Poem of the Week - 2011

Hi Ecurb. I really like the two selections you made.

Crime club is like a poetry noir, or a noir version of Phillip Larkin.

the first stanza seems to contrast the traditional fictional murder mystery elements - maid, butler, etc with the realities of everyday murder.

The final image of the sleuth screaming "nothing can be solved" seems to err more towards the irreconcilability of the "romantic 2 version of murder with the mundane reality.

The bridge between these two worlds seems to be Le Roux. I wondered why he was called this. it sounds like a sleuthy sort of name, but is just a white sauce base, which itself seems a mixture of the exotic with the mundane.

For My Daughter seems to be a poem of anxiety- the anxiety of an imagined daughter and the trials tribulations and death she will endure. His apprehension against her ignorence of this seems to be the crux of the poem.

I get the impression that he would not be able to stand the anxiety of having a daughter, and that, although it seems cruel to some imagined daughter - listing all the grim possibilities, he is really insulating himself against the feeling of great aniety a daughter would engender.

I like both the poems. I think I'll take a look at his other stuff.

Here's a link to some of Kees' poems. I own his "Complete Poems" (although I don't have it now, because my son stole it).

http://www.poemhunter.com/weldon-kees/

I recommend all the "Robinson" poems. Robinson is sort of a strange alter ego for Kees. Here's one other favorite that isn't on poem hunter:


The Patient is Rallying
By Weldon Kees

Difficult to recall an emotion that is dead,
Particularly so among these unbelieved fanfares
And admonitions from a camouflaged sky.

I should have remained burdened with destinations
Perhaps, or stayed quite drunk, or obeyed
The undertaker, who was fairly charming, after all.

Or was there a room like that one, worn
With our whispers, and a great tree blossoming
Outside blue windows, warm rain blowing in the night.

There seems to be some doubt. No doubt, however,
Of the chilled and empty tissues of the mind
—Cold, cold, a great gray winter entering—
Like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube.

I read the poem a few times over the last few days and I think some meaning finally made sense to me. Kees states that he has no daughter, but yet the poem is about a daughter. So as was already pointed about the poem must be about anxiety, if he were to have a daughter. The images are very dark, but I can respect the power of the poet's fears. It's a good poem, if you give it enough time to sink in.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

The Patient is Rallying
By Weldon Kees

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I'm so new...it's my first post. I wanted to say thanks, ecurb, for introducing me to this poet...can't wait to read all he has now. I'm enjoying how rich it is with metaphors and similies , especially the powerful "chilled...like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube" to describe the onset of the death of love-lost for her. I shivered when I read it. The poet being the patient trying to recover and the undertaker being his lover is a clever and somewhat humorous metaphor in what is a sad state of affairs...that is if I understand this poem correctly. Does, "unbelieved fanfares And admonitions from a camouflaged sky" mean his ex-lover is perceived by him to be phoney in her actions towards him now?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blithe spirit

I'm so new...it's my first post. I wanted to say thanks, ecurb, for introducing me to this poet...can't wait to read all he has now. I'm enjoying how rich it is with metaphors and similies , especially the powerful "chilled...like spines of air, frozen in an ice cube" to describe the onset of the death of love-lost for her. I shivered when I read it. The poet being the patient trying to recover and the undertaker being his lover is a clever and somewhat humorous metaphor in what is a sad state of affairs...that is if I understand this poem correctly. Does, "unbelieved fanfares And admonitions from a camouflaged sky" mean his ex-lover is perceived by him to be phoney in her actions towards him now?

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I like the image of spines of air, frozen in an ice cube, too. The literal meaning of the "fanfares and admonitions" is that there's a thunderstorm, which makes it harder for the narrator to recall an emotion that is dead. For some reason, I always assumed the "undertaker" was a new lover for the ex -- who finally buried the affair (I have no reason for thinking this other than that it was my original reading of the poem).

I don't think the poem is about the ex-lover -- it's about the "emotions that are dead (and difficult to even recall)". The patient (the narrator) remembers the room he shared with his lover -- but doubts his own memory. He has no doubt about the present -- the chilled and empty present.

Yes, I agree that it's a poem about emotions that are dead and hard to recall. That's what I meant by "love lost"...his feelings of love (not lover lost).

But I didn't take the "patient" and the "undertaker" literally. I thought patient was a metaphor for him in his condition (he with dead emotions and empty tissues of the mind) and the undertaker was a metaphor for his ex who had buried his emotions.

Regarding the room...I saw it as him wondering, should he have stayed and tried to get along with her ("obeyed") or, ideally, was it possible that they could ever go back to that time when everything in the relationship was good (aka the room he described).

I didn't know the literal meaning of "fanfares and admonitions" meant thunderstorm. I've already learned something ^__^

Somewhat ironic title to that poem. Almost as if he is laughing rather sardonically at himself.

To A Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see — we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud.
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt —
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

I guess you can tell by my name and profile comment that this is one of my favorites. Thank you for posting it, Jersea. I like it for many reasons...the metaphors of nature bring it alive beautifully, but as Shelley alludes to toward the end, no poem nor book can measure up to the unpremeditated artistic expression of joy through melody that the Skylark's song can deliver. Shelley humbly admits that he's listening to the Skylark's melody and wishes the world would listen like that to his poetry.

It's interesting that Shelley's close friend Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale just one year previous to his To a Skylark. They're similar but Keat's is more negative and sad whereas Shelley's is positive and he even mentions that the Skylark is void of sadness in his life unlike humans. Shelley notes that humans could never express joy as completely therefore.

I also find it interesting that Shelley led such a tumultuous life with death of his children and moving constantly from place to place...and yet was able to write such a beautifully positive and joyous piece.

I sort of read Ode to a Nightgale, but am now motivated to go back and reread it. Not too long ago, I read Tender is the Night. The title is taken from Keat's poem.

My senses are overwhelmed by the beauty of these lines:

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

This poem is so easy to comprehend and such a delight to read that I can understand why it is a beloved poem. I'm glad that it was fun for you to reread. It certainly was a joy for me. Now when people say to me, "Oh do you know that poem, I can say yes, I do."

Love has its own periods of feeling and delight and failure. If you've been harm by love, then this poem will resonate with you and that spring will once more arrive soon.

I thought of this poem in terms of divine inspiration and the artistic process. Yes, love can still be another filter in which to understand the poem, since it is such a positive piece.

A Conservative
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly,
A-sitting on a thorn,
A black and crimson butterfly
All doleful and forlorn.

I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise.
While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.

Said I, “What can the matter be?
Why weepest thou so sore?
With garden fair and sunlight free
And flowers in goodly store,”—
But he only turned away from me
And burst into a roar.

Cried he, “My legs are thin and few
Where once I had a swarm!
Soft fuzzy fur—a joy to view—
Once kept my body warm,
Before these flapping wing-things grew,
To hamper and deform!”

At that outrageous bug I shot
The fury of mine eye;
Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
In rage and anger high,
“You ignominious idiot!
Those wings are made to fly!”

“I do not want to fly,” said he,
”I only want to squirm!”
And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
But still his voice was firm:
“I do not want to be a fly!
I want to be a worm!

O yesterday of unknown lack
To-day of unknown bliss!
I left my fool in red and black;
The last I saw was this,—
The creature madly climbing back
Into his chrysalis.

This is wonderful! Some caterpillars just don't want to be butterflies, and you cannot force caterpillars to be butterflies if they have no desire to fly, simply by screaming at them.
I must admit to being confused by the first line when I first encountered this, since I was looking for a description of the garden bed. This was probably due to my tiredness and resultant lack of mental flexibility. :)
I loved this stanza particularly for its alliterative richness:

I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise.
While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.



This caterpillar brought to my mind Auden's poem 'The Unknown Citizen', which if you haven't read, might enjoy:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15549