Near-Perfect Poems, Imperfect Poet

Near-Perfect Poems, Imperfect Poet
By RICHARD EDER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/books/04EDER.html

W. B. YEATS
A Life. Volume 2: The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939.
By R. F. Foster.
Illustrated. 798 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $45.

William Butler Yeats made such charged and explicit use of his life, his passions, his philosophical searchings, his country and causes, and even his failings — no major poet of our time has done it so passionately and few have ever done it — that a biography could just about be constructed out of quotations.

So, almost, could the review of a biography. Starting, famously enough, with "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" Or less famously, with Yeats's remark that "poetry is born out of the quarrel with oneself."

a heaven in a wild flower

AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE
from Poems from the Pickering Manuscript (c.1808) [opening stanza excerpt]
by William Blake (1757-1827)

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

BEFORE THE FAT LADY SINGS

BEFORE THE FAT LADY SINGS (c1990)
by Raymond Joe

It was like when a glass slips,
the moment, just before it falls,
and you watch, motionless, as it leaves your hand.

That moment before a final exam,
when you don't want it to start,
but you know it will, now, in a second,
two seconds, three seconds...

Like those times when you're already late, but
you stop the car anyway,
and you look at the view you know
you may not see again,
all the time hoping, you will see it again.

Like the last week of classes
and there's no time to sleep,
but you want to spend it with __ .

It's like the moment the seagulls hover
on wind currents high overhead
before dipping and diving, right before
they stop playing--

It was like that,
it was that,
and it was grand.

Newsweek Quotations

[some hilarious/insightful quotations in this week's newsweek (10 Nov 03) as usual. my most favorite page in the magazine -- quotations and political cartoons.]

"According to the Muslim faith, a terrorist who touches a pig is not eligible for the 70 virgins in heaven." -- The Hebrew Battalian's Kuti Ben-Yaakov, on getting rabbinical approval to train pigs to guard Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

"It's astounding that I've never won one. They tend not to give it to the Britisih unless you're Sting. The sun shines out of his arse -- a pure jazz musician, Mr. Serious who helps the Indians." -- Singer Rod Stewart on why he hasn't won a Grammy.

"People abroad are going to realize just how much they enjoyed globalization; they watched the movies, listened to the music, vacationed in America and sent their children to college here. They could denounce America by day and consume its bounties by night." -- Fareed Zakaria

BEFORE THE FAT LADY SINGS

BEFORE THE FAT LADY SINGS (c1990)
by Raymond Joe (b.1964)

It was like when a glass slips,
the moment, just before it falls,
and you watch, motionless, as it leaves your hand.

That moment before a final exam,
when you don't want it to start,
but you know it will, now, in a second,
two seconds, three seconds...

Like those times when you're already late, but
you stop the car anyway,
and you look at the view you know
you may not see again,
all the time hoping, you will see it again.

Like the last week of classes
and there's no time to sleep,
but you want to spend it with __ .

It's like the moment the seagulls hover
on wind currents high overhead
before dipping and diving, right before
they stop playing--

It was like that,
it was that,
and it was grand.

Le Bateau des Reves

JB -- It's a strange house. I can't eat with my hands, I can't lower my head, I can't sit on the floor.

Boatman -- If the birds of the sky eat from the hands of men, they lose their freedom.

JB -- Yes, but the foreigner is so nice. He speaks so nicely. His words are like honey...

"Dream Ship" (Elixo Grenet / Jacques Dallin)
from "Princess Tam Tam" (1935), directed by Edmond Greville (Kino Video)
sung by Josephine Baker

Dreams, the wind rises from afar,
The wave carries us off.
Our eyes lose the beach,
Our heart beats harder.
The sea responds to our efforts
And tomorrow will make us strong.

The ocean offers itself to the wave and says,
my beautiful waves that fades and leaps.
The earth tells us that the road of happiness is the ocean.

[the lyrics are so much much more beautiful in the original french. if anyone can help me transcribe and translate better let me know, and i can send you an mp3.]

A BALLAD OF THE MULBERRY ROAD

A BALLAD OF THE MULBERRY ROAD
anonymous (Han Dynasty, 1st century)
excerpt translated by Ezra Pound

The sun rises in south east corner of things
To look on the tall house of the Shin
For they have a daughter named Rafu,
(pretty girl)
She made the name for herself: "Gauze Veil,"
For she feeds mulberries to silkworms.
She gets them by the south wall of the town.
With green strings she makes the warp of her basket,
She makes the shoulder-straps of her basket
from the boughs of Katsura,
And she piles her hair up on the left side of her head-piece.

Her earrings are made of pearl,
Her underskirt is of green pattern-silk,
Her overskirt is the same silk dyed in purple,
And when the men going by look on Rafu
They set down their burdens,
They stand and twirl their moustaches.

'Collected Poems': The Whole Lowell

'Collected Poems': The Whole Lowell
By WILLIAM H. PRITCHARD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/books/review/29PRITCHT.html

COLLECTED POEMS
By Robert Lowell.
Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter.
1,186 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $45.

I am tired. Everyone's tired of my turmoil.'' The final line of Robert Lowell's ''Eye and Tooth,'' one of the many poems about depression in ''For the Union Dead'' (1964), feels ominously prescient of a decline in the poet's reputation after his death in 1977. Something like it happened to both Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot after their deaths in the mid-1960's.

Truth is rarely heard

No Literary Elegance or Flamboyant Imagery on this Night
by Duane Locke (b. 1921)

Truth is rarely heard
If one spends his time
With priests, professors, and the people.

But the truth exists, although truth
Is rarely known by anyone.
Oaks can speak truth.

Castoff objects like broken beer bottles;
Frogs, sparrows, stones can speak truth,
Most people are deaf when truth is spoken.

The hearing of people improves,
They hear acutely what is said
When lies and illusions are spoken.

People clap their hands
When they look in mirrors, see mirages.

The Rains

The Rains
by Philip Levine (b. 1928)

The river rises
and the rains keep coming.
My Papa says
it can't flood for
the water can run
away as fast as
it comes down. I believe
him because he's Papa
and because I'm afraid
of water I know I can't stop.
All day in school I
see the windows darken,
and hearing the steady drum
of rain, I wonder
if it will ever stop
and how can I get home.

the grass is full of stars

[inspired by linda's post today...]

DAISY TIME
from Little Songs: A Book of Poems (1925)
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall (1883-1922)

See, the grass is full of stars,
Fallen in their brightness;
Hearts they have of shining gold,
Rays of shining whiteness.

Buttercups have honeyed hearts,
Bees they love the clover,
But I love the daisies' dance
All the meadow over.

Blow, O blow, you happy winds,
Singing summer's praises,
Up the field and down the field
A-dancing with the daisies.

Lucid Waking

Lucid Waking
from Eve
by Annie Finch

Once I wanted the whole dawn not to let me
sleep. One morning, then, I awoke and watched as
waking woke me, came slipping up through half-light
crying softly, a cat leaving her corner,
stretching, tall in the new gray air of morning,
raising paws much too high. She came slow-stepping
down the hallway to crouch, to call, to answer
through the door, making still and slow the dawning
once so bird ridden --and the sun, the curtains--

TWO IN THE MOON

TWO IN THE MOON
from Mortal World (1995)
by Deborah Pope

I saw it, too, you know,
that full, high winter
moon you said you meant
to tell me of, stood
by the cold, dark glass
at two in the morning,
after you had gone,
watching it wash the porch
in light so clear

and tangible it made
the rest of the world
seem blank and indistinct,
this house a blur, its trees
mere brushwork,
and only itself seem true,
even the porch chairs
held their thin arms
out to it, pure, fulfilled.

How real and unreal it was,
as we were through that
whole, long sliding dream,
touching and untouched,
believing we were new,
moving in the silvered wind,
without map, without references,
all we knew reversed,
as that light, at once
covering and cruel.

in that core of shadow

Bloodspell -- I
from Mortal World, 1995
by Deborah Pope

We walked off the path
where the park was darkest,
the flinch of first winter
hastening the leaving
of people and light,
and you led me back
in the trees, kissed me
as I lifted my face to you,
your arms holding my arms
behind me, I could hardly see you,
felt only the rough
cold of your cheek,
your grip on my coat,

and there seemed nothing
to turn back for, nothing
I had not already gone
a long time without,
the way you turned
the headlights off
once when you left me late,
and I watched as you, fearless,
moved in that core of shadow,
driving only by feel
and a random mercy of moon.

To be remembered

"To be remembered..."
from Unicorn (1980)
by Whitin Badger

To be remembered is to be in light
And air immortalized, in tone and touch
Distilled; and held in subtle auras such
As smiling, the falling snow, the circling flight
Of birds, the haunting distance in the bars
Of color which the crystal prism frees,
The turning wind, the silence under trees,
A sense of angels in the wake of stars.
Worlds wear away, but you are always you,
And having loved you I am not alone
And cannot mind just how or when or where
The shadow falls. For this of love is true:
Once held within the hand, forever known,
Once entered in the heart, forever there.