grave echoed several loud knocks,
seemingly coming from under the box.
The mourners’ eyes widened, they turned tail and fled,
fearing such noise would awaken the dead.
The graveyard fell empty, the rapping returned,
now sorrow’s fresh roses lay withered and burned.
A guttural voice mocked ‘Knock knock dear departed,
I have come to complete the transaction we started’
‘What do you want?’a frail voice replied.
‘Please leave me in peace, I have only just died’
Malevolent laughter stagnated the breeze,
all earthly sounds suffocated with ease.
‘It seems you’ve forgotten the tryst that was planned
for the day your spent life was entombed in this land.
To pay for your years of excess and deceit,
you mortgaged your soul, I have the receipt.’
Amid cries for mercy, and spine chilling screams
the casket’s wood splintered as Satan slipped through the seams.
"IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England."
And
"For even the purest delight may pall,
And power must fail, and the pride must fall,"
And this, which I don't think I felt clearly until I read it at the bedside of my dying father:
"And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Those three poems bring tears to my eyes without fail, and I am not a crier.
And when Hector dies in The Iliad. Chest tightens just thinking about it.
For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.
- Steven Vincent Benet
Either:
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', and it's there that I would be—
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
Oh the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!
Or:
So I'll meet 'im later on
In the place where 'e is gone—
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to pore damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!
Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
(this is where you play "Auld Lang Syne" and it really brings down the house)
PS Something for Troop
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"
"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
But does he know who wrote it?
(without looking it up?)
I kiss her moving mouth,
Her swart hilarious skin;
She breaks my breath in half;
She frolicks like a beast;
And I dance round and round,
A fond and foolish man,
And see and suffer myself
In another being, at last.
Theodore Roethke
Freeman, that last one, Dylan Thomas, yes? that frequently pops into my mind, out of the blue.
"Do Not Go Gentle" is one of those ultimate poems.
Dylan Thomas, who wrote it, was the first poet-poet to get to me, though Dylan and Leonard Cohen got there first with song lyrics.
***
I found this verse in our high school textbook and it intrigued me, but the teacher didn't get around to teaching it:
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
--Wallace Stevens, from "The Man with the Blue Guitar"
Kahlil Gibran on Love
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
Pardon the egotism, but looking through my blog-notebook, I find the following poor misbegotten shard of broken, myopic prophesy, written a year and a half before Katrina:
A rising tide raises all boats
In nature's riverland
But here admidst dams,
Diverting basins and
Mounded miles
The mighty dikes
Raised against the whimsies
Of Blind God Wealth
The rising tides shall
Benefit those that
Design
Deems due best.
Locked within walls
Of mounding logic
The invisible hand strains
Pushes and prods
Closes into a fist.
The river would go
Whence the river wist
And logic and design
Only enrages the beast.
Put your faith in walls
And constraints against fate
And the hundred year flood
Will wash away all
Little and great.
And this prideful port
Astride great waters
And the complicit capital
Far from the scene
Shall both shattering shift
Before roaring furies
Of nature unleashed.
And New Orleans dry
And Baton Rouge drown
By the hubris of wisdom
And the pretension of power.
Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
-James Agee
That made me think of The Morning Watch, a short little novel I read when I was very young. I would like to read that again one more time. Thanks for reminding me of that.
There's no end to favorites in the psalms like the well-known:
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."
It takes a heap of livin' in
to make a house a home.
Probably not up to this blog's high standards, but I've always liked it, and read it to my family when our addition was completed.
""I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.""
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
Saint Sebastian
Like one recumbent, so he stands; all
sustained by his great will.
Far withdrawn like mothers, when they suckle,
and bound into himself like a wreath.
And the arrows come: now and now
and as if they sprang out of his loins,
ironly quivering with their free ends.
Yet he is smiling darkly, and uninjured.
Only once a sorrowing grows big,
and his eyes lie painfully bared, until
they disavow something, as it were petty,
and as though they scornfully let go
the destroyers of a lovely thing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by M.D. Herton Norton)
And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free hearted earth for mother, and God for father.
Kahlil Gibran
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
-Eliot
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
-Keats
I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
-Kipling
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
-Stevens
Folks, Deborah asked for "A line or stanza." 10 points deducted for not following instructions!!!
Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.
--Raymond Carver
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
--Carver (again)
And the gobbleuns 'ill git you
Ef'n you don't watch out
A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And munch'd, and munch'd, and munch'd:
'Give me,' quoth I:
'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.
Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
phx: macbeth?
OK, just a stanza, sentimental:
Here is the season to reap what was sown
Here is the reason the high grass was mown
Soon shall a cold sun collect on a summer's loan
Now comes the road's son, stumbling, home.
Sorry I forgot the attribution. That is one of the witches in Macbeth.
The other is a line from James Whitcomb Riley's Little Orpant Annie. My daddy used to read that to me on his lap.
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, And I lit the boiler fire; Some coal I found that was lying around, And I heaped the fuel higher; The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- Such a blaze you seldom see; And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, And I stuffed in Sam McGee.
It seemed like it was Macbeth but it's been at least 20 years since the last time I read it.
Must be thinking about witches today! Which other witch poems are there I wonder.
I grow old … I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
--TS Eliot
Fault
They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before, --
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more."
Sara Teasdale
Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
Yeats
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
-Stephen Crane
I Know a Man
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.
--Robert Creeley
Oh wow. Your nick is after Robert Creeley? I saw him read once. I really like his poems.
This is just to say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams
if someone thinks norman mailer is more important than hank williams, that's fine. i have no arguments an i never drink milk
bob dylan
I don't think Norman ever really forgave him for that line.
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
T.S. Eliot
Oooh, Norman Mailer is mad at me, thinks Bob. Maybe he'll send one of his serial killer crushes after me!
Oh I alway liked Norman. He's such a good writer. For my money maybe the best American writer of my generation. Bob D could really get under people's skin. Like trading a piece given to him from Warhol as a gift for a sofa.
I heard someone who met BD say if you're a fan, then don't meet him.
Let's face it, Bob and Norm both come up short on the scale of class from time to time but who cares? They're brilliant and entertaining. What more can ya want?
At least Bob kept arms-length from politics.
I've always been mildly proud of this one, if only because it was mercifully short while still containing a nice little allusion to Ballad of Reading Gaol:
The breeze screams reedy pain
Never then, to lift again
Brutal blue and tented high
The skies beckon with baited lie
The lifting rhythm, the twisting gyre
Gone in a moment, and then the mire
Hear now, the keening call
A small brown thing's howl
In heart-breaking harmony
She and the wind sing elegy
For her broken-winged memory.
J'ai de mes ancêtres gaulois l'oeil bleu blanc, la cervelle étroite, et la maladresse dans la lutte. Je trouve mon habillement aussi barbare que le leur. Mais je ne beurre pas ma chevelure.
I have from my Gallic ancestors the white-blue eye, the narrow skull, and the awkwardness in combat. I find my clothing as barbaric as theirs. But I don't butter my hair.
Rimbaud, Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood)
Writing verse in musical languages like French or Japanese is cheating, they already half-sing the most banal of sentiments into an unearned but lush lyricalism, and rhyme almost automatically. More impressive are the guttural Teutonic poets, who can carve their cracked coarse grammar and stop-start syntax into something sonorous and sweet.
I suppose this is why Japanese poetry emphasizes subtle allusive imagery and rigid syllable schemes.
Tree, snow and rock beginnings, the mountain in back of the
lake promised us eternity, but the lake itself was filled with
thousands of silly minnows, swimming close to the shore
and busy putting in hours of Mack Sennett time.
The minnows were an Idaho tourist attraction. They
should have been made into a National Monument. Swimming
close to shore, like children they believed in their own im-
mortality .
A third-year student in engineering at the University of
Montana attempted to catch some of the minnows but he went
about it all wrong. So did the children who came on the
Fourth of July weekend.
The children waded out into the lake and tried to catch the
minnows with their hands. They also used milk cartons and
plastic bags. They presented the lake with hours of human
effort. Their total catch was one minnow. It jumped out of a
can full of water on their table and died under the table, gasp-
ing for watery breath while their mother fried eggs on the
Coleman stove.
The mother apologized. She was supposed to be watching
the fish --THIS IS MY EARTHLY FAILURE-- holding the
dead fish by the tail, the fish taking all the bows like a young
Jewish comedian talking about Adlai Stevenson.
The third-year student in engineering at the University of
Montana took a tin can and punched an elaborate design of
holes in the can, the design running around and around in
circles, like a dog with a fire hydrant in its mouth. Then he
attached some string to the can and put a huge salmon egg
and a piece of Swiss cheese in the can. After two hours of
intimate and universal failure he went back to Missoula,
Montana.
The woman who travels with me discovered the best way
to catch the minnows. She used a large pan that had in its
bottom the dregs of a distant vanilla pudding. She put the
pan in the shallow water along the shore and instantly, hun-
dreds of minnows gathered around. Then, mesmerized by
the vanilla pudding, they swam like a children's crusade
into the pan. She caught twenty fish with one dip. She put
the pan full of fish on the shore and the baby played with
the fish for an hour.
We watched the baby to make sure she was just leaning
on them a little. We didn't want her to kill any of them be-
cause she was too young.
Instead of making her furry sound, she adapted rapidly
to the difference between animals and fish, and was soon
making a silver sound.
She caught one of the fish with her hand and looked at it
for a while. We took the fish out of her hand and put it back
into the pan. After a while she was putting the fish back by
herself.
Then she grew tired of this. She tipped the pan over and
a dozen fish flopped out onto the shore. The children's game
and the banker's game, she picked up those silver things,
one at a time, and put them back in the pan. There was still
a little water in it. The fish liked this. You could tell.
When she got tired of the fish, we put them back in the
lake, and they were all quite alive, but nervous. I doubt if
they will ever want vanilla pudding again.
Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America
"Be secret and exult..."
phx: That's one of my favorite Yeats! I love the title too: "To a Friend Whose Work has Come to Nothing." It reminds me of a Shakespeare fave:
Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
--William Shakespeare
So, when Life looked upward, being
Warmed and breathed on from above
What sight could she have for seeing,
Evermore...but only LOVE?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
-Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade
So far who's been quoted the most...?
Yeats or Eliot, isn't it?
At least Bob kept arms-length from politics.
I hear ya. Norman never endeared himself to the right much. Except for the fact that Gore Vidal was a sworn enemy.
Wonderful blog!
—till at last
The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
Final lines of Sohrab and Rustum
-Mathew Arnold
I'm a sap, so many of the wonderful works above have caught me out. Beautiful and emotional, they are.
So I'll post this one by Jack Prelutsky. I read it over and over to my kids when they were wee.
Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.
Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.
Your nose would be a source of dread
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.
Within your ear, your nose would be
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.
Your nose, instead, through thick and thin,
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place--
be glad your nose is on your face!
When in danger,
When in doubt,
Run in circles,
Scream and shout!
Mr. Edwards, my HS electronics teacher.
He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In !
-- Edwin Markham
What is startling to me is I remembered the little poem exactly -- (high school heart- throbby stuff) but I thought it was an Emily Dickenson poem.
Mmmmm.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
--Wallace Stevens
I have no idea what it means, a puzzle poem with some good-sounding lines that are also fun to say.
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years.
There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”
Robert Browning. This has long haunted me...
"Hector, breaker of horses"
"Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America"
A woman I met in college used to read that with me, and somehow she got me an autographed copy. Years later, I gave it to my best friend who was a lot like Brautigan in nature and appearance. I found him sleeping in front of the TV one day few years ago. He never woke up, and suddenly was gone. I gave it to a 70 year old man who was a good friend of ours and who insisted on living on the street his whole life. A few months later, he disappeared on a bicycle headed up the California Coast and never arrived at his destination. He's never been heard from since.
I hope nobody found that book.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
And I like this opening stanza:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. (lines 1–5)
It is a matter of note that the excellent people on this blog have resisted the urge to post a poem in which the second line ends with "Nantucket".
Deborah,
It's never been clear to me whether Trout Fishing in America was prose or poetry. Then again, it's never mattered to me. I just wanted to find that store where they sold lengths of trout stream by the foot. I guess that makes me Trout Fishing In America Shorty.
cjf
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion/
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,/
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Windhover
It doesn't hurt to call Brautigan's "Trout Fishing In America" prose poetry, but I don't think that's how Brautigan himself thought of it.
Another poet, Lew Welch, who reviewed TFIA when it came out, suggested that Brautigan had created a new form that we ought to call "brautigans." Unfortunately no writers rushed forth to write further brautigans, and I believe we are the poorer for it.
Or maybe we are fortunate, because I suspect it's hard to write a good brautigan, if you're not Richard Brautigan.
However he did write wonderful short pieces with ragged right margins which he called "poems." Here's a favorite:
The Memoirs of Jessie James
I remember all those thousands of hours
I spent in grade school watching the clock
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jessie James
for all the time they stole from me.
--Richard Brautigan
I have no favorite verse to add and if I did it wouldn't be T.S. Elliot.
Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers.
I dislike his verb choice of "quiver." I would have chosen "quaver" instead (the two words are related) but quaver sounds like waver which is what people - who have souls - do. Plus I've seen viscous materials freeze and thaw and they never "quiver" like jello.
I have no idea what it means, a puzzle poem with some good-sounding lines that are also fun to say.
Lydia: That's the impression one gets from a Stevens poem, but don't try too hard to figure him out. He doesn't want you to. That's not the point of his writing.
His poems are not without rational meaning -- although he'll never say what and anything you come up with is fine by him -- but he is concerned with the total aesthetic effect, including very much your "good-sounding lines that are fun to say," and he denounces any effort to paraphrase him or find symbolism.
I puzzled over the poem below, which I love, and it haunted me. I have read Stevens' casual dismissal of his phrase "concupiscent curds" as "merely expressive." I have also read persausive analysis that the occasion of the poem is the death of a prostitute. However, the impact of the poem is not the occasion, but the glorious gaudy language all jammed together.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
--Wallace Stevens
Forget your lust, for the rich man's gold
All that you need, is in your soul
-Ronnie Van Zant
John Grubby who was short and stout
And troubled with religious doubt,
Refused about the age of three
To sit upon the curate's knee;
(For so the eternal strife must rage
Between the spirit of the age
And Dogma, which, as is well known,
Does simply hate to be outgrown).
Grubby, the young idea that shoots,
Outgrew the ages like old boots;
Simone Weil suffered from excruciating migraines, and used to recite one of two works, which she said helped to eventually dispel them: the Our Father (in Greek), and the 3rd George Herbert poem called "Love"
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert, Love (III)
Basta!: Thanks for posting the lovely Herbert!
That poem was also Weil's door for conversion to Christianity. She was an unusual soul.
Yeats was a virgin until he was thirty. At the age of sixty, he was a silver haired Nobel Laureate and director of the Abbey Theater. He had a terrific sex life in his sixties. Not that many men have better sex in their sixties than in their twenties. Anyway, not so coincidentally, he was perhaps a greater lyric poet in his sixties than in his twenties......Some of his lines really stick with you and become part of your consciousness. Even if you forget the lines, they're part of you.
creeley23, I dearly love Wallace Stevens, too.
Re "Emperor of Ice Cream," I more or less agree with Helen Vendler's reading, excerpted in part here.
I THINK that I shall never hear
A poem lovely as a beer.
A brew that’s best straight from a tap
With golden hue and snowy cap;
The liquid bread I drink all day,
Until my memory melts away;
A beer that’s made with summer malt
Too little hops its only fault;
Upon whose brow the yeast has lain;
In water clear as falling rain.
Poems are made by fools I fear,
But only wort can make a beer.
That in the end
I may find
Something not sold for a penny
In the slums of Mind
That I may break
With these hands
The bread of Wisdom that grows
In the other lands.
For this, for this
Do I wear
The rags of hunger and climb
The unending stair.
-Patrick Kavanaugh
Hi yashu. The Vendler is even more persuasive. Nice. Though Stevens, I'm sure, would neither confirm nor deny.
I'll bet you've got some favorites in your treasure house beyond corruption by moth and rust. Perhaps you'd share one or two.
I recall being annoyed by her selections for the "Contemporary American Poetry" anthology, but she made up for it by her advocacy for Frank O'Hara.
It's hard to beat O'Hara for love poems. This is longish but easy, and became a favorite the first time I read it.
Morning
I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death
in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe
chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow
At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes
I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine
although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of
the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle
what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it
is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone
Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial
there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is
when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go
--Frank O'Hara
Hi creeley,
Oh, that's such a beautiful Frank O'Hara poem. He's one of my favorites, too.
Sorry for the delayed reply (had to go offline last night). Guess I'll catch you on the next poetry thread. (Would be cool to have a poetry/ literature post every once in a while... if you're taking requests, dear blog contributors?)
Or might add some stuff here later, if/ when I have more time. Ashamed to say, don't have poems memorized-- at least, not any favorites. And alas, currently away from (most of) my books (visiting family); the only poetry book with me is the Collected Wallace Stevens. And for some reason, it hurts my eyes (or some other part of me) a little to search for/through my favorite poems online, the screen rather than the page. So we'll see...
For now I just offer, not a favorite poem, exactly, but one I'm fond of, belonging to a favorite book of poems (John Berryman's Dream Songs).
It had come to mind recently-- reminded of it by "Bad Park You." And other recent blog themes. So, in honor of "Bad Park You":
Dream Song 20: The Secret of the Wisdom
When worst got things, how was you? Steady on?
Wheedling, or shockt her &
you have been bad to your friend,
whom not you writing to. You have not listened.
A pelican of lies
you loosed: where are you?
Down weeks of evenings of longing
by hours, NOW, a stoned bell,
you did somebody: others you hurt short:
anyone ever did you do good?
You licking your own old hurt,
what?
An evil kneel & adore.
This is human. Hurl, God who found
us in this, down
something . . . We hear the more
sin has increast, the more
grace has been caused to abound.
yashu: Perhaps a ref back to TOP's "wound licking"?
I only know selections from Berryman's Dream Songs. Better than any poet he captures that weird, alcoholic, angsty depression of the fifties and early sixties I remember seeing in adults and not understanding when I was growing up.
Boomers are rightly criticized for their "follow your bliss" narcissism. God knows society has suffered from all their wrecked marriages and careless financial planning. But it makes more sense given the context.
We had seen our parents and their friends doing the right things (mostly) and so many of them were desperately unhappy, trapped in jobs, marriages, and social obligations that weren't working but in which they felt compelled to stay.
So the boomer kids vowed not to fall into those traps and we largely succeeded, except we found that the alternatives had pitfalls too.
And here we are.
Thanks for the topic, Deborah! It's been a pleasure.
With yashu, I put in a vote for more poetry/literature topic in the future.
A Postcard from the Volcano
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on a hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky
Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became
A part of what it is... Children,
Still weaving budding aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,
Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,
A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.
--Wallace Stevens
yashu: A curiously conventional meditation for Stevens and with a science-fictionish theme. Thanks.
Picking up my copy of Stevens Collected, I notice how yellowed the paper is now, although it's only fifteen years-old and in a decent trade edition.
Looks like it's just you and me, but in case anyone's still lurking here's an old favorite that didn't make the cut into the poet's Selected, but I still love it and find that it works for most readers.
Tour
Enter this room, if you will,
but silently.
It will seem empty,
but a white fox
and a black fox
are mating
on the crimson rug.
A number of gold appointments are featured
in this room
which you must not touch,
and the furniture is too valuable
to sit on,
However,
we do understand your wish
to see this place,
to breathe the incense,
and to appreciate its tradition.
If you are interested in the black fox
or the white fox
you may inspect them closely
and ask me any questions
you may have.
Notice the vividness of this place
and the faces that watch you
from the corridor lamps.
It is my pleasure that you are taking this tour.
I will be happy to tell you
whatever I know.
I hope you will not be alarmed to learn
that you may not leave this place again;
because you have seen the black fox mate the white,
and to satisfy your curiosity
let me say,
both animals are now
dead.
--Diane Wakoski
Heh, deliciously creepy poem. A stylish, witty psychological horror story.
You're right, the Stevens I posted is probably his most conventional and "easiest" to read. Still one of the great short poems, IMO. That last line gets me every time (though its "meaning" is mysterious to me). Not sure I see the science fiction?
Will check into this thread again tonight, would love to read any more offerings, if you're so inclined. May proffer some more myself. (Probably mostly Stevens.)
Here's some William Carlos Williams.
William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe"
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,--
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
h, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.[
I like "Dover Beach", especially the last couple lines, but I think Arnold does an excessive gear change between the first stanza and the last one.
Its as if there are some missing stanzas.
I was surprised no one posted "Invictus" - since its one of the most popular and famous Victorian poems.
I guess people aren't into that kind of thing anymore.
Not sure I see the science fiction?
Never mind, I think I know what you mean. It's future projection, which (for us moderns, postmoderns, whatever we are) tends to have a science fiction feel.
Science fiction is the genre in which we ("we" contemporaries) tend to do our future projection (as opposed to, say, prophetic eschatology).
Interestingly, science fiction (even the most dystopic) offers an existential evasion of something, just as eschatology does. The thing about Stevens's poem-- one of the things that makes it great-- is that it doesn't evade, whatever it is. Can't quite put my finger on it.
Thanks for those, rcocean.
"Dover Beach," especially, is a poem I love.
Maybe Victorian poems have gone out of fashion, but I find that one-- read with fresh eyes-- as powerful as ever.
In fact, it strongly reminds me of Wallace Stevens. The encounter with the immensity of the ocean, and all that elicits and symbolizes. The melancholy of it, though not just melancholy, the complex mixture in that response-- e.g. pessimism, resignation, defiance, hope.
yashu: Yeah, the future. I saw "The Time Machine" when I was ten years-old and never got over it.
It was weird with the Stevens poem, in that I didn't know at first how far into the future the children are looking back at us. Set me in that direction and I'll be off a million years ahead.
Soon enough, though, Stevens makes it clear that he doesn't have anything nearly so fantastic in mind. However, reading it again, I suspect he is talking about how our descendants will read our poetry, with the usual provisos about Stevens and meaning.
Dear old Dr. Williams! One of the many things I love about him is the sense of total equality he grants the reader. He is not dictating to you from any height. He's sitting across from you at the kitchen table, offering you a glass of kool-aid. He makes fun of the idea of himself as a genius, though I'm sure he knew his gifts too. A humble poet. How rare!
rcocean: The story behind Invictus is quite moving. It was the poet's personal call to arms after having one leg amputated and being faced with the possibility of losing the other leg too.
I remember discussing this at TOP. Were you one of the commenters then?
yashu: I could do this all night and next morning. Sure, I've got another for you. I'm sure you know Mark Strand and maybe this poem too.
The Whole Story
How it should happen this way
I am not sure, but you
Are sitting next to me,
Minding your own business
When all of a sudden I see
A fire out the window.
I nudge you and say,
"That's a fire. And what's more
We can't do anything about it,
Because we're on this train, see?"
You give me an odd look
As though I had said too much.
But for all you know I may
Have a passion for fires,
And travel by train to keep
From having to put them out.
It may be that trains
Can kindle a love of fire.
I might even suspect
That you are a fireman
In disguise. And then again
I might be wrong. Maybe
You are the one
Who loves a good fire. Who knows?
Perhaps you are elsewhere,
Deciding that with no place
To go you should not
Take a train. And I,
Seeing my own face in the window,
May have lied about the fire.
--Mark Strand, from "Reasons for Moving"
creeley, oh that's a great poem, like it so much, thank you. I've read a little Strand (not that one), don't know him very well at all.
Re-Statement of Romance
The night knows nothing of the chants of night.
It is what it is as I am what I am:
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself
And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,
Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes,
That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self,
In the pale light that each upon the other throws.
--Wallace Stevens
Debris of Life and Mind
There is so little that is close and warm.
It is as if we were never children.
Sit in the room. It is true in the moonlight
That it is as if we had never been young.
We ought not to be awake. It is from this
That a bright red woman will be rising
And, standing in violent golds, will brush her hair.
She will speak thoughtfully the words of a line.
She will think about them not quite able to sing.
Besides, when the sky is so blue, things sing themselves,
Even for her, already for her. She will listen
And feel that her color is a meditation,
The most gay and yet not so gay as it was.
Stay here. Speak of familiar things a while.
--Wallace Stevens
My favorite Stevens is the late Stevens, especially the long poems "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" and "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven," and some of the short poems from "The Rock." (Haven't quoted any of those yet here. Also tried to avoid the most famous poems.)
But to address deborah's original question (sort of). Not sure about "favorite," but the lines that come to me most often, in my everyday (or every other day) life, are probably from one of the first Stevens poems I ever read, "Sunday Morning":
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Or moments from Keats, for example:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
Or passages from Rilke's Duino Elegies, such as
Yes--the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing.
All this was mission. But could you accomplish it?
Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved?
(trans. Stephen Mitchell)
I must to bed. Thanks creeley & others, twas a pleasure, and thanks deborah!
One more (for the road), which is more well-known. Should have posted this right before "Debris of Life and Mind."
Like so often in Stevens, the later poem ("Debris") recalls, modulates, revises notes heard earlier.
ON THE ROAD HOME
It was when I said,
"There is no such thing as the truth,"
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.
You . . . You said,
"There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth."
Then the tree, at night, began to change,
Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.
It was when I said,
"Words are not forms of a single word
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye";
It was when you said,
"The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth";
It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.
yashu: You certainly know your Stevens! You've picked some fine poems. It's interesting that you like his later work better. For most poets and writers the the early work is the best.
Mark Strand falls into this category. His later writing became smoother, more ornate and accomplished but lacked the explosiveness of his early poems.
Stevens was an important poet for John Ashbery. Although Ashbery is far more colloquial than Stevens, he still remains distant from the reader in a similar way, or so it seems to me. This is my favorite Ashbery:
Worsening Situation
Like a rainstorm, he said, the braided colors
Wash over me and are no help. Or like one
At a feast who eats not, for he cannot choose
From among the smoking dishes. This severed hand
Stands for life, and wander as it will,
East or west, north or south, it is ever
A stranger who walks beside me. O seasons,
Booths, chaleur, dark-hatted charlatans
On the outskirts of some rural fete,
The name you drop and never say is mine, mine!
Some day I'll claim to you how all used up
I am because of you but in the meantime the ride
Continues. Everyone is along for the ride,
It seems. Besides, what else is there?
The annual games? True, there are occasions
For white uniforms and a special language
Kept secret from the others. The limes
Are duly sliced. I know all this
But can't seem to keep it from affecting me,
Every day, all day. I've tried recreation,
Reading until late at night, train rides
And romance.
One day a man called while I was out
And left this message: "You got the whole thing wrong
From start to finish. Luckily, there's still time
To correct the situation, but you must act fast.
See me at your earliest convenience. And please
Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it."
I thought nothing of it at the time. Lately
I've been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingering
Starched white collars, wondering whether there's a way
To get them really white again. My wife
Thinks I'm in Oslo--Oslo, France, that is.
--John Ashbery
yashu, rcocean, creeley23:
That elgaic Stevens piece "A Postcard From the Volcano" seems to be a call-out to the Pompeii ruins, and a contemporary evocation of that same spirit. It reminds me a bit of Benet's "Notes to be left in a cornerstone", which is far too long to quote here, but starts, memorably:
This is for you who are to come, with Time,
And gaze upon our ruins with strange eyes
But then, a lot reminds me of Benet. ^_^
creeley23 - Thanks for the The story behind Invictus - I didn't know that. That may have the inspiration for the Reagan scene in "Kings Row".
yashu - Dover Beach used to be a standard "English Class" poem for High-School, I doubt if it is anymore.
Mitch H - I agree, thanks to everyone for posting the Wallace Stevens poetry, didn't know much about him till now.
That elgaic Stevens piece "A Postcard From the Volcano" seems to be a call-out to the Pompeii ruins
Yes, good point. Which makes the title at once funny and deeply poignant. And places the reader in the positions of postcard addresser and addressee both, past present future. We are the children picking up bones, just as those bones will one day be ours.
creeley, what a great Ashbery poem. Haven't read enough Ashbery, but feel a strong affinity for much of what I've read so far. One poet (among many others) I 'd like to explore further.
Really enjoyed your selections. Many of them have a certain something reminiscent of a Kafka fragment/ parable.
Re favorite Stevens, and late vs. early. (Of course, all his great poetry is "late", in the sense that he was a late bloomer. There's no "young" Stevens; he's the great poet of old age.)
I have such a hard time with "favorite," when it comes to Stevens.
I feel closest to the late poems, the voice of the late poems-- philosophically, existentially, in sensibility. To paraphrase "Of Modern Poetry," that voice-- spare, austere-- speaks to me, in the delicatest ear of my mind. (Though I don't happen to be an old man.)
I studied philosophy, and my depressions appear to me as existential crises, so that may have something to do with it (and my love for Stevens overall). I have a penchant for philosophical, existential, metaphysical poems. (Though NB the "philosophy," theory, abstract ideas in Stevens' poetry are in a way the least interesting thing about it. That's not what I love about it. It's hard for me to articulate; I don't find him dry; he moves me.)
But! The early poems are so amazing. They have a strangeness, weirdness, oddity, otherness-- an imagistic vividness (almost luridness) and really compelling rhythmic musicality-- that's not there so much in the later poems. They're incantatory. And Stevens in his way is often funny-- but he's most funny (or most often funny) in his early poems.
So I'm torn. Too hard to pick a side.
PS IMO There's a lot of feeling, painful and passionate feeling in Stevens; but his poetry just doesn't wear it on its sleeve. It's understated, submerged, sometimes ironized-- but that irony doesn't annul it. It expresses it.
I agree with Helen Vendler that, strange as it sounds, he's a great poet of desire (even if it's "desire without an object of desire"). He's also a great poet of self-deprecation. So, a resolutely un-romantic romantic.
Heh. It's kinda fun to have an old abandoned thread all to yourself, or just a couple of us.
Can't bogart an old thread, right?
You can shout and sing and dance a silly dance (or drone on and on, as I have) in a big empty room, without bothering anyone.
yashu: Still here!
I cut my online teeth on one of those old bulletin-board groups, all ascii with not many topics, so the discussions remained alive for as long as anyone wanted to go at a particular topic.
I miss that. The blog style is zippier, but topics have a half-life of about six hours.
With a few exceptions I never found a way into Stevens. He just seemed opaque and sometimes I could hear the music but mostly I couldn't. I don't worry about that. There are many writers I catch on to later.
I do enjoy the parable / prose poem form. Borges and Kafka killed me at a young age. I also find that form communicates to civilians well. I like denser stuff too. Below is the first Neruda that got to me and still does.
People go on and on about Neruda, as he deserves, but they rarely mention "Residence on Earth," his monumental undertaking after "Twenty Love Poems." "Dead Gallop" is the first poem in Residence and I think it's perfect as the lead poem, but I have yet to see it anthologized or discussed.
DEAD GALLOP
Like ashes, like seas peopling themselves,
in the submerged slowness, in the shapelessness,
or as one hears from the crest of the roads
the crossed bells crossing,
having that sound now sundered from the metal,
confused, ponderous, turning to dust
in the very milling of the too distant forms,
either remembered or not seen,
and the perfume of the plums that rolling on the ground
rot in time, infinitely green.
All that so swift, so living,
yet motionless, like the pulley loose within itself,
those wheels of the motors, in short.
Existing like the dry stitches in the tree's seams,
so silent, all around,
all the limbs mixing their tails.
But from where, through where, on what shore?
The constant, uncertain surrounding, so silent,
like the lilacs around the convent
or death's coming to the tongue of the ox
that stumbles to the ground, guard down,
with horns that struggle to blow.
Therefore, in the stillness, stopping, to perceive,
then, like an immense fluttering, above,
like dead bees or numbers,
ah, what my pale heart cannot embrace,
in multitudes, in tears scarcely shed,
and human efforts, anguish,
black deeds suddenly discovered
like ice, vast disorder,
oceanic, to me who enter singing,
as if with a sword among the defenseless.
Well now, what is it made of, that upsurge of doves
that exists between night and time, like a moist ravine?
That sound so prolonged now
that falls lining the roads with stones,
or rather, when only an hour
grows suddenly, stretching without pause.
Within the ring of summer
the great calabash trees once listen,
stretching out their pity-laden plants,
it is made of that, of what with much wooing,
of the fullness, dark with heavy drops.
--Pable Neruda, "Residence on Earth" trans. Donald D. Walsh
Oh, so beautiful. Speaking of philosophical poems. There's a depth, wonder, immensity to that poem, which (to me) harks back to presocratic philosophy (who were also, primordially, poets).
But "philosophical" isn't quite the right word. It's like with Stevens. Poetry which addresses the mysteries philosophy does-- e.g. what it is to be, to be human, to be mortal, in the world, in time-- but not in the manner of philosophy, with its methods, concepts, answers. It probes, in the dark; articulates-- on this side and that of (beyond) concepts-- the experience. The intimacy of the experience. Or something like that.
I'm lucky I'm able to read Neruda fluently in Spanish (raised bilingual); in case anyone here knows Spanish or would like to sound some lines out, here it is in Spanish.
Speaking of Neruda and lines that come often to mind, "sucede que me canso de ser hombre…" sounds sometimes in my head, from the well-known (no doubt known to you, creeley) Neruda poem "Walking Around." One of my favorites from Neruda, though (thank god) this specific mood is one that very rarely afflicts me. (Heh, my moods of alienation tend to manifest themselves differently.) In Spanish here.
Walking Around
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.
trans. Robert Bly
Speaking of Borges, love him too-- his stories of course, but also his poems.
For example,
Limits
Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.
Translation by Alastair Reid, in Spanish here
I cut my online teeth on one of those old bulletin-board groups, all ascii with not many topics, so the discussions remained alive for as long as anyone wanted to go at a particular topic.
I really like the message board format-- a commenter-driven genre, "commenter home" indeed. I used to lurk at the ILM (I Love Music) message board (originally populated by a group of British pop music critics), which expanded to include ILE (I Love Everything), and is now ILX (ilxor.com). Many of those conversations span months or years (with gaps that also last months or years). One of the most wide-ranging and best-working message boards I've ever seen. Still check in and browse/ search through the archives every once in a while.
The blog form is great, but it's more poster-driven than commenter-driven, and the specific thread conversations are so short-lived. This particular community is probably too small (and topics of interest too topical?) for a message board. Anyway, it's nice to see a conversation extend past its one-day shelf life, past the front page. Of course, conversations continue (or are reprised) over multiple posts, too.
yashu: One feature that I liked about my old bulletin-board was that lowly commenters could start topics. Also the hosts were more active in fostering conversation and putting out fires.
Thanks for what you said about Dead Gallop. I've been dying to have a conversation about that poem since I was 25. I couldn't tell you about the Pre-Socratics but my reading is close to yours. Neruda is speaking from the primordial source of creation. It's deep and he takes you there.
I also love the passionate way he uses surrealism -- it becomes far more than most of the clinical French exercises.
You are indeed fortunate to be bilingual. My father spoke Spanish before English. He didn't teach me because he didn't want me to be split as he was -- American father, Mexican mother. In addition to my heritage, Borges and Neruda are reason enough to learn Spanish. I may get to it yet.
Tell me about Neruda translations. I once heard from an indignant poet that she started translating Lorca and Neruda for herself because of Bly's "atrocities of meaning and gross errors...against the language of my mothers and fathers."
Personally I find Bly's translations bland and inartful. I can't believe that there isn't more music in Neruda. I enjoy Merwin's translations but I can tell that I'm getting a Merwinized version of Neruda.
Also, Bly in his time was perhaps the most prominent "community organizers" of American poetry, pushing it in SDS directions.
I do love "It Happens that I'm Tired of Being a Man" (how I remember the poem).
That was written in the early thirties as Europe was gearing up for the Spanish Civil War and WWII. I think it's very difficult for those of us who came later to understand that era.
creeley,
Unfortunately, can't be much help on the subject of Neruda translations-- because (lucky me) I've always read him in Spanish.
But I just looked up the Merwin translation, and yes! much MUCH better.
Neruda is musical indeed, and delicious to read-- to hear/ speak in the mind or aloud. This poem in particular is very rhythmic-- at times has the pace, momentum, of a heavy walk.
Bly's translation is awkward, stilted; there's no pleasure in the sound or rhythm of it.
Interestingly, Merwin's seems to me closer to Neruda, not only in its rhythm, its swing, but also (often) in the exactitude/ literalness of its translation. (Usually, when it comes to translation, you have to choose one or the other; Merwin beats Bly at both.)
So let me post Merwin's (superior) translation:
Walking Around
It happens that I am tired of being a man.
It happens that I go into the tailor's shops and the movies
all shrivelled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan
navigating on a water of origin and ash.
The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud.
I want nothing but the repose either of stone or of wool.
I want to see no more establishments, no more gardens,
nor merchandise, nor glasses, nor elevators.
It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It happens that I am tired of being a man.
Just the same it would be delicious
to scare a notary with a cut lily
or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear.
It would be beautiful
to go through the streets with a green knife
shouting until I died of cold.
I do not want to go on being a root in the dark,
hesitating, stretched out, shivering with dreams,
downwards, in the wet tripe of the earth,
soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.
I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.
I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb,
as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses,
stiff with cold, dying with pain.
For this reason Monday burns like oil
at the sight of me arriving with my jail-face,
and it howls in passing like a wounded wheel,
and its footsteps towards nightfall are filled with hot blood.
And it shoves me along to certain corners, to certain damp houses,
to hospitals where the bones come out of the windows,
to certain cobbler's shops smelling of vinegar,
to streets horrendous as crevices.
There are birds the colour of sulphur, and horrible intestines
hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate,
there are forgotten sets of teeth in a coffee-pot,
there are mirrors
which should have wept with shame and horror,
there are umbrellas all over the place, and poisons, and navels.
I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes,
with fury, with forgetfuless,
I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopedic appliances,
and courtyards hung with clothes on wires,
underpants, towels and shirts which weep
slow dirty tears.
The original is here, followed by various translations (Bly and Merwin & two others). Interesting to compare them. Just on the basis of a skim through, I prefer Merwin's to the others. It appears like the simplest translation-- yet it's also the most beautiful. And that's no simple achievement.
Post a Comment