Daily Archives: September 28, 2009

poems to remember, poetry

The Proof, by W.H. Auden

THE PROOF

‘When rites and melodies begin
to alter modes and times,
And timid bar-flies boast aloud
of uncommitted crimes,
And leading families are proud
To dine with their black sheep,
What promises, what discipline,
If any, will Love keep?’
So roared Fire on their right:
But Tamino and Pamina
Walked past its rage,
Sighing O, sighing O,
In timeless fermatas of awe and delight
(Innocent? Yes. Ignorant? No.)
Down the grim passage.

‘When stinking Chaos lifts the latch,
And Grotte backward spins,
And Helen’s nose becomes a beak
And cats and dogs grow chins,
And daisies claw and pebbles shriek,
And Form and Colour part,
What swarming hatreds then will hatch
Out of Love’s riven heart.’
So hissed Water on their left:
But Pamina and Tamino
Opposed its spite,
With his worship, with her sweetness –
O look now! See how they emerge from the cleft
(Frightened? No. Happy? Yes.)
Out into sunlight.

– W.H. Auden

So there. If you don’t love “timeless fermatas of awe and delight” with all the bones in your body, you are no son of mine. I warned you. Also, It occurs to me that “Helen’s nose becomes a beak” is a variation on the whole “Jill goes down on her back” thing.

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poetry

auden of our discontent

One of my fellow graduate students, someone who gets me pretty well, keeps pointing out similarities in my writing to Auden. He’s right, of course. Today, he pointed out a similarity in one of my poems to an Auden poem I haven’t even read. He’s probably right about that, too. If all I am one day is a sixth-rate Auden, I will be a hell of a lot better than I am now.

All this is to say that, a few weeks ago, reading poetry aloud with friends, I was trying to find this poem online (I principally use my smartphone to search for poems I need to read to people) and couldn’t. Part of the reason it’s hard to find is I can never remember either the title or the first line – but also, I don’t think anyone has felt this poem needed to be absorbed by the Internet Cube yet. Until Me. So, here I am, putting it online (in the next post). For at least a year, it was my most of all favoritest, because of the structure of the lines. It reminds me of Song. It is not my favorite now, but I still have a lot of love for it. You kind of have to read it aloud to get the fullness of the awesome. Other Auden I used to love and now love less includes Victor: A Ballad (which I once officiously read aloud to a roomful of Alpha Delts) and The Dead Echo. Perhaps I shall onlineize them too. Some day.

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gradschool, poetry

no more rhyming and I mean it

The revision of the free-verse poem into metrical verse ended up just being blank verse – I couldn’t make it rhyme without sacrificing something else I didn’t want to lose. That surprised me, but I was happy to be surprised. This is the first time I have ever intentionally written blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) – I have always made a point of having no use for it, out of my dislike of people always saying that “English falls naturally into iambs” and all that undemonstratable and inaccurate stuff – and I was glad to find out I could do it.

Tonight was also the first evening of our graduate reading series, held in a classroom on campus because the bar that was its former home has been shut down, hopefully temporarily. It was wonderful to hear people read their work.

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