1.28.15

It came to my attention that Jan 25th is Burns Night in England and Scotland. My birthday is the 23rd, so I'm always looking for famous folks who have theirs /are celebrated around the same time period. From Wiki:

The first suppers were held in memoriam at Ayrshire at the end of the 18th century by Robert Burns' friends on 21 July, the anniversary of his death, and have been a regular occurrence ever since. The first Burns club was founded in Greenock in 1801 by merchants born in Ayrshire, some of whom had known Burns. They held the first Burns supper on what they thought was his birthday, 29 January 1802, but in 1803 they discovered in Ayr parish records that his date of birth was 25 January 1759.^[2] Since then, suppers have been held on 25 January.Burns suppers may be formal or informal. Both typically include haggis (a traditional Scottish dish celebrated by Burns in Address to a Haggis), Scotch whisky, and the recitation of Burns's poetry. Formal dinners are hosted by organisations such as Burns clubs, the Freemasons, or St Andrews Societies and occasionally end with dancing when ladies are present. Formal suppers follow a standard format.

Sounds delicious, yeah? I thought about posting the traditional Address to a Haggis (written by Burns, of course!) but it is near unintelligible to me, so my apologies, Scotch friends.  Instead, have Birthday Ode for 31st December, 1787: 



Afar the illustrious Exile roams,
Whom kingdoms on this day should hail;
An inmate in the casual shed,
On transient pity's bounty fed,
Haunted by busy memory's bitter tale!
Beasts of the forest have their savage homes,
But He, who should imperial purple wear,
Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head!
His wretched refuge, dark despair,
While ravening wrongs and woes pursue,
And distant far the faithful few
Who would his sorrows share.

False flatterer, Hope, away!
Nor think to lure us as in days of yore:
We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,
To prove our loyal truth-we can no more,
And owning Heaven's mysterious sway,
Submissive, low adore.

Ye honored, mighty Dead,
Who nobly perished in the glorious cause,
Your King, your Country, and her laws,

From great Dundee, who smiling Victory led,
And fell a Martyr in her arms,
(What breast of northern ice but warms!)
To bold Balmerino's undying name,
Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven's high flame,
Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim:
Nor unrevenged your fate shall lie,
It only lags, the fatal hour,
Your blood shall, with incessant cry,
Awake at last, th' unsparing Power;
As from the cliff, with thundering course,
The snowy ruin smokes along
With doubling speed and gathering force,
Till deep it, crushing, whelms the cottage in the vale;
So Vengeance' arm, ensanguin'd, strong,
Shall with resistless might assail,
Usurping Brunswick's pride shall lay,
And Stewart's wrongs and yours, with tenfold weight repay.

Perdition, baleful child of night!
Rise and revenge the injured right
Of Stewart's royal race:
Lead on the unmuzzled hounds of hell,
Till all the frighted echoes tell
The blood-notes of the chase!
Full on the quarry point their view,
Full on the base usurping crew,
The tools of faction, and the nation's curse!
Hark how the cry grows on the wind;
They leave the lagging gale behind,
Their savage fury, pitiless, they pour;
With murdering eyes already they devour;
See Brunswick spent, a wretched prey,
His life one poor despairing day,
Where each avenging hour still ushers in a worse!
Such havock, howling all abroad,
Their utter ruin bring,
The base apostates to their God,
Or rebels to their King.

1.27.15

This is a thing which I was going to post on the weekend, but we had issues with home internet. Amusingly, all the other devices were connecting except the computer, which is new. The landlord had apparently noticed that our machine was named OtherBarry (after Archer, of course) and thought it was a neighbor and blocked it. Works now. 

I know I'm not supposed to admit to doing this normally during work hours, but that's where it usually happens. Something about needing one type of work to get you through the other. Used to be that you worked a "real" job to support a passion. Sometimes people are lucky to make a "passion" a profession. I guess some people are lucky to have a passion defined as X rather than as Not-X. When I was a kid it was the former, now I wouldn't be able to tell you what I liked. 

Do you want me to write more exposition, or just slap some verse down here and let you do whatever you want with it? 

Componer

A poem in three parts

“To put with”, dearest Latin, you dictate

how the parts come together:

not even parts, so much as

things which are united.

Items distributed for purchase,

the economy rests on a bench, the bursar

double checks his list.

Disheveled, they are made into art

and reshelved.

The washers and bolts fit

like the three-hole-punched collection

of definitions.

To put is to display the purpose,

active reasoning, choice,

design.

The collection is not arbitrary;

heart, lungs, pancreas,

connected by red straws

inside the hooped cask.

Each was chosen, not by a hand

in the machine, but made part,

with the slow intent of time.

With us, without us:

the divide is delineated.

The collection, the machine, the ungulate

is not one, but sum.

Each bone and piston nests

in the joint of another.

Radii grow, twinned to their partners.

Magnets fashion companions from rare earth.

1.20.15

What are we making with ourselves, our lives? What happens when you don't get to choose? Infinity keeps moving, even with pieces falling off, and something becomes of the remainder. Here it is done with words; a few poems from C. Dale Young. 



The Call

 in memoriam Cecil Young

I am addicted to words, constantly ferret them away
in anticipation. You cannot accuse me of not being prepared.
I am ready for anything. I can create an image faster than

just about anyone. And so, the crows blurring the tree line;
the sky’s light dimming and shifting; the Pacific cold and
impatient as ever: this is just the way I feel. Nothing more.

I could gussy up those crows, transform them
into something more formal, more Latinate, could use
the exact genus Corvus, but I won’t. Not today.

Like any addict, I, too, have limits. And I have written
too many elegies already. The Living have become
jealous of the amount I have written for the Dead.

So, leave the crows perched along the tree line
watching over us. Leave them be. The setting sun?
Leave it be. For God’s sake, what could be easier

in a poem about death than a setting sun? Leave it be.
Words cannot always help you, the old poet had taught
me, cannot always be there for you no matter how you

store them away with sharpened forethought.
Not the courier in his leather sandals, his legs dark and dirty
from the long race across the desert. Not the carrier

pigeon arriving with the news of another dead Caesar
and the request you present yourself. Nothing like that.
The telephone rings. Early one morning, the telephone rings

and the voice is your mother’s voice. No fanfare. Your
father’s brother is dead. He died that morning. And your tongue
went silent. Like any other minor poet, you could not find

the best words, the appropriate words. Leave it be now.
You let your mother talk and talk to fill the silence. Leave it be.
All of your practiced precision, all of the words saved up

for a poem, can do nothing to remedy that now.

Faced with the classic, even trite symbols of death and passing, the speaker struggles to hold on to any shreds of what he can do in the face of the knowledge, knowing it will fail. 

Fireweed

A single seedling, camp follower of arson . . .

Follower of ashes; follower
of the bleached-out, burned-out
cascade of buildings, lotfuls

of whitened soil speckled with debris
let down by a gutted church
still aspiring to an ether-blue sky

centuries gone; follower
of scripts apotheosized into smoke,
notes lifted into air by flames

that all but threatened the entire lane
with the silence we call a bed
of dirt; follower of the match,

the instigator here and abroad,
the matutinal magnifying glass
focusing light into unwitting

summer grass, into cruciform twigs;
follower of the caveat
ignored because it was too small;

follower of the fourth oldest dream --
the landscape burning and burning.

in memory of Amy Clampitt

I liked that this poem was originally in purple text. 

Cri de cœur

The trees are dark and heavy, my love,
heavy with the sound of the locust—
the dead of summer has arrived.

The lane scripts its old questions
carefully down a canyon of trees.
Green, the sunlight shifts

and dims the credibility of things,
and then the pond is a field,
weedy and green, weedy;

the hospital, dirty squares of light
against a background of trees
dark with the sound of the locust.

Sleeping god in an age of plagues,
give us the chance to use the past tense.
Let us, with the charity of middle age, lie:

"Yes, it was all so beautiful. . ."

It appears as though I have found all elegies, of a sort. Well, it was mostly on purpose, since that's the sort of mood I'm in, and they are all so alike. In the vein of "making and unmaking", death is rather stark, but not something we can escape (well, or easily). 

1.15.15

This is the time of year for writing articles about making resolutions. Whatever you feel about them, it is clear that this is the allotted time for humans to look at themselves critically with an eye for reform. Wouldn't it be lovely if we allowed ourselves this luxury anytime it was needed? Making and remaking is a constant process, and confining it to so very early in the year can condemn our remaking to be forgotten.

Here are some poems about the being, what is within it, and what it is within.



Samurai Song by Robert Pinsky


When I had no roof I made 
Audacity my roof. When I had 
No supper my eyes dined. 

When I had no eyes I listened. 
When I had no ears I thought. 
When I had no thought I waited. 

When I had no father I made 
Care my father. When I had 
No mother I embraced order. 

When I had no friend I made 
Quiet my friend. When I had no 
Enemy I opposed my body. 

When I had no temple I made 
My voice my temple. I have 
No priest, my tongue is my choir. 

When I have no means fortune 
Is my means. When I have 
Nothing, death will be my fortune. 

Need is my tactic, detachment 
Is my strategy. When I had 
No lover I courted my sleep. 




Blue Moles by Sylvia Plath


They're out of the dark's ragbag, these two
Moles dead in the pebbled rut,
Shapeless as flung gloves, a few feet apart-
Blue suede a dog or fox has chewed.
One, by himself, seemed pitiable enough,
Little victim unearthed by some large creature
From his orbit under the elm root.
The second carcass makes a duel of the affair:
Blind twins bitten by bad nature.

The sky's far dome is sane and clear.
Leaves, undoing their yellow caves
Between the road and the lake water,
Bare no sinister spaces. Already
The moles look neutral as the stones.
Their corkscrew noses, their white hands
Uplifted, stiffen in a family pose.
Difficult to imagine how fury struck-
Dissolved now, smoke of an old war.

2.

Nightly the battle shouts start up
In the ear of the veteran, and again
I enter the soft pelt of the mole.
Light's death to them: they shrivel in it.
They move through their mute rooms while I sleep,
Palming the earth aside, grubbers
After the fat children of root and rock.
By day, only the topsoil heaves,
Down there one is alone.

Outsize hands prepare a path,
They go before: opening the veins,
Delving for the appendages
Of beetles, sweetbreads, shards - to be eaten
Over and over. And still the heaven
Of final surfeit is just as far
From the door as ever. What happens between us
Happens in darkness, vanishes
Easy and often as each breath


I really like to imagine the view/perspective from the objects of these two poems, and how the objects can be worn by the speaker. A literary virtual reality, if you will. I imagine the other vessels we use to move ourselves around, and how each one changes what we see and what we make of ourselves. 

1.13.15

There is a "cool story, bro" reason I wanted to post this today, but it doesn't really matter. Earlier I talked about our intro to poetry, what got us reading, or first favorites. I think I already posted one early favorite by Christopher Marlowe, but here is the one that has stuck with me the longest. It's probably overwrought, but I like it because it becomes what it says it will become. 




Ars Poetica by Archibald Macleish

A poem should be palpable and mute   

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   

As the flight of birds.

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.

                         *               

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   

But be. 

1.9.15

It's been a long time since I've done a Weekend Words, mostly because I haven't written anything worth a damn lately. However, it's been fantastically foggy lately, and I think I have just the thing. (I hope I haven't share this before. I can't remember)

10/24/13

It happened again this year,

the mist, as clinging as rumors.

Week after week, and people complained,

but I liked to watch it swallow their voices,

each one before the next appeared.

Yesterday I went out with empty sacks

and baskets,

to count fallen apples.

Their skins specked and flawed, were

waxy in the hand

and rotten in the flesh.

Soft and red and brown, they passed quickly

and ran together in the soil,

so different from the hard knuckles of quince.

The sky opened up in the afternoon,

and across the lake you could see

the people stepping out of doors,

over the litter of papery lace.

It was bright, and the mustard-gilled caps

were yellow like the sun.

Today started over,

touching each with the sense of same.

Yowls and cries were smothered,

and replaced,

with the tin cup tattoo of water bleeding out.

(It happened again this morning.

It changed the world)

1.5.15

Passers-by by Carl Sandburg came across my screen recently. 

Passers-by,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city’s afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love,
Records of great wishes slept with,
        Held long
And prayed and toiled for:

        Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by.

This strongly reminded me of Pound's In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Both have elements of imagism, but I was most struck by the shared feeling of looking out over many faces and being overwhelmed. There is a connection between the speaker and the strangers here. I'm sorry I don't have more to say about these beautiful works. 

1.2.15

A new post for a new year, with something from the handy poem-a-day email. I thought this one was perfect for starting out. 



Never Ever by Brenda Shaughnessy

Alarmed, today is a new dawn,
and that affair recurs daily like clockwork,

undone at dusk, when a new restaurant
emerges in the malnourished night.

We said it would be this way, once this became
the way it was. So in a way we were

waiting for it. I still haven’t eaten, says the cook
in the kitchen. A compliant complaint.

I never eat, says the slender diner. It’s slander,
and she’s scared, like a bully pushing

lettuce around. The cook can’t look, blind with hunger
and anger. I told a waiter to wait

for me and I haven’t seen him since. O it has been forty
minutes it has been forty years.

Late is a synonym for dead which is a euphemism
for ever. Ever is a double-edged word,

at once itself and its own opposite: always
and always some other time.

In the category of cleave, then. To cut and to cling to,
somewhat mournfully.

That C won’t let leave alone. Even so, forever’s
now’s never, and remember is just

the future occluded or dreaming. The day has come:
a dusty gust of disgusting August,

functioning as a people-mover. Maybe we’re going
nowhere, but wherever I go

I see us everywhere. On occasions of fancyness,
or out to eat. As if people, stark, now-ish

people themselves were the forever of nothing,
the everything of nobody,

the very same self of us all, after all, at long
last the first.

12.31.14

I just returned from Alaska, and it is indeed an inspiring land. Who better to speak of than the so-called Bard of the Yukon, Robert Service?

An Englishman, he came to the western US and Canada hoping to become a cowboy after being inspired by adventure novels like those of Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling. He didn't seem to find that adventure, but many others instead, as his work in banks moved him to Vancouver Island, Kamloops, and eventually the Yukon. His verse--born of recitations at local social events that eventually spawned his most famous writings--was considered to be lowbrow by literary circles. It often contained humorous topics and dealt with colorful characters. This is one of his most famous from the Yukon period, The Cremation of Sam McGee:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;

It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;

And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:

"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;

And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;

And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,

With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;

And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.

I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.

It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

I can imagine the social events on the long winter nights up north where such recitations may have occurred, and this seems like a fantastic piece for a gathering. It's dramatic without being self-important, speaks to the uniqueness of place that spawned it, and has a rhythm that pushes the story on (although I found it a bit strained in places). I have half a mind to do a dramatic reading myself.