The Top 500 Poems: 500-401

DWill · Tue Mar 16, 2010 7:41 am

432. "A Grave," by Marianne Moore. If anyone wants to go more deeply into this fascinating poem and wants to consider ideas, several critical articles on it can be found at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/po ... /grave.htm
(Note: Moore's indentations are not preserved in the posted poem.)

Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as
you have to it yourself,
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,
but you cannot stand in the middle of this;
the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.
The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey-
foot at the top,
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of
the sea;
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look --
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer
investigate them
for their bones have not lasted:
men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are
desecrating a grave,
and row quickly away -- the blades of the oars
moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were
no such thing as death.
The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx -- beautiful
under networks of foam,
and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the
seaweed;
the birds swim throught the air at top speed, emitting cat-calls
as heretofore --
the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion
beneath them;
and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of
bell-buoys,
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which
dropped things are bound to sink --
in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor
consciousness.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

According to a note by Chris Burgess(crisco@mail.utexas.edu) on his Marianne Moore Home Page , "A Grave" was written shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania and after Moore's brother Warner joined the Navy as a chaplin and went out to sea. The sea was one of Moore's favorite topics, but she was also very much aware of the sea as a grave. The sea, for Moore, was both beautiful and deadly. Once, when she and her mother were standing together admiring the sea, a man came and stood in front of them, Moore's mother remarked about how people seem to feel the need to stand in the middle of things instead of stepping back to get the full picture, and this incident became part of the poem. (Source: Marianne Moore: A Literary Life by Charles Molesworth)

DWill · Tue Mar 16, 2010 8:04 am


	bleachededen wrote: I do agree with you, and this isn't a poem I would have chosen on my own, but being presented with it as I was here I looked for the things that worked in the poem and didn't harp on what I felt was negative, knowing another poem is coming up soon. I do think the cross metaphor is very heavy handed, almost clunky. Thankfully it yields a few very beautiful lines so I don't hate the poem completely. I can understand the kind of emotion the poet was feeling however, and if readers of this poem have strong Christian ties or tend to seek out symbolism in their poetry, then the heaviness of the metaphor might work for them. But I don't think it's a total loss.

Did you notice that Sitwell does the 'Eliot' thing by quoting directly from another work? It's in the 5th stanza, 2nd and 3rd lines, from Marlowe's "Faustus." This is not my favorite thing to see a poet do.

Saffron · Tue Mar 16, 2010 11:45 am

Glad to see more folks participating! The timing is good, as I am computerless for the indefinate future. I am at the moment on a library computer that flash how many more minutes I have left every 5 minutes -- a bit distacting. I will show up here as often as I am able.

bleachededen · Tue Mar 16, 2010 7:52 pm


	DWill wrote: Did you notice that Sitwell does the 'Eliot' thing by quoting directly from another work? It's in the 5th stanza, 2nd and 3rd lines, from Marlowe's "Faustus." This is not my favorite thing to see a poet do.

Since I never read Faustus I didn't notice, but I agree, I don't like to see that in poetry unless it's very well placed or some sort of parody.

DWill · Tue Mar 16, 2010 8:35 pm

"A Grave" was quite mysterious, beautiful; I'm still pondering it and think it has cast a spell over me. Suicide is possibly in the poet's thoughts, either relating to herself or to the man who stands in front.

431, "The Yachts," by Willliam Carlos Williams, is another mysterious one. This is somewhat unexpected from the poet who celebrated the concrete.

THE YACHTS

contend in a sea which the land partly encloses
shielding them from the too-heavy blows
of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses

tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows
to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.
Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute

brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails
they glide to the wind tossing green water
from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls

ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,
making fast as they turn, lean far over and having
caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.

In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by
lesser and greater crafts which, sycophant, lumbering
and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare

as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace
of all that in the mind is fleckless, free and
naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them

is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as of feeling
for some slightest flaw but fails completely.
Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts

move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they
are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too
well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.

Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows
Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside.
It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair

until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind;
the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies
lost to the world bearing what they can not hold. Broken,

beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up
they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising
in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.

oblivion · Wed Mar 17, 2010 2:26 am

If anyone has watched the Americas Cup, this is a pretty good description. Okay, that comment was rather banal. But I did like it. And I am fascinated with how often the sea turns up in poetry.

DWill · Wed Mar 17, 2010 7:48 am

Is this poem social criticism? It's hard to reconcile the last three stanzas, violent and desperate, with the preceeding ones, so stately and untroubled. Who are the poor wretches in the waves who "seek to clutch at the prows...in agony, in despair?" Do they represent the dark underside of a world in which the success and ease of the master class depends on the misery of others?

oblivion · Wed Mar 17, 2010 2:19 pm

I have no idea, dwill. This one bothers me and won't let me go.It's a bit like Hades. With
WCW, he actually could mean a concrete yacht race with all of its horror, drownings and pain. Then again, he could be on a different plane, one I'm obviously not on today. I really don't don't know!

DWill · Wed Mar 17, 2010 9:50 pm

43. "Anne Rutledge," by Edgar Lee Masters. From his famous "Spoon River Anthology." Anne rutledge was Lincoln's first love, whom he well might have marrried. She died from typhus in 1835.

Anne Rutledge

Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
'With malice toward none, with charity for all.'
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the beneficient face of a nation
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation.
Bloom forever, O Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!

Saffron · Thu Mar 18, 2010 11:49 am


	DWill wrote: 432. "A Grave," by Marianne Moore. If anyone wants to go more deeply into this fascinating poem and wants to consider ideas, several critical articles on it can be found at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/po ... /grave.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- According to a note by Chris Burgess(crisco@mail.utexas.edu) on his Marianne Moore Home Page , "A Grave" was written shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania and after Moore's brother Warner joined the Navy as a chaplin and went out to sea. The sea was one of Moore's favorite topics, but she was also very much aware of the sea as a grave. The sea, for Moore, was both beautiful and deadly. Once, when she and her mother were standing together admiring the sea, a man came and stood in front of them, Moore's mother remarked about how people seem to feel the need to stand in the middle of things instead of stepping back to get the full picture, and this incident became part of the poem. (Source: Marianne Moore: A Literary Life by Charles Molesworth)

DW: Again, very nice to have the extra info included in the post. Some poem, huh. My whole body felt heavy reading it.

Note on my computerless condition: As you see I am a bit behind. I will read from my book and get to a computer when I can to catch up to you all.

Saffron · Thu Mar 18, 2010 11:54 am


	DWill wrote: 43. "Anne Rutledge," by Edgar Lee Masters. From his famous "Spoon River Anthology." Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. Bloom forever, O Republic, From the dust of my bosom!

This poem reminds me that I really do need to finish reading Spoon River Anthology! Wedded by separation, what an interesting idea. We rarely stop to consider the power of what is absent, missing or left out.

DWill · Thu Mar 18, 2010 7:45 pm

I've never finished that, either. Bet it's online (not that you could read it in an hour on a library computer!). "Spoon River" doesn't have a contemporary tone (horrible pun developing), but as I said a while ago--and of course am about to repeat--Harmon's approach in the volume often gives us clues about the taste prevailing at a given time. It's not as though he, or anyone, would necessarily choose these 500 poems as the top ones. He's just giving us the poems many anthologizers in the past chose. He is not an anthologizer himself. So I think we learn something about the taste of the early 1900s. The epitaphic poems that made up "Spoon River" were actually thought to be somewhat edgy and even scandalous in their day. Masters didn't write in as sentimental a vein as was common; he took a pretty honest look at small town life as he gives us these people speaking from the grave. Once again, we have a book of poems achieving great popularity. It could never happen today.

BTW, I guess everyone might know that 'anthology' derives from the Greek meaning a collection of flowers, a bouquet.

429. "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff," by A. E. Housman. Okay, perhaps this one shows us something about my taste. I've mentioned I like A. E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad." This is an atypical poem from the collection, in which the fictional poet/persona, Terence Hearsay, answers objections to the predominantly gloomy, pessimistic outlook in his poems. It contains the famous lines "And malt does more than Milton can/to justify God's ways to man." How true!

TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, 5
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow. 10
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, 15
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse, 20
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot 25
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where, 30
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, 35
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet, 40
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure 45
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale: 50
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head 55
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast, 60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more, 65
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat; 70
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told. 75
Mithridates, he died old.

GaryG48 · Thu Mar 18, 2010 8:36 pm

"Terence this is stupid stuff" is my all-time favorite poem!
And my favorite lines are the last
"--I tell the tale that I heard told,
Mithridates, he died old."
I am crushed that it barely made the 500 list.
Well, not actually crushed but I will be interested to see what ranks higher.

angelarichard25 · Fri Mar 19, 2010 12:24 am

"I tell the tale that I heard told,
Mithridates, he died old"
I like the lines.This poem should take in 500.
I hope so.

oblivion · Fri Mar 19, 2010 2:09 am

Angela and Gary--nice to see both of you in this forum!

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