Children -- Kahlil Gibran

Guest poem sent in by Radhika Gowaikar

(Poem #1194) Children And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. -- Kahlil Gibran

Throughout 'The Prophet', Kahlil Gibran manages to bring together great
insight into how life works (or should, at any rate) and truly beautiful
language. And he makes the two seem mutually indispensible.  Which is why he
appeals to me intellectually as well as aesthetically. He is a master of
analogies and his texts have many that are apt and natural - that of the
archer in this poem is close to perfection.

From a more simplistic viewpoint, he places the "Leave me alone/Let go of
me" phenomenon that most 'children' experience at some point in a much
wider context. I say this because in recent months the topic of how one
should "bring one's parents up" <g> has come up repeatedly with some of my
friends. Well, here is how. (The minor problem that remains is conveying
it to the parents... <g>)

radhika.

Google spews out vast amounts of pages on Gibran. To name two:

http://leb.net/gibran has a detailed biography of Gibran as well as a lot
of his writings in full. (Including The Prophet.) They spell the first
name Khalil.

[broken link] http://impact.civil.columbia.edu/~fawaz/g-gallery.html has many of
Gibran's illustrations that appear in The Prophet.

Cherrylog Road -- James Dickey

Guest poem sent in by Sashidhar Dandamudi

(Poem #1193) Cherrylog Road Off Highway 106 At Cherrylog Road I entered The '34 Ford without wheels, Smothered in kudzu, With a seat pulled out to run Corn whiskey down from the hills, And then from the other side Crept into an Essex With a rumble seat of red leather And then out again, aboard A blue Chevrolet, releasing The rust from its other color, Reared up on three building blocks. None had the same body heat; I changed with them inward, toward The weedy heart of the junkyard, For I knew that Doris Holbrook Would escape from her father at noon And would come from the farm To seek parts owned by the sun Among the abandoned chassis, Sitting in each in turn As I did, leaning forward As in a wild stock-car race In the parking lot of the dead. Time after time, I climbed in And outthe other side, like An envoy or movie star Met at the station by crickets. A radiator cap raised its head, Become a real toad or a kingsnake As I neared the hub of the yard, Passing through many states, Many lives, to reach Some grandmother's long Pierce-Arrow Sending platters of blindness forth From its nickel hubcaps And spilling its tender upholstery On sleepy roaches, The glass panel in between Lady and colored driver Not all the way broken out, The back-seat phone Still on its hook. I got in as though to exclaim, "Let us go to the orphan asylum, John; I have some old toys For children who say their prayers." I popped with sweat as I thought I heard Doris Holbrook scrape Like a mouse in the southern-state sun That was eating the paint in blisters >>From a hundred car tops and hoods. She was tapping like code, Loosening the screws, Carrying off headlights, Sparkplugs, bumpers, Cracked mirrors and gear-knobs, Getting ready, already, To go back with something to show Other than her lips' new trembling I would hold to me soon, soon Where I sat in the ripped back seat Talking over the interphone, Praying for Doris Holbrook To come from her father's farm And to get back there With no trace of me on her face To be seen by her red-haired father Who would change, in the squalling barn, Her back's pale skin with a strop, Then lay for me In a bootlegger's roasting car With a sting-triggered 12-guage shotgun To blast the breath from the air. Not cut by the jagged windshields, Through the acres of wrecks she came With a wrench in her hand, Through dust where the blacksnake dies Of boredom, and the beetle knows The compost has no more life. Someone's outside would have seen The oldest car's door inexplicably Close from within: I held her and held her and held her, Convoyed at terrific speed By the stalled, dreaming traffic around us, So the blacksnake, stiff With inaction, curved back Into life, and hunted the mouse With deadly overexcitement, The beetles reclaimed their field As we clung, glued together With the hooks of the seat springs Working through to catch us red-handed Amidst the gray breathless batting That burst from the seat at our backs. We left by separate doors Into the changed, other bodies Of cars, she down Cherrylog Road And I to my motorcycle Parked like the soul of the junkyard Restored, a bicycle fleshed With power, and tore off Up Highway 106, continually Drunk on the wind in my mouth, Wringing the handlebar for speed, Wild to be wreckage forever. -- James Dickey

I was talking to Thomas Lux, a poet in residence at Tech, about James
Dickey the other day, when he mentioned this poem to me. He called it
memorable and solidly rooted in the South. But what he didn't say was
how powerful and vivid this poem was, I had to find that out for myself.
And what I haven't been able to get out of my head, ever since I read
this poem, are the lines at the closing:

        "Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
        Wringing the handlebar for speed,
        Wild to be wreckage forever."

These alone are worth reading this poem, the power those lines evoke/
invoke! I have felt these emotions many times, when I wrung "the
handlebar for speed, wild to be wreckage forever"!

Also since a recent theme has been poetry and movies, James Dickey apart
from being a powerful poet, wrote the novel Deliverance. It was on
this book, the smash movie Deliverance was based. Infact he figures in
the movie as the sheriff towards the closing, which I think is pretty
unusual, instead of a poem in a movie, it's a poet in a movie.

The movie is worth watching too, if only to see that jam/duel of a
guitar and a banjo. And since I have hiked along the river(Chattooga
River in Georgia) on which it is set, I could experience first hand the
wildness Dickey managed to capture in his work.

So be sure to watch this movie too!

Sashi

Links:

Deliverance:  http://www.destgulch.com/movies/deliver/

Listen to Sheep Child, another powerful poem here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/dickey/jdindex.htm

A very extensive special at NYT. Be sure to read Barnstorming for Poetry.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/specials/dickey.html

Finally, a sometimes painful memoir, one of the best I think that can be
ever written by a son about his father, that first lead me to James
Dickey, Summer of Deliverance:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/reviews/980830.30kirbyt.html

- Sashi

Adlestrop -- Edward Thomas

(Poem #1192) Adlestrop Yes, I remember Adlestrop -- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop -- only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. -- Edward Thomas

Adlestrop is a village in the Cotswolds, lying just off the road between two
equally charmingly-named towns - Chipping Norton and Stow-on-the-Wold. Its
claim to fame, apart from today's poem of course, is that Jane Austen was
often a guest at the Rectory (her uncle was the rector), and Adlestrop Park
may have been the setting for Mansfield Park.

As for the poem... it's a little gem. It doesn't attempt too much (always a
good thing, unless you're Milton), but what it sets out to do it does
perfectly: it captures place and season to a nicety. Especially refreshing,
given the weather we've been having lately.

thomas.

[Links]

Ah, the wonders of the internet: http://www.adlestrop.org.uk/

Edward Thomas:
Poem #1032, Words
Poem #1174, No One So Much As You

Places:
Poem #3, Inversnaid  -- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Poem #5, Chicago  -- Carl Sandburg
Poem #60, Byzantium  -- William Butler Yeats
Poem #128, London, 1802  -- William Wordsworth
Poem #235, Pennsylvania  -- Carl Sandburg
Poem #361, Cologne  -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poem #1021, Matsushima -- Matsuo Basho

[Afterword]

The Scrabble player in me would like to point out that ADLESTROP is a
fertile source of 8-letter words: DROPLETS PETROSAL POLESTAR PROLATES
ADOPTERS ASPORTED PASTORED READOPTS PORTALED PROLATED LEOPARDS TADPOLES
DELATORS LEOTARDS LODESTAR. So now you know.

A Farewell -- Charles Kingsley

(Poem #1191) A Farewell I My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey: Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day. II Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song. -- Charles Kingsley

           (1819-1875)

A prime example of what I call Good Advice to the Younger Generation - what
raises this one above the common herd, I think, is the supreme quotability
of the line "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever" - Kingsley
gets it absolutely right, though ironically the line itself is nothing if
not clever.

Whether one good line is enough to make a poem noteworthy is debatable -
personally, I believe it is, especially in so short a piece. It possibly
helps that I liked the quote long before I knew there was a poem attached to
it. I also belong to the school of poetry criticism that looks for a poem's
good points first, and speaks only later, if at all, of its flaws - this is,
after all, about the enjoyment of poetry far more than it is about its
dissection. (Which is not to say that I don't enjoy tearing into a
particularly bad poem every now and then :)).

martin

Links:
  Biography of Kingsley:
    http://www.bartleby.com/65/ki/Kingsley.html

  And don't miss the connection to Poem #255

Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd -- Mark Twain

(Poem #1190) Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from sickness' shots. No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots. Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots. O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great. -- Mark Twain

        (from Huckleberry Finn)

Note: A parody of obituary poetry popular in the late 19th century [UTEL],
  attributed to "the late Emmeline Grangerford (who died before her 14th
  birthday) [...] She warn't particular, she could write about anything you
  choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful."

The bad poet is a common character in humorous fiction, and several author
have embellished their stories with actual examples of said poet's output.
Some of my favourite examples include Wodehouse, Saki and Sue Townsend[1], and
while today's poem doesn't reach quite that level of sheer sublime
ridiculousness, it did make me laugh - not just for the poem, but for the
image of the earnest young poet, reading "boy falls down well" and turning
her enthusiastic pen to yet another 'tribute'.

All the funnier is that the poem's use of bathos could, if written slightly
differently, have been a genuinely humourous poem in Emmeline's voice. Twain
injected just the right note of seriousness into the last two verses,
though, that it is clear to the reader that Emmeline intended a genuinely
'sadful' poem, and the humour becomes Twain's instead.

One disappointing thing about today's poem is that Twain's wonderful ear for
dialect and speech patterns, so much in evidence throughout Huckleberry
Finn, does not really come through in the poem. Of course, Twain probably
intended this to portray the poet as educated and 'refined', but I cannot
but help think it'd be funnier if the speech patterns evoked a conflict
between that education and the more idiosyncraic dialect it was imposed
upon. (I freely admit that Twain's decision is likely more artistically
accurate, I just think the dialect would've been funnier).

[1] Carroll doesn't actually fall into this category - his parodies were
invariably *better* than the poems (and poets) they sent up

martin

Links:
  The poem in context:

http://www.classic-novels.com/author/twain/huckleberry_finn/huckleberryfinn022.shtml

  The UTEL site, with some notes:
    http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2225.html

  A biography of Twain, and several online texts:
    http://www.online-literature.com/twain/

  And another extensive Twain site:
    [broken link] http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts