from Paradise Lost
Book I ll. 1-26
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse,that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
John Milton 1674
Where to start an epic, the greatest in the english language? Well, at the beginning! These are the first 26 lines of John Milton's Paradise Lost, which, as an epic will do, contain the invocation to the muse and introduce the subject. In this poem, the muse plays a large role; Milton said that the muse would come to him at night. In this clear state, the words would arrange themselves in front of his eyes (which, by the way, were sightless; he went blind before composing the poem). He writes, "The thoughts, as if by their own power, produce the lines of poetry," and, "true eloquence I find to be none, but the serious and hearty love of truth... when such a man would speak..., his words (by what I can express), like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places" (An Apology for Smectymnuus).
Even in this excerpt, he asks, "chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer / Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure," hoping for purification and inspiration. So the Muse, for Milton, was a literal visitor he had, in that he did not "make up" the words, but rather that they were given him out of his own desire for truth and goodness. Milton, in writing the epic, assumes the pious pose necessary in order to be inspired: he wants to know himself, he wants to help others, he wants to know God and be able to write of His ways to men.
Milton also wishes to know of all things; the generation of the earth from Chaos, the original state of man and how he fell, the temptation and the goodness of man, life and death, the fall and the possibility of redemption--manifest in the Son of God. So to ask for inspiration is also to ask for knowledge, somewhat paradoxical given that the fall comes as a result of humanity's desire for knowledge. In Paradise Lost, Satan tempts Eve by telling her that she can be Adam's equal in knowledge, so to ask for it in the introduction perhaps benefits from the fall? That is, there's no going back; mankind is hungry for knowledge and to eradicate this won't get us back to the tree of Life. Rather, we have to deal with the conditions of the fall in order to be redeemed, and perhaps, as the existence of knowledge and epics containing them will reveal, it is also possible that the return will be better. After all, the garden of Eden in PL is only a small part of the earth, whereas man presumably finds a far greater Eden upon his redemption, encompassing the old garden and all of the land he has tread since that time...
Oh achingly beautiful, are not these lines:
Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant:
A glorious blossom of creation appears to us here; Milton appropriately uses a sexual and asexual metaphor. Much of the epic following takes place in the fertile and generative garden. The imagery of the plants and animals is almost erotic, and Adam and Eve are consistently naked with one another. Milton implies that there is a holiness and a purity to this kind of sex.
It is also appropriate to discuss generation--pregnancy--in this opening section, as the poet himself must generate the epic. The question of artistic creation in relation to sexual creation in relation to cosmic creation is one that has been played out by artist after artist... what does it mean to be inspired? Sing, O muse!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Poem of the Week 3/2/2008: Dream Song 14
Dream Song 14
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
John Berryman
I like poetry that captures something, that puts its finger right on a certain experience, and Berryman's Dream Songs (a set of more than 300 16 line poems) often brilliantly manage this. The poem's narrator is named Henry. At some point in his life--unknown to the reader--Henry suffered something tragic. He sets forth the story of his life in a series of songs that seem to almost arise from his subconscious, hence the title of the book. Moreover, he does not always speak as "Henry" as a unified person; "Henry" frequently speaks of himself in the third person, and sometimes dresses in blackface, speaking from that.
What strikes me about this poem is the split character of the narrator and the presence of memory revealed in the final stanza, and the humour this engenders. Regarding Henry's split nature: we are presented in the first stanza with a Henry who is as active as Achilles: he "flashes" and "yearns," and has "plights and gripes." One aspect of Henry has a whole set of concerns and interests in his life with which other parts of him are bored to tears. Some Henrys worry about a woman or are depressed about life or are annoyed with a customer. But the narrative Henry in this poem is, "heavy bored." It's so funny, Henry's different attitudes to his life.
Also interesting to me is the way that Berryman writes the clinging, responsive aspects of thought into the end of this poem; the dog sticks in the memory of Henry after it has gone: an exit leaves the lingering impression of the original presence; we cling even though something has left.
It's always fun with Berryman to do a deeper psychological reading; that these poems are "dream songs" is an invitation to do so, I believe. So the question becomes: why does Henry call up the dog leaving? Does this have to do with his psychological trauma early in life, or is it just an incidental impression that rises to the surface for this poem? I might play with the idea that the dog's leaving represents whatever trauma happened once upon a time in Henry's life; an abandonment of some kind leaves a memory, and is left alone with "me" and an impression.
My Brit Lit professor said that it's a great compliment to treat a poetic character as if s/he is real; I have done so with Henry because he is so perfectly devstated and disunified in these poems. It is a great compliment to Berryman indeed, and picking up The Dream Songs at any time is really rewarding and fun.
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
John Berryman
I like poetry that captures something, that puts its finger right on a certain experience, and Berryman's Dream Songs (a set of more than 300 16 line poems) often brilliantly manage this. The poem's narrator is named Henry. At some point in his life--unknown to the reader--Henry suffered something tragic. He sets forth the story of his life in a series of songs that seem to almost arise from his subconscious, hence the title of the book. Moreover, he does not always speak as "Henry" as a unified person; "Henry" frequently speaks of himself in the third person, and sometimes dresses in blackface, speaking from that.
What strikes me about this poem is the split character of the narrator and the presence of memory revealed in the final stanza, and the humour this engenders. Regarding Henry's split nature: we are presented in the first stanza with a Henry who is as active as Achilles: he "flashes" and "yearns," and has "plights and gripes." One aspect of Henry has a whole set of concerns and interests in his life with which other parts of him are bored to tears. Some Henrys worry about a woman or are depressed about life or are annoyed with a customer. But the narrative Henry in this poem is, "heavy bored." It's so funny, Henry's different attitudes to his life.
Also interesting to me is the way that Berryman writes the clinging, responsive aspects of thought into the end of this poem; the dog sticks in the memory of Henry after it has gone: an exit leaves the lingering impression of the original presence; we cling even though something has left.
It's always fun with Berryman to do a deeper psychological reading; that these poems are "dream songs" is an invitation to do so, I believe. So the question becomes: why does Henry call up the dog leaving? Does this have to do with his psychological trauma early in life, or is it just an incidental impression that rises to the surface for this poem? I might play with the idea that the dog's leaving represents whatever trauma happened once upon a time in Henry's life; an abandonment of some kind leaves a memory, and is left alone with "me" and an impression.
My Brit Lit professor said that it's a great compliment to treat a poetic character as if s/he is real; I have done so with Henry because he is so perfectly devstated and disunified in these poems. It is a great compliment to Berryman indeed, and picking up The Dream Songs at any time is really rewarding and fun.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Poem of the Week 2/25/2008: My Last Duchess
My Last Duchess
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart -- how shall I say? -- too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace -- all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good! but thanked
Somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech -- (which I have not) -- to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark' -- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
-- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Robert Browning
Along with Chaucer and James Joyce, Robert Browning is one of the great portrait authors of the English Language. Each of them writes a person who can speak straight out of the page; the poem becomes more like a conversation, or meeting somebody at a party than it does some kind of Literary Exercise, or Diorama of Life. See if you can catch the dark turn of the poem, about 15 lines from the end!
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart -- how shall I say? -- too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace -- all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good! but thanked
Somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech -- (which I have not) -- to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark' -- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
-- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Robert Browning
Along with Chaucer and James Joyce, Robert Browning is one of the great portrait authors of the English Language. Each of them writes a person who can speak straight out of the page; the poem becomes more like a conversation, or meeting somebody at a party than it does some kind of Literary Exercise, or Diorama of Life. See if you can catch the dark turn of the poem, about 15 lines from the end!
Poem of the Week 2/18/2008: Sonnets from the Portugese, Sonnet XIV
XIV
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile---her look---her way
Of speaking gently,---for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'---
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,---and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,---
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
This is from a collection of some of the most famous love sonnets (How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...), written to Robert Browing, also a famous poet. The two had a long love affair in letter form, before they met and married. Delightfully 19th Century of them, and the poems are really classic love poems.
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile---her look---her way
Of speaking gently,---for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'---
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,---and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,---
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
This is from a collection of some of the most famous love sonnets (How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...), written to Robert Browing, also a famous poet. The two had a long love affair in letter form, before they met and married. Delightfully 19th Century of them, and the poems are really classic love poems.
Poem of the Week 2/11/2008: from Prometheus Unbound
Act I
SCENE, a Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered bound to the Precipice. PANTEA and IONE are seated at his feet. Time, Night. During the Scene morning slowly breaks.
PROMETHEUS
MONARCH of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope;
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 10
O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair--these are mine empire:
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 20
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!
SCENE, a Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered bound to the Precipice. PANTEA and IONE are seated at his feet. Time, Night. During the Scene morning slowly breaks.
PROMETHEUS
MONARCH of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope;
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 10
O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair--these are mine empire:
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 20
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Poem of the Week 2/4/2008: XII. Here’s Our Clean Business Now Let’s Go Down the Hall to the Black Room Where I Make My Real Money
XII. Here’s Our Clean Business Now Let’s Go Down the Hall to the Black Room Where I Make My Real Money
You want to see how things were going from the husband’s point of view---
let’s go round the back,
there stands the wife
gripping herself at the elbows and facing the husband.
Not tears he is saying, not tears again. But still they fall.
She is watching him.
I’m sorry he says. Do you believe me.
Watching.
I never wanted to harm you.
Watching.
This is banal. It’s like Beckett. Say something!
I believe
your taxi is here she said.
He looked down at the street. She was right. It stung him,
the pathos of her keen hearing.
There she stood a person with particular traits,
a certain heart, life beating on its way in her.
He signals to the driver, five minutes.
Now her tears have stopped.
What will she do after I go? he wonders. Her evening. It closed his breath.
Her strange evening.
Well he said.
Do you know she began.
What.
If I could kill you I would then have to make another exactly like you.
Why.
To tell it to.
Perfection rested on them for a moment like calm on a lake.
Pain rested.
Beauty does not rest.
The husband touched his wife’s temple
and turned
and ran
down
the
stairs.
--Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband: a fictional essay in 29 tangos
Jumping from a very old portrait to a very new one. Though of course few can rival Chaucer, I think this poem is very good, especially the tone that it strikes, one that is at once modern and self-consciously dramatic. A melodrama, in fact! Though the events of this poem are serious, it seems, the barefaced telling of these emotions, the broken structuring of the stanzas, and the choppy lines take away from any real buildup for the poem. It's a relief from poems that take themselves so seriously. This one does to such an extent that we are relieved, it seems.
You want to see how things were going from the husband’s point of view---
let’s go round the back,
there stands the wife
gripping herself at the elbows and facing the husband.
Not tears he is saying, not tears again. But still they fall.
She is watching him.
I’m sorry he says. Do you believe me.
Watching.
I never wanted to harm you.
Watching.
This is banal. It’s like Beckett. Say something!
I believe
your taxi is here she said.
He looked down at the street. She was right. It stung him,
the pathos of her keen hearing.
There she stood a person with particular traits,
a certain heart, life beating on its way in her.
He signals to the driver, five minutes.
Now her tears have stopped.
What will she do after I go? he wonders. Her evening. It closed his breath.
Her strange evening.
Well he said.
Do you know she began.
What.
If I could kill you I would then have to make another exactly like you.
Why.
To tell it to.
Perfection rested on them for a moment like calm on a lake.
Pain rested.
Beauty does not rest.
The husband touched his wife’s temple
and turned
and ran
down
the
stairs.
--Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband: a fictional essay in 29 tangos
Jumping from a very old portrait to a very new one. Though of course few can rival Chaucer, I think this poem is very good, especially the tone that it strikes, one that is at once modern and self-consciously dramatic. A melodrama, in fact! Though the events of this poem are serious, it seems, the barefaced telling of these emotions, the broken structuring of the stanzas, and the choppy lines take away from any real buildup for the poem. It's a relief from poems that take themselves so seriously. This one does to such an extent that we are relieved, it seems.
Poem of the Week 1/28/2008: from Canterbury Tales
I have included the Miller's Prologue in Middle English first, but following it is the Modern English translation.
from the Miller's Prolouge, Middle English:
Whan that the Knyght had thus his tale ytoold,
In al the route ne was ther yong ne oold
That he ne seyde it was a noble storie,
And worthy for to drawen to memorie;
5 And namely the gentils everichon.
Oure Hooste lough, and swoor, "So moot I gon,
This gooth aright; unbokeled is the male,
Lat se now who shal telle another tale,
For trewely the game is wel bigonne.
10 Now telleth on, sir Monk, if that ye konne
Somwhat to quite with the Knyghtes tale."
The Millere that for dronken was al pale,
So that unnethe upon his hors he sat,
He nolde avalen neither hood ne hat,
15 Ne abyde no man for his curteisie,
But in Pilates voys he gan to crie,
And swoor, "By armes and by blood and bones,
I kan a noble tale for the nones,
With which I wol now quite the Knyghtes tale."
20 Oure Hooste saugh that he was dronke of ale,
And seyde, "Abyd, Robyn, my leeve brother,
Som bettre man shal telle us first another,
Abyd, and lat us werken thriftily."
"By Goddes soule," quod he, "that wol nat I,
25 For I wol speke, or elles go my wey."
Oure Hoost answerde, "Tel on, a devel wey!
Thou art a fool, thy wit is overcome!
"Now herkneth," quod the Miller, "alle and some,
But first I make a protestacioun
30 That I am dronke, I knowe it by my soun;
And therfore, if that I mysspeke or seye,
Wyte it the ale of Southwerk I you preye.
For I wol telle a legende and a lyf
Bothe of a carpenter and of his wyf,
35 How that a clerk hath set the wrightes cappe."
The Reve answerde and seyde, "Stynt thy clappe,
Lat be thy lewed dronken harlotrye,
It is a synne and eek a greet folye
To apeyren any man or hym defame,
40 And eek to bryngen wyves in swich fame;
Thou mayst ynogh of othere thynges seyn."
Modern English:
Now when the knight had thus his story told,
In all the rout there was nor young nor old
But said it was a fine and noble story
Worthy to be kept in memory;
5 And specially the gentle folk, each one.
Our host, he laughed and swore, "So may I run,
But this goes well; unbuckled is the mail;
Let's see now who can tell another tale:
For certainly the game has well begun.
10 Now shall you tell, sir monk, if't can be done,
Something with which to pay for the knight's tale."
The miller, who of drinking was all pale,
So that unsteadily on his horse he sat,
He would not take off either hood or hat,
15 Nor wait for any man, in courtesy,
But all in Pilate's voice began to cry,
And "By the arms and blood and bones," he swore,
"I have a noble story in my store,
With which I will requite the good knight's tale."
20 Our host saw, then, that he was drunk with ale,
And said to him: "Wait, Robin, my dear brother,
Some better man shall tell us first another:
Submit and let us work on profitably
"Now by God's soul," cried he, "that will not I!
25 For I will speak, or else I'll go my way."
Our host replied: "Tell on, then, till doomsday!
You are a fool, your wit is overcome."
"Now hear me," said the miller, "all and some!
But first I make a protestation round
30 That I'm quite drunk, I know it by my sound:
And therefore, if I slander or mis-say,
Blame it on ale of Southwark, so I pray;
For I will tell a legend and a life
Both of a carpenter and of his wife,
35 And how a scholar set the good wright's cap."
The reeve replied and said: "Oh, shut your tap,
Let be your ignorant drunken ribaldry!
It is a sin, and further, great folly
To asperse any man, or him defame,
40 And, too, to bring upon a man's wife shame.
There are enough of other things to say."
This dronke Millere spak ful soone ageyn,
And seyde, "Leve brother Osewold,
Who hath no wyf, he is no cokewold.
45 But I sey nat therfore that thou art oon,
Ther been ful goode wyves many oon,
And evere a thousand goode ayeyns oon badde;
That knowestow wel thyself, but if thou madde.
Why artow angry with my tale now?
50 I have a wyf, pardee, as wel as thow,
Yet nolde I for the oxen in my plogh
Take upon me moore than ynogh,
As demen of myself that I were oon;
I wol bileve wel, that I am noon.
55 An housbonde shal nat been inquisityf
Of Goddes pryvetee, nor of his wyf.
So he may fynde Goddes foysoun there,
Of the remenant nedeth nat enquere."
This drunken miller spoke on in his way,
And said: "Oh, but my dear brother Oswald,
The man who has no wife is no cuckold.
45 But I say not, thereby, that you are one:
Many good wives there are, as women run,
And ever a thousand good to one that's bad,
As well you know yourself, unless you're mad.
Why are you angry with my story's cue?
50 I have a wife, begad, as well as you,
Yet I'd not, for the oxen of my plow,
Take on my shoulders more than is enow,
By judging of myself that I am one;
I will believe full well that I am none.
55 A husband must not be inquisitive
Of God, nor of his wife, while she's alive.
So long as he may find God's plenty there,
For all the rest he need not greatly care."
-Geoffrey Chaucer 1400.
In this poem, I hope, more than any Great and Wise Idea, you search for some sense of a person and a conversation. Reading can be a kind of seeing--watching specific people move around in a specific manner in their specific lives. And Chaucer was a master of specificity--if you can even pick out the characteristics of a person from one of his portraits in The General Prologue, you will learn something most certainly. Part of the genius of Chaucer (though not all, for his runs deep) is that he has such an open eye for types of people. Unconstrained by like for one or judgment for another, though his narrator sometimes expresses these feelings, he still presents them as they are. How easy is it to do? Not very. Some of the novels I have been reading are not necessarily full of very specific or deep voices, nor of types of people.
In this little train of thought, I am influenced by William Blake's comments about Chaucer. He writes,
The Characters of Chaucers Pilgrims are the Characters that compose all Ages & Nations, as one Age falls another rises. different to Mortal Sight but to Immortals only the same, for we see the same Characters repeated again & again in Animals in Vegetables in Minerals & in Men. Nothing new occurs in Identical Existence . . Accident ever varies Substance can never suffer change nor decay.
He always has something new to say.
Good luck reading this, and I hope that you enjoy it!
from the Miller's Prolouge, Middle English:
Whan that the Knyght had thus his tale ytoold,
In al the route ne was ther yong ne oold
That he ne seyde it was a noble storie,
And worthy for to drawen to memorie;
5 And namely the gentils everichon.
Oure Hooste lough, and swoor, "So moot I gon,
This gooth aright; unbokeled is the male,
Lat se now who shal telle another tale,
For trewely the game is wel bigonne.
10 Now telleth on, sir Monk, if that ye konne
Somwhat to quite with the Knyghtes tale."
The Millere that for dronken was al pale,
So that unnethe upon his hors he sat,
He nolde avalen neither hood ne hat,
15 Ne abyde no man for his curteisie,
But in Pilates voys he gan to crie,
And swoor, "By armes and by blood and bones,
I kan a noble tale for the nones,
With which I wol now quite the Knyghtes tale."
20 Oure Hooste saugh that he was dronke of ale,
And seyde, "Abyd, Robyn, my leeve brother,
Som bettre man shal telle us first another,
Abyd, and lat us werken thriftily."
"By Goddes soule," quod he, "that wol nat I,
25 For I wol speke, or elles go my wey."
Oure Hoost answerde, "Tel on, a devel wey!
Thou art a fool, thy wit is overcome!
"Now herkneth," quod the Miller, "alle and some,
But first I make a protestacioun
30 That I am dronke, I knowe it by my soun;
And therfore, if that I mysspeke or seye,
Wyte it the ale of Southwerk I you preye.
For I wol telle a legende and a lyf
Bothe of a carpenter and of his wyf,
35 How that a clerk hath set the wrightes cappe."
The Reve answerde and seyde, "Stynt thy clappe,
Lat be thy lewed dronken harlotrye,
It is a synne and eek a greet folye
To apeyren any man or hym defame,
40 And eek to bryngen wyves in swich fame;
Thou mayst ynogh of othere thynges seyn."
Modern English:
Now when the knight had thus his story told,
In all the rout there was nor young nor old
But said it was a fine and noble story
Worthy to be kept in memory;
5 And specially the gentle folk, each one.
Our host, he laughed and swore, "So may I run,
But this goes well; unbuckled is the mail;
Let's see now who can tell another tale:
For certainly the game has well begun.
10 Now shall you tell, sir monk, if't can be done,
Something with which to pay for the knight's tale."
The miller, who of drinking was all pale,
So that unsteadily on his horse he sat,
He would not take off either hood or hat,
15 Nor wait for any man, in courtesy,
But all in Pilate's voice began to cry,
And "By the arms and blood and bones," he swore,
"I have a noble story in my store,
With which I will requite the good knight's tale."
20 Our host saw, then, that he was drunk with ale,
And said to him: "Wait, Robin, my dear brother,
Some better man shall tell us first another:
Submit and let us work on profitably
"Now by God's soul," cried he, "that will not I!
25 For I will speak, or else I'll go my way."
Our host replied: "Tell on, then, till doomsday!
You are a fool, your wit is overcome."
"Now hear me," said the miller, "all and some!
But first I make a protestation round
30 That I'm quite drunk, I know it by my sound:
And therefore, if I slander or mis-say,
Blame it on ale of Southwark, so I pray;
For I will tell a legend and a life
Both of a carpenter and of his wife,
35 And how a scholar set the good wright's cap."
The reeve replied and said: "Oh, shut your tap,
Let be your ignorant drunken ribaldry!
It is a sin, and further, great folly
To asperse any man, or him defame,
40 And, too, to bring upon a man's wife shame.
There are enough of other things to say."
This dronke Millere spak ful soone ageyn,
And seyde, "Leve brother Osewold,
Who hath no wyf, he is no cokewold.
45 But I sey nat therfore that thou art oon,
Ther been ful goode wyves many oon,
And evere a thousand goode ayeyns oon badde;
That knowestow wel thyself, but if thou madde.
Why artow angry with my tale now?
50 I have a wyf, pardee, as wel as thow,
Yet nolde I for the oxen in my plogh
Take upon me moore than ynogh,
As demen of myself that I were oon;
I wol bileve wel, that I am noon.
55 An housbonde shal nat been inquisityf
Of Goddes pryvetee, nor of his wyf.
So he may fynde Goddes foysoun there,
Of the remenant nedeth nat enquere."
This drunken miller spoke on in his way,
And said: "Oh, but my dear brother Oswald,
The man who has no wife is no cuckold.
45 But I say not, thereby, that you are one:
Many good wives there are, as women run,
And ever a thousand good to one that's bad,
As well you know yourself, unless you're mad.
Why are you angry with my story's cue?
50 I have a wife, begad, as well as you,
Yet I'd not, for the oxen of my plow,
Take on my shoulders more than is enow,
By judging of myself that I am one;
I will believe full well that I am none.
55 A husband must not be inquisitive
Of God, nor of his wife, while she's alive.
So long as he may find God's plenty there,
For all the rest he need not greatly care."
-Geoffrey Chaucer 1400.
In this poem, I hope, more than any Great and Wise Idea, you search for some sense of a person and a conversation. Reading can be a kind of seeing--watching specific people move around in a specific manner in their specific lives. And Chaucer was a master of specificity--if you can even pick out the characteristics of a person from one of his portraits in The General Prologue, you will learn something most certainly. Part of the genius of Chaucer (though not all, for his runs deep) is that he has such an open eye for types of people. Unconstrained by like for one or judgment for another, though his narrator sometimes expresses these feelings, he still presents them as they are. How easy is it to do? Not very. Some of the novels I have been reading are not necessarily full of very specific or deep voices, nor of types of people.
In this little train of thought, I am influenced by William Blake's comments about Chaucer. He writes,
The Characters of Chaucers Pilgrims are the Characters that compose all Ages & Nations, as one Age falls another rises. different to Mortal Sight but to Immortals only the same, for we see the same Characters repeated again & again in Animals in Vegetables in Minerals & in Men. Nothing new occurs in Identical Existence . . Accident ever varies Substance can never suffer change nor decay.
He always has something new to say.
Good luck reading this, and I hope that you enjoy it!
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Poem of the Week 1/21/2008: Psalm 39
Psalm 39
1 I said, "I will take heed of my ways, that I sin not with my tongue;
I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me."
2 I was dumb with silence; I held my peace,
even from good, and my sorrow was stirred.
3 My heart was hot within me; while I was musing,
the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue:
4 "LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days,
what it is, that I may know how frail I am.
5 Behold, Thou hast made my days as a handbreadth, and mine age
is as nothing before Thee; verily every man in his best state is altogether vanity. Selah
6 "Surely every man walketh in a vain show; surely they are disquieted in vain;
he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.
7 "And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in Thee.
8 Deliver me from all my transgressions; make me not the reproach of the foolish.
9 I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it.
10 Remove Thy stroke away from me;
I am consumed by the blow of Thine hand.
11 When with rebukes Thou dost correct man for iniquity,
Thou makest his beauty to be consumed away like a moth;
surely every man is vanity. Selah
12 "Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry;
hold not Thy peace at my tears; for I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
13 O spare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence and am no more."
King James Version.
See also the New English Translation at http://www.bible.org/netbible/index.htm?psa39.htm
Good advice, if difficult.
1 I said, "I will take heed of my ways, that I sin not with my tongue;
I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me."
2 I was dumb with silence; I held my peace,
even from good, and my sorrow was stirred.
3 My heart was hot within me; while I was musing,
the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue:
4 "LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days,
what it is, that I may know how frail I am.
5 Behold, Thou hast made my days as a handbreadth, and mine age
is as nothing before Thee; verily every man in his best state is altogether vanity. Selah
6 "Surely every man walketh in a vain show; surely they are disquieted in vain;
he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.
7 "And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in Thee.
8 Deliver me from all my transgressions; make me not the reproach of the foolish.
9 I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it.
10 Remove Thy stroke away from me;
I am consumed by the blow of Thine hand.
11 When with rebukes Thou dost correct man for iniquity,
Thou makest his beauty to be consumed away like a moth;
surely every man is vanity. Selah
12 "Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry;
hold not Thy peace at my tears; for I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
13 O spare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence and am no more."
King James Version.
See also the New English Translation at http://www.bible.org/netbible/index.htm?psa39.htm
Good advice, if difficult.
Poem of the Week 1/14/2008: from The Four Zoas
from The Four Zoas
Night the Fourth
Deathless for ever now I wander seeking oblivion
In torrents of despair in vain. for if I plunge beneath
Stifling I live. If dashd in pieces from a rocky height
I reunite in endless torment. would I had never risen
From deaths cold sleep beneath the bottom of teh raging Ocean
And cannot those who once have lovd. ever forget their Love?
Are love & rage the same pasion? they are the same in me
Are those who love. like those who died. risen again from death
Immortal. in immortal torment. never to be delieverd
Is it not possible that one risen again from Death
Can die! When dark despair comes over can I not
Flow down into the sea & slumber in oblivion.
Plate 47: ll. 12-23
William Blake
1804
Scholars Brian Wilke and Mary Lynn Johnson note in Blake's Four Zoas: The Design of a Dream, that this passage ought to sit with the great laments of Western literature. Like Hamlet or Byron's character Manfred, the character here (Tharmas, representative of Instinct, the Bodily Senses, or perhaps Creative Power, as in sex or carpentry) longs for a joy now faded. This passage is a cry of despair, one of loneliness and the continual, cyclic shattering of oneself. "Tharmas simply wants to lose consciousness," the scholars write, but cannot. What is Blake saying here? How does this literature embody a universal cry? It calls to mind ideas of life within death, and the role of suffering therein. When is it better to let a piece of oneself die, and when is it seemingly impossible to encourage that along? But better to read it and perhaps taste the cry all humans share here than to let me unpack or "analyze" it to the best of my abiity.
Night the Fourth
Deathless for ever now I wander seeking oblivion
In torrents of despair in vain. for if I plunge beneath
Stifling I live. If dashd in pieces from a rocky height
I reunite in endless torment. would I had never risen
From deaths cold sleep beneath the bottom of teh raging Ocean
And cannot those who once have lovd. ever forget their Love?
Are love & rage the same pasion? they are the same in me
Are those who love. like those who died. risen again from death
Immortal. in immortal torment. never to be delieverd
Is it not possible that one risen again from Death
Can die! When dark despair comes over can I not
Flow down into the sea & slumber in oblivion.
Plate 47: ll. 12-23
William Blake
1804
Scholars Brian Wilke and Mary Lynn Johnson note in Blake's Four Zoas: The Design of a Dream, that this passage ought to sit with the great laments of Western literature. Like Hamlet or Byron's character Manfred, the character here (Tharmas, representative of Instinct, the Bodily Senses, or perhaps Creative Power, as in sex or carpentry) longs for a joy now faded. This passage is a cry of despair, one of loneliness and the continual, cyclic shattering of oneself. "Tharmas simply wants to lose consciousness," the scholars write, but cannot. What is Blake saying here? How does this literature embody a universal cry? It calls to mind ideas of life within death, and the role of suffering therein. When is it better to let a piece of oneself die, and when is it seemingly impossible to encourage that along? But better to read it and perhaps taste the cry all humans share here than to let me unpack or "analyze" it to the best of my abiity.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Poem of the Week 1/7/2008: Elevation
Elevation
Above the valleys and above the meres
over woods and mountains, clouds and ocean, past
the sun, the depths of ether, and the vast
utmost boundaries of the starry spheres,
my spirit, you are nimble in your flight,
like a good swimmer blissful in the billow;
gaily through the profound void you furrow
with an ineffable and male delight.
Fly far away from these unhealthful vapors,
go purify yourself in loftier air,
drinking, like a pure and heavenly liquor,
the clear fire brimming our limpid space.
Beyond the boredoms, the immense chagrins
which weight our foggy lives with their dark burden,
happy is he who can with vigorous wings
win to the serene and radiant gardens;
happy the man whose thoughts, like blithe larks flying
in the skies of morning, freely use their powers
--who, hovering over life, knows without trying
the tongues of silent things and of the flowers.
--Charles Baudelaire 1857
trans. C. F. MacIntyre, modified ll. 12 by S. Smith
Read this poem more than once, please!
This is a poem to be tasted, to be soared with, for Baudelaire to sing us. Oh, a longing for a purer mode, for a freedom and weightlessness that is, surprisingly at the end of the poem, rooted on the earth itself--in the tongues of silent things and of the flowers. Indeed, to bring the reader so full circle in this poem really askswhat it might mean for a person to embark on this journey--how to rise so high that one is beyond ether?
Beyond ether is God, in Aristotle's cosmology. Beneath things are heavy, weighty, foggy...
There are a few lines in this poem that I just cannot forget; in the third stanza, Baudelaire writes that we could drink, "like a pure and heavenly liquor, / the clear fire brimming our limpid space." At the very edges of our reality, or perhaps showing through its seams, what is there?
The poet has a taste of it.
Above the valleys and above the meres
over woods and mountains, clouds and ocean, past
the sun, the depths of ether, and the vast
utmost boundaries of the starry spheres,
my spirit, you are nimble in your flight,
like a good swimmer blissful in the billow;
gaily through the profound void you furrow
with an ineffable and male delight.
Fly far away from these unhealthful vapors,
go purify yourself in loftier air,
drinking, like a pure and heavenly liquor,
the clear fire brimming our limpid space.
Beyond the boredoms, the immense chagrins
which weight our foggy lives with their dark burden,
happy is he who can with vigorous wings
win to the serene and radiant gardens;
happy the man whose thoughts, like blithe larks flying
in the skies of morning, freely use their powers
--who, hovering over life, knows without trying
the tongues of silent things and of the flowers.
--Charles Baudelaire 1857
trans. C. F. MacIntyre, modified ll. 12 by S. Smith
Read this poem more than once, please!
This is a poem to be tasted, to be soared with, for Baudelaire to sing us. Oh, a longing for a purer mode, for a freedom and weightlessness that is, surprisingly at the end of the poem, rooted on the earth itself--in the tongues of silent things and of the flowers. Indeed, to bring the reader so full circle in this poem really askswhat it might mean for a person to embark on this journey--how to rise so high that one is beyond ether?
Beyond ether is God, in Aristotle's cosmology. Beneath things are heavy, weighty, foggy...
There are a few lines in this poem that I just cannot forget; in the third stanza, Baudelaire writes that we could drink, "like a pure and heavenly liquor, / the clear fire brimming our limpid space." At the very edges of our reality, or perhaps showing through its seams, what is there?
The poet has a taste of it.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Poem of the Week 12/31/2007: Ode to a Chestnut on the Ground
Ode to a Chestnut on the Ground
Out of the bristling foliage
you fell
complete:
polished wood,
glistening mahogany,
perfect
as a violin that has just
been born in the treetops
and falls
offering the gifts locked inside it,
its hidden sweetness,
finished in secret among
birds and leaves,
school of form,
lineage of firewood and flour,
oval instrument
that holds in its structure
unblemished delight and edible rose.
Up there, you abandoned
the bristling husk
that half-opened its barbs
in the light of the chestnut tree,
through that opening
you saw the world,
birds
filled with syllables,
starry
dew,
and down below
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses that fluttered restlessly,
smoke that rises and rises.
You made up your mind,
chestnut, and you leapt down to earth,
burnished and prepared,
firm and smooth
as a small breast
in teh islands of America.
You fell
hitting
the ground
but
nothing happened,
the grass
went on fluttering, the old
chestnut tree whispered like the mouths
of a hundred trees,
one leaf fell from red autumn,
steadily the hours kept on working
upon the earth.
Because you are
just
a seed:
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the embryo,
the floury thickness,
the maternal eyelids,
which, buried, will open again
toward the heights
the simple magnificence
of foliage,
the dark, damp network
of new roots,
the ancient and new dimensions
of another chestnut tree on earth.
Pablo Neruda 1954
trans. Stephen Mitchell
Out of the bristling foliage
you fell
complete:
polished wood,
glistening mahogany,
perfect
as a violin that has just
been born in the treetops
and falls
offering the gifts locked inside it,
its hidden sweetness,
finished in secret among
birds and leaves,
school of form,
lineage of firewood and flour,
oval instrument
that holds in its structure
unblemished delight and edible rose.
Up there, you abandoned
the bristling husk
that half-opened its barbs
in the light of the chestnut tree,
through that opening
you saw the world,
birds
filled with syllables,
starry
dew,
and down below
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses that fluttered restlessly,
smoke that rises and rises.
You made up your mind,
chestnut, and you leapt down to earth,
burnished and prepared,
firm and smooth
as a small breast
in teh islands of America.
You fell
hitting
the ground
but
nothing happened,
the grass
went on fluttering, the old
chestnut tree whispered like the mouths
of a hundred trees,
one leaf fell from red autumn,
steadily the hours kept on working
upon the earth.
Because you are
just
a seed:
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the embryo,
the floury thickness,
the maternal eyelids,
which, buried, will open again
toward the heights
the simple magnificence
of foliage,
the dark, damp network
of new roots,
the ancient and new dimensions
of another chestnut tree on earth.
Pablo Neruda 1954
trans. Stephen Mitchell
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Poems of the Week 12/24/2007: My Nose Garden
Because who's tired of those last three serious poems!
My Nose Garden
I have rowses and rowses of noses and noses,
And why they all growses I really can't guess.
No lilies or roses, just cold-catching noses,
And when they all blowses, it's really a mess.
They runs and they glowses, these sneezity noses,
They drips and they flowses, they blooms and they dies.
But you can't bring no noses to fine flower showses
And really expect them to give you a prize.
But each mornin' I goeses to water with hoses
These rowses of noses that I cannot sell,
These red sniffly noses that cause all my woeses,
Why even the crowses complain that they smell.
Why noses, not roses? Well, nobody knowses.
Why do you suposes they growses this thick?
But since there's no roses come gather some noses--
I guarantee each one's a good nose to pick.
Shel Silverstein 1996
Uselessness, a little fun, yes!
My Nose Garden
I have rowses and rowses of noses and noses,
And why they all growses I really can't guess.
No lilies or roses, just cold-catching noses,
And when they all blowses, it's really a mess.
They runs and they glowses, these sneezity noses,
They drips and they flowses, they blooms and they dies.
But you can't bring no noses to fine flower showses
And really expect them to give you a prize.
But each mornin' I goeses to water with hoses
These rowses of noses that I cannot sell,
These red sniffly noses that cause all my woeses,
Why even the crowses complain that they smell.
Why noses, not roses? Well, nobody knowses.
Why do you suposes they growses this thick?
But since there's no roses come gather some noses--
I guarantee each one's a good nose to pick.
Shel Silverstein 1996
Uselessness, a little fun, yes!
Poem of the Week 12/17/2007: Where Many Rivers Meet
Where Many Rivers Meet
All the water below me came from above
All the clouds living in the mountains
gave it to the rivers
who gave it to the sea, which was their dying.
And so I float on cloud become water,
central sea surrounded by white mountains,
the water salt, once fresh,
cloud fall and stream rush, tree root and tide bank
leading to the rivers' mouths
and the mouths of the rivers sing into the sea,
the stories buried in the mountains
give out into the sea
and the sea remembers
and sings back
from the depths
where nothing is forgotten.
This brings to mind impermanence (as a different poem might say), even though Whyte closes with the idea that the sea will remember all of the places its particles have been. He is probably going for unity within nature, the transformation of one element into another, the great commune between things. It probably also wants to imply that we are part of it; by writing this poem, perhaps he enters the cycle, as do we, tiny, ephemeral pieces in a great, remembering whole.
All the clouds living in the mountains
gave it to the rivers
who gave it to the sea, which was their dying.
And so I float on cloud become water,
central sea surrounded by white mountains,
the water salt, once fresh,
cloud fall and stream rush, tree root and tide bank
leading to the rivers' mouths
and the mouths of the rivers sing into the sea,
the stories buried in the mountains
give out into the sea
and the sea remembers
and sings back
from the depths
where nothing is forgotten.
David Whyte 2004
This brings to mind impermanence (as a different poem might say), even though Whyte closes with the idea that the sea will remember all of the places its particles have been. He is probably going for unity within nature, the transformation of one element into another, the great commune between things. It probably also wants to imply that we are part of it; by writing this poem, perhaps he enters the cycle, as do we, tiny, ephemeral pieces in a great, remembering whole.
Poem of the Week 12/10/2007: "...an ill that heals and wounds."
{From a capitolo, a verse epistle:]
Young ladies, you who still enjoy your freedom
From the constraining bounds that Love imposes,
With which I and so many more are bound,
If you wish passionately to have knowledge
About this Love, who is made god and master
Not only by this age, but by olden times:
It is a burning feeling, vain desire
For empty shadows, self-imposed deception,
Setting your own well-being in disregard;...
Display of what were better kept in hiding,
A way of life forever pale and trembling,
Wandering in a way not understood;
Debasing of your self toward the beloved,
But when away from him, bold and defiant---
Not knowing surely where to set your feet;
A state of holding your own life in hatred,
Loving another more; your own existence
Darkened and say; again, happy and bright.
An apathy toward other occupations,
Fleeing from company of other people;
Close to one only, alien to yourself;...
Though hurt, unable to express your grievance
To the offended; misdirected anger
Against yourself, disprizing of yourself;
Seeing one face alone that's worth the looking;
Preoccupied with it, though at a distance;
An inner happiness expressed in sighs---
And finally, an ill that heals and wounds.
[#241, ll.1-9, 25-36, 43-49]
Gaspara Stampa ~1550
trans. Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie 1994
Rilke references Gaspara Stampa in the First Elegy of the Duino Elegies, and for a moment I had to ask why: why choose this poet? Why would their poetry intersect? Stampa is concerned with the experience of love, and the experience of the lover-abandoned. A member of the Italian literati in Venice in the 1540s and 50s, she fell in love with Collaltino de Collato, an adventuring man who, though was Stampa's sometime lover, did not return her love with such ardour. Stampa, on the other hand, wrote 311 poems out of this abandonment.
I might bet that Rilke chooses Stampa for her bravery in facing her despair. He writes that we ought to admire her as a greater lover, and it does seem that she can bear greater love! She can embrace the love and the anxiety, learning from both. Moreover, she is keenly aware of the progress that comes from suffering--this selection ends with, "an ill that heals and wounds." In what capacity does it do both? I believe that she is talking firstof the pleasure of loving another so much that even to think about his leaving makes one feel the closer to him, and thus happier. In other poems, though, she is explicit that he was the muse for an even greater love, poetry itself. There is healing in the controlled expression and transsubstantiation of love, perhaps. Is this true, that a refined, healthy way of dealing with the sexual feeling, and with love, is through art? I wonder!
Young ladies, you who still enjoy your freedom
From the constraining bounds that Love imposes,
With which I and so many more are bound,
If you wish passionately to have knowledge
About this Love, who is made god and master
Not only by this age, but by olden times:
It is a burning feeling, vain desire
For empty shadows, self-imposed deception,
Setting your own well-being in disregard;...
Display of what were better kept in hiding,
A way of life forever pale and trembling,
Wandering in a way not understood;
Debasing of your self toward the beloved,
But when away from him, bold and defiant---
Not knowing surely where to set your feet;
A state of holding your own life in hatred,
Loving another more; your own existence
Darkened and say; again, happy and bright.
An apathy toward other occupations,
Fleeing from company of other people;
Close to one only, alien to yourself;...
Though hurt, unable to express your grievance
To the offended; misdirected anger
Against yourself, disprizing of yourself;
Seeing one face alone that's worth the looking;
Preoccupied with it, though at a distance;
An inner happiness expressed in sighs---
And finally, an ill that heals and wounds.
[#241, ll.1-9, 25-36, 43-49]
Gaspara Stampa ~1550
trans. Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie 1994
Rilke references Gaspara Stampa in the First Elegy of the Duino Elegies, and for a moment I had to ask why: why choose this poet? Why would their poetry intersect? Stampa is concerned with the experience of love, and the experience of the lover-abandoned. A member of the Italian literati in Venice in the 1540s and 50s, she fell in love with Collaltino de Collato, an adventuring man who, though was Stampa's sometime lover, did not return her love with such ardour. Stampa, on the other hand, wrote 311 poems out of this abandonment.
I might bet that Rilke chooses Stampa for her bravery in facing her despair. He writes that we ought to admire her as a greater lover, and it does seem that she can bear greater love! She can embrace the love and the anxiety, learning from both. Moreover, she is keenly aware of the progress that comes from suffering--this selection ends with, "an ill that heals and wounds." In what capacity does it do both? I believe that she is talking firstof the pleasure of loving another so much that even to think about his leaving makes one feel the closer to him, and thus happier. In other poems, though, she is explicit that he was the muse for an even greater love, poetry itself. There is healing in the controlled expression and transsubstantiation of love, perhaps. Is this true, that a refined, healthy way of dealing with the sexual feeling, and with love, is through art? I wonder!
Poem of the Week 12/3/2007: from Duino Elegies
from The Seventh Elegy
No more wooing! Voice, you've outgrown wooing; it won't be
the reason for your cry anymore, even if you cried clear as
a bird when the soaring season lifts him, almost forgetting
he's an anxious creature, and not just a single heart
she's tossing toward brightness, into the intimate blue.
Just like him, you'd be courting some still invisible,
still silent lover, a mate whose reply was slowly waking
and warming itself while she listened-- the glowing
reflection of your own fired feeling.
And, oh, Spring would understand--the mustic
of your annunciation would echo everywhere.
First that tiny swell of questioning surrounded by
the purely affirmative day's magnifying stillness.
Then the calling-intervals, the rising steps up
to the future's dreamed-of temple; then the trill,
the fountain whose rising jet's already lured into
falling by the promist of play... And ahead of it, summer.
Not only all of summer' dawns, not only
the way they turn into day and shine before beginning.
Not only the days, so delicate around flowers, bove,
around the molded trees, so heavy and strong.
Not only the reverence of these unleashed forces,
not only the paths, not only the evening meadows,
not only the breathing freshness after late thunder,
not only the coming of sleep and a premonition
at night--but also the nights! the high summer nights,
the nights and the stars, the stars of the earth.
Oh, to be dead at last and know all the stars,
forever! Then how, how, how could you forget them!
Look, I've been calling a lover. But she wouldn't come
alone... Other girls would rise out
of those crumbling graves and stand... How could I
limit the call I'd made? The lost are always searching
for the earth again. --Children, just one thing
of this world suddenly undrestood is valid for many.
Never think destiny's more than the substrate of childhood:
how often you'd catch up with a lover, panting, panting
from the happy chase, into the open, forever.
Life is glorious here. You girls knew it, even you
who seem to have gone without it--you who sank under
in the cities' vilest streets festerung like open sewers.
For there was one hour for each of you, maybe
less than an hour, some span between two whiles
that can hardly be measured, when you possessed Being.
All. Your veins swelled with existence.
But we forget so easily what our laughing neighbor
neigher confirms nor envies. We want to make it
visible, even though the most visible joy reveals
itself to us only when we've transformed it, within.
Love, the World exists nowhere but within.
Our life is lived in transformation. And, diminishing,
the outer world vanishes.
Ranier Maria Rilke 1927
Goethe, a great German poet, said that he spent his entire life learning to read. At eighty, he still didn't have the trick. So one question is, why might that be? What does it take to read?
I wonder if reading is a kind of state, a receptive, responsive, open one one's memory is relaxed enough to access different one's varoius associations. A great book would call for very great associations, perhaps, meaning expansion of experience. Real reading might also demand that one stay engaged with every word, difficult to do when thoughts attempt to interrupt through every line.
Rilke is often a litmus test for reading, for me, because he does demand a certain state of sensitivity, rare and delightful when it arises.
It's so hard to codify Rilke in an "analysis"--he must truly be read, be given over to, for only then could the sense of my small words come out. But a note about the first stanza:
Birds, in Rilke's poetry, often represent a higher state for man, a person who is freer from the heavy concerns of man. And so this bird forgets his own anxiety, forgets one identity in order to become a particle of the whole, "just a single heart."
Another thought: Rilke does such an exquisite job incorporating rapture and sadness into his poetry. Every time I read the Duino Elegies I am lifted and saddened. It seems that he balances the possibility of openness with such a compassionate look at the small and wondering man struggling to live.
No more wooing! Voice, you've outgrown wooing; it won't be
the reason for your cry anymore, even if you cried clear as
a bird when the soaring season lifts him, almost forgetting
he's an anxious creature, and not just a single heart
she's tossing toward brightness, into the intimate blue.
Just like him, you'd be courting some still invisible,
still silent lover, a mate whose reply was slowly waking
and warming itself while she listened-- the glowing
reflection of your own fired feeling.
And, oh, Spring would understand--the mustic
of your annunciation would echo everywhere.
First that tiny swell of questioning surrounded by
the purely affirmative day's magnifying stillness.
Then the calling-intervals, the rising steps up
to the future's dreamed-of temple; then the trill,
the fountain whose rising jet's already lured into
falling by the promist of play... And ahead of it, summer.
Not only all of summer' dawns, not only
the way they turn into day and shine before beginning.
Not only the days, so delicate around flowers, bove,
around the molded trees, so heavy and strong.
Not only the reverence of these unleashed forces,
not only the paths, not only the evening meadows,
not only the breathing freshness after late thunder,
not only the coming of sleep and a premonition
at night--but also the nights! the high summer nights,
the nights and the stars, the stars of the earth.
Oh, to be dead at last and know all the stars,
forever! Then how, how, how could you forget them!
Look, I've been calling a lover. But she wouldn't come
alone... Other girls would rise out
of those crumbling graves and stand... How could I
limit the call I'd made? The lost are always searching
for the earth again. --Children, just one thing
of this world suddenly undrestood is valid for many.
Never think destiny's more than the substrate of childhood:
how often you'd catch up with a lover, panting, panting
from the happy chase, into the open, forever.
Life is glorious here. You girls knew it, even you
who seem to have gone without it--you who sank under
in the cities' vilest streets festerung like open sewers.
For there was one hour for each of you, maybe
less than an hour, some span between two whiles
that can hardly be measured, when you possessed Being.
All. Your veins swelled with existence.
But we forget so easily what our laughing neighbor
neigher confirms nor envies. We want to make it
visible, even though the most visible joy reveals
itself to us only when we've transformed it, within.
Love, the World exists nowhere but within.
Our life is lived in transformation. And, diminishing,
the outer world vanishes.
Ranier Maria Rilke 1927
Goethe, a great German poet, said that he spent his entire life learning to read. At eighty, he still didn't have the trick. So one question is, why might that be? What does it take to read?
I wonder if reading is a kind of state, a receptive, responsive, open one one's memory is relaxed enough to access different one's varoius associations. A great book would call for very great associations, perhaps, meaning expansion of experience. Real reading might also demand that one stay engaged with every word, difficult to do when thoughts attempt to interrupt through every line.
Rilke is often a litmus test for reading, for me, because he does demand a certain state of sensitivity, rare and delightful when it arises.
It's so hard to codify Rilke in an "analysis"--he must truly be read, be given over to, for only then could the sense of my small words come out. But a note about the first stanza:
Birds, in Rilke's poetry, often represent a higher state for man, a person who is freer from the heavy concerns of man. And so this bird forgets his own anxiety, forgets one identity in order to become a particle of the whole, "just a single heart."
Another thought: Rilke does such an exquisite job incorporating rapture and sadness into his poetry. Every time I read the Duino Elegies I am lifted and saddened. It seems that he balances the possibility of openness with such a compassionate look at the small and wondering man struggling to live.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Poem of the Week 11/26/2007: Sailing to Byzantium
Sailing to Byzantium
I
THAT is no country* for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
William Butler Yeats 1927
*the country of animal pleasures
from, Yeats, William. William Butler Yeats: Selected Poems and Four Plays. Ed. M.L. Rosenthal. New York: Scribner Paperback Poetry, 1996., a note on Yeats:
"Byzantium" in Yeats' poetry refers specifically to the capital of the Byzantine empire, in the fifth and sixth centuries, when there was "substituted for Roman magnificence, with its glorification of physical power, an architecture that suggests the Sacred City in the Apocalypse of St. John. I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity... I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. I think I could find in some little wine-shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending near to him than Plotinus even. ... I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one ... The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books, were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design..." (A Vision, pp. 270-280). Thus, Byzantium, in addition to its exotic Eastern connotations of a romantic nature, and of a stylized art and orientalized Christianity, represents a perfection of aesthetic and spiritual imagination to which the old man who is the protagonist of Yeats' poem wishes to turn.
I
THAT is no country* for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
William Butler Yeats 1927
*the country of animal pleasures
from, Yeats, William. William Butler Yeats: Selected Poems and Four Plays. Ed. M.L. Rosenthal. New York: Scribner Paperback Poetry, 1996., a note on Yeats:
"Byzantium" in Yeats' poetry refers specifically to the capital of the Byzantine empire, in the fifth and sixth centuries, when there was "substituted for Roman magnificence, with its glorification of physical power, an architecture that suggests the Sacred City in the Apocalypse of St. John. I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity... I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. I think I could find in some little wine-shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending near to him than Plotinus even. ... I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one ... The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the illuminator of sacred books, were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without the consciousness of individual design..." (A Vision, pp. 270-280). Thus, Byzantium, in addition to its exotic Eastern connotations of a romantic nature, and of a stylized art and orientalized Christianity, represents a perfection of aesthetic and spiritual imagination to which the old man who is the protagonist of Yeats' poem wishes to turn.
Poem of the Week 11/19/2007: Jacob's Ladder Reversed
Jacob’s Ladder Reversed
I tell a story awfully.
If I were to find a girl in a well, become a hero,
surely I too would take my life.
I have at lesser successes.
I have wrestled with such pale angels.
For example, I know a wonderful girl
who is wonderful because once we spoke
barely knowing each other while speaking
& she moved my furniture & painted it gold
& set me up with friends & lovers.
She is wonderful. Do you see?
Did I tell you that this was two years ago,
that I’d just been married?
This wonderful girl did not come to the wedding.
(She was not invited.) Still I think her wonderful.
Throw me a little ladder.
Let me climb back now to my grave
Arielle Greenberg
Some general questions about this poem. Maybe you could write a paper.
Hm. Regrets. What is an opportunity?
In what ways is the narrator conflicted, and what does this conflict show us?
Another, more specific: does anybody know the reference in the first stanza, to finding a girl in a well and saving her life?
I tell a story awfully.
If I were to find a girl in a well, become a hero,
surely I too would take my life.
I have at lesser successes.
I have wrestled with such pale angels.
For example, I know a wonderful girl
who is wonderful because once we spoke
barely knowing each other while speaking
& she moved my furniture & painted it gold
& set me up with friends & lovers.
She is wonderful. Do you see?
Did I tell you that this was two years ago,
that I’d just been married?
This wonderful girl did not come to the wedding.
(She was not invited.) Still I think her wonderful.
Throw me a little ladder.
Let me climb back now to my grave
Arielle Greenberg
Some general questions about this poem. Maybe you could write a paper.
Hm. Regrets. What is an opportunity?
In what ways is the narrator conflicted, and what does this conflict show us?
Another, more specific: does anybody know the reference in the first stanza, to finding a girl in a well and saving her life?
Friday, November 23, 2007
Poem of the Week 11/15/2007: Pigeons at Dawn
Pigeons at Dawn
Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.
Some stay up into the wee hours
To search their souls.
Others undress each other in darkened rooms.
The creaky old elevator
Took us down to the icy cellar first
To show us a mop and a bucket
Before it deigned to ascend again
With a sigh of exasperation.
Under the vast, early-dawn sky
The city lay silent before us.
Everything on hold:
Rooftops and water towers,
Clouds and wisps of white smoke.
We must be patient, we told ourselves,
See if the pigeons will coo now
For the one who comes to her window
To feed them angel cake,
All but invisible, but for her slender arm.
Charles Simic
I am hesitating to say what I think this poem means; Charles Simic (our current Poet Laurate) uses imagery so delicately and carefully... I don't want to do it violence. It has a secret, you know, and it's hard to strip that away. So before you read my comments, please read the poem again.
I think, ever so quietly, this poem's secret is our crystalline and awkward search for meaning. The beginning presents a secret--the much that is hidden. It also hands us searchers: the tortured soul up late at night, and the lovers tasting it on each others' skin. And yet there is a third kind of searcher, he who looks to the things in this world, the beautiful and silent times.
What are they looking for? What has been hidden for so long?
Simic brings us through this journey through the rest of the poem. Perhaps it is down a creaky elevator. The poet and his friend, before they reach the morning, must plumb the depths of the icy cellar; here, Simic invites the thought of the subconscious without committing to it.
Because after the depths, the heights: the poet and friend open up to the rooftops. In the morning, it is quiet and cold in this city which could be any city. And they wait in this somehow open and spare landscape for the detail for which they wait--the tiny gleam of secret, of meaning.
And so Simic brings us to the end, leaving an image of smoke and light, and the tiniest hint of meaning, of beauty. Are we to find meaning in the small things? What is the journey we must take to arrive there? What roads will a person take?
Am I being to heavy with this poem? It could be that Simic means this to be aesthetic commune with the world, and for the mop and bucket to be only a mop and a bucket. Were I a good literary critic, I might even say so, that Simic is stuck to images and wants us to stay there as well. But this is a beautiful thing: to have images and meaning together! Images and subconscious--Heidegger says that Plato was daring to call the only unseeable things eidos, Forms. That which is invisible is made visible, sometimes in poetry. Can I make this clearer? When Coleridge wrote his great poem "Kubla Khan," he says that he recieved it in a dream wherein "the words rose before him as things." The unseen becomes seen, the hidden revealed. So why not blend the two, let the poem be fully image and fully subconscious! Good night!
Extraordinary efforts are being made
To hide things from us, my friend.
Some stay up into the wee hours
To search their souls.
Others undress each other in darkened rooms.
The creaky old elevator
Took us down to the icy cellar first
To show us a mop and a bucket
Before it deigned to ascend again
With a sigh of exasperation.
Under the vast, early-dawn sky
The city lay silent before us.
Everything on hold:
Rooftops and water towers,
Clouds and wisps of white smoke.
We must be patient, we told ourselves,
See if the pigeons will coo now
For the one who comes to her window
To feed them angel cake,
All but invisible, but for her slender arm.
Charles Simic
I am hesitating to say what I think this poem means; Charles Simic (our current Poet Laurate) uses imagery so delicately and carefully... I don't want to do it violence. It has a secret, you know, and it's hard to strip that away. So before you read my comments, please read the poem again.
I think, ever so quietly, this poem's secret is our crystalline and awkward search for meaning. The beginning presents a secret--the much that is hidden. It also hands us searchers: the tortured soul up late at night, and the lovers tasting it on each others' skin. And yet there is a third kind of searcher, he who looks to the things in this world, the beautiful and silent times.
What are they looking for? What has been hidden for so long?
Simic brings us through this journey through the rest of the poem. Perhaps it is down a creaky elevator. The poet and his friend, before they reach the morning, must plumb the depths of the icy cellar; here, Simic invites the thought of the subconscious without committing to it.
Because after the depths, the heights: the poet and friend open up to the rooftops. In the morning, it is quiet and cold in this city which could be any city. And they wait in this somehow open and spare landscape for the detail for which they wait--the tiny gleam of secret, of meaning.
And so Simic brings us to the end, leaving an image of smoke and light, and the tiniest hint of meaning, of beauty. Are we to find meaning in the small things? What is the journey we must take to arrive there? What roads will a person take?
Am I being to heavy with this poem? It could be that Simic means this to be aesthetic commune with the world, and for the mop and bucket to be only a mop and a bucket. Were I a good literary critic, I might even say so, that Simic is stuck to images and wants us to stay there as well. But this is a beautiful thing: to have images and meaning together! Images and subconscious--Heidegger says that Plato was daring to call the only unseeable things eidos, Forms. That which is invisible is made visible, sometimes in poetry. Can I make this clearer? When Coleridge wrote his great poem "Kubla Khan," he says that he recieved it in a dream wherein "the words rose before him as things." The unseen becomes seen, the hidden revealed. So why not blend the two, let the poem be fully image and fully subconscious! Good night!
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Poem of the Week 11/8/2007: The Titans
The Titans (Die Titanen)
It’s not yet
Time. They are still
Unbound. And the indifferent don’t care
About godly matters.
Let them puzzle it out
With the Oracle. Meanwhile, during the festivities,
I’ll take my ease thinking of the dead.
In the old days, many generals died
and lovely women and poets.
Today, it’s many men.
But I am alone.
and sailing on the ocean
The sweetly scented islands
Ask where they are.
For something of them remains
In writing and in myth.
God reveals so much.
For a long time the clouds
Have influenced what’s below
And the holy forest, fertile as a god,
Has sent down roots.
The world’s riches burn too intensely.
For we don’t have the song
That will shake our spirit free.
It would consume itself,
For the heavenly fire can never
Endure captivity.
Yet men enjoy
The banquet, and in celebration,
Their eyes are brightened by pearls
On a young woman’s neck.
Also games of war
and through
The garden paths
The memory of battle clatters;
The resonant weapons
Of heroic ancestors lie soothed
And still upon the breasts
Of children. But the bees hum
Around me, and where the plowman
Makes his furrows, birds
Sing against the light. Many give
Help to heaven. The poet
Sees them. It’s good to rely
On others. For no one can bear his life alone.
For when the busy day
Catches fire,
And heavenly dew glistens
On the chain
Leading lightning from sunrise
To its source, even mortals
Feel its grandeur.
That’s why they build houses
And the workshop is so busy
And ships sail against the currents
And men exchange greetings
Holding out their hands; it’s sensible
On earth, and not for nothing
Do we fix our eyes on the ground.
Yet you sense
A different way.
For proportion demands
That coarseness exist
For purity to be known.
But when the first cause
Reaches into the earth
To make it come to life,
People think the heavenly
Have come down to the dead
And the all-knowing has dawned
In a boundless emptiness.
It’s not for me to say
That the gods are growing weak
Just as they come into being.
But when
and it goes
As far as the part in father’s hair, so that
and the bird of heaven
Makes it known to him. Wonderful
in anger, that’s what matters.
Friedrich Holderlin
trans. Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover
It’s not yet
Time. They are still
Unbound. And the indifferent don’t care
About godly matters.
Let them puzzle it out
With the Oracle. Meanwhile, during the festivities,
I’ll take my ease thinking of the dead.
In the old days, many generals died
and lovely women and poets.
Today, it’s many men.
But I am alone.
and sailing on the ocean
The sweetly scented islands
Ask where they are.
For something of them remains
In writing and in myth.
God reveals so much.
For a long time the clouds
Have influenced what’s below
And the holy forest, fertile as a god,
Has sent down roots.
The world’s riches burn too intensely.
For we don’t have the song
That will shake our spirit free.
It would consume itself,
For the heavenly fire can never
Endure captivity.
Yet men enjoy
The banquet, and in celebration,
Their eyes are brightened by pearls
On a young woman’s neck.
Also games of war
and through
The garden paths
The memory of battle clatters;
The resonant weapons
Of heroic ancestors lie soothed
And still upon the breasts
Of children. But the bees hum
Around me, and where the plowman
Makes his furrows, birds
Sing against the light. Many give
Help to heaven. The poet
Sees them. It’s good to rely
On others. For no one can bear his life alone.
For when the busy day
Catches fire,
And heavenly dew glistens
On the chain
Leading lightning from sunrise
To its source, even mortals
Feel its grandeur.
That’s why they build houses
And the workshop is so busy
And ships sail against the currents
And men exchange greetings
Holding out their hands; it’s sensible
On earth, and not for nothing
Do we fix our eyes on the ground.
Yet you sense
A different way.
For proportion demands
That coarseness exist
For purity to be known.
But when the first cause
Reaches into the earth
To make it come to life,
People think the heavenly
Have come down to the dead
And the all-knowing has dawned
In a boundless emptiness.
It’s not for me to say
That the gods are growing weak
Just as they come into being.
But when
and it goes
As far as the part in father’s hair, so that
and the bird of heaven
Makes it known to him. Wonderful
in anger, that’s what matters.
Friedrich Holderlin
trans. Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover
Monday, October 29, 2007
Poem of the Week 10/29/2007: from Duino Elegies
from Duino Elegies
Eighth Elegy
All other creatures look into the Open
with their whole eyes. But our eyes,
turned inward, are set all around it like snares,
trapping its way out to freedom.
We know what's out there only from the animal's
face; for we take even the youngest child,
turn him around and force him to look
at the past as a formation, not that openness
so deep within an animal's face. Free from death,
we only see it; the free animal
always has its destruction behind
and god ahead, and when it moves,
it moves toward eternity like running springs.
Not for a single day, no, never have we had
that pure space ahead of us, in which flowers
endlessly open. It is always World
and never Nowhere without No:
that pure, unguarded space we breathe,
always know, and never crave. As a child,
one may lose himself in silence and be
shaken out of it. Or one dies and is it.
Once near death, one can't see death anymore
and stares out, maybe with the wide eyes of animals.
If the other weren't there blocking the view,
lovers come close to it and are amazed...
It opens up behind the other, almost
an oversight... but no one gets past
the other, and the world returns again.
Always facing creation, all we see
is the reflection of the free and open
that we've darkened, or some mute animal
raising its calm eyes and seeing through us,
and through us. This is destiny: to be opposites,
always, and nothing else but opposites.
Ranier Maria Rilke 1922
Translated by A.J. Poulin Jr.
Following Shelley's Mutability, this section of Duino Elegies posits the same idea of our daily experiences--interrupted, fragile, dual. He writes, "it is always World," and that our destiny is "to be opposites, / always, and nothing else but opposites." Animals, he suggests, are more alive, more aware of the world moving around them. For animals, their presence is forward and pure, whereas our selves always get in the way. Always intrude.
He does pose a different kind of question than Shelley. While the latter says that there can be nothing more than purity, Rilke suggests another world behind this one: indeed that this world is a darkened reflection of what is really possible. He writes of "pure, unguarded space we breathe, / always know, and never crave." What is this space? Where can it be found? What would a place look like that is Nowhere, in which there are no "No"s? And so Rilke juxtaposes our present, transient condition with the possibility of something beyond Shelley's mutability, beyond Plato's becoming. He presents, as the title of one collection of Rilke's poems offers, at least a hint of The Possibility of Being.
Eighth Elegy
All other creatures look into the Open
with their whole eyes. But our eyes,
turned inward, are set all around it like snares,
trapping its way out to freedom.
We know what's out there only from the animal's
face; for we take even the youngest child,
turn him around and force him to look
at the past as a formation, not that openness
so deep within an animal's face. Free from death,
we only see it; the free animal
always has its destruction behind
and god ahead, and when it moves,
it moves toward eternity like running springs.
Not for a single day, no, never have we had
that pure space ahead of us, in which flowers
endlessly open. It is always World
and never Nowhere without No:
that pure, unguarded space we breathe,
always know, and never crave. As a child,
one may lose himself in silence and be
shaken out of it. Or one dies and is it.
Once near death, one can't see death anymore
and stares out, maybe with the wide eyes of animals.
If the other weren't there blocking the view,
lovers come close to it and are amazed...
It opens up behind the other, almost
an oversight... but no one gets past
the other, and the world returns again.
Always facing creation, all we see
is the reflection of the free and open
that we've darkened, or some mute animal
raising its calm eyes and seeing through us,
and through us. This is destiny: to be opposites,
always, and nothing else but opposites.
Ranier Maria Rilke 1922
Translated by A.J. Poulin Jr.
Following Shelley's Mutability, this section of Duino Elegies posits the same idea of our daily experiences--interrupted, fragile, dual. He writes, "it is always World," and that our destiny is "to be opposites, / always, and nothing else but opposites." Animals, he suggests, are more alive, more aware of the world moving around them. For animals, their presence is forward and pure, whereas our selves always get in the way. Always intrude.
He does pose a different kind of question than Shelley. While the latter says that there can be nothing more than purity, Rilke suggests another world behind this one: indeed that this world is a darkened reflection of what is really possible. He writes of "pure, unguarded space we breathe, / always know, and never crave." What is this space? Where can it be found? What would a place look like that is Nowhere, in which there are no "No"s? And so Rilke juxtaposes our present, transient condition with the possibility of something beyond Shelley's mutability, beyond Plato's becoming. He presents, as the title of one collection of Rilke's poems offers, at least a hint of The Possibility of Being.
Poem of the Week 10/22/2007: Mutability
Mutability
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! -yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.
We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutablilty.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley wavered throughout his life between skepticism and deep faith; interested in the philosophy of David Hume, he often treated human experience as closed from anything higher, closed from progression. Though I have read little Hume, Shelley treats life with a poet's sensitivity, noticing the difficulty of living purely.
This idea of change--Plato calls it Becoming, Blake, generation--is something that, I think, modernity does not teach us to believe in. For us, there is always more: more food, more fun, more parties, more advertisements, more songs (for me, more coffee). But is that true? Or is that more just more ending? More death?
Some might ask whether we ought to be disturbed by this, as Shelley, using words like "poisons" and "pollutes," clearly is. And it is a question--maybe that luminosity of clouds covering the moon is enough. Or maybe it is disturbing. It is certainly easy to feel what Shelley articulates in this poem.
Next week I will add to this theme from Rilke.
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! -yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.
We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutablilty.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley wavered throughout his life between skepticism and deep faith; interested in the philosophy of David Hume, he often treated human experience as closed from anything higher, closed from progression. Though I have read little Hume, Shelley treats life with a poet's sensitivity, noticing the difficulty of living purely.
This idea of change--Plato calls it Becoming, Blake, generation--is something that, I think, modernity does not teach us to believe in. For us, there is always more: more food, more fun, more parties, more advertisements, more songs (for me, more coffee). But is that true? Or is that more just more ending? More death?
Some might ask whether we ought to be disturbed by this, as Shelley, using words like "poisons" and "pollutes," clearly is. And it is a question--maybe that luminosity of clouds covering the moon is enough. Or maybe it is disturbing. It is certainly easy to feel what Shelley articulates in this poem.
Next week I will add to this theme from Rilke.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Poem of the Week 10/16/2007: The Alchemy of Sorrow
The Alchemy of Sorrow
One man lights you with his ardor,
Another puts you in mourning, Nature!
That which says to one: sepulcher!
Says to another: life! glory!
You have always frightened me,
Hermes the unknown, you who help me.
You make me the peer of Midas,
The saddest of all alchemists;
Through you I change gold to iron
And make of paradise a hell;
In the winding sheet of the clouds
I discover a beloved corpse,
And on the celestial shores
I build massive sarcophagi.
- Charles Baudelaire 1961, trans. William Aggeler, 1954
The topic of Baudelaire's great poem should be clear enough--transformative sorrow. However, I don't feel that this does the poem justice. So: read it a few times! This will be helpful with any poem. It can take a while to read it enough so that it rings clearly. Some poems teach patience and receptivity. I've been thinking of this often recently: the difference between a poem and a philosopical work. Both can be precise, have ideas etc, but the difference in form has an effect. For me, poetry helps defend against totally dogmatic thought, and against the pride of knowing things too quickly. Having an explanation does not mean knowing the thing! And a poem can reveal this!
As I hope that Baudelaire's does. It is a beautiful poem. A tip that may help sort out the poem: "Nature," in the second line, refers to man's own nature, I believe. It seems that there is a macrocosm/microcosm work here. In other words, Nature is internal and external. This may make sense of the final stanza, for if this is the case, the reader builds the sarcophagus internally, and the celestial shores are in his heart.
I recommend reading more Baudelaire; he's moving and insightful about existential anxiety, relational anxiety, relationship decay and more.
http://fleursdumal.org/
One man lights you with his ardor,
Another puts you in mourning, Nature!
That which says to one: sepulcher!
Says to another: life! glory!
You have always frightened me,
Hermes the unknown, you who help me.
You make me the peer of Midas,
The saddest of all alchemists;
Through you I change gold to iron
And make of paradise a hell;
In the winding sheet of the clouds
I discover a beloved corpse,
And on the celestial shores
I build massive sarcophagi.
- Charles Baudelaire 1961, trans. William Aggeler, 1954
The topic of Baudelaire's great poem should be clear enough--transformative sorrow. However, I don't feel that this does the poem justice. So: read it a few times! This will be helpful with any poem. It can take a while to read it enough so that it rings clearly. Some poems teach patience and receptivity. I've been thinking of this often recently: the difference between a poem and a philosopical work. Both can be precise, have ideas etc, but the difference in form has an effect. For me, poetry helps defend against totally dogmatic thought, and against the pride of knowing things too quickly. Having an explanation does not mean knowing the thing! And a poem can reveal this!
As I hope that Baudelaire's does. It is a beautiful poem. A tip that may help sort out the poem: "Nature," in the second line, refers to man's own nature, I believe. It seems that there is a macrocosm/microcosm work here. In other words, Nature is internal and external. This may make sense of the final stanza, for if this is the case, the reader builds the sarcophagus internally, and the celestial shores are in his heart.
I recommend reading more Baudelaire; he's moving and insightful about existential anxiety, relational anxiety, relationship decay and more.
http://fleursdumal.org/
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Poem of the Week 10/9/2007: ADAMAH
ADAMAH
My name means:
anything made from clay.
I was dust until God
breathed in my nostril
and began talking to me
obsessively:
“This is Pison, the river
from the Land of Onyx,
these holes are your eyes,
these are the olive groves
I planted for you,
these are almond saplings,”
and I was addicted to his breath,
his voice, his shaping hand,
and that was love.
He have me the creatures to name
and soon it was bird flying,
snake crawling, ox lowing.
With him it was simple:
he was just The Name.
Because he was lonely
(I was not, I had him)
he made Eve from my rib:
I was jealous of his breath
writhing and glittering in her…
He planted a tree
at the center of the garden
and we ate its fruit.
When he was walking
in the cool of the day
we hid from him
and he tricked us asking:
“Who told you
you were naked?”
Then we covered our sex
with fig leaves, and he clothed us
with the skins of dead animals.
He drove us away from his voice
and yet we keep hearing it
but it is our own:
hoopoe, adder, bison.
2
So we came to the ocean
and fathomed it, to Ararat
and chartered it, and at last
we came to dust
and recognized in it
an alphabet, a braided law,
that had caused us, and God,
and we wept:
one thread of immortality
passed through us
but it is endless
so we belong to death.
3
From dust we made ourselves,
the vineyards, the walled cities,
and always we expected to wake,
that our eyes be opened,
that we know good and evil
as the serpent promised—
instead, just this long sleep,
omnipotence, this narrow valley
bounded by four rivers.
D. Nurkse 2006
This poem holds an indictment the human condition in the context of modern science. It asks the question: what has happened to man with the advent of science? What are the consequences of believing that we know everything? What kind of world are we left with?
I will have to write more about this poem, as it is so provocative--but not now! Again putting things off. Modern condition?
My name means:
anything made from clay.
I was dust until God
breathed in my nostril
and began talking to me
obsessively:
“This is Pison, the river
from the Land of Onyx,
these holes are your eyes,
these are the olive groves
I planted for you,
these are almond saplings,”
and I was addicted to his breath,
his voice, his shaping hand,
and that was love.
He have me the creatures to name
and soon it was bird flying,
snake crawling, ox lowing.
With him it was simple:
he was just The Name.
Because he was lonely
(I was not, I had him)
he made Eve from my rib:
I was jealous of his breath
writhing and glittering in her…
He planted a tree
at the center of the garden
and we ate its fruit.
When he was walking
in the cool of the day
we hid from him
and he tricked us asking:
“Who told you
you were naked?”
Then we covered our sex
with fig leaves, and he clothed us
with the skins of dead animals.
He drove us away from his voice
and yet we keep hearing it
but it is our own:
hoopoe, adder, bison.
2
So we came to the ocean
and fathomed it, to Ararat
and chartered it, and at last
we came to dust
and recognized in it
an alphabet, a braided law,
that had caused us, and God,
and we wept:
one thread of immortality
passed through us
but it is endless
so we belong to death.
3
From dust we made ourselves,
the vineyards, the walled cities,
and always we expected to wake,
that our eyes be opened,
that we know good and evil
as the serpent promised—
instead, just this long sleep,
omnipotence, this narrow valley
bounded by four rivers.
D. Nurkse 2006
This poem holds an indictment the human condition in the context of modern science. It asks the question: what has happened to man with the advent of science? What are the consequences of believing that we know everything? What kind of world are we left with?
I will have to write more about this poem, as it is so provocative--but not now! Again putting things off. Modern condition?
Poem of the Week 10/1/2007: Those Who Sit
Those Who Sit (Les Assis)
Dark with knobbed growths, peppered with pock-marks like hail, their eyes ringed with
Green, warty fingers clenched on their thigh-bones
Their skulls stained with indeterminate blotches
Like the leprous discolorations of ancient walls;
In amorous seizures they have grafted
Their weird bone structures to the great dark skeletons
Of their chairs; their feet are entwined
Morning and evening, on the rickety rails!
These old men have always been one flesh with their seats,
Feeling bright suns drying their skins to the texture of calico,
Or else, looking at the window-panes where the snow is turning grey,
Shivering with the painful shiver of the toad.
And their Seats are kind to them; coloured
Brown with age, the straw yields to the angularities of their buttocks;
The spirit of ancient suns glows, bound
In these braids of ears in which the corn fermented.
And the Seated Ones, knees drawn up to their teeth, green pianists
Whose ten fingers keep drumming under their seats,
Listen to the tapping of each other's melancholy barcarolles,
And their heads nod back and forth as in the act of love.
- Oh don't make them get up! It's a catastrophe ...
They rear up like growling tom-cats when struck,
Slowly spreading their shoulders... What rage!
Their trousers puff out at their swelling backsides.
And you listen to them as they bump their bald heads
Against the dark walls, stamping and stamping with their crooked feet,
And their coat-buttons are the eyes of wild beasts
Which fix yours from the end of the corridors!
And then they have an invisible weapon which can kill:
Returning, their eyes seep the black poison
With which the beaten bitch's eye is charged
And you sweat trapped in the horrible funnel.
Reseated, their fists retreating into soiled cuffs
They think about those who have made them get up
And, from dawn until dusk, their tonsils in bunches
Tremble under their meagre chins, fit to burst.
When austere slumbers have lowered their lids
They dream on their arms of seats become fertile,
Of perfect little loves of open-work chairs
Surrounding dignified desks.
Flowers of ink dropping pollen like commas
Lull them asleep, in their rows of squat flower-cups
Like dragonflies threading their flight along the flags
- And their membra virilia are aroused by barbed ears of wheat.
Arthur Rimbaud
translated by Oliver Bernard
Dark with knobbed growths, peppered with pock-marks like hail, their eyes ringed with
Green, warty fingers clenched on their thigh-bones
Their skulls stained with indeterminate blotches
Like the leprous discolorations of ancient walls;
In amorous seizures they have grafted
Their weird bone structures to the great dark skeletons
Of their chairs; their feet are entwined
Morning and evening, on the rickety rails!
These old men have always been one flesh with their seats,
Feeling bright suns drying their skins to the texture of calico,
Or else, looking at the window-panes where the snow is turning grey,
Shivering with the painful shiver of the toad.
And their Seats are kind to them; coloured
Brown with age, the straw yields to the angularities of their buttocks;
The spirit of ancient suns glows, bound
In these braids of ears in which the corn fermented.
And the Seated Ones, knees drawn up to their teeth, green pianists
Whose ten fingers keep drumming under their seats,
Listen to the tapping of each other's melancholy barcarolles,
And their heads nod back and forth as in the act of love.
- Oh don't make them get up! It's a catastrophe ...
They rear up like growling tom-cats when struck,
Slowly spreading their shoulders... What rage!
Their trousers puff out at their swelling backsides.
And you listen to them as they bump their bald heads
Against the dark walls, stamping and stamping with their crooked feet,
And their coat-buttons are the eyes of wild beasts
Which fix yours from the end of the corridors!
And then they have an invisible weapon which can kill:
Returning, their eyes seep the black poison
With which the beaten bitch's eye is charged
And you sweat trapped in the horrible funnel.
Reseated, their fists retreating into soiled cuffs
They think about those who have made them get up
And, from dawn until dusk, their tonsils in bunches
Tremble under their meagre chins, fit to burst.
When austere slumbers have lowered their lids
They dream on their arms of seats become fertile,
Of perfect little loves of open-work chairs
Surrounding dignified desks.
Flowers of ink dropping pollen like commas
Lull them asleep, in their rows of squat flower-cups
Like dragonflies threading their flight along the flags
- And their membra virilia are aroused by barbed ears of wheat.
Arthur Rimbaud
translated by Oliver Bernard
Poem of the Week 9/24/2007: Strawberries
Strawberries
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying to the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpartick hills*
let the storm wash the plates
Edwin Morgan 1965
*Upland plateau in the country of West Dunbartonshire, Scotland
Poems like this remind me that erotic art exists, and perhaps reveals the erotic origin of art? I have been thinking about that a lot recently; that art could be so erotic; what does that mean? A friend was talking about Rodin today, how sensual he is, and how sensual sculpture is. Anyways... that's a thought.
This poem achieves its eroticism with the slowmoving, tense enjambment (the lines do not finish with periods); the syntax is thus one long, slow caress. This poem is foreplay. Taught, simultaneously taught and drawn out--everything is implied, veiled, and this is what makes it erotic?
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying to the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpartick hills*
let the storm wash the plates
Edwin Morgan 1965
*Upland plateau in the country of West Dunbartonshire, Scotland
Poems like this remind me that erotic art exists, and perhaps reveals the erotic origin of art? I have been thinking about that a lot recently; that art could be so erotic; what does that mean? A friend was talking about Rodin today, how sensual he is, and how sensual sculpture is. Anyways... that's a thought.
This poem achieves its eroticism with the slowmoving, tense enjambment (the lines do not finish with periods); the syntax is thus one long, slow caress. This poem is foreplay. Taught, simultaneously taught and drawn out--everything is implied, veiled, and this is what makes it erotic?
Poem of the Week 9/17/2007: from The Waste Land
from The Waste Land
V. What the Thunder Said
...
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for the rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetheral rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
TS Eliot 1922
FOR ELIOT"S NOTES, AND COMPLETE POEM TEXT, PLEASE VISIT:
http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/
Due to catching up-time, commentary to come within a few days. Thank you all for your patience as I pull this scattered blog back together.
V. What the Thunder Said
...
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for the rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetheral rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
TS Eliot 1922
FOR ELIOT"S NOTES, AND COMPLETE POEM TEXT, PLEASE VISIT:
http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/
Due to catching up-time, commentary to come within a few days. Thank you all for your patience as I pull this scattered blog back together.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Poem of the Week 9/10/2007: from The Odyssey, Book VI
from The Odyssey, Book VI
But when the girl was ready to go home--
about to yoke the mules and fold the clothes--
gray-eyed Athena set her mind on still
another stratagem, so that Odysseus
might come to see the gracious girl who then
could lead him down to the town of the Phaecians.
The daughter of the king, as she was tossing
the ball to one of her companions, missed
her throw; the ball fell into a deep pool.
The girls cried out. Their shout was loud. They woke
Odysseus. And as he sat up, he thought:
"What misery is mine? What mortals must
I meet in this new land that I now touch?
Are they unfeeling beings--wild, unjust?
Or do they welcome strangers--does their thought
include fear of the gods? That cry I heard,
the cry that captured me, was tender--like
the voice of young girls--voice of nymphs who haunt
the steepest mountain peaks, the springs that feed
the rivers, and teh green of grazing lands.
Can men with human speech be here--close by?
But I must try--must see with my own eyes."
And now he burst out of the underbrush;
with his stout hand he bore a leafy branch
from that thick wood, to hide his nakedness.
He moved out as a mountain lion would
when--sure of his own strength, his eyes ablaze--
through driving wind and rain, he stalks his prey,
wild deer or sheep or oxen; he'll attack
a cattle-fold, however tight the fence
that pens the herd--the hunger's so intense.
So did Odysseus seem as he prepared
to burst into the band of fair-haired girls,
though he was naked, he was ravenous.
But he-his form was filthy, fouled with brine--
struck them as horrible; and terrified,
they scattered on the shore, one here, one there,
among the sandpits jutting out to sea.
The daghter of Alcinous was left
alone: her spirit had recieved the gift
of courage from Athena, who had freed
the limbs of the young girl from fear and trembling.
She did not flinch or flee. She faced him firmly.
Homer
It took me all four years of college to see why people have loved the Odyssey for thousands of years; these are strong, noble people living real lives. In a real way. I guess it is hard now to think of what it might mean to be a strong person, but the Odyssey presents us with situation after situation wherein Odysseus resists. Like Nausicaa, Odysseus is capable of standing still, restraining himself from pleasurable situations in favor of experience, of life.
This passage raises the question for me: how much strength does it take to face whatever situation you are faced with? Though Odysseus's willingness to experience is especially evident in his thoughts as he wakes up--I remember the line, "I must try--must see with my own eyes" from paper prompts about Odysseus and experience freshman year--I think who is really admirable is Nausicaa. As Odysseus enters, he is animal-liike, and presumably frightening. Homer emphasizes his disgusting, ravenous, fierce aspects, from the brine encrusting his skin to his starved body. He "stalks" towards the girls (a literary critic might say that his sexual starvation
But when the girl was ready to go home--
about to yoke the mules and fold the clothes--
gray-eyed Athena set her mind on still
another stratagem, so that Odysseus
might come to see the gracious girl who then
could lead him down to the town of the Phaecians.
The daughter of the king, as she was tossing
the ball to one of her companions, missed
her throw; the ball fell into a deep pool.
The girls cried out. Their shout was loud. They woke
Odysseus. And as he sat up, he thought:
"What misery is mine? What mortals must
I meet in this new land that I now touch?
Are they unfeeling beings--wild, unjust?
Or do they welcome strangers--does their thought
include fear of the gods? That cry I heard,
the cry that captured me, was tender--like
the voice of young girls--voice of nymphs who haunt
the steepest mountain peaks, the springs that feed
the rivers, and teh green of grazing lands.
Can men with human speech be here--close by?
But I must try--must see with my own eyes."
And now he burst out of the underbrush;
with his stout hand he bore a leafy branch
from that thick wood, to hide his nakedness.
He moved out as a mountain lion would
when--sure of his own strength, his eyes ablaze--
through driving wind and rain, he stalks his prey,
wild deer or sheep or oxen; he'll attack
a cattle-fold, however tight the fence
that pens the herd--the hunger's so intense.
So did Odysseus seem as he prepared
to burst into the band of fair-haired girls,
though he was naked, he was ravenous.
But he-his form was filthy, fouled with brine--
struck them as horrible; and terrified,
they scattered on the shore, one here, one there,
among the sandpits jutting out to sea.
The daghter of Alcinous was left
alone: her spirit had recieved the gift
of courage from Athena, who had freed
the limbs of the young girl from fear and trembling.
She did not flinch or flee. She faced him firmly.
Homer
It took me all four years of college to see why people have loved the Odyssey for thousands of years; these are strong, noble people living real lives. In a real way. I guess it is hard now to think of what it might mean to be a strong person, but the Odyssey presents us with situation after situation wherein Odysseus resists. Like Nausicaa, Odysseus is capable of standing still, restraining himself from pleasurable situations in favor of experience, of life.
This passage raises the question for me: how much strength does it take to face whatever situation you are faced with? Though Odysseus's willingness to experience is especially evident in his thoughts as he wakes up--I remember the line, "I must try--must see with my own eyes" from paper prompts about Odysseus and experience freshman year--I think who is really admirable is Nausicaa. As Odysseus enters, he is animal-liike, and presumably frightening. Homer emphasizes his disgusting, ravenous, fierce aspects, from the brine encrusting his skin to his starved body. He "stalks" towards the girls (a literary critic might say that his sexual starvation
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Poem of the Week 9/3/2007: Peach
Peach
Would you like to throw a stone at me?
Here, take all that's left of my peach.
Bloodred, deep;
Heaven knows how it came to pass.
Somebody's pound of flesh rendered up.
Wrinkled with secrets
And hard with the intention to keep them.
Why, from silvery peach-bloom,
From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem
This rolling, dropping, heavy glovule?
I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it.
Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy?
Why hanging with such inordinate weight?
Why so indented?
Why the groove?
Why the lovely, bivalve roundness?
Why the ripple down the sphere?
Why the suggestion of incision?
Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard ball?
It would have been if man had made it.
Though I've eaten it now.
But it wasn't round and finished like a billiard ball;
And because I say so, you would like to throw something at me.
Here, you can have my peach stone.
D.H. Lawrence 1929
Poetry loves the world, yes!~ And don't you want a peach now? What kind of miracle is this peach? I love the voice in this poem. Sometimes poetry takes itself so seriously. Sometimes people do?
It's peach season in Washington. Well, almost the end of peach season. This poem, though, looks very hard at a peach from the 1920s. A peach eighty years ago was as fresh as the peaches I saw today. Humans have loved peaches for a very long time. Where did that long-ago peach go? And its admirer? Interesting that the poem has a line about the circular renewal of matter; the thought, "somebody's pound of flesh offered up" implies that the peach is flesh of other things--animals, grass.
We have all heard that organic matter re-enters the earth, becoming life again. I guess that Lawrence's poem made that idea more real for me--this peach really *was* once, and then it passed. Like the thrown peach stone from one person to another!
Would you like to throw a stone at me?
Here, take all that's left of my peach.
Bloodred, deep;
Heaven knows how it came to pass.
Somebody's pound of flesh rendered up.
Wrinkled with secrets
And hard with the intention to keep them.
Why, from silvery peach-bloom,
From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem
This rolling, dropping, heavy glovule?
I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it.
Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy?
Why hanging with such inordinate weight?
Why so indented?
Why the groove?
Why the lovely, bivalve roundness?
Why the ripple down the sphere?
Why the suggestion of incision?
Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard ball?
It would have been if man had made it.
Though I've eaten it now.
But it wasn't round and finished like a billiard ball;
And because I say so, you would like to throw something at me.
Here, you can have my peach stone.
D.H. Lawrence 1929
Poetry loves the world, yes!~ And don't you want a peach now? What kind of miracle is this peach? I love the voice in this poem. Sometimes poetry takes itself so seriously. Sometimes people do?
It's peach season in Washington. Well, almost the end of peach season. This poem, though, looks very hard at a peach from the 1920s. A peach eighty years ago was as fresh as the peaches I saw today. Humans have loved peaches for a very long time. Where did that long-ago peach go? And its admirer? Interesting that the poem has a line about the circular renewal of matter; the thought, "somebody's pound of flesh offered up" implies that the peach is flesh of other things--animals, grass.
We have all heard that organic matter re-enters the earth, becoming life again. I guess that Lawrence's poem made that idea more real for me--this peach really *was* once, and then it passed. Like the thrown peach stone from one person to another!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Poem of the Week 8/27/2007: On Anothers Sorrow
On Anothers Sorrow
Can I see anothers woe,
And not be in sorrow too.
Can I see anothers frief,
And not seek for kind relief.
Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrows share,
Can a father seehis child,
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd.
Can a mother sit and hear,
An infant groan an infant fear--
No no never can it be.
Never never can it be.
And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small birds grief & care
Hear the woes that infants bear--
And not sit beside the nest
Pouring pit in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near
Weeping tear on infants tear.
And not sit both night & day,
Wiping all our tears away.
O! no never can it be.
Never never can it be.
He doth give his joy to all.
He becomes an infant small.
He becomes a man of woe
He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy maker is not by.
Think not, thou canst weep a tear,
And thy maker is not near.
O! he gives to us his joy,
That our grief he may destroy
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan
William Blake 1790
What a complex end this poem has--we are given compassion for redemption, is this correct? In the beginning, Blake writes that it is impossible to see suffering without taking it on ourselves. The savior suffered and suffers with us every moment so that we can be relieved, so that we can partake in eternal joy.
This is fundamentally a poem of trust and brotherhood--the lord has made a pact with us, it seems, abiding by a high rule of human life in order to help us live. Furthermore, it asks to trust in our suffering, to not be afraid of suffering because it is always suffered in kinship with others. Through this co-suffering, it is implied, suffering will end. And this we ought to trust.
Can I see anothers woe,
And not be in sorrow too.
Can I see anothers frief,
And not seek for kind relief.
Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrows share,
Can a father seehis child,
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd.
Can a mother sit and hear,
An infant groan an infant fear--
No no never can it be.
Never never can it be.
And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small birds grief & care
Hear the woes that infants bear--
And not sit beside the nest
Pouring pit in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near
Weeping tear on infants tear.
And not sit both night & day,
Wiping all our tears away.
O! no never can it be.
Never never can it be.
He doth give his joy to all.
He becomes an infant small.
He becomes a man of woe
He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy maker is not by.
Think not, thou canst weep a tear,
And thy maker is not near.
O! he gives to us his joy,
That our grief he may destroy
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan
William Blake 1790
What a complex end this poem has--we are given compassion for redemption, is this correct? In the beginning, Blake writes that it is impossible to see suffering without taking it on ourselves. The savior suffered and suffers with us every moment so that we can be relieved, so that we can partake in eternal joy.
This is fundamentally a poem of trust and brotherhood--the lord has made a pact with us, it seems, abiding by a high rule of human life in order to help us live. Furthermore, it asks to trust in our suffering, to not be afraid of suffering because it is always suffered in kinship with others. Through this co-suffering, it is implied, suffering will end. And this we ought to trust.
Poem of the Week 8/20/2007: The Angel
The Angel
I Dreamt a Dream! what can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen:
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe, was ne'er beguil'd!
And I wept both night and day
And he wip'd my tears away
And I wept both day and night
And hid from him my hearts delight
So he took his wings and fled:
Then the morn blush'd rosy red:
I dried my tears & armed my fears,
With ten thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was arm'd, he came in vain:
For the time of youth was fled
And grey hairs were on my head.
William Blake 1790
This poem speaks of the human drive to self-concealment. The queen does not want to be made vulnerable, and so she hides both the real reason for her suffering and later must guard that out of her fear. In doing, she loses what could have saved her--an angel.
Of course, Blake cannot be shortened and simplified so extremely. There is a question as to the angel's role in her self concealement; could his comfort have actually enabled her suffering? In other works, Blake has written, "Opposition is true friendship;" our friends ought not enable every vice we have, but challenge us to stay our course, to keep pushing ourselves. To the angel's credit, his presence does seem to symbolize some kind of innocent state--not only does he, like a parent, wipe away her tears, he is associated with youth. When he returns, she is old, implying that his earlier comradeship occurred in youth.
So, though perhaps enabled by the angel, the Queen's reaction was violent and dualistic. Rather than opposition, which holds two forces agaist one-another, she wishes to cut off any chance of vulnerability, of being challenged internally.
I believe that Blake puts us in an uncomfortable position within the poem, for self-concealment is obviously something to which all people are prey. If one has any grain of self-knowledge, one cannot judge this woman, but only ask what might have happened had she not hidden so much from a being that loved her.
I Dreamt a Dream! what can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen:
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe, was ne'er beguil'd!
And I wept both night and day
And he wip'd my tears away
And I wept both day and night
And hid from him my hearts delight
So he took his wings and fled:
Then the morn blush'd rosy red:
I dried my tears & armed my fears,
With ten thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was arm'd, he came in vain:
For the time of youth was fled
And grey hairs were on my head.
William Blake 1790
This poem speaks of the human drive to self-concealment. The queen does not want to be made vulnerable, and so she hides both the real reason for her suffering and later must guard that out of her fear. In doing, she loses what could have saved her--an angel.
Of course, Blake cannot be shortened and simplified so extremely. There is a question as to the angel's role in her self concealement; could his comfort have actually enabled her suffering? In other works, Blake has written, "Opposition is true friendship;" our friends ought not enable every vice we have, but challenge us to stay our course, to keep pushing ourselves. To the angel's credit, his presence does seem to symbolize some kind of innocent state--not only does he, like a parent, wipe away her tears, he is associated with youth. When he returns, she is old, implying that his earlier comradeship occurred in youth.
So, though perhaps enabled by the angel, the Queen's reaction was violent and dualistic. Rather than opposition, which holds two forces agaist one-another, she wishes to cut off any chance of vulnerability, of being challenged internally.
I believe that Blake puts us in an uncomfortable position within the poem, for self-concealment is obviously something to which all people are prey. If one has any grain of self-knowledge, one cannot judge this woman, but only ask what might have happened had she not hidden so much from a being that loved her.
Poem of the Week 8/14/2007: Ulysses
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Like the ancients, as my professor mentioned recently, Tennyson's poem demands of us: What is a life lived well?.
Filled with adventure, every hour is used for exploration and life, inner and out. Ulysses' suffering has been great, as well as his enjoyment. We find, in the last stanza, that Ulysses is a true hero, for he is willing to die at any moment. Rilke discusses the idea of the hero, not because he does sacrifice himself, but because he is willing to. I wonder how often we are willing to risk anything any more. Even in Greek timees, it must have been rare, for those heroes were *heroes* because they would do so. To risk anything, to constantly seek... can we be heroes any more?
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Like the ancients, as my professor mentioned recently, Tennyson's poem demands of us: What is a life lived well?.
Filled with adventure, every hour is used for exploration and life, inner and out. Ulysses' suffering has been great, as well as his enjoyment. We find, in the last stanza, that Ulysses is a true hero, for he is willing to die at any moment. Rilke discusses the idea of the hero, not because he does sacrifice himself, but because he is willing to. I wonder how often we are willing to risk anything any more. Even in Greek timees, it must have been rare, for those heroes were *heroes* because they would do so. To risk anything, to constantly seek... can we be heroes any more?
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Poem of the Week 8/7/2007: from The Country of Marriage
rom The Country of Marriage
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.
VI.
What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
VII.
I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.
Wendell Berry
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.
VI.
What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
VII.
I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.
Wendell Berry
Monday, July 23, 2007
Poem of the Week 7/23/2007: from A Kumquat for John Keats
from A Kumquat for John Keats
Today I found the right fruit for my prime,
not orange, not tangelo, and not lime,
nor moon-like gloes of grapefruit that now hang
outside our bedroom, nor tart lemon's tang
(though last year full of bile and self-defeat
I wanted to believe no life was sweet)
nor the tangible sunshine of the tangerine,
and no incongruous citrus ever seen
at greengrocers' in Newcastle or Leeds
mis-spelt by the spuds and mud-caked swedes,
a fruit an older poet might substitute
for the grape John Keats thought to be Joy's fruit,
when, two years before he died, he tried to write
how Melancholy dwelled inside Delight.* / /
and if John keats had only lived to be,
because of extra years, in need like me,
at 42 he'd help me celebrate
that Micancopy kumquat that I ate
whole, straight off the tree, sweet pulp and sour skin--
or was it sweet outside, and sour within?
For however many kumquats that I eat
I'm not sure if it's flesh or rind that's sweet,
and being a man of doubt at life's mid-way
I'd offer Keats some kumquats and I'd say:
You'll find that one part's sweet and one part's tart:
say where the sweetness or the sourness start.
I find I can't as if one couldn't say
exactly where the night became the day,
which makes for me the kumquat taken whole
best fruit, and metaphor, to fit the soul
of one in Florida at 42 with Keats
crunching kumquats, thinking, as he eats
the flesh, the juice, the pith, the pips, the peel,
that this is how a full life ought to feel,
its perishable relish prick the tongue,
when the man who savours life's no longer young,
the fruits that were his futures far behind.
Then its the kumquat fruit expresses best
how days have darkness behind them like a rind,
life has a skin of death that keeps its zest.
*Cf. John Keats, "Ode on Melancholy," lines 25-26
...
Tony Harrison 1981
I have cut a significant portion of this poem, because of limited space and because the poem spins into sentimental personal and social reflections. It is enough, for now, to get a taste of the kumquat Mr. Harrison would like us to mull over the course of this poem. Perhaps it will be helpful for the reader to know that Keats was a Romantic Era poet who died young; after the deaths of many family members from Tuberculosis, he had the premonition that he would die young, and many of his poems wrestle with issues of life and death, love and beauty. They are intensely compact works of art, almost effortlessly holding the reins of emotion, reflection and beauty, letting each lead as it sees fit. Metaphor is key to his work, from which Tony Harrison takes the cue for this poem.
Though not the densest or most profound poem ever written, I find it clever, fun to read, and a good reminder of the dualities we carry within life. One question it raises, I think, is: Do you know you are going to die? How often is this a reality? Does your life really carry with it the skin that keeps its zest? Interesting.
Today I found the right fruit for my prime,
not orange, not tangelo, and not lime,
nor moon-like gloes of grapefruit that now hang
outside our bedroom, nor tart lemon's tang
(though last year full of bile and self-defeat
I wanted to believe no life was sweet)
nor the tangible sunshine of the tangerine,
and no incongruous citrus ever seen
at greengrocers' in Newcastle or Leeds
mis-spelt by the spuds and mud-caked swedes,
a fruit an older poet might substitute
for the grape John Keats thought to be Joy's fruit,
when, two years before he died, he tried to write
how Melancholy dwelled inside Delight.* / /
and if John keats had only lived to be,
because of extra years, in need like me,
at 42 he'd help me celebrate
that Micancopy kumquat that I ate
whole, straight off the tree, sweet pulp and sour skin--
or was it sweet outside, and sour within?
For however many kumquats that I eat
I'm not sure if it's flesh or rind that's sweet,
and being a man of doubt at life's mid-way
I'd offer Keats some kumquats and I'd say:
You'll find that one part's sweet and one part's tart:
say where the sweetness or the sourness start.
I find I can't as if one couldn't say
exactly where the night became the day,
which makes for me the kumquat taken whole
best fruit, and metaphor, to fit the soul
of one in Florida at 42 with Keats
crunching kumquats, thinking, as he eats
the flesh, the juice, the pith, the pips, the peel,
that this is how a full life ought to feel,
its perishable relish prick the tongue,
when the man who savours life's no longer young,
the fruits that were his futures far behind.
Then its the kumquat fruit expresses best
how days have darkness behind them like a rind,
life has a skin of death that keeps its zest.
*Cf. John Keats, "Ode on Melancholy," lines 25-26
...
Tony Harrison 1981
I have cut a significant portion of this poem, because of limited space and because the poem spins into sentimental personal and social reflections. It is enough, for now, to get a taste of the kumquat Mr. Harrison would like us to mull over the course of this poem. Perhaps it will be helpful for the reader to know that Keats was a Romantic Era poet who died young; after the deaths of many family members from Tuberculosis, he had the premonition that he would die young, and many of his poems wrestle with issues of life and death, love and beauty. They are intensely compact works of art, almost effortlessly holding the reins of emotion, reflection and beauty, letting each lead as it sees fit. Metaphor is key to his work, from which Tony Harrison takes the cue for this poem.
Though not the densest or most profound poem ever written, I find it clever, fun to read, and a good reminder of the dualities we carry within life. One question it raises, I think, is: Do you know you are going to die? How often is this a reality? Does your life really carry with it the skin that keeps its zest? Interesting.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Poem of the Week 7/18/2007: from Don Juan, Canto 1
- from Don Juan, Canto 1
VI - Most epic poets plunge "in medias res"
- (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),
- And then your hero tells, whene'er you please,
- What went before -- by way of episode,
- While seated after dinner at his ease,
- Beside his mistress in some soft abode,
- Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,
- Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.
VII - That is the usual method, but not mine --
- My way is to begin with the beginning;
- The regularity of my design
- Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,
- And therefore I shall open with a line
- (Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)
- Narrating somewhat of Don Juan's father,
- And also of his mother, if you'd rather.
VIII - In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,
- Famous for oranges and women -- he
- Who has not seen it will be much to pity,
- So says the proverb -- and I quite agree;
- Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,
- Cadiz perhaps -- but that you soon may see;
- Don Juan's parents lived beside the river,
- A noble stream, and call'd the Guadalquivir.
IX - His father's name was Jóse -- Don, of course, --
- A true Hidalgo, free from every stain
- Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source
- Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;
- A better cavalier ne'er mounted horse,
- Or, being mounted, e'er got down again,
- Than Jóse, who begot our hero, who
- Begot -- but that's to come -- Well, to renew:
X - His mother[4] was a learnéd lady, famed
- For every branch of every science known
- In every Christian language ever named,
- With virtues equall'd by her wit alone,
- She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,
- And even the good with inward envy groan,
- Finding themselves so very much exceeded
- In their own way by all the things that she did.
XI - Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart
- All Calderon and greater part of Lopé,
- So that if any actor miss'd his part
- She could have served him for the prompter's copy;
- For her Feinagle's[5] were an useless art,
- And he himself obliged to shut up shop -- he
- Could never make a memory so fine as
- That which adorn'd the brain of Donna Inez.
XII - Her favourite science was the mathematical,
- Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,
- Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,
- Her serious sayings darken'd to sublimity;
- In short, in all things she was fairly what I call
- A prodigy -- her morning dress was dimity,
- Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,
- And other stuffs, with which I won't stay puzzling.
XIII - She knew the Latin -- that is, "the Lord's prayer,"
- And Greek -- the alphabet -- I'm nearly sure;
- She read some French romances here and there,
- Although her mode of speaking was not pure;
- For native Spanish she had no great care,
- At least her conversation was obscure;
- Her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem,
- As if she deem'd that mystery would ennoble 'em.
XIV - She liked the English and the Hebrew tongue,
- And said there was analogy between 'em;
- She proved it somehow out of sacred song,
- But I must leave the proofs to those who've seen 'em;
- But this I heard her say, and can't be wrong
- And all may think which way their judgments lean 'em,
- "'T is strange -- the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,'
- The English always used to govern d--n."
-
XV - Some women use their tongues -- she look'd a lecture,
- Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily,
- An all-in-all sufficient self-director,
- Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly,
- The Law's expounder, and the State's corrector,
- Whose suicide was almost an anomaly --
- One sad example more, that "All is vanity"
- (The jury brought their verdict in "Insanity").
XVI - In short, she was a walking calculation,
- Miss Edgeworth's novels stepping from their covers,
- Or Mrs. Trimmer's books on education,
- Or "Coelebs' Wife" set out in quest of lovers,
- Morality's prim personification,
- In which not Envy's self a flaw discovers;
- To others' share let "female errors fall,"
- For she had not even one -- the worst of all.
XVII - Oh! she was perfect past all parallel --
- Of any modern female saint's comparison;
- So far above the cunning powers of hell,
- Her guardian angel had given up his garrison;
- Even her minutest motions went as well
- As those of the best time-piece made by Harrison:
- In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her,
- Save thine "incomparable oil," Macassar!
XVIII - Perfect she was, but as perfection is
- Insipid in this naughty world of ours,
- Where our first parents never learn'd to kiss
- Till they were exiled from their earlier bowers,
- Where all was peace, and innocence, and bliss
- (I wonder how they got through the twelve hours),
- Don Jóse, like a lineal son of Eve,
- Went plucking various fruit without her leave.
I will add the footnotes soon! For now, I hope that you can notice the narrator's contradictory tone. In this satire, Byron is poking fun at any number of things; in this excerpt, he laughs at the conventions of heroic verse, which can take itself Very Seriously. I also recommend that you read this out loud to yourself after reading it silently once, because the rhythm of this poem gallops along, a fact that becomes more impressive when one realizes that this is a fraction of one of sixteen cantos.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Poem of the Week 7/11/07: Man and Camel
Man and Camel
On the eve of my fortieth birthday
I sat on the porch having a smoke
when out of the blue a man and a camel
happened by. Neither uttered a sound
at first, but as they drifted up the street
and out of town the two of them began to sing.
Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me—
the words were indistinct and the tune
too ornamental to recall. Into the desert
they went and as they went their voices
rose as one above the sifting sound
of windblown sand. The wonder of their singing,
its elusive blend of man and camel, seemed
an ideal image for all uncommon couples.
Was this the night that I had waited for
so long? I wanted to believe it was,
but just as they were vanishing, the man
and camel ceased to sing, and galloped
back to town. They stood before my porch,
staring up at me with beady eyes, and said:
"You ruined it. You ruined it forever."
Mark Strand
Sorry no close read right now, for this one certainly needs some untangling.
On the eve of my fortieth birthday
I sat on the porch having a smoke
when out of the blue a man and a camel
happened by. Neither uttered a sound
at first, but as they drifted up the street
and out of town the two of them began to sing.
Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me—
the words were indistinct and the tune
too ornamental to recall. Into the desert
they went and as they went their voices
rose as one above the sifting sound
of windblown sand. The wonder of their singing,
its elusive blend of man and camel, seemed
an ideal image for all uncommon couples.
Was this the night that I had waited for
so long? I wanted to believe it was,
but just as they were vanishing, the man
and camel ceased to sing, and galloped
back to town. They stood before my porch,
staring up at me with beady eyes, and said:
"You ruined it. You ruined it forever."
Mark Strand
Sorry no close read right now, for this one certainly needs some untangling.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Poem of the Week 7/2/2007: Dante's Inferno, from Canto VI
from Canto VI, Dante's Inferno
We were passing over shades sprawled
under heavy rain, setting our feet
upon their emptiness, which seems real bodies.
All of them were lying on the ground,
except for one who sat bolt upright
when he saw us pass before him.
'O you who come escorted through this hell,'
he said, 'if you can, bring me back to mind.
You were made before I was undone.'
And I to him: 'The punishment you suffer
may be blotting you from memory:
it doesn't seem to me I've ever seen you.
'But tell me who you are to have been put
into this misery with such a penalty
that none, though harsher, is more loathsome.'
And he to me: 'Your city,* so full of envy
that now the sack spills over,
held me in its confines in the sunlit life.
'You and my townsmen called me Ciacco.
For the pernicious fault of gluttony,
as you can see, I'm prostrate in this rain.
'And in my misery I am not alone.
All those here share a single penalty
for the same fault.' He said no more.
I answered him: 'Ciacco, your distress so weighs
on me it bids me weep.
ll. 59-84: Dante and Ciacco discuss the future of Florence. Dante asks of the afterlife of five townsmen. Ciacco responds:
And he: 'They are among the blacker souls.
Different vices weigh them toward the bottom,
as you shall see if you descend that far.
'But when you have returned to the sweet world
I pray you bring me to men's memory.
I say no more nor answer you again.'
With that his clear eyes lost their focus.
He gazed at me until his head dropped down.
Then he fell back among his blind companions.
Dante Alighieri, translated by Robert and Jean Hollander
*Florence
I offer this filled out reading in hopes that you will all forgive my having neglected the PotW last week and the close-reads for some time now!
To read this selection of the Inferno, it will help, I think, to give background on the poem and its events for those who have not read it. Dante, the character, begins on a journey through hell after losing his way on the path of truth. Virgil, the poet, appears as a guide, and the two have so far moved through the circles of apathetic individuals, limbo (virtuous heathens and unbaptized babes), and lust. In that of lust, we witnessed Dante's encounter with Francesca, a woman who tells her story of giving into romantic love, which causes Dante to faint from pity. At the beginning of this excerpt, we are in the middle of the third circle of Hell: that of Gluttony.
As with every level of hell, we must ask ourselves, what are the conditions of the punishment? For gluttony, punishment seems to be absolute nothingness--no humanity, no pain, no change in the weather, and no physical form (one then wonders what Dante and Virgil see, and upon what they are walking). All memory of its inhabitants is effaced from "the sunlit world." In this case, those punished are denied their humanity even in the shadows of memory. Physically, we get the feeling that they are merged with their landscape, for Virgil and Dante step over them as if they were the ground. Little wonder Dante calls this penalty "the most loathsome," for they are less-than-human, capable of nothing. In his comment, we recieve a value judgment about the beauty of our own lives: that we are given so much. One question to ask yourself might be: why is nothingness an apt punishment for gluttony?
Which brings us to another question. If the state here is one of nothingness, then how is it possible that Ciacco recognized Dante? This moment is striking, for among so much barrenness, to be suddenly seen, to be picked out by a sinner, associates Dante with the sin. The suddenness of Ciacco's waking acts out what it would be to see sin for oneself. However, there is no way of logically explaining why Ciacco wakes up. Perhaps it is to teach Dante about the sin, and so has a positive outcome. The poem's Christian framework would suggest that the waking up is given by God to help Dante on his way. And so Ciacco's sin is perhaps somewhat redeemed?
The question of "what is good" in this encounter also arises after reading this section. After all, if Ciacco is allowed to enter consciousness for Dante, and this will help, it seems basically positive. Moreover, he is a sympathetic character--not only does he respect Dante's questions, answering them fully, my notes tell me that he is one of the best sinners in Hell. In history, he was engaged in improving Florence. Moreover, he is honest about his sins, not begging them to be excused or claiming his innocence to a human, which would betray a lack of remorse, egoism and blasphemy. Finally, his plea to be remembered is difficult to remain cold to, perhaps because it expresses the innate human impulse of loving one's life, one's place in the world. He wants simply to exist. Ciacco tries to, implores Dante...
And yet he is damned. Confusing, because it goes against our innate reaction. But, no matter what qualites we may admire, there is no doubt that they were not enough to excuse him from his sin, for God sent him there, and God's judgment would be infalliable.
Dante thus gives us a problem that reveals tension in ourselves. There are three levels here: sin (gluttony), sympathy (for Ciacco), and true morality (the implicit, objective judgment of God). By (most likely) aligning the reader's response in the middle of two visible sides, Dante helps us see what we are. Reading the Inferno is an experience, one that brings us back to ourselves, and this, perhaps, is one aspect of his writing that makes him so great.
We were passing over shades sprawled
under heavy rain, setting our feet
upon their emptiness, which seems real bodies.
All of them were lying on the ground,
except for one who sat bolt upright
when he saw us pass before him.
'O you who come escorted through this hell,'
he said, 'if you can, bring me back to mind.
You were made before I was undone.'
And I to him: 'The punishment you suffer
may be blotting you from memory:
it doesn't seem to me I've ever seen you.
'But tell me who you are to have been put
into this misery with such a penalty
that none, though harsher, is more loathsome.'
And he to me: 'Your city,* so full of envy
that now the sack spills over,
held me in its confines in the sunlit life.
'You and my townsmen called me Ciacco.
For the pernicious fault of gluttony,
as you can see, I'm prostrate in this rain.
'And in my misery I am not alone.
All those here share a single penalty
for the same fault.' He said no more.
I answered him: 'Ciacco, your distress so weighs
on me it bids me weep.
ll. 59-84: Dante and Ciacco discuss the future of Florence. Dante asks of the afterlife of five townsmen. Ciacco responds:
And he: 'They are among the blacker souls.
Different vices weigh them toward the bottom,
as you shall see if you descend that far.
'But when you have returned to the sweet world
I pray you bring me to men's memory.
I say no more nor answer you again.'
With that his clear eyes lost their focus.
He gazed at me until his head dropped down.
Then he fell back among his blind companions.
Dante Alighieri, translated by Robert and Jean Hollander
*Florence
I offer this filled out reading in hopes that you will all forgive my having neglected the PotW last week and the close-reads for some time now!
To read this selection of the Inferno, it will help, I think, to give background on the poem and its events for those who have not read it. Dante, the character, begins on a journey through hell after losing his way on the path of truth. Virgil, the poet, appears as a guide, and the two have so far moved through the circles of apathetic individuals, limbo (virtuous heathens and unbaptized babes), and lust. In that of lust, we witnessed Dante's encounter with Francesca, a woman who tells her story of giving into romantic love, which causes Dante to faint from pity. At the beginning of this excerpt, we are in the middle of the third circle of Hell: that of Gluttony.
As with every level of hell, we must ask ourselves, what are the conditions of the punishment? For gluttony, punishment seems to be absolute nothingness--no humanity, no pain, no change in the weather, and no physical form (one then wonders what Dante and Virgil see, and upon what they are walking). All memory of its inhabitants is effaced from "the sunlit world." In this case, those punished are denied their humanity even in the shadows of memory. Physically, we get the feeling that they are merged with their landscape, for Virgil and Dante step over them as if they were the ground. Little wonder Dante calls this penalty "the most loathsome," for they are less-than-human, capable of nothing. In his comment, we recieve a value judgment about the beauty of our own lives: that we are given so much. One question to ask yourself might be: why is nothingness an apt punishment for gluttony?
Which brings us to another question. If the state here is one of nothingness, then how is it possible that Ciacco recognized Dante? This moment is striking, for among so much barrenness, to be suddenly seen, to be picked out by a sinner, associates Dante with the sin. The suddenness of Ciacco's waking acts out what it would be to see sin for oneself. However, there is no way of logically explaining why Ciacco wakes up. Perhaps it is to teach Dante about the sin, and so has a positive outcome. The poem's Christian framework would suggest that the waking up is given by God to help Dante on his way. And so Ciacco's sin is perhaps somewhat redeemed?
The question of "what is good" in this encounter also arises after reading this section. After all, if Ciacco is allowed to enter consciousness for Dante, and this will help, it seems basically positive. Moreover, he is a sympathetic character--not only does he respect Dante's questions, answering them fully, my notes tell me that he is one of the best sinners in Hell. In history, he was engaged in improving Florence. Moreover, he is honest about his sins, not begging them to be excused or claiming his innocence to a human, which would betray a lack of remorse, egoism and blasphemy. Finally, his plea to be remembered is difficult to remain cold to, perhaps because it expresses the innate human impulse of loving one's life, one's place in the world. He wants simply to exist. Ciacco tries to, implores Dante...
And yet he is damned. Confusing, because it goes against our innate reaction. But, no matter what qualites we may admire, there is no doubt that they were not enough to excuse him from his sin, for God sent him there, and God's judgment would be infalliable.
Dante thus gives us a problem that reveals tension in ourselves. There are three levels here: sin (gluttony), sympathy (for Ciacco), and true morality (the implicit, objective judgment of God). By (most likely) aligning the reader's response in the middle of two visible sides, Dante helps us see what we are. Reading the Inferno is an experience, one that brings us back to ourselves, and this, perhaps, is one aspect of his writing that makes him so great.
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