The Way I Am -- Eminem

Guest poem sent in by David Wright

(Poem #1177) The Way I Am This song is for anyone f--k it. Just shut up and listen I sit back with this pack of Zig Zags and this bag of this weed it gives me the s--t needed to be the most meanest MC on this Earth and since birth I've been cursed with this curse to just curse and just blurt this berserk and bizarre s--t that works And it sells and it helps in itself to relieve all this tension dispensin’ these sentences Gettin’ this stress that's been eatin’ me recently off of this chest and I rest again peacefully… but at least have the decency in you to leave me alone, when you freaks see me out in the streets when I'm eatin’ or feedin’ my daughter to not come and speak to me I don't know you and no, I don't owe you a mo-therf--k-ing thing, I'm not Mr. N'Sync, I'm not what your friends think I'm not Mr. Friendly, I can be a prick if you tempt me my tank is on empty No patience is in me and if you offend me I'm liftin’ you 10 feet in the air I don't care who is there and who saw me destroy you Go call you a lawyer, file you a lawsuit I'll smile in the courtroom and buy you a wardrobe I'm tired of all you... I don't mean to be mean but that's all I can be is just me And I am, whatever you say I am If I wasn't, then why would I say I am? In the paper, the news everyday I am Radio won't even play my jam Cause I am, whatever you say I am If I wasn't, then why would I say I am? In the paper, the news everyday I am I don't know it's just the way I am Sometimes I just feel like my father, I hate to be bothered with all of this nonsense it's constant And, "Oh, it's his lyrical content - - the song 'Guilty Conscience' has gotten such rotten responses" And all of this controversy circles me and it seems like the media immediately points a finger at me So I point one back at 'em, but not the index or pinkie or the ring or the thumb, it's the one you put up when you don't give a f--k, when you won't just put up with the bulls--t they pull, cause they full of s--t too When a dude's getting’ bullied and shoots up his school and they blame it on Marilyn and the heroin - Where were the parents at? And look where it's at Middle America, now it's a tragedy Now it's so sad to see, an upper class ci-ty havin’ this happenin’ then attack Eminem cause I rap this way But I'm glad cause they feed me the fuel that I need for the fire to burn and it's burnin’ and I have returned. I'm so sick and tired of bein’ admired that I wish that I would just die or get fired and dropped from my label and stop with the fables I'm not gonna be able to top on "My Name is..." And pigeon-holed into some pop-py sensation to cop me rotation at rock'n'roll stations And I just do not got the patience to deal with these cocky caucasians who think I'm some wigger who just tries to be black cause I talk with an ac- cent, and grab on my balls, so they always keep askin’ the same f--kin’ questions What school did I go to, what hood I grew up in The why, the who what when, the where, and the how 'til I'm grabbin’ my hair and I'm tearin’ it out cause they drivin’ me crazy... I can't take it I'm racin’, I'm pacin’, I stand and I sit And I'm thankful for ev- ery fan that I get But I can't take a sh-t, in the bathroom without someone standin’ by it No I won't sign your autograph You can call me an ass---le I'm glad ‘cuz I am, whatever you say I am If I wasn't, then why would I say I am? In the paper, the news everyday I am Radio won't even play my jam Cause I am, whatever you say I am If I wasn't, then why would I say I am? In the paper, the news everyday I am I don't know it's just the way I am -- Eminem

I’m one of an increasing number of older music fans who are listening to
Eminem and other rappers – and while I’m not out to proselytize for rap,
I don’t know many poetry people who are interested in his work, or in
other rappers – and least of all those old-school poetry fans who feel
in their heart of hearts that it isn’t really poetry if it doesn’t have
strong metrics or even rhyme.  Little do they know we’re in a
renaissance of rhyme right now, and for millions of Americans, this is
poetry.  And I really think he’s one of the best satirists out there
today, and that the rhyming and rhythmic skills of artists like Eminem,
Jay-Z, Nas and others is right up there with Chaucer.  The audacity,
outrage, pain, absurdity, intelligence, irony and sheer guts of much of
Eminem’s stuff is impressive.  It doesn't translate all that well to the
page, but for readers who'll never go near the music, I think it might
be worthwhile to have some idea what's going on, hence this submission.

     I’m an old fan of Middle English lit, and I couldn’t help but be
struck by the similarity of this stuff to Skeltonics. (I’m not the
first person to draw this connection – see: John Skelton: The Godfather
of Rap http://searchenginez.com/skelton.html)

     Take a look at this excerpt from Colyn Clout and you’ll see right
away what I mean – Skelton was going after Cardinal Wolsey.

 From Colyn Clout (1519)

 W H A T can it avail
 To drive forth a snail,
 Or to make a sale
 Of an herring’s tail;
 To rhyme or to rail,
 To write or to indict,
 Either for delight
 Or else for despite;
 Or books to compile
 Of divers manner style,
 Vice to revile
 And sin to exile;
 To teach or to preach,
 As reason will reach?
 Say this, and say that,
 His head is so fat,
 He wotteth never what
 Nor whereof he speaketh;
 He cryeth and he creaketh,
 He pryeth and he peaketh,
 He chides and he chatters,
 He prates and he patters,
 He clytters and he clatters,
 He meddles and he smatters,
 He glosses and he flatters;
 Or if he speak plain,
 Than he lacketh brain,
 He is but a fool;
 Let him go to school,
 On a three footed stool
 That he may down sit,
 For he lacketh wit;
 And if that he hit
 The nail on the head,
 It standeth in no stead;
 The devil, they say, is dead,
 The devil is dead.
     It may well so be,
 Or else they would se
 Otherwise, and flee
 From worldly vanity,
 And foul covetousness,
 And other wretchedness,
 Fickle falseness,
 Variableness,
 With unstableness.
     And if ye stand in doubt
 Who brought this rhyme about,
 My name is Colyn Cloute.
 I purpose to shake out
 All my conning bag,
 Like a clerkly hag;
 For though my rhyme be ragged,
 Tattered and jagged,
 Rudely rayne beaten,
 Rusty and moth-eaten,
 If ye take well therewith,
 It hath in it some pith.
 For, as far as I can se,
 It is wrong with each degree:
 For the temporality
 Accuseth the spirituality;
 The spiritual again
 Doth grudge and complain
 Upon the temporal men:
 Thus each of other blother
 The t’one against the t’other:
 Alas, they make me shudder!

Lest you think that Skelton has the edge for being politically inclined,
here’s some more Eminem -

 From Squaredance -  (The Eminem Show)

 Let your hair down to the track,
 yeah kick on back  (Boo!)
 The Boogiemonster of rap,
 yeah the man's back
 with a plan to ambush
 this Bush administration
 Mush the Senate's face in,
 push this generation
 of kids to stand and fight
 for the right to say somethin’
 you might not like,
 this white hot light
 that I'm under, no wonder
 I look so sunburnt
 Oh no I won't leave no stone unturned
 Oh no I won't leave, won't go nowhere
 Do-si-do, oh-yo-ho, hello there
 Oh yeah, don't think I won't go there
 Go to Beirut and do a show there.
 Yeah you laugh till your motherf--kin ass gets drafted
 While you're at band camp thinkin’ the crap can't happen
 'Til you f--k around, get an anthrax napkin
 Inside a package wrapped in Saran Wrap wrappin’
 Open the plastic and then you stand back gaspin’
 F--kin assassins, hijackin’ Amtraks, crashin’
 All this terror, America demands action
 Next thing you know, you've got Uncle Sam's ass askin’
 to join the Army or what you'll do for their Navy
 You just a baby, getting’ recruited at eighteen
 You're on a plane now, eatin’ their food and their baked beans
 I'm twenty-eight, they gon’ take you 'fore they take me
 Crazy insane, or insane crazy?
 When I say Hussein, you say Shady
 My views ain't changed,
 still inhumane, wait
 Arraigned two days late,
 the date's today,
 hang me!

And as someone who values our First Amendment freedoms, its hard not to
admire a guy who throws down a lyric like this to an audience a hundred
times larger than that of any pen-and-ink poet I can think of. Sam
Hamill and Amiri Baraka eat your hearts out...

 From White America  (The Eminem Show)

 So to the parents of America
 I am the derringer
 aimed at little Erica
 to attack her character
 The ringleader of this circus of worthless pawns
 Sent to lead the march right up to the steps of Congress and piss on the
 lawns
 of the White House - to burn the flag and replace it with a Parental
 Advisory sticker
 To spit liquor in the faces of this democracy of hypocrisy
 F--k you Ms. Cheney!
 F--k you Tipper Gore!
 F--k you with the free-est of speech
 this Divided States of Embarrassment will allow me to have-
 F--k you!

      -- Eminem
      (from the Marshall Mathers LP)

David Wright

[Martin adds]

As David rightly predicted when he sent this in, I was in two minds
about running it. I admit to not being a fan of rap music (and, in
particular, not a fan of Eminem and his ilk, who seem to me to overdo
the use of expletives for a diminishingly-returned shock value), and was
somewhat worried about the potential offensiveness of the lyrics.

Still, David's commentary was interesting and thought provoking, and I
think what finally tipped the balance was the realisation that I would
have run the Skelton piece for sheer historical value, even though I
didn't care too much for it either.

Also, to be perfectly fair, rap was never intended to be standalone
verse - like many other song genres, it works much better with its
accompanying music, and tends to suffer when printed in isolation. In
particular, there is a certain apparent roughness to the verse rhythms
that in actuality is not so much rough as performance-oriented. Rap may
scan by sheer fiat in places, but it does so very convincingly. And,
more than any other form I've seen, it has raised assonance to the
status of a perfectly acceptable substitute for a true rhyme. The
assonance mixes freely with the rhyme, and the both work - no mean feat.

And finally, as David so rightly pointed out, for those of you who will
never listen to the music, it's nice to have at least a passing idea of
what's out there.

Porphyria's Lover -- Robert Browning

A Halloween guest poem sent in by David Wright

(Poem #1109) Porphyria's Lover The rain set early in tonight, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, Murmuring how she loved me -- she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me forever. But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain. Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last l knew Porphyria worshiped me: surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, And I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria's love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word! -- Robert Browning

    This early dramatic monologue by Robert Browning is just such a ghastly
delight!  It has few of the subtleties of the later monologues, and the
macabre melodrama of it really runs the risk of becoming comic at one or two
points, but even some of this is intentional, I think.  (The pathetic little
clarifying aside "Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head", for instance -
the matter-of-factness of that detail and the narrator’s attention to it
just thrusts his madness fully home.)

    Of course the main treat, or trick, for readers new to this poem is that
shocking change of direction, such a violent swerve in the middle of the
poem.  Compare to the line in ‘My Last Duchess’ - "This grew; I gave
commands; Then all smiles stopped together." So much more left to the
imagination in that, and a much more chilling poem.

    Still, I love this earlier poem, with its sensationalistic gothic
effect, its enthusiasm for the perverse.  And Browning’s great skill, even
here, with the narrative voice - the natural flow of thought and direction
of attention over the line-breaks, that enjoyable Browning tension between
the rigorous structure and the conversational voice.  The prevalent pathetic
fallacy in which the narrator's feelings completely color everything he
views.  The narrator's methodical progress in telling the story, his
defensiveness about disputable points ('No pain felt she, I am quite sure
she felt no pain.') his desperate attempt to justify, to explain the
rightness of what he has done, even going so far as to impute thoughts to
the lolling head of his corpse-lover, I suppose the ultimate fulfillment for
a control-freak.

    But then the crack in the narrator's facade - that last line, which just
looms out of the chasm, and goes echoing around the empty heavens of this
irredeemable sinner’s lost world - the worst horror of all: that the
narrator may indeed have a conscience somewhere that appreciates his act.
Strong echoes of Othello, and you know the narrator will hurl himself from
some precipice or overdose on some opiate, or worse - wind up a raver in
Bedlam.  Shiver!

David Wright
Seattle Public Library

I Sit and Look Out -- Walt Whitman

Guest poem submitted by David Wright

(Poem #1042) I Sit and Look Out I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer of young women; I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid--I see these sights on the earth; I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and prisoners; I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these--All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon, See, hear, and am silent. -- Walt Whitman

    (from 'Leaves of Grass', 1900)

Monday's Yeats poem [Poem #1040] reminded me so much of this Walt Whitman
verse, I had to share it. Whitman looks at the world's load of woe, and is
silent. Of course he is not silent. His watching is witnessing, and what he
sees he says. For a poet this is enough, more than enough. Although his
words are far from objective, to overtly comment, to share his opinion would
reduce the enormity of what he describes. Whitman as witness.

- David

The Bait -- John Donne

Guest poem submitted by David Wright:

(Poem #1002) The Bait Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks. There will the river whispering run Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun; And there th'enamour'd fish will stay, Begging themselves they may betray. When thou wilt swim in that live bath, Each fish, which every channel hath, Will amorously to thee swim, Gladder to catch thee, than thou him. If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth, By sun or moon, thou darken'st both, And if myself have leave to see, I need not their light, having thee. Let others freeze with angling reeds, And cut their legs with shells and weeds, Or treacherously poor fish beset, With strangling snare, or windowy net. Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest The bedded fish in banks out-wrest; Or curious traitors, sleave-silk flies, Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes. For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, For thou thyself art thine own bait: That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, Alas, is wiser far than I. -- John Donne

 John Donne takes the conceit in an entirely different direction  - this
fast & loose & frisky invitation to go skinny-dipping in the river, etc., -
a much more enticing invitation than that of Marlowe's shepherd, if you ask
me. I've always thought Donne, or the early Donne anyway, is the sexiest of
poets. The juiciest of all is that poem on his mistress going to bed, the
one with the lines -

 License my roving hands, and let them go
 Before, behind, between, above, below.
 O, my America, my new found land,
 My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
 My mine of precious stones, my empery;
 How blest am I in this discovering thee!
 To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
 Then, where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
   Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee;
 As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
 To taste whole joys.

 Mercy! 'The Bait' is pretty sexy too, all that scintillating stuff about
enamoured fish making love to her underwater - like that memorable old
Japanese erotic print/netsuke of a woman in the clasp of an octopus - is
both titillating and charmingly silly. Once again, clever Donne worships a
woman out of her petticoats, and the appeal is not subject to Raleigh's
critique, for he promises nothing more than a really fun day of loving and
playing on the bank. (Donne's too clever for the lot of them - I expect
anyone writing a response to or a parody of Donne would find himself
anatomized in one of his wonderfully scathing satires).

 The big metaphor of her as a baited hook is proverbial, but Donne seems to
think he can get the bait off that hook and get away, or else that he will
be happily caught.

David.

[thomas adds]

 "The Bait" was going to be the third poem in a series, following
Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and Sir Walter
Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" on the Minstrels. But David's
excellent commentary has left with me little to add, so I'll content myself
with a few expository notes. Most of these, incidentally, are based on the
annotations provided by A. J. Smith to the Penguin edition of Donne's
complete poems.

[Notes]

 Several manuscripts describe this poem as being written to match a melody
that pre-dated Donne; sadly, no contemporary musical setting of "The Bait"
has survived. (Though do check out Minstrels Poem #565, Thomas Campion's
"Now Winter Nights Enlarge", a poem/song written around the same time as
"The Bait"; a version for lute is available at
[broken link] http://www.albany.net/~dowland/sound.html).

 "The Bait" varies Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd" (1599) and Raleigh's
"Nymph's Reply" (1600) (see links below). In "The Compleat Angler" (1655),
Izaak Walton has a milkmaid sing Marlowe's lines, her mother sing Raleigh's
reply, and Venator gives Donne's poem as 'a copy of verses thet were made by
Doctor Donne, and made to show the world that he could make soft and smooth
verses, when he though fit and worth his labour'. It's worth keeping in mind
that Walton's parish pastor was none other than John Donne...

 "When thou wilt swim in that live bath
  Each fish, which every channel hath,
  Will amorously to thee swim"
The lady's power to attract the fish when she bathed was a common conceit in
the erotic poetry of the time; witness the following:
 "Then quickly strip thyself! Lay fear aside!
  For of this dainty prey, which thou shalt take;
  Both sea, fish, and thyself, thou glad shalt make."
        -- R. Tofte, "Laura" (1597), II, 37

 "If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,
  By sun or moon, thou darken'st both,
i.e., you outshine both sun and moon in your beauty.

 "curious" - artfully made.

 "sleave-silk flies" - artificial flies made out of the threads of sleaved
(unravelled) silk.

[Minstrels Links]

 This week's theme is Love Poetry:
Poem #997, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love -- Christopher Marlowe
Poem #998, A Blade of Grass -- Brian Patten
Poem #999, Casabianca -- Elizabeth Bishop
Poem #1001, The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd -- Sir Walter Raleigh
Poem #1002, The Bait -- John Donne
 There is of course no shortage of love poetry in the Minstrels archives;
see http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/ for a full list.

 John Donne, one of my favourite poets:
Poem #330, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Poem #384, Song
Poem #403, A Lame Beggar
Poem #465, The Sun Rising
Poem #796, Death Be Not Proud (Holy Sonnets: X)
Poem #866, The Canonization
Poem #1002, The Bait

Sea Calm -- Langston Hughes

Guest poem sent in by David Wright

I am so enjoying this time at the sea shore.  The Lotos-Eaters was
wonderful.  Here's a little palate-cleanser:

(Poem #990) Sea Calm How still, How strangely still The water is today, It is not good For water To be so still that way. -- Langston Hughes

Terse in the extreme, yet resonant, these short poems of Hughes intrigue me.
Neither Haiku or Imagist, nor Epigrammatic like Pope or Porchia.  But
sharing in both the unspoken quality of the Imagism - the implicit mood, the
feeling of watching, brooding; words that just hint at the scene they
describe - and the effective, almost talismanic brevity and symbolic
implications of Epigram - a poem like a small stone to be carried in the
pocket.  And finally, a poem that might have been penned by a child, and
been no less striking for that.

     Here are a couple more, one many of us know from school, and another
we may not have encountered due to its subject:

    I loved my friend.
    He went away from me.
    There's nothing more to say.
    The poem ends,
    Soft as it began,--
    I loved my friend.

    'Suicide's Note'

    The calm
    Cool face of the river
    Asked me for a kiss.

By way of contrast, here is haiku poet Issa looking at the sea:

    looking at the mountain
    looking at the sea...
    autumn evening

    oh purple clouds
    when will I mount you?
    western sea

(a very Western haiku, if you ask me)

    watching the sea
    sitting on the lawn...
    roasted mushrooms

    my dead mother--
    every time I see the ocean
    every time...

    Hamamatsu beach--
    helping out the cicadas
    singing waves

and then, I can't resist, thanks, Issa, for these, apropos of nothing...

    ain't a devil
    ain't a saint...
    just a sea slug

    hey boatman
    no pissing on the moon
    in the waves!

David

Links:

  We've run one of Hughes' poems before, the famous "The Negro Speaks of
  Rivers", Poem #410 (Biography attached)

  Issa has, surprisingly, not featured on Minstrels, though Basho and Buson
  both have. Here's a page with some resources on the poet and his works:
    [broken link] http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/logos/ainet/issa.html

A Grave -- Marianne Moore

Carrying on our guest theme, another poem from David Wright

(Poem #986) A Grave Man looking into the sea, taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to it yourself, it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing, but you cannot stand in the middle of this; the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave. The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey- foot at the top, reserved as their contours, saying nothing; repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea; the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look. There are others besides you who have worn that look -- whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate them for their bones have not lasted: men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave, and row quickly away -- the blades of the oars moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were no such thing as death. The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx -- beautiful under networks of foam, and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the seaweed; the birds swim throught the air at top speed, emitting cat-calls as heretofore -- the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion beneath them; and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell-buoys, advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things are bound to sink -- in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness. -- Marianne Moore

I can't resist an invitation to contribute more poems on this theme, if theme
it is, and I notice that the minstrels haven't had Marianne Moore yet. You'll
find as a heaping helping of commentary on this poem at
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/grave.htm

According to a note by Chris ) on his Marianne
Moore Home Page , "A Grave" was written shortly after the sinking of the
Lusitania and after Moore's brother Warner joined the Navy as a chaplin and
went out to sea. The sea was one of Moore's favorite topics, but she was also
very much aware of the sea as a grave. The sea, for Moore, was both beautiful
and deadly. Once, when she and her mother were standing together admiring the
sea, a man came and stood in from of them, Moore's mother remarked about how
people seem to feel the need to stand in the middle of things instead of
stepping back to get the full picture, and this incident became part of the
poem. (Source: Marianne Moore: A Literary Life by Charles Molesworth)

=====
David Wright        Seattle Public Library

Links:

  [broken link] http://www.wwnorton.com/naal/explore/moore.htm has a biography of Moore and
  some notes on exploring her poetry

Once by the Pacific -- Robert Frost

David Wright has sent in a wonderful followup to
yesterday's poem (Poem #984) - this would make an interesting theme if anyone
else would like to contribute...

(Poem #985) Once by the Pacific The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore That water never did to land before. The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes. You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent; It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last 'Put out the Light' was spoken. -- Robert Frost

    Maybe poems come in sets, like waves.  At any rate, after pulling out
Whitman's "On the Beach at Night" recently, I stumbled on this Robert Frost
poem - another 'looking out to sea' poem - in a litcrit book I'm reading:
"The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age," by Robert Alter.  Alter's
observations helped me appreciate Frost, a poet I've felt ambivalent about
in the past - the studied folksiness always turned me off a little. The
analysis below is his: it is given in the context of his anti-
deconstructionist argument that literature is something special - not merely
a text but a work and a world of a special type.  (I know how it sounds, but
he's actually quite a good critic, much less reactionary and pious/pompous
than, oh - say - Harold Bloom.)  This is quite long, but those who
appreciate a good, close reading of a poem should enjoy it.  He begins by
referring to a statement by poet A.R. Ammons that in every work of
literature "a world comes into being about which any statement, however
revelatory, is a lessening." ("In all intellectual humilty, a critic should
always keep in mind the lessening, though it may be a price often worth
paying for the sake of the revelation.")

       "I will begin with what would be in Ammons' terms the most drastic
  kind of lessening, a thumbnail paraphrase that is in no way revelatory:
  the speaker in the poem stands by the Pacific shore watching the waves
  pounding and thinks apprehensively of the destruction of all things.  The
  paraphrase in a way does no more than describe the stimulus of the poem,
  since it seems safe to assume that Robert Frost was actually moved to this
  somber musing by looking at the Pacific breakers.  How do such thoughts
  generate a world in which as readers we powerfully experience a sustained
  moment of highly distinctive menace, waves raging and apocalypse
  impending? I say highly distinctive recognizing that each of us will bring
  to the reading of the poem his or her own literary and personal
  associations but also assuming that the elaborate structuring of language
  in these fourteen lines makes them quite different from any other modern
  apocalyptic poem (Yeats' "Second Coming," the end of T.S. Eliot's "The
  Hollow Men," and so forth), whatever the vagaries of our individual
  readings.

       Frost's use of rhyming iambic pentameter in a fourteen-line piece
  indicates that the poem is meant to be taken as a variant of the sonnet.
  But the rhymes are a sequence of couplets (AA, BB, and so forth),
  producing no divisions into quatrains or octet and sestet as in the
  traditional sonnet form.  The sense of neat containment, then, generated
  by the structure of the traditional sonnet is blurred.  There may be an
  underlying tension between the prosodic form of the poem, whether we call
  it quasisonnet or heroic couplets, and the conspicuously colloquial
  diction preserved consistently throughout, reflected in the avoidance of
  the subjunctive after "it looked as if" (using "was," not "were"), and
  flaunted in phrases like "You could not tell," "the shore was lucky,"
  "someone had better*."  The only word in the entire poem that points
  toward a more literary diction is "intent," a choice dictated not merely
  by the rhyme but by the need to suggest something vast, vague, and ominous
  as the spelling out of the apocalypse moves to a climax - moves, moreover,
  through the only very pronounced enjambment in the poem: "a night of dark
  intent / Was coming."  The colloquial diction is the matrix for a peculiar
  quality of Frost's poetry here and elsewhere that might be called
  expressive vagueness, and that is felt, as several critics have observed,
  in his general fondness for words like "something" and "someone."  The use
  of these words provides an instructive instance of how ordinary language
  is transmuted as it participates in the world-building of the poem.  The
  source in spoken English for this usage would be an idiom employed in a
  situation like the following: an angry child says to another child,
  "Somebody better watch out" - meaning, of course, YOU - or, "I'm going to
  do something to you" - meaning, whatever I will do will be so terrible
  that I would rather not say exactly what.  The extraordinary effectiveness
  of the poem is in part the result of transferring these locutions, with
  their associations of colloquial vehemence, to a cosmic scale while never
  committing the sin or pretentiousness I have just committed in using a
  word like "cosmic."

       Although, as I have indicated, it is not in principle possible to
  enumerate all the kinds of interconnections that engender the world of a
  literary text, I would point here to the four salient aspects of the poem
  which, together with the expressive vagueness of something/someone,
  combine to  produce the distinctive mood and tone of this version of
  apocalypse.  These are: the chiasm and synesthesia of the first line (more
  of which in a moment), the pervasive personification of natural forces,
  the prominence of looking, and the allusions to the first chapter of
  Genesis.  A formal element of a literary text may contribute significantly
  to the building of a world through its placement, through repetition,
  through the rhetorical emphasis it gets, or through any combination of the
  three.  Thus, zeugma and catalogs help define the world of 'The Rape of
  the Lock' because they are repeated so frequently, with such inventive
  variations; and on the smaller scale of "Once by the Pacific," that is
  true of personification and the reiterated verb "looked."  On the other
  hand, the first line features two spectacular rhetorical devices that do
  not occur again in the poem, but because they form the archway through
  which we enter into the world of the poem, they play an important part in
  determining our vision of that world.  The line is symmetrical (two nouns,
  two modifiers, joined by the verb "made" at the midpoint of the line) in
  the form we call chiastic: ABBA (shattered/water/misty/din).  The formal
  crossover of the chiasm reinforces a crossover between different sensory
  realms in the imagery (that is, synesthesia): the din is "misty," though
  mist logically belongs to sight and touch, not sound; and the water is
  "shattered," as though it were hard and solid, not quite a synesthetic
  image but coming close in its transgression of the borders between
  different physical states.  This coupling of chiasm and synesthesia begins
  the poem with a terrific sense of the violent interfusion of opposing
  spheres, solid and liquid, sight and sound, land and sea, and that
  interfusion is the precondition for the poem's apprehension of apocalypse.

    The violent mixing of realms is a reversal of one of the organizing
  thematic features of Genesis 1: there, creation begins with the spirit of
  the Lord hovering over the face of the formless waters, and it proceeds
  through an ordered sequence of acts of separation, between the upper and
  the lower waters, between sea and dry land, between night and day.  The
  allusion becomes explicit only at the end of the poem, but it is prepared
  for at the beginning.

       As befits a reversal of the work of the anthropomorphic God of the
  Bible, the force of destruction pulsing through the breakers is
  personified and felt throughout as a malevolent will: "Great waves looked
  over others coming in, / And thought of doing something to the shore*."
  Perhaps the pronounced personification somehow justifies the rather
  strange image of the clouds as locks of hair, though I am not so sure of
  that.  In any case, the active "looked" of the personified waves is
  disturbingly reflected by the impersonal "it looked as if," twice stated,
  which betokens the looking of the observer at the appearance of those
  looking waves, that cliff, that descending night.  What I called the
  mnemonic power of the literary work, * here operates more visibly within
  the limits of fourteen lines.  The mind shuttles back and forth among the
  three occurrences of "looked," finds itself in a world of menacing
  appearances behind which there lurks some kind of baleful presence endowed
  with will.

      *..God's 'Put out the Light' in the last line of "Once by the Pacific"
  is, or course, a canceling of the divine 'Let there be Light' in Genesis
  1, and, as we noted, makes explicit the intimations of an undoing of
  biblical creation earlier in the poem.

       Because literary traditions repeatedly recapitulates itself,
  allusions may be layered, and I suspect that is true here.  A reversal of
  Genesis, running the reel back, as it were, from seventh day to chaos and
  void, presides over the conclusion of Pope's Duciad:

          Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd;
          Light dies before thy uncreated word;
          Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
          And Univeral Darkness buries All.
                                  (IV:653-656)

  'Put out the Light' is also exactly the sentence Othello says, twice, in
  the brief soliloquy just before he murders Desdemona.  Are we intended at
  the end of Frost's poem to recall Shakespeare's image of a dark man
  enraged with jealousy about to destroy the beautiful woman he passionately
  loves?  There is no way of knowing whether Frost meant that echo to be
  heard, but the very possibility of its presence suggests how the
  accumulate d images, themes, and actual verbal formulations of literary
  tradition become charged particles in the mind of the writer (and "mind"
  is surely more than what is conscious and intentional) and of the reader."

-David

[Martin adds:

 One other device that particularly struck me when I read the poem was the
 unusual use of 'if' as an end-rhyme; this is doubly emphasised, not just by
 the rhyme but by its unexpectedness. That this is deliberate can be inferred
 from its pivotal position in the centre of the poem - indeed, if one makes
 the almost invited comparison of the poem's structure to that of a wave, the
 'if' marks the point at which the wave, having reached its point of maximum
 advance, breaks on the shore and retreats, leaving an ominous brooding
 silence that is merely a waiting for the wave to come.
]

On the Beach at Night -- Walt Whitman

Guest poem sent in by David Wright

(Poem #984) On the Beach at Night On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwarth and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps. Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears, The ravening clouds shall not be long victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine. Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. -- Walt Whitman

  I've always loved this poem, and recently in the midst of personal losses,
our national pall, and the dark of Winter here in the Northwest, I came back
to it.

  I don't have much to say about the verse -it seems to offer a kind of hope,
an obscure hint of transcendence without the bounds of religion or dogma.  It
is interesting to let Whitman's poem speak with Gerard Manley Hopkins's
wonderful poem (Minstrels Poem #59 - To a Young Child):

        Spring and Fall: to a young child
        Gerard Manley Hopkins

        Margaret, are you grieving
        Over Goldengrove unleaving?
        Leaves, like the things of man, you
        With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
        Ah! as the heart grows older
        It will come to such sights colder
        By and by, nor spare a sigh
        Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
        And yet you will weep and know why.
        Now no matter, child, the name:
        Sorrow's springs are the same.
        Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
        What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
        It is the blight man was born for,
        It is Margaret you mourn for.

Another related poem, although somewhat lighter, is Wordsworth's.  They make
a nice trio,

        It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
        The holy time is quiet as a Nun
        Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
        Is sinking down in its tranquility;
        The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;
        Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
        And doth with his eternal motion make
        A sound like thunder - everlastingly.
        Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
        If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
        Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
        Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
        And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
        God being with thee when we know it not.

          William Wordsworth, 1802

-David

Minstrels Links:

  We've run several of Whitman's poems on Minstrels:
    Poem #54, "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer" [biography included]
    Poem #157, "O Captain! My Captain!"
    Poem #246, "I Hear America Singing"
    Poem #268, "The Dalliance of the Eagles"
    Poem #445, "A Noiseless Patient Spider"
    Poem #498, "The World Below the Brine"
    Poem #508, "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing"
    Poem #887, "Beat! Beat! Drums!"

Parable of the Madman -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Guest poem submitted by David Wright:

(Poem #953) Parable of the Madman Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred gamesshall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us - For the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto." Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves. It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter
Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]

     Not long ago, a poetry group I participate in was looking at Yeats's
The Second Coming (Minstrels Poem #289) - an exploration that was deeply
tinted with recent tragedies and ongoing world events.  I was thinking of
that poem as a reflection on man without God, man after God.  This led to
thoughts of Nietzsche's most notorious statement: God is Dead, which
everybody knows, although few people know the full parable that it is taken
from.

     Nietzsche has been much maligned in the popular mind as an atheist, a
nihilist, and a proto-fascist.  I think the passage is appropriate for the
Minstrels because Nietzsche was a true oet philosopher (Plato being the only
other example I can call to mind.)  I don't read German, but I understand
that he is one of the greatest of German stylists, and his background in
philology gave him a poet's feel for language.  And writing in the form of a
parable, he demands interpretation in the same way a lot of poets do.

     I find it a moving, frightening, telling mythos for our time - it just
about defines what is meant by 'postmodernism.'  Perhaps it is for all time,
or for certain times throughout history when mankind has felt the darkness
closing in, the meaning evaporating.  But even Ragnarok, the Norse doom of
the Gods in which the world was to be plunged into darkness and ice and
humankind was to be destroyed while the Gods killed each other, even that
dark vision was to be followed by a new Golden Age in which the triumphant
Gods returned.  For Nietzsche, the death of God is attended merely by decay
and worms.  And freedom, that dreaded freedom that Sartre addresses in his
work.

David.

[Minstrels Links]

The aforementioned Yeats poem:
Poem #289, The Second Coming  -- William Butler Yeats

For something completely different, see:
Poem #615, The Philosopher's Drinking Song -- Monty Python

Frustration -- Dorothy Parker

Guest poem submitted by David Wright, as part of our
ongoing theme, hate rhymes:

(Poem #878) Frustration If I had a shiny gun, I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folk who give me pains; Or had I some poison gas, I could make the moments pass Bumping off a number of People whom I do not love. But I have no lethal weapon- Thus does Fate our pleasure step on! So they still are quick and well Who should be, by rights, in hell. -- Dorothy Parker

This poem from Dorothy Parker is exactly the sort of thing we worry about
the kids reading. My open question is, what do we get from a poem like this,
what kind of pleasure does it give us? I'm not suggesting any answers. I'm
just curious to how we respond to such poems. The first time I read these
things I'm impressed with the vigor and force of the poet's wrath, and a bit
bemusedly shocked, and vicariously pleased.  The second and third readings
are somewhat more disturbing...

David.

[Minstrels Links]

Dorothy Parker:
Poem #150, Resume
Poem #192, Comment
Poem #486, Epitaph for a Darling Lady
Poem #560, Chant for Dark Hours
Poem #638, Song of Perfect Propriety
Poem #697, A Well Worn Story
Poem #878, Frustration

Hate Rhymes:
Poem #185, A Glass of Beer  -- David O'Bruadair
Poem #266, The Litany for Doneraile  -- Patrick O'Kelly
Poem #876, I Wish My Tongue were a Quiver -- Louis McKay
Poem #877, I Do Not Love Thee, Dr Fell -- Tom Brown
Poem #635, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister -- Robert Browning

I Wish My Tongue were a Quiver -- Louis Alexander MacKay

Guest poem submitted by David Wright:

(Poem #876) I Wish My Tongue were a Quiver I wish my tongue were a quiver the size of a huge cask Packed and crammed with long black venomous rankling darts. I'd fling you more full of them, and joy in the task, Than ever Sebastian was, or Caesar, with thirty-three swords in his heart. I'd make a porcupine out of you, or a pincushion, say; The shafts should stand so thick you'd look like a headless hen Hung up by the heels, with the long bare red neck stretching, curving, and dripping away From the soiled floppy ball of ruffled feathers standing on end. You should bristle like those cylindrical brushes they use to scrub out bottles Not even to reach the kindly earth with the soles of you prickled feet, And I would stand by and watch you wriggle and writhe, gurgling through the barbs in your throttle Like a woolly caterpillar pinned on its back - man, that would be sweet. -- Louis Alexander MacKay

'Hate Rhymes'

    I'm a pretty mild-mannered guy, so when a colleague confided in me that
she felt the degeneration of Western civilization was epitomized by the pop
stardom of rapper Mashall Mathers, better known as Eminem, she was rather
shocked when I replied that I have both of his CDs and I enjoy him a lot -
at his best he burns with magnificent and often hilarious rage.  "That's
just it.. all that HATE..."  Okay, no arguing with taste.  That night I came
home and a magazine had a leader something like "Will Grammy reward Eminem's
Hate Rhymes?" making a punning equation of Mathers' music with cross-burning
and the like.
     Aside from a tiresome Free Speech response to this which I will spare
you, this got me thinking about the great hate poems of Anon, Homer,
Catullus, Juvenal, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Swift, Plath, Doroty Parker,
Browning, W.D. Snodgrass, etc. etc. and I resolved to dig out the most
hate-filled poem I could find.
     So here's one that's right up there.  I know very little about L. A.
MacKay, a Canadian poet, educator and translator from Ontario with such
suitable titles as "The Ill-tempered lover," "Viper's Bugloss" and "The
Wrath of Homer" to his name, or to his psuedonym, John Smalacombe.  But he
really takes his hate beyond the bilious savor that many poets stop at -
certainly Eminem pales in comparison.  This is a huge and warlike,
annihilating hatred; a lascivious, detailed, determined hatred, like
something out of Titus Andronicus.  I'm not sure I've ever experienced quite
such a hatred.

David.

Ray -- Hayden Carruth

Guest poem submitted by David Wright:

(Poem #774) Ray How many guys are sitting at their kitchen tables right now, one-thirty in the morning, this same time, eating a piece of pie? - that's what I wondered. A big piece of pie, because I'd just finished reading Ray's last book. Not good pie, not like my mother or my wife could've made, but an ordinary pie I'd just bought, being alone, at the Tops Market two hours ago. And how many had water in their eyes? Because of Ray's book, and especially those last poems written after he knew: the one about the doctor telling him, the one where he and Tess go down to Reno to get married before it happens and shoot some craps on the dark baize tables, the one called "After-Glow" about the little light in the sky after the sun sets. I can just hear him, if he were still here and this were somebody else's book, saying, "Jesus," saying, "This is the saddest son of a bitch of a book I've read in a long time," saying "A real long time." And the thing is, he knew we'd be saying this about his book, he could just hear us saying it, and in some part of him he was glad! He really was. What crazies we writers are, our heads full of language like buckets of minnows standing on the moonlight on a dock. Ray was a good writer, a wonderful writer, and his poems are good, most of them, and they made me cry, there at my kitchen table with my head down, me, a sixty-seven-year-old galoot, an old fool because all old men are fools, they have to be, shoveling big jagged chunks of that ordinary pie into my mouth, and the water falling from my eyes onto that pie, the plate, my hand, little speckles shining into the light, brightening the colors, and I ate that goddamn pie, and it tasted good to me. -- Hayden Carruth

I love Raymond Carver's writing and I love Hayden Carruth's writing, and
this is such a fitting eulogy, their sensibilities are so similar. I'm not
sure I buy the initial "How many guys ... that's what I'm wondering," as a
device, but I don't care. This image of the man, the old man, sitting up
late at night, crying and shoveling in pie, just gets me. I can hear it, the
noises of the plate and fork, the breathing, the weeping, the eating.

There's a haiku by Ryusui - in a translation by R. H. Blyth it goes:

      The lost child
  Crying, crying, but still
   Catching the fire-flies.

That sublimely human moment when grief and the forgetfulness of grief are
there together. Just precious, and funny, too. One of the things I enjoy
about this poem that I don't like about some other confessions is his deadly
serious appreciation of pain doesn't eclipse his humor. Like in the line
"finished reading Ray's last book.  Not good pie,".

The book he is referring to in the poem is "A New Path to the Waterfall", a
volume of poetry the Raymond Carver wrote at the very end of his life. All
of his poetry has since been collected into a single volume, "All of Us",
which you probably ought to rush right out and buy.   Carruth's own stuff
has recently been sliced and diced into some nice collections as well.

The Academy of American Poets website (http://www.poets.org/) has a page on
Carruth which links to some other content on the web.

David.

PS. Oh, one more little poem, also by Carruth:

 "The Last Poem In The World"

 Would I write it, if I could?
 Bet your glitzy ass I would.

        -- Hayden Carruth

PPS. Minstrels Poem #684, "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey", Hayden Carruth.

Helen in Egypt -- H D

Guest poem submitted by David Wright, an excerpt
from:

(Poem #689) Helen in Egypt This is the spread of wings, whether the Straits claimed them or the Cyclades, whether they floundered on the Pontic seas or ran aground before the Hellespont, whether they shouted Victory at the gate, whether the bowmen shot them from the Walls, whether they crowded surging through the breach, or died of fever on the smitten plain, whether they rallied and came home again, in the worn hulks, half-rotted from the salt or sun-warped on the beach, whether they scattered or in companies, or three or two sought the old ways of home, whether they wandered as Odysseus did, encountering new adventure, they are one; no, I was not instructed, but I "read" the script, I read the writing when he seized my throat, this was his anger, they were mine, not his, the unnumbered host; mine, all the ships, mine, all the thousand petals of the rose, mine, all the lily-petals, mine, the great spread of wings, the thousand sails, the thousand feathered darts that sped them home, mine, the one dart in the Achilles-heel, the thousand-and-one, mine. -- H D

Lately I've been reading H.D.'s Helen in Egypt and very much enjoying it,
although I'm hard pressed to express why.  The book-length poem takes as its
subject a story that dates back at least as far as the sixth century Greek
lyric poet Stesichorus, and was the subject of a play by Euripides as well.
The story is an alternate version of the Troy legend in which Zeus placed a
phantom Helen upon the ramparts of Troy and kept the faithful wife safe in
Egypt until Menelaus retrieved her.  In H.D.'s version she has encounters
with the spirit of Achilles who comes limping onto the shore, (it is he that
seizes her throat in the passage above, although that is not where their
story ends), as well as with Theseus and Paris, who she does after all seem
to have run off with.

I'm sure there is much interesting matter to be found in the author's
biography, the effect of the post-war years, the relationship of the poem to
Pound's Cantos -- it is supposed to be something of a feminist response --
the layers of Woolf-y psychology or the author's symbols, and I expect it
would be easy to find all sorts of explication of the piece. H.D. has
provided her own explanation in short prose passages before each verse,
originally composed to aid in a recording of the piece, and making this a
very accessible poem to read, I think.

What has captured me is the language, which shares with much ancient Greek
lyric a spare directness combined with this enchanting, at times incantatory
power.  (I guess enchanting and incantatory are just French and Latin for
the same thing, eh?)  And her feel for rhythm, her respect for the pulse,
make this a pleasure to read aloud.  I don't read Greek myself, but I
understand ancient Greek is very plain and unadorned in comparison with
English, or English poetry, anyway.  The whole poem is suffused with mystic
longing and with Love-Death.  If you enjoy reading Homer, this is a
fascinating counterpart to it.

(I'll insert a plug for one of my other favorite modern poetic treatments of
an ancient epic, although it is an altogether different sort of thing, very
prosy and sardonic.  This is Jason & Medeia, by John Gardner, a wonderful
author who hardly anybody seems to read anymore.)

David Wright.

PS. Other poems by H. D. on the Minstrels:
"Oread" poem #310
"Helen" poem #449
The first of these has a biography, critical analysis, and links to other
Imagist poetry. The second kicks off a set of poems on the Trojan War, which
might be of interest read in conjunction which today's poem. - t.

The Sheep-Child -- James Dickey

Guest poem submitted by David Wright. Note that the
second half of the poem, beginning with 'I am here', should be in italics.

(Poem #507) The Sheep-Child Farm boys wild to couple With anything with soft-wooded trees With mounds of earth mounds Of pine straw will keep themselves off Animals by legends of their own: In the hay-tunnel dark And dung of barns, they will Say I have heard tell That in a museum in Atlanta Way back in a corner somewhere There's this thing that's only half Sheep like a woolly baby Pickled in alcohol because Those things can't live his eyes Are open but you can't stand to look I heard from somebody who ... But this is now almost all Gone. The boys have taken Their own true wives in the city, The sheep are safe in the west hill Pasture but we who were born there Still are not sure. Are we, Because we remember, remembered In the terrible dust of museums? Merely with his eyes, the sheep-child may Be saying saying I am here, in my father's house. I who am half of your world, came deeply To my mother in the long grass Of the west pasture, where she stood like moonlight Listening for foxes. It was something like love From another world that seized her From behind, and she gave, not Iifting her head Out of dew, without ever looking, her best Self to that great need. Turned loose, she dipped her face Farther into the chill of the earth, and in a sound Of sobbing of something stumbling Away, began, as she must do, To carry me. I woke, dying, In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes Far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment The great grassy world from both sides, Man and beast in the round of their need, And the hill wind stirred in my wool, My hoof and my hand clasped each other, I ate my one meal Of milk, and died Staring. From dark grass I came straight To my father's house, whose dust Whirls up in the halls for no reason When no one comes piling deep in a hellish mild corner, And, through my immortal waters, I meet the sun's grains eye To eye, and they fail at my closet of glass. Dead, I am most surely living In the minds of farm boys: I am he who drives Them like wolves from the hound bitch and calf And from the chaste ewe in the wind. They go into woods into bean fields they go Deep into their known right hands. Dreaming of me, They groan they wait they suffer Themselves, they marry, they raise their kind. -- James Dickey

     My first brush with this strange and haunting poem was to hear it read
aloud by a professor, not of literature, but of theater.  Every now and then
I'll remember it, like some dimly recalled story or episode from my own youth.
(No, I never went near the sheep.  I'm a city boy.)  Much of the poem's appeal
for me lies in its eerie narrative pull, the sort of ghastly shocker that reads
well late at night by a campfire.  There is an irrepressible element of ghoulish
fun here, the pull of a freak show.
     It is such a terse distillation of Southern gothic grotesquery, an etude
that evokes all the dark themes of Faulkner's symphonic works.  The poem's
procreative lushness, the ruined Eden, the struggling clasp of man against
nature, including his own, and the grim fixation on miscegenation, are the same
forces that drive Light in August.
     Amid all this rankness, there is a moment of blessedness, the remembered
instant of life, which reminds me of an old metaphor for life: a night bird that
flies in one window, dazzled with the light and show of the house, and straight
out the facing window, into night again.  (Samuel Beckett's has a darker
version: 'We are born astride a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole,
lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.')
     James Dickey is best known for his novel Deliverance, or rather, the movie
of that novel.  You can hear a recording of Dickey reading the poem at
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/dickey/sheep.htm  He reflects here
that "I don't know what other defects or virtues this poem might have, but I
think it can hardly be faulted from the standpoint of originality of
viewpoint".  Indeed!  If anyone else knows of a poem narrated by a pickled
monster, I'd love to hear about it.

A few brief essays on the poem can be found at
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dickey/sheep.htm

There is a nice set of links at http://james.dickey.com/.

David Wright.