Jubilate Agno -- Christopher Smart

Back in action with a cat poem of my own...

(Poem #661) Jubilate Agno For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way. For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness. For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer. For he rolls upon prank to work it in. For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself. For this he performs in ten degrees. For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean. For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there. For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended. For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood. For fifthly he washes himself. For sixthly he rolls upon wash. For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat. For eighthly he rubs himself against a post. For ninthly he looks up for his instructions. For tenthly he goes in quest of food. For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour. For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness. For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance. For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying. For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins. For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary. For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes. For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life. For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him. For he is of the tribe of Tiger. For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger. For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses. For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation. For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat. For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon. For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit. For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt. For every family had one cat at least in the bag. For the English Cats are the best in Europe. For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped. For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly. For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature. For he is tenacious of his point. For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery. For he knows that God is his Saviour. For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest. For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion. For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually -- Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat. For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better. For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat. For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music. For he is docile and can learn certain things. For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation. For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment. For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive. For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command. For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom. For he can catch the cork and toss it again. For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser. For the former is afraid of detection. For the latter refuses the charge. For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business. For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly. For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services. For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land. For his ears are so acute that they sting again. For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention. For by stroking of him I have found out electricity. For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire. For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast. For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements. For, tho' he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer. For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped. For he can tread to all the measures upon the music. For he can swim for life. For he can creep. -- Christopher Smart

The line dividing genius and madness is an exceedingly fine one, and more
than a few poets have straddled it. Christopher Smart is one such: today's
extraordinary poem was written while he was confined to an insane asylum in
Bethnal Green, yet it shows none of the effects one might expect from such a
conception. On the contrary - the poem reeks of sanity: the organisation is
superb, the diction is utterly assured and confident, the verses ring
perfectly true. It makes you wonder, doesn't it?

thomas.

[About the Madness of Christopher Smart]

... In 1756 Smart was dangerously ill, and a year later he was admitted to a
hospital for the insane; he spent the years 1759-63 in a private home for
the insane in Bethnal Green. His derangement took the form of a compulsion
to public prayer, which occasioned the famous comment of Dr. Johnson: "I'd
as lief pray with Kit Smart as anyone else". After leaving the asylum he
published his best-known poem, _A Song to David_... [in later years] he
declined into poverty and debt, and died within the 'Rules' of the King's
Bench Prison.

     -- Margaret Drabble, The Oxford Companion to English Literature

[About the Poem Itself]

First published in 1939, under the title Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from
Bedlam, edited by W. F. Stead from Smart's manuscript, which Stead had
discovered in a private library. Smart wrote the poem during the long period
of restraint and confinement to a madhouse (there is no evidence that he was
in Bedlam) which extended from 1756 to 1763. The poem consists of two types
of verses: one a series beginning with the word "Let," associating names of
human beings, mainly biblical, with various natural objects, and the other a
series of aphoristic verses beginning with the word "For." A later edition
of the poem, by W. H. Bond (1954), indicates that Smart's plan was to
arrange the "Let" and "For" passages opposite one another antiphonally,
following a practice of biblical Hebrew poetry, and that the present MS.
represents less than half of Smart's original plan for the poem, It is
unlikely that Smart thought of publishing the poem in his lifetime.

        -- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/smart1.html

[More About Madness and Genius]

Christopher Smart, who was tossed in the madhouse for his incessant praying
(in the street, for the most part), constantly asks what creativity is, what
rationality and irrationality are. His poems let loose a portion of the
imagination which the age of reason makes a point of keeping fettered with
social norms and conventional religion; in this way his raptures are related
to the scenes of redemptive or escapest madness we see in the literature of
Sensibility: Clarissa's mad letters after the rape and the lunatic picking
flowers in Werther. These issues of madness animate the debate we see
throughout the literature of Sensibility that revolves around the tension
between an imagination founded on the senses, on one hand, and governing
reason and judgement, on the other. Foucault in Madness and Civilization
examines the relationship between passion and enthusiasm and madness.
Smart's "madness" is actually grounded in his acute sensibilious response to
the physical world: the "mad" Smart is very much a part of this world, even
as he authorizes himself as a prophetic interpretor of the universe.
Interested in this world -- the material, the everyday, his cat -- his own
senses lead him on a journey of spiritual discovery. We also see here, as we
see in Sentimental Journey and elsewhere, the non-human or animal which
sparks benevolence, pity, or joy in the human.

        -- [broken link] http://www.engl.virginia.edu/~enec981/dictionary/24smartM1.html

[Tangentially Related Stuff]

Rejoice in the Lamb, Britten's 1943 setting of Jubilate Agno by Christopher
Smart, is based upon one of poetry's more weird offerings. The writer was
incarcerated in a lunatic asylum in 1756 for a form of religious mania and
his poem reflects this in an innocent, childlike faith which strikes us as
strange even today. Included in the eight sections is a poem For I will
consider my cat Jeoffrey and the feline's daily devotions which involve
twisting his body around seven times each morning. Britten chooses to set
this part for a rather plaintive treble voice. He uses an alto to tell the
tale of a male mouse that prepares to challenge a cat to protect his mate.
The Te Deum in C, from 1934, contrasts a solo treble voice with the rest of
the choir, while the short Jubilate Deo of 1961 has some sprightly organ
playing.

        --
http://www.musicweb.force9.co.uk/music/classrev/2000/july00/BrittenNaxos.htm

[Moreover]

A poem as distinctive as Smart's simply cries out for parody, and Gavin
Ewart more than rises to the occasion:

'Jubilate Matteo'

For I rejoice in my cat Matty.
For his coat is variegated in black and brown, with white undersides.
For in every way his whiskers are marvellous.
For he resists the Devil and is completely neuter.
For he sleeps and washes himself and walks warily in the ways of Putney.
For he is at home in the whole district of SW15.
For in this district the great Yorkshire Murderer ate his last meal before
he entered into captivity.
For in the Book of Crime there is no name like John Reginald Halliday
Christie.
For Yorkshire indeed excels in all things, as Geoffrey Boycott is the best
Batsman.
For the Yorkshire Ripper and the Hull Arsonist have their horns exalted in
glory.
For Yorkshire is therefore acknowledged the greatest County.
For Hull was once of the company, that is now of Humberside.
For Sir Leonard Hutton once scored 364 runs in a Test Match.
For Fred Trueman too is a flagrant glory to Yorkshire.
For my cat wanders in the ways of the angels of Yorkshire.
For in his soul God has shown him a remarkable vision of Putney.
For he has also trodden in the paths of the newly fashionable.
For those who live in Gwendolen Avenue cry 'Drop dead, darling!'
For in Cambalt road and Dealtry Road where the Vet lives there are
professional people.
For Erpingham Road and Danemere Street and Dryburgh Road include the
intelligentsia.
For in Clarendon Drive the Britist Broadcasting Corporation is rampant.
For the glory of God has deserted the simple.
For the old who gossiped in Bangalore Road are unknown to the dayspring.
For there is a shortage of the old people who adorned the novels of William
Trevor.
For in the knowledge of this I cling to the old folkways of Gwalior Road and
Olivette Street.
For I rejoice in my cat, who has the true spirit of Putney.

        -- Gavin Ewart

[Minstrels Links]

Madness has its place; check out
William Blake: Poems 26, 66, 97, 368, 546,
Ezra Pound: Poems 70, 123, 191, 319, 524, 583,
and Sylvia Plath: Poems 53, 129, 366, 404, 612.

The previous cat theme Martin mentioned: Poems 572, 574, 575, 577 (I'm sure
there are many more cat poems available on the website).

Other works by Gavin Ewart: Poems 263, 283, 546.

All this, and much much more, in the Minstrels archive,
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/

[And Finally]

I've just returned to Tokyo (and email!) after a most excellent holiday; my
thanks go to all those who submitted guest poems to cover for me, and to
Martin for manning the conn over the last few weeks.

On A Night of Snow -- Elizabeth Coatsworth

Carrying on with the cat theme...

Guest poem sent in by Martin Davis

(Poem #660) On A Night of Snow Cat, if you go outdoors, you must walk in the snow. You will come back with little white shoes on your feet, little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet. Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go. See how the flames are leaping and hissing low, I will bring you a saucer of milk like a marguerite, so white and so smooth, so spherical and so sweet - stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow. Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night, strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore, and more than cats move, lit by our eyes green light, on silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar - Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might, and things that are yet to be done. Open the door! -- Elizabeth Coatsworth

I'm afraid that I know nothing of Elizabeth Coatsworth, not can I
remember the anthology in which I found this poem.  When I started to
read it, I thought "Ho hum, another twee cat poem..." ; but then the
cat's voice in the second stanza hits its contrasting view of the world,
and, for me, conjures up the excitement of sharing living space with
cats very successfully.

It works so well that it was only some time after my first reading that
I realised it was a sonnet, 8/6, abbaabba cdcdcd, which I think is
always a tribute to the poet's art.

Regardless of the crafting, it still makes the hair on the back of my
neck rise - I hope you enjoy it too.

Best wishes,
Martin Davis

Poem -- William Carlos Williams

Guest poem sent in by Aseem Kaul

(Poem #659) Poem As the cat climbed over the top of the jamcloset first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into the pit of the empty flowerpot. -- William Carlos Williams

It's so incredibly simple isn't it. There's a cat. It moves from point A to
point B. That's all. But Williams captures the instinctive soft-footedness of
that movement so well. The first time I read this poem, I BRISTLED with
excitement, literally. The words themselves so sleekly feline, and the last
paragraph leaping down on to the page so nimbly that just reading the words,
just hearing the sound of them, you can see the cat moving. One of my
favourite Williams.

Aseem

Links:

poem #83 for a biography of Williams and what is probably his best
known poem.

Serenade -- Oscar Wilde

Carrying on with the theme...

Guest poem sent in by Suchitra

(Poem #658) Serenade The western wind is blowing fair Across the dark Ægean sea, And at the secret marble stair My Tyrian galley waits for thee. Come down! the purple sail is spread, The watchman sleeps within the town, O leave thy lily-flowered bed, O Lady mine come down, come down! She will not come, I know her well, Of lover's vows she hath no care, And little good a man can tell Of one so cruel and so fair. True love is but a woman's toy, They never know the lover's pain, And I who loved as loves a boy Must love in vain, must love in vain. O noble pilot tell me true Is that the sheen of golden hair? Or is it but the tangled dew That binds the passion-flowers there? Good sailor come and tell me now Is that my Lady's lily hand? Or is it but the gleaming prow, Or is it but the silver sand? No! no! 'tis not the tangled dew, 'Tis not the silver-fretted sand, It is my own dear Lady true With golden hair and lily hand! O noble pilot steer for Troy, Good sailor ply the labouring oar, This is the Queen of life and joy Whom we must bear from Grecian shore! The waning sky grows faint and blue, It wants an hour still of day, Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew, O Lady mine away! away! O noble pilot steer for Troy, Good sailor ply the labouring oar, O loved as only loves a boy! O loved for ever evermore! -- Oscar Wilde

[Bio]

1854-1900
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, the son of an
eye-surgeon and a literary hostess and writer (known under the pseudonym
"Speranza"). After studying at Trinity College, Dublin, Wilde went to
Magdalen College, Oxford, where he achieved a double first and won the
Newdigate prize for a poem "Ravenna".

While at Oxford he became notorious for his flamboyant wit, talent, charm
and aestheticism, and this reputation soon won him a place in London
society. Bunthorne, the Fleshly Poet in Gilbert and Sullivan's opera
Patience was widely thought to be a caricature of Wilde (though in fact it
was intended as a skit of Rossetti) and Wilde seems to have consciously
styled himself on this figure.

In 1882 Wilde gave a one year lecture tour of America, visiting Paris in
1883 before returning to New York for the opening of his first play Vera. In
1884 he married and had two sons, for whom he probably wrote his first book
of fairy tales, The Happy Prince. The next decade was his most prolific and
the time when he wrote the plays for which he is best remembered. His
writing and particularly his plays are epigramatic and witty and Wilde was
not afraid to shock.

This period was also haunted by accusations about his personal life, chiefly
prompted by the Marquess of Queensberry's fierce opposition to the intense
friendship between Wilde and her son, Lord Alfred. These accusations
culminated in 1895 in Wilde's imprisonment for homosexual offences.

While in prison, Wilde was declared bankrupt, and after his release he lived
on the generosity of friends. From prison he wrote a long and bitter letter
to Lord Alfred, part of which was afterwards published as De Profundis, but
after his release he wrote nothing but the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

[Links]

Oscar Wilde's works online at
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Oscar_Wilde/oscar_wilde_contents.htm
http://www.upei.ca/~english/202/victorian/wilde.html

A comprehensive biography at
http://www.bartleby.com/65/wi/Wilde-Os.html

The Dark and Turbulent Sea -- Stephen Dobyns

Guest poem sent in by Ravi Mundoli

(Poem #657) The Dark and Turbulent Sea Sailboat, sailboat - so Heart counts the ships at sea in order to raise his thoughts above matters of flesh. Heart is at the beach in his red swimsuit and nearby on towels or tossing balls in the air are abundant examples of female dazzle. Often Heart is comforted by the waves' regulation, the distant line of watery horizon, and the air with its mixed aspects of seafood, salt and sweat. But here at the beach Heart is no closer to the sea's soothing sway and resultant philosophical reflection than on a city street. Lolling and frolicking nymphs, pink flesh, and half-bared breasts, consume his vision and so in desperation Heart counts the ships at sea - sailboat, sailboat - in hopes he'll be restored to calm. This for Heart enacts life's essential problem- the distant vista with its philiosophical paraphernalia is disturbingly hidden by the delights of the foreground. Why for instance, mull over mortality when a bevy of young ladies is engaged in a bosomy bout of volleyball just a few feet away. Jiggle, jiggle thinks Heart, it leads to trouble. Sad to say, he hasn't thought of Kierkegaard all day. Heart is even hesitant to swim or take a nap lest he miss some beauty adjust a strap or hitch her halter up. as for the dark and violent sea it's just a distraction, easily ignored; moral issues, highbrow notions - all forgotten. This is in answer to a question asked the next day by a man in his car starting through his tempest - streaked windshield at the wind pummeled beach: Why's that guy sitting there grinning? Heart's having a picnic, even though its storming. Raindrops run down his neck. Heart stares at the waves disappearing into the fog and feels able at last to see what's there in peace. And what's that?: What lies ahead and what always has been. All the immutable why's and wherefores. But now Heart's distracted once again. Beneath the sand he has found a polka dotted bikini top. What amazing luck! Heart presses it to his lips, then folds it neatly in his basket. Is he aware of the wintry weather's fierce attack? Guess not. -- Stephen Dobyns

Stuff:

   Dobyns has published 21 works of fiction; a book of essays on poetry,
   "Best Words, Best Order" (St. Martin's Press, 1996); and ten books of
   poems, most recently "Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides." His most
   recent novels are "Boy in the Water" and "Church of Dead Girls." A
   collection of his short stories, "Eating Naked," is forthcoming from
   Holt this year. Dobyns' poems have won many awards and prizes,
   including the Lamont Poetry Selection, the Poetry Society of America's
   Melville Cane Award and Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts
   fellowships. His novels have been translated into some 15 languages,
   and two of them have been made into films ("Cold Dog Soup" and "Two
   Deaths of Señora Puccini"). Whether working in prose or poetry, he is a
   storyteller of great playfulness, caustic wit and heartfelt tenderness
   -- provocative and deeply curious.

The present poem is from "Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides".

   In "Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides," we see the world through
   the melancholic eyes of Heart -- blood-pumping organ, lover, poet and
   skeptical philosopher of the everyday. Heart reflects on the vagaries
   of love, the cruelties of time and on "how some folks get pearls,
   others pebbles." Dividing two sections of Heart poems is the long
   "Oh, Immobility, Death's Vast Associate," which is a jazzy
   disquisition on human isolation and inaction in the midst of a planet
   full of people brooding over problems of gravity, age and memory.
   Full of Dobyns' characteristic black humor and maniacal imagination,
   the poem also admits moments of irresistible affirmation:

       But the flower, the poem, the sonata, the song:
       all beauty is a form of eager activity. Within
       its delicate body each daisy is a rowdy dance.

   "Pallbearers" has been called "a cycle of medieval morality poems for
   a new Dark Age."

   "Stephen Dobyns is nothing so much as the Dean Swift of contemporary
   American poetry," writes The Washington Post. "Satirist and
   absurdist, unsparing chronicler of the body's runaway appetites and
   the body politic's rampant festerings, a searing moralist camouflaged
   in a manic style and a flair for the macabre." But, as Hayden Carruth
   said, while "his manner is tart, often sardonic,.at heart the poems
   are profoundly humane," struggling as they always are with the
   paradox of the human condition: "How hard to love the world; we must
   love the world."

        -- [broken link] http://www.smith.edu/newsoffice/Releases/00-025.html

The book is an excellent one, the poems all seem "relevant" even though
(!!) Dobyns uses such modern day images as fax machines and email to put
his point across. In particular, the separating out of "Heart" as though he
were a separate person, with a separate consciousness from the more
business-like brain seems like a brilliant literary trick. You will have to
read the book to understand what I'm saying :-).

Ravi Mundoli