Ancestors -- Adrian Mitchell

My Favourite Contemporary Poet (tm) makes another appearance:

(Poem #397) Ancestors We had an island. Oh we were a stomping old tribe on an island. Red faces, hairy bodies. Happy to be hairy Happy to be hairy When the breezes tickled The hairs of our bodies Happy to be hairy Happy to be hairy Next best thing to having feathers -- That was our national anthem. Right. Hairy tribe, Hairy red story-telling, song-singing, dragon-fighting, fire-drinking tribe Used to get invaded every other weekend. Romans, Vikings, Celts -- fire and sword -- Pushed us back but they never broke us down. In between invasions we grew spuds and barley, Took our animals wherever there was a river and some grass. When the snows came, we moved south When the rivers dried, we moved west When the invaders came, we burnt our crops, moved. Until one day we were surrounded by warriors. The same old fire and sword, but used efficiently. They slaughtered our warriors, lined up the rest of us And there were speeches About law and order, and firm but fair government. And this is what they did, This is government. You take an island and cut it carefully With the razorblade called law and order Into a jigsaw of pieces. The big, rich-coloured pieces Go to the big, rich men. The smaller, paler pieces, (Five beds two recep barn mooring rights five acres) Go to the small, rich men. And nothing at all Goes to those who have nothing at all. Absurd? The many nothing-at-alls Wouldn't stand back and see their island Slashed into ten thousand pieces. They didn't stand back, our hairy ancestors. Some of them spoke out. Some fought back. They were slashed down by the giant razorblade. And now, and now the rich seldom have to kill To defend the land they stole from all the tribe -- Wire fences. Guard Dogs Loose on these Premises. No Trespassing. Bailiffs. Security Guards. Police. Magistrates' Courts. Judges. Prisons -- Grey prisons where the brain and the flesh turn grey As the green English years stroll by outside the walls. So who needs fire and the sword? The tribe has been tamed And our island Our daft green stony gentle rough amazing haven Entirely surrounded by fish Has been stolen from the tribe. It was robbery with most bloody violence. And that was history, history is about the dead. Then is our tribe dead? Is our tribe dead? Is the tribe dead? -- Adrian Mitchell

from 'The Apeman Cometh', 1975.

This couplet:

"Pushed us back but they never broke us down.
In between invasions we grew spuds and barley."

is why I like Adrian Mitchell so much. He can make powerful, moving social
statemnts (it's not hard to picture him with a guitar and a harmonica, a la
Dylan) while retaining a light touch and a brilliantly earthy sense of humour
("Happy to be hairy" - Yeah!)... and to tell the truth I like him in both
guises, both prophet of the coming revolution and irreverent jungle bard.

Which is not to say that today's poem is without failings. The main one, I
think, is the change in tone between the light-hearted first half [1] and the
somewhat strident soap-box fare of the second - it seemed rather abrupt to me.
But it's all redeemed by the final repetition - "Is our tribe dead?" - which I
find heartbreakingly poignant in its sense of bewilderment and loss... it sends
a shiver down my spine.

thomas.

[1] which, in its bawdy good humour, is very reminiscent of 'The Oxford Hysteria
of English Poetry' - see link below.

[Links]

There's quite a bit of Mitchell on the Minstrels (as I said, he's my favourite
contemporary poet). Check out

'Nostalgia - Now Threepence Off' - a must-read for lovers of children's
literature everywhere: poem #95

'To Whom It May Concern' - a scathing denunciatian of the Vietnam War, at
poem #28

'Jimmy Giuffre Plays 'The Easy Way'' - as laid-back a poem as you'll find this
side of J. J. Cale: poem #337

and of course the uproariously funny 'Oxford Hysteria of English Poetry', which
taught me everything I needed to know about Literature with a capital L:
poem #211

For a poem which attempts (and, I think, pulls off) a complete change of tone
midstream, read Theodore Roethke's 'The Meadow Mouse', at poem #267

[Moreover]

The tribe's 'national anthem' was published as a standalone poem in the same
anthology, as

'The Apeman's Hairy Body Song'

Happy to be hairy
Happy to be hairy
When the breezes tickle
The hairs of my body

Happy to be hairy
Happy to be hairy
Next best thing
To having feathers

        -- Adrian Mitchell

I Hear a River Thro' the Valley Wander -- Trumbull Stickney

(Poem #396) I Hear a River Thro' the Valley Wander I hear a river thro' the valley wander Whose water runs, the song alone remaining. A rainbow stands and summer passes under. -- Trumbull Stickney

An exquisite little poem that needs no explanation. The juxtaposition of
images is especially nice - the river and the summer reinforcing both on the
metaphor and the image level - as is the pleasing regularity of the verse
(something imagists[1], for instance, often neglect).

[1] not to imply that imagist verse is 'free', just that metre is rarely
used as a device. Kreymborg's 'Whitman'[2] is a beautiful counterexample.

[2] poem #245

Biography:

  Notes on Life and Works

  Joseph Trumbull Stickney was born in Geneva on June 20, 1874, and grew up
  (to a height of six feet four inches) as his parents travelled widely ...
  Wiesbaden, Florence, Nice, London, and New York. After being educated by
  his father Austin at home in Latin and Greek, Trumbull entered Harvard
  University in 1891. He graduated magna cum laude in June 1895.

  The following eight years were spent studying for the degree of Doctorat
  ès Lettres at the Sorbonne in Paris. For this he wrote two theses, one on
  the letters of Ermolao Barbaro, a 15th-century ambassador to Rome, and the
  other on aphorisms in Greek verse. His Dramatic Verses was published in
  Boston in 1902, dedicated from Paris to his friend "Bay" (George) Lodge,
  who would co-edit Stickney's collected poems in 1905.

  In 1903 his second thesis was published as Les Sentences dans la Poésie
  Grècque: this won him the first Sorbonne Doctorat awarded to an American.
  Stickney then took on a position as instructor in Greek at Harvard in 1903
  and travelled abroad in Greece from April to June that year. A brain tumor
  caused headaches and partial blindness from early in 1904 and led to his
  death in Boston on Oct. 11. He is buried in Hartford, Connecticut. For his
  biography, see Homage to Trumbull Stickney: Poems, edited by James Reeves
  and Seán Haldane (London: Heinemann, 1968), pp. 1-16 (New York Public
  Library shelfmark D-18-2147).

        -- Representative Poetry Online
        http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/stickney.html

Links:

Variations on a Fragment by Trumbull Stickney (John Hollander): Not a parody
(for those of you who remember the Williams variations[3]), but a nice set of
variations on the theme.
  [broken link] http://www.diacenter.org/prg/poetry/95_96/hollande.html

Random association: The last line reminds me of AE's stars 'dancing over the
mountains' - see poem #350

[3] getting further and further off topic, but... poem #278

- martin

Naming of Parts -- Henry Reed

(Poem #395) Naming of Parts "Vixi duellis nuper idoneus Et militavi non sine glori" Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday, We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning, We shall have what to do after firing. But today, Today we have naming of parts. Japonica Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens, And today we have naming of parts. This is the lower sling swivel. And this Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel, Which in your case you have not got. The branches Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures, Which in our case we have not got. This is the safety-catch, which is always released With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easily If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see Any of them using their finger. And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers: They call it easing the Spring. They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt, And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance, Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards, For today we have naming of parts. -- Henry Reed

 From 'Lessons of the War'
 Dedicated to Alan Mitchell.

I remember reading a not terribly distinguished parody of this poem when I was
in school; many years later, when I discovered the original, I was surprised to
see how very good it was. Indeed, it's one of the more celebrated poems of the
last half-century (though the years have not been particularly kind to Henry
Reed: these days we see him more as a failed Modernist than as a revolutionary
Romantic), and it's not hard to see why: the tone of voice, the choice of phrase
and the repetitive patterning are all instantly recognizable.

That said, though, it _is_ a poem that simply cries out for a parody, isn't it?

thomas.

[Links]

Here's a link to an essay on 'The Imagery of Genesis in Henry Reed's 'The Naming
of Parts'': [broken link] http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~mquieto/papers/naming.html . It's an
interesting enough piece, though it suffers somewhat from an overly pretentious
and (imho) juvenile style. An extract should suffice to show what I mean:

"Guns and gardens, soldiers and bees: the poem relates the unrelated in order to
draw a clear dichotomy between the forces of life and the forces of death.
However, the poem goes further than merely contrasting opposites. The  structure
and language of the poem combine to demonstrate how one should become the other.
The eschatological hope expressed by the harmonious image of this Eden begs and
demands a transformation or conversion into communion with the natural order.
The poem demonstrates that war is contrary to nature."

Poem -- Ernest Dowson

Guest poem submitted by Ravi S Mundoli:

(Poem #394) Poem "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae" Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, When I awoke and found the dawn was grey: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. -- Ernest Dowson

(Translation of the subtitle: 'I am not as I was under the reign of the good
Cynara')

Not being someone who knows too much about such things as structure, composition
etc. (unlike other worthies here)  I will gallantly refrain from spouting forth.
This poem affects me. The imagery (mad music, strong wine, riotous roses, pale
lilies, grey dawn, bought red mouth) generates a heady chaos in my head. And the
last three lines in every stanza serve very well to reinforce the general
feeling of heartbrokenness and despair. An explanation of the poet's life
(below) will be useful in understanding it.

I keep seeing Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings in my head when I read this
poem. His life, at one point, was at a stage when he could have written
something like this. If you ever lay your hands on it, read "Moulin Rouge". Its
a novel based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. Come to think of it, even Philip
Carey from Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" would have probably empathized
with the thing.

[Trivia]

All said and done, with Martin and Thomas acting as censors, I thought if one
thing could clinch the weblication of this poem, it would be trivia.

1. "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae" is a quote from Horace. I have
not been able to (i.e. not bothered to) find any reference to Cynarae
elsewhere.  If someone knows more, please post.

2. Margaret Mitchell lifted stuff from the first line of the third stanza.

[About the poem]

Living for a while in the East End of London where his father owned a dry dock,
Ernest Dowson fell in love with the daughter of a restaurant keeper. It was a
platonic love, and the girl could not understand either Dowson's reticent
idealism nor the poem he wrote to her. Its title was a line which Dowson had
taken from Horace. This classic of sentimental decadence was wasted on his
"Cynarae"; she ran off and married one of her father's waiters.

- (Men and Women: The Poetry of Love: American Heritage Press 1970)

[Biography]

Ernest Dowson was born at Belmont Hill in Kent in 1867. His great-uncle was
Alfred Domett (Browning's "Waring"), who was at one time Prime Minister of New
Zealand. Dowson, practically an invalid all his life, was reckless with himself
and, as disease weakened him more and more, hid himself in miserable
surroundings; for almost two years he lived in sordid supper-houses known as
"cabmen's shelters." He literally drank himself to death.

Dowson was a prominent member of the aesthetic movement, a group of English
poets and painters of the 1890s formed as a reaction against Victorianism. His
delicate and fantastic poetry was an attempt to escape from a reality too big
and brutal for him. His passionate lyric, 'I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion', a triumph of despair and disillusion, is an outburst in which
Dowson epitomized himself. "One of the greatest lyrical poem of our time",
writes Arthur Symons, "in it he has for once said everything, and he has said it
to an intoxicating and perhaps immortal music".

Dowson died obscure in 1900, one of the finest of modern minor poets. His life
was the tragedy of a weak nature buffeted by a strong and merciless environment.

[Links]

http://www.bartleby.com/verse/103/2000.html
[broken link] http://www.access.victoria.bc.ca/~joannee/poetry/dowson.htm

Villanelle (minimalist): One Drunken Night -- Peter Schaeffer

(Poem #393) Villanelle (minimalist): One Drunken Night I think she'll pour my drink. I wink at more, I think, than minx who pours my drink. I sink to floor, and think she stinks! I roar, "My drink, you fink!" I snore, and think I drink. -- Peter Schaeffer

What is a villanelle? "Seven-syllable lines using two rhymes, distributed in
(normally) five tercets and a final quatrain with line repetitions", saith
the Britannica, which also calls it a "rigorous and somewhat monotonous
form". Rigorous it may be, but half the beauty of a villanelle lies in the
poet's efforts to conform without lapsing into monotony. Indeed, by its very
nature the villanelle seems to cry out for some sort of wordplay or other -
it is hard to write an entirely 'serious' poem under the constraints[1].

The most usual form of wordplay is simply the setting up of the repeated
lines so that the word meanings shift and change. Schaeffer takes a slightly
different approach here - rather than trying to write so 'naturally' as to
distract attention from the rigid form, he embraces it for humorous effect.
For instance, in 'The Art of the Villanelle' (see links) he explicitly
comments on the repetition - "Attend this line, which you'll have heard.../
until you're sick of every word."[2]

Today's poem, on the other hand, uses a different technique - it strips the
villanelle of its usual trappings, simultaneously poking fun at both the
villanelle and at minimalist verse. (See also the last verse for an example
of villanelle-induced wordplay).

[1] making it all the more impressive when managed - as in Dylan Thomas's
classic poem (see links)

[2] see my comment on self-referential humorous verse, poem #194

Links:

Just over half a minstrels ago, we ran Schaeffer's mindbogglingly good
'Juggler, Magician, Fool - A Pantoum': poem #195

The canonical example of the English villanelle is surely Dylan Thomas's 'Do
Not Go Gentle into That Good Night': poem #38

which includes, as a bonus, another of Schaeffer's villanelles, 'The Art of
the Villanelle'

And for some lovely pieces of minimalist verse, see Pound's 'In a station of
the Metro': poem #319

and Corman's untitled poem: poem #348

- martin