"In Memory of Jane Fraser" by Geoffrey Hill

IN MEMORY OF JANE FRASER

When snow like sheep lay in the fold

And winds went begging at each door,

And the far hills were blue with cold,

And a cold shroud lay on the moor,

She kept the siege. And every day

We watched her brooding over death

Like a strong bird above its prey.

The room filled with the kettle’s breath.

Damp curtains glued against the pane

Sealed time away. Her body froze

As if to freeze us all, and chain

Creation to a stunned repose.

She died before the world could stir.

In March the ice unloosed the brook

And water ruffled the sun’s hair,

And a few sprinkled leaves unshook.

Source of the text - Geoffrey Hill, For the Unfallen: Poems 1952-1958.  Dufour Editions, 1960, p. 23.

TJB: Several elegant, interlaced metaphors, spondaic & end-rhymed, run through Jane’s furious siege against death in a house surrounded by winter.

"Negative" by Wisława Symborska

Original text in Polish:

NEGATYW

Na niebie burym

chmurka jeszcze bardziej bura

z czarną obwódką słońca.

Na lewo, czyli na prawo,

biała gałąź czereśni z czarnymi kwiatami.

Na twojej ciemnej twarzy jasne cienie.

Zasiadłeś przy stoliku

i położyłeś na nim poszarzałe ręce.

Sprawiasz wrażenie ducha,

który próbuje wywoływać żywych.

(Ponieważ jeszcze zaliczam się do nich,

powinnam mu się zjawić i wystukać:

dobranoc, czyli dzień dobry,

żegnaj, czyli witaj.

I nie skąpić mu pytań na żadną odpowiedź,

jeśli dotyczą życia,

czyli burzy przed ciszą.)

English translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak:

NEGATIVE

Against a grayish sky

a grayer cloud

rimmed black by the sun.

On the left, that is, the right,

a white cherry branch with black blossoms.

Light shadows on your dark face.

You’d just taken a seat at the table

and put your hands, gone pray, upon it.

You look like a ghost

who’s trying to summon up the living.

(And since I still number among them,

I should appear to him and tap:

good night, that is, good morning,

farewell, that is, hello.

And not grudge questions to any of his answers

concerning life,

that storm before the calm).

Source of the text – Wisława Symborska, Monologue of a Dog: New Poems, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak.  Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2002, p. 24-25.

TJB: Photo lyrical. Cutesy but affecting, the poem shows us a photo negative where everything is inverted: life/death, question/answer, etc.

"Sir Patrick Spens," anonymous ballad

SIR PATRICK SPENS

[version A]

1  The king sits in Dumferling toune,

        Drinking the blude-reid wine:

    ‘O whar will I get guid sailor,

        To sail this schip of mine?’

2  Up and spak an eldern knicht,

        Sat at the kings richt kne:

    ‘Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor

        That sails upon the se.’

3  The king has written a braid letter,

        And signd it wi his hand,

    And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence,

        Was walking on the sand.

4  The first line that Sir Patrick red,

        A loud lauch lauched he;

    The next line that Sir Patrick red,

        The teir blinded his ee.

5  ‘O wha is this has don this deid,

        This ill deid don to me,

    To send me out this time o’ the yeir,

        To sail upon the se!

6  ‘Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all,

        Our guid schip sails the morne:’

    ‘O say na sae, my master deir,

        For I feir a deadlie storme.

7  ‘Late late yestreen I saw the new moone,

        Wi the auld moone in hir arme,

    And I feir, I feir, my deir master,

        That we will cum to harme.’

8  O our Scots nobles wer richt laith

        To weet their cork-heild schoone;

    Bot lang owre a’ the play wer playd,

        Their hats they swam aboone.

9  O lang, lang may their ladies sit,

        Wi thair fans into their hand,

    Or eir they se Sir Patrick Spence

        Cum sailing to the land.

10  O lang, lang may the ladies stand,

        Wi thair gold kems in their hair,

    Waiting for thair ain deir lords,

        For they’ll se thame na mair.

11  Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,

        It’s fiftie fadom deip,

    And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,

        Wi the Scots lords at his feit.

Source of the text – The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vol. II., edited by Francis James Child. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1965, p. 20-21.

TJB: Those are plurals that were his eyes. Rich in dialogue, rich in poetic doublets, this sea shanty gorgeously, musically, compresses its narrative.

"The Universe is a House Party" by Tracy K. Smith

THE UNIVERSE IS A HOUSE PARTY

The universe is expanding. Look: postcards

And panties, bottles with lipstick on the rim,

Orphan socks and napkins dried into knots.

Quickly, wordlessly, all of it whisked into file 

With radio waves from a generation ago

Drifting to the edge of what doesn’t end, 

Like the air inside a balloon. Is it bright?

Will our eyes crimp shut? Is it molten, atomic,

A conflagration of suns? It sounds like the kind of party

Your neighbors forget to invite you to: bass throbbing

Through walls, and everyone thudding around drunk 

On the roof. We grind lenses to an impossible strength, 

Point them toward the future, and dream of beings 

We’ll welcome with indefatigable hospitality:

How marvelous you’ve come! We won’t flinch 

At the pinprick mouths, the nubbin limbs. We’ll rise,

Gracile, robust. Mi casa es su casa. Never more sincere. 

Seeing us, they’ll know exactly what we mean.

Of course, it’s ours. If it’s anyone’s, it’s ours. 

Source of the text – Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems.  Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2011, p. 13.

TJB: Fermi’s paradox. If intelligent life is out there the poet imagines them as uninvited party guests & we’re the drunk chauvinist party hosts.

"To a Steam Roller" by Marianne Moore

TO A STEAM ROLLER

The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
   You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
      into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them.

Sparkling chips of rock
are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
   Were not “impersonal judgment in aesthetic
      matters, a metaphysical impossibility,” you

might fairly achieve
it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
   of one’s attending upon you, but to question
      the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

Source of the text - Marianne Moore, Poems.  London: The Egoist Press, 1921, p. 6.

TJB: Impersonification. Like any good mother or critic, the steamroller crushes unique gravel to identical sand in this arch, half-rhymed ode.



 

"To Lucasta, Going to the Wars" by Richard Lovelace

                        SONG.
           Set by Mr. John Laniere.
TO LUCASTA, Going to the Warres.

                             I

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkinde,
    That from the Nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet minde,
    To Warre and Armes I flie.

                            II

True; a new Mistresse now I chase,
    The first Foe in the Field;
And with a stronger Faith imbrace
    A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.

                           III

Yet this Inconstancy is such
    As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee (Deare) so much,
    Lov’d I not Honour more.



Source of the text - The Poems of Richard Lovelace: Lucasta, etc.  London: Hutchinson & Co., 1906, p. 18.

TJB: Patronizing patriot. The poet patiently mansplains to his boo why he’d rather be out killing & maiming. Whether we hear irony is all on us.

"Unspoiled Fictions" by Jenny Xie

UNSPOILED FICTIONS

           “when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability
            to leave your own banality and boredom . . .”                    —Jamaica Kincaid



The ease with which a place becomes an entry:
searchlight            viewfinder            fantasy’s aperture



Smell of my lateral gazing
Reach of the outsider’s extravagant need



While I listened for the dialects
While I hunted down the night markets’ chewed lips



Authentic encounters executed           just so
Extractions of color and details in the needed size



Beauty kept simple and numbness hot
The contracts and the rot in the air are merciful




Source of the text - Jenny Xie, Eye Level: Poems.  Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2018, p. 5.

TJB: Instafragments. These ghazal-like lines capture surface details from a tourist’s perspective, carefully curated. Show us the spoiled ones!

"Gravelly Run" by A.R. Ammons

Gravelly Run


I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
   of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self 
as to know it as it is known
   by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:

the swamp’s slow water comes 
down Gravelly Run fanning the long 
   stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between 
the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there, 
and the cedars’ gothic-clustered
   spires could make
green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air’s glass 
jail seals each thing in its entity:

no use to make any philosophies here:
   I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter 
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never 
heard of trees: surrendered self among
   unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road.



Source of the text - A.R. Ammons, Corsons Inlet: A Book of Poems.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965, p. 64.

TJB: Colon flow. From a late Civil War site, the poet takes sides with the poetic/natural & sends the epistemological-carpetbagger-self packing.

"The reticent volcano keeps" by Emily Dickinson

The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.

If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not proceed
Without a listener?

Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every prater be
The only secret neighbors keep
Is Immortality.


Source of the text - The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 631.

TJB: Magma chamber music. Praising the stoic volcano for being a secretkeeper & inverting syntax, the poet sings we too can & must keep secrets.

from the Aeneid by Virgil, Book I, lines 441-493

from the Aeneid by Virgil, Book I, lines 441-493:

Original Latin text:

         Lucus in urbe fuit media, laetissimus umbrae,

quo primum iactati undis et turbine Poeni

effodere loco signum, quod regia Iuno

monstrarat, caput acris equi; sic nam fore bello

egregiam et facilem victu per saecula gentem.               445

hic templum Iunoni ingens Sidonia Dido

condebat, donis opulentum et numine divae,

aerea cui gradibus surgebant limina nexaeque

aere trabes, foribus cardo stridebat aënis.

hoc primum in luco nova res oblata timorem                450

leniit, hic primum Aeneas sperare salutem

ausus et adflictis melius confidere rebus.

namque sub ingenti lustrat dum singula templo,

reginam opperiens, dum, quae fortuna sit urbi,

artificumque manus inter se operumque laborem                455

miratur, videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas

bellaque iam fama totum volgata per orbem,

Atridas Priamumque et saevum ambobus Achillem.

constitit et lacrimans, “quis iam locus,” inquit, “Achate,

quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?               460

en Priamus! sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi,

sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

solve metus; feret haec aliquam tibi fama salutem.”

sic ait, atque animum pictura pascit inani,

multa gemens, largoque umectat flumine voltum.               465

namque videbat, uti bellantes Pergama circum

hac fugerent Grai, premeret Troiana iuventus,

hac Phryges, instaret curru cristatus Achilles.

nec procul hinc Rhesi niveis tentoria velis

adgnoscit lacrimans, primo quae prodita somno                470

Tydides multa vastabat caede cruentus,

ardentisque avertit equos in castra, prius quam

pabula gustassent Troiae Xanthumque bibissent.

parte alia fugiens amissis Troilus armis,

infelix puer atque impar congressus Achilli,               475

fertor equis curruque haeret resupinus inani,

loratenenstamen; huic cervixque comaequetrahuntur

per terram et versa pulvis inscribitur hasta.

interea ad templum non aequae Palladis ibant

crinibus Iliades passis peplumque ferebant,               480

suppliciter tristes et tunsae pectora palmis;

diva solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat.

ter circum Iliacos raptaverat Hectora muros

exanimumque auro corpus vendebat Achilles.

tum vero ingentem gemitum dat pectore ab imo,               485

ut spolia, ut currus, utque ipsum corpus amici

tendentemque manus Priamum conspexit inermis.

se quoque principibus permixtum adgnovit Achivis,

Eoasque acies et nigri Memnonis arma.

ducit Amazonidum lunatis agmina peltis                490

Penthesilea furens mediisque in milibus ardet,

aurea subnectens exsertae cingula mammae,

bellatrix, audetque viris concurrere virgo.

Source of the text in Latin – Virgil, vol. I, with an English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough.  London: William Heinemann, 1916, p. 270-274.

English translation by Robert Fitzgerald:

He looked up at the roofs, for he had entered,
Swathed in cloud—strange to relate—among them,
Mingling with men, yet visible to none.
In mid-town stood a grove that cast sweet shade
Where the Phoenicians, shaken by wind and sea,
Had first dug up that symbol Juno showed them,
A proud warhorse's head: this meant for Carthage
Prowess in war and ease of life through ages.
Here being built by the Sidonian queen
Was a great temple planned in Juno's honor,
Rich in offerings and the godhead there.
Steps led up to a sill of bronze, with brazen
Lintel, and bronze doors on groaning pins.
Here in this grove new things that met his eyes
Calmed Aeneas' fear for the first time.
Here for the first time he took heart to hope
For safety, and to trust his destiny more
Even in affliction. It was while he walked
From one to another wall of the great temple
And waited for the queen, staring amazed
At Carthaginian promise, at the handiwork
Of artificers and the toil they spent upon it:
He found before his eyes the Trojan battles
In the old war, now known throughout the world—
The great Atridae, Priam, and Achilles,
Fierce in his rage at both sides. Here Aeneas
Halted, and tears came.
                                      “What spot on earth,”
He said, “what region of the earth, Achatës,
Is not full of the story of our sorrow?
Look, here is Priam. Even so far away
Great valor has due honor; they weep here
For how the world goes, and our life that passes
Touches their hearts. Throw off your fear. This fame
Insures some kind of refuge.”
                                                He broke off
To feast his eyes and mind on a mere image,
Sighing often, cheeks grown wet with tears,
To see again how, fighting around Troy,
The Greeks broke here, and ran before the Trojans,
And there the Phrygians ran, as plumed Achilles
Harried them in his warcar. Nearby, then,
He recognized the snowy canvas tents
Of Rhesus, and more tears came: these, betrayed
In first sleep, Diomedes devastated,
Swording many, till he reeked with blood,
Then turned the mettlesome horses toward the beachhead
Before they tasted Trojan grass or drank
At Xanthus ford.
                                    And on another panel
Troilus, without his armor, luckless boy,
No match for his antagonist, Achilles,
Appeared pulled onward by his team: he clung
To his warcar, though fallen backward, hanging
On to the reins still, head dragged on the ground,
His javelin scribbling S’s in the dust.
Meanwhile to hostile Pallas’ shrine
The Trojan women walked with hair unbound,
Bearing the robe of offering, in sorrow,
Entreating her, beating their breasts. But she,
Her face averted, would not raise her eyes.
And there was Hector, dragged around Troy walls
Three times, and there for gold Achilles sold him,
Bloodless and lifeless. Now indeed Aeneas
Heaved a mighty sigh from deep within him,
Seeing the spoils, the chariot, and the corpse
Of his great friend, and Priam, all unarmed,
Stretching his hands out.
                                        He himself he saw
In combat with the first of the Achaeans,
And saw the ranks of Dawn, black Memnon’s arms;
Then, leading the battalion of Amazons
With half-moon shields, he saw Penthesilëa
Fiery amid her host, buckling a golden
Girdle beneath her bare and arrogant breast,
A girl who dared fight men, a warrior queen.


Source of the English translation: Virgil, The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Vintage Books, 1983, p. 19-21.

TJB: Visuality Virgilianae. Invisible, Aeneas views wall-art & sees his story & the story of Troy, with focus on the Trojan emotions, not actions.

"This Is a Photograph of Me" by Margaret Atwood

THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF ME

It was taken some time ago.

At first it seems to be

a smeared

print: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;

then, as you scan

it, you see in the left-hand corner

a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree

(balsam or spruce) emerging

and, to the right, halfway up

what ought to be a gentle

slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,

and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken

the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center

of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where

precisely, or to say

how large or small I am:

the effect of water

on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,

eventually

you will be able to see me.)

Source of the text – Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems 1965-1975.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976, p. 8.

TJB: Photo of invisible things. First, we see the photograph (poem?) as blurry, then meaning slowly emerges; then we begin to see the invisible.

"This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin

                  This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
     They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
     And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
     By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
     And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
     It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
     And don't have any kids yourself.


Source of the text - Philip Larkin, High Windows.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974, p. 30.

TJB: Pure proverb; nice demography advice. Harold Bloom might misread this monosyllabic epigram to be about Auden & arguing against writing poems.