T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot is quite the polarizing figure. He was kind of a jerk. He badly mistreated his (admittedly difficult) first wife before abandoning her to an insane asylum; worse, along with his friend Ezra Pound, he traded in the basest, most pernicious anti-Semitic stereotypes. One doesn’t have a sense of him as a warmhearted person.

He was also a bit of a priggish Anglophile. Born and raised in St. Louis, he moved to London, converted to Anglicanism, and took British citizenship at the first opportunity. I’m a bit of an Anglophile myself, but these things ought to have limits.

But was he any good as a poet? I don’t see how you can argue that he wasn’t. He’s certainly among the many literary idols with feet of clay, but the work itself is quite peerless for its milieu.

Because their work is so “difficult,” Eliot and other modernists are often accused of leaving behind middlebrow literary readers (who could warm to a Tennyson far more readily than an H.D., for example) and thereby circumscribing an already-small audience for “serious literature.” I find this a reasonably compelling argument, but I suspect I’ve got fairly middlebrow tastes myself. On the other hand, most contemporary readers don’t find “footnoted” Eliot all that much of a slog compared with Shakespeare or Chaucer; Eliot’s work is at least in a contemporary idiom.

The following poem should not present difficulties to anyone with a passing acquaintance with the Christmas story. I’m all about seasonal appropriateness.

Seamus Heaney and James Wright

I'm in the mood for a bit of juxtaposition.  Neither Seamus Heaney nor James Wright are among my great favorites, but each has his moments.  I do keep telling myself I ought to read Heaney's translation of Beowulf, but I fear my ambitions outpace my diligence.

Both of these poems are "epiphany" poems.  I go back and forth over whether I find such poems charming or tiresome.  The final revelations never seems sufficiently earned to me, which makes them feel ersatz and hokey.  And yet.

Postscript
Seamus Heaney
 
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.


A Blessing
James Wright

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Thomas Lynch

I've been feeling fairly chipper and busy, which can only mean that for you, dear readers, it's time for something dark and indolent.  One of the things I miss about living down south is the sense of atmosphere.  New England has an atmosphere, but it's a spare and etiolated thing, redolent of the pilgrims and puritans and characterized by restraint.  There's not much excess here -- perhaps because excess would have required the expenditure of more energy than one can spare in such an inhospitable clime. 

I lack the energy for a comparable disquisition on the atmospherics of the south.  Nor is this poem a product of the south.  In addition to his literary strivings, Thomas Lynch is a Michigan undertaker.  He is not coy about mingling his work and his art, and the result is poetry that's well-suited for the upcoming Halloween season.

Putting it that way sounds trite and dismissive, but that is not my intent.  I don't think literature suffers from a bit of acquaintance with excess -- or why would we still be so mad for the Romantics and Victorians?

These Things Happen in the Lives of Women

The first time he ever bought her lingerie
she was dead of gin and librium and years

of trying to regain her innocence.
"These things happen in the lives of women. . . ."
is what the priest told him. "They lose their way."
And lost is what she looked like lying there
awash in her own puke and the disarray
of old snapshots and pill bottles,
bedclothes and letters and mementos of
the ones with whom she had been intimate.
She was cold already. Her lips were blue.
So he bought her a casket and red roses
and bought silk panties and a camisole
and garters and nylons and a dressing gown
with appliques in the shape of flowers.
And after the burial he bought a stone
with her name and dates on it and wept aloud
and went home after that and kept weeping.

Thomas Lynch on Wikipedia

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I'm feeling a touch maudlin and sentimental, and that can only mean one thing: it's time for Tennyson.  I have no defense of the following poem except to say that I like it.  It possesses the virtues of my current mood (which is to say maudlin, sentimental, excessive, inflated).  It practically bleeds pathos.  My love for it flies in the face my (admittedly mild) convictions about what constitutes good poetry.  These convictions have never inhibited my affection for Tennyson, for whom such  grandiose locution was more-or-less standard.

One can, of course, defend this diction.  It's been suggested -- I want to say by Aldous Huxley but can't confirm it on the internet -- that this poem would be vastly inferior and far less moving had its fourth line concluded, "and after many a summer dies the duck." 

In Greek mythology, Tithonus was the beloved of Eos, goddess of the dawn.  Because of her ardor, she requested that Zeus grant him immortality.  Unfortunately, she  forgot to insert the vital condition that this eternal life be accompanied by eternal youth. 

Richard Wilbur II

Clearly, I am not the only one borderline obsessed with True Blood. Its near-pornographic violence and sex make me feel like I need to wash my soul out with soap after each episode. And yet: I am transfixed. The show is an addiction I have no intention of forsaking.

Given that we are amid prime True Blood season, I thought I’d give you a poem about vampires. There really aren’t enough of them, I think. This one pulls of a neat trick – by focusing on the crux of longing for vampirism, it avoids excessive corniness and makes light of its gothic trappings. I think it’s a very fine poem.

Edward Lear

I’m in a bit of a nonsense mood and in the humor for nonsense poetry. “The Owl and the Pussycat” is among my favorite nonsense poems, though I feel the terminology does injustice to such a well-wrought little piece of verse. I used to read the lovely, Jan Brett-illustrated The Owl and the Pussycat to my little brother when he was a baby. It was my favorite of his picture books.

Edward Lear himself suffered from severe and debilitating episodes of epilepsy and was prone to lifelong periods of intense depression that he deemed “the morbids.” During his lifetime, he was primarily known as a travel artist (despite partial blindness) and all-around eccentric fellow. Despite this, he remains the only author I know who wrote a paean to inter-species love now considered appropriate literature for young children. But you’ll understand why if you know the poem, or if you read it following the cut.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

After my recent homage to Robert Browning, it seems only fair to give props to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. During their lifetimes, she was by far the more noted poet; his renown grew only after her death. She is most remembered for Sonnets from the Portuguese and, of course, the ubiquitous “How Do I Love Thee?” sonnet therein. They’re nice if formal love poetry is what you’re after – and we all have those moods, right? – but I think her lesser-known poetry is more interesting.

Robert Browning

Robert Browning is probably best known, in popular culture terms, for his whirlwind romance of Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning). She was six years his elder and a bit of a recluse; her father wished for her never to marry, so they eloped. By all reports, it was a happy union, though their spoiled only child was feckless and disrespectful and Elizabeth, whose health was always fragile, did not live to a particularly ripe old age.

Elizabeth was the more noted poet during her lifetime, but Robert is now generally accepted as the more innovative and accomplished author. This is not to disrespect Elizabeth; she wrote some fine poems in her own right and will be the subject of a future post.

The following is among my favorite Browning poems. It’s long, but not quite as long (or is it?) as "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," which appeals to my latent goth tendencies. “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church,” on the other hand, is rather evocative of Renaissance Italy and the Catholic Church’s contradictory position therein. Of course, since it was written by a Victorian British poet, I can’t really trust it as an accurate depiction of church doings.

Don Paterson

Don Paterson is a Scottish poet. I find his output a bit uneven, but he is capable of scribing fine poems. His most appealing work is a book called The Eyes that consists of very loose, homage-esque (rather than literal and faithful) translations of Antonio Machado.

This is a simple, wistful poem from that volume that I have often read myself before going to bed.

ee cummings

So spring is here, the weather is lovely, and all I want to do is wander about outdoors and stare at blossom-laden trees.  Here's a whimsical poem in honor of spring by ee cummings.  He seems never to have taken himself or his art too seriously but remains an excellent poet all the same -- perhaps all the more. 

 

Bonus points to anyone who can identify the little lame balloonman.

John Berryman II

One wonders if his morose attitude contributed to his eventual suicide.  He appears neither a bored nor boring figure in photographs.

Edith Sitwell

This isn’t really a post about Edith Sitwell, about whom I know next to nothing. This is about poems whose pleasures reside in the sounds and texture of the words themselves, rather than in the intellectual or emotional content of those words. The poem below the cut is a fine example of such a poem.

Philip Levine

It’s federal grant season at work, and as such, kind of a stressful time for me. The following poem suffices to remind me there are more grueling fates than white-collar office labor, though I presently lack the intellectual energy to provide much else by way of explication.

I like Philip Levine; he’s a competent but not earth-shaking poet whose virtues are rather evocative of his Midwestern antecedents. This poem is of course referencing the famous Yeats poem “Among School Children.” I love Yeats, but that particular poem has never done much for me.

W.H. Auden (II)

As promised, here’s my favorite Auden poem. I think it’s as fine as example of a villanelle as the much more famous “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” which seems to be the ur-exemplar of the form in English and the only villanelle that has vaulted into the realm of much-known poems.

If the following poem has a flaw, it’s sentimentality; but to me, it feels like earned rather than ersatz sentiment. I think it’s lovely.

Completely unrelated to Auden, poetry, or any of life’s lovely and transforming experiences, I am still unable to log into Facebook – however, I filed a complaint with TRUSTe, and they have determined that I have a valid privacy violation complaint on that account and are working with Facebook to get the issue resolved. Thanks to everyone who had helpful suggestions.

John Berryman

You’ll have to wait another few days for my favorite Auden poem, as I’ve gotten stuck on this Berryman poem instead.

It occurs to me that I use this blog rather as a means of dislodging troublesomely adhesive poems from my mind. It’s similar to the strategy I employ to get songs out of my head: I listen to them compulsively and find that this works better than avoidance for getting them to go away. Maybe it’s just me.

Berryman was one of the confessional poets and led a fairly miserable life. The son of a suicide, he was an alcoholic who eventually shuffled off this mortal coil by hurling himself from a bridge. I suppose that’s one way to accomplish it.

He’s been among my favorite poets since I was a teenager and is one of my few “early favorites” whom I can still read without wincing at my prior tastes (or lack thereof).

This is from The Dream Songs, his great formal sequence. Narrated by a character known only as “Henry,” they are composed in an odd blend of disjointed vernacular and more heightened oratory, but I have never found them difficult.

W.H. Auden (I)

Auden has been one of my favorites for many years. His poems seem to me like cat’s cradles woven around emotional abysses in an attempt to bear himself aloft. It’s as if in the process of writing, he is attempting to cross a treacherous stream, and each word is a foot placed uncertainly on a small rock jutting above the water. The damage of the process is – I was going to say ironically, but it’s really not – a source of beauty.

This poem is among his most famous, but I’ve always found it enigmatic. The first time I read it, the gloss said that the poem was noted for its acerbic twist and final note of rancor toward the beloved. That makes this much more and much less than a traditional love poem.

I must be missing something, because my reading is that it’s entirely sincere. The final stanza seems wistful that a conscribed benediction is all that is in the author’s power to bestow, but I think it is meant as such, and not a half-damning indictment.

My reading may be totally off base; if you have thoughts, feel free to share them. In a few days, I’ll post my favorite Auden poem, which became lodged in my head while I was climbing the stairs to the apartment where we stayed in Lyon and has remained firmly ensconced there ever since.

I’m still working on vacation pictures – including food and poetry scenes! – and will try to have those up by Monday.

Baudelaire and Rilke

In honor of the vacation that I’m on, I thought I’d post some French and German (language) poetry. The first is a poem by Baudelaire translated by Donald Justice. As you may recall, Justice is one of my favorite poets, and I think his translations are as delightful as his own compositions.

I’m not a huge fan of Baudelaire – I missed that 15-year-old goth phase that generally precipitates slavish devotion to his ouvre – but when I’m feeling campy and/or melodramatic, he does have a certain appeal.

The foregoing isn’t meant as an insult. I appreciate Baudelaire’s work without feeling terribly excited about it because his sensibility is so alien to mine, but that’s more my issue than his.

Rilke is pretty hard to write about for altogether different reasons. He strikes me as both a towering and puny figure. The poetry is superficially vast in scope, but even at its most expansive, I read at its core a certain reticence and smallness that makes me feel a bit cool toward it. I feel as if he was a great poet who was ironically and cripplingly lacking in spirit.

Of course, he was also kind an asshole. I might just be glossing my feelings about his personal attributes onto his work. That would be unfair, but I would hardly be the first reader to confuse biography with literature. Rilke wasn’t actually German, but he’s the towering figure in 20th Century German-language poetics.  "Tombs of the Hetaerae," which follows the Baudelaire poem, is a poem I admire without qualifications.

Two poems are below the jump.

Jane Hirshfield

I don’t tend to follow contemporary poetry all that much. I made a show of so doing when I was in grad school, and keeping up with writers was part of the job description, so to speak – but one of the reliefs of finally earning my MFA was the feeling that I could safely return to my determinedly anachronistic reading habits.

This is by way of concession that I would probably know more about Jane Hirshfield if I were an avid reader of living writers. I’ve heard of her and have read a handful of her other poems, and that’s as far as my acquaintance extends. This poem was in last week’s New Yorker.

Part of me wonders if it isn’t a touch too earnest, but the pun of the title prevents me from reading it as only earnest. I have pretty deep-seated suspicions about the capacity of humans to anchor any fixed definitions around the word “truth,” so I suppose I like this poem’s rather flip evasion of the concept. That said, I don’t think it’s smirking or dismissive of the idea of a quest for truth, which would render it juvenile.

I might be wrong; I’m still thinking about it. At the very least, I appreciate poetry that gives me something to think about.

Emily Dickinson II

The problem with doing multiple Emily Dickinson posts is the paucity of available photos of said authoress. I thought I’d go with this hilariously frilly one, which was devised by publishers of a bygone era (based on the picture in my last post on Emily D.) in order to make her seem more attractive and feminine.

It’s a pretty safe guess that she didn’t much resemble this image.

The following poem is among my favorites, but I find the end a bit mystifying and think it can be plausibly read in so many ways. This does nothing to diminish my enjoyment. I’m a bit weary and overwhelmed by other tasks this weekend, so if you were hoping for a thoughtful analysis of intent and narrative structure … then google is your friend, though I confess that when I searched online for a copy of this poem to cut and paste, most of the accompanying analyses seemed irksomely misguided.

Not that I have strong opinions.

It’s a fabulous poem regardless of one’s take on it.

And I finally got around to making traditional scones, so I shall share that recipe tomorrow or the day after.  

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is among my favorite poets, which makes it difficult to write about her. The relationship between her work to some internal conception I have about what a poem should be or do renders dispassionate analysis a daunting task.

Dickinson, as you may know, led what many consider a cramped and narrow life. She never married, lived with her parents and family in Massachusetts her entire adult life, and never pursued advanced studies or travels. However, her poetry is so abundant in experience that people have been trying to ferret out the secret encounters and passions that seem to have animated her ever since she gained posthumous renown.