Poetry
Gertrude Stein
by novalark on Tuesday, June 18, 2002 05:06 pmGertrude Stein and her brother Leo were among the first collectors of works by the Cubists and other experimental painters of the period, such as Pablo Picasso (who painted her portrait), Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque, several of whom became her friends. At her salon they mingled with expatriate American writers, such as Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and other visitors drawn by her literary reputation. Her literary and artistic judgments were revered, and her chance remarks could make or destroy reputations. In her own work, she attempted to parallel the theories of Cubism, specifically in her concentration on the illumination of the present moment and her use of slightly varied repetitions and extreme simplification and fragmentation. The best explanation of her theory of writing is found in the essay Composition and Explanation, which is based on lectures that she gave at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and was issued as a book in 1926. Among her work that was most thoroughly influenced by Cubism is Tender Buttons (1914), which carries fragmentation and abstraction beyond the borders of intelligibility.
Gertrude's first taste of fame would come with the publication of "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" in 1933. It became a best seller in America and turned her into an instant celebrity. The Atlantic Monthly did a serialization of the book which got wide readership. Checks began pouring in giving her more money than she had ever known before.
"I love being rich ... not as yet so awful rich but with prospects, it makes me all cheery inside..."
Gertrude resisted going to America on a lecture tour since she did not know if she would be well received after 30 years absence, but on October 24, 1934 she and Alice arrived in New York aboard the S.S. Champlain. The crowds were enthusiastic, and the press welcomed her with open arms. The NY Times building announced her arrival in tickertape lights. One headline read: "Gerty Gerty Stein is Back Home Home Back".
They would cross the nation doing more than 40 appearances, and visit old friends and make new ones along the way ... Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Bowles, Sherwood Anderson, Thorton Wilder, Charlie Chaplin, and many more. Commenting on the couple someone remarked, "a large lady firmly dressed in a shirt-waist and skirt and jacket, and a smaller lady in something dark with a gray astrakhan toque ... slightly suggestive of a battleship and a cruiser."
Gertrude's first taste of fame would come with the publication of "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" in 1933. It became a best seller in America and turned her into an instant celebrity. The Atlantic Monthly did a serialization of the book which got wide readership. Checks began pouring in giving her more money than she had ever known before.
"I love being rich ... not as yet so awful rich but with prospects, it makes me all cheery inside..."
Gertrude resisted going to America on a lecture tour since she did not know if she would be well received after 30 years absence, but on October 24, 1934 she and Alice arrived in New York aboard the S.S. Champlain. The crowds were enthusiastic, and the press welcomed her with open arms. The NY Times building announced her arrival in tickertape lights. One headline read: "Gerty Gerty Stein is Back Home Home Back".
They would cross the nation doing more than 40 appearances, and visit old friends and make new ones along the way ... Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Bowles, Sherwood Anderson, Thorton Wilder, Charlie Chaplin, and many more. Commenting on the couple someone remarked, "a large lady firmly dressed in a shirt-waist and skirt and jacket, and a smaller lady in something dark with a gray astrakhan toque ... slightly suggestive of a battleship and a cruiser."
The Nudes of God and Doctor James Barfoot
by honeydu on Saturday, June 15, 2002 04:18 pmThe Nudes of God is a book of poetry, the first by Dr. James Barfoot, a Philosophy professor retired from Auburn University at Montgomery. He is originally from Mobile and currently living in Montgomery. The book explores themes of sexuality, philosophy and religion by juxtaposing imagery from these topics as well as classical mythology and current culture.
Though retired from AUM as a philosophy professor, I can remember that Dr. Barfoot has written poetry for a quite a while. Knowing him both as a professor and from talking to him while we were getting his book ready to go to print, I see his elusive sense of humor all throughout, his tongue-in-cheek wisdom, and his seemingly absolute refusal to take himself too seriously, which can be the mark of a brilliant person. There is no posturing in this man, nor in his book, and both knowing him and reading his book have been a pleasure.
Beginning with the sexual imagery in the cover art and the title, it is obvious that this book is one in which the poetry explores themes and mixes ideas that some people do not intermingle. However, Barfoot does it well and tastefully, nothing offensive, no punches pulled, and nowhere in this book is there anything sacrilegious. With titles like "Walking with my Mississippi Nude", "Her Anger Partners His Stupidity", and "Brontosaurus Sex" coupling with lines about Hasidic rabbis, satyrs, naked women, and the coast of Mississippi's way, it is not difficult to discern that this book is a melting pot of mental pictures, some humorous, some not.
After hearing his reading at the release party for the book, it was evident that he not only writes poetry, he thoroughly enjoys it. The playful images abound. His treatment of sexuality is not one of demeaning or degradation, but a fun thing, a good thing, and something that no one quite understands, most of all, perhaps, men. It is precisely his ability to discuss topics that he obviously takes a liking to and couple them with the idea of an innate lack of human understanding to arrive at a summation of how little we truly know about what we depend on for both physical satisfaction and the procreation of our species.
To simply lay out a poem from this book and tear it apart critically does not do this book justice, nor its author. The poems form a cohesive whole, despite being strong standing alone. Read individually they are good; read together they are much better. The cohesive whole of the book allows a good overview of a poet who is steeped in many subjects and who lives a very real life, an intellectual walking in the world, taking it in and reacting to it.
It was difficult, knowing James Barfoot, to not discuss both him and his book. They are very similar: complex, humorous, and full of knowledge and wisdom. There is ,I must add, a great deal of strong sexual language in the book, so it may not be good reading for young readers. Many of the allusions are to figures from classical mythology, so a knowledge of those subjects would be helpful, but not necessary, in reading the poetry in The Nudes of God. Overall, I can say with all honesty that Nudes is worth reading and it is even more worthwhile to hear Dr. Barfoot read them out loud.
Though retired from AUM as a philosophy professor, I can remember that Dr. Barfoot has written poetry for a quite a while. Knowing him both as a professor and from talking to him while we were getting his book ready to go to print, I see his elusive sense of humor all throughout, his tongue-in-cheek wisdom, and his seemingly absolute refusal to take himself too seriously, which can be the mark of a brilliant person. There is no posturing in this man, nor in his book, and both knowing him and reading his book have been a pleasure.
Beginning with the sexual imagery in the cover art and the title, it is obvious that this book is one in which the poetry explores themes and mixes ideas that some people do not intermingle. However, Barfoot does it well and tastefully, nothing offensive, no punches pulled, and nowhere in this book is there anything sacrilegious. With titles like "Walking with my Mississippi Nude", "Her Anger Partners His Stupidity", and "Brontosaurus Sex" coupling with lines about Hasidic rabbis, satyrs, naked women, and the coast of Mississippi's way, it is not difficult to discern that this book is a melting pot of mental pictures, some humorous, some not.
After hearing his reading at the release party for the book, it was evident that he not only writes poetry, he thoroughly enjoys it. The playful images abound. His treatment of sexuality is not one of demeaning or degradation, but a fun thing, a good thing, and something that no one quite understands, most of all, perhaps, men. It is precisely his ability to discuss topics that he obviously takes a liking to and couple them with the idea of an innate lack of human understanding to arrive at a summation of how little we truly know about what we depend on for both physical satisfaction and the procreation of our species.
To simply lay out a poem from this book and tear it apart critically does not do this book justice, nor its author. The poems form a cohesive whole, despite being strong standing alone. Read individually they are good; read together they are much better. The cohesive whole of the book allows a good overview of a poet who is steeped in many subjects and who lives a very real life, an intellectual walking in the world, taking it in and reacting to it.
It was difficult, knowing James Barfoot, to not discuss both him and his book. They are very similar: complex, humorous, and full of knowledge and wisdom. There is ,I must add, a great deal of strong sexual language in the book, so it may not be good reading for young readers. Many of the allusions are to figures from classical mythology, so a knowledge of those subjects would be helpful, but not necessary, in reading the poetry in The Nudes of God. Overall, I can say with all honesty that Nudes is worth reading and it is even more worthwhile to hear Dr. Barfoot read them out loud.
Robert Southey
by Bill Ectric on Wednesday, June 5, 2002 03:56 pmIn the early 1800s there were a group of writers known as The Lake Poets. This was because they all lived in the "Lake District" in northwestern England. They are usually listed as a trio, but only two of them are really famous. The Lake Poets are: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. These poets were part of what was called The Romantic Movement from the late 1700s and early 1800s. As stated elsewhere on this website, "romantic" didn't mean silly valentine-type romance - it was about brave heroes of the past, like Greeks and Romans and also more modern day heroes. Each progressive era of poets and writers tried to speak in a more common, less artificial style, even though by today's standards Robert Southey sounds stilted. It's as though we have to read Southey through the misty fog of another time. Every literary movement sets the stage for the next one, so while some people find the Romanticists "square" and the Transcendentalists "hip", we should acknowledge the contribution of one to another.
For example, Robert Southey (1774-1843), who was from England and went to college at Oxford, made friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and made plans with Coleridge to set up a "Utopian Community" along the Susquehanna River in in Pennsylvania in the United States. They never quite finished that goal, even though they married two sisters they had met, and settled to live near each other. There should be more on the subject of this planned community but I have not unearthed it yet.
The fact remains that Coleridge and Southey influenced one another to each accept a point of view that favored the common man, equality of all people, the abolition of slavery, and a poetry that more closely favored the common speach of the day.
I call Robert Southey "the underdog" because his poetry is somewhat harder to "get into" and he has been called, by some, inferior to Coleridge and Wordsworth. The Columbia Encyclopedia say Southey's "reputation as a poet rests upon his friendships with Coleridge and Wordsworth." His writing seems a little old fashion but it reflects modern ideas. Sometimes it conjures visions that are uncomfortable to see:
A poem about slavery Southey wrote:
"High in the air exposed the slave is hung,
To all the birds of heaven, their living food!"
It is a shocking scene but Southey was passionately opposed to slavery as well as war and he does not hold back.
An indication of Southey's popularity during his lifetime is that he was named Poet Laureate in 1813.
The way I discovered Southey was, when I was about five years old, my parents had a set of pseudo-encyclopedias called "The Book of Knowledge" and on the 1950's cover of each hardbound volume was a boy & girl holding hands standing on a streamlined jet-type vessel sailing across continents, characters, physics symbols, and the ocean, and those books held SO much. My favorite pages were where it showed a skeleton, and when you turned the clear page, all the muscles went over the skeleton. Turn the page again and all the vital organs fit in, then the nerves, then the skin.
But one day I chanced to turn the pages FURTHER and I came upon an illustration of and old man sitting in a field holding a skull, with a small boy child in front of him and a small girl child trotting up into the scene. And the poem,
"The Battle of Blenheim" by Robert Southey filled the page below. I must have been barely old enough to understand it - my Mother read it to me and explained it - but the theme of the poem was the futility of war. The old man speaks of a great victory and the little girl says, "But what good came of it?" and the old man says, "That, I cannot tell. But (they say) it was a great victory."
I had almost forgotten about that poem until certain utterances on this website brought it back to me. Robert Southey, one of the Lake Poets.
For example, Robert Southey (1774-1843), who was from England and went to college at Oxford, made friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and made plans with Coleridge to set up a "Utopian Community" along the Susquehanna River in in Pennsylvania in the United States. They never quite finished that goal, even though they married two sisters they had met, and settled to live near each other. There should be more on the subject of this planned community but I have not unearthed it yet.
The fact remains that Coleridge and Southey influenced one another to each accept a point of view that favored the common man, equality of all people, the abolition of slavery, and a poetry that more closely favored the common speach of the day.
I call Robert Southey "the underdog" because his poetry is somewhat harder to "get into" and he has been called, by some, inferior to Coleridge and Wordsworth. The Columbia Encyclopedia say Southey's "reputation as a poet rests upon his friendships with Coleridge and Wordsworth." His writing seems a little old fashion but it reflects modern ideas. Sometimes it conjures visions that are uncomfortable to see:
A poem about slavery Southey wrote:
"High in the air exposed the slave is hung,
To all the birds of heaven, their living food!"
It is a shocking scene but Southey was passionately opposed to slavery as well as war and he does not hold back.
An indication of Southey's popularity during his lifetime is that he was named Poet Laureate in 1813.
The way I discovered Southey was, when I was about five years old, my parents had a set of pseudo-encyclopedias called "The Book of Knowledge" and on the 1950's cover of each hardbound volume was a boy & girl holding hands standing on a streamlined jet-type vessel sailing across continents, characters, physics symbols, and the ocean, and those books held SO much. My favorite pages were where it showed a skeleton, and when you turned the clear page, all the muscles went over the skeleton. Turn the page again and all the vital organs fit in, then the nerves, then the skin.
But one day I chanced to turn the pages FURTHER and I came upon an illustration of and old man sitting in a field holding a skull, with a small boy child in front of him and a small girl child trotting up into the scene. And the poem,
"The Battle of Blenheim" by Robert Southey filled the page below. I must have been barely old enough to understand it - my Mother read it to me and explained it - but the theme of the poem was the futility of war. The old man speaks of a great victory and the little girl says, "But what good came of it?" and the old man says, "That, I cannot tell. But (they say) it was a great victory."
I had almost forgotten about that poem until certain utterances on this website brought it back to me. Robert Southey, one of the Lake Poets.
Fernando Pessoa
by aifos on Monday, June 3, 2002 04:30 pmPortugese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is the perfect embodiment of the romantic notion of what is to be a poet: unique, eccentric but at the same time leading a quiet life, isolated in its own madness, shyness and love for writing.
After his death, a trunk with around 27,000 items ranging from prose fragments to letters and poems was found. These works are ascribed to around 80 "writers", his heteronyms: Bernardo Soares, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and A'lvaro de Campos are the most important ones. Pessoa created their lives in detail, nothing was forgotten. From what they looked like, going through date of birth and death, profession, views of the world, ways of expressing themselves and even astral charts, Pessoa documented everything and the personalities impact their different works: Ricardo Reis is an epicurian doctor; A'lvaro de Campos is the self-made engineer. Alberto Caeiro is a shepard. Pessoa and the four heteronyms first appeared in a vanguardist magazine called "Athena". No one could suspect that they were indeed the same person...
His childhood can be compared to Baudelaire's: he comes from a bourgeois family of Lisbon and his father died when he was very young. His mother remarried a counsil to South Africa and so, they moved to Durban. Latter they returned to Lisbon and Pessoa never left it again. His relationship with his mother was very strong and her death left a deep scar in him. Living in Durban enriched his English and made him acquainted with the works of several English writers. His work is done both in English and in Portuguese.
During his life, Pessoa worked as a commercial translator for a firm in Lisbon. His earning was modest. In the meanwhile, he kept his literary occupation, helping to create vanguardist literary magazines in the Portuguese avant-garde scene, such as "Orpheu".
Also, throughout his life, Pessoa only saw a book published, an esoteric work, rich in symbolic meaning and having to do with the rich Portuguese historical past and its uncertain future, "A mensagem" (the message). His works, found in the trunk, are still being published and translated to several languages.
Never leaving Lisbon, Pessoa kept friends and acquaintances all over the world. One curious acquaintance of his is Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist. Pessoa read Crowley's astral chart in a brittish publication. Noticing some mistakes and having deep knowledge in astrology, Pessoa wrote a letter to Crowley, sending along with it the corrected chart. Crowley, surprised and flattered and always eager to travel, decided to meet Pessoa in Lisbon. But this was not a perfect "rendez-vous": the two characters had not much in common. Even so, Pessoa decided to participate in Crowley's staged suicide at "Boca do Inferno" (Hell's mouth), a very mystical and beautiful place in the coast near Cascais in Portugal. With the "suicide", Crowley managed to escape the persecution of his many creditors and some angry lovers. After this episode, Pessoa wrote to a friend: "After having commited suicide, Crowley decided to live in Germany (...)", showing his always sharp humor.
But even with many acquaintances, Pessoa was not skilled to social life. He preferred isolation, he lived for literature. Very shy, he became even more isolated after his mother's death and his health, psychological and physical, decayed more and more. His only known lover is Ophelia, a girl that worked in his office and which he almost married. But this was a very distorted relationship. Their love is now documented by an edition of his share of love letters, which shows his psychological health declining fast, his ghosts and problems and which are a notable document about the poet's inner struggles. Sometimes, A'lvaro de Campos "appears" in the letters writing to Ophelia, instead of Pessoa: A'lvaro did not like this relationship. Ophelia's share of letters are kept by her family. She married after their final and painful breakup.
Lots of speculation exist about Pessoa's sexuality; some say he died a virgin. Others say his only love-affair was with Ophelia. Others say that he was homosexual but due to the social pressure could not deal with it. But, this is pure speculation and probably the truth will never be known and it doesn't really matter. For sure, we know that he had many shades. That his personality was very rich and that his love was to write. That he felt completely isolated and lonely, as we can read in his poem "Autopsicografia" (Autopsycopgrahy):
The poet is a faker.
His faking is so real
That he even fakes that is pain,
The pain he truly feels.
And those who read his writings
In the read pain they feel
Not the two pains that were his,
But only the one that is not theirs.
And so in its little tracks
Runs, to entertain reason,
That clockwork train
The thing that is called the heart
(Fernando Pessoa, himself)
Some other poems by heteronyms and himself:
Keeper of flocks (by Alberto Caeiro)
I'm a keeper of flocks
The flocks are my thoughts.
And all my thoughts are feelings
I feel with my eyes and ears,
And with hands and feet,
And with nose and mouth.
To think a flower is to see and to feel it,
And to eat a fruit is to taste its meaning
So when in a hot day
I feel sad for enjoying it so much
And I lay on the grass
And close my hot eyes,
I feel my whole body laying down in fact
I know the truth and am happy.
Portuguese Sea (from "Mensagem", by Pessoa himself)
Oh salt-laden sea, how much of your salt
Is tears of Portugal!
To cross you, how many mothers wept,
how many sons in vain prayed!
How many brides-to-be brides remained,
So you were ours, oh Sea!
Was it worth? Everything is worth,
If the soul is not small.
Whoever wants to go beyond (cape) Bojador,
Has to go beyond pain.
To the sea gave God peryl and the abyss,
But in it He also mirrored heaven.
Pessoa died in Lisbon in 1935, when he was 47 years old.
After his death, a trunk with around 27,000 items ranging from prose fragments to letters and poems was found. These works are ascribed to around 80 "writers", his heteronyms: Bernardo Soares, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and A'lvaro de Campos are the most important ones. Pessoa created their lives in detail, nothing was forgotten. From what they looked like, going through date of birth and death, profession, views of the world, ways of expressing themselves and even astral charts, Pessoa documented everything and the personalities impact their different works: Ricardo Reis is an epicurian doctor; A'lvaro de Campos is the self-made engineer. Alberto Caeiro is a shepard. Pessoa and the four heteronyms first appeared in a vanguardist magazine called "Athena". No one could suspect that they were indeed the same person...
His childhood can be compared to Baudelaire's: he comes from a bourgeois family of Lisbon and his father died when he was very young. His mother remarried a counsil to South Africa and so, they moved to Durban. Latter they returned to Lisbon and Pessoa never left it again. His relationship with his mother was very strong and her death left a deep scar in him. Living in Durban enriched his English and made him acquainted with the works of several English writers. His work is done both in English and in Portuguese.
During his life, Pessoa worked as a commercial translator for a firm in Lisbon. His earning was modest. In the meanwhile, he kept his literary occupation, helping to create vanguardist literary magazines in the Portuguese avant-garde scene, such as "Orpheu".
Also, throughout his life, Pessoa only saw a book published, an esoteric work, rich in symbolic meaning and having to do with the rich Portuguese historical past and its uncertain future, "A mensagem" (the message). His works, found in the trunk, are still being published and translated to several languages.
Never leaving Lisbon, Pessoa kept friends and acquaintances all over the world. One curious acquaintance of his is Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist. Pessoa read Crowley's astral chart in a brittish publication. Noticing some mistakes and having deep knowledge in astrology, Pessoa wrote a letter to Crowley, sending along with it the corrected chart. Crowley, surprised and flattered and always eager to travel, decided to meet Pessoa in Lisbon. But this was not a perfect "rendez-vous": the two characters had not much in common. Even so, Pessoa decided to participate in Crowley's staged suicide at "Boca do Inferno" (Hell's mouth), a very mystical and beautiful place in the coast near Cascais in Portugal. With the "suicide", Crowley managed to escape the persecution of his many creditors and some angry lovers. After this episode, Pessoa wrote to a friend: "After having commited suicide, Crowley decided to live in Germany (...)", showing his always sharp humor.
But even with many acquaintances, Pessoa was not skilled to social life. He preferred isolation, he lived for literature. Very shy, he became even more isolated after his mother's death and his health, psychological and physical, decayed more and more. His only known lover is Ophelia, a girl that worked in his office and which he almost married. But this was a very distorted relationship. Their love is now documented by an edition of his share of love letters, which shows his psychological health declining fast, his ghosts and problems and which are a notable document about the poet's inner struggles. Sometimes, A'lvaro de Campos "appears" in the letters writing to Ophelia, instead of Pessoa: A'lvaro did not like this relationship. Ophelia's share of letters are kept by her family. She married after their final and painful breakup.
Lots of speculation exist about Pessoa's sexuality; some say he died a virgin. Others say his only love-affair was with Ophelia. Others say that he was homosexual but due to the social pressure could not deal with it. But, this is pure speculation and probably the truth will never be known and it doesn't really matter. For sure, we know that he had many shades. That his personality was very rich and that his love was to write. That he felt completely isolated and lonely, as we can read in his poem "Autopsicografia" (Autopsycopgrahy):
The poet is a faker.
His faking is so real
That he even fakes that is pain,
The pain he truly feels.
And those who read his writings
In the read pain they feel
Not the two pains that were his,
But only the one that is not theirs.
And so in its little tracks
Runs, to entertain reason,
That clockwork train
The thing that is called the heart
(Fernando Pessoa, himself)
Some other poems by heteronyms and himself:
Keeper of flocks (by Alberto Caeiro)
I'm a keeper of flocks
The flocks are my thoughts.
And all my thoughts are feelings
I feel with my eyes and ears,
And with hands and feet,
And with nose and mouth.
To think a flower is to see and to feel it,
And to eat a fruit is to taste its meaning
So when in a hot day
I feel sad for enjoying it so much
And I lay on the grass
And close my hot eyes,
I feel my whole body laying down in fact
I know the truth and am happy.
Portuguese Sea (from "Mensagem", by Pessoa himself)
Oh salt-laden sea, how much of your salt
Is tears of Portugal!
To cross you, how many mothers wept,
how many sons in vain prayed!
How many brides-to-be brides remained,
So you were ours, oh Sea!
Was it worth? Everything is worth,
If the soul is not small.
Whoever wants to go beyond (cape) Bojador,
Has to go beyond pain.
To the sea gave God peryl and the abyss,
But in it He also mirrored heaven.
Pessoa died in Lisbon in 1935, when he was 47 years old.
This is Marriage? The Beat Generation and Gregory Corso’s ‘Marriage’
by Sarah Duff on Monday, April 22, 2002 07:03 amGregory Corso's poem "Marriage" is an expression of the poet's disgust with the concept of marriage as a (predominantly middle class) institution. It also displays how the poet's battles between conforming and subverting the entire process. And yet beyond this, his intention is serious: he is searching for some ideal which will allow him the happiness that a conventional marriage would not.
John Clellon Holmes wrote in the early 50's:
"for today's young people there is not a single external pivot around which they can, as a generation, group their observations and their aspirations. There is no single philosophy, no single party, no single attitude. The failure of most orthodox moral and social concepts to reflect fully the life they have known is probably the reason for this."
The Beat Generation lost faith in the structures of ordered American society. As a postwar generation, they believed that these organizations had failed in both preventing the confusion and upheaval of war, but had also not been able to adapt to a world enormously affected by the conflict. In "Marriage", published in 1959, Corso launches an attack on the convention of marriage. He does so by looking at wedlock through three different perspectives: from that of the working, middle and upper class.
The two extremes of wealth (the immigrant family and the sophisticates) are cleverly juxtaposed. Both groups live in apartments in New York City, but they experience the city entirely differently. For the immigrant family it is "hot smelly tight New York City / seven flights up roaches and rats in the walls" and the wealthy "lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window / from which we could see all of New York and farther on clearer days". Even the speaker's wives are compared. The immigrant wife is enormous and fertile with the violence, noise and strong will one associates with the image of "a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes", whereas her counterpart is "beautiful sophisticated / tall and pale". Unlike the first wife, she has no children; there is an air of sterility and coldness to her. What unites these two images are two factors; firstly, they are both caricatures of immigrant life and high society. Secondly, and more importantly, neither portrayal of marriage is deemed satisfactory. In the first case the poet says that it is "impossible to lie back and dream" and the other is a "pleasant prison dream". Marriage does not fulfill him in a spiritual sense.
Corso focuses his greatest energies on the middle class. He meticulously describes each stage of a young couple's life together to illustrate to what extent marriage is ritualised and subordinate to the bourgeois need for appearing respectable. During courtship they limit their behaviour to the boundaries imposed by society, "and she going just so far and I understanding why", when he meets her parents they make cliched comments, "we're losing a daughter / but we're gaining a son", the priest's words, "Do you take this woman as your lawful wedded wife?" underline the sense of tradition and the importance of it being lawful or socially acceptable. Even the honeymoon is taken at a conventional spot: Niagara Falls (34) is a favoured site for honeymooners in America. Moving on to early married life, his wife stays at home while he goes out to work and desires nothing more than to be the mother of his children. This paternalist attitude towards woman (as helpless beings whose sole aim in life should be to please their husbands) was typical of conservative middle class America.
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
(51-55)
Finally, their first child is born. They, in a sense, satisfy the demands of their society: they are married and now they have a family.
However, throughout this journey, it is clear that the speaker is dissatisfied. Through his embarrassment (such as when he cannot ask to go to the bathroom (13)), his anger or irritation at the behaviour of the people at Niagara Falls,
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
The winking bellboy knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
(38-43)
and his absurd fantasies about upsetting middle tradition,
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break up marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce"
the speaker implies that he cannot accept this conventionalized form of marriage. These devices show up how ridiculous this ritual is: there is not spontaneity because all actions have been predetermined and there is no love, as love is forced to conform to what is socially allowed.
What is also very effective is the poet's references to symbols of American life: the "velvet suit and faustus hood", cemeteries, werewolves and zombies bring to mind the B-grade horror movies so popular during the 1950s and 1960s; Flash Gordon and Batman were popular comic book heroes; the golf clubs, lawnmower, picket fence and Community Chest are synonymous with suburban life and Blue Cross Gas & Columbus were suppliers of gas and appliances for household use. The implication created by these concepts is that marriage is rather like a pre-packaged commodity; like tickets to a film, comic books, a house in the suburbs or furniture it is an experience that one buys into and does not create. It is so much part of middle class society that it no longer exists as an expression of love or devotion. Thus, as an institution, the speaker is entirely disillusioned with marriage.
Holmes admits that "it is certainly a generation of extremes". He goes on to say that with this disenchantment with society and the desire to reform it, the Beat Generation were challenged by the tension existing between finding comfort and security in conformity or in excess. In Corso's work, according to Carolyn Gaiser, "one finds the recurring embodiment of the Dionysian force of emotion and spontaneity, as opposed to the Apollonian powers of order, clarity and moderation.
This Nietzschian conflict is present in "Marriage". The speaker repeatedly asserts that he "should" marry. Even though the dictionary meaning of "should" is that the word is "used to indicate obligation, duty or correctness", in context, "should" is a suggestion, rather than an order (as in "must"), it carries no real obligation. This ambivalence introduces conflict. The speaker feels that it is better to marry and, hence, to be "good", but he has no real compulsion to do so, in which case, he is at liberty to play with the norms and conventions of marriage.
For example, in the first stanza, Corso mixes conformity (the rituals of courtship) with excess (the horror genre). In the first few lines, conventional courtship is alluded to with the girl next door (the archetypical, suitable middle class girl) and "take her to the movies" (the usual destination for courting couples). Subverting this are "velvet suit and faustus hood" (these items are unconventional or bohemian and would be considered inappropriate in conservative thinking) and "cemeteries" (an extremely unorthodox spot for a courting couple). In a way, the other references to death and fantasy (the werewolf and tombstone) evoke the darker side of bourgeois society (the werewolf is an apt metaphor: man by day, monster by night). Due to the fact that they have been suppressed and effectively pushed out of the ritual that marriage has become, passion and "desire" are part of this hidden aspect of mid dle class being. Hence, the speaker is feels that he should conform to convention when courting, but he is pulled into the direction of what the establishment labels "excess": passion, desire, sex, uncontrollable emotion and love.
Another example is,
So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavourable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust
In a series of fantasies, the speaker takes a metaphor for middle class life and subverts it. Firstly, "Mr. Jones" is the archetypal suburban neighbor who would not approve of someone "sneaking into [his] house late at night" to perform mischief. His golf clubs and lawnmower are also symbols of suburbia, whereas the "1920 Norwegian books" and portrait of Rimbaud would be more in place in the home of an academic or intellectual -- someone whom Mr Jones may consider to be a threat to his way of thinking. The stamps from Tannu Tuva on the picket fence (once again, a symbol of the American middle class dream) indicate the limitations of bourgeois thinking: they never think beyond their picket fences; their thought is parochial. The stamps challenge this confinement; they suggest what is beyond these self-imposed borders. These first few acts of subversion highlight the narrow boundaries of the middle class life; the books, portrait and stamps represent not only that which lies beyond those boundaries, but they confront and also subvert these limits. Dionysus dares Apollo.
This is further dealt with in the second section of the stanza. Here, the middle classes are represented by "Mrs Kindhead collect[ing] for the Community Chest", "the mayor com[ing] to get [his] vote" and "the milkman". The Community Chest, mayor and milkman are all illustrative of traditional social structures: the Community Chest is a charity organisation who distributes money given by (mainly) middle class people to the poor, the mayor is symbolic of the political organisation of society and the milkman is a common aspect of suburban dwelling. In subverting these elements, the speaker descends into what would be considered "mad" behavior: his actions are not appropriate to the circumstances. Again Dionysus comes face to face with Apollo, but because this subversion is not done secretively, by sneaking into a neighbor's house, they have more of a feeling of the "excess" so assiduously avoided by the bourgeois. The tension between conformity and excess continues, whether quietly or out in the open. This Beat Generation issue is brought into the poem; as a member of the Generation, the speaker is torn between either having the appearance of conforming and in a clandestine manner upsetting middle class life or blatantly and loudly challenging it.
However, as Holmes writes,
For beneath the excess and the conformity, There are the stirrings of a quest. What the [Beat Generation] is looking for is a feeling of somewhereness what [it] wants is a stable position from which to operate. [They] have had enough of homelessness, valuelessness, faithlessness.
Without a base of secure values to work from, the Beat Generation developed a need to create or to find something to believe in. As Kerouac explained, "I was waiting for God to show his face". Only once faith is found can this disillusionment and tension be resolved. Corso introduces this idea of a quest in the eleventh stanza with, "O but what about love? I forget love". At once, the poem is serious. Love is offered as hope; the ideal for which he can strive. It is the answer to his disgust of the marriage institution, but it is not easily found.
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men
There is a true sense of rising panic and worry with his repetition of "And" at the beginning of lines 103, 104 and 105. It reaches a climax with:
but there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!
(105-108)
The speaker envisages a lonely and rather pathetic future as the reality of his situation becomes clear to him. Only by finding love (the ideal) will his happiness be secured.
All this discussion is an exploration of Corso and his generation's question (with a nod to Holmes): is this marriage? From his original rejection of the conventions of marriage, its ritualised nature and its inability to satisfy him spiritually and accommodate his views, attitudes and thinking, the speaker moves to having to balance his desire to conform whilst still wanting to subvert the system. Yet, beyond all this, he realises that the solution for his disillusionment (the faith he needs to believe in) is love and love must be sought. There is a definite and determined progression in this process: the speaker does not remain mired in cynicism or devilish fantasising. As Holmes concludes,
But [the Beat Generation's] ability to keep its eyes open, and yet avoid cynicism; its ever-increasing conviction that the problem of modern life is essentially a spiritual problem; and that capacity for sudden wisdom are assets and bear watching.
(par. 17)
This thought proved prophetic. The Beat poets and writers have become a respected and popular inclusion in the canon of western literature. Indeed, Corso's "Marriage" is one such example. Despite effectively embodying the tenets and spirit of the Beat Movement, the poem has another side to it which places it (somewhat ironically) beyond the limits of Beat literature. I feel that it is possibly this that has ensured the work's continuing popularity, as compared to other Beat poetry which is best understood within its context. This "something else" is Corso's characteristic, almost childlike, sense of fun. In 1961, Carolyn Gaiser wrote, "The mask that is most distinctly Gregory Corso's [is] that of the sophisticated child". This comes across best at the end of the poem where the speaker, seriously anxious about his future, switches from serious contemplation to the child's fantasy of a beautiful woman waiting for her rescuer. This turnabout rescues the poem from becoming oppressively heavy or oppressive. It allows it a timelessness; the humour appeals to people living forty years after the poem's publication.
In 1996, just five years before the poet's death, Iain Sinclair wrote an article about an aging Corso for The London Review of Books. He begins the article with: "There may be only two writers, currently at work in America, who can bring themselves, unblushing, to use the phrase 'drinky poo.'" Of course, Gregory Corso is one of them. This ability to use speak childlike nonsense whilst being fully aware of one's enormous poetic talent is what imbues "Marriage" with its capacity to translate to a wide, and varied, audience, regardless of the poem's Beat Generation context.
John Clellon Holmes wrote in the early 50's:
"for today's young people there is not a single external pivot around which they can, as a generation, group their observations and their aspirations. There is no single philosophy, no single party, no single attitude. The failure of most orthodox moral and social concepts to reflect fully the life they have known is probably the reason for this."
The Beat Generation lost faith in the structures of ordered American society. As a postwar generation, they believed that these organizations had failed in both preventing the confusion and upheaval of war, but had also not been able to adapt to a world enormously affected by the conflict. In "Marriage", published in 1959, Corso launches an attack on the convention of marriage. He does so by looking at wedlock through three different perspectives: from that of the working, middle and upper class.
The two extremes of wealth (the immigrant family and the sophisticates) are cleverly juxtaposed. Both groups live in apartments in New York City, but they experience the city entirely differently. For the immigrant family it is "hot smelly tight New York City / seven flights up roaches and rats in the walls" and the wealthy "lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window / from which we could see all of New York and farther on clearer days". Even the speaker's wives are compared. The immigrant wife is enormous and fertile with the violence, noise and strong will one associates with the image of "a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes", whereas her counterpart is "beautiful sophisticated / tall and pale". Unlike the first wife, she has no children; there is an air of sterility and coldness to her. What unites these two images are two factors; firstly, they are both caricatures of immigrant life and high society. Secondly, and more importantly, neither portrayal of marriage is deemed satisfactory. In the first case the poet says that it is "impossible to lie back and dream" and the other is a "pleasant prison dream". Marriage does not fulfill him in a spiritual sense.
Corso focuses his greatest energies on the middle class. He meticulously describes each stage of a young couple's life together to illustrate to what extent marriage is ritualised and subordinate to the bourgeois need for appearing respectable. During courtship they limit their behaviour to the boundaries imposed by society, "and she going just so far and I understanding why", when he meets her parents they make cliched comments, "we're losing a daughter / but we're gaining a son", the priest's words, "Do you take this woman as your lawful wedded wife?" underline the sense of tradition and the importance of it being lawful or socially acceptable. Even the honeymoon is taken at a conventional spot: Niagara Falls (34) is a favoured site for honeymooners in America. Moving on to early married life, his wife stays at home while he goes out to work and desires nothing more than to be the mother of his children. This paternalist attitude towards woman (as helpless beings whose sole aim in life should be to please their husbands) was typical of conservative middle class America.
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
(51-55)
Finally, their first child is born. They, in a sense, satisfy the demands of their society: they are married and now they have a family.
However, throughout this journey, it is clear that the speaker is dissatisfied. Through his embarrassment (such as when he cannot ask to go to the bathroom (13)), his anger or irritation at the behaviour of the people at Niagara Falls,
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
The winking bellboy knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
(38-43)
and his absurd fantasies about upsetting middle tradition,
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break up marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce"
the speaker implies that he cannot accept this conventionalized form of marriage. These devices show up how ridiculous this ritual is: there is not spontaneity because all actions have been predetermined and there is no love, as love is forced to conform to what is socially allowed.
What is also very effective is the poet's references to symbols of American life: the "velvet suit and faustus hood", cemeteries, werewolves and zombies bring to mind the B-grade horror movies so popular during the 1950s and 1960s; Flash Gordon and Batman were popular comic book heroes; the golf clubs, lawnmower, picket fence and Community Chest are synonymous with suburban life and Blue Cross Gas & Columbus were suppliers of gas and appliances for household use. The implication created by these concepts is that marriage is rather like a pre-packaged commodity; like tickets to a film, comic books, a house in the suburbs or furniture it is an experience that one buys into and does not create. It is so much part of middle class society that it no longer exists as an expression of love or devotion. Thus, as an institution, the speaker is entirely disillusioned with marriage.
Holmes admits that "it is certainly a generation of extremes". He goes on to say that with this disenchantment with society and the desire to reform it, the Beat Generation were challenged by the tension existing between finding comfort and security in conformity or in excess. In Corso's work, according to Carolyn Gaiser, "one finds the recurring embodiment of the Dionysian force of emotion and spontaneity, as opposed to the Apollonian powers of order, clarity and moderation.
This Nietzschian conflict is present in "Marriage". The speaker repeatedly asserts that he "should" marry. Even though the dictionary meaning of "should" is that the word is "used to indicate obligation, duty or correctness", in context, "should" is a suggestion, rather than an order (as in "must"), it carries no real obligation. This ambivalence introduces conflict. The speaker feels that it is better to marry and, hence, to be "good", but he has no real compulsion to do so, in which case, he is at liberty to play with the norms and conventions of marriage.
For example, in the first stanza, Corso mixes conformity (the rituals of courtship) with excess (the horror genre). In the first few lines, conventional courtship is alluded to with the girl next door (the archetypical, suitable middle class girl) and "take her to the movies" (the usual destination for courting couples). Subverting this are "velvet suit and faustus hood" (these items are unconventional or bohemian and would be considered inappropriate in conservative thinking) and "cemeteries" (an extremely unorthodox spot for a courting couple). In a way, the other references to death and fantasy (the werewolf and tombstone) evoke the darker side of bourgeois society (the werewolf is an apt metaphor: man by day, monster by night). Due to the fact that they have been suppressed and effectively pushed out of the ritual that marriage has become, passion and "desire" are part of this hidden aspect of mid dle class being. Hence, the speaker is feels that he should conform to convention when courting, but he is pulled into the direction of what the establishment labels "excess": passion, desire, sex, uncontrollable emotion and love.
Another example is,
So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavourable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust
In a series of fantasies, the speaker takes a metaphor for middle class life and subverts it. Firstly, "Mr. Jones" is the archetypal suburban neighbor who would not approve of someone "sneaking into [his] house late at night" to perform mischief. His golf clubs and lawnmower are also symbols of suburbia, whereas the "1920 Norwegian books" and portrait of Rimbaud would be more in place in the home of an academic or intellectual -- someone whom Mr Jones may consider to be a threat to his way of thinking. The stamps from Tannu Tuva on the picket fence (once again, a symbol of the American middle class dream) indicate the limitations of bourgeois thinking: they never think beyond their picket fences; their thought is parochial. The stamps challenge this confinement; they suggest what is beyond these self-imposed borders. These first few acts of subversion highlight the narrow boundaries of the middle class life; the books, portrait and stamps represent not only that which lies beyond those boundaries, but they confront and also subvert these limits. Dionysus dares Apollo.
This is further dealt with in the second section of the stanza. Here, the middle classes are represented by "Mrs Kindhead collect[ing] for the Community Chest", "the mayor com[ing] to get [his] vote" and "the milkman". The Community Chest, mayor and milkman are all illustrative of traditional social structures: the Community Chest is a charity organisation who distributes money given by (mainly) middle class people to the poor, the mayor is symbolic of the political organisation of society and the milkman is a common aspect of suburban dwelling. In subverting these elements, the speaker descends into what would be considered "mad" behavior: his actions are not appropriate to the circumstances. Again Dionysus comes face to face with Apollo, but because this subversion is not done secretively, by sneaking into a neighbor's house, they have more of a feeling of the "excess" so assiduously avoided by the bourgeois. The tension between conformity and excess continues, whether quietly or out in the open. This Beat Generation issue is brought into the poem; as a member of the Generation, the speaker is torn between either having the appearance of conforming and in a clandestine manner upsetting middle class life or blatantly and loudly challenging it.
However, as Holmes writes,
For beneath the excess and the conformity, There are the stirrings of a quest. What the [Beat Generation] is looking for is a feeling of somewhereness what [it] wants is a stable position from which to operate. [They] have had enough of homelessness, valuelessness, faithlessness.
Without a base of secure values to work from, the Beat Generation developed a need to create or to find something to believe in. As Kerouac explained, "I was waiting for God to show his face". Only once faith is found can this disillusionment and tension be resolved. Corso introduces this idea of a quest in the eleventh stanza with, "O but what about love? I forget love". At once, the poem is serious. Love is offered as hope; the ideal for which he can strive. It is the answer to his disgust of the marriage institution, but it is not easily found.
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men
There is a true sense of rising panic and worry with his repetition of "And" at the beginning of lines 103, 104 and 105. It reaches a climax with:
but there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!
(105-108)
The speaker envisages a lonely and rather pathetic future as the reality of his situation becomes clear to him. Only by finding love (the ideal) will his happiness be secured.
All this discussion is an exploration of Corso and his generation's question (with a nod to Holmes): is this marriage? From his original rejection of the conventions of marriage, its ritualised nature and its inability to satisfy him spiritually and accommodate his views, attitudes and thinking, the speaker moves to having to balance his desire to conform whilst still wanting to subvert the system. Yet, beyond all this, he realises that the solution for his disillusionment (the faith he needs to believe in) is love and love must be sought. There is a definite and determined progression in this process: the speaker does not remain mired in cynicism or devilish fantasising. As Holmes concludes,
But [the Beat Generation's] ability to keep its eyes open, and yet avoid cynicism; its ever-increasing conviction that the problem of modern life is essentially a spiritual problem; and that capacity for sudden wisdom are assets and bear watching.
(par. 17)
This thought proved prophetic. The Beat poets and writers have become a respected and popular inclusion in the canon of western literature. Indeed, Corso's "Marriage" is one such example. Despite effectively embodying the tenets and spirit of the Beat Movement, the poem has another side to it which places it (somewhat ironically) beyond the limits of Beat literature. I feel that it is possibly this that has ensured the work's continuing popularity, as compared to other Beat poetry which is best understood within its context. This "something else" is Corso's characteristic, almost childlike, sense of fun. In 1961, Carolyn Gaiser wrote, "The mask that is most distinctly Gregory Corso's [is] that of the sophisticated child". This comes across best at the end of the poem where the speaker, seriously anxious about his future, switches from serious contemplation to the child's fantasy of a beautiful woman waiting for her rescuer. This turnabout rescues the poem from becoming oppressively heavy or oppressive. It allows it a timelessness; the humour appeals to people living forty years after the poem's publication.
In 1996, just five years before the poet's death, Iain Sinclair wrote an article about an aging Corso for The London Review of Books. He begins the article with: "There may be only two writers, currently at work in America, who can bring themselves, unblushing, to use the phrase 'drinky poo.'" Of course, Gregory Corso is one of them. This ability to use speak childlike nonsense whilst being fully aware of one's enormous poetic talent is what imbues "Marriage" with its capacity to translate to a wide, and varied, audience, regardless of the poem's Beat Generation context.
Chinese Poetry: Book of Odes
by Kevin Kizer on Sunday, April 21, 2002 09:36 pm
Believed to be compiled by Confucius, Shih ching or "Book of Odes" is a collection of 305 poems, dating from 1000 to 600 BC. These are believed to be the oldest existing examples of Chinese poetry.
The collection includes refined folk songs, ritualistic poems, dynastic legends and hymns for ancestral temples. All were intended to be sung, although the musical accompaniments are long lost. The subject matter centers on daily activities such as farming, gathering plants, farming, courting, feasting and going to war. The imagery is concrete and the poems themselves focus on youth, beauty and vigor. The tone is wide, from festive and lighthearted to bitter and satirical. Children and old age are largely ignored.
The construction of the poems is very consistent. Each line contained four characters (note: a Chinese character is not equivalent to an English word; Chinese characters often encompass an entire phrase or idea). The lines are arranged in stanzas of four, six or eight lines. Rhyming occurs infrequently.
Economy of expression is predominant. Most begin with an image of nature, which oftentimes leads to a parallel in human life, or, just as often, a contrast.
"Book of Odes" is considered one of the Five Confucian Classics and became a basic text in Chinese education. For many centuries, the Chinese have studied the text for its wisdom relative to history, philosophy, ethics and politics.
No. 1
GWAN! GWAN! CRY THE FISH HAWKS!
(a wedding song for the royal family)
Gwan! gwan! cry the fish hawks
on sandbars in the river:
a mild-mannered good girl,
fine match for the gentleman.
A ragged fringe is the floating-heart,
left and right we trail it:
that mild-mannered good girl,
awake, asleep, I search for her.
I search but cannot find her,
awake, asleep, thinking of her,
endlessly, endlessly,
turning, tossing from side to side.
A ragged fringe is the floating-heart,
left and right we pick it:
the mild-mannered good girl,
harp and lute make friends with her.
A ragged fringe is the floating-heart,
left and right we sort it:
the mild-mannered good girl,
bell and drum delight her.
No. 192
HOW IS THE NIGHT?
How is the night?
The night's not yet ended.
Courtyard torches are lit;
our lord is coming,
his bridle-bells make tinkling sounds.
How is the night?
The night's not yet over.
Courtyard torches shimmer and shine:
our lord is coming,
his bridle-bells make jangling sounds.
How is the night?
The night gives way to dawn.
Courtyard torches are glimmering:
our lord is coming,
I can see his banners!
On Western Haiku
by Cor van den Heuvel on Saturday, March 2, 2002 03:17 pm
Haiku. What is it about this small poem that makes people all over the world want to read and write them? Nick Virgilio, one of America's first major haiku poets, once said in an interview that he wrote haiku "to get in touch with the real." And the Haiku Society of America has called haiku a "poem in which Nature is linked to human nature." We all want to know what is real and to feel at one with the natural world. Haiku helps us to experience the everyday things around us vividly and directly, so we see them as they really are, as bright and fresh as they were when we first saw them as children. Haiku is basically about living with intense awareness, having an openness to the existence around us. A kind of openness that involves seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
Not so long ago, in 1991, when the first Haiku North America conference was being held at Las Positas College outside of San Francisco, another major figure of American haiku, J. W. Hackett, and his wife Pat, invited four of the attending poets to their garden home on a hill in the Santa Cruz mountains. Christopher Herold, one of those poets, wrote a haiku, included in this anthology, about that experience:
returning quail
call to us from the moment
of which he speaks
Basho: Lifeline
by Kevin Kizer on Sunday, January 13, 2002 02:59 pm
1644
Haiku poet Basho born in Ueno, 30 miles southeast of Kyoto
1656
Enters into the service a local feudal lord; begins composing haikai
1666
Left the feudal family and disappeared for five years, taking on the name Sobo
1667-71
His worked appeared in numerous anthologies; many believe he was in Kyoto studying poetry and Zen
1672
Published "The Seashell Game", which was the record of a haiku contest he supervised
1675
Began taking on students
1676
Published "Two Poets of Edo (Tokyo)" with another poet
1676-70
Worked as a minor official in the waterworks department
1677
Published "Three Poets in Edo"
1678
At the age of 34, was recognized as a master and a group began to form around him
1679
Began to deepen his studies of Chinese poetry; shaved his head and became a lay monk
1680
Withdrew from public life, moving to a modest gamekeeper's hut; it was here that he was given a large banana tree (a basho tree), which became the name he is best known by
1683
A tremendous fire destroyed much of Edo and Basho's home
1684
His students rebuilt his home; began the travels that occupied the rest of his life; his mother died
1685
His travel journal, "Journal of Weather-beaten Skeleton" was published
1686
Returned to his home in Edo
1687
Set out on another trip which resulted in "Notes in My Knapsack" (also known as "The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel") and "A Visit to Kashima Shrine"
1689
At 45, sold his home and journeyed north; created his masterpiece "Narrow Road to the Far North"
1689-90
Began developing the c0ncept of "sabi", solitariness and loneliness that results in lightness and intense concentration
1691
Returned to Edo
1693
His health began failing him; introduced a new poetic ideal called "karumi" which he described as "like looking at a shallow river with a sandy bed"
1693 November
Basho died; his death poem:
Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
the withered fields
Remembering Jack Micheline
by Ray Freed on Saturday, January 12, 2002 12:01 pmI met the poet Jack Micheline in 1970 in New York City at Dr Generosity's, a saloon at 73rd and Second on the East Side. I waited tables there and helped run a Sunday afternoon reading series and was editor and publisher of the Dr Generosity Press, which from 1969 through 1972 put out a number of books and broadsides of poetry.
Of all the poets who came through the Doctor's doors, and the list is long and impressive, Jack was the only one who was a full time poet. I mean that's all Jack did, be a poet. He had no regular job, didn't teach, and at the time was sleeping on the subway. For drink and food Jack would take a poem or two in typescript, make copies, staple the pages inside a brown folder, and on the cover write the poem's title with a marker. On the inside there was a cover page with the title and Jack's signature and the edition number, like This Is Copy 3 Of A Limited Edition Of 10 Copies, again written by Jack with a marker. These productions he peddled for a few dollars each in saloons and on the street. Jack called them Midnight Special Editions.
At that time there were several saloons with regular poetry readings, uptown and downtown, The Tin Palace and St. Adrian's among them. Jack always showed up for these events, and always, invited or not, got on stage and recited a piece or two. Never read, always recited. He knew all his poems by heart. Other poets carried briefcases stuffed with paper, Jack carried his poems in his head.
At some point in the early 70s Jack moved out to San Francisco and we kept in touch by mail. In 1975 I was involved in the production of a book of his, Street of Lost Fools. I lived in Westhampton and had a studio connected to the garage behind the house, where I drank and wrote and kept the pot belly stove cranked up to 80 degrees. One winter night I ran out of plugs of wood for the stove, there was snow on the ground outside where the woodpile sat, I was shirtless and drunk and dreaming myself in Hawaii. No way was I going to get bundled up to go out in the freeze and get wood, no way. So I fed 30 or 40 unbound copies of Jack's book into the pot belly. The stove glowed. Never has any poet's work given me such immediate satisfaction.
In 1980 I moved back to Hawaii and lost touch with Jack. I got sober and realized the book burning was a terrible thing to do. I had to make an amends to Jack, but I had no idea where he was. So I wrote this poem to him:
To The Poet Jack Micheline
On the Occasion of
Another Saloon Reading
This ain't no Philharmonic Jack
no high walled box built
to amplify the lack which is
any tight wound string's condition
no straight backed hall raised
to reassure the greedy fry
that increase of sound
equals the sum of the song
no tall structure stuffed
with poached fish eager
to bathe in the gentle rip
of your rough songs.
A tavern where no cultured poet
dares lay academic intestines bare
for fear of guts
a bar where no thought lives
whose truth is hidden
behind wooly words
a saloon where any poem
is only as good as a turn of the head,
quiet vocabulary of the eyes
a roomful of strangers
come to drink and
listen each to his own voice.
Current poets ripple
in closed schools together
degreed, monied, granted
stiff fish listening only
to each other, learning
only from each other
and though this tiny pond
passes for the sea of poetry
here in the big city
you Sir,
scotch and ginger aristocrat
true man of the art whose book
is written on the living heart
though cut by age and passing fashion
you come on Sundays
to read yourself
in this saloon.
Consider this a sonnet on your door.
That was my amends to Jack, a true poet. I never thought I'd see him again. Then one night I got a call from Jack, drinking in a Village bar with the poet Dan Murray who had my phone number. 9 o'clock for me in Hawaii and 3am for them in New York. It was great to hear Jack's voice again. I got his address and we resumed correspondence. I told him about the books used as fuel and sent him the poem. He told me the burning was okay since I had to keep warm, and said he liked the poem, he was making copies to give out on the streets in San Francisco. Then I was in New York in 1994 and saw Jack on Bleecker Street, we had coffee and he said he was waiting for the limo to take him to the studio, he was taping the Conan O'Brien show. Next day he came out to Riverhead and on to Sag Harbor for a reading at Canio's and we spent the night as guests of a lady poetry lover whose name escapes me and the following day taped a television segment having to do with Street Press, which was the publisher of Street of Lost Fools. We had a good time. Then Jack went back to the West Coast and I went back to Hawaii. We wrote back and forth until Jack passed away.
I had quite a collection of letters and drawings and paintings Jack had sent me over the years. I needed to get new teeth so I sold them as a package to a person who collects things like that. I got the teeth and felt I should let Jack know about it, that once again I had used his writing for my personal satisfaction, so I wrote him this poem:
It hasn't changed Jack
they're still whipping the metal flanks
for speed and anybody of worth
has been turned out into the cold.
It's coming to a boil again
with new and bigger weapons,
any day now a bright light will dull
the sun and biochemistry lay waste millions.
Poetry's a murmur, starved thin
with washboard ribs, living
on the outskirts, taught in college
by mortgages in suits.
At least the night is quiet, full of peace
and sleeping birds dreaming dawn.
What's it like there ? Is it Paradise
or just another dry mouth morning?
I'm selling all your books and letters
because I need new teeth. I know
for teeth or hunger you'd forgive me Jack.
I've got food but nothing to eat it with.
* * * * *
Ray Freed has published several books of poetry, most recently 'All Horses Are Flowers'. He lives on the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. 'To The Poet Jack Micheline On The Occasion Of Another Saloon Reading' was first published as a broadside by Hualalai Press in 1990. This article first appeared in the Spring 2001 issue of 'Poetrybay'.
Of all the poets who came through the Doctor's doors, and the list is long and impressive, Jack was the only one who was a full time poet. I mean that's all Jack did, be a poet. He had no regular job, didn't teach, and at the time was sleeping on the subway. For drink and food Jack would take a poem or two in typescript, make copies, staple the pages inside a brown folder, and on the cover write the poem's title with a marker. On the inside there was a cover page with the title and Jack's signature and the edition number, like This Is Copy 3 Of A Limited Edition Of 10 Copies, again written by Jack with a marker. These productions he peddled for a few dollars each in saloons and on the street. Jack called them Midnight Special Editions.
At that time there were several saloons with regular poetry readings, uptown and downtown, The Tin Palace and St. Adrian's among them. Jack always showed up for these events, and always, invited or not, got on stage and recited a piece or two. Never read, always recited. He knew all his poems by heart. Other poets carried briefcases stuffed with paper, Jack carried his poems in his head.
At some point in the early 70s Jack moved out to San Francisco and we kept in touch by mail. In 1975 I was involved in the production of a book of his, Street of Lost Fools. I lived in Westhampton and had a studio connected to the garage behind the house, where I drank and wrote and kept the pot belly stove cranked up to 80 degrees. One winter night I ran out of plugs of wood for the stove, there was snow on the ground outside where the woodpile sat, I was shirtless and drunk and dreaming myself in Hawaii. No way was I going to get bundled up to go out in the freeze and get wood, no way. So I fed 30 or 40 unbound copies of Jack's book into the pot belly. The stove glowed. Never has any poet's work given me such immediate satisfaction.
In 1980 I moved back to Hawaii and lost touch with Jack. I got sober and realized the book burning was a terrible thing to do. I had to make an amends to Jack, but I had no idea where he was. So I wrote this poem to him:
To The Poet Jack Micheline
On the Occasion of
Another Saloon Reading
This ain't no Philharmonic Jack
no high walled box built
to amplify the lack which is
any tight wound string's condition
no straight backed hall raised
to reassure the greedy fry
that increase of sound
equals the sum of the song
no tall structure stuffed
with poached fish eager
to bathe in the gentle rip
of your rough songs.
A tavern where no cultured poet
dares lay academic intestines bare
for fear of guts
a bar where no thought lives
whose truth is hidden
behind wooly words
a saloon where any poem
is only as good as a turn of the head,
quiet vocabulary of the eyes
a roomful of strangers
come to drink and
listen each to his own voice.
Current poets ripple
in closed schools together
degreed, monied, granted
stiff fish listening only
to each other, learning
only from each other
and though this tiny pond
passes for the sea of poetry
here in the big city
you Sir,
scotch and ginger aristocrat
true man of the art whose book
is written on the living heart
though cut by age and passing fashion
you come on Sundays
to read yourself
in this saloon.
Consider this a sonnet on your door.
That was my amends to Jack, a true poet. I never thought I'd see him again. Then one night I got a call from Jack, drinking in a Village bar with the poet Dan Murray who had my phone number. 9 o'clock for me in Hawaii and 3am for them in New York. It was great to hear Jack's voice again. I got his address and we resumed correspondence. I told him about the books used as fuel and sent him the poem. He told me the burning was okay since I had to keep warm, and said he liked the poem, he was making copies to give out on the streets in San Francisco. Then I was in New York in 1994 and saw Jack on Bleecker Street, we had coffee and he said he was waiting for the limo to take him to the studio, he was taping the Conan O'Brien show. Next day he came out to Riverhead and on to Sag Harbor for a reading at Canio's and we spent the night as guests of a lady poetry lover whose name escapes me and the following day taped a television segment having to do with Street Press, which was the publisher of Street of Lost Fools. We had a good time. Then Jack went back to the West Coast and I went back to Hawaii. We wrote back and forth until Jack passed away.
I had quite a collection of letters and drawings and paintings Jack had sent me over the years. I needed to get new teeth so I sold them as a package to a person who collects things like that. I got the teeth and felt I should let Jack know about it, that once again I had used his writing for my personal satisfaction, so I wrote him this poem:
It hasn't changed Jack
they're still whipping the metal flanks
for speed and anybody of worth
has been turned out into the cold.
It's coming to a boil again
with new and bigger weapons,
any day now a bright light will dull
the sun and biochemistry lay waste millions.
Poetry's a murmur, starved thin
with washboard ribs, living
on the outskirts, taught in college
by mortgages in suits.
At least the night is quiet, full of peace
and sleeping birds dreaming dawn.
What's it like there ? Is it Paradise
or just another dry mouth morning?
I'm selling all your books and letters
because I need new teeth. I know
for teeth or hunger you'd forgive me Jack.
I've got food but nothing to eat it with.
The Youth and Death of Mira Lohvitskaya
by Alex Malina on Friday, January 11, 2002 11:30 pmMira Lohvitskaya (1869 - 1905) was unfortunately overshadowed by the great number of other Russian female poets of the twentieth century even though in the beginning of the last century her poetry was considered among the best in the genre of "female poetry". The critics nicknamed her "the Russian Sappho" for in all her poems there seems to be one prevalent theme - the theme of love. Her poems bring to life that ancient human feeling as old as the world itself:
I love you with greater passion then the fires of the setting sun;
Clearer then the mist and gentler then the most sacred of words;
A blinding arrow, cutting the clouds in the gloom;
No, I love you more then is possible to love on this earth.
Her poetry shines with a deep passion - where it seems she is willing to sacrifice her whole being for the pure enlightenment of love. And her confessions reveal a pure belief in her "sinful love". Love plays over and over in her poetry - but does not tire itself out. One does not see Mira as she is - instead there appears a young beautiful woman, with long dark hair and eyes of a gypsy - and with her gracious lips she begins reciting her poetry, which like smoke fly to the heavens.
Born in 1869 to a distinguished family (her sister was a poet) she was most definitely influenced by the Romantic poets that came before her. At the end of the nineteenth century "pure lyricism" was not looked upon so kindly by the public, and poets more often performed in small circles of art lovers among friends and fellow poets then actually publishing their poems in periodicals. Lohvitskaya fit perfectly into these circles of young intellectuals. Her respectability as a poet was overshadowed by many scandals with other poets. Breathing with spiritual longing some poems were designed primarily to be confessional and extremely shocking to the nineteenth century ear:
The lust of poisonous pleasure
in darkness of unlit candles
relief half-enlightening and half-worried
from sighs and moans within the nights
In her youth she expressed that she wished to die young. She wished to go like one of the gods of Russian poetry like Pushkin, like Lermontov. She wanted to disappear like an artist seeing her doom - disappearing into the storm of life. To her the idea to die young - still beautiful, still gleaming with life, - to die not finishing, not completing, not growing to full wisdom - and (most importantly) to die in love - was tragically romantic.
. . . I want to die young!
Bury me to the side,
away from the tired, busy, roads,
where the willow bends to the waves,
where yellows the uneven, uncut gorse.
So the slumberous apples would bloom,
so the wind would breathe over me,
with aroma of a far away world . . .
She was married and had five children. And at the age of thirty-six she died from tuberculosis. Upon her death Bryusov, the Russian Symbolist, wrote: "For the future anthologies of Russian poetry there should be included at least 10 to 15 poems by Lohvitskaya. . . . the attentive reader will always be worried and fascinated by the inner drama of her soul which remains immortal in her poems."
SELECTED POEMS
Elegy
I wish to die in Spring
when the happiness of May returns
and when before me the whole world
is once again a sweet perfume
With a bright smile I will glance down
on all that I love in my life -
my death I'll bless before my eyes
and then call it wonderful.
5 March 1893
Don't kill the pigeons!
Their feathers white as snow,
their coo so gently
heard in gloom of worldly grief.
Where it is all - restless and bleak.
Don't kill the pigeons!
Don't tear out the cornflower!
Don't be jealous or filled with greed.
The fields will give your their own seed,
and there'll be always room for graves.
We don't live off of just one bread '
Don't tear out the cornflower!
Do not reject beauty!
It is immortal without smoke,
What glory is your poetry,
your hymns, and flowers?
A genius without it is powerless . . .
Do not reject beauty.
1903
I want to die young,
Not in love, not saddened of no one.
To go down as a bright golden star,
fly apart like a still living flower.
And I want on my rock,
exhausted by long hostility,
people to find perfect bliss . . .
I want to die young!
Bury me to the side,
away from the tired, busy, roads,
where the willow bends to the waves,
where yellows the uneven, uncut gorse.
So the slumberous apples would bloom,
so the wind would breathe over me,
with aroma of a far away world . . .
I want to die young!
I'm not looking at the traveled path,
at the stupidity of wasted years,
I can die completely carefree,
if to finish singing my hymn.
Let the fire not spark to the end,
And in memory there'll be one
that in life awakened the heart . . .
I want to die young!
1904
I love you with greater passion then the fires of the setting sun;
Clearer then the mist and gentler then the most sacred of words;
A blinding arrow, cutting the clouds in the gloom;
No, I love you more then is possible to love on this earth.
Her poetry shines with a deep passion - where it seems she is willing to sacrifice her whole being for the pure enlightenment of love. And her confessions reveal a pure belief in her "sinful love". Love plays over and over in her poetry - but does not tire itself out. One does not see Mira as she is - instead there appears a young beautiful woman, with long dark hair and eyes of a gypsy - and with her gracious lips she begins reciting her poetry, which like smoke fly to the heavens.
Born in 1869 to a distinguished family (her sister was a poet) she was most definitely influenced by the Romantic poets that came before her. At the end of the nineteenth century "pure lyricism" was not looked upon so kindly by the public, and poets more often performed in small circles of art lovers among friends and fellow poets then actually publishing their poems in periodicals. Lohvitskaya fit perfectly into these circles of young intellectuals. Her respectability as a poet was overshadowed by many scandals with other poets. Breathing with spiritual longing some poems were designed primarily to be confessional and extremely shocking to the nineteenth century ear:
The lust of poisonous pleasure
in darkness of unlit candles
relief half-enlightening and half-worried
from sighs and moans within the nights
In her youth she expressed that she wished to die young. She wished to go like one of the gods of Russian poetry like Pushkin, like Lermontov. She wanted to disappear like an artist seeing her doom - disappearing into the storm of life. To her the idea to die young - still beautiful, still gleaming with life, - to die not finishing, not completing, not growing to full wisdom - and (most importantly) to die in love - was tragically romantic.
. . . I want to die young!
Bury me to the side,
away from the tired, busy, roads,
where the willow bends to the waves,
where yellows the uneven, uncut gorse.
So the slumberous apples would bloom,
so the wind would breathe over me,
with aroma of a far away world . . .
She was married and had five children. And at the age of thirty-six she died from tuberculosis. Upon her death Bryusov, the Russian Symbolist, wrote: "For the future anthologies of Russian poetry there should be included at least 10 to 15 poems by Lohvitskaya. . . . the attentive reader will always be worried and fascinated by the inner drama of her soul which remains immortal in her poems."
SELECTED POEMS
Elegy
I wish to die in Spring
when the happiness of May returns
and when before me the whole world
is once again a sweet perfume
With a bright smile I will glance down
on all that I love in my life -
my death I'll bless before my eyes
and then call it wonderful.
5 March 1893
Don't kill the pigeons!
Their feathers white as snow,
their coo so gently
heard in gloom of worldly grief.
Where it is all - restless and bleak.
Don't kill the pigeons!
Don't tear out the cornflower!
Don't be jealous or filled with greed.
The fields will give your their own seed,
and there'll be always room for graves.
We don't live off of just one bread '
Don't tear out the cornflower!
Do not reject beauty!
It is immortal without smoke,
What glory is your poetry,
your hymns, and flowers?
A genius without it is powerless . . .
Do not reject beauty.
1903
I want to die young,
Not in love, not saddened of no one.
To go down as a bright golden star,
fly apart like a still living flower.
And I want on my rock,
exhausted by long hostility,
people to find perfect bliss . . .
I want to die young!
Bury me to the side,
away from the tired, busy, roads,
where the willow bends to the waves,
where yellows the uneven, uncut gorse.
So the slumberous apples would bloom,
so the wind would breathe over me,
with aroma of a far away world . . .
I want to die young!
I'm not looking at the traveled path,
at the stupidity of wasted years,
I can die completely carefree,
if to finish singing my hymn.
Let the fire not spark to the end,
And in memory there'll be one
that in life awakened the heart . . .
I want to die young!
1904
