DWill wrote:I don't mean that this is the poem of your day, but it'll be the poem of mine, I guess. I just thought Rimbaud's subject was interesting here--what might a natural-born poet be like? Is a poet really someone set apart, as Rimbaud implies here? Or are all small children in some sense poets, a quality they lose as they become more socialized? I wonder if any of this was autobiography. It's a little long but a manageable read. I had also found a non-rhymed translation of "Seven-Year Poet," but looking at the French, I saw that the rhymed couplets are in the original, so I went with this Norman Cameron translation.

...

What a tragic fellow, Rimbaud. Judging from his photograph, a wildly interesting looking man. To your question about children being poets; I do think all children are like poets in the way the see and express the world around them.

That was a common Romantic idea, that as children we're closer to nature, more at one with it, and therefore can be said to have more poetic souls at that stage, before culture takes this sense away from us. It's just interesting to look at how outlooks change--from seeing children as little beasts that need taming, to seeing them as more spiritual beings than adults.

So I was reading somewhere (damn, I forget where) about which stage of the lifespan is the most violent. Is it adolescence or young adulthood? No, it's the toddler stage! We need to grow out of violence, we don't grow into it, according to this person.

I don't mean to presume to pick a poem of the day, just tossing one into the mix. This is a gloomy sort of poem, but it resonates with me this morning, and seems to go along with our recent discussions of metaphoric and literal truth. It was published in 1867. I believe the "Sea of Faith" here alludes to the doubt of religion in the face of scientific progress.

Dover Beach
by Mathew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
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 A gaean, 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.

Geo, you've picked one of my old favorites that a sophomore lit professor first put in front on me an eon or two ago. An incidental finding on reading it through again is that the poem is rhymed in an unusual way. I've heard this called the first modern poem in English, with that sense of possible meaningless expressed by the suddenly bereft narrator. There is no certainty of meaning to be found in a random universe, so the best we can do is a private world of commitment to another human being. I'd nominate the final image as one of the most powerful of any that I know of.

Poems of such seriousness are ripe for parody--we know that. Accordingly, Anthony Hecht produced "The Dover Bitch," in which the woman in the room with the narrator gives her unprintable views on his fine musings. If it was a pick-up approach, she wasn't buying it.

The Dover Bitch
A Criticism of Life: for Andrews Wanning

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.

DWill, thanks. I really like this line:

". . . 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.

Ha ha, what a great pairing these two poems make.

DWill wrote:That was a common Romantic idea, that as children we're closer to nature, more at one with it, and therefore can be said to have more poetic souls at that stage, before culture takes this sense away from us. It's just interesting to look at how outlooks change--from seeing children as little beasts that need taming, to seeing them as more spiritual beings than adults.

So I was reading somewhere (damn, I forget where) about which stage of the lifespan is the most violent. Is it adolescence or young adulthood? No, it's the toddler stage! We need to grow out of violence, we don't grow into it, according to this person.

Not sure about violent toddlers, but then I did have one that bit me. Children as poets; I was not thinking philosophy, but rather pragmatics. To a young child so much of what they experience everyday is novel; the world is all new. Children become enthralled with even the simplest and most mundane things. They have little experience to inform their experiences and a limited vocabulary with which to communicate. I think this combination results in very interesting observations and statements by children: thing A is just like thing B, but the comparison is one an adult would hardly make even thought the child's observation is astute. A child is limited in how they are able to covey an idea or information and so they use everything they've got indiscriminately.

If I were to tell all of the why I am posting this today it would be TMI, but I will try to give some explanation. Poem first, explanation second --

The Broken Sandal

by Denise Levertov

Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke.
Nothing to hold it to my foot.
How shall I walk?
Barefoot?
The sharp stones, the dirt. I would
hobble.
And–
Where was I going?
Where was I going I can't
go to now, unless hurting?
Where am I standing, if I'm
to stand still now?


I will start with what appeals to me about this poem and move into why post today. I like the simple and vivid image of trying to walk with a broken sandal. It is an experience we all have had in one way or another - broken lace, broken heal.... It is funny that something so simple can hang us up - at least temporarily. In the poem Levertov also takes note of our tender footedness or vulnerability; we need some protection to march out into the world without getting too roughed up. Now for why today. Let me just say my sandal is broken. I had issues with my feet both actual and metaphorically all day and I ended up walking in the pouring rain from my car to the house in bare feet trying to avoid the rocks.

My wake up call came far too early, 5 something AM, little soft pawed nudges and gentle kitty kisses on the tip of my nose. Wait, I never asked for a wake up call, I never would on a Sunday. So, bleary, I am at the computer reading poetry. Along comes Margaret Atwood's poem February; is just the one for me today.

February
By Margaret Atwood
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

Great, and how well tailored to your moment. Little fluffy feline has a paw in at least a billion and a half bird deaths each year, according to a new Smithsonian study. As far as why we keep around us these supremely egotistical creatures, and perhaps our own offspring, too, Atwood is right: "it's love that does us in."

Saffron wrote:This is a favorite little song of mine by the band The Decemberists. I wish there was snow to clear away

January Hymn
Colin Meloy

On a winter's Sunday I go
To clear away the snow
And green the ground below

April all an ocean away
Is this a better way to spend the day?
Keeping the winter at bay

What were the words I meant to say
Before you left
When I could see your breath lead
Where you were going to

Maybe I should just let it be
And maybe it will all come back to me
Seeing, oh, January, oh

How I lived a childhood in the snow
And all my teens in tow
Stuffed in strata of clothes

Hail the winter days after dark
Wandering the gray memorial park
A fleeting beating of hearts

What were the words I meant to say
Before she left
When I could see her breath lead
Where she was going to

Maybe I should just let it be
And maybe it will all come back to me
Seeing, oh, Janu...
Oh, January, oh

This post prompted me to buy the album. I've always really liked the Decemberists, but I didn't yet own this particular album. Just listed to January Hymn right this moment. Damned good stuff! Thanks for posting.