Number 213: Charles Causley "Eden Rock"

Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden
 Rock:

My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.

Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw

Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out

The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

My mother shades her eyes and looks my way

Over the drifted stream. My father spins

A stone along the water. Leisurely,


They beckon to me from the other bank.

I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!

Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

I had not thought that it would be like this.

-- Charles Causley

Hap Notes: This is one of Causley's most famous and moving poems. Here he is reading it aloud- his reading adds to the simple mysterious beauty of the words: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=127

I have a couple of notes for the poem. H.P. Sauce, a note for us Americans, is a brown sauce somewhat like a steak sauce but it has tamarind in it and now comes in a variety of blends. It's a very popular condiment in the U.K. First invented in the late 1800s, it was used in a restaurant in the Houses of Parliament and inventor of the sauce Frederick Garton says that's why he eventually named it "H. P." Causley's mother is using the bottle to hold milk for the picnic. She's stoppered the bottle with a bit of twisted paper.

Genuine Irish Tweed is capitalized because it is authentic hand-woven tweed of pure wool made in Donegal. Other tweeds are not allowed to use this designation.

Isn't this dream like image in the poem a very child-like and lovely thing? It's particularly moving since Causley lost his father when he was only 8 or 9 and he's hearkening back to a time when his parents were (and now are) together and happy. The poet seems a boy, rather than a man in this poem even though we know it is a full grown man writing it. It's very stirring with the sky whitening with a sort of divine light.

Causley died in 2003 and I most fervently wish that this is the vision that met him as he passed on. His gravestone (pictured in the masthead) says simply "Poet" and that he was. The rocks in the masthead picture are Dartmoor and you have to hear him read the poem to know why I whimsically used it.

Here is where we have talked about Causley before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-190-charles-causley-green-man-in.html

and here:
happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-191-another-charles-causley.html

Number 212: Josephine Miles "The Doctor Who Sits At The Bedside Of A Rat"

The Doctor Who Sits at the Bedside of a Rat

The doctor who sits at the bedside of a rat
Obtains real answers–a paw twitch,
An ear tremor, a gain or loss of weight,
No problem as to which
Is temper and which is true.
What a rat feels, he will do.

Concomitantly then, the doctor who sits
At the bedside of a rat
Asks real questions, as befits
The place, like where did that potassium go, not what
Do you think of Willie Mays or the weather?
So rat and doctor may converse together.

-- Josephine Miles

Hap Notes: Oddly enough, Josephine Miles (1911-1985), a fairly restrained and highly intellectual professor at U.C. Berkeley, was an influential force with the poets of the burgeoning "Beat" movement. She was excited by their use of language and showed Ginsberg's Howl to poet Richard Eberhart, who consequently wrote an article about it for the New York Times.

Miles was born with some health problems and she suffered from arthritis from an early age. She had to be educated at home by tutors but eventually went to UCLA and then U.C. Berkeley for her doctorate, where she taught for her entire career. She was the first woman to get tenure in the English department at Berkeley. It wasn't easy for her. Students recollect that Miles was often carried into the classroom due to her disabilities. She worked tirelessly helping students in the evenings. Miles wrote books on the writing of poetry, analyzing vocabulary and styles in addition to publishing more than a half dozen books of her own poetry. She was a gentlewoman and a scholar, to change a phrase a bit.

Miles was a mentor to Jack Spicer (happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-180-jack-spicer-any-fool-can-get.html) and was very good friends with drama and movie critic Pauline Kael. In spite of being a proponent of Beat poetry, Miles remains a singular voice unattached to any school. Her students also included A.R. Ammons, William Stafford, Robin Blaser and Diane Wakoski. (We've already done poems by both Stafford and Wakoski, too.)

Kenneth Rexroth (happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-126-kenneth-rexroth-gic-to-har.html) called her poetry "small, very neat holes cut in the paper," which I believe he meant as a criticism but the statement has some merit as to Miles' precision with language. Randall Jarrell said her work was "full of the conversational elegance of understatement, Of a carefully awkward and mannered charm. Everything is just a little off; is, always, the precisely unexpected."

Miles won scads of awards and fellowships and grants. Her work is always surprising-- from within a short, coolish, dry statement, a strange thing will emerge, an unpredictable outcome, an ending that is not an end.

In today's poem she starts out a little odd, although, a rat as a patient is the way patients often feel – that they are nothing more than laboratory animals. But a laboratory animal just yields physical results. The doctor cannot talk of Willie Mays (oh, tell me you know who that is, please) or of the weather or of the latest books or movies because rats do not function like that (and even if they did, he would not have the necessary language to ask.)

In point of fact, Miles may be saying that while doctors do have the necessary language to talk to the patient, it is all just patter while they check the "animal's" vital statistics. Because that's what doctors do- they are checking for symptoms, anomalies, health statistics. They are not there to make snappy patter. Now, why would this matter to a person?

The word concomitant is cleverly used here- it is often used in the medical profession to describe secondary symptoms that occur with a main symptom. We would do well to remember that Miles had a good deal of interaction with doctors in her life-long frail and disabled state. The poem also exhibits her wry sense of humor.

Here's a good Josephine Miles quote: "I like the idea of speech – not images, not ideals, not music, but people talking – as the material from which poetry is made."

You can find more Miles here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/josephine-miles

Here is an excellent transcript of an interview with Miles after she retired from teaching: www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/josephine-miles/poetry-teaching-and-scholarship--oral-history-transcript--and-related-materi-hci/1-poetry-teaching-and-scholarship--oral-history-transcript--and-related-materi-hci.shtml

Number 211: Shel Silverstein "Ice Cream Stop"

Ice Cream Stop

The circus train made an ice cream stop
At the fifty-two flavor ice cream stand.
The animals all got off the train
And walked right up to the ice cream man.
“I’ll take Vanilla,” yelled the gorilla.
“I’ll take Chocolate,” shouted the ocelot.
“I’ll take Strawberry,” chirped the canary.
“Rocky Road,” croaked the toad
“Lemon and Lime,” growled the lion.
Said the ice cream man, “Til I see a dime,
You’ll get no ice cream of mine.”
Then the animals snarled and screeched and growled
And whinnied and whimpered and hooted and howled
And gobbled up the whole ice cream stand,
All fifty-two flavors
(fifty-three with the ice cream man).

-- Shel Silverstein

Hap Notes: Yay! It's Saturday. And everybody likes ice cream, yes? I love the way Silverstein gets rhymes for each animal. Always nice to take a little break after a long poem by Shelley, eh?

Here is a bit of Saturday ice cream fun.

Here's an 80s ad for ice cream cone cereal. Do you remember this cereal?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DVCKuBntEQ

Then we have Tootsie Roll Ice Cream bars... another thing I never knew about...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEqP01w8bzo

Have you ever heard of spaghetti ice cream? I honestly thought this was a joke but it's not:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY66CyTUvMo&feature=related

No ice cream mention would be complete without the Buckwheat Boys- I believe Baskin and Robbins used this for an ad:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC_gkcplz_4&feature=related

And the Buckwheat Boys cultural contribution to the internet-- the infamous Peanut Butter Jelly Time:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8MDNFaGfT4

Here's a short explanation about these cultural blips:

knowyourmeme.com/memes/peanut-butter-jelly-time

Number 210: Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Cloud"

The Cloud

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hap Notes: Today, in 1822, Shelley and his friend Edward Williams were on the small schooner "Don Juan" (named by Byron but Shelley called it "Ariel") when it capsized in a squall and they were drowned. There is speculation about why the ship went down but, in the end, the results are the same, the poet was dead at 29 years old.

In today's poem, Shelley speaks as the cloud and exhibits his very sound knowledge of the way weather works. He was always interested in science and was well read about it and infinitely curious. This is pretty much how weather works from the evaporation to air to cloud to rain to evaporation again. The clouds don't really make the dew but it is certainly a composition of the cloud. A cenotaph is a monument erected to the dead. The "woof" he is talking about is the texture, as in weaving; the woof and warp (sometimes called the woof and weft- store that tidbit for future poetry reading.) He's even technically correct about this as the woof is the horizontal threads, the warp the vertical.

So in spite of the genies in the purple deep and the swarm of golden bees and the girdles (which is a word often used in poetry and does not mean that Lycra thing that holds in one's stomach, think of it like a big sash that encircles the waist) of pearl, Shelley's got some accuracy here.

The internal rhyming of every other line is both deft and awesome even if "breathe" and "beneath" is stretching it a little. It's a good effort. I loved this poem when I was a kid and I still find it charming.

Here are a few Shelley tidbits you may not know. First, he was tall- 5'11" and slender and walked with a bit of a stooped posture. His thick hair was prematurely greyed in places (some call it "grizzled.") It is said that his eyes were "stag like"- large and fixed on you when he talked. His voice was said to be high pitched (by the by, did you know that Abraham Lincoln's voice was also said to be high pitched with a distinctive Kentucky-Indiana twang?) Bysshe is an alteration of the surname "Bush" (that's right, as in George) and is pronounced "bish."

Shelley was enormously generous, kind and enthusiastic. Byron said, on Shelley's death, " You were all brutally mistaken about Shelley, who was without exception the best and least selfish man I ever knew." (I think he's referring to the fact that Shelley was looked on as a wild-eyed revolutionary in England. Everyone, to a man, who knew Shelley thought he was generous.)

As Shelley's body was cremated on the beach, his heart would not burn. It remained in the ashes (some speculate it was his liver, others that his heart had calcified, making it harder to burn, from his many illnesses which may have stemmed from heart trouble.)

His heart was given to his wife, Mary. A year after she died, the Shelley family opened her box desk (a lap desk) and found a notebook she had shared with Percy, locks from her children's hair, some of Shelley's ashes and a copy of his poem "Adonais" wrapped around his heart. "Adonais" was the poem Shelley had written as an elegy to Keats, who died in 1821, a year before Shelley drowned.

It's my personal opinion, but, I think this poem sums up Shelley almost perfectly. He really was a cloud spirit: stormy, beneficent, complex, serene, egalitarian (rain falls on both the rich and poor) and deeply beautiful, sentimental (everyone has memories of the rain and snow) and mysterious.

Here's where we've talked about Shelley before:

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-48-percy-bysshe-shelley.html

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/numbers-59-and-60-keat-shelley-hunt.html

Number 209: Genevieve Taggard " The Geraniums"

The Geraniums

Even if the geraniums are artificial
Just the same,
In the rear of the Italian cafe
Under the nimbus of electric light
They are red; no less red
For how they were made. Above
The mirror and the napkins
In the little white pots ...
... In the semi-clean cafe
Where they have good
Lasagne ... The red is a wonderful joy
Really, and so are the people
Who like and ignore it. In this place
They also have good bread.

-- Genevieve Taggard

Hap Notes: Genevieve Taggard (1894-1948) is another of the criminally under-read poets of a a bygone era. I refer you to the fact that Taggard died in 1948 and this poem sounds refreshingly contemporary doesn't it? Not all of Taggard's poetry reads quite this easily but it all has startling visions of the world. She is a treasure and it's very sad her reputation is so threadbare. Taggard is still often included in anthologies although, less and less as the years go by. I'm sort of shocked by this although I don't know why I should be; women poets are often ignored if they are not twice as smart and twice as popular as male poets. (I said "often" not always.)

Taggard was born in Washington state but her parents, James and Alta (he was a school principle, she was a teacher), moved to Hawaii as missionaries for the Disciples of Christ (now known as the Christian Church.) Taggard tells of a time when her parents had saved up enough money for them to both attend college and James' brother needed money to buy an apple farm. James' brotherly love outweighed his ambition and the money was given to his brother. The Taggards lived close to poverty their whole lives. Genevieve went to UC Berkeley on a borrowed $200 and then went to New York to pursue her own destiny. Taggard remarked that her mother kept a book of Edgar Guest's poetry on a table in their house as a silent protest of Genvieve's chosen profession. (Edgar Guest was a prolific and somewhat syrupy poet firmly rooted in "traditional" values. I believe that's the nicest thing we can say about him.)

Taggard was a socialist who believed in the working man, fair pay, equality for all races and kindness towards all-- of course she was looked on (as many would today) as a radical. It was especially radical in the early 1900s.

She commented, “In the little church my parents attended in Honolulu I was impressed with the text, "I am come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly.’ When we sat listening I had only to move my eyes from the minister to see outside the flowering vines and colored trees of abundance. Nevertheless, or perhaps because we lived a rich sensuous life, the text became my own. I have never ceased to think that the text, taken literally, should be the aim of all governments. I scoff at those who tell me solemnly that government must be something else."

Notice how despite their poverty she describes their life as "rich" and "sensuous." She understood the difference between the poverty of the soul and the lack of wealth.

She taught at Mount Holyoke College and Bennington but the greater portion of her teaching career was at Sarah Lawrence. She also founded a magazine, The Measure, with her friend Maxwell Anderson (who wrote plays you will know from the movies made from them, "The Bad Seed," "Anne of the Thousand Days" and "Key Largo.") She wrote a great deal for socialist magazines and was devoted to equality for all and freedom. She was a very early proponent of Black Blues and Jazz and a devoted fan of Langston Hughes' poetry and Leadbelly's blues. In fact Taggard often tried to emulate the Blues in some of her poetry and often wished she was a musician.

Much of her life has to be taken in the context of the Great Depression and the sadness therein. So many Americans were suffering from joblessness, women were mostly homemakers, Blacks were thought "inferior" etc. etc. She railed against this and her poetry often has the tang of a progressive trying to paint a picture to make a point. Often Taggard donated any royalties from her books to the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) health care fund.

In today's poem, do not be fooled by the simplicity of the statements. She is giving us a photograph and an impression, for a brief instant of a moment in a restaurant but it is more than this. The moment feeds her, and us with colors, candles, lasagne, light, geraniums and bread. This is not a short review of a good restaurant; this is a statement of warmth from a rich moment of life. It's a form of communion.

We will do more Taggard this year.

All of Taggard's books were out of print. There is one available now from Ahsahta Press, To The Natural World. If you are interested in it you can find it here: ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu/books/taggard.htm

Here's a good Taggard quote (a preface from one of her books):
"The reader will misunderstand my poems if he thinks I have been trying to write about myself (as if I were in any way unique) as a biographer might – or as a romantic poet would, to map his own individuality. Since the earliest attempts at verse I have tried to use the 'I' in a poem only as a means for transferring feeling to identification with anyone who takes the poem, momentarily, for his own. 'I' is then adjusted to the voice of the reader.

You can find more Taggard here: www.poemhunter.com/genevieve-taggard/poems/

The picture on the masthead today is one of my favorite places –Lagomarcino's in downtown Moline, IL. The store started as a confectionery (Candy!!!) in 1908 but also serves ice cream and food. The booths and mirrors are still the same as they were in the 1920s. It's an awesome place (and still there, thank God) and reminded me a bit of the poem.

Number 208: Kenneth Fearing "Q & A"

Q & A

Where analgesia may be found to ease the infinite, minute scars of the day;
What final interlude will result, picked bit by bit from the morning's hurry, the lunch-hour boredom, the fevers of the night;
Why this one is cherished by the gods, and that one not;
How to win, and win again, and again, staking wit alone against a sea of time;
Which man to trust and, once found, how far—

Will not be found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John,
Nor Blackstone, nor Gray's, nor Dun & Bradstreet, nor Freud, nor Marx,
Nor the sage of the evening news, nor the corner astrologist, nor in any poet,

Nor what sort of laughter should greet the paid pronouncements of the great,
Nor what pleasure the multitudes have, bringing lunch and the children to watch the condemned to be plunged into death,

Nor why the sun should rise tomorrow,
Nor how the moon still weaves upon the ground, through the leaves, so much silence and so much peace.

-- Kenneth Fearing

Hap Notes: As you can probably determine from this blog, I am a fan of those who are often called the "lesser" or "minor" poets of the 20th century and I suppose Fearing must be numbered among them, although I think it's a darn shame. Fearing's quick cuts, hip jangly industrial-age jargon, hard-boiled realism and love of mysterious beauty are particularly prescient of contemporary poetry. He isn't always great but when he is, he hits you right between the eyes. Seems to me, that's worth something.

In today's poem he asks us vital questions about ourselves, our era, our neighbors, our lives. He gives us no answer but images from which to draw your own conclusions. The poem is particularly apt in light of how we sensationalize crime and murder on the news, watching endless repetitive, often lurid, commentary on the television as we eat our lunch or dinner in front of the set with our children.

In the second line of the second stanza, I believe he is referring to Blackstone's commentary on English law, Gray's Anatomy (the textbook on human anatomy now in its 40th edition), and Dun and Bradstreet is a company that provides subscribers with information on businesses and corporations. So he is saying in the first line that the Bible (spirituality) will provide no answer, neither will law, science, business, psychology (Freud) or politics (Marx.) He even tells us the media, literature and the occult will not provide answers. So what will "ease the infinite, minute scars of the day"?

What do you think the answer is?

Here's where we have talked about Fearing before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-118-kenneth-fearing-green-light.html

Number 207: Vachel Lindsay "The Mouse That Gnawed The Oak-Tree Down"

The Mouse That Gnawed The Oak-Tree Down

The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down
Began his task in early life.
He kept so busy with his teeth
He had no time to take a wife.

He gnawed and gnawed through sun and rain
When the ambitious fit was on,
Then rested in the sawdust till
A month of idleness had gone.

He did not move about to hunt
The coteries of mousie-men.
He was a snail-paced, stupid thing
Until he cared to gnaw again.

The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down,
When that tough foe was at his feet—
Found in the stump no angel-cake
Nor buttered bread, nor cheese, nor meat—
The forest-roof let in the sky.
“This light is worth the work,” said he.
“I’ll make this ancient swamp more light,”
And started on another tree.

--Vachel Lindsay

Hap Notes: This is a brilliant little poem. It brings up some startling questions that can certainly apply to our lives.

Is it worth it for the mouse to gnaw down that tree? Is he doing something valuable by letting the light into that "ancient swamp"? Did he waste his life destroying something that should have been left intact? That oak tree was probably home to dozens of creatures- is it okay that they are displaced?

The mouse takes on a monumental task. He seeks out no friends, he has no wife but at the end of his task there is more light in the forest. Who is he making the light for and why? Remember that this is the only reward for this gargantuan task-- there's no cheese or cake as a reward. Is light a good enough reward? It obviously was for the mouse, yes?

So is this the tale of a mouse who takes on the task of progress for the sake of progress or is he a mouse with vision who sees that the light will change the swamp for the better and lets go of his mousie needs to make sure that it gets done and if it evicts a few creatures, well, that's just the way it goes? Why is he a "snail-paced stupid thing" when he is not working on the tree?

Is this the tale of the artist, who gives up his life for his art- who is lost and stupid without it? Or is it the tale of a progressive who works for betterment? Or is it the tale of an obsessive who feels his need to gnaw is more important than any thing or anyone (remember the displaced creatures in the tree)?

What if all mice did this? How much light is enough? And of course, if they all took no wives there would be no mice for a later generation. And even if the mice slept around without marrying, there would be a huge population of young mice who'd never see or know who their father was and learn how to become a regular mouse. Just sayin'. Those mouse coteries would be more like street gang kids in the next generation (just an aside, maybe we should call street gangs "coteries"- it sounds so much more interesting than a "gang.")

Is it selfish for the mouse to do this? Why or why not? I'm just asking.

Do you think I'm reading too much into the poem? What is too much? How do you judge this? Maybe this is my oak tree. Maybe not.

There's a lot to gnaw on in this charming poem.

Here's where we've talked about Lindsay before:

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-161-vachel-lindsay-factory.html

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-192-vachel-lindsay.html