Competitiveness you went down to Testosterone Village last night
And got loaded. What was I supposed to do with you today,
This morning, when you tried to get me into a fight
With my own dog, for god’s sake, over getting
To the newspaper first?
– Kenneth Koch, “To Competitiveness,” New Addresses
I might as well leave you with Toby and Andrew for the hiatus. I have been writing a poem about Twelfth Night. Writing poems about plays is, I suppose, like composing music about music. But I like it. Anyway, I hope these gentlemen take better care of you, SOS, than I have been since coming here. They are great fun to drink with, although a little repetitive. (R&G, anyone?) You say honestly. Rest you merry.
TWELFTH NIGHT, ACT II, SCENE III. OLIVIA’s house.
Enter SIR TOBY BELCH and SIR ANDREW
SIR TOBY BELCH
Approach, Sir Andrew: not to be abed after
midnight is to be up betimes; and ‘diluculo
surgere,’ thou know’st,–
SIR ANDREW
Nay, my troth, I know not: but I know, to be up
late is to be up late.
SIR TOBY BELCH
A false conclusion: I hate it as an unfilled can.
To be up after midnight and to go to bed then, is
early: so that to go to bed after midnight is to go
to bed betimes. Does not our life consist of the
four elements?
SIR ANDREW
Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists
of eating and drinking.
SIR TOBY BELCH
Thou’rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.
Marian, I say! a stoup of wine!
In even a short run of spontaneous, unliterary speech, some combinations of consonants and vowels are certain to recur, even though we don’t take special note of them. On the other hand, if a few vowels and consonants recur with more than average frequency, we can’t avoid noticing their sound, and we become conscious as words as an auditory experience, not merely as a medium for conveying information. For many centuries now English poetry has used this recurrence of sound expressively, organizing phonic repetition so that it becomes clearly audible and relevant to other constructive aspects of a poem…
– Alfred Corn, THE POEM’S HEARTBEAT
APRIL
No one’s despair is like my despair-
You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the woman limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her hair.
Do you suppose I care
if you speak to one another?
But I mean you to know
I expected better of two creatures
who were given minds: if not
that you would actually care for each other
at least that you would understand
grief is distributed
between you, among all your kind, for me
to know you, as deep blue
marks the wild scilla, white
the wood violet.
– Louise Glück, “April,” The Wild Iris (1992)
I was alive, ten years old, when this book was published. I did not know it at the time, but it is nice to think that the book’s publication might have made some impact on the world I was living in, and thus also on me, even at ten. I bought it in undergrad at my professor’s recommendation. It has taken me a long time to read it carefully, although I read it as I have read most books of poetry before now – skimming, diving for a fish, getting out – but I am glad I have it now. It sees so distinctly.
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.
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.
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.
I have an assignment, for one of my classes, to take a metrical poem I’ve previously written and revise it into free verse, or, conversely, to take a free verse poem and revise it into meter. It’s fun, except that the one I’ve chosen is one where I am really attached to particular wordings. Still, I think it’s the right one to use.
Interesting discussion this weekend with some of the poets about process. One of our number throws away drafts after having written them, to not have to look back again and doubt. Another thinks about the poem, without writing it, for several days, and then writes it all at once at the end but does relatively few drafts. It’s good to hear about other ways of working.
I will try to disappoint you
better than anyone ever has.
– Stephen Dunn, “Mon Semblable,” Between Angels
Dara Weinberg 