Today is April 1, and I am woefully underprepared for National Poetry Month. I've been sick for a week and was supposed to be in Houston with Lucy this weekend, so I feel a little bit like time has gotten away from me. But it's still April, and that means poetry. As always, there will be one poem per day (ish) between now and April 30.
To kick us off, here in 2023: Emily.
Dear March - Come in -
How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat -
You must have walked -
How out of Breath you are -
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -
Did you leave Nature well -
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -
I have so much to tell -
I got your Letter, and the Birds -
The Maples never knew that you were coming -
I declare - how Red their Faces grew -
But March, forgive me -
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue -
There was no Purple suitable -
You took it all with you -
Who knocks? That April -
Lock the Door -
I will not be pursued -
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied -
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come
That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame -
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "Dear March - Come in -" (1310). I always feel like I'm posting unfinished poems with Dickinson, which is pretty fair from an editorial standpoint. I take my Dickinson from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, ed. by R. W. Franklin, which is a reading edition and thus has no notes, but the editorial history of Dickinson is absolutely fucking fascinating, and there's a brief summary here.
Showing posts with label lyrics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lyrics. Show all posts
Saturday, April 1, 2023
Friday, April 30, 2021
a poem in this place
I'm going to post two poems today and my final poem tomorrow, on May 1st, because time is a construct. This poem was originally intended for Wednesday, April 28, and it was one of the first poems I picked out for this year, back in January when Amanda Gorman instantly became everyone's favorite young poet (with very good reason). Her new poetry collection comes out in September, and I am very excited.
There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.
There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.
There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.
There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.
There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.
There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.
There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.
There's a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.
How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?
Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.
Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.
There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.
There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.
—Amanda Gorman, "In This Place (An American Lyric)," an original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress, 2017. There's an audio reading of this poem at poets.org.
There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.
There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.
There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.
There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.
There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.
There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.
There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.
There's a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.
How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?
Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.
Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.
There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.
There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.
—Amanda Gorman, "In This Place (An American Lyric)," an original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress, 2017. There's an audio reading of this poem at poets.org.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
love bade me welcome
Rounding out the last several days of devotional poetry: George Herbert. I always think about posting Easter Wings on Easter, but the problem is that any type-rendered version looks wrong to me; it's a poem that's fundamentally meant for manuscript, where it's much easier to write out as visual wings. But I started today—before reading a bunch of Herbert this afternoon—by making a very spectacular brunch for one (deviled eggs, oven bacon, blueberry buttermilk pancakes) and then watching Jesus Christ Superstar online with friends. It wasn't how today was supposed to go, pre-virus, but it had its moments. And I think we can probably all use a little metaphysical love in our lives.
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sinne.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack'd any thing.
A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
—George Herbert (1593-1633), "Love (III)" from The Temple, 1633. This is the closing lyric of The Temple, and I took it from the excellent Helen Wilcox edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007), but slightly modernized the spelling. This is one of the most widely discussed and known of Herbert's poems, and I think it's pretty special.
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sinne.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack'd any thing.
A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
—George Herbert (1593-1633), "Love (III)" from The Temple, 1633. This is the closing lyric of The Temple, and I took it from the excellent Helen Wilcox edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007), but slightly modernized the spelling. This is one of the most widely discussed and known of Herbert's poems, and I think it's pretty special.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
and the deep river ran on
It's always a little bit of a challenge, deciding what Auden poem to post each year. This actually wasn't the one I was planning on, but it's a classic, and it has some pretty phenomenal metaphors, as well as being a killer poem in general.
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
"O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), "As I Walked Out One Evening," 1937, from Another Time, 1940. I think I post more poems from Another Time than I do any other era of Auden, actually—it's not intentional, and I love all eras of Auden, but the poems in Another Time are pretty consistently some of my favorites.
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
"O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), "As I Walked Out One Evening," 1937, from Another Time, 1940. I think I post more poems from Another Time than I do any other era of Auden, actually—it's not intentional, and I love all eras of Auden, but the poems in Another Time are pretty consistently some of my favorites.
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).
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
(now again)
Sometime in the last ten years, my copy of Anne Carson's gorgeous translation of Sappho, If Not, Winter (New York: Vintage, 2003)—which, it should probably be noted, I bought for a rather remarkable January-term class on Sappho and Catullus in 2004—disappeared. I don't know if I lost it in one of my many moves since, or loaned it to someone and never got it back, but it took me a long time to admit that it was probably gone for good. I finally replaced it this year, and that means it's time for Carson's Sappho. This is one of my favorite fragments (although it's hard to pick favorites; they're all pretty exceptional. Even fragment 176, lyre lyre lyre).
]
]work
]face
]
]
if not, winter
]no pain
]
]I bid you sing
of Gongyla, Abanthis, taking up
your lyre as (now again) longing
floats around you,
you beauty. For her dress when you saw it
stirred you. And I rejoice.
In fact she herself once blamed me
Kyprogeneia
because I prayed
this word:
I want
—Sappho (b. c. 615 BCE), fragment 22, translated by Anne Carson (b. 1950), from If Not, Winter (2003). In her introduction, Carson writes: "In translating I tried to put down all that can be read of each poem in the plainest language I could find, using where possible the same order of words and thoughts as Sappho did. I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through. This is an amiable fantasy (transparency of self) within which most translators labor" (x), and, later:
When translating texts read from papyri, I have used a single square bracket to give an impression of missing matter, so that ] or [ indicates destroyed papyrus or the presence of letters not quite legible somewhere in the line. It is not the case that every gap or illegibility is specifically indicated: this would render the page a blizzard of marks and inhibit reading. Brackets are an aesthetic gesture toward the papyrological event rather than an accurate record of it. ... Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp—brackets imply a free sense of imaginal adventure. (xi)I love a lot of things about Anne Carson, but perhaps my favorite is the poetic grace with which she approaches scholarly practice. It is an adventure.
Monday, April 27, 2015
wiser far than I
I missed yesterday because I was feeling like death. I am still kind of feeling like death, but here are two poems that go together, for yesterday and today. I may have posted the first one, back in 2008 when I posted a Renaissance Poetry Miscellany, but it's been a long time, and I've never posted the second. They do, I feel, play best together.
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
—Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love," in print in 1599, but certainly in manuscript before then, with a terminus ad quem of 1593. Spelling and punctuation modernized, mostly to my preferences.
*
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we shall some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.
There will the river whispering run
Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun,
And there th'enamoured fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee than thou him.
If thou to be so seen be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if my heart have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with angling-reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treach'rously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare or windowy net:
Let coarse, bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or, curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.
For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish that is not caught thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.
—John Donne (1572-1631), "The Bait," uncertain date, but likely 1590s; 1633 in print. Spelling and punctuation modernized to my preferences, but with reference to the Longman Donne (ed. Robin Robbins), which has the mostexcessive extensive editing of any Donne edition in my possession.
To do this properly I should probably also include The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, generally attributed to Walter Ralegh. But I like the strict juxtaposition of Marlowe and Donne, which is all one really needs to be like, "SO METAPHYSICAL POETRY."
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
—Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love," in print in 1599, but certainly in manuscript before then, with a terminus ad quem of 1593. Spelling and punctuation modernized, mostly to my preferences.
*
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we shall some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.
There will the river whispering run
Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun,
And there th'enamoured fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee than thou him.
If thou to be so seen be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if my heart have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with angling-reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treach'rously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare or windowy net:
Let coarse, bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or, curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.
For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish that is not caught thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.
—John Donne (1572-1631), "The Bait," uncertain date, but likely 1590s; 1633 in print. Spelling and punctuation modernized to my preferences, but with reference to the Longman Donne (ed. Robin Robbins), which has the most
To do this properly I should probably also include The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, generally attributed to Walter Ralegh. But I like the strict juxtaposition of Marlowe and Donne, which is all one really needs to be like, "SO METAPHYSICAL POETRY."
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
bright star
I love the sonnet more than any other poetic form except possibly the villanelle, and I haven't posted a single one so far this year. This does happen—sometimes I get caught up in feelings and free verse, and fall down on the job when it comes to form—but sonnets are very important to me, and so is this dude called John Keats.
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
—John Keats (1795-1821), "Bright Star," 1820.
This is the revised version of "Bright Star," copied by Keats into "his volume of Shakespeare c. October 1, 1820, when he and Severn were on their way to Italy. Brown's draft of the first version was dated 1819" (note on "Bright Star," Selected Poems and Letters by John Keats, edited by Douglas Bush (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 342). Bush's notes are hilarious, and certainly out of date, but I agree with him that the revised version of the sonnet is better than the first draft. It's still not my favorite of Keats' sonnets, though I appreciate the weird shit he does with the rhymes; but that first line is famous, and I think it's certainly worth reading the rest of the poem. Plus, sonnets.
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
—John Keats (1795-1821), "Bright Star," 1820.
This is the revised version of "Bright Star," copied by Keats into "his volume of Shakespeare c. October 1, 1820, when he and Severn were on their way to Italy. Brown's draft of the first version was dated 1819" (note on "Bright Star," Selected Poems and Letters by John Keats, edited by Douglas Bush (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 342). Bush's notes are hilarious, and certainly out of date, but I agree with him that the revised version of the sonnet is better than the first draft. It's still not my favorite of Keats' sonnets, though I appreciate the weird shit he does with the rhymes; but that first line is famous, and I think it's certainly worth reading the rest of the poem. Plus, sonnets.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
the heart convulsive learns
It's an Emily day, don't you think?
The Heart has narrow Banks
It measures like the Sea
In mighty — unremitting Bass
And Blue monotony
Till Hurricane bisect
And as itself discerns
It's insufficient Area
The Heart convulsive learns
That Calm is but a Wall
Of Unattempted Gauze
An instant's Push demolishes
A Questioning — dissolves.
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "The Heart has narrow Banks," Poem 960, 1865. In this case, from the R.W. Franklin edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).
Citing Dickinson is notoriously difficult, because both her manuscript history and her print history are fascinating and complex; she also wrote seven zillion poems. For those interested in manuscript studies and textual scholarship and lyric poetry and Dickinson, I highly recommend Virginia Jackson's Dickinson's Misery.
The Heart has narrow Banks
It measures like the Sea
In mighty — unremitting Bass
And Blue monotony
Till Hurricane bisect
And as itself discerns
It's insufficient Area
The Heart convulsive learns
That Calm is but a Wall
Of Unattempted Gauze
An instant's Push demolishes
A Questioning — dissolves.
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "The Heart has narrow Banks," Poem 960, 1865. In this case, from the R.W. Franklin edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).
Citing Dickinson is notoriously difficult, because both her manuscript history and her print history are fascinating and complex; she also wrote seven zillion poems. For those interested in manuscript studies and textual scholarship and lyric poetry and Dickinson, I highly recommend Virginia Jackson's Dickinson's Misery.
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