|
EPIGRAMS
J.V.
Cunningham
| [American
poet, b. 1911 in Maryland, grew up in Montana, spent his entire
life being mobile from state to state. His first book was published
in 1942. This poem is taken from The Exclusions of a Rhyme,
Denver: Allan Swallow, 1960.] |
1
Homer was poor. His scholars live at ease,
Making as many Homer as you please,
And every Homer furnishes a book.
Though guests be parasitic on the cook,
The moral is: It is the guest who dines.
I'll write a book to prove I wrote these lines.
2
Time heals not: it extends a sorrow's scope
As goldsmiths' gold, which we may wear like a hope.
3
Within this mindless vault
Lie Tristan and Isolt
Tranced in each other's beauties
They had no other duties.
4
Dear, if unsocial privacies obsess me,
If to my exaltions I be true,
If memories and images possess me,
Yes, if I love you, what is that to you?
My folly is no passion for collusion
I cherish my illusions as illusion.
5
After some years Bohemian came to this --
This Maenad with hair down and gaping kiss
Wild on the barren edge of under fifty
She would finance his art if he were thrifty.
6
Dark thoughts are my companions, I have wined
With lewdness and with crudeness, and I find
Love is my enemy, dispassionate hate
Is my redemption though it come too late --
Though I come to it with a broken head
In the cat-house of the dishevelled dead.
7
Motto for a sun dial
I who by day am function of the light
Am constant and invariant by night.
8
This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.
9
How we desire desire!
Joy of surcease
In joy's fulfillment is bewildered peace,
And harsh renewal.
Life in fear of death
Will trivialize the void with hurrying breath,
With harsh indrawal.
Nor love nor lust impels us.
Time's hunger to be realised compels us.
10
In whose will is our peace?
Thou happiness,
Thou ghostly promise, to thee I confess
Neither in thine nor love's nor in that form
Disquiet hints at have I yet been warm;
And if I rest not till I rest in thee
Cold as thy grace, whose hand shall comfort me?
11
Epitaph for someone or other
Naked I came, naked I leave the scene,
And naked was my pastime in between.
12
Life flows to death as rivers to the sea,
And life is fresh and death is salt to me.
COFFEE
J.V.
Cunningham
When I
awoke with cold
And looked for you, my dear,
And the dusk inward rolled,
Not light or dark, but drear,
Unabsolute,
unshaped,
That no glass can oppose,
I fled not to escape
Myself, but to transpose.
I have
so often fled
Wherever I could drink
Dark coffee and there read
More than a man would think
That I
say I waste time
For contemplation's sake:
In an uncumbered clime
Minute inductions wake,
Insight
flows in my pen.
I know no fear nor haste.
Time is my own again.
I waste it for the waste.
BIOGRAPHY
OF SOUTHERN RAIN
Kenneth
Patchen
| [American
poet, b. 1911 in Ohio, then lived in California. Has published 23
books of poetry, several novels and plays, and 1,000 'painted books'
- specially bound booklets individually hand-lettered and decorated
with his own paintings. The piece here is taken from The Collected
Poems, New Direction, 1968.] |
Rain's
all right. The boys who physic
through town on freights won't kick
if it comes; they often laugh then, talking
about the girl who lived down the block,
and how her hair was corn-yellow gold that God
could use for money. But rain,
like memory, can come in filthy clothes too.
The whole
upstairs of space caved in that night;
as though a drunken giant had stumbled over the sky -
and all the tears in the world came through.
It was that. Like everyone hurt crying at once.
Trees bent to it, their arms a gallows for all
who had ever died in pain, or were hungry, since
the first thief turned to Christ, cursing.....
Then, out
of the rain, a girl's voice - her hand
on my arm. "Buddy, help me get this train."
Her voice was soft.....a cigarette after coffee.
I could hear the clickdamnitclick of the wheels;
saw the headlight writing something on the rain.
Then I saw her face - its bleeding sores - I didn't
ask her if she had ever been in love
or had ever heard of Magdalen and Mary
or why she wanted to leave that town.
Do you
see what I mean about the rain?
POEMS
OF SOLITARY DELIGHT
Tachibana
Akemi
[Japanese
poet and scholar, 1812-1868. Translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony
Thwaite, 1964.]
What a
delight it is
When on the bamboo matting
In my grass-thatched hut,
All on my own, I make myself at ease.
What a
delight it is
When, borrowing
Rare writings from a friend,
I open out
The first sheet.
What a
delight it is
When, spreading paper
I take my brush
And find my hand
Better than I thought.
What a
delight it is
When, after a hundred days
Of racking my brains,
That verse that wouldn't come
Suddenly turns out well.
What a
delight it is
When, of a morning,
I get up and go out
To find in full bloom a flower
That yesterday was not there.
What a
delight it is
When, skimming through the pages
Of a book, I discover
A man written of there
Who is just like me.
What a
delight it is
When I blow away the ash,
To watch the crimson
Of the glowing fire
And hear the water boil.
What a
delight it is
When a guest you cannot stand
Arrives, then says to you
"I'm afraid I can't stay long",
And soon goes home.
BAUDELAIRE
Delmore
Schwartz
| [American
poet, short-story writer, essayist; 1913-1966. He started his career
while still a student, and bad luck had seized him shortly afterwards
- in a fortnight he was already lionized and made an icon of the
time's literary planet. For a while he was editor of the praiseworthy
Partisan Review, and in a rapid succession his books came
out of printing houses. Most memorable are Selected Poems 1938-1958,
The World Is a Wedding (stories, 1948) and Succesful Love
(stories, 1961). Had taught at several great places like Princeton
University, Indiana and Syracuse. But prematurely enthroned as a
culture's hero, eventually Schwartz broke down completely. Plagued
by both mental and physical illnesses, he died in an obscure cheap
hotel in New York. For a time, the body was not even identified.] |
When I
fall asleep, and even during sleep,
I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,
Having no relation to my affairs.
Dear Mother,
is any time left to us
In which to be happy? My debts are immense.
My bank account is subject to the court's judgment.
I know nothing. I cannot know anything.
I have lost the ability to make an effort.
But now as before my love for you increases.
You are always armed to stone me, always:
It is true. It dates from childhood.
For the
first time in my long life
I am almost happy. The book, almost finished,
Almost seems good. It will endure, a monument
To my obsessions, my hatred, my disgust.
Debts and
inquietude persist and weaken
me. Satan glides before me, saying sweetly:
"Rest for a day! You can rest and play today.
Tonight you will work." When night comes,
My mind, terrified by the arrears,
Bored by sadness, paralyzed by impotence,
Promises: "Tomorrow: I will tomorrow."
Tomorrow the same comedy enacts itself
With the same resolution, the same weakness.
I am sick
of this life of furnished rooms.
I am sick of having colds and headaches:
You know my strange life. Every day brings
Its quota of wrath. You little know
A poet's life, dear Mother: I must write poems,
The most fatiguing of occupations.
I am sad
this morning. Do not reproach me.
I write from a cafe near the post office.
Amid the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes,
The pounding of my heart. I have been asked to write
"A History of Caricature". I have been asked to write
"A History of Sculpture". Shall I write a history
Of the caricature of the sculptures of you in my heart?
Although
it costs you countless agony,
Although you cannot believe it necessary,
And doubt that the sum is accurate,
Please send me money enough for at least three weeks.
OCTOBER
POEM
Tamura
Ryuichi
[Japanese
poet, b. 1923. Foremost member of the group that called itself Arechi
- Waste Land.]
Crisis
is part of me.
Beneath my glass skin
Is a typhoon of savage passion. On October's
Desolate shore a fresh carcass is cast up;
October
is my empire.
My gentle hands control what is lost.
My tiny eyes survey what is melting.
My tender ears listen to the silence of the dying.
Terror
is part of me.
In my rich bloodstream
Courses all-killing time. In October's
Chilling sky a fresh famine erupts.
October
is my empire.
My dead troops hold every rain-sodden city.
My dead warning-plane circles the sky above aimless minds.
My dead sign their names for the dying.
THE
SPIDER AND
THE GHOST OF THE FLY
Vachel
Lindsay
| [American
poet, 1879-1931. Born in Springfield, Illinois, seen by some as
(or being) possessed by a sort of 'crusading zeal'. But since there
have been countless artists all around the world, who all had a
thought of becoming a priest or so when they reached their twenties,
I think Lindsay wasn't peculiar in this. In the start he worked
hard to write like Walt Whitman -- fortunately he failed
quite miserably. As a poet he was more of the kind I rather particularly
dislike: those who love poetry-reading and even drag audience to
take part in it. As a matter of course the entity called 'audience'
possesses and being possessed by nothing but commonsense, so it's
no wonder that Lindsay failed to involve them this way. Lindsay
ended up believing himself to be a total loser. He committed suicide
in 1931. Only his somewhat mystical, morbid verses live on -- the
beautiful side of the sad man who didn't even recognise it in himself
back then when it mattered the most.] |
Once I
loved a spider
When I was born a fly,
A velvet-footed spider
With a gown of rainbow-dye.
She ate my wings and gloated,
She bound me with hair.
She drove me to her parlor
Above her winding stair.
To educate young spiders
She took me all apart.
My ghost came back to haunt her
I saw her eat my heart.
BRIC
À BRAC
Dorothy
Parker
| [American
poet, short-story writer, book and drama reviewer, 1893-1967. An
exponent of the Algonquin Round Table, a New York smart set of 1920's,
a brief lusty episode in the American history that no one seems
to remember (let alone cherish) today even when they recall Al Capone.
Most people categorize Parker as a non-literary writer because her
longer-than-life pieces are mostly light humorist poems. She worked
for the magazine Vogue and Vanity Fair, too, in her time; then with
The New Yorker. Parker's works are, among others, Sunset Gun
(1928), Laments for the Living (1930), and Death and Taxes
(1932). The humor in every kind of writing she yielded made up for
the tendency to brood over the darkest side of everything. Unhappy
platonic love 'against' Robert Benchley was one of the reasons why.
Perhaps her poems, which are the pieces people remember her by,
can only be an airport-reading. But it's not as easy as it looks
to write such things, as everyone who's tried knows well. Me, actually
I like Parker's short-stories more than the poetic jestures.
Small, very personal, almost meaningless stuff of everyday is put
onstage under spotlights in the stories, and re-lived once more.
Like A Phone Call, to name one example -- that is
how you function in that situation. But if you've never been in
it, Parker couldn't take you for a re-visit. I guess that's one
of the 'why's the stories don't roam around these days; plus some
of them are so time-bound that they several blinks after birth sank
to outdatedness -- most of her works ceased to be at all
when the word 'flapper' was no longer in vogue. That's the fate
they share with Dorothy Parker herself. Notoriously known as suicidal,
she lived on longer than her fame, unhappy to the last day. For
audio-visual clues, there's something you could tap: a film starring
Jennifer Jason-Leigh, titled simply Mrs. Parker.] |
Little
things that no one needs --
Little things to joke about --
Little landscapes, done in beads.
Little morals, woven out,
Little wreaths of gilded grass,
Little brigs of whittled oak
Bottled painfully in glass;
These are made by lonely folk.
Lonely folk have lines of days
Long and faltering and thin;
Therefore -- little wax bouquets,
Prayers cut upon a pin,
Little charts of curly seas,
Little plaits of linen strands,
Little verses, just as these.
INTERIOR
Dorothy
Parker
Her mind
lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.
There all
the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.
Her mind
lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.
GATHERING
LEAVES
Robert
Frost [1875-1963, no intro needed]
Spades
take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make
a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the
mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load
and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to
nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to
nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest must stop?
IN
NEGLECT
Robert
Frost
They leave
us so to the way we took,
As two in whom they were proved mistaken,
That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
And try if we cannot feel forsaken.
WHAT
DO I CARE
Sara
Teasdale
| [American
poet, 1884-1933. People usually remember Teasdale as a frightening
neurotic; maybe today no one recalls that she was a never-great-but-okay
poet, too. Once falling for Vachel Lindsay but got married to someone
else -- of a non-literary background -- she lived an unhappy life
until the day she took some overdose of sleeping pills; a typical
end for the typical malady artists are most fond of.] |
What do
I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
That my songs do not show me at all?
For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,
I am an answer, they are only a call.
But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,
Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,
For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,
It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.
WHERE
KNOCK IS OPEN WIDE
Theodore
Roethke
| [American
poet, 1908-1963. Grew up in Michigan among the buzz of a florist's
business, critics said this shaped his view of reality later on
as reflected in his works. They said death and sensuality were the
two potions everpresent in Roethke's writings, which, still according
to the critics, were rather surrealistic. But he lived a relatively
'good' realistic life compared to at least the ones I put on this
page. Died of a heart-attack while swimming at the age of 55, as
the Poet In Residence at the University of Washington.] |
1
A kitten
can
Bite with his feet;
Papa and Mamma
Have more teeth.
Sit and
play
Under the rocker
Until the cows
All have puppies.
His ears
haven't time.
Sing me a sleep-song, please.
A real hurt is soft.
Once upon
a tree
I came across a time,
It wasn't even as
A ghoulie in a dream.
There was
a mooly man
Who had a rubber hat
The funnier than that, --
He kept it in a can.
What's
the time, papa-seed?
Everything has been twice.
My father is a fish.
2
I sing
a small sing,
My uncle's away,
He's gone for always,
I don't care either.
I know
who's got him,
They'll jump on his belly,
He won't be an angel,
I don't care either.
I know
her noise.
Her neck has kittens.
I'll make a hole for her
In the fire.
Winkie
will yellow I sang
Her eyes went kissing away
It was and it wasn't her there
I sang I sang all day.
3
I know
it's an owl. He's making it darker.
Eat where you're at. I'm not a mouse.
Some stones are still warm.
I like soft paws.
Maybe I'm lost,
Or asleep.
A worm
has a mouth.
Who keeps me last?
Fish me out.
Please.
God, give
me a near. I hear flowers.
A ghost can't whistle.
I know! I know!
Hello happy hands.
4
We went
by the river.
Water birds went ching. Went ching.
Stepped in wet. Over stones.
One, his nose had a frog,
But he slipped out.
I was sad
for a fish.
Don't hit him on the boat, I said.
Look at him puff. He's trying to talk.
Papa threw him back.
Bullyheads
have whiskers.
And they bite.
He watered
the roses.
His thumb had a rainbow.
The stems said, Thank you.
dark came early.
That was
before. I fell! I fell!
The worm has moved away.
My tears are tired.
Nowhere
is out. I saw the cold.
Went to visit the wind. Where the birds die.
How high is have?
I'll be a bite. You be a wink.
Sing the snake to sleep.
5
Kisses
came back,
I said to Papa;
He was all whitey bones
And skin like paper.
God's somewhere
else now.
Don't tell my hands.
Have I come to always? Not yet.
One father is enough.
Maybe God
has a house.
But not here.
SONG
Robert
Creeley
| [American
poet, born in 1926 in New England, then moved to Mallorca, Mexico,
and New Mexico. Taught at Black Mountain College and the University
of Buffalo. Booklist includes For Love (1962), Words
(1967), Divisions & Other Early Poems (1968).] |
Those rivers
run from that land
to sea. The wind
finds trees to move,
then goes again.
And me,
why me
on any day might be
favored with kind prosperity
or sunk in wretched misery.
I cannot
stop the weather
by putting together
myself and another
to stop those rivers.
Or hold
the wind
with my hand from the tree,
the mind from the thing,
love from her or me.
Be natural,
while alive.
Dead, we die to that
also, and go another
course, I hope.
And me,
why me
on any day might be
favored with kind prosperity
or sunk in wretched misery.
You I want
back of me
in the life we have here,
waiting to see
what becomes of it.
Call, call
loud,
I will hear you, or if
not me, the wind will
for the sake of the tree.
METONYMY
AS AN APPROACH
TO A REAL WORLD
William
Bronk
| [American
businessman -- were you ready for that? -- born in
1918, lived in New York, and people said he'd never used the word
'poet' to precede his name. This poem is taken from The World,
The Worldless, 1964. Critics described his works as "witty,
pessimistic and philosophically acute". I have no idea what
the adjectives mean. Mine for Bronk is simply "good".] |
Whether
what we sense of this world
is the what of this world only, or the what
of which of several possible worlds
-- which what? -- something of what we sense
may be true, maybe the world, what it is, what we sense.
For
the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance
of travelers, eating foreign foods, trying words
that twist the tongue, to feel that time and place,
not thinking that this is the real world.
Conceded,
that all the clocks tell local time;
conceded, that 'here' is anywhere we bound
and fill a space; conceded, we make a world;
is something caught there, contained there,
something real, something which we can sense?
Once
in a city blocked and filled, I saw
the light lie deep in the chasm of a street,
palpable and blue, as though it had drifted in
from, say, the sea, a purity of space.
THE
FEELING
William
Bronk
One has
a feeling it is all coming to an end;
no, not that. One has a feeling it is like
that war whose last battle was fought long
after the treaty was signed. The imminence
relates to a past doom. We look back
to one time, some time, something that already has
happened. Look, we are still here, but note
that nothing of moment has happened for an age, an age,
for as long as we can piece together, not
since the time it happened. Was there that time?
Once, there must have been. When will it end?
ASPECTS
OF THE WORLD
LIKE CORAL REEFS
William
Bronk
In the
spring woods, how good it is to see
again the trees, old company,
how they have withstood the winter, their girth.
By gradual
actions, how the gross earth
gathers around us and grows real, is there,
as though it were really there, and is good.
Certain
stars, of stupendous size, are said
to be such and such distances away, --
oh, farther than the eyes alone would ever see.
Thus magnified,
the whole evidence
of our senses is belied. For it is not
possible for miles to add miles to miles
forever,
not even if expressed as the speed of light.
The fault lies partly in the idea of miles.
It is absurd to describe the world in sensible terms.
How good
that even so, aspects of the world
that are real, or seem to be real, should rise like reefs
whose rough agglomerate smashes the sea.
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