The cruelest month: toujours gai

Okay, I’ve given you some high-flown stuff for National Poetry Month. Looking back on it, a lot of it has dealt with heavy-duty subjects. Tennyson and Thomas, on reaching the end of one’s life; Arnold, on the loss of joy, love, light, certitude, peace and  help for pain; Yeats, on the shattering of pretty much the same.

It’s time for a bit of a break, for an entirely different perspective on things. Like from a vers libre poet reincarnated as a cockroach, writing on an old newsroom manual typewriter. Which he does as described thus by his “literary agent”, Don Marquis:

”He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.”

Now, when I started in the newsroom at the Pasadena Star News, we used those old manual typewriters, which is why—to this day—I smack the hell out of any keyboard I use, because you had to apply a lot of force to the keys to get the letters to strike the page. So give it up for archy, who loves an alley cat named mehitabel (a female feline who gives new meaning to the phrase, “she’s been around”) so much that every night he pours his heart (and pulps his head) out to her glory.

(I must have been in high school when I first came across archy and mehitabel. But what I remember is mentioning the poems to my mother, who had known them from when they’d been syndicated in the newspapers she read as a young woman. At the time I’m sure I thought it more bizarre that Mom had read poems than that a cockroach would write them.)

Do not be deceived by his present appearance, however; archy is definitely tackling the Big Things—transmigration, descent into hell, beer. There are plenty of allusions splattered through the poems; I had to look up Gambrinus.) You have to set yourself down one evening in a darkened room, with just one lamp on (with maybe a glass of whisky), and take up with archy and mehitabel.

archy’s writing style—no caps, no punctuation—has been revived in today’s texting/IMing world. The difference is, he knows what he’s doing, and he's making a point in the process.

Anyhow, by way of introduction, I give you “the song of mehitabel”:

this is the song of mehitabel

of mehitabel the alley cat

as i wrote you before boss

mehitabel is a believer

in the pythagorean

theory of the transmigration

of the soul and she claims

that formerly her spirit

was incarnated in the body

of cleopatra

that was a long time ago

and one must not be

surprised if mehitabel

has forgotten some of her

more regal manners

i have had my ups and downs

but wotthehell wotthehell

yesterday sceptres and crowns

fried oysters and velvet gowns

and today i herd with bums

but wotthehell wotthehell

i wake the world from sleep

as i caper and sing and leap

when i sing my wild free tune

wotthehell wotthehell

under the blear eyed moon

i am pelted with cast off shoon

but wotthehell wotthehell

do you think that i would change

my present freedom to range

for a castle or moated grange

wotthehell wotthehell

cage me and i d go frantic

my life is so romantic

capricious and corybantic

and i m toujours gai toujours gai

i know that i am bound

for a journey down the sound

in the midst of a refuse mound

but wotthehell wotthehell

oh i should worry and fret

death and i will coquette

there s a dance in the old dame yet

toujours gai toujours gai

i once was an innocent kit

wotthehell wotthehell

with a ribbon my neck to fit

and bells tied onto it

o wotthehell wotthehell

but a maltese cat came by

with a come hither look in his eye

and a song that soared to the sky

and wotthehell wotthehell

and i followed adown the street

the pad of his rhythmical feet

o permit me again to repeat

wotthehell wotthehell

my youth i shall never forget

but there s nothing i really regret

wotthehell wotthehell

there s a dance in the old dame yet

toujours gai toujours gai

the things that i had not ought to

i do because i ve gotto

wotthehell wotthehell

and i end with my favorite motto

toujours gai toujours gai

boss sometimes i think

that our friend mehitabel

is a trifle too gay

You can find more of a sampling here.

The cruelest month: The blood-dimmed tide

When it comes to my featured National Poetry Month poet for today, I’m back to my Shakespeare problem: the poet is William Butler Yeats, And which of his poems do I pick?

The one that introduced me to him was “Lake Isle of Innisfree”. That was in high school. And the poem that sparked the argu—I mean, discussion about poetic meaning versus sounds with my French professor was “Host of the Air”. And then there's "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death"; see what I mean?

(And, MSWord, are you kidding me? You’re not recognizing Innisfree?)

You can get lost in Yeats, or in any of his poems. I have done, many, many times. It’s hard to pick up anything he’s written and not become completely enmeshed in his imagery, in the world he builds. I was walking around the Sligo countryside (okay—this is just beyond the beyond: MSWord doesn’t like Sligo) a good 20 years on from high school and completely thought, “peace comes dropping slow”—that’s how much Yeats gets into your blood.

So, I don’t know what to give you.

Well—I’ll start with “Easter, 1916”. The historical event—one of the periodic attempts by the Irish to drive out the English; this one was supposed to be funded and supplied by the Germans, who reckoned that they could benefit from Britain facing a two-front war, so to speak. The old Irish motto has always been, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”, but in this instance, there was confusion, lack of coordination and an unexpected reaction from the English involving heavy artillery and vicious executions of the leadership.

(Why, exactly, that came as a surprise I’m not clear. But that whole Anglo-Irish situation isn’t going to be solved or even explained in a single post, so we’ll just carry on, okay?)

It was a whole thing. And I’ve made my own pilgrimage to the General Post Office, where you could still see the bullet holes (like you can at Chapultepec). Yeats was an Irish nationalist, but not a revolutionary. He decried the use of violence, as, indeed, did a large number of the Irish—until the Brits started the summary executions. And--like the man said—a terrible beauty was born.

(Yeats was so revolted by the executions that he was even willing to count John MacBride as a hero/martyr—whom he loathed as the drunken, vain-glorious lout who married the woman Yeats loved hopelessly his whole life.)

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head

Or polite meaningless words,

Or have lingered awhile and said

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done

Of a mocking tale or a gibe

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,

Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent

In ignorant good will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers

When young and beautiful,

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school

And rode our winged horse.

This other his helper and friend

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,

So sensitive his nature seemed,

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vain-glorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone

Through summer and winter, seem

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,

The rider, the birds that range

From cloud to tumbling cloud,

Minute by minute change.

A shadow of cloud on the stream

Changes minute by minute;

A horse-hoof slides on the brim;

And a horse plashes within it

Where long-legged moor-hens dive

And hens to moor-cocks call.

Minute by minute they live:

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is heaven's part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

On limbs that had run wild.

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death.

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith

For all that is done and said.

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead.

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse –

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

But I couldn’t let you go without “The Second Coming”. This one, written in 1919, is just so powerful. “Easter, 1916” is specific; “Second Coming” is universal.

We’re still working to understand what rough beast has emerged from that widening gyre.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The cruelest month: Lasciate ogne speranza

Like so many of the poems I’m sharing for NationalPoetry Month, I was first introduced to Inferno in high school. It happened because I was taking both a lit class and honors English, And both courses (taught by Mr. Sheinkopf) were reading Macbeth (at different times). So Mr. Sheinkopf had Griff Owens and me read Dante instead of Shakespeare twice over.

Maybe he was planning on giving the same tests & didn’t want us coasting.

At any rate, it was the translation by John Ciardi, which I carried around with me for years and years, finally replacing it a while ago with one recommended to me by a colleague (a software developer, as it happens) when he heard me mooching around muttering about needing to refresh my vision of Hell. This one is by two Princetonians, Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander.

I really like this edition because it has the Italian and English on facing pages, just inviting you to make the connection, and luring you into speaking the Italian out loud. Jeez, it’s luscious.

I’m giving you the opening tercets to Cantos I and III, in Italian and the Hollanders’ translation: I is where Dante wakes up to find himself on the cusp of Hell; III is the sign telling us that we’ve officially arrived at Hell.

I

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,

dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

***

Midway in the journey of our life

I came to myself in a dark wood,

For the straight way was lost

Ah, how hard it is to tell

The nature of that wood, savage, dense & harsh—

The very thought of it renews my fear!

It is so bitter death is hardly more so.

But to set forth the good I found

I will recount the other things I saw.

III

"Per me si va ne la città dolente,

per me si va ne l’etterno dolore,

per me si va tra la perduta gente.

"Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore;

fecemi la divina podestate,

la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore.

"Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create

se non etterne, e io etterno duro.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate."

***

“Through me the way to the city of woe,

Through me the way to eternal pain,

Through me the way among the Lost.

“Justice moved my maker on high.

Divine power made me,

Wisdom supreme, & primal love.

“Before me nothing was but things eternal,

& I endure eternally.

Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

You may recall that Dante’s guide through both Inferno and Purgatorio is our friend Vergil—considered by the Church to be essentially a righteous pagan—the kind of guy who would have been a Christian except that he predated Christ (70 BCE – 19 BCE). Once they make it through Purgatory, Vergil hands off to Beatrice, Dante’s love, who becomes his guide through Paradiso.

I’d have given you someone reading this in Italian, but I can’t find anything. Damn.

There was an episode of the TV show Northern Exposure that I caught once (not being a regular viewer) that captured my fancy: Ruth-Anne, the aging store-keeper, wants to learn Italian so she can read Dante. Only it seems that she just doesn’t have the gift for languages. But Shelly, the ditzy blonde waitress, turns out to be fluent in it, and the episode closes with Shelly reading it to a rapt Ruth-Anne.

I absolutely know how she felt. It’s enchanting.

I'm not a rabbit!

Oh, let’s close out the week with a report from the Division of the Blindingly Obvious in the CDC: they’ve done a study, & it turns out women are more tired than men.

No kidding.

So, I’ll leave you with also the blindingly obvious: Madeline Kahn as Lili Von Shtupp singing “I’m Tired”. From Blazing Saddles.

Oh, I just crack me up.

The cruelest month: The cliffs of England stand

Another Victorian for today’s National Poetry Month: Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”.

I love this poem; no—I mean I love it. You can smell the brine in the air and feel the spray on your face and hair. The shingle crunches under your feet and the moon silvers it all.

But it’s the injunction at the end that really gets to me. After the melancholy, long withdrawing roar of faith, the concept of two beings holding true to one another.

Damn.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

The cruelest month: sail beyond the sunset

I’ll confess that I struggle with today’s offering for National Poetry Month. Or, at least—my relationship with it has changed over the years I’ve known it.

The poem is Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, but he’s not talking about the youthful or middle-aged hero, the Sacker of Cities or the guy who kept Circe happy for months on end. This is the old Ulysses, the guy with arthritis and probably insomnia. This King of Ithaca is pretty much looking at his life in the rear-view mirror and it’s giving him the pip.

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this grey spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

               This my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

               There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Here’s my, uh, well—okay, not a problem, really. But a changing viewpoint, I guess.

Back in high school, when I first read it, the poem really struck me quite deeply. Why, I even titled my college thesis (on the contribution of women to World War I) “Work of Noble Note”. So many “captain-of-my-fate” elements to it, yeah?

I thought Ulysses was brave and valiant. You know—he’s thinking about getting the band back together and taking it on the road, even if it’s the last tour. He’s going to model his final time units on the template he established in his early years.

But that’s because he had that brilliant career back in the day.

I’m suddenly reminded of a comment someone—a woman, to be sure—made about a photograph of Sophia Loren taken when she was maybe 60. The observation was along the lines of, “You see—a woman can be quite attractive at 60 if she was stunningly gorgeous in her youth.”

And there you are. When I was in high school, I thought there was a life ahead that involved righting wrongs, going on adventures and mad moments of exquisite happiness. (Only, when you’re a teenager, you really don’t expect exquisite happiness to be meted out in moments; you reckon on years.) And now that I have this apparently permanent relationship with ibuprofen, and sleep is a hard-won thing, I wonder what adventures I could possibly find in the future, when they’re so thin on the ground of the past?

Well, what the hell. I’ve dredged this one up from my past. Must be a reason for that. 

Besides self-torment, I mean.

& for your main course...

Well—this is one you don’t hear every day: the camel given French President François Hollande by the government of Mali is being replaced. Because the family that was looking after it ate it.

An unnamed source from north Mali assures us that it will be a “bigger and better-looking camel”. I get how it could be bigger, but I’m not sure how you measure beauty amongst camels.

I’m quite interested in the choice of a camel—given personally in gratitude for France sending ground troops to repel Al Qaeda invaders. I mean, weren’t there some nice native crafts they could have presented to Hollande? Cloth? Gold jewelry? A camel’s a big responsibility.

I’m also interested in the idea that the family (unnamed) didn’t put it to work, but instead put it on the menu. Must have been the extended family. And a hell of a barbecue.

The cruelest month: recite what history teaches

Today’s poem for National Poetry Month is from Gertrude Stein.

I do not have a particularly close relationship with Stein as a writer; rather, I’ve always been interested in her as a patron of the arts and an ex-pat historical figure, an American Jew living in France who managed to wait out the Nazi occupation without losing either her life or her collection of modernist art.

I’ve enjoyed The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and a while ago I read a couple of decent biographies of her. But I’ll confess I find her non-representational poetic style difficult to assimilate.

(Although, as a cultural observer she certainly got Oakland right when she mused, “There’s no there there.” She’d lived in the city; she knew what she was talking about.)

And I’ll give it up to my Hungarian-born French professor: if you want to take in one of Stein’s poems, you should really listen to it, because you can’t separate the sounds from…well, whatever it is I think she means.

Here’s Stein reading "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso".

When I listen to this and think about the paintings Picasso did while Stein was one of his patrons, it somehow makes sense, although I couldn’t analyse it for you.

If you feel you just have to read it, you can find it here.

The auld triangle

Today’s post for National Poetry Month got me thinking about the Behan boys again.

I mentioned before that Dominic has written songs, including the widely-known “Patriot Game”. But thinking about that college paper I wrote on Brendan (and Dylan Thomas) reminded me of his play, The Quare Fellow, set in Dublin’s Montjoy Prison. It’s not a completely uplifting work, but Behan certainly knew prisons, having served time in a British borstal for his IRA activities.

The thing I really recall from the play is the song “The Auld Triangle”, which Dominic wrote; I’m sure that the first version I heard of it was by the Clancy Brothers.

It had been a long time since I’d heard it by the time I got to Dublin, but when I found myself walking beside the Royal Canal, I went ahead and sang what I remembered of it anyhow. It’s not meant for a solo soprano voice, but what the hell; it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Here’s a version that’s spot on. I love the harmonies hit on the words, “Royal Canal”.

The cruelest month: Sing the sun in flight

Well, of course you can’t have a National PoetryMonth without something from Dylan Thomas. I expect Thomas is the best-known poet to come out of Wales, and he’s been part of my life since my friend Gretchen Pullen introduced me to him in high school. Gretchen was crazy mad for Thomas in the way I was besotted with Yeats.

To tell you the truth, I might just have been too young in high school to appreciate Thomas, but he grew on me. So much so that in my freshman year in college I chose to do a paper comparing his life and poetry with those of Brendan Behan. On the surface they had similarities—larger-than-life personas, hard-drinking, womanizing and poem-making Celts; pretty much everything that sends Sassenachs purse-lipped and pucker-arsed into tut-tutting tizzies.

There were major differences, of course; one being that Behan had politics in his blood, while I have this memory of finding a quote from Thomas that “politics is bloody awful”, although I’ve not been able to track it down recently. (That is a maxim that I have adopted to technology, by the way: technology is bloody awful. If you're not careful.) Another is that the general public (certainly in America) is much more familiar with the Welshman’s work than the Irishman’s.

(When I lived in Britain, I was driving somewhere with one of my English colleagues, a technocrat at the data networking company that employed me, and he mentioned "that Welsh poet" and vaguely referred to "…some really famous poem" by him. I chirped, “Do not go gentle into that good night?” He was quite pleased that I knew about it.)

If you’re a fan of Paul Simon, you might recall the line from “A Simple Desultory Philippic”:

“He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip that when you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas, whoever he was. The man ain't got no culture.”

Well, I got culture.

I could haul out something reasonably obscure for you of my back pocket, because Gretchen really, really loved Thomas and she was really, really persuasive, but I’m going to go with one of his most famous poems, the one my mate Rob was talking about, written as the poet watched his father growing old and frail:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

You should read this one aloud; you need to hear it. If you can’t bring yourself to do it, I give you this reading by Welsh actor Philip Madoc: