Number 228: Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken"

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-- Robert Frost

Hap Notes: I am moving, traveling across the country with all my belongings in a '96 Neon to a new state (I'll cross quite a few of them to get there) so I'll be off the net for a couple of days. Please think a good thought as I travel with my parakeet, Etienne (who is usually called Birdie-ji). We'd appreciate it. I know the masthead is a bad illustration of Frost's roads but it's a good one of mine. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this Frost gem.

Remember what we've said about Frost before? As charming as the surface of the poem is there are some dark vibrations in it. It is typical of Frost to be philosophical, cheery and dark. This isn't JUST about choosing your own different path because Frost says his taking this road will make both paths equally trodden upon. So his choice is only one step different-it's only slightly "less traveled by."

One step, then another, many paths later and where are you? Can you ever go back? Does Frost think one can? Is he saying that some things are unchangeable? Is his casual choice of roads all that casual? What does this poem say about our choices in life?

Here is where we have talked about Frost before- this link will lead you to the many others (I like Frost): happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-206-robert-frost-fire-and-ice.html

Happy Saturday to ya'll and have a good weekend. I'll be back next week. Think of this like a short summer break or a little vacation. Much love to you all!!!- Hap

Number 227: Pablo Neruda "United Fruit Company"

United Fruit Co.

When the trumpet sounded 

everything was prepared on earth, 

and Jehovah gave the world 

to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda, 

Ford Motors, and other corporations.

The United Fruit Company

reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world, 

the delicate waist of America.

It rebaptized these countries 

Banana Republics,

and over the sleeping dead, 

over the unquiet heroes 

who won greatness, 

liberty, and banners,

it established an opera buffa: 

it abolished free will, 

gave out imperial crowns, 

encouraged envy, attracted

the dictatorship of flies: 

Trujillo flies, Tachos flies

Carias flies, Martinez flies, 

Ubico flies, flies sticky with

submissive blood and marmalade, 

drunken flies that buzz over 

the tombs of the people,

circus flies, wise flies 

expert at tyranny.

With the bloodthirsty flies 

came the Fruit Company, 

amassed coffee and fruit

in ships which put to sea like

overloaded trays with the treasures

from our sunken lands.

Meanwhile the Indians fall 

into the sugared depths of the

harbors and are buried in the 

morning mists; 
a corpse rolls, a thing without

name, a discarded number, 

a bunch of rotten fruit 

thrown on the garbage heap.

-- Pablo Neruda

Hap Notes: I suppose it's pretty obvious that Neruda is talking about U.S. political involvement in Central and South America. Most particularly the involvement that involved the "protection" of the employees for the United Fruit Company and the U.S.'s constant involvement in Latin American politics. It's true some of the governments were corrupt but no more so than the ones we helped put in to replace them.

More to the point, Neruda is also talking about the U.S. (and yes, other countries do it, too – still doesn't make it right) assumption that a foreign culture with different habits or little to no technology is somehow "primitive" and "backward." Neruda knows that Latin American history is chock full of freedom fighters, brilliant art, architecture and music, tribal wisdom, ecological balances etc.etc. I don't know if you've ever been around a culture that did not like, trust or respect American culture but the feeling one has is shame at our excesses and mistakes and defensiveness about our culture and our "commitment to freedom and justice for all." The U.S. has been making indigenous/foreign cultures feel like this for 300 years.

The U.S. swept in to Central America on behalf of the United Fruit Company many times with troops to "protect" them. In the 60s the U.S. sent 250,000 troops to the Dominican Republic to safeguard a couple hundred employees of the United Fruit Company. Seems both suspicious and excessive, huh? You can read more about all of this online. But the dictators the U.S. supported (listed in the poem by Neruda) were mostly used as resources so that Americans could have fresh fruit. It's a bloody list of sadness, that. And yes, maybe people would have had worse governments without our intervention. I'll point out these are adult humans capable of carrying out their own destinies without us – the world was still here before the English got to America. History does not start with the U.S. Most of this so-called U.S. "freedom fighting" is often about money not freedom, anyway.

Opera Buffa is an Italian term for ""comic opera" (it's where we get the word "buffoon.)

Here is where we have talked about Neruda before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-46-pablo-nerudawe-are-many.html

Number 226: Evan Jones "The Song of the Banana Man"

The Song of the Banana Man

Touris, white man, wipin his face,
Met me in Golden Grove market place.
He looked at m'ol' clothes brown wid stain ,
An soaked right through wid de Portlan rain,
He cas his eye, turn up his nose,
He says, 'You're a beggar man, I suppose?'
He says, 'Boy, get some occupation,
Be of some value to your nation.'
I said, 'By God and dis big right han
You mus recognize a banana man.

'Up in de hills, where de streams are cool,
An mullet an janga swim in de pool,
I have ten acres of mountain side,
An a dainty-foot donkey dat I ride,
Four Gros Michel, an four Lacatan,
Some coconut trees, and some hills of yam,
An I pasture on dat very same lan
Five she-goats an a big black ram,
Dat, by God an dis big right han
Is de property of a banana man.

'I leave m'yard early-mornin time
An set m'foot to de mountain climb,
I ben m'back to de hot-sun toil,
An m'cutlass rings on de stony soil,
Ploughin an weedin, diggin an plantin
Till Massa Sun drop back o John Crow mountain,
Den home again in cool evenin time,
Perhaps whistling dis likkle rhyme,
Praise God an m'big right han
I will live an die a banana man.

'Banana day is my special day,
I cut my stems an I'm on m'way,
Load up de donkey, leave de lan
Head down de hill to banana stan,
When de truck comes roun I take a ride
All de way down to de harbour side—
Dat is de night, when you, touris man,
Would change your place wid a banana man.
Yes, by God, an m'big right han
I will live an die a banana man.

'De bay is calm, an de moon is bright
De hills look black for de sky is light,
Down at de dock is an English ship,
Restin after her ocean trip,
While on de pier is a monstrous hustle,
Tallymen, carriers, all in a bustle,
Wid stems on deir heads in a long black snake
Some singin de sons dat banana men make,
Like, Praise God an m'big right han
I will live an die a banana man.

'Den de payment comes, an we have some fun,
Me, Zekiel, Breda and Duppy Son.
Down at de bar near United Wharf
We knock back a white rum, bus a laugh,
Fill de empty bag for further toil
Wid saltfish, breadfruit, coconut oil.
Den head back home to m'yard to sleep,
A proper sleep dat is long an deep.
Yes, by God, an m'big right han
I will live an die a banana man.

'So when you see dese ol clothes brown wid stain,
An soaked right through wid de Portlan rain,
Don't cas your eye nor turn your nose,
Don't judge a man by his patchy clothes,
I'm a strong man, a proud man, an I'm free,
Free as dese mountains, free as dis sea,
I know myself, an I know my ways,
An will sing wid pride to de end o my days
Praise God an m'big right han
I will live an die a banana man.'

--Evan Jones

Hap Notes: I would never have known this poem if not for the valuable work poet Robert Pinsky did as U.S. Poet Laureate. His "Favorite Poem" project where he asked people to choose their favorite poems and read the poems they loved aloud was a stroke of genius. The documentary that was made of this project just floored me, gave me hopes that poetry mattered to more people than I had ever dreamed.

Here is the "Song of the Banana Man" excerpt; poemsoutloud.net/video/archive/the_song_of_the_banana_man_by_evan_jones/

Evan Jones (born 1927) was born in Portland, Jamaica (this is the Portland he refers to in the poem) and was the son of a banana farmer. His mom was a Quaker missionary who defied convention and married a native planter. Jones went to Haverford College in Pennsylvania and Oxford, studied literature and taught at Wesleyan in Connecticut. He has made a living as a writer of poetry, plays and screenplays.

The gorgeously expressive Jamaican patois in this poem is particularly effective and moving. Gros Michel and Lacatan are varieties of bananas. A Gros Michel was a tasty banana often imported to the U.S. in the 40's (the time this poem takes place) but they were practically wiped out by disease in the 60s. Lacatan bananas are supposed to be the cream of the banana crop – sweeter and firmer with a richer banana taste. The banana you may have had for breakfast or lunch is a Cavendish. When your grandparents tell you that bananas tasted better when they were young, they are right– they got a much better and tastier banana (the Gros Michel) than you get.

The banana industry (especially with the United Fruit Company which is now Chiquita, I think) has a very sad and bloody history, especially in Latin America, which we will explore a bit more with a poem later in the week. But for now let's just enjoy the era of the poem and the amazing tropical taste of whatever bananas we can get – Americans consume as many bananas as they do apples and oranges combined. It's sort of amazing that this exotic thing has become so much a part of our lives.

Here's a good Jones quote: "The Song of the Banana Man" was "written as a memory of my childhood and a tribute to my county. For I was born in one of the chief banana-growing parts of Jamaica - Hector's River, Eastern Portland. My father was a prominent banana planter there."

Outside of today's poem it's difficult to find any more of Jones' poems online. Today's poem, however, is extremely popular.

Number 225: Wendy Cope "The Uncertainty of the Poet"

The Uncertainty of the Poet

I am a poet,

I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas,

I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.

I am very fond.

A fond poet of 'I am, I am' -

Very bananas.

Fond of 'Am I bananas?

Am I?' - a very poet.

Bananas of a poet!

Am I fond? Am I very?

Poet bananas! I am

I am fond of a 'very'.

I am of very fond bananas.

Am I a poet?

-- Wendy Cope

Hap Notes: Well, first off Cope is having fun with this bit of poetic deconstruction. Her constant re-phrasing of the statements and questions are funny and make us feel as though we are going bananas as we read the verses.

There is some real work being done by this poem, too. The title of the poem is from surrealist painter Georgio de Chirico's work of the same name. (It is pictured on this page and on the masthead.) De Chirico may be making a statement about the classic and the organic, the real and the imagined, the permanent and the temporal and the absurd difficulty of communicating. The same thing could be said of Cope's poem but she does it with her very personal brand of humor. The de Chirico painting, by the by, is housed at the Tate in London and one assumes she's seen it in person.

Cope has done a number of poems in which she mimics, makes fun of and prods the form. This is most certainly one of them. And, of course, she's poking a bit at de Chirico, too.

Here's where we've talked about Cope before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/number-106-wendy-cope-proverbial.html

Number 224: Richard Brautigan "Your Catfish Friend"

Your Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

-- Richard Brautigan

Hap Notes: Big apologies! I had this post and forgot to publish it. So it's very very late (already Saturday! so I'll just owe us a poem at the end of the year.) Luckily, Brautigan is charming whenever you chance to read him.

I'm not quite sure what kind of catfish Brautigan is talking about with the "scaffolds of skin"– the Mississippi River catfish of my youth were sleek. The loricarioids have an "armored" look (and are often called armored catfish") I have included both types in the masthead.

I just have to say that it is very typical of Brautigan's humble self-worth that he would choose this particular fish as an avatar. The bottom feeding catfish is, in many ways, one of the lowliest of creatures. They were, however, when I was a kid, particularly fine eating, as were bullheads. The catching of a catfish involved a great deal of fussing as one tried to ignore the "barbs" of his whiskers. And you skin a catfish, you don't de-scale one since they don't have scales.

I'll never forget my first exposure to this – the catfish or bullheads are nailed to a board by the head (well, they are dead at this point anyway) and the skin is peeled down with a pair of pliers. That's how I saw it done in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. Don't know how other fisher-persons do it, though. It's not a pretty sight, really.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah– the poem, sorry. Didn't mean to kick all of the charm out of the Brautigan. It's very sweet how he would like to be a calming influence on someone even if he was a fish. He was really like that, too.

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

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-77-richard-brautigan-all-watched.html

Since it's Saturday, a few fishy cartoons:

This is Chilly Willy- he's so cute. Seriously.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz3Pp3JW0sc

Here's a Joe Cartoon song, "I'm a Little Catfish"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rd3AsyezZQ&feature=relmfu


Here's the Drew Nelson lush cover of the same song:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJt3Ag-qtTE

Here's the very unusual Diver Dan with the talking fish puppets:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnJJ2VQSE7c

Here's a Dick and Larry cartoon with jolly fish:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxNNQqUS8BE

My mom and I used to sing this all the time– "At The Codfish Ball." This one is Betty Boop. The lyrics are clever.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh7JZ08XwvA

Number 223: Amy Clampitt "Nothing Stays Put"

Nothing Stays Put
In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985

The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes--a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom--
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.
What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics--
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested, standing like troops at attention,
these tiers, these balconies of green, festoons
grown sumptuous with stoop labor?

The exotic is everywhere, it comes to us
before there is a yen or a need for it. The green-
grocers, uptown and down, are from South Korea.
Orchids, opulence by the pailful, just slightly
fatigued by the plane trip from Hawaii, are
disposed on the sidewalks; alstroemerias, freesias
fattened a bit in translation from overseas; gladioli
likewise estranged from their piercing ancestral crimson;
as well as, less altered from the original blue cornflower
of the roadsides and railway embankments of Europe, these
bachelor's buttons. But it isn't the railway embankments
their featherweight wheels of cobalt remind me of, it's

a row of them among prim colonnades of cosmos,
snapdragon, nasturtium, bloodsilk red poppies,
in my grandmother's garden: a prairie childhood,
the grassland shorn, overlaid with a grid,
unsealed, furrowed, harrowed and sown with immigrant grasses,
their massive corduroy, their wavering feltings embroidered
here and there by the scarlet shoulder patch of cannas
on a courthouse lawn, by a love knot, a cross stitch
of living matter, sown and tended by women,
nurturers everywhere of the strange and wonderful,
beneath whose hands what had been alien begins,
as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous.

But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above--
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.
Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're
made of, is motion.

-- Amy Clampitt

Hap Notes: As usual Clampitt is covering a lot of ground in this poem, poetically, botanically and geographically-both literally and figuratively (I read recently that one shouldn't use adverbs- a lot of illiterate hooey, if you ask me). Her amazing brain-full of information is both charming and staggering in its depth. Let's get right to the poem because it is loaded.

First off, Clampitt is telling us something with the first verse as she changes a line to a famous Wordsworth poem- here is Wordsworth, examine it carefully- it will come up over and over in her poem in different ways. :

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

-- William Wordsworth


So, let's go back to Clampitt's poem. Protea are any of a variety of plants with a wide variety of forms- one is pictured next to the poem- named for Proteus, one of the gods of the sea who could change into any form. Clampitt calls the bloom a "blazing honeybee of a bloom" and there is a story (from Virgil's Georgics) that says at one time Aristaeus, the son of Apollo (remember him?) kept bees and they all died of disease. It's a long story but to shorten it as much as possible, Aristaeus' mom told him to go to Proteus, hold him no matter what form he tried to change into, and ask him for help. He did it, Proteus gave him instructions and when he got back, he found a swarm of bees in one of his sacrifices to the gods and his bees never suffered from disease again. Antipodes, as Clampitt is using the word, is the word for any place on earth and its diametric opposite (remember when you were a kid and you thought if you dug straight into the ground you'd come out in China or somewhere? That is antipodal to your digging position- which, of course, I tried when I was a kid but got tired of digging- you keep hitting rock.)

Did Clampitt bury all this stuff in just the first few lines? You bet your boots she did. There's probably MORE that I'm not getting.

However, you don't need to know any of this to enjoy Clampitt's sumptuous, sensuous, gorgeous wording about flowers and plants and life. It's just an added feature when you know a bit more (and there is more but we'll stop now so you can take all this in and enjoy her poem.) Here's a question for you, though: Is she coming to the same conclusion as Wordsworth or does she have a different view?

Father Flye, by the way, was a well known priest in New York who knew a great deal about nature and had a correspondence with the writer James Agee, among other remarkable things about his life. He was an inspiration to hundreds of people in his long lifetime.

Clampitt, when she starts talking about flowers and plants throughout the country, likens it to sewing (another word for planting, sewing seeds, remember) and talks of the "corduroy" furrows and the " scarlet shoulder patch of cannas/on a courthouse lawn"- those red flowers seen at every small town courthouse (and note the building has a "shoulder"- those buildings do look as dignified as a fully uniformed person, don't they?)

There is so much more in this poem but I'll let you "dig" through it yourself. Have a good time with it- the poem will just keep growing and blooming as you appreciate it. (It wouldn't hurt any to read Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud," either- there are insights in it that parallel this poem a bit.)

Here's where we've talked about Clampitt before:
happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-16-amy-clampitt-smaller-orchid.html

Number 222: Frank O'Hara "Why I Am Not A Painter"

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

-- Frank O'Hara

Hap Notes: Here's O'Hara gently pulling our leg about the "differences" between poetry and art, which, as you can see from the poem are really quite few. Again it's all about language and what it can and cannot do.

If you were blind, O'Hara's poem would be much more "visual" than Goldberg's painting. If you could not read English, then Goldberg could speak to you without words. That, in essence, is about the only difference there is to a casual observer/reader of art and poetry.

O' Hara is describing the processes of art. He wrote the poems he describes in graduate school long before he visited Goldberg- he's making a point about the work. He is constructing this scenario very carefully, despite its casual look and tone. O'Hara is adept at this– making careful construction seem casual. As does Goldberg, in his painting, as O'Hara observes the painter at work.

As we have seen, over the course of the last two days with William Carlos Williams, so much depends on the "little red wheelbarrow" full of impressions, denotations and connotations (both yours and the poet's) of each word in modern poetry. Poets select their words as carefully as an artist selects his/her brush or colors. What occurs after that is a combination of work, happy accident, more work, thought and inspiration. When they merge together for you- so that you get feelings and thoughts from them- well, that's art, er, poetry, er, you get the drift.

The masthead today features the Goldberg painting O'Hara was talking about, on the right.

Here's where we've talked about O'Hara before:

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-10-frank-ohara-today.html

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-132-frank-ohara-poem-lana-turner.html