Oh good. I was afraid I might have offended you with my levity.
Don't worry Piffie...you can levitate all you want
and it's ok with me.
Levitate, eh? Maybe this is a good day to do that. I've been madly searching for a good and CHEERY poem, just in case I need to pull it out of my pocket for D'A or somebody.
I found this by Edna. She had a good handle on self-deprecation. This is a poem I like because... I'm afraid... it may be what my neighbors think. I adore Queen Anne's Lace.
PORTRAIT BY A NEIGHBOUR
Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!
It's long after midnight
Her key's in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
Til past ten o'clock!
She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,
She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
Any pays you back in cream!
Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne's lace!
ESVM
I read that one a couple of times before. I like it more each time I read it.
Piffka et al
Here's my contribution for today. A lovely, whimsical, affectionate, 'Invitation' from Elizabeth Bishop to
one of her mentors, her friend, Marianne Moore:
"Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore"
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.
Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.
Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.
Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.
Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.
For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.
With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.
Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
(Elizabeth Bishop)
Wonderful, Jjorge. Talk about levitating... and flying.
Wouldn't anyone adore an invitation like that? Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
These connections between authors and especially poets I find very intriquing. I recently bought an old and used book of poems by Dorothy Parker just because it was dedicated to Elinor Wylie. Haven't read it yet, but remain amazed at how these people all seemed to know each other.
Here's one by Philip Larkin that I gets to me every time I read it.
An Arundel Tomb
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd --
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
I love the thought of his stone gauntlet in one hand so that he can hold her hand through eternity. <sigh>
Here's Arundel Castle -- gorgeous, isn't it?
Thanks for sharing that photo, Piffka! Interesting, isn't it, how so much poetry can be identified with a specific place or event. Shows how poets experience their world and are inspired by it...
(By the way, I copied that poem from an on-line source, then had to fix numerous typos. Caveat emptor when it comes to assuming accuracy from such a source!)
I begin to think that without a true connection to reality, a poem remains lifeless. We need to know there is a real ferry in NYC for ESVM's poem "We were very merry" to make sense. We need to have a sense of place -- which is why Robert Frost's poems are well-loved.
A friend just sent me this snippet of a poem, even this, from 700 years ago, has that touch of the real. You imagine there is a dulcimer and it had a place, a shelf of its own.
from Rumi:
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading
Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Piffka, when I try to remember how I was taught poetry in high school, I can't recall any effort made to relate the poem to any sort of reality. I almost wish I could teach poetry to kids; it would be fun thinking of the poems they might like. Ones that tell stories and are written with strong voices.
There was a recent op ed piece in the NY Times by a woman who recalls being made to memorize poems when she was young. Now she feels like she owns them. She teaches literature now and says kids really balk when she has them memorize poems, but after they have, they're really glad!
What I remember about being taught poetry is endless discussions of what was meant by this and how does this relate to some other piece of literature. It made it all pretty awful. I didn't mind the puzzling, but there was so little interest in sheer enjoyment of the verse. Very sad, really.
I didn't see the essay you mention, but I think it is totally true, if you memorize you begin to "own" the poem.
Do you know the poem by ESVM where she begs the muses to let those dying on the battlefield or incarcerated in prison retain a perfect memory of great music and poetry? What a kindness!
I don't know that Millay poem, but I like what you say about it. You kow there's a new biography of her. I read some reviews--she had quite an amazing life, as I'm sure you know. I have some old 18 cent stamps honoring her--they're quite nice.
As for how poetry was taught, your recollection sounds close to what I experienced. Squeeze all the juice out of it, then serve it up to the kiddies. Watch 'em gag...
D'A -- This is an excellent site for finding and reading EStVM poetry (and others)... I won't post that poem I mentioned, since it is quite long... but let me see, it is called 'Invocation to the Muses' and has the beginning note, "Read by the poet at The Public Ceremonial of The National Institute of Arts and Letters at Carnegie Hall, New York, January 18th, 1941."
(I should mention that it starts out a little slow & ponderous, but gets lots better!)
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/6865/millay12.html
Thanks, Piffka; I'll check that out!
I've posted the primary index of poets for the LeftBank website on the Poetry Forum's "Links" Topic.
Piffka: My first thank you is to you for such a lovely thread. So many beautiful poems. My second thank you is to Jjorge.
Jjorge: Thank you for guiding me here and for posting the Elizabeth Bishop poem. It has really touched me. I've added it to my collection of favorite poems.
Welcome, Raggedyaggie. So pleased you like it and it is nice of Jjorge to send you. Do you have a poem or two or more to share?
My sister once gave me a book, The Top 500 Poems as chosen by Columbia University. What a concept, eh? I ought to see if these are listed anywhere online, that would be a good link. The first in order of popularity by the 400 critics & literary experts who picked them is "The Tiger" by Blake.
Meanwhile, opening the book at random I found two I know, Christine Rossetti's lovely REMEMBER and JABBERWOCKY. I know Jabberwocky best and can probably quote the entire thing with a little help from my son. My favorite line: "one, two, one, two and through and through the vorpal blade went snickersnack...."
Rossetti's I only know the first line by heart:
"Remember me when I am gone away,"
BTW - Love your name. Is there a story?
Raggedyaggie
Hola y bienvenido!*
Piffka
I have the Columbia anthology of which you speak. It was one of my first acquisitions four or five years ago when I first descended (or ascended perhaps) into poetry madness.
Anthologies provide a great foundation for a poetry collection, and in my case a poetry education. They helped me to survey and become acquainted with, many poets. Incidentally, it might be useful to mention that the 'Top 500 Poems' is edited by William Harmon.
D'artagnan
If you like Larkin you might want to visit this conversation that we recently had on Abuzz not long ago.
Piffka, MerryAndrew, Kara, EdgarBlythe and other able2know friends were involved:
http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.301484/discussion/
* transl: 'Hello and welcome'
