Marriages Are Made -- Eunice deSouza

Guest poem sent in by Suresh Ramasubramanian

Here's yet another of my favorites ... with a (longish) commentary below. My
colleague Deepa Balakrishnan re-introduced me to Eunice deSouza's poetry
(after a gap of at least six years) with a poem on the cat theme (which I
sent y'all some weeks back).  Stumbled on another poem, which I'd like to
share with y'alll.

(Poem #603) Marriages Are Made My cousin Elena is to be married The formalities have been completed: her family history examined for T.B. and madness her father declared solvent her eyes examined for squints her teeth for cavities her stools for the possible non-Brahmin worm. She's not quite tall enough and not quite full enough (children will take care of that) Her complexion it was decided would compensate, being just about the right shade of rightness to do justice to Francisco X. Noronha Prabhu good son of Mother Church. -- Eunice deSouza

Wonderfully biting sarcasm and a sharp eye for the 'marriage market' of
conservative (or rather stick in the mud, male chauvinistic) India - where
prospective brides are examined like cattle being brought into a market.

The poem is characteristic deSouza - a plain tale told without any
unnecessary conceits and embellishments, letting well chosen, hard hitting
words speak for themselves.  Yes - speak for themselves - for this poem
(like all deSouza's poems) is best enjoyed when read aloud.

If Keats' poetry is like a fine, old, mellow wine, Eunice deSouza's poetry
is like a good single malt - sharp, biting, harsh to the taste - but
equally enjoyable.

Ms.deSouza has been Head of the Department of English in St.Xaviers
College, Bombay for over 25 years - and is also a leading theater /
literary critic.

Most of her poems have a strong sense of individuality and feminism, and
Several of them (such as this one) are also 'catholic poems' - which take
us on a deeply cynical tour around her Goan / Roman Catholic community, as
also the conservatism of Pune, where she was brought up after she lost her
father at the age of three.

These two short poems she wrote speak far louder than any commentary ..

Don't Look for my life in these poems

        Poems can have order, sanity
        aesthetic distance from debris.
        All I've learnt from pain
        I always knew,
        but could not do.

[and]

My Students ...
        My students think it funny
        that Daruwallas and de Souzas
        should write poetry.
        Poetry is faery lands forlorn.
        Women writers Miss Austen.
        Only foreign men air their crotches

Daruwalla of course being Keki Daruwalla - a retired (and high ranking)
police officer I think, and another of India's best contemporary poets.

Finally, here's a stanza from her poem  'deSouza Prabhu' - which gives us
a little more insight into her (of course, keeping that 'Don't look for my
life in these poems' caveat above)

<[broken link] http://www.indiaworld.co.in/open/rec/poetry/eunice3.html>

        I heard it said
        my parents wanted a boy
        I've done my best to qualify.
        I hid the bloodstains
        on my clothes
        and let my breasts sag.
        Words the weapon
        to crucify.

--
Suresh Ramasubramanian + + http://kcircle.com

Deep Sorriness Atonement Song -- Glyn Maxwell

Guest poem submitted by Vikram Doctor:

(Poem #602) Deep Sorriness Atonement Song (for missed appointment, BBC North, Manchester) The man who sold Manhattan for a halfway decent bangle, He had talks with Adolf Hitler and could see it from his angle, And he could have signed the Quarrymen but didn't think they'd make it So he bought a cake on Pudding Lane and thought "Oh well I'll bake it" But his chances they were slim And his brothers they were Grimm, And he's sorry, very sorry, But I'm sorrier than him. And the drunken plastic surgeon who said "I know, let's enlarge 'em!" And the bloke who told the Light Brigade "Oh what the hell, let's charge 'em", The magician with an early evening gig on the Titanic And the Mayor who told the people of Atlantis not to panic, And the Dong about his nose And the Pobble re his toes, They're all sorry very sorry But I'm sorrier than those. And don't forget the Bible, with the Sodomites and Judas, And Onan who discovered something nothing was as rude as, And anyone who reckoned it was City's year for Wembley. And the kid who called Napoleon a shortarse in assembly, And the man who always smiles Cause he knows I have his files, They're all sorry, really sorry, But I'm sorrier by miles. And Robert Falcon Scott who lost the race to the Norwegian, And anyone who's ever split a pint with a Glaswegian, Or told a Finn a joke or spent an hour with a Swiss-German, Or got a mermaid in the sack and found it was a merman, Or him who smelt a rat, And got curious as a cat, They're all sorry, deeply sorry, But I'm sorrier than that. All the people who were rubbish when we needed them to do it, Whose wires crossed, whose spirit failed, who ballsed it up or blew it, All notches of nul points and all who have a problem Houston, At least they weren't in Kensington when they should have been at Euston. For I didn't build the Wall And I didn't cause the Fall But I'm sorry, Lord, I'm sorry, I'm the sorriest of all. -- Glyn Maxwell

There are irritating sorts of people who don't read poetry because they ask
what use its for. Of course, just answering this is stupid, since usefulness
is hardly the point. Nonetheless, I'm still happy to note that I have often
found poetry useful. There are many situations where I've screwed up,
offended someone, need to make amends, and just saying sorry alone never
seems enough. Adding a poem, like the one above, is an easy way of making
the apology a bit different and making the person you've offended laugh and
be more forgiving.

Gyn Maxwell is a young British poet. I don't actually much like his work,
but this was an exception.

Vikram.

[thomas adds]

I'll type in some notes - just as soon as I stop laughing...

[Notes]

'The man who sold Manhattan for a halfway decent bangle': In 1626 Peter
Minuit, the first director general of New Netherland province, is said to
have purchased the island from the local Indians (the Manhattan, a tribe of
the Wappinger Confederacy) with trinkets and cloth valued at 60 guilders,
then worth about 1 1/2 pounds (0.7 kg) of silver
        -- EB, http://www.eb.com

'He had talks with Adolf Hitler and could see it from his angle': Probably a
reference to Neville Chamberlain, who returned from negotiations with Hitler
in Munich and famously declared "I believe it is peace for our time". It
wasn't.

'And he could have signed the Quarrymen but didn't think they'd make it':
'The Quarrymen' was one of the early names of the greatest rock group of all
time, the Beatles. Manager Brian Epstein sent demo tapes to literally dozens
of recording companies before landing a contract with EMI/Parlophone.

'So he bought a cake on Pudding Lane and thought "Oh well I'll bake it"':
The Great Fire of London, in 1666, started in a bakery on Pudding Lane. (It
ended on Pie Lane, but that's a different matter altogether).

'And the bloke who told the Light Brigade "Oh what the hell, let's charge
'em"': The ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalized by Tennyson;
see poem #355

'The magician with an early evening gig on the Titanic': One can safely
assume that the performance sank without a trace.

'And the Mayor who told the people of Atlantis not to panic': Famous last
words.

'And the Dong about his nose / And the Pobble re his toes': The Dong with
the Luminous Nose, and the Pobble who has no Toes are characters from the
mysterious, twilit world of Edward Lear's imagination. See poem #297 for
the latter (we haven't run the former yet).

'And don't forget the Bible, with the Sodomites and Judas,
And Onan who discovered something nothing was as rude as'
Sodomy: copulation with a member of the same sex or with an animal
Onanism: masturbation
Judas: one who betrays under the guise of friendship
        -- Merriam Webster, http://www.m-w.com

'And anyone who reckoned it was City's year for Wembley': Manchester City
have never won the F. A. Cup.

'And the kid who called Napoleon a shortarse in assembly': The widespread
notion of Napoleon's shortness lies in the inaccurate translation of old
French feet ("pieds de roi") to English. The French measure of five foot two
(5' 2"), recorded at his autopsy, actually translates into five feet six and
one half inches (5' 6.5") in English measure, which was about the average
height of the Frenchman of his day. It's also probable that the grenadiers
of his Imperial Guard, with whom he "hung out," were very tall men, therefor
creating the illusion that Napoleon was very short.
        -- http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95aug/napoleon.html

'And Robert Falcon Scott who lost the race to the Norwegian': Roald Amundsen
reached the South Pole about a month before Scott's doomed expedition.

'And anyone who's ever split a pint with a Glaswegian': Glaswegians are
notorious for their tightfistedness...
'Or told a Finn a joke': ... Finns for their lack of humour...
'or spent an hour with a Swiss-German': ... and Germans for their
boringness.

'All notches of nul points': I'm not sure exactly what this is a reference
to, but Vikram says it might have something to do with the Eurovision song
contest. (Songs that get booed even on Eurovision - ooh, horrendous thought
<grin>).

'and all who have a problem Houston': Astronaut Jack Swigert, command module
pilot of the unsuccessful Apollo 13 mission, reported the first signs of
trouble with this marvellous piece of understatement: "Houston, we've had a
problem here". A vivid account of the subsequent rescue can bo found here:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-13/apollo-13.html

'they should have been at Euston': Euston station, point of departure for
trains from London to Manchester.

[Moreover]

Here's a nicely written review of Maxwell's latest collection of poems:
[broken link] http://www.thenewrepublic.com/archive/0699/061499/kirsch061499.html
The Maxwell-specific stuff starts only in the eighth paragraph; the
preceding material is all about 'the crisis of modern poetry'. Very
interesting - read it!

[Random Ramblings]

The subtitle, 'for missed appointment, BBC North, Manchester, reminds me of
a Muir and Norden classic [1] - the time Frank and Denis were going to a BBC
audition and got hopelessely lost: "Muir in Surrey, Den in Ongar".

[1] Frank Muir and Denis Norden used to run this BBC radio show called 'My
Word', in which they would each improvise outrageous stories culminating in
a punchline which was always an atrocious pun. Sidesplittingly funny.

Hall and Knight -- E V Rieu

In a somewhat lighter vein...

(Poem #601) Hall and Knight or 'z + b + x = y + b + z' When he was young his cousins used to say of Mr Knight: 'This boy will write an algebra - or looks as if he might.' And sure enough, when Mr Knight had grown to be a man, He purchased pen and paper and an inkpot, and began. But he very soon discovered that he couldn't write at all, And his heart was filled with yearnings for a certain Mr Hall; Till, after many years of doubt, he sent his friend a card: 'Have tried to write an Algebra, but find it very hard.' Now Mr Hall himself had tried to write a book for schools, But suffered from a handicap: he didn't know the rules. So when he heard from Mr Knight and understood his gist, He answered him by telegram: 'Delighted to assist.' So Mr Hall and Mr Knight they took a house together, And they worked away at algebra in any kind of weather, Determined not to give up until they had evolved A problem so constructed that it never could be solved. 'How hard it is', said Mr Knight, 'to hide the fact from youth That x and y are equal: it is such an obvious truth!' 'It is', said Mr Hall, 'but if we gave a b to each, We'd put the problem well beyond our little victims' reach. 'Or are you anxious, Mr Knight, lest any boy should see The utter superfluity of this repeated b?' 'I scarcely fear it', he replied, and scratched this grizzled head, 'But perhaps it would be safer if to b we added z.' 'A brilliant stroke!', said Hall, and added z to either side; Then looked at his accomplice with a flush of happy pride. And Knight, he winked at Hall (a very pardonable lapse). And they printed off the Algebra and sold it to the chaps. -- E V Rieu

A hilarious poem - if poets and writers can be immortalised in verse, why
not those old tormentors of many a student, Hall and Knight? Commentary is
almost superfluous - suffice it to say that I loved the poem, and that
'accomplice' is as perfect a choice of words as any I've seen.

Notes:

  Hall and Knight's "Higher Algebra" is surely one of the most famous (I
  will not speak for 'best-loved' <g>) mathematics textbooks of all time,
  second perhaps only to Euclid's Elements in its ubiquity[1]. First
  published in 1887, it is, as far as I know, still in print (at least in
  India, where it is published by Deepa and Company [2][3]; I could not find
  a copy on any of the major book sites). The book is a bit dated today, but
  still well worth a look if only for its historical value.

  The poem, though, more likely refers to their earlier 'Elementary Algebra
  for Schools', to which the more famous book was a sequel.

  'z' is, of course, pronounced 'zed' throughout.

[1] Both Joyce and Wodehouse, for instance, mention it.
[2] [broken link] http://www.vidyainfo.com/books/BookDetails.asp?cid=279&cbid=1479
[3] and where it is still popular as an excellent source of problems

Biography:

Couldn't find a proper biography of Rieu online - here're a few snippets I
managed to dig up:

- He was the founder editor of the Penguin Classics

    During the blitz in 1940 a Dr E V. Rieu started a new translation on the
    Homer's Odyssey. This appeared in 1946 as the first Penguin Classic, and
    enabled those in education to pass examinations and enlightentened those
    who read for shear pleasure.

 -- [broken link] http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/apm/publishing/culture/1997/keating.html

- He was a translator of some note (Homer's 'Odyssey', Virgil's 'Ecologues',
  Apollonius of Rhodes' 'The Voyage of Argo').

  Patrick Kavanagh has written a poem titled "On Looking into E. V. Rieu's
  Homer" - see [broken link] http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/cat10.html

- He was a friend of the great science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon

   The preface to Waking World reveals that Stapledon could accept criticism
   and was willing to rewrite when necessary, for he twice refers to a
   rejected earlier version of the book and credits five people for helping
   him revise it into acceptable shape: these included his wife Agnes; E.V.
   Rieu, a long-time friend and an editor at Methuen; and Professor L.C.
   Martin of Liverpool University.

     -- [broken link] http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7628/stapledon/bio.html

- An sf/f piece, 'The Paint Box' appeared in an anthology titled 'The
  Unicorn Treasury' - see [broken link] http://www.locusmag.com/index/t117.html#A9659

Links:

Here's another poem by Rieu: [broken link] http://www.gulftel.com/thefacks/poem.html

And as for Messrs. Hall and Knight, I was amazed at the sheer lack of
webpages devoted to them and their minor classic. Even the Britannica is
uncharacteristically silent on the subject.

Here are a couple I did manage to find:

  [broken link] http://www.pa.ash.org.au/canberramaths/doks/Ed_Staple's_article.html makes
  an interesting read, especially if you're mathematically inclined.
  (Warning - the page displays all the equations as gifs, and takes forever
  to load)

  [broken link] http://libweb.princeton.edu:2003/libraries/firestone/rbsc/finding_aids/mathoral/pmc38.htm
  has a passing reference to an entire course at Princeton (in the 1930s)
  being based on Hall and Knight.

Today's poem forms part of the Mathematical Poetry theme, which began with
  poem #599

-martin

The Mouse's Tale -- Lewis Carroll

The poetry of mathematics, eh? How about the poetry of mathematicians... ?

(Poem #600) The Mouse's Tale Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, 'Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you.-- Come, I'll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I've nothing to do.' Said the mouse to the cur, 'Such a trial, dear Sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.' 'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,' Said cunning old Fury: 'I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.' -- Lewis Carroll

Possibly the canonical example of emblematic verse - that is, verse
formatted so as to visually resemble its theme. Here's the text that
immediately precedes this charming piece of doggerel:

" "You promised to tell me your history, you know", said Alice, "and why it
is you hate -- C and D", she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would
be offended again.

"Mine is a long and a sad tale!" said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and
sighing.

"It _is_ a long tail, certainly", said Alice, looking down with wonder at
the Mouse's tail; "but why do you call it sad?" And she kept on puzzling
about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was
something like this -- " "

        -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Curiously enough, "in the original manuscript of the book, an entirely
different poem appears as the tale; in a way, a more appropriate one, for it
fulfills the mouse's promise to explain why he dislikes cats and dogs,
whereas the tale as it appears [in the published version] contains no
reference to cats" [1].

Here's the unpublished original:

        We lived beneath the mat,
        Warm and snug and fat.
        But one woe, and that
        Was the cat!

        To our joys a clog.
        In our eyes a fog.
        On our hearts a log
        Was the dog!

        When the cat's away,
        Then the mice will play.
        But alas! one day;
        (So, they say)

        Came the dog and cat
        Hunting for a rat,
        Crushed the mice all flat,
        Each one as he sat,
        Underneath the mat,
        Warm and snug and fat.
        Think of that! "

        -- Lewis Carroll, draft manuscript of Alice in Wonderland.

(Aren't you glad Carroll chose to go with the revised version in the book?)

thomas.

[1] Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice.

[Links]

Several emblematic poems have already featured on the Minstrels:

'Easter Wings' by George Herbert, poem #567
(It was in response to this poem that Anustup Datta pointed out the
technical phrase for the genre, and suggested today's poem for the list.
Thanks, Anustup).

'Landscape: I' by bpNichol, poem #498

'A Prayer to the Sun', by Geoffrey Hill, poem #349

We've visited Lewis Carroll before:
poem #52
poem #265
poem #347
poem #409
The second of these pages has a brief biography of the poet, including the
immortal line "As a mathematician, Carroll was ... derivative" <grin>. A
longer biography can (as usual) be found in Britannica, http://www.eb.com

[Trivia]

Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Dodgson arrived
at this pen name by taking his own names Charles Lutwidge, translating them
into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus, then reversing and retranslating them into
English.

[More Trivia]

You may have heard the story that Queen Victoria loved Alice in Wonderland
so much that she requested a copy of Lewis Carroll's next book; her reward
was a treatise on determinants [1]. Unfortunately, it's just that - a story.
In the second edition of Symbolic Logic, Dodgson writes: "I take this
opportunity of giving what publicity I can to my contradiction of a silly
story, which has been going the round of the papers, about my having
presented certain books to Her Majesty the Queen. It is so constantly
repeated, and is such absolute fiction, that I think it worthwhile to state,
once for all, that it is utterly false in every particular; nothing even
resembling it has ever occurred." .

[1] Different versions of the story name different books - Symbolic Logic,
The Condensation of Determinants, Euclid and his Rivals...

[And Finally]

"'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,'Said cunning old Fury:" is more than a little
reminiscent of Fit the Sixth from the Hunting of the Snark: the Barrister's
Dream. Herewith, the relevant extract:

   He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
        Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
   Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
        On the charge of deserting its sty.

   ...

   But the Judge said he never had summed up before;
        So the Snark undertook it instead,
   And summed it so well that it came to far more
        Than the Witnesses ever had said!

   When the verdict was called for, the Jury declined,
        As the word was so puzzling to spell;
   But they ventured to hope that the Snark wouldn't mind
        Undertaking that duty as well.

        -- Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

'Snark', of course, is probably the greatest piece of nonsense literature
ever written; the full text is at
[broken link] http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/carrol02.html

Geometry -- Rita Dove

This week's theme - the poetry of mathematics

(Poem #599) Geometry I prove a theorem and the house expands: the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling, the ceiling floats away with a sigh. As the walls clear themselves of everything but transparency, the scent of carnations leaves with them. I am out in the open and above the windows have hinged into butterflies, sunlight glinting where they've intersected. They are going to some point true and unproven. -- Rita Dove

It is always refreshing to see a poem that truly appreciates the twin
beauties of nature and mathematics[1]. Dove's quietly understated 'Geometry'
is a fine example - very well constructed, and with a fine sense of balance
between what many people would see as entirely antithetical elements.

The poem's development is highly visual - the house fades into a geometrical
abstraction in a manner reminiscent of a computerised animation (one is
reminded, too, of architect's exploded wireframe diagrams, the components
separated, everything rendered in transparent outline). The scent of
carnations vanishes - another reduction, since smell has no place in the
clean, austere world of geometry. And then, in a sudden reversal, the
windows 'hinge into butterflies' and, glittering in the sunlight, fly off to
'some point true and unproven'. The whole reads like nothing so much as a
scene from Fantasia 2001, complete with the wave of a wizard's wand ("I
prove a theorem") to set the whole process into motion.

The last line, incidentally, is what made the poem for me - indeed, were I
writing the poem I'd have been strongly tempted to break the verse structure
and set it off in a verse by itself. It is astonishing on how many levels it
works. Carrying on the visual expansion, it evokes the image of a vanishing
point at infinity, suggesting thereby the convergence of all the poem's
elements. The 'true and unproven' could be a promise that the rich mine of
mathematical discovery is far from played out, or even a suggestion that
there will be things forever beyond mathematics. It is certainly a reference
to Gödel's theorem, one of the most beautiful and surprising mathematical
results of this century. And finally, it wraps up the poem neatly,
counterbalancing the opening gesture and suggesting that every proof
releases a flock of mathematical butterflies to hover just out of reach.

[1] Yes, this is in part a dig at Whitman's 'Learned Astronomer', the poem
that epitomises the other point of view, and is sadly what many people
think of first when they associate science and poetry.

Biography:

  Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. Her books of poetry include On
  the Bus with Rosa Parks (W. W. Norton, 1999), which was named a New York
  Times Notable Book of the Year and is a finalist for the National Book
  Critics Circle Award; Mother Love (1995); Selected Poems (1993); Grace
  Notes (1989); Thomas and Beulah (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize for
  Poetry; Museum (1983); and The Yellow House on the Corner (1980). She has
  also published Fifth Sunday (1985), a book of short stories; Through the
  Ivory Gate (1992), a novel; and The Darker Face of the Earth (1994), a
  verse drama. Her many honors include the Academy's Lavan Younger Poets
  Award, a Mellon Foundation grant, an NAACP Great American Artist award,
  Fulbright and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships, and grants and
  fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National
  Endowment for the Humanities. She served at Poet Laureate of the United
  States from 1993 to 1995 and is Commonwealth Professor of English at the
  University of Virginia. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

        -- [broken link] http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=188

Links:

The anthology that prompted this week's theme:
http://www.kate.stange.com/mathweb/mathpoet.html

Here's a much fuller biography:
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/compbio.html

It's interesting to compare today's poem to Kreymborg's similarly titled
'Geometry': poem #306

And the notorious Whitman poem: poem #54

As always, guest contributions to the theme are welcome.

-martin