Baccalaureate -- Archibald MacLeish

This week's theme: Bright college days

(Poem #1903) Baccalaureate A year or two, and grey Euripides, And Horace and a Lydia or so, And Euclid and the brush of Angelo, Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees, The nose and Dialogues of Socrates, Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo, How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,-- All shall be shard of broken memories. And there shall linger other, magic things,-- The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea, The rotten harbor smell, the mystery Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings, The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings About the college yard, where endlessly The dead go up and down. These things shall be Enchantment of our heart's rememberings. And these are more than memories of youth Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away; These are earth's symbols of eternal truth, Symbols of dream and imagery and flame, Symbols of those same verities that play Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name. -- Archibald MacLeish

One of the universals of the "college experience" - and pretty much everyone
I know who has attended college agrees with me - is that the actual
classroom education is the least part of it. Of course, that's not precisely
true; it's just that lectures are seldom the stuff of which memories are
made, and therefore loom progressively less significant in nostalgic
reveries. Nonetheless, college remains one of life's defining experiences,
and it is interesting to see what poets have made of the memories that *do*
linger and tint the time thereafter.

Today's poem tackles the theme head-on, with MacLeish's characteristically
beautiful phrases flowing like a wash of colour over the contrasting aspects
of college life. The sequence of images is exquisite; I'm tempted to say
that this is a poem that is more about atmosphere than message, but the
atmosphere is definitely part of the message here, and the list format works
very well indeed. And not just the imagery either - there is a slight
weightiness to the language that helps enhance the academic feel, perhaps
most evident in the phrase "symboks of those same verities", but present
throughout.

The other noteworthy thing is the painstaking attention MacLeish pays to the
sound of his poetry. With some poets, this is easy to see - the music of the
words takes over, and leaps out at the reader. MacLeish's verse is usually
more quietly euphonious, but none the less beautiful, and none the less
perfect for not being showy.

martin

p.s. Yes, the theme is named after the Tom Lehrer song. Yes, it will make an
appearance.

[Links]

Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_MacLeish

Academy of American Poets:
  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/47

What Any Lover Learns -- Archibald MacLeish

Guest poem submitted by Sanket:

(Poem #1886) What Any Lover Learns Water is heavy silver over stone. Water is heavy silver over stone's Refusal. It does not fall. It fills. It flows Every crevice, every fault of the stone, Every hollow. River does not run. River presses its heavy silver self Down into stone and stone refuses. What runs, Swirling and leaping into sun, is stone's Refusal of the river, not the river. -- Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish, American poet, playwright and speech-writer for F.
D. Roosevelt, wrote in his Ars Poetica, "A poem should not mean / But
be". This poem is calm and insightful, like a dispassionate observation.
It is interestingly titled "What Any Lover Learns".

The motion described happens not by the water but by the bedrock.

Sanket.

You, Andrew Marvell -- Archibald MacLeish

Guest poem sent in by Vivek Narayanan

(Poem #1691) You, Andrew Marvell And here face down beneath the sun Here upon Earth's noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night: To feel creep up the curving East The earthy chill of dusk and slow upon those underlands the vast And ever climbing shadow grow And strange at Ecbatan the trees Take leaf by leaf the evening strange The flooding dark about their knees The mountains over Persia change And now at Kermanshah the gate Dark empty and the withered grass And through the twilight now the late Few travellers in the Westward pass And Baghdad darken and the bridge Across the silent river gone And through Arabia the edge of evening widen and steal on And deepen in Palmyra's street The wheel-rut in the ruined stone And Lebanon fade out and Crete High through the clouds and overblown And over Sicily the air Still flashing with the landward gulls And loom and slowly disappear The sails above the shadowy hulls And Spain go under and the shore Of Africa the gilded sand And evening vanish and no more The low pale light across that land Nor now the long light on the sea: And here face downward in the sun To feel how swift how secretly The shadow of the night comes on... -- Archibald MacLeish

My number one memorisable poem has to be at the moment Roethke's The Waking;
of course it's not about sleep at all, but the sleep of reason and anxiety,
ie., an attempt to put reason and anxiety to sleep.  Sure enough, it seems
to have a very real, calming effect on me when I recite it to myself: which
leads me to believe that the number one reason we memorise poems is that so
they may be internalised in the living body and have an actual, physical
effect, be a way of reforming the self.  Well... since that one is already
in the archive, I'm typing up this other famous poem from memory, a
remarkable visualization of time in the shadow that creeps as the Earth
turns.

The poem's own movement/cadence and its eschewing of punctuation makes for a
physical mimesis of the shadow's constant growing; and it manages both a
very large scale and a minuteness of seen detail: such as (and how!) the
wheel-rut left by centuries of wheels on Palmyra's street.

Slightly longish, MacLeish's poem is nevertheless surprisingly easily to
memorise because of the rhymed quartrains and the very steady, measured
iambic (te-tum te-tum) line which is stretched out longingly by all those
long vowels.  When I checked my version out against the poem at the
poets.org website there were a few things I'd gotten wrong, I'd typed: "the"
for "those" in the 7th line, "darken" instead of "deepen" in the 21st line,
and "downward" instead of "landward" in the 26th line.  Thus the exercise
was a very good one which made me pay renewed attention again to MacLeish's
subtle and rather careful word-choices.

I'd also kept the last four lines together and not used any punctuation.
The punctuation seems to be a bit different in different versions on the
net; for instance, in one version the poem ends in an ellipsis, in another in
a full stop-- which makes me think, my humble opinion, that perhaps the poem
would indeed be better without any punctuation at all.

One clarification may also aid the memorising of the poem: going strictly by
sense, the third stanza parses out as follows: "... and strange at Ecbatan,
the trees take leaf by leaf the evening; strange, the flooding dark about
their knees, the mountains over Persia change."  So there should be a slight
pause or breath just before the second "strange" to make the enjambment
clear.

Vivek

[Links]

A great piece by Mark Strand on today's poem:
 http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/author.pperl?authorid=30082&view=fromauthor

Biography:
 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/macleish/life.htm

Today's poem is very reminiscent,  in tone, feel and rhythm, of
Auden's "The Fall
of Rome" [Poem #494]

The End of the World -- Archibald MacLeish

Guest poem submitted by Carolyn and Frank:

(Poem #457) The End of the World Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot The armless ambidextrian was lighting A match between his great and second toe, And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb Quite unexpectedly the top blew off: And there, there overhead, there, there hung over Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes, There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover, There with vast wings across the cancelled skies, There in the sudden blackness the black pall Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all. -- Archibald MacLeish

It is much easier to recognize a great poem (you just wait for the hair
on the back of your neck to rise) than it is to explain why  you think
it is a great poem, but here goes.

To begin with, MacLeish pulls you in with the first two words -- "Quite
unexpectedly" -- and you rush ahead to the details of a circus
performance. Vivid details pointing up a series of events as they are
about to happen. You can visualize it all. Then those two words again,
followed by  "the top blew off"

The next line is amazing.  With repetition and pauses he builds suspense
until you feel that you are one of those "white faces" with "dazed eyes"
looking up. Again a series of marvelous images but in direct contrast to
the specific ones in the first eight lines. Phrases such as starless
dark, sudden blackness and vast wings across the cancelled skies
prepare you for that completely satisfying last line.

I have always thought that MacLeish was one of our great 20th century
poets. This poem I like almost as much as my all-time favorite, 'You',
by Andrew Marvell..  He gives to the reader comforting little lines you
can repeat to yourself when you need assurance of the beautiful in life.
And he is never trite or sentimental - what more could you ask for?

Carolyn Bunch.

---

Carolyn (in comments added to poem 188) just happened to be looking for
the poem that I'd like to submit for the Minstrels collection. It's more
about the end of the world as experienced at a circus than a poem about
circus performers and their audience. I never really analyzed this poem
beyond recognizing the extreme contrast between the light-heartedness of
a circus performance and the seriousness of the world's end. A juxtapose
of comedy and tragedy -- Enjoy!

Frank.

Ars Poetica -- Archibald MacLeish

Continuing what is fast becoming a joint theme...

(Poem #188) Ars Poetica A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit Dumb As old medallions to the thumb Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown - A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind - A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs A poem should be equal to: Not true For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea - A poem should not mean But be -- Archibald MacLeish

  In the code language of criticism when a poem is said to be about poetry
  the word "poetry" is often used to mean: how people construct an
  intelligibility out of the randomness they experience; how people choose
  what they love; how people integrate loss and gain; how they distort
  experience by wish and dream; how they perceive and consolidate flashes of
  harmony; how they (to end a list otherwise endless) achieve what Keats
  called a "Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity."

        -- Helen Vendler, poetry critic

Rather unsurprisingly, if you think about it, a number of poets have taken a
break from mirroring reality, and turned their gaze inwards, whether upon
other poets, other poems, the nature and role of the Poet, or, most
reflexively, the nature and role of Poetry.

Today's poem is a beautiful example. Titled Ars Poetica - 'the Art of
Poetry'[1] - it attempts to prescribe the nature of poetry, and - in a move
Hofstadter would have loved - does so in the form of a poem. Furthermore, it
does not seek to sidestep the possible pitfalls and inconsistencies this
approach leaves it open to - rather it meets them head on, using words like
'mute', 'dumb' and 'wordless' to set up a paradox culminating in the
wonderful last stanza, 'a poem should not mean / but be'.

En route, the main thread is woven through with several exquisite images,
speaking to the reader even as it advocates silence, progressing even as it
advocates motionlessness. And yet, at the end, it does resolve itself into a
seamless, integrated whole, as perfectly self-contained as the globed fruit,
or the timeless, frozen stillness of a winter's night. The reader is free to
pick it apart, to tease meaning from the tapestry of contradictions and
images. As for the poem, it simply is.

[1] and not, as several overingenious students have suggested, 'poetry my
a**e' <g>

Links:

A nice serial analysis of the poem can be found at
<http://www.newwinds.com/poethome/stuart06.htm> - I don't agree with every
one of his points, but overall he's done a nice job.

Biography:
MacLeish, Archibald

 b. May 7, 1892, Glencoe, Ill., U.S.
 d. April 20, 1982, Boston

  U.S. poet, playwright, teacher, and public official, whose concern for
  liberal democracy figured in much of his work, although his most memorable
  lyrics are of a more private nature.

There's an online biography at <[broken link] http://www.poets.org/lit/poet/amacleis.htm>
and another at <[broken link] http://www.rothpoem.com/duk_am.html>

m.