Poetry at its Best

I was reading the Oxford Companion to Philosophy pool-side this weekend and came across this cool, condensed description of poetry ...


Distinctive of poetry at its best is an 'all-in', maximally dense, simultaneous deployment of linguistic recourses­- sound and rhythm as well as sense, the bringing-together of numerous strands of meaning, through metaphors and other figures, through ambiguities (often unresolved), controlled associations and recourses, allusions: all of these contributing to a well-integrated, unified effect.


This companion to philosophy is one of the best books I've read pertaining to that field (the best one of all times, however, and one I adamantly encourage everyone to read, is Bertrand Russell's History Western Philosophy).

Poetry and Idealism

Toward the end of 1798 Coleridge, along with his buddy Wordsworth, took a trip that would land him in Germany for two years where he would study its language and its philosophical giants- including Kant and the transcendental idealism he espoused.

From Kant to Fichte to Schleiermacher, German philosophy was dominated by idealism- the doctrine that our cognitive faculties actively impose subjective properties upon the world it perceives, so much so that it can never know reality as it is, but only as it appears. Some have gone as far as to deny objective reality altogether.

Proponents of this philosophical movement swelled in Germany through the 18th and 19th century and heavily influenced that period's well known zeit geist ... romanticism.

That lead me to conclude that Coleridge- a contemporary of Kant- was not only cognizant of German idealism, but also swayed in one form or another by it.

According to transcendental idealism, we can never experience objective reality in its purity (Kant calls this purity of things things in-themselves, or noumenon). In order for a person (like a poet) to experience anything, there must exist, as a pre-condition to that experience, a cognitive aspect capable of organizing the sense-data.

Therefore, one’s never truly influenced by nature’s beauty directly, because nature’s beauty in its purity is only known through pre-existing cognitive filters; and these filters don't just passively receive sense-date, they aggressively mold it to correspond to its own structure. Therefore, by virtue of these filters, we lose reality in its purest form.

This has lead some idealists to concluded that what a person really perceives is not reality at all, but only an idea of it. Others, like the more radical solipsists, have concluded that all we're really perceiving is ourselves, that it is the mind ‘positing’ ideas in such a way that we believe there to be an objective reality, when in fact there's not.

Now try to imagine selling this to a poet- especially a poet of the romantic period! That Coleridge knew of these prevailing philosophies, and that he stood in modest antipathy toward them, is evident to me from a poem he wrote entitled, To Nature.


To Nature

It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be ; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice



Of the Poem (Parameters and Summary)

Parameters

The poem can be broken up in a couple ways to be better understood. It can be broken up into two quatrain and two tercets (i.e. an octave and a sestet) so that it represents something similar to an Italian sonnet- which seems to be the pattern Coleridge employed here (i.e. abba, clearly an Italian quatrain). Or we can divide the poem up so that its contents are easily seen. In that case the poem would look like this:

It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.

So let it be ; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.

So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice

Rhyme Scheme: abbacbbcefefgg
Meter: loose (revolves round, but is not, a pentameter)

Summary

Lines 1 though 5:

The poet contends that- despite the possibility of it being untrue- that nature is inherently symbolic and suggestive and beautiful in and of herself, that this beauty is self-contained. He draws "from all created things" the deepest of joys, tracing out lessons and meaning from nature as if he were reading a book.

Lines 6 through 8:

Resolute that this is so, the poet clings to his belief regardless of how the world may mock.

Lines 9 through 14:

In the remaining lines the poet concludes with imagery that depicts nature as God’s temple, and the poet himself as priest. Notice the how he also utilizes- very intentionally- religious terminology and concepts borrowed from theology (especially lines 9 through 14).

created things- line 2
inward joy- line 3
love and piety- line 5
my altar- 9
my fretted dome- 10
incense- line 12
God alone- line 13
priest- line 14
sacrifice- line 14

It’s beautiful. It’s almost as if- and I may be pushing too hard here- as if the poet not only denies the notion that the human mind constructs* reality, but posits audaciously the independent and objective reality of both God and nature in the face of idealism (e.g. line 2, created things).

What say you?


*This is actually what solipsists contend- neither Kant, nor idealism in general, hold this belief.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge*

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a leader of the British Romantic movement, was born on October 21, 1772, in Devonshire, England. His father, a vicar of a parish and master of a grammar school, married twice and had fourteen children. The youngest child in the family, Coleridge was a student at his father's school and an avid reader. After his father died in 1781, Coleridge attended Christ's Hospital School in London, where he met lifelong friend Charles Lamb. While in London, he also befriended a classmate named Tom Evans, who introduced Coleridge to his family. Coleridge fell in love with Tom's older sister Mary.

Coleridge's father had always wanted his son to be a clergyman, so when Coleridge entered Jesus College, University of Cambridge in 1791, he focused on a future in the Church of England. Coleridge's views, however, began to change over the course of his first year at Cambridge. He became a supporter of William Frend, a Fellow at the college whose Unitarian beliefs made him a controversial figure. While at Cambridge, Coleridge also accumulated a large debt, which his brothers eventually had to pay off. Financial problems continued to plague him throughout his life, and he constantly depended on the support of others.

En route to Wales in June 1794, Coleridge met a student named Robert Southy. Striking an instant friendship, Coleridge postponed his trip for several weeks, and the men shared their philosophical ideas. Influenced by Plato's Republic, they constructed a vision of pantisocracy (equal government by all), which involved emigrating to the New World with ten other families to set up a commune on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Coleridge and Southey envisioned the men sharing the workload, a great library, philosophical discussions, and freedom of religious and political beliefs.

After finally visiting Wales, Coleridge returned to England to find that Southey had become engaged to a woman named Edith Fricker. As marriage was an integral part of the plan for communal living in the New World, Coleridge decided to marry another Fricker daughter, Sarah. Coleridge wed in 1795, in spite of the fact that he still loved Mary Evans, who was engaged to another man. Coleridge's marriage was unhappy and he spent much of it apart from his wife. During that period, Coleridge and Southey collaborated on a play titled The Fall of Robespierre (1795). While the pantisocracy was still in the planning stages, Southey abandoned the project to pursue his legacy in law. Left without an alternative plan, Coleridge spent the next few years beginning his career as a writer. He never returned to Cambridge to finish his degree.

In 1795 Coleridge befriended William Wordsworth, who greatly influenced Coleridge's verse. Coleridge, whose early work was celebratory and conventional, began writing in a more natural style. In his "conversation poems," such as "The Eolian Harp" and "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," Coleridge used his intimate friends and their experiences as subjects. The following year, Coleridge published his first volume of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, and began the first of ten issues of a liberal political publication entitled The Watchman. From 1797 to 1798 he lived near Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, in Somersetshire. In 1798 the two men collaborated on a joint volume of poetry entitled Lyrical Ballads. The collection is considered the first great work of the Romantic school of poetry and contains Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

That autumn the two poets traveled to the Continent together. Coleridge spent most of the trip in Germany, studying the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Jakob Boehme, and G.E. Lessing. While there he mastered the German language and began translating. When he returned to England in 1800, he settled with family and friends at Keswick. Over the next two decades Coleridge lectured on literature and philosophy, wrote about religious and political theory, spent two years on the island of Malta as a secretary to the governor in an effort to overcome his poor health and his opium addiction, and lived off of financial donations and grants. Still addicted to opium, he moved in with the physician James Gillman in 1816. In 1817, he published Biographia Literaria, which contained his finest literary criticism. He continued to publish poetry and prose, notably Sibylline Leaves (1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), and Church and State (1830). He died in London on July 25, 1834.


*Biography from Poets.org

In Reference to the Previous Post

In the name of the Bee—
And of the Butterfly—
And of the Breeze— Amen!

Emily Dickinson

I just read this poem by Dickinson and thought its concluding lines very delightful considering the subject of my previous post. See comments area for the poem in its entirety.

A Fourth Grade Memory

Stop killing butterflies, I said,
It's wrong to have these creatures dead.
Then his reply- which had me freeze-
Was well, then you stop killing bees.

-jwm


Of the Poem (Fourth Grade History):

What an unruly creature of destruction I was as a child. I remember- as clear as if it were yesterday- a time when I was a little boy in the fourth grade playing outside during recess. I tore a switch off of a tree and used it to smack the heads off of dandelions. This bored me, so I turned my weapon against some flying insects (dragonflies and bees, mostly).

A friend suddenly showed up and joined me in the onslaught. I noticed very quickly that he was targeting butterflies, and rebuked him for it. Without missing a beat he said: "Well, you're killing bees." My heart sank because at that very moment I realized I was actually harming something. Remorseful still, I haven't targeted a bee since.

Anyhow, hence the above quatrain.

An Ode on Solitude by Pope

The fewer our wants, the closer to the gods we are.
Socrates

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixt, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.




Of the Poem (Brief Thought & Parameters):

I thought these the words of an elderly sage-poet the first time I read them. Turns out Alexander Pope was just twelve years old when he scribed out these beautiful thoughts. Not only am I reminded of Thoreau and his Walden when I read this poem, I'm also reminded of his personal axiom: Simplify, simplify, simplify.

The poem exhibits the same mood of biophilia that's usually associated with pastoral works; and, much like ecclesiastical books or wisdom scriptures, the poem has a certain didactic element to it.

Considering the sharp and angular works produced by the poet in his latter years, works that could have cost our poet his life, this one has a rather tranquil disposition about it. In fact, I would even venture to say that it's almost a still-frame of the poet's psychological state of being as a child.

It's interesting to note that this poem was done in a structure that's almost foreign to the measure Pope would take up as an adult: heroic couplets. This unique status just seems another reason, for me at any rate, to appreciate its presence among his many others works.

Read, reread, meditate ... enjoy.


****

Parameters

Stanza: quatrain (5 total)
Meter: first three lines per stanza, tetrameter; last line per stanza, dimeter
Rhyme Scheme: a.b.a.b. (per stanza)

Appended:

Note that lines 9 & 10 may seem as though they’re a nine syllable count, but this is not the case. In line 9 the word unconcern’dly should not be pronounced un-con-cern-ED-ly (that would definitely render an extra syllable); it should be pronounced un-con-cern-DLY (almost as if the ‘d’ were silent and one were saying the name Lee).

Also, in line 10, the way the mouth moves saying the word hour makes it feel as though there are two syllables- there are. But the diction utilized by Pope, and by those of his day, is slightly different from ours today. Think of it this way, we have the word 'being' which has two syllables; however, when it's spoken today, it sounds like a single syllable. The same may be said with Pope's use of the word 'hour'.


Note: post photo-art done by Michael Cunliffe Thompson

Pope's Birthday Quote

"Pleas'd to look forward, pleas'd to look behind,
And count each birthday with a grateful mind."

Alexander Pope

Happy birthday, poet ...

Alexander Pope*

Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

Alexander Pope was born an only child to Alexander and Edith Pope in the Spring of 1688. The elder Pope, a linen-draper and recent convert to Catholicism, soon moved his family from London to Binfield, Berkshire in the face of repressive, anti-Catholic legislation from Parliament. Described by his biographer, John Spence, as "a child of a particularly sweet temper," and with a voice so melodious as to be nicknamed the "Little Nightingale," the child Pope bears little resemblance to the irascible and outspoken moralist of the later poems. Barred from attending public school or university because of his religion, Pope was largely self-educated. He taught himself French, Italian, Latin, and Greek, and read widely, discovering Homer at the age of six.

At twelve, Pope composed his earliest extant work, Ode to Solitude; the same year saw the onset of the debilitating bone deformity that would plague Pope until the end of his life. Originally attributed to the severity of his studies, the illness is now commonly accepted as Pott's disease, a form of tuberculosis affecting the spine that stunted his growth—Pope's height never exceeded four and a half feet—and rendered him hunchbacked, asthmatic, frail, and prone to violent headaches. His physical appearance would make him an easy target for his many literary enemies in later years, who would refer to the poet as a "hump-backed toad."

Pope's Pastorals, which he claimed to have written at sixteen, were published in Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies of 1710 and brought him swift recognition. Essay on Criticism, published anonymously the year after, established the heroic couplet as Pope's principal measure and attracted the attention of Jonathan Swift and John Gay, who would become Pope's lifelong friends and collaborators. Together they formed the Scriblerus Club, a congregation of writers endeavoring to satirize ignorance and poor taste through the invented figure of Martinus Scriblerus, who would serve as a precursor to the dunces in Pope's late masterpiece, the Dunciad.

1712 saw the first appearance of the The Rape of the Lock, Pope's best-known work and the one that secured his fame. Its mundane subject—the true account of a squabble between two prominent Catholic families over the theft of a lock of hair—is transformed by Pope into a mock-heroic send-up of classical epic poetry.

Turning from satire to scholarship, Pope in 1713 began work on his six-volume translation of Homer's Iliad. He arranged for the work to be available by subscription, with a single volume being released each year for six years, a model that garnered Pope enough money to be able to live off his work alone, one of the few English poets in history to have been able to do so.

In 1719, following the death of his father, Pope moved to an estate at Twickenham, where he would live for the remainder of his life. Here he constructed his famous grotto, and went on to translate the Odyssey—which he brought out under the same subscription model as the Iliad—and to compile a heavily-criticized edition of Shakespeare, in which Pope "corrected" the Bard's meter and made several alterations to the text, while leaving corruptions in earlier editions intact.

Critic and scholar Lewis Theobald's repudiation of Pope's Shakespeare provided the catalyst for his Dunciad, a vicious, four-book satire in which Pope lampoons the witless critics and scholars of his day, presenting their "abuses of learning" as a mock-Aeneid, with the dunces in service to the goddess Dulness; Theobald served as its hero.

Though published anonymously, there was little question as to its authorship. Reaction to the Dunciad from its victims and sympathizers was more hostile than that of any of his previous works; Pope reportedly would not leave his house without two loaded pistols in his pocket. "I wonder he is not thrashed," wrote William Broome, Pope's former collaborator on the Odyssey who found himself lambasted in the Dunciad, "but his littleness is his protection; no man shoots a wren."

Pope published Essay on Man in 1734, and the following year a scandal broke out when an apparently unauthorized and heavily sanitized edition of Pope's letters was released by the notoriously reprobate publisher Edmund Curll (collections of correspondence were rare during the period). Unbeknownst to the public, Pope had edited his letters and delivered them to Curll in secret.

Pope's output slowed after 1738 as his health, never good, began to fail. He revised and completed the Dunciad, this time substituting the famously inept Colley Cibber—at that time, the country's poet laureate—for Theobald in the role of chief dunce. He began work on an epic in blank verse entitled Brutus, which he quickly abandoned; only a handful of lines survive. Alexander Pope died at Twickenham, surrounded by friends, on May 25th, 1744.

Since his death, Pope has been in a constant state of reevaluation. His high artifice, strict prosody, and, at times, the sheer cruelty of his satire were an object of derision for the Romantic poets of the nineteenth century, and it was not until the 1930s that his reputation was revived. Pope is now considered the dominant poetic voice of his century, a model of prosodic elegance, biting wit, and an enduring, demanding moral force.


*Biography from Poets.org

That We Die- Another Virelai Nouveau

That We Die

I always thought it strange we die
That we toward death do constant ply
That many million souls have fled
In dread before the Reaper's eye
And how it lingers just ahead
And is not far, but very nigh
I always thought it strange we die

Though mortal flesh I shall not sigh
Nor weep beneath this lovely sky
No, I shall ever grateful tread
Upon this earth and beauty spy
And never look to life in dread
For this is what I do defy
That we toward death must fearful ply

envoi

Still, these three things I can't deny
That one day we will all be dead
And that we toward this constant ply
And that it's very strange we die

-jwm

Of the Poem (Parameters and Side Note):

The previous post spoke of that antiquated French form of verse called a virelai nouveau. The above poem is another attempt at this form- a form that I must say is a delightful one to work with. I envision myself playing around with this pattern quite often. The parameters were explained there, but here they are again below:

Stanza: two septets and a conluding quatrain called an envoi
Meter: this form is usually done in tetrameter (i.e. four metric feet or eight syllables)
Rhyme Scheme: below ...

1st stanza: A1.A2.b.a.b.a.A1
2nd stanza: a.a.b.a.b.a.A2

3rd stanza: a.b.A2.A1
Note: the capital letter 'A' in the rhyme scheme represents the poem's refrain

Side Note

I learned about death as a young boy learning to tie his shoes. My aunt, who was showing me how to lace them, advised me then that I should learn how to do this on my own because she "wouldn't be around forever."

Because I thought the statement strange she went on to explain the mortal aspect into which we were born. I certainly heard of death prior to this, but it wasn't until that moment that I understood death. I was terribly distraught, and remember feeling my fate to be unfair ... I thought it was strange that we die.

Now, as an adult, I've come to terms with death. Still, despite the fact that I believe in life after death, our having to die seems quite strange. Then again, from a slightly different perspective, our having lived at all is just as astonishing.

Enjoy the poem.

The Killing of a Spider- A Virelai Nouveau

I was over a friends house when suddenly something caught his attention ... it was a spider- a baby spider- crawling rather unaggressively up the wall. With some hesitation he walked over to it and- just as I asked him not to kill it- he killed it. The death of that spider unleashed a debate between us.

In general, I argued that this thing, this spider, as tiny and as creepy as it was, had just as much right to live as any other sentient organism- humans included. His argument: "I don't like spiders, and if I feel like killing 'em- I'll kill 'em."

The truth is I don't like spiders either (as well as flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, or any other dirty, creepy insect). Where I have the opportunity I'll put a spider outside- especially a baby spider ... but the bottom line is this: there are living organisms that I will kill without compunction (and mosquitoes top that list). I just felt bad for the baby spider.

Anyhow, to make a long story longer, it was that event- and the loss of the life of that baby spider- that provoked this poem in me. Enjoy.


The Killing of a Spider

The killing of a spider’s right
If not from fear, then yes, from spite
For be it even ever small
A dot upon a wall of white
It creeps him out the way they crawl
And so he says that in his sight
The killing of a spider’s right

Just think about the spider’s bite
Defenseless that we get at night
That wound upon the flesh so raw
Whose throbbing mass is red and bright
As if this spider meant to maul
The meat of creatures full of might
And not from fear, it seems, but spite

envoi

His guilt is therefore less than slight
For in his mind it’s as a law
If not from fear, then yes, from spite
The killing of a spider’s right

-jwm



Of the Poem (Virelai Nouveau)

One of the more delightful and thrillfully challenging forms of poetry I've done thus far would have to be the virelai nouveau. The form derives itself from medieval fixed forms of French verse, and were used as a the foundation for song and poetry writing. A clear and precise definition of a virelai nouveau's parameters doesn't seem to exist, but there's no question that the poem's refrain is an essential part of its structure.

The poem's alternating refrain is probably its most interesting aspect. The first two lines of the poem constitutes the poem's refrain so that the first line concludes the first stanza, the second line the second stanza; and in the final stanza- called an envoi- both lines serve as the poem's concluding lines- but reversed.

The poem's structure therefore, written out, looks like this:

1st stanza: A1.A2.b.a.b.a.A1
2nd stanza: a.a.b.a.b.a.A2
3rd stanza: a.b.A2.A1
Note: the capital 'A' represents the poem's refrain

An eight syllable count seems to have been the poem's most commonly adopted meter, called tetrameter- but this is hardly always the case.

The villanelle is another French form that bares semblance, in both difficulty and structure, to the virelai nouveau.

The virelai nouveau usually uses only two rhymes throughout (e.g. right, spite, white, as one; small, crawl, raw, and so on, as the other).

Notice that I took advantage of slant or oblique rhyming patterns throughout the poem ... for example, in the second stanza the words raw and maul are not direct rhymes, but the sonorous articulation of them bare so close a resemblance rhythmically that their use is justified.

For some reason alliteration and assonance were among the poetic devises that seemed easy to employ using this form- examples below:

Alliteration:

If not from fear, then yes, from spite
It creeps him out the way they crawl
And so he says that in his sight

Assonance:

For be it even ever small
A dot upon a wall of white (notice these vowels sound the same)
It creeps him out the way they crawl

The stanzas I selected here for this poem are two septets and a concluding quatrain, called an envoi. From what I've come to learn, the virelai nouveau doesn't require a specific stanza type, but most do seem to have an envoi or some sort of isolated stanza dedicated to its conclusion- as I mentioned, there are no clear cut parameters on this type of poem.

I really enjoyed working with this form so much that I intend to write a few more based on it in the near future. For anyone who wants to take on the challenge of a tricky and rarely seen poetic form, I highly suggest this one (in fact, I'd love to read and post it).

Baudelaire's [Bleak] Sky

One of my favorite aspects of existence is the blue sky- the host of clouds and birds; the medium of sun and moon, of planets and stars; the symbol of that which is transcendental. One may think this an exaggeration, but even as I sit here in this room typing this post, I long for that sky- my heart almost wants to burst open from mystical anticipation of its view, seriously.

So when I read Baudelaire's poem, The Sky, you might imagine the internal shock- even grief- I felt when he referred to it as a "strangling cavern wall" that essentially traps and suffocates our miserable human existence.

I've read dark poems, and this one isn't too terribly dark- but poems that ruthlessly target inherently beautiful aspects of nature and life ... well, they seem to approach a certain level of contempt. Now I'm not calling our poet contemptuous- far from it! I happen to think his poetry to be both interesting and well done. What I am saying- or at least trying to convey- is that the shock value I received from reading this particular poem was a mixture of awe and negative repulsion.

If one reads this poem and the collection this poem was published with, one will get an immediate sense of a darker poet. Bleak and oblique are many of the poems that have emerged from the pen of this French writer, and in many ways Baudelaire reminds me of a hip, coffee-drinking existentialist just waiting for a reason to rebel. Make no mistakes, I respect Baudelaire as a man and as a poet, and think much of his poetry cleverly written and interesting ... I'm just saying, he's different- but perhaps that's where his poetic genius lies.

The Sky

Where'er he be, on water or on land,
Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;
One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,
Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold;

Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er
His little brain may be, alive or dead;
Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,
And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.

The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall;
The lighted ceiling of a music-hall
Where every actor treads a bloody soil--

The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot;
The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot
Where the vast human generations boil!

Of the Poem:

Lines 1 through 6

The poet makes no distinction of persons in this poem- all alike are subject to the conclusion drawn by it; thus, unhesitatingly, does the poet address the world of the living and of the dead- Where'er he be, alive or dead!, he says.

Lines 7 and 8

There's a mystery hidden in the heart of man, something akin to agoraphobia, but more existentially dreadful. We perceive it when we gaze sky-ward, or so our poet contends, and it seems to produce in us wild states of trepidation and awe. It is the sky.

Line 9

Exactly what produces these "trembling glances" is not clear, but what is clear is that the sky draws it out of us, and all alike are acutely aware of it. Perhaps the poet intends to convey the idea of our being trapped like prisoners beneath this massive dome, or, as he calls it, this "strangling cavern wall."

Lines 10 and 11

To call the sky a "lighted ceiling of a music-hall" seems a little less bleak, indeed, delightful- that is, until our poet describes what this "lighted ceiling" is illuminating: human turmoil and conflict where "every actor treads a bloody soil."

Lines 12 and 14

In short, the poem seems to conclude that all of us- rich or poor, alive or dead, Christ's or Cythera's, hermit or sot- all of us are trapped in a mighty pot, a hideous condition of strife and turmoil where "the vast human generations boil", and that we have a perpetual reminder of this ... that "black lid", that vaulted prison wall we call the sky.

Of the Parameters:

Baudelaire's chosen style for this poem is pretty interesting. He basically took the structure of an Italian sonnet and made a few modifications. The first 8 lines (which are essentially divided into two quatrains) are called an octave. In current Italian sonnets the rhyme scheme would go abba with each quatrain. Baudelaire employs an alternating ryhme scheme with the octave: abab cdcd (this, in truth, is closer to the original structure of the Italian sonnet as it was practiced and endorsed by Giacomo da Lentini, abab abab).

The last 6 lines (which are essentially divided into two tercets) are called a sestet. With the Itailian sonnet the sestet had one of two ryhme schemes: cde cde, or cdc dcd. Baudelaire, cool as he is, switched this up a little, so that in his poem the rhyme followed this pattern: eef ggf.

The meter of the whole poem, like any other typical sonnet, is based on an iambic pentameter.

End Notes:

Cythira- an island by southern Greece (line 3)

Croesus- king of Lydia (line 4)

The Flower- by my Daughter

My daughter and I were thinking of a poem we could paste onto a Mother's Day card for her mom. I explained what a haiku consisted of, and she- not me- came up with this beautiful piece:

I love you so much
You're a flower in my mind
Happy Mother's Day

Good stuff, Chelle.

Spring's Haiku

In autumn she falls
Through ice-clad winters she sleeps
But I hold Summer

-jwm

Charles Baudelaire*

Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)

The son of Joseph-Francois Baudelaire and Caroline Archimbaut Dufays, Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821. Baudelaire's father, who was thirty years older than his mother, died when the poet was six. Baudelaire was very close with his mother (much of what is known of his later life comes from the letters he wrote her), but was deeply distressed when she married Major Jacques Aupick. In 1833, the family moved to Lyons where Baudelaire attended a military boarding school. Shortly before graduation, he was kicked out for refusing to give up a note passed to him by a classmate. Baudelaire spent the next two years in Paris' Latin Quarter pursuing a career as a writer and accumulating debt. It is also believed that he contracted syphilis around this time.

In 1841 his parents sent him on ship to India, hoping the experience would help reform his bohemian urges. He left the ship, however, and returned to Paris in 1842. Upon his return, he received a large inheritance, which allowed him to live the life of a Parisian dandy. He developed a love for clothing and spent his days in the art galleries and cafes of Paris. He experimented with drugs such as hashish and opium. He fell in love with Jeanne Duval, who inspired the "Black Venus" section of Les Fleurs du mal. By 1844, he had spent nearly half of his inheritance. His family won a court order that appointed a lawyer to manage Baudelaire's fortune and pay him a small "allowance" for the rest of his life.

To supplement his income, Baudelaire wrote art criticism, essays, and reviews for various journals. His early criticism of contemporary French painters such as Eugene Delacroix and Gustave Courbet earned him a reputation as a discriminating if idiosyncratic critic. In 1847, he published the autobiographical novella La Fanfarlo. His first publications of poetry also began to appear in journals in the mid-1840s. In 1854 and 1855, he published translations of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he called a "twin soul." His translations were widely acclaimed.

In 1857, Auguste Poulet-Malassis published the first edition of Les Fleurs du mal. Baudelaire was so concerned with the quality of the printing that he took a room near the press to help supervise the book's production. Six of the poems, which described lesbian love and vampires, were condemned as obscene by the Public Safety section of the Ministry of the Interior. The ban on these poems was not lifted in France until 1949. In 1861, Baudelaire added thirty-five new poems to the collection. Les Fleurs du mal afforded Baudelaire a degree of notoriety; writers such as Gustave Flaubert and Victor Hugo wrote in praise of the poems. Flaubert wrote to Baudelaire claiming, "You have found a way to inject new life into Romanticism. You are unlike anyone else [which is the most important quality]." Unlike earlier Romantics, Baudelaire looked to the urban life of Paris for inspiration. He argued that art must create beauty from even the most depraved or "non-poetic" situations.

Les Fleurs du mal, with its explicit sexual content and juxtapositions of urban beauty and decay, only added to Baudelaire's reputation as a poéte maudit (cursed poet). Baudelaire enhanced this reputation by flaunting his eccentricities; for instance, he once asked a friend in the middle of a conversation "Wouldn't it be agreeable to take a bath with me?" Because of the abundance of stories about the poet, it is difficult to sort fact from fiction.

In the 1860s Baudelaire continued to write articles and essays on a wide range of subjects and figures. He was also publishing prose poems, which were posthumously collected in 1869 as Petits poémes en prose (Little Poems in Prose). By calling these non-metrical compositions poems, Baudelaire was the first poet to make a radical break with the form of verse.

In 1862, Baudelaire began to suffer nightmares and increasingly bad health. He left Paris for Brussels in 1863 to give a series of lectures, but suffered from several strokes that resulted in partial paralysis. On August 31, 1867, at the age of forty-six, Charles Baudelaire died in Paris. Although doctors at the time didn't mention it, it is likely that syphilis caused his final illness. His reputation as poet at that time was secure; writers such as Stephane Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud claimed him as a predecessor. In the 20th century, thinkers and artists as diverse as Jean-Paul Sartre, Walter Benjamin, Robert Lowell and Seamus Heaney have celebrated his work.

*Biography from Poets.org

Nefertiti

click photo to enlarge (incredible detail)

Nefertiti

Beneath the skies of goddess Nuit
There lies my passion's sole pursuit ...
It's her- whose flesh is beauty's claim-
A Nubian of Pharaoh's name:

Beauteous Nefertiti- hail ...
Arise, dear love, leave crook and flail,
And let us from this palace flee
So we in silent love can be.

The moon has known our hidden plight,
And we her sacred silver light-
And all in company as one
Our secret keep from Aten's sun.

How joyful though this hidden pledge
That loving wades the water's edge,
That hand in hand reflects the bliss
Of lovers raptured in a kiss.

But now that crimson light and hue
Disperses all our midnight blue,
And soon that sacred god will rise
And cast his cope upon our skies.

So know, before alas we part,
That you, dear queen, are all my heart;
That even now I pine to see
Tomorrow's moon and you with me.

-jwm



Of the Poem (Parameters and Notes):

Stanza: Quatrain (6 total)
Meter: Tetrameter (i.e. eight syllables per line)
Rhyme Scheme: aabb (per stanza)

Side Notes:

In Egyptian mythology Nuit is the goddess who resides over the evening and the night skies.

Aten, who in Nefertiti's time was worshipped monotheistically, was represented by the sun disc.

A crook and flail were symbols of divine royalty, and the symbolism behind these tools are exceedingly deep and ancient. The digital picture of Nefertiti above has her holding these symbolic items.

And yes, for the record, there's no doubt in my mind that Nefertiti was terribly gorgeous.

Here's a link to a site that did a spectacular digital representation of Nefertiti based on the bust of the queen. Enjoy.

A Komunyakaa Poem

Happy birthday, Yusef Komunyakaa ... love love love the poetry, particularly this one (riddled with wonderful imagery that takes me deeply back):


The Smoke House

In the hickory scent
Among slabs of pork
Glistening with salt,
I played Indian
In a headdress of redbird feathers
& brass buttons
Off my mother's winter coat.
Smoke wove
A thread of fire through meat, into December
& January. The dead weight
Of the place hung around me,
Strung up with sweetgrass.
The hog had been sectioned,
A map scored into skin;
Opened like love,
From snout to tail,
The goodness
No longer true to each bone.
I was a wizard
In that hazy world,
& knew I could cut
Slivers of meat till my heart
Grew more human & flawed.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

My daughter and I recently read a great poem written by Robert Frost, entitled: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. It's an exceedingly impressive work, to say the least: so much complexity contained in so simple a write. My daughter loved it too and essentially took it for a narrative poem. I felt as though the poem had a representative aspect that spoke of the beauty of life (the woods, the snow) and the inevitability of death (sleep), an aspect that Frost may have only inadvertently intended.

The structure of the poem is especially interesting- notice the rhyme scheme below:

Poetic Parameters:
Stanza: quatrain (4 total)
Meter: tetrameter
Rhyme Scheme: aaba bbcb ccdc dddd (similar to a Rubaiyat stanza)


Stopping by Wood on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


Of the Poem (One of Many Takes):

We find ourselves, as Heidegger might suggest, thrown into an existence that's nothing less than spectacular: there are the trees, the vaulted blue sky, florescent green grass after it rains- an inexhaustible amount of beautiful things. Indeed, the very idea that one is alive- existing- is marvelous in itself. In short, we're surrounded by an incredible, incredible amount of beauty.

All too often, however, we loose ourselves in mundane worldly matters, becoming so obsorbed in sustaining existence that we tend to loose sight of its very beauty, its splendor. Aesthetic passion and attention flees- or at least seems greatly diminished- where social obligations reign. A great majority of times it seems conventional existence is structured to wage war on on the aesthetic heart- "busy, busy, busy" ... "worry, worry, worry" become its mantra, and we seem hypnotized by it to the point that we literally don't take the time out to stop and smell the roses.

On a purely superficial level it seems that Frost would at least have us aware of the conflict between our inherent desire to be one with beauty and the social constrains and obligations that tend to domesticate that desire. It's almost as if the poem has for its inner topic the conflict between freedom and necessity.

The poet's individual yields to that beauty- out of nowhere and just that moment- and takes in the "lovely, dark, and deep" which was laced with snow that was still falling. Necessity then impinged itself upon the moment and called this person's attention "back to reality" and away from beauty's transcendental sway. In the end the individual leaves that snowy encounter.

The point I derive from the poem is that, despite pressing obligations and social demands, we should step outside of our constraints occasionally and take in some of this beauty that surrounds us.

You and I There - XII

It makes me feel next.
You/Me - Not!
Him though? Yes, Him …
… and you and I There? - Joy fraught! ..

-jwm

Robert Frost*

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.

Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.

In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work.

By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.

Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost's early work as "the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frost's career as The American Bard: "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official Poet Laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain."

About Frost, President John f. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."

Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.


*Biography from Poets.org

Colorado Reigns

It's raining in Colorado today, and it's utterly mystifying. Her gray skies can hardly produce a feeling of depression in me. In fact, the depth of my rapture before her raining skies can't be articulated, and it chases away every notion or prospect of gloom. Rain is, without qualification, my favorite weather of all- world without end ...


Their Version:

Rain, rain, go away
Come again some other day
We want to go outside and play
Come again some other day

My Version:

Rain, rain, come my way
Saturate this sunny day
Mystic is thy color gray
Saturate this sunny day

Eyjafjallajokull*

Eyjafjallajokull

What quarrel can I have with her
Who blackens all those lovely skies? --
Let all her heated belly quake,
And let her plumes the world surprise!
She's violent, yes, I understand,
But she's to me creative strife:
That molten heart that molds our world
Contributes to my very life.

So let her fill the ocean sky
With chalky pitch and billows grey,
For all it is to me is art
Displayed on Iceland's darkened day.

-jwm


*pronounced: aye - ya - fyah - dla - jow - kudl

Green Trees- Short Poem by my Daughter

Green, green trees
So, so beautiful
So much as the world is beautiful

I think trees are the best

- chelle -

The Lilies

What marvelous symbols there be
Of heaven and its Highest Jewel-
A living ode to Yahweh's rule
Inscribed on every thing we see.

See, Nature's but a shadow cast-
A cloak, a shroud, a second light-
A medium for inner sight
That speaks of all His kingdom vast.

Her objects to His realm are wed,
And we can see her nuptial band:
That signature upon her hand
That speaks to every vow He said.

So stroll, dear poet, cheerfully
Amidst the lilies of the field,
And where He shows His symbols yield,
And contemplate them carefully.

-jwm

Kierkegaard Parable: The Poet

What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd around the poet and say to him, "Sing for us soon again"—which is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music, is delightful.

Any thoughts ....

Selected from one of Kierkegaard's more well known works, Either/Or.

'Til Jesus Leads

He wishes he could break his curse
And shake the sins his passions nurse;
But here he lay- mere broken reed-
Iniquitous and full of need.

And even as I write this verse
His sins it seems are growing worse;
Its growth- by leaps and massive speeds-
Will ruthless come ’til Jesus leads.

copyright © 2010

Charles Baudelaire- Quotes & Frag

It was on this day in 1821 that French poet Charles Baudelaire was born. I came to know of him roughly a year ago while discovering that he was heavily influenced by seer-theologian, Emanual Swedenborg. I came to like him immediately.

Below are a couple pretty good quotes by him. I'll be posting more on him soon. Meanwhile, enjoy.

*****

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.*

*From his poem, L'Albatros; the French version of this stanza is in the comments area ...

A Mystic as a Soldier- A Sassoon Poem

A Mystic as a Soldier
 
I lived my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God;
By the glory in my heart
Covered and crowned and shod.

Now God is in the strife,
And I must seek Him there,
Where death outnumbers life,
And fury smites the air.

I walk the secret way
With anger in my brain.
O music through my clay,
When will you sound again?



Of the Poem:
 
The poem is essentially about the destruction of internal bliss as a result of exernal brutality- especially where warfare is concerned. We have three stages, therefore, to the poem:

1st stanza: an internal state bliss
2nd stanza: violence done to that bliss
3rd stanza: and, lastly, bliss in a crippled state

I lived my days apart
 
The idea of the consecrated life is immediately established in line 1, particularly with the word apart- a word that quite literally can be taken to mean sanctification (i.e. set apart by God).

Dreaming fair songs for God
 
Line 2 establishes the mystical depth of the poem by showing a desire to reach Deity by fair songs- songs, of course, being one of the highest and most internal displays of worship one can express.

By the glory in my heart* / Covered and crowned and shod
 
The poet, with lines 3 and 4, wishes to show the extent of the mystic's spiritual life- indicated by the phrase glory in my heart (which signifies the beauty of the mystic's internal life). The poet then uses polysyndeton in line 4 to reinforce the idea that this glory permeates the mystic's life in every area: Covered and crowned and shod ... 

Now God is in the strife
 
Suddenly the mystic finds himself in the midst of war, a situation far removed from the rosy world spoken of in the previous stanza- in fact, the blatant transition from bliss to bleak most certainly depicts Sassoon’s poetic intention here: despite ethereal existence, world is utterly brutal.

Line 5 therefore seems to indicate that, though a soldier now in warfare, the mystic's center of reflection is still God- even in the trenches: I must seek Him there, he says in line 6.

But warfare's no joke: death outnumbers life / fury smites the air

The third stanza speaks of the aftermath, the residual psychological condition within which the mystic finds himself- and it's not pretty.

I walk the secret way

Our mystic, despite the trauma of war and the hideous events thereof, still remains a devotee to that which is Transcendental, he's still among the ranks of the initiate (i.e. the secret way).

With anger in my brain
 
He hasn't, however, emerged unscathed. War's brutal aspect has robbed his peace of mind (line 9), and though he walks the secret way, he does so with a pain- an anger- that's foreign to him. His song, that aforementioned state of joyful worship, has diminished.

Poetic Parameters:

Stanza: quatrain
Meter: trimeter (i.e. three metric feet, or six syllables)*
Rhyme Scheme: a.b.a.b.

*Line 3 of the poem actually has a seven syllable count, so technically the poem isn't entirely done in trimeter. I'd like to fancy poetic intent here and think, considering the number 7 is said to signify holiness, that the poet wanted to convey the depth of the mystic's spiritual state of sanctification.

War Poet- Siegfried Sassoon*

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886 - 1967)

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (September 8, 1886 - September 1, 1967) was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I, but later won acclaim for his prose work.

Sassoon was born in Matfield, Kent, to a Jewish father and English mother. His father, Alfred, one of the wealthy Sassoon merchant family, was disinherited for marrying outside the faith. His mother, Teresa, belonged to the Thornycroft family, sculptors responsible for many of the best-known statues in London -- her brother was Sir Hamo Thornycroft. There was no German blood in Siegfried's family; he owed his unusual first name to his mother's predilection for the operas of Wagner. His middle name was taken from the surname of a clergyman with whom she was friendly.

Sassoon was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied both law and history from 1905 to 1907. However, he dropped out of university without a degree, and spent the next few years hunting, playing cricket, and privately publishing a few volumes of not very highly acclaimed poetry. His income was just enough to prevent his having to seek work, but not enough to live extravagantly. His first real success was The Daffodil Murderer, a parody of a work by John Masefield. At the beginning of the war, Sassoon rushed into service with the Sussex Yeomanry, but was injured and put out of action before even leaving England. In 1916, he joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a commissioned officer, and was thus brought into contact with Robert Graves. He soon became horrified by the realities of war, and the tone of his writing changed completely, partly under Graves' influence.

Sassoon's brief periods of duty on the Western Front were marked by recklessly courageous actions, including the single-handed capture of a German trench. Despite having been decorated for bravery, he decided, in 1917, to make a stand against the conduct of the war. One of the reasons for his violent anti-war feeling was the death of his friend, David Cuthbert Thomas (called "Dick Tiltwood" in the Sherston trilogy). Sassoon's close relationship with Thomas was a tacit admission of his own homosexuality, which he would spend several years attempting to overcome.

Having thrown his Military Cross into the river Mersey at the end of a spell of convalescent leave, Sassoon declined to return to duty. Instead, encouraged by pacifist friends such as Bertrand Russell and Lady Ottoline Morrell, he sent a letter to his commanding officer, which was forwarded to the press and read out in Parliament by a sympathetic MP. Rather than court-martial Sassoon, the military authorities decided that he was unfit for service, and sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, where he was treated for war "neurosis" by psychiatrists.

The novel, Regeneration, by Pat Barker, is a fictionalised account of this period in Sassoon's life, and was made into a film starring Jonathan Pryce as W. H. R. Rivers, the psychiatrist responsible for Sassoon's recovery. Rivers became a kind of surrogate father to the troubled young man, and his sudden death in 1922 was a major blow to Sassoon.

At Craiglockhart, Sassoon met Wilfred Owen, another poet who was eventually to exceed him in fame. It was thanks to Sassoon that Owen persevered in his ambition to write better poetry. A manuscript copy of Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth", containing Sassoon's handwritten amendments, survives as testimony to the extent of his influence. Both men returned to active service in France, but Owen was killed in 1918. Sassoon, having spent some time out of danger in Palestine, eventually returned to the Front, was almost immediately wounded again - by friendly fire, this time in the head - and spent the remainder of the war in Britain. After the war, Sassoon was instrumental in bringing Owen's work to the attention of a wider audience. Their friendship is the subject of Stephen MacDonald's play, Not About Heroes.

Sassoon was a great admirer of the Welsh poet, Henry Vaughan. On a visit to Wales in 1923, he paid a pilgrimage to Vaughan's grave at Llansanffraid, Powys, and there wrote one of his best-known peacetime poems, "At the Grave of Henry Vaughan". The deaths of three of his closest friends, Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy and Frankie Schuster (the publisher), within a short space of time, came as another serious setback to his personal happiness.

Sassoon, having matured greatly as a result of his military service, continued to seek emotional fulfilment, which he at first attempted to find in a succession of love affairs with men, including the actor Ivor Novello; Novello's former lover, the actor Glen Byam Shaw; German aristocrat Prince Philipp of Hesse; the writer Beverley Nichols; and the effete aristocrat the Hon. Stephen Tennant. Unfortunately, Sassoon was wont to become disenchanted with his lovers once the first flush of romance had faded. In 1933, to many people's surprise, he married Hester Gatty, who was many years his junior; this action eventually brought him the status of parent which he had long craved. Their only child, George, was born in 1936. However, the marriage broke down after World War II. Separated from his wife in 1945, Sassoon lived in seclusion at Heytesbury in Wiltshire. Towards the end of his long life, he was converted to Roman Catholicism, and was admitted to the faith at Downside Abbey, close to his home. He also paid regular visits to the nuns at Stanbrook Abbey, and the abbey press printed commemorative editions of some of his poems. He is buried at Mells in Somerset, close to Ronald Knox, whom he admired.


*Biography from Humanities Web

Heart of a Poet ;-)

Have a humorous April Fools ...