Greetings.
I know I have been absent from the site for quite a while but I was finishing up my children's book (The Dark Possum Book One: A Brotherhood of Bothers or a Botherhood of Brothers?) and trying to balance (like so many right now) my life with an unemployment check that (I don't mean to sound ungrateful) is never remotely enough. One does a great deal of robbing Peter to pay Paul except that Peter ain't got much either. Lots of folks in the same washtub but the moon belongs to everyone. Did you see it last night? Gorgeous.
Now that the book is published I am working on a compilation of entries from Hyacinth and Biscuits for a small book and working on the sequel to The Dark Possum. (It's at Amazon.com right now FYI)
But I find I miss working on the site so back I come with (I hope) another year's worth of poems and cartoons and goofy stuff I hope you'll like.
We'll start up on Monday ( Sept. 3) with a doozy- a big one and possibly my favorite poem (if I was winched down, beaten and forced to pick one) in the English language. As with all the longer poems we do (don't worry it's not THAT long), I'll leave it up for a few days.
I may choose a few longer poems this time but not always. Just a heads up.
Thanks for sticking with me.

Number 317: John Updike: Seven Stanzas At Easter

Seven Stanzas At Easter

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.

- John Updike

Hap Notes: It's Easter and Christians believe that something amazing happened today: a man rose from the dead. If we don't believe that Jesus was a man, it's no big trick to rise from the dead. One supposes that God can do anything if he/she is a God worth the worship so rising from the dead is pretty much just a parlor trick. The fact that Jesus was a flesh and blood man that rose from the dead is astounding. It's supposed to be. Glossing over it does God a great disservice.

I would never presume to proselytize for Christianity. I am unqualified to do so since my personal beliefs are a vertiginous mix of Hindu-Buddhist-Christian-Pagan. But, Updike is saying something wildly important about Christianity and the church that often gets smoothed down and varnished. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is what sets Christianity apart: their God is alive. Jesus lives.

Updike is forcing us to look at this resurrection as a real event and describes it as such. There is no blond Northern European in this tale. You wanna know what they looked like? They probably looked a great deal like the people we are fighting in the Middle East. Updike's angel is clad in real linen spun on a loom, the principles of physics hold tight, Jesus has real flesh. The miracle is not merely a metaphor but a real event at a stinky tomb on hot day in the desert.

Whatever you or I feel about religion, think on this: the violence, distrust, iron rules, male-domination, rape and sexism of the so-called "Old Testament" is dead the day that Jesus rises from the dead. It's gone and replaced by a new covenant. Jesus says that the two most important things one can do in life are to love God and to love one's neighbor. Respect all people, care for them, and love God. Christianity is not an exclusive club- anyone can join.

And anybody who says any different has not read their bible. Christians who dwell on the "Old Testament" are both bad Christians and bad Jews- they are cherry-picking the bible to support vindictiveness, prejudice and war. By the by, there is a term circulating in the media that is an oxymoron: "Old Testament Christian." It would be funny if it weren't so blatantly ignorant. One must try to forgive these people for their silliness, they are obviously scared of love and peace for some reason.

So on this Easter day, it's good to celebrate the life of the new church, the church Jesus hoped would be one of forgiveness, tolerance and love for all people. Doesn't it strike you with awe and reverence that we are all evolved from the same initial life on earth? That we are all cut from the same cloth?

How many ways do we have to hear this story until we believe it?


Here is where we have talked about Updike before:

happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-170-john-updike-perfection.html
( This link will lead you to the other Updike poems we've discussed)

Number 316: Annie FInch "Winter Solstice Chant"

Winter Solstice Chant

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

now you are uncurled and cover our eyes

with the edge of winter sky

leaning over us in icy stars.

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

come with your seasons, your fullness, your end.

-- Annie Finch


Hap Notes: Annie Finch (born 1956) means for you to recite this and think of it as an actual chant. Here she is chanting/reading it for you: www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238500
A chant is repetitive and prayer like and is often used in rituals. Let's not forget that the meaning of the word "enchant" stems from the same root and originally meant to captivate by chanting or incantation. Finch's work often plows the rich field of rhythms whether of the word, the world, the spirit or the body and the cadences of their interconnectedness. This particular chant is quite enchanting, I think.

Born in New Rochelle, NY, Finch had parents who were tailor-made for a poet. Her mother was a poet and artist, her dad was a philosophy professor at Sarah Lawrence who studied Wittgenstein. Finch said that her parents met at a lecture given by W.H. Auden. She got her B.A. at Yale, graduating magna cum laude. She received her masters at the University of Houston and got her Ph.D. at Stanford. She currently teaches at the University of Southern Maine and is the author of some dozen or more books of poetry and essays.

She has her own website here: web1.uct.usm.maine.edu/~afinch/
Note the spirals with words to get to her poems– this, alone, is telling you something about her thoughts on nature and our connections.

Here's a good Finch quotation: "Unlike autumn, in whose complex and fertile imagery poets love to linger, winter, that stylized season, is often evoked as a single deft emblem in just a line or two—lines that can be cold and heavy with the press of everything not said."

and another: "I have always felt myself to be largely a religious poet, but until I became aware of paganism, I didn't know what kind of religious poet I was."

You can find more of her poetry at her website listed above.

Number 315: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Christmas Bells"

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas Day 

Their old, familiar carols play, 

And wild and sweet 

The words repeat 

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come, 

The belfries of all Christendom 

Had rolled along 

The unbroken song 

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way, 

The world revolved from night to day, 

A voice, a chime, 

A chant sublime 

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth 

The cannon thundered in the South, 

And with the sound 

The carols drowned 

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent 

The hearth-stones of a continent, 

And made forlorn 

The households born 

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head; 

"There is no peace on earth," I said; 

"For hate is strong, 

And mocks the song 

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: 

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; 

The Wrong shall fail, 

The Right prevail, 

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hap Notes: The story to this well-known poem is equally famous. Longfellow wrote these verses during the Civil War after his son had been severely wounded in battle. His son, Charles, had joined the army without Longfellow's permission and this news fell hard on the heels of the loss of his wife just months previous.

The poem has been set to music and used as a hymn. There are two fairly popular versions. Here's the popular Johnny Marks version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpeGK1U-Cqo&feature=related and and the Calkin version I grew up with: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcP8xvgwucs&feature=related.

I rarely think of this poem without remembering this very famous cartoon from 1939: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8OYvHPpGDY

Here is where we have talked about Longfellow before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-136-henry-wadsworth-longfellow.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/number-71-henry-wadsworth-longfellow.html

The masthead is a charming vintage birthday postcard with Longfellow's picture and a verse from his poem "Maidenhood." Notice the use of the word "ruth" which gets little use now except when it is paired with paired with the ending"less." Ruth means a feeling of despairing pity. Did you realize that ruthless meant "unpitying" or "lacking compassion"?

Number 314: Ogden Nash " The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus"

The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus

In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.

In school he never led his classes,

He hid old ladies' reading glasses,

His mouth was open when he chewed,

And elbows to the table glued.

He stole the milk of hungry kittens,

And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.

He said he acted thus because

There wasn't any Santa Claus.

Another trick that tickled Jabez

Was crying 'Boo' at little babies.

He brushed his teeth, they said in town,

Sideways instead of up and down.

Yet people pardoned every sin,

And viewed his antics with a grin,

Till they were told by Jabez Dawes,

'There isn't any Santa Claus!'

Deploring how he did behave,

His parents swiftly sought their grave.

They hurried through the portals pearly,

And Jabez left the funeral early.

Like whooping cough, from child to child,

He sped to spread the rumor wild:

'Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes

There isn't any Santa Claus!'

Slunk like a weasel of a marten

Through nursery and kindergarten,

Whispering low to every tot,

'There isn't any, no there's not!'

The children wept all Christmas eve
And Jabez chortled up his sleeve.
No infant dared hang up his stocking
For fear of Jabez' ribald mocking.

He sprawled on his untidy bed,

Fresh malice dancing in his head,

When presently with scalp-a-tingling,

Jabez heard a distant jingling;

He heard the crunch of sleigh and hoof

Crisply alighting on the roof.

What good to rise and bar the door?

A shower of soot was on the floor.

What was beheld by Jabez Dawes?

The fireplace full of Santa Claus!

Then Jabez fell upon his knees

With cries of 'Don't,' and 'Pretty Please.'

He howled, 'I don't know where you read it,

But anyhow, I never said it!'

'Jabez' replied the angry saint,
'It isn't I, it's you that ain't.

Although there is a Santa Claus,

There isn't any Jabez Dawes!'

Said Jabez then with impudent vim,

'Oh, yes there is, and I am him!

Your magic don't scare me, it doesn't'

And suddenly he found he wasn't!

From grimy feet to grimy locks,

Jabez became a Jack-in-the-box,

An ugly toy with springs unsprung,

Forever sticking out his tongue.

The neighbors heard his mournful squeal;

They searched for him, but not with zeal.

No trace was found of Jabez Dawes,

Which led to thunderous applause,

And people drank a loving cup

And went and hung their stockings up.

All you who sneer at Santa Claus,
Beware the fate of Jabez Dawes,
The saucy boy who mocked the saint.
Donner and Blitzen licked off his paint.

-- Ogden Nash

Hap Notes: It seems that Nash wants us to pronounce this name Jay-beez so that it rhymes with "babies." But I think he wants us to pronounce "babies" as babbez, which is funnier, actually. It's a fun poem to read aloud.

It's typical Nash humor to list the boy's faults as going though doors marked "No admittance" (to rhyme with "kittens") and brushing his teeth the "wrong" direction and hiding the reading glasses of old ladies. Note how the town can forgive him all his bratty pranks except his crushing of the magic of Saint Nick.

Jabez means "he makes sorrowful" in Hebrew (yabetz, which is decidedly not pronounced Yay-beetz.) and a few years back much was made of a prayer that Jabez (in the book of I Chronicles in the Bible as a member of the lineage of the tribe of Judah) in which he implores God to keep him from harm and increase his territories. The book about it was called "The Prayer of Jabez" and it was a huge best-seller.

The Jabez story in the Old Testament is not to blame for what was made of it in the best-selling book about the prayer. But it is irritating when folks who claim to know God tell you what will make you prosperous. I just don't think the Bible is a very good tool for learning about economics, budgeting, investment opportunities and gaining monetary profits. I don't believe that is the point of the text. Prosperity, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. Some people never get enough. I choose to think of the Jabez prayer as a guy trusting that God is worth talking to about everything, not that God cares about wealth. Imagine, if you will, a deity so petty as to be concerned with what you own– what is he, a banker? And if Jabez was sure that God was going to answer his prayer, wouldn't it have been nice if he'd asked for something for everyone? And furthermore, in the case of the book, it seems to be an excuse to once again villainize the poor– they just haven't enough "faith" to be well off; a disgusting way of rationalizing greed and assuaging guilt.

Gosh, when I digress, I really digress... let's go back to the Nash poem, which is an open and shut case for the indictment of those who do not believe in Santa. Even if you don't believe in him, there's no sense in bragging about the fact that you have no imagination and heart. Shutting down people who believe in Santa does no one credit. In this poem, Santa has a little more backbone than he is usually pictured as having. He doesn't just give the offending, hard-hearted Jabez a bit of coal, he turns him into a broken jack-in-the-box (which seems very fitting, doesn't it?)

Nash's sense of humor is wickedly clever and the poem is primarily meant to amuse. However, the gravest things are said in jest and this poem is also Nash's way of warning us not to kick the magic out of everything in life.

Here is where we have talked about Nash before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/number-214-ogden-nash-centipede.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/number-27-ogden-nash-everybody-tells-me.html

Number 313: Ezra Pound "Ancient Music"

Ancient Music

Winter is icumen in,

Lhude sing Goddamm,

Raineth drop and staineth slop,

And how the wind doth ramm!

Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,

An ague hath my ham.

Freezeth river, turneth liver,

Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,

So 'gainst the winter's balm.

Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,

Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

-- Ezra Pound

Hap Notes: First off, Pound is writing a clever parody here of the Middle English round written in 1225 A.D. called "Summer Is Icumen In." Here's that poem/song:

Sumer is icumen in,

Lhude sing cuccu!

Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,

Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteþ after lomb,

Lhouþ after calue cu.

Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,

Murie sing cuccu!

Cuccu, cuccu, wel singes þu cuccu;
Ne swik þu nauer nu.

Pes:
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.

Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!

Okay, what the hell does this poem mean? Here's a fairly good translation:

Summer has arrived,

Loudly sing, Cuckoo!

The seed grows and the meadow blooms
And the wood springs anew,

Sing, Cuckoo!

The ewe bleats after the lamb

The cow lows after the calf.

The bullock stirs, the stag farts,

Merrily sing, Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing,

cuckoo;
Don't you ever stop now,
Sing cuckoo now.
Sing, Cuckoo.
Sing Cuckoo.
Sing cuckoo now!

The stag farts? Did you read that right? Yep. It's thought to be a sign of virile health. Don't spread that information around, please. I've had enough purposefully flatulent boyfriends who did not need this kind of encouragment. Just sayin'. Here's what the round sounds like: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWWEHAswpFI

Pound was well-equipped to write this parody. He studied Old English as well as Romance languages in college. There is, was and probably never shall be anyone more knowledgeable about poetry than Pound was.

Pound himself said, "I resolved that at 30 I would know more about poetry than any man living, that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was "indestructible," what part could not be lost by translation and—scarcely less important—what effects were obtainable in one language only and were utterly incapable of being translated.
In this search I learned more or less of nine foreign languages, I read Oriental stuff in translations, I fought every University regulation and every professor who tried to make me learn anything except this, or who bothered me with "requirements for degrees."

One cannot speak of 20th century poetry without mentioning the extraordinarily vexing and brilliant Pound.

Today's poem seems especially fitting if you are living in a part of the country that is snowy, grey, cloudy, windy, cold, rainy or (as in my case) all of the above.

Here is where we have talked about Pound before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/number-103-ezra-pound-ballad-of-goodly.html

Number 312: Robert Frost "Christmas Trees"

Christmas Trees

A Christmas Circular Letter


The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn't thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I'd hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while."

"I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over."

"You could look.
But don't expect I'm going to let you have them."
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer's moderation, "That would do."
I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.

He said, "A thousand."

"A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?"

He felt some need of softening that to me:
"A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars."

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter.
I can't help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

-- Robert Frost

Hap Notes: Frost writes this poem as a Christmas letter or, at least, for inclusion in some Christmas Cards. He tells the story of someone wanting to buy his fir trees for Christmas trees but he, as usual, is saying much more about trees, life, value and, even Christmas.

First of all, living out in the country as I do, it's easy to relate to the idea of the winter withdrawing the city from the country. The snow and cold do not lend themselves to easy traveling or, for that matter, leaving a warm city home. So when a stranger pulls up, the country residents are surprised to find a city dweller who understands to wait for the residents to come out to them.

What do you think the city dweller is looking for, aside from the trees, that Frost mentions early in the poem "something it had left behind"- is it just the trees?

Were you as shocked as the narrator was when the offer was three cents per tree? Accounting for current inflation, that's still less than a dollar per tree in 2011. Did you think the narrator ever had any intention of selling the trees? Why or why not?

What is Frost telling us about the trees when he describes them as "the young fir balsams like a place /Where houses all are churches and have spires. "

Here's another telling phrase to ponder–"The trial by market everything must come to." Think he's just talking about trees here?

Here is where we have talked about Frost before: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/10/number-291-robert-frost-ghost-house.html (this one will lead you to our other Frost poems covered.)

And now, because it's Saturday- cartoons, music and other miscellanea:

First Pluto's Christmas Tree from 1952, I think: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBvCQKKaqgk&feature=related

Here's one of those singing Christmas trees composed of people- this show a bit about the structure as well as the singers: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjjXuh4FrrY&feature=related

And this is Suzy Snowflake: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znz3ajeSIcg&feature=related

Ever seen these talking Christmas trees? They're sorta spooky. Here's one of them, Douglas Fir: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZdhUuVAh4Y&feature=related

This was my favorite little cartoon station greeting when I was a kid- it's from CBS with Blechman drawings: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUWMjUjit_U

and another CBS Blechman: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT4QntmQ5JQ&feature=related

Finally, the infamous "cigarettes as gifts" ads. The package was designed by Raymond Loewy no less!: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWj_tR64Ti4&feature=related