"Casabianca" by Elizabeth Bishop

Casabianca

Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite “The boy stood on

the burning deck.”  Love’s the son

stood stammering elocution

while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

or an excuse to stay

on deck.  And love’s the burning boy.

Source of the text - Elizabeth Bishop, Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955, page 6.

TJB: Corinthians column. Honoring and/or lampooning a shipwreck of a poem stuffed with religious metaphor, the poet here ramrods love metaphors.

 

 

 

 

"A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass." by Gertrude Stein

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing

strange  a single  hurt  color and an arrangement in a

system  to  pointing.  All  this  and  not  ordinary, not

unordered   in   not   resembling.   The  difference  is
spreading.

Source of the text - Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons.  New York: Claire Marie, 1914, page 9.

TJB: Spectacular-mundane. Inspired by still-life, this semi-cubist sketch teases at and denies a similarity between form and content. Or so it seems.

"To my Dear and loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet

[Poem as first published in 1678]

Source of the text - Several Poems Compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of Delight, Second Edition.  Boston: John Foster, 1678, page 240.

[Poem from a 20th Century edition]

To my Dear and loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.

Thy love is such I can no way repay,

The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.

Then while we live, in love lets so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Source of the text - Poems of Anne Bradstreet, Edited by Robert Hutchinson.  New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969, page 41.

TJB: Sincere-cavalier.  This straight up spousal-love poem—love as greater than gold mines, too hot to quench—hopes for, is uncertain of, heavenly bliss.

"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 
Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream

A Fragment

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
    A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw:
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Source of the text - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Selected Poems.  New York: Gramercy Books, 1996, p. 57-58.

TJB: Unforgettable improvised mess. The poem starts with Kubla’s dome, then an NSFW romp of river entering cave, then a vision of poetry’s origin.

"Hey Nonny No!" anonymous rhyme

[Text of the rhyme from a 17th Century music manuscript, in which the rhyme was set to music by composer Nathaniel Giles]

Source of the manuscript image - Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 439: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/363ae4db-1b86-456a-a6bc-49523103e1e1/ (Christ Church Mus. 439, Item # 48 (page 51 on electronic viewer))

[Text of the rhyme from an early 20th Century anthology]

Hey nonny no!


Hey nonny no!
Men are fools that wish to die!
Is’t not fine to dance and sing
When the bells of death do ring?
Is’t not fine to swim in wine,
And turn upon the toe,
And sing hey nonny no!
When the winds blow and the seas flow?
Hey nonny no!



Source of the text - The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, Ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927, poem #59, page 90.

TJB: Pub doggerel; carpe diem but with whimsy. Questions or exclamations—the poem has no truck with mere periods, & celebrates all the nonny.

"The Black Unicorn" by Audre Lorde

THE BLACK UNICORN

The black unicorn is greedy.

The black unicorn is impatient.

The black unicorn was mistaken

for a shadow

or symbol

and taken

through a cold country

where mist painted mockeries

of my fury.

It is not on her lap where the horn rests

but deep in her moonpit

growing.

The black unicorn is restless

the black unicorn is unrelenting

the black unicorn is not

free.

 

Source of the text - Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1978, p.3.

TJB: Symbolless symbol; haecceity with a horn. Here, the black unicorn is pure uniqueness—within the moonpit—& also the rage of an entire people.

"Second Person" by Rae Armantrout

Second Person

Lemons, lanterns

hang late

into the evening.

But you are known

for your voluptuous retreat,

for leaving

your absence

on the air,

illicit, thin.

I know

you think

I wonder

if you think

of me.

This reflection

spins,

a bead on a string.

I can take it with me.

Source of the text - Rae Armantrout, Money Shot.  Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011, page 32.

TJB: You-niverse. The personal address, and I-thou nature of lyric poetry, forms some of the subject of this lyric. “I wonder if you wonder.”

"Riprap" by Gary Snyder

Riprap

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
                 placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
                 in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
                 riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
                 straying planets,
These poems, people,
                 lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
                 and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
                 four-dimensional
Game of Go.
                 ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
                 a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
                 with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
                 all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

Source of the text - Gary Snyder, Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems.  San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1969, page 30.

TJB: Ars poeticobble. A poem is figured as a walkable, manmade trail; the reader as a horse led across steep terrain; words as volcanic rocks.

Poem 6, by Ōtomo no Yakamochi, from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu

Poem 6, by Ōtomo no Yakamochi, from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each)

Poem 6, in calligraphy in the hand of Abbot Genchin circa 1660 CE

Poem 6, in modern Japanese characters

Poem 6 transliteration into Roman alphabet

Kasasagi no
wataseru hashi ni
oku shimo no
shiroki wo mireba
yo zo fukenikeru



Poem 6, translated by Peter McMillan

How the night deepens.

As lovers part

a white ribbon of frost

is stretched along

the Bridge of Magpie Wings.

Source of the text (all versions listed above) - One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, translated and edited by Peter McMillan.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pages 8, 116, 156.

TJB: Good tidings. Whether it’s a literal frost-covered bridge separating lovers or, say, the Milky Way, the images are elegant in simplicity.

Riddle 4 from The Exeter Book

 Riddle 4 from The Exeter Book

 

[Image of Riddle 4 from Folio 102v of The Exeter Book]

Source of the image: Chambers, R. W., M. Förster, and R. Flower, eds. The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry. London: P. Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd., 1933, folio 102v.

[Text of Riddle 4 in Anglo Saxon]

Ic sceal þragbysig     þegne minum,
hringum hæfted,     hyran georne,
min bed brecan,     breahtme cyþan
þæt me halswriþan     hlaford sealde.
Oft mec slæpwerigne     secg oðþe meowle 
gretan eode;     ic him gromheortum
winterceald oncweþe.     Wearm lim
gebundenne bæg     hwilum bersteð;
se þeah biþ on þonce     þegne minum,
medwisum men,     me þæt sylfe,
þær wiht wite,     ond wordum min
on sped mæge     spel gesecgan.

Source of the text in Anglo Saxon - George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records vol. III (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), page 183.

[English translation by Phyllis Levin]

Busy from Time to Time, in Rings

Busy from time to time, in rings
bound, I shall obey my servant eagerly,
break my bed and suddenly call out
that my lord has given me a neck-collar.
Often a man or a maid will greet me,
sleepweary; grim-hearted, I give
a winter-cold answer.  A warm limb
sometimes bursts the bound ring,
which is pleasing to my servant,
a feeble-minded man; to me, as well,
if you'd like to know, and if my words
ring true my story may be told.

Source of the text in English translation - The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, edited by Greg Delanty and Michael Matto.  New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011, p. 74-75.

TJB: Ring a bell? With so many possible interpretations, what answer? Bell, plough, dick—who knows? Is it a riddle if there’s not one inevitable answer?