Visits to St. Elizabeth's -- Elizabeth Bishop

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1563) Visits to St. Elizabeth's This is the house of Bedlam. This is the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. The is the time of the tragic man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a wristwatch telling the time of the talkative man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the honored man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the roadstead all of board reached by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the old, brave man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls of the ward, the winds and clouds of the sea of board sailed by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the cranky man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board beyond the sailor winding his watch that tells the time of the cruel man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a world of books gone flat. This is a Jew in a newsapaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board of the batty sailor that winds his watch that tells the time of the busy man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is there, is flat, for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward waltzing the length of a weaving board by the silent sailor that hears his watch that ticks the time of the tedious man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to feel if the world is there and flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances joyfully down the ward into the parting seas of board past the starting sailor that shakes his watch that tells the time of the poet, the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the soldier home from the war. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is round of flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances carefully down the ward, walking the plank of a coffin board with the crazy sailor that shows his watch that tells the time of the wretched man that lies in the house of Bedlam. -- Elizabeth Bishop

        1950.

I've never been a big fan of Bishop. She has an incredible eye for images
(describing a baby rabbit fleeing a fire as 'a handful of intangible ash /
with fixed, ignited eyes' -- "The Armadillo") and an almost unmatched
ability to sketch a scene or a sensation so that it's visible / tangible
(consider 'We stand as still as stones to watch / the leaves and ripples /
while light and nervous water hold / their interview' -- "Quai D'Orleans" or
'Hear nothing but a train that goes by, must go by, like tension' -- "Four
Poems") but for me her poems often fail to come together into a coherent
whole. They remain beautiful yet insubstantial, like a loose nosegay of
impressions that withers easily and is forgotten.

The only exceptions to this are poems where Bishop starts off with a conceit
or a clever idea (see for instance, the incredible Gentleman of Shallott or
The Man Moth, which features on Minstrels as Poem #1395). Here Bishop is at
her best - combining an easy playfulness with touches of exquisite yearning
to create poems that are so solipsistic you don't know how seriously to take
them. "Visits to St. Elizabeth's" is an excellent example of this - a poem
of ceaseless and inspired variation that combines some truly heartbreaking
images ('This is a boy that pats the floor / to see if the world is there,
is flat') with a structure that comes out of a children's rhyme. What makes
this poem stunning is the the deftness with which Bishop pulls off that
structure (just try running This is the house that Jack built upto twelve
lines and see how quickly it becomes tedious) making each new stanza more
exhilarating than the last. Minor variations in the lines from stanza to
stanza create the illusion of revelation - each repetition promises more
clues to the poems true meaning, but it is a meaning never quite grasped.
The overall effect is that of an exquisite piece of baroque music - some
Bach variation - that tempts and teases and leaves you gasping for more
while at the same time convinced that there's something you've missed.

Aseem.

The Young Fools -- Paul Verlaine

Guest poem submitted by Aditi Balasubramaniam:

(Poem #1562) The Young Fools High-heels struggling with a full-length dress So that, between the wind and the terrain, At times a glimmering ankle would be seen, And gone too soon. We liked that foolishness. Sometimes a jealous insect's sting Bothered the necks of beauties beneath the branches. White napes revealed in sudden flashes Were a feast for young eyes wild gazing. Evening fell, ambiguous autumn evening, The women who hung dreaming on our arms Whispered, in low voices, words that had such charms That our souls were left quivering and singing. -- Paul Verlaine

        Translated by A.S. Kline

Paul Verlaine was one of the Parnassian poets of 19th century France and was
known, among other things, for the very Bohemian life he led. I love the way
this poem reflects that. I have included the original poem:

 "Les Ingénus"

 Les hauts talons luttaient avec les longues jupes,
 En sorte que, selon le terrain et le vent,
 Parfois luisaient des bas de jambes, trop souvent
 Interceptés ! - et nous aimions ce jeu de dupes.

 Parfois aussi le dard d'un insecte jaloux
 Inquiétait le col des belles sous les branches,
 Et c'étaient des éclairs soudains de nuques blanches,
 Et ce régal comblait nos jeunes yeux de fous.

 Le soir tombait, un soir équivoque d'automne :
 Les belles, se pendant rêveuses à nos bras,
 Dirent alors des mots si spécieux, tout bas,
 Que notre âme, depuis ce temps, tremble et s'étonne.

        -- Paul Verlaine

More on Verlaine is to be found at http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/verlaine.htm.

Aditi.

People -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Guest poem submitted by Rama Rao:

(Poem #1561) People No people are uninteresting. Their fate is like the chronicle of planets. Nothing in them is not particular, and planet is dissimilar from planet. And if a man lived in obscurity making his friends in that obscurity obscurity is not uninteresting. To each his world is private, and in that world one excellent minute. And in that world one tragic minute. These are private. In any man who dies there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight. It goes with him. There are left books and bridges and painted canvas and machinery. Whose fate is to survive. But what has gone is also not nothing: by the rule of the game something has gone. Not people die but worlds die in them. -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

In this world of heroic biographies there are relatively few homages to the
"average" man. After Thomas Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard", the only
other one I have come across is this fine poem by Yevtushenko. The last line
sums it up: "worlds die in them ."  Yevtushenko is already in the Minstrels'
collection. His "Courage" is another of my favourites.

Rama Rao.

Elegy to a Calf (Lamento pastorello) -- Sarah Binks

Guest poem submitted by Mac Robb:

(Poem #1560) Elegy to a Calf (Lamento pastorello) Oh calf, that gambolled by my door Who made me rich who now am poor, That licked my hand with milk bespread, Oh calf, calf, art dead, art dead? Oh calf, I sit and languish, calf, With somber face, I cannot laugh, Can I forget thy playful bunts? Oh calf, calf, that loved me once? With mildewed optics, deathlike, still, My nights are damp, my days are chill, I weep again with doleful sniff, Oh calf, calf, so dead, so stiff. -- Sarah Binks

        (actually Paul Hiebert, 1892-1987)

I see that Minstrels is back up and running again after a long hiatus so the
long-noted deficiency, viz., the lack of Sarah Binks, the Sweet Songstress
of Saskatchewan, I now remedy. Indeed, the Minstrels have lately featured
Joni Mitchell, née Joan Anderson of Saskatoon (and indeed my local Borders
here in Brisbane, Australia, is touting a CD by kd lang titled "Hymns of the
49th" -- ie parallel), so prairie poesy is perhaps again waxing great in the
counsels of the just.

The late Paul Hiebert, a professor of chemistry at the University of
Manitoba, was a staunch Mennonite and his published writings include a
certain number of devotional Christian tracts which, in latter-day devoutly
secular Canada haven't reach a very wide audience. His gentle teasing in
"Sarah Binks" (1947) of the Great Plains inclination to literary effusion,
on the other hand, was well known and vastly appreciated west of the Great
Lakes; and when Peter Gzowski began a series of conversations with Professor
Hiebert on national radio the Wheat Pool Medal, the maritime imagery of
Wascana Lake and the disputatious footnotes regarding "Miss Iguana
Binks-Barkingwell of St. Olaf's-Down-the-Drain, Hants, Hurts, Harts,
England, who claims to be a distant kinswoman of Sarah Binks" came to
national prominence in Canada.

Prairie folk have a not wholly undeserved reputation for being somewhat
po-faced and humourless: when I taught undergraduate English at the
University of Regina I quickly learned not to make facetious remarks about
people from small prairie towns to school teachers upgrading their
qualifications at summer school -- not till I had established my bona fides
as a prairie farmer myself. But (as my international literary friends
observe) they do write prodigiously -- it must be the long, cold winters --
and among a huge quantity of tares there is, be it said, a substantial
amount of wheat.

Mac Robb
Brisbane, Australia

[Links]

Bad poems on the Minstrels:
Poem #343, The Tay Bridge Disaster  -- William McGonagall
Poem #399, The Indian Serenade  -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poem #948, Grand Rapids Cricket Club -- Julia A. Moore

and elsewhere:
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/index.html

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night -- Walt Whitman

Guest poem submitted by Mark Penney :

(Poem #1559) Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade -- not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear'd, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet, And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten'd, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell. -- Walt Whitman

      This is one of Whitman's tremendous Civil War poems, which were
collected at the time as Drum Taps.  Drum Taps, like virtually all of
Whitman's poetry, eventually was absorbed into the amorphous blob that is
Leaves of Grass, in this case the fourth edition.  One of many remarkable
things about these poems is that they aren't preachy; that is, they don't
overtly take a stand on war in general or the Civil War in particular, they
merely describe.  Whitman's views on the war are left for you to infer.
(Compare this to Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon.)  The whole of Drum Taps
is much more than the sum of its parts, as all this description has an
undeniably powerful cumulative effect.  But "Vigil Strange," one of the
best, can easily stand on its own as a representative of the rest.

      As with all of Whitman's good poems, free verse does not mean
structureless verse.  "Vigil Strange" begins and ends with a short line,
bookending the description in between.  The lines that begin with "vigil"
and an inversion ("Vigil strange," "Vigil wondrous" and "Vigil final") in
effect divide this poem into three sections -- in plot terms, roughly that's
the battle, the vigil, and the burial.

      The speaker of the poem, by the way, is obviously not Whitman, who was
a non-combatant during the war. (He was a nurse; his non-fictional war
memoirs comprise the interesting part of his prose work Specimen Days.)

      The relationship between the speaker and the dead soldier is
complicated and ambiguous (another Whitman signature).  It's not altogether
clear that they are, biologically speaking, father and son, for there are
too many other choices, in particular suggested by the undeniable hints of
eroticism.  At the very least, we can say that the boy (for obviously he was
quite young) represented many things to the speaker, who chooses a variety
of words to describe the relationship-"my son," "my comrade," and most
interestingly, "my soldier," as if the boy was the speaker's protector.
Mirroring this, the speaker's reaction to the death goes through phases:
near indifference in the face of the "even-contested battle," followed by
the deepest sorrow of the all-night vigil, finally followed by stoic
acceptance:  the burial is of "my soldier," not "my son."  At the final
analysis, the altogether personal reaction to a death just retreats into the
fabric of the war, the "battle-field spreading," and at daybreak the speaker
must reluctantly bury his comrade/son/soldier where he fell, and become once
again a soldier himself.

      Interesting how the night fits into things: The imagery of night and
stars is intertwined with the speaker's grieving: the dead boy's face is
first seen "in the starlight," as "cool blew the moderate night-wind."  Time
during the vigil is marked only by the revolution of the stars in the
firmament.  By contrast, "bathed by the rising sun," the speaker abandons
grieving and turns to the practical matter of burial.  It is only at night,
when not fighting, that the speaker can allow himself the luxury of human
emotions; during the day he is a soldier who cannot grieve.

      I've read this poem probably twenty times, and it never fails to
affect me.

Mark Penney.