Friday, April 01, 2011
"Everybody plays the fool"
As the song says. "No exceptions to the rule".
And there's the old saying, "even Homer nods".
But I was very surprised in a library some years ago to see that the editors of Pegasus Descending: A Book of the Best Bad Verse had thought to include in that anthology Emily Dickinson's Poem #566-"A Dying Tiger--moaned for Drink--", which I find to be very powerful, and believe to be oft-acclaimed.
It's of course because of line five--"His Mighty Balls--in death were thick--". Anyone familiar with Dickinson's diction knows she is referring to "EYEballs", but yes, the line is rather funny, if one wants to make an issue of it.
If one bad line is sufficient to whisk an excellent poem away into the bad, bad, bad category, I wonder if William Blake's pithy wise notebook poem "Never pain to tell thy Love" will ever be fated for inclusion in such a collection:
Never pain to tell thy Love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently invisibly
I told my love I told my love
I told her all my heart
Trembling cold in ghastly fears
Ah she doth depart
Soon as she was gone from me
A traveler came by
Silently invisibly
O was no deny
We know very well what he means by it, but the last line is excruciatingly clumsy, is it not? The excuse for W.B.'s line might be: it's not something published, it's just something in a notebook. The excuse for E.D.'s, of course, is that she likely wasn't aware of such slang as "balls" meaning testicles. Or that you should leave your dirty mind out of it as you read what she wrote about her Tyger's eyes extinguished.
________________
NOTE: Pegasus Descending was edited by the odd triumvarate of James Camp, X.J. Kennedy, and Keith Waldrop. I don't know who Camp is, but Kennedy and Waldrop are very different figures.
And there's the old saying, "even Homer nods".
But I was very surprised in a library some years ago to see that the editors of Pegasus Descending: A Book of the Best Bad Verse had thought to include in that anthology Emily Dickinson's Poem #566-"A Dying Tiger--moaned for Drink--", which I find to be very powerful, and believe to be oft-acclaimed.
It's of course because of line five--"His Mighty Balls--in death were thick--". Anyone familiar with Dickinson's diction knows she is referring to "EYEballs", but yes, the line is rather funny, if one wants to make an issue of it.
If one bad line is sufficient to whisk an excellent poem away into the bad, bad, bad category, I wonder if William Blake's pithy wise notebook poem "Never pain to tell thy Love" will ever be fated for inclusion in such a collection:
Never pain to tell thy Love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently invisibly
I told my love I told my love
I told her all my heart
Trembling cold in ghastly fears
Ah she doth depart
Soon as she was gone from me
A traveler came by
Silently invisibly
O was no deny
We know very well what he means by it, but the last line is excruciatingly clumsy, is it not? The excuse for W.B.'s line might be: it's not something published, it's just something in a notebook. The excuse for E.D.'s, of course, is that she likely wasn't aware of such slang as "balls" meaning testicles. Or that you should leave your dirty mind out of it as you read what she wrote about her Tyger's eyes extinguished.
________________
NOTE: Pegasus Descending was edited by the odd triumvarate of James Camp, X.J. Kennedy, and Keith Waldrop. I don't know who Camp is, but Kennedy and Waldrop are very different figures.
Labels: anthologies, Blake, Dickinson, evaluation of poetry
Thursday, August 05, 2010
corollaries from heck
"Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you" wrote William Blake in the Proverbs of Hell section of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. These days, very many people, some of whom are not necessarily all that base, will avoid the person who has that readiness.
Ian Keenan once told me that I was a "classic New Yorker" because often I don't shrink from saying exactly what I think. A lot of good that did me in 80s/90s/00s Manhattan and Queens!
Ian Keenan once told me that I was a "classic New Yorker" because often I don't shrink from saying exactly what I think. A lot of good that did me in 80s/90s/00s Manhattan and Queens!
Labels: Blake, Ian Keenan, mordant observations, New York City
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
poem for the new year
This being the Jewish High Holiday season--Rosh Hashanah, the New Year (literally "Head of the Year") having been last week, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, beginning this very evening, I thought it would be nice to post my most Biblical poem, written in 1984, and later published in John (Jack) Clarke's poetry journal intent., which was fitting, because it is also the most Clarkean poem I ever wrote.
Beginning with yesterday's first imagining of this post, I wanted some sort of title such as the one I have finally chosen, "poem for the new year". When I finally laid my hands on a copy of the poem (I couldn't find one in my apartment, nor my copy of the appropriate issue of intent., so I had to go to my Safe Deposit Box at the Dime Savings Bank for the copies secured there), it was a charming surprise to be reminded by the date at the bottom of the poem that it was written very close to the start of a New Year as in January.
I am probably not telling the reader anything that she or he does not already know, but allow me to point out that "minyan" refers to the quorom of ten men that traditionally is needed to conduct a Jewish prayer service, and here connects with the Biblical narrative of Abraham pleading with The Lord to save the two condemned cities if there are ten worthy people there. "Intellectual tears" evokes Blake's lines from "The Grey Monk": "For a Tear is an intellectual thing,/And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King".
Lot's Wife Turns to the Lot of the City
Murderous fire and sulfer from the skies
not deflected by the force of enough
satisfactory citizens forming a minyan
as minimum constellation to
serve as shield of wonderful light for
the city's living flesh against
the knuckles of judging flame
the lucky woman couldn't take in her
stride, so halted,
turned to witness, with body and heart
bleeding as instantly she
solidified to
bitter intellectual tears standing
firm as eternal
saving saline
mercy of all
health and preservation.
2 January 1984
Beginning with yesterday's first imagining of this post, I wanted some sort of title such as the one I have finally chosen, "poem for the new year". When I finally laid my hands on a copy of the poem (I couldn't find one in my apartment, nor my copy of the appropriate issue of intent., so I had to go to my Safe Deposit Box at the Dime Savings Bank for the copies secured there), it was a charming surprise to be reminded by the date at the bottom of the poem that it was written very close to the start of a New Year as in January.
I am probably not telling the reader anything that she or he does not already know, but allow me to point out that "minyan" refers to the quorom of ten men that traditionally is needed to conduct a Jewish prayer service, and here connects with the Biblical narrative of Abraham pleading with The Lord to save the two condemned cities if there are ten worthy people there. "Intellectual tears" evokes Blake's lines from "The Grey Monk": "For a Tear is an intellectual thing,/And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King".
Lot's Wife Turns to the Lot of the City
Murderous fire and sulfer from the skies
not deflected by the force of enough
satisfactory citizens forming a minyan
as minimum constellation to
serve as shield of wonderful light for
the city's living flesh against
the knuckles of judging flame
the lucky woman couldn't take in her
stride, so halted,
turned to witness, with body and heart
bleeding as instantly she
solidified to
bitter intellectual tears standing
firm as eternal
saving saline
mercy of all
health and preservation.
2 January 1984
Labels: Blake, Hebrew Bible, Jewishness, John Clarke, my own poems
