mehitabel and her kittens -- Don Marquis

Guest poem sent in by Suresh Ramasubramanian

(Poem #1079) mehitabel and her kittens well boss mehitabel the cat has reappeared in her old haunts with a flock of kittens three of them this time archy she says to me yesterday the life of a female artist is continually hampered what in hell have i done to deserve all these kittens i look back on my life and it seems to me to be just one damned kitten after another i am a dancer archy and my only prayer is to be allowed to give my best to my art but just as i feel that i am succeeding in my life work along comes another batch of these damned kittens it is not archy that i am shy on mother love god knows i care for the sweet little things curse them but am i never to be allowed to live my own life i have purposely avoided matrimony in the interests of the higher life but i might just as well have been a domestic slave for all the freedom i have gained i hope none of them gets run over by an automobile my heart would bleed if anything happened to them and i found it out but it isn t fair archy it isn t fair these damned tom cats have all the fun and freedom if i was like some of these green eyed feline vamps i know i would simply walk out on the bunch of them and let them shift for themselves but i am not that kind archy i am full of mother love my kindness has always been my curse a tender heart is the cross i bear self sacrifice always and forever is my motto damn them i will make a home for the sweet innocent little things unless of course providence in his wisdom should remove them they are living just now in an abandoned garbage can just behind a made over stable in greenwich village and if it rained into the can before i could get back and rescue them i am afraid the little dears might drown it makes me shudder just to think of it of course if i were a family cat they would probably be drowned anyhow sometimes i think the kinder thing would be for me to carry the sweet little things over to the river and drop them in myself but a mother s love archy is so unreasonable something always prevents me these terrible conflicts are always presenting themselves to the artist the eternal struggle between art and life archy is something fierce my what a dramatic life i have lived one moment up the next moment down again but always gay archy always gay and always the lady too in spite of hell well boss it will be interesting to note just how mehitabel works out her present problem a dark mystery still broods over the manner in which the former family of three kittens disappeared one day she was taking to me of the kittens and the next day when i asked her about them she said innocently what kittens interrogation point and that was all i could ever get out of her on the subject we had a heavy rain right after she spoke to me but probably that garbage can leaks so the kittens have not yet been drowned archy -- Don Marquis

well, we haven't had an archy poem since at least a couple of years, i
think.  the last one was on oct 9, 1999, from a cursory look at the
minstrels archives.  i hereby propose to remedy this.

motherhood and career - as seen through the eyes of a cat on her ninth
life whose soul once belonged to cleopatra.

        -srs (all lowercase mail for an all lowercase poem)

[Martin adds]

Suresh is right - we have indeed not had one of these in a while, and I do
thank him for remedying that. One of the things that I like about the Archy
and Mehitabel poems is that they work not just as poems, but as continuing
episodes in a narrative that is enthralling in its own right; Archy and
Mehitabel are characters that we come to care about, and in whose
development we can take an interest quite orthogonal to the (considerable)
poetic merits of the individual pieces. Today's poem is a genuinely moving
glimpse into Mehitabel's moral dilemma, and the ending is as artistically
satisfying as it is disturbing.

Water Lilies -- Sara Teasdale

(Poem #1078) Water Lilies If you have forgotten water lilies floating On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade, If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance, Then you can return and not be afraid. But if you remember, then turn away forever To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart, There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies, And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart. -- Sara Teasdale

Today's poem addresses one of my favourite themes - that of the longing, not
for a place, but for a particular *kind* of place. Sea poems are perhaps the
most popular examples of the genre, but practically every form of terrain
from the teeming metropolis to the forest primeval has its 'poetic' aspects,
and most have been immortalised in at least one good poem.

'Water Lilies' is definitely one of the good poems. Teasdale's quiet,
understated style fits her subject beautifully - the "dark lake among
mountains in the afternoon shade" is a perfectly self-contained image that
draws the reader into an almost enchanted scene, and makes the last line not
just plausible but believable.

Links:

There's a biography of Teasdale at Poem #113

A random sampling of poems along the same lines:
  Poem #3, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Inversnaid"
  Poem #29, Rudyard Kipling, "The Sea and the Hills"
  Poem #317, Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Inland"
  Poem #510, Lord Byron, "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods"

And on a somewhat related note:
  Poem #238, W. J. Turner, "Romance"

-martin

The Plea of the Simla Dancers -- Rudyard Kipling

(Poem #1077) The Plea of the Simla Dancers Too late, alas! the song To remedy the wrong; -- The rooms are taken from us, swept and garnished for their fate. But these tear-besprinkled pages Shall attest to future ages That we cried against the crime of it -- too late, alas! too late! "What have we ever done to bear this grudge?" Was there no room save only in Benmore For docket, duftar, and for office drudge, That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor? Must babus do their work on polished teak? Are ball-rooms fittest for the ink you spill? Was there no other cheaper house to seek? You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill. We never harmed you! Innocent our guise, Dainty our shining feet, our voices low; And we revolved to divers melodies, And we were happy but a year ago. To-night, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles -- That beamed upon us through the deodars -- Is wan with gazing on official files, And desecrating desks disgust the stars. Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights -- Nay! by the witchery of flying feet -- Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights -- By all things merry, musical, and meet -- By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes -- By wailing waltz -- by reckless gallop's strain -- By dim verandas and by soft replies, Give us our ravished ball-room back again! Or -- hearken to the curse we lay on you! The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain, And murmurs of past merriment pursue Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain; And when you count your poor Provincial millions, The only figures that your pen shall frame Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions Danced out in tumult long before you came. Yea! "See Saw" shall upset your estimates, "Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse, Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use. And all the long verandas, eloquent With echoes of a score of Simla years, Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment -- Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears. So shall you mazed amid old memories stand, So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought, And ever in your ears a phantom Band Shall blare away the staid official thought. Wherefore -- and ere this awful curse he spoken, Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train, And give -- ere dancing cease and hearts be broken -- Give us our ravished ball-room back again! -- Rudyard Kipling

Notes:
 duftar: office
 babu: clerk (especially one literate in English)

Today's poem is pretty enough in a 'minor Kipling' sort of way, but not
really all that outstanding - apart, that is, from the opening verse. That
verse ranks among my favourite pieces of Kipling - haunting, melodious, and,
particularly in the last four lines, capturing an emotion so beautifully and
precisely that it quite transcends the poem to which it is attached and
achieves that universality that is the mark of a perfectly-phrased idea.

The poem itself is, in part, a comment upon the stultifying bureaucracy
that, even today, remains one of the more enduring legacies of the British
occupation of India. A bit of historical background: Simla was, at the time,
the summer capital of British India, and was as such periodically overrun by
the machinery of government.

    Between 1864 and 1939 it was the official 'summer capital' of British
    India, which raised this small town from the status of a mere pleasure
    resort to a powerful community from which the government of the Raj was
    conducted between April and October.
        -- [broken link] http://www.purabudaya.com/resources/Simla/simla.htm

Note, however, that the 'Simla Dancers' in the poem's title do not refer to
native Indian dancers displaced by the invading British bureaucrats; rather,
Kipling seems to be referring to the demise of a very English ballroom (note
the references to cotillions and waltzes, for example). There are other
mentions of Benmore in his work, too - for instance, the following from 'The
Bisara of Pooree':

        Pack went to a dance at Benmore - Benmore was Benmore in those days,
        and not an office

but I could not find any other reference to it - does anyone know the actual
historical facts involved?

Links:

Kipling might have been influenced by the following:

        Ahead, to windward and to lee,
          The foaming surges roar:
        "O Holy Virgin ! save us now,
          And we will sin no more!"

        "We vow to lead a holy life;"
          Too late! alas, too late!
        Their vows and plaints to imaged saints
          Cannot avert their fate.

                -- James Kennard Jr., 'Wreck of the "Seguntum". A Ballad.'
        http://www.seacoastnh.com/shoals/spanishgraves.html#2

  and then again, he might not - the phrase is a simple enough one to hit
  upon.

An extremely readable piece on Simla:

  Simla didn't exist before the British came, and they built the town in
  their own image, turning their backs on India and trying to imagine they
  were in Sussex. (When they finally retired to Sussex, many of them spent
  the rest of their lives wishing they were back in Simla, which is how it
  goes.)
    -- [broken link] http://travel.guardian.co.uk/saturdaysection/story/0,8922,528336,00.html

-martin

Meeting Poets -- Eunice deSouza

Guest poem submitted by Gauri Keshavan:

(Poem #1076) Meeting Poets Meeting poets I am disconcerted sometimes by the colour of their socks the suspicion of a wig the wasp in the voice and an air, sometimes, of dankness. Best to meet in poems: cool speckled shells in which one hears a sad but distant sea. -- Eunice deSouza

The third of "Five London Pieces".

This is my favourite Eunice de Souza poem. She always keeps it simple and
straight, without using too many words. The suggestion is that poetry is
distant from poets as sea shells are from the sea... as if the work of art
creates a distance between itself and the artist...

Gauri.

[Biography]

Eunice de Souza was born in Pune, India in 1940, and educated there. She
received an MA from Marquette University in Wisconsin and a PhD from Bombay
in 1988. She is now a lecturer in English in St Xavier's College, Bombay.
Apart from writing extensively on contemporary literature and culture, she
has written four books for children, and was the co-editor of Statements
(1976), an anthology of Indian prose in English. Her collections of verse
are Fix (1979), Women in Dutch Painting (1988), and Ways of Belonging: New
and Selected Poems (1990); the last of these was a Poetry Book Society
Recommendation.

Dolor -- Theodore Roethke

(Poem #1075) Dolor I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight, All the misery of manila folders and mucilage, Desolation in immaculate public places, Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard, The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher, Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma, Endless duplication of lives and objects. And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions, Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica, Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium, Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows, Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces. -- Theodore Roethke

[Commentary]

The first time I read this poem [1] I misinterpreted it as being just
another rant (albeit a rather good one) against the increasing mechanization
of modern society, and the concomitant death of craftsmanship and
individuality. Certainly that is one of Roethke's points, and it's not one I
disagree with. But the poet has a subtler message as well: that the
insidious spread of uniformity across _things_ has a deleterious effect on
_people_. It's easier to put a human being in a box when there are other
boxes all around; easier to contain thought when the world seems merely a
container for other objects. All neatly labeled and categorized and indexed,
in inexorable, desolate order.

[1] Ermm, let's be honest. It was all of five minutes ago :)

[Construction]

Notice how Roethke, like Whitman in "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer"
(Minstrels Poem #54), uses long and decidedly unpoetic words in clunky,
choppy phrases to convey the stultifying effect of mechanical repetition and
duplication. Unlike the Whitman poem, however, there is no final easing up,
and so "Dolor" feels somewhat heavy-handed... On the other hand, "long
afternoons of tedium" could very well have been the inspiration for a phrase
we all know and love, so who am I to complain? :)

thomas.

[Minstrels Links]

Poet #Roethke
Poet #Whitman

[Afterthought]

While I agree with the overall thrust of Roethke's poem, on further
reflection I must take exception to the first couple of lines: I happen to
_like_ the easy weight of sharp new pencils, the smell and texture of fresh
sheets of paper. They always make me feel creative :)