Poetry, History, Mythology
Kafka’s Sisters With thanks I was tubercular and dead by early summer nineteen twenty-four, long in the grave with my intensity before those three sisters rose to follow, Ellie and Ottla and Valli dragged through the cattle-car years down to forty-five. Ellie and Ottla and Valli I sing, deported to Poland, deported to Łódź or … Continue reading Kafka’s Sisters & The Remains of Old Yeats (2 poems)
Here are excerpts from the last book of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude. Other excerpts are here. In one of these excursions, travelling then Through Wales on foot and with a youthful friend, I left Bethkelet’s huts at couching-time, And westward took my way to see the sun Rise from the top of Snowdon. Having reading … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 13: “The perfect image of a mighty mind, of one that feeds upon infinity”
Throughout the summer I hope to post my favorite bits from Wordworth’s 1805 Prelude. Book 12 continues his meditations in Book 11, which was titled “Imagination, How Impaired & Restored.” Other excerpts are here. Such benefit may souls of humblest frame Partake of, each in their degree; ’tis mine To speak of what myself … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 12: “making verse deal boldly with substantial things”
Excerpts from Book 11 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, which he calls “Imagination, How Impaired and Restored.” Other excerpts are here. Long time hath man’s unhappiness and guilt Defained us: with what dismal sights beset For the outward view, and inwardly oppressed With sorrow, disappointment, vexing thoughts, Confusion of the judgement, zeal decayed – And … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 11: “Habits of devoutest sympathy”
Excerpts from Book 10 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, where he concludes his story of being in France during the Revolution. Other excerpts are here. A poor mistaken and bewildered offering, Should to the breast of Nature have gone back, With all my resolutions, all my hopes, A poet only to myself, to men Useless, … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 10: “In the very world which is the world of all of us, the place in which, in the end, we find our happiness, or not at all “
The Maid’s Thought Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something. The west wind is dead, the waves Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons Whole hillsides burst aglow With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month, And every pool was rimmed With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines. Now … Continue reading 5 Poems by Robinson Jeffers: “Lend me the stone strength of the past”
Excerpts from Book 9 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, where he begins his story of being in France during the Revolution. Other excerpts are here. ’Tis mine to tread The humbler province of plain history, And, without choice of circumstance, submissively Relate what I have heard. Book 9, 642-645 Oft then I said, And not … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 9: “I saw the revolutionary power toss like a ship at anchor”
Excerpts from Book 8 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, which he titles “Love of Nature Leading to Love of Mankind.” Other excerpts are here. With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel In that great city what I owed to thee: High thoughts of God and man, and love of man, Triumphant over all those loathsome … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 8: “A weight of ages did at once descend upon my heart”
Excerpts from Book 7 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his time living in London. Other excerpts are here. Above all, one thought Baffled my understanding, how men lived Even next-door neighbours, as we say, yet still Strangers, and not knowing each other’s names. Book 7, 117-120 Shall I give way, Copying the … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 7: “This parliament of monsters”
Excerpts from Book 6 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his friendship with Coleridge. Other excerpts are here. There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair, No languor, no dejection, no dismay, No absence scarcely can there be, for those Who love as we do. Book 6, 253-256 I too have been a wanderer, but, … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 6: “No absence scarcely can there be, for those who love as we do.”
Excerpts from Book 5 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his love for books. Other excerpts are here. And yet it seems That here, in memory of all … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 5: “Stirred to ecstasy by glittering verse”
Excerpts from Book 4 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his time home from college. Other excerpts are here. Why should I speak of what a thousand hearts Have felt, and every man alive can guess? Book 4: 33-34 Delighted did I take my place again At our domestic table; and, dear friend, Relating … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 4: “Need I say, dear friend, that to the brim my heart was full?”
Excerpts from Book 3 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, on his years at Cambridge. Other excerpts are here. Things they were which then I did not love, nor do I love them now: Such glory was but little sought by me, And little won. But it is right to say That even so early, from … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 3: “Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich”
Excerpts from Book 2 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude. Other excerpts are here. Thus the pride of strength And the vainglory of superior skill Were interfused with objects which subdued And tempered them, and gradually produced A quiet independence of heart. And to my friend who knows me I may add, Unapprehensive of reproof, that … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 2: “The self-sufficing power of solitude”
The Figured Wheel The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and prisons, Over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little downtowns. Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive and grinds The remains of the dead in the cemeteries, in unmarked graves and oceans. Sluiced by salt water and fresh, by pure and contaminated rivers, … Continue reading Robert Pinsky, “The Figured Wheel”
Excerpts from Book 1 of Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude. Other excerpts are here. Time, place, and manners, these I seek, and these I find in plenteous store, but nowhere such As may be singled out with steady choice – No little band of yet remembered names Whom I, in perfect confidence, might hope To summon … Continue reading Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude, Book 1: “Invigorating thoughts from former years”
From the second of Virgil’s Georgics, translated by David Ferry: It’s spring that adorns the woods and groves with leaves; In spring the soil, desiring seed, is tumid, And then the omnipotent father god descends In showers from the sky and enters into The joyful bridal body of the earth, His greatness and her greatness … Continue reading “the shining days when the world was new”: Virgil Greets the Spring
Crow’s Song about God Somebody is sitting Under the gatepost of heaven Under the lintel On which are written the words: “Forbidden to the living.” A knot of eyes, eyeholes, lifeless, in the life-shape A rooty old oak-stump, aground in the ooze Of some putrid estuary, Snaggy with amputations, His fingernails broken and bitten, His … Continue reading Ted Hughes – “Crow’s Song about God”
Some poetry can become so much a part of our own personal scripture that its status as “literature” is pretty much irrelevant. This is near the top for me: From “East Coker” I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in … Continue reading T. S. Eliot hits the highest notes
from 21 Love Poems: 1 Whenever in this city, screens flicker with pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash, we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties of our own neighborhoods. We need to grasp our lives inseparable from those … Continue reading Adrienne Rich: 4 Love Poems
Inscription for a Gravestone I am not dead, I have only become inhuman: That is to say, Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities, But not as a man Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete Stripping for the race. The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer Of certain fictions … Continue reading 2 Poems by Robinson Jeffers that shoot straight into eternity
Six Young Men The celluloid of a photograph holds them well – Six young men, familiar to their friends. Four decades that have faded and ochre-tinged This photograph have not wrinkled the faces or the hands. Though their cocked hats are not now fashionable, Their shoes shine. One imparts an intimate smile, One chews a … Continue reading Ted Hughes: 2 War Poems
Emily Dickinson, #975 The Mountain sat upon the Plain In his tremendous Chair – His observation omnifold, His inquest, everywhere – The Seasons played around his knees Like Children round a sire – Grandfather of the Days is He Of Dawn, the Ancestor – Wallace Stevens, “How to Live. What to Do” Last evening the … Continue reading Emily Dickinson & Wallace Stevens Climb a Mountain
Here is how James Merrill begins his 560 page poem, The Changing Light at Sandover, published between 1976 and 1982; it being the record of his conversations with a Ouija board, & with the spirits of W. H. Auden & many many others: Admittedly I err by undertaking This in its present form. The baldest prose … Continue reading James Merrill: A Poem to Begin Things
#1142 The Props assist the House Until the House is built And then the Props withdraw And adequate, erect, The House support itself And cease to recollect The Augur and the Carpenter – Just such a retrospect Hath the perfected Life – A Past of Plank and Nail And slowness – then the scaffolds drop … Continue reading Emily Dickinson Affirms a Soul
Many thanks to Sarah Law over at Amethyst, a journal focusing on poetry and the sacred, for publishing my poem on the sanctuaries of the Gauls in ancient France. You can read it here. Continue reading “the wordless, most unassembled spread of oak”: new poem at Amethyst
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives … Continue reading Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”
Paterson What do I want in these rooms papered with visions of money? How much can I make by cutting my hair? If I put new heels on my shoes, bathe my body reeking of masturbation and sweat, layer upon layer of excrement dried in employment bureaus, magazine hallways, statistical cubicles, factory stairways, cloakrooms of … Continue reading Allen Ginsberg, “Paterson”
“Out, Out – ” The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw … Continue reading Robert Frost: “Out, Out – ”
My Grandmother’s Love Letters There are no stars tonight But those of memory. Yet how much room for memory there is In the loose girdle of soft rain. There is even room enough For the letters of my mother’s mother, Elizabeth, That have been pressed so long Into a corner of the roof That they … Continue reading Hart Crane: “My Grandmother’s Love Letters”
After finishing To the House of the Sun, a poem mostly reliant on translations of ancient poetry (and in some ways the book now feels like something I translated), I had to find my way back to English poetry. One way was through the Penguin anthologies of Renaissance, Metaphysical, Romantic and Victorian poetry. They included … Continue reading Mary Robinson’s Poem “A London Summer Morning”
Bobby Delano The labor to breathe that younger, rawer air: St. Mark’s last football game with Groton lost on the ice-crust, the sunlight gilding the golden polo coats of boys with country seats on the Upper Hudson. Why does that stale light stay? First Form hazing, first day being sent on errands by an oldboy, … Continue reading 3 Poems of Adolescent Love & Hazing by Robert Lowell
The Shampoo The still explosions on the rocks, the lichens, grow by spreading, gray, concentric shocks. They have arranged to meet the rings around the moon, although within our memories they have not changed. And since the heavens will attend as long on us, you’ve been, dear friend, precipitate and pragmatical; and look what happens. … Continue reading Elizabeth Bishop, “The Shampoo”
Back in the late nineties when a place called Borders Outlet still existed and Amazon was only a few years old, that was about the only store I could find – and afford – to buy brand new poetry books by that elusive species, The Poet Who Wasn’t Long Dead. Of all the books I … Continue reading Laurie Sheck’s poem “The Stockroom”
A young Seamus Heaney recalls a blacksmith from his boyhood, while a much older Seamus Heaney illustrates the sometimes excessive power of retributive force (he says he was inspired by the U. S. military response to 9/11) by the swinging of a sledgehammer. The Forge All I know is a door into the … Continue reading “All I know is a door into the dark”: 2 Poems by Seamus Heaney
Walt Whitman, early 1863, looking on the Civil War dead: A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, … Continue reading Walt Whitman, “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim”
Here are some bits from Kafka’s Diaries, trying & failing to harmonize his writing life with his family and work life. All writers have been to some version of this, but few things are as heartbreaking as reading Kafka’s version of it. The first entry is one of the few moments of real elation he … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #14: Kafka Tries Again & Again
Here’s the twenty-third psalm of American poetry, & the place where Wallace Stevens brought so much of his complexity (despite his usual high-falutin title) to a stunning simplicity. It’s also a great love poem: Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest … Continue reading Wallace Stevens, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”
Even though I’ve never read a word of his poetry, John Berryman has been haunting me lately. Two friends who are also poets that I admire deeply have both praised his work, and recently I’ve come across remarks from a handful of Berryman’s peers, reflecting on his life and his suicide in 1972. Here are … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #13: Richard Wilbur & John Berryman: “The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him”
I’m stunned every time I read this: one of Wordsworth’s best short poems (& that’s saying something), & perhaps one of the great poems period: St. Paul’s Pressed with conflicting thoughts of love and fear I parted from thee, Friend! and took my way Through the great City, pacing with an eye Downcast, ear sleeping, … Continue reading Wordsworth & Eternity at St. Paul’s
If the Negro, or any other writer, is going to do what is expected of him, he’s lost the battle before the takes the field. I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance – but it must be acceptance on his own terms. Perhaps, … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #12: Ralph Ellison, Anthony Burgess, James Dickey
George Eliot, on empathy: The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies…. Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. The only effect I … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #11: George Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Philip Levine, Stephen King, Seamus Heaney: “struggling erring human creatures”
A random scattering, some barely aphorisms, from the first two volumes of the notebooks of Albert Camus. They are gold: One must not cut oneself off from the world. No one who lives in the sunlight makes a failure of his life. My whole effort, whatever the situation, misfortune or disillusion, must be to make … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #10: Albert Camus: “Dissolve in love”
On the supposed “difficulty” of his poetry: We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #9: Geoffrey Hill, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, James Merrill, Ursula K. Le Guin: “We are difficult”
As even “nerd culture” and all the rest just becomes another snobby fad and pop culture corner to hide in, Patti Smith suggests where the real “next” actually is, out of view completely:…when people ask me Who’s the new people?, well to me the new people are the unknown people. The new people that I … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #8: Patti Smith, Toni Morrison, T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane: “I shall make every sacrifice toward that end”
On why he turned from more specialized to more popular writing on science and culture: Because of that [the use of scientific knowledge in the making of atomic bombs] I wanted to be sure that what I had to say would not be confined to a small circle of specialists but would touch people where … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #7: Bronowski, Bloom, Munro, Gilbert, Trevor
Some great quotes from W. B. Yeats and William Blake, chosen almost at random from two good biographies of them; there are no doubt thousands more, & should you have other favorites, do add them in the comments: From a young W. B. Yeats: …my ever multiplying boxes of unsaleable MSS – work too strange … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #6: Yeats & Blake
On why he wrote about animals so much: I suppose because they were there at the beginning. Like parents. Since I spent my first seventeen or eighteen years constantly thinking about them more or less, they became a language – a symbolic language which is also the language of my whole life. It was not … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #5: Hughes, Auden, Hall, Pinsky, Collins
Flannery O’Connor responds to questions from academics and their students about her short stories: Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #4: O’Connor, Campbell, Merwin, Walcott, van Gogh
Advice to aspiring poets: If you can, get out. Everything else in the world pays better. Everything else in the world costs less, not only in terms of money but in terms of damage to your life. Everything else in the world is more justly rewarded. If you can be happy doing something else, the … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #3: Snodgrass, Beethoven, Hollander, Kunitz, Milosz
Quotes from all over on art & creativity: [Leonardo] was always less concerned with the finishing of a picture than with its conception. His ideal would consist of imagining the picture and getting someone else to paint it: invention was what mattered most to him. Painting was above all “a thing of the mind.” As … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #2: Leonardo, Williams, Bishop, Meredith, Ashbery
A new series of quotes from everywhere on writing and creativity: I was in the Navy, and I worked at a shore station in New York. Late in ’44, I was assigned to CINPAC – the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Ocean – at Pearl Harbor, and when that command moved to the Marianas, to Guam, I went … Continue reading The Poet Speaks #1: Fitzgerald, Larkin, Paz, Lowell, Aiken
Many thanks to the editors of Crannóg, who published my poem “Cauldron & Drink” in their most recent issue. It’s one of my favorites from my upcoming book of poems from old Europe. For readers outside of Ireland and the UK, I’ve pasted an image from the journal below, although I would encourage everyone to … Continue reading “Cauldron & Drink” – New Poem at Crannóg
It’s been said of Picasso: “At the age of sixteen, he produced two paintings which were of academic perfection…. So what do you do with your life if you’re producing academically perfect works at the age of sixteen? Every step afterwards is an innovation.” Indeed, whether you like where Picasso went or not, it’s undeniable … Continue reading What’s a Genius to Do?
What use does criticism serve, if any? I’m thinking here of the reviews of books, movies, or music, whether the smallest notices in newspapers on up to book-length studies. Do some of us genuinely enjoy a good suggestion? Have we found a handful of voices that we trust, that feel like a friend, and so … Continue reading To Criticize the Critic
SAY IT WITH ME: THIS IS SATIRE! I’ve been silent long enough. When college students complained in 2015 that the Asian-themed food in their cafeteria was a mockery and appropriation of a grand culinary tradition, I said nothing. College students have no money after all, why should they complain about bad food, no matter its … Continue reading If You Don’t Believe in Cultural Appropriation, You’re Wrong: A Satire
To celebrate Walt Whitman’s birthday today, S4N Books is announcing their new series, Pocket Poems. It will feature classic long poems and books of poetry in small pocket-sized editions. The first three volumes are now available: the 1855 and 1892 editions of Whitman’s Song of Myself, and Alfred Tennyson’s elegy, In Memoriam. Future titles will … Continue reading New Poetry Series
A recent article tells the astonishing story about theatre majors who were unable to act out flirting: “Accustomed to soliciting one another via text, and more used to hookups than dates, this verb was no longer a touchstone for college students, and ‘flirting’ did not elicit any specific physical or emotional behaviors (sustained eye contact, … Continue reading Early Yeats (12 Poems)
Here’s W. B. Yeats recalling his earliest experiences of poetry: ….This may have come from the stable-boy, for he was my principal friend. He had a book of Orange rhymes, and the days when we read them together in the hay-loft gave me the pleasure of rhyme for the first time. Later on I can … Continue reading Yeats Discovers Poetry
Is there anything better than T. S. Eliot talking about his debt to Dante? Here is the majority of his famous essay “What Dante Means to Me” (hence my own “What Eliot Means to Me”), which can be found in his collection of essays, To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings. The essay was originally … Continue reading T. S. Eliot on Dante
Here are some bits on writing, nature, and anonymous everyday life from Wallace Stevens, that quiet murmur of American poetry who may well outlast nearly everybody. The following are from his letters and journals, from 1898 to 1955, only a few months before his death at seventy-five. That a poet so technically isolated (and gladly … Continue reading Wallace Stevens, Intergalactic Planetary
Here are some of Seamus Heaney’s memories of reading, writing, and poetry, from earliest schooldays to university, all taken from Dennis O’Driscoll’s wonderful book-length interview with him, Stepping Stones. Yes, my memory of learning to read goes back to my first days in Anahorish School, the charts for the letters, the big-lettered reading books. But … Continue reading Heaney Comes to Poetry
In early January, 1924, the poet Hart Crane, twenty-four and basically broke, received a letter from his father offering to hire him into the family business. To a friend, Crane wrote, “Along comes a letter from my father this morning offering me a position with him as travelling salesman! This is unacceptable, of course, even … Continue reading Hart Crane to His Father
