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Halloween Verse

From Edgar Allan Poe’s “Spirits of the Dead”:

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness — for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall overshadow thee; be still.

William Logan Strikes Again

I tell you, I love William Logan’s criticism. Here’s an essay from the Poetry Foundation. But I’ll forego discussing Logan or his essay here. Rather, his passion for Hart Crane is one that I share, though I’m probably more blind to Crane’s faults than Logan is. In the essay, Logan mentions that a revised version of it for book form includes some lines from Crane’s “Voyages III,” which is a particular favorite of mine.

Infinite consanguinity it bears –
This tendered theme of you that light
Retrieves from sea plains where the sky
Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones;
While ribboned water lanes I wind
Are laved and scattered with no stroke
Wide from your side, whereto this hour
The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.

And so, admitted through black swollen gates
That must arrest all distance otherwise, –
Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,
Light wrestling there incessantly with light,
Star kissing star through wave on wave unto
Your body rocking!
and where death, if shed,

Presumes no carnage, but this single change, –
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn
The silken skilled transmemberment of song;

Permit me voyage, love, into your hands…

This poem illustrates so much of what Logan comments about: the love/hate relationship people have with this poet. This is a poet drunk on words and romanticism. And I happen to find it startling beautiful. Some of Crane’s lines and images make no sense, but then, sometimes he just did not seem to be going for sense on anything like what we consider “sense.” One of Crane’s extended letters to Harriet Monroe at Poetry discusses his “Logic of the Metaphor,” where he argues that language, imagery, and metaphor can take illogical constructions and be “sensible” to the reader. It is a concept that I do agree with.

A Question of Process

When I first began writing poems years ago, I wrote a great many poems. It seemed as if one or two were completed a day (this isn’t accurate, but that’s what it felt like; a more reasonable “completion” rate was probably a couple a week). I’ve always been a reviser. Many of my poems start out terribly, but through gradual re-workings I refine the the language, work to create a good poem (so I think). Over the years, though, the number of poems I complete have dropped significantly. No longer do I “complete” a couple of poems a week. In 2008, I’ll be luck if there are a couple of poems that I began writing in 2008 that seem even remotely acceptable as poems.

This can be appallingly frustrating as a writer…at least for me. The job I do every day has to do with meeting deadlines and getting a quantity of books done in a specified time. If you asked me to write poems like that, I would be fired for lack of productivity. I’m hardwired to see the value of productivity. Thus, for me, it is always a challenge to see only a couple of poems a year “finished,” for I often see this as a sign that I’m not getting done what I need to get done. The reality is, I’ve started a great many poems in 2008. Only a very few have proceeded rapidly enough (i.e., through multiple drafts) for me to feel that I’ve made progress in 2008. The other reality is that I’ll be working on many of these in 2009, just as I was working on poems begun in 2007 in 2008.

Quantity is no measure of quality (just compare Philip Larkin’s collected poems to W.H. Auden’s – note, I think Auden’s great poems are greater than Larkin’s, but there’s not much in Larkin’s collected poems that seem “lesser” poems; most poems beyond the 1940s for Auden are forgettable at best). Every writer finds their own motivations, fears, etc. My fear is that I won’t write any more poems worthy of being called poetry. But this is a fear that only creeps up during “non-productive” times. My motivations are a need to write and a desire to communicate and play with language. In the end, I tend to perfectionism in my poems, which is what slows me down as a writer – revision after revision. Most of the time I’m comfortable with this because I’m working on honing the content, striving for the highest quality I can achieve. Some times, though, it really gets to me because it seems that I am accomplishing very little. Fortunately, this is rare, and when it happens, I focus in on a couple of lyric poems until I can get them to acceptable stages. This seems to overcome the sense of “not getting something done.” Every poet strives to achieve the “perfect” poem; we just go about it in endless ways.

William Hazlitt

In some recent correspondence, Jared Carter mentioned to me his high opinion of William Hazlitt, the early 19th-century English critic. I had heard of Hazlitt, but I had not read anything of his works. So this past weekend I began reading “Lectures on the English Poets,” which you can find at Project Gutenberg. Very quickly, I realized that Hazlitt has something at the very least to say to me:

Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of men; for nothing but what so come home to them in the most general and intelligible shape, can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for any thing else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment, (as some persons have been led to imagine) the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours – it has been the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with like endings: but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of a flower that “spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun,” – there is poetry, in its birth.

I find this passage striking, because it coincides with one of my central beliefs about poetry and one that I believe I have commented on this blog before (if not, then I meant to). Hazlitt continues on to discuss how poetry encompasses human experience, that poetry is what makes us aware of our humanity. He also contrasts it with figurative art, which strives (at least to his time) to represent, while poetry strives to represent and reveal. I would not limit figurative art to only representation (Hazlitt did not live to see the continuing trends in art, nor does he seem to grant much status to Orthodox icons), but he makes his point essentially.

To me, poetry is common around us. I’ve often thought that poetry appears in as mundane a thing as a TV commercial. Let’s just take a car commercial. Just last night, I saw one that had the vehicle driving across a broad plane with flat-top hills at the edge and grassy fields. Some shots were sunset or dawn, some seemed like a bright yet cool autumn afternoon. These images, the music in the background, all of this appealed to our concept of beauty, our notions about ourselves within that framed world provided by the commercial, our aspirations for ourselves, etc. Obviously, the commercial maker was appealing to us about our sense of worth, our values, brushing our ego, etc., but that’s not to say that’s not poetry. This commercial provided a context in which to see ourselves (or myself in this case) from afar, which necessarily forced me – even briefly – to reflect on my reasoning for being on this planet. This may sound way too “grand” for a commercial, and in the end it is, but my point is that these briefly tapped feelings and thoughts “lifted” me to observe the human context, and this something that the best poetry does.

W.H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts” is one of those poems. Its last lines penetrating into something about us, that forces us to recognize our ability to disregard even the most spectacular of happenings:

…and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Or George Seferis’s third poem in Mythistorema (and quoted during the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics), whose opening line charts the mystery of living and sets up the poem to reflect on history and our “place” in history:

I woke with this marble head in my hands

Notes from a Vacation to Remember: Part 5 (The Finale)

Day 8: Chicago to Indianapolis

One of the really interesting observations I have about our entire vacation happened at the end of Day 7 and continued into Day 8. The four of us, Gina, Fern, Karen, and I essentially created a community. Obviously, Gina and I know each other, but Karen and Fern were strangers to each other and to us. Yet, placed into a stressful situation, we teamed together and found a common goal: Get home. We trusted each other without much questioning. Karen and Fern had both not suffered the mishaps of late planes or trains and the consequent reluctance of the airline or train company to really assist or overcome their roadblocks. In some sense, this situation mimicked so much philosophical discussions about the formation of societies, its rules, and so on. We four were tossed in this situation and worked together toward a goal. I’m still amazed by the implicit trust that occurred.

Anyways, after a night in a hotel in Chicago, we planned a route south to avoid the flooded highways. Fern’s stop was in Lafayette, which is north of Indy. We rented a car and needed to take a taxi to the airport to pick it up. You would think that most taxi drivers would know where the car rental facilities are near an airport, especially in a city the size of Chicago. Not so for us.  I had to guide the taxi driver to the airport’s car rental areas. Even then, figuring out how to get into the lots were exceedingly difficult (though Gina saw the entrance right off the bat). Finally with our rental car, we drove south in Illinois before finding a state highway and cutting over to Indiana. We dropped Fern off in Lafayette and then drove to the south side of Indy to drop Karen off (her daughter picked her up there). Then…we went back home and picked up our Riley and Kennedy from the kennel. Home at last.

Posthumous Keats

I just recently finished Stanley Plumly’s Posthumous Keats, which was quite a good read. The book is part biography, part memoir, part literary criticism. Specifically, the book covers the last 18 months of Keats’s life and beyond, the moment from his first hemorrhage to final days in Rome. Each chapter covers in detail an aspect of Keats’s posthumous existence. For example, the first chapter deals with the epitaph on Keats’s tomb in the protestant cemetery in Rome. Keats wanted only “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” But Joseph Severn and Charles Brown (the former nursed Keats in his final illness in Rome, the latter was a close friend who was with Keats at the time of his first hemorrhage) modified and altered Keats’s original epitaph to today’s version:

This Grave
contains all that was mortal
of
YOUNG ENGLISH POET
who
on his Death Bed
in the Bitterness of his Heart
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies
Desired
these words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone

“Here lies One
whose name was writ in Water.”

Feb 24^th 1821

What Plumly reveals is the whole context for this modification, how the modifications represent more the desires and assumptions of Severn and Brown than Keats, how these sentiments fed and made legendary the common assumption that Keats was killed by the harsh critical response to his poetry.

Here in 2008 to fathom that Keats has not always been among the “immortals” of poetry is nearly impossible. For three-quarters of a century, Keats remained obscure, that “poor poet Keats.” Interestingly, Keats thought he was a poet to be forgotten because he had never completed a masterpiece of epic poetry in the vein of the Homer, Dante, and so on. He viewed his odes, which we consider his masterworks, but forgettable poems. His longer poems (e.g., “The Eve of St. Agnes”) were higher up the rung. But his Endymion, Hyperion, and The Fall of Hyperion were not successes, in his eyes.

When I first read the Romantics, Shelley was my idol. I labored over his poems, sought ever delight from them. Shelley was the Romantic poet. Keats was of interest, but not so inspiring. But slowly my view changed. Keats has become the premier Romantic poet. Shelley spoke to the public, railed against injustice, reflected on our purpose within society and to each other. Keats, however, speaks to himself and by doing so speaks to us as individuals. He does not care to comment on freedom or coercive state power; rather, he wishes to contemplate the nature of beauty before him or the impression of a translation of Homer. Keats achieves through this a greater connection to us than Shelley, though a great poet, can in the end only achieve less frequently and on a smaller scale. Keats is of the imagination; Shelley is of the society.

But back to Plumly’s book. Other chapters contemplate the various drawings and paintings of Keats (Severn’s, Brown’s, and Haydon’s in particular) or the progression of tuberculosis and how it was viewed by the medicine of the day. This book is enjoyable, insightful, and surprising. If you are interested in a fresh review of Keats’s work and life and the value of his poetry and the nature of an artist’s search for immortality, give this book a read.

****

One final comment: Plumly quotes what is essentially Keats’s last will and testament (in a letter to Brown):

In case of my death this scrap of paper may be serviceable in your possession.

All my estate real and personal consists in the hope of the sale of books publish’d and unpublish’d. Now I wish Brown and you to be the first paid Creditors . . . but in case it should shower pay my Taylor the few pounds I owe him.

My Chest of Books divide among my friends –

Plumly writes, “This modest declaration says all that needs to be said about ultimate value. A writer is the words. All that Keats is or will ever be is his poems, a fact of life he is all too well aware of.”

Notes from a Vacation to Remember: Part 4

Days 5-7: Seattle-Chicago

So this is the day we take the Empire Builder back. But first…and this is an important first, we must have some of the Pacific Northwest’s offerings of oysters. So a visit to a local yarn store (very cute, open, airy, with a sweet dog) and then to Elliott’s Oyster House on Puget Sounds. Scrumptious. Delicious.

Once we board the train (early evening), we learn that the attendant on the train is serving two cars. Which is all fine and well, but he will complain about this task over and over and over through the next three days. Your paying passengers are not the ones to complain to. Needless to say, we hardly see the man the next few days. The toilets are not cleaned often, the towels for the shower are scarce, etc. In line with this, we are on the first floor of the train, which has a family room – basically, a roomette with an additional two smaller beds for children. A couple and their two children hunker down in there. Well…if only they had hunkered down. One of the children was perhaps 2 and the other was 9-10 months. Never in my life have I heard such non-stop crying and screaming. Lest you think I am exaggerating, note that from the hours of ~7:00 am to ~9:30 pm it was literally non-stop. One would cry. Then the other would scream. And every time we were in the dining car, they four would be there too. AH!

The trip home is much less to remember and cannot go fast enough. We learn just outside of Minneapolis that we are being detoured due to track repairs (conducted by the freightlines that actually own the tracks that Amtrak leases travel time on). Those passengers with stops between Minneapolis and Chicago will be bused to their stops. The train veers sharply south along the Mississippi River. Several times it needs to divert to the siderails to let the freight trains have their right away. At one point, our attendant opens the door windows to let the smokers get their fix. They’ve not had their regularly scheduled stops where they can step out to smoke because this train is non-smoking. As a former smoker, I understand the inconvenience, but none of us like this detour and all have to put up with the consequences. And, well, the smoke didn’t all go out the window and some people, Gina, are extremely sensitive to it. The attendant lost his tip with that inconsiderate move.

We arrive in Chicago 2 hours late and miss our connection. Amtrak is utterly confused and disorganized in trying to get people where they need to go. No signs. No Amtrak employees out helping their passengers understand what it is they need to do or where to go or what to watch out for. We eventually team up with two other passengers, Fern and Karen, who were taking the train south to Indy. Finally, Amtrak tells us that they cannot get a bus to drive us because of severe flooding (parts of I-65, I-80, etc., are closed). They can put us up in a hotel and we can leave on the train for Indianapolis the next evening. Problem is…that won’t do. We have to get back earlier than 11:55 PM the following night. They won’t refund our tickets, they won’t provide a rental car, etc., etc. So…we say we aren’t refunding our tickets, so they put us up for the night. Gina, Fern, Karen, and I agree to rent a car the next day and drive to our destinations. Forget the train. Man…it was time to sleep.

Portrait of a Woman Brushing Her Hair and Other Poems