The Jolly Company -- Rupert Brooke

Guest poem submitted by Mike Christie:

(Poem #1857) The Jolly Company The stars, a jolly company, I envied, straying late and lonely; And cried upon their revelry: "O white companionship! You only In love, in faith unbroken dwell, Friends radiant and inseparable!" Light-heart and glad they seemed to me And merry comrades (even so God out of heaven may laugh to see the happy crowds; and never know that in his lone obscure distress each walketh in a wilderness). But I, remembering, pitied well And loved them, who, with lonely light, In empty infinite spaces dwell, Disconsolate. For, all the night, I heard the thin gnat-voices cry, Star to faint star, across the sky. -- Rupert Brooke

I have never been a particular fan of Rupert Brooke, but I think he has the
occasional gift for a perfect turn of phrase.  In this case I knew the
phrase before I knew the poem: the last two and a half lines of this poem,
to be exact.  John Wyndham (the author of "The Day of the Triffids") quotes
them in one of his more obscure books, "The Outward Urge".  I read that book
many years ago and loved the lines, but I only recently found the original
poem.

The poem itself is competent, and I am glad to have found it.  But to me it
turns from silver to gold at the end; those two lines are wonderfully
evocative, and bring the poem's theme out with surgical and emotional
precision.

Mike.

PS. I found this version on the web, so if [any Minstrels reader has] a text
to check that would be good, since I have no faith in the accuracy of web
versions.

Night in Arizona -- Sara Teasdale

(Poem #1856) Night in Arizona The moon is a charring ember Dying into the dark; Off in the crouching mountains Coyotes bark. The stars are heavy in heaven, Too great for the sky to hold -- What if they fell and shattered The earth with gold? No lights are over the mesa, The wind is hard and wild, I stand at the darkened window And cry like a child. -- Sara Teasdale

      (1915)

One of my favourite things about Teasdale's work is her ability to blend the
external and the internal, to choose, time and again, precisely the right
words to both evoke a vivid sensory image and an intense feeling of empathy
with the poet's emotional reaction.

Today's poem is an excellent example - the deceptively simple and minimalist
description of the Arizona night is at once haunting and evocative; the
images just the right blend of universality and specificity that every word
triggers a flood of associations. The final two lines, far from begin an
abrupt intrusion of the first person "I" into an otherwise detached poem,
feel completely natural - the narrator has in some sense cast her presence
over the poem all along.

Like my favourite Teasdale poem, "Morning" [Poem #113], today's poem is
ultimately about the resonance between the poet's spirit and the sweep of the
world around her. When done right (and few people do it better than
Teasdale), this renders a poem both powerful and intensely memorable - not
just for the specific lines and phrases, but for a very individual 'feel'
which is hard to put into words, but which is indisputably present.

martin

The Ways We Touch -- Miller Williams

Guest poem submitted by Rachael Shaw:

(Poem #1855) The Ways We Touch Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. -- Miller Williams

I have recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee - the home of country music. I
was fortunate on my first night in town to see a rare performance by
singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams and her father, poet Miller Williams
called 'Poetry Said, Poetry Sung'. Miller Williams recited a poem and
Lucinda picked a song to play that would fit the poem her dad had just read.

His poems really spoke to me and I went to the library the following day to
look for his work. On reading a few poems from 'Points of Departure' and
'Some Jazz a While', I was disappointed that the poems did not have such an
impact on me as they did when they were spoken by Miller the night before. I
fear this may happen with readers as well so I ask that you imagine an old,
grey man of slight stature and big glasses, whose body rocks when he laughs
and whose voice crackles when he talks ever so slowly. A man who knows of
struggle and loss. At one point during the show Lucinda said "Takes me
longer to say in a song what dad can do in a few lines." I think this is so
very true. For me, 'The Ways We Touch' was made to be spoken.

To experience Miller Williams, click on this videolink:
  [broken link] http://www.press.uillinois.edu/poetry/images/inaugural.mov.
Miller was chosen to read a poem at Bill Clinton's innaugauration in 1997
('Of History and Hope').

Rachael.

The Story We Know -- Martha Collins

(Poem #1854) The Story We Know The way to begin is always the same. Hello, Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, Just fine, And Good-bye at the end. That's every story we know, And why pretend? But lunch tomorrow? No? Yes? An omelette, salad, chilled white wine? The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello, And then it's Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow Day by the fire, dinner at eight or nine And Good-bye. In the end, this is a story we know So well we don't turn the page, or look below The picture, or follow the words to the next line: The way to begin is always the same Hello. But one night, through the latticed window, snow Begins to whiten the air, and the tall white pine. Good-bye is the end of every story we know That night, and when we close the curtains, oh, We hold each other against that cold white sign Of the way we all begin and end. Hello, Good-bye is the only story. We know, we know. -- Martha Collins

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,/ Creeps in this petty pace from
day to day,/ To the last syllable of recorded time" - poets and writers have
never had a problem expressing the dull, measured tread of day following day
following day, and "The Story We Know" is a fine example of the genre.
Collins uses a variant of the villanelle form to good effect, a series of
"every day the same" verses bracketed and counted off by the endless rounds
of "hello" and "good-bye".

Where the poem really drew me in, though, was in the penultimate verse, the
brilliantly placed "But one night" jolting the reader awake with the promise
that this time around, things are different. The poem after that gets
steadily deeper, as we take a metaphorical step back and see the darker
shadow of life and death wrap itself around the flickering round of days,
and the poignant conclusion summing it all up:

 Hello,
 Good-bye is the only story. We know, we know.

martin

[Links]

Biography:
  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/273

Thunder Road -- Bruce Springsteen

Guest poem submitted by Mark Penney:

(Poem #1853) Thunder Road The screen door slams Mary's dress waves Like a vision she dances across the porch As the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely Hey, that's me, and I want you only Don't turn me home again Cause I just can't face myself alone again Don't run back inside, darling, You know just what I'm here for So you're scared and you're thinking That maybe we ain't that young anymore Show a little faith, there's magic in the night You're not a beauty, but hey, you're all right Oh, and that's all right with me. You can hide 'neath the covers And study your pain Make crosses from your lovers, Throw roses in the rain Waste your summer praying in vain For a savior to rise from these streets Well I'm no hero, that's understood All the redemption I can offer, girl, Is beneath this dirty hood With a chance to make it good somehow Baby, what else can we do now Except roll down the window And let the wind blow back your hair The night's busting open These two lanes will take us anywhere We've got one last chance to make it real To trade in these wings on some wheels Climb in back Heaven's waiting on down the tracks Oh, come take my hand We're riding out tonight to case the promised land Oh, Thunder Road, oh, Thunder Road Lying out there like a killer in the sun I know it's late, but we can make it if we run Oh, Thunder Road, Sit tight, take hold, Thunder Road. Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk And my car's out back if you're ready to take that long walk From the front porch to my front seat The door's open but the ride it ain't free And I know you're lonely for words that I ain't spoken But tonight we'll be free All the promises will be broken There were ghosts in the eyes Of all the boys you sent away They haunt this dusty beach road In the skeleton frames of burnt-out Chevrolets They scream your name at night in the street Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet And in the lonely cool before dawn You can hear their engines roaring on But when you get to the porch they're gone On the wind, so Mary climb in, It's a town full of losers And I'm pulling out of here to win. -- Bruce Springsteen

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  some, but by no means all, song
lyrics work when you look at them independently as poems.  This is one of
the ones that does, in a very big way.

True, Springsteen's "story songs" are often too wordy, but he has a real
talent for indelible images.  And this song is fairly overflowing with them.
In my opinion, the ragged length of the lines (some of them actually have
too many syllables to fit the music!) and the irregular rhythm and rhyme
actually add something in this case -- a certain restless drive, that
underpins what we think of the main character.  (Listening to this song, you
keep feeling like it's going to settle into a regular ballad structure, with
abab rhymes and so on, but it never quite does.  For example, the "Thunder
Road" part in the middle looks like it's going to be a chorus, but ... nope,
it never comes back.  The whole thing almost feels improvised, a sort of
rush of disconnected thoughts.)

On the surface, it's just a testosterone-laden teenaged boy, trying to go on
a ride with, and maybe sleep with, a girl.  But Springsteen's approach to
the main character is interestingly divided -- simultaneously identifying
with this kid, but also keeping some objective distance.  (Look at that
virtuosic last verse for evidence:  what kid, trying to impress a girl,
would be thinking all those things at once?  It all of a sudden turns so
bitter and cynical -- "They haunt this dusty beach road / In the skeleton
frames of burnt-out Chevrolets" -- it's clear we're looking at the kid not
only through his own eyes, but through the author's as well.)

But my god, the images.  The first four lines are incredible.  And the third
verse.  And the last one.  It's one of those songs that you learn the words
to, because the words themselves are so delicious.

Lastly, you've got to say that the song is a little one-sided.  I'd love to
hear Mary's side of things.  Maybe it'd start something like this:

 A car horn honks
 I look to see who's there
 It's that Bruce again in his '63 Chevy
 And his unkempt hair
 "Dom-do-de-wah" sings Roy,
 "Only the lonely," and this boy.
 What can I do to make him
 Leave me alone and go away again?

Mark