Number 287: Edgar Allan Poe "The Raven"

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" -
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never - nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore:
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting -
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

-- Edgar Allan Poe

Hap Notes: Surely most people know the work of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), a writer who not only expanded the literature of horror and the supernatural, but also pretty much invented and refined the detective story. He was also a poet, editor, journalist and critic. In America, he was one of the first writers to live by his writing work as his sole means of support.

The reports of Poe's drinking and debauchery are greatly exaggerated and were written by his enemies from jealousy and revenge. Poe was not a drug addict. He had a few drinks now and then, yes. Okay, more than a few. He was a melancholy fella. He was often erratic and a bit odd. His parents were professional actors; his dad left when he was merely a babe and his mother died not long after that from tuberculosis. He was raised by foster parents. The plot thickens, eh?

In today's haunting poem (it virtually made his reputation when it was printed in the newspaper) a man saddened by the death of his beautiful beloved, Lenore, is driven to madness by a mysterious talking raven (ravens and crows can be taught to speak). When he talks of the bust of Pallas, he is talking about Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, strength, female arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Pluto and Plutonian are references to the underworld, Hades. The reference to a "balm in Gilead" is a biblical one. It refers to a curative ointment of sorts, made from the resin of a tree, and is from the book of Jeremiah: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wounds of God's people?"

One always wonders what the narrator of the poem was reading. Some suggest a book on the occult but the speaker in the poem says he was seeking to find comfort in the books so I'd wager they were wrong. He mentions the Bible in his quote about Gilead but he also calls his reading matter "many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" so we'd be safe in assuming he did not mean the bible. (I suppose I could work myself up to express certain parallels between good and evil in this poem but I'll let you do that.)

Poe felt very strongly, and wrote so in essays, that a poem's meaning should just underlie the surface. So. What is under the surface in this poem?

Poe is arguably one of the most influential novelists/poets ever produced in America.

It's Saturday so here are some cartoons and Poe related stuff:

First off, here's Christopher Walken reading "The Raven": www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLSmhpwLdEQ&feature=related

And Vincent Price: www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ZvwQd-wXw

and James Earl Jones reciting it on a Simpsons Halloween special: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxSCtRxBhj4&feature=related

and Christopher Lee: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxsPHWSxlY&feature=related

and John De Lancie: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIckeYVuMC0

and John Astin: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACUxJ6fq2IY

and Lou Reed's version- Surprisingly, it is in many ways one of the best interpretations.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrys8knY53I

Here is Tim Burton's animated film about a child named Vincent whose leanings fall somewhere between Poe and Price: www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0zkFo3IkcY&feature=related

A chilling animated film of "The Raven": www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNsEh1FkJCA&feature=fvwrel

And Tiny Toons: www.youtube.com/watch?v=v57cDPH1108&feature=related

Here's "The Raven" by the Alan Parsons Project: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAE1XTvKLXA&feature=related

And here's Poe (no relation- I think her name is supposed to stand for Peace On Earth) with "Hello" : www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAVgJQVo2oE

And, what the hell, Liz Phair (who is still going strong and reprises this song often in concert) doing "Mesmerizing" from her extraordinary and original low-fi classic "Exile In Guyville": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Lrr1iUJMQ Because I like it.

The masthead today is the Gustave Dore illustration for the book in which this poem first appeared(1884) and an inset of a Raven's face.

Number 286: Douglas Goetsch "Smell and Envy" and John Clare "Evening Primrose"

Smell and Envy

You nature poets think you've got it, hostaged

somewhere in Vermont or Oregon,

so it blooms and withers only for you,

so all you have to do is name it: primrose

- and now you're writing poetry, and now

you ship it off to us, to smell and envy.

But we are made of newspaper and smoke

and we dunk your roses in vats of blue.

Birds don't call, our pigeons play it close

to the vest. When the moon is full

we hear it in the sirens. The Pleiades

you could probably buy downtown. Gravity

is the receiver on the hook. Mortality

we smell on certain people as they pass.

-- Douglas Goetsch

Evening Primrose

When once the sun sinks in the west,

And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;

Almost as pale as moonbeams are,

Or its companionable star,

The evening primrose opes anew

Its delicate blossoms to the dew;

And, hermit-like, shunning the light,

Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,

Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,

Knows not the beauty it possesses;

Thus it blooms on while night is by;

When day looks out with open eye,

Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,

It faints and withers and is gone.

-- John Clare

Hap Notes: I don't suppose Goetsch is talking about Clare here, I just thought the juxtaposition was interesting. Douglas Goetsch is a gifted teacher in addition to being the award-winning author of a half dozen poetry books. He taught at New York City public schools as well as at writer's workshops throughout the U.S. at various universities. He is the founder of Jane Street Press. His poetry is luminous, clever and well thought out. He is also an excellent prose writer, especially about poetry.

You can find more Goetsch here: www.janestreet.org/samples.html

John Clare (1793-1864) was born in Helpston, England. His family was poor and his parents were illiterate. He went to some bit of formal schooling and reputedly wrote his poetry after his manual laborer jobs ploughing and threshing. In his life time he had several books of poetry published. He struggled with being an outsider to the literati of England ( he was called the "peasant poet") and an outsider to the rank and file workers amongst whom he had grown up. He suffered later in life from delusions and depression. He died in the Northamptonshire County General Lunatic Asylum.

You can find more Clare here: www.johnclare.info/poems.html

In the two poems, I think it is obvious that Goetsch is a city boy and Clare is a country boy. Goetsch is making a very good point about the "observational" poetry of "nature lovers" who write a few lines about flowers or birds to which many city dwellers cannot relate or, at least, relate to with a certain amount of tough derision. That poetry often seems to be redolent with saccharine idyllic word pictures. (Although I am duty bound to point out that there is plenty of wildlife in the city- hawks, squirrels, birds, raccoons and even rabbits. There is wildlife everywhere on the planet if you look for it.)

Clare is talking about a beautiful night-blooming flower that never sees the sun. Which, I suppose, could be a really good analogy for city dwellers who do not get a chance to see the natural world much. Or an analogy to one whose potential is somewhat hidden from public daytime viewing, much as Clare was as a youth.

The masthead is a close up of a primrose. The inset is Goetsch (top) and Clare (bottom).

Number 285: Ranier Maria Rilke "Moving Forward"

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my sense, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Robert Bly)

Hap Notes: I don't know that Rilke is specifically writing about aging in this poem, although he is certainly talking about the maturation and inspiration of perception. Rilke's poetry is so moving because of his economy of thought; he gives us a few word pictures, a few clues, and then lets us float around in the words and find our own startling revelations.

There are many profound sides to this poem. Let me select my favorite: " I feel closer to what language can't reach." The historian Heinrich Zimmer said "The best truths cannot be spoken and the second best will be misunderstood." (To which Joseph Campbell added "The third best is the usual conversation.") It's a staggering and awe-filled observation that language cannot reach many of the most important things we think and feel.

Here's a little more fuel for your thinking fires as they smolder. Rilke said in the last (tenth) of the "Duino Elegies"– "And we, who have always thought/ of happiness as rising, would feel/ the emotion that almost overwhelms us / whenever a happy thing falls."

Here's a bit more: Rilke writes, "we are incessantly flowing over and over to those who preceded us and to those who apparently come after us … Transience everywhere plunges into a deep being."

Here is where we have talked about Rilke before: http://happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/10/number-275-ranier-maria-rilke-autumn.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-194-rainer-maria-rilke-archaic.html

Today's masthead features several of Cy Twombly's panels from “Untitled (A Painting in Nine Parts)." On the panel labeled Part 1 are Rilke's words from todays poem. I think the other two panels pictured (V and VI) are a perfect illustration of the poem (for me anyway, but all the panels are exquisite in their speechless perfection of feeling.) If you've a hankering to see the works of "second wave" abstract expressionist Twombly, you owe yourself a trip to Houston, Texas, to the Menil Collection Cy Twombly Gallery where his artwork gets the proper light and setting to astound. You can see the gallery and some of the works here: http://www.menil.org/collection/CyTwomblyInDepth.php (Twombly passed away in July of this year- there will never be another like him.)

Number 284: Dale Wimbrow "The Guy In The Glass"

The Guy In the Glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum,
And think you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the guy in the glass.

-- Dale Wimbrow

Hap Notes: First off, never heard of "pelf"? It's a word for ill-gotten gains, money gotten in a disreputable way. This poem, for many years, was attributed to the ubiquitous "Anonymous", that fella who wrote so many of the older familiar poems. Sometimes an urban mythology goes with it such as "it was found on a jail cell wall" or "it was written by a recovering addict." All interesting embroideries but false and belies the work of the poet,Dale Wimbrow (1895-1954), who was a fascinating and multi-faceted poet, musician, writer and artist.

Wimbrow was born in Whaleyville, Maryland. He went to Western Maryland College and served in WWI. He wrote songs and was somewhat famous for his work with orchestras on the radio. Here is a Wimbrow penned song: Dale Wimbrow and his Rubenville Turners doing "Country Bred and Chicken Fed" from 1926: http://www.archive.org/details/edba-5276 Pretty cheery stuff and anticipates the rise of Swing and Western Swing music. He his wife, Dorothy, was a radio writer and producer.

Wimbrow wrote a good half dozen songs in addition to two books. He also started the Indian River News in 1948. The newspaper went on until his death and was later re-established and carried on by his wife.

Today's poem has been memorized, cut out of various newspapers (Ann Landers ran it in her column in 1983) and recited by millions over the years. It was originally published in the American magazine in 1934. Wimbrow wrote it in answer to a question written in to the magazine by an 18 year old fella, " One good reason, please, why an ambitious man should be honest." The magazine offered a prize for the best reader responses. Ironically, I don't think he won that contest. Go fig.

Since this poem has run in countless publications, I doubt that it needs much explication, however, it bears repeating that when you look in the mirror you should be looking a person whom you enjoy being with since that is who you will be with for life.

Here is another of Wimbrow's poems and his children's tribute website for him: http://www.theguyintheglass.com/

Yay! Saturday! So here are some cartoons and music:

Romper Room magic mirror WQAD-TV in Moline, IL.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuU2HcI1SgM&feature=related

And here's Miss Frances at Ding Dong School making a very, uh, interesting sandwich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK5xsXa9LMw

Michael Jackson with "Man In The Mirror": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivWY9wn5ps

That scary mirror scene and transformation of the evil queen in Disney's "Snow White" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N14Ho-VVPgA

Here is a cartoon of Toopy and Binoo with a mirror. The cartoon originated from the books "Toupie et Binou" written by Dominique Jolin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROlXQB2V9sU Toopy and Binoo

Here's Arcade Fire with "Black Mirror" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuymDSGCko

This is just sick- bathroom mirrors with commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5n53Qi3Avk

Apropos of nothing– have you ever seen this hand art before?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj1lDZcy_Bc&feature=related

And for the upcoming holiday- here are a few pumpkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRAfFoBotSM&feature=related

This is certainly not for children – claymation of part of Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqi5F5MqqTQ

And finally- you've got to really click around the Boobah Zone (I can't believe it's taken me this long to share this- it's so odd, part of a children's show btw): http://www.boohbah.tv/zone.html

(The masthead picture today is the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles)

Number 283: Dylan Thomas "Poem in October"

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart’s truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year’s turning.

-- Dylan Thomas

Hap Notes: Thomas' birthday is Oct. 27 but I've got a bunch of spooky poems planned for the end of the month so we'll put it here. This is Thomas' lyric reverie as he walks in the early morning on his thirtieth birthday. The landscape fills him with remembrance as well as the joys and sorrows of living.

His word pictures are extraordinary. The "heron priested shore"– who cannot imagine standing herons as priests with their stiff posture and plumage? Then there is a "springful of larks" and the "parables of sunlight" and the birds "flying my name" and the town covered with the red leaves of "October blood." And so much more...

It is both usual and important to scan one's life on her/his birthday. Thomas comes away with the hope that his heart's truth– the truths of his childhood, the truth of nature, his longing for love and understanding, his joys and sorrows– will still be as fresh and remembered on his next birthday.

Thomas' sterling reputation for reading poetry aloud is well-deserved. Here is Thomas reading the poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnoHCSU5yn8&feature=related

Here's where we've talked about Thomas before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/number-108-dylan-thomas-do-not-go.html

Number 282: Lucy Maud Montgomery "An Autumn Evening'

An Autumn Evening

Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.

And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen with a rapt delight,
Pausing again and yet again at will
To drink the elusive beauty of the night,
Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup,
That with divine enchantment is brimmed up.

-- Lucy Maud Montgomery

Hap Notes: Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) is well known as the author of the Anne of Green Gables books. If you have not read these delightful books or if you'd care to revisit them you can find the full collection here: www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/m#a36. If you love these books you are in good company; Mark Twain adored "Anne."

If you have read her work then it will not be surprising to find that Montgomery had a difficult childhood. She was born in Canada, in Cilfton on Prince Edward Island. Her mother died when she was about a year and a half old and her father, distraught with grief and confusion, and left the young Montgomery to live with her mother's parents. Then, when she was 7 years old she lived with her paternal grandparents. then her dad remarried- the marriage was rocky.

Montgomery was a bright and imaginative little girl. After public school she got through a two year college course of study in one year and qualified to teach. She didn't care much for teaching but it did allow her time to write, which is always what she wanted to do. She was pretty and had a lot of suitors but she really just wanted to write. She went through several engagements with suitors which she eventually broke off. However, she knew, at the time, that a woman in Canada had to have a husband. So she eventually did marry in her thirties, three years after publishing the first "Anne" book in 1908.

Married life did not appeal to the writer much. Her husband, Ewan MacDonald, a Presbyterian minister, was subject to depression as was she. Her only outlet from dreariness was writing and she was prolific, publishing books and short stories and poetry. She was quite famous but this seemed to only vaguely touch her life.

I do not think it would be unfair to say that Montgomery enjoyed her youth on Prince Edward Island where she had wonderful daydreams, made up stories and enjoyed the natural beauty of the place. Throughout her whole life her childhood called to her to come back and enjoy the woods and the stories just waiting to be made up.

In today's poem we see flashes of her whole life; a certain lonely melancholy, the "elfin voices" of imagination and childhood, an awe of the beauty of nature and the fulfillment of her soul through this beauty. She stands alone in this poem- as she did always in her own heart as she wrote.

She received many honors in her lifetime including Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts in 1923, and a Companion of the Order of the British Empire, and a member of the Literary and Artistic Institute of France, in 1935.

You can find more Montgomery's poems here: rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/229.html

Number 281: Song Of The Battery Hen

Song of the Battery Hen

We can't grumble about accommodation;
We have a new concrete floor that's
Always dry, four walls that are
Painted white, and a sheet-iron roof
The rain drums on. A fan blows warm air
Beneath our feet to disperse the smell
Of chickenshit and, on dull days,
Fluorescent lighting sees us.

You can tell me; if you come by
The North door, I am in the twelfth pen
On the left-hand side of the third row
From the floor; and in that pen
I am usually the middle one of the three.
But even without directions, you'd
Discover me. I have the same orange-
Red comb, yellow beak and auburn
Feathers, but as the door opens and you
Hear above the electric fan a kind of
One-word wail, I am the one
Who sounds loudest in my head.

Listen. Outside this house there's an
Orchard with small moss-green apple
Trees; beyond that, two fields of
Cabbages then, on the far side of
The road, a broiler house. Listen:
One cockerel crows out of there, as
Tall and proud as the first hour of the sun.
Sometimes I stop calling with the others
To listen, and I wonder if he hears me.
The next time you come here, look for me.
Notice the way I sound inside my head.
God made us all quite differently,
And blessed us with this expensive home.

-- Edwin Brock

Hap Notes: Edwin Brock (1927-1997) idly read a poetry anthology when he was waiting to be demobbed (demobilized) from the Royal Navy in 1946 in Hong Kong after WWII. It changed the young man's life. The idea that verse, with it's often terse and condensed words, had communicative possibilities far beyond any other form of the written word inspired him to write. (He was from a distinctly un-literary South London family and he'd only gotten school qualifications from grammar school.)

He pursued writing as he worked as a policeman. When he was first published in the Times Literary Supplement the editor, Alan Pryce-Jones, had no idea that the young poet was a Bobby. Much was made of this in the British press, but Brock was unaffected by the ballyhoo and continued to read and hone his craft. He eventually became an advertising copywriter. He was quite good at it although he hated it as he hated anything that interfered with his reading and writing.

Brock had more than a dozen books of poetry published in his life time as well as a novel and an autobiography. His divorce, his remarriage, the birth of his children and other aspects of his life were all covered in his somewhat "Confessional" poetry. Today's poem, along with "Five Ways To Kill A Man" are two of his most famous and oft-read poems.

I suppose, one could make a case for the poor chickens in this poem. You'd have to be a complete numb skull not to know about the treatment of chickens raised for meat in today's market. Here in America, their beaks are often cut so that they won't hurt themselves or other chickens while penned up. So that's the first layer here. A battery is a large group of cages for the raising of poultry.

But there's something haunting in this poem that has to do with more than just the plight of animals we raise for food. There's an element in this poem that speaks directly to all of us who feel penned in and, even more startling, the rationalization we go through to defend our positions. That world out there is different, beautiful, calls to us but it is dangerous.

Here's what Brock had to say about today's poem at a reading: "It was written... when I was staying on a farm in Worcestershire. The farmer showed me his battery house with some pride and when I made the usual cliched comment about the poor bloody hens he said "Do you know we had an experiment one day, we left the flaps of all the cages up to see what the hens would do. Well, they looked around and walked right back in." At that point I said to myself, " Christ, he's just written my autobiography" and that afternoon I wrote "Song of the Battery Hen."

You can find more Brock here:www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7496