Two recent events brought to mind the immediacy of death. First, last Saturday, I went to the hospital to visit SanPaul’s mom. Her condition has been deteriorating since the beginning of the year. When I entered her room she momentarily did not recognize me – she thought that I was one of the staff on duty. It was only after I launched into my best imitation of “Cuban Spanish” that she eventually recognized me by the sound of my voice. I looked at her and even though she is now a mere shell of her former self, she still hangs on to life with a tenacity that confounds all her doctors. It is almost as if she has some unfinished business to take care of before she finally goes.
Then on Monday morning TT sent me the story about her dying uncle. What touched me the most about her story is how, even though he is sick and frail, her uncle still makes every effort to be there for his family. Again, I am impressed by the strength that some people posses – even as their final hour approaches.
All of the above reminded of a poem by Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas. In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” Dylan addressed his dying father. Dylan tells his father that men from all walks of life (wise men, good men, wild men and grave men) have fiercely fought against death’s final approach. At the end of the poem, Dylan asks his father to not walk gently into the shadows of death but, instead, to rage and fight against the “dying of the light.”
One of the biggest regrets in my life is that I was not there for my father at the very end. If I could change the events of my life, being there for him at the end would be on top of my short list.
So for all the mothers, for all the fathers, for all the aunts and uncles, for all the children, and for all the friends who have preceded us in life, here is Dylan’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.”
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
By Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9, November, 1952)
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The fifth poet in our FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER series is Wallace Stevens. I discovered Wallace Stevens while I was still in high school. I was attracted to Stevens’ view of the role of man’s creative imagination in bringing order to a chaotic world. Stevens’ poetry offered me a safe haven during a very troubled time in my life. After reading “The Idea of Order at Key West” I was hooked for life!
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds
If Robert Frost is the modern poet most admired by the general public and William Carlos Williams the favorite of younger poets, the Stevens was the darling of the academic world. Stevens was preoccupied with “ideas of order” and was convinced that the imagination can discover “the opposite of chaos in chaos.”
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a American Modernist poet. He was born of German-Dutch ancestry in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for an insurance company in Connecticut.
Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel;, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie. A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems. The marriage reputedly became increasingly distant, but the Stevenses never divorced.
After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, Stevens was hired on January 13, 1908, as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company/ By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain the rest of his life. By 1934, he had been named vice-president of the company. After he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard but declined since it would have required him to give up his vice-presidency of The Hartford.
Stevens’ business associates were apparently not aware of his status as a major literary figure – he just went about his work without making a fuss about his work as a poet. The most remarkable thing about Stevens, apart from his large body, was that there was nothing really remarkable about him outside of his immense talent as a writer. Like William Carlos Williams (who was a successful physician as well as a renown poet) Stevens was a successful lawyer who “just happened” to write great poetry.
Stevens was the rare American artist of his time who never traveled to Europe. Stevens chose to experience the “heaven of Europe” second-hand, through letters, post cards, art catalogs, wines and other “authentic food for a starved imagination.” Stevens enjoyed trips to Key West, where he allegedly broke a hand in a fistfight with Ernest Hemingway (I would have loved to see them fighting), rare beefs, strong martinis, risqué jokes and the occasional Greta Garbo (in other words, he was a man’s man).
For Stevens, poetry is “the supreme fiction,” the single essence that can replace a lost belief in God as a source of life’s redemption. Stevens was very much a poet of ideas. “The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully,” wrote Stevens. He was obsessed with the relationship between reality and imagination; he insisted that we must turn to art – shaped by the imagination – for a “freshening of life.”
Concerning the relation between consciousness and the world, in Stevens’ words "imagination" is not equivalent to consciousness nor is "reality" equivalent to the world as it exists outside our minds. Reality is the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. Because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world, reality is an activity, not a static object. To make sense of the world is to construct a worldview through an active exercise of the imagination.
Further on the subject of “imagination” Stevens wrote, “The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them.” The imagination is the mechanism by which we unconsciously conceptualize the normal patterns of life, while reason is the way we consciously conceptualize these patterns.
According to Stevens, the imagination can only conceive of a world for a moment--a particular time, place and culture--and so must continually revise its conception to align with the changing world. For this reason, the best we can hope for is a well-conceived fiction, satisfying for the moment, but sure to lapse into obsolescence as new imaginings wash over the world.
Modern poetry, Stevens wrote, is “the poem of the mind in the act of finding / What will suffice.”
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage, And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and With meditation, speak words that in the ear, In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound Of which, an invisible audience listens, Not to the play, but to itself, expressed In an emotion as of two people, as of two Emotions becoming one.
His poem An Ordinary Evening in New Haven is a self-conscious digression about the creation of poetry.
We keep coming back and coming back To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns That fall upon it out of the wind. We seek The poem of pure reality, untouched By trope or deviation, straight to the word, Straight to the transfixing object, to the object At the exactest point at which it is itself, Transfixing by being purely what it is A view of New Haven, say, through the certain eye, The eye made clear of uncertainty, with the sight Of simple seeing, without reflection. We seek Nothing beyond reality.
Here then, for your reading pleasure this Friday morning, are some of my favorite Stevens’ poems.
NOT IDEAS ABOUT THE THING, BUT THE THING ITSELF
At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it, A bird's cry at daylight or before, In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache above snow . . . It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism Of sleep's faded papier mâché . . . The sun was coming from outside.
That scrawny cry—it was A chorister whose c preceded the choir. It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings, Still far away. It was like A new knowledge of reality.
POETRY IS A DESTRUCTIVE FORCE
That's what misery is, Nothing to have at heart. It is to have or nothing.
It is a thing to have, A lion, an ox in his breast, To feel it breathing there.
Corazon, stout dog, Young ox, bow-legged bear, He tastes its blood, not spit.
He is like a man In the body of a violent beast. Its muscles are his own . . .
The lion sleeps in the sun. Its nose is on its paws. It can kill a man.
THE EMPEROR OF ICE CREAM
Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal. Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
And, finally, THIRTEEN WAYS TO LOOK AT A BLACKBIRD.
I
Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.
Take Stevens with you this weekend and journey with him in magical, mystery tour of the imagination.
Enjoy!
Before I go, here are images of the French 1938 Peugeot 402BL Eclipse Decapotable. The retractable hardtop in this Peugeot predates the retractable hardtops now common in many models of Mercedes, Volvo, VW and Audi, by almost six decades. This Peugeot was designed and built at a time when car designers were allowed to use their power of imagination to create cars that were not only highly functional but also beautiful to behold. Compare this Peugeot to the current crop of cookie-cutter cars (my beloved Benzes included) and you will see how truly beautiful and magnificent the cars from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s truly were.
(For a full image, please click on the photos, thanks.)
The fourth poet to be featured in FRIDAY’S POETRY CORNER represents a departure from our previously featured poets. The first three poets, Whitman, Dickinson and Frost can best be described as “traditionalists.” This week’s featured poet, William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), is the spearhead of a wave of “modernists” American poets who came into prominence in the early 20th century.
William Carlos Williams, or WCW as he was also known, was an American poet. His poetry is closely associated with modernism and Imagism. In addition to being a poet, WCW was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician.
Williams was a true American archetype. His father was an English immigrant; his mother was of Dutch, Spanish and Jewish descent (she was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico.) Williams was a doctor by profession - his formal education included: public school in Rutherford until 1896, then was sent to study at Château de Lancy near Geneva, Switzerland, the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, France, for two years and Horace Mann School in New York City. In 1902, Williams entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. During his time at Penn, Williams became friends with Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (best known as H.D.) and the painter Charles Demuth. These friendships influenced his growth and passion for poetry. He received his M.D. in 1906 and spent the next four years in internships in New York City and in travel and postgraduate studies abroad, including the University of Leipzig where he studied pediatrics.
Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. He wrote short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, translations and correspondence. He wrote whenever he could find the time; he spent weekends in New York City with a group of friends that included writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore.
The critic Randall Jarrell referred to Williams as, “the America of poets.” WCW was one of first American poets to look inwards, into the heart of America, for inspiration. Whereas Frost adopted a style of poetry inspired by the English masters, Williams developed a unique American voice. Unlike compatriots such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Williams resisted the temptation of going into European exile. As a populist, Williams rejected T. S. Eliot's frequent use of allusions to foreign languages and Classical sources, as in Eliot's The Waste Land. Williams advocated that poets leave aside traditional poetic forms and unnecessary literary allusions and, instead, try to see the world as it really is. Marianne Moore, another skeptic of traditional poetic forms, wrote that Williams used "plain American which cats and dogs can read."
Williams rejected the use of traditional meter. His correspondence with Hilda Doolittle exposed him to the relationship of sapphic rhythms to the inner voice of poetic truth. Contrast the following passage:
"The stars about the beautiful moon again hide their radiant shapes, when she is full and shines at her brightest on all the earth" — Sappho.
With one of Williams own poems, titled "Shadows” from his Journey To Love collection,
"Shadows cast by the street light under the stars, the head is tilted back, the long shadow of the legs presumes a world taken for granted on which the cricket trills"
Notice how the breaks in the poem seem to search out a natural pause spoken in an American idiom that is reflective of rhythms found in that most American musical style: jazz.
Williams’ wide appeal to generations of American readers lies in how he gave birth to an entirely fresh form of American poetry whose subject matter revolves around everyday circumstances of life and the lives of the common people. In THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE the author reflects on his casual observations of a young woman stepping out of her house. Williams’ use of simple words turns the mundane into a beautiful image.
Poetry is the most auditory form of writing - good poetry sounds as good as it “reads.” Williams pioneered the use of the “variable foot” which evolved from years of visual and auditory sampling of his world from his first person perspective of life as a doctor. The variable foot reflects the way that radio, television and the media influences how people communicate, "machine made out of words."
Williams considered himself a socialist and opponent of capitalism (are you reading this yucca, a socialist with a part-Dutch mom, what a surprise!). In 1935 he published "The Yachts" a poem which indicts the rich elite as parasites and the masses as striving for revolution. The poem features an image of the ocean as the "watery bodies" of the poor masses beating at their hulls "in agony, in despair", attempting to sink the yachts and end "the horror of the race." Given many of today’s current events, e.g., fat cat executives receiving HUGE and obscene bonuses while workers lose their jobs and homes, William’s vision in “The Yachts” seems almost prophetic.
In recent years the reputation of this white-haired “musician” of letters, has been on the rise. At one time British reviewers could easily dismiss Williams as a, “writer of some local interests.” Slowly, Williams has come to be regarded as one of America’s most significant poets – loved by many (myself included) and followed by many others (again, myself included).
Here then, for your visual and auditory pleasure, is a selection of Williams’ poems. Read them aloud to yourself (or better still find someone to read them to you) so you can enjoy the writer’s rhythms. And please, go slowly - poems are not meant to be sped-read through at Autobahn speed, they are more like a ride through the countryside on a horse-drawn carriage.
THE YACHTS
contend in a sea which the land partly encloses shielding them from the too-heavy blows of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses
tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly. Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute
brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails they glide to the wind tossing green water from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls
ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing, making fast as they turn, lean far over and having caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.
In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare
as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace of all that in the mind is feckless, free and naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them
is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling for some slightest flaw but fails completely. Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts
move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.
Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows. Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside. It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair
until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind; the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,
beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.
Williams often used the same title to name poems from different collections. Look at the three poems below, all named LOVE SONG. The one common theme uniting all three poems is the author’s deeply sensual imagery.
LOVE SONG
What have I to say to you When we shall meet? Yet— I lie here thinking of you.
The stain of love Is upon the world. Yellow, yellow, yellow, It eats into the leaves, Smears with saffron The horned branches that lean Heavily Against a smooth purple sky.
There is no light— Only a honey-thick stain That drips from leaf to leaf And limb to limb Spoiling the colours Of the whole world.
I am alone. The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky.
See me! My hair is dripping with nectar— Starlings carry it On their black wings. See, at last My arms and my hands Are lying idle.
How can I tell If I shall ever love you again As I do now?
Here is a slightly different version of the poem above. If anyone doubts whether "free" verse is something more than prose, then read aloud this poem by Williams. Note the contrast between the slowing rhythm of "horned branches" and "smooth purple" on one side and, on the other, the alternating stresses of "that drips from leaf to leaf/and limb to limb." What the vowels and consonants do in the two last lines alone is as artful as any rhyme.
LOVE SONG
I lie here thinking of you:---
the stain of love is upon the world! Yellow, yellow, yellow it eats into the leaves, smears with saffron the horned branched the lean heavily against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light only a honey-thick stain that drips from leaf to leaf and limb to limb spoiling the colors of the whole world- you far off there under the wine-red selvage of the west!
Here is the third “variation” of a LOVE SONG.
LOVE SONG
SWEEP the house clean, hang fresh curtains in the windows put on a new dress and come with me! The elm is scattering its little loaves of sweet smells from a white sky!
Who shall hear of us in the time to come? Let him say there was a burst of fragrance from black branches.
The pictorial style in which THE RED WHEELBARROW is written owes a great deal to the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and the precisionist style of Charles Sheeler, an American photographer-painter whom Williams met shortly before composing the poem. The poem represents an early stage in Williams' evolution as a poet. It focuses on the objective representation of an object - the poem’s brief form is almost haiku-like.
THE RED WHEELBARROW
so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens.
The last two poems also reflect Williams’ use of every day words to deliver powerful images. In THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE the reader is invited to join the writer as he cruises along the streets of a quiet neighborhood. As the author drives around, a young housewife, still wearing last night’s negligee, briefly emerges from her house. What a beautifully simple way to describe the young housewife, “shy, uncorseted, tucking in, stray ends of hair.” In DANSE RUSSE the author does something that almost all of us have done at one point or the other – sneak a naked dance in front of a mirror when no one else is looking. What can be more sensual (and at the same time lonely) than an unclothed body, joyfully moving to the beat of some unseen band?
THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE
AT ten A.M. the young housewife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband's house. I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
DANSE RUSSE
IF when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,--
Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?
Poetry is the music of the soul. Close your eyes and let Williams’ compositions make you want to dance naked – alone or in the presence of a loved one.
I must admit that over the past few weeks I have been in a deep, blue deep funk. I don’t know why, I don’t know exactly when it started and I certainly have no idea when it will end - and end it must, as all past “funks” have.
When I feel this way there are only a few things that make me feel better (yes eating chocolate is one of them, and so is going for a long bike ride). But what really soothes me, however, is listening to music and writing poetry.
Lately, it has been Jackson Browne to the rescue. His lyrics read like free verse poetry; his melodious rhythms and excellent guitar and piano playing make him a perfect companion when the blue funk strikes. So here, and without further ado, are two of Browne’s most soulful songs. Enjoy!
Sky Blue and Black (lyrics)
In the calling out to one another Of the lovers up and down the strand In the sound of the waves and the cries Of the seagulls circling the sand In the fragments of the songs Carried down the wind from some radio In the murmuring of the city in the distance Ominous and low
I hear the sound of the world where we played And the far too simple beauty Of the promises we made
If you ever need holding Call my name, Ill be there If you ever need holding And no holding back, Ill see you through Sky blue and black
Where the touch of the lover ends And the soul of the friend begins Theres a need to be separate and a need to be one And a struggle neither wins Where you gave me the world I was in And a place I could make a stand I could never see how you doubted me When Id let go of your hand
Yeah, and I was much younger then And I must have thought that I would know If things were going to end
And the heavens were rolling Like a wheel on a track And our sky was unfolding And itll never fold back Sky blue and black
And Id have fought the world for you If I thought that you wanted me to Or put aside what was true or untrue If Id known thats what you needed What you needed me to do
But the moment has passed by me now To have put away my pride And just come through for you somehow
If you ever need holding Call my name, Ill be there If you ever need holding And no holding back, Ill see you through
Youre the color of the sky Reflected in each store-front window pane Youre the whispering and the sighing Of my tires in the rain Youre the hidden cost and the thing thats lost In everything I do Yeah and Ill never stop looking for you In the sunlight and the shadows And the faces on the avenue Thats the way love is Thats the way love is Thats the way love is Sky blue and black
Sky Blue and Black (video)
In the Shape of a Heart (lyrics)
It was a ruby that she wore On a chain around her neck In the shape of a heart In the shape of a heart It was a time I wont forget For the sorrow and regret And the shape of a heart And the shape of a heart I guess I never knew What she was talking about I guess I never knew What she was living without
People speak of love dont know what theyre thinking of Wait around for the one who fits just like a glove Speak in terms of belief and belonging Try to fit some name to their longing People speak of love
There was a hole left in the wall From some ancient fight About the size of a fist Or something thrown that had missed And there were other holes as well In the house where our nights fell Far too many to repair In the time that we were there
People speak of love dont know what theyre thinking of Reach out to each other though the push and shove Speak in terms of a life and the learning Try to think of a word for the burning
You keep it up You try so hard To keep a life from coming apart And never know What breaches and faults are concealed In the shape of a heart
It was the ruby that she wore On a stand beside the bed In the hour before dawn When I knew she was gone And I held it in my hand For a little while And dropped it into the wall Let it go, heard it fall
I guess I never knew What she was talking about I guess I never knew What she was living without People speak of love dont know what theyre thinking of Wait around for the one who fits just like a glove Speak in terms of a life and the living Try to find the word for forgiving
You keep it up You try so hard To keep a life from coming apart And never know The shallows and the unseen reefs That are there from the start In the shape of a heart .
In The Shape of a Heart (video)
Pour tous les fans Français, Jackson Browne est et sera le plus grand auteur compositeur interprete de sa génération!!!
The other day I was listening to Jackson Browne’s FOUNTAIN OF SORROW. As I listened to Browne’s carefully crafted lyrics it occurred to me that photography and poetry share much in common. A photograph captures that special moment in time when the photographer clicks the shutter's release and freezes time forever. A poem, on the other hand, captures the mood of that moment in time when Muses breathed inspiration into the poet's heart.
When reduced to their most essential element, both photography and poetry are efforts to capture the mood of a moment. Look at one of your own favorite photographs and then close your eyes; you will be transported to the moment when the photograph was snapped. If you try hard enough, you will hear the sounds and smell the odors that were there when you took the photo. Do the same with a favorite poem and soon the rhythms of the words will evoke the mood of the moment captured by the poet.
Music is the bridge that brings together the words of the poet and the images of the photographer. The best songwriters use words to bring out feelings in the listener; they use those same words to paint mental images. Jackson Browne has written beautiful songs that can both evoke emotions and paint beautiful pictures.
In FOUNTAIN OF SORROW, Browne goes one step further and uses the device of a lost photograph to lead the listener into an exploration of the sorrow caused by a lost love:
Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer I was taken by a photograph of you There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more But they didn’t show your spirit quite as true.
Of special note is the reversed image in this line: I was taken by a photograph of you. Normally, we take photographs, we are not taken by them. Browne then goes on to describe the moment when the photographer releases the shutter and captures an image that will live on, even after the moment has passed:
You were turning round to see who was behind you And I took your childish laughter by surprise And at the moment that my camera happened to find you There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes.
The rest of the song develops parallel themes of sex and nothingness, fantasy and realism, as Browne, looking at the photograph of a former lover, recalls: When you see through love's illusion, their lies the danger/And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool/So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger." In the chorus, highly romanticized sexuality becomes a "fountain of sorrow, fountain of light."
For all of you who love photography, for all of you who enjoy reading a good poem and for all of you who have loved and lost, and loved again, here are the entire lyrics to FOUNTAIN OF SORROW. Enjoy!
Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer I was taken by a photograph of you There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more But they didn’t show your spirit quite as true
You were turning round to see who was behind you And I took your childish laughter by surprise And at the moment that my camera happened to find you There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes
Now the things that I remember seem so distant and so small Though it hasn’t really been that long a time What I was seeing wasn’t what was happening at all Although for a while, our path did seem to climb But when you see through loves illusions, there lies the danger And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger While the loneliness seems to spring from your life Like a fountain from a pool
Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light You’ve known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight You’ve had to hide sometimes, but now you’re all right And its good to see your smiling face tonight
Now for you and me it may not be that hard to reach our dreams But that magic feeling never seems to last And while the futures there for anyone to change, still you know its seems It would be easier sometimes to change the past I’m just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you In my lessons at loves pain and heartache school Where if you feel too free and you need something to remind you There’s this loneliness springing up from your life Like a fountain from a pool
Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light You’ve known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight
You’ve had to hide sometimes but now you’re all right And its good to see your smiling face tonight
Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light You’ve known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight You’ve had to struggle, you’ve had to fight To keep understanding and compassion in sight You could be laughing at me, you’ve got the right But you go on smiling so clear and so bright
In this installment of FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER I will feature American poet Emily Dickinson. Dickinson’s lifestyle, experiences and poetic style stand in sharp contrast to last week’s featured poet, Walt Whitman. Where Whitman was loud and gregarious, Dickinson was quiet and reserved; where Whitman traveled extensively, rarely hanging his hat for very long at one place, Dickinson never ventured far from home, spending the last few years of her life as a near-recluse in her own home; where Whitman’s poetry was big and expansive, Dickinson’s poems are concise and focused. Dickinson was well read, and was familiar with the work of her contemporaries; she, however, never read Whitman because he was too “crude.”
These two poets; Whitman, a man who sometimes wrote of “feminine” themes and was suspected of being gay or at least bi-sexual; Dickinson, a woman, who sometimes wrote about manly objects, provide a nice point-counter point to FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a successful lawyer and her family had strong community ties. Dickinson lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life, she never traveled far from her birthplace. She studied at Amherst Academy (later re-named Amherst College, a well-known American liberal arts college). Dickinson also spent time studying at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, now Mount Holyoke College, the “oldest continuing institution of higher education for women in the world."
After completing her formal studies, Dickinson returned to her family’s home in Amherst. There, the local residents thought of Dickinson as something of an eccentric. She had a penchant for white clothing (a white dress is Dickinson’s only surviving article of clothing) and was reluctant to greet guests or, later in her life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
Dickinson was a prolific private poet, though fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often utilize slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two subjects which infused her letters to friends.
Dickinson was keenly aware of the ways in which poetry can move people. “If I read a book,” she observed, “and it makes my body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the way I know it. Is there any way?” Historian and critics have often tried to make a big deal of Dickinson’s “retreat” from society. But as Marianne Moore (another American poet of fame) once remarked, “For a poet there is society in solitude.” Dickinson herself once wrote to a friend, “I find ecstasy in living. The mere sense of living is joy enough.” Clearly Dickinson was not lonely, nor was she without joy in her life; she simply sought out the solitude that enabled her to craft such exquisite poetry.
The extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in Dickinson's manuscripts, and the idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery, combine to create a body of work that is "far more various in its styles and forms than is commonly supposed.” Dickinson did not write in traditional iambic pentameter, and did not even use a five-foot line. Her poems typically begin with a declaration or definition in the first line ("The fact that Earth is Heaven"), which is followed by a metaphorical change of the original premise in the second line ("Whether Heaven is Heaven or not"). Dickinson's poems can easily be set to music because of the frequent use of rhyme and free verse.
It was not until after Dickinson’s death in May 15, 1886, that the depth and breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Fortunately for her legions of fans, Emily’s younger sister, Lavinia, discovered her cache of poems. Dickinson’s first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable initial reviews, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
Here then, for your reading, and listening (poems are meant to be read aloud and never, ever, to be speed-read through), pleasure are a few of Ms. Dickinson’s better known poems.
Notice how Dickinson uses words and imagery to describe a steaming locomotive’s journey through the countryside in terms that any horse lover can recognize. The horse becomes a metaphor for something bigger and more powerful - a steam locomotive.
I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains, And, supercilious, peer In shanties by the sides of roads; And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while In horrid, hooting stanza; Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges; Then, punctual as a star, Stop--docile and omnipotent-- At its own stable door.
In the following poem, Dickinson describes the Zen-like notion that to appreciate “good” one must also experience “bad.” Thus “bad” becomes a necessary part of life – without bad we would never know “good.”
Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition , So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break, agonized and clear.
Dickinson often wrote about death. To her, however, death was not the end of a journey it was more like a way-station on the road to a new adventure.
I died for beauty but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth,--the two are one; We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.
And here is more....
The dying need but little, dear,-- A glass of water's all, A flower's unobtrusive face To punctuate the wall,
A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret, And certainly that one No color in the rainbow Perceives when you are gone.
Hunger, of the soul and heart, was another of Dickinson’s themes.
I had been hungry all the years- My noon had come, to dine- I, trembling, drew the table near And touched the curious wine.
'T was this on tables I had seen When turning, hungry, lone, I looked in windows, for the wealth I could not hope to own.
I did not know the ample bread, 'T was so unlike the crumb The birds and I had often shared In Nature's dining-room.
The plenty hurt me, 't was so new,-- Myself felt ill and odd, As berry of a mountain bush Transplanted to the road.
Nor was I hungry; so I found That hunger was a way Of persons outside windows, The entering takes away.
There are several online collections of Dickinson’s poems. This one is one of my favorite:
Apropos to today’s FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER, I just read an article in Newsweek magazine about the imminent death of poetry. IS POETRY REALLY DEAD?
Is there anyone who really thinks that poetry is finally “dead?” As long as there are individuals who need to connect with their inner emotions, can poetry be really dead?
Here is an original poem by our very own Monsieur ARCABULLE Odriscoll. M. Odriscoll accepted my challenge, or was it a request, to contribute poetry to our blog. M. Odriscoll has previously contributed other posts for this blog. The poem is in French; some of you may not be able to read it in the original French. I have attempted a very free translation into English. If you request it, I will post the translation but only after ARCABULLE reviews. I think, however, that the poem flows better in its native French.
Here, without further ado, is ARCABULLE’s La vie est un long fleuve tranquille
LA VIE EST UN LONG FLEUVE TRANQUILLE
La vie est un long fleuve tranquille Qu'est-ce que la vie ? qu'est-ce que notre vie ? est-elle un long fleuve tranquille comme nous l'espérons et ce pourquoi nous nous battons
la vie est en fait une succession de tumultes et d'émotions de ruptures et de combats que l'on arrive ou pas à surmonter et à dépasser
la vie nous apporte beaucoup de tristesse et de peine mais elle est parfois injuste car certains ont plus de chance
d'autres subissent de plein fouet enormement de pressions et de déceptions,de ruptures ils doivent s'accrocher, se battre pour sortir du noir qui les habitent
la vie mérite d'être vécue quoi qu'il en soit car un jour la lumière vient elle nous offre des instants des éclairs de bonheur des bouffées d'oxygène
la vie nous offre parfois ces instants de bonheur qu'il nous faut apprécier et déguster tel un bon cabernet
même si en notre for intérieur le noir est toujours là il nous habite il nous guette il est toujours à l'affût
la vie est un combat qu'il nous faut mener il faut nous accrocher pour sortir du noir et enfin voir la lumière qui est juste là elle est à 2 pas
un pas, deux pas ne t'arrête pas le plus dur est derrière toi car tu as déjà fait le premier pas
encore un effort fais le deuxième pas qui certainement te délivrera et t'offrira le bonheur que tu mérites à toute heure
la vie est un long fleuve tranquille car au final malgré les tumultes les joies, les peines nous sommes toujours là la vie est toujours là la vie continue pleine d'envies et de joies
un français un peu fou voire très fou
Bisous à toutes et à tous profitez de la vie carpe diem mes amis
It has been often remarked that poetry is “the music of our life.” In poetry’s measured lines, whether in the form of free verse or iambic pentameter, we can find a rhythm that gives meaning and context to our daily existence. Literature, and especially poetry, has the power to make us look into our soul at the very same time that we are looking at the outside world. With poetry we can both find ourselves and lose ourselves, all in one line, one stanza.
Poetry, like music, is the rawest and most pure form of communication. Most of us have at one point or the other, read a poem, or listened to a piece of music, that made our imagination soar and perhaps even taken on greater flights of fancy. It is because of this raw power that over 400 years later we still quote passages from Shakespeare for inspiration, purpose or guidance.
The writer C. S. Lewis once remarked, “In reading literature one becomes a thousand men and women and yet remain oneself. Like a night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself and am never more myself than when I do.” (NOTE: C. S. Lewis was an Irish writer, poet, philosopher and essayist. His most famous literary works include, The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy. Why does it seem that the best English writers were mostly Irish? ERIN GO BRAGH!).
It is no secret to my friends that I love literature. It is also no secret that I love writing, especially poetry. I once heard someone comment that we should all read poetry everyday, even if it is just a few lines. I would like to go one step further and encourage everyone to everyday write some poetry, even if it is only a few lines of verse.
In order to write good poetry, or any poetry for that matter since there is really no such thing as “bad” poetry, we also need to read poetry. We should read poetry not in order to slavishly copy other poet’s styles; we must al develop our own style and find our own, unique voice. We need to read poetry simply for the delicious pleasure of savoring the words on the text.
With that in mind, I would like to start a new feature of the Between Homes (BH) blog. I will call it FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER. Every Friday, (or as time permits) I will choose a passage, or passages from some poet. I will post the passage and I will encourage each of you to read it, savor it. I also invite you (if you are feeling very ambitious or just want to make me happy) to post your comments about the poem. What did it mean to you? How did it make you feel? What do you think the writer was trying to get across to her audience? Actually I was kidding about the part of wanting to “make me happy.” You should write comments about your reaction to the particular poem for your sake; to help you open up your heart and mind.
For today’s FRIDAY MORNING POETRY CORNER I would like to feature two selections from Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892). Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist and humanist. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
The two selections below are from Whitman’s Song of Myself. The poem was first published without sections and appeared as the first of twelve untitled poems in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Today it is one of the best-known poems in the book. The first edition was published by Whitman at his own expense. (Whitman, like Ben Franklin before him, was one of the first blogists. If the Internet had been in existence in Whitman’s time, he would surely have his own poetry blog.)
What do you think of this particular passage?
Through me forbidden voices, Voices of the sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from, The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
It is almost too funny to read the outrage expressed by Whitman’s contemporaries when they read the passage above. Whitman was accused of being vulgar, over-sexed and worse. And yet, all that Whitman was trying to tell us, I think, is not to be ashamed of our feelings, not to be ashamed of our bodies and to understand that our basic, raw (and even smelly) humanity is far greater than all the churches in the world. Perhaps Whitman was telling us that God, however you may conceive him or her to be, lives inside each of us and cannot be found in churches or temples. I am almost sure that Christ would agree with that.
What do YOU think?
The next passage, also from Song of Myself, became very popular after the 9-11 attack on the USA. Newspapers across the world carried haunting images of firefighters, police officers and other first responders marching into burning, crumbling buildings, looking for victims to rescue, and coming out covered in dust and ashes. Many of these brave heroes never made it out alive and were forever entombed in the collapsed debris.
Whitman’s verse seemed so appropriate at the time, conveying in a way that only words can convey, what it is like to be a rescuer, to be trapped by debris, and to then wait to be rescued himself.
I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken, Tumbling walls buried me in their debris, Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.
(Image from http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/home2.shtml all rights fully reserved by the copyright holder or holders.)
I hope that you enjoyed these selections. I hope that they made you think, made you feel and made you connect with your humanity.
Please feel free to post your comments or, better still, post your own poetry here.
This photograph was published by LIFE magazine. It was taken on August 14, 1945, at a Times Square (New York) celebration of the Victory over Japan in World War II. The picture says it all, doesn't?
If you have been following these pages, you know that I love to write. Writing affords me an opportunity to give flight to my imagination, letting my feelings soar on wings of words. I write when I am happy, I write when I am sad, I write when I need to fill the emptiness that we all feel from time to time.
A while ago I wrote a poem called “Dream Lover.” I wrote at a time when I was feeling very blue. On a lark, I submitted the poem to a writing group to which I belong. To my surprise my poem was chosen to be read at a gathering of writers. I was present at the reading (actually I was hiding in the crowd) and was overcome with joy to hear my words spoken out in public; I was elated when I heard the crowd’s applause.
That was almost a year ago and I had pretty much forgotten about the poem. Then this morning I received the following IM:
Jaz Flossberg: Debbie, The Breakers Coffee Shop Arts Series presented "Love Poems" last night. Many of the poems were from people in SL. Your poem "Dream Lover" was read among the 14 poems selected. I want to thank you for having written the poem. It was very well received and helped make our presentation a success. Thank you.
There was my poem, once again, being read in public. I never imagined that words that I wrote in private would ever be read out loud in public; I never dreamed that people would actually enjoy my writing.
Here then is “Dream Lover.”
Dream Lover
Between the darkness and the light, There lies a land Of warm shadows and soft whispers. Where tears and hurt are unwelcomed guests And lovers are free to dream.
I hold my lover in my arms And I look into his eyes. Eyes like a cool spring lake. In his blue eyes I see reflections of a life I once knew, When I was my lover’s cherished one.
I hold him tighter in my arms, And in his embrace I live again. Softly, he whispers that he loves me and I fall to my knees Drinking deeply from his sweet honey Till there is none left for me to drink.
My lover sighs And his sighs are like a lullaby I heard long ago. Like a child, I close my eyes, Daring to dream again, Hoping to be taken back to a world I once knew.
In the distance, a songbird calls out to his mate Slowly, I open my eyes And my lover is gone. Nothing left for me to hold, But the cold and empty air.
Through the prism of a single, solitary tear I see a freshly cut red rose on the pillow next to me. And then I know That when this mortal day is done, My dreams will once again take me back to the one I love.
“Dream lover” was written during a very dark period of my life when I was feeling blue and sad...and very lonesome.
Fortunately, I eventually came out from under the clouds that had kept me in the dark. When I finally came out from the dark, there was a bright, warm glowing ember pointing the way out. The following poem was inspired by that glowing ember.
Untitled
In the cold hour before dawn When the songbird calls out to its mate In the frantic rush of lovers Reaching out for one another In the moments of stillness When words are silently spoken.
I feel you standing next to me The glow of your eyes Beating back the darkness around me Filling my empty hours with love And once again I come alive
I look at your figure, silent before me Your arms reach out to surround me And the tears and the sadness and the fears Melt away into the foggy past
I keep my eyes wide open Out of fear Fear that if I close them you will go and leave me Alone with my tears
I stand in a clearing in the thick forest And through the tall, dark trees that surround me A warm, autumn wind blows And in my heart I hear a voice That gently reassures me
I keep my eyes open I’ve heard that impostor’s voice before It is a struggle that I cannot win And when the moment finally comes, When I must fearfully let my eyes close - I let out a sigh Because when the mocking morn returns It will bring back its companion, the bitter loneliness
Later, when I finally dare to open my eyes again As the darkness begrudgingly surrenders to the advancing light I see you lying next to me, a perfect ghostly presence I turn away because I have seen that ghost before
Suddenly, I feel your warm breath on my cold shoulders Can ghosts breathe? Slowly I turn and touch you, not daring to believe And then I see your eyes open, Two glowing embers looking right through me
Then I know that the voice I heard in my heart The voice I’ve feared for so long Was not the impostor’s cruel whispers For you are here with me And my lonely days and nights are gone forever.
Thank you for letting me share with you this little part of me.
Happy Valentine's Day to all the lovers of the world. And if you are still seeking that special someone to love, do not despair, she or he is just around the corner - I promise!
