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Category: a poem to ponder

August 17, 2012

“Lear’s Wife” – W.S. Merwin‏

“King Lear” is one of my favourite Shakespearean plays,
its only inspiring rendering however has been Kurosawa’s
“Ran“, a Japanese rendition, with some inspired literary
adjustments, that tells the tale better nevertheless than
I’ve seen anywhere before
 
but this 2008 production with Sir Ian McKellen seems at
very first glance a worthy contender, I’ll have to watch
 
 
I was reminded by this poem that Lear had never been
given a wife
 
here she finally is 
 
 
Richard
 
                      _______________ 
 
 
 
If he had ever asked me
I could have told him

If he had listened to me
it would have been
another story

I knew them before
they were born

with Goneril at my breast
I looked at the world
and saw blood in darkness
and tried to wake

with Regan at my breast
I looked at the world
and covered my mouth

with Cordelia in my arms
at my breast
I wanted to call out to her
in love and helplessness
and I wept

as for him
he had forgotten me
even before they did

only Cordelia
did not forget
anything
but when asked she said
nothing

 
 
                  W. S. Merwin  
 
 
 
 
 
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August 16, 2012

XX. Beloved, my beloved, when I think – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XX. Beloved, my beloved, when I think

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sat alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
No moment at thy voice, but, link by link,
Went counting all my chains as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand, – why, thus I drink
Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech, – nor ever cull
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

__________________________

even at her twentieth poem already about her love
Elizabeth doesn’t become insipid, mawkish, no longer
inspiring, but delivers a conclusion of substance and
insight and relevance, though the answer to her
question remains a question

despite having been hopeless in her earlier “silence …,
… counting all [her] chains”, never even having imagined
his “voice”, nor the possibility of those punishing irons
“fall[ing] off at any blow / Struck by [his] possible hand”,
never having ever had an inkling of him before his now
evident presence, she sees the flaw in the argument of
“Atheists”, who affirm the absence of light having only
known darkness, the absence of God or, it would
appear as in her own experience, the quite comparable
absence of love

it’s hard to resist such a persuasive argument, with its
shades of Plato‘s chained prisoners in his allegory of
the cave, where they can’t imagine the sun, standing
in for Knowledge, for never having been made aware
of it, beings with glimpses only of a perhaps
incandescent environment that some, including Plato
and now the appropriately anointed Elizabeth, would
have as the more searching Truth

Robert was on-again off-again in his professions of
faith until the very end, a not unRomantic position,
God had been irreversibly unsettled by then by
Science, during the earlier pre-Revolutionary days,
Humpty Dumpty had been, as it were, irrevocably
unseated from his once unimpeachable wall, never
to be so impregnable again

this poem is probably a bit of a playful connubial
dig by a nevertheless ardent still Christian

go girl

Richard

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July 22, 2012

How to Listen to Classical Music: Beginner’s Manual

 
How to Listen to Classical Music: Beginner’s Manual    
 
                                     (after Pamela Spiro Wagner) 
 
            First, forget everything you have learned,
            that Classical Music is difficult,
            that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
            with your high school equivalency diploma,
            your steel-tipped boots,
            or your white-collar misunderstandings.    
 
            Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
            the best Classical Music means what it says and says it.
 
            To listen to Classical Music requires only courage
            enough to leap from the edge
            and trust.
 
            Treat Classical Music like dirt,
            humus rich and heavy from the garden.
            Later it will become the fat tomatoes
            and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.
 
            Classical Music demands surrender,
            language saying what is true,
            doing holy things to the ordinary.

            Listen to just one Classical work a day.
            Someday an irresistible composition may open in your heart
            like a daffodil offering its cup
            to the sun.
 
            When you can identify the Mozart fantasia 
            among the four of his sonatas I’ve included here in this gentle message,
            close this manual.
 
            Congratulations.
            You are now hearing 
            as opposed to listening to Classical Music 
 
 
Richard 
 
 
 
 
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July 16, 2012

XlX. The soul’s Rialto hath its merchandize – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XlX The soul’s Rialto hath its merchandize

The soul’s Rialto hath its merchandize;
I barter curl for curl upon that mart,
And from my poet’s forehead to my heart
Receive this lock which outweighs argosies, –
As purply black, as erst to Pindar’s eyes
The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart
The nine white Muse-brows. For this counters part,…
The bay crown’s shade, Beloved, I surmise,
Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black!
Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath,
I tie the shadows safe from gliding back,
And lay the gift where nothing hindereth;
Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack
No natural heat till mine grows cold in death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

Elizabeth in the last poem has just given a
lock of her own hair to her “poet”, now
Robert returns his own tonsorial favour

this exchange, this particular instance of
“mechandiz[ing]”, would baffle merchants –
“counters”, she calls them, somewhat
derisively – would render deliberations
moot whereby a curl “outweighs” very
“argosies”, flotillas – see Jason and the
Argonauts, their golden cargo, for an
etymology

Pindar is one of the nine lyric poets of Greek
antiquity, whose brows were touched by the
nine Greek muses, Clio, Thalia, Erato, Euterpe,
Polyhymnia, Calliope, Terpsichore, Urania,
Melpomene, may they forever inspire

the “bay crown” is the laurel her victor still
may wear to honour his celebrated literary
achievements

“purpureal” is another word for purple

Elizabeth‘s love is unquestionably erudite,
perhaps a little indeed too “purple” were it
not for the beauty, and piercing sincerity, of
her vaunted sentiment

as it is she overcomes her own arcane even
references to deliver staunch and poignant,
I think, relevance, enough to be moved and
admire

long live Elizabeth

Richard

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July 14, 2012

XVlll. I never gave a lock of hair away – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XVlll. I never gave a lock of hair away

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say
“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more: it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears
Would take this first, but Love is justified, –
Take it thou, – finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_______________________________

with her one word, “this”, peremptory and indicative,
Elizabeth anchors us to a common present, making
us witness to the scene, a scene of the most tender
intimacies

these effortlessly transcend by their apparent
urgency and truth the usual meter of a sonnet,
leaving in the dust however always only perfect
rhymes, like wooden sentinels left twirling in too
strong a wind

enough of them however to constitute a poem

or what’s a poem

the same kind of thing happens in the history
of music, where notes skip deftly over a bar
without even the semblance of an
acknowledging curtsy, caught up in the more
compelling reality of their vivid and impetuous
imagination, like children who haven’t learned
quite all the rules yet

in Mozart, his piano sonata in D major, K576,
here for instance, the incorrigible child is
ever even present, even ever evident

both poets reflect a search for greater
authenticity, challenging established ideas
of beauty in its unending deliberation with
truth, see Keats on this irreducible dichotomy

Richard

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July 13, 2012

XVll. My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XVll. My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes

My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes
God set between His After and Before,
And strike up and strike off the general roar
Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats
In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind’s forlornest uses, thou canst pour
From thence into their ears. God’s will devotes
Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine.
How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?
A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing – of palm or pine?
A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

it is to be remembered that Robert Browning at the
time was considered a poet of growing authority
though Elizabeth herself had not been of no
consequence, and her star was not to lose its
brilliance in the literary firmament throughout her
lifetime and beyond, but Robert was a man and
benefited therefore from greater consideration
than would’ve then a woman, a not unfamiliar
situation even now

the institutional role of women was pretty well
the one that Elizabeth naturally took on, when
women had no other recourse but to be
dependent, if not graced with comfortable
independent means, which in fact Elizabeth
was

with such an unmistakable gift as hers, however,
I can’t imagine that beyond the genuine love she
manifests for her husband throughout her poems
she would have been unaware of her own
considerable worth, ever granting that love can
be even ever so blind, my own love for instance
riding each morning for me preternaturally and
however improbably the very chariot of a
blinding, mesmerizing, sun

“Choose” though, she at the very last commands,
striking again a telling imperative

note the elision of the rhyme through several
verses in the poem giving the lines a momentum
that lets the poem fly, making the matter
compelling, urgent

compare Mozart soaring above the bar lines
when the piano is comparably unleashed, to
let the music make a similar irrepressible magic

prose is finding its way into poetry here, poetry
conversely into prose

Richard

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July 10, 2012

XVl. And yet, because thou overcomest so – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XVl. And yet, because thou overcomest so

And yet, because thou overcomest so,
Because thou art more noble and like a king,
Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling
Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow
Too close against thine heart henceforth to know
How it shook when alone. Why, conquering
May prove as lordly and complete a thing
In lifting upward, as in crushing low!
And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword
To one who lifts him from the bloody earth,
Even so, Beloved, I at last record,
Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth,
I rise above abasement at the word.
Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

by the very fact of being king, she says, you elevate
me to the status of being queen, be I ever so humble

therefore I cede, and duly accept, however mightily
encumbered, thy proferred crown

long live, I say, Elizabeth

and, morally as well as aesthetically inspired, I
proclaim, wow

Richard

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July 8, 2012

XV. Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XV. Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear

Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear
Too calm and sad a face in front of thine;
For we two look two ways, and cannot shine
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.
On me thou lookest with no doubting care,
As on a bee shut in a crystalline;
Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love’s divine,
And to spread wing and fly in the outer air
Were most impossible failure, if I strove
To fail so. But I look on thee – on thee –
Beholding, besides love, the end of love,
Hearing oblivion beyond memory;
As one who sits and gazes from above,
Over the rivers to the bitter sea.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

________________

having been flung into the maelstrom of love Elizabeth
Barrett Browning has now conceded that her condition is
a fact, she might as well deal with it

and deal with it she does, in imperatives, “Accuse me not”,
she orders, after the many other stipulations she musters
in the last, her XIVth of these poems, where “… love me
for love’s sake”, she demands after a string of other, albeit
precautionary, edicts

there are parameters to this involvement, she insists, you
must love me for who I am if we are to share destinies too
profound, and too fraught, to squander

in this I suspect she will be a woman of steel

Richard

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July 5, 2012

Xlll. And wilt thou have me fashion into speech – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

Xlll. And wilt thou have me fashion into speech

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light on each? –
I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirits so far off
From myself – me – that I should bring thee proof
In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief, –
Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
And rend the garment of my life, in brief,
By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,
Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________________

there are circumlocutions in Romantic poetry
that are often hard to follow, and the work of
sorting these out just as often will lead to
giving the poem a pass, how pertinent can
a poem be, you ask, as you cursorily lay it
to rest

unless a line or two, a phrase, a cadence, an
arresting truth you find, becomes enough to
probe it further, to read again with a magnifying
glass this time, checking the entrails, the parts
of speech, the punctuation, their interactions,
the chemistry

this alone is good for your head

the word “rend” upended me here, who, I
wondered, rent, the text is clear but “however
wooed” interjects to sow confusion, a comma
after “wooed”, rather than a hyphen, confirms
that she herself is breaking up inside for fear
of speaking out her anguish, a hyphen
would’ve led us to him

still a bit convoluted, but the underlying
sentiment remains incontrovertibly raw
and clear

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a mess, but
has found a solid anchor in the refuge of
her manifestly masterful, mistressful, if you’d
rather, poems, though I suspect she’ll never
attain belief in her own connubial validity

van Gogh was also so existentially rent

and also Goethe’s Werther, the premier Romantic
hero, who famously foregos his even life for lack
of validating love

Elizabeth Barrett Browning remains to bear it,
live it, for us, iconically

go, I would think, though ever so distraught,
dear and magnificent Elizabeth

Richard

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June 29, 2012

Xll. Indeed this very love which is my boast – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

Xll. Indeed this very love which is my boast

Indeed this very love which is my boast,
And which, when rising up from breast to brow,
Doth crown me with a ruby large enow
To draw men’s eyes and prove the inner cost, –
This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,
I should not love withal, unless that thou
Hadst set me an example, shown me how,
When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,
And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak
Of love even, as a good thing of my own:
Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,
And placed it by thee on a golden throne, –
And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)
Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_______________________

though the sonnet has a history going back to the
13th Century, English poets probably found their
soul spring in Shakespeare, all CLlV of his seminal
blueprints

you’ll notice the order of rhymes, the set number of
lines of verse, 14, are the same, Barrett Browning
hides however her consonant sounds by blurring
the meter as she forces it into the following line by
the dictates of correct grammar and meaning

the result is Romantic urgency, instead of the more
controlled poetry of a ceremonious, therefore less
indulgent, more rigidly formal, monarchic court, and
age

majesty has ceded here to democracy, for better
or for worse

Richard

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