NPM: Homosexuality

Norman Bluhm & Frank O’Hara

I was asked to come up with a list of poets whose books are either missing from the library shelves or falling apart on them, and when I began thinking about 20th century poets who are underrepresented in our collection, I thought of -- of. Oh god. What's his name again?

Completely blanked out. Had to consult an anthology to remember it was Frank O'Hara I was thinking of. And, after rereading some of his work, it seems like a marvelous idea to share a poem of his today (and to better acquaint myself, in the meantime, with more than just his hit singles).

Homosexuality
Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)

So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping
our mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a glance!

The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment
than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick;

so I pull the shadows around me like a puff
and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite moment

of a very long opera, and then we are off!
without reproach and without hope that our delicate feet

will touch the earth again, let alone "very soon."
It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate.

I start like ice, my finger to my ear, my ear
to my heart, that proud cur at the garbage can

in the rain. It's wonderful to admire oneself
with complete candor, tallying up the merits of each

of the latrines. 14th Street is drunken and credulous,
53rd tries to tremble but is too at rest. The good

love a park and the inept a railway station,
and there are the divine ones who drag themselves up

and down the lengthening shadow of an Abyssinian head
in the dust, trailing their long elegant heels of hot air

crying to confuse the brave "It's a summer day,
and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world."

NPM: The choice, the work, the life.

 
My pal James shared this photograph with me not long ago. That up there is Hunter Thompson as a young man. Accompanying the photograph was an except from The Proud Highway:  

As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I’m not sure that I’m going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says, ‘you are nothing’ I will be a writer.

James has known me for a long time. He's aware I've made a similar declaration, and in my dedication to the work I've sometimes come near physical collapse or existential despair. But I'm still too stubborn and ridiculous to quit, so I continue to slope along.

Some months ago at my day job in the library, I pulled a Yeats paperback off the shelf, and it split in two the moment it was opened, pages spilling onto the floor. One one of these pages was a poem called "The Choice."

I taped the page to one of the shelves near the library's entrance, so I can be reminded every day that I've made my choice, and it must ultimately be a good one.

The Choice
William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

NPM: To Be of Use

An art workshop adjunct at the Quaker center transcribed this piece onto posterboard and hung it over the door to the kiln room.

To Be Of Use

Marge Piercy (1936 -)

The people I love the best

jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

   I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
   who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
   who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
   who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

   The work of the world is common as mud.
   Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
   But the thing worth doing well done
   has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
   Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
   Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
   but you know they were made to be used.
   The pitcher cries for water to carry
   and a person for work that is real.

NPM: Zhuangzi and Merton

Liu Maoshan, The Harbor at Dawn

Well, my plan for today was to serve up that short Wordsworth poem about the daffodils along with two signifying pieces by contemporary poets. After reading the two contemporary daffodils poems and realizing I don't like them as much as I remember, it was on to plan B: a Bruce Bawer sonnet of which I'm fond. Then I remember I'd already posted it during 2011's National Poetry Month extravaganza.

So my only recourse was to open up The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry in a panic and just pick the first thing that caught my eye. That thing ended up being some words by ancient Taoist Zhuangzi translated by Thomas Merton, a 20th century American monk, mystic, and author.

I remember last year we looked at a few poems by Li Po and mentioned some of the difficulties of translating Chinese poetry in English -- when the languages are so tremendously different, a true translation of poetic text becomes almost impossible. Merton, however, did not understand Chinese, and used older English translations as his source. This, then, is really more like a posthumous collaboration in which Merton reinterprets old interpretations of Zhuangzi. Merton may not have been a translator of literature per se, but he was a poet and a mystic, and no stranger to the Tao sage's way of thinking.

(The whole collection is available under the title The Way of Chuang-Tzu.)

The Breath of Nature

Zhuangzi (369 B.C - 286 B.C.)

Trans. Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

When great Nature sighs, we hear the winds

Which, noiseless in themselves,

Awaken voices from other beings,

Blowing on them.

From every opening

Loud voices sound. Have you not heard

the rush of tones?

There stands the overhanging wood

on the steep mountain:

Old trees with holes and cracks

Like snouts, maws, and ears,

Like beam-sockets, like goblets,

Grooves in the wood, hollows full of water:

You hear mooing and roaring, whistling,

Shouts of command, grumblings,

Deep drones, sad flutes.

One call awakens another in dialogue.

Gentle winds sing timidly,

Strong ones blast on without restraint.

Then the wind dies down. The openings

Empty out their last sound.

Have you not observed how all then trembles and subsides?

Yu replied: I understand:

The music of earth sings through a thousand holes.

The music of man is made on flutes and instruments.

What makes the music of heaven?

Master Ki said:

Something is blowing on a thousand different holes.

Some power stands behind all this and makes the sounds die down.

What is this power?

NPM: Intimations of Immortality

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Souvenir of Mortefontaine

For a long time most of the stuff I had to read in high school just reminded me of high school, and whenever it reappeared, I tried to avoid it. Wordsworth was one of the first public high school curriculum poets with whom I reconciled.

I don't read Wordsworth as often as some poets, but I genuinely like his stuff. By its enthusiasm it reminds me of Walt Whitman -- but (apart from the obvious fundamental differences in style), Whitman's poetry has a sinewy and gritty character, while Wordsworth's is glossy and ephemeral. I do prefer Walt to William, but nevertheless, every time I bump into Wordsworth I ask myself why I don't read him more often.

Happenstance recently provided me an excuse to revisit Wordsworth. My ladyfriend runs the afterschool program at a local Montessori School; three afternoons a week she's supervising and engaging with children between the ages of three and ten. There are some nights when I'll find her in bed, half asleep, and ask her about her day; she'll start talking about her afternoon with the children with such exuberance that she wakes herself up and has to settle down before she can try sleeping again.

She talks a lot about the sense of wonder that's so salient in young children, and unique to them. You know it when you see it; it's familiar to everyone, but it's often hard to articulate. The other night she was explaining it, or trying to, and suddenly I was reminded of some lines from "Intimations." I emailed her the poem, but I don't know if she actually read it. (I try to be optimistic, but she is a busy woman.)

But you're not busy,  and you certainly want to read it. Come on. It'll take you ten minutes, tops. (Perhaps you are also interested in revisiting Allen Ginsberg's "Don't Grow Old," which references "Intimations?" I'm betting you are.)

If you read it, let me know how you reacted to it. Hate it? Tell me why. Like it? Tell me why.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)


There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
          To me did seem
        Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore——
        Turn wheresoe'er I may,
          By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

     The Rainbow comes and goes,
     And lovely is the Rose,
     The Moon doth with delight
  Look round her when the heavens are bare;
     Waters on a starry night
     Are beautiful and fair;
  The sunshine is a glorious birth;
  But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
  And while the young lambs bound
    As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
    And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
    And all the earth is gay;
      Land and sea
    Give themselves up to jollity,
      And with the heart of May
    Doth every Beast keep holiday——
      Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
      Shepherd-boy!

Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the call
  Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
  My heart is at your festival,
    My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss, I feel——I feel it all.
      Oh evil day! if I were sullen
      While the Earth herself is adorning,
        This sweet May-morning,
      And the children are culling
        On every side,
      In a thousand valleys far and wide,
      Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up in his mother's arm——
      I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
      ——But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
      The pansy at my feet
      Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
    Hath had elsewhere its setting,
      And cometh from afar:
    Not in entire forgetfulness,
      And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
    From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
    Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
    He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
    Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
    And by the vision splendid
    Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
    And no unworthy aim,
  The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
    Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnéd art;
    A wedding or a festival,
    A mourning or a funeral;
      And this hath now his heart,
    And unto this he frames his song:
      Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
    But it will not be long
    Ere this be thrown aside,
    And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
    As if his whole vocation
    Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
    Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind——
    Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
    On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
    To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
    Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

    O joy! that in our embers
    Is something that doth live,
    That nature yet remembers
    What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast——
    Not for these I raise
    The song of thanks and praise;
  But for those obstinate questionings
  Of sense and outward things,
  Fallings from us, vanishings;
  Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
    But for those first affections,
    Those shadowy recollections,
  Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
  Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
    To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
    Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
  Hence in a season of calm weather
    Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
    Which brought us hither,
  Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
    And let the young Lambs bound
    As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
    Ye that pipe and ye that play,
    Ye that through your hearts today
    Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
  Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
    We will grieve not, rather find
    Strength in what remains behind;
    In the primal sympathy
    Which having been must ever be;
    In the soothing thoughts that spring
    Out of human suffering;
    In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
        Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

NPM: A comment.

Carl Spitzweg, The Poor Poet

I mentioned some weeks ago that a short story of mine was published by a Canadian lit zine called The Puritan. Its hardworking editors just unveiled a new and improved version of their blog, The Town Crier, and I was struck by a quip from a short interview with poet Souvankham Thammavongsa posted just a few days ago:

Tell us the best thing you’ve read lately, or a poet you’re jealous of, or a poem you wish you wrote.
 
I am not jealous of poets because the stakes in poetry are so low. What I am jealous of is the person who doesn’t write poetry. You have the freedom to believe that what you are doing matters to the world. I’m jealous of that freedom.

NPM: Spring and All and the Red Wheel Barrow

Salvador Dali, The First Day of Spring

It's that time again. National Poetry Month is upon us!

For the third April in a row, this humble blog will be ladling out a Mulligan stew of collected verses for your enjoyment and edification. Even if you're usually not inclined to read poetry, it would mean a lot to me if, throughout the month, you occasionally had a look at and tried to engage with what's being served up here. I guarantee it will be five minutes better spent than the perusing the latest ephemera on your newsgossip site of choice. READ LESS GAWKER, READ MORE POETRY. That's our motto at Beyond Easy!

We will be workshopping this motto at our weekly staff meeting.

Also, Beyond Easy has no staff. What I actually intend to do is sit in the bathtub and bounce ideas off the chickens.

At this point all I can do to save face is get on with it.

We begin once again with William Carlos Williams, one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century. Anyone who's ever taken Composition 101 will be familiar with his poem about the red wheelbarrow. But what you might not know is that it was not published as a standalone piece; it is a component of a much longer work called Spring and All, a chimeric manifesto composed as a reaction to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which in 1922 established itself as the barycenter of English poetry. The Poetry Foundation gives us the scoop:

What Williams did not foresee, however, was the "atom bomb" on modern poetry——T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Williams had no quarrel with Eliot's genius—he said Eliot was writing poems as good as Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"——but, simply, "we were breaking the rules, whereas he was conforming to the excellencies of classroom English." As he explained in his Autobiography, "I felt at once that it had set me back twenty years and I'm sure it did. Critically, Eliot returned us to the classroom just at the moment when I felt we were on a point to escape to matters much closer to the essence of a new art form itself——rooted in the locality which should give it fruit." Not only did Williams feel threatened by Eliot's success, but also by the attention The Waste Land received. As Karl Shapiro pointed out, "he was left high and dry: Pound, who was virtually the co-author of Eliot's poems, and Marianne Moore were now polarized to Eliot. Williams felt this and would feel it for another twenty years. His own poetry would have to progress against the growing orthodoxy of Eliot criticism." But while the Eliot wave undoubtedly sank his spirits, at the same time it buoyed his determination: "It was a shock to me that he was so tremendously successful," Williams admitted. "My contemporaries flocked to him——away from what I wanted. It forced me to be successful."

According to Breslin, The Waste Land was one of the "major influence[s] on that remarkable volume," Williams's next book, Spring and All. The last in a decade of experimental poetry, Spring and All viewed the same American landscape as did Eliot but interpreted it differently. Williams "saw his poetic task was to affirm the self-reliant, sympathetic consciousness of Whitman in a broken industrialized world," Stauffer noted. "But unlike Eliot, who responded negatively to the harsh realities of this world, Williams saw his task as breaking through restrictions and generating new growth."

In the long run, Williams probably came out on top. Judging from my experience, many more people outside of English programs are reading Williams today than Eliot.

Well. Without further ado, let's look at an except from Spring and All -- specifically, the section beginning with everybody's favorite vignette about the red wheelbarrow on which so much depends. When Williams has a point to make, he tends to make it wanderingly, obliquely (as we've already seen in one of his essays), but he does make a point.


From Spring and All (1923)
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Lovingly transcribed from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I.


XXII

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens


   The fixed categories into which life is divided must always hold. These things are normal——essential to every activity. But they exist——but not as dead dissections.

   The curriculum of knowledge cannot but be divided into the sciences, the thousand and one groups of data, scientific, philosophic and whatnot——as may as there exist in Shakespeare——things that make him appear the university of all ages.

   But this is not the thing. In the galvanic category of——The same things exist, but in a different condition when energized by the imagination.

   The whole field of education is affected——there is no end of detail that is without significance.

   Education would begin by placing in the mind of the student the nature of knowledge——in the dead state and the nature of the force which may energize it.

   This would clarify his field at once——He would then see the use of data

   But at present knowledge is placed before a man as if it were a stair at the top of which a DEGREE is obtained which is superlative.

   nothing could be more ridiculous. To data there is no end. There is proficiency in dissection and a knowledge of parts but in the use of knowledge——

   It is the imagination that——

   That is: life is absolutely simple. In any civilized society everyone should know EVERYTHING there is to know about life at once and always. There should never be permitted, confusion——

   There are difficulties to life, under conditions that are impasses, life may prove impossible——But it must never be lost——as it is today——

   I remember so distinctly the young Pole in Leipzig going with hushed breath to hear the Wundt lecture——In this mass of intricate philosophic data what one of the listeners was able to maintain himself for the winking of an eyelash. Not one. The inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated fact is not knowledge. There is no end——

   And what is the fourth dimension? It is the endlessness of knowledge——

   It is the imagination on which reality rides——It is the imagination——It is a cleavage through everything by a force that does not exist in the mass and therefore can never be discovered by its anatomization.

   It is for this reason that I have always placed art first and esteemed it over science——in spite of everything.

   Art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality——Poetry

   The effect of this realization upon life will be the emplacement of knowledge into a living current——which it has always sought——

   In other times——men counted it a tragedy to be dislocated from sense——Today boys are sent with dullest faith to technical schools of all sorts——broken, bruised

   few escape whole——slaughter. This is not civilization but stupidity——Before entering knowledge the integrity of the imagination——

   The effect will be to give importance to the subdivisions of experience——which today are absolutely lost——There exists simply nothing.

   Prose——When values are important, such——For example there is no use denying that prose and poetry are not by any means the same IN INTENTION. But then what is prose? There is no need for it to approach poetry except to be weakened.

   With decent knowledge to hand we can tell what things are for

   I expect to see values blossom. I expect to see prose be prose. Prose, relieved of extraneous, unrelated values must return to its only purpose: to clarity to enlighten the understanding. There is no form to prose but that which depends on clarity. If prose is not accurately adjusted to the exposition of facts it does not exist——Its form is that alone. To penetrate everywhere with enlightenment——

   Poetry is something quite different. Poetry has to do with the crystallization of the imagination——the perfection of new forms as additions to nature——Prose may follow to enlighten but poetry——

   Is what I have written prose? The only answer is that form in prose ends with the end of that which is being communicated——If the power to go on falters in the middle of a sentence——that is the end of the sentence——Or if a new phrase enters at that point it is only stupidity to go on.

   There is no confusion——only difficulties.