BANK ONE
She sought an escape goat
To ride in and out of the vault
Bearing gold bars
Into the desert
Where snakes would have her
Is it my mother
She wondered aloud
Stroking the cold slippery surface
Of purset form
Through the canvas bag
Source of the text - Laura Sims, Practice, Restraint. New York: Fence Books, 2005, p. 21.
TJB: A daydream-lyric whispers 1 clause per line in crisp descending order of independence. One stanza dream-seeks; one wonders & strokes gold.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
"Rite" by Muriel Rukeyser
Rite
My father groaned; my mother wept.
Among the mountains of the west
A deer lifted her golden throat.
They tore the pieces of the kill
While two dark sisters laughed and sang.—
The hidden lions blare until
The hunters charge and burn them all.
And in the black apartment halls
Of every city in the land
A father groans; a mother weeps;
A girl to puberty has come;
They shriek this, this is the crime
The gathering of the powers in.
At this first sign of her next life
America is stricken dumb.
The sharpening of your rocky knife!
The first blood of a woman shed!
The sacred word: Stand Up You Dead.
Mothers go weep; let fathers groan,
The flag of infinity is shown.
Now you will never be alone.
Source of the text - Muriel Rukeyser, Out of Silence: Selected Poems. Evanston, IL: TriQuarterly Books, p.114.
TJB: This stripped-down paratactic & apposite archetype-lyric archly conflates sacrifice [to please god], puberty [which does what?], & America.
My father groaned; my mother wept.
Among the mountains of the west
A deer lifted her golden throat.
They tore the pieces of the kill
While two dark sisters laughed and sang.—
The hidden lions blare until
The hunters charge and burn them all.
And in the black apartment halls
Of every city in the land
A father groans; a mother weeps;
A girl to puberty has come;
They shriek this, this is the crime
The gathering of the powers in.
At this first sign of her next life
America is stricken dumb.
The sharpening of your rocky knife!
The first blood of a woman shed!
The sacred word: Stand Up You Dead.
Mothers go weep; let fathers groan,
The flag of infinity is shown.
Now you will never be alone.
Source of the text - Muriel Rukeyser, Out of Silence: Selected Poems. Evanston, IL: TriQuarterly Books, p.114.
TJB: This stripped-down paratactic & apposite archetype-lyric archly conflates sacrifice [to please god], puberty [which does what?], & America.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
from "General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
from the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (lines 1-18)
Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury.
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So Priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
Source of the text - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd Edition, edited by Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987, p. 23.
TJB: Our narrator assonantly links cause—a gorgeous April-chronographia ending in a unique bird-image—to effect, the desire for holy pilgrimage.
Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury.
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So Priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
Source of the text - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd Edition, edited by Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987, p. 23.
TJB: Our narrator assonantly links cause—a gorgeous April-chronographia ending in a unique bird-image—to effect, the desire for holy pilgrimage.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
"The Burial of the Dead" from "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot
From The Waste Land
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’
Source of the text - T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963, pp. 51-53.
TJB: Beginning in participles, brimming with definiteness, conflating routine & action, this section blends 6 anecdotes & 4 present-tense lyrics.
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’
Source of the text - T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963, pp. 51-53.
TJB: Beginning in participles, brimming with definiteness, conflating routine & action, this section blends 6 anecdotes & 4 present-tense lyrics.
Friday, April 23, 2010
"Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom" by Louise Bogan
MEN LOVED WHOLLY BEYOND WISDOM
Men loved wholly beyond wisdom
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry thicket
Rising within women's eyes
Is the love men must return.
Heart, so subtle now, and trembling,
What a marvel to be wise,
To love never in this manner!
To be quiet in the fern
Like a thing gone dead and still,
Listening to the prisoned cricket
Shake its terrible, dissembling
Music in the granite hill.
Source of the text - Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968, p. 16.
TJB: Amid 3 gorgeous-precise similes, this gnomos-lyric surprises with the equivocal force of “must,” “now,” “never,” “dissembling,” & “granite.”
Men loved wholly beyond wisdom
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry thicket
Rising within women's eyes
Is the love men must return.
Heart, so subtle now, and trembling,
What a marvel to be wise,
To love never in this manner!
To be quiet in the fern
Like a thing gone dead and still,
Listening to the prisoned cricket
Shake its terrible, dissembling
Music in the granite hill.
Source of the text - Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968, p. 16.
TJB: Amid 3 gorgeous-precise similes, this gnomos-lyric surprises with the equivocal force of “must,” “now,” “never,” “dissembling,” & “granite.”
Thursday, April 22, 2010
"You were you are elegy" by Mary Jo Bang.
YOU WERE YOU ARE ELEGY
Fragile like a child is fragile.
Destined not to be forever.
Destined to become other
To mother. Here I am
Sitting on a chair, thinking
About you. Thinking
About how it was
To talk to you.
How sometimes it was wonderful
And sometimes it was awful.
How drugs when drugs were
Undid the good almost entirely
But not entirely
Because good could always be seen
Glimmering like lame glimmers
In the window of a shop
Called Beautiful
Things Never Last Forever.
I loved you. I love you. You were.
And you are. Life is experience.
It's all so simple. Experience is
The chair we sit on.
The sitting. The thinking
Of you where you are a blank
To be filled
In by missing. I loved you.
I love you like I love
All beautiful things.
True beauty is truly seldom.
You were. You are
In May. May now is looking onto
The June that is coming up.
This is how I measure
The year. Everything Was My Fault
Has been the theme of the song
I've been singing,
Even when you’ve told me to quiet.
I haven’t been quiet.
I’ve been crying. I think you
Have forgiven me. You keep
Putting your hand on my shoulder
When I’m crying.
Thank you for that. And
For the ineffable sense
Of continuance. You were. You are
The brightest thing in the shop window
And the most beautiful seldom I ever saw.
Source of the text - Mary Jo Bang, Elegy. St. Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2007, pp. 84-85.
TJB: The poet writes straight-at-it in short harrowing sentences & fragments [removing actor & act], frequently correcting past tense to present.
Fragile like a child is fragile.
Destined not to be forever.
Destined to become other
To mother. Here I am
Sitting on a chair, thinking
About you. Thinking
About how it was
To talk to you.
How sometimes it was wonderful
And sometimes it was awful.
How drugs when drugs were
Undid the good almost entirely
But not entirely
Because good could always be seen
Glimmering like lame glimmers
In the window of a shop
Called Beautiful
Things Never Last Forever.
I loved you. I love you. You were.
And you are. Life is experience.
It's all so simple. Experience is
The chair we sit on.
The sitting. The thinking
Of you where you are a blank
To be filled
In by missing. I loved you.
I love you like I love
All beautiful things.
True beauty is truly seldom.
You were. You are
In May. May now is looking onto
The June that is coming up.
This is how I measure
The year. Everything Was My Fault
Has been the theme of the song
I've been singing,
Even when you’ve told me to quiet.
I haven’t been quiet.
I’ve been crying. I think you
Have forgiven me. You keep
Putting your hand on my shoulder
When I’m crying.
Thank you for that. And
For the ineffable sense
Of continuance. You were. You are
The brightest thing in the shop window
And the most beautiful seldom I ever saw.
Source of the text - Mary Jo Bang, Elegy. St. Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2007, pp. 84-85.
TJB: The poet writes straight-at-it in short harrowing sentences & fragments [removing actor & act], frequently correcting past tense to present.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
"To My Wash-stand" by Louis Zukofsky
No. 22 ("To My Wash-stand")
To my wash-stand
in which I wash
my left hand
and my right hand
To my wash-stand
whose base is Greek
whose shaft
is marble and is fluted
To my wash-stand
whose wash-bowl
is an oval
in a square
To my wash-stand
whose square is marble
and inscribes two
smaller ovals to left and right for soap
Comes a song of
water from the right faucet and the left
my left and my
right hand mixing hot and cold
Comes a flow which
if I have called a song
is a song
entirely in my head
a song out of imagining
modillions described above
my head a frieze
of stone completing what no longer
is my wash-stand
since its marble has completed
my getting up each morning
my washing before going to bed
my look into a mirror
to glimpse half an oval
as if its half
were half-oval in my head and the
climates of many
inscriptions human heads shapes'
horses' elephants' (tusks) others'
scratched in marble tile
so my wash-stand
in one particular breaking of the
tile at which I have
looked and looked
has opposed to my head
the inscription of a head
whose coinage is the
coinage of the poor
observant in waiting
in their getting up mornings
and in their waiting
going to bed
carefully attentive
to what they have
and to what they do not
have
when a flow of water
doubled in narrow folds
occasions invertible counterpoints
over a head and
an age in a wash-stand
and in their own heads
Source of the text - Louis Zukofsky, Complete Short Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, pp. 52-53.
TJB: This essay-chant moves from close-observed reality to imagination with intensely transitive-hypotactic clauses, with a major shift at “so.”
To my wash-stand
in which I wash
my left hand
and my right hand
To my wash-stand
whose base is Greek
whose shaft
is marble and is fluted
To my wash-stand
whose wash-bowl
is an oval
in a square
To my wash-stand
whose square is marble
and inscribes two
smaller ovals to left and right for soap
Comes a song of
water from the right faucet and the left
my left and my
right hand mixing hot and cold
Comes a flow which
if I have called a song
is a song
entirely in my head
a song out of imagining
modillions described above
my head a frieze
of stone completing what no longer
is my wash-stand
since its marble has completed
my getting up each morning
my washing before going to bed
my look into a mirror
to glimpse half an oval
as if its half
were half-oval in my head and the
climates of many
inscriptions human heads shapes'
horses' elephants' (tusks) others'
scratched in marble tile
so my wash-stand
in one particular breaking of the
tile at which I have
looked and looked
has opposed to my head
the inscription of a head
whose coinage is the
coinage of the poor
observant in waiting
in their getting up mornings
and in their waiting
going to bed
carefully attentive
to what they have
and to what they do not
have
when a flow of water
doubled in narrow folds
occasions invertible counterpoints
over a head and
an age in a wash-stand
and in their own heads
Source of the text - Louis Zukofsky, Complete Short Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, pp. 52-53.
TJB: This essay-chant moves from close-observed reality to imagination with intensely transitive-hypotactic clauses, with a major shift at “so.”
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
"The Merry Bells of London," anonymous lyric
The Merry Bells of London.
Gay go up and gay go down,
To ring the bells of London Town.
Bull’s eyes and targets,
Say the bells of St. Marg’ret’s.
Brick-bats and tiles,
Say the bells of St. Giles.
Halfpence and farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin’s.
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s.
Pancakes and fritters,
Say the bells at St. Peter’s.
Two sticks and an apple,
Say the bells at Whitechapel.
Old Father Baldpate,
Say the slow bells at Aldgate.
You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells at St. Helen’s.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells at Old Bailey.
When I shall grow rich,
Say the bells at Shoreditch.
Pray, when will that be?
Say the bells at Stepney.
I’m sure I don’t know,
Says the great bell at Bow.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
Source of the text - Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus, edited by Joseph Ritson. Edinburgh: R. Clark, 1866, pp. 37-38.
TJB: Rough-purity. Accentual rhymes form a litany-narrative, reveal personality, & channel keen awareness of humor, delight, & looming mortality.
Monday, April 19, 2010
"Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Spring and Fall:
to a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Source of the text - Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Catherine Phillips. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
TJB: Sprung-high-lyric. With short lines & offbeat feminine rhyme [man you-can you!], the poem predicts answer to its 2 opening questions is No.
to a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Source of the text - Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Catherine Phillips. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
TJB: Sprung-high-lyric. With short lines & offbeat feminine rhyme [man you-can you!], the poem predicts answer to its 2 opening questions is No.
Friday, April 16, 2010
"At Melville's Tomb" by Hart Crane
At Melville's Tomb
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.
Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
Source of the text - Hart Crane, Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters. New York: The Library of America, 2006, p. 24.
TJB: Who is it written to? Elegizing Melville, Ahab, whale, & poet at once, it uses offbeat Miltonic grammar, slant rhyme, & highly poetic terms.
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.
Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
Source of the text - Hart Crane, Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters. New York: The Library of America, 2006, p. 24.
TJB: Who is it written to? Elegizing Melville, Ahab, whale, & poet at once, it uses offbeat Miltonic grammar, slant rhyme, & highly poetic terms.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Queen Elizabeth I's verse response to Ralegh
[Elizabeth to Ralegh]
Ah, silly Pug, wert thou so sore afraid?
Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed.
It passeth fickle Fortune's power and skill
To force my heart to think thee any ill.
No Fortune base, thou sayest, shall alter thee?
And may so blind a witch so conquer me?
No, no, my Pug, though Fortune were not blind,
Assure thyself she could not rule my mind.
Fortune, I know, sometimes doth conquer kings,
And rules and reigns on earth and earthly things,
But never think Fortune can bear the sway
If virtue watch, and will her not obey.
Ne chose I thee by fickle Fortune's rede,
Ne she shall force me alter with such speed
[ ]
But if to try this mistress' jest with thee.
Pull up thy heart, suppress thy brackish tears,
Torment thee not, but put away thy fears.
Dead to all joys and living unto woe,
Slain quite by her that ne'er gave wise men blow,
Revive again and live without all dread,
The less afraid, the better thou shalt speed.
TJB Note: It is likely that a line is missing before line 15, "But if to try..." although some have argued that the poet intended a rhyming triplet. The sense of line 15, unlike the rest of the poem, is unclear. It is also possible [though less likely] that many lines are missing.
Source of the text - Elizabeth I: Collected Works, edited by Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 308-309.
TJB: How can an absolute monarch impress subjects with wit? After 7 brilliant, engaging rebuke-couplets, a line is missing then the poem fizzles.
Ah, silly Pug, wert thou so sore afraid?
Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed.
It passeth fickle Fortune's power and skill
To force my heart to think thee any ill.
No Fortune base, thou sayest, shall alter thee?
And may so blind a witch so conquer me?
No, no, my Pug, though Fortune were not blind,
Assure thyself she could not rule my mind.
Fortune, I know, sometimes doth conquer kings,
And rules and reigns on earth and earthly things,
But never think Fortune can bear the sway
If virtue watch, and will her not obey.
Ne chose I thee by fickle Fortune's rede,
Ne she shall force me alter with such speed
[ ]
But if to try this mistress' jest with thee.
Pull up thy heart, suppress thy brackish tears,
Torment thee not, but put away thy fears.
Dead to all joys and living unto woe,
Slain quite by her that ne'er gave wise men blow,
Revive again and live without all dread,
The less afraid, the better thou shalt speed.
TJB Note: It is likely that a line is missing before line 15, "But if to try..." although some have argued that the poet intended a rhyming triplet. The sense of line 15, unlike the rest of the poem, is unclear. It is also possible [though less likely] that many lines are missing.
Source of the text - Elizabeth I: Collected Works, edited by Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 308-309.
TJB: How can an absolute monarch impress subjects with wit? After 7 brilliant, engaging rebuke-couplets, a line is missing then the poem fizzles.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
"Wulf and Eadwacer," anonymous Anglo-Saxon lyric
Wulf and Eadwacer
[original Anglo-Saxon text]
Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife;
willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.
Ungelic is us.
Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre.
Fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen.
Sindon wælreowe weras þær on ige;
willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.
Ungelice is us.
Wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode.
þonne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt,
þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde;
wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað.
Wulf, min Wulf, wena me þine
seoce gedydon, þine seldcymas,
murnende mod, nales meteliste.
Gehyrest þu, Eadwacer? Uncerne earmne hwelp
bireð wulf to wuda.
þæt mon eaþe tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs,
uncer giedd geador.
[translated into modern English by Michael Alexander]
The men of my tribe would treat him as game:
if he comes to the camp they will kill him outright.
Our fate is forked.
Wulf is on one island, I on another.
Mine is a fastness: the fens girdle it
and it is defended by the fiercest men.
If he comes to the camp they will kill him for sure.
Our fate is forked.
It was rainy weather, and I wept by the hearth,
thinking of my Wulf's far wanderings;
one of the captains caught me in his arms.
It gladdened me then; but it grieved me too.
Wulf, my Wulf, it was wanting you
that made me sick, your seldom coming,
the hollowness at heart; not the hunger I spoke of.
Do you hear, Eadwacer? Our whelp
Wulf shall take to the wood.
What was never bound is broken easily,
our song together.
Source of the Anglo-Saxon text - Richard Marsden, The Cambridge Old English Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336-338.
Source of the English translation - The School Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. London: Faber & Faber, Limited, 1997, p. 451.
TJB: With simple syntax & terms this compressed enigma-lyric forces many double-meanings yet includes 4 people, 5 places, refrain & fluid sounds.
[original Anglo-Saxon text]
Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife;
willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.
Ungelic is us.
Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre.
Fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen.
Sindon wælreowe weras þær on ige;
willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.
Ungelice is us.
Wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode.
þonne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt,
þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde;
wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað.
Wulf, min Wulf, wena me þine
seoce gedydon, þine seldcymas,
murnende mod, nales meteliste.
Gehyrest þu, Eadwacer? Uncerne earmne hwelp
bireð wulf to wuda.
þæt mon eaþe tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs,
uncer giedd geador.
[translated into modern English by Michael Alexander]
The men of my tribe would treat him as game:
if he comes to the camp they will kill him outright.
Our fate is forked.
Wulf is on one island, I on another.
Mine is a fastness: the fens girdle it
and it is defended by the fiercest men.
If he comes to the camp they will kill him for sure.
Our fate is forked.
It was rainy weather, and I wept by the hearth,
thinking of my Wulf's far wanderings;
one of the captains caught me in his arms.
It gladdened me then; but it grieved me too.
Wulf, my Wulf, it was wanting you
that made me sick, your seldom coming,
the hollowness at heart; not the hunger I spoke of.
Do you hear, Eadwacer? Our whelp
Wulf shall take to the wood.
What was never bound is broken easily,
our song together.
Source of the Anglo-Saxon text - Richard Marsden, The Cambridge Old English Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336-338.
Source of the English translation - The School Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. London: Faber & Faber, Limited, 1997, p. 451.
TJB: With simple syntax & terms this compressed enigma-lyric forces many double-meanings yet includes 4 people, 5 places, refrain & fluid sounds.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
From "The Last 4 Things" by Kate Greenstreet
from The Last 4 Things
Dear When-you-stop-you-will-feel,
Black, the color of space, mourning,
is green for rain. As if a legend to a map,
I saw the room and
wanted the life.
Wool men! we must consider:
what beauty means in the moth's world.
Come this far. Look briefly
into the past. Living in a house inside a house,
you receive a transmission of "meaning" energy
you cannot decipher.
Nothing marks the turn.
Source of the text - Kate Greenstreet, The Last 4 Things. Boise: Ahsahta Press, 2009, p.24.
TJB: Bricks w/o glue. Envy of another’s house & life is equated to interpreting meaning in this letter-poem which uses map, moth, & house images.
Dear When-you-stop-you-will-feel,
Black, the color of space, mourning,
is green for rain. As if a legend to a map,
I saw the room and
wanted the life.
Wool men! we must consider:
what beauty means in the moth's world.
Come this far. Look briefly
into the past. Living in a house inside a house,
you receive a transmission of "meaning" energy
you cannot decipher.
Nothing marks the turn.
Source of the text - Kate Greenstreet, The Last 4 Things. Boise: Ahsahta Press, 2009, p.24.
TJB: Bricks w/o glue. Envy of another’s house & life is equated to interpreting meaning in this letter-poem which uses map, moth, & house images.
Monday, April 12, 2010
"The City Limits" by A.R. Ammons
The City Limits
When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider
that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest
swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue
bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider
that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the
leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.
Source of the text - A.R. Ammons, Collected Poems 1951-1971. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1972, p.320.
TJB: Each of the 6 compounds in this Emersonian chant, 5 ‘when you consider’ & the final ‘then,’ wends through the physical & toward the cosmic.
When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider
that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest
swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue
bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider
that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the
leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.
Source of the text - A.R. Ammons, Collected Poems 1951-1971. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1972, p.320.
TJB: Each of the 6 compounds in this Emersonian chant, 5 ‘when you consider’ & the final ‘then,’ wends through the physical & toward the cosmic.
Friday, April 9, 2010
"Crow's Fall" by Ted Hughes
Crow's Fall
When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.
He got his strength flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.
He laughed himself to the centre of himself
And attacked.
At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.
But the sun brightened—
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.
He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.
"Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."
Source of the text - Ted Hughes, Crow: from the life and songs of the crow. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, p.25.
TJB: Declarative parable. From hypotactic-intransitive to paratactic-transitive & back, the emphasis is on repetition & sharp verb-adverb sounds.
When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.
He got his strength flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.
He laughed himself to the centre of himself
And attacked.
At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.
But the sun brightened—
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.
He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.
"Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."
Source of the text - Ted Hughes, Crow: from the life and songs of the crow. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, p.25.
TJB: Declarative parable. From hypotactic-intransitive to paratactic-transitive & back, the emphasis is on repetition & sharp verb-adverb sounds.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
"It was deep April, and the morn" by "Michael Field."
It was deep April, and the morn
Shakspere was born;
The world was on us, pressing sore;
My Love and I took hands and swore,
Against the world, to be
Poets and lovers evermore,
To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore,
To sing to Charon in his boat,
Heartening the timid souls afloat;
Of judgement never to take heed,
But to those fast-locked souls to speed,
Who never from Apollo fled,
Who spent no hour among the dead;
Continually
With them to dwell,
Indifferent to heaven or hell.
Note: The author, "Michael Field," was the pen-name for Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who composed poems and verse-plays together. Bradley was Cooper's aunt and guardian and partner for life.
Source of the text - Michael Field. Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher, MDCCCXCVIII, p.50.
TJB: Palaver-doggerel. This April-song, with long-vowels & expected rhymes, includes a beguiling Charon-sequence & the poets’ mission-statement.
Shakspere was born;
The world was on us, pressing sore;
My Love and I took hands and swore,
Against the world, to be
Poets and lovers evermore,
To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore,
To sing to Charon in his boat,
Heartening the timid souls afloat;
Of judgement never to take heed,
But to those fast-locked souls to speed,
Who never from Apollo fled,
Who spent no hour among the dead;
Continually
With them to dwell,
Indifferent to heaven or hell.
Note: The author, "Michael Field," was the pen-name for Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who composed poems and verse-plays together. Bradley was Cooper's aunt and guardian and partner for life.
Source of the text - Michael Field. Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher, MDCCCXCVIII, p.50.
TJB: Palaver-doggerel. This April-song, with long-vowels & expected rhymes, includes a beguiling Charon-sequence & the poets’ mission-statement.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
"The Song of the Sword," anonymous ancient Hebrew poem
The Song of the Sword [Genesis 4:23-24]
[Original text in Hebrew]
[English translation by JPS]:
[And Lamech said to his wives,]
Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
O wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech.
I have slain a man for wounding me,
And a lad for bruising me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.
Notes: (i) The author of this ancient poem or poem-fragment is unknown. Linguistic evidence suggests an approximate date of composition of the 12th century BCE.
(ii) "sevenfold" - After Cain kills his brother Abel, he is cursed by God. Cain comments that he will be killed for his actions. God declares sevenfold vengeance upon anyone who takes Cain's life. God then places a mark upon Cain. This narrative is taken to be an etiology, explaining the peculiar 'mark' [perhaps a tattoo] worn by members of a tribe claiming descent from Cain. The tribe likely attempted to deter violence against its members by threatening the sevenfold violence.
Source of the text (the Hebrew and the English translation) - Sarna, Nahum M., Genesis = Be-reshit : the traditional Hebrew text with new JPS translation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989, pp.38-39.
TJB: 3 deeply parallel couplets marry form to content; the poem’s nature as tribal boast is brutally magnified by its austere parallelisms.
[Original text in Hebrew]
[English translation by JPS]:
[And Lamech said to his wives,]
Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
O wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech.
I have slain a man for wounding me,
And a lad for bruising me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.
Notes: (i) The author of this ancient poem or poem-fragment is unknown. Linguistic evidence suggests an approximate date of composition of the 12th century BCE.
(ii) "sevenfold" - After Cain kills his brother Abel, he is cursed by God. Cain comments that he will be killed for his actions. God declares sevenfold vengeance upon anyone who takes Cain's life. God then places a mark upon Cain. This narrative is taken to be an etiology, explaining the peculiar 'mark' [perhaps a tattoo] worn by members of a tribe claiming descent from Cain. The tribe likely attempted to deter violence against its members by threatening the sevenfold violence.
Source of the text (the Hebrew and the English translation) - Sarna, Nahum M., Genesis = Be-reshit : the traditional Hebrew text with new JPS translation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989, pp.38-39.
TJB: 3 deeply parallel couplets marry form to content; the poem’s nature as tribal boast is brutally magnified by its austere parallelisms.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
"Apartment" by Rae Armantrout
Apartment
1
The woman on the mantel,
who doesn’t much resemble me,
is holding a chainsaw
away from her body,
with a shocked smile,
while an undiscovered tumor
squats on her kidney.
2
The present
is a sentimental favorite,
with its heady mix
of grandiosity
and abjection,
truncated,
framed.
3
It’s as if I’m subletting
a friend’s apartment.
Even in the dream,
I’m trying to imagine
which friend.
And I’m trying to get
all my robes together,
robes I really own and
robes I don’t
Source of the text - Rae Armantrout, Versed. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2009, p.107.
TJB: The poet sees, deeply, her previous self in a picture, describes the picture, & unleashes an extraordinary metaphor for her unfamiliar body.
1
The woman on the mantel,
who doesn’t much resemble me,
is holding a chainsaw
away from her body,
with a shocked smile,
while an undiscovered tumor
squats on her kidney.
2
The present
is a sentimental favorite,
with its heady mix
of grandiosity
and abjection,
truncated,
framed.
3
It’s as if I’m subletting
a friend’s apartment.
Even in the dream,
I’m trying to imagine
which friend.
And I’m trying to get
all my robes together,
robes I really own and
robes I don’t
Source of the text - Rae Armantrout, Versed. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2009, p.107.
TJB: The poet sees, deeply, her previous self in a picture, describes the picture, & unleashes an extraordinary metaphor for her unfamiliar body.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
"To Autumn" by John Keats
To Autumn. by John Keats.
I
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
II
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Written on September 19, 1819, and published the following year.
First published:
John Keats, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. London: Talor and Hessey, 1820.
Source of the text - John Keats, Complete Poems of John Keats (Wordsworth Collection). Hertfordshire, U.K.: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1994, pp.232-233.
I
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
II
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Written on September 19, 1819, and published the following year.
First published:
John Keats, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. London: Talor and Hessey, 1820.
Source of the text - John Keats, Complete Poems of John Keats (Wordsworth Collection). Hertfordshire, U.K.: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1994, pp.232-233.
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