Number 65: Simon Armitage "I Say I Say I Say"

I Say I Say I Say

Anyone here had a go at themselves
for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists
with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark
at the back, listen hard. Those at the front
in the know, those of us who have, hands up,
let's show that inch of lacerated skin
between the forearm and the fist. Let's tell it
like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark
round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels
washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.
A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs.
A likely story: you were lashed by brambles
picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good,
repeat with me the punch line 'Just like blood'
when those at the back rush forward to say
how a little love goes a long long long way.

--Simon Armitage

Hap Notes: First off, before you read another word, go back up and read this as if it were a British music hall comedian telling you a joke- with a laugh track at the end of the first half dozen lines. "I say, I say, I say" is a joke opening, much like "A man walked into a bar" or "Have you heard the one about?" Armitage (born 1963) is setting the poem up, in the first few lines, as a grim joke told on stage. The poem wouldn't have half its poignant impact without its "comic" exterior of the stand-up gig.

Armitage is a relatively young guy to have his poems be part of the GCSE curriculum in English Literature (the British equivalent of a high school diploma.) Of course, there's the endless favorable comparisons to Philip Larkin- the poet England drags out for every contemporary comparison. I like Larkin very much, I just don't like how critics make every contemporary British poet measure up to his standard- I frankly think, when it comes to English poets, that is setting the bar a bit low. The Armitage GCSE poems are from Book of Matches in which there are 30 sonnets which one can read in the time it takes to burn a match. Poets have to be clever these days.

Armitage is clever and funny and heart-rending. He's won scads of prizes including the Whitbread Poetry Award (three times!), National Book Critics' Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot prize, among many others. He is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and is well loved at poetry festivals and the like. He's also worked in film, radio and television and he has written essays, fiction and screenplays.

Armitage's vernacular is generally young, hip and streetwise with a bit of a gritty streak. He likes to spin you a tale, often a grim one, with a smiling death-mask layered on the trembling facade. Some of Armitage's slang is lost on Americans who don't know the words or attitudes of Northern England, but the vernacular is so well-placed, one can often imagine what's being said. A close reading of Armitage does well with Google by your side to flip in a few phrases, though. His autobiographical poems are like little slices of a soundbite of his life. In one poem about his youth, you can hear the voice of his father berating him for an earring he clumsily punches in his ear. His bits of dialog in poems are brilliant.

As Armitage sees age, his poems get deeper and darker. His first book of poetry was published when he was 23, his last book, published in 2010, counts him as 47, so it's not a wonder his style changes a bit, although always with that laughing death's head somewhere in the work. Near to my heart is his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, always a favorite of mine and it needed a good brushing up from all the Middle-English translations which made it sound so clunky and the story is so vivid and exciting. Armitage gives the poem its color back.

I don't suppose the poem needs much explication. The "people in the dark," is both literal and figurative in regards to suicide. The idea of taking "strong drink" before the attempt, sitting in a bathtub of warm water (so the blood will run out faster), the failed attempt leaving permanently stained towels, tub line and scars. The mark between the forearm and the "fist"- not hand, "fist." Would a little love go "a long long way" or is that something people in the "dark" think?

We'll see him again this year.

Here's a good Armitage quote: "But it’s kind of unkillable, poetry. It’s our most ancient artform and I think it’s more relevant today than ever, because it’s one person saying what they really believe."

You can find more Armitage here: www.poemhunter.com/simon-armitage/

Number 64: Thomas Lux "The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball"

The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball

each day mowed
and mowed his lawn, his dry quarter acre,
the machine slicing a wisp
from each blade's tip. Dust storms rose
around the roar: 6:00 P.M., every day,
spring, summer, fall. If he could mow
the snow he would.
On one side, his neighbors the cows
turned their backs to him
and did what they do to the grass.
Where he worked, I don't know
but it sets his jaw to: tight.
His wife a cipher, shoebox tissue,
a shattered apron. As if
into her head he drove a wedge of shale.
Years later his daughter goes to jail.

Mow, mow, mow his lawn
gently down a decade's summers.
On his other side lived mine and me,
across a narrow pasture, often fallow;
a field of fly balls, the best part of childhood
and baseball, but one could not cross his line
and if it did,
as one did in 1956
and another in 1958,
it came back coleslaw -- his lawn mower
ate it up, happy
to cut something, no matter
what the manual said
about foreign objects,
stones, or sticks.

--Thomas Lux

Hap Notes: Thomas Lux (born 1946) is a "superstar" of the poetry reading, garnering audiences that reach beyond the college set. His poetry appeals to a variety of ages which, I think, is due to his natural style of writing, although "natural style" is kind of a misnomer because it is a difficult thing to accomplish and still make poetry. Lux works hard to make each word count and seem neither too casual nor too contrived.

If I have a soft spot, it is for poets who like and understand baseball, a game I've always thought had a lot of poetry in it (yeah, I know- it's one of those things that has to remain unspoken to most baseball fans because talking about the poetry of the game causes it to evaporate) Lux once said that if he was offered the chance to be a successful poet for 50 years or play center field for the Boston Red Sox for a year, he'd have to think about it. (Center field is a good position for a poet actually- you can see the whole game from a different perspective than the guys around the diamond and you can go in all directions- towards it or back or a little to the left or the right- a game balancer, really)

Lux grew up in a rural environment on a dairy farm in Massachusetts. Neither of his parents graduated from high school and the only poetry they ever knew, like so many people, was their everyday lives. And, also like most people, they aren't really aware that it IS poetry. This kind of upbringing assures a solitary life if one loves to read. Stuff brews in you as you grow up. Virgil grew up on sheep farm, you know.

Lux interprets the poetry of everyday life, turning it back into a poem with words. He's very good at this when he succeeds, which is quite often. We know the people in this poem, or think we do, anyway. A man driven to even make the grass conform to his standards will surely have a child who will land in jail someday. A woman whose life is a wisp of paper, a head full of fine-grained, easily broken flakes of mud and minerals. (Of course I'm always thinking what did the shoes look like? What was the apron like? Who is she? She probably doesn't even know anymore.) A job that sets his jaw to- tight. Nice prosody.

So many pictures do the telling in the poem: the baseball returned as "coleslaw", the dust that the mower is kicking up because there's no blade of grass worth the cutting, the "mow mow mow his lawn gently down a decades summers" replicating the old "Row row row your boat" song of childhood. That song is a round, remember- you just keep repeating it over and over. The cows just do what cows do naturally to the grass- they turn their backs on the mowers frenzy.

Does the man purposely, angrily run over the baseball? Does he just run over it because he's thinking of other pressures? How does the ball get returned? Is it characteristic of a man so rigid to run over a baseball, something that is decidedly not something a mower should go over? Is there a tight violence in the poem so that the idea of children playing baseball is a relief and a worry? This poem is finely woven work- as well wound as a baseball.

Lux graduated from Emerson College and he's taught writing at several colleges while maintaining "poet in residence" positions at Sarah Lawrence and others. He's the Bourne professor of poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, so he's a Ramblin' Wreck now. Coming from an engineer father as I do, I cannot imagine any place that is more thirsty for someone like Thomas Lux than Georgia Tech. We need more poet-engineers and engineer-poets, I think.

Lux is the author of at least 11 books of poetry, one is slated to come out this year along with a non-fiction book. He received the Kingsley Tufts prize and numerous Guggenheim, NEA and Mellon Foundation grants.

Here's a good Lux quote: "Writing is 80% reading so I read a great deal. I tend to work on poems in batches (that way if I get stuck on one I move on to the next). I do most of my writing over the summers and during breaks from teaching. I write doggedly, 15-20 drafts. I’m not prolific but I’m pretty steady: each slim volume takes about four years to write."

and another: "Every poet you love, and even some you hate, influence your work."

one more: "There’s plenty of room for strangeness, mystery, originality, wildness, etc. in poems that also invite the reader into the human and alive center about which the poem circles."

You can find more Lux here: www.poemhunter.com/thomas-lux/

Number 63: James Henry Leigh Hunt "Abou Ben Adhem"

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said
"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still, and said "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

--James Henry Leigh Hunt

Hap Notes: Here's our poet Leigh Hunt's (1784-1859) most anthologized poem. There really was an Abou Ben Adhem, a Sufi mystic and Muslim saint who was a king who gave up his throne (such as it was- more of a title than anything else or as we say in Texas, it was "all hat and no cattle") to lead the life of an ascetic. His full name was Sultan Abrahim Bin Adham, Bin Mansur al-Balkhi al-Ijli, Abu Ishaq (Saint Abraham, son of Adham- yes- I had to look that up.) The Sufi poet Rumi wrote about him, also.

Hunt was writing about "The Night of Records," an Islamic belief that on the 15th night, in the month of Sha'ban, Allah takes his golden book and crosses off the names of those he will call to him in the coming year and those whom he loves. Islam uses a lunar calendar so the time year of Sha'ban shifts constantly-if you are wondering when the book will be opened this year it will be July 17. Sha'ban is July 2-July 31 this year. (2011 is 1432 A.H.- the Muslim calendar starts from the year Mohammad moved from Mecca to Medina.)

Hunt was practically always in dire financial straits. The largesse of Shelley saved him from ruin several times and after Shelley died (1822) he was somewhat dependent on Lord Byron (who was known to be a bit stingy with his pals) since Hunt, Shelley and Byron were in the process of starting a magazine before Shelley died. Hunt wrote some pretty sharp criticism on Byron later on which many feel was because of Byron's penny pinching. (It is pretty well known that Dickens based the character Horace Skimpole in Bleak House on Hunt. It's a good book and apparently a very good picture of Hunt although he wasn't nearly as much of a weasel as Skimpole is. Skimpole is characterized as a leech on his friend's finances.)

Hunt labored on in poverty, writing and editing, and Shelley saved him again (even though he was dead!) when Mary Shelley inherited the Shelley estates. She gave Hunt an annuity which certainly helped him. Hunt had introduced Shelley to Keats and while the two are always thought of together, they were more professional acquaintances than deep friends. Shelley admired Keats and was a little envious- and protective!-of his natural genius.

Hunt's poetry is very charming to read. It won't burn in your memory for a deft turn of phrase and it's just a bit deeper than a pond. You probably won't get that "ocean" experience from his work but, then, he had to write for a living and that slows a writer down. It may sound odd to say this but when one works as a writer, one does not work solely on projects that are near to the heart- sometimes it's about what will sell. An excellent professional writer said to me that you write "one for yourself and one for the paycheck" when you work as a writer. Hunt's financial difficulties were such that he had to write more than one for the paycheck before he could write for himself. He loved poetry and wrote it from an early age. You mightn't get the resounding soul vibrations of a good poem from his work but neither will you sneer at its dull wittedness.

I'm very fond of Hunt. He's a good read with a cup of cocoa on a winter's night. His story poems are a joy to read. What he lacks in depth, he makes up for with charm. Which, now that I think on it, may have been his trouble. He is too easily charming, he needed more rigor in his writing habits. He could have been, with a little help, a great poet. I think Shelley was hoping to do this. Who knows what could have happened had Shelley lived longer?

Here's a good Hunt quote: “If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.”

and another: “It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.”


You can find more Hunt here: poemhunter.com/james-henry-leigh-hunt/poems/

Number 62: Marie Ponsot "One Is One"

One Is One

Heart, you bully, you punk, I'm wrecked, I'm shocked

stiff. You? you still try to rule the world--though

I've got you: identified, starving, locked

in a cage you will not leave alive, no

matter how you hate it, pound its walls,

& thrill its corridors with messages.

Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl

in your cell but I'm deaf to your rages,

your greed to go solo, your eloquent

threats of worse things you (knowing me) could do.

You scare me, bragging you're a double agent

since jailers are prisoners' prisoners too.

Think! Reform! Make us one. Join the rest of us,

and joy may come, and make its test of us.

-- Marie Ponsot

Hap Notes: I wonder if you notice that Marie Ponsot's (born 1921) ferocious poem is a sonnet? Ponsot is a master of forms of poetry and this poem is a beautiful illustration of how the forms are not worn out if you know how to handle them. Ponsot still teaches poetry writing at the Poetry Center in New York and she was a professor of English at Queens College in New York until she retired in 1991.

Her fame as a poet came late. She had one book of poetry published in 1956 by Ferlinghetti's City Lights. It fared with little success. She didn't publish another book of poems for more than 40 years. Her book The Bird Catcher for which she won the National Books Critic Circle Award, was published in 1998 when she was 77. She was a freelance writer for many years and translated many children's books from the French, notably Jean de la Fontaine's stories. I wonder how many people have noticed, over the years, how much children's literature and poetry intersect? (Although de la Fontaine's work has something for everyone, not just children- but that's often true with children's lit, yes?)

Ponsot majored in 17th Century literature at Columbia University, moved to France, married a painter, Claude Ponsot (a student of Fernand Leger). She had six sons with Ponsot before divorcing him. She's lived a few lives.

Ponsot is a wonder. She writes with many forms and one of the things she suggests to poetry students for understanding how to write in the many different forms available is to practice. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Yet I do believe it's one of the hardest things to do. You will often fail but you have to keep practicing. If you were on a team for football, baseball, hockey, tennis or underwater basket weaving, you would have to practice, practice practice. Yet somehow we feel that poetry should just spout out of us- as if it's EASIER than a sport. Eh?

Marie Ponsot is a very well practiced poet. You can see the effort she put into each poem to clarify or sculpt her words. In "One is One" there are shifts in the poem- is she talking to just her heart? Is there another person she's addressing? What person? The poem is brilliantly open. I tend to think of it as just the poet addressing her own heart. When she says "join the rest of us" is she suggesting the heart should join the other organs in her body or join with the many other people that she is (and we all are) inside or is she talking to God or somebody else? Your call.

You can find a little more Ponsot here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/marie-ponsot


Here's a great Marie Ponsot quote: "A poet is the person who takes time from the other tasks of the world’s work to try to tell the truth. So the obligation to do it more frequently or more accurately or more consciously or more willingly, at least, is greater. And the form of the telling is part of something—like language—bigger than the poet. If you’re doing it, you should take yourself seriously and do the best you can. Do the damn best you can! And know that this one may not be it, but maybe if you work hard on this one, the next one may be better. You have to believe that the resource is there, that there’s a place for it to come from and a place for it to go. The place that it comes from is your language. And the place where it can go is into this vast conversation of human animals trying to say something memorable."

Number 61: Diane Wakoski "Belly Dancer"

Belly Dancer

Can these movements which move themselves

be the substance of my attraction?

Where does this thin green silk come from that covers my body?

Surely any woman wearing such fabrics

would move her body just to feel them touching every part of her.

Yet most of the women frown, or look away, or laugh stiffly.

They are afraid of these materials and these movements

in some way.

The psychologists would say they are afraid of themselves, somehow.

Perhaps awakening too much desire—

that their men could never satisfy?

So they keep themselves laced and buttoned and made up

in hopes that the framework will keep them stiff enough not to feel

the whole register.

In hopes that they will not have to experience that unquenchable

desire for rhythm and contact.

If a snake glided across this floor

most of them would faint or shrink away.

Yet that movement could be their own.

That smooth movement frightens them—

awakening ancestors and relatives to the tips of the arms and toes.

So my bare feet

and my thin green silks

my bells and finger cymbals

offend them—frighten their old-young bodies.

While the men simper and leer—

glad for the vicarious experience and exercise.

They do not realize how I scorn them;

or how I dance for their frightened,

unawakened, sweet

women.

-- Diane Wakoski

Hap Notes: In the 70s Diane Wakoski (born 1937) was a smoldering volcano of a poet who wrote things about men that were shockingly fierce and outspoken. She dedicated her book, The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems (published in 1971) "...to all those men who betrayed me at one time or another in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles and break their necks." She supported herself for many years by traveling across the country giving readings and selling her infamous Black Sparrow Press Books out of the trunk of her car.

Wakoski went to Berkeley at a time when the "Beats" were out in San Francisco feeling their way along to a new more relaxed form of poetic expression. Wakoski was part of poet Thom Gunn's poetry workshops. She is associated with the "Deep Image" poets and "The Movement" although she's really not part of any one school, she always, for better or worse, shoots straight from the hip. (I'll never forget that Wakoski picture of her with a gun on one of her poetry reading records (top, left)-- she looked so determined and in control.)

Wakoski is often overlooked in contemporary poetry anthologies and it's a darn shame because she influenced so many women to be poets, and to be frank, to be angry, justifiably confused and betrayed by their victimization at the hands of male dominated society. These are words we hardly ever talk about anymore in mixed company but her poetry still rings true in many ways. I think we scared men with all this anger and you don't want to scare the dominant gorilla in the jungle. Wakoski liked men, she just got tired of their B.S.

Wakoski still gives readings with her charming lilting cadence and she's still a red hot coal with less of the, sometimes irrational, anger she had in her 20s and 30s. She has been Poet In Residence at Michigan State since 1975 where she also teaches creative writing.

In "Belly Dancer" Wakoski stares at a very difficult subject- the way women perceive their bodies and how men react when they see a woman exposing her sexuality. She says a very interesting thing when she points out that men "could never satisfy" a woman's true sexual nature. We have been conditioned to think that men have the greater sex drive but that's not strictly what she's talking about. It's not just the drive, it's the sensual, earthy, passionate experience that she wants to open up for women. She's saying that women may have a deeper more primal passion than men and that women often feel this and are frightened by it. Interesting that she uses the snake as an example with its male connotations and its role in the "fall" of man.

What would happen if women treated sex as something that they deserved as a full sensual experience? What if that was the measure of someone's sex life; rich, deep, soul-shaking quality and not quantity? It's a lot easier to "button up" and just live with the status quo. Why unbutton a tribe full of voluptuaries who dance just for the joy of movement and the feeling of the silk? Women would be so much harder to contain.

If this poem strikes you as somewhat antiquated because contemporary values are different from when this poem was written you really need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid, sis.

Wakoski's poetry has often been criticized as "whining" or "being too much the victim." I suppose this is because now we live in a society where men respect women's sexuality and treat us as intellectual equals and allow our passions to soar with respect and would never degrade us by making pornographic movies or photos. HELLO? Wakoski's poetry has the complaints of a victim because she, like many women, could not always break from the stereotypes of "acceptable" women and at the same time loathed it. Our culture is very good at helping women to loathe themselves for either their bodies, their beauty (or lack thereof) and their interests.

I think her ferocity and frustration still has a valid place in the culture. She's not a man-hater-- but she certainly grew to hate a few of them. Nobody with any brains in the women's movement in the 70s hated men; they hated the presumption of what a woman was, the straight-jacket women were fitted with, which men were brought up to think was right. Men would have a much better time with "unbuttoned" women. It would be better for everybody all the way around. That's what the women's movement was really about.

Here's a good Wakoski quote talking about her book Emerald Ice: “My themes are loss, justice, truth, transformation, the duality of the world, the possibilties of magic, and the creation of beauty out of ugliness. My language is dramatic, oral, and as American as I can make it. I am impatient with stupidity, bureaucracy, and organizations. Poetry, for me, is the supreme art of the individual using language to show how special, different, and wonderful his perceptions are. With verve and finesse. With discursive precision. And with utter contempt for pettiness of imagination or spirit.”

You can find more Wakoski poetry here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/diane-wakoski

Numbers 59 and 60: Keats, Shelley, Hunt- The Super Bowl of Poetry

To the Nile
Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

--John Keats

The Nile

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,--
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

-- Leigh Hunt

To The Nile

Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,

And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles

Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. 

Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells

By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells

Urging those waters to their mighty end.

O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level

And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest 

That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil

And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.

Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,

Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hap Notes: Okay, you're just sitting around with your pals one night and you decide to have a little contest. Each of you will write a sonnet on the same topic. It must be in sonnet form. You get 15 minutes. Now, go! (if you really want to try this, here's a little refresher on sonnet forms: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet )

The above three poems were what Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and John Keats (1795-1821) came up with in 15 minutes on the chosen subject: the Nile.

If you need a little help understanding the poems here's a few clues, when Keats says "swarts" he's saying "swarthy", in Hunt's poem Seostris was a legendary king of Egypt, Shelley's Aethiopian is just Ethiopian spelled differently- also areal is aerial.

So who won? Well, you decide. Hunt, while a minor poet, wrote a couple of my favorite verses ("Jenny Kissed Me" and "Abou Ben Adhem"). His competition is not to be taken lightly.

Which one do I like better? Hmmmm. It changes every time I read them. I initially thought Keats had the weaker poem, but reading them just now I thought it was very good. I love Shelley so I lean, again, toward him. Hunt's poem is extremely good, though. I guess, today, I'll say I think the stronger poem is Hunt's with Shelley running a very close second.

Here's a little hint for understanding and reading Romantic poetry. Read it aloud. Pause with each comma. Stop for split second at each period. If there is no comma or period read it straight through, regardless of the stanza's form, to end. In other words, even if the line is, for example Keats' line "Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste"-- don't stop your recitation at "taste" end it after "The pleasant sunrise. " It will all become clearer that way.

I'm counting this entry as two poems today. If you think I'm cheating, I'll add another one on Dec. 9 when we get there.

I'd love to see your 15 minute sonnet. You can post them here. I'll do one, too. And let's have the subject be the same as Hunt, Shelley and Keats: the Nile. Remember, you only get 15 minutes. Should be fun. No, really.

Number 58: Archibald MacLeish "Ars Poetica"

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds
-
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs
-
A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be

-- Archibald MacLeish

Hap Notes: "Ars Poetica" means "the art or nature of poetry" and this well-anthologized poem by MacLeish (1892-1982) gives us pictures in place of didactic instructions. Both Aristotle and Homer wrote on "ars poetica" but MacLeish's is certainly the prettiest one.

This poem surely contains all the ins and outs of writing poetry. Some of the lines are perfect. Some, like "A poem should not mean/But be" will have more than a few readers rolling their eyes in disgust and thinking of statements like one made at an 'Obama-Care' forum to "keep your government hands off my medicare." Huh? Because Medicare is a government run program and this poem already is, isn't it? Or maybe it's more like logician Raymond Smullyan's book titles i.e. This Book Needs No Title and What Is The Title Of This Book? I'm picking nits, though, because of the poem's over-exposure in almost every decent poetry anthology. Even I roll my eyes at the line somewhat.

If you've never read the poem, I suppose I've just spoiled if for you. Not as bad as if I'd said "Rosebud is the sled" but still, I apologize if I have. The last line served as a "statement" for the modern aesthetic for way too many years and "statements" get jumped on. MacLeish's poetry and plays are full of ideas and not all of them are going to fly for everyone.

MacLeish was an exceptional intellect. He majored in English at Yale. He graduated number one in his class at Harvard Law. He hung out in Paris with all the famous ex-pats of the day, Stein and Hemingway and Fitzgerald et al. He won three Pulitzers.

What MacLeish did that stands head and shoulders above his writing, to me, anyway, was his refreshment of the Library of Congress to which he was appointed librarian during Roosevelt's presidency. He shot some life into it. He started the process to have an American Poet Laureate and he even once named Louise Bogan to the post when she was clearly hostile to his writing. He was a fair-minded guy with a penchant for books and the arts.

He reorganized the Library of Congress with such a good shake that he winnowed down the extraneous, reassigned the qualified and got it running properly. There is no amount of thanks that we can give that is too great for this. He blew the dust off the place and made it a repository for the mysteries of the human mind. He said, "If books are reports on the mysteries of the world and our existence in it, libraries remain reporting on the human mind, that particular mystery, still remains as countries lose their grandeur and universities are not certain what they are."

When he was appointed to the post, by the by, he was a controversial figure seeing as he had no experience or education in the library sciences. Roosevelt wanted a poet with some feeling for the arts. The American Library Association was a bit taken aback by this. Of course, it turns out that 34 of the 37 people who had taken the post before MacLeish had no library science training either. You know what they say when a new manager comes in; a new broom sweeps clean. Sometimes this is good, sometimes the good gets swept away with the bad and things get messed up. The library, it turns out, needed a good healthy sweep.

I find MacLeish's poetry somewhat hard to like. It is redolent with ideas which often trip up the lines. His mind is a finely tuned instrument, but one can see it clicking off categories in the work. It is obvious that he loved the form, though, and there beats a noble heart.

Here's a good MacLeish quote: "Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered."

And another in honor of the upcoming Super Bowl: "Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words. "

You can find more MacLeish here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/archibald-macleish