Number 202: Robert Lowell "To Delmore Schwartz"

To Delmore Schwartz

(Cambridge 1946)

We couldn't even keep the furnace lit!
Even when we had disconnected it,
the antiquated
refrigerator gurgled mustard gas
through your mustard-yellow house,
and spoiled our long maneuvered visit
from T.S. Eliot's brother, Henry Ware...

Your stuffed duck craned toward Harvard from my trunk:
its bill was a black whistle, and its brow
was high and thinner than a baby's thumb;
its webs were tough as toenails on its bough.
It was your first kill: you had rushed it home,
pickled in a tin wastebasket of rum–
it looked through us, as if it'd died dead drunk.
You must have propped its eyelids with a nail,
and yet it lived with us and met our stare,
Rabelaisian, lubricious, drugged. And there,
perched on my trunk and typing-table,
it cooled our universal
Angst a moment, Delmore. We drank and eyed
the chicken-hearted shadows of the world.
Underseas fellows, nobly mad,
we talked away our friends. "Let Joyce and Freud
the Masters of Joy,
be our guests here," you said. The room was filled
with cigarette smoke circling the paranoid,
inert gaze of Coleridge, back
from Malta – his eyes lost in flesh, lips baked and black.
Your tiger kitten, Oranges,
cartwheeled for joy in a ball of snarls.
You said:
"We poets in our youth begin in sadness;
thereof in the end come despondency and madness;
Stalin has had two cerebral hemorrhages!"
The Charles
River was turning silver. In the ebb-
light of morning, we stuck
the duck
-'s web-
foot, like a candle, in a quart of gin we'd killed.

-- Robert Lowell

Hap Notes: Here we have Lowell reminiscing about his days with Schwartz at Harvard. Schwartz and Lowell had a "falling out" of sorts and were not close after their year or so in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and Lowell refers to this many times with rue in his personal letters to friends throughout his life. But, in this poem, written and published while Schwartz was still alive, Lowell fondly remembers their friendship and even possibly hopes to mend it.

The Wordsworth that Schwartz quotes in the poem is given a mournful twist by Schwartz. The verse in the poem, "Resolution and Independence", is actually "We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; /But thereof come in the end despondency and madness." Remember how Koch called Schwartz "that rueful man"?

Stalin had his cerebral hemorrhages in 1953, nine years after the experiences detailed in the poem. Not sure if Lowell is confused on the dates or making a point here. Remember that almost everything you unearth in Lowell's poetry was purposefully placed there. Of course, he was human, had own troubles with mental illness, and it could be a lapse of memory. Possible.

Lowell said that Schwartz introduced him to Freud and talked incessantly about him. We know from previous poems this week how attached Schwartz was to James Joyce.

The Coleridge picture, staring at the two poets, I cannot figure. I've put a few on the masthead. Coleridge went to Malta in 1804 for his health, he returned to England in 1806 (he took a side trip to Italy, too, but had a diplomatic position in Malta after he got there) sicker than when he'd left and completely addicted to opium (laudanum). Notice the duck's black beak and Coleridge's "baked" black lips.

Lowell's stanza structure (especially the second to last "-'s web-") is fascinating. I think he's making us pause as we read stuck/ the duck/-'s web-"/foot. It certainly slows it down, especially if you read it aloud. It's meant to be slightly amusing, especially the duck's almost lurid leer. It is stuck in his memory, this dead duck with the lubricious stare.

Lowell often associates "mustard yellow" with Schwartz and makes reference to a suit coat that Delmore owned in that color in a letter Lowell wrote later in life. Mustard gas was a weapon used on the soldiers in WWI. There are a few nails in this poem to consider, too.

Even Berryman commented on the charming kitten/cat, Oranges, that Delmore had with him. The poets liked the name. And there is the thought that nothing much really rhymes with "oranges," a literary joke of sorts.

It's a loony picture, this stuffed duck and Coleridge staring at these two brilliant, slightly mad, drinking poets. There's a good deal of symbolism going on with the career of Schwartz and the dead duck, too, pickled as Schwartz often was in his later years, in alcohol.

Lowell is saying something about, in addition to everything else, poets and their lives in this poem.

Here's where we've mentioned Lowell before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-171-robert-lowell-for-union-dead.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-33-robert-lowell-dolphin.html

Number 201: John Berryman: "Dream Song 149" and "Dream Song 150"

Dream Song 149

The world is gradually becoming a place 

where I do not care to be anymore. Can Delmore die?

I don't suppose

in all them years a day went ever by

without a loving thought for him. Welladay.

In the brightness of his promise, 



unstained, I saw him thro' the mist of the actual

blazing with insight, warm with gossip

thro' all our Harvard years 

when both of us were just becoming known

I got him out of a police-station once, in Washington, the world is tref

and grief too astray for tears. 



I imagine you have heard the terrible news, 

that Delmore Schwartz is dead, miserably & alone,

in New York: he sang me a song 
'I am the Brooklyn poet Delmore Schwartz 

Harms & the child I sing, two parents' torts' 

when he was young & gift-strong.

-- John Berryman

DREAM SONG 150

He had followers but they could not find him;
friends but they could not find him. He hid his gift
in the center of Manhattan,
without a girl, in cheap hotels,
so disturbed on the street friends avoided him
Where did he come by his lift

which all we must or we would rapidly die:
did he remember the more beautiful & fresh poems
of early manhood now?
or did his subtle & strict standards allow
them nothing, baffled? What then did self-love show
of the weaker later, somehow?

I’d bleed to say his lovely work improved
but it is not so. He painfully removed
himself from the ordinary contracts
and shook with resentment. What final thought
solaced his fall to the hotel carpet, if any,
& the New York Times’s facts?

-- John Berryman

Hap Notes: It's really not fair to make our first exposure here to John Berryman (1914-1972) as a precursor to an upcoming Schwartz poem but I don't think Berryman himself would mind it so much because he loved him so deeply. These poems today about Schwartz were in his second book of dream songs, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Berryman adored Schwartz and saw him as a learned mentor in addition to being a treasured friend.

I studied literature at the University of Minnesota, where Berryman spent a large part of his teaching career, and I was forever pestering the office staff at Lind Hall with questions about him: was his office here? (yes) Where did he teach? (often in the old "barracks") Do you remember him? (yes. He was odd.) They sent me to a few professors who'd known him. A lot of adjectives were haltingly used to describe him; erratic, charming, loud, effusive, difficult, strange, unstable. But to a man, the one word everyone used to describe him was "brilliant." I never set foot on that Washington Avenue bridge (which I did on a daily basis) without thinking of him.

His dream songs (there are 365 of them) were originally published in two volumes, the first of which, 77 Dream Songs, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1965. The dream songs were a revelation of mixed syntax, language and images. Their structure, as you can see, is three stanzas of 6 lines each and each of them carries a charge, whether of dynamite or electricity or a sword flourish.

The dream song poems follow Henry, a sometimes Berryman alter-ego, a sometimes fictional character, and deal with a variety of subjects many of which are dark and odd. Berryman one time wrote, jokingly, that the songs were "meant to terrify and comfort." I would remind you that the gravest things are said in jest. (He chose the name "Henry" because Berryman and his second wife, Ann, once had a discussion about names they hated. She chose "Mabel" and he chose "Henry." They often affectionately referred to each other with these names.)

Berryman was born in Oklahoma and grew up for a while in Florida and New York, all of which would belie his cultured accent. You can hear his sonorous voice here (slightly inebriated and eventually reading "Life, Friends is Boring" one of the dream songs ): www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YUu3L-qGMI&feature=related (Even inebriated he gives a stunning interview and you can hear for yourself his highly literate brilliance.)

Berryman's biological father, John Smith, committed suicide (he shot himself just outside of the young poet's window) and Berryman took his stepfather's name, with whom he got along well. Berryman graduated from Columbia and also studied at Clare College, Cambridge in England on scholarship. He felt that poetry was his vocation but was forced, like most poets, to supplement his income by teaching. In Berryman's case this was very distracting because he was a scholar and worked hard to make his classes worth the taking. He taught at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop and Harvard in addition to his years at the University of Minnesota.

He was an extraordinary teacher when he was not in the hospital for treatment for manic-depression or drunk (even then he was erudite.) He often got permission to leave the hospital to teach and then return after the class. He took the teaching, like he took his poetry writing, seriously.

Berryman committed suicide by jumping off the Washington Avenue bridge into the Mississippi on the campus of the University of Minnesota in January of 1972. It is said that he waved to onlookers before making the leap. I don't think he drowned, I believe he hit the frozen bank of the river. He was 57.

In today's poems "Henry" talks about Delmore Schwartz and the poet laments at the gradual diminution of Schwartz's prowess as a poet: "I’d bleed to say his lovely work improved/but it is not so." The word "tref" (pronounced Trafe) is a Yiddish/Hebrew derivative and means "unclean, unfit to consume." It is a derogatory term often used to describe something vile. The expression "harms and the child" is, for one thing, a derivative of the first line of Virgil's Aeneid: "Arms and the man I sing, who, forced by fate/And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,/Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore." (Dryden translation.)

Eileen Simpson, Berryman's second wife, wrote a very interesting book on the poets and their wives that she and Berryman hung with, Poets In Their Youth. It's well worth reading for insights.

Here's a good Berryman quote: "This business about geniuses in neglected garrets is for the birds. The idea that a man is somehow no good just because he becomes very popular, like Frost, is nonsense, also. There are exceptions—Chatterton, Hopkins, of course, Rimbaud, you can think of various cases—but on the whole, men of genius were judged by their contemporaries very much as posterity judges them. So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers."

You can find more Berryman here: famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/john_berryman/poems

The masthead today is the young Berryman studying at Cambridge (left) and the young Delmore Schwartz (right.)

Number 200: Kenneth Koch "A Momentary Longing To Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead"

A Momentary Longing To Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat
Saying to me as we walked across the Yard
Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said
You are not wearing overcoat. He said,
You should do as I say not do as I do.
Just how American it was and how late Forties it was
Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me
In his New York apartment sitting on chair
Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering.
Look at this photograph said of his mother and father.
Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out.
Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture.
Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said.
Why don't you ask him?
Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not.
Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph.
Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs.
Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening
I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true.
Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying
But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.

-- Kenneth Koch

Hap Notes: Koch is one of my favorite poets, although his poems are not particularly favorites of mine. I know that's an odd thing to say. Koch lived and breathed poetry, saw the poetry in the cadences of everyday life, encouraged all people (especially children and the elderly) to write poetry and felt deeply about literature and friends and his wife and his children. He felt deeply and he knew how to describe it. Is there anything more brilliantly put than "crazier than shirt tales in the wind" or "the minuet of stars"?

His poems ARE him in some sense and as you read his work with its "unsyntactical beauty" you become part of his life, part of his story and you cannot help but love him, his brilliant asides, funny comments and beautiful images. He makes you laugh and cry. As he so aptly put it, ""The truth is that one can be funny and serious at the same time."

In today's poem he is talking about the poet Delmore Schwartz whom he studied under at Harvard. Schwartz was a literary skyrocket when he first started writing. He was bathed with praise, was the youngest poet to receive the Bollingen Prize in 1959 and was hailed as a fresh new literary voice. He started at the top and you know what that means: he had nowhere to go but down and down he went into mental hospitals and heavy drinking.

Koch was so excited to be studying under Schwartz, whose poems he'd read in the New Directions anthologies. "I was so star-struck!" Koch said. Now, I know that Koch sounds like Yoda when he says about Schwartz's desk "There did he write? I am wondering." It's a delightful thought to me that Yoda could be patterned after Koch (or Schwartz, for that matter) but I highly doubt it. The stirred up grammar is due to an emotion coming through in his reverie as he's thinking of his late mentor.

"Do as I say, not as I do" was not as well-used when Schwartz said it to Koch in the late 40s so it was clever, self-deprecating and not cliche then. Pogo is a comic strip by Walt Kelly known for its brilliant literary references, highly charged political commentary and South Georgia "Swamp-speakin" animal population. (Pogo, the main character is a possum. The masthead is the poster Kelly did for the first Earth Day in 1971. I think I've mentioned before that this country used to be flecked with litter everywhere one went. Kelly's cartoon is barely an exaggeration.) Here's a quick refresher on Kelly: www.bpib.com/kelly.htm

The Coney Island photograph shows us many things but one of them is a reflection on Schwartz's "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," the short story that launched him to prominence which we shall talk about more when we get to him.

Schwartz, by the way (oh, yeah, you know his work is coming this week sometime, yes?) was famous for sitting at a tavern in New York with his well-thumbed copy of Finnegan's Wake, which he read aloud to his circle of admirers. He lived like a nomad, traveling from one seedy hotel desert to another. When he died, his body was not identified for three days at the morgue. He lived the weary sad life of an alcoholic whose fame came too soon, maybe, and pessimism was his daily bread.

Schwartz was a mesmerizing talker and he was vital and brilliant when Koch studied under him and Koch said, "Most of all, he gave me the image of a real poet."

One more thing I want to mention about Koch. Back in the late 60s there was a "revolutionary" group called "Back Against The Wall Motherfuckers." Their name was based on a poem "Black People!" by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and they had some foggy idea about revolutionary art which was somewhat interesting and somewhat ill-conceived. At one point, as a stunt, they "assassinated" Kenneth Koch while he was giving a reading at St. Mark's Church in New York. A member of the group pointed a handgun at the podium, shouted "Koch!" and fired a round of blanks at Koch. Koch responded, "Grow up."

Here's a wonderful 20 minute treat– Koch reading his own poetry at the Library of Congress: www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/1866 (The last two poems he reads, "The History of Jazz" and "The Circus" are two of my (and many others') favorite poems by him. Hearing him read them in his smooth voice is addictive. He's magical.

Here is where we have talked about Koch before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-5-kenneth-koch-to-roman-forum_11.html (this poem has gotten the second most hits on this blog- it's wonderful!)

Number 199: Sarah Teasedale "Moonlight"

Moonlight

It will not hurt me when I am old,

A running tide where moonlight burned

Will not sting me like silver snakes;

The years will make me sad and cold,

It is the happy heart that breaks.

The heart asks more than life can give,

When that is learned, then all is learned;

The waves break fold on jewelled fold,

But beauty itself is fugitive,

It will not hurt me when I am old.

-- Sarah Teasdale

Hap Notes: I have a bit of a tough itinerary planned for this week so I thought we'd start out gently. This Teasdale poem, as simple as it seems is saying something far darker than just the memory of past beauty and life is fleeting.

Is she trying to convince us or herself that memories of beauty will not hurt? And isn't it her realization that "the heart asks more than life can give" the idea that may hurt most of all?

While it's true that memories cannot physically come up and slap you in the face, how does one describe the hurt that is inside of the heart? How can one's heart, happy or no, be hurt? What are we really talking about when we say "the heart?" It's not the bi-valved blood pumping organ in our chests that feels the sting of memory-- so what is it?

There is a wistful beauty in the way the constant sea keeps coming up to the shore and the way life keeps going on, springing anew, changing. It will not hurt you when you are old but it does do something to a thoughtful person. What is it?

This is a pensive Teasdale thinking about her old age long before it will come. In many ways it is the sad imaginings of what it is like to be old before one gets there. In reality, old age is not nearly as "sad and cold" for some as Teasdale imagines it. Much of what she is saying is what she is feeling in her youth about about something that is already hurting her which she predicts will fade in time to a sad coldness.

Speaking strictly from my own agedness, I can argue that life is richer and sweeter as one ages regardless of what beauty and heartbreak one has seen in their lifetime. The only thing that will leave you sad and cold in your old age is NOT feeling the way Teasdale describes in her youth in this poem.

Your heart is not glass (no matter Debbie Harry's [Blondie] song to the contrary) and if it does figuratively "break" now and again, it is, as Woody Allen said "a resilient little muscle." You have to keep "breaking" your heart to feel truly alive, otherwise you will be sad and cold in your old age.

But the poem does strike the right note for a loving sorrow, yes? Moonlight brings this out in us, doesn't it?

Here's where we've talked about Teasdale before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-160-sara-teasdale-there-will.html

Number 198: Winfield Townley Scott "If All The Unplayed Pianos"

If All The Unplayed Pianos

If all the unplayed pianos in America—

The antimacassared uprights in old ladies’ parlors

In the storehourses the ones that were rented for vaudeville

The ones where ill fame worsened and finally died

The ones too old for Sunday School helplessly dusty

The ones too damp at the beach and too dry in the mountains

The ones mothers used to play on winter evenings

The ones silenced because of the children growing away—

Resounded suddenly all together from coast to coast:

Untuned joy like a fountain jetted everywhere for a moment:

The whole nation burst to untapped, untrammeled song:

It would make—in short—a most satisfactory occasion,

A phenomenon which the scientists could never explain.

-- Winfield Townley Scott

Hap Notes: If I had the power to revive the career of an under appreciated poet, Winfield Townley Scott (1910-1968) would be at the top of my list (second would be Kenneth Fearing.) It's true that his poetry is often merely good (which sounds like enough to me.) He is not often taught in schools or universities. A contemporary with extraordinary talents like Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, Scott's work is often a momentary revelation rather than a magnum opus.

Scott grew up on the East Coast, graduated from Brown (not particularly a "poet's college" especially in his era) and went on to write for the Providence Journal. He wrote book reviews and became editor of its weekly book page. The book page was a revelation. Highly lauded, it had no equal outside of New York City. Scott was a great admirer of Edwin Arlington Robinson whom he met in his college years. Scott wrote thoughtful reviews and essays for the paper.

His poetry was often published in Poetry Magazine and he won a Shelley Award in 1939. His published journal, A Dirty Hand, has also been highly lauded. He moved to New Mexico to concentrate on writing and he loved the geography and beauty of the state. He committed suicide after a domestic dispute in 1968. There's a biography of Scott, Poet in America: Winfield Townley Scott by Scott Donaldson, which is supposed to be extremely good.

Scott never thought himself to be good enough as a poet. I disagree. I daresay you will, too.

In today's poem, it's a delightful idea to think of all those tinny and untuned pianos breaking into spontaneous song isn't it? But there's a bit more to it than that. I think America is full of the under-used unappreciated and talented (or potentially talented or those who are potentially yearning to express something regardless of "talent"). The odd music that would result from all those pianos is also a song of those who sang once and are then forgotten.

We've talked about the antimacassar before, do you remember (hint: Lewis Carroll) and it really just means "doily" in this poem.

I became familiar with Scott's work through an anthology I bought in my college years, The Voice That Is Great Within Us. Edited by Hayden Carruth, this book is full of remarkable gems of poetry and my copy is beat-up and yellowed and much beloved.

Instead of a quote, let me give you another Scott poem which, again, I think shows his gentle genius:


The Child's Morning

Gangway for violets,
Old snow in the corner.
Sun after a rise of rain
Over cuttlebone cloud.
Sun in the brook running
Green with watercress
Sun on the spade—
We shovel out crocuses.
Up the concrete walk
Under surf of rollerskates
The hail of jacks,
Kiss-click of aggies.
We summon with jumpropes
Sap in the trees,
With bat-knock of ball
And the thudding glove.
That clang of schoolbells
We answer with answers:
Tall immaculate silence
Of colored kites.

--Winfield Townley Scott

Number 197: Geroge Starbuck "Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line"

Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line

O for a muse of fire, a sack of dough,
Or both! O promissory notes of woe!
One time in Santa Fe N.M.
Ol' Winfield Townley Scott and I ... But whoa.

One can exert oneself, ff ,
Or architect a heaven like Rimbaud,
Or if that seems, how shall I say, de trop ,
One can at least write sonnets, a propos
Of nothing save the do-re-mi-fa-sol
Of poetry itself. Is not the row
Of perfect rhymes, the terminal bon mot,
Obeisance enough to the Great O?

"Observe," said Chairman Mao to Premier Chou,
"On voyage à Parnasse pour prendre les eaux.
On voyage comme poisson, incog."

-- George Starbuck

Hap Notes: So much is packed into this clever little poem that I sometimes forget to appreciate the sheer artistry of Starbuck. Once again, he's so clever here that we forget to take the poem as seriously as we should. He's saying something here about art, politics and poetry in addition to the extraordinary cleverness. Starbuck was a well read and highly intelligent man and whatever we find in the poem, it's a good bet that he slipped it in there on purpose.

First off notice that each line of the poem starts out with 'O', then notice that his rhyming sounds all sound a bit like "oh" then notice his clever use of abbreviations and short-hand to get his "different" letter for each ending. Pretty clever stuff. But there's so much more. Let's start at the beginning, eh? (And I'm quite sure I'm going to miss stuff, but I''ll try to be thorough.)

"O for a muse of fire" is the beginning lines of the Prologue of Shakespeare's Henry V where he bades the audience to use their imagination to create the scenes in France, the horses, etc. He and Starbuck are both telling us to uh, 'think outside the box' (hate that phrase but it does nicely here.)

The "notes of woe" is from a Lord Byron poem called, " Away, Away Ye Notes of Woe." In the poem he talks of music he once loved that now fill him with sorrow when he thinks on those brighter days.

Santa Fe, N.M. is, of course, Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is where the poet Winfield Townley Scott is buried (we'll get to his poems soon). Scott committed suicide.

"ff" is the musical notation fortissimo - very loud.

Rimbaud (pronounced "Rimbo" - sorta) is a poet we talked about when we discussed Verlaine, a gifted poet with a seedy side, remember?

De Trop (dee tro) is a French phrase for "a bit too much". Bon Mot (bone mo) is literally "good word" and means clever phrase.

The great O is (I believe) Orpheus, the legendary Greek poet, singer and story teller who was said to have charmed even stones with his musical verses. ( I don't know if Starbuck was thinking of the orgasmic reference we use but it certainly fits here.) We will talk more about Orpheus later this year. (The masthead today is "Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld" by Corot. If you want more stuff on Orpheus and Eurydice here's a spot to check: www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/eurydice/eurydicemyth.html )

Premiere Chou (Zhou in the history books now) was the first premier in the peoples republic of China under Mao Zedung.

The French phrase means "they travel to Parnassus to take the waters,/ they travel as fish." Taking the waters is what people used to do (and may still, I don't know) to take the curative effects of natural springs. Parnassus in Greek mythology is a mountain which was the home of the muses and sacred to Apollo. It's worth noting that the "Parnassian" poets in France in the 1800s were devoted to formal perfection and less romantic "inspirations."

"Incog" is a truncation of the word incognito.

Got all that? Now put it together. I may have missed some stuff– I'm not even half as smart as Starbuck. The poem is great fun (okay, it is for me anyway) but there's some serious stuff being said about poetry. By the by, Starbuck's final little joke on us all is that this is NOT a sonnet – it has 15 (instead of 14) lines.

It's very funny that the two Chinese communist leaders disguise themselves as fish to "take the waters" eh? What else does that say?

I'm going to let you ponder this poem a while. Relax– don't force it, just let it come to you.

Here's where we have talked about Starbuck before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-112-george-starbuck-sonnet-in.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-114-browning-starbuck-and-bierce.html

It's Saturday so here's a few cartoons too!

First Betty Boop and the awesome Cab Calloway: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZOXF83zBg

Then we have a great little tune by Bernie Cummins & His New Yorker Hotel Orchestra - Minnie The Mermaid, I guess because I was thinking of traveling incognito as a fish. My mom used to sing this to me and I always loved it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgcW5VErLc

Here's a little fish who didn't want to go to school: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzy9C9fAJOg

Finally, a little sampling of Dr. Orpheus from one of my favorite current cartoon series "The Venture Brothers": www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkWD50Pz7sk

Number 196: Robert Louis Stevenson "Summer Sun"

Summer Sun

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose:
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Hap Notes: I love this charming poem of Stevenson's but, in all honesty, I posted it because it's my birthday and it's an enchanting thought for the day. Also, my hands are already sticky from eating so much cold watermelon for breakfast because on my birthday, if I can afford it, I only eat what I really love. One birthday I ate a whole jar of maraschino cherries for breakfast – probably not my best idea ever.

I hope the summer sun is shining on you today and if it is not, there's always this Stevenson poem to shine on you instead.

Here's where we have talked about Stevenson before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-21-robert-louis-stevenson-after.html

The Renoir in the masthead is a particular favorite of mine. It's at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. and it's so awesome in person you have to sit down for a minute to catch your breath. Up close it's a tangled marvel, far away, the glassware sparkles in the sun. Here's the whole painting and an explanation of who's who in the picture: www.phillipscollection.org/collection/boating/whoswho.aspx