Number 122: e.e. cummings "Chansons Innocentes: I"

Chansons Innocentes: I

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

--e.e. cummings

Hap Notes: I suppose it's almost obligatory to use this poem in the spring. It's probably the first poem that occurs to me when I think of the season (I was going to say "springs to mind" but didn't want the spontaneous thought to seem too cute.) Cummings (1894-1962), in spite of his "tricksy" orthographics, wrote many poems without changing the traditional case work of the letters. His poems with the run-together words and interesting punctuations were often intended to be seen as a word sculpture in addition to being read as a poem.

Cummings (born Edward Estlin Cummings) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Edward and Rebecca Cummings and was always called Estlin at home. His dad was a professor of political science and sociology at Harvard (and was later a Unitarian minister) and his mom was an unconventional mother who read poetry aloud to the children (he had a younger sister, Elizabeth) and eschewed the "typical" "feminine" role of housewife. (I use the quotation marks to make clear my snide aversion to the idea that there can be such a thing. I don't believe femininity has much to do with daily house chores.) She encouraged him to write a poem every day – he wrote his first poem at the age of three. He pretty much hit the ground running as far as becoming a poet is concerned.

Cummings went to Harvard and majored in English and Classics studies where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's and went on to get his master's there as well. While at Harvard he roomed with John Dos Passos (there's a pair, eh?) While in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, he was stationed in Paris awaiting assignment and fell in love with the place. He would return to Paris many times in his life. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1918. Cummings had an outspoken aversion to war throughout his life.

Edward Cummings, the poet's father, was an extraordinarily capable man who was both well-educated and could repair things- a potent mix. Cummings always said his dad could do anything and he admired him tremendously. His father was always one of his greatest fans so it was mutual.

Cummings spent some travel time in Russia and I think that's why he supported Joseph McCarthy's "red scare" shenanigans. Cummings was a Republican back in the day when a Republican is what a Democrat is, politically, today. Republicans in contemporary culture could not even tolerate the national programs that even Richard Nixon developed today (the EPA, the school lunch programs, tax incentives for the poor etc.) Just sayin'.

Okay, let's get to the poem, yes? The old balloon man changes in each description, gradually becoming Pan, the god of rustic music and shepherds and flocks and wild nature. The expression "far and wee" sounds very much like the sounds a "pan pipe" would make. The world is full of colorful balloons, temptingly splashy puddles and fudgey muds. The children are running and dancing like the lambs of the season. The poem is filled, the way much of cummings' work is, with joy and sensuality. Remember too, that he avidly studied Greek and Roman works and mythology.

Cummings major influences are probably imagists Amy Lowell and Gertrude Stein. One can see the mix of influences with cummings and Dos Passos a bit too, I think.

By the by, I don't know that cummings preferred his name to constantly be spelled in lower case letters. I believe he did it as a form of modesty and humbleness. I just followed along with the traditional spelling- very un-cummings-like of me, really. Except then I get to explain why I did it. Cummings took a certain amount of critical disparagement for his orthographics in his day. I think it's pretty obvious why he used them now, but at the time they were refreshingly revolutionary (and still seem so, sometimes.)

I suppose it's also worth mentioning that cummings has been enormously influential to modern poets, artists and fontographers for the last 50 years or so.

If you have never heard cumming's distinctive voice, here he is reading the poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA836Ax7scw

Here's a good cummings quote:

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

You can find more cummings here: famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/e__e__cummings/poems

Number 121: Gerard Manley Hopkins "Spring"

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy pear tree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hap Notes: Here's Hopkins again, still sounding fresh and new, in a sonnet about spring. The octave (the beginning eight lines) describes the beauty of spring in Hopkins' inimitable perspective. The sestet ( the last six lines) ask and answer a question about spring- what does it mean, all this new life?

First of all, let's pause for a second to enjoy the feel and sounds of the words; "weeds, in wheels" not only sounds good but makes you pause for moment. Have you ever driven by a field and noticed that when it is full of vegetation, it almost looks as if it's rotating? Also, weeds tend to cluster –one can see the "wheel" like pattern of their proliferation. Weeds, in the spring, often seem to be moving, they grow so quickly. See how packed Hopkins' words are? He chooses his words for sound and meaning very artfully.

The "rinse and wring" of a thrush's call is not likening it to a wash cloth but, it's close – the latin root of rinse is akin to the word "fresh" and "wring" means to extract the sound by pressure or compression. The birds song is so sharp and vivid that it strikes the ear like sound "lightning.' You've probably heard a sharp, sweet bird call that did something like this to your ear – sort of bursts in on your hearing. The eggs of the thrush are so blue they look like "little heavens." The "glassy pear tree" is referring to the shine of new leaves and buds. They "brush" the "descending" blue (of the sky) and isn't it interesting that the sky is coming down to us....

Now, Hopkins asks, what is all this juicy, joyous beauty about?

He equates it with paradise, Eden, and says it's a metaphor for innocence. I've read interpretations of the sestet in which the reader says Hopkins is appealing to Christ to save the little children. I respectfully disagree. Remember Jesus says in Luke anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. He's asking for Christ to preserve the child in us all and for us to remember this innocence. THAT'S what all this "juice and joy" is about– Christ saves us with rebirth and innocence.

Here's where we've seen Hopkins before:happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-67-gerard-manley-hopkins.html

And here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-30-gerard-manly-hopkins-thou.html

Number 120: Roald Dahl "Television"

Television

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

--Roald Dahl

Hap Notes: Nobody probably needs an introduction to Dahl (1916-1990) with his myriad extraordinary books (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, The Witches-- just to name a few.) Even if you've never read them (and do read them–they are wonderfully written) you've seen the countless movies based on them. He was also a short story writer in addition to his "children's" fiction.

Dahl himself was a sweet and salty character who did a bit of "spy" work during WWII (which mostly involved women and I'm not sure he was all that great at the "spy" part) and he was a flying ace who cut a very handsome and dashing figure then. He was severely beaten (with a cane– it left him bloody) when he was eight, at private school, for a prank of which he'd been a part (he and three other kids put a dead mouse in a jar of jawbreakers at a local candy store.) The incident passes but one can surely see that this could form a vivid part of childhood memories. Dahl was born in Wales to Norwegian parents– there's certainly a mix of cultures one doesn't see every day, eh?

Everybody probably also knows that he was married to actress Patricia Neal and he nursed her back to health (speaking and walking) after a debilitating stroke she suffered in 1965. One can read gossipy stories about Dahl's sex life, his drinking, his bitter talk but underneath it all beat the heart of a 7-year-old prankster who loved candy and had a sense of humor and intrigue.

He's quite serious in the poem about television, you know. Kurt Vonnegut said that nobody ever learned anything from the television and there's certainly a large grain of truth in that. You don't have to mentally visualize anything when watching the screen and this seems to do more harm than good. In the poem he's referencing books you've probably read– Mr. Tod, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Pigling Bland are all Beatrix Potter, the stories about the camel and the monkey are from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, and Mr. Toad, Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole are from (an especial favorite of mine) Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Children's literature is usually a mighty good read since the book has to appeal to a limited attention span- they get to it and they're rousing and fun and full of amazing things. Have you ever seen a movie that could equal a good book? They are rare – very rare.

I know it seems impossible now but when I was growing up there were kids who were NEVER allowed to watch television- there were families who didn't even own a television set (not from poverty, from choice.) In my family our rules were strict about it- one hour per day, at MOST and we were allowed to watch cartoons on Saturday morning. My mother always let me watch old movies with her. If one wanted to watch football with my father, one could- but it was hardly a lot of fun what with all the cigar smoke and tense cursing. Television, like soda pop, was a treat doled out very sparingly. O Tempora! O Mores! eh?

Here's a good Dahl quote: "I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage."

Dahl wrote quite a bit of verse. You can find some here: www.roalddahlfans.com/poems.php

Number 119: Kim Addonizio "Eating Together"

Eating Together

I know my friend is going,
though she still sits there
across from me in the restaurant,
and leans over the table to dip
her bread in the oil on my plate; I know
how thick her hair used to be,
and what it takes for her to discard
her man’s cap partway through our meal,
to look straight at the young waiter
and smile when he asks
how we are liking it. She eats
as though starving—chicken, dolmata,
the buttery flakes of filo—
and what’s killing her
eats, too. I watch her lift
a glistening black olive and peel
the meat from the pit, watch
her fine long fingers, and her face,
puffy from medication. She lowers
her eyes to the food, pretending
not to know what I know. She’s going.
And we go on eating.

--Kim Addonizio

Hap Notes: Kim Addonizio (born 1954) has a rock-star image; her website is littered with pictures of her younger days in hip garb, she can play the blues harmonica (and does at many of her readings), she is tattooed and hip. In spite of this meandering through the confusing facades of pop culture, she often writes a vulnerable and sensitive poem. She has written several volumes of award-winning poetry and novels.

Now before you tell me that its okay to be hip and a good poet I'll tell you that you cannot be both. Poetry, in spite of its sorta hip cousin rap, is about dorky stuff like the passage of time, love, hope, hate, loss, anger, sorrow – you know, real life. Real life ain't hip, if it were we wouldn't need advertising copywriters. We, as a culture, keep saying it is, or it should be, but it really isn't- it's full of clumsiness, insecurity and fear. The truest things a person can say are not hip, they expose the raw humanity underneath. Our culture is all about running away from this, being cool, being young, being cavalier and clever and glib. When someone erupts with real feeling, we want to comfort them and then shove them aside; we have a tendency to piss on a fire and hope it will go out. It's clever, it just can't stop forest fires. And only YOU can prevent forest fires! (ten points if you know where that line is from- and it ain't poetry.) Everywhere we look we see aching empty souls just treading water, wanting something deep and nourishing to the spirit; see what I mean? Not hip. Not hip to say it, either. Poetry can help this if it's not too hip or glib. Just sayin'.

Addonizio's mom was tennis champ Pauline Betz and her dad was the awesome Robert Addie who covered baseball for the Washington Post and the Washington Herald. He was one of those "old school" journalists who never skipped a beat; i.e. he wrote clean and sharp stuff and was always on the job. She went to went to Georgetown University and San Francisco State and while she has done some teaching she has wisely commented that it would suck the soul out of her writing. She's in her 50s now so her best stuff is just beginning to form. (ahem...being in your 50s and 60s= not hip.) She's very talented.

In the poem today we see friends eating a meal together while one is suffering the ravages of cancer. Cancer eats what you eat, takes the food's nutrients and starves you as it grows, weakening you twice. Her friend bravely takes off her cap exposing her head of considerably less hair due to cancer treatments. She pulls the flesh off of that black olive and I immediately think of her trying to do the same to the cancer- or the cancer doing it to her. Cancer always seems to be black to me, do you think so, too? It's a wonderful, vulnerable poem from the standpoint of the cancer sufferer; and always there's the hint of the guilty sorrow we feel when someone else is suffering. All we can do is write about it.

You can find more Addonizio here: www.poemhunter.com/kim-addonizio/


Here's a good quote from Addonizio:

"What I've learned is simple: if you nurture it, it will expand, and it will nurture you in return. I have also learned that it is a kind of salvation. Sometimes it's more than enough and sometimes it's not enough -- by that I mean one's own creativity. If you can truly tap in to the creative process, you know it's there all the time, and then you probably don't need saving."

You can see the whole interview here: about-creativity.com/2007/07/an-interview-with-kim-addonizio.php

And her website is here: www.kimaddonizio.com/Site/Site/_welcome.html

Number 118: Ruth L. Schwartz "The Swan at Edgewater Park"

The Swan at Edgewater Park

Isn't one of your prissy rich peoples' swans

Wouldn't be at home on some pristine pond

Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms

in its tidal fringe

Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck

into the body of a Great Lake,

Swilling whatever it is swans swill,

Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,

While Clevelanders walk by saying Look

at that big duck!

Beauty isn't the point here; of course

the swan is beautiful,

But not like Lorie at 16, when

Everything was possible—no

More like Lorie at 27

Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,

Her kid with asthma watching TV,

The boyfriend who doesn't know yet she's gonna

Leave him, washing his car out back—and 

He's a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and

It's not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he

Really does, he loves them both—

That's the kind of swan this is.

-- Ruth L. Schwartz

Hap Notes: Ruth L. Schwartz (born 1962) has won a dozen prizes and fellowships for her poetry but the most intriguing thing about her, save for her extraordinary verse, is that she got her Ph.D. at the University of Integrative Learning in Transpersonal Psychology (she got her B.A. at Wesleyan and her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan.) Her website explains her mission more clearly and here it is: www.heartmindintegration.com/guidance.html.

She has taught at Goddard College, Mills College California State-Fresno, California College of the Arts, Ashland University and Cleveland State University (where one assumes today's poem was observed.) She also guides would-be writers in a retreat through "Writer as Shaman" which you can find out about here: www.thewriterasshaman.com/default.html. If you want to write, just reading about the retreats can be somewhat liberating. There are also free "teleclasses" archived to enjoy.

In our poem today, Schwartz is saying something about beauty and love and our choices in life.

Here's a good Schwartz quote: "Writing has always been a way for me to grapple with life on earth, and it served me well in that capacity. But in order to create the life I truly wanted to live, I needed more. Shamanism and other mystical practices gave me the additional tools I needed to truly say Yes to myself and my life, and helped me reach a state of deep peace, freedom and possibility."

You can find more Schwartz here: www.ruthschwartz.com/

Number 117: Kenneth Fearing "Green Light"

Green Light

Bought at the drug store, very cheap; and later pawned.
After a while, heard on the street; seen in the park.
Familiar, but not quite recognized.
Followed and taken home and slept with.
Traded or sold. Or lost.

Bought again at the corner drug store,
At the green light, at the patient's demand, at nine o'clock.
Re-read and memorized and re-wound.
Found unsuitable.
Smashed, put together, and pawned.

Heard on the street, seen in a dream, heard in the park, seen
by the light of day;
Carefully observed one night by a secret agent of the Greek
Hydraulic Mining Commission, in plain clothes, off
duty.
The agent, in broken English, took copious notes. Which he
lost.
Strange, and yet not extraordinary.
Sad, but true.

True, or exaggerated, or true;
As it is true that the people laugh and the sparrows fly;
As it is exaggerated that the people change, and the sea stays;
As it is that the people go;
As the lights go on and it is night and it is serious, and just
the same;
As some one dies and it is serious, and the same;
As a girl knows and it is small, and true;
As the corner hardware clerk might know and it is true, and
pointless;
As an old man knows and it is grotesque, but true;
As the people laugh, as the people think, as the people
change,
It is serious and the same, exaggerated or true.

Bought at the drug store down the street
Where the wind blows and the motors go by and it is always
night, or day;
Bought to use as a last resort,
Bought to impress the statuary in the park.
Bought at a cut rate, at the green light, at nine o'clock.
Borrowed or bought. To look well. To ennoble. To prevent
disease. To entertain. To have.
Broken or sold. Or given away. Or used and forgotten. Or
lost.

--Kenneth Fearing

Hap Notes: If you have never read any of Kenneth Fearing's (1902-1961) poetry, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to him. His poetry is sharp, littered with advertising and literary references and muscular with irony and wit. Then, when you are reading a barbed and bitter passage, a beautiful, lyric sentence will emerge startling you with its truth, abruptly the poem will dive back into street-wise sardonic patter. I think he's incredibly under-rated. He's a thrilling read.

It's really no wonder he can thrill a reader. He wrote a bit of soft core porn and pulp fiction in his career. His crime thriller, The Big Clock, was twice made into a movie, first with Ray Milland with the original title, later as No Way Out with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman where it was updated for the times. That book gave Fearing his only financial stability. He was a freelance writer/poet who never held a "regular" job for more than six months at a time throughout his entire life. He struggled with poverty most of his life.

Fearing was born in Oak Park, IL (Hemingway's home town) and he went to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and later, the University of Wisconsin. In his lifetime he wrote seven books of poetry and seven works of fiction (with his own name.) He made most of his cash from his fiction and his family, who often gave him money to survive. While much of his poetry was written during the 'Great Depression', he cannot be sloughed off as merely representative of his era. His work is vibrant and sharp and witty and wise.

In today's poem we see his bright-work polished down and mysterious. What is "it"? Sometimes it seems like a person, sometimes it's something noisy, sometimes it's for a headache, sometimes it's...what? A radio? A watch? A drug? It seems to be found in a drugstore on a corner by a traffic light. Maybe it's something not so cheap, maybe it's just something we treat cheaply. And why is it called "green light" and not "red light"? I'll let you ponder this a while.

Here's a good Fearing quote: "There can be a unique exhilaration in creative writing, and it can offer the surprise of final discovery. These qualities exist in life (sometimes), and if they are not to be found in a verbal presentation of it, then the reader (or audience) has been cheated and the writer has been killing everyone's time. This excitement and surprise must be real, not counterfeit, and have in it the breath of those crises upon which most people feel their lives are poised, sometimes crossing into them, in fact, and then rarely with routine behavior, seldom with standardized results."


You can find more Fearing here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kenneth-fearing

Number 116: James K. Baxter "Wild Bees"

Wild Bees

Often in summer, on a tarred bridge plank standing,
Or downstream between willows, a safe Ophelia drifting
In a rented boat - I had seen them comes and go,
Those wild bees, swift as tigers, their gauze wings a-glitter
In passionless industry, clustering black at the crevice
Of a rotten cabbage tree, where their hive was hidden low

But never strolled too near. Till one half-cloudy evening
Of ripe January, my friends and I
Came, gloved and masked to the eyes like plundering desperadoes,
To smoke them out. Quiet beside the stagnant river
We trod wet grasses down, hearing the crickets chitter
And waiting for light to drain from the wounded sky.

Before we reached the hive their sentries saw us
And sprang invisible through the darkening air.
Stabbed, and died in stinging. The hive woke. Poisonous fuming
Of sulphur filled the hollow trunk, and crawling
Blue flames sputtered - yet still their suicidal
Live raiders dived and clung to our hands and hair.

O it was Carthage under the Roman torches,
Or loud with flames and falling timber, Troy!
A job well botched. Half of the honey melted
And half the rest young grubs. Through earth-black smouldering ashes
And maimed bee groaning, we drew our plunder.
Little enough their gold, and slight our joy.

Fallen then the city of instinctive wisdom.
Tragedy is written distinct and small:
A hive burned on a cool night in summer.
But loss is a precious stone to me, a nectar
Distilled in time, preaching the truth of winter
To the fallen heart that does not cease to fall.

- James K. Baxter

Hap Notes: I cannot claim to be an authority on the poetry of New Zealand but I did think this poem by Baxter fits in nicely with yesterday's poem by fellow New Zealander Katherine Mansfield. James K. Baxter (1926-1972) is one of New Zealand's most colorful, interesting and (in his time) controversial poets.

Baxter was a brilliant and somewhat eccentric person who held a variety of odd jobs as he wrote and read profusely. Educated at several colleges, first at Otago University and later at Victoria University and Wellington Teacher's College, Baxter's restless spirit made him move from place to place, learning, living and, for a quite a while, drinking.

He was an ardent protester of the Viet Nam War. You probably know that Viet Nam was not a U.S. unilateral "intervention" but was done by members of the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, U.S.) Treaty and these allies all fought in the "police action." Baxter was also passionately dedicated to bridging the gap between the native Maori tribes of New Zealand and the Pakeha (white non-Maori bloodline residents of New Zealand.) He established a commune in Jerusalem (NZ) which met with varying degrees of success. He was interested in Jung and his writing often reflects Jungian sensibilities. He had a colorful and fascinating life that I will leave you to explore online at your leisure. (As you can see from his pics, he changed a bit from life-to-life work.)

How in the world do I know anything about New Zealand poetry? Well, I don't really but I read a verse by Baxter and it stuck in my head until I found out more about him. Here's the verse, which I still think is one of the great short poems I have read:

High Country Weather

Alone we are born,
And die alone.
Yet see the red-gold cirrus,
Over snow-mountain shine.

Upon the upland,
Ride easy stranger.
Surrender to the sky,
Your heart of anger.

- James K. Baxter.

In our poem today, Baxter tells of a group of pals determined to get some honey from a hive in the low crevice of a tree. They try to smoke them out with a "bee smoker"; a firepot with bellows and a nozzle to direct the smoke, sometimes with lighted sulphur. Smoke confuses and alarms the bees (sort of like yelling Fire! in a theater) and the sulphur will kill them. Baxter equates the destruction to the battle of Carthage (in which the Romans completely destroyed the African city in the Punic War.)

The poem certainly has it's underlying symbols of what "white" societies can do to natives but it's also straight up just observing the senseless violent behavior of people not respecting the value of the natural world. The scant honey they got was either melted by the heat or contained larvae- it was a lot of destruction for little gain. As is so often the case, eh?

If this poem has piqued your interest in New Zealand's poetry or bees, here's a couple of book recommendations: The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson and 99 Ways Into New Zealand Poetry by Paula Green and Harry Rickets (find this at your library- it's huge.)

Here's a good Baxter quote: "When some cheese-headed ladder-climber reads a poem of mine from the rostrum/ Don't listen." (he's referring to clergy)

Baxter's poetry is not easy to find online but worth the search. You can find two here: oldpoetry.com/oauthor/show/james_k_baxter