Yesterday the East Coast was socked in by a rock-em, sock-em, snow storm. Not quite a blizzard, but a decent deep dusting--in my area, a foot or more. Enough to cancel mass transit, keep people off the roads, and close the malls early, only a week before Xmas. So what more appropriate theme for today than the good white fluffy stuff? Here are two:
December Moon
Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.
--May Sarton
(And if you want more Sarton, go here: http://www.languageisavirus.com/may-sarton/.)
And this one, which introduced me to the work of William Stafford, who quickly became a favorite poet.
Snow
Without a word I arrive quietly. A random stranger,
sometimes I appear at a farm window and look in.
They panic, I don't know why. Will I quell
their fire? I tap to enter, to embrace them.
Why do they struggle so? Surely their lives
have a place for this gift I bring.
I turn with my millions, unroll a robe constantly
offered, and go where my limber fate invents
itself, always different and always the same.
I try a new farm, to be a stranger again;
at the schoolground I try to heal the children,
to muffle their screams. Where earth is torn open
I fill it in. Nobody can escape this embrace;
nobody will be left alone. In the cemetery
every grave has its decoration, reverently
placed. On even the littlest grave I trace
each word and carefully spell the names.
"I turn with my millions": This line in itself is a fair description of Stafford's output: a life's output of about 22,000 poems, 3,000 of which were published in 57 volumes of poetry. Here's the kicker: his first book wasn't published until he was in his late 40's. Never too late to start. For more Stafford: http://williamstaffordarchives.org/
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Camelot
Since I saw the musical Camelot last night (Saturday, Dec. 12) on stage in Maryland, today's theme is--what else?--Camelot. The musical itself makes anachronistic mention of Mallory and Tennyson, who both famously wrote epics about King Arthur and his Roundtable. This post includes poems and poem excepts from other visits to ancient England.
Warm-bosomed as she breathed the passionate air
Of old romance, and did in fancy move
'Mong the gay knights who died for ladies fair;
Until she heard the thunder of the press,
And so became a lover; her heart rang
The note of love's alarm, his tenderness,
When in the onset all the tourney sang.
And she was one of the dead ladies who,
In beauty's blazon, to his misty bower
With Launcelot, when the Queen was gone, withdrew
Under the shadow of the tourney tower;
And, lilting to him through the gloaming, made
His heart a lyre whereon her passion played.
Robert Crawford (1868-1930)
Avalon
Upon a high-raised hill in Avalon,
Four dragon sentinels with burnished scales
Keep ward and watch, and whether the sleets and hails
Of winter beat their caves, or in May magic the lawn.
Like a dull emerald smitten with the dawn,
Up brightens, guard and gleam; and still the Grail's
Enchaliced splendors shake over those sweet dales,
Where, 'neath a thick-leaved canopy unwithdrawn
Since the old days of Vivien's sorcery,
Sleeps Merlin in a nest of nightingales--
Thus one clear moment--then the vision fails,
As his, who lone on a wreak-littered lea
Has mocking glimpse of star-mist on the sails,
Of some great ship that lies out to sea.
Robert Eliott Gonzales (1888-1916)
Not everything about Arthur and his court has to be serious--it can't all be about questing, Green Knights, nobility, and affairs. Here's a bit of ridiculousness:
When good King Arthur ruled the land,
He was a goodly king:
He stole three pecks of barley meal,
To make a bag-pudding.
A bag-pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums;
And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.
--unknown
Lastly, usually the best character to play in any play or movie is the bad guy. In Camelot, of course, that's Mordred, and for me last night, the actor stole the show--even though he doesn't make his appearance until Act II (I can see this actor playing a good Iago). So today's last selection is "Mordred's Lullaby," music by Heather Dale.
At Camelot
Her maiden dreams were redolent of love,Warm-bosomed as she breathed the passionate air
Of old romance, and did in fancy move
'Mong the gay knights who died for ladies fair;
Until she heard the thunder of the press,
And so became a lover; her heart rang
The note of love's alarm, his tenderness,
When in the onset all the tourney sang.
And she was one of the dead ladies who,
In beauty's blazon, to his misty bower
With Launcelot, when the Queen was gone, withdrew
Under the shadow of the tourney tower;
And, lilting to him through the gloaming, made
His heart a lyre whereon her passion played.
Robert Crawford (1868-1930)
Avalon
Upon a high-raised hill in Avalon,
Four dragon sentinels with burnished scales
Keep ward and watch, and whether the sleets and hails
Of winter beat their caves, or in May magic the lawn.
Like a dull emerald smitten with the dawn,
Up brightens, guard and gleam; and still the Grail's
Enchaliced splendors shake over those sweet dales,
Where, 'neath a thick-leaved canopy unwithdrawn
Since the old days of Vivien's sorcery,
Sleeps Merlin in a nest of nightingales--
Thus one clear moment--then the vision fails,
As his, who lone on a wreak-littered lea
Has mocking glimpse of star-mist on the sails,
Of some great ship that lies out to sea.
Robert Eliott Gonzales (1888-1916)
Not everything about Arthur and his court has to be serious--it can't all be about questing, Green Knights, nobility, and affairs. Here's a bit of ridiculousness:
When good King Arthur ruled the land,
He was a goodly king:
He stole three pecks of barley meal,
To make a bag-pudding.
A bag-pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums;
And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.
--unknown
Lastly, usually the best character to play in any play or movie is the bad guy. In Camelot, of course, that's Mordred, and for me last night, the actor stole the show--even though he doesn't make his appearance until Act II (I can see this actor playing a good Iago). So today's last selection is "Mordred's Lullaby," music by Heather Dale.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Talking to the Sun
Poets (artists of any stripe) owe a great deal to those who came before them. Perhaps none of them should imagine too much that they choose a path in the wood that's never been trod before, only untrod by themselves. This week features three poets/lyricists/wordsmiths: Frank O'Hara, and Billy Bragg.
Here's Frank O'Hara, paying tribute to the 20's-era Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky:
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.
And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.
And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"
"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
Eight years after he wrote this farewell poem--which was never published during his too-brief lifetime--O'Hara was killed when a dune buggy on Fire Island struck him. Brad Gooch, who wrote a biography of O'Hara titled City Poet, mentions Kenneth Koch's reaction when Koch found the poem among O'Hara's papers:
Reading through the stack of poems later in his apartment on West Fourth Street, Koch came across for the first time "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," a poem that was to become a favorite anthology piece, which O'Hara hadn't shown to anyone while he was alive. A variation on Mayakovsky's "An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer Cottage," the poem had been written by O'Hara on July 10, 1958, when he was visiting Hal Fondren at his rented house at Fire Island Pines, not far from the spot where he would be hit almost exactly eight years later. The poem consists of a conversation between the Sun, who wakes O'Hara and complains petulantly, "When I woke up Mayakovsky he was / a lot more prompt," and the apologetic poet's comment, "Sorry, Sun, I stayed / up late last night talking to Hal."
"I almost fell off my chair," remembers Koch. "It was Frank talking about his own death." In the following months, Koch often read the poem at poetry readings to audiences who were invariably moved by its almost too neatly prophetic parting stanza:
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
From City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1993 by Brad Gooch.
About Vladimir Mayakovsky's poetry: The best way to read his poetry is ALOUD, imagining it with Whitman's "barbaric yawp." About the man: That's about the extent of commonality between those Whitman and the Russian: Whitman, the ultimate poet of syncretistic democracy, and Mayakovsky, the committed Bolshevik. Mayakovsky, ultimately let down by the results of the Revolution and Stalinist rule, died even younger than O'Hara, committing suicide in 1930 at age 36. But the following poem, unlike O'Hara's, isn't a farewell poem: it's much too ebullient for that.
AN EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE WHICH HAPPENED TO ME, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, ONE SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY
(Pushkino, Mount Akula, Rumyantsev Cottage, 20 miles down the Yaroslav Railway)
A hundred suns the sunset fired,
into July summer shunted,
it was so hot,
even heat perspired--
it happened in the country.
The little hamlet known as Pushkino,
Akula's Mount
made hunchbacked.
Below, the village
seemed pushed-in so --
its crooked roof-crusts cracked.
And beyond that village
yawned a hole,
into that hole- and not just maybe -
the sun for certain always rolled,
slowly, surely, daily.
At morn
to flood the world
again
the sun rose up-
and ruddied it.
Day after day
it happened this way,
till I got
fed up with it.
And one day I let out such a shout,
that everything grew pale,
point-blank at the sun I yelled:
"Get out!
Enough of loafing there in hell!"
To the sun I yelled:
"You lazy mummer!
in the clouds cushioning,
while here - knowing neither winter nor summer,
I sit, just posters brushing!"
I yelled to the sun:
"Hey, wait there!
Listen, golden brightbrow,
instead of vainly
setting in the air,
have tea with me
right now!"
What have I done!
For ruin I'm heading!
To me,
of his own goodwill,
the sun himself,
ray-strides outspreading,
is marching over the hill.
Not wanting to show him I'm afraid-
back I retreat, guardedly.
Now his eyes lighten the garden shade.
He's actually in the garden now.
Through windows,
doors,
crannies he spread;
in flooded a sunny mass,
having burst in
he drew his breath,
and spoke in a deep bass.
"I've withheld my fires you see
the first time since creation began.
You've invited me?
So lay out the tea,
and, poet, lay on the jam!"
Tears from my poor eyes were streaming-
the heat really made me scary,
all the same-
I got the samovar steaming:
"Of course,
sit down, comrade luminary!"
What possessed me to shout at him like a fool,
inwardly myself I cursed, -
and sat confused
on the corner of a stool,
frightened it might be worse!
But a radiance strange
streamed from the sun, -
and my tact
no longer taxing,
I sit and chat with the luminated one,
gradually relaxing.
About this,
and about that I chatted,
worn out with ROSTA publicity,
but the sun:
"Alright,
don't get so rattled,
see things with greater simplicity!
You think it's easy
for me
to shine so?
- If so, come and have a test! -
But once you go -
why have a go
go - and shine your damnedest!"
We gossiped like that till darkness appeared,
till the night before, that is.
For how could there be any darkness here?
And now
like chums we chatted.
And soon,
in open friendship bonded,
to slap him on the back I dared.
And likewise the sun
warmly responded:
"Why, comrade, we're a pair!
Come, poet,
let us dawn
and sing
away the drabness of the universe.
As the sun, myself I'll fling,
and you - yourself,
in verse."
And shadows' walls,
and jails of night
fell to its double-barreled shot.
Battering barrage of poetry and light -
shine out, no matter what!
And when the sun gets tired,
and night
wants to rest
its sleepy-headed,
why suddenly -
I shine with all my might -
and once more day is trumpeted.
Shine all the time,
for ever shine.
the last days' depths to plumb,
to shine - !
spite every hell combined!
So runs my slogan -
and the sun's!
Onward ho to Billy Bragg, the Brit alt-rock musician who has been entertaining/agitating fans for about three decades now. Consider me one of those who is alternately entertained and agitated. The first album I picked up of his was Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, the title of which is taken from a Mayakovsky poem by the same title.
So let's have a look at that poem (Bragg included a translation in the liner notes of his album; this isn't his trans.). Like O'Hara, he says we ought not get too wrapped with the trivialities of our present--O'Hara talking all night long, sleeping in and forgetting to gree the sun), and hints at being remembered long after his death:
Our duty is
To roar
Like brass-throated sirens
In philistine fog
And in stormy weather...
Come, you smug dweller in the present era,
Buy your rail ticket
To Eternity
Here.
Calculate
The impact of verse
And distribute
All that I earn
Over three hundred years.
Here's Frank O'Hara, paying tribute to the 20's-era Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky:
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.
And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.
And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"
"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
Eight years after he wrote this farewell poem--which was never published during his too-brief lifetime--O'Hara was killed when a dune buggy on Fire Island struck him. Brad Gooch, who wrote a biography of O'Hara titled City Poet, mentions Kenneth Koch's reaction when Koch found the poem among O'Hara's papers:
Reading through the stack of poems later in his apartment on West Fourth Street, Koch came across for the first time "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," a poem that was to become a favorite anthology piece, which O'Hara hadn't shown to anyone while he was alive. A variation on Mayakovsky's "An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer Cottage," the poem had been written by O'Hara on July 10, 1958, when he was visiting Hal Fondren at his rented house at Fire Island Pines, not far from the spot where he would be hit almost exactly eight years later. The poem consists of a conversation between the Sun, who wakes O'Hara and complains petulantly, "When I woke up Mayakovsky he was / a lot more prompt," and the apologetic poet's comment, "Sorry, Sun, I stayed / up late last night talking to Hal."
"I almost fell off my chair," remembers Koch. "It was Frank talking about his own death." In the following months, Koch often read the poem at poetry readings to audiences who were invariably moved by its almost too neatly prophetic parting stanza:
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
From City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1993 by Brad Gooch.
About Vladimir Mayakovsky's poetry: The best way to read his poetry is ALOUD, imagining it with Whitman's "barbaric yawp." About the man: That's about the extent of commonality between those Whitman and the Russian: Whitman, the ultimate poet of syncretistic democracy, and Mayakovsky, the committed Bolshevik. Mayakovsky, ultimately let down by the results of the Revolution and Stalinist rule, died even younger than O'Hara, committing suicide in 1930 at age 36. But the following poem, unlike O'Hara's, isn't a farewell poem: it's much too ebullient for that.
AN EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE WHICH HAPPENED TO ME, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, ONE SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY
(Pushkino, Mount Akula, Rumyantsev Cottage, 20 miles down the Yaroslav Railway)
A hundred suns the sunset fired,
into July summer shunted,
it was so hot,
even heat perspired--
it happened in the country.
The little hamlet known as Pushkino,
Akula's Mount
made hunchbacked.
Below, the village
seemed pushed-in so --
its crooked roof-crusts cracked.
And beyond that village
yawned a hole,
into that hole- and not just maybe -
the sun for certain always rolled,
slowly, surely, daily.
At morn
to flood the world
again
the sun rose up-
and ruddied it.
Day after day
it happened this way,
till I got
fed up with it.
And one day I let out such a shout,
that everything grew pale,
point-blank at the sun I yelled:
"Get out!
Enough of loafing there in hell!"
To the sun I yelled:
"You lazy mummer!
in the clouds cushioning,
while here - knowing neither winter nor summer,
I sit, just posters brushing!"
I yelled to the sun:
"Hey, wait there!
Listen, golden brightbrow,
instead of vainly
setting in the air,
have tea with me
right now!"
What have I done!
For ruin I'm heading!
To me,
of his own goodwill,
the sun himself,
ray-strides outspreading,
is marching over the hill.
Not wanting to show him I'm afraid-
back I retreat, guardedly.
Now his eyes lighten the garden shade.
He's actually in the garden now.
Through windows,
doors,
crannies he spread;
in flooded a sunny mass,
having burst in
he drew his breath,
and spoke in a deep bass.
"I've withheld my fires you see
the first time since creation began.
You've invited me?
So lay out the tea,
and, poet, lay on the jam!"
Tears from my poor eyes were streaming-
the heat really made me scary,
all the same-
I got the samovar steaming:
"Of course,
sit down, comrade luminary!"
What possessed me to shout at him like a fool,
inwardly myself I cursed, -
and sat confused
on the corner of a stool,
frightened it might be worse!
But a radiance strange
streamed from the sun, -
and my tact
no longer taxing,
I sit and chat with the luminated one,
gradually relaxing.
About this,
and about that I chatted,
worn out with ROSTA publicity,
but the sun:
"Alright,
don't get so rattled,
see things with greater simplicity!
You think it's easy
for me
to shine so?
- If so, come and have a test! -
But once you go -
why have a go
go - and shine your damnedest!"
We gossiped like that till darkness appeared,
till the night before, that is.
For how could there be any darkness here?
And now
like chums we chatted.
And soon,
in open friendship bonded,
to slap him on the back I dared.
And likewise the sun
warmly responded:
"Why, comrade, we're a pair!
Come, poet,
let us dawn
and sing
away the drabness of the universe.
As the sun, myself I'll fling,
and you - yourself,
in verse."
And shadows' walls,
and jails of night
fell to its double-barreled shot.
Battering barrage of poetry and light -
shine out, no matter what!
And when the sun gets tired,
and night
wants to rest
its sleepy-headed,
why suddenly -
I shine with all my might -
and once more day is trumpeted.
Shine all the time,
for ever shine.
the last days' depths to plumb,
to shine - !
spite every hell combined!
So runs my slogan -
and the sun's!
Onward ho to Billy Bragg, the Brit alt-rock musician who has been entertaining/agitating fans for about three decades now. Consider me one of those who is alternately entertained and agitated. The first album I picked up of his was Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, the title of which is taken from a Mayakovsky poem by the same title.
So let's have a look at that poem (Bragg included a translation in the liner notes of his album; this isn't his trans.). Like O'Hara, he says we ought not get too wrapped with the trivialities of our present--O'Hara talking all night long, sleeping in and forgetting to gree the sun), and hints at being remembered long after his death:
Our duty is
To roar
Like brass-throated sirens
In philistine fog
And in stormy weather...
Come, you smug dweller in the present era,
Buy your rail ticket
To Eternity
Here.
Calculate
The impact of verse
And distribute
All that I earn
Over three hundred years.
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