count my hopes

This is for Earth Day, but it also now makes me think about Maybe Happy Ending, which we saw in New York last week and absolutely loved. There are some parallels, although this is not (obviously) a poem about fireflies.

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees
are making a comeback, one snug tight
in a purple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite color is purple but Prince's
was orange & we both find this hard to believe;
today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuckle around us; behind
your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been
there our whole conversation; by my old apartment

was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read
& two little girls would sit next to me; you caught
a butterfly once but didn't know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl
you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like
to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.

—Fatimah Asghar, "I Don't Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We've Done to the Earth," originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 8, 2019 (where you can listen to the poet read the poem), by the Academy of American Poets.

imp my wing

Every time I post a George Herbert poem on or around Easter I think to myself, "but what if I posted 'Easter Wings' instead?!" The problem with "Easter Wings" is that it's a pattern poem, so the way it's displayed on the page is essential, and that is very annoying to code here in a way that reads effectively. Conveniently, however, the Wikipedia entry about the poem has some images of both manuscript and early print editions, and the text of the poem can be read at Poetry Foundation. So for Easter, go read "Easter Wings," if you care to, and feel some type of way!

And here's a bonus poem, because I was reading through The Temple (it's devotional poetry season) and I really love this one. I missed a day earlier in the month, so I think we can double up on Herbert—it has been a few years.

Who sayes that fictions onely and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beautie?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
            Not to a true, but painted chair?

Is it no verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow course-spunne lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lovers loves?
Must all be vail'd, while he that reades, divines,
            Catching the sense at two removes?

Shepherds are honest people; let them sing:
Riddle who list, for me, and pull for Prime:
I envie no mans nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with losse of ryme,
            Who plainly say, My God, My King.

—George Herbert (1593-1633), "Jordan (I)" from The Temple, 1633. I took it from the Helen Wilcox edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007). This isn't exactly a sonnet (it's fifteen lines), but it follows a lot of sonnet rules, including the turn after line ten. And it's very much in conversation with Sidney and Donne, especially. I love how cranky Herbert is about other poetry, like, "COME ON, GUYS, I CAN WRITE TOTALLY STRAIGHTFORWARD LOVE POETRY ABOUT GOD, OKAY?" (Spoilers: he cannot, he's still a metaphysical poet.)

insnared with flowers

I am, as some of you may have noticed, a few days behind on poems. I often hit a fatigue point in late April, and this year I also have the post-vacation blues; it's been hard to concentrate on much this week. But it's the weekend, the weather is glorious, and it's time to catch up on poetry! I'm going to post a few separate poems today, starting with one for April 22, which was Earth Day. This poem is also a little bit for my mood today—I took a long walk through the park this morning and saw many flowers and flowering trees—because I get hit with the metaphysicals in spring and start thinking about tree sex. And it's been a few years since I posted anything by my bro Andrew Marvell.

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their uncessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flow’rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men;
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So am’rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name;
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passions' heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two Paradises ’twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th’industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flow’rs!

—Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), "The Garden," around 1668 or earlier. First published in print in 1681. Traditionally, this poem is seen as a product of Marvell's "period of retirement" from 1650-1652 at Nun Appleton in Yorkshire, where he wrote "Upon Appleton House," as well as other poems in which characters walk around in gardens and have metaphysical sex with trees. But according to the notes in my edition of Marvell, a strong case has been made to date the poem during the Restoration because of the influence of Katherine Philips, which I personally like as an argument because Philips was pretty baller. My favorite piece of my own marginalia on this poem is not "(tree sex)" written under the line about the nectarine and the curious peach, but the note at the very end of the poem where I wrote, somewhat inexplicably, "well, but, BEES," underlined twice.

and to shine

Mary Oliver died in January, so I always knew that I was going to close out the month with her—although she is also the poet I've concluded poetry month with the most frequently (in 2007, 2012, 2015, and this year, making for an impressive 4/13). Choosing the poem was much more difficult, because I've posted a lot of Mary Oliver over the years, and I've already posted most of my favorites. Of those, "Wild Geese" remains one of the most perfect poems in existence, and "In Blackwater Woods" and "When Death Comes" are not only two of my favorite poems in the world, they're also both about loss and grief and death in ways that really matter to me, and obviously mattered to Oliver. She was also very prolific, and wrote so many wonderful poems that it's easy to get lost in reading them, and harder, sometimes, to come up for air. This is not a bad thing. 

Eventually, though, I stopped overthinking it quite so much (would it even be possible to encapsulate all my Mary Oliver feelings in one Mary Oliver poem?) and went with this one. 

When I am among the trees, 

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

    but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It’s simple," they say,

"and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine."

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "When I Am Among The Trees," from Thirst, 2006. 

Thanks for reading, friends. Happy Poetry Month 2019! See you next year. ♥

we're on the moon

Last April, there was an article in The New York Times (admittedly a publication that is Dead To Me, except for the Recipes section) about protest poetry in the United States, especially in the wake of the 2016 election. I feel very strongly about poetry as a means of resistance, now and always; one of the things I really like about this poem in particular, though, is how raw and immediate it feels—both because it's about the election, and because it isn't about the election. Anyway, poetry is kind of magic. Let's win the Midterms.

I'm looking at the moon tonight,
the closest it's been to Earth since 1948
and feel relieved we can do little to ruin it.
That can't be true, you say, and for a moment
even the moon's loneliness escapes isolation
and depends on something else. It's attached.
Like us and what we abandon. Us
and the evil we refuse. The same evil
we share history with, the thin membrane
between you or me and the worst of life.
It's already past midnight and another election
is over in the United States of America.
The oceans will not continue into infinity.
Nor will our money. Nor will this suffering.
We have voted and proven again
we do not know one another. I am trying
so hard to understand this country
, I tell youeven as I'm about to fail loving you (I know this)
in the way people need to be loved
which is without deception, which is almost
impossible. Don't you love it though, you say,
and I remember the first time I saw you in a room
without anyone else. Don't you love the moon?
And because it's easy to say it, I do, I make sure
to tell you I do. Despite the news I knew years ago:
no one saves anyone. We’re on the moon.

—Alex Dimitrov (b. 1984), "The Moon After Election Day" from Resistance, Rebellion, Life (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2017), and in this case from The New York Times, "Poems of Resistance: A Primer," April 21, 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.

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 most excessive 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."

the mower mown

I have been shamefully neglecting my own literary period, this year. Let's do something about that, shall we? This is my favorite of the Mower Poems, because it is the most self-aware and self-consciously ridiculous, and because it knows its own genre so very well. (I am also pretty fond of The Mower to the Glow-Worms. How can you not love a poem about glow-worms?)

Hark how the Mower Damon sung,
With love of Juliana stung!
While everything did seem to paint
The scene more fit for his complaint.
Like her fair eyes the day was fair,
But scorching like his am’rous care.
Sharp like his scythe his sorrow was,
And withered like his hopes the grass.

‘Oh what unusual heats are here,
Which thus our sunburned meadows sear!
The grasshopper its pipe gives o’er;
And hamstringed frogs can dance no more.
But in the brook the green frog wades;
And grasshoppers seek out the shades.
Only the snake, that kept within,
Now glitters in its second skin.

‘This heat the sun could never raise,
Nor Dog Star so inflame the days.
It from an higher beauty grow’th,
Which burns the fields and mower both:
Which mads the dog, and makes the sun
Hotter than his own Phaëton.
Not July causeth these extremes,
But Juliana’s scorching beams.

‘Tell me where I may pass the fires
Of the hot day, or hot desires.
To what cool cave shall I descend,
Or to what gelid fountain bend?
Alas! I look for ease in vain,
When remedies themselves complain.
No moisture but my tears do rest,
Nor cold but in her icy breast.

‘How long wilt thou, fair shepherdess,
Esteem me, and my presents less?
To thee the harmless snake I bring,
Disarmèd of its teeth and sting;
To thee chameleons, changing hue,
And oak leaves tipped with honey dew.
Yet thou, ungrateful, hast not sought
Nor what they are, nor who them brought.

‘I am the Mower Damon, known
Through all the meadows I have mown.
On me the morn her dew distills
Before her darling daffodils.
And, if at noon my toil me heat,
The sun himself licks off my sweat.
While, going home, the evening sweet
In cowslip-water bathes my feet.

‘What, though the piping shepherd stock
The plains with an unnumbered flock,
This scythe of mine discovers wide
More ground than all his sheep do hide.
With this the golden fleece I shear
Of all these closes every year.
And though in wool more poor than they,
Yet am I richer far in hay.

‘Nor am I so deformed to sight,
If in my scythe I lookèd right;
In which I see my picture done,
As in a crescent moon the sun.
The deathless fairies take me oft
To lead them in their dances soft:
And, when I tune myself to sing,
About me they contract their ring.

‘How happy might I still have mowed,
Had not Love here his thistles sowed!
But now I all the day complain,
Joining my labour to my pain;
And with my scythe cut down the grass,
Yet still my grief is where it was:
But, when the iron blunter grows,
Sighing, I whet my scythe and woes.’

While thus he threw his elbow round,
Depopulating all the ground,
And, with his whistling scythe, does cut
Each stroke between the earth and root,
The edgèd steel by careless chance
Did into his own ankle glance;
And there among the grass fell down,
By his own scythe, the Mower mown.

‘Alas!’ said he, ‘these hurts are slight
To those that die by love’s despite.
With shepherd’s-purse, and clown’s-all-heal,
The blood I staunch, and wound I seal.
Only for him no cure is found,
Whom Juliana’s eyes do wound.
’Tis death alone that this must do:
For Death thou art a Mower too.’

—Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), "Damon the Mower." Probably July-August 1652, first publication 1681.

(Just in case you were wondering, my favorite Marvell poem—and, indeed, one of my favorite poems of all time—will always be the gloriously insane wonderland that is Upon Appleton House.)

with all that hospitality doth know

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show,
Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row
Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold;
Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told,
Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile,
And, these grudged at, art reverenced the while.
Thou joy’st in better marks, of soil, of air,
Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.
Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport;
Thy mount, to which the dryads do resort,
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made,
Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade;
That taller tree, which of a nut was set
At his great birth where all the Muses met.
There in the writhed bark are cut the names
Of many a sylvan, taken with his flames;
And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke
The lighter fauns to reach thy Lady’s Oak.
Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,
That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer
When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends.
The lower land, that to the river bends,
Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;
The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed.
Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops,
Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney’s copse,
To crown thy open table, doth provide
The purpled pheasant with the speckled side;
The painted partridge lies in every field,
And for thy mess is willing to be killed.
And if the high-swollen Medway fail thy dish,
Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish,
Fat aged carps that run into thy net,
And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,
As loath the second draught or cast to stay,
Officiously at first themselves betray;
Bright eels that emulate them, and leap on land
Before the fisher, or into his hand.
Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.
The early cherry, with the later plum,
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;
The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.
And though thy walls be of the country stone,
They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan;
There’s none that dwell about them wish them down;
But all come in, the farmer and the clown,
And no one empty-handed, to salute
Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.
Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,
Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make
The better cheeses bring them, or else send
By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend
This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear
An emblem of themselves in plum or pear.
But what can this (more than express their love)
Add to thy free provisions, far above
The need of such? whose liberal board doth flow
With all that hospitality doth know;
Where comes no guest but is allowed to eat,
Without his fear, and of thy lord’s own meat;
Where the same beer and bread, and selfsame wine,
This is his lordship’s shall be also mine,
And I not fain to sit (as some this day
At great men’s tables), and yet dine away.
Here no man tells my cups; nor, standing by,
A waiter doth my gluttony envy,
But gives me what I call, and lets me eat;
He knows below he shall find plenty of meat.
The tables hoard not up for the next day;
Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray
For fire, or lights, or livery; all is there,
As if thou then wert mine, or I reigned here:
There’s nothing I can wish, for which I stay.
That found King James when, hunting late this way
With his brave son, the prince, they saw thy fires
Shine bright on every hearth, as the desires
Of thy Penates had been set on flame
To entertain them; or the country came
With all their zeal to warm their welcome here.
What (great I will not say, but) sudden cheer
Didst thou then make ’em! and what praise was heaped
On thy good lady then, who therein reaped
The just reward of her high housewifery;
To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh,
When she was far; and not a room but dressed
As if it had expected such a guest!
These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all.
Thy lady’s noble, fruitful, chaste withal.
His children thy great lord may call his own,
A fortune in this age but rarely known.
They are, and have been, taught religion; thence
Their gentler spirits have sucked innocence.
Each morn and even they are taught to pray,
With the whole household, and may, every day,
Read in their virtuous parents’ noble parts
The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts.
Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee
With other edifices, when they see
Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else,
May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.

—Ben Jonson (1572-1637), "To Penshurst" from The Forest, from The Works of Benjamin Jonson, 1616. This poem is so virtuosic in a way that only Jonson can ever really sell. Like, I love it for all the usual reasons, but I think it really repays some rigorous close reading and a healthy dose of contextual skepticism. The class politics alone are kind of amazing, not to even mention the whole thing where the rabbits are like "please eat us!" I LOVE COUNTRY HOUSE POEMS.

not dream of islands

I'm on the train back to New York City from Montreal, where the internet is once again spotty but the scenery is stunning. Here is a poem by one of my favorite poets ever in the whole history of poetry. It's also a sestina. Because, like, why not? Sestinas are so hard to write, you guys. But maybe not quite as much for Wystan, with his ridiculous poetic competence.

Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys,
Seeing at end of street the barren mountains,
Round corners coming suddenly on water,
Knowing them shipwrecked who were launched for islands,
We honour founders of these starving cities
Whose honour is the image of our sorrow,

Which cannot see its likeness in their sorrow
That brought them desperate to the brink of valleys;
Dreaming of evening walks through learned cities
They reined their violent horses on the mountains,
Those fields like ships to castaways on islands,
Visions of green to them who craved for water.

They built by rivers and at night the water
Running past windows comforted their sorrow;
Each in his little bed conceived of islands
Where every day was dancing in the valleys
And all the green trees blossomed on the mountains
Where love was innocent, being far from cities.

But dawn came back and they were still in cities;
No marvellous creature rose up from the water;
There was still gold and silver in the mountains
But hunger was a more immediate sorrow,
Although to moping villagers in valleys
Some waving pilgrims were describing islands ...

"The gods," they promised, "visit us from islands,
Are stalking, head-up, lovely, through our cities;
Now is the time to leave your wretched valleys
And sail with them across the lime-green water,
Sitting at their white sides, forget your sorrow,
The shadow cast across your lives by mountains."

So many, doubtful, perished in the mountains,
Climbing up crags to get a view of islands,
So many, fearful, took with them their sorrow
Which stayed them when they reached unhappy cities,
So many, careless, dived and drowned in water,
So many, wretched, would not leave their valleys.

It is our sorrow. Shall it melt? Ah, water
Would gush, flush, green these mountains and these valleys,
And we rebuild our cities, not dream of islands.

—W.H. Auden (1907-1973), Paysage Moralisé, May 1933.

here is unfenced existence

Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river's slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,

Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires -
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers -

A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

—Philip Larkin (1922-1985), "Here" from The Whitsun Weddings, 1964. (Dates of poem composition: 6 September 1961 to 8 October 1961.)

I compulsively buy poetry books in March and April, which results in me owning things like The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin because it was only $12.50 at the Strand last March. It's a beautiful, sunny, perfect spring day in New York City, and yet, I don't know; I was feeling this poem. I'm listening to Vienna Teng's Aims as I write this up, which seems startling apropos.

Here is Larkin on the poem in 1981, when "asked whether he intended the poem as a brief for retirement, the simpler life": "Oh no, not at all ... well, it depends what you mean by retirement. If you mean not living in London, I suppose it might be interpreted along those lines. I meant it just as a celebration of here, Hull. It's a fascinating area, not quite like anywhere else. So busy, yet so lonely. The poem is frightful to read aloud: the first sentence goes on for twenty-four-and-a-half lines, which is three-quarters of the poem, and the rest is full of consonants." He also called it "a pointless shapeless thing about Hull," which I sort of adore. A+ Larkin. I love the enjambment in this poem so much that I don't even mind that the first sentence goes on for twenty-four-and-a-half lines. (The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, edited by Archie Burnett (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 391-392.)

ocean-furious, nettle-streaked

Posting Anne Carson for National Poetry Month is a daunting prospect. She is almost impossible to excerpt, and her books are gorgeous, complicated, baffling, referential, stunning collections of poetry and novel and essay, opera and screenplay, script and critical discourse -- sometimes (frequently) all at once. This is why I haven't posted Carson since I posted an excerpt of Autobiography of Red two years ago. I may post more of her Sappho translations, and some year I may say, "fuck it," and post at least part of The Glass Essay, but for now all I will say is that I really recommend her, because she is extraordinary. Here is a little one.

Searching for things sublime I walked up into the muddy windy big hills
behind the town where trees riot according to their own laws and

one may

observe so many methods of moving green—under, over, around, across,
up the back, higher, fanning, condensing, rifled, flat in the eyes, as if

pacing a

cell, like a litter of grand objects, minutely, absorbed, one leaf at a time,
ocean-furious, nettle-streaked, roping along, unmowed, fresh out of pools,

clear as Babel,

such a tower! scattered through the heart, green in the strong sense, dart-shook,
crownly, carrying the secrets of its own heightening on

up, juster than a shot, gloomier than Milton or even his king of terrors, idol in
its dark parts, as a word coined to mean "storm (of love)" or

"waving lines"

(architectural), scorned, clean, with blazing nostrils, not a
servant, not rapid, rapid.

—Anne Carson, 'And Reason Remains Undaunted' in "Sublimes" from Decreation, 2005.