from Hamlet, Act III Scene I
To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
William Shakespeare
One of the most (if not the most) quoted lines of all of Shakespeare struck me the other morning as one of the central questions of all existence, TO be or not to be. That is the question. That is the question. Why? Because it begs of us to consider why we are here, whether life is worth living, what life is, what keeps us here... What does? Just a fear of the afterlife and of the unknown, which would be almost pathetic (though perhaps nonetheless accurate at times)...*
The suicide question is perhaps the explicit, and even intended, meaning of the passage, but when it flashed to me, it seemed to be asking about To Sleep, Perchance to Dream. Death as sleep, the unknowingness of sleep, and that waking up and living might really demand that we face the "slings and arrows of existence," the "thousand natural shocks" that come to us daily. And why choose to be that? Is it nobler to suffer those things, nobler in the mind? TO be or not to be. To awake and suffer, or to sleep and dream?
*
Thus conscience makes cowards of us all, facing the ills we have. And why does Shakespeare write about conscience here? It is so lost from modern language, modern understanding of man--guilt is something to be expiated, but perhaps it has a taste of the other side of knowledge, perhaps it knows something more than we think that we know? Who are we? And why are we here? Should we choose to stay)?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Poem of the Week 6/23/2008: i am
i am so glad and very
merely my fourth will cure
the laziest self of weary
the hugest sea of shore
so far your nearness reaches
a lucky fifth of you
turns people into eachs
and cowards into grow
our can'ts were born to happen
our mosts have died in more
our twentieth will open
wide a wide open door
we are so both and oneful
night cannot be so sky
sky cannot be so sunful
i am through you so i
e.e. cummings
Who is the "you" in this poem? oh oh beauty poem. I think this is one of the best poems ever written, and that it plays into two of my larger questions: what role do relationships play in the meaningful part of self-development, and also, why does the modern world have such an obsession with them? Is the modern world on to something, or rather does it have a taste, through this experience, of the "sunful" in another? Of the release?
merely my fourth will cure
the laziest self of weary
the hugest sea of shore
so far your nearness reaches
a lucky fifth of you
turns people into eachs
and cowards into grow
our can'ts were born to happen
our mosts have died in more
our twentieth will open
wide a wide open door
we are so both and oneful
night cannot be so sky
sky cannot be so sunful
i am through you so i
e.e. cummings
Who is the "you" in this poem? oh oh beauty poem. I think this is one of the best poems ever written, and that it plays into two of my larger questions: what role do relationships play in the meaningful part of self-development, and also, why does the modern world have such an obsession with them? Is the modern world on to something, or rather does it have a taste, through this experience, of the "sunful" in another? Of the release?
Monday, June 16, 2008
Poem of the Week 6/16/2008: No Second Troy
No Second Troy
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
W.B. Yeats
comments to come. sunshine calls.
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
W.B. Yeats
comments to come. sunshine calls.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Poem of the Week 6/9/2008: I Missed His Book, but I Read His Name
I Missed His Book, but I Read His Name
"The Silver Pilgrimage," by M. Anantanarayanan . . .
160 pages. Criterion. $3.95.
- The New York Times
Though authors are a dreadful clan,
To be avoided if you can,
I'd like to meet the Indian,
M. Anantanarayanan.
I picture him as short and tan,
We'd meet, perhaps, in Hindustan,
I'd say, with admirable elan,
"Ah, Anantanarayanan,
I've heard of you. The Times once ran
A notice on your novel, an
Unusual tale of God and Man."
And Anantanarayanan
Would seat me on a lush divan
And read his name--that sumptuous span
Of "a"s and "n"s more lovely than
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan"--
Aloud to me all day. I plan
Henceforth to be an ardent fan
Of Anantanarayanan,
M. Anantanarayanan.
John Updike 1963
The last two poems of the week have been amusing ones, but reading Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel is helping me appreciate the value of laughter and literature. It's so easy for thought et. al. to take itself seriously, and especially so for poets. The very word, today, rings of sensitivity and sensibility, as if it has a kind of flourish to it. So I admire the work of John Updike, who often writes for the New Yorker, and tickles and delights his readers. A delight!
"The Silver Pilgrimage," by M. Anantanarayanan . . .
160 pages. Criterion. $3.95.
- The New York Times
Though authors are a dreadful clan,
To be avoided if you can,
I'd like to meet the Indian,
M. Anantanarayanan.
I picture him as short and tan,
We'd meet, perhaps, in Hindustan,
I'd say, with admirable elan,
"Ah, Anantanarayanan,
I've heard of you. The Times once ran
A notice on your novel, an
Unusual tale of God and Man."
And Anantanarayanan
Would seat me on a lush divan
And read his name--that sumptuous span
Of "a"s and "n"s more lovely than
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan"--
Aloud to me all day. I plan
Henceforth to be an ardent fan
Of Anantanarayanan,
M. Anantanarayanan.
John Updike 1963
The last two poems of the week have been amusing ones, but reading Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel is helping me appreciate the value of laughter and literature. It's so easy for thought et. al. to take itself seriously, and especially so for poets. The very word, today, rings of sensitivity and sensibility, as if it has a kind of flourish to it. So I admire the work of John Updike, who often writes for the New Yorker, and tickles and delights his readers. A delight!
Friday, June 06, 2008
Poem of the Week 6/2/2008: The Dover Bitch
The Dover Bitch
A Criticism of Life: for Andrews Wanning
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.
Anthony Hecht
!!!!!
A Criticism of Life: for Andrews Wanning
So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.
Anthony Hecht
!!!!!
Poem of the Week 5/28/2008: Dover Beach
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold is my guilty pleasure. I think most of the content of this posting will show that, so while I am qualifying it, I happily stick to my opinions.
Despite all of the reasons to stay clear of this poem, I know that I like it; it's one of those things literary critics could probably appreciate but perhaps not out and out like? Actually, why am I saying that? Some idea about not sticking to cliches, to the easily accessed poems, but I really do appreciate this poem for what it is, a rather complete whole reflecting upon meaning, faith, the presence of modern life against the way things were, and finally the position of relationships within everything, not to mention one of my favorite lines of all time (for some reason, it seems just perfect to me, though it's certainly not the cleverest or most spectacular):
the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling
I miss music in poetry. An introduction to a volume of Rilke I recently read mentioned that with the coming of more recent poetry, a drier, more "willful" and active style came into being, and the lofty notes of Arnold's work
Another note: Matthew Arnold was once found on a naked jaunt in a stream, and, when admonished by the onlooker, yelled back, "Is it impossible you find anything imperfect in the human form divine?" Who says things like that? O sweet spirit of delight!
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold is my guilty pleasure. I think most of the content of this posting will show that, so while I am qualifying it, I happily stick to my opinions.
Despite all of the reasons to stay clear of this poem, I know that I like it; it's one of those things literary critics could probably appreciate but perhaps not out and out like? Actually, why am I saying that? Some idea about not sticking to cliches, to the easily accessed poems, but I really do appreciate this poem for what it is, a rather complete whole reflecting upon meaning, faith, the presence of modern life against the way things were, and finally the position of relationships within everything, not to mention one of my favorite lines of all time (for some reason, it seems just perfect to me, though it's certainly not the cleverest or most spectacular):
the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling
I miss music in poetry. An introduction to a volume of Rilke I recently read mentioned that with the coming of more recent poetry, a drier, more "willful" and active style came into being, and the lofty notes of Arnold's work
Another note: Matthew Arnold was once found on a naked jaunt in a stream, and, when admonished by the onlooker, yelled back, "Is it impossible you find anything imperfect in the human form divine?" Who says things like that? O sweet spirit of delight!
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Poem of the Week 5/18/2008: from Little Gidding
from "Little Gidding"
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
T.S. Eliot
thoughts later.
goodbye college!
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
T.S. Eliot
thoughts later.
goodbye college!
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Poem of the Week 5/12/2008: Little Elegy
Little Elegy
That madman from the eastern regions
Ho Chi-chang
wild as wind and river
first time I met him
at the capital
he called me "angel in exile"
oh how he loved his cup
and now he's dirt
under the pine trees
he pawned his gold turtle
to buy me wine
as I remember that
tears wet my scarf.
Li Po
Trans. David Young
I don't think that Li Po's poems need much explanation; each is like a small glass globe, taking in the world, managing it so that it fits in the palm of one's hand.
A friend was challenging me that poetry can be too intrusive, (she may be thinking of confessional poets, and also undeveloped poets), who smear their emotions on the page, sharing what is little more than a diary entry, meant for no person's eyes. The emo-music of poetry. I suppose it's a rare thing to find a poem that really manages its emotion, though I think that all good ones should; Li Po's certainly achieves this through such carefully selected detail! The poem is so sparing with its images that what arise to us are the gold turtle, the tears on the scarf, the cup loved ny the madman, the dirt he now is...
That madman from the eastern regions
Ho Chi-chang
wild as wind and river
first time I met him
at the capital
he called me "angel in exile"
oh how he loved his cup
and now he's dirt
under the pine trees
he pawned his gold turtle
to buy me wine
as I remember that
tears wet my scarf.
Li Po
Trans. David Young
I don't think that Li Po's poems need much explanation; each is like a small glass globe, taking in the world, managing it so that it fits in the palm of one's hand.
A friend was challenging me that poetry can be too intrusive, (she may be thinking of confessional poets, and also undeveloped poets), who smear their emotions on the page, sharing what is little more than a diary entry, meant for no person's eyes. The emo-music of poetry. I suppose it's a rare thing to find a poem that really manages its emotion, though I think that all good ones should; Li Po's certainly achieves this through such carefully selected detail! The poem is so sparing with its images that what arise to us are the gold turtle, the tears on the scarf, the cup loved ny the madman, the dirt he now is...
Friday, May 30, 2008
Poem of the Week 5/5/2008: Black and White Stone
Black and White Stone
Sima
seeds a stone
in the air
The stone rises
Inside
an old man is asleep
If his eyes open
the stone explodes
whirlwind of wings and beaks
above a woman
who flows
through the whiskers of autumn
The stone falls
burning
in the eye's plaza
flowering
in the palm of your hand
speaking
dangling
between your breasts
languages of water
The stone ripens
Inside
the seeds sing
They are seven
seven sisters
seven vipers
seven drops of jade
seven words
asleep
on a bed of glass
seven veins of water
in the center
of the stone
opened with a glance
Octavio Paz 1971
Trans. Eliot Weinberger
Perhaps what will help the understanding of this poem most is to know that it was based on a dream Paz had. The author's note is as follows:
"I was not a friend of Joseph Sima's, but in 1969 and 1970 I had the fortune of seeing him a few times always briefly, at the gallery Le Point Cardinal in Paris. His presence and conversation created an impression on me that was no less vivid than his painting. Two days before writing the poem and dreaming the dram that are the object of this note, I had recieved a letter from Claude Esteban, asking me for a text--perhaps, he hinted, a poem--in homage to Sima. I barely remember my dream, except for the image of an almost spherical stone--a planet? giant gourd? light bulb? fruit?--floating in the air, slowly changing color (but what were the colors that alternately lit up and grew dark?) spinning around itself and over a landscape of fine sand covered with eyes--the eyes of Marie Jose who slept at my side. The undulating yellow landscape had turned into eyes that watched the stone breathe, dilating and contracting, suspended in the air. Then I was woken by a voice that said "Sima siembra" ("Sima seeds"). I got up and wrote, almost embarassedly, the poem that Esteban had requested. Three days later I read in Le Monde that Sima had died. As the newspaper arrived in Mexico three days after publication in Paris, I had dreamed the dream and written the poem just when Sima died."
Oddly, the way Sima, somebody Paz obviously admired, will be remembered best through a poem of Paz's; it is at moments like this when I reflect on and trust Shakespeare's idea of art lasting longer than the person himself.
Some other thoughts that came to me are those pertaining to latin poetry; this poem's sensuality and mysterious but clear imagery seem, to me, like Nietzsche's woman. That is, they are beautiful and true yet lead one forward, their mystery never quite grasped, quite understood. Reading this poem, it is perhaps best not to treat it like something to be Understood, but rather something by which to be humbled, or something to marvel at, legs crossed on the floor.
Sima
seeds a stone
in the air
The stone rises
Inside
an old man is asleep
If his eyes open
the stone explodes
whirlwind of wings and beaks
above a woman
who flows
through the whiskers of autumn
The stone falls
burning
in the eye's plaza
flowering
in the palm of your hand
speaking
dangling
between your breasts
languages of water
The stone ripens
Inside
the seeds sing
They are seven
seven sisters
seven vipers
seven drops of jade
seven words
asleep
on a bed of glass
seven veins of water
in the center
of the stone
opened with a glance
Octavio Paz 1971
Trans. Eliot Weinberger
Perhaps what will help the understanding of this poem most is to know that it was based on a dream Paz had. The author's note is as follows:
"I was not a friend of Joseph Sima's, but in 1969 and 1970 I had the fortune of seeing him a few times always briefly, at the gallery Le Point Cardinal in Paris. His presence and conversation created an impression on me that was no less vivid than his painting. Two days before writing the poem and dreaming the dram that are the object of this note, I had recieved a letter from Claude Esteban, asking me for a text--perhaps, he hinted, a poem--in homage to Sima. I barely remember my dream, except for the image of an almost spherical stone--a planet? giant gourd? light bulb? fruit?--floating in the air, slowly changing color (but what were the colors that alternately lit up and grew dark?) spinning around itself and over a landscape of fine sand covered with eyes--the eyes of Marie Jose who slept at my side. The undulating yellow landscape had turned into eyes that watched the stone breathe, dilating and contracting, suspended in the air. Then I was woken by a voice that said "Sima siembra" ("Sima seeds"). I got up and wrote, almost embarassedly, the poem that Esteban had requested. Three days later I read in Le Monde that Sima had died. As the newspaper arrived in Mexico three days after publication in Paris, I had dreamed the dream and written the poem just when Sima died."
Oddly, the way Sima, somebody Paz obviously admired, will be remembered best through a poem of Paz's; it is at moments like this when I reflect on and trust Shakespeare's idea of art lasting longer than the person himself.
Some other thoughts that came to me are those pertaining to latin poetry; this poem's sensuality and mysterious but clear imagery seem, to me, like Nietzsche's woman. That is, they are beautiful and true yet lead one forward, their mystery never quite grasped, quite understood. Reading this poem, it is perhaps best not to treat it like something to be Understood, but rather something by which to be humbled, or something to marvel at, legs crossed on the floor.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Poem of the Week 4/28/2008: Death
Death
Death calls my dog by the wrong name.
A little man when I was small, Death grew
Beside me, always taller, but always
Confused as I have almost never been.
Confusion, like the heart, gets left behind
Early by a boy, abandoned the very moment
Futurity with her bare arms comes a-waltzing
Down the fire escapes to take his hand.
"Death," I said, "if your eyes were green
I would eat them."
For what are days but the furnace of an eye?
If I could strip a sunflower bare to its bare soul,
I would rebuild it:
Green inside of green, ringed round by green.
There'd be nothing but new flowers anymore.
Absolute Christmas.
"Death," I said, "I know someone, a woman,
Who sank her teeth into the moon."
For what are space and time but the inventions
Of sorrowing men? The soul goes faster than light.
Eating the moon alive, it leaves space and time behind.
The soul is forgiveness because it knows forgiveness.
And the knowledge is whirligig.
Whirligig taught me to live outwardly.
Shoe shop. . . pizza parlor. . . surgical appliances. . .
All left behind me with the hooey.
My soul is my home.
An old star hounded by old starlight.
"Death, I ask you, whose only story
Is the end of the story, right from the start,
How is it I remember everything
That never happened and almost nothing that did?
Was I ever born?"
I think of the suicides, all of them thriving,
Many of them painting beautiful pictures.
I think of boys and girls murdered
In their first beauty, now with children of their own.
And I have a church in my mind, set cruelly ablaze,
And then the explosion of happy souls
Into the greeny, frozen Christmas Eve air:
Another good Christmas, a white choir.
Beside each other still,
My Death and I are a magical hermit.
Dear Mother, I miss you.
Dear reader, your eyes are now green,
Green as they used to be, before I was born.
Donald Revell
Does anybody have questions about this poem? I think that I could answer them, but that it is a poem that you all could puzzle out yourselves; he uses some basic college facts (it is a very collegy poem; Mr. Revell is a professor at the University of Las Vegas-Nevada), including the old idea that men are stars, the philosophic lynchpin that our perception shapes the world around us, that rationality is a mill that cannot itself learn, that must be informed by impressions. I think that Mr. Revell has read Blake-- these philosophic undertones align with Blake's.
At any rate, meditations on death are, I think, one thing poetry still has going for it, and one thing that many of us could do to think about a little more. Here, the lamentation is a measured one. That is, the thought of endings, and the grief for life that accompanies death (death's bride?), is cut by the funny tone of lines like, "Absolute Christmas" and by the playful wonder at Death, as well. Death is somebody who grows, who gets things wrong, who is so confusing that he must be forgotten; I take this to mean that man must push the thought of death away because simply he does not know what happens...
Revell also brings up questions of life, and death of course must do; with death, he wonders what the quality of life truly is. Are we ever born, he wonders, into a real and true place, or are we always drawn outward to pizza parlors and worry about our health in doctor's offices? Death calls us home, in a way, bringing the interior world to light again, the soul, the true home, whatever that means.
What does death demand of us? And how does Revell address it?I am grateful that Revell addresses the reader at the end of the poem, for, as a friend and I were discussing yesterday, death must necessarily be about oneself, and about life in general--the great grief of living lifts its chin, everything held in the eyes of a good old black dog.
Donald Revell
Does anybody have questions about this poem? I think that I could answer them, but that it is a poem that you all could puzzle out yourselves; he uses some basic college facts (it is a very collegy poem; Mr. Revell is a professor at the University of Las Vegas-Nevada), including the old idea that men are stars, the philosophic lynchpin that our perception shapes the world around us, that rationality is a mill that cannot itself learn, that must be informed by impressions. I think that Mr. Revell has read Blake-- these philosophic undertones align with Blake's.
At any rate, meditations on death are, I think, one thing poetry still has going for it, and one thing that many of us could do to think about a little more. Here, the lamentation is a measured one. That is, the thought of endings, and the grief for life that accompanies death (death's bride?), is cut by the funny tone of lines like, "Absolute Christmas" and by the playful wonder at Death, as well. Death is somebody who grows, who gets things wrong, who is so confusing that he must be forgotten; I take this to mean that man must push the thought of death away because simply he does not know what happens...
Revell also brings up questions of life, and death of course must do; with death, he wonders what the quality of life truly is. Are we ever born, he wonders, into a real and true place, or are we always drawn outward to pizza parlors and worry about our health in doctor's offices? Death calls us home, in a way, bringing the interior world to light again, the soul, the true home, whatever that means.
What does death demand of us? And how does Revell address it?I am grateful that Revell addresses the reader at the end of the poem, for, as a friend and I were discussing yesterday, death must necessarily be about oneself, and about life in general--the great grief of living lifts its chin, everything held in the eyes of a good old black dog.
Poem of the Week 4/21/2008: Your Hair of Snakes and Flowers
Your Hair of Snakes and Flowers
When I saw one of those men touch your hair,
I heard for the first time in many a year
the ancient battle trumpets and I saw
the banners of an army winding off to war
and felt that blind power urging me to knock
him out with one punch, send him tumbling to the floor.
If nobody had held me back, stopped me,
I would—God help me—have killed him on the spot,
stomped out his blood, and spit in it. I'm sorry,
but you must be aware your winding hair
is different now, a hornets' nest, a snakes' lair!
Yes, like a ball of snakes in a flower basket, dear.
Håkan SandellTranslated from the Swedish by Bill Coyle
There would be all sorts of fun and easy ways to discuss this poem as the staging of epic in the modern world, how it stands at an intersection of traditional heroic poetry and modern love lyric. Then one could discuss the further intertwining of poet and translator, one language moving into another language.
But that is poetic wrangling, and I can't speak Swedish to compare the two anyway, so it seems that the implication of these intersections is that the battle of epic is a battle in one's own head, in one's own life. The great drums sound as the beating of a heart, the armies are energy and fury running down the arm, pulling the hand into a fist...
A final note: I don't think that it would be as good of a poem without the final line, when the speaker turns to his wife or girlfriend, and addresses her caustically and politely. Yes dear, he says, you are so sweet and dangerous.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Poem of the Week 4/14/2008: The List of Famous Hats
The List of Famous Hats
Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.
Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.
James Tate 1996
This is a prose poem by James Tate; I have become interested in prose poems of late, partially because it begs the question ever interesting to me: what makes a poem? Why do we recognize some language as poetic and some not? Is there a cultural locus of this? I, at least, feel that a prose poem like this couldn't really exist before the modern age, for only now are we so chatty and cluttered that we have to abandon form, or rather that we can't appreciate more formal aspects of lanuage or poetry. Perhaps that's unfair. Well, it's probably true in many cases and not in others, I suppose.
My favorite definition for poetry was set forth by Howard Nemerov, himself an excellent poet. "Poetry," he writes, "is right language." So any proper description would make poetic language; clever style is thus not necessarily poetry (though is often counted as such), nor is high form. It has to be apt language. What does this mean? Oh, I hesitate to provide answers, so here, instead, are a few thoughts. Compression, paradox, symbolism (provided it doesn't symbolize something made up, like creativity or "sense of place," for example), and musicality often convey more of a thing, can lead us to the thing itself... This is probably a lot of quibbling. Does anybody have any thoughts, or is this something that it does not do to think about; perhaps, like the question of music, it's a case of: we know it when we hear it. That's satisfactory for me.
I hope you enjoy this poem. Funny poetry is a real gift of existence.
This is a prose poem by James Tate; I have become interested in prose poems of late, partially because it begs the question ever interesting to me: what makes a poem? Why do we recognize some language as poetic and some not? Is there a cultural locus of this? I, at least, feel that a prose poem like this couldn't really exist before the modern age, for only now are we so chatty and cluttered that we have to abandon form, or rather that we can't appreciate more formal aspects of lanuage or poetry. Perhaps that's unfair. Well, it's probably true in many cases and not in others, I suppose.
My favorite definition for poetry was set forth by Howard Nemerov, himself an excellent poet. "Poetry," he writes, "is right language." So any proper description would make poetic language; clever style is thus not necessarily poetry (though is often counted as such), nor is high form. It has to be apt language. What does this mean? Oh, I hesitate to provide answers, so here, instead, are a few thoughts. Compression, paradox, symbolism (provided it doesn't symbolize something made up, like creativity or "sense of place," for example), and musicality often convey more of a thing, can lead us to the thing itself... This is probably a lot of quibbling. Does anybody have any thoughts, or is this something that it does not do to think about; perhaps, like the question of music, it's a case of: we know it when we hear it. That's satisfactory for me.
I hope you enjoy this poem. Funny poetry is a real gift of existence.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Poem of the Week 4/7/2008: The Third Century
The Third Century
The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which
never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I
The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which
never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I
thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.
The dust and stones of the street were as precious
as gold : the gates were at first the end of the world.
The green trees when I saw them first through one
of the gates transported and ravished me, their
sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to
leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such
strange and wonderful things. The Men ! O what
venerable and reverend creatures did the aged
seem ! Immortal Cherubims ! And young men
glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange
seraphic pieces of life and beauty ! Boys and girls
tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving
jewels. I knew not that they were born or should
die ; But all things abided eternally as they were in
their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the
Light of the Day, and something infinite behind
everything appeared : which talked with my
expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed
to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The
street were mine, the temple was mine, the people
were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were
mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and
ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the
sun and moon and stars, and all the World was
mine ; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.
I knew no churlish properties, nor bounds, nor
divisions : but all properties and divisions were
mine : all treasures and the possessors of them. So
that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to
learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I
unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again
that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.
Thomas Traherne, from Centuries of Meditation
Though technically "prose," this work by Thomas Traherne stands in my "Poetry is right language" category. For it is certainly some of the most marvelous and remarkable language I have ever come across, at once simple and shining, as hard cut and as glittering as a gem. I steal that image from this "century." A Metaphysical poet, Traherne was most primarily a pastor and member of several holy orders in England in the mid to late 17th Century. I suppose it is unnecessary to write too much about this passage, for it stands as something to be slowly savored and tasted. However, it might be fruitful to think about the way the state of childhood works in this poem, and how it might open up into a much greater redemptive state; what is childhood, and why is it connected with the divine, the infinite? How is Traherne entering the Kingdom of Heaven now, though this childlike state? Happy reading.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Poem of the Week 3/31/2008: Death the Hypocrite
Death the Hypocrite
You claim to loathe me, yet everything you prize
Brings you within the reach of my embrace.
I see right through you though I have no eyes;
You fail to know me even face to face.
Your kiss, your car, cocktail and cigarette,
Your lecheries in fancy and in fact,
Unkindness you manage to forget,
Are ritual prologue to the final act
And certain curtain call. Nickels and dimes
Are but the cold coin of a realm that's mine.
I'm the acute accountant of your crimes
As of your real estate. Bristlecone pine,
Whose close-ringed chronicles mock your regimen
Of jogging, vitamins, and your strange desire
To disregard your assigned three-score and ten,
Yields to my absolute instrument of fire.
You know me, friend, as Faustus, Baudelaire,
Boredom, Self-Hatred, and, still more, Self-Love.
Hypocrite lecteur, mon sembable, mon frere,
Acknowledge me. I fit you like a glove.
Anthony Hecht 1995
Hecht's note: "Some bristlecone pines are the oldest living things on earth . . . a total of seventeen bristlecone pines have been found which, still living and growing, are over 4,000 years old, the oldest some 4,600 years old." Andreas Feininger, from his book Trees.
Also, the line, "Hypocrite lecteur...frere" comes from TS Eliot's "The Waste Land"
This poem springs from a series of "Death" poems by Anthony Hecht, including, Death Demure, Death the Oxford Don, Death the Society Lady, Death the Poet, Death the Judge, Death the Mexican Revolutionary, Death the Whore, Death the Copperplate Printer, and even a set of nursery rhymes about death. This last one is a delicious poem you can check out here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179071
"Death the Hypocrite" is titled after its narrator, the death that results from hypocrisy, or the death that deals in hypocrisy. It demands us to ask, what has death become in the modern world? Why would somebody try to avoid the question of death, and how? All of the little gimmicks modern man uses to put off the reality of death, that "certain curtain call," are actually tokens of death's appearance, his already having settled in. For fear of death is consciousness of death, is it not? To repress the reality of death is to slide under the need to come to any sort of reckoning with one's life, for life seems endless, formless, interminable. But to not terminate, ever, to simply mist and fritter one's life away, what kind of life is this, Hecht's poem begs us to ask. Indeed, he leaves us almost nowhere to turn for solace, for our small attempts to "preserve life"--jogging, vitamins, etc--shrink to nothing against the 4,600 rings on the bristlecone pine.
You claim to loathe me, yet everything you prize
Brings you within the reach of my embrace.
I see right through you though I have no eyes;
You fail to know me even face to face.
Your kiss, your car, cocktail and cigarette,
Your lecheries in fancy and in fact,
Unkindness you manage to forget,
Are ritual prologue to the final act
And certain curtain call. Nickels and dimes
Are but the cold coin of a realm that's mine.
I'm the acute accountant of your crimes
As of your real estate. Bristlecone pine,
Whose close-ringed chronicles mock your regimen
Of jogging, vitamins, and your strange desire
To disregard your assigned three-score and ten,
Yields to my absolute instrument of fire.
You know me, friend, as Faustus, Baudelaire,
Boredom, Self-Hatred, and, still more, Self-Love.
Hypocrite lecteur, mon sembable, mon frere,
Acknowledge me. I fit you like a glove.
Anthony Hecht 1995
Hecht's note: "Some bristlecone pines are the oldest living things on earth . . . a total of seventeen bristlecone pines have been found which, still living and growing, are over 4,000 years old, the oldest some 4,600 years old." Andreas Feininger, from his book Trees.
Also, the line, "Hypocrite lecteur...frere" comes from TS Eliot's "The Waste Land"
This poem springs from a series of "Death" poems by Anthony Hecht, including, Death Demure, Death the Oxford Don, Death the Society Lady, Death the Poet, Death the Judge, Death the Mexican Revolutionary, Death the Whore, Death the Copperplate Printer, and even a set of nursery rhymes about death. This last one is a delicious poem you can check out here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179071
"Death the Hypocrite" is titled after its narrator, the death that results from hypocrisy, or the death that deals in hypocrisy. It demands us to ask, what has death become in the modern world? Why would somebody try to avoid the question of death, and how? All of the little gimmicks modern man uses to put off the reality of death, that "certain curtain call," are actually tokens of death's appearance, his already having settled in. For fear of death is consciousness of death, is it not? To repress the reality of death is to slide under the need to come to any sort of reckoning with one's life, for life seems endless, formless, interminable. But to not terminate, ever, to simply mist and fritter one's life away, what kind of life is this, Hecht's poem begs us to ask. Indeed, he leaves us almost nowhere to turn for solace, for our small attempts to "preserve life"--jogging, vitamins, etc--shrink to nothing against the 4,600 rings on the bristlecone pine.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Poem of the Week 3/24/2008: Drinking in Moonlight
Drinking in Moonlight
I sit with my wine jar
among flowers
blossoming trees
no one to drink with
well, there's the moon
I raise my cup
and ask him to join me
bringing my shadow
making us three
but the moon doesn't seem to be drinking
and my shadow just creeps around behind me
still, we're companions tonight
me, the moon, and the shadow
we're observing
the rites of spring
I sing
and the moon rocks back and forth
I dance
and my shadow
weaves and tumbles with me
we celebrate for awhile
then go our own ways, drunk
may we meet again someday
in the white river of stars
overhead!
Li Po
trans. David Young
What does it make you want to do? When thinking about the sympathetic power of poetry, or its motive power perhaps.... anybody feel like commenting on this one? It's spectacular. I will probably have something to say about it later in the week.
I sit with my wine jar
among flowers
blossoming trees
no one to drink with
well, there's the moon
I raise my cup
and ask him to join me
bringing my shadow
making us three
but the moon doesn't seem to be drinking
and my shadow just creeps around behind me
still, we're companions tonight
me, the moon, and the shadow
we're observing
the rites of spring
I sing
and the moon rocks back and forth
I dance
and my shadow
weaves and tumbles with me
we celebrate for awhile
then go our own ways, drunk
may we meet again someday
in the white river of stars
overhead!
Li Po
trans. David Young
What does it make you want to do? When thinking about the sympathetic power of poetry, or its motive power perhaps.... anybody feel like commenting on this one? It's spectacular. I will probably have something to say about it later in the week.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Poem of the Week 3/17/2008: The Anactoria Poem
The Anactoria Poem
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what-
ever you love best.
And it's easy to make this understood by
everyone, for she who surpassed all human
kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
husband--that best of
men--went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
never spent a thought on her child or loving
parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
left her to wander,
she forgot them all, she could not remember
anything but longing, and lightly straying
aside, lost her way. But that reminds me
now: Anactória,
she's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely
step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on
all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and
glittering armor.
Sappho
Translated by Jim Powell
Some quick notes on this poem:
--Anactoria is Sappho's lover, and the person to whom the poem is addressed--
At question in it is, appropriate for a lyric poem, only, "the most beautiful of / sights the dark earth offers." What is it? Well, it depends on who you are, for beauty, for Sappho, is a matter of perspective. Whatever one finds the most beautiful is whatever you love; beauty is a function of love. Sappho then goes on to show this to be true using the example of Helen of Troy. Though her physical beauty was allegedly the greatest, Helen herself did not think so, and left her life in order to cavort with Paris, to wander with longing.
Sappho reveals her taste in beauty at the end of the poem, saying that what she loves best is this woman, that Sappho would rather see Helen's glittering face than all of the power in the world. This is a philosophical poem that turns into a love poem.
a biography on Sappho from Poets.org
Only a handful of details are known about the life of Sappho. She was born around 615 B.C. to an aristocratic family on the Greek island of Lesbos. Evidence suggests that she had several brothers, married a wealthy man named Cercylas, and had a daughter named Cleis. She spent most of her adult life in the city of Mytilene on Lesbos where she ran an academy for unmarried young women. Sappho's school devoted itself to the cult of Aphrodite and Eros, and Sappho earned great prominence as a dedicated teacher and poet. A legend from Ovid suggests that she threw herself from a cliff when her heart was broken by Phaon, a young sailor, and died at an early age. Other historians posit that she died of old age around 550 B.C.
The history of her poems is as speculative as that of her biography. She was known in antiquity as a great poet: Plato called her "the tenth Muse" and her likeness appeared on coins. It is unclear whether she invented or simply refined the meter of her day, but today it is known as "Sapphic" meter. Her poems were first collected into nine volumes around the third century B.C., but her work was lost almost entirely for many years. Merely one twenty-eight-line poem of hers has survived intact, and she was known principally through quotations found in the works of other authors until the nineteenth century. In 1898 scholars unearthed papyri that contained fragments of her poems. In 1914 in Egypt, archeologists discovered papier-mâché coffins made from scraps of paper that contained more verse fragments attributed to Sappho.
Three centuries after her death the writers of the New Comedy parodied Sappho as both overly promiscuous and lesbian. This characterization held fast, so much so that the very term "lesbian" is derived from the name of her home island. Her reputation for licentiousness would cause Pope Gregory to burn her work in 1073. Because social norms in ancient Greece differed from those of today and because so little is actually known of her life, it is difficult to unequivocally answer such claims. Her poems about Eros, however, speak with equal force to men as well as to women.
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what-
ever you love best.
And it's easy to make this understood by
everyone, for she who surpassed all human
kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
husband--that best of
men--went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
never spent a thought on her child or loving
parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
left her to wander,
she forgot them all, she could not remember
anything but longing, and lightly straying
aside, lost her way. But that reminds me
now: Anactória,
she's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely
step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on
all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and
glittering armor.
Sappho
Translated by Jim Powell
Some quick notes on this poem:
--Anactoria is Sappho's lover, and the person to whom the poem is addressed--
At question in it is, appropriate for a lyric poem, only, "the most beautiful of / sights the dark earth offers." What is it? Well, it depends on who you are, for beauty, for Sappho, is a matter of perspective. Whatever one finds the most beautiful is whatever you love; beauty is a function of love. Sappho then goes on to show this to be true using the example of Helen of Troy. Though her physical beauty was allegedly the greatest, Helen herself did not think so, and left her life in order to cavort with Paris, to wander with longing.
Sappho reveals her taste in beauty at the end of the poem, saying that what she loves best is this woman, that Sappho would rather see Helen's glittering face than all of the power in the world. This is a philosophical poem that turns into a love poem.
a biography on Sappho from Poets.org
Only a handful of details are known about the life of Sappho. She was born around 615 B.C. to an aristocratic family on the Greek island of Lesbos. Evidence suggests that she had several brothers, married a wealthy man named Cercylas, and had a daughter named Cleis. She spent most of her adult life in the city of Mytilene on Lesbos where she ran an academy for unmarried young women. Sappho's school devoted itself to the cult of Aphrodite and Eros, and Sappho earned great prominence as a dedicated teacher and poet. A legend from Ovid suggests that she threw herself from a cliff when her heart was broken by Phaon, a young sailor, and died at an early age. Other historians posit that she died of old age around 550 B.C.
The history of her poems is as speculative as that of her biography. She was known in antiquity as a great poet: Plato called her "the tenth Muse" and her likeness appeared on coins. It is unclear whether she invented or simply refined the meter of her day, but today it is known as "Sapphic" meter. Her poems were first collected into nine volumes around the third century B.C., but her work was lost almost entirely for many years. Merely one twenty-eight-line poem of hers has survived intact, and she was known principally through quotations found in the works of other authors until the nineteenth century. In 1898 scholars unearthed papyri that contained fragments of her poems. In 1914 in Egypt, archeologists discovered papier-mâché coffins made from scraps of paper that contained more verse fragments attributed to Sappho.
Three centuries after her death the writers of the New Comedy parodied Sappho as both overly promiscuous and lesbian. This characterization held fast, so much so that the very term "lesbian" is derived from the name of her home island. Her reputation for licentiousness would cause Pope Gregory to burn her work in 1073. Because social norms in ancient Greece differed from those of today and because so little is actually known of her life, it is difficult to unequivocally answer such claims. Her poems about Eros, however, speak with equal force to men as well as to women.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Poem of the Week 3/9/2008: from Paradise Lost
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!
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!
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)