Wounded with his wounded heart

You could spend the entire National Poetry Month on various Elizabethan poets. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Donne, Jonson…the age doesn’t get more golden as far as English lit goes.

So let’s have Sir Philip Sidney for today. Like Marlowe and Raleigh, Sidney was one of those utility players: soldier, courtier, poet, politician. He was part of the Dudley family, which put him in close proximity to Elizabeth, and embarked on diplomatic missions before he was 20; at the age of 22 he was in Paris and witnessed the Saint Bartholomew Day Massacre, which must have shaped his already strong Protestant convictions.

By age 25 he wrote an open letter the Queen detailing why she should not marry the (French Catholic) Duc d’Alençon. Among his objections was the fact that d’Alençon was a son of Catherine de Medicis, “the Jezebel of our age”, who of course had been critical to the Saint Bartholomew Day events of five years earlier. Pretty bold for a young single guy, although of course it was a different age, and he’d already paid a lot of dues.

Sidney was as bold a military leader against Spain as he was a matrimonial advisor. He was wounded at the Battle of Zutphen. I have to think that the 26 days it took to die from gangrene must have been ghastly. He was not yet 32 years old.

As a man of letters, Sidney held that the purpose of poetry is “to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of.” He wrote in a variety of formats. Here’s an example.

“My true love hath my heart”

My true-love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

A halfway decent man

I am of the opinion that Paul Simon is among our greatest living poets. And his songs aren’t bad, either. I think of him as a late-20^th Century John Donne, commenting on our current world and all its quirks.

The problem for today’s National Poetry Month post is choosing which of his massive oeuvre to share. Do I go really early—“Mrs. Robinson” (from The Graduate), “59^th Street Bridge Song”, “Homeward Bound”, “I Am a Rock”? Or “Kodachrome”, “Bridge over Troubled Water”, “The Boxer”, “Still Crazy after All These Years”, “Mother and Child Reunion”? And then there’s “Slip Slidin’ Away”, “You Can Call Me Al”, “Time Is an Ocean”.

Okay, I’m giving you two. Simon and Garfunkel recorded “The Sound of Silence” in 1964; it got them a recording deal with Columbia Records. It’s quintessential Simon as Angsty Young Man, and it resonated so deeply with me when I first heard it.

Forty-two years later, Simon released an album that included “Wartime Prayers”, which seems pretty appropriate today.

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Frog and pee

It’s fairly easy to take a pop at haiku, the Japanese poetry form. Three lines of 17 syllables (five, seven, five) make a good target for mockery—possibly because of the semi-obligatory Zen component that can seem pretentious.

Viz: these examples from Kate Miller-Wilson

On yoga:

I’d go to yoga,
But they don’t serve donuts there.
Namaste right here.

On a road trip with kids:

Music on, windows down,
We’re not even late yet, but...
Someone has to pee.

On cats:

In the morning light,
You sleep despite my meow.
I stand on your face.

And yet—even these spoofs carry haiku-like universal truths, distilled to their pure essence because of the limitations of the form.

Poetry always wins, folks.

But let’s also have some more, ah, kosher examples from a master, Matsuo Bashō, perhaps the most famous poet of the Edo period in 17^th Century Japan. Here’s one of his in the original transliteration, with several translations. Note that getting the sense of the poem in English sometimes results in violating the syllabic strictures:

Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!
       Alan Watts

The old pond —
a frog jumps in,
sound of water.
        Robert Hass

dark old pond
:
a frog plunks in
        Dick Bakken:

Listen! a frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!
        Dorothy Britton

 

 

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Tut-tut

Spike Milligan is more famous for his long career as an entertainer—actor, comedian, musician on stage and screen—than for his poetry, but it’s mixed in there, along with being a writer and playwright. In keeping with his puckish nature, his poems are generally silly.

We see that in today’s entry for National Poetry Month, where Milligan imagines a sort of Gingham Cat and Calico Dog nocturnal discussion among the letters along a schoolroom wall. It’s a nice respite from everything that’s going on, and harkens back to a day when classrooms weren’t political and ideological battlefields.

Happy days, eh?

“The ABC”

'Twas midnight in the schoolroom
And every desk was shut
When suddenly from the alphabet
Was heard a loud "Tut-Tut!"

Said A to B, "I don't like C;
His manners are a lack.
For all I ever see of C
Is a semi-circular back!"

"I disagree," said D to B,
"I've never found C so.
From where I stand he seems to be
An uncompleted O."

C was vexed, "I'm much perplexed,
You criticise my shape.
I'm made like that, to help spell Cat
And Cow and Cool and Cape."

"He's right" said E; said F, "Whoopee!"
Said G, "'Ip, 'Ip, 'ooray!"
"You're dropping me," roared H to G.
"Don't do it please I pray."

"Out of my way," LL said to K.
"I'll make poor I look ILL."
To stop this stunt J stood in front,
And presto! ILL was JILL.

"U know," said V, "that W
Is twice the age of me.
For as a Roman V is five
I'm half as young as he."

X and Y yawned sleepily,
"Look at the time!" they said.
"Let's all get off to beddy byes."
They did, then "Z-z-z."

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

I am the dream and the hope

Poems can be amazingly visual (cf. e.e. cummings), but they’re more than words on the page. They’re meant to be spoken, shouted, whispered, chanted. The choices the poet makes in wording are aligned to build the framework for listeners, not just readers.

Case in point is anything by Maya Angelou, who died 10 years ago next month. Our entry for National Poetry Month today is “And Still I Rise”. As your eyes fly across the page, feel the cadence, the rise and fall of emphasis, the sibilance and glottal stops.

Then watch her recitation below and experience it even more fully.

“And Still I Rise”

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

©2024 Bas Bleu

Gratitude Monday: White orisons

Here in the District They Call Columbia, we’re at that point in Spring where the cherry trees have snowed their petals all over, and dogwood trees are only just beginning to think about blooming.

But we’re covered for tree-borne beauty, because the tulip magnolias are out, both the purple ones and the white ones.

I am so grateful to see them in my walks around the ‘hood. Not only because of the joy their flowers spark, but also because they and all their barky brethren are at work to clean our air and make our world literally more livable.

Trees also inspire poets—from Rabindranath Tagore to Robert Frost to Edna St. Vincent Millay. Pondering a tree through the seasons and its lifecycle slows you down. Individually and collectively they connect you to life in a completely different way—if you’re willing to take the time.

Siegfried Sassoon is one of the best-known of the poets of World War I. His experiences at the Western Front transformed him, moving from patriotic support to bitter, public opposition. Sassoon used poetic language and structure to convey the kinds of things that newspapers did not report: filth, vermin, rotting corpses; terror, incompetence, futility.

In “Tree and Sky”, written in 1915, Sassoon uses a tree as a symbol for his soul and invites angels to congregate therein and lead him to military triumphs. This was written early in his war; later poems tossed away this kind of imagery and their landscapes were considerably more bleak.

“Tree and Sky”

Let my soul, a shining tree,
Silver branches lift towards thee,
Where on a hallowed winter’s night
The clear-eyed angels may alight.

And if there should be tempests in
My spirit, let them surge like din
Of noble melodies at war;
With fervour of such blades of triumph as are
Flashed in white orisons of saints who go
On shafts of glory to the ecstasies they know.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Acclaim the bully

 You can distill a lot of rage into a poem. The various formats and meters allow the poet to drip venom into every syllable; perhaps every pen stroke. Take Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

The grand old man of the Beat generation—poet, artist, bookseller and publisher—celebrated his 100^th birthday in 2019 by publishing an autobiographical novel. He didn't consider himself a Beat poet, but he certainly captured those times.

As owner of City Lights Bookstore and Publishing, he published many of the Beats; he was arrested on obscenity charges for publishing Allan Ginsburg’s Howl. The subsequent trial was a landmark First Amendment case, which Ferlinghetti won when the judge ruled the poem had redeeming social value.

Seems odd that this happened in San Francisco, but it was the 50s.

Ferlinghetti identified as a philosophical anarchist, and he  opposed totalitarianism all his life. In 2006, in the midst of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rise of the Tea Party and other bad juju, Ferlinghetti wrote a poem echoing Khalil Gibran’s “Pity the Nation”. It’s appalling that the update was needed 73 years after Gibran, and that it’s even more needed 18 years on.

Every time I reread it, I marvel at its artistry.

“Pity the Nation”

(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep

And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

Whose sages are silenced

And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

Except to praise conquerers

And acclaim the bully as hero

And aims to rule the world

By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows

No other language but its own

And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money

And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people

who allow their rights to  erode

and their freedoms to be washed away

 My country, tears of thee

 Sweet land of liberty!

I'm out to find that village

 In a land known for its poets, Seamus Heaney still stands out. The committee that awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 cited his “works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.”

Well, yes.

Born in Ulster, Heaney’s literary career took him many places, but he chose to live in the Republic and he wrote frequently about Ireland and Irish history. His “Requiem for the Croppies” is utter heartbreak.

Today, however, we’ll have something less terrible. Just the joy of spring in Ireland.

“May”

When I looked down from the bridge

Trout were flipping the sky

Into smithereens, the stones

Of the wall warmed me.

Wading green stems, lugs of leaf

That untangle and bruise

(Their tiny gushers of juice)

My toecaps sparkle now

Over the soft fontanel

Of Ireland. I should wear

Hide shoes, the hair next my skin,

For walking this ground:

Wasn’t there a spa-well,

Its coping grassy, pendent?

And then the spring issuing

Right across the tarmac.

I’m out to find that village,

Its low sills fragrant

With ladysmock and celandine,

Marshlights in the summer dark.

All I ever had

Without poetry, we wouldn’t have songs. Songs without lyrics are instrumental music. A songwriter or lyricist may have a melody in mind when s/he writes a song, but usually the words guide the music.

Bob Marley was inspired to write “Redemption Song” after hearing a speech by pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. Unlike most of his other pieces, this one was meant to be sung as a solo, with only acoustic guitar as accompaniment. Therefore, it’s pretty uncomplicated on the surface, but there’s a whole lot of stuff going on. It’s always been one of my favorites.

This video was released by Marley’s estate in February 2020. There’s a lot going on here, too.

Today's National Poetry Month entry: "Redemption Song."

 

 

This is for

I said yesterday that poetry manifests in just about every possible way a writer can fling words out in a way that’s meaningful to her or him. The patterns are not random, except when they are purposefully so, when carefully-plotted randomness is critical to the idea the poet is communicating.

As with any writing—you have to thoroughly know the rules before you can break them with impact.

American poet Nikki Giovanni is an example of this. Since her early writings in the 1960s, Giovanni has powerfully conveyed the intersectionality of race and gender as both targets of societal oppression and vectors of empowerment. And she uses whatever form best suits her purpose.

Today’s National Poetry Month entry is a case in point. You may be a little confused by how long it takes to get to the eponymous character. Then you realize that Giovanni has tied everything together, because everything is, in fact, tied together.

That’s poetry.

“Rosa Parks”

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said
they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago
Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would
know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who
helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight
the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because
even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth-
place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The
Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the
Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both
the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would
know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled
when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954
when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa-
rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in
1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a
doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood
why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer
when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps
and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways
when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the
Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while
the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to
St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept
him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all
summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly
lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand-
children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the
rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money,
Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac-
ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the
sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s
body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago,
where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did
to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is
for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa
Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi-
nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make
history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama,
who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the
moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods
aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in
Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the
Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks
said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would
there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs.
Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system,
the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and
the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young
men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great
voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting
us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the
Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it
was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not
being able to stand it. She sat back down.