Number 250: Fleur Adcock "For A Five-Year-Old"

For A Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
Into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
That it would be unkind to leave it there:
It might crawl to the floor; we must take care
That no one squashes it. You understand,
And carry it outside, with careful hand,
To eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
Your gentleness is moulded still by words
From me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
From me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
Your closest relatives, and who purveyed
The harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.

-- Fleur Adcock

Hap Notes: Kareen Fleur Adcock's (born 1934) poetry has a Granny Smith apple quality in that it can be tart, sweet, crisp and sometimes a little bitter or acrid. Her work is written with a conversational vocabulary and the mysteries it unveils can be surprising.

Born in Aukland, New Zealand, Adcock is the veteran of two youthful marriages to NZ literary types, both of which ended in divorce before she left for England in 1963. She went to England and was the assistant librarian at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, a post she held for 16 years.

Adcock has consistently written poetry throughout her life and has won loads of awards ( okay, specifically? The New Zealand State Literary Fund Award, the Buckland Award (twice), the Jessie Mackay Prize (twice), the Cholmondeley Award, the New Zealand National Book Award, Arts Council Writers' Award, an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for contribution to NZ literature, a Ruckland Award, a Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and Companion of New Zealand Order of Merit. Phew!)

Today's poem is wryly amusing. When we ask how someone can be a Christian and bomb an abortion clinic or even carry a gun, we can directly go back to the little cheats (or big cheats) we have in our lives that make us feel guilty or defensive. We raise our children to respect life while we ravage the earth. We talk peace and make war. We hate our dependence on fossil fuels and drive everywhere. I know all these things sound BIG and our little cheats are so small but as the old adage goes, "You can't get a little bit pregnant." You are what you do, not what you believe, unless the two are synonymous. And that is hard to accomplish in our culture. We are painfully aware of this on a daily basis, just like the poet is in today's poem.

Note how our "words" have an effect on a small child. If only this were so as they got to their teen-aged years, eh? Also implicit in the poem is the natural trust and kindness of a child. That quality we guard so carefully until... what?

Of course, there is also a quality of loving protection in the poem, too, isn't there?

Here's a good Adcock quote: "You have to listen to your own voice. Not your heart, not your instincts, not any of that self-permissive psycho-babble stuff. No, none of that. If it was just about instincts and bright ideas it wouldn't need to be a voice. It's about words. You hear them, read them, then you write. But mostly read. Read the bloody poems."

and also

""There's nothing airy-fairy about being a poet."

You can find more Adcock here: www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=75

Number 249: Conrad Aiken "Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain"

Beloved Let Us Once More Praise The Rain

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

-- Conrad Aiken

Hap Notes: I've been dragging my feet on doing Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) because I am somewhat flummoxed by his obscurity. He called T.S. Eliot, "Tom," and when they were students at Harvard, they drank beer, went to burlesque shows and read comics (Krazy Kat!) together (both of their grandpas were Unitarian ministers). He wrote an extraordinary short story, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" that burns in the memory once read: www.daily-pulp.com/horror/silent-snow-secret-snow/ (That story and "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather are branded on my memory, I've read them so many times.) Freud claimed Aiken as a favorite author. Aiken was mentored by no less than George Santayana. His writing is both charming and alarming. So what gives?

Let's start at the beginning. Conrad Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia. His mother and father came from upper crust East coast families. When Conrad was 11, his physician dad, who had become increasingly irritable and erratic, killed his mother and then committed suicide. (Surely you have noted by this point in our blog that difficult circumstances and mental illness criss-cross in the lives those who write good literature?) Young Conrad was at home when it happened, heard the shots and discovered the bodies. He was subsequently raised by an aunt in Massachusetts, attended private schools and then Harvard (where he met "Tom".)

Aiken was a fascinating writer, intensely involved in exploring consciousness, musicality (of words, thoughts, expressions) and the universe. His relationship with Eliot was always familiar and cordial but Aiken found Eliot's work too affected. Eliot once, with his characteristic sly polite wryness, commented that each of Conrad's new books were "better than the last."

So, one supposes that being somewhat at odds, in poetic theories only, with Eliot (the most influential poet, with Pound, of the time) coupled with Aiken's somewhat shy and reclusive nature, leads Aiken to the pile of under-read poets. He is often mentioned as being "too difficult" for the average reader. Which is all the more amazing when you know that he received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1930. He also was awarded the National Medal for Literature, the Gold Medal for Poetry from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and served as Poetry Consultant/Laureate for the U.S. from 1950-1952.

Aiken was very interested in psychology and was an avid reader of both Freud and Jung. If you are a fan of Emily Dickinson, you can thank Aiken for pretty much establishing her work on a critical level.

If you read Jon Berendt's Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, you'll remember Aiken's grave in Savannah is mentioned.

If you want to really get to know Aiken better, I recommend his autobiographical novel, Ushant.

In today's poem, the poet celebrates the beauties and wonders of the natural world as it rains. Orion, is the constellation of the hunter, thought to be a giant man who hung around with Artemis and was killed by a giant scorpion (the Scorpio constellation is named for it). If you saw "Men In Black," you'll remember mention of "Orion's Belt," which are the three stars in the center of the constellation (and a cat collar.) There is much more to discover in the poem.

Here's a fascinating Aiken quote about Eliot and Pound:

"In 1914 I persuaded Tom to let me take “Prufrock” to England; he wasn’t at all sure of it. I tried it everywhere—not even Harold Monro of the famous Poetry Bookshop could see it, thought it crazy; many years later he said it was the “Kubla Khan” of the twentieth century. Then I met Pound, showed it to him, and he was at once bowled over. He sent it to Poetry. So, when Tom had to retreat from Germany, when the war started, one of his first moves was to go and see Ezra."

and another Aiken quote (both of these from his Paris Review interview): " Of course I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It’s simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe."

and one more: "...I have said repeatedly that as poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry’s office."

Here's an interesting "Unitarian" view of Aiken: www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/aiken.html

You can find more Aiken here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/conrad-aiken

and here: /www.blackcatpoems.com/a/conrad_aiken.html

The masthead picture is the constellation Orion with an inset of Aiken's grave in Savannah, where he hoped people would sit, have a martini and contemplate.

Number 248: Stanley Kunitz "Three Floors"

Three Floors

Mother was a crack of light
and a gray eye peeping;
I made believe by breathing hard
that I was sleeping.

Sister's doughboy on last leave
has robbed me of her hand;
downstairs at intervals she played
Warum on the baby grand.

Under the roof a wardrobe trunk
whose lock a boy could pick
contained a red Masonic hat
and a walking stick.

Bolt upright in my bed that night
I saw my father flying;
the wind was walking on my neck,
the windows were crying.

-- Stanley Kunitz

Hap Notes: This is a beautifully constructed poem and like many good poems it contains a massive amount of information in a compact amount of space. Let's take it stanza by stanza.

The poet is a young boy in bed. His mother checks on him by opening the door just a crack and peeking in. He, like all of us have done at one time or another, fakes sleeping by regular hard breathing, eyes shut in slumbering concentration. His room is on the second floor.

Downstairs, the poet's sister is entertaining her WWI soldier boyfriend on the piano (at intervals; whether from hesitation in her skill or from other things one does with a boyfriend in the parlor.) She plays "Warum" which I think is a part of Schumann's "Fantasiestücke" (Fantasy Pieces) and sounds like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB8W6cBH2VA
'Warum' means "why?" and you can hear from the dreamy quality of the music (and the character in Schumann's composition, how this would lead a person to dream and ponder). Here's a little more info on the piece- it's very telling for the poem: Go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schumann and click on the word Fantasiestücke.The "gentle questioning" of the piece is an interesting dimension here. The poet is "robbed" of his sister's hand and it may mean she tucked him in at night and it may mean he has lost her attention. And of course, there is the love and admiration that a young boy feels for an older sister- that often manifests itself in a sort of romance.

Up in the attic is a trunk that the poet, as a boy, has picked the lock of and found some hidden mysteries within. Remember when we talked of Kunitz before we have discussed how his father committed suicide before the poet was born: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-20-stanley-kunitz-portrait.html. In the trunk are items of his father's. He selects interesting items for the poem. The mysterious Masonic hat showing his father to be a member of the Masons (side note: when I was a kid I got into one of my father's nightstand drawers and found his Masonic "code" book. I didn't understand it and it both puzzled and scared me.) A walking stick is also an interesting piece. What kind of person carries a walking stick? (Hints: think on the words balance, pride, lame, hobbled, well-dressed.)

Then, in the middle of the night, the poet/boy awakes with a start from a thunderstorm. How could the wind be "walking on his neck"? Why would his father be flying? The rain on the windows is like tears. How do you think the poet/boy feels, first as a small boy in bed and secondly as a man remembering this?

This poem is loaded with other things as well. Think on the short portraits of everyone in the poem. What are eyes and hands doing in this poem? What do these three floors stand for in the poem? There is much, much more to be gleaned from these short stanzas.

Here is the other entry where we have talked about Kunitz before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-151-stanley-kunitz-hornworm.html

The masthead is Chagall's "The Dream". I don't know that it has all that much to do with the poem but it's the painting that came into my head to use.

Number 247: Frank O'Hara "A True Account Of Talking To The Sun At Fire Island"

A True Account Of Talking To The Sun At Fire Island


The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."

"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."

I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.

And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"

"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.


-- Frank O'Hara

Hap Notes: Yeah, it's an intended pun, sort of, it being Sunday and all and Frank talking to the sun. But really, it's just an excuse to have one of my favorite longer O'Hara poems on the blog.

The Mayakovsky poem he is referring to is "An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer Cottage". O'Hara also makes references to the Russian poet/playwright in his poem, titled, aptly enough, "Mayakovsky." If you'd like to see some of Maykovsky's poems (including the one O'Hara references today) go here: writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/text/Mayakovsky.html

This is a charming and amusing poem but O'Hara is touching on some mysterious stuff here. Note the phrase "excessively calm"; both amusing and telling, yes? What do you think O'Hara means when he says of the sun "darkly he rose"? Who or what do you think is calling to the sun (and O'Hara)?

Here is where we have talked about O'Hara before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-10-frank-ohara-today.html

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

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-222-frank-ohara-why-i-am-not.html

The masthead today is Van Gogh's "Reaper With Wheat Field And Sun." It's hard to think of an artist more intimate with the sun and its/his/her colors than Van Gogh. Do you even see the reaper in the painting? The sun and the wheat sort of swallow him.

Numbr 246; Robert Louis Stevenson "The Swing"

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Hap Notes: Well, what is like being on a swing– that remarkable, vertiginous feeling as the world swirls around you as you glide up to the sky? Remember the first time you went a little too high? That amazing feeling of breaking, just for a moment, the grip of gravity?

No matter your age, a swing is a wonderful thing to be on in the summer-time. Stevenson's verse actually swings along as you read it, doesn't it?

It's Saturday so here's our cartoons to go with the poem.

First is Bullwinkle (of Rocky and Bullwinkle) reading today's poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqG8DuA5As&playnext=1&list=PL49E145C413A0CA24

Here's a very clever Walter Lanz cartoon (I love the description of what gets sold at the Black Market), a Swing Symphony called "The Greatest Man in Siam" (Siam btw is what Thailand was called until 1949.) : www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEUuBrxNgn4

You don't have to be a child to enjoy the playground: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekfsa380S-s

Here are Astaire and Rogers in "Swing Time": www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxPgplMujzQ

A remarkable Fleischer cartoon, "Swing You Sinners!": www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b8isnhYMjg

One of my favorite cartoons, Recess, features Swinger Girl who may or may not have "gone over the top." /www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8ocsjLh9OM

and of course, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDQpZT3GhDg

Here is where we have talked about Stevenson before:
happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-196-robert-louis-stevenson.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-21-robert-louis-stevenson-after.html

The masthead is Ben Shahn's "Liberation." Painted in 1945, it shows the playfulness of children who have lived through some grim circumstances, and while they look a bit grim themselves, they still find the spirit to swing.

Number 245: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) "Air"

Air

I am lost in hot fits
of myself
trying
to get
out. Lost
because
I am kinder
to myself
than I
need
Softer
w/others
than is good
for them.

Taller
than
most/
Stronger
What is it
about me
that
frightens me
loses
me
tosses me helplessly
in
the air.

Oh love
Songs
don't leave
w/o me
that you
are the weakness
of my simplicity

Are feeling
& want
All need
& romance
I wd do anything
to be loved
& this
is a stupid
mistake.

-- Amiri Baraka

Hap Notes: Amiri Baraka was born LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He studied at Rutgers, Columbia and Howard universities and has taught at the State University of New York in both Stony Brook and Buffalo, Columbia and Rutgers. He changed his name in the 60's to reflect his own identity (rather than what he termed his "slave name"). He is is a powder keg of anger, frustration and heartache and his work testifies to this over and over again.

Baraka has always been a controversial figure in poetry, using verse as a powerful weapon to wake people up from sleep-walking through the culture. Poets who choose this route face a lot of threatening opposition and fear from their work and Baraka's career reflects this, too. I will refer you to his eye-opening poem written about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, "Somebody Blew Up America" here: www.amiribaraka.com/blew.html.

His somewhat militant Marxist views left him open to a lot of criticism from his zeal in his younger days; a zeal which has been honed to a sharp point as he matured as a poet. His poetry readings are riveting: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUEu-pG1HWw.

Baraka has been writing about Jazz, especially "Free Jazz", for more than 50 years and wrote the definitive book on it, Blues People: Negro Music in White America. He has performed both as a musician and with his poetry with Jazz ensembles. He has written more than a dozen poetry books, won an Obie award for his play, Dutchman, and has received an American Book Award and a Langston Hughes award, among others.

He continues to be a powder keg of explosive words and world-shattering ideas.

But in today's poem we see the soft side of the poet, frustrated by love and a crisis of self-identity, at cross purposes with his beneficent thoughts and longings for love. Some of Baraka's poems will startle you, some will make you think, some will fill you with shame but this poem, with all its vulnerability, just makes you want to give him a hug or a pat on the back, doesn't it? Most anger starts with heart-ache, does it not?


Here's a good Baraka quote: "Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."

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

You can find more Baraka here: www.amiribaraka.com/writings.html

The masthead today is Jacob Lawrence's "Play".

Number 244; Wallace Stevens "A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts"

A Rabbit As King of The Ghosts
The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten on the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

-- Wallace Stevens

Hap Notes: Imagine yourself to be a rabbit– one of those "wild" rabbits that haunt your yard and garden. It is night. You have rabbit's mind. You remember rabbit things. The grass is made for you, the moon shines on only you. You are the only rabbit in the world. That somewhat pesky cat from earlier in the day is gone... everything is about you. You grow large in your own thoughts-- you are everything. Each singular thing surrounding you is rabbit centered, but for just you as a rabbit.

Perhaps you don't need to pretend you are a rabbit to think everything is for, and about, you. And in some ways, it is. Maybe in your meditations you have become one with everything. The first step in that feeling is to feel everything is about you, then gradually, nothing is about you, the next feeling is that there is no you and finally, you are everything and everything is in you and everybody else too. But rabbit isn't really meditating here. Or is he?

Stevens saw the everyday world as one of exotic and riotous beauty. Each time he puts a pen to paper to write a poem he sees the things he is describing as though he were an enthusiastic and mystified traveler who has just come upon the thing for the first time. He sees vivid colors, exotic plants and remarkable vistas. He sees a rabbit and imagines a rabbit-y life, a rabbit-y meditation. He loves the words and the sounds they make, too. Think, too, on why this particular poem takes place at night.

There is much more in this poem but the thing I really want you to be aware of is the description of consciousness in this poem. What is Stevens saying about the "real" world? What is he saying about our senses and our thoughts? Whose world are we living in, our own, or some cultural construct? How does your perception of the world change it? Stevens is showing us another way to look at the world and there are millions more.

So why did you choose the perception you live in and with? Stevens' world is filled with miraculous colors, strange plants and much more everyday magic. What is your world filled with? (Poetry, hopefully).

Here's where we've talked about Stevens before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-74-wallace-stevens-thirteen-ways.html