Winter Landscape -- John Berryman

This week's theme: Brueghel, or, A Poetic Curiosity:

(Poem #482) Winter Landscape The three men coming down the winter hill In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds At heel, through the arrangement of the trees, Past the five figures at the burning straw, Returning cold and silent to their town, Returning to the drifted snow, the rink Lively with children, to the older men, The long companions they can never reach, The blue light, men with ladders, by the church The sledge and shadow in the twilit street, Are not aware that in the sandy time To come, the evil waste of history Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow Of that same hill: when all their company Will have been irrecoverably lost, These men, this particular three in brown Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say By their configuration with the trees, The small bridge, the red houses and the fire, What place, what time, what morning occasion Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders, Thence to return as now we see them and Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies. -- John Berryman

Anustup Datta () wrote in with a most interesting discovery:
a set of four poems all based on the same painting, Pieter Brueghel's 'Hunters
in the Snow'. (You can see the painting itself at
[broken link] http://www.khm.at/khm/staticE/page430.html). For today's poem I'll just include
Anustup's own commentary; from tomorrow onwards I'll be adding my own two (or
more) bits.

thomas.

[Anustup writes]

This exercise was prompted by a sense of curiosity to compare two arts - the
visual and the poetic. Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Or does the
use of language, an evocative medium that conjures up far more than it
physically says, actually add extra dimensions of meaning to the subject? You be
the judge.

I have chosen one of my favourite paintings - Pieter Brueghel's celebrated
'Hunters in the Snow'. It is a very evocative painting, as anyone who has seen
Andrei Tarkovsky's classic film 'The Sacrifice' would know: this painting plays
a central role in it. Brueghel was known for his silky and delicate landscapes -
his nickname was 'Velvet', as distinguished from his brother [1] Jan, who was
dubbed 'Hell'.

My other reason for choosing Brueghel is his popularity among poets - many of
his works have had poetry written on them. The most celebrated is W. H. Auden's
'Musee des Beaux Arts' (Minstrels Poem #68), on Brueghel's 'The Fall of Icarus'.
William Carlos Williams has also written a well-known poem on the same painting
[2].

Anustup.

[1] Actually, 'Hunters in the Snow' is by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the father
of Jan and Pieter Brueghel the Younger - t.

[2] 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus', one of several Williams poems based on
Brueghel paintings - see his 'Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems', New
Directions, 1962 - t.

[EB on Brueghel]

" ... with the possible exception of a drawing of a mountain valley by Leonardo
da Vinci, the landscapes resulting from [Brueghel's journey to Italy] are almost
without parallel in European art for their rendering of the overpowering
grandeur of the high mountains. Very few of the drawings were done on the spot,
and several were done after Brueghel's return, at an unknown date, to Antwerp.
The vast majority are free compositions, combinations of motifs sketched on the
journey through the Alps...

... the double interest in landscape and in subjects requiring the
representation of human figures also informed, often jointly, the paintings that
Brueghel produced in increasing number after his return from Italy. All of his
paintings, even those in which the landscape appears as the dominant feature,
have some narrative content. Conversely, in those that are primarily narrative,
the landscape setting often carries part of the meaning.

... ['Hunters in the Snow' features] a combined monumentalization and extreme
simplification of figures... and another characteristic of Brueghel's art, an
obsessive interest in rendering movement."

        -- Encylopaedia Brittanica

Who By fire -- Leonard Cohen

(Poem #481) Who By fire And who by fire, who by water, who in the sunshine, who in the night time, who by high ordeal, who by common trial, who in your merry merry month of may, who by very slow decay and who shall I say is calling? And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate, who in these realms of love, who by something blunt, and who by avalanche, who by powder, who for his greed, who for his hunger, and who shall I say is calling? And who by brave assent, who by accident, who in solitude, who in this mirror, who by his lady's command, who by his own hand, who in mortal chains, who in power, and who shall I say is calling? -- Leonard Cohen

from 'New Skin for Old Ceremony', 1974; also appears on 'The Best of Leonard
Cohen' (1975), which I'd recommend to Cohen tyros.

I spent most of yesterday listening to Leonard Cohen's spine-tinglingly deep
monotone and bewitching lyrics while reading Neal Stephenson... ooh (on both
counts).

I sometimes wonder if it's quite fair to run Cohen and Dylan and the like on the
Minstrels - after all, there's definitely more to their art than just words on
the printed page; by considering their lyrics as examples of poetry, we rob them
of what gives them much of their power (the underlying music) while at the same
time minimizing the many constraints under which they were written.

I've mentioned these points before, of course [1]. What makes it worse, though,
is the fact that I have no really objective way of judging whether, for example,
today's poem is actually a good one in its own right (and one that'll appeal to
an audience who haven't heard the song - not _you_, Gentle Reader, but others
less musically-knowledgeable <grin>), or if it's just an adequate set of lyrics,
granted power and immediacy by the music it's set to. I wish I knew... As usual,
your feedback would be appreciated.

thomas.

[1] The relationship between poetry and song lyrics has been talked about quite
a bit on the Minstrels; check out the essays accompanying Sting's
'The Soul Cages', poem #114
and Richard Thompson's 'Taking My Business Elsewhere', submitted by Amit
Chakrabarti; Hi Amit!), at poem #299

[Minstrels Links]

Footnote [1] above (is that an oxymoron, by the way?) has links to a couple of
examples of song lyrics; here are some more:
  poem #112, poem #227, poem #119.

In a sense, moving from the spoken (or sung) to the written word is a kind
of translation; some of my favourite examples of translated poetry are
listed at poem #472.

There's more about Cohen at poem #116.

And finally, 'The Music Crept By Us' is Cohen at his morbidly funny best:
poem #339 (Thanks to Zenobia Driver for suggesting that one).

[End Note]

All this meta-commentary about music and lyrics has left me without a great deal
to say about the poem itself. Suffice to say that I find Cohen's ironic
catalogue of ways to die pithy, yet not so direct as to be devoid of feeling or
subtle meaning. The counterpoint provided by the line 'and who shall I say is
calling?' is also very skilfully done; it's even more effective in the song.

Before Action -- W N Hodgson

Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta:

(Poem #480) Before Action By all the glories of the day And the cool evening's benison, By that last sunset touch that lay Upon the hills where day was done, By beauty lavishly outpoured And blessings carelessly received, By all the days that I have lived Make me a solider, Lord. By all of man's hopes and fears, And all the wonders poets sing, The laughter of unclouded years, And every sad and lovely thing; By the romantic ages stored With high endeavor that was his, By all his mad catastrophes Make me a man, O Lord. I, that on my familiar hill Saw with uncomprehending eyes A hundred of Thy sunsets spill Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice, Ere the sun swings his noonday sword Must say goodbye to all of this;-- By all delights that I shall miss, Help me to die, O Lord. -- W N Hodgson

If there be perfection in war poetry, Hodgson's "Before Action" is it. It is,
first of all, beautiful poetry - the rhythms of the soldier's orisons are
perfectly captured. The second verse introduces the irony - subtly - all the sad
and lovely things that the romantic ages had to say about battle, valour, glory
and the ideals of high endeavour : the finale of Tennyson's "Maud" is an
excellent example. The third verse is pure despair - the last line drops like a
bombshell, but not before beguiling one with the perfect beauty of "A hundred of
Thy sunsets spill/Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice". All in all, a real gem.

Anustup.

The Man He Killed -- Thomas Hardy

Guest poem submitted by Jeff Berndt:

(Poem #479) The Man He Killed "Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because-- Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like--just as I-- Was out of work--had sold his traps-- No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown." -- Thomas Hardy

I don't know how you feel about Thomas Hardy.  Most people know him as a writer
of novels, but here's a poem of his that I ran across some days ago.  The
message in this poem is obvious--no subtleties here.  But I still like it.  I
don't know anything about when exactly Hardy wrote this poem or in response to
what incident; if anybody does, I wouldn't mind hearing about it.

Jeff.

Enigma -- Duncan Campbell Scott

Guest poem submitted by Raghavendra Udupa:

(Poem #478) Enigma Some men are born to gather women's tears, To give a harbour to their timorous fears, To take them as the dry earth takes the rain, As the dark wood the warm wind from the plain; Yet their own tears remain unshed, Their own tumultuous fears unsaid, And, seeming steadfast as the forest and the earth, Shaken are they with pain. They cry for voice as earth might cry for the sea Or the wood for consuming fire; Unanswered they remain Subject to the sorrows of women utterly -- Heart and mind, Subject as the dry earth to the rain Or the dark wood to the wind. -- Duncan Campbell Scott

I stumbled upon this beautiful piece of work when I was browsing the University
of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online [1]. Apart from the theme, what I
liked most about the poem is its simplicity. In fact, each word contributes to
the central theme (perhaps Scott picked this up from the Imagists who were his
contemporaries). For instance, the poet describes the fears of women as timorous
and  those of men as tumultuous...  the metaphors are simple but powerful. The
two lines that appealed to me the most are:
        "They cry for voice as earth might cry for the sea
        Or the wood for consuming fire;"

Raghu.

[1] http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/intro.html

[Bio]

Born in Ottawa in 1862, educated at Smith's Falls, Ontario, and Stanstead,
Quebec, Scott obtained a position at 17 years old as a clerk in the Indian
Branch of the federal government and before his retirement in 1932 had risen to
become deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs. In this
position he developed an understanding of and sympathy with the native peoples
of Canada, some of which appears in his poems about Amerindians, and much in his
book, The Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (1931). From 1893 to 1947
he published nine volumes of poetry, as well as two books of short stories and a
play. As the literary executor of Archibald Lampman, Scott edited, published and
popularized his poetry. The two men had jointly published essays in a Toronto
Globe column in 1892-93. Scott was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of
Canada in 1899, and he acted as its president in 1921. The University of Toronto
and Queens' University gave him honorary degrees in 1922 and 1939. He married
Belle Warner Botsford in 1894 and they had one daughter, who died in 1907. After
his wife's death in 1929, he remarried Elise Aylen in 1931. His death came at 85
in 1947.

        -- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/scottd.html