The Top 500 Poems: 500-401

DWill · Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:32 am

I had thought I'd already posted 435, "Greater Love," by Wilfred Owen, but I see I haven't. Owen might have done great things if he'd survived WW I. He was only 25 when he died, but has 4 poems in the 500. The man knew war.

Red lips are not so red

As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

Kindness of wooed and wooer

Seems shame to their love pure.

O Love, your eyes lose lure

When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude

Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,

Rolling and rolling there

Where God seems not to care:

Till the fierce love they bear

Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,—

Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,—

Your dear voice is not dear,

Gentle, and evening clear,

As theirs whom none now hear,

Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot

Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;

And though your hand be pale,

Paler are all which trail

Your cross through flame and hail:

Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

bleachededen · Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:45 am


	DWill wrote: As much as we'd love to have a poetry major around, esp. one with the moniker bleachededen, I can't entice you with a promise of living or even recently dead poets from now on. We can be plunged into the antique ages again by the vagaries of the List at any time. Sorry!

It's ok, I still follow the thread. I'll just get excited when certain poems come up in topic. And maybe I'll even pay some attention to the older poems, as well, from time to time.

No worries. I'll be here awhile.

oblivion · Sun Mar 14, 2010 4:37 am

This has to be one of the best poems concerning war/death/destruction/loss I have ever read. One can read whole novels (for example, "All's Quiet on the Western Front") on the same topic but the essence of horror comes across better in the "simplicity" of this one poem. It is as if the sheer horror makes every word heavy, every word difficult to utter. The burden is too great.

And Gary and Bleachededen, really happy to see you here in this forum!

oblivion · Sun Mar 14, 2010 4:39 am


	Saffron wrote: fact, I remember thinking: Alexander = physical power/body, Montaigne = intellect power/mind, and St. St. Theresa spiritual/soul.

Yes!!!!!!!! Excellent!

DWill · Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:09 am


	oblivion wrote: This has to be one of the best poems concerning war/death/destruction/loss I have ever read. One can read whole novels (for example, "All's Quiet on the Western Front") on the same topic but the essence of horror comes across better in the "simplicity" of this one poem. It is as if the sheer horror makes every word heavy, every word difficult to utter. The burden is too great. And Gary and Bleachededen, really happy to see you here in this forum!

I read that Owen died about a month before the Armistice was signed. An irony, I also read, was that the War made Owen as a poet. His pre-war efforts are said to be derivitive of Keats. He supposedly wanted to do something similar to what Remarque and Crane did, which was to fathom the essence of the war experience from the point of view of the soldiers who would die in it. I agree with you, oblivion, that he does this with economy and force. He is not only an anti-war poet, though everyone knows him for "Dulce et Decorum Est." This poem is frequently cited as glorifying, in a sense, the sacrifice that soldiers make for fellow soldiers, the greater love shown when men lie down their lives for others (after the NT verse). For me, what comes through more strongly is bitterness that nobody really sees or cares about the horrific sacrifice soldiers are forced to make, preferring the distraction of all the rhapsodizing about romantic love, especially in poetry, which seems really trite and silly.

The poem is beautifully made. Should it be, do you think, since its subject is not beautiful? Or is it beautiful in the way a requiem is beautiful, and therefore appropriate?

434. "If We Must Die," by Claude McKay.

Claude McKay: If We Must Die (1919)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In 1919 there was a wave of race riots consisting mainly of white assaults on black neighborhoods in a dozen American cities. Jamaican-born writer Claude McKay responded by writing this sonnet, urging his comrades to fight back. It had a powerful impact, then and later.
For what reason does McKay say even a doomed resistance is worth while?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Saffron · Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:21 am


	DWill wrote: The poem is beautifully made. Should it be, do you think, since its subject is not beautiful? Or is it beautiful in the way a requiem is beautiful, and therefore appropriate?

I go for the latter.

Saffron · Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:31 am


	DWill wrote: 434. "If We Must Die," by Claude McKay. Claude McKay: If We Must Die (1919) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For what reason does McKay say even a doomed resistance is worth while?" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You know you can't pose a question like that without me wanting to answer! I will resist....for now.

BTW I can teach you how to make solid lines, if you like. It is as easy as clinking a button!

DWill · Sun Mar 14, 2010 11:00 am

Saffron wrote:


	DWill wrote: 434. "If We Must Die," by Claude McKay. Claude McKay: If We Must Die (1919) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For what reason does McKay say even a doomed resistance is worth while?" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You know you can't pose a question like that without me wanting to answer! I will resist....for now.

BTW I can teach you how to make solid lines, if you like. It is as easy as clinking a button!

Oh, that question wasn't mine, I just dragged it in along with the copied poem, so the lines came with it. I think this old dog may have learned about as much as he's going to, anyway.

oblivion · Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:38 pm

Saffron wrote:


	DWill wrote: The poem is beautifully made. Should it be, do you think, since its subject is not beautiful? Or is it beautiful in the way a requiem is beautiful, and therefore appropriate?

I go for the latter.

I think I would claim that the beauty of the poem is purposely in contrast to its content thus underscoring the horror and sacrifice.

bleachededen · Sun Mar 14, 2010 1:58 pm

Saffron wrote:


	DWill wrote: The poem is beautifully made. Should it be, do you think, since its subject is not beautiful? Or is it beautiful in the way a requiem is beautiful, and therefore appropriate?

I go for the latter.

I also go for the latter.

DWill · Mon Mar 15, 2010 8:07 am

"If We Must Die" seems to fall into the category of declarative poetry that has a relationship to oration. With a slight change of diction, this could be a heoric speech by a Shakespearean hero. Obviously the poet isn't shooting for subtlety here.

433. "Still Falls the Rain." by Edith Sitwell.

Still Falls the Rain
(The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn.)

Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us---
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain---
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,---those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear---
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain---
Then--- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune---
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,---dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain---
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."
-- Edith Sitwell

Two commentaries:

"There is something of the same grand quality in her poems with their stylised diction and use of emblems which can sometimes lead to a deadening ornateness. However, when this symbolism is allied to subject matter of real import the effect can be very powerful, as in this recording of her poem 'Still Falls the Rain'. Written in response to the Blitz on London, Sitwell described this poem in a letter to Benjamin Britten as one of the proudest achievements of her life and on the evidence of this recording it's easy to see why: with its use of repetition, insistent rhyme and Christian imagery of suffering, the poem has a relentless quality like the bombardment and endurance which inspired it. "

"This was the first Sitwell poem I ever read, and it impressed the hell out
of me. Some of the lines in it are (IMHO) truly spectacular. The first
stanza is pure genius, for instance, and I love the image of the baited
bear. And I love how spectacularly visual the poem is - how vividly the
image of dark night turning to crimson dawn comes across. And I love the
sound of it - the repetition of the single line, the restless, switching
rhyme patterns, the ebb and flow of the stanzas that makes this a poem that
cries to be read aloud. But most of all, I love the sheer relentlessness of
it, the way that one repeated line is like a great hammer striking deep
into the poem again and again, the sense of stopping in utter defeat and
then starting up again, despairing but not defeated. There's a tone to this
poem that both reminds me of Hopkins and seems, sometimes, to anticipate
Sexton and Plath."

oblivion · Mon Mar 15, 2010 8:33 am

Even though Sitwell (with whom I am not at all familiar) appeals to audio imagery (still, pulse, sound, hammer-beat, voice, etc. as well as the rhythm of the poem), it reminds me of rather dark, gruesome religious paintings by Gruenewald, especially his passions. You think you have her figured out and then : " O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune..."
Very powerful. I'll have to read more.

bleachededen · Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:19 pm

This poem was particularly moving for me, despite my usual distaste for Christian imagery. Here, however, it works because of the context of the poem - the Blitzkrieg, as DWill has reminded us.

I love the image and idea of the bombs as rain. "Still comes the rain" instead of something like "still fall the bombs" gives us the sense that this is constant and has become almost normal, mundane, because of the Germans' persistence, and the Christ image is the English people, dying innocent upon the cross, still loving their homeland, as Christ still loves God with his "self-murdered heart" (another strong and beautiful image).

A very powerful poem indeed, and I wouldn't be surprised if Benjamin Britten had set this to music at some point, seeing that he spoke to the poet herself. In fact, if he had, I'd be quite interested to hear it. I adore his music.

DWill · Mon Mar 15, 2010 7:35 pm

For me, the Christian imagery in the poem tends to overwhelm it. But this is a general problem I have with symbolic poems. I feel somewhat cheated that the poet borrows luster from other sources rather than give us more from herself. I respond more strongly to the image of bear-baiting than to the Christian imagery. This isn't just because I'm not Christian; I do like Hopkins, but I find that he does more with his symbols, uses fewer but makes them go farther.

bleachededen · Mon Mar 15, 2010 8:57 pm


	DWill wrote: For me, the Christian imagery in the poem tends to overwhelm it. But this is a general problem I have with symbolic poems. I feel somewhat cheated that the poet borrows luster from other sources rather than give us more from herself. I respond more strongly to the image of bear-baiting than to the Christian imagery. This isn't just because I'm not Christian; I do like Hopkins, but I find that he does more with his symbols, uses fewer but makes them go farther.

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. :-P

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.

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