Waking Up on Valentine's Day

The Good-Morrow

John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

An April Observance

Winter's tufts of white

Are falling softly on spring's

The pussy-willow.

What I Had for Lunch: Marbled Tea Eggs

Villanelle: The Psychological Hour

Ezra Pound

I had over prepared the event,
that much was ominous.
With middle-ageing care
I had laid out just the right books.
I had almost turned down the pages.

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

So much barren regret,
So many hours wasted!
And now I watch, from the window,
the rain, the wandering busses.

"Their little cosmos is shaken" -
the air is alive with that fact.
In their parts of the city
they are played on by diverse forces.
How do I know?
Oh, I know well enough.
For them there is something afoot.
As for me;
I had over-prepared the event -

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

Two friends: a breath of the forest. . .
Friends? Are people less friends
because one has just, at last, found them?
Twice they promised to come.

"Between the night and the morning?"
Beauty would drink of my mind.
Youth would awhile forget
my youth is gone from me.

II
(Speak up! You have danced so stiffly?
Someone admired your works,
And said so frankly.

"Did you talk like a fool,
The first night?
The second evening?"

"But they promised again:
'To-morrow at tea-time'.")

III
Now the third day is here -
no word from either;
No word from her nor him,
Only another man's note:
"Dear Pound, I am leaving England."

Vitam Impendere Amori

Mardi Gras Poet

I don't always attend the monthly open mic poetry sessions at the downtown library (way too many extra-curricular activities around here for any one person to pursue), but I couldn't resist today's. A one-hour publishing panel kicked it off; I already know what's involved in publishing a book, but I wanted to meet the panelists, especially James Kates, co-director of the Boston-based non-profit literary publishing house, Zephyr Press.

Kates, Springfield author Barbara Ann Gowan, and Florence Poets Society member Thomas "Twilite" Clark summarized their experiences and fielded questions, then sat back and listened to the poetry. Tommy Twilite went back up to the mic and recited a pretty good poem, Crystal Senter Brown, who's the host, always does a few poems and is pretty cool, but I especially liked this young man making his poetic début with us.

Originally from New Orleans, he recited a poem he'd written about Mardi Gras, then cheerily flung a few strings of beads into the audience. He stumbled partway through his recitation, which momentarily flustered him, but he didn't give up. A deep breath and he backed up a bit, restarted his stanza and finished swimmingly. The audience was encouraging and enthusiastic.

And that's what I like so much about open mic poetry. Where else is a teenaged African-American kid going to get props from blue-haired ladies, ponytailed Vietnam vets, timid WASP-y housewives, middle-aged women on disability, Latino single mothers, and gruff old white guys? Poetry...the great civilizer.

Happy Birthday Françoise Hardy

Today is the 64th birthday of Françoise Hardy, the French pop singer of the '60s and '70s. She was the Madonna of her time, eclipsing all other female singers of the era. Unlike Madonna, however, she was--and is--universally beloved.

It didn't hurt that she was possibly the most beautiful woman in France, a talented singer and composer, and, for all that, seemingly unaware of her specialness. She projected an air of sweetness and vulnerability: a musical Audrey Hepburn. Her first hit, "Tous les garçons et les filles" is about watching everybody else her age paired up, while she herself had no one to love her. She wrote it from personal experience.

When Françoise Hardy sang, she looked straight at the camera or the audience. You couldn't shake the feeling she was singing just to you. How many men must have wanted to jump up and proclaim, "I love you, Françoise! I love you!"

Françoise Hardy is married to talented musician Jacques Dutronc. They have one son, Thomas Dutronc, himself a very cool jazz musician. Françoise Hardy famously collaborated at one point with Michel Berger. Here's a song she wrote with him, called Message Personnel:

Au bout du téléphone
Il y a votre voix
Et il y a des mots
Que je ne dirai pas
Tous ces mots qui font peur
Quand ils ne font pas rire
Qui sont dans trop de films
De chansons et de livres
Je voudrais vous les dire et je voudrais les vivre
Je ne le ferai pas,
Je veux, je ne peux pas
Je suis seule à crever, et je sais où vous êtes
J'arrive, attendez-moi, nous allons nous connaître
Préparez votre temps, pour vous j'ai tout le mien
Je voudrais arriver, je reste, je me déteste.
Je n'arriverai pas,
Je veux, je ne peux pas.
Je devrais vous parler
Je devrais arriver
Ou je devrais dormir.
J'ai peur que tu sois sourd
J'ai peur que tu sois lâche
J'ai peur d'être indiscrète
Je ne peux pas vous dire
Que je t'aime peut-être.

Mais si tu crois un jour que tu m'aimes
Ne crois pas que tes souvenirs me gênent
Et cours, cours jusqu'à perdre haleine
Viens me retrouver
Si tu crois un jour que tu m'aimes
Et si ce jour-là tu as de la peine
A trouver où tous ces chemins te mènent
Viens me retrouver
Si le dégoût de la vie vient en toi
Si la paresse de la vie
S'installe en toi
Pense à moi, pense à moi.

Mais si tu crois un jour que tu m'aimes,
Ne le considère pas comme un problème
Et cours, et cours jusqu'à perdre haleine
Viens me retrouver.
Si tu crois un jour que tu m'aimes
N'attends pas un jour, pas une semaine
Car tu ne sais pas où la vie t'emmène
Viens me retrouver.
Si le dégoût de la vie vient en toi
Si la paresse de la vie
S'installe en toi
Pense à moi, pense à moi.

Mais si tu...

More Potatoes Please

Back on October 10 of last year, I featured a poem about a potato. It seems there is a whole sub-sub-genre of poetry devoted to that humble tuber. Here's an interesting example, from someone whose reputation as a writer is still intact:

The Potatoes’ Dance

Vachel Lindsay (A Poem Game.)

    I
"Down cellar," said the cricket, 
"Down cellar," said the cricket, 
"Down cellar," said the cricket, 
“I saw a ball last night,
In honor of a lady,
In honor of a lady, 
In honor of a lady, 
Whose wings were pearly-white.
The breath of bitter weather,
The breath of bitter weather, 
The breath of bitter weather,
Had smashed the cellar pane. 
We entertained a drift of leaves, 
We entertained a drift of leaves, 
We entertained a drift of leaves, 
And then of snow and rain.
But we were dressed for winter,
But we were dressed for winter,
But we were dressed for winter,
And loved to hear it blow 
In honor of the lady,
In honor of the lady,
In honor of the lady, 
Who makes potatoes grow, 
Our guest the Irish lady, 
The tiny Irish lady, 
The airy Irish lady,
Who makes potatoes grow.  
II  
“Potatoes were the waiters,
Potatoes were the waiters, 
Potatoes were the waiters, 
Potatoes were the band, 
Potatoes were the dancers 
Kicking up the sand, 
Kicking up the sand, 
Kicking up the sand,
Potatoes were the dancers
Kicking up the sand. 
Their legs were old burnt matches,
Their legs were old burnt matches, 
Their legs were old burnt matches,
Their arms were just the same. 
They jigged and whirled and scrambled,
Jigged and whirled and scrambled, 
Jigged and whirled and scrambled, 
In honor of the dame, 
The noble Irish lady
Who makes potatoes dance,
The witty Irish lady,
The saucy Irish lady,
The laughing Irish lady
Who makes potatoes prance.  
III  
“There was just one sweet potato.
He was golden brown and slim.
The lady loved his dancing, 
The lady loved his dancing,
The lady loved his dancing, 
She danced all night with him, 
She danced all night with him. 
Alas, he wasn’t Irish.
So when she flew away,
They threw him in the coal-bin,
And there he is today, 
Where they cannot hear his sighs
And his weeping for the lady,
The glorious Irish lady,
The beauteous Irish lady, 
Who
Gives 
Potatoes
Eyes.”

Lizard

Lizard

Lick
With your sliver tongue
A slick shiny beetle
Like a collar-pin
Posed
Immobile
On an enamelled leaf.
Did you dart
Or creep up on him?
Did your colors change
From gray of rock to foliate green
Or did the beetle see
Yet freeze,
Horrified,
Hypnotized by your golden eye?
The sun, the sun is over everything.
Under its staring gaze
You seem caught interminably.
All focuses
For a motionless eternity
On a point in space.
In the blink
Of a transparent eyelid
It will vanish.

Lament for My City

This is the city which is not Paris.
There are junkies in the park, but they don’t speak French.
And when the waiters are rude, we don’t smile indulgently and say, “How Gallic!”
We call the manager because, after all, we are consumers and they have no business giving us attitude.
That tenebrous mist stealing over the rooftops? A pollution index measures it.
Strolls along the bank of the river, punctuated by amorous embraces, are ill-advised.
The homeless woman who tried that last week was found with two stab wounds to the throat.

Worthington is our Montmartre, our Pigalle. A beleaguered council struggles to control the spread of strip joints taking over.
The little frame shop? Gone.
The luncheonette? That’s gone as well.
The Christian Science Reading Room? Long anachronism, finally a memory.

O city of the generic name, you are my city.
I cry for you.
Every other Springfield in every other state is named for you, my home.
And all across this lovely, lovely country, parks and rooftops, rivers, streets and neighborhoods so like your own
Bleed and burn,
Bleed and burn.

Peter Hears the Cock Crow and Weeps Bitterly

Peter hears the cock crow and weeps bitterly

I wouldn’t walk these streets alone if I didn’t have a dog.
I wouldn’t have to, on the other hand.
I could hold fast in my fort.
Alarm the house, unalarm the car,
Make that foray once or twice a day
To work, to buy the bread or milk,
And back again.
Alarm the car, unalarm the house,
Dash in,
Hold safe.

I only note the cudgel because it seems so odd
To see it on a city street.
Heavy, gnarled,
The kind of stick you lean upon, hiking
In the Lake District, reciting Tennyson.
Where could he have found it, walking
On a downtown street?

He needs it, though.
He seems to sway a bit as he goes.
When he swipes at a pole, he staggers slightly,
Bangs it hard on the bricks,
Halts before he shuffles on.

Not that I’m afraid.
I’m behind him, after all.
It’s dark, he wouldn’t see me anyway.
I’m on my own street, my dignified and lovely street.
If the shelter weren’t at one end, the liquor store at the other,
No men with cudgels would use it as a corridor.

We’re passing by the courtyard of the lawyer’s place,
Ringed with yew.
I see a missile fly into the bush.
An empty bottle.
Outrage like bile rises in my throat.
What was the story someone told at last night’s meeting?
About the lady who told the punks
Excuse me, you’ve dropped something.
Don’t you want to pick it up?

He has a cudgel though.
I have a dog though.

He reaches the corner, turns out of sight.
I hear the stick clang against a pole, then another.
The dog waits, knowing we’ve reached the limit of our walk.
We turn, head toward home.
I pass the courtyard, cursing the old man.
It doesn’t matter, does it
What you say, or don’t say to a drunk?
What you say, or don’t say
When a man has a stick?

Poetry: The Logic of the Pot

The logic of the pot

The logic of the pot is not
that it is immortal
that it is shaped of, baked of
clay whose age is the earth’s
(though this be true)
not
that man gave meaning to the mute
stuff of creation—made his own,
mirrored God’s thought
in his pot
and fired it fast.
Though this be accurate too
the logic of the pot
lies in its use, the act
giving complete
expression to the facts’
connection.

Bad Poetry: Attorney-Gate

This blog is starting to write itself! I've been offered another candidate for bad poetry, and it's Tuesday, so I'll post it. For those who don't keep up with the news (and shame on you), just enjoy the rhyme and meter. It's actually pretty good poetry, from housewife turned political pundit Carla Binion, commenting on an article by P. M. Carpenter called "All the Presidents' Stonewallers." (The article can be found at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6365):

Alberto Gonzales and Monica Goodling Clam Up To Further American Justice
By Carla Binion

We're Gonzales and Goodling. We're with Justice.
Though we've likely lied, you ought to trust us.
Law's our business. That's no myth,
Though Goodling plans to take the fifth.
Our fate won't be the same as Scooter's
In spite of those fired prosecutors.
If we just clam up, you'll never bust us,
And justice will fail, 'cause we're with Justice.

Bad Poetry: W. C. Hunter

Just when I thought I was running out of bad poetry, a friend generously supplied this, complete with background:

The following is a poem composed by a western trader at Canton, in the mid-nineteenth century when the English were carving out part of Canton as the Hong Kong colony and demanding that the rest of it hold itself open for opium sales. The trader/poet's name was W.C. Hunter. The only other necessary explanation is that, in Cantonese Chinese, the phrase "Se-Ta-Che" means "western guest."

The feast spread out, the splendour round
Allowed the eye no rest:
The wealth of Kwang-Tung, of all Ind,
Appeared to greet each guest.

All tongues are still; no converse free
The solemn silence broke.
Because, alas! friend Se-Ta-Che
No word of Chinese spoke.

Now here, now there, he picked a bit
Of what he could not name;
And all he knew was that, in fact,
They made him sick the same!

Mingqua, his host, pressed on each dish
With polished Chinese grace;
And much, Ming thought, he relished them,
At every ugly face!

At last he swore he'd eat no more.
'Twas written in his looks:
For, 'Zounds!' said he, 'the devil here
Sends both the meat and cooks!'

But, covers changed, he brightened up,
And thought himself in luck
When close before him what he saw
Looked something like a duck!

Still cautious grown but, to be sure,
His brain he set to rack;
At length he turned to one behind,
And, pointing, cried 'Quack, Quack!'

The Chinese gravely shook his head,
Next made a reverend bow;
And then expressed what dish it was
By uttering 'Bow-wow-wow.'

Bad Poetry: How Strange Are Dreams!

Here's another gem from J. Gordon Coogler, Southern Sunday School teacher and poet. I wish I could find the complete text. Those afficionados not lucky enough to own one of his books have to content themselves with this excerpt from How Strange Are Dreams!:

How strange are dreams! I dreamed the other night
A dream that made me tremble,
Not with fear, but with a kind of strange reality;
My supper, though late, consisted of no cheese.

Bad Poetry: Earwigs

Edward Newman was a 19th-century British poet and President of the Entomological Society. It should therefore come as no surprise that his poetic masterpiece was an 86-page treatise on bugs, The Insect Hunter. The following is from the section "Earwigs."

Notice that Newman doesn't bother with rhyme. He has a similar insouciance with regard to alliteration, figures of speech, repetition, or almost any other poetic device you can think of. He has definitely mastered the art of monotonous cadence, however, chopping an endless catalog into four-foot lines of verse:

First of walkers come the Earwigs,
Earwigs or Forficulina;
The hind wings, quite transparent,
Like a lady's fan are folded
Neatly up beneath the fore wings,
And when opened out are earshaped,
Very beautiful to gaze on;
All the legs are very simple,
And the feet are all three jointed;
At the tail we find a weapon
Very like a pair of pincers,
And with this 'tis said the Earwigs
Open and fold up the hind wings;
You may watch them and observe it;
I have never had that pleasure.

Bad Poetry: Louie Louie

One phrase that makes me see red is, "Poetry is dead." Knowing I'm in for a fight, I nevertheless take the bait and reply, "No, it's not. Of course, a lot of it has morphed into song lyrics, especially rap." Then I have to listen to the invective about rap and how it's crap. Well, 99% of rap is crap, but then, 99% of most everything is crap. The only difference is that rap is too new for all the dross to have been skimmed off yet.

Of course, lots of song lyrics are mere nonsense. Case in point: "Louie, Louie." The famously "dirty song" of my youth (nobody could understand the lyrics, a widespread rumor held that they were dirty, and when the FBI got in the act and spent two and a half years investigating it, that clinched it) was written by Richard Berry and recorded by him in the late fifties with the Pharoahs. The Kingsmen released what has become the definitive version in 1963. The actual lyrics go like this:

Louie, Louie,
me gotta go.
Louie, Louie,
me gotta go.

A fine little girl, she wait for me;
me catch a ship across the sea.
I sailed the ship all alone;
I never think I'll make it home

Three nights and days we sailed the sea;
me think of girl constantly.
On the ship, I dream she there;
I smell the rose in her hair.

Me see Jamaica moon above;
It won't be long me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I never leave again.

In the Kingsmen's version, the lyrics are nearly unintelligible. According to snopes.com, the definitive urban legends site:

Lead singer Jack Ely had strained his voice participating in a marathon 90-minute "Louie Louie" jam the night before the session.

Ely was singing with braces on his teeth.

The boom microphone in the studio was fixed way too high for Ely, who had to stand on tiptoe and sing up into the mike.

What the band thought was a rehearsal run-through turned out to be the one and only take of the song.

Bottom line: it's a great song. The opening riff is as famous as any in rock and roll. "Louie Louie" was at the top of the list of songs in the mix I created for my toga party, about which some are still talking. I've been listening to it since 1963 and I'm not sick of it yet. Dancing on a beer-sloshed floor, walls vibrating with the bass, shouting out the lyrics along with the band, who cares if "Me gotta go" isn't worthy of Dylan or Simon or Garfunkel or Shakespeare? It's perfect for what it is.

Word of the Day: Aleatory

Aleatory or aleatoric means pertaining to chance; literally, depending on a roll of the dice (from the Latin alea, a dice game). Anything exploiting the principle of randomness can be termed aleatory. An insurance policy, for example, is an aleatoric contract, in that it depends on a chance occurence (accident, death, fire, flood, or what have you).

The principle of randomness has been applied to literature, music, and other forms of art, with interesting results. The random poetry generators noted in previous posts produce aleatory verse. A mathematical process known as a Markov chain (after the Russian mathematician Andrei Markov) is used to generate the literary output. Where X₁, X₂, X₃, ... is a series of random variables,

Pr(X_n+1 = x|X_n = x_n,…,X₁ = x₁,X₀₀) = Pr(X_n+1 = x|X_n = x_n).

In order to produce lines of verse which resemble recognizable language, certain linguistic parameters might be defined in a random text generator, with Markov chains embedded within larger programs. For example, words might be identified by their parts of speech, and a preposition programmed always to be followed by a noun, the specific noun generated by a Markov chain.

Pierre Boulez, the French composer, has experimented extensively with aleatoric music. Barry Salt, the film scholar, in 1971 made a film called Permutations (a.k.a. Six Reels of Film to Be Shown in Any Order). Each reel contains two scenes whose implications vary depending on the order in which the reels are shown. The projectionist is supposed to roll dice in order to determine the reel order. Jeffrey Harrison, a Guggenheim fellow who's been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and many other distinguished anthologies and journals, has experimented with aleatoric poetry. And now, in the 21st century, any dummy with a computer can attempt what in 1921 took a million monkeys.

Bad Poetry: Howl With Allen Ginsberg

For those faithful readers who had fun with last week's bad poetry, here's another random poetry generator, also brought to you by Chris Seidel.

This site will generate a "Howl." Howl, of course, is the 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg, his most famous work and arguably the most famous poem produced by any of the beats. That's the one which begins

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix

I gave it the line "how do i love thee" and got this:

how do i love thee
the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who
blew and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they
were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their lofts,
who coughed on the windows of the alchemy of the skull, who cowered
in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine
in Paradise

Howl, it might be noted, is not as formless as it might appear at first glance. The poetic unit is the line, which is equivalent to one breath. I'd have to say, from the above example, that the random poetry generator doesn't have a firm grasp of this concept. But anyways, for anyone who'd like to experiment with it, here's the link:

http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Ramble/howl.html

(Chris Seidel, btw, has moved on to a real job and no longer maintains his deliciously nerdy site. Many links are broken, but at the time of this writing, the above is still working.)

Bad Poetry: Heretical Rhyme Generator

As if there wasn't enough bad poetry around, now you can automatically generate more with Chris Seidel's Heretical Rhyme Generator (http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Poem/). Just feed it a first line and it will write a poem for you. I gave it the line "How do I love thee" and this is what I got:

How do i love thee

Oh boy, does she smell

Oh my, Oh, might what then can it be?

'Twas my last mistake-my death knell.

Bad Poetry: Come Back Clean

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) was perhaps the most popular, not to mention prolific, poetess of her time. Raised in rural Wisconsin on a diet of sentimental and homespun verse, she declared the University of Wisconsin after one semester "a waste of time" and mathematics a "holy horror." She often said that kindness was her religion. She was an ardent prohibitionist and a proponent of theosophy and of the New Thought Movement.

New Thought holds that God is creative intelligence or universal mind; there are no sins but rather "mistakes;" positive thinking and affirmations can achieve healing and success. In the late nineteenth century, New Thought was personified by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby; in the late twentieth century, by Deepak Chopra.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox's most famous poem begins "Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone...." Although criticized for excessive femininity and ranked as a very minor poet, she raked in an impressive amount of money doing something by which few men, even today, can earn a living. She urged women, "Do not thrust upon a man's mind continually the idea that you are a vastly higher order of being than he is. He will reach your standard much sooner if you come half-way and meet him on the plane of common sense and human understanding." Very happily married for over thirty years, she was no doubt speaking from experience.

During the Great War, Wilcox read her poems to soldiers. In this poem, she urges men to control their "man's desire" while away and come back to their loved ones with a clean "sword."

Come Back Clean

This is the song for a soldier
To sing as he rides from home
To the fields afar where the battles are
Or over the ocean's foam:
"Whatever the dangers waiting
In the lands I have not seen,
If I do not fall--if I come back at all,
Then I will come back clean.

"I may lie in the mud of the trenches,
I may reek with blood and mire,
But I will control, by the God in my soul,
The might of my man's desire.
I will fight my foe in the open,
But my sword shall be sharp and keen
For the foe within who would lure me to sin,
And I will come back clean."