Berryman and Birthdays

Thinking about my recent birthday led me to this poem by John Berryman:



Dream Song 112
 

My framework is broken, I am coming to an end,
God send it soon. When I had most to say
my tongue clung to the roof
I mean of my mouth. It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured, and has been. God send
it soon.

I now must speak to my disciples, west
and east. I say to you, Do not delay
I say, expectation is vain.
I say again, It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured. Bring her to the test
at once.

I say again, It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured, for her high black hair
but not for that alone:
for every word she utters everywhere
shows her good soul, as true as a healed bone,—
being part of what I meant to say.

John Berryman


Who is the Lady? Perhaps an image of the feminine divine? The poem has a prayer-like quality, given that it includes a plea to God to "send it soon," and a message to the speaker's "disciples." When the speaker says "my framework is broken," it sounds to me like the breakdown of a world view, or a philosphy, or some kind of belief. The speaker enjoins the disciples to honor the "Lady's birthday" and "bring her to the test." Perhaps she will pass a test of truth, as a "good soul" whose words are "as true as a healed bone," and express the speaker's ideas better than he can.

A Bone to Chew On

I'm traveling this week, and I don't have time to do much in the way of blogging, but I wanted to give you something to chew on until I get home.

Take care.


The Dog of Art
 

That dog with daisies for eyes
who flashes forth
flame of his very self at every bark
is the Dog of Art.
Worked in wool, his blind eyes
look inward to caverns and jewels
which they see perfectly,
and his voice
measures forth the treasure
in music sharp and loud,
sharp and bright,
bright flaming barks,
and growling smoky soft, the Dog
of Art turns to the world
the quietness of his eyes.

Denise Levertov

The Something of Nothing

My sister is a planetary scientist, and one day we had a lengthy discussion about what scientists in her field call "dark matter." My elementary understanding of this subject is that we only know, or can identify and/or quantify, about five percent of all of the matter in the universe. The rest looks like nothing to our human eyes; but the possibilities of what this dark matter may represent are seemingly endless--perhaps parallel universes where our other selves are living out all the alternative paths our lives could have taken. Freaky, but cool.

The idea of what nothing can represent is fascinating. Consider this poem by Kay Ryan:


Nothing Ventured

Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?

Kay Ryan


The speaker in this poem states that nothing is one big, unquantifiable something. Maybe it's like love; can you measure how much you love someone? But the unmeasureable nature of nothing does not nullify its existence. That's why to venture it is "the big wager." You can only venture all of it, not a part.

I'll add this gorgeous poem by Linda Hogan. Feel free to read this short essay I wrote on it.


Nothing

Nothing sings in our bodies
like breath in a flute.
I dwells in the drum.
I hear it now
that slow beat
like when a voice said to the dark,
let there be light,
let there be ocean
and blue fish
born of nothing
and they were there.
I turn back to bed.
The man there is breathing.
I touch him
with hands already owned by another world.
Look, they are desert,
they are rust. They have washed the dead.
They have washed the just born.
They are open.
They offer nothing.
Take it.
Take nothing from me.
There is still a little life
left inside this body,
a little wildness here
and mercy
and it is the emptiness
we love, touch, enter in one another,
and try to fill.

Linda Hogan

Silhouettes of the Past

Yesterday I was sifting through a few boxes of stuff from my life, some things going back to when I was very small: piano recital programs, science fair awards, pictures of friends, pictures of me, writings, textbooks, and other trinkets. I do not enjoy this activity. I find it downright painful. Sometimes I see a picture of myself, young and naive and trusting in the future, and I feel a sense of loss, even waste. Why? I have a pretty good life. I'm not complaining. For some reason it bothers me to think about how I felt then that I could do anything. It turned out I couldn't. This is true for everyone. There are a finite number of things we can actually do with our lives, depending on our abilities, our energy, and our choices. So why does this bother me?

I'm not going to try to answer this today. Instead, I'll just share this poem that reflects this sense of the past at my shoulders, following me, haunting me, whispering to me. It is from The Antioch Review, vol. 54, no. 2, Spring 1996, p. 157:


WHAT A LITTLE BIRD SAID
by Joanie Mackowski

Flying behind my shoulders cormorants
head for the sea, and erratic, endless
stream of them; their rain-bent, pterodactylan
silhouettes set low over mercury
waves seem a bit severe--listen, lessons
in love aren't always tactile: a tarot
of overturned clam shells brims in the tangled
waves; the waves are full of tattered weed
like asterisks--maybe tonight the stars
will take a risk and bloom like barnacles
underwater--I miss you I--red-wing
blackbirds cling to the cattails, seem to say
miss you o me too or sometimes ole!
and sometimes this song continues all day--


(Photograph from this page about cormorants.)

"Tears and Loss and Broken Dreams"

I have heard it said that "everything looks better in the morning." I have, in fact, experienced this; I have gone to bed inexplicably worried about something, then awoken with the sunlight feeling less anxiety and a more positive view.

Is it true, then, that everything looks worse in the evening? Is there something about the waning light, the dropping temperature, and the pearly moon that brings on melancholy?

This poem by Carl Sandburg (1868-1967) describes just that feeling:


Dreams in the Dusk

Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day’s close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day’s loss
Wrote in tears the heart’s loss.

Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.

Carl Sandburg


"Tears and loss and broken dreams." Do you have this experience in the evening? Do you feel the weight of your life's losses and sadder memories taking up space in your soul when the sun goes down?

Loss

I fear to love you, Sweet, because
Love's the ambassador of loss.

Francis Thompson (1859-1907)


Loss is a part of the human experience. We lose things, time, and money. We lose friends and people we love. We lose happiness, joy, and even hope. Sometimes we think we're losing our minds. Ultimately, we will lose our bodies when they pass away and join the earth's soil.

In Western culture, we try very hard to avoid loss, the same way we try to avoid pain or thoughts of death. Loss is seen as a negative experience, even a negative word. Loss is difficult, and often painful, but inevitable. How do we come to grips with that?

In the following poem by Elizabeth Bishop, the speaker describes her experience with loss and how she claims to deal with it:


One Art


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop


The "art" of losing, the speaker calls it; something to pay attention to, to think about and analyze and not to ignore. Paying attention to loss--feeling its full emotional effects and taking the time to process it--sounds very wise to me. It is important to feel and process any kind of pain so we don't get stuck in it.

But, somehow, I feel the speaker is not quite being honest. Maybe it's the cavalier way she tries to deny the importance of losing significant things, like "continents" and "realms." "Even losing you," she states, insinuating that the loss of her love is the greatest loss on her list. Not "disasters," perhaps, but I feel a hestitancy in the speaker to claim the experience of loss, the pain of it, even perhaps the agony of losing her love. To state that the loss hurts would make her feel too vulnerable, and she is not willing to let on that her former lover had that much effect on her.

What about the "Write it" phrase? What do you think? Does Bishop's poem resonate with any experience of loss you have had? How does poetry or another kind of art help you process loss?

Fiery Connection

I found this gorgeous poem by Adrienne Rich at Poem Hunter. To me it stands as an alternative to the Clifton poem "fury,"in which a mother is forced to sacrifice her poetry to the red hot coals of a furnace. In Rich's "Burning Oneself Out," the speaker experiences a powerful connection with the burning logs in her wood stove, and describes the power of the senses to make us feel pulled out of time and joined with the thing we are observing. It is a transient but true experience.

Have a fabulous weekend.


Burning Oneself Out
 

We can look into the stove tonight
as into a mirror, yes,

the serrated log, the yellow-blue gaseous core

the crimson-flittered grey ash, yes.
I know inside my eyelids
and underneath my skin

Time takes hold of us like a draft
upward, drawing at the heats
in the belly, in the brain

You told me of setting your hand
into the print of a long-dead Indian
and for a moment, I knew that hand,

that print, that rock,
the sun producing powerful dreams
A word can do this

or, as tonight, the mirror of the fire
of my mind, burning as if it could go on
burning itself, burning down

feeding on everything
till there is nothing in life
that has not fed that fire

Adrienne Rich

Artistic Sacrifice

"If a man fears death, / he shall be saved by his poems."

from Mark Strand's "The New Poetry Handbook"

The two previous posts have elicited strong responses from several people. It appears many of us identify with the feeling that writing has become a necessary part of their lives, as necessary as eating and sleeping. Others resonate with the idea that to destroy one's art is to destroy a bit of one's self, and a few of us understand this feeling from direct experience. Some of us have destroyed our poems, journals, drawings, or other art we have created out of a sense of self-loathing, or misdirected rage, or embarassment, or perhaps because, like Lucille Clifton's mother, we were forced to do so.

I am very curious to know of other experiences of people who have, at some point in their lives, destroyed their art. What circumstances caused you to do it? What feelings did you have as you did it? How did you feel afterwards? What does that sacrifice mean to you now? Do you still feel the urge to do it?

I will share an art-destruction story of my own. When I was eleven, our local small town newspaper was having a contest for kids. Every day they printed a picture of a clown, and I would cut it out and color it in. You could do as many as you wanted, then send them all in. The best colored-in clown won a prize.

Creating art in my family was dangerous. Any creative risk was met with suspicion and sarcasm from my parents, so I hid these pictures in my room. (I didn't find out until I was in my twenties that my sister had been writing poems since her childhood, and keeping them in a large binder. She has hundreds of them, all kept secret for years.) I can't remember what prompted my mother's rage on that day--she was prone to fits of hostility and depression--but I remember her throwing things, yelling, and sending me to my room.

What I remember best about the entire incident is what I felt in that room. Most likely it was a warped anger against my mother, but I felt it as an intense self-loathing, a sense that I was incurably "bad," because my mother disliked me so much. I saw those clown pictures sitting on the floor of my room in a small stack, and I hated them. I hated that I had colored them, had bothered to hope that I might do something special. I hated that I had allowed myself to become vulnerable enough to believe that art was worthwhile. I hated that they existed.

I grabbed at the stack and started ripping paper as fast as I could, tearing apart the clown faces with sobbing fury. Once I had reduced the stack to a pile of ripped, colored newsprint, I felt a strange catharsis, as if I could breathe again. I stuffed the pieces in my trashcan and lay on my bed, unmoving, for a long time.

This sacrifice of my art was a sacrifice of a piece of my eleven-year-old heart. But it also helped me survive in an painful family situation. I could have never shown that kind of anger to my parents without severe consequences, and the destruction of the clown helped me proccess it, albeit it in a misdirected way. Part of me mourns the clowns; part of me is glad I had the clowns to rip up so I didn't do it to my body. It's difficult to judge.

Wide-Open Art

This weekend, I was reflecting on the power writing and other artistic expression has to liberate us from emotional paralysis. When I am writing regularly, I feel emotions travel through me like a mild electrical current, almost like a buzzing. Things that hurt still hurt, but they move on. Things that make me happy still do, but I experience the happiness more fully. Doing yoga regualrly provides a similar experience.

In her latest post, Kristina writes the following about writing:

Does [it] make you laugh? Does it make you cry? Does it make you think? Does it make you feel? Does it fulfill you? Does it leave you exhausted? Does it rejuvenate you? Does it scare you? Really, really scare you? Do you know, in your heart, that you could get through anything life hands you as long as you didn't have to give up this one thing?

Ruminating on these question brought me to the idea that, if you are a writer, then writing is breathing, just as sure as your lungs are breathing as they expand and contract. Writing is to our emotional selves what oxygen is to our blood. We crave it, and feel suffocated when we don't have it.

What happens to a person when she cannot practice her art? A few months ago, I posted a poem by Lucille Clifton called "fury," in which she describes her mother burning her own poems in a fiery, red furnace. Clifton's mother was forced to stifle her own artistic expression. Today, I found another poem by Clifton which illustrates what I perceive as the consequences of her mother's sacrifice:


My Mama Moved Among the Days
 
My Mama moved among the days
like a dreamwalker in a field;
seemed like what she touched was here
seemed like what touched her couldn't hold,
she got us almost through the high grass
then seemed like she turned around and ran
right back in
right back on in

Lucille Clifton


An artist without her art is "untouched" by the world, as if she can't process the reality of her environment properly. Things don't seem "real" without the framework of her art. It also appears that, without her poetry to sustain her, "mama" in the poem loses the courage she needs to get her self and her family through "the high grass;" she could make it, but chooses to run "right back in." Her fear of the wide-open world gets the better of her.

Writing is terrifying in its wide-openness. It takes immense courage to do it, and sometimes it just seems easier to pass it up. But when we do--when we choose the illusory protectiveness of the high grass--that's when we wither.

Wallace Stevens and Postmodernism

As you have probably guessed by now (I'm looking at you, Defeatist), I am something of a postmodernist. Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition practically made me weep with relief the first time I read it; I was so astounded to find a vocabulary to express ideas that had been floating around in my psyche and attempting to make their way into full consciousness.

Thinking about this brought to mind Wallace Steven's poem "A Study of Two Pears;" but while I was looking for it, I ran into this other wonderful poem by Stevens at the Academy of American Poets. I haven't read this poem for a long time. I had forgotten how much I like it. The imagery is gorgeous, and for some reason, I always laugh at the end.

Have a wonderful weekend.



Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird


Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.


II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
 

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.


IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
 

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.


VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
 

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?


VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.


IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.


X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.


XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.


XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.


XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens

Philosophical Gaps

One does not need to spend to much time surfing blogs, reading newspapers or magazines, or simply talking to various people to learn how eager we are to share our views with other people, whether on minor issues ("John Cusack is the best actor ever!) or major ones ("Pulling out of the Kyoto Conference was the stupidest decision ever!) Forming ideas, opinions, views about how the world does or should work, and creating a framework through which to view the function and purpose of our lives are inherent parts of the human experience. We spend a lot of time doing it, whether we are aware of it or not.

The trick, of course, is that once a belief or opinion is chosen, others are rejected; "the bookcase slides shut," as Ashbery writes in the following poem. It's true that some beliefs are more flexible than others; but if you prefer a more flexible view of the world, than you are probably rejecting the idea of absolutes or the validity of a "black and white" philosophy. You like the grays.

Fine. But how do we choose our beliefs, as we must do as humans, either quite consciously or not, and keep our minds open to other human beings who are doing the same thing? By listening to them. Listening to another person express ideas that are contrary to our own, without getting defensive or interrupting them, is just about the hardest thing to do. Holy cow, can it feel threatening. My husband and I spent years learning how to do this with each other, let alone with others. But consider this: it is unlikely that any one of us can imagine, let alone express, the entire truth of the purpose or meaning of our existence, or even of any given contentious issue. This does not nullify the vailidity of our opinions; but it does call into question where the truth actually lies.

"There's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas," Ashbery writes. I would suggest that there is a lot to learn in those gaps, as well--realizations of truths about self, about the universe, about others--and the ability the listen to others without judging them. Consider the article about six women on both sides of the abortion debate--three pro-choice and three-pro-life--who came together for five and a half years of secret talks to foster a civilized, honest discussion about their views. They actually listened to each to other:

At the end of the five and a half years of secret conversations, the six leaders wrote an article in The Boston Globe about their experience of dialogue. None of the women had changed their mind about abortion; they had, however, achieved a genuine and heartfelt respect and affection for each other.

A "genuine and heartfelt respect and affection." Can you imagine? Isn't it amazing to think about listening openly to someone without the burden of judging them, or feeling as if you must approve or disapprove of what they're saying? And having someone else do that for you? Can you imagine getting to know someone as a human being rather than seeing them as a mouthpiece for a particular agenda? Can you imagine the power in this?

If you're tired of the baloney about the "polarization" in the United States, and talk of the "red state/blue state" nonsense (check out the purple map for something closer to the truth), you might want to see what's going on at the Public Conversations Project.


My Philosophy of Life
 
Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?

That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like.
Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom
or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought
for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests,
would be affected, or more precisely, inflected
by my new attitude.I wouldn't be preachy,
or worry about children and old people, except
in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe.
Instead I'd sort of let things be what they are
while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate
I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger
accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,
revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside
and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions.
At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender,
but something in between.He thinks of cushions, like the one
his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him
quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great rush
is on.Not a single idea emerges from it.It's enough
to disgust you with thought.But then you remember something
William James
wrote in some book of his you never read--it was fine, it had the
fineness,
the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet
still looking
for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it
even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and
his alone.

It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore.
There are lots of little trips to be made.
A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler.Nearby
are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved
their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well,
messages to the world, as they sat
and thought about what they'd do after using the toilet
and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out
into the open again.Had they been coaxed in by principles,
and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort?
I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought--
something's blocking it.Something I'm
not big enough to see over.Or maybe I'm frankly scared.
What was the matter with how I acted before?
But maybe I can come up with a compromise--I'll let
things be what they are, sort of.In the autumn I'll put up jellies
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility,
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well.
I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks,
or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part,
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea
of two people near him talking together. Well he's
got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him--
this thing works both ways, you know. You can't always
be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself
at the same time.That would be abusive, and about as much fun
as attending the wedding of two people you don't know.
Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas.
That's what they're made for!Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.
They don't come along every day. Look out!There's a big one...

John Ashbery

Disease, Fatigue, and Poetry

If you have ever heard of polycythemia vera, and chances are you haven't, you know that it is a rare blood disease marked by an abnormally high red blood cell count and blood cell volume. For some patients, including me, the disease causes abnormally high platelet and white cell counts as well. It is as if my bone marrow has no sense of moderation, and simply creates cells as fast as possible all the time.

One of the symptoms of this disease is fatigue, something I manage every day, but which sometimes becomes crushing. For the last several weeks I have been laid up with the kind of painful bone-deep fatigue that is disabling. This is why I have been absent from my beloved blog. Sometimes I get too tired to even think, let alone write.

Now I am on an upswing again, back to doing yoga, laundry, socializing, and blogging. I found a new site, PoemHunter.com, and did a search for "tired" to see what might come up. I found this lovely poem by Amy Levy. I love the way it describes the end-of-day fatigue as something positive, something to look forward to, something that forces our minds and souls to rest


The End of the Day
 
To B. T.

Dead-tired, dog-tired, as the vivid day
Fails and slackens and fades away.--
The sky that was so blue before
With sudden clouds is shrouded o'er.
Swiftly, stilly the mists uprise,
Till blurred and grey the landscape lies.

* * * * * * *

All day we have plied the oar; all day
Eager and keen have said our say
On life and death, on love and art,
On good or ill at Nature's heart.
Now, grown so tired, we scarce can lift
The lazy oars, but onward drift.
And the silence is only stirred
Here and there by a broken word.

* * * * * * *

O, sweeter far than strain and stress
Is the slow, creeping weariness.
And better far than thought I find
The drowsy blankness of the mind.
More than all joys of soul or sense
Is this divine indifference;
Where grief a shadow grows to be,
And peace a possibility.

Amy Levy

John Berryman

Many thanks to Robin for this week's beautiful poem by John Berryman (1914-1972). Be sure to take a look at Robin's lovely site about poetry and "other things that quicken the heart." To read more about Berryman, check out this page at the Academy of American Poets.


Dream Song 28: Snow Line


It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don't know. It was dark and then
it isn't.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be eat
nothing. I am usually tired.
I'm alone too.

If only the strange one with so few legs would come,
I'd say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.
Where are his note I loved?
There may be horribles; it's hard to tell.
The barker nips me but somehow I feel
he too is on my side.

I'm too alone. I see no end. If we could all
run, even that would be better. I am hungry.
The sun is not hot.
It's not a good position I am in.
If I had to do the whole thing over again
I wouldn't.

John Berryman


Robin writes that the speaker of this poem is a sheep that has strayed from its flock, and suggests that it may be a take on the 23rd Psalm. There has been a storm, "wet and white and swift," which has led to the sheep's predicament. I am interested in the way the sheep thinks both individually and communally; for example, she thinks in terms of "I" and "me"--"I am usually tired," "The barker nips me"-- but slips easily into a "we" voice--"where I am / we don't know;" "If we could all / run, even that would be better." This sheep is accustomed, and perhaps even designed, to exist as one within a group of the same--one sheep among many sheep, living and eating and existing together. Other sheep are not specifically mentioned, only alluded to through the "we" voice. Those who are not sheep, however--the man ("the one with so few legs") and the dog ("the barker")--are viewed as separate from the flock; where other sheep are viewed as part of the self, "we" being interchangeable with "I," the dog and man are spoken of in the third person, from an outside perspective.

The loneliness of the lost sheep is intensified by the use of the "we" voice. This creature is intended to be in a group of like creatures. She thinks of I and we as referring to the same thing: sheep, a word that is is the same for both singular and plural. To find herself now lost, tired, alone, cold, and hungry, is devastating. She does not want to be independent. She longs for the interdependence of her life in the flock, where her needs were provided for by the sheep, the shepherd, and the dog. She loved her simple, content life.

From a broader perspecctive, I see this poem as a statement of longing for the kind of life the sheep had before becoming lost, a life of simplicity, contentment, and community. It is a longing humans are familiar with, but one we are frequently not willing to satisfy, as it required a shephered whoe makes all decisions as to where we will go, and a "barker" who keeps us in line. The sheep is willing to live within these parameters in order to enjoy the community and safety of the flock. But humans, who are apt to think of "following the flock" as something negative, tend to value independence more than dependence. Perhaps this is the speakers point--we may choose to live independent lives, but there is a price to pay; and at least as far as the speaker is concerned, it isn't worth it.

Thoughts?

A Sonnet by Mathilde Blind

I am so glad I asked for poetry suggestions, because I am learning a great deal about poets I have not yet studied. Today's poem is by Mathilde Blind, a "late-Victorian poet, biographer, novelist, essayist, translator and editor" born in Germany. (Check out this page for a biography of Blind.)

The following sonnet is from Blind's Song's and Sonnets, published in 1893:


XI.
Dost thou remember ever, for my sake,
When we two rowed upon the rock-bound lake?
How the wind-fretted waters blew their spray
About our brows like blossom-falls of May
One memorable day?

Dost thou remember the glad mouth that cried--
"Were it not sweet to die now side by side,
To lie together tangled in the deep
Close as the heart-beat to the heart--so keep
The everlasting sleep?"

Dost thou remember? Ah, such death as this
Had set the seal upon my heart's young bliss!
But, wrenched asunder, severed and apart,
Life knew a deadlier death: the blighting smart
Which only kills the heart.


The speaker in this poem states that a broken heart is worse than death; that is is, in fact, "a deadlier death" than death of the body. It is a poignant statment about the crushing sensation of being rejected by one who once claimed to love you intnesely, but now does not. The speaker's lover had "set the seal" of love on her young heart, but the seal was ripped open and her heart wounded by the lover's desertion.

Because Blind was a fervent feminist and socialist who chose never to marry, I can't help searching for some irony in this poem. Was Blind, who had a great love for the standard male romantic poets, just creating her own sonnet about love and loss, in one of her last published works? It seems to me that is the case. It is not a political turning the tables on the sonnet form, but a participation in it, creating a beautiful, painful illustration of the feeling of love, abandonment, and grief.

Thoughts?

Autobiography in Fiction: What are the boundaries?

The great thing about managing this blog is it gives me the opportunity to learn about writers I may not otherwise study. I was doing some research on our current poet, D.H. Lawrence, who, although an accomplished poet, painter, and critic, is best known for his novels. It is understood within the scholarly community that Lawrence's work was highly autobiographical, and that he drew from personal experiences and acquaintances to inspire his work. His home town of Nottinghamshire frequently provided the setting for these stories. Check out this site for lots of great info about Lawrence's life and work.

Many times, the people of Nottinghamnshire were offended by Lawrence's work, because they could recognize themselves in the often unflattering portrayals of the characters in Lawrence's books. Apparently, Lawrence did not try too hard to disguise who was inspiring what character.

What are the boundaries, do you think, for this kind of writing? Today, the lines between genres are more blurred than ever. We have memoir, which is different from autobiography, which can be different from other kinds of non-fiction, which is different from fiction, but these categories frequently blend and overlap. Does a writer have an obligation to protet the identities of real-life people who inspire their characters, or does it depend on the genre? Is it enough to simply change a character's name? What about memoir? What are the ethical/ literary boundaries?

Thoughts?

D.H. Lawrence--Let's Discuss.

Our next poem is by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930): "When I Went to the Circus." For a short biography of this extraordinary novelist, critic, poet, and painter, click here.

Extra special thanks to Jett who suggested the poem, and when I couldn't find it, typed the whole thing out and sent it to me. Thanks, Jett!


WHEN I WENT TO THE CIRCUS

When I went to the circus that had pitched on the waste lot
It was full of uneasy people
Frightened of the bare earth and the temporary canvas
And the smell of horses and other beasts
Instead of merely the smell of man.

Monkeys rode rather grey and wizened
On curly piebald ponies
And the children uttered a little cry--
And dogs jumped through hoops and turned somersaults
And then geese scuttled in in a little flock
And round the ring they went to the sound of the whip
Then doubled, and back, with a funny up-flutter of wings—
And the children suddenly shouted out.

Then came the hush again, like a hush of fear.

The tight-rope lady, pink and blonde and nude-looking, with a few gold spangles
Footed cautiously out on the rope, turned prettily spun round
Bowed, and lifted her foot in her hand, smiled, swung her parasol
To another balance, tripped round, poised, and slowly sank
Her handsome thighs down, down, till she slept her splendid body on the rope.
When she rose, titing her parasol, and smiled at the cautious people
they cheered, but nervously.

The trapeze man, slim and beautiful and like a fish in the air
Swung great curves through the upper space, and came down like a star
--And the people applauded, with hollow, frightened applause.

The elephants, huge and grey, loomed their curved bulk through the dusk
And sat up, taking strange postures, showing the pink soles of their feet
And curling their precious live trunks like ammonites
And moving always with a soft slow precision
As when a great ship moves to anchor.
The people watched and wondered, and seemed to resent the mystery
That lies in the beasts.

Horses, gay horses, swirling round and plaiting
In a long line, their heads laid over each other’s necks;
They were happy, they enjoyed it;
All the creatures seemed to enjoy the game
In the circus, with their circus people.

But the audience, compelled to wonder
Compelled to admire the bright rhythms of moving bodies
Compelled to see the delicate skill of flickering human bodies
Flesh flamey and a little heroic, even in a tumbling clown,
They were not really happy.
There was no gushing response, as there is at the film.


There is so much to do with this poem. Mostly, I am struck by the response of the human beings to the parading, performing animals and humans. They begin “frightened” and “uneasy,” just from the smells of animals and canvas. Children “shout out” when they see the monkeys. There is a “nervous” cheer for the “nude-looking” “tight-rope” lady,” her almost-naked appearance being to primitive or animal-like for the comfort of the audience. The same for the “trapeze man,” who receives “hollow, frightened applause.”

It is striking how the audience is just as uncomfortable with the human acts as they are with the animal acts. It is as if, in the three rings of this circus, animals and humans are on a level playing field, all of them serving the same purpose, which is to parade their trained talents in front of a crowd. The audience senses this “equality” between man and animal, and are forced to consider that they, as human beings, may be just as trained—to applaud in the proper places, and to obey their compulsion to watch the disturbing show.

The stanza with the elephants is the one I find most poignant. The audience watches the elephants “taking strange postures” “with a soft slow precision,” disturbed by the elephant’s talent and ability. The people resent “the mystery / That lies within the beasts.” Why? I believe it goes back to the leveling of animals and people—that elephants are capable of the kind of great beauty and intelligence that only people should be capable of. To be confronted with the idea that they may not be the most significant creatures on the earth, but only one of many—this is what the people resent.

But, in the end, they are still “compelled to wonder… admire… and see” the show, despite how it disturbs them. They don’t responds with enthusiasm however, not the way they would “at the film.” Why? Because a film is not real. You can always leave a movie thinking, “well, that’s just a story, that’s just a movie.” But what these people witnessed was real life confronting them with what is potentially their own insignificance.

Thoughts? Please share!

A Poetry Manifesto

Before we move on to the next poem, I would like to post something I wrote for my poetry workshop. We are required to write a poetry "manifesto," a word that makes me laugh a bit, but is supposed to be our chance to express something we believe about the nature and purpose of poetry. Feel free to comment, to add something, to agree or disagree, whatever. I'm interested to hear what poets and/or readers of poetry might think. Thanks for indulging me!

A Call for Courageous Poets

Do we have anything new to say? Is there any freshness and new-born life in us that we can express in our poetry? Is there any boldness and color left in our language that hasn’t already been appropriated by one of our predecessors? Is there anything unique about our lives, our experiences of love, pain, loss, beauty, sex, lies, truth, violence, abandonment, death, birth, hate, and joy?

I believe, at some point, each of us must confront this question. How we answer it fundamentally affects how we write, what we write, and our attitudes toward what we and other poets write. I have my answer.

The nature of experience is one of fluidity. We each travel from moment to connected moment, as if flowing through a liquid circle of time. Usually, when a moment feels cemented or halted in our minds, it is because its sensory impact was so strong: the scent of a mother’s baked cookies; a particularly cold hike through the woods; a traumatic instance of abuse; the first time we kissed someone; the first time our hearts were broken. But each moment, no matter how apparently mundane, takes up its own space in our lives, and is as worthy of our attention as the “stronger” moments. Our individual connectedness to these moments, our willingness to be grounded firmly in our experiences, and our mastery of language are what determine the quality, impact, and uniqueness of our art.

In an essay entitled “A Poet is Made, Not Born,” Tina Blue writes, “The more carefully you attend to observation, to really experiencing the complexity and intensity of the world's details, the less likely you are to view your experience of life through the lens of cliché” (sic). Cliché serves a purpose in our language. It is a way we are taught to express an idea so it will be readily and commonly understood. But cliché is not natural to us. It is learned. I think of my nearly three-year-old niece, Justine, who sings a famous Christmas song this way:

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
How much fun it is to ride
Horse and soap and sleigh! Hey!

Justine doesn’t know the actual lyrics to this song, and she doesn’t care. She has complete faith in her ability to translate what comes at her from the radio or the CD player. No one has yet told her, “No, Justine, it goes like this.” Justine has perfectly and confidently expressed her experience of the song.

We have an advantage over Justine, however, and that is our mastery of language. If we can learn to ground ourselves in experience, and if we continue to study the beautiful English language, we can either avoid cliché by discovering our own words, phrases, colors, and distinctions, or we can exploit cliché, by subverting it, or employing it in the interests of satire or to provoke debate.

Language, like experience, is fluid. Words are constantly being added or subtracted from the English lexicon. There is no possible way for language to be completely used up. Like experience, it is not finite. How can one completely quantify the sensory and emotional impact of an experience? How can one learn and employ every word and nuance available in our language? We can’t. As poets, this is to our advantage; we can each express our particular perception of an experience through disciplined and creative use of language. Because each of us is unique, because each of our experiences is interpreted through our own unique conscious and subconscious filters, because language always carries the potential for unique expression, we can create unique poetry.

This is not for the faint-hearted. It is not for the easily jaded, or for the cynical. It takes courage to create art even in the best of circumstances; it takes even more if we have voices around us whispering, or even shouting, that there is nothing we can express that has not already been expressed. This is an artificial, external voice, not our own, internal truth. Let’s dig out our truths. Let’s not cast judgment on our experiences. Let’s use it all: our pain, love, abuse, fear, guilt, bodies, friends, hate, joy, everything. Let’s seize our courage and put it to use, injecting hope, creativity, and beauty into a frightened world, with language that we choose. Let’s learn from our predecessors, but not be intimidated by them.

Do I believe I have anything new to say?

Yes.

Who wants to join me?

Pablo Neruda

This year marks the 100th birthday of the poet Pablo Neruda. Check out Copper Canyon Press for a celebration of his life and work.

Thank you to Kristina for suggesting the following beautiful poem by Neruda.

Here I Love You

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.


Neruda is amazing at expressing love in a way that is terribly romantic. Trees, water, the sea, the moon, the stars—he uses lovely, expressive imagery that catches our imagination, longing, and desire for love.

This, in my opinion, is not what makes him a great poet. What he does so wonderfully well is describe love that is complicated, heartbreaking, and even messy. In this poem, “Here I Love You,” the speaker is separated from the object of his love: “the horizon hides you in vain.” In vain, because the speaker, although feeling the pain of separation keenly, feels no diminishment in his love.

In the first stanza, there are many subtle images which serve to complicate the expression of love. The "pines" in which "the wind disentangles itself" are "dark," and the "moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters. My first response to the word "phosphorous" is simply to think of a warm glow on the surface of the water, perhaps reflecting a warm glow of love in the speaker's heart; but it is interesting to note that the most common form of phosphorous, which is a white solid, is highly poisonous. It is also insoluble in water. Why use a toxic substance to illustrate love? Perhaps because to love someone who is far away from you is so painful. It can feel as if something poisonous is eating away at you from the inside.

Why are the waters "vagrant?" Vagrant means "one who has no established residence and wanders idly from place to place." Perhaps the vagrant waters reflect the life of the speaker, one who must travel but feels as if he has no true home; at least, no home apart from the one he loves. And "Days, all one kind, go chasing each other." This expresses not only the day-to-day life of someone on the sea, doing his work almost robotically, thinking of his love, but also has a quality of depression: that every day seems exactly the same; every day brings the same pain and separation; every day the speaker longs for the lover he cannot see.

Neruda takes the experience of love and layers it, complicates it, even makes it downright painful. For me, this makes his work more accessible, because it reflects the world in which we exist. Sometimes love just plain hurts.

And this is just the first stanza. Any thoughts? I'd love to hear your ideas.

More on e.e. cummings

Thanks to Carson for giving new insight into the time in which e.e. cummings lived. Carson writes that cummings would have lived in a era when the "l" (el) on the typewriter was used to write not only the letter "l", but also the number "1" (one).

Fascinating, especially in the context of the alienation and lonliness inherent in the poem. The number one is, of course, "the loneliest number." So, visually, we can view that first letter as the number one, which adds to that sense of loneliness.

Also, the letters after the parentheses spell "oneliness," or "one-liness." Now cummings is really playing with us: "1", or "one-liness," equals "loneliness."

Love this poem.

e.e.cummings

First, I am still soliciting poems from anyone who might have a poem in mind that they'd like to see discussed here. Thanks to everyone who took the time to suggest their favorite poems. I'm planning to cover many of the suggestions.

Today, I'm posting a poem suggested by a friendly reader at http://snazzycat.com/ordinarychica. (I was careful to spell it correctly :-) It's by e.e. cummings.

l(a

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness

--e.e.cummings


Form is at the heart of this poem. As chica pointed out, if you read everything between the parenthesis, you read "a leaf falls." The rest spells "oneliness." If you add the beginning "l" to the "oneliness--that is, everything not in parenthesis--you get "loneliness."

Man oh man. This poem is heartbreaking. Upon first reading, I thought, how clever. A nifty poetic device. But the more I read it, the more it got to me. The form illustrates falling, motion, slimness, even termination. The lines are long--not just the poem as a whole, but the letters in the poem--so many l's and f's. Long, even fluid lines, all leading down.

We are familiar with the image of falling leaves and the poignancy that creates. Poems are full of that image. But cummings is illustrating that poignancy in several ways. First, the words themselves: "a leaf falls loneliness" or "loneliness a leaf falls." It doesn't work well to read it that way does it? Second, in the long, lean lines; the downward fluidity of the poem as a whole created with the whole line, and the lines of the letters. Third, those parentheses! Parentheses are inherently exclusive. cummings illustrates loneliness by alienating that word from the rest of the poem. And fourth, although this list is by no means comprehensive, the title. l(a. Alienation and loneliness is inherent in the separation, the boundary, between those two letters.


The gentle, wind-carried fall of a leaf, traveling downward to meet its fate, which is, let's face it, death. The separation of the leaf from its home and companions. Fantastic poem.

Any other ideas about this poem? Feel free to comment with other insights--I'd love to hear your ideas.