2017 Eclipse

.. faith without works is dead ..

Praxis

Oh, let me not just overreach 
And force what You would have me learn
Unduly, early, what You teach
Despite my pensive yearn

Upon Your precious Word I fall
So eagerly, and wanting more
And yet, so calmly, comes Your call
To love as those of yore

So guide me, Lord, and show me how
To live a life of love as You
I’ll leave this ‘learning’ here and now
If You can draw me through

-jwm

Time and Memory

If Only ...

If only we could meet again
And curse the days of yore
Forget them and anew begin
And love, and love restore

 

If only we could change the past
And meet again in love
And shun our former ills at last
And all the pain thereof

Our hearts renewed could reunite
And one, and one could be
And we could live in love's dear light
Through all eternity

But time will not assuage the pain
That memory holds dear
And though reunion I might fain
I fain it false, I fear

-jwm

Poe's Annabel Lee

It takes a sort of disturbed, divine genius to concoct precious literary works that revolve around the theme of death, and of death’s potential, and of the suffering and the loss thereby, and to render that theme beautiful. Think about it … to draw beauty from the ultimate source of trepidation that, consciously or subconsciously, plagues the life of every living human being … to draw beauty from death? To achieve such a thing requires incredible wit, and audacity, and most certainly a creative mind unmoved by the prospect of risk.

Edgar Allan Poe is such a mind. He is said to have thought that the death of a beautiful woman is “the most poetical topic in the world.” As pathological as that statement may sound, I don’t believe that Poe was moved by some diabolical euphoria revolving around the death of beautiful women, or that some infernal strain of delight flowed through his blood by the thought of it. Poe’s poetical melancholy was derived from real tragic losses that he endured throughout his life, losses that involved women in his life for whom he cared deeply.

The most tragic of these losses was his wife Virginia, who died at the age of 24 after a long and painful battle with tuberculosis. Poe loved her dearly and with all his heart, and was steeped in a deep, desolate depression that could only be assuaged by the remote hope that his beloved might be reunited with him. It was from this tortuous mode of misery, coupled with the longing he had for his wife, that Poe’s final poem would emerge, Annabel Lee.

Annabel Lee is a poem Poe completed two years after Virginia’s death. He struggled desperately to make it as perfect as possible (it is said that there were roughly 11 known versions of it). The poem itself is about love, and about what happens with love when death intervenes.  

The narrator speaks of a love that he shared with a girl by the name of Annabel Lee. This love was so pure between the two, and so deep and innocent, that even the angels were jealous of it. One day “a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling” Annabel Lee, which is said to be the cause of her eventual death. The narrator goes on to say that it was the jealousy of these angels that produced this wind that killed his beloved. Notwithstanding, the narrator continues, the depth and purity of their love was such that it was immutable- nothing, not even death or angels or demons, could separate the two:

And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

The poem then takes a strange and almost repelling twist as it comes to a close. We are told that despite their immutable love, and the beautiful imagery describing Annabel’s presence with him, every evening, during the night-tide, the speaker goes into the tomb of his wife and lies there lovingly by her side.

It’s a fascinating poem that consists of six stanzas with equally fascinating imagery. The tempo of it, most especially when read aloud, flows so incredibly well. Poe uses repetition, alliteration, and polysyndeton with great literary effectiveness. It is a poem that every poet, and every romantic minded person, must of necessity know.

  

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Kanaalaq

Kanaalaq

Kanaalaq came and bore me kisses
From bright blue skies where heaven’s bliss is …
To me, a loveless, lonely mortal,
Descended she from heaven’s portal!

She passed my flesh to reach my spirit-
Bestowing love as she drew near it;
And merging, merging like the mystic,
Grew one with me unhedonistic.

In passions steeped we intermingled-
Our souls with one another tingled-
Til we were one, and we were captured
In deep elation, deeply raptured.

The bliss brought existential numbing-
And climax rapidly was coming:
Nirvana’s otherworldly feeling
Consumed my being and had me reeling!

All hint of night had fled off frightened,
And I, within this bliss, enlightened
Felt truly happy with this creature:
“O never leave” I did beseech her.

She dwells here still (my heart is grateful),
This goddess- loving, gorgeous, faithful.
She fills me too with true renewal …
Kanaalaq, ah, my lovely jewel.

-jwm

Happy Burns Day!

Robert Burns (1759 – 1796), happy date of birth, lad …

I wanted to find a poem of his that I hadn’t previously read, and, coming across a few, I really enjoyed the following (hope you do too) …


*****

Love in the Guise of Friendship

Talk not of love, it gives me pain,
For love has been my foe;
He bound me in an iron chain,
And plung'd me deep in woe.

But friendship's pure and lasting joys,
My heart was form'd to prove;
There, welcome win and wear the prize,
But never talk of love.

Your friendship much can make me blest,
O why that bliss destroy?
Why urge the only, one request
You know I will deny?

Your thought, if Love must harbour there,
Conceal it in that thought;
Nor cause it in that thought;
Nor cause me from my bosom tear
The very friend I sought.

Weakness

My eyes cannot escape your shape;
Your beauty has me mesmerized-
Your gorgeous curves, the way you walk,
Your sexy lips, the way you talk …
The way your hair just dangles there-
I swear to you it mystifies!
And how your lips move when you speak-
O darling, how you make me weak.

-jwm


Poetic Parameters:

Stanza: Octet
Meter: Tetrameter (i.e. eight syllables per line)
Rhyme Scheme: x.x.a.a.x.x.b.b (where ‘x’ represents unrhymed lines)

Love's End

Love’s End

The end of love is never well
The pain it brings what soul can tell
Still all will know its lovely sting
And for a time will with it dwell

For those of you whose hearts are frail
Delighting now in love’s good spell
Beware of deprivation’s hell
The end of love is never well … (just sayin’)

-jwm



Of the Poem (Parameters):

Stanza: Quatrain (i.e. 4 lines per stanza)
Meter: Tetrameter (i.e. 8 syllables per line)
Rhyme Scheme: aaba aaaa (a scheme I almost never use)

Of an Angel

Of an Angel

I never thought that mortal eyes
Could peer upon an angel’s face
Much less see one from vault’d skies
Descend in splendid grace
But there she was, in pleasant light
Approaching from a heav’nly height
Her beauty, ah, what word can say
I never will forget that day

She hardly bore a seraph wing
Nor were there cherubs harping by
But heaven glowed from her like spring
Like Solis there on high
Her aura was of such a hue
That human eyes could scarce view
But blesséd were my eyes it seem’d
Who looked on her as on a dream

Her movements were as words with me
With tones seductive and sublime
I fell into a swoon, a glee
And lost all sense of time
For she was heaven’s very seat
A flower seldom seen, and sweet
A lovely Naiad by the dell
With titan strength, yet ever frail

She held with her a certain air
A scepter-soul, though hardly mean
Like Nefertiti pure and fair
A true and noble queen
Yet neither crook, nor even flail
Did in her royal hands prevail
No what prevail’d, and this is true
A royalty I never knew

Around her head a laurel loop’d
The fragrance of it- ah, divine
And hair above her right eye droop’d
Beneath the emerald twine
Her gown wav’d gently by a breeze
That rippl’d round her like the seas
And as she pass’d me gently, meek
An oblique smile rais’d her cheek

Her auburn flesh was flesh of youth
Her eyes- viridian and clear
Her manners held a hidden truth
Celestial and dear
I pined inside to touch her frame
To speak with her, to know her name
But I bewitch’d sat stunn’d and daz’d
At all she was, and was amaz’d

Affection for her fill’d my soul
As gracefully she pass’d me by
To joy she mov’d my heart from lull
And she mov’d toward the sky
An angel?– yes, she was indeed
A creature of that heav’nly breed
Whose presence chang’d my every way
I never will forget that day

-jwm

Of the Poem:

Poetic Parameters

Stanza: Octet (i.e. 8 lines per stanza)
Meter: Mixed (all lines except the fourth are in tetrameter, the fourth consists of six syllables)
Rhyme Scheme: ababccdd

A Brief Note

This poem was inspired by a moment I had last year while sitting poolside … a woman, so beautiful, so delicate, came walking in and completely obliterated my ability to pay attention to anything else- a ballad I wrote last year about her expresses this well:

Their choir filled the maple tree
Their fluting, too, the fir
And though they sang so beautifully
All I could hear was her

Her appearance was incredible, and my heart instantly was drawn to her. She seemed something divine, something angelic- hence the poem’s title, Of an Angel.

Beneath a Starry Gaze

There, just below the moon’s ascent,
Ethereal a figure went-
A silhouette, a dimly shade,
That moved towards him with clear intent.

Though fear in others would have weighed,
He fearless went from where he stayed
To meet that spectral figure dim
That bold approached him unafraid.

That ghostly apparition slim
Through pale-blue moonlight seem’d to swim,
Approaching now with sure design-
Intent specifically on him!

But then, behold! - a sight divine
For what those shadows did confine
Was this: his lovely lady’s sight-
Most beautiful, and yes, sublime.

The two embraced that starry night
Beneath that silver moon so bright
(In silence and in full content)
As stars gazed on them from their height.

-jwm

Of the Poem (Parameters):

Stanza: Quatrain, Rubaiyat
Meter: Tetrameter
Rhyme Scheme: aaba bbcb ccdc dded eeae

Note:

The structure of the poem is modeled off of what I consider to be one of the most gorgeous stanza types to work with, the Rubaiyat.

The Rubaiyat’s rhyme pattern is aaba which- despite the ‘off rhythm’ of the third line- produces and incredible rate of poetic flow. Where two or more stanzas are involved, that rate flow is punctuated, and is awesome.

Wherever there are two or more of these stanzas the rhyme pattern is usually interlocking, so that the ‘b’ of the first stanza (aaba) constitutes the primary rhyme pattern of the second stanza … aaba bbcb, and so on.

You’ll also notice that in this poem the rhyme pattern returns to the initial primary rhythm of the first stanza (aaba bbcb ccdc dded eeae), this was intentional and served as a sort of internal self-closure of the poem- even apart from the storyline itself.

I first came to know this stanza type by reading a Robert Frost poem called, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous poem, and I was compelled to try the style out.

Since my introduction to this form I’ve done a few poems that mimic it, and am working on another one right now.

Now, if you’ve come across this site and have written a poem based on the Rubaiyat structure, please … let me read it: post it in a comments area of mine or, better yet, click on my picture above and friend me on Facebook so that we might correspond over it. I’d be delighted! Meanwhile, let me know what you think of this particular poem above, Beneath a Starry Night.

The Poet

In yon holy nave,
With chalice on high,
This blessing he gave
To all who were by:

May God never part,
The Muse never fail,
May Love lead the heart
And poetry tell.

-jwm

The Clod and the Pebble

The Clod and the Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

Of the Poem

We human beings appropriate into our behavior the views we take of things. It’s as simple as this: If we have a positive perspective, we usually behave positively; if a negative one, then negatively. The point is, we're governed by the principles we assume.

Of the things that we view, which are countless, there are a limited number that we contemplate that are actually cardinal concepts (e.g. God, Justice, Beauty, Afterlife, etc).

Love, and our idea of love, abides high among these cardinal concepts. In fact, I'd even venture to say that it's how we view 'love' that ultimately determines how we live our lives- all else is merely cursory.

Blake touches on this point in the poem above by contrasting two mutually exclusive perspectives on love.

The one perspective, represented by the Clot, assures us that love- true love- is selfless and always gives of itself (even to the point of self-sacrifice). The other, represented by the Pebble, contends that love is inherently hedonistic, that it seeks ‘only self to please’, and will draw on every means possible to achieve its own particular pleasures at the expense of others.

The contrast becomes exceedingly clear when you look at lines 1 and 9 side by side:

Love seeketh not itself to please / Love seeketh only self to please

The rest of the poem essentially elaborates on the behavioral aspects these contending views produce … here’s few examples from the poem:

Selfless love will selflessly sacrifice its own comforts in order that it might increase the comfort and ease of another- for another gives its ease (line 3).

Self-complacent love is the kind of love that wishes only to please itself; the kind of love that will sacrifice the ease of another in order to achieve its hedonistic inclinations- even to the point that it becomes joyful at another's loss of ease (line 11)!

Selfless love has a minimal amount of self-interest (nor for itself hath any care- line 2), and will endeavor, inasmuch as it is possible, to bestow heaven’s peace wherever it can- even in the dreaded heart of hell itself.

A vile love of self will almost always suppress others, binding others, as it were, to its own crude delights (line 10); and, because this love is almost always in a perpetual state of strife with others, there is war where there would otherwise be peace (or, what’s the same, a Hell in Heaven's despite- line 14).

Why a Clod of Clay and why a Pebble? - I’m afraid I’d need Blake right here to explain that to me. But I’ll say this, the Clod is said to have been trampled by cattle, implying to me that the life of altruistic love is inherently connected with suffering and sacrifice (we see this repeatedly made clear). Self-love, however, in its greed-ridden frenzy, and despite its perpetual state of strife and conflict, seems to abide careless there in that brook, warbling away its metre meet.

It almost reminds me of sacred verse:

Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?

Jeremiah 12:1

Poetic Parameters

Stanza: quatrain (3 total)
Meter: The poem seems to revolve loosely around a tetrameter.
Rhyme Scheme: Stanzas 1 and 3 individually correspond to an abab pattern and, aside from their second lines (‘care and ‘delight’), correspond quite nicely with each other. The middle or second stanza has an xaxa rhyme scheme (where ‘x’ represents unrhymed lines)..

Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading Blake ... thank you for reading poetry.

Love Unrequited

I write, and yet I've never wrote
Of heart-felt pain that love has smote,
Or love undying skirting death
Whose deep-blue heart holds heavy breath.
I've never woeful had to write
Of love's dark unrequiting night,
Nor could I fathom this the day
That she would have me so dismayed ..

O my- alas! my heart in throes ..
My soul abandoned to its woes ..
For love long sought seems sought in vain,
And now I'm reeling here in pain.

envoi

Still, even in this pain I pine
To bind with her (her heart to know) ..
And this despite the dismal signs
That warn me she increases woe.

-jwm

Blame Her Not

She was mortal and was loved, but fell victim to a darkness she had never known. Seduced away from her first love and enraptured by the force of the vampire’s gaze, she was bitten, and dying, came into the life of the immortal undead- and she knew it.

Her first love, from whom she fled, loved her nonetheless; and although he knew of her murderous and irrevocable desire for human blood, and although he knew the hideous secret of her new nature, his blame fell upon the thief who stole his mortal love away.



Blame Her Not

Can I cast blame for what she eats,
Or that she strolls where sunlight sleeps;
Or blame her that her skin is pale,
Whose lips are glist’ning red as ale?
Am I to cast accusing stares
And judge her not of wheat, but tares;
Or shun her for her blood-lust bent,
The girl whose ghostly heart is rent?

I saw her wand’ring in the chill
Amidst the fog and murky rill;
And starving- writhing there in pain-
She slipp’d into the town again.
Who knows where all that hunger led,
But townsfolk found another dead:
A victim’s corpse lay by the mill-
And yet I cannot blame her still.

-jwm

My Daughter's Voice: A Father's Day Poem

Just wrote this this Father's Day morning. Today fathers and dads like myself are being lifted up and shown adoration; and yet I somehow suspect that for us fathers this day has little to do with ourselves, and everything to do family (especially our children). I’m sure this is a given, and may even sound cliché … but it had to be said.

This poem I dedicate to my daughter, Chelle (aka Chelles-Bells)



My Daughter's Voice

What hund’red times I must have heard
Her look to me and say the word
That erstwhile I would daily count,
And boast to all the day’s amount.
Ah, myriad a day I hear
That word that still provokes a tear-
Amazed how what my daughter voic’d
Could easy many burdens hoist.

But lo, the word is just a sound
That moves like wind above the ground,
That tinkers with my inner ear
So ‘daddy’ is that thing I hear.
Yet when I hear it I rejoice,
Because it’s this: my daughter’s voice.
This sound, this wind that in me whirl
Reminds me she’s my little girl …

-jwm

My Lovely Jean

I smell the cold in the rain.
It touches me through the screen
And weeps for my gain:
Its nemesis, my lovely Jean.

I found her beauty in the blue
Beyond the loamy medium,
Far beyond the multi-hue,
And further still from all this tedium.
Through it she pulled me to her heart,
And all that I called ‘I’ repined-
Since now its world was torn apart
By Love that pulled me from its bind.

Now pain sleeps in the silhouettes-
In clouded blues above and bold-
And thunders down on Jean its threats,
While shedding tears that smell of cold.

-jwm



Of the Poem:

The idea was to represent redemptive love mythologically. The story is of a person pulled into the heart of the highest heavens and, leaving the viler aspects of nature behind in the clouds, is made one with heavenly Love.

The darker aspect of the poem is Pain (in many ways one's former love), of which the raining sky and those thunderclouds represent.


I chose only to follow a rhyme scheme (there's no intentional meter).

In an Artist's Studio: Rossetti Poem

One face looks out from all his canvasses,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,
A saint, an angel; -- every canvass means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyfull as the light;
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.


Of the Poem:

This happens to be the very first one of Christina Rossetti’s poems that I came to read. While reading it, what first came to mind was the kind of insatiable passion that consumes a person so much so that the object of their desire is reflected in everything they see, hear, or do.

Next was my thought of Plato, who believed that the beautiful objects we behold in our existence are no more than mere reflections or copies of a higher Beauty- a Beauty whose eternal idea and form transcend the temporal and spacial beauties we see in this all too human realm.

Although Christina's poetic use of an artist's studio is quite natural (considering her background with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood), that very first impression mentioned above was not that it represented a particular artist, or a woman, or even art itself ... rather, it seemed to represent an obsession of passion, and not necessarily in the negative sense of obsession. Turns out that initial thought might not have been far off from the poet's intention.

Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was one of the leading artists of the Brotherhood and had a many young ladies to model for his works. One in particular was Elizabeth Siddal- a somewhat tall, slender, beautiful girl with 'copper' color hair. He was immediately taken by her. And after a short period of modeling for him, he dropped almost all of his other models, and stopped her from modeling for fellow artists. She became very quickly his sole consuming subject- not only in his drawings and paintings, but his poems too.

Unfortunately, Siddal's story is a sad one. Already prone to melancholy and illness, the still birth of her daughter only served to exasperate her problems. After becoming pregnant again, Siddal overdoses on laudanum. It's unclear whether or not this was an accident.

In 1863, a year after her death, Dante produced Beata-Beatrix (the painting above), where his beloved 'Lizzy' bore representation of a praying Beatrice. There's no question that the bulk of Dante's works of art centered on Elizabeth Siddal, that there was within him an insatiable desire to know her beauty and represent it in those works. Obviously I don't know the finer details of their relationship, but I'd like to imagine a time that they were immutably in love, so that even when apart they were together. Edith Piaf's song, Tu Es Partout, contains lyrics to the like:

Tu es partout car tu es dans mon coeur
Tu es partout car tu es mon bonheur
Toutes les choses qui sont autour de moi
Meme la vie ne represente que toi
Des fois je reve que je suis dans tes bras
Et qu'a l'oreille tu me parles tout bas
Tu dis des choses qui font fermer les yeux
Et moi je trouve ca merveilleux

English Translation:

You are everywhere because you are in my heart
You are everywhere because you are my happiness
Everything that is around me
Even life does not represent you
Sometimes I dream that I am in your arms
And you speak softly in my ear
You tell me things that make me close my eyes
And I find that marvelous

I imagine that this is the point of Rossetti's poem (that is, provided it's devoid of sarcasm) ...

Ocean Sky

THE VAULTED blue above the girl,
Who hand in hand with father went,
Produced in her a happy twirl-
A dancing she knew not what meant.

This blue expanse she did adore,
Whose happy clouds did haply sore
To-ward higher place, and even more-
The Heaven where the cherubs tour.

She marveled at that ocean sky-
The blue her father did not see.
It begged in her the question why
It only caused in her a glee.

But then her father saw a bird,
And seen the sky beyond its view.
He nudged his girl with loving word:
That blue sky there to me is you.

-jwm


Of the Poem:

This poem is inspired by and dedicated to Chelle, my little girl and my favorite person in the whole wide world ...