Number 243: Jorge Luis Borges "Ars Poetica"

Ars Poetica

To gaze at the river made of time and water

And recall that time itself is another river,

To know we cease to be, just like the river,

And that our faces pass away, just like the water.

To feel that waking is another sleep

That dreams it does not sleep and that death,

Which our flesh dreads, is that very death

Of every night, which we call sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol

Of mankind’s days and of his years,

To transform the outrage of the years

Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,

To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset

A sad gold, of such is Poetry

Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry

Returns like the dawn and the sunset.

At times in the afternoon a face

Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;

Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours.

They tell how Ulysses, glutted with wonders,

Wept with love to descry his Ithaca

Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca

Of green eternity, not of wonders.

It is also like an endless river

That passes and remains, a mirror for one same

Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same

And another, like an endless river.

--Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Harold Morland

Hap Notes: "Ars Poetica" is a Latin phrase which means "the art of poetry" and can refer to technical as well as the "essence" of what poetry is. Aristotle and Horace wrote about it and so have many poets including Archibald MacLeish (we talked of his poem here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-58-archibald-macleish-ars.html) Often poets write about the art of poetry because it moved them enough to want to become a poet or because they want to explain just what poetry is or can do. Is it art for art's sake or does it have to have a function? Just something to ponder.

Borges is giving us a lot to ponder but notice how he keeps returning to water, dreams and sleep in the poem. Dreams are often explained in the language of poetry; i.e. if you write down a dream in verse form you will be amazed at what a good poem it is and most poems need to be interpreted as one would interpret dreams.

The poet says Ulysses (or who the Greeks call Oedipus) was besotted with wonders in his journey where he sees the Lotus Eaters, a Cyclops, his men turned into swine, cannibals, gods, monsters, sirens and whirlpools. What makes Ulysses weep? Thoughts of his home, the island of Ithaca, a green island in the Ionian Sea.

As to Heraclitus, we've already talked about him too: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-135-gerard-manley-hopkins-that.html. "Remember the idea that the same person cannot step into the same river twice? What further twist does Borges give this?

Just a few more observations and I'll let you ruminate on the words alone. Borges describes a very interesting concept here of being awake as a kind of sleep that dreams it does not sleep and that sleep is a kind of death that we awaken from each day. Remember that he is describing the writing of poetry here.

Poetry, he says, is a mirror of sorts. But what does the mirror tell you each day? Surely one sees something different in it each day? And what about one's reflection in the water? What kind of images do we see in it?

Today is Borges birthday- he would be 112 today. He is even the subject of the Google doodle today: newsfeed.time.com/2011/08/24/google-doodle-honors-writer-jorge-luis-borges-and-his-forking-paths/

Here's a great resource on Borges: www.themodernword.com/borges/

Here is where we have talked about Borges before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/number-88-jorge-luis-borges-other-tiger.html

The masthead today is Chagall's "Les River". Chagall always seems to me to be the artist of deams.

Number 242: Bayard Taylor "Bedouin Song"

Bedouin Song

From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under your window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgement
Book unfold!

Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;
I lie on the sands below,
And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-wind touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,
And melt thee to hear the vow
Of a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgement
Book unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,
By the fever in my breast,
To hear form thy lips
The words that shall give me rest.
Open the door of thy heart,
And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgement
Book unfold!

-- Bayard Taylor

Hap Notes: This passionate bit of fancy written by Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) will most certainly give readers pause who assumed that burning passionate love has reached its limits in the movies. Taylor wrote this in the 1800s and while it is fanciful, its ardent drive is pretty hot stuff (and retains a bit of modesty, too.)

Born to well-to-do Quaker parents, Taylor went to school and was then apprenticed to a printer. He maintained an interest in poetry and did a great deal of reading on his own. His poetry found a small audience and he took a job for several newspapers. He was friends with Horace Greeley who employed him at the New York Tribune. He also wrote travel articles for the United States Gazette and the Saturday Evening Post. While Taylor was chiefly a very popular travel writer and poet, he did write a couple of novels as well.

Taylor was gifted with language studies and was proficient in German (Mark Twain met him on one of his travels by ship and commented on it and Taylor's affable nature). Taylor was an adventurous student of other cultures. He met Tennyson on one of his junkets and he traveled to a huge variety of places including England, Germany, Sweden. Denmark, Lapland, Austria, Egypt, China, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor, Constantinople and even the Arctic. His popular travel books made him a household name. He was also a war correspondent during the Civil War and was the Chargé d'Affaires under the American minister to Russia at St. Petersburg. Abraham Lincoln was among the audience when he gave a lecture on Russia in Washington.

He became a professor at Cornell in 1869 where he continued to work on a translation of Goethe's Faust and lectured on Goethe and Schiller (of whom he was planning to write biographies.) He was an extraordinary mixture of adventure, language, culture and poetry. His travels gave him plenty of fodder for his often romantic poetry full of exotic places, descriptions and phrases.

After his death, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, encouraged by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote a memorial poem to Taylor.

Today's poem was written in 1853 on the Mozambique Channel. The verses gallop along as passionately as the words, don't they? It always reminds me of a Valentino movie full of incense, colorful tents, handsome desert riders, palm tree-d oases, etc. etc. Taylor did not mean this as a judgment or cliche about Bedouins – it is meant as a dreamy tribute to passionate and enduring love. Taylor actually saw the places he wrote dramatic romantic poems about and this, in itself, is somewhat of a poetic novelty.

Here's a good Taylor quote: “The healing of the world is in its nameless saints. Each separate star seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars break up the night and make it beautiful.”

You can find many of Taylor's books here: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.html/?format=html&default_prefix=all&sort_order=&query=Bayard+Taylor

Here's a bio and few of his poems: www.poetry-archive.com/t/taylor_bayard.html

Number 241: Carl Sandburg "At A Window"

At A Window

Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

-- Carl Sandburg

Hap Notes: Here's a Sandburg poem that I recently found in a book, The Family Book of Best Loved Poems (copyright 1952). The poem can be found several places on the internet but there is something very appealing to me about going to a flea market and getting a book like this for 50¢ and diving for the treasures within (of which this poem is one of many.) I didn't even SEE the book at the flea market, my intrepid friend, who was with me, saw it and brought it to my attention, God bless her. The book holds few surprises and being a "family book" there won't be contemporary (for the 50s) confessional poetry but there are a plethora of old classics I am always going on about here on the blog like "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" et.al.

So while the internet held this very nice Sandburg poem, it was a far more happy thing to find it in the flea market find. Sandburg is asking the "fates" or the "gods" to give him hunger, pain, want, shame and failure but to not let him live without love. He's not just talking about sex or romance here, he's asking for a hand, a voice, a star to comfort his loneliness. It's a very nice poem and who does not feel the ache of loneliness as they watch the "day-shapes of dusk "? It's a time when you need a hopeful star, is it not?

Just a short aside about books of poetry, particularly collections like the flea market one I bought today which are a tad cloying and trite when read in big chunks: there's nothing like finding a treasure in an old chest like this book. I pity those not close to a public library who cannot find a few older books like this one because poetry is an art of layers and dimensions and varied threads and not all of it will appeal to everyone but all of it will appeal to someone.

Poetry is full of history lessons as well as social and political notations. Poetry tells you about the emotions and quotidian habits of men, women and children. Poetry gives new life to beauty and new beauty to life. While you can read the stuff online, a book full of it is heady stuff. One should not be allowed to read poetry and drive. One should be arrested for writing too much of it. One should get a king's ransom for finding old books full of it. The internet is an awesome tool but a book is an intellectual weapon far more advanced than that. You can hold a book, bend its pages, write in its margins, mark it with a fallen leaf, set your coffee cup on it, spill crumbs on it and it still works just like a book is supposed to. You can drop it on the floor a dozen or more times, step on it, leave it outside, use it as way to prop open a window or set it under a lamp to better its position and when you get back to reading it, it still works, it still tells you it's messages and secrets, it still waits for you.

Not all flea market books are fabulous reads but poetry collections are bound to have a couple of awesome poems, at least a few horrible (and sometimes amusing) stinkers and a handful of miraculous, surprising treasures. Treasures that you can buy at a flea market for 50¢. It's a remarkable bargain, especially compared to the internet (which I like very much, I'm just sayin'.)

Here's the last Sandburg poem we talked about (which will lead you to the others): happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-178-carl-sandburg-happiness.html

The masthead is Degas' "Woman at a Window".

Number 240: Kenneth Grahame "Mr. Toad"

Mr Toad

The world has held great Heroes,
As history-books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad!

The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much
As intelligent Mr Toad!

The animals sat in the Ark and cried,
Their tears in torrents flowed.
Who was it said, "There's land ahead"?
Encouraging Mr Toad!

The army all saluted
As they marched along the road.
Was it the King? Or Kitchener?
No. It was Mr Toad.

The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting
Sat at the window and sewed.
She cried, "Look! Who's that handsome man?"
They answered, "Mr Toad."

-- Kenneth Grahame


Hap Notes: Of course this is the poem about Mr. Toad written by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) in his classic book, The Wind In The Willows. Grahame was a gifted student who could not afford college. He took a position at the Bank of England where he rose up in the ranks, retiring as the bank's Secretary in 1908 for health reasons.

Grahame wrote The Wind in The Willows as an outcropping from bedtime stories he told his son, Alistair. Prior to his most famous book, Grahame had written a few other books, too, full of fancy. Mr. Toad from "Willows", however. was based on his son (anyone who has had a toddler or small child in the family will see a resemblance, really, between their offspring and the cagey Mr. Toad.) Disney has used Grahame's books as a basis for movies including the aforementioned "Willows" as well as Grahame's book/story The Reluctant Dragon.

Grahame and his siblings were raised by their grandmother (their mother died and their father was incapable of raising them for a variety of reasons.) His beginnings were fairly inauspicious but his beloved book has been treasured by generation after generation. When Teddy Roosevelt visited England the two authors he especially wanted to meet were Rudyard Kipling and Grahame.


Here's the whole book: www.literatureproject.com/wind-willows/index.htm
and here are ALL his books: www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/g#a153

Here's the Kenneth Grahame Society: www.kennethgrahamesociety.net/

You can see the whole movie of stop-motion animation of "Willows" at YouTube starting here:www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pKVVmmp4N0

Here's "When the Toad Came Home" from an animated version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH0_V6IVOXY&feature=related

On a somewhat related note – Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXZNkxJFiQ0&playnext=1&list=PLD8CD8A0661E85728

Which sort of leads us to Tex Avery's classic Screwy Squirrel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTttAkELFZc

Okay, and here's Warner Bros'. Slappy Squirrel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwYacTjyD3U

Let's wrap it up with the Squirrel Nut Zippers: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdAt4qWvz_8

Happy Saturday!

Number 239: Dannie Abse "Three Street Musicians"

Three Street Musicians

Three street musicians in mourning overcoats
worn too long, shake money boxes this morning,
then, afterwards, play their suicide notes.

The violinist in chic, black spectacles, blind,
the stout tenor with a fake Napoleon stance,
and the looney flautist following behind,

they try to importune us, the busy living,
who hear melodic snatches of musichall
above unceasing waterfalls of traffic.

Yet if anything can summon back the dead
it is the old-time sound, old obstinate tunes,
such as they achingly render and suspend:

‘The Minstrel Boy’, ‘Roses of Picardy’.
No wonder cemeteries are full of silences
and stones keep down the dead that they defend.

Stones too light! Airs unresistible!
Even a dog listens, one paw raised, while the stout,
loud man amazes with nostalgic notes – though half boozed

and half clapped out. And, as breadcrumbs thrown
on the ground charm sparrows down from nowhere,
now, suddenly, there are too many ghosts about.

-- Dannie Abse

Hap Notes: Dannie Abse (born 1923) was born in Cardiff, Wales to Jewish parents and this gives him an extraordinary perspective right off the bat. Add to this that he trained as and is a practicing doctor as well as a poet and writer. Big intellect, lots of facets, eh?

Abse does write some "medical" poems, dealing with patients, operations, X-rays and the like but mostly he writes on a variety of subjects in a voice schooled in the classics, spiced with his own particular sensitivities. He is one of England's most famous contemporary poets and has published a couple dozen books of the stuff and won as many fellowships and awards.

In 2005 Abse's wife of 50 years, was killed in a car crash (his rib was broken in the accident also. I'll let you think on that a bit.) Joan Abse was an art historian and the love of his life. Abse's poetry is notable for its refreshing take on monogamy, love and marriage. Abse's heartbreaking memoir of his grief at her loss, "The Presence", has received much critical acclaim. His current book of verse, Two For Joy, celebrates love and marriage's passion and humor.

In today's poem we find three musicians playing old standards in a rushing modern world. But those who remember the tunes, feel memories returning like a flock of birds as they hear the songs. You know how one song can trigger a cascade of memories? The somewhat motley and strange crew of musicians has conjured up the ghosts of memories in the listeners, and win out over the loud sounds of contemporary bustling. It's a lovely poem.

We will do more Abse this year.

Here is a great Abse quote: "There have been many [doctor-writers] who have had great difficulty in combining both of these professions. Tobias Smollett, the novelist, did not prosper as a surgeon, and Oliver Goldsmith was advised to treat his enemies rather than his patients. There was John Keats, who perhaps suffered from too much empathy with creatures and things to become a good doctor, to survive, perhaps, as a doctor. And I think that is a problem for a lot of poets, that they do have this ability to empathize greatly. "

and another:
"Keats used to talk about how he identified with a bird pecking at the gravel outside his window, and indeed with a billiard ball he could feel complete affinity. Some, like the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, used to say that he didn't like to leave a bit of soap behind in an hotel in case it got lonely. So I do think poets have got this problem, and they, doctor-writers, are not always as successful as William Carlos Williams was, or, indeed, Chekhov."


You can find more Abse here: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=68

Here's his website: www.dannieabse.com/

The masthead is Picasso's "Three Musicians," an image that often goes through my head when I read this poem.

Number 238: Bruce Smith "After St. Vincent Millay"


After St. Vincent Millay

When I saw you again, distant, sparrow-boned 

under the elegant clothes you wear in your life without me, 

I thought, No, No, let her be the one 

this time to look up at an oblivious me.

Let her find the edge of the cliff with her foot, 

blindfolded. Let her be the one struck by the lightning 

of the other so that the heart is jolted

from the ribs and the rest of the body is nothing 

but ash. It’s a sad, familiar story

I wish you were telling me with this shabby excuse:

I never loved you any more than

I hated myself for loving you.

And about that other guy by your side

you left me for. I hope he dies.

--Bruce Smith



Hap Notes: Bruce Smith (born 1946) has written a half dozen books of poetry with his signature jazzy classicism. His spicy blend of thoughtful metaphor is punctuated by modern musical notes and odd riffs. His work, like today's poem, is often a blend of heart-rending and amusing.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from the title of the poem, is a poet you are familiar with if you've kept up with us on this blog. Here's a refresher: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-11-edna-st-vincent-millay.html. Millay often wrote of the ecstasies/heartbreak of romance. Millay also said, "It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over."

In today's poem, note how he manages to go from the lyrical description to the conversational to jarringly painful to philosophical to bitter all in the course of one somewhat tattered sonnet. The last line is an explosion of laughter and grief.

Smith is a native of Philadelphia, PA, got his degree at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA) and has taught at a variety of universities including Harvard, Portland State and the University of Alabama. He is currently teaching at Syracuse University. He has won numerous fellowships and awards including an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.


Here's a good Smith quote: "I like the apprenticeship that's implied in jazz. Before you can blow you had better acquire the skills beforehand, woodshed, as they say, which for poets is reading and practicing and failing. Jazz in my mind is also an antidote and adversarial stance to pop music, which, as Oppen said, can only say what the audience already believes."

You can read the whole interview here (and it's well worth the reading): www.stmarys-ca.edu/external/Mary/archive/Mary_spring2007/interviews/smith.html

You can find more Smith here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bruce-smith

Number 237: William Wordsworth Two "To Sleep"

To Sleep

Fond words have oft been spoken to thee, Sleep!
And thou hast had thy store of tenderest names;
The very sweetest, Fancy culls or frames,
When thankfulness of heart is strong and deep!
Dear Bosom-child we call thee, that dost steep
In rich reward all suffering; Balm that tames
All anguish; Saint that evil thoughts and aims
Takest away, and into souls dost creep,
Like to a breeze from heaven. Shall I alone,
I surely not a man ungently made,
Call thee worst Tyrant by which Flesh is crost?
Perverse, self-willed to own and to disown,
Mere slave of them who never for thee prayed,
Still last to come where thou art wanted most!

-- William Wordsworth
To Sleep

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;
I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie
Sleepless! and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth;
So do not let me wear tonight away;
Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

-- William Wordsworth


Hap Notes: Obviously William Wordsworth (1770-1850) had some serious insomnia since he devoted two full sonnets to it. Even the many paintings and drawings of Wordsworth seem to show a man who needed a good night's sleep.

Wordsworth was born in the "Lake District" in Northwest England, a place that would come to stand for poetry in later years. Wordsworth's friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the poet Robert Southey, along with Wordsworth were known as the "Lake Poets" when they all lived there in the early 1800s. (This, by the way, is just a geographical epithet and was not a "school" of poetry.)

Wordsworth went to St. James College, Cambridge, graduating in 1791. He had begun writing poetry by this time and for a while, was a supporter of the French Revolution. He became disenchanted with the revolution when heads started to roll. He fell in love with a French woman, Annete Vallon, with whom he had a child. He could not visit her often due to the tension built up between Britain and France in the revolution but this was also a good excuse since it didn't seem Wordsworth really wanted to marry her (he did, however, give her financial help whenever necessary.)

In 1798 he and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a collection of poems, Lyrical Ballads, which changed the style and temper of literature as we know it. The collection was the opening salvo of what would come to be known as "Romantic" movement. English literature would never be the same. (Remember how we said that Byron and Keats and Shelley were the "second generation" romantics? Coleridge and Wordsworth are the first.)

Wordsworth was very close to his sister, Dorothy, who often traveled with him. She kept several diaries and journals which reveal how supportive she was of his work (and Lyrical Ballads). She kept house for Wordsworth for many years and lived with him and his wife, Mary Hutchens (an old grade school friend. That's right. He played around in France and then married the girl next door). I believe Dorothy lived in their house until her death in 1855.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were trying to create poetry in what Wordsworth termed "the language of men" and one has to remember that the flowery sounding phrases from this era were somewhat like spoken English sounded then. Wordsworth's famous description of poetry reads, in part "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." Wordsworth was a prolific poet (go to our poet's link at the bottom of the page and you'll see) and many of his phrases will be familiar to you as you read him.

In today's poems we see a man fighting with his insomnia (Wordsworth was also prone to depression) with every means at his disposal; "counting sheep" (which I think Wordsworth may have invented), thinking of tranquil places, imploring sleep to bless him with a visit and even chastising sleep for its non-appearance. Most everyone can relate to a sleepless night or two, can't they?

We will do more Wordsworth this year.

Here's a good Wordsworth quote: "The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this."

and another

"Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future. "

You can find more Wordsworth here:www.bartleby.com/145/wordchrono.html

Today's picture is Wynken, Blynken and Nod. Remember them? If not, here's the poem:www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15720