After missing two and a half days of work, i spend my morning searching the web for this Wednesday's poem. That's how much i love you all.

You may see that i changed the blog's epigram over there on the left. The new epigram is a verse from Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier," which states one of my main purposes for doing this blog, however arrogant or ironic the epigram might sound.

The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters is a classic of American literature. If this book was not assigned to you in high school, you should call your principal and demand to know why.

i saw Spoon River performed a few years ago at a little theater in L.A., and i also acted one of the parts for an acting class in college. The idea of the book is that each poem is what one of the dead persons in Spoon River's graveyard might say if they were able to talk. It's heavy on irony, but there's a good amount of wry humor, too.

So, to balance the sentiment of the Bob Marley quote on my sidebar, you might find the theme of the following poem from Spoon River useful.

Oaks Tutt

My mother was for womanÂ’s rights
And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.
I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.
When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries
In order to learn how to reform the world.
I traveled through many lands.
I saw the ruins of Rome,
And the ruins of Athens,
And the ruins of Thebes.
And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis.
There I was caught up by wings of flame,
And a voice from heaven said to me:
“Injustice, Untruth destroyed them. Go forth!
Preach Justice! Preach Truth!”
And I hastened back to Spoon River
To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work.
They all saw a strange light in my eye.
And by and by, when I talked, they discovered
What had come in my mind.
Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate
The subject, (I taking the negative):
“Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World.”
And he won the debate by saying at last,
“Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt,
Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate:
‘What is Truth?’”

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Inspired by Ginger and Candace's recent post about their fabulous meeting in the city of New York, i decided to select a poem from my favorite New York poet, Frank O'Hara.

The following is one of O'Hara's best known poems, and it deserves to be. Reading it, one can imagine what it must have been like to be young and hip in the city back in 1959.

"Lady," by the way, is the great jazz singer Billie Holiday, who died on July 17, 1959 at New York's Metropolitan Hospital.

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don't know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
                                        I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

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Lazy schlub that i am, i forgot to do a Poetry Wednesday post. When i realized this too late, i toyed with the idea of just letting it go and hoping my two or three readers didn't notice.

Then this morning, surfing, i came across a lovely poem from 1911 that i just had to share with y'all. So here it is. The poet is Constantine P. Cavafy, an Egyptian born poet who wrote in Greek.

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Posted by: annika at 09:04 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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We don't have cicadas out here in California. At least i've never seen one. But i'm sympathetic to all those people back east who have had to deal with the ugly critters this year.

If you're suffering through the infestation, you may look to the words of the great haiku poet Basho for encouragement.

In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die.

Update: Victor beat me to it (via Zenchick). He's also got some wild and grotesque pictures here, here and here.

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i have been negligent for not posting any poem by my favorite poet on one of these Poetry Wednesdays. Today i will correct that. The following is by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

God's World

O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough!
    Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
    Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
    But never knew I this;
    Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
ThouÂ’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

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In lieu of a poem, and in honor of Cole Porter's birthday today, i present to you the lyrics to my favorite Cole Porter song. You may not have heard these lyrics because the song is more famous as an instrumental. It was band leader Artie Shaw's theme song, i believe.

Begin the Beguine

When they begin the beguine
It brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back a night of tropical splendor,
It brings back a memory ever green.

IÂ’m with you once more under the stars,
And down by the shore an orchestraÂ’s playing
And even the palms seem to be swaying
When they begin the beguine.

To live it again is past all endeavor,
Except when that tune clutches my heart,
And there we are, swearing to love forever,
And promising never, never to part.

What moments divine, what rapture serene,
Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted,
And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted,
I know but too well what they mean;

So donÂ’t let them begin the beguine
Let the love that was once a fire remain an ember;
Let it sleep like the dead desire I only remember
When they begin the beguine.

Oh yes, let them begin the beguine, make them play
Till the stars that were there before return above you,
Till you whisper to me once more,
'Darling, I love you!'
And we suddenly know, what heaven weÂ’re in,
When they begin the beguine

Happy one hundred and thirteenth birthday Cole Porter!

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Today's selection is by the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes.

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

     Go home and write
     a page tonight.
     And let that page come out of you--
     Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

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The ghazal is a thousand year old poetic form, which can follow very strict structural and metric rules. It originated in Persia, but was also used by Hindu and other poets, up to today. The poems usually involve a series of couplets and often explore erotic or sensual themes.

i know very little about the form, except that the great Spanish poet/playwright, Federico García Lorca included a number of poems in his 1934 collection De Divan Del Tamarit, which he labeled Gacelas. Many of the poems don't appear to be true ghazals, since they don't strictly follow a couplet format, although some do.

One poem from De Divan Del Tamarit seems especially apropriate to my own dark mood, given the fearful state of our world as i'm looking at it today. García Lorca called it Gacela de la Muerte Oscura. The following translation is by Catherine Brown:*

Ghazal of Dark Death

I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
far away from the uproar of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who wanted to cut his heart out on the sea.

I don't want to hear that the dead lose no blood,
that the decomposed mouth is still begging for water.
I don't want to find out about the grass-given martyrdoms,
or the snake-mouthed moon that works before dawn.

I want to sleep just a moment,
a moment, a minute, a century.
But let it be known that I have not died:
that there is a stable of gold in my lips,
that I am the West Wind's little friend,
that I am the enormous shadow of my tears.

Wrap me at dawn in a veil,
for she will hurl fistfuls of ants;
sprinkle my shoes with hard water
so her scorpion's sting will slide off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of apples
and learn a lament that will cleanse me of earth;
because I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart out on the sea.

* from Selected Verse: A Bilingual Edition, edited by Christopher Maurer.

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Wednesday being poetry day here, i think the perfectly appropriate selection in light of my current dillema is this one, the most famous poem about dillemas:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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1 Aah! A great one! (Though "Stopping By Woods..." might challenge it for his best known...) Frost -- along with Whitman and Poe -- is my favorite!!!

Posted by: Tuning Spork at April 28, 2004 06:45 PM (QzJ0r)

2 This is my favorite poem of his and have used it as a guide in making many big (and little) decisions.

Posted by: Shae at May 02, 2004 10:12 AM (qRr/q)

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i'm going to try to make Wednesday poetry day here on annika's journal. A great way to start is with my favorite male poet, William Carlos Williams, and a poem relevant to today:

Peace on Earth

The archer is wake!
The Swan is flying!
Gold against blue
An Arrow is lying.
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Bears are abroad!
The Eagle is screaming!
Gold against blue
Their eyes are gleaming!
Sleep!
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Sisters lie
With their arms intertwining;
Gold against blue
Their hair is shining!
The Serpent writhes!
Orion is listening!

Gold against blue
His sword is glistening!
Sleep!
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

Take what you want from that poem; that's what poetry is all about. To me it's a wish that you and i will continue to sleep safe while the battle between good and evil goes on around us, whether we're aware of it or not.

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i thought tonight might be an appropriate night to re-post my one and only baseball related sonnet:

More: The very prolific Scorebard says it in haiku.

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i'm not too crazy about gimmicky poems that look funky on the page. i guess it's the lingering effects of trying to decipher too much e.e. cummings in school. But here's one i found via Ivy is here, which i really like a lot.

Click here to read Sunday Morning from the blog Watermark.

Posted by: annika at 09:21 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 That link to ee cummings is the website for the school district i went to when i lived in arizona... ...but on to something that is actually interesting. I don't much go for those funky looking poems either. so if you bloggers would like to read a poem also called "Sunday Morning" then check out Wallace Stevens, the first 5 lines alone are worth it and quite pertinent to the going's on on this, Good Friday. He writes of "complacencies", etc being used "to dissipate the holy hush of ancient sacrifice." http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2017.html ...annika if you'd still like to read that criticism of Stevens I was writing it's almost done. I'm sure you are waiting with bated breath

Posted by: Scof at April 09, 2004 11:16 AM (XCqS+)

2 i was wondering whether you ever finished that. : )

Posted by: annika at April 09, 2004 11:47 AM (zAOEU)

3 ...yeah i've got about 4 or 5 essays half finished lying around. i could use a live-in drill sergeant for a couple weeks... another good good friday poem, found via NRO today: The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood — Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good. - T. S Eliot's "Four Quartets"

Posted by: Scof at April 09, 2004 11:59 AM (XCqS+)

4 Scof, i just read the NRO article from which you pulled that Eliot quote. The author, Thomas Hibbs, makes a grave error of interpretation regarding The Passion. Did you notice it? Referring to the devil character played by Rosalinda Celentano, he said: "This hooded, feminine-looking figure with a deep, sinister voice floats effortlessly among the Jewish crowd during the sentencing of Jesus, appears just behind the Roman guard overseeing the sadistic scourging of Christ, and then exults at evil's apparent victory at the moment of Christ's death." How did he misinterpret that final scene at Jesus' death? That wasn't exultation, that was despair. i thought it was obvious, the devil was screaming in agony over its defeat at the moment of Christ's death. Only someone who does not understand the gospels could make such a mistake.

Posted by: annika at April 09, 2004 01:10 PM (zAOEU)

5 You're right, he does miss that point. which is the point really. a number of verses make that clear, i.e. john 12:31 I wonder why Hibbs thinks that the devil thought he was winning? as far as that scene in the movie, I'll have to judge for myself this evening and get back to you. I haven't seen the movie yet but am going tonight to watch.

Posted by: Scof at April 09, 2004 01:38 PM (XCqS+)

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William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. In honor of his birthday, here's one of my favorites:

      Daffodils

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
   That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

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Please don't think that i'm turning this into a Brittany Spears bashing site. (It's just that she's such an easy target.) i promise i'll take a break from mentioning her for a while, but i can't not mention this inspired poem by the Big Hominid, about the American Skankwoman.

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A Reflection Upon the Modern Style

Poetry that doesn't rhyme
Is laziness, a waste of time,
A blight upon the landscape that
Would be outlawed if I were King.

And poems that do not scan are worse;
How can they be described as verse?
They have no soul; their tone is flat;
They do not make one cry or sing.

This modern stuff I cannot stand.
It must be banished from the land,
While I lay out the welcome mat
For poetry with rhymes that ring

Down through these hallowed, ancient halls
And far on out beyond these walls,
To man and woman, dog and cat...
I'm out of words that end in ing.

Posted by: annika at 03:36 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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1 Okay team, you know the drill.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 16, 2004 03:41 AM (kOqZ6)

2 Yay!!! Welcome to our world!

Posted by: The Bartender at January 16, 2004 04:12 AM (DXeaE)

3 Let me be the second to say: Yay! Welcome to Munu. Taking over the World since 2003.

Posted by: Simon at January 16, 2004 05:02 AM (FUPxT)

4 WOO HOO!!! I was gonna bring a cake but I, y'know... left it at the store. And I love the poem! A friend of mine once told me: "Hey, you should re-write your song lyrics so that they don't rhyme and then publish them as poems!" I smacked him good. And I just came up with an alternate ending for yers: Down through these hallowed, ancient halls And far on out beyond these walls, The hardest rule to learn is that a poem is not an endless thing. Eh. At least it rhymes...

Posted by: Tuning Spork at January 16, 2004 05:27 AM (msrFi)

5 Yay!!!!!!! (and, finally!)

Posted by: Susie at January 16, 2004 05:33 AM (0+cMc)

6 Maybe I should tell Annika.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 16, 2004 06:52 AM (kOqZ6)

7 Yay! Dang, I was supposed to be second--I helped recruit her!

Posted by: Victor at January 16, 2004 01:16 PM (L3qPK)

8 Yay! I've sent Annika an email to let her know she has a blog here.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 16, 2004 01:48 PM (jtW2s)

9 Wow, i'm going to cry. Thanks everybody. i'm really excited about being a Munuvian. i won't be able to start posting here until the 24th, but that poem will be a nice placeholder for me. Did you write it, Pixy? i love it.

Posted by: annika at January 16, 2004 11:45 PM (zAOEU)

10 Welcome, Annika! hln

Posted by: hln at January 17, 2004 10:12 AM (CWwGn)

11 Good to see ya girl!

Posted by: Cherry at January 19, 2004 01:03 PM (i7dMY)

12 Yay! Annika! Now make one of these goons show ya how to import all your blogger posts into MT. Glad ya finally made the break!

Posted by: Tiger at January 19, 2004 07:36 PM (hvvCY)

13 Yay!

Posted by: LeeAnn at January 20, 2004 08:42 AM (HxCeX)

14 A very belated Yay!

Posted by: Ted at January 20, 2004 10:54 AM (blNMI)

15 Yay! I'm no longer the new guy!

Posted by: StMack at January 22, 2004 11:27 AM (UquFN)

16 thank christ, an RSS feed.

Posted by: glenn at January 22, 2004 11:30 AM (1oqLe)

17 OK, so get back already!

Posted by: Tiger at January 26, 2004 03:45 PM (qWgy0)

18 Heh. It's quiet in here. Too quiet.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 26, 2004 09:21 PM (kOqZ6)

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