Harry Wilmans -- Edgar Lee Masters

Guest poem submitted by Bill Cater:

(Poem #1875) Harry Wilmans I was just turned twenty-one, And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent, Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House. "The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said, "Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs Or the greatest power in Europe." And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved As he spoke. And I went to the war in spite of my father, And followed the flag till I saw it raised By our camp in a rice field near Manila, And all of us cheered and cheered it. But there were flies and poisonous things; And there was the deadly water, And the cruel heat, And the sickening, putrid food; And the smell of the trench just back of the tents Where the soldiers went to empty themselves; And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis; And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, And days of loathing and nights of fear To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, Following the flag, Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts. Now there's a flag over me in Spoon River! A flag! A flag! -- Edgar Lee Masters

        From the "Spoon River Anthology"

I thought that this poem offered a more realistic take on the
not-so-glorious experience of war and would be very appropriate to the week
of Memorial Day.  Having performed in the stage version of "Spoon River" a
number of years ago, and worked backstage on another production many years
earlier, I must credit Masters with helping to develop my interest in
poetry.  After all, how many poets have had their work transformed into a
very successful stage production?

Bill Cater.

[Notes]

"Spoon River Anthology" (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of
unusual, short, free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the
fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that
ran near Masters' hometown. The collection includes two hundred and twelve
separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four soliloquies.

Each poem is an epitaph of a dead citizen, delivered by the dead themselves.
They speak about the sorts of things one might expect. Some recite their
histories and turning points, others make observations of life from the
outside, and petty ones complain of the treatment of their graves, while few
tell how they really died. Speaking without reason to lie or fear of the
consequences, they construct a picture of life in their town that's shorn of
all facades. The interplay of various villagers -- e.g. a bright and
successful man crediting his parents for all he's accomplished, and an old
woman weeping because he is secretly her illegitimate child -- forms a
gripping, if not pretty, whole.

        -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_River_Anthology

The entire anthology is available here: http://www.bartleby.com/84/

Firelight -- Edwin Arlington Robinson

(Poem #1874) Firelight Ten years together without yet a cloud They seek each other's eyes at intervals Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls For love's obliteration of the crowd. Serenely and perennially endowed And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls No snake, no sword; and over them there falls The blessing of what neither says aloud. Wiser for silence, they were not so glad Were she to read the graven tale of lines On the wan face of one somewhere alone; Nor were they more content could he have had Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines Apart, and would be hers if he had known. -- Edwin Arlington Robinson

For those familiar with Robinson's work, today's poem treads familiar
territory - he was at his best when depicting that class of people held up
to common admiration (and perhaps a little envy), and then taking a brief,
but devastating glance beneath the alluring surface.

It would be easy to call him cynical - very few poets manage to strip
humanity's various comfortable masks away as economically and effectively as
he does - but there is always a genuine strain of sympathy to his poetry, a
compelling sense of "there, but for the grace of God, go I", that belies any
such charge. Rather, I believe the import of his poetry is not "see these
men you have held up and adulated - rejoice, for they are no better off than
you", but instead, "you who have hidden your pain from the world beneath a
mask of gaiety, take comfort, for you are far from alone".

martin

[Links]

Wikipedia article:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Arlington_Robinson
  Edwin Arlington Robinson (December 22, 1869 - April 6, 1935) was an American
    poet, who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

For a lighter take on the theme, there's Christine Lavin's classic "Good Thing
He Can't Read My Mind":
  [broken link] http://www.christinelavin.com/00051501goodthing.html

All the World's a Stage -- William Shakespeare

Guest poem submitted by Rupindar Millington:

(Poem #1873) All the World's a Stage All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. -- William Shakespeare

A recent submission, "Childhood" by Frances Cornford (Poem #1872), reminded
me instantly of this great poem from Shakespeare's As You Like It, 1600.
The link between childhood and old age, the full circle of life in which at
the first and last stages we are helpless - back to square one:

        Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
        Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Is our life marked out?  Do we merely go through the stages of our life
acting it out?  Are there really seven stages?  Are some of us better
actors/actresses than others?  Something to debate; no wonder I recall it so
well - it was part of my English Literature Syllabus :-)... or perhaps I'm
having a mid-life crisis!!

Enjoy!

Rupindar Millington

Song -- Rupert Brooke

(Poem #1872) Song All suddenly the wind comes soft, And Spring is here again; And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green, And my heart with buds of pain. My heart all Winter lay so numb, The earth so dead and frore, That I never thought the Spring would come, Or my heart wake any more. But Winter's broken and earth has woken, And the small birds cry again; And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds, And my heart puts forth its pain. -- Rupert Brooke

Note:
  frore (adj., archaic): Extremely cold; frosty.

It's been a while since I ran anything by Brooke - something I thought I'd
amend today. "Song" is actually not a poem I've read before; I was leafing
idly (and a trifle sleepily) through Brooke's collected poems, looking for
some old favourite I might have overlooked, when I was startled into
awareness by the fourth line.

Brooke is usually a poet I find soothing, even at his bitterest - his words
often speak of restlessness and heartache, but they do it with a quiet
melancholy and philosophical tone that convey an unspoken measure of
acceptance. Today's poem stands in sharp contrast - it is stripped of the
usual 'detached observer' voice that runs in constant counterpoint through
most of Brooke's poetry, the words and expression are simple to the extent
that from a lesser poet they'd have degenerated into amateurishness. Here,
instead, the net result is that the words get out of the way, and let the
poem's emotional content through, in a manner very reminiscent of Teasdale
(normally not someone I would compare to Brooke at all).

One of the things I enjoy most about running Minstrels is the way it has
forced a shift in the way I read poetry, from a passive intake of other
people's selections to an active search through reams of verse, looking with
an anthologist's eye for a more than usually good one. Today's poem is an
excellent example of the rewards of such an endeavour - an uncharacteristic
Brooke poem that I'd likely never have come across were I not systematically
reading through his collected works, but one that I am very glad to have
discovered.

martin

[Links]

Wikipedia on Brooke:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Brooke

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke:
  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7086/brookeidx.htm

Calling it Quits -- Aimee Mann

Guest poem submitted by J. Goard:

(Poem #1871) Calling it Quits He's a serious Mister; shake his hand and he'll twist your arm. With monopoly money we'll be buying the funny farm. So I'll do flips, and get paid in chips from a diamond as big as the Ritz - then I'm calling it quits. Eyes the color of candy, lies to cover the handicap - though your slippers are ruby, you'll be led to the booby trap. And there's no prize, just a smaller size, so I'm wearing the shoe 'til it fits - then I'm calling it quits. Now he's numbering himself among the masterminds, cause he's hit upon the leverage of valentines, lifting dialogue from Judy Garland storylines where get-tough girls turn into goldmines. But oh, those polaroid babies, taking chances with rabies, happy to tear me to bits - well, I'm calling it quits, yes, I'm calling it quits. -- Aimee Mann

I've been wanting to post an Aimee Mann lyric for some time now, and what's
been holding me back has really been the choice of song.  Her list is chock
full of masterfully depressing poems, sometimes oddly spliced with jangly
pop or ultra-mellow Bacharach kinds of sounds, with an abundance of
interestingly mangled idioms that can't be anything but deliberate.  Some of
her songs ("Save Me", "Little Bombs") move me deeply.  But I finally settled
on "Calling it Quits" for being a concentrated example of her particularly
*poetic* sense: the use of sonics, the wordplay, and, most especially, the
way in which her lyrics mesh with the melodic rhythm.

This song has a particularly autobiographic basis. After leaving the band
"Til Tuesday" and releasing two solo albums on a major label, Mann was
basically on the outs with the industry, and dropped away for several years
before coming back big with her 1999 soundtrack to the film "Magnolia", and
with her independently released 2000 album "Bachelor No. 2".  Since then,
she has released two more albums independently.  While the theme of "Calling
it Quits" may not be mindblowingly original, the way in which she puts it
together reveals a truly rare lyrical talent.

The first thing you notice upon hearing a song like this, if you're me ;-),
is consistency in the rhythm of the lines, between parallel musical lines
and between verses.  Just shy of my thirtieth birthday, I risk sounding like
a fogey, but: this is just something all of the great songwriters and
songwriting duos were able to do a few generations ago, except when they had
a reason to want not to.  Compare Cole Porter and Dorothy Fields and Oscar
Hammerstein with today's rock and pop hits, and for the most part the common
denominator is that today's poetics are much crappier.  The lyrical content
might be interesting, the musical craft might be top-notch, and the song
ultimately moving, but the lyrics typically come across as a barely-edited
cocktail napkin draft, with lines of erratic lengths and rhythms basically
crammed onto the vocal melody.  Not to name names.  Moreover, the critical
establishment in popular music seems oblivious to this aspect of the craft
which is so visceral for me, such that when exceptions like Billy Joel or
Elvis Costello or Linford Detweiler (Over the Rhine) get a lot of ink, it
still misses a big part of their talents as songwriters.

Take, for example, the bridge lyrics to "Calling it Quits" ("now he's
numbering...").  The first three lines are sung in eighth notes, except for
the antepenultimate syllables which get a whole beat, and then the fourth
line is highly punctuated poetically and musically, stressed more or less
like this:

  - - - ' - - - ' - ' - * - '
  - - - ' - - - ' - - - * - '
  - - - ' - - - ' - ' - * - '
    - * * * - * - * *

And the natural linguistic cadence of the lyrics fits this scheme perfectly:
big words creating unstressed or weakly stressed syllables in the first
three lines, and chunky compounds in the fourth.

Another aspect of this song's craft is alliteration and complex internal
rhyme.  In each of the first two verses, the first four lines have a
parallel rhythm, with an AABB rhyme scheme - except that an extra syllable
connects lines 2 and 4 as well.  The effect of having all of this rhyme
expectation collide at the end of lines 4 in expressions that also serve as
punchlines of sorts, is remarkable.

Some of the alliteration is obvious (color-candy-cover-cap) or not original
(funny farm), but some is more subtle, as the abundance of sibilants in the
first line and a half.  Most interesting is the movement of consonants in
the bridge verse.  Line 1 is full of [m]s, with one [b].  Line 2 creates a
clever expression "leverage of valentines" that plays off a reversal of [l]
and [v], and then line 3 moves into a lot more [l]s.  The weighty line 4
picks up on the [g] of "Garland" and bashes us with it.  And look at how the
last half-verse, which (relative to the first two verses) is already gaining
momentum by not having the syllable at the end of line 2, keeps the [b]s
going with "bits".

Finally, there isn't just phonetic but semantic fun going on here.
"Monopoly" isn't capitalized in the online lyrics sites I checked, and I'll
run with that, since the sense of economic monopoly among music producers
relative to artists seems to be as relevant as the sense of the popular
game's fake money (many empty promises of wealth).  "Buying the farm" means
dying, of course, "funny farm" means madness, and merging the two is classic
Aimee Mann idiom mangling.  "Lies to cover the handicap" is a striking line,
drawing out double senses of "cover" and "handicap": that is to say, it can
mean "obscure the disability" or "compensate for the skill differential".
"Smaller size" evokes the pressure on female stars to be very thin while
also fitting the shoe reference.

All in all, there is just so much craft in this song (as in so many of her
others) that could easily escape a first or twentieth listen.  But if you
get to the point of appreciating what Mann does with words, and if you
respond to this style of tightly crafted pop, it can be truly engrossing.

J. Goard

Aimee Mann official site: https://www.aimeemann.com