Shakesperian Readings - 3 -- Phoebe Cary

(Poem #1083) Shakesperian Readings - 3 My father had a daughter got a man, As it might be, perhaps, were I good-looking, I should, your lordship. And what's her residence? A hut my lord, she never owned a house, But let her husband, like a graceless scamp, Spend all her little means, -- she thought she ought, -- And in a wretched chamber, on an alley, She worked like masons on a monument, Earning their bread. Was not this love indeed? -- Phoebe Cary

Note: A parody of Viola's speech in Twelfth Night, II.iv.107-15

  [Viola]  My father had a daughter lov'd a man
           As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
           I should your lordship.
  [Orsino] And what's her history?
  [Viola]  A blank, my lord; she never told her love,
           But let concealment like a worm i' th' bud
           Feed on her damask cheek; she pin'd in thought,
           And with a green and yellow melancholy
           She sate like Patience on a monument,
           Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

  (http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/caryph6.html#3.1n)

  Cary collected three separate parodies together under the title
  "Shakesperian [sic] Readings"; since they were entirely distinct otherwise
  I decided to run this one as a standalone poem.

Today's skilful little parody is a deceptively gentle commentary on the
difference between Romance and Reality. Cary cleaves very closely indeed to
the Shakespearean original, following the structure, development and even
the sound of Viola's lines, twisting them subtly but deftly. This is a true
parody (as opposed to a pastiche) insofar as it satirises the original at
the same time as it follows its form.

The poem's opening salvo, "as it might be, perhaps, were I good looking",
sets the tone admirably, contrasting at once the pragmatism of Cary's
narrator with Viola's deliberate dissemblings. The rest of the poem develops
the theme, contrasting the unglamorous but oft-encountered case of a poor
woman slaving to support a wastrel husband with the 'romantic' heroine
pining away for a love she will not name. Cary's heroine, we feel, cannot
afford the time for such self-inflicted griefs; her problems are far more
real and concrete. The main impact of the poem, though, lies in its final
line, the one that mirrors precisely Shakespeare's, and invites the reader
to ponder the same question - "Was this not love indeed?". And the
implication is, definitely, that they can't *both* be right.

martin

Links:

Another parody that follows the sound of the original closely is Bierce's
"Elegy" (Poem #400)

All three Shakesperian Readings:
  http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/caryph6.html

And a nascent Collection of parodies on Minstrels:
  [broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/collections/41.html

Under Which Lyre -- W H Auden

Guest poem submitted by Alan Kornheiser

(Poem #1082) Under Which Lyre A Reactionary Tract for the Times Ares at last has quit the field, The bloodstains on the bushes yield To seeping showers, And in their convalescent state The fractured towns associate With summer flowers. Encamped upon the college plain Raw veterans already train As freshman forces; Instructors with sarcastic tongue Shepherd the battle-weary young Through basic courses. Among bewildering appliances For mastering the arts and sciences They stroll or run, And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter Are shot to pieces by the shorter Poems of Donne. Professors back from secret missions Resume their proper eruditions, Though some regret it; They liked their dictaphones a lot, T hey met some big wheels, and do not Let you forget it. But Zeus' inscrutable decree Permits the will-to-disagree To be pandemic, Ordains that vaudeville shall preach And every commencement speech Be a polemic. Let Ares doze, that other war Is instantly declared once more ’Twixt those who follow Precocious Hermes all the way And those who without qualms obey Pompous Apollo. Brutal like all Olympic games, Though fought with smiles and Christian names And less dramatic, This dialectic strife between The civil gods is just as mean, And more fanatic. What high immortals do in mirth Is life and death on Middle Earth; Their a-historic Antipathy forever gripes All ages and somatic types, The sophomoric Who face the future’s darkest hints With giggles or with prairie squints As stout as Cortez, And those who like myself turn pale As we approach with ragged sail The fattening forties. The sons of Hermes love to play And only do their best when they Are told they oughtn’t; Apollo’s children never shrink From boring jobs but have to think Their work important. Related by antithesis, A compromise between us is Impossible; Respect perhaps but friendship never: Falstaff the fool confronts forever The prig Prince Hal. If he would leave the self alone, Apollo’s welcome to the throne, Fasces and falcons; He loves to rule, has always done it; The earth would soon, did Hermes run it, Be like the Balkans. But jealous of our god of dreams, His common-sense in secret schemes To rule the heart; Unable to invent the lyre, Creates with simulated fire Official art. And when he occupies a college, Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge; He pays particular Attention to Commercial Thought, Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport, In his curricula. Athletic, extrovert and crude, For him, to work in solitude Is the offence, The goal a populous Nirvana: His shield bears this device: Mens sana Qui mal y pense. Today his arms, we must confess, From Right to Left have met success, His banners wave From Yale to Princeton, and the news From Broadway to the Book Reviews Is very grave. His radio Homers all day long In over-Whitmanated song That does not scan, With adjectives laid end to end, Extol the doughnut and commend The Common Man. His, too, each homely lyric thing On sport or spousal love or spring Or dogs or dusters, Invented by some court-house bard For recitation by the yard In filibusters. To him ascend the prize orations And sets of fugal variations On some folk-ballad, While dietitians sacrifice A glass of prune-juice or a nice Marsh-mallow salad. Charged with his compound of sensational Sex plus some undenominational Religious matter, Enormous novels by co-eds Rain down on our defenceless heads Till our teeth chatter. In fake Hermetic uniforms Behind our battle-line, in swarms That keep alighting, His existentialists declare That they are in complete despair, Yet go on writing. No matter; He shall be defied; White Aphrodite is on our side: What though his threat To organize us grow more critical? Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical, Shall beat him yet. Lone scholars, sniping from the walls Of learned periodicals, Our facts defend, Our intellectual marines, Landing in little magazines Capture a trend. By night our student Underground At cocktail parties whisper round From ear to ear; Fat figures in the public eye Collapse next morning, ambushed by Some witty sneer. In our morale must lie our strength: So, that we may behold at length Routed Apollo’s Battalions melt away like fog, Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue, Which runs as follows:— Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases, Thou shalt not write thy doctor’s thesis On education, Thou shalt not worship projects nor Shalt thou or thine bow down before Administration. Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon World-Affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit A social science. Thou shalt not be on friendly terms With guys in advertising firms, Nor speak with such As read the Bible for its prose, Nor, above all, make love to those Who wash too much. Thou shalt not live within thy means Nor on plain water and raw greens. If thou must choose Between the chances, choose the odd; Read The New Yorker, trust in God; And take short views. -- W H Auden

 (Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

Auden had an interesting war and an interesting peace. Ignoring the
obvious--- the GIs were back on campus after the war, of course, and the
contrast between who they were and where they'd been with what they had to
study must have tickeled Auden no end---let us not forget that Auden had
made the ultimate sacrifice to fight the Nazis...he'd gotten married, to
help a refugee out.  ("What else are buggers for?" he had asked.)

The poem is the lesser Auden, the entertaining Auden, with the perfectly
structured rhyme and rhythm scheme hiding wonderfully barbed lines. To read
it is to adore it, and copies of its final lines decorate graduate student
offices the breadth of the country. But read it again...the irony is deep.
The blood is yet fresh.  And do not the opening lines remind you of the
opening lines of Richard III?

-Alan

[Martin adds]

This also reminds me strongly of Auden's "The Fall of Rome" (Poem #494), both
in mood and in rhythm (Sunil Iyengar, who submitted the latter poem, seems to
agree - see his commentary).

The Dilettante: A Modern Type -- Paul Laurence Dunbar

(Poem #1081) The Dilettante: A Modern Type He scribbles some in prose and verse, And now and then he prints it; He paints a little,--gathers some Of Nature's gold and mints it. He plays a little, sings a song, Acts tragic roles or funny; He does, because his love is strong, But not, oh, not for money! He studies almost everything From social art to science; A thirsty mind, a flowing spring, Demand and swift compliance. He looms above the sordid crowd, At least through friendly lenses; While his mama looks pleased and proud, And kindly pays expenses. -- Paul Laurence Dunbar

If poets are observers of the human condition, it is unsurprising that they
often turn a critical eye upon some of its more pretentious specimens.
Indeed, setting up a figure for the sole purpose of puncturing it seems to be
a popular pastime among the more acid sort of poet - and a welcome one,
having given us gems like Parker's "Epitaph for a Darling Lady" and Bierce's
"Rimer".

Today's poem is a fine example of the genre. While Dunbar doesn't exhibit the
sparkling acid wit of Bierce or Parker, his gentler style nonetheless leaves
room for sly asides like "but not, of course, for money", and, of course, the
well-timed and delivered punchline. In the end, we get the familiar thrill of
seeing a poet address a common annoyance, and say the things we'd like to in a
way we cannot.

martin

Links:

There's a biography of Dunbar at
  http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sgo/texts/dunbar2.html

Dunbar has been sadly unrepresented on Minstrels (something that shall
definitely change), but there's a collection of his works up at
  http://www.libraries.wright.edu/dunbar/

The Lama -- Ogden Nash

(Poem #1080) The Lama The one-l lama, He's a priest. The two-l llama, He's a beast. And I will bet A silk pajama There isn't any Three-l lllama.* -- Ogden Nash

(to which Nash appended the footnote
  *The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known
  as a three-alarmer. Pooh.
)

This is probably Nash's best known poem, and for good reason. Not only does
he provide a wonderfully quotable mnemonic, he goes on to extend it with an
almost Carrollian piece of whimsy, carrying the progression through to its
logical conclusion (why *isn't* there a three-l lllama anyway?). And the
footnote is a delightful piece of icing on the cake, there being something
so Nashian about the pun that I have to wonder whether it was part of the
poem all along.

-martin

[Afterthought]

'llama' would, of course, be pronounced 'yama' in the original Spanish, though
it has been quite thoroughly Anglicised by now.

mehitabel and her kittens -- Don Marquis

Guest poem sent in by Suresh Ramasubramanian

(Poem #1079) mehitabel and her kittens well boss mehitabel the cat has reappeared in her old haunts with a flock of kittens three of them this time archy she says to me yesterday the life of a female artist is continually hampered what in hell have i done to deserve all these kittens i look back on my life and it seems to me to be just one damned kitten after another i am a dancer archy and my only prayer is to be allowed to give my best to my art but just as i feel that i am succeeding in my life work along comes another batch of these damned kittens it is not archy that i am shy on mother love god knows i care for the sweet little things curse them but am i never to be allowed to live my own life i have purposely avoided matrimony in the interests of the higher life but i might just as well have been a domestic slave for all the freedom i have gained i hope none of them gets run over by an automobile my heart would bleed if anything happened to them and i found it out but it isn t fair archy it isn t fair these damned tom cats have all the fun and freedom if i was like some of these green eyed feline vamps i know i would simply walk out on the bunch of them and let them shift for themselves but i am not that kind archy i am full of mother love my kindness has always been my curse a tender heart is the cross i bear self sacrifice always and forever is my motto damn them i will make a home for the sweet innocent little things unless of course providence in his wisdom should remove them they are living just now in an abandoned garbage can just behind a made over stable in greenwich village and if it rained into the can before i could get back and rescue them i am afraid the little dears might drown it makes me shudder just to think of it of course if i were a family cat they would probably be drowned anyhow sometimes i think the kinder thing would be for me to carry the sweet little things over to the river and drop them in myself but a mother s love archy is so unreasonable something always prevents me these terrible conflicts are always presenting themselves to the artist the eternal struggle between art and life archy is something fierce my what a dramatic life i have lived one moment up the next moment down again but always gay archy always gay and always the lady too in spite of hell well boss it will be interesting to note just how mehitabel works out her present problem a dark mystery still broods over the manner in which the former family of three kittens disappeared one day she was taking to me of the kittens and the next day when i asked her about them she said innocently what kittens interrogation point and that was all i could ever get out of her on the subject we had a heavy rain right after she spoke to me but probably that garbage can leaks so the kittens have not yet been drowned archy -- Don Marquis

well, we haven't had an archy poem since at least a couple of years, i
think.  the last one was on oct 9, 1999, from a cursory look at the
minstrels archives.  i hereby propose to remedy this.

motherhood and career - as seen through the eyes of a cat on her ninth
life whose soul once belonged to cleopatra.

        -srs (all lowercase mail for an all lowercase poem)

[Martin adds]

Suresh is right - we have indeed not had one of these in a while, and I do
thank him for remedying that. One of the things that I like about the Archy
and Mehitabel poems is that they work not just as poems, but as continuing
episodes in a narrative that is enthralling in its own right; Archy and
Mehitabel are characters that we come to care about, and in whose
development we can take an interest quite orthogonal to the (considerable)
poetic merits of the individual pieces. Today's poem is a genuinely moving
glimpse into Mehitabel's moral dilemma, and the ending is as artistically
satisfying as it is disturbing.

Water Lilies -- Sara Teasdale

(Poem #1078) Water Lilies If you have forgotten water lilies floating On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade, If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance, Then you can return and not be afraid. But if you remember, then turn away forever To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart, There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies, And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart. -- Sara Teasdale

Today's poem addresses one of my favourite themes - that of the longing, not
for a place, but for a particular *kind* of place. Sea poems are perhaps the
most popular examples of the genre, but practically every form of terrain
from the teeming metropolis to the forest primeval has its 'poetic' aspects,
and most have been immortalised in at least one good poem.

'Water Lilies' is definitely one of the good poems. Teasdale's quiet,
understated style fits her subject beautifully - the "dark lake among
mountains in the afternoon shade" is a perfectly self-contained image that
draws the reader into an almost enchanted scene, and makes the last line not
just plausible but believable.

Links:

There's a biography of Teasdale at Poem #113

A random sampling of poems along the same lines:
  Poem #3, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Inversnaid"
  Poem #29, Rudyard Kipling, "The Sea and the Hills"
  Poem #317, Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Inland"
  Poem #510, Lord Byron, "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods"

And on a somewhat related note:
  Poem #238, W. J. Turner, "Romance"

-martin

The Plea of the Simla Dancers -- Rudyard Kipling

(Poem #1077) The Plea of the Simla Dancers Too late, alas! the song To remedy the wrong; -- The rooms are taken from us, swept and garnished for their fate. But these tear-besprinkled pages Shall attest to future ages That we cried against the crime of it -- too late, alas! too late! "What have we ever done to bear this grudge?" Was there no room save only in Benmore For docket, duftar, and for office drudge, That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor? Must babus do their work on polished teak? Are ball-rooms fittest for the ink you spill? Was there no other cheaper house to seek? You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill. We never harmed you! Innocent our guise, Dainty our shining feet, our voices low; And we revolved to divers melodies, And we were happy but a year ago. To-night, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles -- That beamed upon us through the deodars -- Is wan with gazing on official files, And desecrating desks disgust the stars. Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights -- Nay! by the witchery of flying feet -- Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights -- By all things merry, musical, and meet -- By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes -- By wailing waltz -- by reckless gallop's strain -- By dim verandas and by soft replies, Give us our ravished ball-room back again! Or -- hearken to the curse we lay on you! The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain, And murmurs of past merriment pursue Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain; And when you count your poor Provincial millions, The only figures that your pen shall frame Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions Danced out in tumult long before you came. Yea! "See Saw" shall upset your estimates, "Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse, Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use. And all the long verandas, eloquent With echoes of a score of Simla years, Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment -- Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears. So shall you mazed amid old memories stand, So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought, And ever in your ears a phantom Band Shall blare away the staid official thought. Wherefore -- and ere this awful curse he spoken, Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train, And give -- ere dancing cease and hearts be broken -- Give us our ravished ball-room back again! -- Rudyard Kipling

Notes:
 duftar: office
 babu: clerk (especially one literate in English)

Today's poem is pretty enough in a 'minor Kipling' sort of way, but not
really all that outstanding - apart, that is, from the opening verse. That
verse ranks among my favourite pieces of Kipling - haunting, melodious, and,
particularly in the last four lines, capturing an emotion so beautifully and
precisely that it quite transcends the poem to which it is attached and
achieves that universality that is the mark of a perfectly-phrased idea.

The poem itself is, in part, a comment upon the stultifying bureaucracy
that, even today, remains one of the more enduring legacies of the British
occupation of India. A bit of historical background: Simla was, at the time,
the summer capital of British India, and was as such periodically overrun by
the machinery of government.

    Between 1864 and 1939 it was the official 'summer capital' of British
    India, which raised this small town from the status of a mere pleasure
    resort to a powerful community from which the government of the Raj was
    conducted between April and October.
        -- [broken link] http://www.purabudaya.com/resources/Simla/simla.htm

Note, however, that the 'Simla Dancers' in the poem's title do not refer to
native Indian dancers displaced by the invading British bureaucrats; rather,
Kipling seems to be referring to the demise of a very English ballroom (note
the references to cotillions and waltzes, for example). There are other
mentions of Benmore in his work, too - for instance, the following from 'The
Bisara of Pooree':

        Pack went to a dance at Benmore - Benmore was Benmore in those days,
        and not an office

but I could not find any other reference to it - does anyone know the actual
historical facts involved?

Links:

Kipling might have been influenced by the following:

        Ahead, to windward and to lee,
          The foaming surges roar:
        "O Holy Virgin ! save us now,
          And we will sin no more!"

        "We vow to lead a holy life;"
          Too late! alas, too late!
        Their vows and plaints to imaged saints
          Cannot avert their fate.

                -- James Kennard Jr., 'Wreck of the "Seguntum". A Ballad.'
        http://www.seacoastnh.com/shoals/spanishgraves.html#2

  and then again, he might not - the phrase is a simple enough one to hit
  upon.

An extremely readable piece on Simla:

  Simla didn't exist before the British came, and they built the town in
  their own image, turning their backs on India and trying to imagine they
  were in Sussex. (When they finally retired to Sussex, many of them spent
  the rest of their lives wishing they were back in Simla, which is how it
  goes.)
    -- [broken link] http://travel.guardian.co.uk/saturdaysection/story/0,8922,528336,00.html

-martin