larryhammer | Entries tagged with meme

For Poetry Monday:

Of the Shining Underlife, Carl Phillips

Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.

Then they’re branches again—hickory, I think.

—It’s not too late, then.

First published in the July/August 2020 issue of Poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from Running Scared, Roy Orbison.

For Poetry Monday, another bit of Japonisme:

On Seeing the Daibutsu, Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Long have I searched, Cathedral, shrine, and hall,
To find a symbol, from the hand of art,
That gave the full expression (not a part)
Of that ecstatic peace which follows all
Life’s pain and passion. Strange it should befall
This outer emblem of the inner heart
Was waiting far beyond the great world’s mart—
Immortal answer, to the mortal call.

Unknown the artist, vaguely known his creed:
But the bronze wonder of his work sufficed
To lift me to the heights his faith had trod.
For one rich moment, opulent indeed,
I walked with Krishna, Buddha, and the Christ,
And felt the full serenity of God.

Wilcox (1850-1919) was an extremely popular American poet with, shall we say, a mixed critical reception. She visited Japan in 1911. This is from her collection Picked Poems (1912), and is about the same statue as Kipling’s Buddha at Kamakura.

---L.

Subject quote from The Sign, Ace of Base.

For Poetry Monday, more Japonisme from another early Modernist:

Muramadzu, Arthur Davison Ficke

A mouldering Buddha sits as warden
Beside the ruined mossy gate.
He must be rash, or strong with fate,
Who mounts unbidden to this garden.

The pine and cypress intertwining
Cover the lotus-pool with shade.
But where the ancient graves are laid,
A dreamy veil of sun is shining.

I do not know what shapes are here,
Nor why the sun so strangely shines ....
It is a place of ruined shrines ....
The distant wind is all I hear ....

What secret makes this place beguiling
I know not; nor what visions lost
Stir like a frail forgotten ghost
While Buddha’s lips are faintly smiling.

Fiske is better remembered as a Western authority on ukiyo-e prints than as a poet. This first appeared in a 1907 collection, in a section of poems written while on an around the world tour that included his first visit to Japan. No one has been able to explain the title.

—L.

Subject quote from Superstition, Stevie Wonder.

For Poetry Monday, after an influencer of Pound, Pound himself—at least in part:

The Sole Survivor, Rai San’yō, tr. Ezra Pound

A force cut off
Fighting hard,
Shut around.

I burst the bonds,
I alone,
I returned,

Fleeing by night
Through the crags of the border.

My sword is broken,
My horse fallen.
The hero drags his corpse to his native mountains.

Rai (1780-1832) was an Edo-period historian and poet. In November 1915, Pound attended a London performance of sword dances by Itō Michio (1892-1961), some of which were accompanied by songs sung by Uchiyama Masami (I can’t find good dates on this guy), one of them being this. This translation (made with Uchiyama’s assistance, credited as “from notes by”) was first published in the Dec 1916 issue of Future without naming the author. The original title was “Kogun Funto,” which more literally means “exhausted warrior,” and the original form was a single four-line stanza.

—L.

Subject quote from Anti-Hero, Taylor Swift.

For Poetry Monday:

Kyoto, Yone Noguchi

Mist-born Kyoto, the city of scent and prayer,
Like a dream half-fading, she lingers on:
The oldest song of a forgotten pagoda bell
Is the Kamo river’s twilight song.

The girls, half whisper and half love,
As old as a straying moon beam,
Flutter on the streets gods built,
Lightly carrying Spring and passion.

“Stop a while with me,” I said.
They turned their powdered necks. How delicious!
“No, thank you, some other time,” they replied.
Oh, such a smile like the breath of a rose!

Noguchi Yonejirō, who wrote in English as Yone Noguchi, was a Japanese writer in both English and Japanese, and his poetry and essays from, especially, the first two decades of the 20th century were influential on both Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats. This poem was published in 1908, shortly after he returned to Japan after living in the United States for over a decade.

---L.

Subject quote from Creep, Radiohead. (bonus PMJ cover)

For Poetry Monday, one more late Shelly:

“The flower that smiles to-day,” Percy Shelley

The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world’s delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.

Virtue, how frail it is!
Friendship how rare!
Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!
But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all
Which ours we call.

Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou—and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep.

Another poem written in the last year of his life and published posthumously with an editorial title, though this time the title Mary supplied was “Mutability.” It’s common to point out, for context, that Percy and Mary lost three children in early childhood. Like many of his shorter lyrics, it’s been set to music several times.

He nails that dismount.

---L.

Subject quote from Anti-Hero, Taylor Swift.

For Poetry Monday, might as well get in a posthumously published short from the third of the three great 2nd Gen Romantics:

“This living hand, now warm and capable,” John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

Written in November 1819 beneath the draft of stanza 51 of The Cap and Bells; or, The Jealousies: A Faery Tale (final title still TBD when he abandoned it after almost 800 lines) and first published in an 1898 edition of his collected poetry. The initial romantic-with-a-small-r interpretation was that this was a complete poem addressed to his fiancée, Fanny Brawne, but current consensus is that it’s a fragment he jotted to reuse in a later work, possibly a drama. What is certain is that it was written around the time he recognized undeniable symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him (as it already had his mother and youngest brother) fifteen months later.

---L.

Subject quote from Pictures of You, The Cure. Which, yes, plays into the Great Romantic Myth of Keats, but tonally fits the poem.

For Poetry Monday, another posthumously published short from a 2nd Gen Romantic:

“Music, when soft voices die,” Percy Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Written in 1821 but not published until the 1824 Posthumous Poems edited by Mary Shelley and Leigh Hunt, under the title “To ——”. To be fair to the editors, Shelley used that title for a couple other enigmatic love lyrics also not written to Mary.

---L.

Subject quote from Zeur niet!, Annie M. G. Schmidt, tr. de_eekhoorn.

For Poetry Monday:

“We’ll go no more a-roving,” Lord Byron

So, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

Written 1817 when Byron was 29, while recovering from his first Carnival season in Venice, in a letter sent to Thomas Moore. It remained unpublished until Moore, as Byron’s literary executor, published Letters and Journals of Lord Byron in 1830, after which it was added to editions of Byron’s collected poems. Its refrain is adapted from “The Jolly Beggar,” a traditional Scottish song (Byron’s mother was a Scot). (TIL current Baron Byron, the 13th of that office, published a novel in 2021, the first Baron Byron to publish a book since The Byron.)

---L.

Subject quote from Every Little Bit, Patty Griffin.

For Poetry Monday:

Epitaph for a Tyrant, W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Written 1939.

---L.

Subject quote from Época, Gotan Project.

I totally forgot to post this yesterday, which is possibly indicative of … something. So here, have it for Poetry Tuesday instead:

what if a much of a which of a wind, e. e. cummings

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives truth to the summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t:blow death to was)
—all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die,the more we live

---L.

Subject quote from On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble, A. E. Housman.

For Poetry Monday, another short poem from another language, this time with my translation:

Inscribed in the Temple of Mulan, Du Mu

I bend my bow in battle, serving as a man—
Within my dreams, as formerly, I paint my brows.
I often long for home, yet raise my cup at banquets.
Upon Fuyundui’s shrine, I pray to Wang Zhaojun.

题木兰庙
弯弓征战作男儿，
梦里曾经与画眉。
几度思归还把酒，
拂云堆上祝明妃。

Yes, this is the Mulan you all know, and yes, a temple to her—southern China has many Mt. Mulans, literally “magnolia mountain,” and when her legend spread in the 5th and 6th centuries, those with Daoist temple complexes started dedicating one of their temples to her worship. (One in Wuhan, founded before 700, can still be visited.) Du Mu (803-852) was a late Tang poet from the same Du clan as Du Fu, though they weren’t closely related. According to his biographies, this temple was near the Hubei-Henan border.

The speaker is Mulan during her army service on the northern steppes. Fuyundui is a pass near Baotou, Inner Mongolia, on the north bank of the Ordos Loop of the Yellow River, where Xiongnu and other steppe nomads would pray before raiding south into Han lands—just as Mulan wants to return south herself. Wang Zhaojun was sent by Han Emperor Yuan (so a few centuries before Mulan’s supposed time) to make a diplomatic marriage to the Chanyu of the Xiongnu Empire, and after his death was not allowed to return—making her another woman who went north in service of the empire and longed to go home. A lot of resonance in just one line.

Index of Chinese translations

---L.

Subject quote from Ticket to Ride, The Beatles.

For Poetry Monday, another short one in another language, this time in multiple translations:

Greek Anthology 7.718, Nossis

original:
Ὦ ξεῖν᾿, εἰ τύ γε πλεῖς ποτὶ καλλίχορον Μυτιλάναν,
τὰν Σαπφὼ χαρίτων ἄνθος ἐναυσαμέναν,
εἰπεῖν, ὡς Μούσαισι φίλαν τήνᾳ τε Λοκρὶς γᾶ
τίκτεν ἴσαν ὅτι θ᾿ οἱ τοὔνομα Νοσσίς· ἴθι.

unsigned translation from Sententiae Antiquae:
Stranger, if you sail to the city of beautiful dances, Mytilene,
The city which fed Sappho, the the Graces’ flower,
Tell them that the land of Lokris bore for the Muses
A woman her equal, by the name of Nossis. Go!

uncredited translation from Locriantica:
Stranger, if you sail to Mitylene, land of beautiful dances,
to catch there the most out of Sappho’s graces,
tell that I was loved by the Muses, and that the Locrian land bore me.
My name, remember, is Nossis. Now go!

translation by Natoli, Pitts, & Hallett:
Wayfarer, if you sail to Mitylene, city of beautiful choral dances,
to draw inspiration from the bloom of Sappho’s graces,
say that the Locrian earth bore me,
dear to the Muses and to her. Having learned that my name is Nossis, go.

Flexing is old, old school (as is dissing). Nossis (fl. c. 300 BCE) was from Epizephyrian Locris, a Greek colony in southern Italy, modern Locri, and was well known enough to be named one of the “nine earthly muses” i.e. best poetesses by Antipater of Thessalonica in the late 1st century BCE (along with, yes, Sappho). A dozen of her epigrams have survived, all in the Greek Anthology. I don’t have enough Greek (or indeed any) to tell whether that “woman her equal,” missing from the other two, is a defensible reading.

---L.

Subject quote from Lethal Woman, Dove Cameron.

For poetry Monday:

“Aren’t you who you once were?,” Shun’e, tr. Thomas McAuley

Aren’t you who you once were?
Aren’t I who I was then?
How strange that
All we trusted in
Has changed.

kimi ya aranu / wa ga mi ya aranu / obotsukana / tanomeshi koto no / mina kawarinuru

君やあらぬ我が身やあらぬおぼつかなたのめしことのみなかはりぬる

Shun’e (1113-c.1191) was a Heian nobleman (from the Minamoto clan), Buddhist priest (his lay personal name is not recorded), and poet (I translated one of his in One Hundred People, One Poem Each). This is from a poetry competition, and won its round, in part because it’s a deliberate echo of a poem by Ariwara no Narihira (which I’ve also translated).

---L.

Subject quote from Hello, Adele.

For Poetry Monday:

Celia Celia, Adrian Mitchell

When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on

High Holborn is a street in central London (TIL the bourn in the name is probably the former River Fleet). My first reaction was to compare this not with any of several possible Ben Jonson callbacks, but Simon & Garfunkel, despite the name not actually being right.

---L.

Subject quote from Once I Loved A Maiden Fair, aka The Revolted Lover (alt source), Anonymous balladeer. The version quoted is from chapter 1 of The Girls of the Hamlet Club by Elsie J. Oxenham (1914).

For Poetry Monday, another Auden:

In Time of War XIV, W.H. Auden

Yes, we are going to suffer, now; the sky
Throbs like a feverish forehead; pain is real;
The groping searchlights suddenly reveal
The little natures that will make us cry,

Who never quite believed they could exist,
Not where we were. They take us by surprise
Like ugly long-forgotten memories,
And like a conscience all the guns resist.

Behind each sociable home-loving eye
The private massacres are taking place;
All Women, Jews, the Rich, the Human Race.

The mountains cannot judge us when we lie:
We dwell upon the earth; the earth obeys
The intelligent and evil till they die.

Part of a sonnet cycle written for a travel book, Journey to a War (1939) by Auden and Christopher Isherwood, in which they documented the conditions at the front of the Sino-Japanese War. This was not his first poem about a war he observed first-hand (see “Spain 1936”) nor his first collaborative travel book (see Letters from Iceland), but the cycle as a whole is possibly his best work from the 1930s. He extensively revised the cycle when he started including it in his collections (and dropped the verse commentary appended in Journey), but this is from the original version.

---L.

Subject quote from Not Alone, Patty Griffin.

For Poetry Monday:

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Sometimes known as “Funeral Blues,” this started as a satirical blues song for the play The Ascent of F6 (1936) by Auden and Christopher Isherwood, with music by Benjamin Britten. During its initial run it was sung by Hedli Anderson plus a chorus, and at her request Auden rewrote the lyrics into a solo cabaret song that she performed (with revised music by Britten) until she retired from the stage. Auden published this revision as an independent poem dated April 1936, and he continued tweaking it throughout his life—this is his final version from the posthumous Collected Poems, where it is part IX of “Twelve Songs.” Some of you may know it as a funeral reading in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

---L.

Subject quote from God, Tori Amos.

For Poetry Monday:

“The night is darkening round me,” Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Chosen for tonal affinities with last week.

---L.

Subject quote from Not Alone, Patty Griffin.

For Poetry Monday, one last one from A Shropshire Lad:

“From far, from eve and morning,” A.E. Housman

From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.

Now—for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart—
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.

Tonally very different from last week’s, though it’s another that’s influential on SFF—both Zelezny and Le Guin, among others, took titles from it. This has always given me vibes of Ariel from The Tempest.

---L.

Subject quote from Better Days, Goo Goo Dolls.

For Poetry Monday, while I could start another Kipling pong to a Housman ping, let’s instead boing off Housman himself:

Poem, after A. E. Housman, Hugh Kingsmill

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean, upstanding chap like you!
Sure, if your throat ’tis hard to slit,
Slit your girl’s, and swing for it.

Like enough, you won’t be glad
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon’s not the only thing
That’s cured by hanging from a string.

So, when the spilt ink of the night
Spreads o’er the blotting-pad of light
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives, and think of you.

Housman claimed this was the best and indeed only good parody of himself he’d seen.

---L.

Subject quote from Pepper, Butthole Surfers.

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“all at once he was standing there / so sure of himself his head in the air / my heart was breaking”
“no one’s gonna drag you up / to get into the light where you belong / but where do you belong?”
“when you believe in things that you don’t understand then you suffer / superstition ain’t the way”
“slowly lurching toward your favorite city / pierced through the heart but never killed”
“i want you to notice when im not around/youre so fuckin special wish i was special/but im a creep”
“one day i’ll watch as you’re leaving / and life will lose all its meaning / for the last time”
“you were stone white, so delicate, lost in the cold / you were always so lost in the dark”
“when your husband’s on the pier with some young lady / when the spirit of conjugal love is fading”
“funny how morning turns a love to shame/ disguised and disfigured/ you thought i tasted like rain”
“si desapareció / en mí aparecerá / creyeron que murió / pero renacerá”
“Through him the gale of life blew high; / The tree of man was never quiet”
“i think it’s today / the girl that’s drivin’ me mad / is goin’ away / she’s got a ticket to ride”
“she walks like a saint floats like an angel / sharp like a knife under the table”
“i’m sorry for breaking your heart/ but it don’t matter it clearly doesn’t tear you apart/ anymore”
“Love is sore temptation. / Who will say but maidens may / Kiss for recreation?”
“it was good to be alive/but sometimes that can slip away as fast/as any fingers through your hands”
“god sometimes you just don’t come through / do you need a woman to look after you?”
“you are not alone / laying in the light / put out the fire in your head / and lay with me tonight”
“’cause i don’t need boxes wrapped in strings/ and desire and love and empty things/ just a chance”
“they were all in love with dyin’ / and they were doing it in texas”

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“all at once he was standing there / so sure of himself his head in the air / my heart was breaking”

“no one’s gonna drag you up / to get into the light where you belong / but where do you belong?”

“when you believe in things that you don’t understand then you suffer / superstition ain’t the way”

“slowly lurching toward your favorite city / pierced through the heart but never killed”

“i want you to notice when im not around/youre so fuckin special wish i was special/but im a creep”

“one day i’ll watch as you’re leaving / and life will lose all its meaning / for the last time”

“you were stone white, so delicate, lost in the cold / you were always so lost in the dark”

“when your husband’s on the pier with some young lady / when the spirit of conjugal love is fading”

“funny how morning turns a love to shame/ disguised and disfigured/ you thought i tasted like rain”

“si desapareció / en mí aparecerá / creyeron que murió / pero renacerá”

“Through him the gale of life blew high; / The tree of man was never quiet”

“i think it’s today / the girl that’s drivin’ me mad / is goin’ away / she’s got a ticket to ride”

“she walks like a saint floats like an angel / sharp like a knife under the table”

“i’m sorry for breaking your heart/ but it don’t matter it clearly doesn’t tear you apart/ anymore”

“Love is sore temptation. / Who will say but maidens may / Kiss for recreation?”

“it was good to be alive/but sometimes that can slip away as fast/as any fingers through your hands”

“god sometimes you just don’t come through / do you need a woman to look after you?”

“you are not alone / laying in the light / put out the fire in your head / and lay with me tonight”

“’cause i don’t need boxes wrapped in strings/ and desire and love and empty things/ just a chance”

“they were all in love with dyin’ / and they were doing it in texas”