319
Of Bronze -- and Blaze --
The North -- Tonight --
So adequate -- it forms --
So preconcerted with itself --
So distant -- to alarms --
An Unconcern so sovereign
To Universe, or me --
Infects my simple spirit
With Taints of Majesty --
Till I take vaster attitudes --
And strut upon my stem --
Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,
For Arrogance of them --
My Splendors, are Menagerie --
But their Completeless Show
Will entertain the Centuries
When I, am long ago,
An Island in dishonored Grass --
Whom none but Dasies -- know.
Emily Dickinson
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Poem of the Week 1/15/2012: from Song of Myself
5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.
6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass
Always worth a read.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Poem of the Week 1/8/2011: Beyond the End
Beyond the End
In 'nature' there's no choice --
flowers
swing their heads in the wind, sun & moon
are as they are. But we seem
almost to have it (not just
available death)
It's energy: a spider's thread: not to
'go on living' but to quicken, to activate: extend:
Some have it, they force it --
with work or laughter or even
the act of buying, if that's
all they can lay hands on--
the girls crowding the stores, where light,
color, solid dreams are - what gay
desire! It's their festival,
ring game, wassail, mystery.
It has no grace like that of
the grass, the humble rhythms, the
falling & rising of leaf and star;
it's barely
a constant. Like salt:
take it or leave it
The 'hewers of wood' & so on; every damn
craftsman has it while he's working
but it's not
a question of work: some
shine with it, in repose. Maybe it is
response, the will to respond--('reason
can give nothing at all/like
response to desire') maybe
a gritting of teeth, to go
just that much further, beyond the end
beyond whatever ends: to begin, to be, to defy.
Denise Levertov
"Beyond the end" announces its subject right away: the matter of choice. Levertov does not present a cosmology or a model of the mind so much as an expansive call to action, to energy - exuberance is beauty, blake says, and this poem seems to say so as well. In her zeal to extend energy everywhere, the poet even includes girls shopping as an expression of will, some kind of old English wassail, festival.
The poem addresses the question: is there something that makes humans more than natural, more than flowers swaying to some stimulus, rooted and planted? Perhaps, she suggests, we should rather be as unattached as a spider flying on its thread, flinging ourselves into the blue. And then to refine that image, carry forward "the will to respond," a kind of readiness, or axis perhaps, that holds one together inside. Water pressure inside, the power of oceans concentrated, fiercely joyfully waiting.
In 'nature' there's no choice --
flowers
swing their heads in the wind, sun & moon
are as they are. But we seem
almost to have it (not just
available death)
It's energy: a spider's thread: not to
'go on living' but to quicken, to activate: extend:
Some have it, they force it --
with work or laughter or even
the act of buying, if that's
all they can lay hands on--
the girls crowding the stores, where light,
color, solid dreams are - what gay
desire! It's their festival,
ring game, wassail, mystery.
It has no grace like that of
the grass, the humble rhythms, the
falling & rising of leaf and star;
it's barely
a constant. Like salt:
take it or leave it
The 'hewers of wood' & so on; every damn
craftsman has it while he's working
but it's not
a question of work: some
shine with it, in repose. Maybe it is
response, the will to respond--('reason
can give nothing at all/like
response to desire') maybe
a gritting of teeth, to go
just that much further, beyond the end
beyond whatever ends: to begin, to be, to defy.
Denise Levertov
"Beyond the end" announces its subject right away: the matter of choice. Levertov does not present a cosmology or a model of the mind so much as an expansive call to action, to energy - exuberance is beauty, blake says, and this poem seems to say so as well. In her zeal to extend energy everywhere, the poet even includes girls shopping as an expression of will, some kind of old English wassail, festival.
The poem addresses the question: is there something that makes humans more than natural, more than flowers swaying to some stimulus, rooted and planted? Perhaps, she suggests, we should rather be as unattached as a spider flying on its thread, flinging ourselves into the blue. And then to refine that image, carry forward "the will to respond," a kind of readiness, or axis perhaps, that holds one together inside. Water pressure inside, the power of oceans concentrated, fiercely joyfully waiting.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Poem of the Week 12/30/2011: Carmel Point
Carmel Point
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rock-heads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers presents us with a poem that at once divides and unifies man and nature; man no longer realizes his connections with the greater world, which is patient and unyieldingly calm, permanent, confident. Thus the poet interlaces a conception of reality that does not exclude human beings; it is rather a place to which at some point we ought to return.
Man and nature's common essence (one way to speak of their unity?) is apparent in the first few lines. If things are patient, that is a human category - they exhibit a benevolent human trait, something we humans often cannot reach or touch. Then, man and nature seem to take the other's character in the line, "This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses." Nature is "de-faced," or in a way dehumanized, while humans are a "crop," some kind of planted, temporary field of natural products on their way to being born.
Jeffers effortlessly carries us through a narrative - asking the readers to imagine this pace at first glance from man - a field of poppies and lupin, only a few larger beings making their small mark - horses and cows. This is what we besmirched, cut up with our concrete boxes... but nature, he offers, is unperturbed. Unperturbed because it is so permanent as to be living "in the very grain of the granite, / safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff." It is patient and compassionate, nearly, which we can pick up in the gentle tone in the lines about man and the tides. Nature, like a mother or some much greater figure, sees the truth in our works, which is that they are again not separate from her - these works eventually dissolve like everything else, and so man's childish disruption of nature's beauty is no different than a barnacle on a rock.
Indeed, this is in part a statement about reality - the way of things is to be safe, unthreatened, unhurried, and pristine. What is is beautiful, still, even as it is in motion, from the grazing cows to crashing waves to the sudden growth of a suburban "crop."
This regard perhaps provides the impetus for the final section, wherein the speaker recommends a new orientation, a new way for us to be - "We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; / We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident / As the rock and ocean that we were made from."Human views, it seems, are anxious and quick, whereas nature's vaster view is solid, eternal, confident, firm, strong. In dehumanizing and uncentering from ourselves, we may discover that we are and embody the patience of the rocks, the great geologic beauty of a granite cliff. "Carmel Point" calls for us to understand this, to see the way of things, their patience, and to remember again that it is, ultimately, ourselves and not ourselves that we are seeing - because, perhaps, we simultaneously are and are not.
An afterthought: I recommend reading Robinson Jeffers after some time spent at the California coast - nothing puts his words into better perspective than to see this view oneself, smell the air, hear the crashing and stillness. Indeed, important to know about Jeffers is that he built himself a house out of stones, "Tor House," near Carmel, and lived on the beach alone for many years. A vision of starry, wonderful vastness!
Happy new year all!
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rock-heads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers presents us with a poem that at once divides and unifies man and nature; man no longer realizes his connections with the greater world, which is patient and unyieldingly calm, permanent, confident. Thus the poet interlaces a conception of reality that does not exclude human beings; it is rather a place to which at some point we ought to return.
Man and nature's common essence (one way to speak of their unity?) is apparent in the first few lines. If things are patient, that is a human category - they exhibit a benevolent human trait, something we humans often cannot reach or touch. Then, man and nature seem to take the other's character in the line, "This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses." Nature is "de-faced," or in a way dehumanized, while humans are a "crop," some kind of planted, temporary field of natural products on their way to being born.
Jeffers effortlessly carries us through a narrative - asking the readers to imagine this pace at first glance from man - a field of poppies and lupin, only a few larger beings making their small mark - horses and cows. This is what we besmirched, cut up with our concrete boxes... but nature, he offers, is unperturbed. Unperturbed because it is so permanent as to be living "in the very grain of the granite, / safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff." It is patient and compassionate, nearly, which we can pick up in the gentle tone in the lines about man and the tides. Nature, like a mother or some much greater figure, sees the truth in our works, which is that they are again not separate from her - these works eventually dissolve like everything else, and so man's childish disruption of nature's beauty is no different than a barnacle on a rock.
Indeed, this is in part a statement about reality - the way of things is to be safe, unthreatened, unhurried, and pristine. What is is beautiful, still, even as it is in motion, from the grazing cows to crashing waves to the sudden growth of a suburban "crop."
This regard perhaps provides the impetus for the final section, wherein the speaker recommends a new orientation, a new way for us to be - "We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; / We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident / As the rock and ocean that we were made from."Human views, it seems, are anxious and quick, whereas nature's vaster view is solid, eternal, confident, firm, strong. In dehumanizing and uncentering from ourselves, we may discover that we are and embody the patience of the rocks, the great geologic beauty of a granite cliff. "Carmel Point" calls for us to understand this, to see the way of things, their patience, and to remember again that it is, ultimately, ourselves and not ourselves that we are seeing - because, perhaps, we simultaneously are and are not.
An afterthought: I recommend reading Robinson Jeffers after some time spent at the California coast - nothing puts his words into better perspective than to see this view oneself, smell the air, hear the crashing and stillness. Indeed, important to know about Jeffers is that he built himself a house out of stones, "Tor House," near Carmel, and lived on the beach alone for many years. A vision of starry, wonderful vastness!
Happy new year all!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Poem of the Week 12/22/2011: High Windows
High Windows
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Philip Larkin
Larkin always seems to leave a sort of ambiguity in his poetry, and in this one it has to do, perhaps, with the viewpoint. Whose thoughts are those at the end? Is it the speaker - the grumpy sort of a-religious, modern man? Or is it the person contemplating a Godless future, without any of the worries from Christianity who then remembers the subtlety and vastness of that experience? Indeed, Larkin presents two versions of paradise - the modern and materialist version, against, the quiet experience of vastness the final stanza suggests.
This stanza, after all, in a way suggests Adam and Eve in the garden, but instead of wearing fig leaves she wears a diaphragm, and sex is regarded not sinfully but practically - as something that can be done so long as nobody is pregnant. Also in counterpoint to Christianity seems to be the "long slide / to happiness;" it brings up images of Jacob's ladder to heaven, perhaps, or the great chain of being. Larkin offers us the endless slide of youthful... delight? debauchery?
And then this perspective gets amplified by the italics in the third and fourth stanzas - picking up on how this new world has dropped "bonds and gestures.../ like an outdated combine harvester." This perspective resents the priests, confession, the worrying about an afterlife about which one can do very little, captured in the lines that are nearly spit out, "free bloody birds."
Suddenly, however, the poem ends with something utterly a-cultural and perhaps truly holy. This is rather surprising considering the resentment about cultural bonds in the italics, but the blast of beauty, stillness, and openness offers a completely different theology, a paradise installed endlessly above the church windows. Indeed, even the height of this is probably symbolic, given that the rest of the poem has been earthy and grounded, from the images of the bed to the slide towards happiness to the "bloody birds" (priests) that are falling to the ground. The high windows show a level that is above all of these cultural concerns, debauchery, and worries - a God not tied to any of the cultural forms that show, tell, do, act, oppress, or "free." This God "shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless," an endlessness entirely different from the endless slide of pleasure posited in the early stanzas. A single moment and a few lines pierce the poem at its end!
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Philip Larkin
Larkin always seems to leave a sort of ambiguity in his poetry, and in this one it has to do, perhaps, with the viewpoint. Whose thoughts are those at the end? Is it the speaker - the grumpy sort of a-religious, modern man? Or is it the person contemplating a Godless future, without any of the worries from Christianity who then remembers the subtlety and vastness of that experience? Indeed, Larkin presents two versions of paradise - the modern and materialist version, against, the quiet experience of vastness the final stanza suggests.
This stanza, after all, in a way suggests Adam and Eve in the garden, but instead of wearing fig leaves she wears a diaphragm, and sex is regarded not sinfully but practically - as something that can be done so long as nobody is pregnant. Also in counterpoint to Christianity seems to be the "long slide / to happiness;" it brings up images of Jacob's ladder to heaven, perhaps, or the great chain of being. Larkin offers us the endless slide of youthful... delight? debauchery?
And then this perspective gets amplified by the italics in the third and fourth stanzas - picking up on how this new world has dropped "bonds and gestures.../ like an outdated combine harvester." This perspective resents the priests, confession, the worrying about an afterlife about which one can do very little, captured in the lines that are nearly spit out, "free bloody birds."
Suddenly, however, the poem ends with something utterly a-cultural and perhaps truly holy. This is rather surprising considering the resentment about cultural bonds in the italics, but the blast of beauty, stillness, and openness offers a completely different theology, a paradise installed endlessly above the church windows. Indeed, even the height of this is probably symbolic, given that the rest of the poem has been earthy and grounded, from the images of the bed to the slide towards happiness to the "bloody birds" (priests) that are falling to the ground. The high windows show a level that is above all of these cultural concerns, debauchery, and worries - a God not tied to any of the cultural forms that show, tell, do, act, oppress, or "free." This God "shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless," an endlessness entirely different from the endless slide of pleasure posited in the early stanzas. A single moment and a few lines pierce the poem at its end!
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Poem of the Week 10/5/2011: Returning to My Cottage
Returning to My Cottage
A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley
one by one
woodcutters and fisherman
stop work, start home
the mountains move off
into darkness
alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon
the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past
in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color
it's sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.
Wang Wei, trans. David Young
Written in the early T'ang Dynasty in China, Wang Wei's poem engages with and transcends the landscape genre in which it begins; ultimately, it leads its readers through its gorgeous metaphor for the difference between being related to the world and being self-enclosed.
Wei first manages to be incredibly specific, conjuring a distinct landscape using few and fewer words. It starts with a single bell's tone. This leads us into a valley where workers are heading home. Perhaps this specificity - the singluarity of the event - make it simpler to conjure distinct images, or a single world, in which these events are unfolding. Wang Wei establishes a sense of place, and love for that place.
We can notice the active subjects and verbs Wei offers. In this world, the sound floats, the mountains move, clouds beckon, wind stirs, growth vibrates... Wei's landscape is a living world, one where immense forces have a specific role, action, and effect. And since many of these forces (mountains, clouds, wind, growth) are somewhat universal in nature, they suggest a deeper set of forces moving through this world, or perhaps what Baudelaire might call correspondences. Our landscapes correspond with this one, they play as if in harmony.
So the meeting of particular and universal sets us up for the rich final stanza. Its events are simple. Our speaker is sad to leave this world for the indoors. Blur your eyes, and it looks like he's sad for leaving vast for the smaller - the larger world for a more closed one, a higher order for lower... And we can ponder what it means to be enclosed -- inside of a house with a shut door... To some extent this evokes a world of dead, still air; blur your eyes again and imagine enclosure within the self, where there are limits to what your breath can mingle with and you might encounter. Being in the house is solitary, closed off...
Rilke calls the more open world a world of possibility, and in Wei's expansive active landscape, it's the possibility and vastness of being related to something higher than oneself, or many things, a whole moving breathing landscape and world. What a sad one to leave when our minds are wrapped in thoughts.
I'm leaving it a bit vague at the end... hoping you'll read the poem several times and follow the trajectory and story Wei offers.
Until later, thanks for reading!
A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley
one by one
woodcutters and fisherman
stop work, start home
the mountains move off
into darkness
alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon
the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past
in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color
it's sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.
Wang Wei, trans. David Young
Written in the early T'ang Dynasty in China, Wang Wei's poem engages with and transcends the landscape genre in which it begins; ultimately, it leads its readers through its gorgeous metaphor for the difference between being related to the world and being self-enclosed.
Wei first manages to be incredibly specific, conjuring a distinct landscape using few and fewer words. It starts with a single bell's tone. This leads us into a valley where workers are heading home. Perhaps this specificity - the singluarity of the event - make it simpler to conjure distinct images, or a single world, in which these events are unfolding. Wang Wei establishes a sense of place, and love for that place.
We can notice the active subjects and verbs Wei offers. In this world, the sound floats, the mountains move, clouds beckon, wind stirs, growth vibrates... Wei's landscape is a living world, one where immense forces have a specific role, action, and effect. And since many of these forces (mountains, clouds, wind, growth) are somewhat universal in nature, they suggest a deeper set of forces moving through this world, or perhaps what Baudelaire might call correspondences. Our landscapes correspond with this one, they play as if in harmony.
So the meeting of particular and universal sets us up for the rich final stanza. Its events are simple. Our speaker is sad to leave this world for the indoors. Blur your eyes, and it looks like he's sad for leaving vast for the smaller - the larger world for a more closed one, a higher order for lower... And we can ponder what it means to be enclosed -- inside of a house with a shut door... To some extent this evokes a world of dead, still air; blur your eyes again and imagine enclosure within the self, where there are limits to what your breath can mingle with and you might encounter. Being in the house is solitary, closed off...
Rilke calls the more open world a world of possibility, and in Wei's expansive active landscape, it's the possibility and vastness of being related to something higher than oneself, or many things, a whole moving breathing landscape and world. What a sad one to leave when our minds are wrapped in thoughts.
I'm leaving it a bit vague at the end... hoping you'll read the poem several times and follow the trajectory and story Wei offers.
Until later, thanks for reading!
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Poem of the Week 9/8/2011: Invitation to the Voyage
Invitation to the Voyage
My child, my sister,
Think of the rapture
Of living together there!
Of loving at will,
Of loving till death,
In the land that is like you!
The misty sunlight
Of those cloudy skies
Has for my spirit the charms,
So mysterious,
Of your treacherous eyes,
Shining brightly through their tears.
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
Gleaming furniture,
Polished by the years,
Will ornament our bedroom;
The rarest flowers
Mingling their fragrance
With the faint scent of amber,
The ornate ceilings,
The limpid mirrors,
The oriental splendor,
All would whisper there
Secretly to the soul
In its soft, native language.
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
See on the canals
Those vessels sleeping.
Their mood is adventurous;
It's to satisfy
Your slightest desire
That they come from the ends of the earth.
— The setting suns
Adorn the fields,
The canals, the whole city,
With hyacinth and gold;
The world falls asleep
In a warm glow of light.
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
- Charles Baudelaire, trans. William Aggeler
Thanks many times to C for alerting me to this poem. It's a marvel of a work, something like a love poem but bursting with a greater love than just the erotic -- more like eros, from somebody who loves the world loving another. You see, the entire poem reads as seductive love poem, but the opening line, "My child, my sister," stages it so that we cannot simply read it as a romantic poem. Instead, it is a love like Whitman's, away from the grasping love of a person and towards a love that is meant to enliven the beloved, more objective, true, and vast!
What is this love? It is a love that is meant to bring the girl closer to what she is meant to be, as the first stanza announces. The speaker implores her to imagine the rapture that comes from living in a world that is like her, a land that matches her sensibility, is the right soil in which she can grow. It also draws out a world that exists for the living person -- expresses the sentiment that the world is here for human life, and that everything that is built reaches to us . This reflection is not egotistical, but hopefully grounded on earth, compassionately and exuberantly offering the things of this world to us, who see and live it.
Apparently it's based on some Claude Lorraine paintings of a ship-flecked, so there's an aesthetic joy in the poem as well; the poem is thus an eckphrastic poem, which is a poem based on a piece of art. Just goes to show an incredible ability to communicate and "read" that is outside the academy -- is translated by nothing but images, and then re-written (and re-translated into english) in a poem.
Thanks all for reading,
till later!
My child, my sister,
Think of the rapture
Of living together there!
Of loving at will,
Of loving till death,
In the land that is like you!
The misty sunlight
Of those cloudy skies
Has for my spirit the charms,
So mysterious,
Of your treacherous eyes,
Shining brightly through their tears.
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
Gleaming furniture,
Polished by the years,
Will ornament our bedroom;
The rarest flowers
Mingling their fragrance
With the faint scent of amber,
The ornate ceilings,
The limpid mirrors,
The oriental splendor,
All would whisper there
Secretly to the soul
In its soft, native language.
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
See on the canals
Those vessels sleeping.
Their mood is adventurous;
It's to satisfy
Your slightest desire
That they come from the ends of the earth.
— The setting suns
Adorn the fields,
The canals, the whole city,
With hyacinth and gold;
The world falls asleep
In a warm glow of light.
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
- Charles Baudelaire, trans. William Aggeler
Thanks many times to C for alerting me to this poem. It's a marvel of a work, something like a love poem but bursting with a greater love than just the erotic -- more like eros, from somebody who loves the world loving another. You see, the entire poem reads as seductive love poem, but the opening line, "My child, my sister," stages it so that we cannot simply read it as a romantic poem. Instead, it is a love like Whitman's, away from the grasping love of a person and towards a love that is meant to enliven the beloved, more objective, true, and vast!
What is this love? It is a love that is meant to bring the girl closer to what she is meant to be, as the first stanza announces. The speaker implores her to imagine the rapture that comes from living in a world that is like her, a land that matches her sensibility, is the right soil in which she can grow. It also draws out a world that exists for the living person -- expresses the sentiment that the world is here for human life, and that everything that is built reaches to us . This reflection is not egotistical, but hopefully grounded on earth, compassionately and exuberantly offering the things of this world to us, who see and live it.
Apparently it's based on some Claude Lorraine paintings of a ship-flecked, so there's an aesthetic joy in the poem as well; the poem is thus an eckphrastic poem, which is a poem based on a piece of art. Just goes to show an incredible ability to communicate and "read" that is outside the academy -- is translated by nothing but images, and then re-written (and re-translated into english) in a poem.
Thanks all for reading,
till later!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Poem of the Week 8/31/2011: A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
John Donne
At last, a mourning poem that gathers together lovers, places, people, life and death; in its circled compass, one of Donne's primary metaphors, it inscribes the comings and goings of the things of our lives.
This tension continues in the next stanza --
But trepidation of the spheres,
And the genius of this image is that the circling compass itself evokes the image of the stars that came before it, the heavens circling above us, the trace of the planets in those heavens, and so brings to their separation a greater truth. The lovers live with the same truth that turns the heavens, the one that holds man steady in death -- that of a near universal perspective.
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
John Donne
At last, a mourning poem that gathers together lovers, places, people, life and death; in its circled compass, one of Donne's primary metaphors, it inscribes the comings and goings of the things of our lives.
To approach this poem, I'd suggest following the similies, images, and metaphors Donne uses, and try to decode the story they tell. It begins with a potent similie: with a dying man and his surrounding companions. Through this image Donne presents the poem's tension and argument. While the dying man lets his own soul go, some of those around him say "no." Translated - some will accept passing, and others try to deny it.
This tension continues in the next stanza --
Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Cosmic events replace the dying man as the metaphors at hand. When earth quakes, men scramble to explain, tensely grasping knowledge out of fears. In stark contrast -- they ignore the rotation of the planets, though that movement and change is far more vast. So why tremble when the earth does if it's merely a change; like the stars, part of the everlasting movement of all things?
Now the poem transitions to its subject; lovers appear in the lines. "Dull sublunary lovers / whose soul is sense" cannot allow one-another to part. They only sense the animal aspect of the love, the physical and bodily, and so cannot let one-another go.
This is one half of the argument -- the dull hold on, the wise let go.
And so the speaker tells his (presuming it's a man) mistress -- he and the lady ought to be like the dying man, trusting that a parting is only temporary, and moreover that in the wisdom of parting, there is not parting at all! They are like "gold to airy thinness beat," and that of a compass whose two legs journey far apart yet are not, not once separate; in truth they dance around one-another.
And the genius of this image is that the circling compass itself evokes the image of the stars that came before it, the heavens circling above us, the trace of the planets in those heavens, and so brings to their separation a greater truth. The lovers live with the same truth that turns the heavens, the one that holds man steady in death -- that of a near universal perspective.
The poem's final word, "erect" of course has sexual connotations, but I think it's more potent understood as dignity. It connotes no stretching grasper of a person, but one with dignity who experiences instead of "a breach ... an expansion."
I hope very much you all enjoy.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Poem of the Week 7/14/2011: To Failure
To Failure
You do not come dramatically, with dragons
You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking; nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne,
Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost
That’s seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.
It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Instal you at my elbow like a bore.
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.
Philip Larkin
For this week's PotW, a few brief notes will do. The title, "To Failure," sets up a poem that is somewhat of a letter to failure, discussing what the speaker expected it to be and then what it may actually be. This he does in an Italian sonnet that is tweaked just slightly (slant rhyme and rhyme patterns).
The first eight lines, the first half of the Italian sonnet, present a view of failure that is not, but that seems real. This failure is mythic (heroic even), evoking dragons, ghosts, and some kind objective ledger in the world. The first stanza, in its active, dreamy, engaged world, implies that in a life lived with too much intensity, one's failure has some kind of meaning, either with the bite of a dragon or the slow squeeze of losing all one's money. This failure is life lived fully, mistakes that attack, or that haunt a person, or demand something of them, include a contract and meaning.
The next stanza, which is failure itself, offers nothing other-worldly -- just chestnut trees "caked with silence," a stale smell, the quiet vision of a life in tatters. The contrast here lies at the heart of the poem, for me. Because failure is not adventure, torture, being haunted by the past. Failure, according to Larkin, is nothing. It's a slow decay of life, stillness, staleness, deadness. Blake writes, "expect poison from the standing water," and this seems to me ENTIRELY apt for Larkin's view of failure. Water that sits becomes poison, just as a life that sits, is too passive, is too stale, is a decayed failure.
Indeed! It raises the question of a life well lived! Because is a failure something done wrong, something that tortures a person or demands something of them, or is failure never experiencing that, never going under the nozzle of suffering, mistakes, problems, situations?
Thanks for reading these brief notes. The poem is simple, yes, but much in the way an arrow is simple, going straight to the point! Good night everybody.
Philip Larkin
For this week's PotW, a few brief notes will do. The title, "To Failure," sets up a poem that is somewhat of a letter to failure, discussing what the speaker expected it to be and then what it may actually be. This he does in an Italian sonnet that is tweaked just slightly (slant rhyme and rhyme patterns).
The first eight lines, the first half of the Italian sonnet, present a view of failure that is not, but that seems real. This failure is mythic (heroic even), evoking dragons, ghosts, and some kind objective ledger in the world. The first stanza, in its active, dreamy, engaged world, implies that in a life lived with too much intensity, one's failure has some kind of meaning, either with the bite of a dragon or the slow squeeze of losing all one's money. This failure is life lived fully, mistakes that attack, or that haunt a person, or demand something of them, include a contract and meaning.
The next stanza, which is failure itself, offers nothing other-worldly -- just chestnut trees "caked with silence," a stale smell, the quiet vision of a life in tatters. The contrast here lies at the heart of the poem, for me. Because failure is not adventure, torture, being haunted by the past. Failure, according to Larkin, is nothing. It's a slow decay of life, stillness, staleness, deadness. Blake writes, "expect poison from the standing water," and this seems to me ENTIRELY apt for Larkin's view of failure. Water that sits becomes poison, just as a life that sits, is too passive, is too stale, is a decayed failure.
Indeed! It raises the question of a life well lived! Because is a failure something done wrong, something that tortures a person or demands something of them, or is failure never experiencing that, never going under the nozzle of suffering, mistakes, problems, situations?
Thanks for reading these brief notes. The poem is simple, yes, but much in the way an arrow is simple, going straight to the point! Good night everybody.
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