Number 82: Kay Ryan "Flamingo Watching"

Flamingo Watching

Wherever the flamingo goes,
she brings a city’s worth
of furbelows. She seems
unnatural by nature—
too vivid and peculiar
a structure to be pretty,
and flexible to the point
of oddity. Perched on
those legs, anything she does
seems like an act. Descending
on her egg or draping her head
along her back, she’s
too exact and sinuous
to convince an audience
she’s serious. The natural elect,
they think, would be less pink,
less able to relax their necks,
less flamboyant in general.
They privately expect that it’s some
poorly jointed bland grey animal
with mitts for hands
whom God protects.

-- Kay Ryan

Hap Notes: I love Kay Ryan's (born 1945) phrase "unnatural by nature." Ryan was the Poetry Consultant (see? I said it- hate the term but I'll use it instead of laureate if that's what I have to call it) for the U.S. just last year. She was a bit of an outsider poet, no-one was more surprised than she was when she was named laureate. Her several books of verses are certainly worth the position, though. Her poetry is vividly and often eccentrically phrased and is full of surprises (as most good poetry should be.)

One of the reasons I like Ryan is because she went to a "community" or "junior" college and I find them admirable for their abilities to give you the basic requirements for a college degree without the crippling expense. If you're going to have to take English 101, how much better to take it in a small class at a community college than in one of those "teaching theaters" full of a couple hundred students. I always hated those big lecture classes- nobody knows anyone and your papers are graded by grad students you've never met. It's not at all what one hopes college is about.

Ryan was born in San Jose, California and went to Antelope Valley College and later, the University of California in Los Angeles. She lives somewhere in Marin county, just like George Lucas. Her poetry flew under the radar until she was included in a few anthologies in the mid 1990s and, of course, it certainly didn't hurt that Dana Gioia has written several good pieces about her. If there's anyone in this country that you want to impress with your poetry, former chairman-of-the-NEA poet Gioia would be the guy. She worked with community college programs while she was laureate.

Ryan privately published her poetry by subscription and only one of her books had been backed by a New York publishing house. She's an object lesson in writing poetry; write it, publish it and let it go. Her poetry style is refreshing, usually fairly short, remarkably worded observations, as if she's some amalgam of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore with a bit of Emily Dickenson in the mix. And remember what I always say; poets want to be published- it's hard and competitive and somewhat arbitrary.

A flamingo is an unusual creature, it has that reputation, like the puffin, for its odd and entertaining good looks. There are a great many analogies one could draw from this poem about people, writers, musicians and artists as well as animals. (And as a side note, I've always liked the British "grey" spelling better than the American "gray" spelling- it just seems right.) She has compression, the thing so undervalued in much contemporary poetry. It's a joy to read her thoughtful, densely packed verses with the often delightfully surprising conclusions or observations. She allows you to be a part of the poem as you read through it over and over. Her poems often strike me like some revelatory thing a stranger has said to you during the day- I keep coming back to it and pondering it.

Here's a good Ryan quote from her interview in the Paris Review: " I’d bought a tarot deck—this was the seventies—a standard one with a little accompanying book that explained how to read the cards, lay them out, shuffle them—all those things. But I’m not a student and was totally impatient with learning anything about the cards. I thought they were just interesting to look at. But I did use the book’s shuffling method, which was very elaborate, and in the morning I’d turn one card over and whatever that card was I would write a poem about it. The card might be Love, or it might be Death. My game, or project, was to write as many poems as there were cards in the deck. But since I couldn’t control which cards came up, I’d write some over and over again and some I’d never see. That gave me range. 
I always understood that to write poetry was to be totally exposed."

and another (and apply this to the poem, now): "I’ve always been sickened by the whole discussion of natural tone, natural voice. I think that’s ridiculous. Every tone, every voice is unnatural, and it is natural to be unnatural. So there’s nothing to talk about. It works or it doesn’t work. I don’t think that anybody ought to tolerate the tyranny of the idea of “natural” voice."


You can find a lot more Ryan here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kay-ryan

Number 81: W.S. Merwin "Small Woman on Swallow Street"

Small Woman on Swallow Street

Four feet up, under the bruise-blue

Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim

Slips over the sky, street after street, and nobody

Knows, to stop it. It will cover

The whole world, if there is time. Fifty years’

Start in gray the eyes have; you will never

Catch up to where they are, too clever

And always walking, the legs not long but

The boots big with wide smiles of darkness

Going round and round at their tops, climbing.

They are almost to the knees already, where

There should have been ankles to stop them.

So must keep walking all the time, hurry, for

The black sea is down where the toes are

And swallows and swallows all. A big coat

Can help save you. But eyes push you down; never

Meet eyes. There are hands in hands, and love

Follows its furs into shut doors; who

Shall be killed first? Do not look up there:

The wind is blowing the building-tops, and a hand

Is sneaking the whole sky another way, but

It will not escape. Do not look up. God is

On High. He can see you. You will die.

-- W. S. Merwin

Hap Notes: In the past couple of decades, William Stanley Merwin (born 1927) has become more zen-like in his poetry but this isn't one of those. This poem always scares me a bit and I believe it's supposed to. The big dark gaping grins of her boots is a terrifying image as she seems to be swallowed up by her overly large footwear on her small frame.

This woman is being swallowed up by her own darkness. The world, and everything in it, is too big for her. Just don't look up at that wide expanse of sky, at things beyond your hat brim. Keep your head down, wear a big coat for protection, and hurry along. She is over 50, she's not a young woman, but she is determined to keep on moving. She's clever but nervous.

Here's what Robert Bly says about "Small Woman on Swallow Street": " The poem is cunning and strong. The evil in human nature is not related to Adam or Eve, or to theological doctrines, or to something the Greeks might or might not have done, but to kindly members of sewing circles in little towns in Pennsylvania, members of the poet's family, white protestants." It's an interesting interpretation.

Merwin's dad was a minister. He was born in New York and the family moved to Pennsylvania where Merwin grew to love the natural world. The property had a barn and a big yard and he used to talk to a tree out in the back yard when he was a kid. You gotta love a kid who talks to trees and wrote hymns for his father to see.

When my sister was around 9 or 10, my mom dressed her up as a little old lady for Halloween. She had on a long old flowery dress, a big coat, a dark blue hat with powdery pink flowers and she drew lines on her face to simulate wrinkles. The sparkle in her eyes was of a little girl but she actually looked old. She had a cane for walking. She was a little slip of a thing. Seriously, that silly costume on my sister scared the bejesus out of me. It was like looking at fast-forward mortality. I often think of my sister-as-an-old-lady when I read this poem. The story of my sister-as-an-old-lady is a tale of making sure you still have that child inside of you as you age-scary as that may seem to others. The poem is sort of what happens when you don't- when you give the child in you away. You will die anyway, but at least you'll be curious about it and not scared of it. You won't be swallowed up by your own darkness.

Merwin's career has been long and illustrious. He's won two Pulitzers and dozens of prestigious poetry prizes. He was friends with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, he studied under R.P. Blackmur at Princeton and he knew John Berryman. He was a good friend of James Wright. He has written more than 30 books of poetry and is the 2010-2011 current U.S. Poet Laureate.

Ever since he moved to Hawaii some 30 years ago, his poetry has taken on a certain open- hearted philosophical quality that is often very Zen like. I think his surroundings have something to do with this. He built his home there at the foot of a dormant volcano. He has a large garden there that has become a sanctuary for rare plants. He is a practicing environmentalist.

Here's one of my favorite Merwin quotes: "As soon as I could move a stub of pencil and put words on paper, I wanted to be a poet."

You can find more Merwin (whom we will see later on this year) here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-s-merwin

Number 80: Elizabeth Bishop "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore"

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.

--Elizabeth Bishop

Hap Notes: Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) and Moore (1887-1972) were friends and Moore served as a mentor for the young Bishop, being 24 years older. They met when Bishop was in her early 20s and Moore in her late 40s and Bishop often mentions the generational differences in the their lives. They maintained their friendship for more than 35 years, often corresponding in letters (you know, those old fashioned, hand-written missive sent through the post office. A dying art, the letter.) [Breaking off briefly to say that one hopes our correspondences will not be reduced to reproduced "tweets" on our phones. Was watching the ESPN coverage of the Carmelo Anthony (and the Knicks got Billups, too!) trade and they had graphics displaying the tweets. (!?)]

It's obvious from the poem that Bishop loved Moore and maybe even received a bit of motherly warmth from this, which she surely could have used since Bishop's own mother was in a mental institution the whole time she was growing up. Of course, Moore was a formal woman (one part of the generational differences) and Bishop never even called her "Marianne" for two years of the friendship, calling her "Miss Moore" until Moore invited the younger poet to use her first name.

Moore and Bishop's poetry have one vital thing in common in that they are both detailed observers of the things and life around them. Bishop called Moore "the world's greatest living observer" and carefully composed letters writing little observances and anecdotes to her. Moore was a good reader, a wise adviser and an honest critic and helper with Bishop's poetry.

Bishop met her through a librarian friend at Vassar. Moore and Bishop set up a time to talk. Here's Bishop describing the event.

"I was very frightened, but I put on my new spring suit and took the train to New York. I had never seen a picture of Miss Moore: all I knew was that she had red hair and usually wore a wide-brimmed hat. I expected the hair to be bright red and for her to be tall and intimidating. I was right on time, even a bit early, but she was there before me (no matter how early one arrived, Marianne was always there first) and, I saw at once, not very tall and not in the least bit intimidating. She was forty-seven, an age that seemed old to me then, and her hair was mixed with white to a faint rust pink, and her rust-pink eyebrows were frosted with white. The large black flat hat was as I’d expected it to be. She wore a blue tweed suit that day and, as she usually did then, a man’s “polo shirt,” as they were called, with a black bow at the neck. The effect was quaint, vaguely Bryn Mawr 1909, but stylish at the same time. I sat down and she began to talk."


and later in the meeting:

"Happily ignorant of the poor Vassar girls before me who hadn’t passed muster, I began to feel less nervous and even spoke some myself. I had what may have been an inspiration, I don’t know—at any rate, I attribute my great good fortune in having known Marianne as a friend in part to it. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was making a spring visit to New York and I asked Miss Moore (we called each other “Miss” for over two years) if she would care to go to the circus with me the Saturday after next. I didn’t know that she always went to the circus, wouldn’t have missed it for anything, and when she accepted, I went back to Poughkeepsie in the grimy day coach extremely happy."

I love the idea of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop at the circus together. Makes me feel as happy as the flying poet descriptions in the poem. The illustration is an epergne, if you didn't know what it was (and why should you?).

Moore, in her letters to Bishop, seems a bit cooler and less emotive than Bishop in her letters but the younger poet wisely understood that this was generational. Moore was raised in a time of more formal manners, where personal remarks were kept to a minimum and cordial relationships were not casual. Readers older than 40 may recall older teachers or relatives who were like this. Their every thought was not expressed, nor did they think it proper that it should be. Moore was anxious to help Bishop and wrote to her many times telling her this. Remember how I said yesterday that Moore spoke in complete sentences? That's how educated people generally spoke (and still speak sometimes.)

Bishop says, "She must have been one of the world’s greatest talkers: entertaining, enlightening, fascinating, and memorable; her talk, like her poetry, was quite different from anyone else’s in the world."

If you want to review what we've discussed about Bishop go here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-34-elizabeth-bishop-filling.html

Number 79: Marianne Moore "Poetry"

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

-- Marianne Moore

Hap Notes: Since I mentioned this poem yesterday, I felt it might be good to see the whole thing today.

Marianne Moore (1887-1972), in addition to lots of other distinctive things, liked a good hat. She wore a little tricorn hat and a cape when she was the toast of New York. She loved sports, wrote the liner notes for Muhammed Ali's spoken word album, enjoyed watching boxing matches and was a great baseball fan. One of her prized possessions was a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle. She threw out the first pitch for the 1968 season at Yankee Stadium. She recognized Christy Mathewson's pitching at the first ballgame she ever attended, just from reading his book on the subject. She even wrote a poem "Baseball and Writing."

She was born and raised in Kirkwood, Missouri (it's pretty close to St. Louis) and was brought up by her grandparents and her mother as her father had left before she had even been born (he had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in the east.) She graduated from Bryn Mawr and started publishing poetry in 1915. She was the editor of the literary journal The Dial for a few years and was instrumental in the careers of Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsburg and John Ashberry, just to name a few.

Moore's Collected Poems (1951) won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize. She was great friends with Wallace Stevens. They were both fairly conservative Republicans. (Which today means they were centrist Democrats. The Republican party has strayed a long way from its original principles in the last 40 years.) Moore never married. She lived with her mom until 1947 (when her mom passed away.)

This particular poem, "Poetry" is one of her most famous and anthologized. She tinkered with it off and on her whole life. At one point the poem was just the first two sentences, Moore claiming the rest was just "padding." Obviously the poet does not dislike poetry however she does make a scattered case for the poetry she does like and the poetry she does not. What it boils down to is that she hates affected obtuseness and wants a poem to be genuine.

It's interesting to note that when she compiled a list of what she felt were the greatest literary works, she chose Keats and Byron and even Ogden Nash but not Shelley. If you want to see what she listed visit here: www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/exhibit.htm. Her handwriting, also on the website, is pretty and familiar as old school Palmer Method (with maybe a little Spencerian. Don't know what I'm talking about? It's the way many of us were taught cursive writing in school, that's all.)

Moore was a well read, clever, crisply turned out woman who was a marvel with her use and appreciation of words. In interviews she is tart and a little like a bemused educated sprite. She was one of those people who spoke in well ordered whole sentences.

Here's a good Moore quote: "It never occurred to me that what I wrote was something to define. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity. I like the end-stopped line and dislike the reversed order of words; like symmetry."

You can find more Moore here: www.poemhunter.com/marianne-moore/

Number 78: Tony Hoagland "I Have News For You"

I Have News For You


There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

-- Tony Hoagland

Hap Notes: Tony Hoagland (born 1953) is so accessible, like Billy Collins, that you almost get blind-sided by the deep stuff lodged in its seemingly simple heart. You feel like he's chatting with you, or maybe you're overhearing him talk to someone, or talk to himself and then everything telescopes out into the larger universe. He's a guide to the cosmos that you met in the hardware store. He's an especial favorite of mine.

The difference between everyday speech and describing what is pulsing underneath it, is poetry. Hoagland is certainly poetry and not just idle conversation. Contemporary conversational poets give one the illusion of casual observances but they are laid in the cement of poetry. They claim poet as their title. They published it as poetry. It may seem like I am stating the obvious. Again, read closely.

In "I Have News For You" what is the poet saying about us, about poets? Marianne Moore, in her poem about poetry says "there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle." Hoagland is maybe saying the same thing about contemporary angst.

Hoagland grew up on Army bases, his dad was an army doctor. He was born at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. (I love the name Fort Bragg. Even though it was named for Confederate General Braxton Bragg, it always sounds to me like a perfect name for the military.) He went to a variety of colleges (I think he was on the classic ten-year plan where it takes you ten years to figure out how to pay for it and what to major in and man, wouldn't it be cool to just hang out and have a job for a year thing.) He currently teaches at the University of Houston.

Here's a good Hoagland quote (I'm always stunned to find out that people other than me did this- I used to think it was an odd thought, but apparently it's somewhat common.) : "I know that people often say "you want to learn poems by heart so that if you ever go to prison you can say them to yourself, and it will give you consolation and comfort and companionship." I think that was true for me, and that it still remains true for me."

And another: "I feel that we are so drowned in a culture whose media forces and spin-doctoring are so powerful, so pervasive, and so hard to ignore, that poetry is actually well-equipped to present a model of what our experience is like right now. It is able to name it, to name the affliction which is very, very hard to name. To name that affliction that an ordinary American experiences walking around: the enormous confusion of hierarchies; the value and information; the bombardment; the difficulty of finding stillness."

You can find more Hoagland here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/tony-hoagland

Number 77: Richard Brautigan "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace"

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

-- Richard Brautigan

Hap Notes: Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) has a name that even sounds like poetry to me but it may be because I loved his stories and poems and books when they were refreshingly new and somewhat shocking. I kept battered copies of Brautigan books (Most notably In Watermelon Sugar and Revenge of the Lawn) with me, in my purse or backpack or slipped into a pouch on the cover of a three-ring binder, for many years. I always think I've outgrown him. Then, I re-read something of his that hits me just right and I fall in love with him all over again.

Born in Tacoma, Washington, Brautigan grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He moved to San Francisco in 1956 but before you nod knowingly about the "Beats" and the hippies I'm here to tell you that Brautigan, when he's good, transcends all that. He has a "whistling in the dark" positivity that is un-Beat-like. He's not a "flower child", he's more of a tree. He has a whimsical bent which is often childishly referred to as "childish." There's a wounded, still hopeful soul under most of his stories and poems and while this IS childlike, it's no more so than any other person on earth.

Brautigan was diagnosed as schizophrenic/depressive and given shock therapy in his twenties. He was a shy man with a very gentle soul. His personality came to life when he read his own poetry aloud: Here he is reading "Gee, You're So Beautiful It's Starting To Rain" www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiCyDhoI1-0. His book Trout Fishing in America made him a counter-culture hero and famous enough to be featured in magazines. It has sold over 4 million copies. The books he wrote allowed him to travel and live. He visited Japan several times and loved it there.

Some writers, fans and friends of Brautigan's have expressed surprise at his suicide in 1984 but, quite frankly, I'm always surprised the gods allowed us to have him as long as we did. Here's a clue: he committed suicide in his home. When they found him, he'd been dead for weeks. He walked alone.

Brautigan's short stories are always my favorite. His stories are populated with old ladies who feed bees and people who replace their plumbing with poetry and movie directors' beautiful daughters. There's one in particular where he says he's trying to tell someone how he feels about a girl and he likens it to rural America first getting electric lights- how amazing it was that they could have bright lights on in the dark-the electricity! His work is charming, eccentric and fits into no particular genre.

He had a very rocky upbringing with several abusive step-fathers and the soggy sadness of poverty in the northwest. It's a little off but I always think of him being somewhat like Curt Cobain (Nirvana.) Brautigan, like Cobain, in spite of his fame, had no one to whom he could relate and even if he did, there was no way to put it into words as hard as he tried.

Here's a good Brautigan quote: "All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."

You can find more Brautigan here: www.brautigan.net/poetry.html

Bonus poem because it's so hard to select just one Brautigan- he's like a candy store- so much delicious stuff:

Moonlight on a Cemetery

Moonlight drifts from over
A hundred thousand miles
To fall upon a cemetery.

It reads a hundred epitaphs
And then smiles at a nest of
Baby owls.

--Richard Brautigan

Number 76: Sidney Lanier "The Mocking-Bird"

The Mocking-Bird

Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray
That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,
He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
Of languid doves when long their lovers stray,
And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew
At morn in brake or bosky avenue.
Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say.
Then down he shot, bounced airily along
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song
Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again.
Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain:
How may the death of that dull insect be
The life of yon trim Shakespeare on the tree?

-- Sidney Lanier

Hap Notes: I promise this is the last "bird" poem for a while. This one is so irresistable, though. Just the line "Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say" is just so perfect, almost as remarkable as the work of the author Lanier (1842-1881) claims the bird to be like.

Sidney Lanier often uses multiple rhythms and unusual words in his poetry which has the faint tones of Gerard Manly Hopkins (they were contemporaries in two different countries who never met- it's just an artistic coincidence.) A little help for some of the words: bosky means lots of shrubbery and/or trees, prinking is to groom a bit showily, a sward is an area of grass, twitched means the bird pulled or moved suddenly.

Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia and the state is so proud of him they named a lake and a bridge after him. He even got a commemorative stamp in 1972. That "Smith Brothers" beard he sported was the fashion of the day, especially in the south, (The Smith Brothers used to be on a cough drop package for those of you who don't know- two somber looking bearded men who looked like they could scare the cough out of you. Since the last Smith Brothers cough drop was made in 1972, it dawns on me this is an obscure reference.)

Lanier was something of a musical prodigy. He learned to play the flute and later the violin, guitar, banjo and the piano without lessons. He taught himself musical notation and wrote an interesting book on the connections of musical notations and poetry. While he was a lawyer, he also, at one time was the first chair flautist for an orchestra in Maryland. He fought for the Confederates during the Civil War, he was captured and incarcerated in a military prison where he contracted tuberculosis. He suffered from TB for the rest of his fairly short life. He also taught English Literature at Johns Hopkins University.

Lanier strikes me as one of those people who was madly talented in the arts yet felt it could not be a respectable full-time career. He was drawn to music and poetry like a magnet to steel.

His reputation was more vital in the south. He wrote some dialect poems that can make one wince now, but some of his work is brilliant and sharply observed, like our poem today.

Here's a Lanier quote: "Music is love in search of a word."

and here's a telling excerpt from a letter he wrote to his dad: "My dear father, think how, for twenty years, through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life...think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances...these two figures of music and of poetry have steadily kept in my heart so that I could not banish them."

You can find more Lanier here: famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/sidney_lanier/poems