The Distracted Centipede -- Anonymous

Guest poem submitted by Gregory Marton:

(Poem #1664) The Distracted Centipede A centipede was happy quite, Until a frog in fun Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?" This raised her mind to such a pitch, She lay distracted in the ditch Considering how to run. -- Anonymous

I took a friend back home to Hungary this past week, and in teaching her
Hungarian, and in the simultaneous translation, I oft forgot for a few
moments how to speak either language!  She appraised my predicament with
this apt and catchy limerick, and I am the richer for it.

I have seen several titles " The Puzzled Centipede", "The Frog and the
Centipede", "The Poor Worm", "The Centipede Poem", and several minor
variants: "figuring how to run", "Pray tell which leg...", a/the in several
places, his/her mind and so on. The indentation is mine, and feel free to
quash it.  I was unable to find attribution, as were the editors of the
Oxford Book of Verse for Children, according to one second-hand source:
        [broken link] http://faqs.jmas.co.jp/FAQs/buddhism-faq/questions

[And a few minutes after sending us the original submission, Gremio adds:]
In fact, I find some more variants and titles, when I search without "frog".
The antagonist is often a toad and sometimes a bird.  I hadn't realized how
devious it is of either predator to distract its prey until I read it with a
bird.  This page emphasizes the point, by cleverly (I'm giving benefit of
the doubt) substituting "Prey" for "Pray":
        [broken link] http://www.camp4.com/coolsite.php?newsid=321

I also read in several places:
        This raised his doubts to such a pitch
        He fell distracted in the ditch
        Not knowing how to run.

This has been (probably mis-)attributed to Marion Quinlan Davis here:
        http://www.cognitivebehavior.com/theory/quickconcepts.html
and to Allan Watts here:
        http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/0008/an000811.htm

Grem.

The Clod and the Pebble -- William Blake

Guest poem sent in by Gregory Marton

(Poem #1452) The Clod and the Pebble Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. So sang a little Clod of Clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet: But a pebble of the brook, Warbled out these metres meet. Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to Its delight: Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite. -- William Blake

I'm not sure if by ordering the clod first the poem's bent is actually
pessimistic, but in coming upon this from the pebble's passion, I found
myself rejoyced, and remembered to smile. This is in Songs of Experience,
which caught my eye with its illuminated illustrations and pleasant price
at a used book sale. Heaven sends the choicest gems to break Hell's mood!

Your humble Clod,
Gremio

[Martin adds]

Blake's ordering of the verses here reminds me of another of his Songs of
Experience, "A Poison Tree" [Poem #1087]. It has a similar 'dark' structure,
upholding (or seeming to uphold) schadenfreude over selflessness.  Gremio is
right - one would expect the "moral" of the poem to support the clod, and
Blake's letting the pebble have the last word flies in the face of those
expectations, making the modern reader (at least) slightly uneasy.

A Hillside Thaw -- Robert Frost

Guest poem sent in by Gregory Marton

(Poem #1284) A Hillside Thaw To think to know the country and not know The hillside on the day the sun lets go Ten million silver lizards out of snow! As often as I've seen it done before I can't pretend to tell the way it's done. It looks as if some magic of the sun Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor And the light breaking on them made them run. But if I thought to stop the wet stampede, And caught one silver lizard by the tail, And put my foot on one without avail, And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed In front of twenty others' wriggling speed, -- In the confusion of them all aglitter, And birds that joined in the excited fun, By doubling and redoubling song and twitter, I have no doubt I'd end by holding none. It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch. >From the high west she makes a gentle cast And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch, She has her spell on every single lizard. I fancied when I looked at six o'clock The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast. The moon was waiting for her chill effect. I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock In every lifelike posture of the swarm, Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect. Across each other and side by side they lay. The spell that so could hold them as they were Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir. It was the moon's: she held them until day, One lizard at the end of every ray. The thought of my attempting such a stay! -- Robert Frost

The recent Frost spree brought to mind this poem with all its wonderful
early-spring imagery.  This poem was my introduction to Robert Frost, now
my favorite poet.  I had been expounding to a friend[1] about how one could
find just about everything online (c.a. 1999) and she asserted that this, her
favorite Frost poem was nowhere to be found.  Needless to say, she was right!
In fact as I started on a quest for it, the poem turned out not to be on our
university library shelves either, and I finally found it in an ancient first
edition copy in the Maryland room.  It was magnificent to read it that first
time, and a triumph to finally have found her a copy, and a pleasure to hold
the tome, and see Frost's inscription in his own hand.

It might have been the chase that made me fall in love with this poem, but
reading it aloud and seeing the newts come alive under the golden sunbeams
chasing them with torn and muddy clothes as I might have done, excited
child, and looking on from afar as the pale moon's glow slows them to
Escherlike images ... that beauty kept me enthralled.

The last line sealed it, expressing as no other could my sheer awe and
humility at nature's subtle power.

Happy spring!  :-)
Gremio

[1] [broken link] http://www.agaonline.org/poetry/hillside-thaw.html

On Turning Ten -- Billy Collins

Guest poem sent in by Gregory Marton

(Poem #1096) On Turning Ten The whole idea of it makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-- a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number. It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. -- Billy Collins

A very new friend, quickly becoming someone I feel like I've known my whole
life, sent me yesterday's poem, Litany in one of our first exchanges of
email, and so introduced me to our poet laureate.  I laughed and enjoyed it
and started to explore his other work online.  I found his imagined children
comforting, and his flawed adults familiar.  On Turning Ten was my favorite
and with it I replied.

Where Litany had beautifully caricatured beauty (of which Atwood's
'Variations on the word "sleep"'[Poem #1093] was a delightful example), On
Turning Ten reminds us that we each have it inside.  We sat on a sailboat
yesterday immersed in wonder, and she said if you would cut her today, she'd
shine.  So, indeed, would I.

Warmest wishes,
Gremio

Casabianca -- Felicia Hemans

Guest poem submitted by Gregory Marton:

Yesterday's poem, "Casabianca" by Elizabeth Bishop written in 1946, is
somewhat out of place without its predecessor below, written in 1829:

(Poem #1000) Casabianca The boy stod on the burning deck, Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck shone round him o'er the dead. Yet beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm; A creature of heroic blood, A proud, though child-like form. The flames rolled on - he would not go Without his father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard. He called aloud - "Say, father, say If yet my task is done?" He knew not that the chieftain lay Unconscious of his son. "Speak, father!" once again he cried, "If I may yet be gone!" And but the booming shots replied, And fast the flames rolled on. Upon his brow he felt their breath, And in his waving hair; And looked from that lone post of death In still, yet brave despair: And shouted but once more aloud, "My father! must I stay?" While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud, The wreathing fires made way. There came a burst of thunder sound - The boy - oh! where was he? Ask of the winds that far around With fragments strewed the sea! With mast, and helm, and pennon fair, That well had borne their part - But the noblest thing that perished there Was that young, faithful heart. -- Felicia Hemans

 This was better known as "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck", and is the
poem Bishop's boy recites in Poem #999.

 From [broken link] http://mason-west.com/ElizabethBishop/casabianca.shtml :

     Hemans's poem commemorates the death of Young Casabianca, a boy
     about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the "Orient", who
     remained at his post in the Battle of the Nile after the ship had
     taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and perished in
     the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the
     powder. The Battle of the Nile, in which Nelson captured and
     destroyed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay, took place on August
     1, 1798.

 Hemans's "Casabianca" came to me through one of the most inspiring pieces
of text I've ever read. Alan Turing, in his famous 1950 paper "Computing
Machinery and Intelligence", describes the famous Turing Test. He asserts
that machines will someday "think" in the sense of  that word that we use
for ourselves, and was the first to describe, by his imitation game, a means
to tell whether a machine was doing so.

 In the paper Turing also describes constructing an intelligent machine by
constructing first a child machine, then training it as one would a child.
In describing why Skinnerian operant conditioning, a series of rewards for
good behavior and punishments for bad, would not be the best training
approach, Turing says:

     Roughly speaking, if the teacher has no other means of
     communicating to the pupil, the amount of information which can
     reach him does not exceed the total number of rewards and
     punishments applied.  By the time a child has learnt to repeat
     "Casabianca" he would probably feel very sore indeed, if the text
     could only be discovered by a "Twenty Questions" technique, every
     "NO" taking the form of a blow.

 At first I thought Turing had mistyped "Casablanca" but looked and found
otherwise!  Indeed the metaphor is most apt, especially in light of Bishop's
version (1946): the child machine, the only sort of boy designed not to run
or fight back, reciting in "stammering elocution" the poem until by blows he
gets it right.  The machine, the most obstinate of little boys -- it's this
boy that I as an AI grad student love, even if he'll not for some time yet
pass Turing's test or run from burning flames.  We'll get there.  :-)

Gremio.