Big River -- Zachary Richard

Guest poem sent in by Matt Chanoff

(Poem #1590) Big River Water's on the river rising More water come than float away People from Catahoula down to Burway Bay They've got no place left to stay When the water's coming out the basin There ain't nothing waterproof Standing on the levee with the river raging I've got nothing left to lose Big river Big river on the rise Big river gonna overflow Big river is going to wash us to the sea Back in 1927 Six feet of water in Evangeline Now the government trying to tell us Said that the levee's going to hold next time Big river Big river on the rise Big river is gonna overflow Big river is gonna wash us to the sea I've seen the water come under the levee Boiling up from a crawfish hole And before the sun was setting Four feet of water in my front door Big river Big river on the rise Big river gonna overflow Big river, Oh mighty Mississippi on the rise Oh mighty Mississippi is gonna overflow Big river Gonna wash us to the sea. -- Zachary Richard

Today's poem is by Zachary Richard, one of the greatest Zydeco singers
around. It's a heartbreaking song -- though you have to hear him sing it for
the full effect. The reason to run it now is painfully obvious.

It's one an album called "Zach's Bon Ton" You can read about Richard at
[broken link] http://www.zacharyrichard.com/bio.html.

Matt Chanoff

Epitaph for the Race of Man: X -- Edna St Vincent Millay

(Poem #1589) Epitaph for the Race of Man: X The broken dike, the levee washed away, The good fields flooded and the cattle drowned, Estranged and treacherous all the faithful ground, And nothing left but floating disarray Of tree and home uprooted, -- was this the day Man dropped upon his shadow without a sound And died, having laboured well and having found His burden heavier than a quilt of clay? No, no. I saw him when the sun had set In water, leaning on his single oar Above his garden faintly glimmering yet... There bulked the plough, here washed the updrifted weeds... And scull across his roof and make for shore, With twisted face and pocket full of seeds. -- Edna St Vincent Millay

 Part X of the sonnet sequence "Epitaph for the Race of Man".
 Published in the collection "Wine From These Grapes" (1934).
 Form: Petrarchan sonnet.
 Rhyme scheme: abba abba cdcede.

 [Commentary]

 Poetry can offer consolation in the darkest of times. War, famine and
pestilence; flood, fire and drought -- poets have responded to terrible
events with works of power and passion, and readers have found in these
works new reserves of strength and determination.

 Different poets, of course, have different approaches. For example, Dylan
Thomas' magnificent defiance in the face of death [1] contrasts dramatically
with the quiet acceptance of his namesake R. S. Thomas [2], and they each
have little in common with the heartfelt sorrow of W. H. Auden [3]. Yet each
of their poems speaks powerfully to something basic in human nature; our
experience is the richer for having them put our feelings into words.

 Today's poem offers yet another response to tragedy: that even in the
depths of despair, life (symbolized by the "pocket full of seeds") goes on.
Flooded fields can be drained; trees replanted; homes rebuilt. It's true
that we cannot bring back the lives that have been lost, but what we can do,
we will. It is this that makes us human; it is this that makes us great.
This is Millay's theme, and it is both heartbreakingly sad and profoundly
optimistic.

thomas.

[1] Poem #38, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night -- Dylan Thomas
[2] Poem #392, Good -- R. S. Thomas
[3] Poem #256, Funeral Blues -- W. H. Auden

 [And finally]

 Poetry can console, but for those most affected by the terrible events of
last week, mere words may not be enough. We urge readers of the Minstrels to
contribute generously to various tsunami relief efforts; the following
website has a comprehensive set of donation links:
 http://wetware.blogspot.com/2004/12/tsunami-relief-efforts.html

 Incidentally, Martin, Sitaram and myself all come from south India, and we
each have family and friends there; fortunately, none of our near and dear
were hurt in the cataclysm. We thank all those who wrote in to express their
concern.

At a Lecture -- Joseph Brodsky

Guest poem sent in by Aseem

(Poem #1588) At a Lecture Since mistakes are inevitable, I can easily be taken for a man standing before you in this room filled with yourselves. Yet in about an hour this will be corrected, at your and at my expense, and the place will be reclaimed by elemental particles free from the rigidity of a particular human shape or type of assembly. Some particles are still free. It's not all dust. So my unwillingness to admit it's I facing you now, or the other way around, has less to do with my modesty or solipsism than with my respect for the premises' instant future, for those afore-mentioned free-floating particles settling upon the shining surface of my brain. Inaccessible to a wet cloth eager to wipe them off. The most interesting thing about emptiness is that it is preceded by fullness. The first to understand this were, I believe, the Greek gods, whose forte indeed was absence. Regard, then, yourselves as rehearsing perhaps for the divine encore, with me playing obviously to the gallery. We all act out of vanity. But I am in a hurry. Once you know the future, you can make it come earlier. The way it's done by statues or by one's furniture. Self-effacement is not a virtue but a necessity, recognised most often toward evening. Though numerically it is easier not to be me than not to be you. As the swan confessed to the lake: I don't like myself. But you are welcome to my reflection. -- Joseph Brodsky

Gotcha.

It's so rare to find a truly great poet who's not represented on
Minstrels, that discovering that you don't have a single Brodsky poem
was an almost electric shock of opportunity. And so, like water pouring
into a plug suddenly pulled, this poem.

One reason, perhaps, that Brodsky doesn't feature on Minstrels is that
most of his best poems are too long to fit on the site (see for example
'A part of speech' or 'Strophes' or 'Lullaby on Cape Cod' or the
incredible 'Gorbunov and Gorchakov') - finding something short enough
proved quite a task.

This poem, written in English in 1995, will do nicely though. For one
thing, it expresses brilliantly the sense I always have while reading
Brodsky of listening to someone older and infinitely wiser talk - an
urge to just shut up and listen. Not that Brodsky ever talks down or
lectures (self-effacement, as the poem suggests, is a common theme in
his work) but because his words have such an aching yet simple ring of
truth that one wishes one could memorise them forever just as one is
sure one will have forgotten them tomorrow. Brodsky is not a poet who
can be remembered or quoted - his voice is not so easily trapped (In A
Part of Speech he writes: "Hence all rhymes, hence that wan flat voice
/ that ripples between them like hair still moist / if it ripples at
all). And yet to read him is to experience a sense of quiet and
half-cynical longing that stays with you long after the words of the
poem are forgotten.

That's why I think the last line of this poem captures Brodsky exactly.
To read him is to be a mirror to a truly great intellect, holding on to
his images for as long as one can, knowing that once they leave the
world will seem strangely blank.

Aseem.

Biography:
  http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1987/brodsky-bio.html
        Joseph Brodsky died on January 28, 1996.

Six Significant Landscapes -- Wallace Stevens

Guest poem sent in by Cristina Gazzieri

(Poem #1587) Six Significant Landscapes I An old man sits In the shadow of a pine tree In China. He sees larkspur, Blue and white, At the edge of the shadow, Move in the wind. His beard moves in the wind. The pine tree moves in the wind. Thus water flows Over weeds. II The night is of the colour Of a woman's arm: Night, the female, Obscure, Fragrant and supple, Conceals herself. A pool shines, Like a bracelet Shaken in a dance. III I measure myself Against a tall tree. I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun, With my eye; And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way ants crawl In and out of my shadow. IV When my dream was near the moon, The white folds of its gown Filled with yellow light. The soles of its feet Grew red. Its hair filled With certain blue crystallizations From stars, Not far off. V Not all the knives of the lamp-posts, Nor the chisels of the long streets, Nor the mallets of the domes And high towers, Can carve What one star can carve, Shining through the grape-leaves. VI Rationalists, wearing square hats, Think, in square rooms, Looking at the floor, Looking at the ceiling. They confine themselves To right-angled triangles. If they tried rhomboids, Cones, waving lines, ellipses -- As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon -- Rationalists would wear sombreros. -- Wallace Stevens

I have often worked with classes of students on this poem, and I like doing
it because each class, when discussing and interpreting it make it a very
peculiar poem; I have tried to gather the different interpretations my
students and I have been giving to the poem and to unite them . The titles
has, of course, influenced all class discussions. If these are "Six
Significant Landscapes" we have always started from the effort to visualize
them and then to attribute them meaning.  What has emerged is, more or less
this:

 +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 |Stanzas|Continents| Types         |Themes           |Messages           |
 |-------+----------+---------------+-----------------+-------------------|
 |I      |Asia      |The philosopher|Time vs. Eternity|Man can acquire    |
 |       |          |               |                 |wisdom to          |
 |       |          |               |                 |appreciate what is |
 |       |          |               |                 |valuable (water)   |
 |       |          |               |                 |and what is not    |
 |       |          |               |                 |(weeds)            |
 |-------+----------+---------------+-----------------+-------------------|
 |II     |Africa    |The dancer     |The fascination  |Man can appreciate |
 |       |          |               |and sensuality of|and enjoy the      |
 |       |          |               |natural life.    |fascination of     |
 |       |          |               |                 |life.              |
 |       |          |               |                 |                   |
 |-------+----------+---------------+-----------------+-------------------|
 |III    |-         |The poet       |Awareness of the |Man must judge     |
 |       |          |               |ego, in          |himself and        |
 |       |          |The man        |comparison with  |collocate himself  |
 |       |          |               |nature and other |in the universe and|
 |       |          |               |people.          |in society         |
 |-------+----------+---------------+-----------------+-------------------|
 |IV     |America   |The divinity   |Ideality,        |It is also         |
 |       |          |               |spiritual        |pleasant/important |
 |       |          |               |elevation        |to cultivate       |
 |       |          |               |                 |dreams.            |
 |-------+----------+---------------+-----------------+-------------------|
 |V      |Europe    |-              |Art vs. nature   |Nature is the most |
 |       |          |               |                 |appealing form of  |
 |       |          |               |                 |art. (however      |
 |       |          |               |                 |suggestive art     |
 |       |          |               |                 |could be)          |
 |-------+----------+---------------+-----------------+-------------------|
 |VI     |-         |Rationalists   |The self-imposed |Man should look    |
 |       |          |               |limits of        |beyond the limits  |
 |       |          |               |rationalism.     |of any kind of     |
 |       |          |               |                 |ideology           |
 +------------------------------------------------------------------------+

This is only a limitative synthesis of all that this poem has suggested,
but, in general, when we come to the last stanza of the poem we have often
found, or felt that to interpret the poem simply as "rationalism is a limit"
was disqualifying the poem. Personally, I think that the final message is
that a "complete" man should have all these "landscapes" in himself, and,
especially, he should try to look afar, beyond the boundaries suggested by
his own continent, language, religion, natural background, social status,
cultural background ... trying to perceive or create more and more
landscapes of the soul.

Cristina

The Explorer -- Rudyard Kipling

(Poem #1586) The Explorer "There's no sense in going further -- it's the edge of cultivation," So they said, and I believed it -- broke my land and sowed my crop -- Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop: Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated -- so: "Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges -- "Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and wating for you. Go!" So I went, worn out of patience; never told my nearest neighbours -- Stole away with pack and ponies -- left 'em drinking in the town; And the faith that moveth mountains didn't seem to help my labours As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down. March by march I puzzled through 'em, turning flanks and dodging shoulders, Hurried on in hope of water, headed back for lack of grass; Till I camped above the tree-line -- drifted snow and naked boulders -- Felt free air astir to windward -- knew I'd stumbled on the Pass. 'Thought to name it for the finder: but that night the Norther found me -- Froze and killed the plains-bred ponies; so I called the camp Despair (It's the Railway Gap to-day, though). Then my Whisper waked to hound me: -- "Something lost behind the Ranges. Over yonder! Go you there!" Then I knew, the while I doubted -- knew His Hand was certain o'er me. Still -- it might be self-delusion -- scores of better men had died -- I could reach the township living, but.... He knows what terror tore me... But I didn't... but I didn't. I went down the other side. Till the snow ran out in flowers, and the flowers turned to aloes, And the aloes sprung to thickets and a brimming stream ran by; But the thickets dwined to thorn-scrub, and the water drained to shallows, And I dropped again on desert -- blasted earth, and blasting sky.... I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by 'em; I remember seeing faces, hearing voices, through the smoke; I remember they were fancy -- for I threw a stone to try 'em. "Something lost behind the Ranges" was the only word they spoke. I remember going crazy. I remember that I knew it When I heard myself hallooing to the funny folk I saw. 'Very full of dreams that desert, but my two legs took me through it... And I used to watch 'em moving with the toes all black and raw. But at last the country altered -- White Man's country past disputing -- Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind -- There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting. Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find. Thence I ran my first rough survey -- chose my trees and blazed and ringed 'em -- Week by week I pried and sampled -- week by week my findings grew. Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom! But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two! Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snowslide shivers -- Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains, Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers, And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains! 'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em; Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour; Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen 'em -- Saw the plant to feed a people -- up and waiting for the power! Well, I know who'll take the credit -- all the clever chaps that followed -- Came, a dozen men together -- never knew my desert-fears; Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the water-holes I hollowed. They'll go back and do the talking. They'll be called the Pioneers! They will find my sites of townships -- not the cities that I set there. They will rediscover rivers -- not my rivers heard at night. By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there, By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright. Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre? Have I kept one single nugget -- (barring samples)? No, not I! Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker. But you wouldn't understand it. You go up and occupy. Ores you'll find there; wood and cattle; water-transit sure and steady (That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron at your doors. God took care to hide that country till He judged His people ready, Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I've found it, and it's yours! Yes, your "Never-never country" -- yes, your "edge of cultivation" And "no sense in going further" -- till I crossed the range to see. God forgive me! No, I didn't. It's God's present to our nation. Anybody might have found it, but -- His Whisper came to Me! -- Rudyard Kipling

I can never read this poem without feeling an answering thrill in my heart,
without the hairs on my arms rising in response and a shiver running down my
spine. This is Kipling at his best, and his best - as I keep on
rediscovering - is very, very good indeed. And while today's poem is perhaps
not one of his "famous" ones, while it may never attain the prominence of
"Tommy" or "East and West", its subject is clearly one that was dear to
Kipling's heart, that he returned to again and again in poetry and prose.

And it is that passion that sparkles through the poem, that infuses it with
all the romance of exploration - "Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost
and wating for you. Go!" - and the relentless purity of the drive:

   Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?
     Have I kept one single nugget -- (barring samples)? No, not I!
   Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker.
     But you wouldn't understand it. You go up and occupy.

Most of Kipling's best work is set in the turbulent borderland between
civilisation and wilderness; today's poem definitely deserves a place in
that number.

martin