NPM: Beach and Bitch—A Study in Attitudes

Hazel Cashmore, On the Beach at Night, Alone

Ugh. Laid up with strep throat. Before I lie back down, here are today's poems: a famous and widely anthologized nineteenth century piece and a mid-twentieth century (1967) response to it. You can read another (much more knowledgeable) blogger's take on the second poem here.

Sorry. That's all I can muster today. Goodnight!


Dover Beach 
Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888)

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.


The Dover Bitch
Anthony Hecht (1923 – 2004)

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.

NPM: Dead girlfriend ballads

Today, variations on a theme in two flavors: British Romantic and American Gothic. Enjoy!

Thomas Faed, Burns and Highland Mary

Highland Mary
Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around
The castle o' Montgomery!
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers,
Your waters never drumlie:
There Simmer first unfauld her robes,
And there the langest tarry;
For there I took the last Farewell
O' my sweet Highland Mary.

How sweetly bloom'd the gay, green birk,
How rich the hawthorn's blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade,
I clasp'd her to my bosom!
The golden Hours on angel wings,
Flew o'er me and my Dearie;
For dear to me, as light and life,
Was my sweet Highland Mary.

Wi' mony a vow, and lock'd embrace,
Our parting was fu' tender;
And, pledging aft to meet again,
We tore oursels asunder;
But oh! fell Death's untimely frost,
That nipt my Flower sae early!
Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay
That wraps my Highland Mary!

O pale, pale now, those rosy lips,
I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly!
And clos'd for aye, the sparkling glance
That dwalt on me sae kindly!
And mouldering now in silent dust,
That heart that lo'ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom's core
Shall live my Highland Mary.

Donn Crane

Annabel Lee
Edgar Allen Poe (1809 – 1849)

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love——
   I and my Annabel Lee——
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
   Went envying her and me——
Yes!——that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we——
   Of many far wiser than we——
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling——my darling——my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea——
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

NPM: Ecclesiastes and the night heron

Chris Luckhardt

Strained personal schedule today, so we'll make this quick. Yesterday we looked at the King James Bible version of Ecclesiastes. Today we have two short poems. One is by Derek Mahon (originally printed in the Guardian), and it refers directly to Ecclesiastes (calls it out, really). The other is by Anne Pierson Wiese (originally appearing in her book Floating City) and it reminds me of Ecclesiastes. I'll let you judge as to how taut the connecting line actually is.


Ecclesiastes
Derek Mahon (1941 – )

God, you could grow to love, it, God-fearing, God-
chosen purist little puritan that,
for all your wiles and smiles, you are (the
dank churches, the empty streets, the shipyard silence, the tied-up swings) and
shelter your cold heart from the heat
of the world, from woman-inquisition, from the
bright eyes of children. Yes, you could
wear black, drink water, nourish a fierce zeal
with locusts and wild honey, and not
feel called upon to understand and forgive
but only to speak with a bleak
afflatus, and love the January rains when they
darken the dark doors and sink hard
into the Antrim hills, the bog meadows, the heaped
graves of your fathers. Bury that red
bandana and stick, that banjo; this is your
country, close one eye and be king.
Your people await you, their heavy washing
flaps for you in the housing estates——
a credulous people. God, you could do it, God
help you, stand on a corner stiff
with rhetoric, promising nothing under the sun.


Profile of the Night Heron
Anne Pierson Wiese (1964 – )

In the Brooklyn Botanic Garden the night
heron is on his branch of his tree, blue
moon curve of his body riding low
above the pond, leaves dipping into water
beneath him, green and loose as fingers.
On the far shore, the ibis is where
I left him last time, a black cypher
on his rock. These birds, they go to the right
place every day until they die.

There are people like that in the city,
with signature hats or empty attaché cases,
expressions of private absorption fending
off comment, who attach to physical
locations——a storefront, a stoop, a corner,
a bench——and appear there daily as if for a job.
They negotiate themselves into the pattern
of place, perhaps wiping windows, badly,
for a few bucks, clearing the stoop of take-out
menus every morning, collecting the trash
at the base of the walk/don't walk sign
and depositing it in the garbage can.

Even when surfaces change, when the Mom & Pop
store becomes a coffee bar, when the park
benches are replaced with dainty chairs and a pebble
border, they stay, noticing what will never change:
the heartprick of longitude and latitude
to home in on, the conviction that life
depends, every day, on what outlasts you.

NPM: The fine hammered steel of woe

The most common misconception about the Bible—other than the whole "inerrant literal word of God" thing—is that it's a book. It would be more apt to consider it as a literature, or even as an anthology. It's a patchwork of myth, history, poetry, tract, storytelling, theology, proverb, and codification. Of course it's going to be inconsistent and self-contradictory as a whole: it was collected from texts written by different people at different times for different reasons, and subject to various editorial contingencies during the centuries of its compilation. The idea that it forms a coherent, interpenetrating unity is absurd.

As an atheist, I've found that approaching the Old Testament as it were an anthology titled Myth, Literature, and Religion of the Ancient Hebrews makes it a much more palatable read and allows one to enjoy his visits to certain parts without taking it too seriously and without concerning himself with the tribalist violence. It's a perspective I recommend taking up for today's poem, which is actually from the Old Testament.

Herman Melville called it "the truest of all books" in Moby Dick. It was Ernest Hemingway's favorite book of the Bible; he took a phrase from it for the title of his most famous novel, The Sun Also Rises. Tom Wolfe said of it:

For of all I have ever seen or learned, this book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man’s life upon this earth——and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound.

So today we'll be looking at Ecclesiastes, a book of the Tanakh traditionally ascribed to King Solomon. I'm posting it here for its literary beauty rather than any religious purpose. Strictly speaking, what you're reading is an ancient Hebrew poem or meditation (along similar lines as Marcus Aurelius's), translated into sonorous English verse by contemporaries of William Shakespeare.

Quick note #1: For those less familiar with early seventeenth-century usage: "vanity" is here used to signify futility and valuelessness rather than the excessive self-love to which it usually refers now. (The term used in the original Hebrew text means something like "vapor.")

Quick note #2: I collected the images a while ago and lost the credits. I acknowledge it was sloppy of me.

Quick note #3: It's on the long side for a web read; I might suggest tackling it in two or three sittings.

NPM: Ocean's hymn

Gilbert Lewis, Swimmer

Today from the "poems and poets I stumbled upon during the last few years and really enjoyed" file is a piece by Ocean Vuong (originally in PANK).

I've occasionally wondered how I would more clearly articulate my own definition of "poetry" rather than rely on Jay Parini's "language that is adequate to our experience." Any way in which I would describe what poetry is and what poetry does would have to make mention of its deliberate use of narrative negative space.

Reading an early draft of The Zeroes, a friend of mine criticized what he felt was an insufficient degree of physical description where the characters were concerned. Reading an early draft of All the Lonely People (next novel), another friend felt that the descriptions of places didn't go far enough: "they're in a restaurant; you need to tell me what the inside of the restaurant is like." When I was working on "The Fighting Game," there were some scenes during which I struggled with the logistics of sequence. "He brought in a backpack; we need to know he was wearing it when he came in. He brought in some cables in the backpack; we need to explain that they were extended, and why and how he extended them. There's a TV in the room; that needs to be established in advance, and we need to know where the TV is situated."

A straightforward prosaic narrative usually needs to be fairly contiguous in order to be effective. When someone is acting, we need to know who they are, what they look like, what they're doing, and how they're doing it. We need to know where they are. Often we need to know what they were doing before what they're doing now, and we need to know the antecedent events of the present action.

The evocative and penetrative power of poetry often comes from stripping away of the journalistic facts of the event and leaving only sensory and emotional imprints. Unless you has a photographic memory, your personal recollections are not the preservation of various narratives, but disparate somatic germs. We remember just enough. Maybe only almost enough.

When you read this poem, for instance, consider how much information of the event Vuong excludes, and take note of what he chooses to include. Go back and read a few other poems, here or elsewhere, and make a similar inquiry of them.


Revelation
Ocean Vuong (1988 – )

Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us.

In the path of trembling hands,
the hair on our thighs rose
against the night, and I dreamed
the extraordinary things
light would do to the parts I touched:
tuft of hair, silk of foreskin, the wet pearl
emerging from its sheath.

As I tasted myself inside your mouth,
the breath's warm blooming,
as those fig leaves lay torn by our feet,
somewhere, someone was beginning to sing.

I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn was mine.

NPM: Caturday

From Etsy via Google Images. Artist unknown.

THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO. before people looked at pictures of cats on the internet. people read short poems about cats. on the internet.

neko no koi (cats in love)
Matsuo Bashō (1644 – 1694)
(Translator unknown)

cats in love
   when they stop in my bedroom
a hazy moon


She sights a Bird
Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

She sights a Bird——she chuckles——
She flattens——then she crawls——
She runs without the look of feet——
Her eyes increase to Balls——

Her Jaws stir——twitching——hungry——
Her Teeth can hardly stand——
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first——
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,

The Hopes so juicy ripening——
You almost bathed your Tongue——
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes——
And fled with every one——


Poem
William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down

into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot


Fog
Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

NPM: The Economy Rescued by My Mother Returning to Shop

P. Piglia, Shopping Angel

Poetry is often employed to the same purpose as editorial cartoons: putting a complex social issue into clearer perspective. The cartoonist uses his or her art to strip away the chatter and statistics, expressing the pith of the matter at hand by giving it a face and a snappy one-liner or two. He or she improves our understanding of the issue by condensing it. The political or "editorial" poem, on the other hand, is best used to subtilize our understanding of an issue.

Case in point: this piece by C.K. Williams, printed in the New Yorker of December 9, 2013. As much as I value consistency in formatting, it appears in a Times font rather than Courier so as to preserve the lines' unusual length and the breaks as they appear in print. (Not that anyone would notice the difference, but...)


The Economy Rescued by My Mother Returning to Shop
C.K. Williams (1936 – )

I sleep as always these dark days aquiver I awake atremble my limbs jerk I thrash like a
            gaffed shark
no not shark too many sharks already fiscal financial that's why gullible guppy I was I
            thought
the boom wouldn't bust the bubble not burst shred leave us hanging over this thorny
            dollarless void

Markets staggered sales down the chute confidence off the cliff the aisles of the box stores
            and chains
depeopled ghost towns even the parking lots empty the lane lines in martial formation like
            wings
stripped of their feathers signalling for interstellar relief how not quiver not jerk
            and thrash?

Wait don't give up too soon here comes my mother back from beyond and she's going to
            shop!
Avid sharp-eyed alert gleaming and beaming as she always was on our old bus expeditions
            downtown
with a vigilance keen and serene and hands entities sentient and shrewd cunningly separate
            from her

evolved to analyze things' intrinsic or better overlooked worth as they collate the goods on
            their racks—
a blouse in silk and on sale!—which she shows an admiring mirror and opens her wallet
            and buys
buys as that president told us we should though only my mother has sufficient passion to
            effect this

Didn't I once watch her unwrap a pair of new shoes to inhale the scent of their
            unblemished soles
and in the very next quarter didn't the G.N.P. begin to stir the number of long-term
            unemployed slip
because of my mother's single-minded devotion to the subtlest aspects of commerce and
            exchange?

And all this after growing up poor in my grandmother's half-starving canned green-pea
            kitchen
and after surviving Depression and War how did she garner so much abstruse lore on
            redistribution
how accrue so many practical speculations about what we'd need to correct these failures
            and flops?

Delighted the gods of money must be to behold her again as she conveys herself through
            their portals
Here's ingenious Hephaestus devising for our enchantment his gadgets and gizmos and
            glitter
and here Hermes publicity market sales (not Hermès shrine for the rich and
            pretend rich)

and vast Hades who lurks in the fear beneath all waiting to drag us down to the
            realm of dire want
where a hound with three heads a banker's a hedge-funder's an under-prime mortgage
            broker's
snarls as my mother who once filched from her sister coins she didn't have to buy me an
            ice cream

croons as she crooned then Make it last and retires to her couch and opens her credit-card
            statement
and pays isn't it splendid to be able to pay for your new skirt your sheer stockings your eau
            de toilette
and so redeem the Dow and the Nasdaq and hallow us all for our humble hungers our almost
            innocent greed?