Howls and Whispers

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Today over at the U. the English department organized a public serial reading, mostly by profs and kids, of Ginsberg's "Howl" to celebrate National Reading Week.

It is a vigorous poem, Whitman with his pubes ablaze you might say, and I do enjoy hearing it read well. But maybe it was the burden of filling an outdoor space with sound or maybe it was the fact those who had the gusto didn't want to outshine those who didn't -- whatever the reason, too many read in zombie tones,as if surprised and a little distressed at what they were reading.

If you don't sound as if you've recently been beaten with a hose and somewhat resented it, when it comes to saying "Howl" why bother? Proclaiming the joys of consensual sodomy with rough trade isn't tea shoppe conversation.

(I don't think, though those are not my areas of expertise, either of 'em.)

Most Anthologized Poem in the World? So I've Read

Keats

TO AUTUMN.

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

So Far So Good II

Cover of Soylent Green

This afternoon we went to the funeral home, a trip that filled me with dread because. even though Mom had pre-paid for her funeral, that was 20 years ago, which meant the funeral industry scum had 20 years to lose the paperwork, change the rules, begin operation under new management -- Soylent Green, Ltd. I believe the new group is.

To my dismay -- the dismay of having to improve one's notion of the fundamental decency of one's fellow human being -- when we told the funeral people that You know what? We've lost every scrap of record of Mom's prepaying, they poked around for a couple minutes and reappeared with a photocopy of the original agreement. The funeral director explained several times that mom had bought a $8,500 funeral for $3,700. I didn't mind. It's okay to preen occasionally.

We were so thrilled that we were not being ripped off that I bought several gaudy nonessentials -- yes, Mom will now have an eternal website of pictures and tributes and so on of which I shall be *webmaster* -- because, damn, if I don't go thousands of dollars out of pocket during the next few days.... Well, what's the point of having in-laws?

Though this is my last one. I thought Mom's advanced age -- actually only 98 years, five months -- had steeled me against any emotion other than relief that her suffering, which was wonderfully brief, is over. And I felt quite a lot of anticipation that E. and I will be at home for Christmas for the first time in five years and will be able to spend all of December together for the first time in five years. The relief came washing over me, you might say, before there was pain to wash away.

But at the funeral home today one of our tasks was picking out a bit of poetry for the cards that will be handed out at the service. They had several pages of samples, and I choose a handsome sentiment by Emerson -- though the funeral home spelled it Emmerson, which error I graciously pointed out. And then, just because my Ph.D. is in English Lit, with a specialty in 19th Century British, I read a poem by Tennyson because I thought E. and Esther would like it and I like doggerel because doggerel reads well.

I read the first two lines of the poem, and then I began to weep, pretty damn loud, real weep-track quality if there is such a thing. And for what? Only cliche can come after that question, but if cliche happens to be the truth, well, you can't just go around making shit up to be all cool and Steven Sondheim.

And for what -- as I was saying -- did I weep? For my mother-in-law who gave me my wife (thank you); who said she loved me in spite of the fact I was not handy around the house when I came to visit, though I tried; who was so fierce in her joy and her sorrow and who laughed madly in her gladness, laughed as her daughter laughs, loud enough to embarrass you to be honest, if it happened in public.

Actually, Mom cackled, and it was nice finally to be able to say, So that's what that word means.

And I cried, mind you, over Tennyson. But that's a good thing because it shows the tears were genuine, all mine and none of the poet.


Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

I concede: Isn't it pretty to think so?

Berkeley Poetry Slam: Haiku Review

Opposites Attract (She Completes Me)

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While I drove my wife to work this morning, the beauty of the day drew out of my memory bank one of the first nature poems to which I was exposed, to wit:

Spring is sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where
The birdies iz

E. responded that she was enamored of the very same poem at a similarly tender age, when it was one of the first windows for both of us into the whimsical power of irony -- except that in Michigan the payoff was

I wonder where
The flowers iz

At first I resisted that variant, since my first inclination was to prefer the notion of looking skyward, of the eyes lifted up as the spirit is lifted up on these first fine days, of the eye searching, questing, yearning and then to see the dot, the speck -- yes, there it is: a bird! a bird!

But almost at once I appreciated the organicism of her version, of the clean narrative line it implies, in that one indeed would naturally, when noting those first stirrings of the grass, yearn for the beauty of the flowers so long absent. Indeed, those very flowers might rise amid or directly adjacent to where the grass is struggling to appear.

Here is both literal and metaphorical focus.

But in the case of absent birds, for the poem to have a point one is necessarily referring to those that migrate, else the poem is in danger of falling into non sequitur. For some birds have endured among us all winter, and it seems ungracious to wonder where "the birdies" are when, in fact, *some* birds have never left us. And thus a poem of celebration could transform into a hymn to the fickleness of humanity, of our desire for incessantly fresh sensation, of disloyalty to nature, not its celebration.

I was abashed. Yes, E.'s version is superior. She's quite a wonder.

I Need to Bury the Cat

I'm not going to put it off any longer. The earth is soft, and the sky is blue.

I read this poem a long time ago. I looked and I found it. Dickey does not write of domestic animals, but I am still glad I found it, not believing in heaven for anyone but glad to play at believing.

The Heaven of Animals

Here they are.  The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains it is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For some of these, it could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward:  to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle's center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

  -- James Dickey

Sitting Here Giving My Reporting Students Their Final

Half the final is always a police report -- a real police report rich in irrelevant detail and bureaucratic language -- that the kids must boil down to 100 words. They may, of course, keep going after that act of summary, but they must not "go chronological," as I put it, too soon.

Story telling is a natural human act. Some do it better than others, but we all appreciate the art of Scheherazade, for whom the maintenance of suspense was an act of survival. Yet the aim of certain kinds of journalism is the destruction of suspense: Here is what happened raw and simple. Perhaps that sort of tight focus is a form of misdirection, even dishonesty, in its arrogant assumption that the reporter's frame somehow corrals the truth.

That's the student of Media Studies talking, and it's the right kind of talk. News is made (I obviously don't mean fabricated, only that certain information is selected and pulled downstage) by whoever records it. But that does not mean the summary lead is not a useful thing or always a dishonest thing. If you go too Postmodern and say the critic rules the text and the text is indeterminate as is the material world which is a kind of text, you may become as foolish as one of Swift's floating philosophers, trapped in solipsism.

So I teach the summary lead without shame, though I also try to teach the modesty that should accompany its use.

But moderation in all things, including modesty. Read Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts"

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Marvelous brilliant cruel poem. It's all about burying the lead, a reporter would say.

This is Not a Well-Written Headline

Supreme Court Rejects Obama Citizenship Claim

On the other hand, to undertake the job of writing headlines is to accept inevitable embarrassment. There's a slice of foolish pie on the buffet for all of us who write.

I recall two lines from my days of teen poetry that have outlived all the rest of it, at least in the mind of my wife, who loves love and love's howlers even more.

One was a rather melodramatic imagining of a man's life at sea containing this stanza:

And then the West Wind turned again and brought from inland farms
The smell of all I'd done and been far from the ocean's arms.

Talk about an excremental vision!

But this one is better:

I aim my shaft of love toward whom I choose
Though shaft fall short.

Yeah, we've all dated a guy like that, my wife says.

Not the Way I Remembered It

from Emily Dickinson

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.