a distraction, not a prayer

It’s been some time since I’ve posted a poem, so here goes one.  maybe since it’s titled “The Elephant,” Emily will hate it less?  Probably not.  It’s by Dan Chiasson.

How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.

Once I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion, once I was not the elephant I find I am.

My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was

somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me

to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it in the lumbering tercets, but in my mind

I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers

breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments with balance, the high-wire act and cones.

We elephants are images of humility, as when we undertake our melancholy migrations to die.

Did you know, though, that elephants were taught to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves?

Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer.

That’s not humility you see on our long final journeys: it’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down.

a day to be remembered

here is another poem from W. S. Merwin, titled “The Anniversary of My Death.”

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

I need to get my hands on a book of his work.

with lips but half regretful

today I read an essay written by Richard Rorty in the last year of his life, in which he regrets not having spent more of that life with verse.  he discusses a few bits of poetry that had meant a great deal to him in his life, the sorts of things he turned to — not religion or philosophy — when nearing his end.  he turned to these not because they contain truths that cannot be expressed in prose, or truths that cannot be found elsewhere; indeed, he writes,

There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.

he speaks, instead, of the effect verse had on him, namely, the imagery, rhythm, and rhyme, all of which

conspire to produce a degree of compression, and thus of  impact, that only verse can achieve. Compared to the shaped charges contrived by versifiers, even the best prose is scattershot.

anyway, one “old chestnut” he quotes comes from Swinburne’s “The Garden of Prosperine,” which I then read and was very impressed by.  so I reproduce here a few of the opening and closing verses:

Here, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds’ and spent waves’ riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.

…

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
Today will die tomorrow;
Time stoops to no man’s lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.

great thoughts

another poem by Kay Ryan:

Great thoughts

do not nourish

small thoughts

as parents do children.

Like the eucalyptus,

they make the soil

beneath them barren.

Standing in a

grove of them

is hideous.

and I suppose a symphony of the loudest instruments would be a bit off-putting.

book review: Push

this is really an incredible novel, not just in terms of its plot or emotional impact, but also in terms of its structure, creativity, and — OK, yes — emotional impact.  it’s written from the perspective of an overweight, underloved pregnant 16-year-old in the mid-80s who has been emotionally and educationally neglected, not to mention abused in more than one horrible way.  although she likes school, she has never learned to read, and so much of this novel is about her progress in learning to read as she prepares for her baby and tries to escape the patterns of abuse and pain in her life.

what is most impressive about the writing is its complete use of vernacular and incorrect spellings that match speech.  unlike Junot Diaz’s novel, there aren’t numerous writers and so you don’t skip in and out of better writing.  if anything, it only gets harder as the novel includes her journal writing as she’s learning to spell and to write.  her journal also includes some of the poetry she starts writing, which, as much of the rest of the novel, is raw and inspired, even if simple.

that’s about all I’ll write to avoid spoilers.  it’s a short novel altogether, and since I could hardly put it down, I finished it in less than 24 hours, I think.

I’m not sure how much I’ll enjoy the film, which looks too heavy on the inspirational side — though to be fair, some of the material is a bit too raw to appeal to all audiences.  I just hope that they don’t water it down.  also, for the record, Monique is nowhere near as fat as she should be to play the mother!