Overheard In An Asylum -- Alfred Kreymborg

(Poem #752) Overheard In An Asylum And here we have another case quite different from the last, another case quite different -- Listen. Baby, drink. The war is over. Mother's breasts are round with milk. Baby, rest. The war is over. Only pigs slop over so. Baby, sleep. The war is over. Daddy's come with a German coin. Baby, dream. The war is over. You'll be a soldier too. Yes, we gave her the doll -- Now there we have another case quite different from -- -- Alfred Kreymborg

Notes: The bit I indented was italicised in the original. The war in quetion
is WW1; the poem is from his 1916 collection 'Mushrooms'.

Today's quietly chilling poem is all the more effective for its utter lack
of commentary. The language is simple and understated, a fact that detracts
nothing from the vividness of the image. I really don't want to say too much
about the poem - it has very little problem speaking for itself.

Links:

We've run a couple of Kreymborg's poems:

  poem #306: Geometry
  poem #245: Whitman

His biography can be found at poem #245

-martin

Geometry -- Alfred Kreymborg

A nice poem to start the year off...

(Poem #306) Geometry Never a mouse chases ever a tail, never a mouse ever sees that always a cat catches always a mouse, cats being kittens who once chased their tails. Toss a pebble into a stream, never a circle catches a circle; shoot a dawn-ball into the sky, never a moonbeam catches a sun; drop the same thought on the floor: Only a kitten catches a tail, the tail being straight, the kitten a circle. Yet never a mouse chases ever a tail, never a mouse ever sees that always some death catches always his mouse, deaths being kittens who once chased their tails. -- Alfred Kreymborg

A dizzying poem that seems to be a metaphor for human progress, life, death,
cosmology, logic, physics, metaphysics, space, time and the most
pronouncedly noneuclidean geometries that ever sprung from a mathematician's
pipe-dreams. And no doubt a host of other things that I'll think of the moment
my head stops spinning.

m.

Links:

A biography of Kreymborg, and another of his poems at poem #245

For another beautiful poem that explores the relationship between form,
content, geometry and the universe, see poem #195

Whitman -- Alfred Kreymborg

Prompted by Thomas's mention of Whitman...

(Poem #245) Whitman After we've had our age of gold and sung our song of brass, fingers will brush the age aside, fingers and leaves of grass. -- Alfred Kreymborg

A wonderfully understated poem - like all the good Imagists, Kreymborg seems
to have mastered the art of saying a lot in a few words, letting the
reader's imagination and experience supply the rest. To explain such a poem
would be both inadequate and superfluous; I'm not even going to try.

A few footnotes - the 'leaves of grass' is a reference to Whitman's most
famous work; you can find an online copy at
<http://www.bartleby.com/142/index1.html>. And for completeness sake, here
are some reviews of Leaves of Grass:
<http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/whitman/works/leaves/1882/reviews/index.html>

And science fiction fans can doubtless think of several stories that echo
both the tone and content of the poem - Clarke and Bradbury especially come
to mind.

Biography:

  Kreymborg, Alfred

  Pronunciation: [krAm´bôrg]

   1883-1966, American poet and anthologist, b. New York City. Originally one
   of the imagists, he wrote poems collected in Mushrooms (1916), Manhattan
   Men (1929), Selected Poems (1945), and Man and Shadow (1946). He
   chronicled American poetry in such works as the critical history Our
   Singing Strength (1929, 1934) and the anthology Lyric America (1930). His
   puppet plays were also popular.
         -- <http://www.infoplease.com/ce5/CE028989.html>

From a review of his autobiography:

  Below is a book review, written by the poet and critic Mark Van Doren
  about a memoir by modernist poet and editor Alfred Kreymborg. Kreymborg's
  book is called Troubadour (1925). Kreymborg, as everyone associated with
  poetry knew then, was for many years right at the center of the New York
  poetic avant garde--if not necessarily as a poet in his own right, then as
  a promoter of modernist sensibility and as an editor and anthology. He was
  co-editor of the modernist magazine, Others, to which William Carlos
  Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore et alia contributed.

  [...]

  Mr. Kreymborg met so many people because he always, apparently, was at the
  center of things. When Greenwich Village was a center he was there, so
  that his life throughout one period becomes its history. As director in
  one capacity of another of the periodicals Musical Advance, The Glebe,
  Others, and Broom he touched hands with dozens of musicians, painter, and
  poets-- particularly poets. As playwright and producer with The
  Provincetown Players and The Other Players he entered still another circle
  filled with names that now are magical; he caught more reputations on the
  rise. And whenever circumstances failed to throw in his way a writer whom
  he admired he went on purpose to see him, gathering material before he
  returned for the row of portraits which he now paints with so knowing a
  hand. If "Troubadour" survives as nothing else it must survive for its
  sketches--not lacking in humor--of Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson,
  Carl Sandburg, Lola Ridge, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, E.A.
  Robinson, Harriet Monroe, Wallace Stevens, Maxwell Bodenheim, Marianne
  Moore, and William Carlos Williams. Of such--and indeed merely of
  such--have some of the richest of autobiographies been composed.

        -- <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/first-glance.html>

Information on two of the groups he was involved in, the Others group and
the Glebe magazine, may be found at the following sites:

  [broken link] http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~slatin/20c_poetry/projects/relatproject/glebe.html

  [broken link] http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~slatin/20c_poetry/projects/relatproject/arensbergothers.html

m.