Number 27: Ogden Nash "Everybody Tells Me Everything"

Everybody Tells Me Everything

I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

-- Ogden Nash

Hap Notes: Ogden Nash (1902-1971) did not invent light verse but his distinctive style is often imitated and set the bar for any light versifier (or "worsifier" and Nash called himself). There are people who consider "light" verse to be easier to read and digest but the idea that light verse does not often have a serious intent at the core is to belittle the intelligence of the poet. Shakespeare said the gravest things are said in jest and I do believe that often applies to light verse. Yes, it's amusing and sometimes silly, but it's a rare person who can succeed in solely trying to funny because trying to be funny all the time often brings out incredibly cathartic and telling things about the writer's issues and personality.

We won't go into the philosophy of how humor is a form of aggression but it's certainly in there. Nash made suburban frustrations and concerns slightly rebellious. We could probably use somebody to do that for us now.

Nash often wrote short little rhyming epithets that people remember and he's very witty at that. He invents words to be amusing. You may remember his poem "The Jellyfish" which reads in entirety: "Who wants my Jellyfish?/ I'm not sellyfish." I find his titles to the poems to be particularly sharp and amusing. I'm sure you know the poem that goes "Candy /is Dandy/ But Liquor/ is quicker." It's called "Reflections on Ice-breaking." Other Nash titles include "Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice," and "So Does Everybody Else Only Not So Much," and "To a Small Boy Standing on My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them," and my particular favorite "Don't Cry, Darling, lt's Blood All Right." (See how the titles make you want to read the poem? There's a genius in that which should not be overlooked. Getting someone to stop and read something based on a title should not be underestimated.)

Nash is in no small way responsible for much of the kind of humor that has come to be identified with The New Yorker. He was also published and lauded in The Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Review (so sad it's not around anymore), Ladies Home Journal and Life magazine. He is often placed in the company of Dorothy Parker, James Thurber and Robert Benchley all of whom wrote with sly comic intelligence. Nash made a living writing verse during the Great Depression. I'm assuming that people needed something cheery and less preachy. We could use that, now, too.

It's not a big shock to learn that he was, before he made a living from poetry, an advertising copywriter. In part of a Christmas poem entitled "I Remember Yule", he grumbles:

"What, five times a week at 8:15 P.M., do the herald angels sing?
That a small deposit now will buy you an option on a genuine diamond ring.
What is the message we receive with Good King Wenceslas?
That if we rush to the corner of Ninth and Main we can get that pink mink
housecoat very inexpensceslaus.
I know what came upon the midnight clear to our backward parents,
but what comes to us?
A choir imploring us to Come all ye faithful and steal a 1939 convertible
at psychoneurotic prices from Grinning Gus."

Once again, it's funny and clever but there are a few daggers in there. One should never confuse Nash's cleverness for mere comedy. Truly amusing stuff always makes you think.

When I was a kid, one of the things I looked forward to with great glee was the Family Circle magazine at Christmas time. They usually had an illustrated light verse poem and very often they were by Nash. "The Unpublished Adventures of Santa Claus" or "What's the Because of Santa Claus" were always a delight to read. Nash's longer poems often read like very sophisticated Dr. Seuss.

Nash lived in Baltimore and he was a fan of the Colts (when they were there) and he loved baseball. He often had poems appear in sports magazines. (You might want to read that last sentence again if the impact escaped you.)

In 2002 the U.S. Postal Service brought out a series of six stamps honoring Nash and a few of his poems. Oh, another interesting fact; he was directly related to the guy for which the city of Nashville, TN, is named.

Now, I'm not saying that Ogden Nash is a writer of totally intellectual and fabulous verse.
But I am saying that when it comes to reading something, poetry in particular, you could do considerably worse.

(That was my first and only imitation of his fun to imitate but hard to equal style.)

A couple of good Ogden Nash quips: "Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else."

"Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long."

You can find more Nash here: www.ogdennash.org/ogden_nash_poems.htm

Number 26: Karl Shapiro "Manhole Covers"

Manhole Covers

The beauty of manhole covers--what of that?
Like medals struck by a great savage khan,
Like Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable,
Not like the old electrum, chased and scored,
Mottoed and sculptured to a turn,
But notched and whelked and pocked and smashed
With the great company names
(Gentle Bethlehem, smiling United States).
This rustproof artifact of my street,
Long after roads are melted away will lie
Sidewise in the grave of the iron-old world,
Bitten at the edges,
Strong with its cryptic American,
Its dated beauty.


--Karl Shapiro

Hap Notes: Karl Shapiro (1913-2000) started out winning the Pulitzer Prize for his V-Letter and Other Poems in 1945 and ended up becoming a thorn in the side of the established aesthetics of poetry by not falling into line behind T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. When a group of poets got together in 1948 and hoped to give Ezra Pound the first Bollingen Prize- an award sponsored by the Library of Congress- in the hopes that Pound could be released from prison if he won an award, Shapiro, who was on the board for the prize, voted against it. It darkened his reputation for years.

Let me rewind just a bit. Pound was in prison for treason. He was a supporter of the Nazi Party while he lived in Italy during WWII. He called Hitler a "saint." He did propaganda radio broadcasts under the sponsorship of Mussolini. Pound wrote vile things about Jews (called them "Kikes" and that was the nicest thing he said), blamed them for everything bad in Europe and called Mussolini "the boss." Now, there's no doubt Pound was a few screwdrivers short of a tool kit and, as such, it's hard to determine how much of Pound's stupidity was just mental illness. He was not treated well in prison and that was a sad shame.

Shapiro, however, was a Jew. I cannot imagine having a conscience of any kind and wanting to award Pound anything in 1948. Poets who lined up behind Pound included T.S. Eliot, Conrad Aiken, e.e. cummings, Allen Tate, W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Robert Penn Warren and the writer Katherine Anne Porter. Shapiro was pretty much ignored after his "no" vote.“I was suddenly forced into a conscious decision to stand up and be counted as a Jew,” he said. The prize was awarded to Pound. It didn't make him any the less disturbed and he continued to be anti-semitic and also associated with people from the KKK. No kidding.

The Bollingen Prize, not surprisingly, was taken away from the Library of Congress after this and the prize has since that time been awarded by the Yale University Library. Shapiro actually won the Bollingen in 1969 along with John Berryman.

In 1959 Shapiro wrote an article in the New York Times Book Review saying that poetry was a "diseased art" and took aim at the Eliot/Pound "high Modernism" and "New Criticism" as one of the reasons why. This, at the time, was like saying the pope wears a funny hat and smells bad. His outspoken views ostracized him even more.

I love the poetry of most of the people who stood up for Pound and I love some of Pound's work, too. Let's face it The Wasteland would not be the dazzling poem it is if not for Pound's blue pencil. Pound was a brilliant editor.

However, I lean towards Shapiro because he had a hell of a lot of chutzpah. He was not a fan of Wallace Stevens or Marianne Moore or William Butler Yeats and I am. However, poetry needed a good dowsing in cold water and Shapiro gave it a tub's worth. Unfortunately, this ended up marginalizing him even more, which is a pity because so many poets owe him so much, most notably Billy Collins, Nikiki Giovanni and even Kenneth Koch and Stanley Kunitz.

Shapiro found an appreciative academic home at the University of California in Davis. Regardless of his irreverence and ire at much of academia, the college gave him a long rope and he needed one. He was full of vinegar but there was honey in him, too, and he had a wonderful sense of humor.

For example, our poem "Manhole Cover," where he compares the iron manhole covers of a street to "medals struck by a savage khan." I think he's referring, since the list goes on more or less archeologically, to a Mongol leader of some type. ( Although it's worth noting that Kahn is the Germanized form of Cohen, as Kaplan is its Russian form and Copeland, too. A cohain (Cohen) is another form of Kohanim- a Jewish religious leader- Aaron was the first in the Old Testament.) I don't think that Shapiro is thinking this but, it's certainly possible.

It's both amusing and a little disconcerting to think of manhole covers as future artifacts in history, as remnants of our iron age. Shapiro had a love/hate thing with cars and wrote poems about them. He even wrote a fictional novel called Edsel. Electrum is a naturally occurring mix of gold and silver that was often used for coins in ancient Rome; see how he takes us down through the ages with the ancient civilizations including the Mayans?

Our artifacts are marked with the companies who made them, Bethlehlem (gentle) or the smile the words "United States" form on the edges of a manhole cover in a "c" shape. The inscriptions, so obvious to us, will not be so after the street has "melted." (nuclear meltdown?) Interesting progression, too: medals, calendars, coins, manhole covers.

I love his appreciation for this everyday thing. And he's saying something about all civilizations isn't he?

Here's a good Shapiro quote: "The poet is in exile whether he is or he is not. Because of what everybody knows about society’s idea of the artist as a peripheral character and a potential bum. Or troublemaker."

And another, "I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than turning out a good stanza or a good piece of prose."

You can find more Shapiro here: www.poemhunter.com/karl-shapiro/

Number 25: Thomas Hardy "The Darkling Thrush"

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

--Thomas Hardy

Hap Notes: Thomas Hardy again, already? Yes. It just seemed like such a good poem for the new year ahead. In spite of the alarming changes to our planet the birds carry on and still sing for whatever reasons they have. I encourage us all to do likewise. Happy New Year!

A few cursory notes- Coppicing- as in the "coppice gate" is when trees are cut short so that they will regrow with new shoots. It was traditionally done in England to provide more firewood and wood resources. When the coppice is working, it will be surrounded by tall shoots and "tangled bine stems." The original tree, by the way, will never die of old age this way; the word coppice here indicates a small growth of trees that have come up like a small slender forest. So there's meaning in the coppice gate here in the poem- see picture above. Whether it is a gate made of coppice or the coppice itself (to the right in the above picture), next to a gate.

The humans in the poem who "haunt" the deathly area, have sensibly gone home to sit in front of a warm fire. Only the poet remains in the winter gloom and hears the thrush (also pictured above.) He doesn't give us a big thrush, he gives us an old, frail, gaunt, small, wind-blasted one; a thrush who would seemingly have no reason to sing at all. It's interesting to note that he says "all mankind" who, unfortunately, since they went inside for creature comfort, cannot hear the thrush's "happy" song. Thrush song is reputed to be one of the most beautiful by people who rate such things and thrushes usually sing at sunset (most birds do) like the one in the poem.

Hardy may have some bitter thoughts about fate, life, people and the nature of the universe, saying, in the poem, that the day felt as though the world was a corpse in a coffin with its bleak features and gray skies but he cannot fool us with this cynicism. He hears the "ecstatic sound" of a bird's "happy good-night air." Now a bitter man would never describe a bird's song as either happy or an "air"- an old world word for a "tune." Ah, and doesn't this bird's song bring a breath of fresh oxygen (air) to the scene? Even if the trees look like the broken strings of lyres, a song still comes out of the gloom.

We will keep Hardy's little secret: he loves the earth and has a wild hope for it in spite of his grousing.

To refresh your memory on what we've already said about Hardy, and to find a link to more Hardy visit here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-19-thomas-hardy-christmas-ghost.html

Number 24: Tony Harrison "Long Distance II"

Long Distance II

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

--Tony Harrison

Hap Notes: Tony Harrison (Born 1937) has certainly had his share of controversy in his lifetime. His poem, "V", raised hackles when it was read and shown as a film on television in Great Britain. The poem describes visiting his parent's grave site in Leeds during the miners' strike in the early 80s. His vivid use of the language of the graffiti on the graves offended some sensibilities. "V" is an acid slash of images and words. You can see this program on YouTube in several parts. Yep, welcome to the 21st century where poets do filmed projects. Harrison has done several of what he calls "Film Poems."

You have to smile a bit that poetry can still rankle politicians and the media. It's a powerful sword that many think has rusted but this proves otherwise. It may not make you a millionaire but don't forget what Kipling said about words being the most powerful drug on earth. Harrison knew this at an early age. He was one of those kids who stayed inside, read classics and Shakespeare and took a bit of razzing for it.

Harrison is on YouTube reading much of his poetry, holding his frayed and splayed book and speaking in that flat gorgeous Yorkshire accent of his. I wish all poets were so gifted with reading their work aloud, but Harrison certainly is. Read the poetry first, then listen to him so you can hear his emphasis compared to your own. He (as Eliot would say) does the "Police" in different voices. (Is that too obscure a reference? In "The Wasteland" T.S. Eliot refers to a person who reads the paper with different voices for the speakers, with the words "He do the "Police" (Police Gazette, I think) in different voices." Harrison uses different voices and tones. Didn't mean to drop the tranny there.)

Harrison read classics at the university which is a very plain British way of saying he majored in them. He's done award-winning translations of Aeschylus's The Oresteia and (great shades of yesterday's blog!) his The Gaze of the Gorgon won the Whitbread Poetry Award.

Three charming and somewhat unrelated bits: I've always thought it amusing that a recurring character on "The Mighty Boosh", a pink brain with tentacles and a grin, is named Tony Harrison. The poet actually wrote the lyrics for the songs in a movie "The Bluebird," a strange children's film I've always sorta liked. And Thom Yorke from the band Radiohead is a huge fan of Harrison.

Let's talk about the poem, yes? First off, did you even notice that it rhymed? His seemingly effortless way with rhyme is miraculous. Must be his native Yorkshire woodnotes mixed with a healthy dose of the Greek and Roman classics. The poem is a marvel of smooth gorgeous effortless verse which, if you'd ever tried to write you'd know is the complete opposite of those words. One little comment and I'll let you enjoy it for yourself. How long was that number virtually disconnected do you think, from his parents, as opposed to literally? It's a lovely poem, ain't it? Such tender words from the furious spirit who wrote "V."

Here's a good Harrison quote: "I was well read and knew languages, but I didn't want to become Ezra Pound. I wanted to write poetry that people like my parents might respond to."

You can find more Tony Harrison poetry here: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7814

Number 23: Rudyard Kipling "When Earth's Last Picture is Painted."

When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it -- lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from -- Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
Andd no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of Things as They are!

--Rudyard Kipling

Hap Notes: Okay, before I begin to talk about Kipling (1865-1936) you may want to wash off a bit of the schmaltz and the treacle residue from the poem. I know you think I've gone off the bend on this one. But it has not been posted exclusively for you but in honor of Mrs. Virginia Edwards, my high school English Literature teacher who adored the poem and because it was a pivotal point in my relationship to her and classic poetry. (AND P.S. Kipling was the first English speaking writer to get the Nobel Prize and still remains its youngest recipient. He was 42).

We moved the summer before my senior year in high school and I was torn from all the friends with which I had gone to grade school and junior high and most of high school and was deposited in a new school where I knew no one. The only bright spot in the whole thing was the new school was very modern (at the time) and allowed you to take courses, much like college, that you could choose yourself. I loaded my schedule with literature classes and Latin (they had Latin!)

When I mentioned to someone that I was going to take English literature with Virginia Edwards, my new classmates filled me in on her. They called her "the Virgin Queen" (although she was married and had grown children) and said she was a "musty powderpuff" of a long bygone era. She always wore a clutch of fake violets at her throat or a large brooch. She was, they told me, ancient (she may have been in her late 60s) and had a humped back. She said "pleezhure" for the word pleasure and "Lehzhure" for the word leisure. She was a gorgon. I, of course, was not repulsed by their friendly warnings but intrigued. I generally like gorgons.

The gorgon turned out to be a diminutive woman with carefully coifed hair and a strong but gentle voice. She wafted lavender and lemon. The first day of class she read this poem aloud. I, being the ginormous goose of literature that I was (am) had it committed to memory and I silently mouthed the words as she spoke. I didn't think she'd notice this, since I was sitting in the back of the room as was my wont (where you can read other things and draw pictures with impunity.) The next thing I knew she had asked me to stand up. "Do you know this poem?" she asked sternly. I said that I did. She said, "Then, recite it." Which I did. She brushed away a tear (!) and said "Thank-you. Thank you, very much. That was lovely." and went on with the class.

After the class she asked me how I knew the poem and I showed her my beat up copy of Palgrave's Golden Treasury. She nodded. That was it. The next day she read Robert Burn's poem "John Anderson My Jo, John" and I wept a little. She deposited a box of kleenex on my desk and said, "I believe we are going to need these this year." We were never fast friends, we were compatriots in the forces of literature. She treated me as a lieutenant to her General. She was never gooey with sentiment- she let the poetry and the literature do what it would. She did give me a new copy of Palgrave's when I graduated. The inscription said, "You need this, I think. Thank you for a most satisfying and enjoyable year."

Now, how did my peers react to this geekiness in me? I couldn't tell you. Being the ginormous goose that I was (am) I didn't notice and didn't give a damn anyway. Just didn't think about it. And I was never teacher's pet. She never asked me to distribute tests or do anything out of the ordinary, She did not let me slide because I knew things. In fact, I think she was a bit repulsed by my wild curly hair and ratty black turtleneck and blunt speaking. She treated me like she was teaching a strange new creature who could possibly bite (a gorgon, maybe?) I told her she should reconsider e.e. cumings. She told me I shouldn't be so disrespectful of Matthew Arnold. I loved her very much. I'm quite sure she's dead, now. But not to me. Hence the Kipling (which, by the by, has some merit, I think, in spite of it's saccharine.)

Kipling, of course, everybody knows whether they think they do or not. He wrote The Jungle Book which has been made into both Disney animated movies and real-life movies. He wrote Captains Courageous, which many people know from the Spencer Tracy film. He wrote Gunga Din which was made into a movie with Cary Grant (and is an okay poem- come on!) and Kim. He wrote that "IF" poem that people send each other at graduations.

Kipling was born in Bombay (now called Mumbai) and didn't go to school in England until he was 5 or 6. He stayed with people who took care of British children whose families lived in India so they could get an English education. He was most grievously abused by them and hated his life there. Kipling always considered himself more Indian than Brit- even though there's always the whiff of British Imperialism about much of his work. It's more than a tad distasteful. I always think of him as a cross between Teddy Roosevelt (adventurous and imperious) and William Wordsworth (romantic)- there's a strange mix, indeed.

And even though much of his work may seem a bit sugary, there's merit in much of it and he is well-loved by lots of people who normally do not read poetry so there you have it. This particular poem was written as a l'envoi to his book The Seven Seas. ( a l'envoi is verse that sort of bless or depict the moral or "christen" if you will, a book.)

Kipling is highly quotable. You know -- "a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke" and "God could not be everywhere and therefore he created mothers" and just oodles more. Here are a couple of good ones:

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten."

and "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."

Oh, and here's one very telling about his "foster parents": "Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established. Also, badly-treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear of it".

You can find more Kipling here: www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/kipling_ind.html

Number 22: Galway Kinnell "The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students"

The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
“Clinical Sonnets”; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, “Being German my hero is Hitler,”
instead of “Sincerely yours,” at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters extolling the Pre-Raphaelites:

I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had of trying to guess
which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue. I did care.
I did read each poem entire.
I did say everything I thought
in the mildest words I knew. And now,
in this poem, or chopped prose, no better,
I realize, than those troubled lines
I kept sending back to you,
I have to say I am relieved it is over:
at the end I could feel only pity
for that urge toward more life
your poems kept smothering in words, the smell
of which, days later, tingled in your nostrils
as new, God-given impulses
to write.

Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmarks again
of imaginary towns—Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell—
their solitude given away in poems, only their loneliness kept.

--Galway Kinnell

Hap Notes: Galway Kinnell (Born 1927) while studying at Princeton University made no bones about how scornful he was of classes that could "teach" one to write poetry. After graduation, he served in the Navy and traveled a good deal. When he got back to the states he got a job as a field worker with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and was heavily involved with the civil rights movement during the 60s. He was arrested, at one point, while integrating a workplace in Louisiana. I believe he is retired now but he still writes and lectures because you never actually retire from writing like you do from, say, driving a cab or making rubber or something. It haunts you forever.

In addition to writing poetry and teaching creative writing, Kinnell has translated the poetry of Rilke and Francois Villon. It's the Villon translations where I first encountered him and I worked backwards, then, to read his poetry. Kinnell was great friends with the poet James Wright and their work has a similar clearly worded symmetry.

Kinnell deals with real life situations in his poetry and his influence seems to be most notably Whitman, without the grandeur of the style which he would, I think, find a bit much. He does celebrate the self, though, almost as much as he makes social commentary in much of his poetry. Kinnell takes a nice big juicy bite out of life, he has an appetite for it as well as a certain amount of horror and sorrow for mankind.

The whimsical humor of the poem at hand is, at first, somewhat light-hearted and funny. One immediately understands the kinds of poetry the narrator has been reading from the description of the senders and it makes you smile a bit, and wince, to think on it. The poet has obviously written criticisms, "in the mildest words" but he's sure that if the students understand his objections they will feel rejected enough to poison him- he's mostly joking about this, though. We understand both points of view here, though- the rejected and the rejector. The descriptions immediately fill us with a sense of superiority.

Then the author (somewhat modestly) says his poem, the one we are reading, the "chopped prose," isn't much better than the poems sent for his instructional perusal, which of course, probably isn't true at all. But then he gets down to the dirt of the poem.

The poems which are "smothering in words" that "will to life" and the pity that he feels for those lonely souls trying to get their feelings on the paper are suspiciously close to the poet himself. His poem, addressed to us, is also from some "imaginary" place, isn't it? His solitude is also shared but his loneliness is his own, pondering the various places the students live, but, reader, where is he from, eh? He's some place we don't see or know- he's giving us his solitude but keeping his loneliness as well.

So while he bids his students goodbye and releases himself from the task of reading more painful verses. He, also, has that "god given impulse" does he not? He, in spite of his poetic prowess, could be mourning for himself as well as them.

And what interesting town names- Xenia (the Greek concept of courtesy to one far from home), Burnt Cabins (like a pioneer town once in flames), and Hornell (more than likely named for some forgotten town founder.) Put those together and see how they add. Subtle but good stuff there.

Here's a good Kinnell quotation: "If you could keep going deeper and deeper, you'd finally not be a person ... you'd be a blade of grass or ultimately perhaps a stone. And if a stone could read, poetry would speak for it."

Here's another: "Maybe the best we can do is do what we love as best we can, perhaps, by trying to bring together one’s art and one’s life with one’s values."

You can find more Kinnell here: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=2637

Number 21: Robert Louis Stevenson "After Reading 'Anthony and Cleopatra' "

After Reading Antony and Cleopatra

As when the hunt by holt and field
Drives on with horn and strife,
Hunger of hopeless things pursues
Our spirits throughout life.

The sea's roar fills us aching full
Of objectless desire -
The sea's roar, and the white moon-shine,
And the reddening of the fire.

Who talks to me of reason now?
It would be more delight
To have died in Cleopatra's arms
Than be alive to-night.

--Robert Louis Stevenson

Hap Notes: Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburg, Scotland so don't forget to hear his poetry with that lovely lilt in mind. Think Ewan McGregor.

Here we have another guy who wrote a good deal of "children's poetry." Remember A Child's Garden of Verses? Of course he also penned some mighty famous tales, for example; Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He is said to be in the top 30 of the most translated authors in the world. He was something of a celebrity due to the popularity of his books.

Stevenson packed a good deal into his short, riddled-with-illness, 44 years. He was born to a family of lighthouse builders and I believe his dad thought he would follow in the family biz. Parents of teens may note, with a bit of bemusement, the rules of a club (the Liberty, Justice, Reverence Club) he and a school friend devised, the first of which was "Disregard everything our parents have taught us." He was a great lover of reading as a youth and particularly admired Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and John Bunyan. His father made him at least get a law degree at the University of Edinburg which he did but he never actually practiced with it.

He traveled widely, fell ill a LOT and when he felt better he wrote like a house afire. He was a right handsome fella for being so terribly skinny most of his life. His life is worth several books worth of stuff so let me just tell you he ended up in the South Seas on a Samoan Island where the natives adored him- he was called Tusitala (story teller) and was often involved in politics involving the isles. He married a woman 10 years his senior who already had children.

He has often been relegated to "children's" literature or worse, Neo-Romantic sentimentality, however his admirers include Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Vladimir Nabokov, G,K. Chesterton, J. M. Barrie and French Symbolist Marcel Schwob. Henry James was his dear friend and champion; Stevenson wrote a charming poem about an antique mirror and Henry James, perhaps we'll read it together at some point.

This little poem packs a wallop. Stevenson is telling us that the human race is always hungering and aching for unobtainable, often indefinable things. These mysterious things haunt us throughout our lives. The sea speaks of it to us, the moon fills us with it and watching the firelight and the reddening coals speaks of it. This aching, unrealized desire is past reason. Stevenson imagines himself, after he has read Shakespeare's play, as an Anthony, dying in the arms of Cleopatra- something that can never happen but fills him with a romantic longing.

I believe much of our lives we are yearning for a similar satisfaction; one that can never happen. Like Stevenson's impossible fantasy, its elusiveness makes it all the more appealing and frustrating. Humans do not like to think there is anything that is impossible- this impossibility may be the sadness that mixes with the search.

That ocean image is particularly apt- you know how, standing on the seashore, one is filled with an ache and a longing in addition to admiration and maybe, a bit of fear? What is it we want when we look out upon ocean? Who can specifically name it?

Oh, a "holt" is a wooded area. And remember he's not saying a hunt is full of hopeless desire, he's saying our desires for these hopeless things trail us like a driven hunt. It may be, too, that our desire for the impossible is part of the thrill of the hunt, that it, in itself, is part of the romance of life.

Stevenson probably has the most quoted gravestone of all time; his poem "Requiem."

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Here's a good Stevenson quote: "If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong."

You can find more Stevenson here: www.poemhunter.com/robert-louis-stevenson/