Trying this again

I've probably lost what readership I ever had, but I may as well give it another go.

Here's a piece by the mid-18th century poet Thomas Gray, best known for his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." It always makes me think of Mr. Swartwout, my British literature teacher in high school. I find it interesting how the poem seems to resemble mock-heroics like Pope's Rape of the Lock earlier in the century, yet is also more in earnest, resembling in some respects the human-animal relationship posited by Burns in "To a Mouse."

"Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes"

'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream:
Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretched, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no nereid stirred:
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard.
A favorite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters gold.

1748

Trying my hand at translation

One of my favorite poets in any language is the German modernist Rainer Maria Rilke, who, incidentally, was raised as a girl (just FYI). We spent a lot of time in a class I took on German literature a couple of semesters ago on Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, and I especially enjoyed this one. The way it plays with the material and immaterial qualities of language and experience raise a number of philosophical and critical questions that are, for me at least, incredibly interesting. The only trouble is, I couldn't find an English translation that I could access. I've provided my own (incredibly unpoetic) translation below, but I'd recommend just trying to read aloud the original German, even if you don't understand any of it. After all, that's part of the point.

Herausgegaben von Die Sonette an Orpheus

Voller Apfel, Birne und Banane
Stachelbeere ... Alles dieses spricht
Tod und Leben in den Mund ... Ich ahne ...
Lest es einem Kind vom Angesicht,

wenn es sie erschmeckt. Dies kommt von weit.
Wird euch langsam namenlos im Munde?
Wo sonst Worte waren fließen Funde,
aus dem Fruchtfleisch überrascht befreit.

Wagt zu sagen, was ihr Apfel nennt.
Diese Süße, die sich erst verdictet,
um, im Schmecken leise aufgerichtet,

klar zu werden, wach und transparent,
doppeldeutig, sonnig, erdig, hiesig--:
O Erfahrung, Fühlung, Freude--riesig!

From The Sonnets to Orpheus

Full of apples, pears, and bananas,
Gooseberries ... All of these speak
Death and life in the mouth ... I apprehend ...
Read it in the face of a child

When it tastes them. This comes from afar.
Do they become slowly nameless in your mouths?
Where once words were, flow in findings,
Out of the fruit-flesh, astonishingly freed.

Dare to say what your apple names.
This sweetness that first thickens
So as to quietly stand up in tastes,

To become clear, awake and transparent,
Double-meaning, sunny, earthy, local--:
O Discovery, Feeling, Joy--enormous!

1923

Marriage poetry

For my upcoming wedding, we're going to have some family members read a couple of poems. The standard choice for marriage poetry seems to be the Shakespeare sonnet "Let me not to the marriage of true minds." Not a bad poem, but my fiance and I wanted to avoid the obvious choice. As the English major in our relationship, I took on the task of finding a suitable alternative. Unfortunately, good love poetry is actually hard to find, especially since I have a taste for the sardonic or bitter. My favorite Shakespearean sonnet, for example, is all about how love is built on nothing but lies. Eventually, though, I came upon a poem by Edmund Spenser, who wrote roughly a generation before Shakespeare. For fun, I'll give it in the original Early Modern English spelling (u and v are interchangeable).

Sonnet 65 from Amoretti

The doubt which ye misdeem, fayre loue, is vaine
That fondly feare to loose your liberty,
when loosing one, two liberties ye gayne,
and make him bond that bondage earst dyd fly.
Sweet be the bands, the which true loue doth tye,
without constraynt or dread of any ill:
the gentle birde feeles no captiuity
within her cage, but singes and feeds her fill.
There pride dare not approch, nor discord spill
the league twixt them, that loyal loue hath bound:
but simple truth and mutuall good will,
seekes with sweet peace to salue each others woud
There fayth doth fearlesse dwell in brasen towre,
and spotlesse pleasure builds her sacred bowre.

1595

Apologies, and a poem

So, it's been about three weeks without posts. Terribly sorry, but two major term papers, finals, and moving do that. The good news, though, is that I've done well in all my classes and my new apartment is looking great after a long day and a half of scrubbing and painting. Things, I must admit, will be again fairly scattered here, as starting next Tuesday I'll be on the road doing far more important things. Still, I'll get in an entry when I can. Today, here's a piece by Sherman Alexie, a Native American writer (of mixed tribal ancestry) whom I only knew through his short fiction until recently. His story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" is a personal favorite of mine, and forms a part of the basis for the film Smoke Signals (which I've only seen part of). I still prefer the fiction to his poetry, but this particular piece I thought worth sharing.

"Crow Testament"

1.
Cain lifts Crow, that heavy black bird
and strikes down Abel.

Damn, says Crow, I guess
this is just the beginning.

2.
The white man, disguised
as a falcon, swoops in
and yet again steals a salmon
from Crow's talons.

Damn, says Crow, if I could swim
I would have fled this country years ago.

3.
The Crow God as depicted
in all of the reliable Crow bibles
looks exactly like a crow.

Damn, says Crow, this makes it
so much easier to worship myself.

4.
Among the ashes of Jericho,
Crow sacrifices his firstborn son.

Damn, says Crow, a million nests
are soaked with blood.

5.
When Crows fight Crows
the sky fills with beaks and talons.

Damn, says Crow, it's raining feathers.

6.
Crow flies around the reservation
and collects empty beer bottles
but they are so heavy
he can carry only one at a time.

So, one by one, he returns them
but gets only five cents a bottle.

Damn, says Crow, redemption
is not easy.

7.
Crow rides a pale horse
into a crowded powwow
but none of the Indians panic.

Damn, says Crow, I guess
they already live near the end of the world.

2000

A short haitus

As you may have noticed, I'll be taking a short break from blogging until probably next Wednesday or Thursday as I complete a couple academic projects for the semester. I'll try to make up for it by doing a few extra posts once I have a bit more time.

Cheers,
~

National Poetry Month

As Mighty Toy Cannon over at Culture Shock has informed me, April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, I'll be posting poems about poetry all through the month. Today's poem opens the sonnet cycle by one of the masters of that form in renaissance England, Philip Sidney. Unlike most sonnets, it is written in hexameter, not pentameter, giving the pace a steady build, as opposed to the stately closed lines you get with a lot of pentameter.

From Astrophil and Stella

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my trewand pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

1582?

Lesson in Form: Monorhyme

Okay, this is an easy one. To borrow a joke from the Simpsons, monorhyme is made up of two Greek roots, mono meaning one, and rhyme meaning rhyme. This pattern is (in my experience) best used for light verse, in which it becomes a fun exercise to see just how far the poet can take it. Here's my favorite example, a poem by Dick Davis:

"Monorhyme for the Shower"

Lifting her arms to soap her hair
Her pretty breasts respond--and there
The movement of that buoyant pair
Is like a spell to make me swear
Twenty odd years have turned to air;
Now she's the girl I didn't dare
Approach, ask our, much less declare
My love to, mired in young despair.

Childbearing, rows, domestic care--
All the prosaic wear and tear
That constitute the life we share--
Slip from her beautiful and bare
Bright body as, made half aware
Of my quick surreptitious stare,
She wrings the water from her hair
And turning smiles to see me there.

A Forgotten Romantic

John Clare is one of those neglected nineteenth-century writers, like Melville and Hopkins, whose work was revived in the early twentieth century and became a sort of proto-modernist. Or, at least his later work was. During his lifetime, he achieved brief but intense stardom as a peasant-poet, a new Robert Burns, but after his fifteen minutes were over he went mad and spent the rest of his life is what was probably the most humane mental asylum in Victorian Britain. Rather than being beaten and locked in a windowless cell, he was allowed to walk in the gardens and was encouraged to continue writing poetry. This later poetry was not published until 1920, to the acclaim of many modernist writers. The following poem resonates particularly strongly with Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

"Song"

I peeled bits o' straws and I got switches too
From the grey peeling willow as idlers do,
And I switched at the flies as I sat all alone
Till my flesh, blood, and marrow wasted to dry bone.
My illness was love, though I knew not the smart,
But the beauty o' love was the blood o' my heart.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude
And flew to the silence of sweet solitude,
Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades,
Unseen of a' shepherds and flower-loving maids.
The hermit bees find them but once and away;
There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.

I looked on the eyes o' fair woman too long,
Till silence and shame stole the use o' my tongue;
When I tried to speak to her I'd nothing to say,
So I turned myself round, and she wandered away.
When she got too far off--why, I'd something to tell,
So I sent sighs behind her and talked to mysel'.

Willow switches I broke, and I peeled bits o' straws,
Ever lonely in crowds, in nature's own laws--
My ballroom the pasture, my music the bees,
My drink was the fountain, my church the tall trees.
Who ever would love or be tied to a wife
When it makes a man mad a' the days o' his life?

1842-64

More Heidegger, More Scots

The professor teaching the critical theory seminar I'm in this semester also specializes in Scottish literature, and so we've read a few Scottish poems as part of our class discussions of Heidegger and related philosophy. This poem, by John Burnside, came up early in the semester in our lectures on Heidegger's Being and Time and "What is Metaphysics?" The central concept here is that of "worlding," the way that the human, or in Heidegger's terminology, Dasein, being-there, creates the "world" through interaction with "earth," and the possibility of a post-humanist understanding of existence. At least, that's what I think it comes down to.

"Agoraphobia"

My whole world is all you refuse:
a black light, angelic and cold,
on the path to the orchard,
fox-runs and clouded lanes and the glitter of webbing,
little owls snagged in the fruit nets
ourt by the wire

and the sense of another life, that persists
when I go our into the yard
and the cattle surround me, obstinate and dumb.
All afternoon, I've worked at the edge of your vision,
mending fences, marking out our bounds.
Now it is dusk, I turn back to the house

and catch you, like the pale Eurydice
of children's classics, venturing a glance
at nothing, at this washed infinity
of birchwoods and sky, and the wet streets leading away
to all you forget: the otherworld, lucid and cold
with floodlights and passing trains and the noise of traffic,
and nothing like the map you sometimes
study, for its empty bridlepaths,
its hill-tracks and lanes, and the roads winding down to a coast
of narrow harbours, lit against the sea.

[~1980?]

Irish Poetry, a Couple Days Late

Towards the end of his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce includes a poem by his protagonist/alter-ego Stephen Dedalus. At this point, young Stephen is preparing to leave Ireland behind, symbolically rejecting any identity his homeland could provide him. Though not particularly known for his poetry, I have to say that Joyce really could have done more in that genre had he wished to.

An untitled villanelle

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim,
Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

1914

Where there's a Will . . . (Sorry)

My friend Lexy is currently at work on a thesis involving linguistic rape in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus which takes some inspiration from her reading of the Bard's sonnet 135. I don't know all the details, but she will present a version of the paper this Saturday at the BYU Literature conference. In the meantime, here's the poem:

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus.
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

1609

P.S., I will also be presenting at that conference on Wordsworth's poem "Michael," which is far to long for me to type into a blog post.

Heidegger, de Man, Singer

This semester, I'm taking a course in critical theory centering on the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the responses to his work, roughly since 1980. Heidegger writes extensively on language, interpretation, presence, and above all, Being. Paul de Man, one of the most influential theorists generally considered part of "post-structuralism," deals with many of these same topics, but in a much different way. My midterm in the class involved reading the following poem by the Scottish writer Burns Singer with these two philosophers in mind. But you don't have to go in to all that to appreciate it.

"A Sort of Language"

Who, when night nears, would answer for the patterns
Words will take on? emerging huge, far, shiny,
What unfrequented systems? Or like clouds
Unseen and hiding brightness, bringing rain,
Progressions that the wind drives on, drives after,
Who will say? I who have seen, seen many,
Imagining I scattered them abroad,
Starlight for Calvary and the immense equations
That drew to unity two who knew not either,
As to a hill at midnight, I have seen words,
Seen them with thanks too, shivering, become
Fragile and useless, pale as the steel sparks
Tramcars make waifs of when they round a corner.

[~1950?]

Quick update

Not much time to comment tonight, so I'll let this poem speak for itself. Enjoy.

Wallace Stevens - "Emperor of Ice Cream"

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

1923

Lesson in Form: the Pantoum

The pantoum, a little-used poetic form, is a sort of hybrid of terza rima and a villanelle. The poem is made up of a series of quatrains in which the second and fourth line of one stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. The final stanza elaborates on this, taking the first and third lines of the first stanza as its fourth and second lines. The effect can be a distinctly circular feel, with slight changes in meaning taking place within overwhelming continuity and repetition. Seasonal change and the passage of time are therefore particularly common subjects for pantoums, as in this poem by Greg Williamson.

"New Year's: A Short Pantoum"

The sunlight was falling. A part
Played out in the deep snow.
We were all there. At the start
We knew how the year would go,

Played out in the deep snow.
The sunlight was falling apart.
We knew how the year would go.
We were all there at the start.

2001

Forgiving William Carlos Williams

Until my freshman year at Willamette University, the only poem I'd read by William Carlos Williams was "The Red Wheelbarrow." Now it may just be the way it had been forced upon me in high school, but I hate the poem, and for a long time I hated the man who'd created it. It simply struck me as overly pretentious in its poetics. "Look at how I dispense with rhyme, meter, and any aspirations of Romantic transcendence" the poem gloats. "Isn't that just thoroughly modern?"

As a student, my job was to notice how modern the poem was.

Then I read the following poem and all was forgiven. It's a wonderful dismantling of poems praising female beauty, going back to the Petrarchan sonneteers (there's your dash of literary history for the day). I hope you enjoy it, and that you, too, can learn to see others with fresh eyes (or something like that).

"Portrait of a Lady"

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze--or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
--as if that answered
anything. Ah, yes--below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore--
Which shore?--
the sand clings to my lips--
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.

1920

Introductions and Billy Collins

Under the inspiration of my good friend and progenitor Mighty Toy Cannon, I've decided to stake my claim on this massive information dump we call the Internet and to do so, not by producing my own content, but by gathering and re-presenting the little bits of culture likely to get lost down the memory chute. The topic for this blog will be poetry: every now and then, when the mood strikes me, I'll post some poem I've come across and enjoyed. I'll try to stay away from the too-famous, but I will include some of the major authors, if I think the work isn't too tired. I may comment, but it'll probably be brief. (Yeah, the "Critical" in the title is a lie. I just like the word.) I may eventually work into a "New poems every Monday and Thursday" format or something, but I won't make any promises.

That said, let's get to the poetry. The "memory chute" line actually pertains to today's poem quite nicely.

Billy Collins - "Forgetfulness"

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye,
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

1991