Upon Julia's Clothes -- Robert Herrick

(Poem #777) Upon Julia's Clothes Whenas in silks my Julia goes Then, then, (methinks) how sweetly flows That liquefaction of her clothes. Next, when I cast mine eyes and see That brave vibration each way free; Oh, how that glittering taketh me! -- Robert Herrick

A brief, yet bewitching poem from Herrick. The sensuous enchantment of his
words rivals anything by the great Romantics, but the choice of topic -
prosaic, and even a bit earthy - sets his poem apart.

thomas.

[Minstrels Links]

Poems by Robert Herrick:
Poem #332, "Delight In Disorder"
Poem #398, "The Night Piece, To Julia"
Poem #593, "The Hag"
Poem #665, "Dreams"
The second of these has a biography and links to several archives of
Herrick's poetry.

Herrick always reminds me of John Donne, both for his technical mastery and
for his outspoken emotion. Check out the following poems by the latter:
Poem #330, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"
Poem #384, "Song"
Poem #403, "A Lame Beggar"
Poem #465, "The Sun Rising"

[Moreover]

"Upon Julia's Clothes" is but one of several Herrick poems addressed to
Julia; others include "The Night Piece: To Julia", "On Julia's Voice", "A
Ring Presented to Julia", "Julia's Petticoat" and "The Bracelet: To Julia"
(I'm sure there are more). The "Julia" poems (not to be confused with Samuel
Daniel's "Delia" sonnets - see Poem #375 on the Minstrels for an example)
have varying forms and themes, but underlying them all is a wonderfully
romantic love.

Surprisingly, none of the usual references (Britannica, Google) have
anything to say on who this Julia might be. Would some kind member of this
list care to enlighten me?

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, With The Plough -- Robert Burns

Guest poem submitted independently by Suresh Ramasubramanian, and William Johns:

(Poem #776) To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, With The Plough Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle! I'm truly sorry man's dominion, Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal! I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request; I'll get blessin wi' the lave, An' never miss't! Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! It's silly wa's the win's are strewin! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' foggage green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin, Baith snell an' keen! Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, An' weary winter comin fast, An' cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell --- Till crash ! the cruel coulter past Out thro' thy cell. That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee monie a weary nibble! Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, An' cranreuch cauld ! But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy ! Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear! -- Robert Burns

[Suresh's Commentary]

Robert Burns was born in 1759, Ayrshire, Scotland. He grew up on his
father's farm, and was self-taught. When he was just 15 years old, his
father died, saddling him with an  unproductive farm. His poetry gradually
became popular though, so much so that he published a book of poems in 1786
(aged 27) to finance a trip to Jamaica. The book sold much better than
anticipated, but Burns decided to go to Edinburgh and publish a "better"
second edition of his poems. He died only 10 years later at the early age of
37, but not before writing some excellent poetry such as "Auld Lang Syne"
(till today a staple of new year parties in England) and "To a mouse ...".

This poem has one immortal line, which has passed into (fairly) common
English usage -
  The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
  Gang aft agley,
Here's where Steinbeck got the title of his "Of Mice and Men", by the way.

The poem is written in his typical "broad scots" and deals with a field
mouse whose nest he apparently destroyed when plowing a field. Burns sees
the mouse scuttling out of its nest, cowering and shivering in terror (and
cold? it is mid-winter after all) in front of him. He starts off on the poor
mouse suffering because of his actions, and then reassures it that it only
has to fear the present, whereas he has had a dreary past, and "guesses and
fears" his unseen but easily guessed future.

Nothing at all would have differentiated this poem from the millions of
sentimental and tear-jerking verses churned out by assorted poets (and
ridiculed by several others) - but for the fact that Burns seems to have
opened his heart to the mouse, and speaks to it as if he's trying to cheer
up an old friend who has somehow fallen upon hard times.

The broad scots is an added bonus, making this poem a delight to read aloud
(or to listen to). For what it's worth, the "r"s are rolled out here, ...
rrrr ... almost like in French.

http://www.robertburns.org/works/75.html has a version with hyperlinks to a
glossary of the scottish words.

Suresh.

[William's Commentary]

One of my favorites. When I was a kid, we caught a mouse in the kitchen. He
became the family pet, named "Wee sleeket cowran tim'rous beastie", and he
lived a long and happy life in his new home. Kind of the exact opposite of
what happened in the poem...

Bill.

The Maldive Shark -- Herman Melville

(Poem #775) The Maldive Shark About the Shark, phlegmatical one, Pale sot of the Maldive sea The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, How alert in attendence be. From his saw-pit mouth, from his charnel of maw The have nothing of harm to dread, But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank Or before his Gorgonian head; Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth In white triple tiers of glittering gates, And there find a haven when peril's abroad, An asylum in jaws of the Fates! They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey, Yet never partake of the treat-- Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, Pale ravener of horrible meat. -- Herman Melville

Melville has none of the airiness or delicacy of, say, Keats or Flecker
(whose respective ages he neatly bisects). Instead, his verse is _chunky_,
with layer upon layer of densely piled phrases, murky and threatening and
yet strangely vivid. The net effect is powerful, and not completely benign:
the ominous cadences add to the terror of the shark, the 'pale ravener of
horrible meat'...

thomas.

[Poetry and Prose]

Herman Melville is, of course, more famous as a writer of prose - and what
prose! His masterpiece 'Moby Dick' is generally considered one of the
greatest novels of all time - wildly, incredibly inventive, linguistically
and philosophically challenging, and a rollicking good adventure to boot. It
may not be the easiest of reads to get through, but it's definitely worth
the effort. http://www.melville.org/ has more on the writer and his work.

Martin once ran a week of "poems written by writers of prose"; check out
Poem #179, "Missed", P. G. Wodehouse
Poem #181, "The Guards Came Through", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Poem #183, "Sorrows of Werther", William Makepeace Thackeray
and, later:
Poem #259, "Songs from an Evil Wood", Lord Dunsany
Poem #261, "Recompense", Robert E. Howard
Poem #664, "Conceit", Mervyn Peake
Poem #701, "Teeth", Spike Milligan

While the above examples may be by and large unremarkable, they do serve to
highlight the achievement of writers such as Thomas Hardy and Rudyard
Kipling, who achieved equal acclaim for both forms of their art. D. H.
Lawrence, Oliver Goldsmith and Edgar Allan Poe are hardly any less
distinguished than the two giants named above, while J. R. R. Tolkien and
Lewis Carroll deserve special recognition for the way their prose is
immeasurably enhanced by the inclusion of verse - so much so that the two
are well nigh inseparable (in this reviewer's mind, at least). Boris
Pasternak and Jorge Luis Borges round out the list; all these writers can be
found on the Minstrels website, at
[broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html .

For an essay on the necessary distinction between poetry and other forms of
expression, see poem #349.

Ray -- Hayden Carruth

Guest poem submitted by David Wright:

(Poem #774) Ray How many guys are sitting at their kitchen tables right now, one-thirty in the morning, this same time, eating a piece of pie? - that's what I wondered. A big piece of pie, because I'd just finished reading Ray's last book. Not good pie, not like my mother or my wife could've made, but an ordinary pie I'd just bought, being alone, at the Tops Market two hours ago. And how many had water in their eyes? Because of Ray's book, and especially those last poems written after he knew: the one about the doctor telling him, the one where he and Tess go down to Reno to get married before it happens and shoot some craps on the dark baize tables, the one called "After-Glow" about the little light in the sky after the sun sets. I can just hear him, if he were still here and this were somebody else's book, saying, "Jesus," saying, "This is the saddest son of a bitch of a book I've read in a long time," saying "A real long time." And the thing is, he knew we'd be saying this about his book, he could just hear us saying it, and in some part of him he was glad! He really was. What crazies we writers are, our heads full of language like buckets of minnows standing on the moonlight on a dock. Ray was a good writer, a wonderful writer, and his poems are good, most of them, and they made me cry, there at my kitchen table with my head down, me, a sixty-seven-year-old galoot, an old fool because all old men are fools, they have to be, shoveling big jagged chunks of that ordinary pie into my mouth, and the water falling from my eyes onto that pie, the plate, my hand, little speckles shining into the light, brightening the colors, and I ate that goddamn pie, and it tasted good to me. -- Hayden Carruth

I love Raymond Carver's writing and I love Hayden Carruth's writing, and
this is such a fitting eulogy, their sensibilities are so similar. I'm not
sure I buy the initial "How many guys ... that's what I'm wondering," as a
device, but I don't care. This image of the man, the old man, sitting up
late at night, crying and shoveling in pie, just gets me. I can hear it, the
noises of the plate and fork, the breathing, the weeping, the eating.

There's a haiku by Ryusui - in a translation by R. H. Blyth it goes:

      The lost child
  Crying, crying, but still
   Catching the fire-flies.

That sublimely human moment when grief and the forgetfulness of grief are
there together. Just precious, and funny, too. One of the things I enjoy
about this poem that I don't like about some other confessions is his deadly
serious appreciation of pain doesn't eclipse his humor. Like in the line
"finished reading Ray's last book.  Not good pie,".

The book he is referring to in the poem is "A New Path to the Waterfall", a
volume of poetry the Raymond Carver wrote at the very end of his life. All
of his poetry has since been collected into a single volume, "All of Us",
which you probably ought to rush right out and buy.   Carruth's own stuff
has recently been sliced and diced into some nice collections as well.

The Academy of American Poets website (http://www.poets.org/) has a page on
Carruth which links to some other content on the web.

David.

PS. Oh, one more little poem, also by Carruth:

 "The Last Poem In The World"

 Would I write it, if I could?
 Bet your glitzy ass I would.

        -- Hayden Carruth

PPS. Minstrels Poem #684, "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey", Hayden Carruth.

Untitled -- Bhartrihari

Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta:

(Poem #773) Untitled She who is always in my thoughts prefers Another man, and does not think of me. Yet he seeks for another's love, not hers; And some poor girl is grieving for my sake. Why then, the devil take Both her and him; and love; and her; and me. -- Bhartrihari

In stark contrast [to e. e. cummings' love poetry - t.] is this short
quatrain (in the Sanskrit) from Bhartrihari - a man who wrote fiery love
poems in his youth and turned to the renunciation of worldly pleasures in
his old age. The theme is not new - love can be terribly confusing - but the
mode of expression is really charming and captures the frustration of the
lover perfectly. A little gem, which grows on you as you read it a second
time.

Anustup.

[Biography]

  born AD 570?, Ujjain, Malwa, India
  died 651?, Ujjain

Hindu philosopher and poet-grammarian, author of the Vakyapadiya ("Words in
a Sentence"), regarded as one of the most significant works on the
philosophy of language, earning for him a place for all time in the
sabdadvaita (word monistic) school of Indian thought.

Of noble birth, Bhartrihari was attached for a time to the court of the
Maitraka king of Valabhi (modern Vala, Gujarat), where most likely his taste
for sensuous living and material possessions was formed. Following the
example of Indian sages, he believed he must renounce the world for a higher
life. Seven times he attempted monastic living, but his attraction to women
caused him to fail each time. Though intellectually he presumably understood
the transitory nature of worldly pleasures and felt a call to yoga and
ascetic living, he was unable to control his desires. After a long
self-struggle, Bhartrihari became a yogi and lived a life of dispassion in a
cave in the vicinity of Ujjain until his death.

Bhartrihari entitled three of his works sataka ("century"): The Sringara
(love) -sataka, Niti (ethical and polity) -sataka, and Vairagya (dispassion)
-sataka. Although all three are attributed to him, only the first is
regarded as his with certainty by most scholars. In another work sometimes
attributed to Bhartrihari, the Bhatti kavya ("Poem of Bhatti"), he performs
linguistic gymnastics to demonstrate the subtleties of Sanskrit.

        -- EB