To close out the month, and the tenth anniversary of my National Poetry Month posts (still astounding to me): Derek Walcott. Walcott died in March (here is a really lovely obituary from the The New Yorker), and, as small a memorial as it may be, I kind of knew from that point on that he was going to be my last poem, this year. This is one of my favorites of his, and one of his best known, and it's also, I think, the right note to end on, here in the uncertain waters of 2017.
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will great yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love-letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
—Derek Walcott (1930-2017), "Love after Love" from Sea Grapes, 1971.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
what can I tell you of that other country
One last extra poem, for those days I missed in the middle of the month. This is another one I would have loved to post while I was on my adventures in the Mediterranean, if only I'd remembered to bring it with me.
The little now is all I ever knew,
this seaport city of my years,
this shore I walk on, that the tides
gnaw as the sea rises and keeps rising.
What can I tell of what occurred
before my birth, that foreign, sunrise land?
I cannot know it, though my isle
was once a part of it. I used to watch
the long, bright caravans creep down the roads
from fabled mountains, out to the promontory
of the morning where my city stood.
Those roads are long since undersea.
We only have what drifts to us from there
over dark waters: fragments
of carven wood, a hollow green glass globe.
Some papers in a sealed chest
in a strange writing, half effaced.
A storm-blown bird, whose song
receives no answer here.
I sent my ships to rumored western lands,
heavy with hopeful cargo.
And for a long time they returned
laden with wine and honeycomb,
silk, linen, opals, amethysts.
The sailors sang as they rowed in to harbor.
All they brought they laid out on the beach.
I went in splendor in the city then.
Few ships go out now, few come back, and those
are empty, dancing on the waves.
What can I tell you of that other country
from which my caravels return
so lightly, with thin sails that let light through,
and thin sides, and grey-haired sailors,
and the broken amphorae empty?
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929), "The Merchant of Words," from Life Sciences: New Poems, 2006-2010, although in this case actually from Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2010 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
The little now is all I ever knew,
this seaport city of my years,
this shore I walk on, that the tides
gnaw as the sea rises and keeps rising.
What can I tell of what occurred
before my birth, that foreign, sunrise land?
I cannot know it, though my isle
was once a part of it. I used to watch
the long, bright caravans creep down the roads
from fabled mountains, out to the promontory
of the morning where my city stood.
Those roads are long since undersea.
We only have what drifts to us from there
over dark waters: fragments
of carven wood, a hollow green glass globe.
Some papers in a sealed chest
in a strange writing, half effaced.
A storm-blown bird, whose song
receives no answer here.
I sent my ships to rumored western lands,
heavy with hopeful cargo.
And for a long time they returned
laden with wine and honeycomb,
silk, linen, opals, amethysts.
The sailors sang as they rowed in to harbor.
All they brought they laid out on the beach.
I went in splendor in the city then.
Few ships go out now, few come back, and those
are empty, dancing on the waves.
What can I tell you of that other country
from which my caravels return
so lightly, with thin sails that let light through,
and thin sides, and grey-haired sailors,
and the broken amphorae empty?
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929), "The Merchant of Words," from Life Sciences: New Poems, 2006-2010, although in this case actually from Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2010 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
a citizen of the city of ideas
For reasons that don't really need exploring at this juncture, I totally failed to post any Cavafy while I was actually in Greece. (Mostly, I couldn't decide what the right poem was, and then I gave up and decided to save him for later.) I want to remedy that now, however, because Cavafy is wonderful.
The young poet Eumenes
complained one day to Theocritus:
“I have been writing for two years now
and I have done only one idyll.
It is my only finished work.
Alas, it is steep, I see it,
the stairway of Poetry is so steep;
and from the first step where now I stand,
poor me, I shall never ascend.”
“These words,” Theocritus said,
“are unbecoming and blasphemous.
And if you are on the first step,
you ought to be proud and pleased.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.
For even this first step
is far distant from the common herd.
To set your foot upon this step
you must rightfully be a citizen
of the city of ideas.
And in that city it is hard
and rare to be naturalized.
In her market place you find Lawmakers
whom no adventurer can dupe.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.”
—C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933), written sometime before 1911. In this case translated by Rae Dalven, and from The Complete Poems of Cavafy, expanded edition (San Diego: Harcourt, 1976).
The young poet Eumenes
complained one day to Theocritus:
“I have been writing for two years now
and I have done only one idyll.
It is my only finished work.
Alas, it is steep, I see it,
the stairway of Poetry is so steep;
and from the first step where now I stand,
poor me, I shall never ascend.”
“These words,” Theocritus said,
“are unbecoming and blasphemous.
And if you are on the first step,
you ought to be proud and pleased.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.
For even this first step
is far distant from the common herd.
To set your foot upon this step
you must rightfully be a citizen
of the city of ideas.
And in that city it is hard
and rare to be naturalized.
In her market place you find Lawmakers
whom no adventurer can dupe.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.”
—C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933), written sometime before 1911. In this case translated by Rae Dalven, and from The Complete Poems of Cavafy, expanded edition (San Diego: Harcourt, 1976).
Friday, April 28, 2017
the soul's wicked cartridge
The first Rita Dove poem I ever posted, way back in 2009, was "Ludwig Van Beethovens' Return to Vienna" from Sonata Mulattica: A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009). It's still one of my favorites, and although I've posted a whole lot of Rita Dove in the years since, I haven't been back to Sonata Mulattica since 2010. I bought a copy a couple of years ago, though, and it's time. To tell the truth, I really recommend just going and reading the whole book; but nevertheless, here is another one I love, for some of the same reasons:
I kneel, but not in sufferance,
not in faith. There is a fulcrum
beyond which the bow tip wobbles;
no ardency nor forceful wrist
can make it sing. I am there,
at wit's balancing point. Music
pours through the blackened nave,
hollowing my bones to fit
the space it needs. It needs
so much of me, the soul's
wicked cartridge emptying
as fast as it fills. I kneel
because even the reed bends
before God's laughter
splits it, and the storm
moves on.
—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "Cambridge, Great St. Mary's Church" from Sonata Mulattica, 2009.
not in faith. There is a fulcrum
beyond which the bow tip wobbles;
no ardency nor forceful wrist
can make it sing. I am there,
at wit's balancing point. Music
pours through the blackened nave,
hollowing my bones to fit
the space it needs. It needs
so much of me, the soul's
wicked cartridge emptying
as fast as it fills. I kneel
because even the reed bends
before God's laughter
splits it, and the storm
moves on.
—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "Cambridge, Great St. Mary's Church" from Sonata Mulattica, 2009.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
alone in an imaginary room
Billy Collins time!
If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.
And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse
and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.
Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,
and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.
But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,
leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?
We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.
I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.
—Billy Collins (b. 1941), "The Great American Poem" from Ballistics (2008).
If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.
And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse
and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.
Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,
and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.
But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,
leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?
We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.
I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.
—Billy Collins (b. 1941), "The Great American Poem" from Ballistics (2008).
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
sing america
Sometimes you've just gotta throw up your hands and post some real classic Langston Hughes.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
—Langston Hughes (1902-1967), "I, Too," in this case from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Books, 2004), but first published in 1926.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
—Langston Hughes (1902-1967), "I, Too," in this case from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Books, 2004), but first published in 1926.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
new spheres
Speaking of poets who are gay for God, here's a little of our good friend John Donne, for April 17:
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown'd no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
—John Donne (1572-1631), Holy Sonnet V. My favorite thing about the Holy Sonnets is how little chill Donne has about his kinky God feelings. Like, he's got a LOT of kinky God feelings, and he doesn't care who knows about them.
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown'd no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
—John Donne (1572-1631), Holy Sonnet V. My favorite thing about the Holy Sonnets is how little chill Donne has about his kinky God feelings. Like, he's got a LOT of kinky God feelings, and he doesn't care who knows about them.
go out into your heart
I borrowed my friend K's copy of Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God back in January, when I was upstate for her secret wedding. K told me to keep Rilke through poetry month, and I can't disappoint her, can I? There are a lot of really spectacular poems in this volume, but this one got me where I live.
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust the power
when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), II, i from "The Book of Pilgrimage," from Book of Hours, translated from the German by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead Books, revised edition, 2005).
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust the power
when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), II, i from "The Book of Pilgrimage," from Book of Hours, translated from the German by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (New York: Riverhead Books, revised edition, 2005).
Monday, April 24, 2017
flux
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924), "Monet Refuses the Operation" from Second Language (Louisiana State University Press, 1996). This is another poem I definitely got from the wonderful wintercreek, and, yeah, I love the Impressionists. I also love this gorgeous, gorgeous poem.
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924), "Monet Refuses the Operation" from Second Language (Louisiana State University Press, 1996). This is another poem I definitely got from the wonderful wintercreek, and, yeah, I love the Impressionists. I also love this gorgeous, gorgeous poem.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
one love
An extra poem for today (or for April 16), only a little bit because I was talking with a friend about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead the other day, and that play always makes me think of tennis. Tennis, and death possibly being a boat.
tennis players
and poets
talk to themselves
one complaining
of unforced errors
the other lamenting
lovers
not here
poets find wonderful
witty repartee
to captivate
the imagination
of the beloved
tennis players curse
in languages we don't
understand
explaining the loss
of points
poets understand loss
old age marriage
fatigue and well
just not going to
make any sense
to this person
this time
game point
set point
match point
no love
—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943), "The International Open (Tennis Players vs. Poets)," from Chasing Utopia, 2013.
tennis players
and poets
talk to themselves
one complaining
of unforced errors
the other lamenting
lovers
not here
poets find wonderful
witty repartee
to captivate
the imagination
of the beloved
tennis players curse
in languages we don't
understand
explaining the loss
of points
poets understand loss
old age marriage
fatigue and well
just not going to
make any sense
to this person
this time
game point
set point
match point
no love
—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943), "The International Open (Tennis Players vs. Poets)," from Chasing Utopia, 2013.
stars and sunbeams
Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday!
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil’d searching of mortality;
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess’d at.—Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.
—Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Shakespeare," first published in 1849. I sort of hate the rhyme in the last couplet of this sonnet, and also it’s a little weird that it’s a sonnet about Shakespeare but not actually a Shakespearean sonnet? YOU DO YOU, MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil’d searching of mortality;
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess’d at.—Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.
—Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Shakespeare," first published in 1849. I sort of hate the rhyme in the last couplet of this sonnet, and also it’s a little weird that it’s a sonnet about Shakespeare but not actually a Shakespearean sonnet? YOU DO YOU, MATTHEW ARNOLD.
each one of us a queen
Tonight I went to see Anastasia on Broadway, and it was GREAT, and so was the vodka and Russian food that we went out for beforehand. So, in keeping with the theme (sort of), here is some Marina Tsvetaeva:
Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,
Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—
We, who have sung the praises of the lord
With every fiber in us, every cell.
We, who did not manage to devote
Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway
Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,
Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.
Every morning, every day, we’d rise
And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;
And we’d strike up the songs of paradise
Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,
We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,
Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been
Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:
The world was ours, each one of us a queen.
First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,
Then plaited with a starry diadem;
We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:
But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,
Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden
Where apple trees from paradise are found.
No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent
And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.
—Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941), “Bound for Hell,” translated from the Russian by Stephen Edgar, and in this case from Poetry magazine, 2012, and courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.
Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,
Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell—
We, who have sung the praises of the lord
With every fiber in us, every cell.
We, who did not manage to devote
Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway
Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat,
Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.
Every morning, every day, we’d rise
And have the finest Chinese silks to wear;
And we’d strike up the songs of paradise
Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair,
We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran,
Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been
Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan:
The world was ours, each one of us a queen.
First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled,
Then plaited with a starry diadem;
We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled:
But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them,
Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden
Where apple trees from paradise are found.
No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent
And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.
—Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941), “Bound for Hell,” translated from the Russian by Stephen Edgar, and in this case from Poetry magazine, 2012, and courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
memory speaking in dactyls
I spent a lot of time thinking about this poem while we were in Greece, but I had so many poems I wanted to post while we were there that some of them had to get saved for later, and this is really more of a poem about Latin than about Greek. Luckily, I then missed a whole bunch of days, so here is an extra poem for April 15.
"…forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit…"
This is dactylic hexameter. This is the meter I learned about
back when I first studied Virgil, much longer ago than I'll tell you.
I tell of a lesson that failed; I sing of a student who stumbled.
"This, even this, one day, will be helpful for us to remember…."
That's what the poet said, anyway.
Think of a scratchy recording, a thirty-three rpm relic,
and under the scratches and crackles, a basso declaiming Evangeline:
"This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks"—
that was to show us the meter of Arma virumque cano—
and beating it out on the table,
the hand of an elderly teacher, her finger-joints lumped and arthritic.
Think of old Longfellow's poem, unread now for so many decades.
Think of old classrooms, old desks, old textbooks with fray-cornered covers.
Feel the great age of the Latin, and all this antiquity pressing
on us who were girls of sixteen.
Soothing old rhythms and sounds, but the road where they led me dead-ended.
English is different from Latin, and stresses are different from long-marks.
Scattered and careless, I fumbled the Latin idea of duration.
(Lord, how I cringe when I think of the ways I misscanned the Aeneid,
misunderstanding the sound of it.)
A wonder it happens at all, that young people learn from old epics.
So many ways of mishearing the rustle of papery voices.
Still, there are fragments that stick; we look for them later and find them.
"Tears of things": now that I've shed them, the line that most comes to me lately—
memory speaking in dactyls.
—Maryann Corbett, "A Meditation on Dactylic Hexameter." I am about 98% certain that I got this poem from the wonderful wintercreek, many moons ago, but I don't have any other publication information. Maryann Corbett is pretty cool, though.
"…forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit…"
This is dactylic hexameter. This is the meter I learned about
back when I first studied Virgil, much longer ago than I'll tell you.
I tell of a lesson that failed; I sing of a student who stumbled.
"This, even this, one day, will be helpful for us to remember…."
That's what the poet said, anyway.
Think of a scratchy recording, a thirty-three rpm relic,
and under the scratches and crackles, a basso declaiming Evangeline:
"This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks"—
that was to show us the meter of Arma virumque cano—
and beating it out on the table,
the hand of an elderly teacher, her finger-joints lumped and arthritic.
Think of old Longfellow's poem, unread now for so many decades.
Think of old classrooms, old desks, old textbooks with fray-cornered covers.
Feel the great age of the Latin, and all this antiquity pressing
on us who were girls of sixteen.
Soothing old rhythms and sounds, but the road where they led me dead-ended.
English is different from Latin, and stresses are different from long-marks.
Scattered and careless, I fumbled the Latin idea of duration.
(Lord, how I cringe when I think of the ways I misscanned the Aeneid,
misunderstanding the sound of it.)
A wonder it happens at all, that young people learn from old epics.
So many ways of mishearing the rustle of papery voices.
Still, there are fragments that stick; we look for them later and find them.
"Tears of things": now that I've shed them, the line that most comes to me lately—
memory speaking in dactyls.
—Maryann Corbett, "A Meditation on Dactylic Hexameter." I am about 98% certain that I got this poem from the wonderful wintercreek, many moons ago, but I don't have any other publication information. Maryann Corbett is pretty cool, though.
Friday, April 21, 2017
towards the songs' pretended sea
(For Blues People)
In the south, sleeping against
the drugstore, growling under
the trucks and stoves, stumbling
through and over the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night. Frowning
drunk waving moving a hand or lash.
Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting
a hand rest in shadows. Squatting
to drink or pee. Stretching to climb
pulling themselves onto horses near
where there was sea (the old songs
lead you to believe). Riding out
from this town, to another, where
it is also black. Down a road
where people are asleep. Towards
the moon or the shadows of houses.
Towards the songs’ pretended sea.
—Amiri Baraka (1934-2013), "Legacy," from Black Magic (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1969).
In the south, sleeping against
the drugstore, growling under
the trucks and stoves, stumbling
through and over the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night. Frowning
drunk waving moving a hand or lash.
Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting
a hand rest in shadows. Squatting
to drink or pee. Stretching to climb
pulling themselves onto horses near
where there was sea (the old songs
lead you to believe). Riding out
from this town, to another, where
it is also black. Down a road
where people are asleep. Towards
the moon or the shadows of houses.
Towards the songs’ pretended sea.
—Amiri Baraka (1934-2013), "Legacy," from Black Magic (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1969).
Thursday, April 20, 2017
anything worth doing is worth doing badly
So I got this dumb cold on our last day in Venice (also my birthday), and then we flew back to New York and it become exponentially worse and morphed into some kind of terrible flu, and I have been sick in bed all week and have missed FIVE DAYS of poetry posts, which is the most I have missed since, like, 2008. I'm going to make up for it by posting a few extra poems over the next few days, probably entirely at random. I mean, it's been ten years, I feel like I can probably be a little bit of a poetry maverick at this point.
Anyway, here is a Jack Gilbert poem for today:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
—Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), "Failing and Flying," from Refusing Heaven, 2005.
Anyway, here is a Jack Gilbert poem for today:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
—Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), "Failing and Flying," from Refusing Heaven, 2005.
Friday, April 14, 2017
sailed calmly on
It's
my birthday! I am still in Venice, which is great, except that I woke
up this morning with a head cold and feel pretty crappy. We've been
taking it easy today, shopping and packing and eating more good food,
and tomorrow we fly back to New York. It's been an amazing trip, but I'm
ready to go home.
This poem is not really a birthday poem, but it is Auden, and I love it, and I've never posted it before, which is sort of shocking (although I did post the William Carlos Williams companion poem back in 2010).
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), "Musée des Beaux Arts" from Another Time, 1940. Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
This poem is not really a birthday poem, but it is Auden, and I love it, and I've never posted it before, which is sort of shocking (although I did post the William Carlos Williams companion poem back in 2010).
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), "Musée des Beaux Arts" from Another Time, 1940. Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
all the old loves
It's not that I don't like Venice—I do, mostly—but it is a very weird
city about which I have very complex feelings, not all of which are
entirely positive. Some of this is probably the result of being in
Venice at the end of a too-long trip, when I'm already tired and worn
out; on the other hand, weird shit keeps happening. For example: tonight
we spent half an hour waiting in an abandoned vaparetto stop for a
water-bus that never came, while the wind howled and the whole floating
platform creaked and wailed like a dying banshee. It was an interesting
life choice.
I submit this poem, therefore, with a mild dose of irony.
Love, in this summer night, do you recall
Midnight, and Venice, and those skies of June
Thick-sown with stars, when from the still lagoon
We glided noiseless through the dim canal?
A sense of some belated festival
Hung round us, and our own hearts beat in tune
With passionate memories that the young moon
Lit up on dome and tower and palace wall.
We dreamed what ghosts of vanished loves made part
Of that sweet light and trembling, amorous air.
I felt — in those rich beams that kissed your hair,
Those breezes, warm with bygone lovers' sighs—
All the dead beauty of Venice in your eyes,
All the old loves of Venice in my heart.
—John Hay (1838-1905), "Night in Venice," in this case from The Complete Poetical Works of John Hay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917). This is an uncollected poem.
I submit this poem, therefore, with a mild dose of irony.
Love, in this summer night, do you recall
Midnight, and Venice, and those skies of June
Thick-sown with stars, when from the still lagoon
We glided noiseless through the dim canal?
A sense of some belated festival
Hung round us, and our own hearts beat in tune
With passionate memories that the young moon
Lit up on dome and tower and palace wall.
We dreamed what ghosts of vanished loves made part
Of that sweet light and trembling, amorous air.
I felt — in those rich beams that kissed your hair,
Those breezes, warm with bygone lovers' sighs—
All the dead beauty of Venice in your eyes,
All the old loves of Venice in my heart.
—John Hay (1838-1905), "Night in Venice," in this case from The Complete Poetical Works of John Hay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917). This is an uncollected poem.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
the walls remember
I've been saving this one for a long time.
I made my bed between Sappho and Catullus
watching the moon set, the sparrows fly up at dawn,
a poem burn itself out at the bottom of a yahrzeit glass.
A couple at Vulci dreamed out the underworld
on a lid of nenfro, carved to their marriage-sheets.
At Pompeii, crushed in the hollows of boiling ash.
In a thousand years, not even the walls remember
who loved, who fucked, for how much, so long ago,
not even the coins I dropped to pay for your memory,
a candle into the last of the wine.
—Sonya Taaffe, "Graffiti," in the September 2011 issue of Stone Telling.
I made my bed between Sappho and Catullus
watching the moon set, the sparrows fly up at dawn,
a poem burn itself out at the bottom of a yahrzeit glass.
A couple at Vulci dreamed out the underworld
on a lid of nenfro, carved to their marriage-sheets.
At Pompeii, crushed in the hollows of boiling ash.
In a thousand years, not even the walls remember
who loved, who fucked, for how much, so long ago,
not even the coins I dropped to pay for your memory,
a candle into the last of the wine.
—Sonya Taaffe, "Graffiti," in the September 2011 issue of Stone Telling.
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
something to do with the leaves and painting
Carpaccio, San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice
You are amazed to find trees in Venice —
To turn a corner into a campo
Where two or three rustling acacias
Spread their halo of leaves
Over two or three red-slatted benches.
It's as if you had slipped through a curtained doorway
Into a hall full of dull gold scenes
By Carpaccio — a miraculous light —
Though the rio's still shrouded in a mist
Compounded of water vapour and smog
So it's not that the sun has come out, it's
Something to do with the leaves and painting
In the realm of echoes where footsteps
Reverberate endlessly between two walls
And dawn is the chink of a stonemason
At his reparations, disembodied
Voices irresistible as bird calls.
Yes, you're amazed to find trees in Venice
Shedding their gold leaf onto the pavement
Outside a secondhand bookstore.
It's like Carpaccio's little white dog
Wagging his tail at the feet of Saint Augustine
Who is staring out of the window
Looking for the voice of Saint Jerome.
—Beverley Bie Brahic, "The Vision of Saint Augustine" from Against Gravity (Worple Press, England, 2005), and in this case from Poetry magazine, 2005.
You are amazed to find trees in Venice —
To turn a corner into a campo
Where two or three rustling acacias
Spread their halo of leaves
Over two or three red-slatted benches.
It's as if you had slipped through a curtained doorway
Into a hall full of dull gold scenes
By Carpaccio — a miraculous light —
Though the rio's still shrouded in a mist
Compounded of water vapour and smog
So it's not that the sun has come out, it's
Something to do with the leaves and painting
In the realm of echoes where footsteps
Reverberate endlessly between two walls
And dawn is the chink of a stonemason
At his reparations, disembodied
Voices irresistible as bird calls.
Yes, you're amazed to find trees in Venice
Shedding their gold leaf onto the pavement
Outside a secondhand bookstore.
It's like Carpaccio's little white dog
Wagging his tail at the feet of Saint Augustine
Who is staring out of the window
Looking for the voice of Saint Jerome.
—Beverley Bie Brahic, "The Vision of Saint Augustine" from Against Gravity (Worple Press, England, 2005), and in this case from Poetry magazine, 2005.
Monday, April 10, 2017
where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings
We're in Venice! I should probably be posting Byron, but I just can't
make myself do it (sorry, bro). Have some Robert Browning instead; he
was just as weird, albeit in a totally different way.
I
Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!
II
Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
III
Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by . . . what you call
. . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all.
IV
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
V
Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,—
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?
VI
Well, and it was graceful of them—they'd break talk off and afford
—She, to bite her mask's black velvet—he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?
VII
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try!
VIII
"Were you happy?" —"Yes."—"And are you still as happy?"—"Yes. And you?"
—"Then, more kisses!"—"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!
IX
So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
"I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"
X
Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
XI
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve.
XII
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
"The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.
XIII
"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
"Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
"Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!
XIV
"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
"Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
XV
"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
—Robert Browning (1812-1899), "A Toccata of Galuppi's," from Men and Women, 1855. The meter of this poem, for those who care about such things, is trochaic octameter catalectic. I TOLD YOU BROWNING WAS WEIRD.
I
Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!
II
Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
III
Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by . . . what you call
. . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all.
IV
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
V
Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,—
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?
VI
Well, and it was graceful of them—they'd break talk off and afford
—She, to bite her mask's black velvet—he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?
VII
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try!
VIII
"Were you happy?" —"Yes."—"And are you still as happy?"—"Yes. And you?"
—"Then, more kisses!"—"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!
IX
So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
"I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"
X
Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
XI
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve.
XII
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
"The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.
XIII
"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
"Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
"Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!
XIV
"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
"Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
XV
"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
—Robert Browning (1812-1899), "A Toccata of Galuppi's," from Men and Women, 1855. The meter of this poem, for those who care about such things, is trochaic octameter catalectic. I TOLD YOU BROWNING WAS WEIRD.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
oh, tourist
Tomorrow morning we disembark in Venice; we'll be in Venice through the
end of the week, and I'm really looking forward to that (although I am
admittedly still not entirely clear on how Venice even works), but I'm
going to miss a lot of things about the boat. On the other hand, I think
too much longer on the boat would make us go even more stir crazy than
we already are, so a change is good. In honor—or something—of our
imminent arrival in Venice, some Elizabeth Bishop:
Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery;
impractically shaped and—who knows?—self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,
with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,
some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,
and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,
is this how this country is going to answer you
and your immodest demands for a different world,
and a better life, and complete comprehension
of both at last, and immediately,
after eighteen days of suspension?
Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming,
a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brillant rag.
So that's the flag. I never saw it before.
I somehow never thought of there being a flag,
but of course there was, all along. And coins, I presume,
and paper money; they remain to be seen.
And gingerly now we climb down the ladder backward,
myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen,
descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters
waiting to be loaded with green coffee beans.
Please, boy, do be more careful with that boat hook!
Watch out! Oh! It has caught Miss Breen's
skirt! There! Miss Breen is about seventy,
a retired police lieutenant, six feet tall,
with beautiful bright blue eyes and a kind expression.
Her home, when she is at home, is in Glens Fall
s, New York. There. We are settled.
The customs officials will speak English, we hope,
and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap,
but they seldom seem to care what impression they make,
or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter,
the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps—
wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter
do when we mail the letteres we wrote on the boat,
either because the glue here is very inferior
or because of the heat. We leave Santos at once;
we are driving to the interior.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), "Arrival at Santos," January 1952 (published in The New Yorker, June 21, 1952, but in this case from The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, 1980.
Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery;
impractically shaped and—who knows?—self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,
with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,
some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,
and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,
is this how this country is going to answer you
and your immodest demands for a different world,
and a better life, and complete comprehension
of both at last, and immediately,
after eighteen days of suspension?
Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming,
a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brillant rag.
So that's the flag. I never saw it before.
I somehow never thought of there being a flag,
but of course there was, all along. And coins, I presume,
and paper money; they remain to be seen.
And gingerly now we climb down the ladder backward,
myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen,
descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters
waiting to be loaded with green coffee beans.
Please, boy, do be more careful with that boat hook!
Watch out! Oh! It has caught Miss Breen's
skirt! There! Miss Breen is about seventy,
a retired police lieutenant, six feet tall,
with beautiful bright blue eyes and a kind expression.
Her home, when she is at home, is in Glens Fall
s, New York. There. We are settled.
The customs officials will speak English, we hope,
and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap,
but they seldom seem to care what impression they make,
or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter,
the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps—
wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter
do when we mail the letteres we wrote on the boat,
either because the glue here is very inferior
or because of the heat. We leave Santos at once;
we are driving to the interior.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), "Arrival at Santos," January 1952 (published in The New Yorker, June 21, 1952, but in this case from The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, 1980.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
art my way back
I went looking for contemporary poets from Croatia, ideally writing in English, and found Ana Božičević.
Her poetry is weird and layered and very contemporary and not always
entirely to my taste, but I also really like it; I especially like this
one, which was a Poem-a-Day
at the Academy of American Poets on November 26, 2013. I think my
favorite thing about this poem is the enjambment and the accompanying
punctuation, which is completely killer.
Skinny dirt road
In the middle of the ocean.
That led to the house of art.
I took it. The engine nearly
Drowned. I lied that it was fun
That I’d do it again. When I got to
That shore
The house was gone and when
I looked back, so was the path.
Now I’m old. Drown in my bed
A thousand miles inland.
For years I thought
I could
Art my way back. Cats sing
Of rose dawns. This country’s a
Mirror image
Of the one I left, except
I’ve bad dreams. And
You’re the only
Person who’s not here.
Is it the same
For you.
—Ana Božičević (b. 1977), "Joyride," 2013.
Skinny dirt road
In the middle of the ocean.
That led to the house of art.
I took it. The engine nearly
Drowned. I lied that it was fun
That I’d do it again. When I got to
That shore
The house was gone and when
I looked back, so was the path.
Now I’m old. Drown in my bed
A thousand miles inland.
For years I thought
I could
Art my way back. Cats sing
Of rose dawns. This country’s a
Mirror image
Of the one I left, except
I’ve bad dreams. And
You’re the only
Person who’s not here.
Is it the same
For you.
—Ana Božičević (b. 1977), "Joyride," 2013.
Friday, April 7, 2017
dreaming of cities
The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages.
Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire;
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.
The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.
But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightning's danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.
This dwarfs our emerald country with its trek
So tall with prophecy:
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.
—Stephen Spender (1909-1995), "The Pylons," from Poems, 1933.
I feel like Spender gets less attention from me by virtue of being the one of his set that's not Auden or Isherwood, but I like this poem a lot.
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages.
Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire;
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.
The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.
But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightning's danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.
This dwarfs our emerald country with its trek
So tall with prophecy:
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.
—Stephen Spender (1909-1995), "The Pylons," from Poems, 1933.
I feel like Spender gets less attention from me by virtue of being the one of his set that's not Auden or Isherwood, but I like this poem a lot.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
in storms and at sunset
Today we are in Kotor, Montenegro, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life. It's kind of overwhelming. It also started raining part of the way through the day, and we got slightly drenched and then took the tender back to our boat in the rain, which was a little bit magic.
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
—Frank O’Hara, "To the Harbormaster" from Meditations in an Emergency, 1957.
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
—Frank O’Hara, "To the Harbormaster" from Meditations in an Emergency, 1957.
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
your irreversible time
Today is "poems about grief" day, in memory of my brother. This isn't exactly a poem about grief, but I think it's the right one. Plus, I love sonnets.
You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver
(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won’t read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust
like you; the universe is Proteus.
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.
Know this: in some way you’re already dead.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), "To the One Who is Reading Me," translated by by Tony Barnstone, and in this case from Poetry magazine, March 2012. I really love Tony Barnstone's translator's notes:
You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver
(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won’t read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust
like you; the universe is Proteus.
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.
Know this: in some way you’re already dead.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), "To the One Who is Reading Me," translated by by Tony Barnstone, and in this case from Poetry magazine, March 2012. I really love Tony Barnstone's translator's notes:
Jorge Luis Borges was unapologetic about his sonnets. He liked his rhymes to be true, and he liked to create sentences the size of stanzas in order to emphasize the sonnet’s modular structure. Borges also made it clear that he expected the same dedication and craft from his translators, that he did not want his sonnets translated into loosened form or into free verse. (His comment on such translations was simple: “Try harder.”) [...]
Of course, we can’t keep time in a box; time has a box prepared for us. Understanding this is what allows us to value what life we have. My father tells a story about Borges. One day the great man was walking down the streets of Buenos Aires when a man rushed up to him and exclaimed, “Borges, you are immortal!” Borges, with his characteristic dry wit, replied, “Don’t be so pessimistic.”
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
a phantom fury of the past
One of the difficulties of being on this trip during National Poetry Month is that, in ten years of posting poetry, I've already posted a boatload (hah) of poems that fit my current theme. I try not to repeat myself, but there are so many favorites that I've been thinking about, both in the weeks and months leading up to this trip, and while we've been in Athens and Delphi and Santorini and Olympia, and on this ship. If you feel inclined to read some other poems, here are a few from years past:
William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Derek Walcott, Sea Grapes
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
John Masefield, Sea Fever
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Anne Carson, excerpt from Autobiography of Red
Louise Glück, Persephone the Wanderer
Jack Gilbert, Ovid in Tears and The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
W. H. Auden, The Fall of Rome
C. P. Cavafy, Ithaca
And for today:
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
The yellow years have gathered fast:
Long centuries have come and gone.
And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon;
And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),
This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.
But into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cast:
Long centuries have come and gone,
The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first has fallen to the last:
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have come and gone.
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), "Villanelle of Change," in this case from Collected Poems, 1921, although I got it from Poetry Foundation. I love villanelles so much.
William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Derek Walcott, Sea Grapes
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
John Masefield, Sea Fever
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Anne Carson, excerpt from Autobiography of Red
Louise Glück, Persephone the Wanderer
Jack Gilbert, Ovid in Tears and The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
W. H. Auden, The Fall of Rome
C. P. Cavafy, Ithaca
And for today:
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
The yellow years have gathered fast:
Long centuries have come and gone.
And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon;
And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),
This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.
But into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cast:
Long centuries have come and gone,
The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first has fallen to the last:
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have come and gone.
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), "Villanelle of Change," in this case from Collected Poems, 1921, although I got it from Poetry Foundation. I love villanelles so much.
Monday, April 3, 2017
you caught my voice far off
Not to overplay my heavy-hitting queer ladies in the first week, but I
drank a lot of wine in the Greek Islands today, and it's hard to do that
and not start having feelings about Sappho. At least, it is if you're
me. This is the only extant poem of Sappho's that survives in its
entirety, and some things about it may seem familiar to some of you; it
was extremely influential to later love poetry. The translation, as
always, is Anne Carson's.
Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you
do not break with hard pains,
O lady, my heart
but come here if ever before
you caught my voice far off
and listening left your father's
golden house and came,
yoking your car. And fine birds brought you,
quick sparrows over the black earth
whipping their wings down the sky
through midair—
they arrived. But you, O blessed one,
smiled in your deathless face
and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why
(now again) I am calling out
and what I want to happen most of all
in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again)
to lead you back into her love? Who, O
Sappho, is wronging you?
For if she flees, soon she will pursue.
If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them.
If she does not love, soon she will love
even unwilling.
Come to me now: loose me from hard
care and all my heart longs
to accomplish, accomplish. You
be my ally.
—Sappho (b. c. 615 BCE), fragment 1, translated by Anne Carson (b. 1950), from If Not, Winter (2003).
Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you
do not break with hard pains,
O lady, my heart
but come here if ever before
you caught my voice far off
and listening left your father's
golden house and came,
yoking your car. And fine birds brought you,
quick sparrows over the black earth
whipping their wings down the sky
through midair—
they arrived. But you, O blessed one,
smiled in your deathless face
and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why
(now again) I am calling out
and what I want to happen most of all
in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again)
to lead you back into her love? Who, O
Sappho, is wronging you?
For if she flees, soon she will pursue.
If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them.
If she does not love, soon she will love
even unwilling.
Come to me now: loose me from hard
care and all my heart longs
to accomplish, accomplish. You
be my ally.
—Sappho (b. c. 615 BCE), fragment 1, translated by Anne Carson (b. 1950), from If Not, Winter (2003).
Sunday, April 2, 2017
beside the unharvested sea
Crash on crash of the sea,
straining to wreck men; sea-boards, continents,
raging against the world, furious,
stay at last, for against your fury
and your mad fight,
the line of heroes stands, godlike:
Akroneos, Oknolos, Elatreus,
helm-of-boat, loosener-of-helm, dweller-by-sea,
Nauteus, sea-man,
Prumneos, stern-of-ship,
Agchilalos, sea-girt,
Elatreus, oar-shaft:
lover-of-the-sea, lover-of-the-sea-ebb,
lover-of-the-swift-sea,
Ponteus, Proreus, Oöos:
Anabesneos, who breaks to angeras a wave to froth:
Amphiolos, one caught between wave-shock and wave-shock:
Eurualos, board sea-wrack,
like Ares, man’s death,
and Naubolidos, best in shape,
of all first in size:
Phaekous, sea’s thunderbolt—
ah, crash on crash of great names—
man-tamer, man’s-help, perfect Laodamos:
and last the sons of great Alkinöos,
Laodamos, Halios, and god-like Clytomeos.
Of all nations, of all cities,
of all continents,
she is favoured above the rest,
for she gives men as great as the sea,
to battle against the elements and evil:
greater even than the sea,
they live beyond wrack and death of cities,
and each god-like name spoken
is as a shrine in a godless place.
But to name you,
we, reverent, are breathless,
weak with pain and old loss,
and exile and despair—
our hearts break but to speak
your name, Oknaleos—
and may we but call you in the feverish wrack
of our storm-strewn beach, Eretmeos,
our hurt is quiet and our hearts tamed,
as the sea may yet be tamed,
and we vow to float great ships,
named for each hero,
and oar-blades, cut of mountain-trees
as such men might have shaped:
Eretmeos, and the sea is swept,
baffled by the lordly shape,
Akroneos has pines for his ship’s keel;
to love, to mate the sea?Ah there is Ponteos,
the very deep roar,
hailing you dear—
they clamour to Ponteos,
and to Proëosleap, swift to kiss, to curl, to creep,
lover to mistress.
What wave, what love, what foam,
For Oöos who moves swift as the sea?
Ah stay, my heart, the weight
of lovers, of loneliness
drowns me,
alas that their very names
so press to break my heart
with heart-sick weariness,
what would they be,
the very gods,
rearing their mighty length
beside the unharvested sea?
—H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), "Sea Heroes," originally published (as 'Sea-Heroes') in Coterie, No. 4, 1920, 44-6, and collected in Hymen in 1921.
straining to wreck men; sea-boards, continents,
raging against the world, furious,
stay at last, for against your fury
and your mad fight,
the line of heroes stands, godlike:
Akroneos, Oknolos, Elatreus,
helm-of-boat, loosener-of-helm, dweller-by-sea,
Nauteus, sea-man,
Prumneos, stern-of-ship,
Agchilalos, sea-girt,
Elatreus, oar-shaft:
lover-of-the-sea, lover-of-the-sea-ebb,
lover-of-the-swift-sea,
Ponteus, Proreus, Oöos:
Anabesneos, who breaks to angeras a wave to froth:
Amphiolos, one caught between wave-shock and wave-shock:
Eurualos, board sea-wrack,
like Ares, man’s death,
and Naubolidos, best in shape,
of all first in size:
Phaekous, sea’s thunderbolt—
ah, crash on crash of great names—
man-tamer, man’s-help, perfect Laodamos:
and last the sons of great Alkinöos,
Laodamos, Halios, and god-like Clytomeos.
Of all nations, of all cities,
of all continents,
she is favoured above the rest,
for she gives men as great as the sea,
to battle against the elements and evil:
greater even than the sea,
they live beyond wrack and death of cities,
and each god-like name spoken
is as a shrine in a godless place.
But to name you,
we, reverent, are breathless,
weak with pain and old loss,
and exile and despair—
our hearts break but to speak
your name, Oknaleos—
and may we but call you in the feverish wrack
of our storm-strewn beach, Eretmeos,
our hurt is quiet and our hearts tamed,
as the sea may yet be tamed,
and we vow to float great ships,
named for each hero,
and oar-blades, cut of mountain-trees
as such men might have shaped:
Eretmeos, and the sea is swept,
baffled by the lordly shape,
Akroneos has pines for his ship’s keel;
to love, to mate the sea?Ah there is Ponteos,
the very deep roar,
hailing you dear—
they clamour to Ponteos,
and to Proëosleap, swift to kiss, to curl, to creep,
lover to mistress.
What wave, what love, what foam,
For Oöos who moves swift as the sea?
Ah stay, my heart, the weight
of lovers, of loneliness
drowns me,
alas that their very names
so press to break my heart
with heart-sick weariness,
what would they be,
the very gods,
rearing their mighty length
beside the unharvested sea?
—H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), "Sea Heroes," originally published (as 'Sea-Heroes') in Coterie, No. 4, 1920, 44-6, and collected in Hymen in 1921.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
the poet has come back
So, um, HELLO. I'm in Greece! I haven't used my journal in 500 years!
BUT GUESS WHAT: it's April 1, 2017, which means it's the TENTH
ANNIVERSARY of the very first time I posted a poem a day in April, for
National Poetry Month. I had no idea what would happen when I started
this in 2007, but it's become one of my favorite traditions. A decade
later, I have yet to run out of poetry. I've also read a lot more poetry
than I ever anticipated (even as someone who has always loved poetry);
and through ten years in which I've faced numerous major life events and
changes, the poetry has remained a constant. I'm very grateful for it,
and I'm very happy to still be here, doing this.
This year I have the added excitement of being on a Mediterranean cruise, which means the poetry will probably be egregiously thematic. Today is the first day of the cruise, and we're docked in Athens. Tomorrow we go to visit the Oracle at Delphi, and then we sail on to several ports in Greece, then up the Adriatic to Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia, and then to Venice. I'm pretty excited, and also excessively prepared for the first half of the month, since I didn't bring any poetry books with me; on the other hand, we'll see what happens.
I want to start, however, with Margaret Atwood:
The poet has come back to being a poet
after decades of being virtuous instead.
Can't you be both?
No. Not in public.
You could, once,
back when God was still thundering vengeance
and liked the scent of blood,
and hadn't got around to slippery forgiveness.
Then you could scatter incense and praise,
and wear your snake necklace,
and hymn the crushed skulls of your enemies
to a pious chorus.
No deferential smiling, no baking of cookies,
no I'm a nice person really.
Welcome back, my dear.
Time to resume our vigil,
time to unlock the cellar door,
time to remind ourselves
that the god of poets has two hands:
the dextrous, the sinister.
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), "The poet has come back" from The Door, 2007.
This year I have the added excitement of being on a Mediterranean cruise, which means the poetry will probably be egregiously thematic. Today is the first day of the cruise, and we're docked in Athens. Tomorrow we go to visit the Oracle at Delphi, and then we sail on to several ports in Greece, then up the Adriatic to Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia, and then to Venice. I'm pretty excited, and also excessively prepared for the first half of the month, since I didn't bring any poetry books with me; on the other hand, we'll see what happens.
I want to start, however, with Margaret Atwood:
The poet has come back to being a poet
after decades of being virtuous instead.
Can't you be both?
No. Not in public.
You could, once,
back when God was still thundering vengeance
and liked the scent of blood,
and hadn't got around to slippery forgiveness.
Then you could scatter incense and praise,
and wear your snake necklace,
and hymn the crushed skulls of your enemies
to a pious chorus.
No deferential smiling, no baking of cookies,
no I'm a nice person really.
Welcome back, my dear.
Time to resume our vigil,
time to unlock the cellar door,
time to remind ourselves
that the god of poets has two hands:
the dextrous, the sinister.
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), "The poet has come back" from The Door, 2007.
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