A while back we had a discussion here about our favorite poems and poets. It was great, except for the random nitwit who showed up and lectured all of us that “Ball Turret Gunner” was OBVIOUSLY about abortion, and gave us some key points on “how” to read poetry.
But let him not ruin our fun.
Sonnet To Sleep, by Keats:
O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes.
Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
So SAD.. I love that poem..
Sorry I missed the original discussion. This is probably my favorite.
Voyages III
Infinite consanguinity it bears
This tendered theme of you that light
Retrieves from sea plains where the sky
Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones;
While ribboned water lanes I wind
Are laved and scattered with no stroke
Wide from your side, whereto this hour
The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.
And so, admitted through black swollen gates
That must arrest all distance otherwise,
Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,
Light wrestling there incessantly with light,
Star kissing star through wave on wave unto
Your body rocking!
and where death, if shed,
Presumes no carnage, but this single change,-
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn
The silken skilled transmemberment of song;
Permit me voyage, love, into your hands . . .
-Hart Crane
Sheila and everybody,
How about if in addition to discussing our favorite poets, we also discuss favorite lines or passages that mean something deep to you or haunt your imagination? Here’s one of mine.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
Wallace Stevens
from “The Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”
Hart Crane is amazing.
I would say, in answer to you, Bryan – that that last stanza in The More Loving One, by Auden (posted below) is something I have a deep connection to.
Another line which always struck a deep deep chord in me … was from Emily Bronte’s “Once Rebuked”:
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading —
It vexes me to choose another guide.
Here is another from Hart Crane.
Reflective conversion of all things
At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread
The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread
Impinging on the throat and sides
Inevitable, the body of the world
Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus
That winks above it, bluet in your breasts.
from “The Marriage of Faustus and Helen”
Also from “Faustus”:
Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile
Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height
The imagination spans beyond despair,
Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.
Sheila,
I love that quotation from Bronte. That is so you.
The air is sweetest that a thistle guards,
And purple thistles in our blue air burn,
And spiny leaves hold back the light we share.
The loose tides sprawl and turn and overturn
Distant pearl eaters gorging on the shore
While taut between those waters and these words
Our air, our morning these poignant thistles weave
Nets that bind back, garland the hungering tide.
-James Merrill
Art thou pale for loneliness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that had a different birth
And ever changing, like some joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Fragment
The entirety of Longfellow’s The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. I cannot even explain how exciting I found that poem as a kid … I could SEE IT. The boats coming into the harbour at night, the flashing lantern, the hooves on the cobblestone ..
To me, that entire poem was a magic world – which I was allowed to freely enter. I could participate in it as fully as I wanted to.
I LOVE that poem.
I’ve actually never read that one.
It is full fair a man to bear him even,
For alday meeteth man at unset stevene.
Chaucer
from “The Knight’s Tale”
You’ve got to read the poem out loud. Whatever you do, do not read it silently – because it doesn’t lift off the page that way. It’s meant to be heard. I know huge sections of it by heart:
“Listen my children and you will hear
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.”
Shivers!!!
Also:
“And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.”
I just don’t know of anything more SATISFYING than that.
Here’s one of my favourite poems:
The Kiss, by Sassoon
To these I turn, in these I trust
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal,
I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.
Has anyone mentioned Milton yet? I don’t think so. “Paradise Lost” is, IMHO, the greatest epic poem ever written in the language.
For some reason this is the one passage from Paradise Lost that burns in my consciousness the most.
Nathless he so endur’d, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call’d
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans’t
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In VALLOMBROSA, where th’ ETRURIAN shades
High overarch’t imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds ORION arm’d
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
BUSIRIS and his MEMPHIAN Chivalrie,
VVhile with perfidious hatred they pursu’d
The Sojourners of GOSHEN, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating Carkases
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
I don’t know how I could have left off the following sonnet – written by the great Milton – He wrote it to his own blindness. I can’t even conceive of … what he was going through … and yet … This poem may be the most important poem in my life:
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bar his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.
“They also serve who only stand and waite.”
I can barely type those words without my eyes filling up with tears. Jesus.
Also:
“that one Talent which is death to hide”
It kills me.
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry
Great as Milton was, I tend to prefer Blake’s Milton to the original, at least from a spiritual point of view.
The Negation is the Spectre, the Reasoning Power in Man:
This is a false Body, an Incrustation over my Immortal
Spirit, a Selfhood which must be put off and annihilated alway.
To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by self-examination,
To bathe in the waters of Life, to wash off the Not Human,
I come in Self-annihilation and the grandeur of Inspiration;
To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour,
To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration,
To cast off Bacon, Locke, and Newton from Albion’s covering,
To take off his filthy garments and clothe him with Imagination;
To cast aside from Poetry all that is not Inspiration,
That it no longer shall dare to mock with the aspersion of Madness
Cast on the Inspirèd by the tame high finisher of paltry Blots
Indefinite or paltry Rhymes, or paltry Harmonies,
Who creeps into State Government like a caterpillar to destroy;
To cast off the idiot Questioner, who is always questioning,
But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin
Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave;
Who publishes Doubt and calls it Knowledge; whose Science is Despair,
Whose pretence to knowledge is Envy, whose whole Science is
To destroy the wisdom of ages, to gratify ravenous 9d0 Envy
That rages round him like a Wolf, day and night, without rest.
He smiles with condescension; he talks of Benevolence and Virtue,
And those who act with Benevolence and Virtue they murder time on time.
These are the destroyers of Jerusalem! these are the murderers
Of Jesus! who deny the Faith and mock at Eternal Life,
Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination
By imitation of Nature’s Images drawn from Remembrance.
These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation,
Hiding the Human Lineaments, as with an Ark and Curtains
Which Jesus rent, and now shall wholly purge away with Fire,
Till Generation is swallow’d up in Regeneration.
Hear the voice of the prophet!
From Dante’s Inferno:
Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. How shall I say
what wood that was! I never saw so drear,
so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
Its very memory gives a shape to fear.
Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!
But since it came to good, I will recount
all that I found revealed there by God’s grace.
How I came to it I cannot rightly say,
so drugged and so loose with sleep had I become
when I first wandered there from the True Way.
William Blake was such a freakin’ rock star. I love that wacko visionary.
Damn, that’s some good Blake, Bryan. Thanks for that.
Jeff – Oh, Wendell Berry is so wonderful … I always forget about him for some reason … thanks for that!
I think one of my favorite Blake lines comes from (I think) Marriage of Heaven and Hell – this might be a bit of a paraphrase – forgive:
“The eagle never lost so time
As when he stooped to learn from the crow.”
That, to me, encapsulated my entire grad school experience. They tried to make everyone into crows. They had deep suspicion of eagles.
How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live ’em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give ’em.
“How much, how many”
Shel Silverstein.
I don’t think mass education is ever designed for eagles. I’m not a big conspiracy theorist, but it’s pretty apparent that modern educational systems were invented at the height of the industrial revolution.
Steve – I’m talkin’ about GRAD school though. Which I don’t classify as “mass education”.
Oh Shel. Shel Silverstein … I can still see his crazy grinning bald-headed photo on the back of “The Giving Tree” to this day!
“William Blake was such a freakin’ rock star.” Sheila, that’s great! Can’t you just imagine him as a long-haired maniac with a guitar screaming the Everlasting Gospel into a microphone?
Come to think of it, Ezekiel might have made a good rock star too.
I’ve always had it bad for Edna St. Vincent Millay:
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Edna’s stuff hurts my heart – I love it. There’s that one sonnet about time healing everything and what bullshit that is … Hm. Let me look it up.
Blake always struck me as totally psychedelic (I’m sure you’ve seen his drawings) … and very wise … and also a nutjob of the 1st degree. He saw angels in the trees … I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that!! He just seems, even to our modern eyes, to be very very unconventional.
Jess – here’s the sonnet of hers I mentioned – she’s awesome.
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
Hmmm. Maybe I’ll have to rethink my opinion of grad school. Everything I’ve heard about it hasn’t been positive, though.
Steve – Maybe we’re saying the same thing. I thought that I would find myself surrounded by eagles at grad school – because it’s more elite, you have to apply to get in, blah blah – Instead, the majority of the other students were crows – and I, being an eagle (I say it without embarrassment), never “wasted so much time” – as when I hung out with mostly crows. Waste o’ freakin’ TIME.
It’s like slowing down the fastest kid in the class so the slowest kid won’t develop bad self-esteem.
But this was GRAD SCHOOL. A fucking EXPENSIVE grad school.
Perhaps we’re saying the same thing. I had great teachers, great training, and made a couple of great friends – but other than that? 2 thumbs down.
Sheila, I LOVE that one. It’s beautiful. I love this one, too. I promise I won’t post any more after this one ;)
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
“What a big book for such a little head!”
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by.
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.
I didn’t have a good experience in grad school either, although I had more respect for some of my fellow students than for most of my professors.
Jess – she’s so awesome. The sonnets are just perfect. Post as many as you like! I never get tired of her.
I recently ran across this poem while reading The Iliad. It was written by Patrick Shaw-Stewart in 1915 while he was on a three-day leave from Gallipoli. (On a side note, I have heard that there will be a book soon about poetry inspired by World War I–I look forward to discovering more such gems). Most people have probably heard the first stanza (I saw a man this morning/ Who did not wish to die/ I ask, and cannot answer,/ If otherwise wish I.) But the second half is what really moves me. Especially the last two lines…
O hell of ships and cities,
Hell of men like me,
Fatal second Helen,
Why must I follow thee ?
Achilles came to Troyland
And I to Chersonese :
He turned from wrath to battle,
And I from three days’ peace.
Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die ?
Thou knewest and I know not-
So much the happier I.
I will go back this morning
From Imbros over the sea ;
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.
Ah. I thought you were complaining about the teachers and the system of grad school in general. Yeah. Dumb people suck.
That’s my main beef with education in general though. The smart ones come out smart, the dumb ones come out dumb, and they take all your money no matter what effect they have.
Steve:
“Dumb people suck”. I just BURST into laughter when I read that. heh heh heh Yup, that pretty much sums it all up!!
Chrees: Do you know Rupert Brooke? He was quite amazing and he died in battle in 1915 at a very young age. More information on him.
I posted his very moving “Song of the Pilgrims” here …
I can’t tell you how many times I just walked out of class because I couldn’t take the questions from students. In computer science, mostly. I’m usually not a snob, but there’s a difference between doing your stuff and trying to get the teacher to hold your hand.
I really wasn’t as social in undergrad as I should have been. It seemed like it’d be easier to be social in grad school, but maybe it wasn’t worth it. I took a grad course in Nietzsche one semester and enjoyed it. But I think I’d tire of doing a PhD in philosophy, as much as I love the subject, because there’s only so much pomo bullshit one can take.
I had read a little of Brooke’s poems. That era has seemed to drop off the popular literary landscape unless it is something by Faulkner/Fitzgerald/Hemingway/etc. The more I dig, the more gems I find.
And I’ve had that image of Achilles with me all day now…
Chrees –
Did you read the excerpt in the post below about Ben Jonson and Shakespeare? Ben Jonson, quite a formidable poet in his own right, happened to be a contemporary (sort of) of Shakespeare’s – and so … there it goes. He will never ever escape from the dude’s shadow. That’s the way it goes.
Reminds me of a GREAT quote from Bing Crosby:
“Frank Sinatra is a singer that comes along once in a lifetime. But why oh why did he have to come along in mine?”
HAHAHA
my favorite last line of a poem is by Frank O’Hara..i love him(in the interst of full disclosure, i also played him in a beautiful play by Jay Skelton)…the poem is called “Lana Turner Collapsed”..cut to the last line…
“Get up Lana, We need you.”
Love it.
Totally off-topic, but related to the Crosby quote. A friend’s dad told the story of why he never played in golf tournaments… he was quite good in high school and was looking forward to getting a college scholarship. That is, until he played in the Ohio junior championship in the early ’50s and got spanked badly. He thought he wasn’t in the same league as “those guys” and wouldn’t amount to anything and he never touched his clubs for about 10 years. Of course, one of “those guys” was Jack Nicklaus.
I always doubted his story, but who knows…
One of my favorite love poems:
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
John Ashbery
“Some Trees”
Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention! What a great day to know about. It made me think of all of my favorite poets and poems and I went and found a lot of them and read them again. I also loved discovering new poets here in the comments. One of my favorite poems is by Billy Collins.
Nightclub
You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.
For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else’s can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o’clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.
Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.
From the 15th century..”Mannerly Margery Milk & Ale”
Ay besherew you! By my fay
This wanton clerkes be nice aways.
Avent, avent, my popagay!
What will you do nothing but play?
Tilly vally straw, let be I say
Gup Christian Clout gup Jack of the vale
With mannerly Margery, milk and ale
Be Gad, ye be a pretty pode
And I love you an hole cart load
Straw, James fodder, ye play the fode
I am no hackney for your road;
Go watch a bole, your back is broad.
Gup Christian Clout gup Jack of the vale
With mannerly Margery, milk and ale
Iwis ye deal uncourteously;
What would you frumple me now? Fy, fy!
What and ye shall be my piggesnye
By Christ ye shall not! No, no hardely!
I will not be japed bodily
Gup Christian Clout gup Jack of the vale
With mannerly Margery, milk and ale
Walk forth your way, ye cost me nought
Now I have found that I have sought
The best chepe flesh that ever I bought
Yet for his love that all hath wrought
Wed me, or else I die for thought
Gup Christian Clout gup Jack of the vale
With mannerly Margery, milk and ale
..not sure I understand it, but I like it!
How about a smidgen (’cause that’s all there is of this one…) of William Carlos Williams?
So much depends
on a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rainwater
beside the white chickens
I dunno why I always liked that one. Probably because it’s easy to remember.
I’d quote my REAL favorite, Rudyard Kipling, but I fear the Politically Correct Police would swoop down and subject me to sensitivity training. Oh, hell with it. Here’s a bit.
Brown Bess – Rudyard Kipling
In the days of lace-ruffles, perukes and brocade
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could despise–
An out-spoken, flinty-lipped, brazen-faced jade,
With a habit of looking men straight in the eyes–
At Blenheim and Ramillies fops would confess
They were pierced to the heart by the charms of Brown Bess.
Though her sight was not long and her weight was not small,
Yet her actions were winning, her language was clear;
And everyone bowed as she opened the ball
On the arm of some high-gaitered, grim grenadier.
Half Europe admitted the striking success
Of the dances and routs that were given by Brown Bess.
When ruffles were turned into stiff leather stocks,
And people wore pigtails instead of perukes,
Brown Bess never altered her iron-grey locks.
She knew she was valued for more than her looks.
“Oh, powder and patches was always my dress,
And I think am killing enough,” said Brown Bess.
So she followed her red-coats, whatever they did,
From the heights of Quebec to the plains of Assaye,
From Gibraltar to Acre, Cape Town and Madrid,
And nothing about her was changed on the way;
(But most of the Empire which now we possess
Was won through those years by old-fashioned Brown Bess.)
In stubborn retreat or in stately advance,
From the Portugal coast to the cork-woods of Spain,
She had puzzled some excellent Marshals of France
Till none of them wanted to meet her again:
But later, near Brussels, Napoleon–no less–
Arranged for a Waterloo ball with Brown Bess.
She had danced till the dawn of that terrible day–
She danced till the dusk of more terrible night,
And before her linked squares his battalions gave way,
And her long fierce quadrilles put his lancers to flight:
And when his gilt carriage drove off in the press,
“I have danced my last dance for the world!” said Brown Bess.
If you go to Museums–there’s one in Whitehall–
Where old weapons are shown with their names writ beneath,
You will find her, upstanding, her back to the wall,
As stiff as a ramrod, the flint in her teeth.
And if ever we English had reason to bless
Any arm save our mothers’, that arm is Brown Bess!
Apologies for being so in touch with my inner child that I present a piece of Spike Milligan’s kiddies stuff. Works for me:
“A thousand hairy savages
Sitting down to lunch.
Gobble, gobble, glup, glup,
Munch, munch, munch.”
I’ll come back in a few decades when I’ve grown up shall I?
MJF: heh heh heh
“Get up, Lana.”
bwahahaha
Bryan – I think this is my favorite love poem. Or one of them anyway. It’s by DH Lawrence and it’s called “An Elephant is Slow to Mate”:
The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse
and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.
So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.
Susie –
A wonderful poem. Billy Collins is so full of heart – I love it.
David Foster –
I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I certainly get the gist – and the TONE of it makes me laugh. The bawdiness of early English, the rollicking robust-ness – nothing quite like it.
I *think* that the speaker is a woman, mocking various guys who are attempting to seduce her…but I’m not sure. Any experts in the house?
It appears that she is saying she will not be taken advantage of … “I will not be japed bodily” … and that in the last stanza is she saying: I’ve finally found the man for me. I’ve found love. After all the gropers and popagays who want to do nothing but “play” … she’s found a man.
Something like that.
I’m no expert, though. Reading it out loud is helpful. I learned that in the class I took on Chaucer in college. I was like: what the hell??? And then I read it out loud and it made perfect sense. Kind of like Finnegans Wake, too.
no one’s mentioned anne sexton yet, so i will.
MUSIC SWIMS BACK TO ME
Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.
Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.
They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?
Also, Sylvia Plath:
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it–
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?–
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot–
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart–
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash–
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there–
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr god, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
The most chilling single line of poetry, though, is “Till human voices wake us and we drown,” with “I have heard the Eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker/and in short, I was afraid.” a close second.
I have no idea why I love this sonnet, but it has always just stunned me:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Beth, I love that one!
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
LOVE it.
Dorothy Parker? I love her.
I always remember this snippet of what I used to believe was a Robinson Jeffers poem, but it’s really Sidney Lanier (thank you, Google).:
Inward and outward
to northward and southward
the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silverwrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.
— “The Marshes of Glynn”
I think I originally read it either in a John Brunner novel, or some Stanley Booth piece from on the edge of fact and fiction (memory’s a funny thing)
I must’ve kept Jeffers in mind more after I discovered Big Sur … oh, and girls.
jess,
my favorite part of that plath poem is the last verse. it hits you like a punch in the gut. it does to the reader what the speaker in the poem is describing herself doing. form + function and all that.
anne sexton it’s harder for me to pick out a single “best” poem of hers. i have a dog-eared copy of her complete works that i’ve carried around for years, though.
ever read gwendolyn brooks?
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(knorsito)