Number 115: Katherine Mansfield "Voices of the Air"

Voices of the Air

But then there comes that moment rare
When, for no cause that I can find,
The little voices of the air
Sound above all the sea and wind.

The sea and wind do then obey
And sighing, sighing double notes
Of double basses, content to play
A droning chord for the little throats—

The little throats that sing and rise
Up into the light with lovely ease
And a kind of magical, sweet surprise
To hear and know themselves for these—

For these little voices: the bee, the fly,
The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks,
The breeze on the grass-tops bending by,
The shrill quick sound that the insect makes.

-- Katherine Mansfield

Hap Notes: Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is mostly noted for her short story work but I've always loved this poem because I like bugs so much. (Mansfield is no relation to me, I don't think, but we both use a family name as a pen-name. Her full name (before marriage) was Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp.

I like bugs, beetles, flies, creepy crawly things that others often eschew and I like the idea of them having "little voices." I know you mightn't like insects all that much but my advice to you is to make peace with them – they are the most successful species on the planet. There are 900,000 different kinds of living insects and they comprise 80 percent of the species of the world. It is estimated that at any one time there are 10 quintillion insects on the planet (that's a one with 18 zeros behind it.) They don't want to hurt you (not many of them, anyway) they just want to fly around, eat, mate and die. If they wanted to kill us off, they'd have done it by now. Just sayin'.

Mansfield isn't just talking about insects, here, anyway. She's talking about the myriad sounds the natural world makes that sometimes will break through the louder noises of life- in this case, the sound of the ocean. It's good to listen to "little throats sing." I suggest you join in once in a while. They must know something- they've been around for more than 100 million years.

Mansfield was born and raised in New Zealand though after she went to college in England she did not return much (partly because of her health). She was friends with D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Many of her short stories were published after her untimely death at 34. Lawrence is said to have somewhat based Gudrun in Women In Love on Mansfield and Gerald Crich is also somewhat based on Mansfield's husband John Middleton Murry.

She was a brilliant modern writer, a good thinker and a talented cellist, too. She often wrote that she and D.H. Lawrence were very similar in character and they remained close friends. Both of them suffered from tuberculosis and it would take both their lives when they were still quite young. (Lawrence died when he was 45.)

Here's a good Mansfield quote: "I'm a writer first and a woman after."

and another:

"When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves."

You can find more of Mansfield's poetry here: www.poemhunter.com/katherine-mansfield/

Number 114: Phil Rizzuto "Reversal of Opinion"

Reversal of Opinion

And he hits one in the hole
They're gonna have to hurry.
THEY'LL NEVER GET HIM!
They got him.
How do you like that?
Holy Cow.
I changed my mind before he got there.
So that doesn't count as an error.

-- Phil Rizzuto

Hap Notes: Friends send me Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto and I've been anxious to use one. Two baseball fans/writers, Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, thought Rizzuto's on-air transcripts made for poetry and they framed some of his comments as such. Rizzuto (1917-2007), or "the Scooter" is familiar to baseball fans all over even though Rizzuto was loyal to the Yankee pinstripes even in his broadcasting career.

Born in Brooklyn, Rizzuto played shortstop with the Yankees from 1941-1956. He was a color-commentator broadcaster for the Yanks from the early 60s until 1996. His colorful phrasing and Brooklyn accent made for a very textured and fun baseball broadcast. He won the MVP in 1950 as a player and as a broadcaster he teamed up with the likes of Red Barber, Mel Allen, Joe Garagiola, Tom Seaver, Billy Martin and Bobby Murcer.

Here's high praise for his playing – Ted Williams once said that the Red Sox would have won the pennants in all their playoffs in the late 40s if they'd had Rizzuto. Rizzuto was a wiry, energetic player whom the fans loved.

Rizzuto is the broadcaster who first said "Holy Cow!" on ballgames. (Much as I loved Halsey Hall credit must go to Rizzuto). He was also the baseball broadcaster on Meatloaf's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light." Rizzuto got a gold record from it.

There's plenty of stuff online on the colorful, long, rich and varied career of Rizzuto. I even think the poem/quip has more than a kernel of Zen in it.

P.S. Sorry this is so late. I forgot to push "save". Twice. It's one of those days. Time for a glass of wine, some cookies and an Amitabh Bachchan movie. Or maybe just the cookies.

Number 113: Browning, Starbuck and Bierce

Pippa's Song (from Pippa Passes)

The year 's at the spring,
And day 's at the morn;
Morning 's at seven;
The hill-side 's dew-pearl'd;
The lark 's on the wing;
The snail 's on the thorn;
God 's in His heaven—
All 's right with the world!

--Robert Browning

Pigfoot (with Aces Under) Passes

The heat’s on the hooker.
Drop’s on the lam.
Cops got Booker.
Who give a damn?

The Kid’s been had
But not me yet.
Dad’s in his pad.
No sweat.

-- George Starbuck


With a Book

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning—
Sense lacking.
Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning,
Save blacking.

-- Ambrose Bierce

Hap Notes: Well, it's Saturday and back in my childhood that meant we could watch cartoons in the morning! Frankly, outside of the hour before and after school, that's the only time cartoons were on television then. Now, of course, they are on 24/7 which delights me at 3 in the a.m. but gives one pause as to who else (aside from goofs like me) is watching them. Anyway, here is the poetry equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons.

First we have the song Pippa sings in Browning's long poem about a young innocent girl and her meanderings during one day, "Pippa Passes". It's a play in verse and "Pippa's Song" is one of the most quoted passages of Browning's work. I'd be amazed if you've never heard that last verse. Let's call this the "Disney" cartoon even though Pippa's song in the poem gets more and more ironic as her day passes. (The painting is from a children's book of Pippa by Frank Adams)

Then we have our poet of yesterday, George Starbuck, in one of his "translations from the English." He takes Pippa's song, hips it up as street lingo and gives us "Pigfoot." We'll use a couple more of his "translations" later this year- they are astute and amusing. This is the Warner Brothers cartoon where the Disney cartoon is imitated and given a hip twist and a bit of ridicule.

Finally we have that curmudgeon of a journalist/writer Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?) who gives us a pun as he takes a swipe at Browning's intensity and length. We'll call this the Tex Avery cartoon although it might be more of a Rocky and Bullwinkle moment (remember their "poetry corner"?) Bierce is not known for poetry (even though he wrote two volumes of it) but I have a soft spot for him because of his immensely clever Devils Dictionary, his extraordinary short stories and he and I share the same birthday. The question mark at his death date is just to indicate that he moved to Mexico and disappeared. It's a fascinating story I'll let you discover on your own.

Here's Bullwinkle reading Wordsworth: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv1L-8f2erg&playnext=1&list=PLDC3C98AC7F1692A5

Happy Saturday!

Number 112: George Starbuck "Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree"

Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree

O
fury-
bedecked!
O glitter-torn!
Let the wild wind erect
bonbonbonanzas; junipers affect
frostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adorn
all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!
It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a sect
tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;
bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son born
now
now
while ox and ass and infant lie
together as poor creatures will
and tears of her exertion still
cling in the spent girl’s eye
and a great firework in the sky
drifts to the western hill.

-- George Starbuck

Hap Notes: It's fitting we use this poem for April Fools' day because George Starbuck (1931-1996) was, in his own lifetime, considered too clever by half and much of his extraordinary work has been dismissed as hyper-educated light verse. This is quite a shame because Starbuck knew a prodigious amount about poetry and its forms and chose to play with them with wit, whimsy and a sense of perspective. So his April Fools' joke on us all is that he was and is a verbal force to be reckoned with and his fading reputation is getting some color back again.

He was a math whiz who was accepted at Cal Tech when he was 16 and I suppose it's no shock that many musicians and poets have a talent for math. He dropped out of the math gig after two years because he wanted to write poetry. He studied at U.C. Berkley, the University of Chicago and Harvard but never got a degree in anything. He studied under both Archibald MacLeish and Robert Lowell (he was in the same class and pals with Plath and Sexton). In fact he served as a sounding board/editor for both Sexton's To Bedlam and Part Way Back and to his friend Philip Roth's book Goodbye Columbus.

Starbuck was a vivid opponent of the Viet Nam War and is responsible for making "loyalty oaths" illegal in the U.S. When the State University of New York-Buffalo asked him to sign one (in the paranoid early 60s) he took his case all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

In today's poem (a "visual" or "shape" poem, often considered "concrete poetry) Starbuck's extraordinary vocabulary bursts and pops and sizzles as it describes Christmas. Note that the tree is "potted" and he's making a comment about religion with that, too. The novelty of this poem often off-sets its brilliant wording. Maybe we'd take it more seriously if it looked like this:

O fury-bedecked! O glitter torn!
Let the wind erect bonbonbonanzas;
Junipers affect frostyfreeze turbans;
Iciclestuff adorn all cuckolded creation
In a madcap crown of horn!

It's a new day; no scapegrace of a sect
Tidying up the ashtrays playing
Daughter-in-Law Elect;

Bells! Bibelots! Popsicle cigars!
Shatter the glassware!
A son born now

Now

While ox and ass and infant lie
Together as poor creatures will
And tears of her exertion still
Cling in a spent girl's eye
And a great firework in the sky
Drifts to the western hill.

But Starbuck's shaping of the poem is integral to its meaning- even though the words are gorgeous in any form. And of course, his words belie the "potted" plant with their wild vigor. In his poem "Tuolumne" Starbuck says "I have committed whimsy. There. So be it./I have not followed wisdom as I see it."

Starbuck's brilliance is that he has hidden much of his genius behind an "antic disposition." It's fitting that on April Fools' Day we unmask the sparkling intelligence and crackling and serious vocabulary that always grins and winks at us underneath his clever wordplay.

And aren't you glad that "Starbuck" means so much more than overpriced coffee? (Well, and the Melville reference, of course.)

Here's a great Starbuck quote:

"For me, the long way round, through formalisms, word games, outrageous conceits (the worst of what we mean by 'wit') is the only road to truth.... Put another way: I have a conscious slavery to the language. The only alternatives are unconscious slavery, or the sainthood of the wholly silent."

You can find more Starbuck here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-starbuck

Number 111: Elizabeth Bishop "One Art"

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

Hap Notes: I promise this is the last villanelle for a while. And you can see (because now you are expert at spotting them) that Bishop plays with the form a bit.

Bishop is too thoughtful and self-conscious to be overly emotionally confessional in her poetry. Lowell exposes every raw nerve he has, Plath lets her anger and confusion and hurt flame out but Bishop is more constrained. As you read this poem, imagine you are at her home and she is pouring you a cup of tea. You are going to have a friendly, serious chat over a cuppa with her. As she pours out the tea, she says a few things about losing- keys, hours, a watch – casual things. Then she reflects on loved houses she lived in, places she liked living (she may even have pictures of these places around her study. She has books and maps about the places, too.) You notice her hand shaking now as she pours. As she reflects on the loss of a relationship, her eyes gleam with tears, she gets a grip on herself (being forceful –as if saying "face it and buck up, Elizabeth- don't allow it to master you, just admit it") and finishes her thought with a sad catch in her voice. The poem is casual and polite but it is a mask for loss, which she eventually forces herself to verbalize.

Of course we're not really having tea with her, I'm using it as a device, but I wanted to illustrate her careful progression and constraint in this poem in which she reveals important things. Remember she wants us to know this– it's a poem, not a casual conversation. This is part of her awesome writing mastery. Her vulnerability is hard won in this poem. Think, too, on the title of this poem. It's about writing as much as it's about life. The poem's inner core exposes itself masterfully with every thoughtful word. The poem's somewhat reluctant last stanza is purposely so. Do you see why?

Bishop's personal life remained properly personal but we do know that she had a lover, Maria Carlota Costallat de Macedo Soares, whom she lived with in South America for more than 15 years. When the relationship broke up, Bishop moved back to the U.S. from her much loved houses there. "Lota" Soares followed Bishop to New York and the day she got there (in 1967) Soares took a suicidal overdose of drugs (tranquilizers) and died after being in New York for less than a few days.

This poem appears in Bishop's Geography III which was published in 1976. We have spoken of Bishop before right here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-34-elizabeth-bishop-filling.html
and also here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-80-elizabeth-bishop-invitation.html

I suppose it's obvious that I love and greatly admire her extraordinary work.

Number 110: Sylvia Plath "Mad Girl's Love Song"

Mad Girl's Love Song
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

--Sylvia Plath

Hap Notes: It's very hard to talk about Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) without getting a little angry for a variety of reasons. Her suicide has been the cause of much speculation and has been used by some writers in the women's movement as a banner for the frustrations of creative women. Her husband, the poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998), was very publicly accused of abuse and neglect, her doctor has been accused of neglect for prescribing anti-depressants (which often do just the reverse in depressed patients), and you can still find people who, upon reading The Bell Jar (Plath's semi-autobiographical novel), suddenly feel that they, too, are exactly like Plath. All of this is balderdash and snail spittle. There may be elements of truth in all these statements but depression is like diabetes-the person who has it has to control it by themselves.

There is a certain glamor attached to attractive, sensitive, depressed, suicidal young women in our culture and, quite frankly, it's repulsive. Speaking as a woman who has had brushes with far far too deep bouts of depression and a couple of breakdowns I can categorically state that depression will soak up all the love you can give to a depressed person and it will never be enough because the person whose love they desperately need is their own.

Plath suffered her first breakdown when she was 22. Remember that in the days that Plath was treated there was a thought that after a depressed patient got "better," they were cured. The variety of depression Plath had (most likely genetic and recurring) is the kind that takes the patient's constant care-taking vigilance to head off and avoid. I do not believe she was given the skills or the therapy to do this. She was given electro-convulsive therapy (shock treatment in the popular vernacular) and released as "recovered."

Of course, poets are supposed to be depressed aren't they? So it's part and parcel with the "job" right? Well, no, although there are studies that show (Goodwin, Jamison) that depressives and manic-depressives have a brain chemistry that gives them a different and often, creative, perspective on the world. You can't blame Hughes for Plath's depression or suicide any more than you can blame (tempting though it may be) Courtney Love for Kurt Cobain's. Depression is a poorly understood chemical imbalance in the brain. Suicide often seems to be the answer to be let out of the suffering of depression. When the world seems to be drained of any possibility of happiness (or even just everyday "normalcy") suicide appears to be the way to make this horrible helpless, hopelessness go away.

This is diagonally off topic but if you are intensely depressed by the world in general you have good reasons for this. There's a lot wrong with the world. However, there are things that make life precious and juicy and delicious and if you cannot see this, you need to get help and I'll warn you that not everybody who helps you will be right for you and you cannot give up because there are things that require your attention in the world. Your sensitivity is important to balance out the hatred and prejudice in the world- you have to battle on to counteract this. Each person on the earth is needed for something- if you haven't found what it is yet, keep on trying. You come equipped with powerful stuff to maintain happiness- you just haven't figured out how to use it. Don't give up. Just sayin'. Get some help but don't expect that a pill will solve your depression- you need to actively monitor your own treatment. Yeah, it's a pain in the patoot but the results are true happiness. No kidding. True happiness is in you, waiting for you to find it. Of course it's hard work. Most things are but it gets easier and easier every day. I kid you not. Do not give up.

Okay, back to Plath. She was a gifted student in high school and college. She was friends in college with Anne Sexton (who had her own depressions) and she studied under Robert Lowell (this is beginning to sound like a blue print for depression, huh?) Her fame rests on two fairly decent books of poetry and a book of fiction. She speaks to a lot of people who are dealing with the early growing pains that one feels in their 20s; her voice resonates with them because of her fierce brilliance with the words that describe her feelings. She can be comforting to those who feel alone with these thoughts.

I think in our poem today (yes, it's a villanelle) Plath is talking about life, in general, as a lover. The thunderbird is a Native American legend of a huge bird who creates the thunder and moves the clouds with its giant wings. There are legends that talk of thunderbirds mating with humans (they are shape shifters). I have heard it said that this poem is about Ted Hughes but since Plath wrote this poem in 1951 and met Hughes in 1954 this is impossible. She may be speaking to another man but I think it's more likely that she is speaking to life, here. Everything in the poem is either dark or leaving her- even God and Satan. There is no hope in the poem that when spring returns she'll feel the thunder of life. With her eyes closed, the world is black, when she opens them, things are worse. There are strong hints of suicide in the poem, yes?

Here's a good Plath quote:

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited."

and another: "I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give."

and another: "God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering."

You can find more Plath here: famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/sylvia_plath

Number 109: Edwin Arlington Robinson "The House on the Hill"

The House on the Hill

They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill.
They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

---Edwin Arlington Robinson

Hap Notes: As you can see, I am determined to show you the power and variety of the villanelle. The Robinson poem illustrates its deceptively simple form- it's almost nursery-rhyme like and yet, the form, if you've tried it, has constraints. Robinson is one step away from writing a simple little poem, here. But it's loaded with extras.

"Our poor fancy play" could easily be construed as children playing around the house. But look at that wording- remind you of anything? How about a Shakespeare passage we've spoken of earlier? i.e. "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/And then is heard no more." This oft-quoted passage from Macbeth was well known to Robinson who studied Shakespeare assiduously at Harvard during his short time there.

The poem asks us why we search for things or people that we know to be gone. What are we looking for? Have you ever gone to an abandoned house and peered in the windows, wanting to see the inside? Unless we are in the market for real estate, why do we do that? What are we looking for? It's a good question when you think on it- tells us much about ourselves and others.

In addition to what we've already said about Robinson here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-47-edwin-arlington-robinson.html let me add a couple of things.

First off, his name was acquired in an unusual manner. His mom wanted a girl and Baby Robinson was un-named for six months. Robinson's parents were at a holiday resort and the other vacationers urged them to name the child. They put a bunch of names on slips of paper in a hat and a man from Arlington, MA was selected to draw out the paper. Hence, Edwin Arlington.

Robinson spent 24 summers of his life from 1911-1935 at the MacDowell artist colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Robinson went reluctantly the first time to the artist sanctuary made by composer Edward McDowell and his wife Marian at their farm as a place for artists to work and socialize with other creative folks. Robinson was so skeptical of the arrangement that he arrived at the colony with a fake telegram in his pocket so if he didn't like it he could scram out in a hurry. In addition to Robinson, the colony has been a refuge for many others including Willa Cather, painter Milton Avery, Leonard Bernstein (he wrote "Mass" there), Aaron Copeland (He wrote "Billy the Kid" there) and Thornton Wilder (Peterborough served as the model for Grover's Corners in Wilder's Our Town.) The colony still continues today.