Today for National Poetry Month we’re having something from singer-songwriter Don McLean. No—not “American Pie”. Also, not “Starry Night”. Not even “And I Love Her So”. It’s one that cut to my heart from the moment I first heard of it.
No one can listen to this and tell me McLean is not a poet.
©2024 Bas Bleu
Langston Hughes was one of the many vibrant and eloquent voices of the Harlem Renaissance. And like Yeats and Hopkins and Owen and Marlowe, I just can’t get enough of him.
Today we’re having “I Look at the World” because I’ve been
thinking a lot about what it means to be the out-of-place ones in our society.
Hughes always captures that viewpoint concisely.
“I Look at the World”
I
look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.
I
look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!
I
look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that's in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.
©2024 Bas Bleu
We last saw poems from Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames
eight
years ago, so we’re due for more.
Keep in mind that, as with all poetry, these verses are
meant to be read aloud to get the full appreciation. This may be difficult if
you don’t speak French. It might be a challenge even if you do. So I have
included the, erm, phonetic transliteration of the poems at the bottom of this
post, in invisible electrons. If you really, really need it, just
highlight the space and the text will become visible. As will the reason why
this is a Friday set of poetry.
The poems don’t have titles; they are helpfully numbered, like Shakespeare’s sonnets. Or the Psalms. Or items on a Chinese menu.
“10”
Lit-elle messe, moffette,1
Satan ne te fête,
Et digne somme coeurs et nouez.
À longue qu’aime est-ce pailles d’Eure.
Et ne Satan bise ailleurs
Et ne fredonne messe. Moffette, ah, ouais!2
1.
Moffette.
Noxious exhalations formed in underground galleries or mines.
2. This little fragment is a moral precept addressed to a young girl. She is
advised to go to mass even under the most adverse conditions in order to confound
Satan and keep her heart pure until the knot (marriage) is tied. She is warned
against long engagements and to stay out of hayfields be they as lush and
lovely as those of the Eure valley, for Satan will not be off spoiling crops
elsewhere. She must not mumble at mass, or the consequences will make the noxious
fumes of earth seem trivial.
“1”
Un petit d’un petit1
S’étonne aux Halles2
Un petit d’un petit
Ah! degrés te fallent3
Indolent qui ne sort cesse4
Indolent qui ne se mène5
Qu’importe un petit d’un petit
Tout Gai de Reguennes.6
1.
The inevitable result of a child marriage.
2.
The subject of this epigrammatic poem is obviously from the provinces, since a
native Parisian would take this famous old market for granted.
3.
Since this personage bears no titles, we are led to believe that the poet
writes of one of those unfortunate idiot-children that in olden days existed as
a living skeleton in their family’s closet. Am inclined to believe, however, that this is
a fine piece of mis direction and that the poet is actually writing of some
famous political prisoner, or the illegitimate offspring of some noble house.
The Man in the Iron Maask, perhaps?
4,
5. Another misdirection. Obviously it was not laziness that prevented this
person’s going out and taking himself places.
5.
Another misdirection. Obviously it was not laziness that prevented this person’s
going out and taking himself places.
[1] He
was obviously prevented from fulfilling his destiny, since he is compared to
Gai de Reguennes. This was a young squire (to one of his uncles, A Gaillard of
Normandy) who died at the tender age of twelve of a surfeit of Saracen arrows
before the walls of Acre in 1191.
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
Humpty Dumpty sat on
a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
©2024 Bas Bleu
It’s that time again—yes, Will Shakespeare’s birthday—when we bring out a couple of selections from the master. Always a highlight of National Poetry Month.
Much of Shakespeare’s life would have been
spent amidst pestilence; smallpox, typhus, cholera were just some of the
diseases swirling about. It’s surprising that his works aren’t more drenched
with catastrophic events beyond the making of man. And
here’s the thing about Shakespeare: all his plays about Big Men
(Legends-in-Their-Own-Minds Bigly Men) end badly for the eponymous
heroes. Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, Lear, Othello, Richard III
(and probably I and II, too; I haven’t looked)—these guys all disappear up
their own tailpipes and do not die of old age.
(Well, Lear. Technically he was an old man. But turned out
by his daughters to wander the moors with his Fool, descending into madness,
his one loyal daughter executed...he drops dead in Act V. Not what he had
planned, so I think my point stands.)
Today
we’re taking on Richard III, the last of the kings from the House of York.
As you recall, Shakespeare’s Richard is deformed in body,
mind and soul. As you’ll also recall, Shakespeare was getting his material from
Tudor historians; all
of them were in the pay (or patronage) of one Tudor or another, starting with
the one (Henry VII) whose army killed Richard. (Think of it as being a
historian or playwright with Stalin looking over your shoulder.)
Shakespeare’s
Richard would strike us as a sort of incel, living in the Late Medieval
equivalent of his mom’s basement while quill-scratching out whiny rage screeds on velum about
how the hotte ladyes won’t give him the hourglass of day.
Yes,
Richard is
presumed to have ordered the murders of his nephews in the Tower of London in
1483; sons of Richard’s late brother Edward IV, they were alleged to have been
got rid of to remove any question of legitimacy to his wearing the crown.
There’s a whole lot of hoo-ha about this—whether Edward’s marriage to the
princes’ mother was actually legal, whether the boys were legitimate
heirs, and who would benefit most from their deaths. There’s also a
lot of hoo-ha about Richard being a tyrant, a madman and a
disastrous ruler. But I don’t believe the facts that have come down to us
bear that second lot of hoo-ha out, and I do believe that the hoo-hawers ought
to take a good look at the early years of Henry VII’s reign when he was
solidifying the throne.
Bear in
mind that despite his physical limitations (modern scholars speculate that he
suffered from scoliosis, a sideways curving of the spine which would have made
any Medieval means of transportation very painful for him), Richard rode a
horse into battle more than once and inspired men to follow him. Unlike current
incels who dress up like Meal Team 6 and shuffle into Subway shops in Kevlar
vests and draped with long guns and AR-15s, Richard was both a warrior and an
effective administrator.
Anyhow, Shakespeare sets up Richard’s wickedness right at the opening scene, which begins with his soliloquy, as Duke of Gloucester:
Now
is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.
There’s nothing at all subtle about this: Richard flat out says that—since he’s physically deformed and therefore no one will love him regardless of his actions—he’s fitting his morals to his ugliness. And, by the way, even though the Yorks have only just ascended to the throne (in the form of his tall, hunky brother Edward), he’s already mapping out how to kill the one brother and blame the other for regicide.
Yikes!
So
let’s have something different by way of mitigation, then. I’m giving you
Sonnet XXX, which speaks to the bonds of friendship, a concept utterly foreign
to Shakespeare’s Richard.
“XXX”
When
to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear
friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows
end.
©2024 Bas Bleu
Pesach begins at sundown today. Pesach is the celebration of that time when the Angel of Death passed by Jewish households when it spread calamity across Egypt. It also marks the joyful but speedy exit of the Jews from their captivity; in too much of a hurry to let bread rise. Ergo matzoh.
Pesach is a time for huge family gatherings around the table,
recounting the whole Exodus story, eating (but nothing leavened) and drinking,
talking and singing. Essentially, giving thanks for release from slavery, for
escape from plagues, for the grace of God. It’s kind of the Ur-Gratitude
celebration, and it lasts for eight days (seven if you’re in some Reform
congregations). The meal follows a script set down centuries ago for both the
menu and the conversation.
(It
has been said that the totality of Jewish holidays is: they tried to kill us;
we won; let’s eat.)
I definitely get behind having a ritual meal with roots more than
2000 years old, where traditions flow seamlessly into the new generation along
with matzoh ball soup, brisket and charoset. There will be many households in
both Israel and Ukraine whose celebrations will be muted: no latkes for
20; no kitchens piled up with the food and wine brought by family and friends.
Elijah will find many empty chairs to choose from. But that will not stop the
remembrance and the gratitude.
So today my entry for National Poetry Month is a poem about this
holiday by one of my all-time favorite writers, Primo Levi. The second line is
highly appropriate.
“Passover”
Tell
me: how is this night different, from all other nights?
How, tell me, is this Passover, different from other Passovers?
Light the lamp, open the door wide, so the pilgrim can come in,
Gentile or Jew; under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
Let him enter and sit down with us; let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate
Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction, the Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and
bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences, in which you lean your elbow on the table,
Since the forbidden becomes prescribed, evil is translated into good.
We will spend the night recounting, far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine, the mountains will skip like rams.
Tonight they exchange questions: the wise, the godless, the simple-minded and
the child.
And time reverses its course, today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth. Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Soaked straw and clay with sweat, and crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger. this year in fear and shame,
Next year in virtue and in justice.
©2024 Bas Bleu
For today’s National Poetry Month poem, we’re going to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Adisa Bašić is a professor of literature and creative writing at the Sarajevo Faculty of Philosophy. She was born in 1979 and lived through the Siege of Sarajevo, from April 1992 to February 1996.
The neighborhood she’s writing about here was
constructed in the 1970s. Like the rest of the city, it suffered death and
destruction from Serbian airstrikes and bombardments. Which—if tourists came to
the area, they’d probably see. But, as she notes, they don’t.
Alipašino
We’re the
kids from the neighborhood
that will never end up
on postcards.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
We don’t win presidential elections in a run-off.
And no language do we speak better than our mother tongue.
We do not know that our twin brothers live
in all of the cities of the world.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
There is nothing well known here:
an elementary school,
a supermarket, and an old walnut tree long cut down.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
And we have nothing to show them.
Except ourselves.
Translated
by Una Tanoviĉ
©2024 Bas Bleu
First off, you knew we weren’t going to get out of National Poetry Month without anything by e. e. cummings, right? Does anyone else cover the range of what we might call “word play” with such power and so few actual, you know, words?
Second—I’ll just get right to today’s entry,
because I don’t need to ‘splain to you the power of his images of the crimes of
and against Humanity. This is poetry, folks.
“Humanity i love you”
Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
©2024 Bas Bleu
Like Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell is one of the great poets of my lifetime. Like Simon, she also writes music around her poems.
If he’s the poet of a hustling New York City and of men beaten
down by it, she’s all about the secluded canyons of LA and relationships seen
from the female perspective. Her apogee might in fact be her Ladies of the
Canyon album. It’s certainly my favorite.
The poetry Mitchel's songs seem to go best with her open tuning of the guitar and her ethereal voice. There have been some good covers (Eva Cassidy; Judy Collins; Crosby, Stills & Nash), but there's something haunting about Mitchell singing her own compositions.
For National Poetry Month today I was going to give you “Willy”, from Ladies. But then
there was “Woodstock”, also from Ladies. Or “Big Yellow Taxi”, from Ladies.
And the eponymous “Ladies of the Canyon”…
Yeah, okay—Ladies is the best.
So I’m just going for two of my all-time favorites from the album. First up, “The Circle Game”, which pops into my head every single time I see a dragonfly.
And “For Free”.
©2024 Bas Bleu
I first made the acquaintance of today’s National Poetry Month poem through reading about D-Day.
Throughout the war (WWII, if you’re in any confusion), the BBC
broadcast messages to resistance organizations in Nazi-occupied countries.
Things like, “Baby needs new shoes” or “Uncle Ralph lost his eyeglasses”. There
would be a whole string of this sort of thing, and the “baby”
one might mean “blow the bridge tonight” to a group in Bruges, and “Uncle
Ralph” could announce “arms drop tomorrow” to a cell in Bordeaux.
As the buildup to the invasion of France progressed, it was
decided to use the opening lines from Paul Verlaine’s “Chanson d’automne”
to signal resistance groups in France to engage in specific acts of
sabotage—destroy lines of communication, railroads, bridges, etc., to hinder
the German ability to counterattack in the early days of acquiring a toehold on
the continent.
Broadcasting the first three lines meant: invasion is coming
within two weeks; get ready. It went out over the airwaves on 1 June, 1944. The
next three lines meant: invasion within 48 hours; start the destruction. That
was broadcast 5 June, 1944, 45 minutes before midnight, when the armada was on
its way.
I’ve read other French poets since then (I was in junior high when
I started studying WWII), but—leaving aside the historical reference—I really
like the imagery in this one. “Les sanglot longs des violons de l’automne
blessent mon coeur”… The long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my
heart—doesn’t that just strike home?
“Chanson d’automne”
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure
Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.
If you’d like the English, here you go:
The long sobs
Of the violins
Of Autumn
Wound my heart
With a monotonous
Languor.
All choked
And pale, when
The hour chimes,
I remember
Days of old
And I cry
And I’m going
On an ill wind
That carries me
Here and there,
As if a
Dead leaf.
©2024 Bas Bleu
If you’re a young person looking for existential angst and despair, T.S. Eliot’s your man. I mean, really—if “The Waste Land” doesn’t do it, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" will. There’s no better description of what youth fears (when youth thinks about it) in old age than “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
(He also perfectly described the academic environment when he said
of his time at Merton College, “I hate university towns and university people,
who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many
books and hideous pictures on the walls… Oxford is very pretty, but I don’t
like to be dead.”)
But there’s another side to Eliot, as evidenced by Old
Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of light verse. You’ll know a
lot of the pieces if you’ve heard anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber. But if you
can divorce yourself from those earworms, tuck into “Macavity: The Mystery
Cat”.
I’ve got an edition of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats illustrated by Edward Gorey. Here’s the one for Macavity:
This is a great poem to read with kids, especially with all the
repetition of his name. The notion of a cat outwitting the best that grownups
have to offer (Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office) is just so delicious. The
descriptions link Macavity to Professor Moriarty and the Scarlet Pimpernel; you
know—elusive, triumphant scofflaws. Precisely what you’d expect from a Feline
of the World.
This is definitely one you should read aloud.
“Macavity: The Mystery Cat”
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!
He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!
And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it’s useless to investigate—Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumb;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
©2024 Bas Bleu
