Assault- Another Millay Poem

Here's another great poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The imagery here is especially gorgeous, and I can easily imagine myself aesthetically absorbed on a stroll such as hers . (Notice again here her stress on Beauty's overwhelming presence: waylaid by Beauty.)


Assault

I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!



Of the Poem (in Brief):

This particular poem pulled me into the very moment Millay was referring to, especially the first quatrain. The second stanza moves from purely empirical imagery to transcendental symbols pertaining to savage Beauty, and does so very compellingly. A great poem indeed.


There’s an audio clip attached to this poem at Poets.org, click on the link and check it out.

God's World- a Millay Poem

God's World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.



Of the Poem:

I first read this poem last year. It was so powerful a message that I remember exactly- down to the singular most detail of the day- where I was when I read it.

The reason it moved me so deeply is because I've long understood and known the overwhelming presence of Beauty that exists in the world. It's everywhere, crushing in all around me to the point that I feel unable to talk or move or think ... I see it in the trees, I smell it in the air, I feel it permeate dark summer nights. Beauty's everywhere. Everywhere!

It's a mystifying aspect of existence I know all too well, and it sits perpetually by just waiting for me to pause and acknowledge it, and the second I do- every time without fail!- it breaks in on me with the force of a sacred deluge, and inundates everything I am to the point of irreversible rapture ...

I believe this is the point of Millay's poem: Beauty's overwhelming glory made manifest in this humble world. In the first stanza she can't seem to get enough of it, but by the end of the second stanza she doubts whether she can take in anymore of its incredible glory: My soul is all but out of me, she says, and continues:

let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Should another autumn leaf fall or bird sing she feels she'll loose herself entirely in the beauty of it.

When I read this poem I’m reminded of William Wordsworth’s Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, and how amazed he was that there are those in the world who hardly recognize the beauty that surrounds them:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty

I’m also reminds of a beautiful quote from a scene out of American Beauty:

“It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.”

With that I’d like to say Happy Birthday to this poet, whose date of birth was on February 22, 1892 … Happy Birthday, Edna St. Vincent Millay. We'll see you on the other side.


*****

Poetic Parameters:

Rhyme Scheme: abbccaa (per stanza)

Meter: Mixed- Lines 1 and 4 through 7 are done in pentameter (i.e. five metric feet), while lines 2 and 3 consist of three metric feet (or trimeter)

Stanza: Septet (i.e. 7 lines)

Edna St. Vincent Millay*

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892. Her mother, Cora, raised her three daughters on her own after asking her husband to leave the family home in 1899. Cora encouraged her girls to be ambitious and self-sufficient, teaching them an appreciation of music and literature from an early age. In 1912, at her mother's urging, Millay entered her poem "Renascence" into a contest: she won fourth place and publication in The Lyric Year, bringing her immediate acclaim and a scholarship to Vassar. There, she continued to write poetry and became involved in the theater. She also developed intimate relationships with several women while in school, including the English actress Wynne Matthison. In 1917, the year of her graduation, Millay published her first book, Renascence and Other Poems. At the request of Vassar's drama department, she also wrote her first verse play, The Lamp and the Bell (1921), a work about love between women.

Millay, whose friends called her "Vincent," then moved to New York's Greenwich Village, where she led a notoriously Bohemian life. She lived in a nine-foot-wide attic and wrote anything she could find an editor willing to accept. She and the other writers of Greenwich Village were, according to Millay herself, "very, very poor and very, very merry." She joined the Provincetown Players in their early days, and befriended writers such as Witter Bynner, Edmund Wilson, Susan Glaspell, and Floyd Dell, who asked for Millay's hand in marriage. Millay, who was openly bisexual, refused, despite Dell's attempts to persuade her otherwise. That same year Millay published A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), a volume of poetry which drew much attention for its controversial descriptions of female sexuality and feminism. In 1923 her fourth volume of poems, The Harp Weaver, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to publishing three plays in verse, Millay also wrote the libretto of one of the few American grand operas, The King's Henchman (1927).

Millay married Eugen Boissevain, a self-proclaimed feminist and widower of Inez Milholland, in 1923. Boissevain gave up his own pursuits to manage Millay's literary career, setting up the readings and public appearances for which Millay grew quite famous. According to Millay's own accounts, the couple acted liked two bachelors, remaining "sexually open" throughout their twenty-six-year marriage, which ended with Boissevain's death in 1949. Edna St. Vincent Millay died in 1950.


*Biography from Poets.org

Atlantic Waters

It hugged the pillars of that pier
With trumpet waves that crashing sprayed
And low above it seagulls sang
To I, the priest who by it prayed

That green New Jersey ocean smelled
Of seaweed, rotted wood, and grime
But I, the priest who by it prayed
Felt nary ever better time

For seagulls loved the lapping sea
The lapping sea the seagull's song
And I the priest who prayed by both
Felt high elation ever strong

-jwm

Comus in the Margins

There's a poem quoted in the margins of one of Benjamin Jowett's translations of the works of Plato- specifically the book of Phaedo. The quote there was to serve as a comparison to what Socrates was elaborating on, namely, how some spirits are still so carnally-minded after death that they are so weighed down by it that they cannot ascend to the heavenly world ...

But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste, and use for the purposes of his lusts,—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy;—do you suppose that such a soul will depart pure and unalloyed?

She is held fast by the corporeal, which the continual association and constant care of the body have wrought into her nature.

And this corporeal element, my friend, is burdensome and weighty and earthly, and is visible; a soul thus hampered is depressed and dragged down again into the visible world, because she is afraid of the invisible and of the other world- prowling about tombs and sepulchers, near which, as they tell us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions of souls, spectres emanating from souls that have not departed pure, but still retain something of the visible element: which is why they can be seen.

-Phaedo, 80

Jowett, or perhaps the publishers, thought that a good comparison of the thought above might be found in a section of a poem entitled Comus, and so it was inserted …

But, when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchers,
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.

-Comus, 469

Now I can’t be certain of the exact time I first read those lines, but it was definitely prior to 1995, and therefore prior to my formal introduction to poetry. I mention this because the poet who wrote those lines, John Milton, is the selfsame poet whose works pulled me deep into the realm of poetry years later (which I mention in an earlier post).

I should probably be clear on something here, or rather on two points.

First of all, John Milton is a man- no more and no less than I am. Although he happens to be my favorite poet, my praises to him resemble that of praises I’d render to a friend.

Nevertheless, and secondly (and the self-reflecting point of this post), I find it fascinating that his poetic influence reached further back than I had imagined. I must have read and reread that margin note twenty times or more, and never once- until recently- did it occur to me to find out who was responsible for those lines.

It goes without saying, when I did find out who was responsible for those lines, it reaffirmed the aesthetic preference I have for his style of writing- not to mention I was amazed and happy about it.

One of the very first things I did when I set this blog up was to indicate why poetry interests me. I wrote:

My longstanding interest in philosophy and theology- both sparked by my interest and belief in God- are what brought me to poetry, hence here.

Isn’t it delightfully coincidental that my first exposure to Milton was while reading Phaedo years ago- a deeply philosophical work whose subject revolves around the question of life after death and immortality? I believe that it’s questions like these, ultimately, that brought me to poetry … even more so, respectfully, than Milton.


Side Note: The above link under Phaedo leads to an awesome lecture that I recommend checking out.

Poetry vs. Histroy- Aristotle Quote

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

-Aristotle

A Philosopher's Hymn to Virtue

Aristotle is a philosopher who I admire a great deal. Last week I decided I'd take up another comprehensive study of one of his best known works, the Nicomachean Ethics (this is something that I’ve been meaning to do for a while now, a sort of back-to-the-basics type thing).

Anyhow, this new resolution brought me back to a poem that's attributed to him- the poem's called Hymn to Virtue (Ἀρετή, Areté).

This is a poem dedicated to Hermias (said to be Aristotle’s uncle-in-law), a poem modeled on an early poetic form well known to the ancient Greeks: Paean.

It's very important to realize that there were several transliterations of this poem, and that, despite the beauty of the poem we English speakers are familiar with, we might have lost some of the poetic parameters intended by Aristotle.

Of course, this doesn't mean its meaning is lost to us- far from it. What it means is that we ought to be very cautious ascribing parameters to the poem that are not intended in the original Greek.*

What's more important however, is that as we read this work we remember it came from the hand of a man who quite literally dedicated his entire life to a life of virtue in the purest sense of the word, and that as he did so, he became one of the highest contributors to the very foundations of Western civilization as we know it- and more. Yeah, I admire this guy a lot.

With that said, here’s that poem below, enjoy.


****

Hymn to Virtue

O sought with toil and mortal strife
By those of human birth,
Virtue, thou noblest end of life,
Thou goodliest gain on earth!
Thee, Maid, to win, our youth would bare,
Unwearied, fiery pains; and dare
Death for thy beauty’s worth;
So bright thy proffer’d honours shine,
Like clusters of a fruit divine.

Sweeter than slumber’s boasted joys,
And more desir’d than gold,
Dearer than nature’s dearest ties: -
For thee those heroes old,
Herculean son of highest Jove,
And the twin-birth of Leda, strove
By perils manifold:
Pelides’ son, with like desire,
And Ajax, sought the Stygian fire.

The bard shall crown with lasting bay,
And age immortal make
Atarna’s sovereign, ‘reft of day
For thy dear beauty’s sake:
Him, therefore, the recording Nine
In songs extol to heights divine,
And every chord awake;
Promoting still, with reverence due,
The meed of friendship, tried and true.


*To me the structure resembles that of an ode whose rhyme scheme (per stanza) is as follows: a.b.a.b.c.c.b.d.d

The meter of lines 1, 3, 5, 6, and 8 (of each stanza) seem to loosely resemble a tetrameter; whereas the rest want to express six to seven syllable counts.

Quote: Dylan Thomas

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

-Dylan Thomas

Note: This quote is selected from Thomas' poem The Hand that Signed the Paper

(behind this link is a small article pertaining to that work).

What Will Your Verse Be

Dead Poet's Society is a great movie (and I thought so long before my own introduction to poetry's beauty).

In retrospect, there are scenes within this movie that have moved me to a deeper sensitivity to creativity's expression, and it is for this reason that my heart leaps in my chest when I come across a soul moved by the arts (whether it be music, painting, writing, photography, whatever).

This blog's introductory quote is taken from that movie and remains indelibly scribed on my heart.

In the movie, and immediately after the scene where that quote takes place, Robin Williams' character continues with another profound and inspirational quote from Walt Whitman:

To make video fullscreen click the expanding arrows in the media player.

Said the Crow

My curses gazed upon the foe
Who perched on wires by the tree:
"Just who is it you seek, Old Crow,
The neighbor boy, or is it me?"

Said the Crow:

"I seek for water and for bread,
And seek for murders in the sky-
But never for a neighbor dead,
Or that a neighbor's neighbor die."

Of the Poem:

Sometimes a crow's a crow, as sometimes a cigar's a cigar.

The poem above came from an experience I had earlier this week. I accompanied two friends for a walk across the street when suddenly there was dark black crow directly before us plucking at a puddle of water. An onslaught of superstitious images filled my head to the point that an eeriness sat on the entire scene (my friends felt it too).

Now I hardly consider myself a superstitious person, but truth be told, I've always perceived the presence or suggestion of Death where these birds would rove. Moreover, and on account of this, I've caught myself shunning them, shooing them, cursing them, staring swords at them ... I think I even tried to throw something at one of them once!

Superstitious? I wouldn't go that far, but I will acknowledge that like most of us I've grown up in a culture riddled with superstitious ideologies, and that these have become so interwoven into our social awareness that it's almost impossible to come out unscathed by it (e.g. my examples above).

Notwithstanding, the above poem is essentially a reminder to myself that this is so, that that bird we saw plodding about the water wasn't the embodiment of Death or Destruction or Bad Omen, but was rather ... well ... a bird.

Now we may attach symbols to these creatures that represent otherworldly aspects, and even mythologize or poeticize about them, but the truth is we ought to be focused on the meaning behind the symbol rather than the subject through whom that meaning seemingly symbolically manifests.


Side Note:

In the second line of the second stanza the phrase "murders in the sky" appears. This sounds exceedingly dark, and was intended to. But the truth is it's not dark at all. The word 'murder' is a collective noun that basically means the same thing as 'flock' (hence the phrase murder of crows). When in line two of stanza two the crow says he seeks "murders in the sky" he's essentially saying he seeks the company of other crows- a social inclination.

copyright © 2010

Love Divine- by SGK

I have a friend who produces music and writes songs. A few days ago he recited a stanza from a poem he had written some time ago. After having explained its context, and reciting it a couple more times, I had to ask him if I could post it. Anyhow, here it is, it's called ...


Love Divine

You were my woman-
that funny smile was mine-
but you made it all so clear
when you finally picked up the line:
in an unspoken voice your heart said goodbye
and with preservation for your feelings,
and no concern for mine,
I say farewell, my good friend,
and goodbye to a love divine.

-skg

Remembering a Life- by Nordette Adams

Remembering A Life

I remember him in the misted vision of toddler years
and again in girlhood, the booming voice on TV,
someone grown-ups talked about, eyelids flapped wide.
Elders huddled 'round the screen enraptured,
in fear for him, in awe.

I remember him.
His words swept the land, singing our passion.
Dogs growled in streets. Men in sheets.
Police battering my people. (Water, a weapon.)
Yet my people would rejoice... And mourn.

I remember him, a fearsome warrior crying peace,
a man--blemished by clay, the stain of sin as
any other, calling on the Rock--
Death's sickle on his coat tails,
yet he spied glory.

Shall we walk again and remember him,
not as the Madison Aveners do,
but in solitude and hope
with acts of courage and compassion,
with lives of greater scope
carving fresh paths of righteousness?

I remember.


-Nordette Adams

Carefully: by Jessica Doss

Negative thoughts lead to negative actions then can't be erased.... Trying to move carefully yet at a faster pace... Hiding from the truth cuz secure in the lie... There's no chance at failure when you don't even try... Shackled in the sky by our own understanding... To paralyzed to take off by fear of the landing... Fear keeps you safe from great life experience... The awareness learned might be worth the risk if you're really feelin it.. Subject to personal perception but lacking the self reflection... Questions ever puzzled down the right path with indirect directions... Unwrapped barely naked longing for internal embrace... So blinded by fear that your comfort I can't seem to take... Slowing towards the end quickly yet powerless to stop... Guess the question will be answered are these feelings we caught...

Of the Poem (Brief Summary & Thanks):

The poem above was submitted by a friend of mine, Jessica Doss. In it is found a tension that consumes the speaker, a tension between stagnation as a result of fear, and a latent but new hope that looks upon the possibility of a great life experience.

The poem employs to a great extent the use of cognitive terminologies: thoughts, understanding, awareness learned, perception, reflection, etc. This indicates a contemplative aspect of the poem that the poet wishes to relay. The opening line immediately discloses the poem's creed: all action comes from thought, and, after having come, is then indelibly marked onto the soul.

When coupled with the negative predicates of the poem- failure, fear, naked, blinded, powerless- its contemplative nature takes on a sort of existential desperation, one that painfully desires change and reformation (a change and reformation that no doubt must occur at the aforementioned level of thought itself).

Before the poem concludes there's a reference to an obscure figure: your comfort I can't seem to take. The line prior to this speaks of a longing for internal embrace, so my personal conclusion is that the figure in the following line is God Himself (or some other spiritual import).

As always, it excites me when someone honors me with a chance to read their works, their poems. Where deliberate effort is put into a work- especially where these efforts pertain to aspects of human existence and the world within which we live- I take special care to acknowledge it.

So thank you, Jessica, for sharing your poem here.

Hannah Arendt on Poetry

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.

-Hannah Arendt

Thou Mortal Thread

O thou mortal thread of light-
Frail and flickering in the dark-
Fear not mortal winds that blow
And bend thy quaint and placid spark.
These may breathe a fatal air
And quit that quaking flame agleam;
They, however, cannot touch
Th' eternal essence of thy beam.
Revel therefore in this time-
Though mortal and a borrowed thing-
Revel, O thou sacred flame,
For in thee dwells immortal being.

Of the Poem (Notes):

Stanza: I initially intended three quatrains here, but because the subject ran together well and without blatant breaks they were combined into a whole.
Meter: Mixed; The first line (and the odd ones that follow) have a seven syllable count, whereas all the even lines are four metric feet (i.e. tetrameter) .
Rhyme Scheme: a.x.a.x. / b.x.b.x. / c.x.c.x. (where ‘x’ represents, as I’ve shown in earlier posts, unrhymed lines).

In the following words there are nine distinct syllables: The eternal life within thy beam. These words are line 8 in the above poem, but with this difference, that I changed the to th' so as to reduce the syllable count to eight.

What happens, and one sees this over and over in the world of poetry, is that th' binds itself to the word that immediately follows it. This is not to say that th' is 'silent', but rather that its sonorous angularity is diminished, and when this happens its independent vocalization becomes immediately dependent on the word that follows.

In short, th' binds itself in such a way to the word eternal that it's almost essentially one word (one word containing three rather than four syllables). I intentionally did this here because until this point I haven't been able to employ this technique in a poem. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity here to do this.

A great example of this would be Shakespeare's 147th sonnet , lines 1 through 4.

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.

Had Shakespeare chosen the verses th' in line four it would have turned his pentameter into an eleven syllable count rather than ten. Hence, in the original sonnet, Th' is written to preserve the meter. This was my intention above.

With that said, I hope that if this is read by others, well, it's an enjoyable read.

My Self-Summary by Aaron Cole

On the very first day of this very new year, 2010, my neighbor shared a poem he recently wrote. To say the least, I was excited to check it out. To my astonishment, however, I came to find that he intentionally adhered to a chosen metrical foot, tetrameter.

Now I use the word ‘astonishment’ because, from my perspective at any rate, one seldom comes across a contemporary American who chooses measured verse verses free verse- much less a contemporary American who lives right next to you . That the poem had my complete attention goes without saying.

Here’s that poem below:


My Self-Summary

Listen Hear my soliloquy
as I try to Unravel these
false dichotomies existing
tween the outer and inner me
Not bi polar, but bi solar.
I stand in the crux of 2 suns.
One physical, and warms my flesh
And one spiritually guides the mesh
None the less both are part of me
war wages perpetually;
but separately agreed they make
me the man I have come to be.



Of the Poem:

A seemingly tension-ridden dualism runs through the poem that’s extremely obvious:

~false dichotomies
~the outer and inner
~bi solar (i.e. two suns)
~the crux of 2
~physical (flesh)/spiritually
~and latently, division (war wages) and unity (separately agreed)

I stand in the crux of 2 suns.
One physical, and warms my flesh
And one spiritually guides the mesh

These lines, lines 6,7 and 8, are highly reminiscent of Swedenborg’s doctrine of two suns (now as far as I’m aware, Aaron has never read Swedenborg, which makes the relation of the poem above with the quotes below rather interesting):

There are two suns by which all things were created from the Lord, the sun of the spiritual world and the sun of the natural world. All things were created from the Lord by the sun of the spiritual world, but not by the sun of the natural world; for the latter is far below the former, and in a middle distance. The spiritual world is above and the natural world beneath it; and the sun of the natural world was created to act as a medium or substitute.

The expanse of the centre of life is called the spiritual world, which subsists from its sun; and the expanse of the centre of nature is called the natural world, which subsists from its sun.

The tension of the dualism that’s apparent throughout the poem culminates in line 10:

war wages perpetually

But immediately thereafter the poet reconciles the tension through a sort of Heideggerian acceptance of the inevitable- which in this case would be the fact that the author must come to terms with the influence of these two seemingly opposing poles. This is apparent in the following lines that conclude the poem:

None the less both are part of me
war wages perpetually;
but separately agreed they make
me the man I have come to be

I’ll comment here as I did to him on Facebook:

“Absolutely astonishing display of poetic prowess, Aaron. No joke. The sheer fact that you chose to adhere to classical meter in the face of popular free verse reveals an authentic aspect that, as Plato would say, is seldom seen amongst men.”

… and I’ll add that not only am I honored that he’d share his work with me, but most especially honored that he’d grace me with the opportunity to post it here.

Thanks, Aaron. Great write.

I'd love to hear what others might think of his work. So please, leave a comment if you will.

2010

“Another fresh new year is here . . .
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!

This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest . . .
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!

I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!”

Old Long Since

Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish dialect poem written by Robert Burns, one of Scotland's finest poets. The literal transliteration of the title (auld lang syne) is "old long since" (which roughly means "days gone by").

The poem was inspired by an old folk song, and possibly influenced by a ballad written by James Watson in 1711. Upon its completion in 1788, Burns submitted it to the Scots Musical Museum with heavy emphasis on its oral and antiquated origin.

The poem, which begins with the question as to whether or not old time should be forgotten, has become a celebratory song in most English speaking countries. In America, for example, it is sung as a New Year comes into existence, and the ‘Old Year’ recedes.

****

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne

We twa hae run aboot the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine;
we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin' auld lang syne

We two hae paidled i' the burn,
Frae mornin' sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne

And here's a hand, my trusty friend,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne


****

Since the publication of Burns’ poem and the selection of music that was to attend it, many versions of the song have since come into being (notwithstanding, the common theme has remained the same). Below is a version- a pretty version- of that old Scottish folk song passed down to us here as we exit a decade, and enter a new one.

Have a happy and safe New Year.

Robert Burns*

Robert Burns (1759 - 1796)

Born in Alloway, Scotland, on January 25, 1759, Robert Burns was the first of William and Agnes Burnes' seven children. His father, a tenant farmer, educated his children at home. Burns also attended one year of mathematics schooling and, between 1765 and 1768, he attended an "adventure" school established by his father and John Murdock. His father died in bankruptcy in 1784, and Burns and his brother Gilbert took over farm. This hard labor later contributed to the heart trouble that Burns' suffered as an adult.

At the age of fifteen, he fell in love and shortly thereafter he wrote his first poem. As a young man, Burns pursued both love and poetry with uncommon zeal. In 1785, he fathered the first of his fourteen children. His biographer, DeLancey Ferguson, had said, "it was not so much that he was conspicuously sinful as that he sinned conspicuously." Between 1784 and 1785, Burns also wrote many of the poems collected in his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which was printed in 1786 and paid for by subscriptions. This collection was an immediate success and Burns was celebrated throughout England and Scotland as a great "peasant-poet."

In 1788, he and his wife, Jean Armour, settled in Ellisland, where Burns was given a commission as an excise officer. He also began to assist James Johnson in collecting folk songs for an anthology entitled The Scots Musical Museum. Burns' spent the final twelve years of his life editing and imitating traditional folk songs for this volume and for Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs. These volumes were essential in preserving parts of Scotland's cultural heritage and include such well-known songs as "My Luve is Like a Red Red Rose" and "Auld Land Syne." Robert Burns died from heart disease at the age of thirty-seven. On the day of his death, Jean Armour gave birth to his last son, Maxwell.

Most of Burns' poems were written in Scots. They document and celebrate traditional Scottish culture, expressions of farm life, and class and religious distinctions. Burns wrote in a variety of forms: epistles to friends, ballads, and songs. His best-known poem is the mock-heroic Tam o' Shanter. He is also well known for the over three hundred songs he wrote which celebrate love, friendship, work, and drink with often hilarious and tender sympathy. Even today, he is often referred to as the National Bard of Scotland.



*Biography from Poets.org

A Hymn for Christmas-Day

In the 1793 edition of Hymns and Sacred Poems, under the title Hymn for Christmas Day, there's a poem that contemporary carolers are most likely very familiar with- or should I say almost familiar with. I refer to that delightful Christmas hymn, Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.

The song as it’s commonly sung today consists of thirty lines divided into three stanzas. However, when Charles Wesley wrote the poem (and make no mistakes- it's a poem) there were twenty additional lines, and every stanza was a quatrain. The original beginning couplet of the poem, which is now a repeating couplet in our contemporary hymn, was also different:

Hark! how all the welkin rings
“Glory to the King of Kings”

The couplet as it exists in its current form was a change initiated by a friend and coworker of Wesley’s, George Whitefield - I have a feeling it may have had something to do with that funny little word, welkin.

A little over a hundred years later Felix Mendelssohn would dedicate a musical piece to Gutenberg’s achievement of the printing press. Meant to be a purely secular piece, the music behind that dedication would later serve as the melody for Wesley’s poem (a beautiful choice made by William Cummings).

Below is Wesley’s poem as it appeared in Hymns and Sacred Poems. I would love to know what others think about the last four stanzas, the ones many hardley know. Enjoy, and have a merry Christmas all.

*******

Hark, how all the welkin rings,
“Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconcil’d!”

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
Universal nature say,
“Christ the Lord is born to-day!”

Christ, by highest Heaven ador’d,
Christ, the everlasting Lord:
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb!

Veil’d in flesh, the Godhead see,
Hail th’ incarnate Deity!
Pleas’d as man with men to appear,
Jesus, our Immanuel here!

Hail, the heavenly Prince of Peace,
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.

Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.

Now display thy saving power,
Ruin’d nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.

Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
O, to all thyself impart,
Form’d in each believing heart.

Keep Me in Thee

Keep me in thee in this day
Grace me that I may not stray
Let what's wrought be wrought by thee
That thy will be willed in me

-jwm

A Dark Fog Has Lifted

Years ago- around the late 90s- I found a poem tucked away within the pages of a book of mine, the Dialogues of Plato. It was hand written on yellow notebook paper, and had the name ‘john’ jotted just a little to the upper right hand of it.

Now I owned that book for the longest time, read and reread it more times than I can count. My point- that poem wasn’t in there when I first purchased it used from a coffeehouse in downtown Denver, which leads me to believe that it had been dedicated to me anonymously.

At this point in my life poetry and the study thereof had only been a marginal delight- and this at best! No, deep theological and philosophical studies consumed most of my time, which is what makes the dedication of this poem to me odd?

What’s more- and let me premise this by saying I’ve determined the hand writing to be that of a female- the content doesn’t seem to fit the context of my life as it was then. Had it spoke of love in the sense of romance I might have concluded someone’s secret crush snuck that poem in those pages … but it has nothing of the sort. Sure, there’s the 15th and 16th line, but this is predicated upon the idea of family (line 6) rather than a love-relationship.

Anyhow, I recently reread the poem and, despite a few grammatical glitches, must readily admit that I think it’s a good work. I just wish I knew who wrote it.

*****

A dark fog has lifted from
Confused souls,
We have found ourselves
In a clearing.
Looking around we can 5
Recognise our family
Only arms reach away.
We each have our pain
To hold,
Despair preys so close upon 10
Us all.
But we are no longer blind,
We have the eyes to see
What is held most true.
In seeing it in each other 15
We recognise it in ourselves.
Though we face our histories
Alone,
We survive together
In truth, love, beauty and understanding 20
We live.

".. to be just so clear .. "

A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

-E.B. White

Elhanan

And there was war again with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam. ~I Chronicles 20:5

Elhanan
Was a son of Jair’s
Who slew like David
Anak’s heirs-
Titan men
From days of old,
Whose lofty minds
And hearts were cold.

Like Lahmi-
O that foolish foe-
Who mocked the Lord
With words of woe.
His pride-lust
And his scand’lous ways
By Elah’s grounds
Would end his days.

War-prone how
He towered high
As humble lad
And Lord drew nigh …
And just as he
Was weapon clad
A fatal blow
Came from the lad!

And so upon
The desert plain
Dagon’s pride
By God lay slain
Prefiguring
The days to be
When Christ would claim
Like victory.

-jwm



Of the Poem (Parameters):

Meter: Loose; No less than 3 syllables, no more than 5 (per line)
Rhyme Scheme: x.a.x.a.x.b.x.b ('x' represents unrhymed lines)
Stanza: Octet (i.e. 8 lines per stanza)
Note: The meter was inspired by anacreontic verse.

Coming to terms with names:

Elhanan (el-haw-nun) was a warrior and hero who, like David, slew a giant.
Jair (j-air) was the father of Elhanan.
Anak (an-nack) refers to an ancient family of giants, sometimes associated with the Nephilium.
Lahmi (lah-mee) was a giant, and the brother of Goliath.
Elah (ee-lah) is the field where Goliath was put down.
Dagon (day-gun) is the god whom the Philistines worshipped.

Note that in comments area is a brief explication as to the developement of the poem.

Happy Birthday Milton

One and four hundred years ago from this day there was born a man who would become one of history's greatest poets ... John Milton.

Anyone who knows me knows that not only does he bare a great influence on my poetic preferences, but that it was by reading his Paradise Lost that I developed an irreversible passion for poetry in the first place.

With that said, here are two poems written by him, poems particularly appropriate for this day's blog as their subjects deal with temporal existence and how we relate to it.

(The first one is about the consuming nature of Time and Eternity's triumph over it; and the second one, written by Milton on his 24th birthday, is about time and how he's aging through it.)


To this thy fete of birth
With joy and godly boast
Thy works and thee in mirth
We celebrate and toast

-jwm

****

On Time

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t'whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.

****

How Soon Hath Time

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on wtih full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.

A Quatrain on May

Some want for Winter when it’s May-
But May is haply of my soul.
Should Winter rise by what they pray,
I pray my May their Winter null.

-jwm

Of the Poem:

A fun, simple (albeit cryptic) quatrain I wrote Nov. 9th ... thought I'd post it here as well.

Thanksgiving Per Cicero

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

-Marcus Tullius Cicero

Robert Penn Warren

The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."

-Robert Penn Warren

Under the Influence of Yeats

A year ago* I placed a journal entry referring to a poem I read by Yeats. The poem is called The Song of Wandering Aengus, and it influenced me so much so that not only would I adopt tetrameter as my own standard meter, but the rhyme scheme and stanza type would be sprinkled throughout my own works.

In fact, A Memory of Delta D.O.C. (a poem of true events) was the very first experimental stanza I wrote after having read Yeats' poem. I immediately felt comfort using these poetic parameters.

*****

A Memory of Delta D.O.C.

I left the buildings for the brink-
For Delta’s wretched grounds below-
To interface with others jailed,
When to delight a sight did show:
The prison sky seemed calm to me
As orange tints embraced her blue;
Then Jesus spoke through every cloud
With love no mortal mouth can do.

*****

I owe Yeats a great debt of thanks as his poem- this particular poem- has contributed a great deal to the poetic style of writing I’ve adopted . I thought it therefore utterly appropriate to post it here today- a sort of commemoration and extension of gratitude to Yeats and his work.

*****

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.



*The journal entry was actually on 11/23/08 and read:

Read The Song of Wandering Aengus by Yeats; recorded the format of this poem and scripted a stanza after its manner.

Rapture (by Richard Garcia)*

Rapture

Born to dwell in darkness, this carrier of light.
Denied rapture with the Holy One, called to stand and fight.

For the sake of the lost sheep The Shepherd does require,
a child to lead them from the Butcher's blade,
sparing them the unquenchable thirst of the everlasting fire.

I look to the heavens in search of lost grace.
Shadows of this world I'm left to comfort,
tears anoint my face.

I'll walk this world of darkness, I'll carry the sword of light
I'll face the Accuser of the brethren.
Fot the Good Shepherd's flock,
I'll lay down my life.

Of the Poem:

So many have taken as their poetic topic noble subjects such as love, beauty, romance, honor, heroism, and a plethora of others. These subjects have been so thoroughly exhausted that it's difficult to produce a written work that doesn't sound like another's. So when I come across a poem that has an original signature to it, an original sound or way about it, that takes on a topic or aspect that is atypical, I get excited.

The poem above, written by aspiring poet Richard Garcia, is one of those that falls in the atypical category. Not often enough- or at least from my perspective and studies- not often enough does one come across eschatology in poetry, especially eschatology pertaining to the Christian idea of the rapture. The poem above is about one left behind after the rapture has happened, and the resolve this person has to maintain the Christian faith as a soldier of Christ in what will ultimately become the darkest of times.

In reading the poem I’m reminded of the eschatological poem of Yeat, The Second Coming. I think this poem is a good read, and give much do accolade to Mr. Garcia for the scripting of it. I’d love love love to know what others think of it.

*****

Poetic Parameters

Meter: Open Meter

Stanza: Mixed
The opening stanza is a closed couplet
The second and third are tercets
The concluding stanza is a quatrain

Rhyme Scheme:
1st stanza: a.a.
2nd & 3rd stanzas a.b.a. (per stanza)
4th stanza: Open (with a possible oblique intended with 'light' and 'life')


*Rapture by Richard Garcia
© 09/12/2008

When Last My Heart Gives Way

When last my heart gives way
To a melancholy,
When dim dark steals the day
And grief weeps of folly,
I seek Him and he loves me free
Despite my lack or sin’s degree.

When last my shame has fled
From all this soul contrite,
And sin in me seems dead-
Or dead at least the sight-
I leave Him who had loved me free,
And wish my Lord leave me to be …

… ‘til next my heart gives way.

-jwm

Wyatt’s Rhyme Royal

Sir Thomas Wyatt, along with the Earl of Surrey, is said to have introduced sonnets to the English language. Now I’ve read several of these works- all of which I both enjoyed and learned from- and every one of them were in the form of sonnets. So imagine how surprised and overjoyed I was to discover- this afternoon- that Wyatt had in fact experimented with other forms! I literally just stumbled on the poem below while browsing online.

Anyone who knows Wyatt knows that he was utterly obsessed with Anne Boleyn, a pretty young lady of the court of Henry VIII, who eventually became the Queen of England, and whose death by execution shook England’s world at the time.

The poem is obviously about love divided, and I think the presupposition that it pertains to Wyatt’s infatuation is a safe one.

To those eyes that read it here, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

*****

What Should I Say

What should I say,
Since faith is dead,
And truth away
From you is fled?
Should I be led
With doubleness?
Nay, nay, mistress!

I promised you,
And you promised me,
To be as true
As I would be.
But since I see
Your double heart,
Farewell my part!

Though for to take
It is not my mind,
But to forsake
[One so unkind]
And as I find,
So will I trust:
Farewell, unjust!

Can ye say nay?
But you said
That I alway
Should be obeyed?
And thus betrayed
Or that I wiste--
Farewell, unkissed.

*****

Of the Poem’s Parameters:

Stanza: Septet (i.e. seven lines per stanza)
Meter: The meter here is primarily a dimeter (a form not widely used; consider Thomas Hardy's poem The Robin)
Rhyme Scheme: Wyatt follows the Rhyme Royal perfectly (i.e. a.b.a.b.b.c.c.)

This poem has excited in me a desire- which in truth I’ve had for a while- to write a poem using Rhyme Royal ... in fact, I’ve already begun, using Wyatt's model.

Pontius

Pontius

And know this, my Judean lord
'Tis I that wash the guilted pure
Thy water and thy brazen bowl
They lack the potency to cure

Though earthen silt be washed away
Despite the warning of thy wife
The guilt that stains thy blooded hands
Will 'til Vienne stain all thy life

-jwm

The Witch of Aberdeen

I knew a girl who loved the dark,
Whose lonely laughter plagu’d the night:
She flew a broom of riddled bark
Against the pale of crescent light.

One day en masse her village rose
And seized her from her dwelling place-
Entangled violence ripped her clothes,
And all the struggle bruised her face.

They tossed her to the fi’ry hearth-
Condemned she was by town’s decree:
So that it’s known through all this earth,
No witch will ‘mongst us ever be.

But soft reply would softly come
From copper blazes flaming high:
You seize me 'cause your hearts are numb,
That's why I flew the velvet sky.

Now bones beneath a ravenstone
Condemn those callous hearts so mean ...
And if you listen there's the moan
Of her, the witch of Aberdeen.

-jwm


Of the Poem:

Although intended as a fun Halloween poem, there’s actually some tragic historical basis to it. During the late 1500s James VI of Scotland, completely obsessed with witches and their witchcraft, decreed laws and techniques of torture that would expose those involved in the otherworldly art of darkness. The problem- as I see it- is that most of the people accused were tortured into confessions that led to their executions. In fact, and there’s plenty of evidence for this, some were executed despite their enduring torture without confession (Dr. John Fian comes to mind).

The Scottish town of Aberdeen fell victim to this trend. Take as an example the trials that occurred between 1596 and 1597 … 23 women and one male were convicted and executed (execution was usually by hanging and only afterwards a torching of the bodies).

The Witch of Aberdeen is a poem about a hypothetical female thought to be a witch (which the poem neither affirms of denies), about a female who, after having been condemned by arbitrary local laws, is taken forcefully from her home and beaten and burned to death. The subject matter- though a little morbid- was necessary in order to convey the sad and brutal historical reality of witch hunts and their executions.

That Amber Sun

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” C.S. Lewis

That Amber Sun

Our sun, that shiny orb our Lord,
That star amongst a billion bright,
Authentic outshines all their horde
And is alone Intrinsic Light.

Though Pollux and Arcturus reign-
Whose massive aspect Rigel mocks-
Their heat extends a hellish bane
That captures only lifeless rocks.

But vaulted there’s our amber sun
Amidst those wretched stars in strife;
He’s mighty and His will is one,
And from His being we have our life.

-jwm


Of the Poem:

It’s interesting to look back and see all the contributing factors that brought a poem about- from the initial inspiration and first manifestation of its lines, to the fruition of a work whose many-layered meanings are interposed as perfectly as they can be (I say this of poets in general).

There are poets I’ve studied- Yeats comes to mind- who leave with their works commentaries that not only lend a clarifying context to it, but discloses something of the mental process the poet went through to achieve it. Although I don’t depend on these- as they may diminish a poem’s mystique- I do find them helpful at time (especially as they reveal the creative evolution of the poet’s mind).

*******

The above poem is an offshoot of another poem I was working on. That poem, now in a fragments file, began as a representation of change, the four seasons, and the source of these seasons- namely God.

What spawned the endeavor to work on it was the beautiful introductory to Autumn Colorado just had: with all the golden trees and leaves of burgundy blown about the ground, and that crisp transitional air that called for the Winter, but held fast to the Summer ... I felt so thankful to experience it.

But then a new idea heavily held my attention, and so I stored the one I had been working on away- as I have with other incomplete poems- and pursued the current poem this blog pertains to.

For the sake of what follows, here’s that pervious work (untitled):

From Autumn leaves that auburn wear
The Winter’s dreadful cold in chain,
To Spring’s electric, emerald air
Whom Summer amplifies in train …
What marv’lous sights we humans know,
Who knowing hardly come to see
The transcendental light and glow,
The Source through whom these seasons be.

The last two lines are what planted in me a desire to script out something that would be a more direct attitude of thankfulness and, well, praise. The very first stanza that came to mind, bland though it may be, was this one:

The sun- our sun- though small and frail
Amidst the stars and solar strife
Is mighty as the moon is pale
And from its being we have our life.

Feeling this to be too naturalistic, too earthbound, too devoid of the Giver of life (who most certainly isn’t the physical sun), I immediately began to use other bodies and concepts from astronomy to convey the spiritual ideas I had in mind.

Imagination, concentrated symbolism, and time were my tools for about a week- and then it was complete.

I hope this doesn’t seem self-complacent, my posting how this poem emerged, but I thought it would be fun to share how it came about.

I myself am always left wondering: what amount of time did that poet take; who or what influenced this particular work; what was the context; what was the method of composition … and it goes on and on. And so I thought I’d try to answer at least one of those questions here.

That aside, I hope you liked the poem.

Poetic Fragment

Aghast he walked among the stones
In search of iv’ry bricks to keep,
But flinted there were harlotries
Whom Venus raging put to sleep.
Their rosy cheeks and modest hues
Went pale before the Cyprus groves;
For shame they lost their chastity
To stony hearts no longer Jove’s.

-jwm




Of the Poem:

This piece of poetry is a fragment of a slightly larger work in progress (it is in fact its opening lines). I posted it here in isolation as it was initially intended to be a single stanza pertaining to the Greek figure Pygmalion.

Without going into too much detail at this time suffice it to say that he was a talented sculptor who, according to the myth, was astonished at the improprieties and harlotries committed by the women of Amathus (Cyprus). This horrified his moral conscience to the point that he made an oath never to marry or come to love a woman. As it turns out, he sculpts a piece of ivory into the most beautiful maiden he had ever laid eyes on, and falls in love with it.

The work in progress will be about that story, but the stanza above, which employs Romanized aspects of the Greek myth, pertains to the women of Amathus who had become so obstinately reprobate that their hearts were like flint, where all signs of innocence- rosy cheeks, modest hues, their chastity- all vanished as a reuslt of this and a curse Venus put on them.

Leaves of Scarlet

Rilke’s Winter’s in my breast
Milton’s happy Summer’s gone
Black’s the bough that’s bare of leaves
Leaves of scarlet on my lawn

-jwm

Autumn Tree

I felt ashamed, O Autumn tree
Your cinders falling to the ground
I thought them falling deathward, see
But now I know they’re heaven bound

-jwm

copyright © 2009

perdition

that lucid dark
whose light is done
seems all its moons are crescent now

the fallen lark
and hidden sun
their lights are dimmed- and here is how

the Hope that youthful cherubs knew
the gleaming Truth by which they glew
they flew away from his abyss
where bleeding shadows waning hiss

and Love who once with him did dwell
that sacred nymph from yonder dell
she’s gone to live in Eden’s bliss
she’s fled, she’s fled from his abyss

-jwm

Lake of Fire (Nirvana)

I love it when I come across song lyrics that clearly have a poetic structure. I’ve said this before, and I’ll reiterate it here: the song writer may or may not have intended it to be so, but to read the lyrics as poetry and to then hear the song performed is almost always interesting (I should just say always).

A few blogs back I focused briefly on some song lyrics written by the artist Sting that I felt carried a poetic import. Listening to these lyrics sung, especially in the acoustic version, was for me an utter delight. Now I can’t be certain he intended these lyrics to take on the form of poetic meter, but his reliance on a metronome seems clear enough.

In the comments area of that blog I posted a brief note pertaining to a song done by Kurt Cobain, the late lead singer of one of my favorite rock groups, Nirvana. The song is called Lake of Fire. An observation was made there by me:

Most of Kurt Cobain’s written lyrics (from my perspective) seem a little more chaotic than free verse poetry, but when he does intend a poetic form it’s usually very visible. Take as an example his song: Lake of Fire.

Lake of Fire

Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly
They go to the lake of fire and fry
Won't see em again 'till the fourth of July

I knew a lady who came from Duluth
She got bit by a dog with a rabid tooth
She went to her grave just a little too soon
And she flew away howling on the yellow moon

Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly
They go down to the lake of fire and fry
Won't see em again 'till the fourth of July

Now the people cry and the people moan
And they look for a dry place to call their home
And try to find some place to rest their bones
While the angels and the devils try to make them their own

Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly
They go down to the lake of fire and fry
Won't see em again 'till the fourth of July

Again, I can’t claim certainty here, but if Cobain didn’t intend a poetic meter in these lyrics (which I personally find hard to believe), then he was consciously or unconsciously dependent upon it for symmetry.

I thought it would be nice (and cool) to post those lyrics here along with his performance of them.

Now I don’t expect everyone to love the song, but I do urge anyone to first read the lyrics and then watch the video (I find it very interesting to compare one’s initial take on the lyrics- as poetry- to the performance of the song itself). Let me know what you think- anybody.

As a side note, as the case was with Sting’s performance, watch Cobain as he sings the song … you might like or dislike this particular piece, but you can’t deny the reflective passion he delivers with it.

Ezra Pound (A Modernist Poet)*

Ezra Loomis Pound (1885 - 1972)

Pound founded the imagist movement in American poetry and was an influential poet. He was the first to promote and publish T.S. Eliot's poetry. Recently it was discovered that Pound's suggested revisions for Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) were adopted in the final version of the work, revealing Pound as a sort of invisible "co-author" of one of the 20th century's most influential poems. Unfortunately, Pound's positive role as a teacher and promoter of modernist poets and poetics and as a translator of Oriental and Anglo-Saxon verse has been largely overshadowed by the spectacle of the vehemently reactionary anti-Semite and racist who actively supported the Fascists during World War II, was indicted for treason following the war, and was declared legally insane in 1945.

Ezra Loomis Pound was born on Oct. 30, 1885, in Hailey, Idaho, but spent most of his youth in Pennsylvania. In 1901 he began attending the University of Pennsylvania and then, two years later, transferred to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, from which he graduated in 1905. He received a master of arts degree from Pennsylvania in 1906, where he taught while engaged in his studies. Among his pupils was poet William Carlos Williams. After teaching French and Spanish at Wabash College, Indiana, Pound left for London in 1908 on a cattle boat, where he lived until 1920.

A Lume Spento (1908), Pound's first published volume, was followed in 1909 by Personae of Ezra Pound and Exultations of Ezra Pound. Most of his early work was late romantic in style, heavily imitative of Robert Browning, and probably influenced as well by his study of Provençal chansons. The "credo" Pound stated in 1917, calling for a new "imagist" poetry of austerity, directness, and emotional freedom, a poetry "nearer the bone, " was realized in the poem Portrait d'une femme, published in Ripostes (1912), which was probably inspired by Henry James' novel Portrait of a Lady and which may have influenced T.S. Eliot's later poem of the same name.

Pound founded and edited the revolutionary literary magazine Blast in 1914 and later became the European editor of Harriet Monroe's Chicago Poetry, using his influence to promote and encourage Eliot. Harriet Monroe later said, "It was due more to Ezra Pound than to any other person that 'the revolution' was on."

Pound effectively preached the gospel of modernism during this period, but his own poetry for the most part did not live up to his teachings. He developed his own voice as a poet much more slowly than did Eliot, who by the time he left Harvard had already developed his mature style. Through his "creative translations" of Chinese poems in Cathay (1915) and his "Homage to Sextus Propertius" (1918 and 1919) Pound's characteristic mature style gradually emerged. By the time Hugh Selwyn Mauberley appeared in 1920, with its echoes of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, " Pound had achieved his artistic maturity.

In 1918 Pound began investigating the causes of World War I, the earliest evidence of his lifelong obsession with economic and political theory, to explain the failures of modern democratic society. From 1920 to 1924 Pound lived in Paris, where he was associated with Gertrude Stein and her brilliant circle of American expatriates. He dominated the avant-garde literary movements of the period. He moved to Italy in 1924, where he spent most of the rest of his life. The first of the Cantos, his magnum opus, appeared in 1925. In the years before World War II he published, in addition to his poetry, books on economics, art, and Oriental literature and lectured at the Bocconi University in Milan on Thomas Jefferson and Martin Van Buren.

In 1941 Pound began to broadcast propaganda from Rome attacking the American war effort. The broadcasts, which expressed his complete disillusionment with democratic culture, were largely personal diatribes on the proper nature and function of art and the artist in society - thus, his indictment for treason by the American government after the war was condemned by most artists and critics. The Italian government had faithfully observed Pound's request that he not be compelled to say anything contrary to his conscience or to his duties as an American citizen; his broadcasts were misguided attempts to "save" his home-land from what he felt was a debilitating democracy rather than calls for its destruction.

Pound was returned to the United States in 1945 under indictment for treason but never stood trial. After his lawyer successfully entered a plea of insanity, Pound was committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. His Pisan Cantos were given the Bollingen Award in 1949, largely through the influence of Eliot, who, along with William Carlos Williams and many other prominent figures in American letters, was instrumental in having Pound's indictment dismissed in 1958. That same year Pound was released from St. Elizabeth's under a storm of controversy and returned immediately to Italy.

When Pound returned to Naples he gave a fascist salute to assembled photographers and claimed he was the greatest living poet. He returned to his home in Merano and began gardening, planting grapes and, of course, writing. This period in his life was cut short by a heart attack in 1962. Afterwards he became very elusive and rarely talked to anyone. He continually worked on one singular project, trying to find a "paradise" to end his Cantos series. He took long walks along the streets of Venice and, as friends said, tried to come to terms with himself and his life.

There seemed to be many others as well who were trying to come to terms with Pound. The year of his death the American Academy of Arts and Sciences had turned down a request by other writers and critics to award Pound their Emerson-Thoreau Medal. By a 13 to nine vote, the Academy voted not to award Pound even though they stated that he was a great writer. They cited Pound's political views and past behavior as the reasoning behind denying him the award.

Pound died on November 1, 1972 in Venice's Civil Hospital from an intestinal blockage after falling ill at his home near St. Mark's Square.

*Biography from Poets.org