When First We Faced -- Philip Larkin

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #1778) When First We Faced When first we faced, and touching showed How well we knew the early moves, Behind the moonlight and the frost, The excitement and the gratitude, There stood how much our meeting owed To other meetings, other loves. The decades of a different life That opened past your inch-close eyes Belonged to others, lavished, lost; Nor could I hold you hard enough To call my years of hunger-strife Back for your mouth to colonise. Admitted: and the pain is real. But when did love not try to change The world back to itself--no cost, No past, no people else at all-- Only what meeting made us feel, So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange? -- Philip Larkin

In evaluating this poem, all I have to say that it feels exactly true to the
scraped clean and hopeful beginnings of things. 'When did love not try to
change the world back to itself'?

Amulya.

Patriotism -- Sir Walter Scott

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #1690) Patriotism Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, "This is my own, my native land!" Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung. -- Sir Walter Scott

        From "The Lay of the Last Minstrel", Canto VI.

Here's a poem I memorized out of sheer love. Somehow, when I was seven or
eight, I couldn't get enough of swelling patrotic sentiment. This one, and
"Rule, Brittania!" were particular favourites (I wasn't discriminating about
which country)... Though it sounds very different now, I still instinctively
resist notions of a post-national world: there's a dire voice in my head
that goes, "unwept, unhonoured and unsung". :)

Amu.

Black Rook in Rainy Weather -- Sylvia Plath

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #1048) Black Rook in Rainy Weather On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain- I do not expect a miracle Or an accident To set the sight on fire In my eye, nor seek Any more in the desultory weather some design, But let spotted leaves fall as they fall Without ceremony, or portent. Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then -- Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent By bestowing largesse, honor One might say love. At any rate, I now walk Wary (for it could happen Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical Yet politic, ignorant Of whatever angel any choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize my senses, haul My eyelids up, and grant A brief respite from fear Of total neutrality. With luck, Trekking stubborn through this season Of fatigue, I shall Patch together a content Of sorts. Miracles occur. If you care to call those spasmodic Tricks of radiance Miracles. The wait's begun again, The long wait for the angel, For that rare, random descent. -- Sylvia Plath

Truly miraculous.

A poem about revelation that breaks like light, and yet it is tense with
effort. It is not just simple awe at the shimmering that suns out from a
bird's wings; it is a labored, longed-for epiphany.

This poem enacts the conflict I find fascinating about Sylvia Plath -- she's
the same person who in the 'Soliloquy of a Solipsist' knows that the world
is what she gifts herself, she possesses the capacity to endow it with grace
or terror, even oblivion, with the blink of her eyelid. But simultaneously,
there's always the compulsion to be overwhelmed, to abandon herself to
fantasy.

Here too, she shies away from directly singing her vision. And yet, in spite
of (and perhaps because of) all the studied casualness ('spasmodic tricks of
radiance', 'one might say love') she manages to convey a sense of whimsical
magic. That is the astonishment of the poem. For me anyway.

I'm not equipped to analyze the structure or rhyme scheme, but this one
looks pretty corseted. Sylvia Plath, like other confessional poets is often
associated with a raw, visceral intensity -- which is odd considering so
much of her poetry has this kind of achieved poise and formal perfection.

(I'm skipping all the who-is-sylvia-what-is-she details, because it's been
done to death.)

Amulya.

[Minstrels Links]

Sylvia Plath:
Poem #53, Winter landscape, with rocks
Poem #129, Ariel
Poem #366, Child
Poem #404, Daddy
Poem #612, Love Letter
Poem #678, Mirror
Poem #881, The Moon and the Yew-tree
Poem #1048, Black Rook in Rainy Weather

Crows, rooks, blackbirds and ravens:
Poem #35, The Windhover  -- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Poem #85, The Raven  -- Edgar Allan Poe
Poem #137, The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven  -- Guy Wetmore Carryl

Poem #620, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird -- Wallace Stevens
Poem #621, Thirteen Blackbirds Looking at a Man -- R. S. Thomas
Poem #1048, Black Rook in Rainy Weather -- Sylvia Plath

Pretty Words -- Elinor Wylie

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #862) Pretty Words Poets make pets of pretty, docile words: I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish Which circle slowly with a silken swish, And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds: Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds, Come to my hand, and playful if I wish, Or purring softly at a silver dish, Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds. I love bright words, words up and singing early; Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing; Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees; I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly, Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting. -- Elinor Wylie

"Of that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent", said who,
Wittgenstein? I'm saying it too. There's nothing to pontificate about this
poem, really. But it's real pretty, isn't it?

Elinor Wylie is a rather uncool poet at the moment, but there's a great bio
with links to her poetry and further information, available at
http://www.magiclink.com/web/lostheroines/webdoc4.htm

Amulya.

I'm Explaining a Few Things -- Pablo Neruda

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #816) I'm Explaining a Few Things You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds? I'll tell you all the news. I lived in a suburb, a suburb of Madrid, with bells, and clocks, and trees. From there you could look out over Castille's dry face: a leather ocean. My house was called the house of flowers, because in every cranny geraniums burst: it was a good-looking house with its dogs and children. Remember, Raul? Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember from under the ground my balconies on which the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth? Brother, my brother! Everything loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises, pile-ups of palpitating bread, the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake: oil flowed into spoons, a deep baying of feet and hands swelled in the streets, metres, litres, the sharp measure of life, stacked-up fish, the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which the weather vane falters, the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes, wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea. And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings -- and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood. Jackals that the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate! Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and knives! Treacherous generals: see my dead house, look at broken Spain : from every house burning metal flows instead of flowers, from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from every dead child a rifle with eyes, and from every crime bullets are born which will one day find the bull's eye of your hearts. And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see The blood in the streets. Come and see the blood In the streets! -- Pablo Neruda

Translated by Nathaniel Tarn.

Here's one for all those who decry politically engaged literature as being
aesthetically compromised: Pablo Neruda. For some of the most wonderful
poems that combine Art and heart. He wrote some of the most burning,
gorgeous lines but what powers his poetry is always his politics. Unlike
Nabokov's idea that 'the sole purpose of art is aesthetic bliss', he
fiercely believes that poems can make new worlds. He described the first of
his poetry readings at a trade union meeting as 'the most important fact of
my literary career'.

This particular poem combines generosity, fight, painfulness... and
lyricism, even as it shows up the absurdity of 'poppy-petalled metaphysics'.
There's an aggressive overabundance - the spilling over of the merchandise,
building up to the rush of violent visual images, (black friars spattering
blessings) and then, the unexpected, bludgeoning moments of tenderness (the
house of geraniums, the children's blood).

Neruda's surreal, sure, but it isn't swimmy, soft-focus surrealism. His
images cohere emotionally, with the energy of his anger, all the way up to
the terrible finality of 'come out and see the blood on the streets'. The
poem burns clean.

Amulya.

The Beautiful Lie -- Sheenagh Pugh

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #792) The Beautiful Lie He was about four, I think... it was so long ago. In a garden; he'd done some damage behind a bright screen of sweet-peas - snapped a stalk, a stake, I don't recall, but the grandmother came and saw, and asked him: "Did you do that?" Now, if she'd said why did you do that, he'd never have denied it. She showed him he had a choice. I could see, in his face, the new sense, the possible. That word and deed need not match, that you could say the world different, to suit you. When he said "No", I swear it was as moving as the first time a baby's fist clenches on a finger, as momentous as the first taste of fruit. I could feel his eyes looking through a new window, at a world whose form and colour weren't fixed but fluid, that poured like a snake, trembled around the edges like northern lights, shape-shifted at the spell of a voice. I could sense him filling like a glass, hear the unreal sea in his ears. This is how to make songs, create men, paint pictures, tell a story. I think I made up the screen of sweet peas. Maybe they were beans; maybe there was no screen, it just felt as if there should be, somehow. And he was my - no, I don't need to tell that. I know I made up the screen. And I recall very well what he had done. -- Sheenagh Pugh

I stumbled across this poem by Sheenagh Pugh by sheer accident, in the TLS.
It describes the possibilities opened by the making of fiction, of creating
counter universes with imagination. I love that heady, delirious moment of
discovering -  "this is how..." - it's resonant, memorable. It's such a
powerful affirmation of the magic of 'making it up', escaping a too-literal
world. "Reality is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live
there", as John Barth puts it. Despite the teasing suggestion of Sin (the
snake, the garden, the "taste of fruit"), it places creativity firmly on the
side of experience. It looks at imagination not as some kind of pure
innocent vision, but as something that is born out of some kind of friction,
contact with the outside world.

I don't know much about Sheenagh Pugh, except she's Welsh and writes
wonderfully. She has a website: [broken link] http://www.geocities.com/sheenaghpugh.

Amulya.

Gone Are The Days -- Norman MacCaig

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #755) Gone Are The Days Impossible to call a lamb a lambkin or say eftsoons or spell you ladye. My shining armour bleeds when it's scratched; I blow the nose that's part of my visor. When I go pricking o'er the plain I say Eightpence please to the sad conductress. The towering landscape you live in has printed on its portcullis Bed and breakfast. I don't regret it. There are wildernesses enough in Rose Street or the Grassmarket where dragons' breaths are methylated and social workers trap the unwary. So don't expect me, lady with no e, to look at a lamb and feel lambkin or give me a down look because I bought my greaves and cuisses at Marks and Spencers. Pishtushery's out. But oh, how my heart swells to see you perched, perjink, on a bar stool. And though epics are shrunk to epigrams, let me buy you a love potion, a gin, a double. -- Norman MacCaig

I love MacCaig for the same things, always... the tenderness, the humour,
and oh, the Romance that's still utterly romantic even when it's dedicated
to a 'lady with no e'. The sensuous brunt of the words, his obvious
revelling in the sound and feel of 'perjink' and 'greaves and cuisses', the
whole picture of him 'pricking o'er the plain' and gently saying 'eightpence
please' to the conductress. I don't care, even if epics are shrunk to
epigrams, he's my hero.

Amulya.

Incident -- Norman MacCaig

Guest poem submitted by Amulya Gopalakrishnan:

(Poem #699) Incident I look across the table and think (fiery with love) Ask me, go on, ask me to do something impossible, something freakishly useless, something unimaginable and inimitable Like making a finger break into blossom or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes or remembering tomorrow. I will you to ask it. But all you say is Will you give me a cigarette? And I smile and, returning to the marvelous world of possibility I give you one with a hand that trembles with a human trembling. -- Norman MacCaig

Find me a guy who thinks like that, the madness and the wry tenderness...
realizing the awful depth of his love, the contrast between that glorious
pitch of passion and our unmagical surroundings. Reminds me of Yeats in
Adam's Curse( yearning to love her in 'the old high way of love'). I love
the touches like 'marvellous world of possibility'... discovering the
romance of the real. What's absolutely wonderful about MacCaig is the way he
always, always brings out the underworld of dreaming, of the fantasy
billowing beneath the even surface of the everyday.

Amulya.