Landscape by E.E. Cummings, no date.
I was recently reminded of E.E. Cummings' work as an artist as well as a poet. I was unable to find many pieces online, but judging from this one, his art looks like his poetry (his poetry reads like his art?), spilling over with color and energy and interrupted lines of thought.
Cummings, whose name was only decapitalized by publishers who thought continuity with his poetry would be a brilliant idea (uh, okay), at thirty years old lost his father, whom he was very close to, inspiring poems such as "my father moved through dooms of love." It can be assumed that he also revered his mother, after reading "if there are any heavens." Cummings was married three times and had one child, Nancy, from whom he was separated when his wife divorced him around 1924. Nancy and her father finally reunited in 1946. Cummings died in 1962 and is buried in Boston.
may my heart always be open to little...
by E.E. Cummings
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
No, I don't usually count song lyrics as poetry, except in rare cases. This is a rare case, mostly because of my gratitude to my cousin and his wife for the Death Cab for Cutie sampler CD they gave me for Christmas.
Transatlanticism
by Death Cab for Cutie
The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.
I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.
Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door
Have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row;
It seems farther than ever before.
Oh no.
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
So come on, come on
I need you so much closer...
This is a widely-known and heavily-quoted poem, which for me is usually the mark of lesser quality. But this I can't help but appreciate because of its blunt, insightful request. It is simple, but it is something every person feels. For that reason it is worthy of recognition. This poem also reminds me of the dilemmas of twenty-something friends who are striving to realize their dreams and communicate them to others. "Tread softly," we ask. "Our dreams are very close to us now; please, tread softly."
Some of the records I've found of this poem list the title as "Aedh Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven." I'm finding conflicting opinions on who Aedh is, from a Celtic god to a Scottish king.
He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
My brother got me an e.e. cummings anthology for Christmas. I'm not sure if it includes this one, but it's one of my favorites.
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
by e.e. cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
A favorite Christmas song, of Appalachian origin.
I Wonder As I Wander
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor, ornery people like you and like I
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
When Mary birthed Jesus, 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
And high from God's heaven a starlight did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's angels in heaven for to sing
He surely could have it 'cause He was the King
Litany
by Billy Collins
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine.
--Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass,
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is no way you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's teacup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--
the wine.
i have been told that poetry is concentrated language
well i say that life is concentrated poetry
--s.d.
Wordsworth said in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion. He set a precedent for many succeeding generations, letting them revel in the freedom of language, liberated from the straitjackets of formal poetic forms: the sonnet, the ballad, the couplet, the ode. This is a wild conjecture from an amateur English student, but I suspect his influence holds sway even now. Today poetry is pared down, stripped of extraneous rhyme and gratuitous rhythm; we've entered a period of poetic realism, with a few retrospective tributes to absurdism and da-da thrown in here and there. (Or maybe they consider it some form of neo-absurdism, but I'm not going to split hairs about something I am ill-qualified to comment on.)
I must admit that I like it. The emphasis in poetry is not so much the decorative variations of language as it was with the older generations, but the task of refining language so that it describes perfectly the subject matter. Language now plays second fiddle to the subject of the art; it is a tool, a means to an end. But it is unfair and inaccurate to say that language itself today is disregarded--on the contrary, I think it becomes all the more vital. Without language to communicate, the subject means nothing. Poetry is an avenue for truth to the masses; if there is no avenue, there is no truth, at least not a known one.
I love how subjects and words have become nearly inseparable. Flannery O'Connor once said that the moral of a story should never be separated from the story itself; the two should be so intertwined that without the story the meaning would hardly make sense. "A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way." I think the same should be true of poetry. Take Dylan Thomas, for example. His short phrase green fuse takes two separate concepts and melds them, weaves them together into a mental picture that almost literally becomes a new idea, an original concept. Breaking the two ideas down into their exclusive parts is helpful to an extent for getting at the new, melded meaning, but the two must be put back together again. The words belong together; isolated, they carry nothing of what the author was trying to get at.
The preliminary and tentative conclusion of these thoughts is that, for me, good poetry is a form of language in which words belong. Words arranged in such a way that they describe the subject the only way it could be described. The words weave a tapestry. They belong.
May my heart always be open to little...
by e.e. cummings
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
I apologize; I haven't had my act together when it comes to actually saying anything of substance about the poems I post. Half of me just wants to let art speak for itself, but then again, who am I to say that you should read something if I cannot articulate my own thoughts about it?
I haven't seriously explicated this poem yet, so I simply know that I like it because it evokes thoughts of the paradoxes of life. Even though it hurts (because it hurts?), it's still worth living.
If I Could Tell You
by W.H. Auden
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.
In honor of the opening of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I highly recommend seeing, two magnificent poems by C.S. Lewis.
The Country of the Blind
Hard light bathed them-a whole nation of eyeless men,
Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed. A long
Process, clearly, a slow curse,
Drained through centuries, left them thus.
At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few,
No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date,
Normal type had achieved snug
Darkness, safe from the guns of heavn;
Whose blind mouths would abuse words that belonged to their
Great-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in some
Eunuch'd, etiolated,
Fungoid sense, as a symbol of
Abstract thoughts. If a man, one that had eyes, a poor
Misfit, spoke of the grey dawn or the stars or green-
Sloped sea waves, or admired how
Warm tints change in a lady's cheek,
None complained he had used words from an alien tongue,
None question'd. It was worse. All would agree 'Of course,'
Came their answer. "We've all felt
Just like that." They were wrong. And he
Knew too much to be clear, could not explain. The words --
Sold, raped flung to the dogs -- now could avail no more;
Hence silence. But the mouldwarps,
With glib confidence, easily
Showed how tricks of the phrase, sheer metaphors could set
Fools concocting a myth, taking the worlds for things.
Do you think this a far-fetched
Picture? Go then about among
Men now famous; attempt speech on the truths that once,
Opaque, carved in divine forms, irremovable,
Dear but dear as a mountain-
Mass, stood plain to the inward eye.
As the Ruin Falls
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death? --Romans 7:24
A Hymn to God the Father
by John Donne
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
In the relative advent of this blog, I think it might be beneficial to include a poem about poetry--that is, a poem that I believe explains in one very eloquent way what poetry should be. This is a modern poem that I found in the book Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, compiled by former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. Judging from what little I've read of Collins and the poems he selected for this anthology, I highly recommend his work, as well as this book. It's an especially appropriate pick for someone who's having trouble understanding or appreciating poetry; easy reading, but very poignant.
What He Thought
by Heather McHugh
We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the mayor, mulled
a couple matters over (what's
cheap date, they asked us; what's a
flat drink). Among Italian literati
we could recognize our counterparts:
the academic, the apologist,
the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib--and there was one
administrator (the conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated
sights and histories the hired van hauled us past.
Of all, he was most politic and least poetic,
so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome
(when all but three of the New World Bards had flown)
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?)
to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before.
I couldn't read Italian, either, so I put the book
back into the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans
were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there
we sat and chatted, sat and chewed,
till, sensible it was our last
big chance to be poetic, make
our mark one of us asked
"What's poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables and
marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or
the statue there?" Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think--"The truth
is both, it's both," I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed
taught me something about difficulty,
four our underestimated host spoke out,
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:
The statue represents Giordano Bruno,
brought to be burned in the public square
because of his offense against
authority, which is to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government, but rather is
poured in waves through all things. All things
move. "If God is not the soul itself, He is
the soul of the soul of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him
forth to die, they feared he might
incite the crowd (the man was famous
for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask, in which
he could not speak. That's
how they burned him. That is how
he died: without a word, in front
of everyone.
And poetry--
(we'd all
put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on
softly)--
poetry is what
he thought, but did not say.
I dare not ask of the moon its light
I dare not ask of the moon its light,
Or it may shine all the day
And benumb those in its way,
Till the ice-glow turns to common sight.
I dare not ask of the sun its heat,
Or it may burn through the night
And steal from lovers and vagrants the right
To romance the dusk in the street.
I dare not ask of the rain its tears,
Or it may drown every joy,
Flooding and rushing and charging to cloy
Jupiter’s blessings to fears.
I dare not ask of my love his care
Or he may lavish it on me,
Answering only to my plea;
I should rather sink to a sea of despair
Than secure an owed love to me.
11.30.05
crystal l.
Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
I like poems that are rife with double meanings, poems with impossible rhythm, poems with similes that make me think in new dimensions.
But sometimes... sometimes a poem comes along that is so pure in its simplicity that I fall in love with it almost against my will. I shouldn't like a poem like this--so basic, so one-leveled. But it makes me cry, it's so uncomplicated and wide-eyed and innocently courageous. The poet knows exactly what she is saying.
I Would Live In Your Love
by Sara Teasdale
I would live in your love
as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes,
drawn down by each wave that recedes;
I would empty my soul of the dreams
that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats,
I would follow your soul as it leads.
For the beauty of the earth,
For the glory of the skies;
For the love which from our birth,
Over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
For the wonder of each hour,
Of the day and of the night;
Hill and vale and tree and flow'r,
Sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and mind's delight;
For the mystic harmony,
Linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child;
Friends on Earth and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
For Thy church that evermore,
Lifteth holy hands above;
Off'ring up on ev'ry shore,
Her pure sacrifice of love;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
--Folliott S. Pierpoint, 1864
Keeping Things Whole
by Mark Strand
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
What is the truth that stays in the back of your throat, that you've never uttered? The truth you have no words for? The truth you live on?
The Simple Truth
by Philip Levine
I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said,
"Even if you don't I'll say you did."
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Victorian poet in era, but nearly Modern in skill and vision. Virtually unknown in his lifetime, his poems are now recognized for their use of "sprung rhythm," a system of meter that Hopkins himself created that captures the natural inflections and tones in speech and capitalizes on them, as well as "inscape," "the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things," and "instress," "either the force of being which holds the inscape together or the impulse from the inscape which carries it whole into the mind of the beholder." Inscape can be succinctly described as the innate essence of a thing; instress as the impression the thing communicates to the seer. These visionary elements are all wrapped up in one of my favorite poems, "As kingfishers catch fire." Read it aloud and listen to the flawless rhythm:
As kingfishers catch fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
by Dylan Thomas
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Midnight Gladness
by Denise Levertov
"Peace be upon each thing my eye takes in,
Upon each thing my mouth takes in." --Carmina Gadelica
The pleated lampshade, slightly askew,
dust a silverish muting of the lamp's fake brass.
My sock-monkey on the pillow, tail and limbs asprawl,
weary after a day of watching sunlight
prowl the house like a wolf.
Gleams of water in my bedside glass.
Miraculous water, so peacefully
waiting to be consumed.
The day's crowding arrived
at this abundant stillness. Each thing
given to the eye before sleep, and water
at my lips before darkness. Gift after gift.
