Number 186: Robert Browning "Prospice"

Prospice

Fear death? -- to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall.
Tho' a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so -- one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the friend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest.

-- Robert Browning

Hap Notes: Well, this is Browning's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," written in 1861, fifty years before the birth of Dylan Thomas. Except he is directing himself to meet death/old age as the last great struggle. He charges himself to fight death but he also knows that nobody gets out of that fight alive. The important part, to Browning, is to "Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears/Of pain, darkness and cold."

So he's telling us that the price for life's joys is the struggle one must face, one last time, with the arch forces of death and aging. "Guerdon," if you are unfamiliar with the word (I was) means reward. So he's sort of saying "Chin up, face to the wind, go forward into the battle of life and death." Prospice is Latin for "forward," by the by.

Browning wrote this poem after the death of his wife, poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and theirs is one of the truly great love stories of their day. Some say that Robert's influence was not always a good one on her work but this sort of posthumous sifting is frustrating since Elizabeth, in spite of her physical frailty, was pretty much able to hold her own. She wrote possibly the most famous love poem of all time "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" to Browning. She was 38 when he met her (he was a fan of her work). He was 32. After they married she was disinherited by her father (her dad did this to all his children who married- he was more than a bit of a fascist as a dad). She was 43 when she had her first child. She opposed slavery and encouraged the rights of women. Browning was quite drowned in love for her and her poetry. Today's poem's last lines express his fervent hope to be reunited with her, the "soul of his soul," in death.

I'm a great fan of both of the Brownings, although I lean somewhat towards Robert. After struggling through all ten poems of his book-length "The Ring and The Book" one either loves him and admires him or never wants to read another word of him and admires him. Of those two I am the former. But that's not why I chose this poem at this time.

Okay, you'll have to sit through a bit more about Amitabh Bachchan here – just warnin' you. Because he quoted both Browning and Tennyson on his blog a couple of days ago (yes, even my movie stars have to like poetry.) He comes by it naturally since his dad, Harivansh Rai "Bachchan" Shrivastav, is a very famous Hindi poet. So, he's going through one of his father's books and he sees, written in his father's hand, a quote from Browning, "I was ever a fighter, so -- one fight more." It moved him (as it would anyone, I suppose) and reminded me, once more, of my love for this very heartfelt poem. (The Tennyson his dad quoted is in my top ten poems of all time- we'll get to it someday.....) It amuses me that even my love for a Bollywood icon is another thread in the tapestry of the poetry that creates the universe.

Harivansh Bachchan, by the way, wrote a wonderful poem "Madhushala" (The Tavern) which is a deeply drawn metaphor on poetry, life and love that I am not qualified to talk about. This does not stop me from singing it (yes, it's been set to music, poetry's easier to understand cousin) and if you hear Amit-ji singing it you will too– warning you ahead of time that it's infectious: www.youtube.com/watch?v=19sMzT5Iln0&feature=related

Here's an English translation of the poem- I don't know how good it is, my Hindi is limited to "no," "potato," "come here," "darling," "everything," "tea" and "wrong format," so I'm incapable of knowing it is a good one although the poem's metaphor comes through loud and clear: allpoetry.com/poem/8586937-Madhushala__The_Tavern__-by-Harivansh_Rai_Bachchan

Back to Browning. Here's where we have talked about him before:
happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/number-102-robert-browning-how-they.html

The masthead contains Thomas B. Read's portraits of the Brownings.

Number 185: Eve Merriam "How To Eat A Poem"

How to Eat a Poem

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice
that may run down your chin
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

-- Eve Merriam

Hap Notes: I'm always kind of stunned about how many people are unaware of Eve Merriam (1916-1992). In addition to her charming verses, many written for children, she wrote some of the most caustic and remarkable social commentaries of our time and much of it is still very relevant.

For example, her musical "The Club" portrays men in a private club making disparaging and derogatory comments about women – and all the men were played by women. It was highly controversial at the time (1976) and it brought up riveting differences of how women were thought of and shocking contrasts between men and women. We'd do well to re-stage that today.

Then there's her seminal "Inner City Mother Goose" which dealt with poverty, housing issues and life in the hard edges of the city. Here's an example:

Hickory Dickory Dock 

The Crowd ran up the block. 

A cop struck one, 
A rock got thrown; 

Hickory Dickory riot.


"Inner City Mother Goose" was published in 1969 and while many of the rhymes seem tame compared to the harshest of contemporary rappers, at the time the book was banned just about everywhere. Merriam reasoned that the original Mother Goose had social content so why not update it? The book had an introduction written by poet Nikki Giovanni. It's revelatory still.

Merriam wrote dozens of poems every bit as charming as today's poem in several wonderful books, too. I don't mean to say she was a hell-bent revolutionary. She was a quiet, educated one who bridled at social injustice. Her daughter said that Merriam sent Harvey Milk his first campaign contribution when he ran for Supervisor in San Francisco in 1973. Every time I read her work or about her I just want to give her a big hug.

Merriam had a life long love affair with poetry that started when she was 8 or 9 years old. She went to the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia. She held jobs in radio and was an editor for Glamor magazine. Her first book of poems, Family Circle, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1946.

Throughout her life, though, her main interest was just getting kids to read poetry, read it aloud, write it, enjoy it. She felt this kind of literacy would make for a better world. How can you disagree with this?

Sorry this post is so late. Sorting through my books today I found Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle (Which Merriam's poem starts) It's pretty beat up, full of coffee cup rings, suntan lotion stains, odd pink fingerprints from some kind of candy... I gotta get a new copy- I've had this one (warped cover and curled pages- what the hell did I do, swim with it? No- I used it as a life raft.) for 40 years at least. I started drifting away in it and the next thing I knew the morning had flown away. I'd planned on a completely different poem. We've got time – we'll do it tomorrow.

By the way, don't take today's poem too lightly. Merriam is saying something rather deep about reading, letting yourself go without judgment, the sounds and feel of the words. You gotta take a bite, it might be messy. That's good. Poetry is not dry, it's full of juice.

Here's a good Merriam quote:
"I find it difficult to sit still when I hear poetry or read it out loud. I feel a tingling feeling all over, particularly in the tips of my fingers and in my toes, and it just seems to go right from my mouth all the way through my body. It's like a shot of adrenalin or oxygen when I hear rhymes and word play,"

and another:
"Whatever you do, find ways to read poetry. Eat it, drink it, enjoy it, and share it."

You can find more Merriam here: www.poemhunter.com/eve-merriam/

Number 184: Robert Burns "Charlie, He's My Darling"

Charlie, He's My Darling

'Twas on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
That Charlie came to our town,
The young Chevalier.

An' Charlie, he's my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie, he's my darling,
The young Chevalier.

As he was walking up the street,
The city for to view,
O there he spied a bonnie lass
The window looking through,

Sae light's he jumped up the stair,
And tirl'd at the pin;
And wha sae ready as hersel'
To let the laddie in.

He set his Jenny on his knee,
All in his Highland dress;
For brawly weel he ken'd the way
To please a bonie lass.

It's up yon heathery mountain,
An' down yon scroggie glen,
We daur na gang a milking,
For Charlie and his men,

An' Charlie, he's my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie, he's my darling,
The young Chevalier.

-- Robert Burn

Hap Notes: We'll set some vocabulary first before we talk of the history of this poem/song. Let's head right to the fourth stanza: He lightly jumped up the stairs and rang the doorbell (tirld at the pin) and who's so ready as she is (wha sai ready as hersel') . Then, He very well knew the way (brawly weel he kenned the way). The scroggie glen is scrub land, and we daur not gang a milking means "we dare not go a milking." If that last phrase reminds you of "The Fairies" by William Allingham ("Up the airy mountain/Down the rushy glen,/We daren't go a-hunting, For fear of little men...") Burns' poem was written in 1794, Allingham was born in 1824.

This poem/song is about Bonnie Prince Charlie (Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria Stuart). It's a long involved tale of the Jacobite (named for the Latin word for James) uprising and starts out back with the Plantagenets and the Lancasters (red rose) and the Yorks (white rose) and the Wars of the Roses. We won't go back that far because the names of the British succession and heirs of who was supposed to be king and who actually was, hurts my old head. You'll often see in the pictures of Charlie, the white rose, a signifier of the Yorks.

Suffice it to say Bonnie Prince Charlie (the great-great-grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots and the grandson of James II) arranged an uprising to get the throne back (from the Hanovers, I think) to secure it for his dad, and eventually himself. He had the help of France (Louis XV was his 2nd cousin) but as he and his troops were battling it out, France (who was supposedly sending help) backed out for a number of reasons and Bonnie Prince Charlie hid in the highlands and was eventually smuggled out of the country. He wasn't born in Scotland, since his family was in exile, and he didn't die there either. He was hidden in the highlands for months with a 50,000 pound reward on his head and nary a Scot ratted him out.

The Stuarts were Catholics (Mary changed the spelling from Stewart to the French, Stuart) and they had many supporters in Scotland and throughout Ireland and Great Britain. Prince Charlie hardly had the troops or arms or money to take over but he made a valiant stab at it and was greatly admired in Scotland for it. In fact, it's said there are more songs about Bonnie Prince Charlie than any other monarch (or "pretender" to the throne) and as you can see from the masthead pics, he was sort of a dish.

In Burns' poem we see that Bonnie Prince Charlie had a way with women and that even his soldiers weren't to be trusted with the milkmaids. They had cool uniforms and that always helps.

After the last Jacobite rebellion, Charlie tried to reassemble it once more but it never took place. Instead, he took to drink and women on the continent and ended sadly. In the poem, however, he is hale, hearty and fightin'.

Burns' poem/song spawned two other versions, and in fact, Burn's may have been a compilation of local songs about the prince. The other ones are:

James Hogg (1821) Noted for the line "Our King shall have his own again" a line which inspired another poem about the prince.

T was on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
That Charlie came to our town,
The young Chevalier.

As Charlie he came up the gate,
His face shone like the day;
I grat to see the lad come back
That had been lang away.

Then ilka bonny lassie sang,
As to the door she ran,
"Our King shall hae his ain again",
An' Charlie is the man:

Out ow'r yon moory mountain,
An' down the craggy glen,
Of naething else our lasses sing,
But Charlie an' his men.

Our Highland hearts are true an' leal,
An' glow without a stain;
Our Highland swords are metal keen,
An' Charlie he 's our ain.


and Lady Nairne ( 1821) You will note her troops are married men concerned with national pride and not the girls, so much.

'T was on a Monday mornin

Right early in the year

When Charlie came to our town

The Young Chevalier.

As he cam' marchin' up the street

The pipes played loud and clear

And a' the folk cam' rinnin' out

To meet the Chevalier.

Wi' highland bonnets on their heads

And claymores bright and clear

They cam' to fight for Scotland's right

And for the Chevalier.

They've left their bonnie highland hills

Their wives and bairnies dear

To draw the sword for Scotland's lord

The young Chevalier.

Oh, there were mony beating hearts

And mony a hope and fear

And mony were the pray'rs put up

For the young Chevalier.

Now if you think all this Rabbie (as he's often called) Burns talk is ancient history, look at this charming Scottish school's winners for the Burns Day competition that took place this year.
He's still first in the hearts of many a Scot to this day.
The video is utterly charming: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN4DO-NVfNY

And of course, the song itself, which has loads of entries on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-5RloO2HY

Honestly the reason I chose this poem is because the song started going through my head, unbidden, a few days ago. I just followed my odd stuffed-full-of-verses head, like I often do here.
(Ye also mae have notic'd I ha' a more tha' a wee soft spot for Rabbie Burns.)

Interestingly enough, divers have lately found proof that France may have tried to send help but got scuttled. They may have tried to use a British ship they bought to fool the Brits and it didn't quite work out. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5387583/Shipwreck-found-by-divers-was-vessel-sent-to-help-Bonnie-Prince-Charlie.html

Number 183: Shel Silverstein "Hippo's Hope"

Hippo's Hope

There once was a hippo who wanted to fly
--Fly-hi-dee, try-hi-dee, my-hi-dee-ho.
So he sewed him some wings that could flap through the sky
--Sky-hi-dee, fly-hi-dee, why-hi-dee-go.

He climbed to the top of a mountain of snow
--Snow-hi-dee, slow-hi-dee, oh-hi-dee-hoo.
With the clouds high above and the sea down below
--Where-hi-dee, there-hi-dee, scare-hi-dee-boo.

(Happy ending)

And he flipped and he flapped and he bellowed so loud
--Now-hi-dee, loud-hi-dee, proud-hi-dee-poop.
And he sailed like an eagle, off into the clouds
--High-hi-dee, fly-hi-dee, bye-hi-dee-boop.

(Unhappy ending)

And he leaped like a frog and he fell like a stone
--Stone-hi-dee, lone-hi-dee, own-hi-dee-flop.
And he crashed and he drowned and broke all his bones
--Bones-hi-dee, moans-hi-dee, groans-hi-dee-glop.

(Chicken ending)

He looked up at the sky and looked down at the sea
--Sea-hi-dee, free-hi-dee, whee-hi-dee-way.
And he turned and went home and had cookies and tea
--That's hi-dee, all hi-dee, I have to say.

-- Shel Silverstein

Hap Notes: I love Saturday. I suppose it's because I still have that percolating joyous feeling when I wake up that there's no school today. Then I remember that I'm an adult and Saturdays mean cleaning out the garage, doing laundry, running errands and lawn work. But always in the back of my head there's some strange delight in the idea that there's no school today which meant cartoons, tennis shoes, reading, playing "statue" (did you ever play that?) or pirate and more reading. When I wake up in the morning I still say "YAY! It's Saturday!" and I have for more than 40 years. It has now passed into a happy ritual.

Today's Saturday poem reminds me just a bit of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books where after reading a couple of pages, you decided what would happen next based on a couple of choices and then turn to the page number where that option would play out in the story. Remember those? I'll be amazed if you don't; they sold more than 250 million copies of those books from 1979-1998. (Yeah, I looked that up.)

I always choose the chicken option in this poem but I suppose it's really because I just like cookies and tea.

Hippos are the source of much light verse from Hillaire Belloc (I shoot the hippotomus/ With bullets made of platinum/ Because if I use leaden ones/ His hide is sure to flatten 'em.) to T.S. Eliot's wry comments on the church. (Have you ever read that? It's evil good. You can find it here: www.poetry-archive.com/e/the_hippopotamus.html. There's a good Ogden Nash one, too:
www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hippopotamus/

For cartoons today, here's a very freaky explanation of why the blue danube is blue (although for years it was filled with pollution but they've fixed it a bit, now). This is the kind of cartoon people used to see exclusively at the movie theater: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LQpK0UFolY&feature=related

Here's a really funny Mel Brooks (!) voiced and written cartoon from the 60's: www.youtube.com/watch?v=otPkk1sUFkI&feature=related

And here's Betty Boop (in another pre-movie cartoon) with the housecleaning blues. Grampy fixes that right up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISzY6N25lrg&feature=related

The masthead includes one of my favorite Thurber cartoons. The extraordinary hippo with wings hatching is from Allforart.com.

Number 182: Paul Verlaine "Claire De Lune"

Like most of Verlaine's poetry, it's short so I've given you a few translations:

Claire De Lune

Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

The while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,—
And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,

The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.

--Paul Verlaine
Translated by Gertrude Hall


Claire De Lune

Your soul is the choicest of countries
Where charming maskers, masked shepherdesses,
Go playing their lutes and dancing, yet gently
Sad beneath fantastic disguises.

While they sing in a minor key
Of all-conquering love and careless fortune,
They seem to mistrust their own fantasy
And their song melts away in the light of the moon,

In the quiet moonlight, lovely and sad,
That makes the birds dream in the trees, all
The tall water-jets sob with ecstasies,
The slender water-jets rising from marble.

-- Paul Verlaine
Translated by A.S. Kline

Moonlight

Your soul is a select landscape

Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go

Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key

Of victorious love and the opportune life,

They do not seem to believe in their happiness

And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,

That sets the birds dreaming in the trees

And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,

The tall slender fountains among marble statues.

--Paul Verlaine
Translated by Chris Routledge

Hap Notes: Are we really gonna tackle Verlaine (1844-1896) on a Friday? Well, sure. He's the easiest of the French Symbolists to understand and this is a pretty famous poem seeing as how it's been set to music or inspired music by Faure', Debussy, Ferre' and Poldowski just to name a few. Bob Dylan mentions him, too. Verlaine's sensuous descriptions inspire music.

In point of fact Verlaine is all about the sound, feel and colors of words and his poems are written in the moment, deeply felt, passionate and often wistful or sorrowful or besotted with love and beauty. If you are just learning French, he is a good choice for reading and translating and if you ever go to France and can recite some Verlaine, ooh la la, mes amis.

Verlaine's life is that scary and cautionary tale one always hears about the dangers of absinthe, a green liquor that had properties much like liquid marijuana in the late 1800s. It's a delicious licorice/anise flavored herbal drink that is no longer made to induce the high that Verlaine and his compadres got from it. Verlaine is the guy who called it "the green fairy."

Verlaine was born in Metz and started writing poetry early, his first poem was published when he was 19. Verlaine seems to have been two people trapped in one body. One of the people, let's call him V1, had a civil service job, fell in love, married, and had a child.

The other person in Verlaine, V2, got a letter from a young poet, Arthur Rimbaud, whom Verlaine , 27, thought talented and at least a man of 30 years old. Rimbaud was handsome, wild and 17. Verlaine's passionate and tumultuous affair with Rimbaud was ecstatic and degrading. Rimbaud disturbed the Verlaine household and encouraged the ultra-sensitive Verlaine to live a life of debauchery and alcohol. Verlaine didn't need much persuasion.

Verlaine left his wife and son and bummed around with Rimbaud. They went to England and things just kept deteriorating. It ended after a year or so, with Verlaine shooting Rimbaud, injuring the young poet's wrist. Rimbaud pressed charges, mostly out of concern for Verlaine's mental state, and Verlaine went to jail.

While in jail, Verlaine read voraciously, Shakespeare and Cervantes etc. etc. and wrote like a madman. He converted to Catholicism (V1) and wrote letters to Rimbaud (V2). Rimbaud said that when Verlaine got out of prison and visited him in Germany, he had, after plying him with drink, shattered most of the commandments. Okay, Rimbaud's actual words were "he made the 98 wounds of Christ bleed again." They were a romantic, passionate, wild and rather vile couple, all in all.

Verlaine was probably inspired and encouraged by Rimbaud's youthful genius but he sank into the life of V2- the drunken, dirty, beggar/poet who lived the rest of his life in slums and public hospitals, always still writing and remembering. Rimbaud, whose poetry is often called genius, became a merchant and never wrote another word after the age of 21.

Verlaine was in a bad way towards the end of his life but the French love artists and poets and a small pension was arranged for him. He was even given the title of "Prince of Poets" an unofficial title honored by French poets. He succeeded Leconte' de Lisle and preceded Mallarme' in the position. Verlaine died at 51.

Rimbaud wanted to break the frames of standard poetry and he saw that Verlaine's talent was in the impression rather than the facts. Verlaine's work is tied up with Rimbaud like smoke is tied to fire. Verlaine wanted to use language like music and memory like paint. He generally succeeds in this.

In today's poem, we see the results of Verlaine's ultra-sensitivity. His poems are generally short and loaded with moonlight, love, loss, fragrance and signifiers like puppets, masks, statues and clowns. There is nobody who writes with more wistful longing. It is not hard to imagine masked dancing people who do not seem to believe in their happiness, is it?

Here is David Oistrakh playing Debussy's Verlaine inspired piece Claire De Lune. That's almost assuredly a Stradivarius he's playing. While it was originally intended for piano, this really captures the "feel" of the Verlaine: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKd0VII-l3A

Here is the original French version of the poem. Remember that Verlaine wanted the words to feel and sound appropriate to the mood so the French adds yet another dimension.

Clair de lune

Votre âme est un paysage choisi

Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques

Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi

Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur

L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,

Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur

Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,

Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres

Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,

Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

-- Paul Verlaine

Here's a good Verlaine quote:

"The poet is a madman lost in adventure."

You can find more Verlaine here: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8426

The masthead picture is Verlaine in 1892, seated with pens, paper, hat, cane and absinthe.

Number 181: Harold Munro "Overheard on a Saltmarsh"

Overheard on a Saltmarsh

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

------ Green glass, goblin. Why do you ask?

Give them me.

------No.

Give them me. Give them me.

------No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

------Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,
Better than the voices of winds that sing,
Better than any man's fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

------Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.

------ No.

I will howl in the deep lagoon
For your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them me.

------No.


Hap Notes: When I was about 8 or 9 years old I thought this was possibly the most brilliant poem of all time. The mysterious pauses and Tolkienesque dialog thrilled me. I can still feel it and so must many more because it is the subject of countless illustrations. The poem brings out the artist in us all as we paint a picture in our minds of the scene.

Harold Edward Munro (1879-1932) was a major force in British literature but not for his poetry. His Poetry Bookshop in London launched the careers of many poets. He published poetry from young poets and published the first collection (with Edwin Marsh) of the so-called Georgian poets (from King George V) in 1912.

Poets in the first Georgian collection included D.H. Lawrence, Rupert Brooke, G.K. Chesterton and John Masefield among others. Munro edited a 1933 collection of poetry just before he died, "Poets in the 20th Century" which contains a who's who of English poets and included many poets we have covered over the last few months, Ezra Pound, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Graves, Rudyard Kipling and a score or two more.

Munro also founded a magazine, The Poetry Review, which published many poets of the era as well being influential to poets of the time. Wilfred Owen was not only published by Munro, but lived for a time over the bookshop. He published much of these works at his own expense and published several magazines devoted to poetry.

Born in Brussels to Scottish parents, Munro was an educated man suffering from the social mores of the time because he was gay, which was a crime in Great Britain. Monro said of his school years "I was too slow and dreamy and could stick at nothing." He married once, for love but it ended predictably unhappily and again, later in life to his assistant Alida Klementaski. His second marriage was one of a platonic nature. He struggled with alcoholism and eventually died from complications caused by it.

Harold Munro was actually in love with poetry and life only lets you get one really big true love and poetry was his. As a youth, he read Virgil and it stirred him up for life. He read frenetically and deeply after Virgil; Tennyson, Browning, Moliere, everything by Goethe and on and on. All his life he read poetry, wrote it, published many poets in pamphlets when he was younger and in books as he got older and was devoted to it. His own poetry was often dismissed and that's a shame because he wrote some excellent ones.

Munro was not an elitist and he cared more for poetry itself than any fad or school. T.S. Eliot said he was "one of the few poets of whom it can be said that they cared more for poetry in general than for their own work." Eliot wrote the introduction for Muno's posthumous collected works.

We will do more Munro this year, I do believe.

Here's a good Munro quote, it's from a poem but it's irresistable:

"Here's a new day. Oh pendulum move slowly!"

and another:

"I hate literary gossip and anecdote."

and another:

"By a stroke of good fortune I left school young, and then I suddenly became conscious of myself as a solitary and wayward person and in the seclusion of my bedroom, I wrote a dozen poems and the same number of short stories, all about an individual too obviously myself..."

and again:

"By the time I went to Cambridge poetry had become an obsession, but I kept this a close secret and not till my third year did I form a little group with three other undergraduates to discuss and criticize each other's verses."

You can find more Munro here: www.poemhunter.com/harold-monro/

Number 180: Jack Spicer "Any Fool Can Get Into an Ocean..."

Any Fool Can Get Into an Ocean...

Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

-- Jack Spicer

Hap Notes: Jack Spicer (1925-1965) is going to mess with your head if you are brave enough to get to know him even slightly. He was so far ahead of his time we are still trying to catch up to him. Sometimes he's pulling your leg, except that this is just a turn of phrase and it's not actually your leg, he can't be pulling because he's dead and phonemes aren't turning. Or is it, he, they? Let's start over.

Jack Spicer was born in Los Angeles. He went to school at Berkeley where he met a variety of like-minded poets who encouraged him, most notably Kenneth Rexroth, Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan. Duncan inspired Spicer to come out of the closet and embrace his sexuality. Spicer often called (as many gays often do on the year when they are finally allowed the freedom to be who they are) 1946 the year of his birth. Spicer lost his teaching assistanceship at Berkeley when he refused to sign that paranoid Sloan-Levering Act loyalty oath. He was a student of linguistics and studied Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse in which he was close to getting a Ph.D.

Spicer was politically active and was involved in the gay liberation group, the Mattachine Society. He was hired as the head of the humanities department at the California School of Fine Arts in the early 50's. Spicer and five of his literary/art friends founded the "Six" Gallery, the place where Ginsburg read "Howl" and changed the direction of poetry. Spicer, however, was not a 'Beat'. He wasn't really from any school of poetry at all. He was his own school of thought.

Spicer's work was incredibly individual, beautiful, lyric, self-mocking, somewhat difficult and brilliant. His book "After Lorca" published in 1957, was his "translations" of Lorca's poems and also letters written to the poet. Lorca writes back and even writes the preface to the book. The fact that Lorca had been dead for 20 years when Spicer wrote the book is part of the charm and miracle and wonders of Spicer since it is Spicer writing both for Lorca, about Lorca and to Lorca and to himself as Lorca. Spicer, while he wrote some wonderful individual poems, felt that a book of poems should be more like a series of poems that are roughly sewn from the same threads.

Spicer also worked for a time as the host for a folk music radio show at Berkeley where he made a connection with music archivist Harry Smith and ended up assisting Smith with the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Spicer sort of held court in local bars with people who were attracted to his theories and poetry. He was adamant about not being published nationally, detested the idea of poetry as something one "sold" and refused to copyright his work when it was published on a small press locally (he called copyrighting "the big lie of the personal"). All his poetry was published in the public domain. His belief was that poetry came from the "outside." He called it "Martians," I call it the universe, but in any case he felt the poet was a conduit for these "transmissions" and that the poet's vocabulary was the "furniture" that the muse or Martians or the universe used to arrange the "room" of a poem.

He said of these "transmissions" at one of his Vancouver lectures "I don't think it's something the electroencephalogram would get. I don't think it has anything to do with what's in my skull. I think there's something Outside. I really believe that, and I haven't noticed anyone really, in all of these people who come here, who did seem to believe that I believed it, but I do."

Before you dismiss him as a nutcase, let me point out he was a highly educated linguist with a solid background of reading in the classics. Those of you who know something about Science Fiction authors will get a kick out of the fact that when Spicer attended Berkeley he roomed at the same boarding house with Philip K. Dick. (All of us who know Dick's work are now sporting a wry smile.) What Spicer is talking about is a connection with the "muses" that often miraculously helps one create a work of art. He felt the inspiration for poetry was from some "outer" source that one interpreted with their own vocabulary.

Spicer had an alcohol addiction that was pretty fierce. He collapsed into a coma from alcohol poisoning and died in the poverty ward of San Francisco General Hospital when he was only 40. His last murmured words were " My vocabulary did this to me."

Spicer is a book and a half of information that I'm not qualified to write. It's ironic, but not unpredictable, that Spicer's poetics are highly lauded by linguists and philosophy majors who love to disseminate his theories with even more obfuscating theories. Wittgenstein is often dragged in, and, of course, Derrida. Or Derrida-da as I like to joke. (Just trying to lighten up the mood...)

Today's poem, in addition to referencing a lot of Greek and Roman mythology, is a sly response to Robert Frost who said, "any damned fool can get into a poem but it takes a poet to get out of one."

Here are some Spicer quotes that are somewhat enlightening about his work:

In response to his saying poetry was not important:

"What I'm trying to say is that when I say "not important," it is the kind of thing that - you want a job, you want a million dollars, you want someone to sleep with - no. That doesn't help a bit. It is important to your life in the sense that you live your life not just as a human being but as something more than a human being, and I don't know how much it is. In terms of biography, I doubt if poems that you write or poems that you read by others really change the course of, or the flow of events, of things. But at the same time they do in a fundamental way."

"Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to. ”

I add this quote strictly because it shocked me. I always thought this was MY crazy theory. I'm happy to see it is Spicer's: "But there are different kinds of levels of gravity and Vancouver has a different level than San Francisco does, and it's one I prefer." (yes, he's talking about the force gravity, not seriousness)

You can find more Spicer here: www.poetryfoundation.org/search/?q=Jack+spicer

P.S. I have no idea if Jack Spicer from "Xiaolin Showdown" has anything to do with the poet but it would be charming if he did have. I kinda doubt it, though.