Number 89: William Blake "The Tyger"

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

-- William Blake

Hap Notes: I thought Blake's (1757-1827) tiger would be an interesting contrast to yesterday's Borges poem although Blake's poem has much more in common with Robert Frost's "Design" which we talked about here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-7-robert-frost-design_14.html with the big difference being that Blake does not see an innocent creature but a darkly frightening one.

It certainly sounds like Blake is implying a more sinister "creator" for the tiger. Is this more or less frightening than Frost's implication that there is nothing?

Blake is one of those artists everybody said was nuts when he was alive but then got "discovered" by the next generation. He's been influencing poets, painters and rock stars ever since.

We'll talk more about Blake tomorrow but for now you can find more Blake here: www.poetry-archive.com/b/blake_william.html

Number 88: Jorge Luis Borges "The Other Tiger"

The Other Tiger

A tiger comes to mind. The twilight here
Exalts the vast and busy Library
And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo's slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger's stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.

It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.

We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours
Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.

---Jorge Luis Borges
(Translated by John Updike)

The Other Tiger

I think of a tiger. The fading light enhances
the vast complexities of the Library
and seems to set the bookshelves at a distance;
powerful, innocent, bloodstained, and new-made,
it will prowl through its jungle and its morning
and leave its footprint on the muddy edge
of a river with a name unknown to it
(in its world, there are no names, nor past, nor future,
only the sureness of the present moment)
and it will cross the wilderness of distance
and sniff out in the woven labyrinth
of smells the smell peculiar to morning
and the scent on the air of deer, delectable.
Behind the lattice of bamboo, I notice
its stripes, and I sense its skeleton
under the magnificence of the quivering skin.
In vain the convex oceans and the deserts
spread themselves across the earth between us;
from this one house in a far-off seaport
in South America, I dream you, follow you,
oh tiger on the fringes of the Ganges.

Evening spreads in my spirit and I keep thinking
that the tiger I am calling up in my poem
is a tiger made of symbols and of shadows,
a set of literary images,
scraps remembered from encyclopedias,
and not the deadly tiger, the fateful jewel
that in the sun or the deceptive moonlight
follows its paths, in Bengal or Sumatra,
of love, of indolence, of dying.
Against the tiger of symbols I have set
the real one, the hot-blooded one
that savages a herd of buffalo,
and today, the third of August, ’59,
its patient shadow moves across the plain,
but yet, the act of naming it, of guessing
what is its nature and its circumstance
creates a fiction, not a living creature,
not one of those that prowl on the earth.

Let us look for a third tiger. This one
will be a form in my dream like all the others,
a system, an arrangement of human language,
and not the flesh-and-bone tiger
that, out of reach of all mythologies,
paces the earth. I know all this; yet something
drives me to this ancient, perverse adventure,
foolish and vague, yet still I keep on looking
throughout the evening for the other tiger,
the other tiger, the one not in this poem.

--Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Alastair Reid

The Other Tiger

I think of a tiger. The gloom here makes

The vast and busy Library seem lofty

And pushes the shelves back;

Strong, innocent, covered with blood and new,

It will move through its forest and its morning

And will print its tracks on the muddy

Margins of a river whose name it does not know

(In its world there are no names nor past

Nor time to come, only the fixed moment)

And will overleap barbarous distances

And will scent out of the plaited maze

Of all the scents the scent of dawn

And the delighting scent of deer.

Between the stripes of the bamboo I decipher

Its stripes and have the feel of the bony structure

That quivers under the glowing skin.

In vain do the curving seas intervene

And the deserts of the planet;

From this house in a far-off port

In South America, I pursue and dream you,

O tiger on the Ganges’ banks.


In my soul the afternoon grows wider and I reflect

That the tiger invoked in my verse

Is a ghost of a tiger, a symbol,

A series of literary tropes

And memories from the encyclopaedia

And not the deadly tiger, the fateful jewel

That, under the sun or the varying moon,

In Sumatra or Bengal goes on fulfilling

Its rounds of love, of idleness and death.

To the symbolic tiger I have opposed

The real thing, with its warm blood,

That decimates the tribe of buffaloes

And today, the third of August, ’59,

Stretches on the grass a deliberate

Shadow, but already the fact of naming it

And conjecturing its circumstances

Makes it a figment of art and no creature

Living among those that walk the earth.

We shall seek a third tiger. This

Will be like those others a shape

Of my dreaming, a system of words

A man makes and not the vertebrate tiger

That, beyond the mythologies,

Is treading the earth. I know well enough

That something lays on me this quest

Undefined, senseless and ancient, and I go on

Seeking through the afternoon time

The other tiger, that which is not in verse.

--Jorge Luis Borges
translated by Harold Morland

Hap Notes: Ah, the problems/joys of translation is displayed in all its glory here. I hope to let the poet (and the translators) do all the talking today. Come on, it's nice to have a day when I am more or less silent, isn't it? The Bible that we all read has been translated from Hebrew/Aramaic to Latin to English- think there may be some differences in the texts? Don't get daunted by this Borges project... just read and enjoy. Which translation do you like? (If you're asking- I think they all have merit, actually. See how hard it is to translate, though?)

Here's what I will say, and then, I'll give you some helpful quotes from the author: I do love Pablo Neruda but I think the most brilliant writer of the 20th century may have been Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) who wrestled with the ideas of perception, dimension and the senses-things that are vital to the 21st century human being. (His name is pronounced Horhay Lweess Borhays- more or less... close enough.) Here's something that could help- have someone read one translation and you read another- line by line. It would be better if there were three to do it. Or, barring that, copy and paste the poems side by side...)

Here are a few quotes to help you as you figure out which translation means the most to you, with first, a prose selection from the same book:

Dreamtigers

In my infancy I adored tigers with fervor: not the egg-coloured tigers of the floating-islands of Paraná, or the Amazonian confusion, but the royal Asiatic tiger, with stripes, which can only be confronted by men of war, on a tower mounted on an elephant. I used to linger endlessly before one of the cages in the Zoological gardens; I appreciated the vast encyclopedias and the books of natural history, for the splendour of their tigers. (I have total recall of these figures: I who cannot recall, without error, the face or smile of a woman.) Infancy passed, and the tigers, and my passion for them faded, but they are always still in my dreams. In subconscious sleep, or the chaos which generally follows, it's like this: I sleep, and am distracted by some sort of dream, and immediately I know that it is a dream. At such times I think: This is a dream, a purely voluntary diversion, and now that I have unlimited power I am going to evoke a tiger.

O, incompetence! My dreams are never able to engender the fierce things longed for. The tiger appears, indeed, but desiccated, or enfeebled, or with irregular variations of form, or of an inadmissible size, or completely fugitive, or similar to a dog or bird. ( Borges translated by James Duvall)

"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges."

"Writing is nothing more than a guided dream."

Number 87: Thomas Lux "A Man Gets Off Work Early"

A Man Gets Off Work Early


and decides to snorkel in a cool mountain lake.
Not as much to see
as in the ocean but it’s tranquil (no sharks) floating
face down into that other world.
The pines’ serrated shadows reach
across the waters
and just now, below him, to his left,
a pickerel, long and sharp and . . .whuppa whuppa whuppa,
louder, behind, above him, louder,
whuppa whuppa whuppa . . . . Two weeks later,
20 miles away, he’s found,
a cinder, his wetsuit
melted on him, in a crab-like position
on the still warm ash
of the forest floor
through which fire tore unchecked,
despite the chemicals,
the men with axes and shovels,
despite the huge scoops of lake water
dropped on it
from his friend, the sky,
on whom he turned his back.

--Thomas Lux

Hap Notes: First off, let me calm you a bit and say that this incident is a bit of urban legend. It's more like a koan or a logic problem that one solves. I have seen no evidence that a scuba-diving man was accidentally sucked up by one of those fire-fighting helicopters which takes water from nearby lakes and drops it on the blaze. And I looked for it, just to be sure, because I am a geek that does that kind of thing.

I researched it because the poem made a dark burnt rubber mark inside of me somewhere, it was eerie and horrible and odd. Which, of course, is part of the poem's power. The fish on the masthead is a pickerel- part of the pike family- thought you might want to see one. (Breaking off briefly to say this is the smile of the student in Roethke's "Elegy for Jane", that's what I always think of when I hear the word, anyway.)

I thought I had dreamed this poem and searched for it frantically in my Lux collection (I only have three slim Lux volumes but it's probably not out of line to say that if you like a certain poet, buy their books, don't wait for an anthology. If you get burnt by a few you don't like, you'll become a far more careful reader. Invest in the poetry you love. It's the only investment that will yield multiple returns as long as you live.) I was relieved to find it. I may be crazy but, at least, my memory is still okay. Sheesh.

Note how in the poem, the man is relieved by the idea that no sharks can bother him in a lake. Lux turns this strange story into a dark, sad tale of the shocks of life. The man leaves his own world, turns his back on "his friend, the sky" and a flying machine in the sky wrenches him out of the water and drops him on the fiery land. I'll let you think on it because the contortions in the poem leave me sort of wrenched myself. Hard to make a poem, as casual as this one seems, do that kind of heavy lifting but it does.

Here's another great Lux quote: "I think poetry can be taught. You can write clearly and lucidly without compromising creativity. It's important that I make this clear that there is great pleasure in this labor. It is not tedious, because along the way, in the process of rewriting, you make discoveries. Anything good does not get made easily."

Here's where we've talked about Lux before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-64-thomas-lux-man-into-whose.html

Number 86: Alberto Rios "Refugio's Hair"

Refugio's Hair

In the old days of our family,
My grandmother was a young woman
Whose hair was as long as the river.
She lived with her sisters on the ranch
La Calera--The Land of the Lime--
And her days were happy.
But her uncle Carlos lived there too,
Carlos whose soul had the edge of a knife.
One day, to teach her to ride a horse,
He made her climb on the fastest one,
Bareback, and sit there
As he held its long face in his arms.
And then he did the unspeakable deed
For which he would always be remembered:
He called for the handsome baby Pirrín
And he placed the child in her arms.
With that picture of a Madonna on horseback
He slapped the shank of the horse's rear leg.
The horse did what a horse must,
Racing full toward the bright horizon.
But first he ran under the álamo trees
To rid his back of this unfair weight:
This woman full of tears
And this baby full of love.
When they reached the trees and went under,
Her hair, which had trailed her,
Equal in its magnificence to the tail of the horse,
That hair rose up and flew into the branches
As if it were a thousand arms,
All of them trying to save her.
The horse ran off and left her,
The baby still in her arms,
The two of them hanging from her hair.
The baby looked only at her
And did not cry, so steady was her cradle.
Her sisters came running to save them.
But the hair would not let go.
From its fear it held on and had to be cut,
All of it, from her head.
From that day on, my grandmother
Wore her hair short like a scream,
But it was long like a river in her sleep.

-- Alberto Rios

Hap Notes: Alberto Rios (born 1952) was born on the border town of Nogales, Arizona. He grew up in a family of mixed cultures, his father was born in Mexico and his mother was born in England. Stories of his youth are filled with the sadness of teachers forbidding him to speak Spanish in the class room and the culture doing its best to wipe the rich (I may say, richer, here) language of his father. When I say "forbidding," by the way, I don't mean they just told him not to do it- they punished him (and other classmates- he says they "swatted" him. Something that is now, I believe, illegal) and shamed them. Welcome to the land of "the free" Alberto, eh? This has been pretty common practice in America and I find it revolting, particularly in town that borders Mexico. These kids are American citizens, not foreign nationals.

Not all of Rios' teachers were state-education-law following drones. He had a teacher in high school who saw his writing (he'd been writing things in secret for years) and encouraged him, opened him up to new poets, gave him a bit of hope. He eventually attended the University of Arizona where he received a degree in English and Psychology. He has been teaching Creative Writing at Arizona State since 1981. He is the author of nine books of poetry. He has also written short stories and a memoir.

The poem is riveting isn't it? His uncle whose soul had the "edge of a knife." What a strange and sadistic trick to play, eh? And doesn't it contrast interestingly with the biblical story of King David's recalcitrant son Absalom whose hair caught in a tree and hung him? Refugio is the name of his Grandmother but, from the spattering of Spanish I know, it is the (male) word for refuge or shelter. Which she certainly was. Oh, an Alamo tree is the Spanish word for Cottonwood tree. Wearing "her hair short like a scream" is so well put- the knife's edge cuts her hair but no one can touch her hair in her dreams. In fact, no one could touch Alberto in his head either as he grew up in a school system that invalidated his rich heritage while he wrote secretly in the back of his notebooks. His books and poems are often full of magic.

This poem of memory, brings up some memories for me, as I think on the young Alberto's plight in school.

When I lived in California, I worked, when I was a retail manager, with a young man whose parents had immigrated from Chile almost fifteen years prior to my meeting him. He was a tough kid, belligerent and hostile and all of seventeen years old. I like belligerent hostile kids, there's some life in 'em. So I took his abusive curt answers to my questions with relative cheerfulness. One day (he was going to walk home late at night by himself after work which I forbid all kids to do- I drove a lot of those kids home each night) I was driving him home and he told me that he could speak very little English and that's why he was often mad and frustrated. I was stunned to find out that he had been passed from class to class (he was a junior in high school) without learning how to write or read well enough to feel comfortable since he'd been in school in America all of his life. He shrugged and said "The teachers don't like us (Spanish speaking kids). They just ignored us." I'd love to tell you that I tutored him and everything worked out fine but while I offered, he was too proud and angry to accept.

One more personal memory: When I lived in Atlanta I worked with some people from Castro's "Mariel Boatlift" do you remember this? People were allowed to leave Cuba in boats and it was alleged that Castro emptied his prisons and let the "undesirables" leave. First off, you could go to prison in Cuba for many different reasons, not just because you were a felon and secondly, it was found later than less than a quarter of the emigres were "undesirables." The people I knew were high school teachers- one taught physics, one taught literature. They had been in America a couple of years when I met them. We had an evening where we traded "traditional" dinner evenings. I made Yankee pot roast with carrots and potatoes with apple pie for dessert. They made Pollo y arros- Chicken with rice (which I have never tasted better or been able to equal.) They served delicious coffee- Cafe' Bustelo with sweetened condensed milk. I'd never tasted any coffee so good (it was 30 some odd years ago- and I had no experience with Hispanic culture at the time- strange place to get it, Atlanta.)

Well, they showed me the coffee can and I started reading the Spanish aloud, trying to discern what the words were. I looked up and there were tears streaming down their faces. Their uncle was there and a brother who had also come from Cuba. They were all weeping. I was startled and stopped. The uncle said, "This is the first time we have heard someone else speak Spanish to us in two years." The side of a coffee can read by a small town midwestern girl who knew no Spanish at the time; even this moved them.

I suppose I should mention that, at the time, these people who could have done such good for Spanish speaking students as teachers, were working maintenance at an apartment complex (as I was) and that's how I met them.

The stories of Rios' school days brought back these memories to me. They needed to be set down just as his grandmother's story needed to be told. Rios has won tons of awards and his books are full of the "magical realism" that he teaches at Arizona State.

Here's a wonderful Rios quote from a Bloomsbury interview:" I want my poems and stories to serve the community in the same manner the baker’s bread does. People eat bakery bread for taste as well as nourishment, and my writing should provide a similar kind of sustenance. The baker’s main ingredient is flour, mine is words, yet both our products are created in large measure to serve others. The ultimate test for me is to offer a poem or story at the metaphoric kitchen table, and have people respond as if I’ve passed them a slice of delicious buttered bread. In that sense, I never think of myself as reading these poems from a lectern, or of teaching them to a captive audience of students. My poems must take care of themselves, and make their own way. I just wish they’d write home more."

You can find more Rios here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/alberto-rios

Number 85: Rabindranath Tagore "Closed Path"

Closed Path

I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power,
that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

Hap Notes: Rabindrath Tagore (1861-1941) is probably India's most famous poet in the west, mostly because of his Nobel Prize (the first awarded to a non-European) and the poet William Butler Yeats (whom we will get to later, I promise). Tagore translated his own poems into English as something to do on a sea voyage to England. The poems were seen by his friend, artist Rothenstein, who, in turn showed them to Yeats. Yeats was impressed and the poems were published in 1912. Tagore was 51 years old at the time. This is how the floodgates opened to much of the English speaking world as the amazing words of Indian poetry flowed out. (This is one story of how it happened- there are more but let's stick with this one, for now.)

Tagore had a fascinating life. He was born in Kolkata (once Calcutta) and was born into a wealthy Bengali Brahmin family. He went to England to study law, left with no degree and became a writer of small fame, of stories, songs and plays, in his home town. He, at 51, decided to go back to England to restart his studies (!) and that's when he wrote out the translations that changed his life and the world's perceptions of India. Just look at his eyes. There's a truth in them, isn't there?

Tagore was a brilliant intellect who knew something about post-Newtonian physics and had discussions with Einstein. He traveled the world after his Nobel Prize in 1913 and he started a school and he had political views which I cannot possibly explain because I don't understand Indian politics much better than I understand our own and India is a big country with a lot of political subgroups. Gandhi, I kind of understand. The 1961 census recognized, hold on to your hat-- 1,652 separate languages in India. A full 29 of those languages are each spoken by 1 million or more people. Now throw in the difficulties of politics and translation. Let's back away from this problem politely and get back to the poem, eh?

This poem is so wonderful because of its universality. Whether you are old and thinking that your life's path is coming to a slow halt or you are young and see that some impediment has left you feeling as though some path has been closed off to you, the poem has meaning and gives hope. The world is such a vast and various place that fresh worlds will open for you at every turn. There is never an end to learning, the world is filled with wonders, new horizons beckon you daily.

I must confess that while I deeply enjoy the poetry of India, the more I read about it, the more Hindi I understand, the more background literature I read on it, the less I know. I have several times mentioned the difficulties of translation and one of them is not the language itself, which one can learn, but the upbringing that goes along with the language. For example, if I would say something in a poem about, say, a baseball game or Mt. Rushmore or a Southern Baptist church, you would instantly be flooded with impressions, that we may share, about these things because we grew up in America. Where Tagore's work excels is transcending much of this cultural baggage and gets right to the heart of things.

I adore the work of Harivansh Bachchan, another famous poet. His son, Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan (yeah, I managed to slip him in again), reads and sings some of his work which you can find on YouTube. You'll need to find a good translation to fully appreciate the words but the tune (yes, tune- many poems in India are put to music- think how easy that makes them to memorize!) of his father's classic poem Madhushala (it's too long for us to do here and I wouldn't presume to understand it all) is wonderful. You'll find yourself humming it and long to know the words. That's how learning starts- for the love and interest of something. However, the Bachchans are not Bengali- it's a whole different culture of meaning.

I don't mean to scare you with Indian poetry difficulties, though. Indian poetry is a beautiful lake with enticing colorful flowers around it and spicy sandalwood smokes in the air. Just take a run and jump into the lake and start floating around. It's wonderful and heady stuff. Read a good translation of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita. This Vedic literature will make your understanding deeper and...

"a new country will be revealed with its wonders."

Here's a good Tagore quote: " I say again and again that I am a poet, that I am not a fighter by nature. I would give everything to be one with my surroundings. I love my fellow beings and I prize their love."

and another (they're endless): "Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come."

You can find more Tagore here: poemhunter.com/rabindranath-tagore/poems/

Number 84: Gerald Stern "The Dancing"

The Dancing

In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a post-war Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop--in 1945--
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing--in Poland and Germany--
oh God of mercy, oh wild God.

-- Gerald Stern

Hap Notes: Gerald Stern (born 1925) was born to Eastern European immigrant parents who were Orthodox Jews. He was brought up in a fairly tough neighborhood in Pittsburgh. His much beloved sister, Sylvia, died at nine years old from spinal meningitis. He attended the University of Pittsburgh, was in the Army Air Corps, got his master's degree from Columbia and then spent his life teaching English. He taught at high schools at first then had positions at several different colleges including Temple University, Indiana University in PA, University of Iowa, Sarah Lawrence and Columbia.

His poetry is a sweet and salty mix of American; part big city savvy, part chatty conversational small town guy. In amidst it all is his Jewish upbringing which often makes him play tricks with the time almost like a magical Hasidic Kabbalah master.

In the poem, first we see an old shop (a thrift store? a Salvation Army Store?) filled with odd things: baseball trophies, neckties, broken furniture, coffee pots. They are domestic things that make him think of things he grew up around and he remembers his family's old radio, the Philco with the "automatic eye" like the one in the masthead picture above. He remembers he and his parents dancing in their tiny living room to Ravel's "Bolero." It was 1945 and they would probably have danced to anything, though- it was more than likely VE Day and the war was over-- everybody was dancing.

The Mellons, who one often thinks of as the donors of paintings and charity funds, were notorious strike breakers at the beginning of the 1900s and reputedly used machine guns to intimidate the striking workers. There's too much history in that one little phrase in the poem but the Mellons certainly had their evil side with a monopoly on aluminum that they jacked the price up on so high that U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 1941, Henry Ickes said, "If America loses this war it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America.”

Note also that the objects he mentions at the beginning of the poem sort of put one in mind of things that got piled up or discarded during the war. One can almost see the stuff outside of a bombed building (well, maybe not the baseball trophies per se.) If you want a literal translation of his "knives shining" and his "hair streaming" I can't give you one, I've always thought of it more as figurative symbols of youth's sharpness and wildness.

Stern published his first book of poetry at 48 so while his knives may still be as shining as ever, his hair probably isn't streaming and his adult take on the world is both joyous and cautious. We may get to another of his poems this year, a favorite of mine, "Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye" which uses photographer Alfred Stieglitz as a basis for some magical reminiscing. Oooh, and there's another great one "Behaving Like a Jew" maybe I'll salt them both in or maybe have a whole Stern week.

Stern has won scads of poetry prizes and grants and awards.

Here's a good Stern quote from a PBS interview: "When I was - I don't know - I always - when I was in high school and in the army and in college, I was always writing poetry, and I thought everybody was writing poetry. I just thought it was a normal activity. I was doing the other things - dating, playing football, drinking beer, et cetera, playing pool, but always I was writing poetry."

and a great one from Rumpus magazine: "The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don’t seem to have a subject. I don’t totally understand that. I did a reading recently at The New School for Best American Poetry; I published a poem there this year. Anyway, there were some very good poets at this reading, but there were also some who seemed more interested in being funny and making cute jokes and writing endlessly about nothing. It was narcissism, indulgence, no social consciousness, no sense of… We’re destroying the earth! We live in a country that’s governed by confusion and lies and that operates through greed and selfishness and cruelty. We’ve killed or forced into exile two million Iraqis. Where is the poetry? What are our important poets doing?"

You can find more Stern here: www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/231

Number 83: Dana Gioia "Sunday Night in Santa Rosa"

Sunday Night in Santa Rosa

The carnival is over. The high tents,

the palaces of light, are folded flat

and trucked away. A three-time loser yanks

the Wheel of Fortune off the wall. Mice

pick through the garbage by the popcorn stand.

A drunken giant falls asleep beside

the juggler, and the Dog-Faced Boy sneaks off

to join the Serpent Lady for the night.

Wind sweeps ticket stubs along the walk.

The Dead Man loads his coffin on a truck.

Off in a trailer by the parking lot

the radio predicts tomorrow's weather

while a clown stares in a dressing mirror,

takes out a box, and peels away his face.

--Dana Gioia

Hap Notes: Dana Gioia (born 1950- and it's pronounced "JOY-A") makes me a little uneasy. I suppose it's because he has the perfect education for corporate America (B.A. from Stanford, M.A. from Harvard, M.B.A. from Stanford) and he worked as Vice-President of Marketing for General Foods from 1977-1992. He quit that job to write poetry full time and was chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) from 2003-2009. He has done worlds of good for poetry when he served at that post. So what makes me uneasy? (Come on, Wallace Stevens was a vice-president for Hartford Insurance wasn't he? What's my problem?) Maybe it's just the contemporary corporate aura that surrounds his work. He's a talented poet and a fair-minded enthusiastic and literate critic. He edited literary magazines. What the hell do I want, eh?

Ah, and my uneasiness also stems from a poetry lover's quandary. Gioia has taken up the daunting (and often thankless) task of editing several poetry anthologies. I don't know how you read an exciting new anthology, but I always look for my familiar favorites to see which poems got selected for the book. I was sort of crestfallen from the lack of favorites in the Gioia edited Twentieth Century American Poetry. Gioia wasn't the only editor and I know the decision making is tough but there are 180 poets in this book so leaving out Kunitz. Koch, Wakoski and Brautigan frosted me a little. If you are a poetry reader, you'll understand my blunt-headed belligerence. Also, I'll point out that Francis Turner Palgrave was a poet (Palgrave's Golden Treasury was first published in 1861) and I had issues (so did Tennyson, who re-edited it 30 years later) with him too. The C. Day Lewis version from 1954 was a blessing. What I'm saying is, there's a danger in expecting too much from an anthology. I found many delights in all these books. Still....

Oh, let's look at the poem and I'll stop my carping. He's an extraordinary person and part of me wants to find the flaw because I'm a bit of a skeptic.

First off, the poem is a wonderful word picture, isn't it? The cadence is brilliant, too. But, let's look a little deeper at the poem. It's the end of the weekend, the carnival shuts down and now it's time for "civilians" to put on make-up and go to work, isn't it? And it's Sunday night. Could the poet be saying something about the church? Look at the poem again. It's possible. Can you see any analogies to God in three persons here? David and Goliath? The "Dead Man" who is still alive? Could Eve be considered a "Serpent Lady?" Is this the church packing up its "show" for the weekend? Who else could be "taking off their face" on Sunday night? Can you see the meek inheriting the earth in the mice? Do you see a few more apt religious analogies in the "Wheel of Fortune"? And what does that radio signify about whoever is in that trailer who may run the carnival? Just some food for thought. Some more food for thought- is a carnival an inherently bad thing? Maybe, maybe not. "Palaces of light" hardly sounds evil does it?

Gioia is a Catholic and in 2010 he was awarded the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, an honor given to an American Catholic in recognition of outstanding achievement to the church and society.

Gioia was born in Hawthorne, California so he's a native of the state. He lived in Santa Rosa (which is close to Petaluma, north of San Francisco) for quite a while as an adult. His dad was Italian, his mom was a native Californian of Mexican heritage, so he grew up in a house with three languages. And the Latin of the church, by the by. He likes the poetry of Longfellow (yay!) and he believes that a return to more formalized verse (with rhyme and meter etc.) is needed which strikes me as refreshingly modern, actually. He doesn't need me for a PR agent, he's got his own website with some of his poetry on it and many great critical pieces as well. Visit him here http://www.danagioia.net/

He is also a great proponent of jazz as a unique American art form (Brubeck even put one of his poems to music.) He worked, while with the NEA, to promote the reading of William Shakespeare, literacy in grade school students and pretty much revitalized that much maligned and battered arts organization. Every civilized country in the world understands the value of the arts and acts as patrons to their burgeoning, and also, established artists. Gioia, with his corporate savvy, knew how to talk to congress to get the NEA back on its feet again. Everybody in America owes him a debt of thanks for that.

Perhaps you remember or participated in the program Poetry Out Loud, where students from around the country memorized poems for competition in local, then state, then national levels. Around 320,000 high school students competed in this in 2010, thanks to Gioia's piloting of the program.

Here's a good Gioia quote: "Memorization went out of vogue in English classes, but kids still memorized rock and rap lyrics. The advantages of memorizing great poetry seem pretty obvious. It allows one to master and possess great language expressing powerful emotions, ideas, and situations. Memorizing and reciting also helps develop the student's powers of expression and gives experience in public speaking."

here's another: "The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us."

"Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world—equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being—simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images."

You can find more Gioia at his website listed above.