Poem of the Day

Congrats on the 5000 posts Virg. Maybe you'll make 10,000 posts before the count to 10,000 game is over. :D I like the poem. Thanks for sharing it. I hope your Papa is doing well.

Happy 5,000th post, Virgil. ;)

Quote:

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My Papa's Waltz by Thoedore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

---

I have read this Roethke poem many times, and believe it has much more depth than from the first read. The first time I read it, a former poetry instructor had her students read it and analyze it in class.
With the use of Roethke's language, several students felt confused, wondering if the narrator of the poem experienced abuse, hence some of the awkward sentences and terms, such as 'I hung on like death,' 'we romped,' 'the hand that held my wrist / was battered on one knuckle,' 'my ear scraped a buckle,' and 'beat time on my head.' I never agreed with this interpretation, but tossed it around in my head; unfortunately, the only proof I could provide relied on the sentence 'my mother's countenance / could not unfrown itself.' The amibiguity of language really always confused me; I would like to think that the more awkward sentences and vocabulary more referred to the lack of grace during intoxication ('the whiskey on your breath'), to phrase the term nicely. Needless to say, I have always loved the poem, and enjoy analyzing such debatable poems. :)

You know, there is both love and a sense of danger associated with the Papa in the poem. I never took it as abuse, but I guess the line "You beat time on my head" may lead you to think it.

Thanks Mono and Petrarch.

Since there has been a posting upon sonnets which it must be admitted slipped into a series of digressions, I thought I would post this sonnet which in a truly Post-Modern, self-referential manner refers to or imagines the very birth of the form:

He looks over the laborious drafts
of that first sonnet (still to be so called),
the random scribbles clustering the page-
triads, quatrains promiscuously scrawled.
Slowly he smoothes down angularities,
then stops. Has some faint music reached his sense,
notes of far-off nightingales relayed
out of an awesome future ages hence?
Has he realized that he is not alone
and that Apollo, unbelievably arcane,
has made an archetype within him sing-
one crystal-clear and eager to absorb
whatever night conceals or day unveils:
labyrinths, mazes, enigmas, Oedipus King?

Jorge Luis Borges
tr. Alan S. Trueblood

Borges' poetry deals with many of the same themes as his "fictions": eternity, oblivion, the beginings and the ends, the labyrinths of human knowledge and understanding, the greater labyrinth of human ignorance... and always: books.

Thanks, St Lukes. I thought that was interesting. I'm not familiar with Borges's poetry.

Thank you, I love Borges and didn't realize he wrote sonnets!

Actually, Borges wrote quite a few sonnets... especially collected in the book of poems entitled, The Self and the Other (1964). My personal favorite collection of Borges' work is El hacedor ("The Maker"), which is published in the US as Dreamtigers. It's an very thin book, very difficult to describe: a collection of poems, aphorisms, meditations, fictions, etc...

Thanks for posting this one, SLG. I enjoyed Borges' probing into sonnetary origins.

Thanks for posting the Borges, SLG - I'm actually reading Ficciones right now, so great timing! ;)

How about a John Donne Sonnet for poem of the day.

Quote:

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Batter My Heart by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

---

This is my favorite of the Holy Sonnets - thank you for posting it Virgil.
I love it because in it we see the old Johnny. . . bold, sensual, vigorous. Here is no pompous dean, but a man in thrall to his old self, using the vocabulary he knows best and applying it to his faith. Granted, Theresa of Avila also used highly sexual language when describing her ecstasies, and the use of contradictory imagery or ideas like being frozen by the fire of a woman's eyes was typical of sonnets, but I think the conceit of Donne as a beseiged city and then a woman to be kidnapped and ravished by a deity is quite unusual.

Yes, I would agree with all you say, Hyacinth. I would also add we see the typical Donne meter, that is to say he is purposely unconventional.

"Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by the fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?---
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much."



I think that this poem should be relatively simple. I know from previous observance that "child of my right hand" is the literal meaning of the sons name in Hebrew, and that his paying on the "just day" means that the son died on his birthday.

I have superficial trouble with the last two lines though . . . . he doesn't want to "like too much" the things that he "loves"? He even makes "all his vows" to that end. :confused:

Very nice selection, Flint. I think you're right about the last lines, in that he perhaps feels guilty, or selfish about liking the thing that he loves. Take the clue in the second line; he feels that he should have been contented with love, but made something more of the father son relationship. Perhaps he regrets the "sin" of pride, which a father often commits for a son. In any case, it seems to me that he will not make the mistake again. Pitty.

I like this, by New Zealand poet James K. Baxter:

Quote:

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A Pair of Sandals

A pair of sandals, old black pants
And leather coat — I must go, my friends,
Into the dark, the cold, the first beginning
Where the ribs of the ancestor are the rafters
Of a meeting house — windows broken
And the floor white with bird dung — in there
The ghosts gather who will instruct me
And when the river fog rises
Te ra rite tonu te Atua —
The sun who is like the Lord
Will warm my bones, and his arrows
Will pierce to the centre of the shapeless clay of the mind.

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Hemi (James in Maaori) was a devout Catholic who tried to follow Jesus' example in giving most of his possessions away and living an abstemious life. I find several of the images in this poem very evocative - the meeting house where the rafters are the "ribs of the ancestor", and where the "ghosts gather" over a "floor white with bird dung."