# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  Poetry Bookclub 2

## quasimodo1

In an attempt to bring this discussion group back to life, let me start with some suggestions. If anyone interested has any others, please post them. The choices are Billy Collins (The Trouble with Poetry, 2005), Sylvia Plath (Crossing the Water, 1971, Theodore Roethke (Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical Poems, 1963), Langston Hughes (The Panther & the Lash, 1992), and Marianne Moore (Illusion is More Precise than Precision: The Poetry of Marianne Moore, 1992). If this shows any signs of life, there will be a vote/poll.

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## Dark Muse

I would love to do Sylvia Plath

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## JBI

I would love to do Roethke, and perhaps Collins, but not crazy about the others. Maybe we can add a few more multicultural ones for the final poll? I think the only one I haven't read in collected works is Collins.

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## Jozanny

Billy Collins? Isn't that just a shade on this side of pandering?  :Wink:

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## stlukesguild

I could go for Roethke... perhaps Marianne Moore (although Elizabeth Bishop would be better... :Biggrin: )

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## JBI

How about adding Octavio Paz, Giussepe Ungaretti, and Anna Akhmatova to the list, or some other voices? It seems blasphemous to have a list of all Americans.

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## Jozanny

I would not want to turn this into a free for all, of course, but in my limited aesthetic opinion,  Judith Johnson is more interesting than Collins, fresher than Plath, and more undervalued.

_Ice Lizards_ is not easy to get ones hands on, however.

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## Dark Muse

> I could go for Roethke... perhaps Marianne Moore (although Elizabeth Bishop would be better...)


Bishop would be my second choice to Plath

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## quasimodo1

Seems like we are adding Octavio Paz, Giussepe Ungaretti, Anna Akhmatova and Judith Johnson to the preliminary list. If anyone has specific collections in mind, please post them. Let me post some collections by these poets. q1

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## quasimodo1

And Elizabeth Bishop...also in preliminary list.

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## JBI

http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems...ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Garde...874502&sr=8-13

http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems...9874698&sr=1-4

All those are within modest lengths, the longest being Ungaretti, though he is cut in half because it is a bilingual edition.

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## quasimodo1

Poetry Bookclub 2

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
6:57 PM

Authors and collections

Billy Collins THE TROUBLE WITH POETRY 2005

Sylvia Plath CROSSING THE WATER 1971

Theodore Roethke SEQUENCE: SOMETIMES METAPHYSICAL POEMS 1963

Langston Hughes THE PANTHER & THE LASH 1992

Marianne Moore ILLUSION IS MORE PRECISE THAN PRECISION: THE POETRY OF MARIANNE MOORE 1992

Giusseppe Ungaretti SELECTED POEMS: A BILINGUAL EDITION 2002

THE PROMISED LAND 1950

Octavio Paz A TALE OF TWO GARDENS: POEMS FROM INDIA 1952-1995 (last copyright by Octavio Paz and Elizabeth Bishop, 1972)

ARBOL ADENTRO (A Tree Within) 1987

Anna Akhmatova SELECTED POEMS (Penquin Classics) 1985

TWENTY POEMS (translated by Jane Keynon) 1985

Judith Johnson THE ICE LIZARD: POEMS, 1977-1988 1992

Elizabeth Bishop POEMS: NORTH AND SOUTH- A COLD SPRING 1955

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## Virgil

Quasi, I forget how this works. Wll we be voting for one of those books? 

As a side note, I think Theodore Roethke is so under rated. I will vote for him.  :Smile:

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## quasimodo1

hey Virgil, I think we have to reduce this list to five for a vote. Roethke is great but so are all of these. Akhmatova has my vote, followed by Marianne Moore and Ungaretti.

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## Virgil

> hey Virgil, I think we have to reduce this list to five for a vote. Roethke is great but so are all of these. Akhmatova has my vote, followed by Marianne Moore and Ungaretti.


So what am I supposed to do, pick two others? I'll go with Eizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore.

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## quasimodo1

We need a first choice for the elimination. So you would go with Roethke, yes? Also, at this point, other collections can be added.

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## stlukesguild

Again... I would be in for Roethke. He was certainly a good choice and it has been a while since I've read him. Out of the list so far my second choice would be Paz and third Akhmatova.

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## quasimodo1

OK then, pick three in decending order and I'll do the handicapping. How about Sunday, 12 midnight for a cutoff on selections?

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## Virgil

Ok. Roethke, Bishop, Moore.

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## quasimodo1

Taking note of these choices... The others involved in first poetry bookclub were Quark, JBI, DARK MUSE, Dapper Drake, Il Penseroso and sofia 82. They will get a heads-up.

Scheherazade has informed me that we can vote on ten options. So, unless there is other input, we'll have that vote Monday.

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## quasimodo1

"The Lanyard" {from the collection, THE TROUBLE WITH POETRY, by Billy Collinns}

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

Crossing the Water {from the collection of the same name by Sylvia Plath}
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here? 
Their shadows must cover Canada. 

A little light is filtering from the water flowers. 
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry: 
They are round and flat and full of dark advice. 

Cold worlds shake from the oar. 
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes. 
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand; ... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/32.html Some selections of Roethke's poetry, not necessarily from the collection mentioned above.

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## Dark Muse

Plath, Bishop, Akhmatova

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## quasimodo1

Thank you Muse. A sample of Langston Hughes... The Weary Blues 



Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, 
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, 
I heard a Negro play. 
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night 
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light 
He did a lazy sway. . . . 
He did a lazy sway. . . . 
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues. 
With his ebony hands on each ivory key 
He made that poor piano moan with melody. 
O Blues! 
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool 
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. 
Sweet Blues! 
Coming from a black man’s soul. 
O Blues! 
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone 
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan— 
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world, 
Ain’t got nobody but ma self. 
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’ 
And put ma troubles on the shelf.” ... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

Spenser's Ireland 
by Marianne Moore 


has not altered;--
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Denunciations do not affect
the culprit; nor blows, but it
is torture to him to not be spoken to.
They're natural,--
the coat, like Venus'
mantle lined with stars,
buttoned close at the neck,-the sleeves new from disuse.

If in Ireland
they play the harp backward at need,
and gather at midday the seed
of the fern, eluding
their "giants all covered with iron," might
there be fern seed for unlearn-
ing obduracy and for reinstating
the enchantment?
Hindered characters
seldom have mothers
in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.

It was Irish;
a match not a marriage was made
when my great great grandmother'd said
with native genius for
disunion, "Although your suitor be
perfection, one objection
is enough; he is not
Irish." Outwitting
the fairies, befriending the furies,
whoever again
and again says, "I'll never give in," never sees

that you're not free
until you've been made captive by
supreme belief,--credulity ... {excerpt}

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## Jozanny

If I understand quasi correctly, this is my vote:

1.Roethke
2.Johnson
3.Ungaretti

I must say, I am a practitioner of the art quasi, and had something of a small press recognition in the 80's--but I tip my hat--the breadth and depth of your dedication is a shining example, even for a cynic like me.

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## quasimodo1

Gracias Jozanny (there's a title for something). A sampling of Ungaretti... 
Variations On Nothing


That negligible bit of sand which slides
Without a sound and settles in the hourglass, 
And the fleeting impressions on the fleshy-pink, 
The perishable fleshy-pink, of a cloud...

Then a hand that turns over the hourglass, 
The going back for flowing back, of sand, 
The quiet silvering of a cloud
In the first few lead-gray seconds of dawn... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

"An enormous mass of liquid mercury, barely undulating; vague hills in the distance; flocks of birds; a pale sky and scraps of pink clouds... Little by little the white-and-blue architecture of the city sprouted up, a stream of smoke from a chimney, the ochre and green stains of a distant garden. An arch of stone appeared, planed on a dock and crowned with four little towers in the shape of pine trees. Someone leaning on the railing beside me exclaimed, 'The Gateway of India!'" Octavio Paz

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## quasimodo1

...waves of heat; huge gray and red buildings, a Victorian London growing among palm trees and banyans like a recurrent nightmare, leprous walls, wide and beautiful avenues, huge unfamiliar trees, stinking alleyways,... ...women in red, blue, yellow, deliriously colored saris, some solar, some nocturnal, dark-haired women with bracelets on their ankles and sandals made not for the burning asphalt but for fields... ...public gardens overwhelmed by the heat, monkeys in the cornices of the buildings, **** and jasmine, homeless boys.... Octavio Paz

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## quasimodo1

It rained, the earth dressed and became naked, snakes left their holes, the moon was made of water, the sun was water, the sky took out its braids and its braids were unraveled rivers, the rivers swallowed villages, death and life were jumbled, dough of mud and sun, season of lust and plague, season of lightning on a sandalwood tree, mutilated genital stars rotting, reviving in your womb, mother India, girl India, drenched in semen, sap, poisons, juices.
({from A Tale of Two Gardens, by Octavio Paz}

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## quasimodo1

My breast grew helplessly cold,
But my steps were light.
I pulled the glove from my left hand
Mistakenly onto my right.

It seemed there were so many steps,
But I knew there were only three!
Amidst the maples an autumn whisper
Pleaded: "Die with me!

I'm led astray by evil
Fate, so black and so untrue."
I answered: "I, too, dear one!
I, too, will die with you..." {by Anna Akhmatova, excerpt from Song of the Final Meeting}

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## quasimodo1

http://www.albany.edu/~jej84/Rune/runeline1.htm Judith Johnson, poet and performance artist, has created an unusual, digital poetry format.

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## quasimodo1

Visits to St. Elizabeths 
by Elizabeth Bishop 


[1950]

This is the house of Bedlam.

This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the time 
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a sailor 
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam. {excerpt...St. Eliziabeths refers to a psychiatric hospital in Washington, DC}

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## Jozanny

Mmm, quasi, I tried to pm you and cannot...if it is a glitch or your preferences, I am leaving now and will try to respond at another time. Good evening to you.

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## Il Penseroso

I won't vote because I'm really not sure how much I'll be able to participate, and I wouldn't want to skew the results without including myself in the discussions. But I'll do my best to get my hands on whatever is selected to at least be able to read along with the group.

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## quasimodo1

To Il Penseroso: I don't think it would alter the results and if I might dare to speak for some others...we'd love to have your input.

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## Il Penseroso

Alright, if you insist.  :Smile: 

1. Octavio Paz
2. Theodore Roethke
3. Elizabeth Bishop

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## JBI

Ungaretti
Paz
Bishop

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## Jozanny

I hate to come off as a dunce, but the discussion will start after Sunday? I'd have to depend on my free library to be able to join in faster than deploying Amazon, but the library has a deplorable poetry collection, and uses some kind of color dot system for which can be checked out and which cannot.

I have no ideal why, since all fiction is available--but they are more restrictive with research material, and maybe poets fall under that category.

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## quasimodo1

To Jozanny and others: Since acquiring the text might take some time, after one is selected...we will probably begin some days after Monday. I might be able to post one or two poems, depending on the text, and that could get us started.

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## quasimodo1

Using a peculiar handicapping formula, these are the ratings for the selected poets: 0 for Hughes/ 1 for Johnson/ 3 for Collins/ 4 for Moore/ 5 for Ungaretti and Akhmatova/ 6 for Paz/ 7 for Bishop/ 8 for Plath/ and 9 for Roethke. Just a preminary evaluation which might stand until the real vote.

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## Jozanny

Thank you quasi.

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## quasimodo1

Don't mean to imply that the discussion is closed to just members; it will not be. The members participating so far are Stlukesguild, JBI, Quark, Dark Muse, Dapper Drake, Virgil, Il Penseroso, Sofia 82, Jozanny, myself and ANYONE ELSE. Looking for more imput on the selected authors and collections...

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## quasimodo1

Moving along at this dizzying pace...it apparently is Roethke that will be discussed. The original collection, Sequence: Sometimes Metaphysical Poems (1963) is the topic. Unless there is a move to chose any of the following:

Poetry Open House, Knopf, 1941.
 
The Lost Son and Other Poems, Doubleday, 1948.

Praise to the End!, Doubleday, 1951.

The Waking: Poems 1933-1953, Doubleday, 1953.

Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse of Theodore Roethke, Secker & Warburg, 1957, Doubleday, 1958.

I Am! Says the Lamb, Doubleday, 1961.



The Far Field, Doubleday, 1964.

The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, Doubleday, 1966.

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## Dark Muse

Roethke is a new one to me, so I will try and see if I can get a hold of some of his stuff to look at.

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## stlukesguild

I have Words for the Wind which is a volume of Roethke's collected poems through 1958. It appears I'll need to get an updated collected works to include those of _Sometimes Metaphysical Poems_. I am not at all against that. I like what I've read by Roethke and would certainly not be adverse to reading more. One problem, Quasi. I just checked into Amazon and the volume, Sometimes Metaphysical Poems is currently unavailable (out of print?). _The Collected Poems_, which runs around $10 may be the best alternative... or the library... but I prefer my own books so that I can jot notes, highlight, etc...

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## quasimodo1

As Stlukesguild has posted, Sometimes Metaphysical Poems is not available so another text which is available could be the text to be discussed. http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poem...0482229&sr=8-1 Anyone interested in the Poetry Bookclub...please advise if this is satisfactory. Obviously, a purchase might be required. Anyone interested in a final vote for the top five poets can make that happen as well. They are in descending order...Roethke, Plath, Bishop, Paz and Ungaretti tied with Akhmatova.

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## quasimodo1

IN A DARK TIME

In a dark time, eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks-- is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. ...


{excerpt, 1964}

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## quasimodo1

Open House 


My secrets cry aloud. 
I have no need for tongue. 
My heart keeps open house, 
My doors are widely swung. 
An epic of the eyes 
My love, with no disguise. 


My truths are all foreknown, 
This anguish self-revealed. 
Im naked to the bone, 
With nakedness my shield. 
Myself is what I wear: 
I keep the spirit spare. ... {excerpt}





{Theodore Roethke, Open House from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1941 by Theodore Roethke.}

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## stlukesguild

Quasi... I have no problem with using Roethke's Collected Poems. If it's all agreed I'll put in an order to Amazon immediately and until it arrives I can utilize _Words for the Wind_ which covers the collected poems up to 1958. I also have the collected works of Paz and Bishop and a collection of Akhmatova. I thought I had something by Ungaretti... but actually don't. As for Plath... well let's just say I'm not all that fond of the confessional poets and leave it at that. :Biggrin:

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## Jozanny

I will not be joining in. I just ordered a substantial scholarly work, and on a personal level I have too much going on, sorry. If the selected text is unavailable, my branch isn't likely to have it.

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## quasimodo1

Infirmity 


In purest song one plays the constant fool 
As changes shimmer in the inner eye. 
I stare and stare into a deepening pool 
And tell myself my image cannot die. 
I love myself: thats my one constancy. 
Oh, to be something else, yet still to be! 


Sweet Christ, rejoice in my infirmity; 
Theres little left I care to call my own. 
Today they drained the fluid from a knee 
And pumped a shoulder full of cortisone; 
Thus I conform to my divinity 
By dying inward, like an aging tree. 


The instant ages on the living eye; 
Light on its rounds, a pure extreme of light 
Breaks on me as my meager flesh breaks down 
The soul delights in that extremity. 
Blessed the meek; they shall inherit wrath; 
Im son and father of my only death. 


A mind too active is no mind at all; 
The deep eye sees the shimmer on the stone; 
The eternal seeks, and finds, the temporal, 
The change from dark to light of the slow moon, 
Dead to myself, and all I hold most dear, 
I move beyond the reach of wind and fire. ... {four of six stanzas}



Theodore Roethke, Infirmity from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1963 by Beatrice Roethke

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## quasimodo1

To get this discussion started, before it needs CPR, we will use a website and perhaps even eliminate the need of purchasing a text...perhaps. The link, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...tml/?id=172122 will have the rest of this poem by Roethke...Big Wind 

BIG WIND

Where were the greenhouses going, 
Lunging into the lashing 
Wind driving water 
So far down the river 
All the faucets stopped? 
So we drained the manure-machine 
For the steam plant, 
Pumping the stale mixture 
Into the rusty boilers, 
Watching the pressure gauge 
Waver over to red, 
As the seams hissed 
And the live steam 
Drove to the far 
End of the rose-house, 
Where the worst wind was, 
Creaking the cypress window-frames, 
Cracking so much thin glass 
We stayed all night, 
Stuffing the holes with burlap; .....

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## quasimodo1

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry
(edited by David Lehman)

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan. His father owned what one visitor from Holland
Called "the finest greenhouse in America." When Roethke was fourteen, the greenhouse--Roethke's
"symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth" --was sold after a bitter dispute between
Otto, the poet's father, and Otto's brother Charles. In the aftermath, Charles committed suicide; Otto
Died of cancer mere months later. Roethke, who had a history of mental breakdowns, taught for many
Years at the University of Washington, where his devoted students included Richard Hugo, Carolyn Kizer, David Wagoner, and James Wright. "Write like someone else" was Roethke's best pedagogic 
Advice. Of his 1948 book THE LOST SON, the author said, "In spite of all the muck and welter, the dark, thee dreck of these poems, I count myself among the happy poets." He suffered a fatal hear attack in a 
Friend's swimming pool in 1963.

{This brief bio of Roethke is, I assume, David Lehman's way of engaging the reader for the poems to follow in this anthology. I am quoting it here because of the greenhouse reference.}

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## quasimodo1

The second poem from this website... http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=172123 is "Child on top of a Greenhouse" and ought to be included in any discussion of the first poem.

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## quasimodo1

Book to be the topic: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, Doubleday, 1966. One outlet for purchase= http://www.alibris.com/search/books/...dore%20Roethke

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## Virgil

> Book to be the topic: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, Doubleday, 1966. One outlet for purchase= http://www.alibris.com/search/books/...dore%20Roethke


Oh great, Roethke was selected and I actually have that book. I will have to find it.

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## quasimodo1

Thanks Virgil. Anybody having difficulty finding/acquiring the text? I have an extra and can ship it anywhere USA. q1

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## JBI

I'm still waiting on my copy from the library - I can't buy it because I just dropped 700$ for school books, and I am broke beyond belief.

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## Jozanny

Perhaps in the future we can check which collections are available in libraries or in print at a large distributor? I know with poetry collections this is chancy, but I didn't know when the nominating process was ongoing that the edition of Roethke selected was out of print.

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## JBI

> Perhaps in the future we can check which collections are available in libraries or in print at a large distributor? I know with poetry collections this is chancy, but I didn't know when the nominating process was ongoing that the edition of Roethke selected was out of print.


It wouldn't matter; the collected Roethke is hardly more expensive than the anthology would have been anyway; in truth, you get more Roethke for your buck this way.

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## Dark Muse

> Thanks Virgil. Anybody having difficulty finding/acquiring the text? I have an extra and can ship it anywhere USA. q1


If it would not be too much trouble, I would take you up on that. I don't really like to buy things online, so I don't if I will be able to get a hold of a copy of the book.

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## quasimodo1

Anyone wanting the text of the first poem, please speak up.

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## Virgil

Quasi, how are going to go through the book? Last time we went poem by poem and it was grueling and tiring and we never got through it. I think it would be too much to discuss every poem in the collection. I wish there was an easier way. One thought would be that each of us took turns selecting a poem.

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## quasimodo1

Virgil, Your way sounds perfect. As you might have noticed, I sent the text of the first poem to all the players, at least those expressing interest so far. At this point, the method of approaching the book is open. I'm just trying to keep this thread from malingering...a project I'm quite fond of.

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## Dark Muse

Yes I agree Virgil's idea does sound interesting

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## quasimodo1

To awassini: Professor, if your comment is on topic and since very few here speak either Farsi or Arabic, perhaps you could translate.

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## quasimodo1

Virgil and Dark Muse, Having each "member" choose a poem for discussion will be the loose rule. We could start with a look at "Feud" if there is any interest in the poem. Also, and please add to this if possible, the current group is composed of Dark Muse, Dapper Drake, Il Penseroso, JBI, Jozanny, Quark, myself, Sofia 82, Stlukesguild and Virgil.

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## stlukesguild

Since the Rothke is agreed upon I'll pick up a copy of the Collected Poems at my local Borders (I saw it there last week). I like the idea of picking a specific poem each... perhaps as a starting point... for discussion. So how does this discussion work beyond that?

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## quasimodo1

Stlukes: You ask a question that you are better suited to answer. A free-for-all approach to discussion rarely works as well as some format whether parliamentary or a template.

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## quasimodo1

There are so many possibilities for an easy choice but I wanted a poem at once representatve and challenging, and THE SHAPE OF FIRE (pp 61--63) is clearly both. At this point, after one reading...I can't say I have much of an idea about its meaning. Let the speeches begin.

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## quasimodo1

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke {FIRST POEM FOR DISCUSSION}
PP 61-63

THE SHAPE OF THE FIRE

I

What's this? A dish for at lips
Who says? A nameless stranger.
Is he a bird or a tree? Not everyone can tell.

Water recedes to the crying of spiders.
An old scow bumps over black rocks.
A cracked pod calls.

Mother me out of here. What more will the bones allow?
Will the sea give the wind suck? A toad folds into a stone.
These flowers are all fangs. Comfort me, fury.
Wake me, witch, we'll do the dance of rotten sticks.

Shale loosens. Marl reaches into the field. Small birds pass over water.
Spirit, come near. This is only the edge of whiteness.
I can't laugh at a procession of dogs.

In the hour of ripeness the tree is barren.
The she-bear mopes under the hill.
Mother, mother, stir from your cave of sorrow.

A low mouth laps water. Weeds, weeds, how I love you.
The arbor is cooler. Farewell, farewell, fond worm.
The warm comes without sound.

II

Where's the eye?
The eye's in the sty.
The ear's not here
Beneath the hair.
When I took off my clothes
To find a nose,
There was only one shoe
For the waltz of To,
The pinch of Where.

Time for the flat-headed man. I recognize that listener,
Him with the platitudes and rubber doughnuts,
Melting a the knees a varicose horror.
Hello, hello. My nerves knew you, dear boy.
Have you come to unhinge my shadow?
Last night I slept in the pits of a tongue.
The silver fish ran in and out of my special bindings;
I grew tired of the ritual of names and the assistant keeper of the
Mollusks:
Up over a viaduct I came, to the snakes and sticks of another winter,
A two-legged dog hunting a new horizon of howls.
The wind sharpened itself on a rock;
A voice sang:

Pleasure on ground
Has no sound,
Easily maddens
The uneasy man.

Who, careless, slips
In coiling ooze
Is trapped to the lips,
Leaves mare than shoes;



Must pull off clothes
To jerk like a frog
On belly and nose
From the sucking bog.

My meat eats me. Who waits at the gate?
Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.
Renew the light, lewd whisper.
{two of five parts}

----------


## Dark Muse

I will have to wait untill I can read the whole poem, but so far, I have no idea what it is about. It just sounds like a random collection of images, though some of them are kind of cool, they make no acutal sense.

----------


## quasimodo1

After some research and because this poem seems so inaccessible, here are a few ideas about its makeup: The poems in this series, including "The Lost Son" are psychological comparisons, similar to what the German poets used to call a "bildungsroman" but also quite different because the poems don't show a linear progression from innocence to ethical strength. Also relative to the psychological factor is this quote from "Madness in the New Poetry" by Peter Davison..."Is madness a conflict between imagination and reality? (Theodore Roethke would call it "nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.") Perhaps, but what else but that very conflict gives rise to poetry? Where madness enters in we may expect incoherence; but let us take care to discriminate between the incoherence of not knowing how, and the incoherence of reaching beyond. Madness without poetry can sometimes, through the excitement that rises from it, arouse in the reader feelings much like those that would be aroused by poetry without madness. Longinus defined the difference as between the sublime and the beautiful; but twentieth-century psychiatric madness has all too little of the sublime about it. Where it engages the poet too closely with himself it tends to damage poetry, for the self should be the reservoir of poetry rather than its shallop. Poetry has suffered long from the preponderance of the idea that it exists to scratch the poet's itch. When madness enters in, the poet may try to cure himself upon the page, or to drive himself on to further intoxications of madness. If madness damages poetry, poetry must be defended. The poet as poet bears responsibility for the excellence and wholeness of his poem more than for his self's wholeness, no matter how mad he happens to be. In examining some of the books of verse published in the last year, I have kept in mind poetry before madness. Let us watch the outcome of each struggle." http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/65jan/davison.htm

----------


## Dark Muse

Hehe I am trying to make heads or tails out of this poem




> Is he a bird or a tree? Not everyone can tell.


I really like this mine though it still somwhat baffles me, but from the other referecens within the first part of the poem, seems to be about the relationship or struggle between mother and sun. 




> Water recedes to the crying of spiders.
> An old scow bumps over black rocks.
> A cracked pod calls.


I really like this but have no idea what to make of it




> Mother me out of here. What more will the bones allow?
> Will the sea give the wind suck? A toad folds into a stone.
> These flowers are all fangs. Comfort me, fury.
> Wake me, witch, we'll do the dance of rotten sticks.


This makes me think of an old hag 

The contradiction of the line between the flowers and the fangs seem interesting, as it seems to suggest that somthing which should be comforting has taken a negative turn here, it puts me in the mind of an overbearing mother figure who suffocates her children and will not let them go. 




> Shale loosens. Marl reaches into the field. Small birds pass over water.Spirit, come near. This is only the edge of whiteness.
> I can't laugh at a procession of dogs.


There seems to be a lot of refrences to water 




> In the hour of ripeness the tree is barren.
> The she-bear mopes under the hill.
> Mother, mother, stir from your cave of sorrow.


I find this interesting, the use of the word barren, placed in connection with the idea of a mother. It could almost be an "empty nest" syndrom, with the moping, and retreating in the cave of sorrow. Not coping with her children growing.

----------


## quasimodo1

"Time for the flat-headed man. I recognize that listener,
Him with the platitudes and rubber doughnuts,
Melting a the knees a varicose horror.
Hello, hello. My nerves knew you, dear boy.
Have you come to unhinge my shadow?
Last night I slept in the pits of a tongue.
The silver fish ran in and out of my special bindings;
I grew tired of the ritual of names and the assistant keeper of the
Mollusks:
Up over a viaduct I came, to the snakes and sticks of another winter,
A two-legged dog hunting a new horizon of howls.
The wind sharpened itself on a rock;" As you mentioned Muse, there are many references to water and to many things you would be familiar with and fond of if your early life was lived amidst greenhouses. This "greenhouse" effect (no pun) comes through in almost all Roethke's poetry. In this one, I'm still trying to make connections between the text and the authors psychological beginnings. In the passage above, his father is a clear reference but just how the son would "unhinge" him, I'm still guessing.

----------


## Virgil

Are we discussing this poem: "Feud"? 
Is this an early poem Quasi? It doesn't seem like Roethke's mature style, though a can pick up a echo. Here's the first stanza:




> Corruption reaps the young; you dread
> The menace of ancestral eyes;
> Recoiling from the serpent head
> Of fate, you blubber in surprise.


One thing I find interesting, and I do think Roethke employs this again, and that is the address to "you." "You dread," "you blubber," he puts the reader into the poem. It becomes a conversation.

Edit: Oops, I see we have changed the first poem to be discussed. Never mind.

----------


## Dark Muse

I notice a lot of his images seem to repeat




> Up over a viaduct I came, to the snakes and sticks of another winter,
> A two-legged dog hunting a new horizon of howls.
> The wind sharpened itself on a rock;
> A voice sang:


These lines seem to refelct back to some of the things which he said in the first part of the poem.

----------


## stlukesguild

Yes... "challenging" is certainly the word for it. Is it really "representative"? Most of what I have read by Rothke struck me as far more immediately accessible. Not that I question this. A great deal of Modern/Poet-Modern poetry is nearly abstract in nature... suggestive of a certain mood... atmosphere... idea... without ever being able to be reduced to a logical narrative meaning. As I first read through this poem I was certainly struck by the sound of his "music" as it were. Where a great deal of poetry has a sort of lilting musicality... often utilizing words that seem rooted in French and Italian and the Romance languages in general, Rothke repeatedly strikes me as producing a music that is rooted far more in the earthy Anglo-Saxon... harder... with hard guttural sounds... if that makes sense.

"Old scow bumps over black rocks..." "A cracked pod..." "A toad folds into a stone..." "That minnowy world of weeds and ditches..." "A slow snail lifting..." all of these words have a sound... and the images equally suggest something closer to the earth-bound dark and dank world of _Beowolf_ and peat bogs and rough-tilled soil. In spite of the flow of images that suggests something Surrealistic or abstract... it is not the modernism of Rimbaud, Breton, Eliot, etc... that comes to mind but rather poetry such as that of _Piers Plowman_, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ezra Pound's translation of the _Seafarer_, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill. There is a seeming love of the more guttural, Germanic/Anglo-Saxon sounds. I suppose this is most obvious in the use of consonance (and assonance) as opposed to the end rhyme... a technique favored in Anglo-Saxon poetry... and later revived by Manley Hopkins:

A t*o*ad f*o*lds into a st*o*ne...

*W*ake me, *w*itch, we'll *d*o the *d*ance of rotten sticks...

Morning-*f*air, *f*ollow me *f*urther back,
Into that minno*w*y *w*orld of *w*eeds and ditches,
When the *h*erons floated *h*igh over the white *h*ouses,
And the little *cr*abs *sli*pped into *sil*very *cr*aters...

Now to dig deep into the soil of this poem to attempt a further understanding of the poet's intention beyond the music of the form or the language...

----------


## Virgil

> Whats this? A dish for fat lips. 
> Who says? A nameless stranger. 
> Is he a bird or a tree? Not everyone can tell. 
> 
> 
> Water recedes to the crying of spiders. 
> An old scow bumps over black rocks. 
> A cracked pod calls. 
> 
> ...


Now that is typical Roethke.  :Smile:  The key phrase I think is "Mother me out of here."

----------


## quasimodo1

One expression that recurs in Roethke criticism is "confessional surrealism" where older methods are given up in favor of something more suggestive and emotive. I can see that working here. Since as Stlukesguild accurately reports...without ever being able to be reduced to a logical narrative meaning.

----------


## quasimodo1

Oh, Virgil, missed that post. At this point I would rather be discussing "Feud" but that will wait until we get a better handle on this piece.

----------


## Virgil

> One expression that recurs in Roethke criticism is "confessional surrealism" where older methods are given up in favor of something more suggestive and emotive. I can see that working here. Since as Stlukesguild accurately reports...without ever being able to be reduced to a logical narrative meaning.


"Confessional Surrealism" yes I would concur with that characterization. Which is interesting because he was predated the confessional poetry movement that took off in the 1960s. I just looked up confessional poetry on wiki and they include Roethke. I had not considered Roethke as part of the confessional poets, but I guess it fits to some degree. I don't think he's as "confessional" as Robert Lowell.

----------


## stlukesguild

Upon a second reading I am struck by thoughts of some similarities in theme with Eliot's _Wasteland_ and _Hollow Men_. The poem begins with a collection of images of earth and soil... and yet suggestions that such have become barren... wasted:

Water receded to the crying of spiders
An old scow bumps over black rocks
A cracked pod calls

Mother me out of here. What more will the bones allow?
Will the sea give the wind suck? A toad folds into a stone.
The flowers are all fangs. Comfort me, fury.
Wake me, witch, we'll do the dance of rotten sticks.

Shale loosens. Marl reaches into the field...

In the hour of ripeness, the tree is barren.

Like the closing stanza of Eliot's _Hollow Men_ there are the sections that suggest a mocking nursery rhyme:

Wheres the eye?
The eyes in the sty.
The ears not here
Beneath the hair.
When I took off my clothes
To find a nose,
There was only one shoe
For the waltz of To,
The pinch of Where. 

The closing two sections of the poem contrast greatly with this as they look back in time... to a world far more succulent... fertile...lush...:

4

Morning-fair, follow me further back
Into that minnowy world of weeds and ditches,
When the herons floated high over the white houses,
And the little crabs slipped into silvery craters.
When the sun for me glinted the sides of a sand grain,
And my intent stretched over the buds at their first trembling.

That air and shine: and the flickers loud summer call:
The bearded boards in the stream and the all of apples;
The glad hen on the hill; and the trellis humming.
Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:
Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.
Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;
The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;
And love, love sang toward.


5

To have the whole air!
The light, the full sun
Coming down on the flowerheads,
The tendrils turning slowly,
A slow snail-lifting, liquescent;
To be by the rose
Rising slowly out of its bed,
Still as a child in its first loneliness;
To see cyclamen veins become clearer in early sunlight,
And mist lifting out of the brown cat-tails;
To stare into the after-light, the glitter left on the lakes surface,
When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island;
To follow the drops sliding from a lifted oar,
Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward...

----------


## Dark Muse

I can see this poem having a certain confessional asepct to it. 




> The closing two sections of the poem contrast greatly with this as they look back in time... to a world far more succulent... fertile...lush...:


Yes, in the words that Quasi used, I cannot remember if he said it here, or just in his PM to me, but the last half of the poem does strike me as being more "innocent" than the first half.

----------


## quasimodo1

For sure, Stlukes, Eliot immediately comes to mind when reading some of Roethke's more complex, longer poems. In this particular poem, it seems accessability was never a consideration.

----------


## quasimodo1

Pleasure on ground
Has no sound,
Easily maddens
The uneasy man.

Who, careless, slips
In coiling ooze
Is trapped to the lips,
Leaves mare than shoes;

The Shape of the Fire has these mini-poem assemblies; does anyone have any idea what function they are serving?

----------


## quasimodo1

III
The wasp waits.
The edge cannot eat the center.
The grape glistens.
The path tells little to the serpent.
An eye comes out of the wave.
The journey from flesh is longest.
A rose sways least.
The redeemer comes a dark way.


{part three of THE SHAPE OF THE FIRE}

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## Dark Muse

I notice he seems to use all these currious little contradictions of words within the poem. Though I cannot make heads or tails of what they mean.

In the begining it starts with 




> Is he a bird or a tree? Not everyone can tell.


And than 




> The edge cannot eat the center.





> The path tells little to the serpent.


They strike me as odd little lines, of things which relate to each other, but I cannot completely grasp what he is trying to say with his use of them.

----------


## quasimodo1

Muse, these lines stood out to me as well and as Stlukesguild said...he is creating a (psychological) mood and atmosphere. Before we all forget that Roethke had a more accessible side, I remember these lines from a NYTimes review.... Roethke, another quirky, intense Northwest Pacific soul, and these Gravesian words from Roethke's final book:


Now I adore my life 

With the Bird, the abiding Leaf, 

With the Fish, the questing Snail, 

And the Eye altering all; 

And I dance with William Blake 

For love, for Love's sake; 

And everything comes to One, 

As we dance on, dance on, dance on

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## quasimodo1

refering back to Roethke's T.S.Eliot like sound..."Roethke taught at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a talented tennis player (according to a friend's father, who had him for freshman comp at Penn in the '40s). These are the credentials of a bourgeois academic, for sure. And yet he wrote like a drum-beating wild man and had an unfortunate need to check into the psychiatric ward on occasion to check his mania. His last poems take after the litanizing Whitman and make way for the Deep Image movement of the '60s-yet he continued to acknowledge T.S. Eliot as the master. It's Eliot's advice from the sublime Four Quartet that Roethke's answering, with decisive concision, at the end of "The Longing":

Old men should be explorers?
I'll be an Indian.
Ogalala?
Iroquois
{ http://www.artseditor.com/html/janua..._roethke.shtml }

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## Jozanny

> After some research and because this poem seems so inaccessible, here are a few ideas about its makeup: The poems in this series, including "The Lost Son" are psychological comparisons, similar to what the German poets used to call a "bildungsroman" but also quite different because the poems don't show a linear progression from innocence to ethical strength. Also relative to the psychological factor is this quote from "Madness in the New Poetry" by Peter Davison..."Is madness a conflict between imagination and reality? (Theodore Roethke would call it "nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.") Perhaps, but what else but that very conflict gives rise to poetry? Where madness enters in we may expect incoherence; but let us take care to discriminate between the incoherence of not knowing how, and the incoherence of reaching beyond. Madness without poetry can sometimes, through the excitement that rises from it, arouse in the reader feelings much like those that would be aroused by poetry without madness. Longinus defined the difference as between the sublime and the beautiful; but twentieth-century psychiatric madness has all too little of the sublime about it. Where it engages the poet too closely with himself it tends to damage poetry, for the self should be the reservoir of poetry rather than its shallop. Poetry has suffered long from the preponderance of the idea that it exists to scratch the poet's itch. When madness enters in, the poet may try to cure himself upon the page, or to drive himself on to further intoxications of madness. If madness damages poetry, poetry must be defended. The poet as poet bears responsibility for the excellence and wholeness of his poem more than for his self's wholeness, no matter how mad he happens to be. In examining some of the books of verse published in the last year, I have kept in mind poetry before madness. Let us watch the outcome of each struggle." http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/65jan/davison.htm


Yea, but is this more about deconstructing Roethke or understanding his poetry? *The Shape of Fire* insofar as I can do this without a text of my own at hand, seems to be, indeed, about fire and its transitory dance, fragile existence. Think about the line "a dish at lips". This could be a face looking into a reflective surface, which mimics the attraction of fire as a visual experience. The entire first section may in fact be the voice of fire dreading the heaviness of water and dampness.

For now, I will leave the above paragraph as a suggestion--but would also suggest, for those of us who care about sustained readings of one author, we need to find a better way to go about this--if I am going to stay with the club anyway. The specific novel discussions seem much better organized than what *we* have done here.

I do agree with Virgil that discussing every poem in a standard collection length is impractical, but I think also that during the nominating process, links to the texts should be placed so they can be ordered before the vote closes, and we should use the polls like they do in the forum book club. The poll is a good measuring and organizational tool.

----------


## Dark Muse

The way in which he uses reputition, as well as some of the discriptions he uses, reading this poem, in some ways made me think of Joyce.

These verses in particular struck me as being Joyce like 




> Where's the eye?
> The eye's in the sty.
> The ear's not here
> Beneath the hair.
> When I took off my clothes
> To find a nose,
> There was only one shoe
> For the waltz of To,
> The pinch of Where.





> Must pull off clothes
> To jerk like a frog
> On belly and nose
> From the sucking bog


.

----------


## quasimodo1

Jozanny: I like your observations and theories about what Roethke is getting at. If this poem is somehow about his psychological formation, I am assuming at a young age, then these metaphors (?) are running all over the place. I think we will give this poem tonight for more ovservations and tomorrow push on with poem chosen by someone else. As for the method of this discussion, I'm all ears. If it doesn't follow a clear and linear progressions like some prose discussions, well, perhaps poetry is not linear and our responses to it certainly are not. And Jozanny, I'll send the entire text in a bit.

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## Jozanny

:Rolleyes:  Thank you for your efforts quasi, I know they are sincere. It isn't that I can't afford the text of the collected poems; merely, I don't want to buy what I don't want to keep, and my seller's list at Amazon isn't moving.

I am sort of busy right now, but I will make a vain attempt at the free library next week. I need to renew my card anyway--I have access at my alma mater, and I could also possibly negotiate library usage on the University of Pennsylvania campus--they tend to be accommodating toward pretenders to the throne--but I do not want to go back into North or West Philly unless my own personal research requires it, so I am at the mercy of whatever public collections are available.

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## quasimodo1

"Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:
Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.
Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;
The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;
And love, love sang toward." Going out on a small limb here, this section most likely refers to a slice of time when Roethke lived in the house with many greenhouses and "a simple drowse" probably refers to a time before self-awareness, a time before manhood.

----------


## JBI

Or, perhaps we could take a Frye approach, and look at the greenhouse for an allusion to Eden, and, I guess in the case of Roethke's life, a metaphor representing the fall from Eden, as related in the first chapters of Genesis, and even more importantly, in Milton. It isn't too long a shot to say, that in the context of the poem, the poem supports the Greenhouse as a sort of modern Eden - a containment of the refined goodness of life, without the outside negativity (being that it is walled off).

----------


## quasimodo1

"And mist lifting out of the brown cat-tails;
To stare into the after-light, the glitter left on the lake's surface,
When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island;
To follow the drops sliding from a lifted oar,
Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly
Shoreward;"
This section, especially "the sun has fallen behind a wooded island" seems like Roethke's northern temperate zone version of Eden.

----------


## Virgil

The more I read "The Shape of Fire" the more I love it. It is a magnificent work. Like everyone else I cannot graps it, but I do think the central thrust of the poem is a birthing process. From what he's birthing from and to I can't grasp it. But I think each section has a reference to a passage from one place to another. 
Section 1: "Mother me out of here"
Section 2: "Up over a viaduct I came, to the snakes and sticks of another winter"
Section 3: "An eye comes out of the wave. /The journey from flesh is longest."
Section 4: "Morning-fair, follow me further back /Into that minnowy world of weeds and ditches"
Section 5: "To be by the rose /Rising slowly out of its bed"

This birthing to a new world is one set of tensions that are going on in the poem. Notice how there are constant references to an edge, the transition point between things:
"This is only the edge of whiteness," "The edge cannot eat the center," and "As an opaque vase fills to the brim from a quick pouring, /Fills and trembles at the edge yet does not flow over, /Still holding and feeding the stem of the contained flower."

Another set of tension that I see is between the physical world with a temporal, shadowy world: 
"Spirit, come near," "Have you come to unhinge my shadow?," "The redeemer comes a dark way," and "Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms."

So if you put together the notions of birthing, transition, physical and shadowy worlds, I think the poem is mostly about a transition from the physical world to a spiritual world. These lines from right at the center of the poem seem central: "An eye comes out of the wave. /The journey from flesh is longest."

One thing that I have found with Roethke is that he is very Platonic, the philosophy of Plato, that is. There are constant references to shadows and caves and light. He seems to use Plato's allegory of the cave as a framework for many of his themes.

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## quasimodo1

Virgil, I think you have it. This bit about transition to a spiritual life was mentioned is two of the better critiques of the poem, which also mentioned psychological growth.

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## Virgil

Thanks Quasi. I'm not sure if we are finished with "The Shape of Fire" but Quasi has gven me the go ahead to select the next poem. I select my favorite Roethke poem, a poem I consider one of the finest of the 20th century, "In A Dark Time." You can find the poem here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=172120.

Now this does not mean that one can't still comment on the previous poem. Feel free to start the discussion on the new poem or discuss the previous.

----------


## Dark Muse

> In a dark time, the eye begins to see, 
> I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; 
> I hear my echo in the echoing wood 
> A lord of nature weeping to a tree. 
> I live between the heron and the wren, 
> Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.


I adored this stanza. It was so superbly dark and rich. And there is something quite heathenistic about which I just love. 




> I hear my echo in the echoing wood


This line was just phenomenal. 




> A lord of nature weeping to a tree.


I loved this too

----------


## Dark Muse

This poem too me seems to be about a journey of the soul, ones quest to find themselves, and an awakening period, or time of Self-realization.




> I live between the heron and the wren,


I find these line interesting, I have noticed these two birds specifically seem to often appear in his pomes. Does anyone know why the heron and the wren have such significance to Roethke.

Also I have noticed in a lot of his work he references water, and considering the heron is a bird with a connection to water. Did he by chance live near water? 




> Whats madness but nobility of soul


I really like this line 




> At odds with circumstance? The days on fire! 
> I know the purity of pure despair, 
> My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. 
> That place among the rocksis it a cave, 
> Or winding path? The edge is what I have.


This seems to reflect a time of awakening, and struggle with the self. With the mention of day on fire, it seems to be the light breaking through the darkness.




> That place among the rocksis it a cave, 
> Or winding path? The edge is what I have.


This seems to reflect a moment of possible freedom, or escape, for while the cave would result in a dead end and more darkness, a winding path offers another alternative, a way out.

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## Jozanny

Well, I am not finished with "The Shape of Fire", so the rest of you can feel free to move on without me while I continue to examine it. I do not think the poem is truly about rebirth, even though Roethke certainly toys with the conceit. My reason for this is, I know something about both mental illness and broken bodies. Neither gets fixed, and I suspect Roethke knew it as well as Wittgenstein knew it, as well as I know it. Drugs and the brutality of good old fashioned psychiatric hospital treatments may lead to periods of stability, but a damaged brain once damaged remains so, and I think what the narrative voice attempts to examine is transformation as a redeemable process, without coming to any firm conclusions about it.

This is not a traditional rite of passage piece which leans toward salvation, and when I am finished my traditional monthly cycle of ailing, I will point toward a more complex reading than I've yet seen anyone offer--which is seemingly fitting. I do not think Roethke meant to be simplicity itself once the manic rhythm is settled into.

----------


## Virgil

> Well, I am not finished with "The Shape of Fire", so the rest of you can feel free to move on without me while I continue to examine it. I do not think the poem is truly about rebirth, even though Roethke certainly toys with the conceit. My reason for this is, I know something about both mental illness and broken bodies. Neither gets fixed, and I suspect Roethke knew it as well as Wittgenstein knew it, as well as I know it. Drugs and the brutality of good old fashioned psychiatric hospital treatments may lead to periods of stability, but a damaged brain once damaged remains so, and I think what the narrative voice attempts to examine is transformation as a redeemable process, without coming to any firm conclusions about it.


"transformation as a redeemable process" versus rebirth, isn't that about the same thing?




> This is not a traditional rite of passage piece which leans toward salvation, and when I am finished my traditional monthly cycle of ailing, I will point toward a more complex reading than I've yet seen anyone offer--which is seemingly fitting. I do not think Roethke meant to be simplicity itself once the manic rhythm is settled into.


Looking forward to it. I must say I really liked this poem and any further explanation of it is very welcomed.  :Smile:

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## Jozanny

> "transformation as a redeemable process" versus rebirth, isn't that about the same thing?


No, it isn't.

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## Virgil

> No, it isn't.


 :FRlol:  You will have to explain it to me. When you're feeling better, of course.  :Smile:

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## quasimodo1

Before another posting on the "Fire" poem, I thought this piece on Roethke from artseditor.com would be apropos..."I don't recall exactly which of Roethke's poems appeared in that anthology. (I still own the book, by the way; but I'm 200 miles away from the shelf it's on now.) But I do recall that we read the obligatory "My Papa's Waltz" as a prime example of Roethke's control of form and tone. I'm sure we read the hallucinatory recollections (fitting for our psychedelic pastimes) in the title poem of The Lost Son and Other Poems, getting off on its dark children's ditties -"The weeds whined," goes one quatrain, "The snakes cried,/The cows and briars/Said to me: Die."-and its troublesome notational utterances that sound, we probably said, like Eliot on acid:

What a small song. What slow clouds. What dark water.
Hath the rain a father? All the caves are ice. Only the snow's here.
I'm cold. I'm cold all over. Rub me in father and mother.
Fear was my father, Father Fear.
His look drained the stones.

Maybe professor-poet Plumly, ruggedly handsome and hip with thick wavy hair at the head of the class, told us that these two poems, "My Papa's Waltz" and "The Lost Son," represent the extremes of style between which Roethke usually worked in his several succeeding collections of poems. He also must have introduced us to the two outstanding sequences of poems that Roethke is perhaps best known for: the so-called "greenhouse" poems written early in his career (from The Lost Son and Other Poems) and "The North American Sequence" written toward the end of it (from The Far Field, 1964). For these have been the poems I've returned to frequently since then for an experience of the sublime. I read the compact and explosive descriptions of the greenhouse poems for almost no other reason than to enter the root cellar at his family's nursery in Michigan..." -- http://www.artseditor.com/html/janua..._roethke.shtml

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## quasimodo1

An aside on Roethke: http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal...oets_02sp.html an interesting one-page vignette on the meeting of these two men.

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## quasimodo1

In order to have some designated time for discussion, and considering the fact the members post from every time zone possible...we will have Sunday afternoon and evening roughly from 4 PM to 12 midnight for a common meeting time. Any other time is of couse acceptable to post on this thread. Also any member who wishes, I encourage to comment. q1

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## quasimodo1

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

JOURNEY TO THE INTERIOR

I. In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the
Narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
--Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly. {first of three parts} This is not the next poem for discussion just a favorite Roethke passage of mine. Virgil will be starting the next discussion on "In a Dark Time". Tomorrow night would be good but we shall see what members sign in.

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## Virgil

I was wondering when I should start "In A Dark Time." Tomorrow is perfect.

I was noticing the first line of what you just posted above Quasi. " In the long journey out of the self". So much of Roethke is a journey, either out of the self or into the self.

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## quasimodo1

That's a journey I can identify with. Great that tomorrow works out. I'll will sign in starting around 7PM but you just start when you can. Thanks.

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## quasimodo1

from Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical 


IN A DARK TIME

In a dark time, eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks-- is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have. {first half of this poem...topic for tonight's discussion}

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## Dark Muse

> In a dark time, the eye begins to see, 
> I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; 
> I hear my echo in the echoing wood 
> A lord of nature weeping to a tree. 
> I live between the heron and the wren, 
> Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den


I adored this stanza. It was so superbly dark and rich. And there is something quite heathenistic about which I just love. 




> I hear my echo in the echoing wood


This line was just phenomenal. 




> A lord of nature weeping to a tree


I loved this too




> I live between the heron and the wren,


I find these line interesting, I have noticed these two birds specifically seem to often appear in his pomes. Does anyone know why the heron and the wren have such significance to Roethke.

Also I have noticed in a lot of his work he references water, and considering the heron is a bird with a connection to water. Did he by chance live near water? 





> Whats madness but nobility of soul


I really like this line 

This poem too me seems to be about a journey of the soul, ones quest to find themselves, and an awakening period, or time of Self-realization.




> At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
> I know the purity of pure despair,


This seems to reflect a time of awakening, and struggle with the self. With the mention of day on fire, it seems to be the light breaking through the darkness




> That place among the rocksis it a cave, 
> Or winding path? The edge is what I have.


This seems to reflect a moment of possible freedom, or escape, for while the cave would result in a dead end and more darkness, a winding path offers another alternative, a way out.

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## quasimodo1

Well Muse, a line you highlighted now seems packed with extended meanings..."I live between the heron and the wren," Beside this dual-identity and a metaphor I take to mean one persona is that of a larger, agressive (assertive) type and the other a much smaller retiring type. In emerging from this "dark time", Roethke will have to gather the assets of both.

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## Dark Muse

I also thought it was interesting that while the wren, a smaller bird, and one which is more associated with the air and flight, while the heron, though it can fly, is in a way more "grounded" they are typically wading birds and are more associated with water than with air. And more often found on the ground than in the sky.

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## stlukesguild

This poem is quite fabulous... and far less obscure or hermetic than _The Shape of the Fire_... although I would not think to reduce it to any single simple "meaning". The sound or music of this poem is more traditional with its use of rhyme... but still there are the more complex echoes... repetitions of sound: assonance, consonance, rhyme within lines and not merely at the end of lines:

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my *sh*adow in the *deepening* *sh*ade;
I hear my *echo* in the *echoing* wood--
A lord of nature *weeping* to a tree,
I live between the *heron* and the *wren*,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

Knowing Roethke's connection with American Romantics of the West Coast... especially the Northwest... and their connection with Asian poetry... I wonder if Roethke's musical structure of internal rhyme and repetition might not echo such poetic uses as found in Asian... and especially Chinese poetry... as well as the Anglo-Saxon poetic forms filtered through Pound and Hopkins as I mentioned earlier. 

Roethke was deeply passionate about the great Romantic and mystical poets such as Whitman, Emerson, Blake, Wordsworth, and Yeats. I definitely sense an imagery drawn from... or at least suggestive of many of the Romantic poems of the poet's personal travel through a dark place... 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--

These lines immediately suggest an affinity with nothing less than Dante's _Inferno_:

_Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita._

(Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard -- so tangled and
rough- Pinsky tr.)

But there are also echoes of Eliot- "Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened" (which may not be surprising considering Eliot's profound admiration of Dante).

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!

The suggestion of a link between madness and the poet's personal struggles might be a tired cliché in the work of many writers... but not so much with Roethke... especially when one considers his own personal experience with exorcising such demons... and the fact that he never wallows in a "woe is me" attitude, but rather suggests something of a visionary deeper understanding of or transformation of the self growing out of his experiences.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Again I think of Dante's Comedia... which is essentially the journey of the soul... in which the poet awakens... in spite of the great length of the poem and the time that seemingly has passed... but a short time later... yet profoundly transformed. Also... to my mind... there are reverberations of San Juan de la Cruz' (St. John of the Cross') equally visionary _Dark Night of the Soul_.

...There is the lucky dark...
no sign for me to mark,
no other mark, no guide
except for my heart- the fire- the fire inside!

That led me on
keener than sunlight in the highest blue...

O dark of night, my guide!...

I stayed, I stayed; forgot me...

slipped from the me and not-me
and ties of earth untwined
among the lilies falling and out of mind.

from The Dark Night (of the Soul)- San Juan de la Cruz, tr. John Frederick Nims

Hopefully I'm making some sense as I'm actually sick as a dog this evening :Sick: .

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## JBI

Seems interesting, just a question though;

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Wind as in breeze, or Wind as in wound? What do you think? I personally am opting for a pun, since wind (breeze) would be the obvious word, yet wind (wound) would be the obvious rhyme, which seems fitting, and also contextually can be just as valid.

In terms of the rhyme though, he in two of the three other stanzas uses a full rhyme (wren/den, night/light), whereas he uses a half rhyme with cave and have, setting a possible president, and I think it a bit of a stretch to say he is using a half rhyme in the fourth stanza to continue a pattern (that seems a little bit unlikely). What are your thoughts on the couplet?

and, for any joiners wanting the full text, it is available here: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...ke/poems/16320

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## Virgil

I've been reading "In A Dark Time" for so many years (probably over 25 years!) and returning to it reguarly that I don't know where to begin. I guess I should start with structure and theme. It's four stanzas of six lines each of iambic pentameter and where the first four lines are unrhymed and a rhyming closing couplet. The themes of each stanza are structured in this way: Stanza 1, Disintegration or division; Stanza 2, the journey out; Stanza 3, a correspondence; Stanza 4, reunification. So there is a movement, a journey, from disintegration to reunification. 

One of the poetic techniques that Roethke employes is an echoing within lines. Notice how words get repeated in a line:
Line 2: shadow/shade, Line 3 echo/echoing, Line 9 purity/pure, Line 18 natural/unantural, Line 19 dark/darker, Line 23 mind/mond. Besides the beauty of the sounds echoing, the technique supports the dichotomy of the self, the self dividing. I think Quasi is correct that the heron and the wren also shows a metaphor of splitting. 

Another incredible technique that Roethke employs is literary allusions to other poems. Notice the allusions throughout: Plato's allegory of the cave, Dante's Purgatory of the winding path on an edge, Baudelaire's poem"Correspndences," Emily Dickenson's poem "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died," Wallace Stenven's "Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour," and Dante's Paridisio. At least these are the ones I can identify. You will have to look them up and find them. Perhaps I will post them myself later. 

One last thing for now. I must highlight one of the absolute greatest lines not just of poetry but of all humanity: "What's madness but nobility of soul/At odds with circumastances." 

I definitely will have more to say.  :Biggrin:

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## Virgil

I mentioned some allusions in that last post. Here are the full poems Roethke alludes to.




> CORRESPONDENCES 
> by Charles Baudelaire
> 
> Nature is a temple in which living pillars 
> Sometimes emit confused words; 
> Man crosses it through forests of symbols 
> That observe him with familiar glances. 
> 
> Like long echoes that mingle in the distance 
> ...





> I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died 
> by Emily Dickinson
> 
> I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --
> The Stillness in the Room
> Was like the Stillness in the Air --
> Between the Heaves of Storm --
> 
> The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --
> ...





> Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour 
> by Wallace Stevens
> 
> Light the first light of evening, as in a room
> In which we rest and, for small reason, think
> The world imagined is the ultimate good.
> 
> This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
> It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
> ...


You will have to look up Dante and Plato yourself, but I think you can see the allusions to them and within the poems I posted here.

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## quasimodo1

Virgil, your choice of the most outstanding lines..."What's madness but nobility of soul/ At odds with circumstances." are the highlight for myself as well and Stlukesguild's comment ..."The suggestion of a link between madness and the poet's personal struggles might be a tired cliché in the work of many writers... but not so much with Roethke... especially when one considers his own personal experience with exorcising such demons... and the fact that he never wallows in a "woe is me" attitude, but rather suggests something of a visionary deeper understanding of or transformation of the self growing out of his experiences." defines this further and perfectly.

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## Virgil

> This poem is quite fabulous... and far less obscure or hermetic than _The Shape of the Fire_... although I would not think to reduce it to any single simple "meaning". The sound or music of this poem is more traditional with its use of rhyme... but still there are the more complex echoes... repetitions of sound: assonance, consonance, rhyme within lines and not merely at the end of lines:
> 
> In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
> I meet my *sh*adow in the *deepening* *sh*ade;
> I hear my *echo* in the *echoing* wood--
> A lord of nature *weeping* to a tree,
> I live between the *heron* and the *wren*,
> Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
> 
> ...


Oh I missed the concluding posts on the previous page. I agree with everything you say. I had never thought about The Dark Night of the Soul as an allusion. I do think Roethke intended it. 





> Seems interesting, just a question though;
> 
> The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
> And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
> 
> Wind as in breeze, or Wind as in wound? What do you think? I personally am opting for a pun, since wind (breeze) would be the obvious word, yet wind (wound) would be the obvious rhyme, which seems fitting, and also contextually can be just as valid.


JBI, there is a play of words on tear as in weeping and tear as in rip. The narrator is a "lord of nature weeping to a tree" but later is "tearless." And certainly there is a pun in the last line of "tearing." Remember that the lord of nature is the alter ego, a split self, someone who has been torn from his central ego. The lord of nature is the noble soul which gets picked up in the next stanza and is the mad, schitzophrenic half of the narrator. The lord of nature is also the one who corresponds with nature in the third paragraph. But in the fourth paragraph the nature is reduced to a maddened fly and a wind that tears. He has escaped the disintegrating forces of nature, the physical world, to an absorbing God, into the mind, an abstract form. I hope you see how that all interweaves.

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## JBI

We ready for the next poem?

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## quasimodo1

Just as an aside, I thought this quote from a blog was quite good, about Roethke- generally: "Among the many books I ordered from Amazon last December, the one that I've been reading a lot lately has been Theodore Roethke's Collected Poems. In fact I'm enjoying it so much that over the next few weeks I intend to read it from cover to cover - perhaps the first Collected I've read that way in a long time, since perhaps T.S. Eliot's, which I read shortly after graduating from university (over 20 years ago now…). Like Eliot's, Roethke's Collected is not particularly long, running some two hundred and sixty pages. It reads more like a selected. Minor poems, major linked works, but not a weak poem to be found, so far at least. (At this point, I've almost finished the second of seven collections in the book, The Lost Son and Other Poems, first published in 1948.)

What is remarkable about Roethke is that he constructs a far-reaching and resonant dialogue from a limited - obsessively limited -- set of themes and images, practically all pastoral. I find that kind of singularity amazing in an age when we are bombarded by so many different influences from so many different directions. In times of hyper-abundance, such narrowness of focus could almost be taken as dishonest. Where Roethke is honest, where he takes risks, is in his fidelity to his subject matter (I'm sure I'm being tautological here, but being true to ones subject matter always entails great risk), his sensitivity, his vulnerability, his expression of his very real throes of manic-depressive illness, his adventurous thrust into a world of wholly subjective language. The pastoral provided a refuge and mooring place -- the beauty and archetypal qualities of plants, winds, soil, greenhouses, as well as the structured rhythms and rhyme schemes which no matter how committed he was to free verse he always returned to. Whatever Silliman may say (I honestly don't know what Silliman thinks of Roethke), no Poetry of Quietude this. Too much edginess and anxiety here; too much flight into the unknown.

In his first book, Open House (1941) Roethke establishes himself on very solid if conservative ground. Aside from a few starchy, highly compressed constructions where he tries to sum up Reality in a few words (I'm thinking of "The Adament", in particular, and a couple of others), these short poems - and those that begin his second collection -- are among his most successful and highly anthologized. I'm thinking of the title poem, "Cuttings 1 & 2", "My Papa's Waltz", & others. (For a link containing a Roethke bio and many of these, click here.)" source= http://briancampbell.blogspot.com/20...g-roethke.html And JBI: Virgil might have more to add about "In a Dark Time" but if not we are ready to move on. q1

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## Virgil

One last thing on this poem. I wanted to discuss the last stanza. Here:




> Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. 
> My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, 
> Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? 
> A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. 
> The mind enters itself, and God the mind, 
> And one is One, free in the tearing wind.


Do people think that the poem ends with death and unification with God or does the poem end as escape from maddeness into sanity, the unification with God being a metaphor? On the death side, the allusion to Dickenson's poem would suggest a death. On the sanity part, the allusion to Stevens's poem:



> Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
> We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
> A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
> 
> Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
> We say God and the imagination are one...
> How high that highest candle lights the dark.
> 
> Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
> ...


I think suggests an imaginative integration of his schitzophrenic personas. At least to me. Perhaps he means both. Any comments?

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## quasimodo1

My take on the ending is that transformation takes place, put only as one of an endless series of epistemological summits which for Roethke will lead to another.

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## Dark Muse

Though I do not know Roethke as well as most of the rest of you, from my reading of the poem and what I took from it, I did not see the end as being death. I will have to agree with quasi

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## JBI

How about for the next one, "I Knew a Woman"?

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## quasimodo1

Seems like an intriqueing poem to me and since I've never read it, I can't wait to see how Roethke percieved knowing a woman.

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## stlukesguild

Ah... JBI! You are after my own heart! That was surely the poem I wished to suggest as well.

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/122.html

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## quasimodo1

First reactions to Roethke usually are not worth much but if anyone ever wished Roethke would stop placing perfume on a goat...they get their wish here.

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## quasimodo1

http://www.folkways.si.edu/trackdeta...x?itemid=30800 -- Hear Roethke recite the first stanza of "I Knew a Woman" from the Smithsonian.

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## Virgil

> How about for the next one, "I Knew a Woman"?


Good choice. That's a fine poem, and very different from the two we've read so far.

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## quasimodo1

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...thke/woman.htm Previous critiques of "I knew A Woman" by Richard Allen Blessing and others.

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## Virgil

> http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...thke/woman.htm Previous critiques of "I knew A Woman" by Richard Allen Blessing and others.


Hey Quasi, that first article by Karl Malkoff:



> Karl Malkoff
> 
> The first of the purely sensual poems, "I Knew a Woman,' seems, at first glance, completely innocent; but closer examination reveals that the poem's words, like its lady, move "more ways than one." Double meanings dominate the poem: the lady teaches "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand"; the protagonist comes "behind her for her pretty sake"; and love, which likes a gander, "adores a goose." Even lines easily passed over have hidden sexual connotations: ". . .what prodigious mowing we did make." "To mow," in Scots dialect, means to have sexual intercourse. And should there be any doubt as to Roethke's knowledge of this meaning, the reader need only turn to "Reply to a Lady Editor," the poet's tongue-in-cheek response to the editor of a woman's magazine who had clearly missed the poem's suggestiveness; Roethke there calls Dan Cupid a "braw laddie-buck," and advises the editor just to lean herself back if be should arrive.
> 
> From Theodore Roethke: An Introduction to the Poetry. Copyright � 1966 by Columbia University Press.


I had Malkoff as a professor in college for modern American poetry.  :Wink:  Not sure I agree with all his thoughts here. I do agree there is a double entendre.

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## Jozanny

Yes, "In A Dark Time" is a superficially pleasing construct, but a piece I am least impressed with. I happen to like the real challenge of intricacy the reader is presented with in some of the other selections. Any poet can allude, or argue with Eliot, but by the early 60's one is starved for something authentic, even within dialectic engagement. "The Shape of Fire" speaks to me much better on that account, not so much obscure as a jigsaw, scarred yet strong.

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## Virgil

> Yes, "In A Dark Time" is a superficially pleasing construct, but a piece I am least impressed with. I happen to like the real challenge of intricacy the reader is presented with in some of the other selections. Any poet can allude, or argue with Eliot, but by the early 60's one is starved for something authentic, even within dialectic engagement. "The Shape of Fire" speaks to me much better on that account, not so much obscure as a jigsaw, scarred yet strong.


I see your point about allusions, but what makes "In A DArk Time" really special to me is that the allusions are so smoothly integrated into the language that they are not just allusions. The poem works without knowledge of the allusions and the allusions only amplify the meaning. Sometimes with Eliot and Pound the allusions are clumsy and choppy to the flow. I agree. I don't have any sense of that here.

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## Petrarch's Love

Glad Virg. told me about -the discussion going on here. I haven't ever looked at Roethke in depth, so this sounds great. I may not have time to participate regularly, but I'll try to stop by and follow what's going on when I can. Love the choice of the next poem. What a piece of verse!

Quasi--Thanks for the link to Stanley Kunitz's memories of Roethke, and also for the recording of him reading. I enjoyed both a great deal. 




> I had Malkoff as a professor in college for modern American poetry. Not sure I agree with all his thoughts here. I do agree there is a double entendre.


Pretty neat to run into some thoughts from your former prof., Virg. What don't you agree with? He seemed to be on pretty sound ground. The only thing that surprised me about his blurb was the idea that someone could think this poem was "completely innocent" even at first glance. Maybe I've just read too much Donne for my own good.  :Tongue:  There's a very Elizabethan/Jacobean quality to this poem. He uses those double entendres just like the best of that period and, as one of the critics on the page Quasi linked pointed out, he also demonstrates that impeccable use of the caesura, and in a way that reminds me a bit of the early 17th century. His style in this one also reminds me vividly of Yeats for some reason, but I haven't yet taken the time to analyze exactly why. I don't actually know much of anything about Roethke's influences, so I don't know how strongly Yeats may have been on his radar, but there seems to be something very Yeatsian going on here. In general, though, what a perfect blend of wit, naughtiness, and--as least so I think--quite genuine love and affection. There's so much going on in there, but I'll sign off for now and see what others (many who may know more about the poet) have to say. I'll also go back and read the rest of the thread to see what I've missed.  :Smile:

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## Virgil

> Glad Virg. told me about -the discussion going on here. I haven't ever looked at Roethke in depth, so this sounds great. I may not have time to participate regularly, but I'll try to stop by and follow what's going on when I can. Love the choice of the next poem. What a piece of verse!


Roethke is so under valued. I think he's top notch. 





> Pretty neat to run into some thoughts from your former prof., Virg. What don't you agree with? He seemed to be on pretty sound ground. The only thing that surprised me about his blurb was the idea that someone could think this poem was "completely innocent" even at first glance. Maybe I've just read too much Donne for my own good.


I guess Makoff is right. But I didn't think this was double entredre:



> Double meanings dominate the poem: the lady teaches "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand"; the protagonist comes "behind her for her pretty sake"; and love, which likes a gander, "adores a goose."


Maybe I just have an innocent mind.  :Tongue: 




> There's a very Elizabethan/Jacobean quality to this poem. He uses those double entendres just like the best of that period and, as one of the critics on the page Quasi linked pointed out, he also demonstrates that impeccable use of the caesura, and in a way that reminds me a bit of the early 17th century. His style in this one also reminds me vividly of Yeats for some reason, but I haven't yet taken the time to analyze exactly why. I don't actually know much of anything about Roethke's influences, so I don't know how strongly Yeats may have been on his radar, but there seems to be something very Yeatsian going on here. In general, though, what a perfect blend of wit, naughtiness, and--as least so I think--quite genuine love and affection. There's so much going on in there, but I'll sign off for now and see what others (many who may know more about the poet) have to say. I'll also go back and read the rest of the thread to see what I've missed.


Good point on the caesura Petrarch, yes Roethke consciously uses it. He is a craftsman of a poet.

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## Dark Muse

> Maybe I just have an innocent mind.


Innocent mind? Haha who are you fooling? You forget, I have seen some of your coments in the DL thread.

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## quasimodo1

"How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,/ She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," Roethke in these lines (8,9) uses a form related to the Pindaric ode, from the lyric poets highest form of praise and exhibiting the depth of his knowledge of literary forms.

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## Virgil

> Innocent mind? Haha who are you fooling? You forget, I have seen some of your coments in the DL thread.


 :FRlol:  You're right.  :Biggrin: 





> "How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,/ She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," Roethke in these lines (8,9) uses a form related to the Pindaric ode, from the lyric poets highest form of praise and exhibiting the depth of his knowledge of literary forms.


Yes. I guess it is double entendre. I just considered it a metaphor.

Now what a wonderful last stanza:




> Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: 
> Im martyr to a motion not my own; 
> Whats freedom for? To know eternity. 
> I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. 
> But who would count eternity in days? 
> These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: 
> (I measure time by how a body sways).


I do think that Petrarch is right in recalling 17th century poetry. I think the bringing up of eternity and wanton and time alludes to marvell's To His Coy Mistress. Only with the difference that the male narrator here is the one being seduced.

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## Dark Muse

> I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
> When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
> Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: 
> The shapes a bright container can contain!
> Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
> Or English poets who grew up on Greek
> (I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)


I just loved the first stazna of this poem 




> I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,


I think the first line is beautiful, and I think there is something almost primitive in the use of bones here. "lovely in the bones" almost sounds voodoesque to me. It makes me think of a Witchdoctor. 




> When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;


This is beautiful, and filled with sweet emotion. You can really feel a sense of tender love in these words. 




> Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:


This is a very beautiful and senusal, it seems to embrace the beauty of feminity. When I read it, I cannot help but to think of the swaying of hips. 




> Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
> Or English poets who grew up on Greek


These lines I found to be interesting, though I am not entierly sure what to make of them.

----------


## Virgil

> I think the first line is beautiful, and I think there is something almost primitive in the use of bones here. "lovely in the bones" almost sounds voodoesque to me. It makes me think of a Witchdoctor.


I just noticed it for the first time and I've been reading this poem for years, Roethke brings back the "bones" in the last stanza! 




> This is a very beautiful and senusal, it seems to embrace the beauty of feminity. When I read it, I cannot help but to think of the swaying of hips.


I think that's what he wants you to think.




> Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
> Or English poets who grew up on Greek
> 
> 
> These lines I found to be interesting, though I am not entierly sure what to make of them.


That connects back to Turn, counter turn and stand. Greek poetry.

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## Dark Muse

> That connects back to Turn, counter turn and stand. Greek poetry.


Ahh ok, thanks for that. I wondered why those words were capatalized in the poem

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## quasimodo1

Saginaw News (MI){PUBLICATION2}


July 26, 2008 
Page: 3E 



Remembering Roethke 

JANET I. MARTINEAU The Saginaw News 
As celebrations continue marking the centennial year of the birth of Saginaw native and Pulitzer-winning poet Theodore Roethke, fans pause next week to remember his death 55 years later. On Friday, the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation hosts a Roethke Remembrance With Candlelight and Jazz event.


The schedule is as follows:

2 p.m., reading and discussion of his epic poem, "The Lost Son," at his boyhood home, 1805 Gratiot in Saginaw.

4 p.m. to 7 p.m., ongoing tours of the home/museum and sales of poetry books written by area authors.

8 p.m., candlelight procession to Roethke's grave, reading of "The Lost Son" and three works by contemporary Saginaw poets: "Love Poem for Theodore Roethke, Oakwood Cemetery, 1908?1963" by Maxine Harris, "The Ghost on Gratiot" by Carol Lopez and "Shadow in the Glass House" by Marion Tincknell.

Meet at the entrance of Oakwood Cemetery, Gratiot at Midland roads.

9 p.m. to 11 p.m., dinner at Spencer's M-46, 5530 Gratiot, with performance by Brush Street, a jazz ensemble. Roethke was a jazz fan.

Participants will order from the menu and the restaurant will donate 10 percent to the Theodore Roethke Home Museum.

Roethke was born in Saginaw on May, 25, 1908, and died in Seattle, Wash., on Aug. 1, 1963, of a heart attack. He is an Arthur Hill High School graduate, and at the time of his death was a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Admission to all the events is free.

Judges picked, slam added

Meanwhile, plans continue at Saginaw Valley State University for the awarding of the 11th Triennial Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize in November.

Frank Bidart, who won the $3,000 prize in 1998, has selected the three judges who will choose the 2008 winner by mid-September. As set up in 1968, the prize winner is chosen by the three judges from worthy American writers they peruse on their own and not from solicited entries or nominations.

The judges are:

* Lloyd Schwartz, a Pulitzer-winning classical music critic and poet and commentator on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air." This summer the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts is setting some of his poems to music. Schwartz teaches English at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

* Campbell McGrath, a historian, comedian, storyteller and poet who teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami. He has won numerous prizes and grants, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.

* Peg Boyers, a poet and creative writing teacher at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the executive editor of the college's quarterly literary magazine "Salmagundi." Her recent book "Honey With Tobacco" contains autobiographical poems exploring her Cuban American experience and a childhood marked by travel and the tropics.

On Tuesday, Nov. 11, SVSU will host a 6 p.m. dinner and a 7:15 p.m. program during which the winner will read from his or her works. Both the dinner and the program are open to the public.

And in honor of the centennial year, SVSU has placed ads in Poetry magazine and on the Academy of American Poets Web newsletter at poets.org inviting the nation to the event.

Roethke's widow, Beatrice Roethke Lushington, also will attend the event.

SVSU is planning several other activities surrounding the awarding of the prize.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, its Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum will turn one of its classrooms into a coffee house atmosphere for a free poetry slam - with the winner selected by the audience.

Any and all poets may participate by reading their works. The winning poem will appear in the SVSU Cardinal Sins literary magazine.

Other events between the slam and the award evening are a "Roethke Haunts" tour featuring his boyhood home, grave, the Tittabawassee River (which inspired many of his poems) and a favorite watering hole in Old Saginaw City. Also planned is a program featuring New York poet Bill Heyen, a Roethke fan, and a performance of "Reveling in Roethke" by the River Junction Poets of Saginaw. 

Copyright, 2008, The Saginaw News. All Rights Reserved. Used by NewsBank with Permission.

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## Dark Muse

> How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
> She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
> She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
> I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
> She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
> Coming behind her for her pretty sake
> (But what prodigious mowing did we make.)


A lot of this stanza has already been discussed previously. I have to agree that I think it is filled with double entendre. I think it is full of sensulaity. 





> She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin


This is a beautiful line 




> She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,


I found this line to be currious, as not completely certain of what was implied here and how this symbology fits into the rest of the poem and the other ideas which were expressed within.

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## Virgil

And the sickle, rake. and mowing connects nicely with the grass and hay of the last stanza.  :Smile:

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## Dark Muse

Yes it connects with grasy and hay, but I do not see how it fits in with the overall theme of the Poem.

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## quasimodo1

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
.....I find these lines to be the center of this poem. Behind all the allure and beauty of Roethke's subject is this sense of time, or its instantanteity. Like all martyrs, at least of the religious type, his own mind set has predestined him.

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## JBI

I think this poem sort of fits with the earlier tradition of English verse, particularly in reference to Marlowe and Raleighs splendid reply. The question of Time, which is so rooted in Renaissance work, as Petrach has mentioned, is here turned completely upside down, in a sort of jazzy carpe diem poem, that is in a sense about the qualities of time, but completely ignores them. Roethke seems to be saying, to me at least, that all the fretting about death and age killing love is silly, as he already is (was) a slave to another more powerful thing - the woman, a stronger force.

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## stlukesguild

She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,

I found this line to be currious, as not completely certain of what was implied here and how this symbology fits into the rest of the poem and the other ideas which were expressed within.

It would seem to me to reinforce the idea that he... the poet... is the one who is seduced... as she mows him down. Of course it all fits in with his professed (and surely exaggerated) innocence. He almost seems to proclaim that with such a woman he never had a chance. :Blush:

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## Dark Muse

Yes I can kind of see how that would work.

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## stlukesguild

JBI... I agree that there is something of what you suggest to be found especially in the closing stanza:

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

"Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay..." Let time come and go as it will, he is indeed blinded by... enthralled with a greater force. In some ways I am also reminded of some of Yeat's later poems... the older poet forgetting all in the face of love and sensuality... or actually finding "an eternity in an hour"... spent with the woman who has so bewitched him.

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## stlukesguild

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?

.....I find these lines to be the center of this poem. Behind all the allure and beauty of Roethke's subject is this sense of time, or its instantanteity. Like all martyrs, at least of the religious type, his own mind set has predestined him.

Quasi... Yes, I love this final stanza. There is this play back and forth:

"Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay"... he starts to muse upon the passage of time... but rather suggests that he is content to let the world and time slide on past.

"I'm martyr to a motion not my own"... Again I sense a double meaning: he, like all of us, is martyr to the passage of time which is not his to control... but he is also martyr to this woman... ah! the motion of those hips!! A conquest of reason by passion... like the tale of Phyllis and Aristotle.

"What's freedom for? To know eternity." So proclaims the poet's reason... but once again her charms complete bedazzle and distract him: "I swear she cast a shadow white as stone." 

"But who would count eternity in days?"... And so he confronts the question of "eternity" and suggests that perhaps eternity is not measured in time... that perhaps it is indeed, to be found in an hour... spent with the woman who so bewitches him.

"These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)" ... And has SHE not become his purpose or reason and his only means of counting the passing minutes?

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## quasimodo1

This thread has given me not so much of a new appreciation for Roethke, since there never was much to begin with, but a true appreciation of his poetry and almost every poem in this collection requires multiple readings.

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## JBI

Anyone else notice about 3/4 through the volume of his Collected Works he seems to shift away from free-verse, to a more consistent use of evenly lengthened lines, and traditional forms. What are you're thoughts on that?

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## quasimodo1

Yes, I was noticing many subtle (and some not so subtle) changes in style. He reminds me of Wallace Stevens in the sense that as Roethke matured (aged?), his poetry became more distant with far less concern for readers without literary backgrounds. He is known to have T.S. Eliot as a model and he gravitated toward that "ideal" consciously and subconsciously.

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## Dark Muse

> Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
> Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
> She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
> My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
> Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
> Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
> (She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)


Though I know most have moved on to the last stanaza, I thought this one was worth mentioning before we wrap up this discussion. 




> Love likes a gander, and adores a goose


I really liked this play upon the old addage "What is good for the goose is good for the gander"




> Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
> She played it quick, she played it light and loose;


I loved this allusion to music, and I thought it touched back to the first stanza when it spoke of her and the birds, as well I think passion and music can often be tied in together. 




> My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees


At first this struck me as a bit odd, "flowing" is not a typical word used to talk about knees, it seems to refelect back to the begining "she moved in more way than one" 




> Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose


Was not sure what to make of the "mobile nose"

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## Kafka's Crow

I've been in and out of this thread regularly, what a way to enjoy a poet! Thanks Quasimodo for inviting me but I have not read much of Roethke. I ordered a copy of _Collected Poems_ right away and it arrived today all the way from somewhere in America. So, I'll jump in the middle here. I have not read all the posts in this thread but can see that a very intelligent discussion is going on here and we (now I can say 'we') are making good progress. I don't know why but this poet reminds me of Wallace Stevens a good deal.

_I Knew a Woman_: I think this is a 'memory poem' as the title suggests. Its main concern is memory through time, the consciousness of memory, the consciousness itself. In this context the key lines are:




> Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
> *The shapes a bright container can contain!*


This is the kaleidescope of memory. The 'bright container' is that which gives shape, the consciousness, the person's own being casting shadow and reflecting, transforming reality of the subject. The whole universe is at work here, the birds, the sights, the music, the sounds and all these forces are turning the 'bright container' constantly. Then there is the poet himself, his desire, his love, his infatuation as it grows over the years bridging time and space. The woman is being transformed under pressures from all directions. Human consciousness is never free and memory is even more unreliable as it bears the whole burden of the time elapsed and the things that happened over the elapsed period exert their pressure on the subject. 

Sorry, time for the school run but does this make sense? During my fleeting visits to this thread I have noticed this theme running through other poems as well, his theme of shadows (Plato's cave), reflections and lights. What do you folks think?

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## JBI

> Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
> I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
> What's freedom for? To know eternity.
> I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
> But who would count eternity in days?
> 
> .....I find these lines to be the center of this poem. Behind all the allure and beauty of Roethke's subject is this sense of time, or its instantanteity. Like all martyrs, at least of the religious type, his own mind set has predestined him.
> 
> Quasi... Yes, I love this final stanza. There is this play back and forth:
> ...


StLukes, I got from the last line, that he body takes the form of a metronome/clock, to which he becomes slave. The image then would fit with his other time comments, and make for quite the double entendre, as the first meaning would seem to be of his captivation, whereas the second would allude to his imprisonment to her bidding, and her overbearing control.

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## Kafka's Crow

> StLukes, I got from the last line, that he body takes the form of a metronome/clock, to which he becomes slave. The image then would fit with his other time comments, and make for quite the double entendre, as the first meaning would seem to be of his captivation, whereas the second would allude to his imprisonment to her bidding, and her overbearing control.


Allow me to steal your interpretation and dove-tail it with my understanding of this poem. Memory is the mechanism that keeps a consciousness afloat or alive. 'In my end is my beginning' as Eliot would quote Mary, Queen of Scots. The woman is a memory, transformed by and transforming consciousness:




> Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
> I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
> What's freedom for? To know eternity.
> I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
> But who would count eternity in days?


(saves me from going back to my book and JBI's post again and again!)

Time destroys all, but why martyr? Why not just dead or decayed or consumed or deceased, why martyr. What is the cause that the martyr was defending or trying to uphold? 

Eternity can be found in the working of one memory, Blake's grain of sand. Time (history) is made up of memories, a chain of memories and a close examination of only one memory can reveal the whole structure of history. It is invisible, individual memory that creates individual and ultimately group/collective-consciousness (history) is invisible. It moves without a shadow (white shadow is an invisible shadow) and works secretly but this is the 'moving mover'. We are made up of memories and memories are made up by us, by the world. We inhabit a world and a history that reflects nothing but ourselves. Time is memory, not days, hours or years. Time _is_ what happens _in_ time. But what happens in time is not pure but is transformed by many different forces while it keeps on transforming everything else. This is a curious idea but what we see is nothing but ourselves. The reality is nothing but consciousness and self is the most powerful part of the consciousness, the major ingredient so to speak. The image of rake (gleaner) following the scythe (the reaper, time) also point to the relationship between time and the memory. After time is passed, all we are left with is memories which are adulterated by external elements as well as emotions. Thus remembrance is never unadulterated and what is time (history) but remembrance?

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## quasimodo1

Welcome back to Kafka's Crow and your observations. "During my fleeting visits to this thread I have noticed this theme running through other poems as well, his theme of shadows (Plato's cave), reflections and lights. What do you folks think?" I think Roethke grew up in and around greenhouses, the source of this imagery?

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## Dark Muse

With all his talk about birds, particuarly herons and water I thought he may have grown up near the water somewhere. He does have a poem called Child On Top of a Greenhouse

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## quasimodo1

One of the poets Roethke read while institutionalized was "that sweet man John Clare.": 

FIRST LOVE

I neer was struck before that hour 
With love so sudden and so sweet, 
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower 
And stole my heart away complete. 


My face turned pale as deadly pale, 
My legs refused to walk away, 
And when she looked, what could I ail? 
My life and all seemed turned to clay. 


And then my blood rushed to my face 
And took my eyesight quite away, 
The trees and bushes round the place 
Seemed midnight at noonday. 


I could not see a single thing, 
Words from my eyes did start 
They spoke as chords do from the string, 
And blood burnt round my heart. 


Are flowers the winters choice? 
Is loves bed always snow? 
She seemed to hear my silent voice, 
I never saw so sweet a face 
As that I stood before. 
My heart has left its dwelling-place 
And can return no more.

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## Dark Muse

Now that it seems like _I Knew A Woman_ is wrapping up, Quasi said I could pick the next poem for disuccion. I was really struck by the poem _Genesis._ It is not a very long poem, but out of all I have read so far, something about it just really sticks out in my mind the most.

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## Kafka's Crow

Ok! Let's do it stanza by stanza.

*Genesis*
This elemental force
Was wrested from the sun;
A river's leaping source
Is locked in narrow bone.

An utterly biblical title and an utterly scientific opening! What's going on here? The universal force is channelized into creating a small planet (the narrow bone). I am amazed by the six syllables. I think only a couple of lines or three in the whole poem are written in less than six syllabus and none exceeds six. Did he rest on the seventh? The poem is being created as well as the universe.

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## Dark Muse

Yes it is quite interesting that he choose the word Genisis as the titile of this poem, though the poem is riddled with biblical references, there is also something very "natural" about it. 




> This elemental force


This is a great opeening line. It enstnatly grabbed my attention in my first reading of the poem, and it never fails to effect me and I have read this poem over several times now. It does open the poem with a "bang" I think.




> Was wrested from the sun


I think this is an interesting line. It is the idea of some struggle, a conflict of energy, a pushing and pulling force. It is a very scientific take on creation coupled with the title of the poem. 




> A river's leaping source
> Is locked in narrow bone


Bones seem to come up a lot in Roethke's poems. I think the mention of the river, has a sort of calming effected compared with the violence of the first two lines. Though I was not sure what to make of the "narrow bone"

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## Kafka's Crow

Is this 'river' with a 'leaping source' the universal time and 'narrow bone' is the microcosmic or the earthly time, days and nights, hours, months and years, what Wordsworth calls 'earth's diurnal course'. I can be wrong here but I think he is talking about the creation of time.

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## Bitterfly

> I think this is an interesting line. It is the idea of some struggle, a conflict of energy, a pushing and pulling force. It is a very scientific take on creation coupled with the title of the poem.


Why do you think the idea of conflict is "scientific"? I see strife more as "pre-scientific"(as in Greek cosmogonies, or in Ovid's account of Creation). The presence of natural elements (fire, water, which oppose each other) also make me think that. And "wrested from the sun" strangely reminds me of Prometheus...




> Bones seem to come up a lot in Roethke's poems. I think the mention of the river, has a sort of calming effected compared with the violence of the first two lines. Though I was not sure what to make of the "narrow bone"


The very regular rhythm (perfect iambic trimeters) also contributes to the calming effect (and contrasts with the violence of the beginning), I find.

If I knew what the rest of the poem was about  :Biggrin:  (didn't find it on the net), it would be easier for me to understand, I think, but the "narrow bone" gives me the impression that all that energy is being poured into man, there to be bounded ("locked").

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## Dark Muse

> Is this 'river' with a 'leaping source' the universal time and 'narrow bone' is the microcosmic or the earthly time, days and nights, hours, months and years, what Wordsworth calls 'earth's diurnal course'. I can be wrong here but I think he is talking about the creation of time.


Ahh yes, that does make sense.

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## Dark Muse

> Why do you think the idea of conflict is "scientific"? I see strife more as "pre-scientific"(as in Greek cosmogonies, or in Ovid's account of Creation). The presence of natural elements (fire, water, which oppose each other) also make me think that. And "wrested from the sun" strangely reminds me of Prometheus...


Though the poem might be touched with elements of mythology, it seems to me, that inspite of the title of the poem. At least those first opening lines seems to refelct more the idea of the "Big Bang" rather than Biblical Creation. The elements expressed within the poem contradict "Geneisis"

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## quasimodo1

Kafka's Crow will forgive me for jumping to the last stanza... "A pearl within the brain,
Secretion of the sense;
Around a central grain
New meaning grows immense." My take on this poem is much more personal, personal for Roethke that is. All the references come together if he is writing of his own unique source for a poem. How "meaning grow immense" once his mind has created that "seed" or concept.

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## Bitterfly

> Though the poem might be touched with elements of mythology, it seems to me, that inspite of the title of the poem. At least those first opening lines seems to refelct more the idea of the "Big Bang" rather than Biblical Creation. The elements expressed within the poem contradict "Geneisis"


 Ah, Ok, I hadn't understood that that was what you were emphasizing. Pretty interesting idea! :Thumbs Up: 

Erm, I'd love to see the rest of the poem, now my curiosity has been sparked!

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## Dark Muse

I could not find it anywhere online, so I just PMed it to you, sense for legal reasons I cannot post it in its enterity here.

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## Bitterfly

Thanks a ton!
Now that I can see the whole poem, the meaning is a tad clearer!  :Tongue: 

First stanza: Creative forces: sun, water, "source" (reminiscent of the river in the garden of Eden). There's strife - as for all creative activity. The "narrow bone" has "locked" the force in - that's perhaps why it threatens to break out again in the second stanza?

Second stanza: I can understand the link with Genesis at least, now  :Tongue:  - there's a reference to the fruit of the garden of Eden. What's interesting is that it's not exactly the "fruit of good" in the Bible, is it? Isn't it rather the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? And why is the "wisdom" (positive connotations) associated with "floods" and "invades" (pejorative, the flood which came to punish mankind); likened to an almost destructive force ("swells", "burst"). Is creation both beneficial and destructive? One has the impression this force is going to break, to burst the mind that harbours it.

Third stanza: something hidden and secretive ("pearl", "secretion" which contains the word "secret") which you therefore have to go and look for? How come it hasn't burst out? It "grows immense" yet is still "within". Maybe the mind has found a way to control the elemental force of the beginning. More intellectual vocabulary (sense", "meaning", "brain" rather than "mind"). 
I find this stanza a bit of a letdown, actually...  :Frown:   :Tongue:

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## Dark Muse

> This wisdom floods the mind,
> invades quiescent blood;
> a seed that swells the rind
> to burst the fruit of good


The second stanza is quite interesting. I think the frist two lines 




> This wisdom floods the mind,
> invades quiescent blood;


Could be linked to poetic creativity and its effect upon a person. The way in which it says "wisdom floods the mind" from what information I have gleamed about Roethke by reading the other posts here, and his struggles with sanity, I think this line is quite fitting. It is something that comes overwhelming upon a person. 

As I found the second line here 




> invades quiescent blood


To be quite interesting. I admit I had to look up quiescent 

marked by inactivity or repose : tranquilly at rest 

Now this is interesting, when pared with the line "invade" it seems to me to suggest one who is at rest, suddnely being sparked into activity again. It also toys with the early ideas of chaos seen in the first stanza. 




> a seed that swells the rind
> to burst the fruit of good


These lines, paricuarly the mention of the seed that swells and than bursts into fruit, I could not help but to have the imagery of a woman impregnated, which would tie into ideas of creation.

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## Virgil

I have to apologize. I was away on a business trip and could not get an internet connection. I need to catch up.

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## quasimodo1

Virgil: Not a problem. While awaiting a response from the next person to choose a poem... I'd like to put one up for consideration. Let this one have at least a day or two. It surely is dense enough. See next posting.

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## quasimodo1

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
pp 13-14

THE COMING OF THE COLD

I

The late peach yields a subtle musk,
The arbor is alive with fume
More heady than a field at dusk
When clover scents diminished wind.
The walker's foot has scarcely room
Upon the orchard path, for skinned
And battered fruit has choked the grass.
The yield's half down and half in air,
The plum drops pitch upon the ground,
And nostrils widen as they pass
The place where butternuts are found.
The wind shakes out the scent of pear.
Upon the field the scent is dry:
The dill bears up it acrid crown;
The dock, so garish to the eye,
Distills a pungence of its own;
And pumpkins sweat a bitter oil.
But soon cold rain and frost come in
To press pure fragrance to the soil;
The loose vine droops with hoar at dawn,
The riches of the air blow thin.

II

The ribs of leaves lie in the dust,
The beak of frost has picked the bough,
The briar bears its thorn, and drought
Has left its ravage on the field.
The season's wreckage lies about,
Late autumn fruit is rotted now.
All shade is lean, the antic branch
Jerks skyward at the touch of wind,
Dense trees no longer hold the light,
The hedge and orchard grove are thinned.
The dank bark dries beneath the sun,
The last of harvesting is done.
All things are brought to barn and fold.
The oak leaves strain to be unbound,
The sky turns dark, the year grows old,
The buds draw in before the cold. ... {2 of 3 parts}

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## stlukesguild

Quasi has asked that I select the next Roethke poem and so I have done so... choosing _Four For Sir John Davies_:

1. The Dance

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
That made him think the universe could hum?
The great wheel turns its axle when it can;
I need a place to sing, and dancing-room,
And I have made a promise to my ears
I'll sing and whistle romping with the bears.

For they are all my friends: I saw one slide
Down a steep hillside on a cake of ice-
Or was that in a book? I think with pride:
A caged bear rarely does the same thing twice
In the same way: O watch his body sway!
This animal remembering to be gay.

I tried to fling my shadow at the moon,
The while my blood leaped with a wordless song.
Though dancing needs a master, I had none
To teach my toes to listen to my tongue.
But what I learned there, dancing all alone,
Was not the joyless motion of a stone.

I take this cadence from a man named Yeats;
I take it, and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddle through my brain,
Yes, I was dancing-mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.

This first section can be heard read by Roethke himself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKaoXy2KaJU

Stanley Kunitz... poet and friend of Roethke writes the following of the genesis of this poem:

On another country visit, in the following decade, he asked me long after midnight to read something choice to him. I picked up Sir John Davies' neglected Elizabethan masterpiece, "Orchestra," a poem that he had somehow never chanced on despite his omnivorous appetite for verse, and I can still recall the excitement with which he responded to the clear-voiced music.

From that encounter, combined with his deep attachment to the poetry of Yeatsit was beat, above all, that enchanted himhe composed the eloquent sequence, "Four for Sir John Davies," which was to set the cadence for a whole new cycle of later poems. 

The text of Sir John Davies' _Orchestra_ can be found here:

http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/davies1.html

Hopefully Petrarch's Love will drop by and enlighten us with her knowledge of Davies' poem and perhaps offer up some insights into it's relationship with Roethke's work. I have been unable to find the entire poem on the net (anyone else have any luck? please post a link). It is included in my volume of Roethke's _Words for the Wind_ as well as his _Collected Poems_. I'll PM the text to anyone needing it.

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## Petrarch's Love

Oh, I love that recording of Roethke reading the poem you posted, St. Luke's! Great youtube find. I'll be glad to join in the discussion, but it'll have to be tomorrow night, since I have to spend this evening finishing my class prep. for the first day tomorrow rather than get lured into the dance (though perhaps my students would rather we dance than have me get up and lecture on portraits of Elizabeth I and Shakespeare's _Richard II_  :Tongue: ). The Renascence text of the Davies is the one in my bookmarks, so I'm assuming that's the most complete version I could find on the web.

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## quasimodo1

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his 

complete meaning alone. His signigicance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. 

You cannot value him alone; you must set him for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of 

aesthetic, not merely historical criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what 

happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, 

which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them." T.S.Eliot

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## stlukesguild

That bit (and a little more) from Eliot's great essay, _Tradition and the Individual Talent_ from _The Sacred Wood_ has long been etched upon my mind. Art is as much a dialog with art and other artists as it is a dialog with the present. 

Looking at the first section here of Roethke's poem it is clear that he builds upon Davies exploration of the idea of all the cosmos involved in a grand dance... or the _Musica Universalis_ or the _Music of the Spheres_ a concept often credited to Pythagoras, who is quoted as having suggested that "there is geometry in the humming of the strings; there is music in the spacing of the spheres." This concept was further echoed in Dante's Divine Comedy and the theory remained popular into the Renaissane and was even put forth in Johannes Kepler's Harmonice Mundi (1619) in which Kepler suggested a connection between geometry, astronomy, harmonics, and music... a universal music (_musica universalis_). 

It is immediately intriguing to consider Roethke's use of the word "humming" in this context. 

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
That made him think the universe could hum?

It also leads me to think that the dancing bears to which Roethke speaks are none other than Ursa Major and Minor.

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## quasimodo1

According to some academic critics of Sir John Davies and other more recent critiques of Roethke's poems, in the past the mind and the universe (taking up stlukes. mention of constellations) were said to be somehow syncopated and/or humming in unison. "But what I learned there, dancing all alone,/ Was not the joyless motion of a stone" These lines indicate to me a harmony percieved of the planet (a stone) and the universe also in harmony with the dancing mind.

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## Virgil

Hmm, my Roethke collection doesn't contain this poem nor was I able to find it on line. Does anyone have a link to "The Dance"?

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## stlukesguild

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
That made him think the universe could hum?
The great wheel turns its axle when it can

I ponder at the opening lines. Is Roethke asking merely whether we have lost faith in that old concept of the Musica Universalis... or have we lost something larger... a faith in an actual Universal Harmony... and order or meaning to the universe... God?

I need a place to sing, and dancing-room,
And I have made a promise to my ears
I'll sing and whistle romping with the bears.

For they are all my friends: I saw one slide
Down a steep hillside on a cake of ice-
Or was that in a book? I think with pride:
A caged bear rarely does the same thing twice
In the same way: O watch his body sway!
This animal remembering to be gay.

And then he turns to the dancing bears... and I wonder whether he is speaking of the celestial bears (Ursa Major/Minor)... and the image of the bear sliding on a cake of ice calls to mind the image of these constellations or a snowy horizon... or was it something read in a book? 

...As the two bears, whom the First Mover flings
With a short turn around heaven's axeltree,
In a round dance forever wheeling be."

from _Orchestra_, Sir John Davies

And the caged animal is seen dancing with a joy that immediately calls to mind (especially in response to Roethke's choice of that word "gay") his beloved Yeats:

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay...

On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

from _Lapis Lazuli_

The last two stanzas reinforce this connection with Yeats and make me suspect that Roethke speaks of the dance of poetry... and certainly not the "joyless motion of a stone"... the "dance" of the dead planets throughout the celestial spheres:

I tried to fling my shadow at the moon,
The while my blood leaped with a wordless song.
Though dancing needs a master, I had none
To teach my toes to listen to my tongue.
But what I learned there, dancing all alone,
Was not the joyless motion of a stone.

I take this cadence from a man named Yeats;
I take it, and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddle through my brain,
Yes, I was dancing-mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.

Again I find myself thinking on Kunitz' description of Roethke's response to Davies' _Orchestra_:

it was beat, above all, that enchanted him—

There is an intriguing section of Davies Orchestra in which he discusses the music of poetry... its rhythm... as a dance:

70 (67)

But for more diuers and more pleasing show,
A swift and wandring daunce she did inuent,
VVith passages vncertaine to and fro,
Yet with a certaine aunswere and consent
To the quick musick of the Instrument.
Fiue was the number of the Musicks feete,
Which still the daunce did with fiue paces meete...

69

What shall I name those currant trauases
That on a triple Dactyle foote doe run
Close by the ground with slyding passages,
VVherein that Dauncer greatest prayse hath won
Which with best order can all orders shun:
For euery where he wantonly must range,
And turne and wind, with vnexpected change.

70

Yet is ther one the most delightfull kind,
A lofty iumping, or a leaping round,
VVhere arme in arme, two Dauncers are entwind,
And whirle themselues with strict embracements bound,
And still their feet an Anapest do sound:
An Anapest is all theyr musicks song,
Whose first two feet are short, & third is long.

92

And those great Maisters of the liberall Arts
In all their seuerall Schooles doe Dauncing teach:
For humble Grammer first doth set the parts
Of congruent and well-according speach:
Which Rhetorick whose state ye clouds doth reach,
And heau'nly Poetry doe forward lead,
And diuers Measures, diuersly doe tread.

93

For Rhetorick clothing speech in rich aray
In looser numbers teacheth her to range,
VVith twentie tropes, and turning euery way,
And various figures, and licentious change:
But Poetry with rule and order strange
So curiously doth moue each single pace,
As all is mard if she one foote misplace. 

I'll wait for Petrarch to comment here...

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## Virgil

My Roethke collection contains this after all. I was looking under the wrong title. I was reading this last night and this is another outstanding poem. I don't have time to comment right now, but I will by tonight.

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## Jozanny

Will someone be kind enough to pm me the poem? I have not made it to the library yet because my Quickie and I are in a dark comedy of discovery as to which of us will kill the other first.

It is hard to digest Roethke from this angle, but what I have digested leaves me conflicted.

Thanks to those who helped. Hard day, bbl.

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## quasimodo1

STEPHEN SPENDER ON ROETHKE'S DANCING: "In his poems, Roethke seems often to be dancing. This is not the dance transcended and purified in the poetry; the entry into a metaphysical pattern of theological joy of Auden or Eliot, nor is it the tragic dancing on the graves of the dead of Yeats-- it is simply Roethke incredibly and almost against his will dancing. He is the boy who is waltzed round by his father of the whiskeyed breath; the sensual man swaying toward the woman swaying toward him; the dying man dancing his way out of his body toward God. There was never, one might say, such ungainly yet compulsive dancing, as in Roethke." Stephen Spender

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## Virgil

Two things strike me from this poem. First the number of questions throughout the poem. I count seventeen questions the narrator asks. He opens the poem with a question: "Is that dance slowing in the mind of man/That made him think the universe could hum?" That openning question is quite paradoxical, actually quite metaphysical. A dance in the mind is quite an image. It's not physically real and it leads to another metaphysical concept, the universe portrayed as a machine. How about some other questions: "What is desire?--/The impulse to make someone else complete?" "Who can embrace the body of his fate?" "Who's whistling up my sleeve?" "Things loll and loiter. Who condones the lost?/This joy outleaps the dog. Who cares? Who cares?" "What shape leaped forward at the sensual cry?--" "Did space shake off an angel with a sigh?" "Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?" "Who leaps to heaven at a single bound?" "The visible obscures. But who knows when?" "The world is for the living. Who are they?"

All of these questions are paradoxical, disjointed, and realtively unanaswerable. Some are even outright absurd. From a poetic craft point of view, these questions creates a constant stress through out the poem. There is never a moment of relaxation.

The other thing that I observe is the constant contrast of opposites: light versus dark, ground versus universe or heavens, down versus up, mind versus body, spirit versus flesh, ice versus fire, animal versus human.

I should have more to say on the poem later.

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## quasimodo1

Was I the servant of a sovereign wish,
Or ladle rattling in an empty dish?
One of Virgil's questions quoted here, may seem absurd but my view is that it's rhetorical. The given answer is that Roethke sees himself as voicing or re-voicing the dead poets theme. He indeed was or wanted to be the "servant of a sovereign wish" almost as historical fiction when done correctly recaptures the past.

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## Virgil

> Was I the servant of a sovereign wish,
> Or ladle rattling in an empty dish?
> One of Virgil's questions quoted here, may seem absurd but my view is that it's rhetorical. The given answer is that Roethke sees himself as voicing or re-voicing the dead poets theme. He indeed was or wanted to be the "servant of a sovereign wish" almost as historical fiction when done correctly recaptures the past.


Actually Quasi I missed that question entirely. So eighteen questions, unless I missed others. I'm not familiar with this dead poet's theme. Can you elaborate? I'm curious and interested.  :Smile:

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## quasimodo1

In the first stanza, Roethke is making a connection with Yeats referencing Davies work as subtext. Each stanza uses a different subtext: Homer and Virgil are two others. As Stlukes mentioned, "Orchestra" is a corresponding work serving both as inspiration and connection. Sir John Davies' theme or themes are ...comparing the natural order with that of the cosmos, the microcosm of man vis the macrocosm of God and/or the universe... the overall harmonies of man and the natural world. Davies uses Homer, I think, as a lens to meditate and elaborate on these comparisons.

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## quasimodo1

On the composing of "Four for Sir John Davies" in Theodore Roethke's own words: "Let me say boldly, now, that the extent to which the great dead can be evoked, or can come to us, can be errie, and astonishing. Let me, at the risk of seeming odd, recite a personal incident. I was in that particular hell of a poet: a longish dry period. It was 1952, I was 44, and I thought I was done. I was living aone in a biggish house in Edmonds, Washington. I had been reading-- and re-reading--not Yeats, but Ralegh and Sir John Davies. I had been teaching the five-beat line for weeks--I knew quite a bit about it, but write it myself? --no: so I felt myself a fraud. Suddenly, in the early evening, the poem "The Dance" started, and finished itself in avery short time--say thirty minutes, maybe in the greater part of an hour, it was all done. I felt, I KNEW, I had hit it. I walked around, and wept: and I knelt down--I always do after I've written what I know is a good piece. But at the same time I had, as God as my witness, the actual sense of a Presence-- as if Yeats himself were in that room. The experience was in a way terrifying, for it lasted at least half an hour. That house, I repeat, was charged with a psychic presence: the very walls seemed to shimmer. I wept for joy. At last I was somebody again. He, they--the poets dead--were with me. Now I know there are any number of cynical explanations for this phenomenon: auto-suggestion, the unconscious playing an elaborate trick, and so on, but I accept none of them. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life."

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## stlukesguild

A fabulous quote... Roethke channeling Yeats. It certainly suggests the author certainly believed in the notion that one of the roles of the poet was to engage in a sort of dialog with one's predecessors. Perhaps not unlike the already quoted comments by Eliot. 

I'm looking now at the second poem in the suite, _The Partner_, where Roethke has moved on from the dance per se:

Between such animal and human heat
I find myself perplexed. What is desire?
The impulse to make someone else complete?
That woman could set sodden straw on fire.
Was I the servant of a sovereign wish,
Or ladle rattling in an empty dish?

Roethke seems to move on to questions... unanswerable... about love/desire/sex and whether it is all part of some plan of nature... or of God... part of the music of the spheres... the universal harmony... or nothing but a sound (and a fury?) signifying nothing?

We played a measure with commingled feet:
The lively dead had taught us to be fond.
Who can embrace the body of his fate?
Light altered light along the living ground.
She kissed me close and then did something else.
My marrow beat as wildly as my pulse.

I am continually struck by Roethke's ability to suggest multiple meanings... or ask multiple questions... with a single phrase: "Who can embrace the body of his fate?"

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## quasimodo1

Who can embrace the body of his fate?
Light altered light along the living ground.
Roethke in describing the "body" of his fate intends to speak of the multiple fates which comprise a life, perhaps his life up to this point. Is the next line adjoined to this one? The light which alters the "light" is the metaphor for each small fate illuminating the next as he (we) moves through a life. So it might follow that Roethke doesn't view fate as a predestined end but one shaped and formed by all influences, definitely including a poetic ancestry.

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## Jozanny

I. The Dance

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
That made him think the universe could hum?
The great wheel turns its axle when it can;
I need a place to sing, and dancing-room,
And I have made a promise to my ears
I'll sing and whistle romping with the bears.

For they are all my friends: I saw one slide
Down a steep hillside on a cake of ice,--
Or was that in a book? I think with pride:
A caged bear rarely does the same thing twice
In the same way: O watch his body sway!--
This animal remembering to be gay.


Although Roethke was dead before animation had advanced to make it possible, this opening has the false sentimentality of the Coke polar bear commercial, while the narrative voice lacks the courage to really link the caged bear to bear baiting itself, which Davies no doubt knew of if he was a true poet of the Renaissance.

I hate to be the odd woman out while digesting my kippers (a breakfast practice I adopted from _The Turtle Diary_ once I could afford it), but Roethke really does have a limited use of tropes to authenticate himself. A great poem does more than scan perfectly, and Roethke doesn't quite break the mold while staying within the mold. He obsesses certain things well--clumsy manic feet, dishes, the body itself, but I'd like it if he would really try to put a fist through his retrospective fragmentation now and then.

I don't know how many more pieces we're going to discuss, but I'd like to nominate "Epideral Macabre" for the next. More daring in its chances.

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## quasimodo1

Jozanny: You really need to get intouch with you feelings. Criticizing Roethke for his editorial restraint...you know, that has been a kind of background music. I'll go with that.

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## Jozanny

> Jozanny: You really need to get intouch with you feelings.


I am too in touch with them already and have no idea what you are intending to rebuff with this sentiment.




> Criticizing Roethke for his editorial restraint...you know, that has been a kind of background music. I'll go with that.


Was I doing that?

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## quasimodo1

No rebuff intented, Jo. I totally get your response and wish for the fist occaisonally.

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## stlukesguild

I will add... that like Jozy I also thought almost immediately of bear-baiting with Roethke's image of the caged and dancing bear. Considering the Renaissance source of inspiration I somewhat suspect that he was not unaware of the allusion himself. Should he have been more forceful... the fist... the kick in the groin? Perhaps that is better left to Bukowski. Seriously I do agree that formalism can get rather dry and leave you wanting something more... but then again I'll take the formalism of Wilbur and Hecht over the "expressionism" of Sexton, Plath, Bukowski, and Ginsberg any day. But we are speaking of Roethke. While he is not Yeats or even Eliot I do find that he is not some effete formalist afraid of stepping on any toes. There is a certain muscularity there. If anything he may be too indebted to his predecessors.

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## stlukesguild

Before this discussion wanes... and hopefully Petrarch shows up to offer some of her thoughts... I would like to suggest that it might make sense to begin thinking about possibilities for the next poet of discussion. I believe Octavio Paz and Anna Ahkmatova (sp.?) were tied for second in the original poll. I would certainly be for renominating them as potentials for future discussion. I'm throwing out this idea now in order that we might have time to make nominations, hold a poll, and actually get the needed book(s) without a lot of down-time.

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## Jozanny

Why does *force* have to be associated with Bukowski's cheap theatrics? Look at Donne:

Death Be Not Proud


Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die. 

John Donne 




He is beloved for more than being Elizabethan.

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## quasimodo1

Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
Shook with a mighty power beyond his will,--
Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.
This stanza has a force beyond most others; I see Roethke on a height overlooking the purgatorial doings of the human race if only temporarily and while composing this poem.

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## Virgil

> Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
> Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
> Shook with a mighty power beyond his will,--
> Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
> All lovers live by longing, and endure:
> Summon a vision and declare it pure.
> This stanza has a force beyond most others; I see Roethke on a height overlooking the purgatorial doings of the human race if only temporarily and while composing this poem.


I agree, that was a remarkable passage.

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## Petrarch's Love

I've been meaning all week to put down a few comments in relation to Davies' _Orchestra_ and the Roethke, and at last find myself with that most precious of all possessions, a bit of spare time. 

St. Luke's pointed out earlier in the thread that the focus of Davies' poem is the _musica universalis_ or the music of the spheres, and the universal dance that accompanies that music. (For those unfamiliar with the concept of the music of the spheres, I put a little basic information and a few pictures in a blog entry awhile back, which might prove helpful:http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=4861). Again, as St. Luke's has already said, the opening lines of Roethke's poem:




> Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
> That made him think the universe could hum?


refer to this old way of understanding the workings of the universe in terms of a universal music and a universal dance. The lines might also be a criticism of our current culture. Is there something wrong, something lost to an age that no longer can "think the universe could hum?" I think that in some ways this relates to the number of questions in the Roethke that Virg. has been attending to. _Orchestra_ is a poem that, in many ways, provides a cohesive vision, a delightful answer to the workings of the universe. It suggests the way everything is connected to everything else by means of the cosmic dance. Roethke's poem not only questions whether we can still imagine such an answering vision, but also, if it is no longer possible to think the universe could hum or that everything is connected in a delightful universal dance, then he questions what it all means. We see things dancing, but don't know the wherefore, don't know the prime mover: "What's the cue?" (Roethke, "The Partner" ln. 17) Of course the questions in the Roethke don't neccessarily have to imply a criticism of the modern age. They do, however, suggest a mind wondering, inquiring into the meaning or lack of meaning in the world. What are the living? What happens in the animal movements of bears and men? What happens when two bodies meet? "Did each become the other in that play?" 

One of the loveliest things about Davies' _Orchestra_ is the way it lightly plays with, and intertwines thoughts about both love and the cosmos. The framing story of Davies' poem is a classic carpe diem pitch from one of the suitors of Penelope (Odysseus' faithful wife from the Odyssey). He invites her to dance, which she obviously interprets as at least prelude to a sexual advance, and prudently denies. What follows is his defense of dancing starting with the origins of the universe and the dancing of the cosmos as ordained by love. In the context of the frame story, there is obviously a certain bias of the poem to calling upon love as being central to the universe, with the goal of getting the girl to give in. Yet the pleasure of the poem, like many of the best poems in the same period (there's a very Spenserian feel to _Orchestra_) is that, while it never transcends erotic love, never leaves the body entirely behind, it none-the-less broadens into much more than that. While the poem starts with erotic love as it's theme, it continually moves ("moves" of course, being a key word for both the Davies and the Roethke) back and forth between physical love and physical movement, and a wider universal sort of love, and a movement of the mind and, ultimately, of the soul. Every imaginable thing: sun, moon, planets, plants, animals, gods, graces, words...is a part of the dance, which in turn owes its origins to love, but exactly what sort of love shifts gracefully and seamlessly throughout the poem. At times dancing seems like a metaphor for love; at times both seem like a metaphor for erotic love. At other times all of the above merge into an inclusive vision of universal movement. At one point he even alludes to a specifically erotic tale, that of Venus and Mars caught in Vulcan's net, only to claim that they were simply engaged in an innocent bit of dancing :




> This is the net wherein the sun's bright eye
> Venus and Mars entangled did behold;
> For in this dance their arms they so imply
> As each doth seem the other to enfold.
> What if lewd wits another tale have told,
> Of jealous Vulcan and of iron chains?
> Yet this true sense that forged lie contains.


This cleaning up of a familiar lusty myth is partly just a flirtatious bit of fun. Taken within the framing story one could read it as the suitor telling Penelope..."see they were only dancing and we should dance just like Venus and Mars " :Brow:  It's also just another example of the way the poem dances around the themes of love, sex, physical movement, and the way they all relate to one another. What seems to be an amorous entanglement may in reality be a dance. In other places, what would seem to be merely movement takes on amorous overtones: the sun loves the earth, there are even hints that rhetoric can make words a bit "licentious" :Biggrin: 




> For Rhetorick clothing speech in rich aray
> In looser numbers teacheth her to range,
> VVith twentie tropes, and turning euery way,
> And various figures, and licentious change:


Roethke, of course picks up on this playful and delicate blurring of the lines between love and sex and dancing and divine vision, and in turn produces his own nuanced lines entwining them all. In Roethke's poems, however, while there is a similar degree of movement between the various shades of love and experience, there is, in places, less assurance about how all these things relate, anf more unease; less lightheartedness in the play. 

My personal sense of the mind behind Roethke's poem is one that is troubled and has been taking comfort in that delightful and moving vision of the Renaissance poet. There's something comforting, perhaps cathartic, in his obvious attachment to the beat, the meter, of the poem. There's something about the way he frames his questions that makes it seem as though the writing of them is in some sense providing him answers. The poem seems like a pleasant but fragile break in a time that otherwise has been filled with profound uncertainty. I think one of the central lines has to be that in the Dante stanza of "The Vigil":




> All lovers live by longing, and endure:
> Summon a vision and declare it pure.


This is a description of love, but could just as easily be a description of poetry. Part of what Roethke seems to desire to do is to "summon a vision and declare it pure," but it is uncertain whether that is entirely possible to a mind that may no longer be capable of thinking the universe can hum; it may not even be desirable in a world "for the living. Who are they?" Certainly part of Roethke's poem seems to be an even more explicit version of the carpe diem elements of _Orchestra_. He suggests that "The flesh can make the spirit visible," and the answer to the question who are the living, could certainly be that they are those who die; the answer to life is in _le petit mort_ at the conclusion of the poem. Another part of the poem is an attempt to form some sort of pure vision, while still acknowledging on a certain level, the impossibility of doing so, either in life or in poetry. 




> Roethke in describing the "body" of his fate intends to speak of the multiple fates which comprise a life, perhaps his life up to this point. Is the next line adjoined to this one? The light which alters the "light" is the metaphor for each small fate illuminating the next as he (we) moves through a life. So it might follow that Roethke doesn't view fate as a predestined end but one shaped and formed by all influences, definitely including a poetic ancestry.


I would also add that to anyone who has been reading a lot of Renaissance poety, the idea of a "fate" as an allegorical human figure is likely also at play, giving the term body the potential for a slightly more literal valence.

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## Jozanny

Petrarch offers an orderly collegiate analysis, while I return to my tireless percussion of "yes but this isn't enough to save Roethke for me..."

It is not because I am channeling the confessionalism of the Beat generation, as luke and quasi attributed to me yesterday, so much as I am channeling Donne, Dickinson, Bishop, and even Robert Frost. The modernist Shakespearean who taught me to be honest with my own work and to eschew formalism if I had to, also taught me something about mastering formalism to the degree that you could transcend it. Bishop's work, still so fresh, and so vogue, does this. As her TNR critic pointed out, "One Art" her one and only villanelle, might have just as easily been Shakespeare's, or Donne's, and yet is an absolutely perfect signifier of the 1970's.

To now channel Calvino, Roethke loses me with his signifier(s). His dialectic is Eliot? Well, Eliot's most famous rebels bulldoze Roethke's romantic naturalistic tropes, but no wait, his dialectic is Yeats modernist irony through which he yanks the Renaissance design configuration (and nostalgia for it) from its grave? Frost shuts all this groping down with one eloquent American compliment and contrast in "Fire and Ice".

Back to Roethke:

Did each become the other in that play?
She laughed me out, and then she laughed me in;
In the deep middle of ourselves we lay;
When glory failed, we danced upon a pin.
The valley rocked beneath the granite hill;
Our souls looked forth, and the great day stood still.

Charming, but why hide yourself in the cliche of angels on a pin when you have the skill enough to defy expectations? I want to like the guy, I really do, but he is neither over-arching enough nor presents himself with a muted originality so that I can adopt him within my own poetic affection.

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## Virgil

I agree Jozy the cliche of angels on a pin could have been left out, but look at the brilliance of the lines before that:



> She laughed me out, and then she laughed me in;
> In the deep middle of ourselves we lay;


I love those lines!! I really do think that Roethke is an outstanding poet.

And kudos to Petrarch for that analysis. It enlightened my thinking of the poem.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch offers an orderly collegiate analysis, while I return to my tireless percussion of "yes but this isn't enough to save Roethke for me..."


 :FRlol: Petrarch will now attempt a disorderly, non-collegiate analysis, but may fail miserably: 

Jozy--While I appreciate your criticisms of Roethke--he's hardly being a shattering rebel and iconoclast in a poem like this--I also think the estimation of this poem very much depends upon the needs and expectations one brings to it. Your criteria for appreciating the poem seems to be linked with whether it is sufficiently innovative, and I'll certainly agree that it doesn't achieve the kind of innovation you're pointing to. It is not fresh in the way you describe the work of other poets being, and I'll state now that I fundamentally agree with you that this poem is not up there with Donne's "Death be not proud," or the top of of Frost's or Dickinson's works, but then that is a rather high bar to set. 

So, I agree that this poem is not, perhaps, at the very height of poetic production and certainly that it isn't shattering any boundaries. All the same, I cannot help but wonder if "they also serve who only stand and wait"? The poem may not be bursting forward, but there's more appeal to it than simply that it scans well. There's some real talent there, not just at the formal level of producing smooth iambs, but in his ability to create layers of meaning in a single line, to create a certain kind of play between the words and the ideas. Some of those lines, including those the ones Virg. pointed out above, are really outstanding and both effective and affecting (not simply affectations) in their own right. Yes, he's intentionally channeling the past in this poem, but I think it would be grossly unfair to characterize this as a poem that creates a hollow echo of the past devoid of feeling. If one comes to it with the expectation of finding a great and ground breaking piece of verse, then there's bound to be some disappointment, but if the expectation is to find some pleasure in a piece of verse that uses its language well to convey certain images, thoughts and emotions, then I think it will not be a disappointment. Take this stanza: 




> What shape leaped forward at the sensual cry?
> Sea-beast or bird flung toward the ravaged shore?
> Did space shake off an angel with a sigh?
> We rose to meet the moon, and saw no more.
> It was and was not she, a shape alone,
> Impaled on light, and whirling slowly down.


There's an obvious Ovdian/Yeatsian touch to this stanza, and yet I don't think its only merit is that it is imitative. I get the same sort of pleasure from the metamorphoses of this stanza as I do from parts of Ovid (perhaps not the pinnacles of the Metamorphosis, but some of the good bits). I respond, not just because it sounds like Ovid, but because in its own right it conveys the same feeling just as well as some of Ovid's passages, or Yeats' passages. I could know nothing about the earlier poets and still find this effective, whereas hollow imitators dependent on form alone for their effect usually fall very far short of being able to provoke any kind of emotional response independent of a response to them as a shadow of the past they imitate. While this may not be one of the all time "great" poems (and again, I am not claiming it is), I think it would be a disservice not to appreciate and enjoy the very real qualities it does have to offer. 

This is to say that I sense some real substance here, some genuine pleasure to be had in this poem apart from a mere reliance on nostalgia and formalism. At the same time, it would be remiss to say that nostalgia plays no part in the poem, and I think to try to punch a fist through it, so to speak, would likely ruin part of what it has to offer. As I said in my previous post, my feeling is that part of the function of this poem is as a kind of comfort, a fragile yearning for something the poet is trying to find and yet not quite certain ever even existed. I think this quality in itself is both real and moving in the poem. His attempts to re-create "that first fine careless rapture" of high moments, both in the poetic past and in the past of his own life, may not ultimately be successful in all places in the poem, but there is something inherently moving about the attempts themselves.

Of course, it may not just not be your cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that. Figured I would put my 2cents worth of defense in though.

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## Petrarch's Love

> And kudos to Petrarch for that analysis. It enlightened my thinking of the poem.


Thanks, Virg. Glad if my thoughts on the poem could be helpful.  :Smile:

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## Jozanny

> What shape leaped forward at the sensual cry?
> Sea-beast or bird flung toward the ravaged shore?
> Did space shake off an angel with a sigh?
> We rose to meet the moon, and saw no more.
> It was and was not she, a shape alone,
> Impaled on light, and whirling slowly down. 
> 
> There's an obvious Ovdian/Yeatsian touch to this stanza, and yet I don't think its only merit is that it is imitative. I get the same sort of pleasure from the metamorphoses of this stanza as I do from parts of Ovid (perhaps not the pinnacles of the Metamorphosis, but some of the good bits). I respond, not just because it sounds like Ovid, but because in its own right it conveys the same feeling just as well as some of Ovid's passages, or Yeats' passages. I could know nothing about the earlier poets and still find this effective, whereas hollow imitators dependent on form alone for their effect usually fall very far short of being able to provoke any kind of emotional response independent of a response to them as a shadow of the past they imitate. While this may not be one of the all time "great" poems (and again, I am not claiming it is), I think it would be a disservice not to appreciate and enjoy the very real qualities it does have to offer.


A very fine apologia :Smile: . Bravo! But it may point to the difference between a poet's rivalry with his or her predecessors, and a critic's ability to illuminate for a mature readership; I am not sure. Eliot would no doubt object, since he negotiated the full terrain. When I do sit and read my betters, which isn't often, I ask what I can steal if it is profound enough. Roethke is new to me, didn't floor me, and occasionally rumbles my digestion.

I'll maintain an open door policy in the meanwhile.

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## Petrarch's Love

> A very fine apologia. Bravo!


Thanks. 




> But it may point to the difference between a poet's rivalry with his or her predecessors, and a critic's ability to illuminate for a mature readership; I am not sure. Eliot would no doubt object, since he negotiated the full terrain. When I do sit and read my betters, which isn't often, I ask what I can steal if it is profound enough. Roethke is new to me, didn't floor me, and occasionally rumbles my digestion.


I figured you were reading it with the mining eye of the poet, since that's usually the perspective that what most desire some sort of innovation. As for reading like a poet, versus reading like a critic, it's an interesting question. Though I certainly can see they are two different modes of approaching a poem, I personally find it very hard to think of them as entirely separate modes, and impossible to think of them as mutually exclusive. Absolutely the reason I ended up in literary criticism was because at a young age I began reading poems with an eye to writing poems. It was not the reading of poetry but the writing of poetry that made me want to study it, to read it with the goal of seeing how it ticked. I was, as you say, floored by certain things and interested in what worked and how it worked with an eye toward using it myself and to experimenting with how to make it new. I make no claims to being a poet of any worth (which I'm not), but writing, for writing's sake, is still often something at work in my mind when I'm reading poetry: how does this work? How could it be reproduced? Improved upon? (Though I have also since found other reasons to analyze poetry, the most important being to teach it or open it up for others). I also write poetry in order to produce criticism. Any significant critical work I've done has also involved producing hundreds of lines of poetry in imitation of the poet(s) I'm working with. I need to have that first hand insight into how the poetry is working, what the rules the poet is making and breaking are, how they play out. I have trouble understanding how some of my colleagues can be literary critics without ever having any kind of interest in writing poetry, and how poets could have little interest in analyzing it, though I don't question that both can do their jobs very well without taking the other into account; I just can't personally identify with how one functions entirely without the other. I suppose I must, in this respect, have some sort of mindset in common with T.S. Eliot as you mentioned above, though naturally with no claims to anything approaching his level of skill as either a critic or a poet.  :Biggrin: 

When it came to this poem, I think I had both my poet's cap (which looks for great stuff to use) and my critic's cap (which is primarily interested in detached judgement) conveniently off and was appreciating the experience provided by the poem with relatively little detachment. Read for appreciation's sake I thought it worked quite nicely, though this could also simply be a matter of taste, and clearly you just weren't taken with it, which is fine. Thanks for the thoughtful posts you've been providing.  :Smile:

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## Virgil

Henry James said the following:



> The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.


What he means is that an artist be allowed his subject matter. It is his choice and his perogative. How we judge him is by what he does with the subject matter.

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## stlukesguild

Petrarch... You raise an interesting question. Does a writer/poet read in a manner inherently different from a critic/academic? Certainly we might suggest that a critic/academic reads in a manner somewhat different from the common reader, so is the poet's eye still different yet? 

I raise this question wondering from my own position. I have had my differences with Mortalterror (among others) in my preference/admiration for certain forms of literature in which the narrative is not the central issue. Undoubtedly this owes much to my own perspective as a visual artist. While narrative exists in visual art it is commonly frozen and assumes a recognition of the story by the audience. If not... the "narrative" is often quite ambiguous... or open-ended... or of little real importance as opposed to mood, atmosphere, "feeling", etc...

In art one regularly hears of the painter who is referred to as "a painter's painter"... suggesting that while he or she may have a certain acceptance within the larger audience of art lovers, painters tend to recognize some real depth and ability that is perhaps not more commonly recognized. Are there not poets referred to as "a poet's poet"? At the same time, might one not assume that there is something of Bloom's "anxiety of influence" involved in any artist confronting the work of a predecessor? The art lover or poetry lover can approach a marvelous painting or poem without the least anxiety... without a sense of a bar set too high for one to ever master... without a sense of hostility directed toward the masterful (read authoritative) work that seemingly challenges all that one values or struggles toward in one's own work.

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## Virgil

One last post on “FOUR FOR SIR JOHN DAVIES.” I would like to really explore the last section, “The Vigil.” But first notice how he gets to the last section. 

The first section could be summed up as the poet’s search for a theme that reflects the universe’s “hum.” Why he finds it in the dancing bear I can’t figure out, but so he does, and the central facts I think of that first section are the master that coordinates the dance and the solitary experience of the poet. Here he tries “to fling his shadow at the moon.”

The second section can be summed up as the making love and how that interweaves with the humming of the universe. We see this in the lines “We played a measure with commingled feet” and “Who's whistling up my sleeve?” and “O what lewd music crept into our ears!” And the solitary consciousness is replaced by “we” and other “she.” “She kissed me close, and then did something else” and “I gave her kisses back, and woke a ghost.”

The third section can be summed as the aftermath of the love making and try to understand the love’s relationship to the hum. “We two, together, on a darkening day/Took arms against our own obscurity.” and “The flesh can make the spirit visible;/We woke to find the moonlight on our toes.” The question then arises if they transcend into the Platonic ideal of perfect love within the universe’s motion:



> What shape leaped forward at the sensual cry?--
> Sea-beast or bird flung toward the ravaged shore?
> Did space shake off an angel with a sigh?
> We rose to meet the moon, and saw no more.
> It was and was not she, a shape alone,
> Impaled on light, and whirling slowly down.


And so we come to the final section where we find the narrator not in the heavens but as Dante just before entering Paradiso on the “purgatorial hill.” The question becomes can the physical love of the two transcend into the perfect form of love. The poet trembles at the moment and ponders it:



> Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
> Shook with a mighty power beyond his will,--
> Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
> All lovers live by longing, and endure:
> Summon a vision and declare it pure.


Can the two make the leap from Purgatory to Heaven? Ultimately it’s not the single ego of the poem who strives but the two, “we.”



> Though everything's astonishment at last,
> Who leaps to heaven at a single bound?
> The links were soft between us; still, we kissed;
> We undid chaos to a curious sound:
> The waves broke easy, cried to me in white;
> Her look was morning in the dying light.


Then he has a moment of individualism:



> The visible obscures. But who knows when?
> Things have their thought: they are the shards of me;
> I thought that once, and thought comes round again;


But notice how the central “I,” the ego of the first section is weakened now, just “shards” and discarded as in the past, “I thought that once.” The central ego has been fragmented and the we is quickly reconstituted and the forces of disintegration “mocked.”:



> Rapt, we leaned forth with what we could not see.
> We danced to shining; mocked before the back
> And shapeless night that made no answer back.


And finally central ego is completely dissolved into the female form, and word “form” is quite key. 



> The world is for the living. Who are they?
> We dared the dark to reach the white and warm.
> She was the wind when wind was in my way;
> Alive at noon, I perished in her form.
> Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall:
> The word outleaps the world, and light is all.


Notice how all four sections of the poem have the motif of "leaping" somewhere in the section. It sets up the final leap, the leap to the heavens of the fourth section. Their love has reached the Platonic form, and all this through “word” of poetry.

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## quasimodo1

This posting is not meant to preclude any discussion of Roethke. I mean to update participants that the following poets have been mentioned for the next discussion: Octavio Paz, Ana Ahkmatova, Eugenio Montale and Mebdh McGuckian. We need at least one more, hopefully an English or American poet for balance. That is all.

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## Dark Muse

What about Elizabeth Bishop, she was mentioned the first time around. Hah, I would say Plath, but I seem to be the only one who likes her.

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## quasimodo1

Muse: Consiser Bishop and Plath added to the list. At some point we'll have a proper vote.

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## Jozanny

> Hah, I would say Plath, but I seem to be the only one who likes her.


Eh, I would not say you were the only one DM. I think "Blackberrying" is one of her more powerful efforts; I would however, sit out a Plath discussion, despite the fact that I have her hubby's Collected Poems, and read The Bell Jar. I am weary of the Plath saga, the romanticism-as-tincture to her illness. My mother was bipolar, untreated and undiagnosed for a long time, and what this does to families is neither prophetic or particularly charming. Plath's emotional instability is too closely married to any analysis of her contribution to the canon. At least Bishop's small if near perfect output can stand by itself, despite the fact that all of the poets entrenched in this era seemingly loved their mood disorders and sinus pressure.

Now, quasi has politely hounded me to introduce Roethke's "Epidermal Macbre" which I selected in post 200, but here is the link again because I can waste myself til death if I like.

Even though I am less than sold on Roethke's trinket jangling with his schemes and couplets, and this post made me miss part of The Newshour, for which I will hold quasi responsible (glares sternly), what I like about the piece, is what this annotation states eloquently:




> Much of Roethke's poetry stemmed from what W. H. Auden described in a review as "the experience of feeling physically soiled and humiliated by life." For Roethke this began with his own physical ungainliness. Many of his readers identified with his poems describing the pursuit of spirituality, continually hampered by a sense of the obscene, the earthly, and the mundane. The Roethke contingents among us provide a counterbalance to the Whitmanesque celebrants of the body and should remind caregivers to be respectful of modesty and shame.


I can relate, and like the metaphor of the body as an ill-fitted suit which is malevolent in its own right:

The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.

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## Virgil

> What about Elizabeth Bishop, she was mentioned the first time around. Hah, I would say Plath, but I seem to be the only one who likes her.


I like Syvia Plath. I like Elizabeth Bishop too.

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## Dark Muse

> I like Syvia Plath.


Well at least I am not completely alone. Usually whenever I mention her name, people have a tendency to look down their noses at me, like I am such unsophisticated pauper because I happen to enjoy her work. Or they presume that the only reason I must like her is because it is just the cliche thing to do based upon the popularity given to her life story and past, and that I could not just genuinely happen to enjoy reading her work. 

I do not think everyone must like her, but I am tired of others pulling the snob card out, just becasue I do.

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## quasimodo1

"Poetry is usually considered the most local of all the arts. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, can be enjoyed by all who see or hear. But language, especially the language of poetry, is a different matter. Poetry, it might seem, separates peoples instead of uniting them." T.S. Eliot in his Nobel speech. I'm quoting Eliot on how poetry seperates people, at least in an appreciative sense...also Eliot is referring to the local nature of poetry; and in Roethke's work as JoZ has so eloquently commented, he never got over his sense of province. Or his physical sense of self. The point about poet's various states of mind, or lack of, and how that can temper your enjoyment is well appreciated. No one could pay me to be in John Berryman's head, even for a second.

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## Virgil

> Well at least I am not completely alone. Usually whenever I mention her name, people have a tendency to look down their noses at me, like I am such unsophisticated pauper because I happen to enjoy her work.


Really? I've known lots of sophisticated poetry readers like Plath. I studied her in college.




> Or they presume that the only reason I must like her is because it is just the cliche thing to do based upon the popularity given to her life story and past, and that I could not just genuinely happen to enjoy reading her work.


Well, her life story does grab some people. But I think her poetry stands up pretty well.




> I do not think everyone must like her, but I am tired of others pulling the snob card out, just becasue I do.


Ah, don't worry. She's a fine poet. Died way too young. Actually she's better than her husband Ted Hughes.

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## Dark Muse

> Ah, don't worry. She's a fine poet. Died way too young. Actually she's better than her husband Ted Hughes.


Here here to that. I tried reading Hughes work, and it really did not do it for me.

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## Jozanny

The rest of you can do as you like. I go in and out of things, and I am out right now on the forums, and the only reason I stopped by this evening was so quasi would cease pming me. I am not feeling well and I have been trying as best I can despite ailing to get back to *my* work. I am tired, stressed, and my brother and sister are whining that they want me to pay their damn mortgages and I'd like to bust both their heads.

I know all the regular posting voices here pretty much, including mine, and I am bored with it, for now. Have fun, good luck, happy holidays, and see you all around.

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## quasimodo1

JoZ, this might not be polite, and I am not without empathy, especially about your siblings, but sometimes you are absolutely hilarious.

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## Virgil

> The rest of you can do as you like. I go in and out of things, and I am out right now on the forums, and the only reason I stopped by this evening was so quasi would cease pming me. I am not feeling well and I have been trying as best I can despite ailing to get back to *my* work. I am tired, stressed, and my brother and sister are whining that they want me to pay their damn mortgages and I'd like to bust both their heads.
> 
> I know all the regular posting voices here pretty much, including mine, and I am bored with it, for now. Have fun, good luck, happy holidays, and see you all around.


Jozy I understand. I will always look for you here on lit net.  :Smile:  I liked the Roethke Macabre poem you highlighted. I just need a lttle time to think about it before I say anything.

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## Jozanny

> JoZ, this might not be polite, and I am not without empathy, especially about your siblings, but sometimes you are absolutely hilarious.


That's what they tell me old man  :Wink: , but I am taking time off from my distractions here, just for a little while. I will probably be back before turkey day. I do not hate Plath; her tropes are just same old same old, like Eliot. I'd rather do an author more under the radar, but not just now. 

Smooches :Tongue:  :Tongue:

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## mortalterror

> There's an obvious Ovdian/Yeatsian touch to this stanza, and yet I don't think its only merit is that it is imitative. I get the same sort of pleasure from the metamorphoses of this stanza as I do from parts of Ovid (perhaps not the pinnacles of the Metamorphosis, but some of the good bits). I respond, not just because it sounds like Ovid, but because in its own right it conveys the same feeling just as well as some of Ovid's passages, or Yeats' passages.


I well consider all that ye haue sayd,
And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate
And changed be:

Forgive my obtuseness, but the Ovidian nature of the poem is not so obvious to me. The Yeats is straight forward enough. Roethke is careful to cite it. He fairly beats us over the head with his allusion and it would be tough to miss in any event. Where my comprehension breaks down, what I don't quite get, is how besides the passage you've already quoted above Roethke reminds you of Ovid.

I'm not sure you are misinterpreting Roethke so much as I fear you may be misreading Ovid. Truly, there is a metamorphosis in the passage described, but let's not confuse any topoi with the writers who wrote them best. We say of a sonnet that it bears the stamp of Petrarch, but is Petrarch to be defined or confined to a sonnet? Was he not first a writer of latin epic? Should his letters to classical authors be dismissed out of hand? Ovid wrote several books: historical, pedagogical, epistolary. His finest was The Metamorphoses. Indeed, it was. But even The Metamorphoses is not solely about metamorphoses. What was Ovidian about The Metamorphoses were the narratives, the humor, the emphasis on love, not the metamorphoses themselves. There are many writers of sports and hunting which do not remind me of Hemingway. It is rather the manner of his treatment which so characterized his stories, a particular view of the world. Consequently, not every change of state is an overt reference to Ovid.

The structure of the Roethke poem reminds me a bit of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, with it's seemingly disconnected parts containing an overriding theme; but there the resemblance ends. Roethke's method is his own and not Eliot's. His conceits, his interests, his style, as well as the places he draws on for inspiration are all very different. I wouldn't call this an Eliotic poem, especially because I don't think that The Wasteland represents the quintessential Eliot mode. 

I don't mean to belabor the point, but as I already said, I don't quite get what you mean when you call Four for Sir. John Davies Ovidian. If you have other reasons for doing so besides the brief transformation passage I would love to hear more about it. I'd especially like to know what parts of Ovid you are likening it to; since my copy of The Metamorphoses is nearly 400 pages long with many transitions and conversions.

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## Petrarch's Love

> Forgive my obtuseness, but the Ovidian nature of the poem is not so obvious to me. The Yeats is straight forward enough. Roethke is careful to cite it. He fairly beats us over the head with his allusion and it would be tough to miss in any event. Where my comprehension breaks down, what I don't quite get, is how besides the passage you've already quoted above Roethke reminds you of Ovid.


Hi Mortal--I think this can all be cleared up pretty quickly. I didn't mean to claim at all that the poem as a whole was Ovidian, which I don't think it is. I was merely bringing out the metamorphosis in the passage by Roethke which seems to have Ovid lurking around behind it (albeit in a very simple way), and saying that I got a similar sort of pleasure out of the way Roethke handles a metamorphosis bit as I do out of some of those described by Ovid (I hasten to emphasize the "some," since there are many metamorphosis descriptions in Ovid that far surpass what is offered in the Roethke passage quoted). I was just trying to get a small point across about imitation in poetry with a specific passage. I did not in any way intend to claim that this meant the entire poem had direct parallels with Ovid and certainly did not intend to claim that an allusion like this summed up the works of Ovid which, as you rightly point out, have a great deal to offer beyond a few descriptions of metamorphosis. I should probably also point out right now that, even in the passage I quoted, I don't really want to claim that Roethke is reaching the full, rich, heights of Ovid, that he is a particularly Ovidian poet, or even that the passage itself is intensely Ovidian. I think, as I believe I said in my original post, that it has something of an "Ovidian touch" which in my opinion works nicely. The Roethke passage clearly could not reach the kind of full effect that the best bits of Ovid have because, among other things, it lacks the framework, the overall vision that supports and builds up to the best passages. That overall narrative, the way Ovid's poem moves and shifts as it progresses, is, of course, one of the great pleasures of the _Metamorphoses_, which could not possibly be captured in Roethke's small play in this passage. 



> not every change of state is an overt reference to Ovid.


This is true, but I think in that particular passage he is making a slight Ovidian reference. This would be especially unsurprising given that in the poem as a whole he's responding to the poetry of the Elizabethan age, which is jam packed with Ovidian references.




> I well consider all that ye haue sayd,
> And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate
> And changed be:


As a postscript I'd like to add that it warms this Spenserian's heart to see the Mutability cantos being quoted.  :Smile:  Now if we wanted to have a serious talk about some poetry that really and fully imitates, even rivals Ovid...

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## Jozanny

From Plath to Ovidian imitators. Gotta love you people. Even though my harried middle age wars to reduce my pleasure in discussion, I will nominate someone who I feel would reward me as a poet most, and that would be Allen Tate. The little I've picked up on him is tantalizing and full of intrigue.

Petrarch: I enjoy your arguments for Roethke much more than I enjoy the samples of his work presented to me, with the possible exception of "The Shape of Fire"; the best way I can say why, in the moment, is because I sense Roethke uses formalism much like a straight jacket is used to control the disruption and the danger in the delusional patient.

And for myself, I ask, why not take the risk? Why not leap and see what kind of brush fire your manic state leaves behind? You want to, and have the appreciation of Yeats and Eliot in the fumes of your aspiration, and yet, you hold yourself in. 

And thus far, that is my argument with him, which remains unanswered. Do I have to square this with my argument that Plath's biography is too tied to her output? Hehe!  :Smile:

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## JBI

> From Plath to Ovidian imitators. Gotta love you people. Even though my harried middle age wars to reduce my pleasure in discussion, I will nominate someone who I feel would reward me as a poet most, and that would be Allen Tate. The little I've picked up on him is tantalizing and full of intrigue.
> 
> Petrarch: I enjoy your arguments for Roethke much more than I enjoy the samples of his work presented to me, with the possible exception of "The Shape of Fire"; the best way I can say why, in the moment, is because I sense Roethke uses formalism much like a straight jacket is used to control the disruption and the danger in the delusional patient.
> 
> And for myself, I ask, why not take the risk? Why not leap and see what kind of brush fire your manic state leaves behind? You want to, and have the appreciation of Yeats and Eliot in the fumes of your aspiration, and yet, you hold yourself in. 
> 
> And thus far, that is my argument with him, which remains unanswered. Do I have to square this with my argument that Plath's biography is too tied to her output? Hehe!


Oh, most certainly - none of the really popular Plath poems were even published in her life time, and I think if she didn't kill herself, people would realize how pretentious, and outright insulting her most famous "Daddy" really is. To be honest, I still find it insulting how some bourgeois girl, who had everything given to her whole life, and great opportunities, could have the nerve to compare herself with a Jew in a concentration camp. What justification does she have even, for the less controversial, but still as depressing poems? Lets be honest, none. Most people in this world go through harder times than she did (her husband didn't love her, oh well), and most don't kill themselves. I think she merely took Robert Lowell, and tried to become him, leading to a failure within her life, as everything crumbled around her, until her eventual suicide.

As for the verse, I find it like going to Bedlam on tour, but all the bedlamites are mere actors, putting on a show. But, perhaps that is just me.

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## quasimodo1

Thanks to mortalterror for joining the discussion. And JoZ, Allen Tate jumps out as one of the best suggestions for the next poet. I have to admit only a passing familiarity but the Poetry Foundation, something of an overly-austere group, had this to say of Tate: One of Tate's preoccupations was indeed "man suffering from unbelief." His modern Everyman, however, faced a more complex situation than the simple medieval morality tale hero. Michigan Quarterly Review contributor Cleanth Brooks explained, "In the old Christian synthesis, nature and history were related in a special way. With the break-up of that synthesis, man finds himself caught between a meaningless cycle on the one hand, and on the other, the more extravagant notions of progress—between a nature that is oblivious of man and a man-made 'unnatural' utopia." Even though he had periods of skepticism himself, Tate felt that art could not survive without religion. Pier Francesco Listri wrote in Allen Tate and His Work: Critical Evaluations, "In a rather leaden society governed by a myth of science, [Tate's] poetry conducts a fearless campaign against science, producing from that irony a measure both musical and fabulous. In an apathetic, agnostic period he [was] not ashamed to recommend a Christianity to be lived as intellectual anguish."

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## Dark Muse

> Oh, most certainly - none of the really popular Plath poems were even published in her life time, and I think if she didn't kill herself, people would realize how pretentious, and outright insulting her most famous "Daddy" really is. To be honest, I still find it insulting how some bourgeois girl, who had everything given to her whole life, and great opportunities, could have the nerve to compare herself with a Jew in a concentration camp. What justification does she have even, for the less controversial, but still as depressing poems? Lets be honest, none. Most people in this world go through harder times than she did (her husband didn't love her, oh well), and most don't kill themselves. I think she merely took Robert Lowell, and tried to become him, leading to a failure within her life, as everything crumbled around her, until her eventual suicide..


So if someone comes from an Upper-Middle class background, they can only write nice happy little poems?

----------


## quasimodo1

I get your point JBI; it coincides with JoZ's take on Plath. But Muse also makes a point...when I read something like "Black Rook in Rainy Weather"...there is definately a poet there. The pretensions about the holocaust; well, where do you go with that?

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

THE REPLY



I'm neither out nor in
Before that simple tune
As cryptic as a rune,
As fresh as salt-drenched skin.

This shivers me, I swear
A tune so bold and bare,
Yet fine as maidenhair,
Shakes every sense. I'm five
Times five a man; I breathe
This sudden random song,
And, like you, bird, I sing,
A man, a man alive.
{last two of three stanzas}

----------


## JBI

> So if someone comes from an Upper-Middle class background, they can only write nice happy little poems?


No, but they can't say,


An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.


To be honest, as a Jew who had his whole families past history wiped out, I find this highly insulting.

----------


## Jozanny

> No, but they can't say,
> 
> 
> An engine, an engine,
> Chuffing me off like a Jew.
> A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
> I began to talk like a Jew.
> I think I may well be a Jew.
> 
> ...



It is insulting JBI, and I hope Hughs does not include it in the edition I have; what a rotten trinket. I have used Stalinist Russian imagery to discuss writing in my poetry, but one immerses in the imagery to join it to the mindset--what she is doing here is childish and diminishing.

----------


## Virgil

> No, but they can't say,
> 
> 
> An engine, an engine,
> Chuffing me off like a Jew.
> A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
> I began to talk like a Jew.
> I think I may well be a Jew.
> 
> ...


What exactly is insulting about it? She is not ridiculing Jews in any way. If you look at that entire poem, she is speaking from a little girl's voice, and there are metaphors through out the poem. I found that poem quite original. 

Actually I'm surprised. I have not come across serious readers who did not like Plath. I would love to discuss her. Could be interesting debate.  :Biggrin:

----------


## Jozanny

> What exactly is insulting about it? She is not ridiculing Jews in any way. If you look at that entire poem, she is speaking from a little girl's voice, and there are metaphors through out the poem. I found that poem quite original. 
> 
> Actually I'm surprised. I have not come across serious readers who did not like Plath. I would love to discuss her. Could be interesting debate.


Then you can do it without me. My objection to Plath rests on the cult of personality which is so dependent on the modality of her poetic tropes. She was stale when I was in highschool :Rolleyes: , and there are fresher stronger more interesting voices out there--and that verse JBI cited is offensive even if it was written as a childish ditty. It isn't ironic; it is a mirror reflection of bigotry in formation. One cannot get away from boards like this where it is always stale performers like Plath or Dostoevsky as the epitome of Russian realism. There are so many other interesting things going on in the literary world, and the majority of posters here never venture forth. It is a real shame.

----------


## JBI

> What exactly is insulting about it? She is not ridiculing Jews in any way. If you look at that entire poem, she is speaking from a little girl's voice, and there are metaphors through out the poem. I found that poem quite original. 
> 
> Actually I'm surprised. I have not come across serious readers who did not like Plath. I would love to discuss her. Could be interesting debate.


She isn't writing from a child's point of view, she just writes childishly. The verse is insulting, because she went through virtually no hardships, had a good upbringing in a wealthy family, with a good education, yet has the nerve to equate herself with a Jew in a concentration camp being sent to his death simply for racial prejudice. I find that insulting. In the words of the movie Election, Who the &*^% does she think she is?

----------


## quasimodo1

So I'm guessing that Plath as a subject would be too volatile or just enough? Anyone familiar with her collection, COLOSSUS?

----------


## Virgil

> Then you can do it without me. My objection to Plath rests on the cult of personality which is so dependent on the modality of her poetic tropes.


I admit she has resonated into a cult of personality, but I think that unlike Bukowski there is a there there. I don't understand what you mean by "modality of her poetic tropes." every poet uses poetic tropes.




> She isn't writing from a child's point of view, she just writes childishly. The verse is insulting, because she went through virtually no hardships, had a good upbringing in a wealthy family, with a good education, yet has the nerve to equate herself with a Jew in a concentration camp being sent to his death simply for racial prejudice. I find that insulting. In the words of the movie Election, Who the &*^% does she think she is?


First of all lots of people were using the Jew in a concentration camp as a metaphor post WWII. Lots. In poetry and fiction. If she's a product of her age than what's wrong with that? It's like saying Shakespeare shouldn't be using Renaissance metaphors or Dante using Christian metaphors. I studied Plath in college with that same professor I quoted above with a Roethke poem, Karl Malkoff. And he was Jewish and felt no insult and he thought her poetyr of quality, enough to include in a class of Stevens, Wiliiams, Lowell, and the other great American second half 20th century poets .




> So I'm guessing that Plath as a subject would be too volatile or just enough? Anyone familiar with her collection, COLOSSUS?


No I'm not familiar with the collection but I guess I have a deal of her poems and I can find iton the internet. I bet it woould be a fiesty discussion.  :Biggrin:  But if people don't want to I understand.

Here's a poem:




> *Death & Co.* 
> by Sylvia Plath
> 
> Two, of course there are two.
> It seems perfectly natural now——
> The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded
> And balled¸ like Blake's.
> Who exhibits
> 
> ...


[Snip]
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18927

I find this a solid poem by a world class poet.

----------


## Jozanny

> So I'm guessing that Plath as a subject would be too volatile or just enough? Anyone familiar with her collection, COLOSSUS?


Dear no,

If Virgil and DarkMuse want to do Plath, I simply will not join in. I did not know that Plath, too, dabbled in anti-semitic musings, which, again, was once so acceptable in certain segments of British and American society. I wearied of her pretty much as soon as I decided to become a writer, but it was the weariness tinged bemused.

This discovery through JBI has rattled me a bit though. As I mentioned previously, I enjoy "Blackberrying". She manages here to stop sniveling and let the imagery do what her biography should not have to--but even here, new wave feminism has long moved past this kind of transcribed idealism.

In short, to me Sylvia has long been a minor figure, too entangled in her own story for me to much care. When the vote is taken if the chips are in her favor I will wait for someone more interesting, that is all. You're the leader q. :Smile:

----------


## Dark Muse

> IAnd he was Jewish and felt no insult and he thought her poetyr of quality, enough to include in a class of Stevens, Wiliiams, Lowell, and the other great American second half 20th century poets


In my opinion she is better then Lowell, I do not particularly care for his works all that much. Some of them are interesting, but I cannot say I am a huge fan. 





> So I'm guessing that Plath as a subject would be too volatile or just enough? Anyone familiar with her collection, COLOSSUS?


I do not know that particular collection, currently I have a collection of her works that are part of an athology of Contemperary Poetry. And once upon a time ago I got a couple of collections of her work from the librabry, but obviously I do not have them now, and cannot recall which collections they were.

----------


## quasimodo1

Poetry Bookclub



The choices for a vote.

OCTAVIO PAZ

ANA AHKMATOVA

EUGENIO MONTALE

MEDBH McGUCKIAN

ELIZABETH BISHOP

SYLVIA PLATH

ALLEN TATE

Let's see, that's one South American, one Russian, one Italian, one Irishperson, two American women and one American man. I hate to bother Logos for this, so just send or post a first and second choice. Gracias

----------


## Virgil

I've never read Montale. I may pick that one. But I'll hold out for now.  :Wink:

----------


## Jozanny

Tate is my first choice.

Paz is second because he is on my shelf.

----------


## Dark Muse

Plath is my first choice, and Bishop my second

----------


## stlukesguild

JoZ... you never cease to amaze me. I am in complete agreement with you with regard to Sylvia. To often her poetry reminds me of the diaristic sniveling of some teenager who believes that the fact that her daddy may have been too distant (while working overtime to give her all the material comforts she so enjoys) or the fact that Bobby doesn't like her... or some equally profound stuff... is not only a personal tragedy but a tragedy of the greatest depths. I agree completely with JBI's suggestion that a comparison of her little personal "traumas" with the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust is insulting in the extreme. "Oh I suffer! See how I suffer. My headache is virtually a brain tumor... no its like the guillotine." This self-proclaimed suffering has formed a virtual cult that embraces her imagined suffering and turned her into Saint Sylvia.

----------


## stlukesguild

1st choice- Eugenio Montale
2nd choice- Octavio Paz
3rd choice- Elizabeth Bishop

Last possible choice- Saint Sylvia :Sick:

----------


## quasimodo1

Poetry Bookclub bibliographies



AKHMATOVA

Poetry

Anna Akhmatova: Poems (1983) 
Anno Domini MCMXXI (1922) - rus 
Evening (1912) - rus 
Plantain (1921) - rus 
Poems of Akhmatova (1967) 
Rosary (1914) 
Selected Poems (1976) 
Selected Poems (1989) 
The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1990) 
Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1985) 
White Flock (1914)

BISHOP

North & South (Houghton Mifflin, 1946) 
A Cold Spring|Poems: North & South  A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1955) 
A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1956) 
Questions of Travel (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965) 
The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969) 
Geography III, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976) 
The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983) 
Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments, edited and annotated by Alice Quinn, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006)
Other works:


McGUCKIAN

Her first published poems appeared in two pamphlets, Single Ladies: Sixteen Poems and Portrait of Joanna, in 1980, the year in which she received an Eric Gregory Award. In 1981 she co-published Trio Poetry 2 with fellow poets Damian Gorman and Douglas Marshall, and in 1989 she collaborated with Nuala Archer on Two Women, Two Shores. Medbh McGuckian's first major collection, The Flower Master (1982), which explores post-natal breakdown, was awarded a Rooney prize for Irish Literature, an Ireland Arts Council Award (both 1982) and an Alice Hunt Bartlett Award (1983). She is also the winner of the 1989 Cheltenham Prize for her collection On Ballycastle Beach. 

Medbh McGuckian has also edited an anthology, The Big Striped Golfing Umbrella: Poems by Young People from Northern Ireland (1985) for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, written a study of the car in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, entitled Horsepower Pass By! (1999), and has translated into English (with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin) The Water Horse (1999), a selection of poems in Irish by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. A volume of Selected Poems: 1978-1994 was published in 1997, and among her latest collections are The Book of the Angel (2004) and 'The Currach Requires No Harbours' (2007).

Recent criticism of McGuckian has pointed to her extensive use of unacknowledged source material, from Russian poetry and elsewhere, a discovery that may have motivated her decision to name (on the acknowledgements page) the primary source for her latest collection, The Currach Requires No Harbour. 

MONTALE

Ossi di seppia (1925) 
La casa dei doganieri e altre poesie (1932) 
Le occasioni (1939) 
Finisterre (1943) 
La fiera letteraria (Poetry criticism, 1948) 
La bufera e altro (1956) 
La farfalla di Dinard (Journalism, 1956) 
Satura (1962) 
Accordi e pastelli (1962) 
Il colpevole (1966) 
Xenia (1966) 
Fuori di casa (1969) 
Diario del '71 e del '72 (1973) 
Posthumous Diary (1996) 
The Storm & Other Poems, trans. Charles Wright (Oberlin College Press, 1978), ISBN 0-932440-01-0 
Selected Poems, trans. Jonathan Galassi, Charles Wright, & David Young (Oberlin College Press, 2004), ISBN 0-932440-98-3

PAZ

His works include the poetry collections La Estación Violenta, (1956), Piedra de Sol (1957), and in English translation the most prominent include two volumes which include most of Paz in English: Early Poems: 19351955 (tr. 1974), and Collected Poems, 19571987 (1987). Many of these volumes have been edited and translated by Eliot Weinberger, who is Paz's principal translator into American English. 


PLATH

Plath has been criticized for her controversial allusions to the Holocaust, and is known for her uncanny use of metaphor. Her work has been compared to and associated with Anne Sexton, W.D. Snodgrass, and other confessional poets. 
While the few critics who responded to Plath's first book, The Colossus, did so favorably, it has also been described as somewhat staid and conventional in comparison to the much more free-flowing imagery and intensity of her later work. 

The poems in Ariel mark a departure from her earlier work into a more personal arena of poetry. It is a possibility that Lowell's poetrywhich is often labeled "confessional"played a part in this shift. Indeed, in an interview before her death she listed Lowell's Life Studies as an influence. The impact of Ariel was dramatic, with its potentially autobiographical descriptions of mental illness in poems such as, "Tulips", "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus". 

In 1982, Plath became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for The Collected Poems. In 2006, a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University discovered a previously unpublished sonnet written by Plath entitled "Ennui". The poem, composed during Plath's early years at Smith College, is published in Blackbird, the online journal. 


TATE

Poetry

Poems, 1928-1931, 1932. 
The Mediterranean and Other Poems, 1936. 
Selected Poems, 1937. 
The Winter Sea, 1944. 
Poems, 1920-1945, 1947. 
Poems, 1922-1947, 1948. 
Two Conceits for the Eye to Sing, If Possible, 1950. 
Poems, 1960. 
Poems, 1961. 
Collected Poems, 1970. 
The Swimmers and Other Selected Poems, 1970.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Just to add my own opinion on the Plath discussion, I'll first admit I haven't read a great deal by her, so there may be great stuff I'm missing; I just don't know. What I have read by her didn't impress me much at all, and I completely agree with JBI's assessment of her allusions to the holocaust in "Daddy." Comparing having personal issues with her father to being a victim of the holocaust strikes me as grossly disproportionate, inappropriate and immature. 




> First of all lots of people were using the Jew in a concentration camp as a metaphor post WWII. Lots. In poetry and fiction. If she's a product of her age than what's wrong with that? It's like saying Shakespeare shouldn't be using Renaissance metaphors or Dante using Christian metaphors.


Yes, there were a lot of references to the holocaust post WWII, but generally I think poets of integrity treat such references in a serious way, with respect for the extent of the horror they are invoking in referring to concentration camps. By comparing her pain at a father's distance to being a jew suffering at the hands of a Nazi, she diminishes the reality of the horror the latter would have suffered. The two are deeply disproportionate forms of suffering. Though there are some problems with the analogy you bring up between Dante using Christian metaphors and modern poets alluding to the Holocaust (one is a positive belief that is a part of a culture, while another is an unimaginably brutal event that tried to destroy a whole people and to rend a culture apart, which are two very different things), I think there's a possible way to use that to illustrate the way in which I see this to be inappropriate. If a poet in Dante or Shakespeare's Christian world were to pen a poem in which he were seriously, and in great detail, saying that he suffered just the way Christ did on the cross because his lady didn't show him favor--actually said right out that he is the suffering Lord and she is pounding nails into his hands, I'm not sure that would fly too well either. This is not to say that poets of that time don't sometimes incorporate religious vocabulary or themes into love poetry, but they wouldn't directly suggest that they have suffered as much as Christ suffered in the same manner that Plath suggests that she has suffered just as much as victims of the Holocaust suffered. Again, these are actually quite different cultural influences in many ways, but I don't think it's a good defense of Plath's use of these metaphors to simply say it's part of her culture. What you do with cultural reference makes a huge difference. Incidentally, I disagree that Plath should not be allowed to refer to the holocaust at all simply because she didn't experience an event that horrific, but I do think the manner in which she refers to it in that poem is objectionable. When it comes to great suffering, some respect for the enormity of that suffering is in order.

----------


## Virgil

A poet is allowed to feel what she may feel. She did commit suicide afterall. Critics don't determine a poet's subject matter. It's like saying that TS Eliot is silly for comparing the sexuality of the 1920's as evidence of a wasteland. Or Yeats about his cyclic thoeoies of history. The poet has his ideas; it's what he does with it. Or William Faulkner comparing Benjy to Christ in The Sound and the Fury. I see nothing wrong with the Plath's halocaust metaphor because she creates with it (when you look at the total context of her work) a larger vision of humanity. Nonetheless I see everyone's points and I've noted them. I have never seen such negativity of her work before.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch: I enjoy your arguments for Roethke much more than I enjoy the samples of his work presented to me, with the possible exception of "The Shape of Fire"; the best way I can say why, in the moment, is because I sense Roethke uses formalism much like a straight jacket is used to control the disruption and the danger in the delusional patient.
> 
> And for myself, I ask, why not take the risk? Why not leap and see what kind of brush fire your manic state leaves behind? You want to, and have the appreciation of Yeats and Eliot in the fumes of your aspiration, and yet, you hold yourself in. 
> 
> And thus far, that is my argument with him, which remains unanswered. Do I have to square this with my argument that Plath's biography is too tied to her output? Hehe!


Hi Jozy--Well, seldom has a critic been told her argument is more engaging than the poetry being argued over.  :FRlol:  I found your above response interesting because it showed me that I think we fundamentally agree about what's going on in Roethke's "Four for Sir John Davies." I completely agree that the formalism and the nostalgia for the poem is partly a direct reaction to his mania. While you see this as a "straightjacket," however, I was seeing it as a comfort. We're both pointing to the same thing: he's reigning in his manic tendencies here, but we two were reacting in different ways to that. I do agree with you that it can sometimes be a good thing for a poet to let go completely, to embrace disorder and see where it takes him, but I had the sense in this case of a person who had experienced more than his fair share of mania, and there was something moving about this sense of balance he was exploring in this poem. Sometimes trying to find order can be just as daring as trying to find disorder. Now, I don't really think this is a daring poem, indeed I'm not trying to argue that it's a poem of particular genius, but I do think it affords some pleasure. Obviously it's ultimately a matter of personal taste, and in this case you obviously would like him to let loose some more, while I find some things appealing in this more staid vein. I personally wasn't as fond of the "The Shape of Fire" because, much as I saw some interesting potential in there, I felt it was too much a product of his mania, to the point where it ceased to be able to speak to the reader and to convey thought and emotion in an effective way. Honestly, probably a poem better than either of those would be one displaying more of a balance or, better yet, a tension between the two modes. A poet needs to be able to do either extreme--let go and spill things out in passion, even mania, and work within formal structures and modes--because writing requires familiarity with both.

----------


## JBI

> I admit she has resonated into a cult of personality, but I think that unlike Bukowski there is a there there. I don't understand what you mean by "modality of her poetic tropes." every poet uses poetic tropes.
> 
> 
> First of all lots of people were using the Jew in a concentration camp as a metaphor post WWII. Lots. In poetry and fiction. If she's a product of her age than what's wrong with that? It's like saying Shakespeare shouldn't be using Renaissance metaphors or Dante using Christian metaphors. I studied Plath in college with that same professor I quoted above with a Roethke poem, Karl Malkoff. And he was Jewish and felt no insult and he thought her poetyr of quality, enough to include in a class of Stevens, Wiliiams, Lowell, and the other great American second half 20th century poets .
> 
> 
> No I'm not familiar with the collection but I guess I have a deal of her poems and I can find iton the internet. I bet it woould be a fiesty discussion.  But if people don't want to I understand.
> 
> Here's a poem:
> ...


I too have studied her, and read her collected poems from cover to cover. She does nothing, in my opinion, but writes pseudo hysterics. I'm not alone in my criticism - other critics have said similar things. It just happens that she wrote in a time where people were looking for this sort of thing - in the post-Freud era, where this sort of junk was popular (just look at the generation of poets she was writing in, all depressive, and most alcoholics). I just don't think she does what ever she does really well, and instead jumps to the controversial, or the outrageous.

Critically, her first book has been dismissed, everything published in her life time pretty much has - it is her later works that receive all the attention, and of all of them, Ariel in particular. I don't find her a very strong poet. She imagines herself some sort of victim of some world scheme, when really she had none of it. She grew up during the war, but wasn't a Jew, or even a European, and has no right. It's like me going out and comparing myself to someone in the killing fields in Cambodia. It's not normal, or justified. Sure, one could argue this has nothing to do with her poetry, but I find her work just over dramatizing an already privileged life, in which she had all the opportunities in the world.


Or better yet, why don't I write a poem about my personal suffering, portraying myself as a child-rape victim, who in the end is brutally murdered? Would that go over very well? Where is the line? How much is one aloud to take. 

This isn't the only instance she uses Holocaust imagery and references, she seems to do so throughout the entire body of her works. Of course, I'm not a fan of censorship, and I try to keep personal views out of my reading, but something like this can't be ignored, as it is probably her most anthologized, and well known poem.

----------


## Dark Muse

> It's not normal, or justified. Sure, one could argue this has nothing to do with her poetry, but I find her work just over dramatizing an already privileged life, in which she had all the opportunities in the world.


That does not seem to be a very intelligent argument. That because she had opportunities, or group up with a certain upbringing or family background means she does not have the right to have certain personal feelings, or express emotions that are not filled with puppy dogs and sunshine. 

Just because a person comes from a well to do family, or has had opportunities does not be default mean they must be happy, or have had positive life experiences. 

A person is entitled to feel what they feel, as Virgil pointed out in one of his above post, not matter how they are raised, and as an artist they are permitted to express those feelings in the way of their own choosing. 

It does not mean everyone has to enjoy the work. But to say, she had no right to even have those feelings because of her upbringing, that is just ludicrous.

----------


## JBI

> That does not seem to be a very intelligent argument. That because she had opportunities, or group up with a certain upbringing or family background means she does not have the right to have certain personal feelings, or express emotions that are not filled with puppy dogs and sunshine. 
> 
> Just because a person comes from a well to do family, or has had opportunities does not be default mean they must be happy, or have had positive life experiences. 
> 
> A person is entitled to feel what they feel, as Virgil pointed out in one of his above post, not matter how they are raised, and as an artist they are permitted to express those feelings in the way of their own choosing. 
> 
> It does not mean everyone has to enjoy the work. But to say, she had no right to even have those feelings because of her upbringing, that is just ludicrous.


Of course, and I must be drawn back to Robinson's Richard Cory,

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, richer than a king
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Yet Cory's death isn't the same - him killing himself is justified by himself, but are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Is Robinson really saying everyone has problems, or is he being ironic and saying people are never happy. Either way though, as it applies to Plath, she had the privileges Jews in concentration camps didn't have. She went to school, had a life, whereas 6million other people didn't. She may have been depressed, but she wasn't targeted for extermination. It is alright for her to try to convey her depression, as Lowell did before her, but where is the line. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her, or is she merely acting childish, and saying, "oh I have such a bad life." Personally, I think she just has an inability to be happy, which makes her not a profound individual, but a mentally ill one, and that has no justification for over dramatization, and overdoing it with making herself seem as if she has had the most terrible existence, when the fact that she has her life is proof enough that she is not actually "a Jew".

----------


## Virgil

Yes, JBI, you're constant insertion of her "privildged life" reflects your personal reaction to her the person rather than her poetry. What her real life was has nothing to do with her work. What she felt, whether honest or not, is irrelevant. I personally take it as honest, like I said she did commit suicide. It's the work. After perusing her work I can see a young poet in there. She died at 31 so most of her work is of a youth. But her good work, perhaps posthumous in Ariel, seems solid to me. That's my assessment. Let the critics debate it out.  :Wink:

----------


## JBI

I don't know if she would have even been given a second glance had she not killed herself. The question hovers over her work, I find. As a person, her life has become a media best seller. From the movie, to the cult following, which seems to be perpetually supporting her work. As it is, I don't know if her work can be read without her biography in the mix, and I personally doubt she would be successful as a poet without a biography.

----------


## Virgil

Here's another solid poem by Plath.




> *Balloons* 
> by Sylvia Plath
> 
> Since Christmas they have lived with us,
> Guileless and clear,
> Oval soul-animals,
> Taking up half the space,
> Moving and rubbing on the silk
> 
> ...


[Snip]
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18932

Read the whole poem. And frankly this is prior to the Confessional movement took off. So give her credit for pushing the form.

----------


## Epistemophile

> It's not normal, or justified. Sure, one could argue this has nothing to do with her poetry, but I find her work just over dramatizing an already privileged life, in which she had all the opportunities in the world.


how do you ever justify what you write and why you write? why should there be any justification at all? a poet chooses his/her subject matter and he or she chooses to write in a particular way. we can either like it or dislike it, but can we really say that the poet does not have sanction to write about something he/she personally never experienced? 
and, what would be art without dramatization! 
we usually brand off poets like anne sexton and sylvia plath as 'confessionals' but sometimes fail to notice that in several cases irony forms the lynchpin around which many of their poems turn. 
for me the very complexity in plath's poetry arises from a (perhaps deliberate) confusion between confessional and ironic utterances. i mean, how many of us have tried to read her poems as dramatic monologue of sorts?

----------


## Virgil

And another:




> *Sow* 
> by Sylvia Plath
> 
> God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
> His great sow:
> Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid
> 
> In the same way
> He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
> ...


[Snip]
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18945

What marvelous language in this one.

----------


## Epistemophile

> Of course, and I must be drawn back to Robinson's Richard Cory


And I must be drawn back to Chekov's The Death of a Government Clerk:
http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1107/

----------


## Dark Muse

> I don't know if her work can be read without her biography in the mix, and I personally doubt she would be successful as a poet without a biography.


I think that can be said by a lot of Contemporary poets. I know it has been my personal experience reading the works of many Contemporary poets, where reading just their work alone, just left me confused and baffled and their work felt rather meaningless to me, and I had to go and look up information about the poet himself to try and make greater sense of what I was reading.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> A poet is allowed to feel what she may feel. She did commit suicide afterall. Critics don't determine a poet's subject matter. It's like saying that TS Eliot is silly for comparing the sexuality of the 1920's as evidence of a wasteland. Or Yeats about his cyclic thoeoies of history. The poet has his ideas; it's what he does with it. Or William Faulkner comparing Benjy to Christ in The Sound and the Fury. I see nothing wrong with the Plath's halocaust metaphor because she creates with it (when you look at the total context of her work) a larger vision of humanity. Nonetheless I see everyone's points and I've noted them. I have never seen such negativity of her work before.


Of course a poet is allowed to feel what she feels. Everyone is allowed to feel whatever they like. This doesn't mean it can't be offensive to others as her use of this metaphor clearly was to JBI. I agree that we need to respect the ability of artists to express their own ideas and world views in art, but to say that we can't judge those ideas when we find them wrong or offensive would do the art just as much a disservice in the sense that it renders the ideas expressed impotent and unimportant. Yes, well written poetry can express bad ideas and still be well written, but to talk about the form of the creation and not hold a dialogue with the ideas as well would be to miss part of the purpose of a poem. Part of that purpose is, after all, to convey ideas and emotions. 

As I think about the latter, about the emotions of Plath's "Daddy" I realize that I should say that I do see the way this inflated, apparently outrageously disproportionate use of the holocaust metaphor could possibly be slightly less egregious than it seems. That is, I do recognize that this was clearly someone suffering from extreme mental illness, which can be a horrendously painful and hellish experience. I do recognize that we aren't really talking about someone who lived a spotlessly happy life and is complaining about a slight problem in an otherwise fine existence. People with mental illness often talk about their problems in their relationships with others (a parent, a boyfriend or girlfriend etc.) with disproportionate intensity because it's a normalizing channel in which to express the inexplicable emotional anguish that they experience. It's pretty clear to me that Plath is transferring anguish from elsewhere into her troubled relationship with her father, which is why the metaphor comes out so extreme. 

This said, I still find the use of the holocaust metaphor inappropriate in this poem. I think if the core of the poem was set up differently to suggest the way that her mental torture was heavy to bear like the physical torture that others have undergone--if it somehow suggested a fuller recognition of how unbearibly horrifying an event like the holocaust was, and made a deeper, more nuanced explanation of the way she sees some small echo of that level of horror in her own life--then I could possibly see some effective potential for the metaphor. At it is written, however, the way she uses the holocaust remains highly problematic to me, especially in the stanzas JBI quoted earlier: 

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

This isn't empathizing with people who are like her, who have suffered like her, it is saying that she has become this other, a Jew, a group associated (fairly stereotypically) with taro cards and undesirable ancestry. I don't think this passage suggests that she's an anti-semite, but it doesn't suggest that she's fully thought through what it would be to be a victim of holocaust, what it is that she is invoking here. She seems to be using the holocaust metaphor because it's the most dramatic thing she can think of rather than because she is thinking about the actual parallels (or lack of parallel) between herself and the suffering of others. Generally speaking, too, I maintain that the comparison of her suffering and that of holocaust victims is disproportionate. 

P.S.--I was called away and there have been several posts added since I started this post, and which I haven't had a chance to read. I'll now go back and consider the dialogue in those posts, and the Plath poems Virgil offers in them.

----------


## stlukesguild

I agree that we must allow the artist to convey what he or she feels or thinks without censorship. I would never want an art that conveys only what the artist feels is the right or correct thing to say. I have no problem with an artist being shocking or outrageous at times... although quite often if this is the central issue of the work it is a good sign of an immature artist. On the other hand, I don't see that the mantra of self-expression means that we cannot criticize what the artist has said... nor do I buy the notion that a work cannot simply be bad... even crap... because it is somehow expressive of the artist view of reality. I may be more negative about Plath because I have had her work hoisted upon me by many who would have me believe that she must be admired... recognized... worshiped as a poet simply because she "suffered". 

If I wish to read writing by the mentally ill I'll stick with Nerval... or John Clare... or a good many others.

----------


## Jozanny

I was going to quote myself again, from the Stalinist piece I mentioned, but since I fear getting virtually stoned :Biggrin: , let me use Macbeth to make a point about _immersion_:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


Macbeth, V.v.19-28 (Macbeth) 

This is a famous soliloquy not simply because it conveys the suffering of a once honorable protagonist, but also because of how this suffering is immersed in an imagery which is ultimately comforting in its dramatic outplay. If Plath had done the same with her shallow "I am a Jew" business, maybe I'd have more sympathy, but she does not allow her imagery, such as it is, to merge into suffering and make its own motif. It is terribly bad work and turns my stomach.

Again, I have coupled European/Holocaust history with mental illness and emotional pain, but never to make the comparison with myself. I lose my own suffering and experience of it in the poem. Here is a snippet of what I mean from one of my booklength manuscripts I am submitting, this from Black Bear Review:

Before They Found Him in Neshaminy Creek

Wild eye woman of the northeast in a mug
shot we see you and oh
how the baby cries in the sound of Saturday porcelain
shellac smooth in the squall of bubble bath
social workers fail to discern
bathroom night
knife in the kitchen indeed
night of the long knives, your
mind fractures swastika crosses
/when Hitler invades
Poland is gone to Himmler and the
Black Guard to Gestapo, the
glory of the Reich in a laurel

(snipped)

I can honestly say, knowing my own output, and knowing a good deal of Plath, that I come far closer to what I was hoping to achieve with the force of this narrative (I couldn't resist, but it does go to my point).

----------


## quasimodo1

THE GOOD WIFE TAUGHT HER DAUGHTER 
Lordship is the same activity 
Whether performed by lord or lady. 
Or a lord who happens to be a lady, 
All the source and all the faults. 
A woman steadfast in looking is a callot, 
And any woman in the wrong place 
Or outside of her proper location 
Is, by definition, a foolish woman. 
The harlot is talkative and wandering 
By the way, not bearing to be quiet, 
Not able to abide still at home, 
Now abroad, now in the streets, 
Now lying in wait near the corners, 
Her hair straying out of its wimple. 
The collar of her shift and robe 
Pressed one upon the other. 
She goes to the green to see to her geese, 
And trips to wrestling matches and taverns. 
The said Margery left her home 
In the parish of Bishopshill, 
And went to a house, the which 
The witness does not remember, 
And stayed there from noon 
Of that day until the darkness of night. 
But a whip made of raw hippopotamus 
Hide, trimmed like a corkscrew, 
And anon the creature was stabled 
In her wits as well as ever she was biforn, 
And prayed her husband as so soon 
As he came to her that she might have 
The keys to her buttery 
To take her meat and drink. 
He should never have my good will 
For to make my sister for to sell 
Candle and mustard in Framlyngham, 
Or fill her shopping list with crossbows, 
Almonds, sugar and cloth. ... {excerpt, and a sample for those unfamiliar with McGuckian}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/12/hobson.htm Review of the biography...ALLEN TATE: ORPHAN OF THE SOUTH by Fred Hobson of the Atlantic.

----------


## quasimodo1

Is Poetry Still Possible?
"The Nobel Prize has been awarded this year for the seventy-fifth time, if I am not misinformed. And if there are many scientists and writers who have earned this prestigious recognition, the number of those who are living and still working is much smaller. Some of them are present here and I extend my greetings and best wishes to them. According to widespread opinion, the work of soothsayers who are not always reliable, this year or in the years which can be considered imminent, the entire world (or at least that part of the world which can be said to be civilized) will experience a historical turning of colossal proportions. It is obviously not a question of an eschatological turning, of the end of man himself, but of the advent of a new social harmony of which there are presentiments only in the vast domains of Utopia. At the date of the event the Nobel Prize will be one hundred years old and only then will it be possible to make a complete balance sheet of what the Nobel Foundation and the connected prize have contributed to the formation of a new system of community life, be it that of universal well-being or malaise, but of such an extent as to put an end, at least for many centuries, to the centuries-long diatribe on the meaning of life. I refer to human life and not to the appearance of the amino-acids which dates back several thousand million years, substances which made possible the apparition of man and perhaps already contained the project of him. In this case how long the step of the deus absconditus is! But I do not intend to stray from my subject and I wonder if the conviction on which the statute of the Nobel Prize is based is justified: and that is that sciences, not all on the same level, and literary works have contributed to the spread and defence of new values in a broad "humanistic" sense. The response is certainly affirmative. The register of the names of those who, having given something to humanity, have received the coveted recognition of the Nobel Prize would be long. But infinitely more numerous and practically impossible to identify would be the legion, the army of those who work for humanity in infinite ways even without realizing it and who never aspire to any possible prize because they have not written works, acts or academic treatises and have never thought of "making the presses groan", as the Italian expression says. There certainly exists an army of pure, immaculate souls, and they are an obstacle (certainly insufficient) to the spread of that utilitarian spirit which in various degrees is pushed to the point of corruption, crime and every form of violence and intolerance. The academicians of Stockholm have often said no to intolerance, cruel fanaticism and that persecuting spirit which turns the strong against the weak, oppressors against the oppressed. This is true particularly in their choice of literary works, works which can sometimes be murderous, but never like that atomic bomb which is the most mature fruit of the eternal tree of evil."

{from Montale's Nobel Lecture}

----------


## quasimodo1

In Search of the Present
"I begin with two words that all men have uttered since the dawn of humanity: thank you. The word gratitude has equivalents in every language and in each tongue the range of meanings is abundant. In the Romance languages this breadth spans the spiritual and the physical, from the divine grace conceded to men to save them from error and death, to the bodily grace of the dancing girl or the feline leaping through the undergrowth. Grace means pardon, forgiveness, favour, benefice, inspiration; it is a form of address, a pleasing style of speaking or painting, a gesture expressing politeness, and, in short, an act that reveals spiritual goodness. Grace is gratuitous; it is a gift. The person who receives it, the favoured one, is grateful for it; if he is not base, he expresses gratitude. That is what I am doing at this very moment with these weightless words. I hope my emotion compensates their weightlessness. If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: gratitude, acknowledgement. And also an indefinable mixture of fear, respect and surprise at finding myself here before you, in this place which is the home of both Swedish learning and world literature.

Languages are vast realities that transcend those political and historical entities we call nations. The European languages we speak in the Americas illustrate this. The special position of our literatures when compared to those of England, Spain, Portugal and France depends precisely on this fundamental fact: they are literatures written in transplanted tongues. Languages are born and grow from the native soil, nourished by a common history. The European languages were rooted out from their native soil and their own tradition, and then planted in an unknown and unnamed world: they took root in the new lands and, as they grew within the societies of America, they were transformed. They are the same plant yet also a different plant. Our literatures did not passively accept the changing fortunes of the transplanted languages: they participated in the process and even accelerated it. They very soon ceased to be mere transatlantic reflections: at times they have been the negation of the literatures of Europe; more often, they have been a reply."

{from the Nobel Lecture by Octavio Paz}

----------


## quasimodo1

Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan in Odessa, Ukraine. Her childhood does not appear to have been happy; her parents separated in 1905. She was educated in Tsarskoe Selo (where she first met her future husband, Nikolay Gumilyov) and in Kyiv. Anna started writing poetry at the age of 11, inspired by her favourite poets: Racine, Pushkin, and Baratynsky. As her father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, she chose to adopt the surname of her Tatar grandmother as a pseudonym. .


Grey-Eyed King (1910)
Hail to thee, o, inconsolate pain!
The young grey-eyed king has been yesterday slain.

That autumnal evening was stuffy and red.
My husband, returning, had quietly said,

"He'd left for his hunting; they carried him home;
They found him under the old oak's dome.

I pity his queen. He, so young, passed away!...
During one night her black hair turned to grey."

He picked up his pipe from the fireplace shelf,
And went off to work for the night by himself.

Now my daughter I will wake up and rise --
And I will look in her little grey eyes...

And murmuring poplars outside can be heard:
Your king is no longer here on this earth. 
Many of the male Russian poets of the time declared their love for Akhmatova; she reciprocated the attentions of Osip Mandelstam, whose wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, would eventually forgive Akhmatova in her autobiography, Hope Against Hope. In 1910, she married the boyish poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian. 

Silver Age
In 1912, she published her first collection, entitled Evening. It contained brief, psychologically taut pieces which English readers may find distantly reminiscent of Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy. They were acclaimed for their classical diction, telling details, and the skilful use of colour. By the time her second collection, the Rosary, appeared in 1914, there were thousands of women composing poems "in honour of Akhmatova." Her early poems usually picture a man and a woman involved in the most poignant, ambiguous moment of their relationship. Such pieces were much imitated and later parodied by Nabokov and others. Akhmatova was prompted to exclaim: "I taught our women how to speak, but don't know how to make them silent".

Together with her husband, Akhmatova enjoyed a high reputation in the circle of Acmeist poets. Her aristocratic manners and artistic integrity won her the titles "Queen of the Neva" and "Soul of the Silver Age," as the period came to be known in the history of Russian poetry. Many decades later, she would recall this blessed time of her life in the longest of her works, "Poem Without a Hero" (194065), inspired by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.
{from the reference section of dictionary.com}

----------


## quasimodo1

Her years at Vassar were tremendously important to Bishop. There she met Marianne Moore, a fellow poet who also became a lifelong friend. Working with a group of students that included Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clark, and Margaret Miller, she founded the short-lived but influential literary journal Con Spirito, which was conceived as an alternative to the well-established Vassar Review. After graduating, Bishop lived in New York and traveled extensively in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and North Africa. Her poetry is filled with descriptions of her journeys and the sights she saw. In 1938, she moved to Key West, where she wrote many of the poems that eventually were collected in her Pulitzer Prize-winning North and South. In 1944 she left Key West, and for fourteen years she lived in Brazil, where she and her lover, the architect Lota de Macedo Soares, became a curiosity in the town of Pétropolis. After Soares took her own life in 1967, Bishop spent less time in Brazil than in New York, San Francisco, and Massachusetts, where she took a teaching position at Harvard in 1970. That same year, she recieved a National Book Award in Poetry for The Complete Poems. Her reputation increased greatly in the years just prior to her death, particularly after the 1976 publication of Geography III and her winning of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. 

Bishop worked as a painter as well as a poet, and her verse, like visual art, is known for its ability to capture significant scenes. Though she was independently wealthy and thus enjoyed a life of some privilege, much of her poetry celebrates working-class settings: busy factories, farms, and fishing villages. Analyzing her small but significant body of work for Bold Type, Ernie Hilbert wrote: "Bishop's poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist's discretion and attention. Unlike the pert and wooly poetry that came to dominate American literature by the second half of her life, her poems are balanced like Alexander Calder mobiles, turning so subtly as to seem almost still at first, every element, every weight of meaning and song, poised flawlessly against the next." 
{this is quoted from the Poetry Foundation website}

----------


## quasimodo1

Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963) 
In the six months before her suicide in a London flat, SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963) produced poems of shocking intensity 

at a fever pitch; collected in Ariel (1965), these won her enduring posthumous fame. Born in Massachusetts and 

educated at Smith College, Plath had crossed the Atlantic with her English husband, the poet Ted Hughes; he and two 

young children survived her. Among Plaths other popular works is The Bell Jar, (1963) an autobiographical novel.
{from the Poetry Foundation}----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-Sleep in the Mojave Desert 
by Sylvia Plath 


Out here there are no hearthstones, 
Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry. 
And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly 
On the minds eye, erecting a line 
Of poplars in the middle distance, the only 
Object beside the mad, straight road 
One can remember men and houses by. 
A cool wind should inhabit those leaves 
And a dew collect on them, dearer than money, 
In the blue hour before sunup. 
Yet they recede, untouchable as tomorrow, 
Or those glittery fictions of spilt water 
That glide ahead of the very thirsty. 

{first stanza, of two}

----------


## Virgil

To all the Plath disenters: Ok, that was one poem "Daddy". I'm sure there is a poem by everyone who has ever written that I can find I don't like. But you are indicting her entire work. Surely she was young and didn't get a chance to write fully and reach her maturity. I'm not saying she's the greatest poet of the 20th century, but I thnk there are enough poems of quality to put her in the canon. Here's possibly my favorite Plath poem:




> *Fever 103°* 
> by Sylvia Plath
> 
> Pure? What does it mean?
> The tongues of hell
> Are dull, dull as the triple
> 
> Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
> Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
> ...



http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/p...th/poems/18937

Read the whole thing because the ending fabulous.  :Wink:

----------


## Jozanny

> Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan in Odessa, Ukraine. Her childhood does not appear to have been happy; her parents separated in 1905. She was educated in Tsarskoe Selo (where she first met her future husband, Nikolay Gumilyov) and in Kyiv. Anna started writing poetry at the age of 11, inspired by her favourite poets: Racine, Pushkin, and Baratynsky. As her father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, she chose to adopt the surname of her Tatar grandmother as a pseudonym


quasi,

Even though I did not vote for Akhmatova, she is running for me as a mildly interesting third place choice :Smile: --but again, in terms of logistics, chasing my tail around Philly for a decent collection of hers in translation is not optimal for me at the moment, so I hope digging up samples online would be enough; if not, I'll muse quietly with my hand on my chin. :Biggrin: 

Is it too early to ask for a running vote tally?

PS: I am not quite sure I understand Acmeism, from the short summaries I am reading on it. Not to impose, but this might be a useful mini-discussion for me.

----------


## stlukesguild

Eugenio Montale was one of the giants of 20th century poetry, standing along side the likes of T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Rilke, Pasternak, Wallace Stevens, etc... He was most certainly the most important Modern Italian poet... probably THE most important Italian poet since Leopardi. At a time when Italian poetry had slid into a sort of decorative effete mannerism not unlike the worst indulgences of Victorian poetry and Symbolism, Montale brought about a new clarity... a new muscularity... a new Modernism. Montale brought an international awareness to his poetry. As an avid autodidact he was well read in Shakespeare, browning, Donne, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Henry James, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valery, Rilke. Montale also was a voracious but selective reader of Italian classics. The three major poets to inspire and challenge Montale were D'Annunzio, Leopardi, and Dante. Inspired by the example of T.S. Eliot, who Montale realized was greatly responsible for bringing about a muscular new manner of English poetry while maintaining a profound debt and admiration for the achievements of the past, Montale confronted his Italian predecessors... especially Dante... head on. 

_In limine_

Rejoice when the breeze that enters the orchard
brings you back the tidal rush of life:
here, where dead memories
mesh and founder,
was no garden, but a reliquary.

That surge you hear is no whir of wings,
but the stirring of the eternal womb.
Look how this strip of lonely coast 
has been transformed: a crucible.

All is furor within the sheer wall.
Advance and you may chance upon
the phantasm who might save you:
here are tales composed, and deeds
annulled, for the future to enact.

Find a break in the meshes of the net
that tightens around us, leap out, flee!
Go, I have prayed for your escape- now my thirst
will be slaked, my rancor less bitter...

Eugenio Montale
from _Cuttlefish Bones_
tr. William Arrowsmith

_Godi se il vento ch'entra nel pomario
vi rimena l'ondata della vita:
qui dove affonda un morto
viluppo di memorie,
orto non era, ma reliquiario.

Il frullo che tu senti non è un volo,
ma il commuoversi dell'eterno grembo;
vedi che si trasforma questo lembo
di terra solitario in un crogiuolo.

Un rovello è di qua dall'erto muro.
Se procedi t'imbatti
tu forse nel fantasma che ti salva:
si compongono qui le storie, gli atti
scancellati pel giuoco del futuro.

Cerca una maglia rotta nella rete
che ci stringe, tu balza fuori, fuggi!
Va, per te l'ho pregato, - ora la sete
mi sarà lieve, meno acre la ruggine ..._

----------


## Dark Muse

> I am not quite sure I understand Acmeism, from the short summaries I am reading on it. Not to impose, but this might be a useful mini-discussion for me.[/COLOR]


An anqutience of mine first brought Acmeism to my attention. I find it to be quite interesting, and Akhmatova is my favorite of the few poets I have thus read within the Acmesim movement. There is something about this form of poetry which appeals to me. 

In the first round of voting I voted for her.

----------


## quasimodo1

JoZ and all: Let me explain the intricate calculus of the vote...a first choice vote=1.oo points/ a second choice vote= 0.50 points/ a third place choice= 0.33 points. As of last night, late, the tally was Tate (2.00), Paz (1.00), Montale (1.00), Plath (1.00), and Bishop (0.83). I need to check the last posts for changes.

----------


## quasimodo1

acmeism = a school of early 20th-century Russian poetry whose practitioners were strongly opposed to the vagueness of symbolism and strove for absolute clarity of expression through precise, concrete imagery.

----------


## Jozanny

> JoZ and all: Let me explain the intricate calculus of the vote...a first choice vote=1.oo points/ a second choice vote= 0.50 points/ a third place choice= 0.33 points. As of last night, late, the tally was Tate (2.00), Paz (1.00), Montale (1.00), Plath (1.00), and Bishop (0.83). I need to check the last posts for changes.


tres bien mon ami

----------


## Virgil

Ok here's my vote:

First: Montale
Second: Plath  :Biggrin: 
Third: Tate

----------


## Jozanny

> Ok here's my vote:
> 
> First: Montale
> Second: Plath 
> Third: Tate


I know I am asking for trouble, but how can such a discerning reader like yourself prefer Plath before Tate Virgil? I have only recently discovered the man, but my poet's nose certainly knows the difference between a Pinto and a Thoroughbred.

----------


## Virgil

> I know I am asking for trouble, but how can such a discerning reader like yourself prefer Plath before Tate Virgil? I have only recently discovered the man, but my poet's nose certainly knows the difference between a Pinto and a Thoroughbred.


I probably have read Tate somewhere but I can't remember any of his work. I didn't say that I prefered Plath over anyone. I just said her work was not bad. Plus I picked Plath second because it would be a fiesty discussion.  :Wink:

----------


## Jozanny

> I probably have read Tate somewhere but I can't remember any of his work. I didn't say that I prefered Plath over anyone. I just said her work was not bad. Plus I picked Plath second because it would be a fiesty discussion.


And here I thought you and I had both learned a thing or two about thriving on conflict :Tongue: .

Seriously, Plath is so close to Bukowski in motivational impetus that your defense surprises me. JBI's astute objections aside, from what I know of the literary criticism out there, her reputation is in decline, deservedly, but I will make that case later.

----------


## quasimodo1

First let me admit my vote: Tate (1), McGuckian (2), Montale (3). Members...Bitterfly, Il Penseroso, Petrarch's Love, Quark, Sofia 82, Epistemophile, Dapper Drake, Mortalterror and Kafka's Crow have not gone to the poll.

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## stlukesguild

I picked Plath second because it would be a fiesty discussion. :Wink: 

Perhaps...  :FRlol: If JBI or I... or JoZ were to participate it might be more along the line of a feeding frenzy.

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## quasimodo1

Right now, unless some of the slacker members vote, (I mean that respectfully), we are in a dead heat for first...Montale and Tate. The illustrious and embattled Plath is third or second.

----------


## Virgil

> Seriously, Plath is so close to Bukowski in motivational impetus that your defense surprises me.


No I disagree with that. She may be sensational like Bukowski but that's neither here nor there. Shakespeare was sensational. Bukowski's use of language is like a buffoon; Plath has a fine writing voice and really stresses the language for tension. I agree she can be juvinile at times, but she did not fully mature as a writer. She was young. But sometimes she hits it. 




> JBI's astute objections aside, from what I know of the literary criticism out there, her reputation is in decline, deservedly, but I will make that case later.


Well, evaluations go up and down. All I'm saying is she belongs in the canon of American poetry of the post WWII era. Hemingway's reputation goes up and down and he's still in the canon.

----------


## Jozanny

> Right now, unless some of the slacker members vote, (I mean that respectfully), we are in a dead heat for first...Montale and Tate. The illustrious and embattled Plath is third or second.


I have faith that Petrarch Love's discrimination will save us from disaster. :Biggrin:

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## stlukesguild

I have faith that Petrarch Love's discrimination will save us from disaster.

Yes... but then there's always MortalTerror who may just vote for Plath simply because JBI and I have expressed a dislike for her work. :Biggrin:

----------


## quasimodo1

More Sonnets At Christmas 
by Allen Tate 

(1942) 

To Denis Devlin


I


Again the native hour lets down the locks 
Uncombed and black, but gray the bobbing beard; 
Ten years ago His eyes, fierce shuttlecocks, 
Pierced the close net of what I failed: I feared 
The belly-cold, the grave-clout, that betrayed 
Me dithering in the drift of cordial seas; 
Ten years are time enough to be dismayed 
By mummy Christ, head crammed between his knees. 


Suppose I take an arrogant bomber, stroke 
By stroke, up to the frazzled sun to hear 
Sun-ghostlings whisper: Yes, the capital yoke 
Remove it and theres not a ghost to fear 
This crucial day, whose decapitate joke 
Languidly winds into the inner ear. 



II


The days at end and theres nowhere to go, 
Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying; 
Get up and once again politely lying 
Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe 
With greedy eyes that stare like an old crow. 
How pleasantly the holly wreaths did hang 
And how stuffed Santa did his reindeer clang 
Above the golden oaken mantel, years ago! 



Then hang this picture for a calendar, 
As sheep for goat, and pray most fixedly 
For the cold martial progress of your star, 
With thoughts of commerce and society, 
Well-milked Chinese, Negroes who cannot sing, 
The Huns gelded and feeding in a ring. 



III


Give me this day a faith not personal 
As follows: The American people fully armed 
With assurance policies, righteous and harmed, 
Battle the world of which theyre not at all. 
That lying boy of ten who stood in the hall, 
His hat in hand (thus by his father charmed: 
You may be President), was not alarmed 
Nor even left uneasy by his fall. 



Nobody said that he could be a plumber, 
Carpenter, clerk, bus-driver, bombardier; 
Let little boys go into violent slumber, 
Aegean squall and squalor where their fear 
Is of an enemy in remote oceans 
Unstalked by Christ: these are the better notions. 
{excerpt}

----------


## JBI

> I have faith that Petrarch Love's discrimination will save us from disaster.
> 
> Yes... but then there's always MortalTerror who may just vote for Plath simply because JBI and I have expressed a dislike for her work.


If Petrarch votes Montale or Tate though, Plath cannot win unless there are other voters.

----------


## Dark Muse

I will pull for Montale between those two. Never read any of his work but I am not much of a fan of Tate. I suppose some of his stuff is somewhat interesting but all in all don't care for him.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> I have faith that Petrarch Love's discrimination will save us from disaster.


Goodness! My vote seems to unexpectedly have become a topic of discussion. I could become corrupted by this unexpected power and perversely vote Plath. :Biggrin:  Of course, that might mean I would have to discuss her work, which, I'm not particularly tempted by. Thus my vote stands:

1. Montale
2. Bishop
3. Tate

----------


## quasimodo1

update on the vote: Paz=1.00/ Akhmatova=0.50/ Montale=3.66/ McGuckian=0.50/ Bishop=1.33/ Plath=2.00/ Tate=2.66. Somebody get another registered voter out here. The poet in the lead at midnight will win the day. Zarathustra thus spake.

----------


## Jozanny

I have no great problem with Montale that I know of; that he is an Italian modernist doesn't automatically earn him my featly (and I can see Virgil raise an eyebrow, given my largesse toward the homeland...) but I am still stuck in the same refrain of journeying for my supper. I will not take the bus to Paley simply for a book of poetry--because; however, if I can manage with my ailing chair, I'll check the public branch next week, although I am hesitant to be optimistic.

I purchased Tate to treat myself, and believe he is worth a rare dessert, but I can't splurge on too much for the sake of this club.

----------


## JBI

AS it is 12:00 now, I guess we can say Montale has won? If so, can we start selecting editions? Preferably a bilingual one, but that is not a necessity - the most readily available large one I can seem to find is this one: http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poem...3697430&sr=8-1 and I can't seem to find a complete works, but the reviews, if they are to be trusted, seem to be conflicting. Perhaps we would prefer a single volume however?

----------


## quasimodo1

JBI: [Collected Poems, 1920-1954: Revised Bilingual Edition (Paperback)
by Eugenio Montale (Author), Jonathan Galassi (Translator)] This collection sounds perfect and bilingual is best, as far as I'm concerned. I'm waiting for Stlukes. to suggest one, as per my request, since he is more familiar than I. Thanks. PS: B&N has this text also... http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...+Montale&SAT=1

----------


## quasimodo1

"Doubt" from The Collected Poems (1920-1954)
Published by Farrar Straus Giroux - Translated by Jonathan Galassi
Obtained from Musil Institute 

I was giving a lecture
to the "Friends of Cacania"
on the subject "Is Life Likely?"
when I remembered I
was totally agnostic,
love and hate in equal parts and the outcome
unsure, depending on the moment.
Then I decided five minutes
were enough--
two and a half for the thesis
two and a half for the antithesis
this was the only homage possible
for a man without qualities.
I spoke exactly thirty-five seconds.
And when I said
that yes and no were look alikes
shouts and whispers interrupted my talk
and I awoke. It was the most laconic dream
of my life, maybe the only one not devoid
of "quality."

{this early tidbit from Project Muse}

----------


## JBI

> "Doubt" from The Collected Poems (1920-1954)
> Published by Farrar Straus Giroux - Translated by Jonathan Galassi
> Obtained from Musil Institute 
> 
> I was giving a lecture
> to the "Friends of Cacania"
> on the subject "Is Life Likely?"
> when I remembered I
> was totally agnostic,
> ...


Any chance you have the original Italian?

----------


## quasimodo1

I have access to it but I just enrolled so it might take some time.

----------


## mortalterror

> Yes... but then there's always MortalTerror who may just vote for Plath simply because JBI and I have expressed a dislike for her work.


I was actually trying to keep out of that mess; but incidentally I loved her book, and liked some of the poems I've read by her. When I read The Bell Jar in high school, I thought it was Catcher in the Rye for chicks, which would explain why you wouldn't go for it.

My earlier participation was prompted more out of a love of Ovid than an interest in Roethke. I don't know much about these modern poets; but I'm sure whatever you choose will be fine.

----------


## stlukesguild

If Montale were to be selected I would suggest one of two highly regarded translators. The first is William Arrowsmith; the second is Jonathan Galassi. Both translations have been acclaimed by some rather discerning critics including Anthony Hecht and Harold Bloom, although I personally prefer Arrowsmith's translations... but then again, these are the ones I was first introduced to Montale on. The Galassi translation can be seen here:

http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poem...3704695&sr=1-1

This volume includes Montale's three major collections: _Cuttlefish Bones, The Occasions_, and _The Storm and other Poems_. It might be the best deal if someone were to wish for a broader survey of the poet's work. Arrowsmith translated all three of these volumes as well as _Satura_, a volume of late poems. Unfortunately only _Satura_ and _Cuttlefish Bones_ are still in print. On the other hand, A complete survey of Montale's work might be too much to begin with. _Cuttlefish Bones_ is a seminal collection... not unlike _The Wasteland and other Poems_, Pasternak's _My Sister-Life_, Rilke's _New Poems_ or _Duino Elegies_, etc... It contains many of Montale's most famous poems and is far less hermetic than some of the later work. It might also be more informative to explore a body of work intended as a unified whole as opposed to a retrospective volume.

http://www.amazon.com/Cuttlefish-Bon...3704695&sr=1-2

Either volume contains both the Italian and the English facing... useful for JBI and Petrarch. Both are also voluminously annotated. Again... if Montale were/is the clear winner of the poll I have no problem with using either of these books... both of which I own... but I would again lean toward Arrosmith who seems to be THE Montale translator much as Hamburger is THE Holderlin translator.

----------


## mortalterror

William Arrowsmith is the man! His translation of Petronius' Satyricon is amazing; some of the best I've ever seen. His translations of Euripides are also pretty great. He has a collection of the ancient Greek plays translated entirely by poets, which beats the heck out of those cheap Grene and Lattimore volumes everyone's always buying.

----------


## quasimodo1

If you, Mortal and Stlukes are in enthusiastic agreement on Arrowsmith, then I'll try to make sure whatever collection we use will be translated by him. The two comparisons that Stlukes sent seem to prove your point. Montale looks to be a fascinating study.

----------


## stlukesguild

William Arrowsmith is the man! His translation of Petronius' Satyricon is amazing; some of the best I've ever seen. His translations of Euripides are also pretty great. He has a collection of the ancient Greek plays translated entirely by poets, which beats the heck out of those cheap Grene and Lattimore volumes everyone's always buying.

Mark the calendar, Mortal. We actually agree with all you have said! :Eek:  :FRlol:

----------


## stlukesguild

PS... I fixed the broken links to Amazon and the two translations discussed... including Arrowsmith's _Cuttlefish Bones_.

http://www.amazon.com/Cuttlefish-Bon...3704695&sr=1-2

----------


## Bitterfly

Answering Quasimodo, who doesn't seem to be authorised to receive messages, for some reason!  :Biggrin: 

I did go and look at the choice of poets that was offered, but didn't feel eligible to vote, for a simple reason: I have a lot of work to do, and don't have easy access to the books you've put up for the vote! So I'll be following what you all say with a lot of interest, but don't know if I'll be able to join in very much, therefore I felt I shouldn't be trying to impose my preferences!

Plus I'm not really sure about the relevance of studying poets in translation - reading them for pleasure, why not (although I like to have the original under my eyes). I probably would have voted for Bishop or Plath for that reason (and there, I've ended up choosing  :Biggrin: ).

----------


## Virgil

So has it been decided? Is it Montale? If so I will need to order the book. I guess that Arrowsmith translation is the preferred? But unfotunately the Arrowsmith book only has seven years worth of Montale's poetry, while the other one has a life span.

----------


## JBI

> So has it been decided? Is it Montale? If so I will need to order the book. I guess that Arrowsmith translation is the preferred? But unfotunately the Arrowsmith book only has seven years worth of Montale's poetry, while the other one has a life span.


Half life - it goes up to 54 I believe, but he published past that - though apparently not too much.

Now I feel bad for not buying that complete poems copy I saw in an Italian book store for 9 Euros (hardcover). Though it wouldn't have the English, it would have had the complete selection - oh well, opted for Campana instead for some reason.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Looks great. I put in a vote for Montale because I know next to nothing about him but have long meant to look into his stuff. I'll most likely be able to access any volume you decide on at our university library, so just give the heads up when you've decided on the book. 



> William Arrowsmith is the man! His translation of Petronius' Satyricon is amazing; some of the best I've ever seen. His translations of Euripides are also pretty great. He has a collection of the ancient Greek plays translated entirely by poets, which beats the heck out of those cheap Grene and Lattimore volumes everyone's always buying.


Nonsense. Everyone knows it's simply not done to buy anything but Loeb editions. Festive, Christmas-like red and green shelves are the badge of honor of the dead language geek!  :Biggrin:  Seriously, though, I am also an Arrowsmith fan. I didn't know he had done Italian translation too, so I'll be interested to look at his work with Montale.

----------


## JBI

How about we try his first anthology, Cuttlefish Bones, then?

----------


## quasimodo1

JBI: This "cuttlefish" collection...it is bilingual, correct? Looks like we will be purchasing the text and I'm willing to transfer any text to file...in order to transmit the material to anyone who needs to avoid spending thier hard-earned funds. Looks like you, Stlukes, Jozanny and Virgil have the podium, (snickering), until at least 9 or 10PM.

----------


## stlukesguild

Yes... it is bilingual and contains a good amount of notes... although not as many as the Galassi edition. Shall we set a day/time to begin? I'll need some time to brush through the work, but I do have one poem I'd like to put out for discussion.

----------


## quasimodo1

This will be our text/collection by Eugenio Montale, translated by William Arrowsmith. -- http://www.amazon.com/Cuttlefish-Bon...3704695&sr=1-2 Again, anyone without this text [which right now includes me] not to worry as poems discussed will be transmitted via PM as needed. For some examples of Montale's poetry, you can visit agni online. -- http://www-test.bu.edu/agni/poetry/p...6-montale.html .

----------


## Kafka's Crow

"I am always a bit too late, in everything that needs be done"

Couldn't find _Cuttlefish Bones_ on Amazon UK. Ordered it from the US site, should be here soon. I am just a follower here, lead me anywhere you want. I am glad Plath wasn't chosen, though. These are all new poets to me. Ask me about Haney, Hughes, Zephanayah, Motion etc. My world of contemporary poetry world is either too narrowly British/Irish or totally and utterly Oriental! Nothing in between except some course-work related American poets. I, the novice, bow to the will of the more enlightened ones in this group. 

P.S: Sorry I couldn't vote. Had I voted, I would have definitely chosen Montale as I did not want to touch my copy of _The Bell Jar_.

----------


## quasimodo1

"cuttlefish, common name applied to cephalopod mollusks that have 10 tentacles, or arms, 8 of which have muscular suction cups on their inner surface and 2 that are longer and can shoot out for grasping prey, and a reduced internal shell enbedded in the enveloping mantle. The body is short, broad, and flattened. Cuttlefish are carnivorous and excellent at capturing prey with their arms.
Although good swimmers, they are not as fast as the related squids, but like the squids cuttlefish have lateral fins used as stabilizers and for steering and propulsion. They swim by jet propulsion, forcibly expelling water through a siphon. During the day they lie buried in the bottom of the ocean; at night they swim and hunt for food.

Except for the squid genus Loligo, cuttlefish have the best cephalopod eyes, which are highly complex. When disturbed, cuttlefish eject a cloud of dark brown ink from an ink sac for protection. The ink gland and ink sac are specializations of the rectal gland. The ink is composed mostly of melanin and has been used as the artist's pigment, sepia. All cuttlefish are dioecious, i.e., the sexes are separate.

The common, worldwide, deepwater cuttlefish, genus Spirula, is considered a "living fossil" because it possesses a remnant of the external shell of the ancient cephalopods. These cuttlefish have a small, coiled internal shell containing a bubble of gas (nitrogen), which serves as a float in the ocean. The European cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, possesses a degenerate internal shell composed of lime, which is popularly called cuttlebone. Within the narrow spaces between the thin septa of the shell are fluid and gas (mostly nitrogen), which give the organism buoyancy. These cuttlefish are found in the Mediterranean and E Atlantic. The cuttlebone is used for pet birds as a source of lime salts. Sepia are able to undergo a complex of color changes ranging from pink to brown with varying stripes and spots, usually displayed when they are disturbed. The eggs, deposited singly and attached by a stalk to objects on the ocean bottom, are extremely large, up to .6 in. (15 mm) in diameter. The smallest cuttlefish, Idiosepius, inhabits tide pools and attains a length of .6 in. (15 mm). Cuttlefish are classified in the phylum Mollusca, class Cephalopoda, order Sepioidea." {from dictionary.com}

----------


## Virgil

Well, I ordered Cuttlefish. I should get it by the end of the week.  :Biggrin:

----------


## Jozanny

> Well, I ordered Cuttlefish. I should get it by the end of the week.


I am not yet; if I am finicky about the quality of the literature I read, I am a terror when it comes to poetry, and Tate merited my money because of TNR's analysis of his modernism, and he had better measure up. I am thinking of ditching my Plath and I already have my signed Joel Oppenheimer on the auction block. Joel had that winsome homespun personality honed to a T on the stage, but when I looked into his eyes, he was an angry cold and dying old man who frightened me, and neither his work nor Judith Johnson's appreciation of him makes up for it. 

I hate about 93% of the poems I read, including mine. Petrarch was onto something when she gleaned that my demands insist on triumph.

----------


## quasimodo1

Xenia I
by Eugenio Montale
(translated from the Italian by William Arrowsmith)

1
Dear little insect
nicknamed Mosca, who knows why,
this evening, when it was nearly dark,
while I was reading Deutero-Isaiah,
you reappeared at my side,
but without your glasses
you couldnt see me,
and in the blur, without their glitter,
I didnt know who you were.
2
Minus glasses and antennae,
poor insect, wingèd
only in imagination,
a beaten-up Bible and none
too plausible either, black night,
a flash of lightning, thunder, and then
not even the storm. Could it be
you left so soon, and without
a word? But its crazy, my thinking
you still had lips.
3
At the St. James in Paris Ill have to ask for
a room for one. (They dont like
single guests.) Ditto
in the fake Byzantium of your Venetian
hotel; and then, right off, hunting down
the girls at the switchboard,
your old pals; and then leaving again
the minute my three minutes are up,
and the wanting you back,
if only in one gesture,
one habit of yours.
4
Wed worked out a whistle for the world
beyond, a token of recognition.
Now Im giving it a try, hoping
were all dead already and dont know it.
5
I ve never figured out whether I 
was your faithful dog with runny eyes
or you were mine.
To others you were a myopic little bug
bewildered by the twaddle 
of high society. They were naïve,
those clever folk, never guessing
they were the butt of your humor:
that you could see them even in the dark,
unmasked by your infallible sixth sense,
your bats radar.
6
You never thought of leaving your mark 
by writing prose or verse. This
was your charmand later my self-revulsion.
It was what I dreaded too: that someday
youd shove me back into the croaking
bog of modern poets.
{6 of 14 parts}

----------


## stlukesguild

_Xenia I_ (there's a _Xenia II_ as well) is from the collection _Satura_, first published in 1971.

----------


## JBI

Shall we perhaps create a new thread for the new discussion? I think this one is getting too long, and perhaps if we cut it now, we can make discussions easier to find, and perhaps keep up the discussion on older poets that we have discussed. Just a thought.

----------


## Virgil

> Shall we perhaps create a new thread for the new discussion? I think this one is getting too long, and perhaps if we cut it now, we can make discussions easier to find, and perhaps keep up the discussion on older poets that we have discussed. Just a thought.


I asked Quasi that very question in a PM. I guess we could do another poet here. I don't think it makes a difference.

----------


## Jozanny

I am not sure what happened to Montale and his Cuttlefish Bones (clever post modern title, that) but I have not gotten down to Vine Street yet, where the free library sits like an absurd edifice, mocking neo-classicism more than honoring it in the breech. It isn't that I can't do it in the ailing Quickie frame. It is more my ailing frame that is the issue :Biggrin: . I am under the weather, despite being the Big Sister who has taken up right where mom left off, taking care of her whining spoiled brats who cannot live within their means. It still throws me that I have to take care of _them_ because I am cautious and frugal and still so strong in the middle age of my disability... I can't even begin to convey the irony of it to the rest of you without getting tooooooooooooooo personal, but in the interior weakness of my mind's indulging itself, I have Tate's Collected Poems, adding to the satisfaction of my personal library. Did not look at it yet, nor the introduction by Christopher Benfey.

Don't know Benfey. 

What I wanted to add though, is I missed out getting to the analysis of Tate's modernism in _both_TNR and The New Criterion in time, before they both went to archive :Frown: , so if any of you do find such an analysis that I could look at without a paywall, it would delight me; not that I will not keep snooting the tubers on my own :Tongue: !

Now I have to go email my brother and plead patience while he waits for rescue, because I am nothing if not phlegm today; then I will zip down to the lobby mailbox.

I don't know what the issue is with some of you about the bookclub thread length, but I don't have any problem with continuing on.

----------


## Virgil

> I am not sure what happened to Montale and his Cuttlefish Bones (clever post modern title, that) but I have not gotten down to Vine Street yet, where the free library sits like an absurd edifice, mocking neo-classicism more than honoring it in the breech. It isn't that I can't do it in the ailing Quickie frame. It is more my ailing frame that is the issue. I am under the weather, despite being the Big Sister who has taken up right where mom left off, taking care of her whining spoiled brats who cannot live within their means. It still throws me that I have to take care of _them_ because I am cautious and frugal and still so strong in the middle age of my disability... I can't even begin to convey the irony of it to the rest of you without getting tooooooooooooooo personal, but in the interior weakness of my mind's indulging itself, I have Tate's Collected Poems, adding to the satisfaction of my personal library. Did not look at it yet, nor the introduction by Christopher Benfey.
> 
> Don't know Benfey. 
> 
> What I wanted to add though, is I missed out getting to the analysis of Tate's modernism in _both_TNR and The New Criterion in time, before they both went to archive, so if any of you do find such an analysis that I could look at with a paywall, it would delight me; not that I will not keep snooting the tubers on my own!
> 
> Now I have to go email my brother and plead patience while he waits for rescue, because I am nothing if not phlegm today; then I will zip down to the lobby mailbox.
> 
> I don't know what the issue is with some of you about the bookclub thread length, but I don't have and problem with continuing on.


Jozy, Quasi had a personal issue come up which would take him a few days. I'm still waiting for the book to come from amazon. I think StLukes was slated to pick the first poem. 

I hope you feel better. I know it can be one of those days. I've been so busy at work that I'm pretty exhausted when I get home.

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Ah, if we're starting soon I'd better go pick up the book at the library tomorrow. 

Jozy--Sorry to hear you're having one of those no good sort of days. I hope you feel better soon. I have access to some journals via my university proxy and found an article in New Criterion from 2001, titled "The Violence of Allen Tate" by David Yezzi. Is that the article you wanted to get hold of? If so, PM me and maybe we can find some way to get it from me to you in pdf form.

----------


## Jozanny

> Ah, if we're starting soon I'd better go pick up the book at the library tomorrow. 
> 
> Jozy--Sorry to hear you're having one of those no good sort of days. I hope you feel better soon. I have access to some journals via my university proxy and found an article in New Criterion from 2001, titled "The Violence of Allen Tate" by David Yezzi. Is that the article you wanted to get hold of? If so, PM me and maybe we can find some way to get it from me to you in pdf form.


That is one of them Petrarch yes! I owe you a future hypothetical lunch, and will PM you in a bit. I have to run for a few.

----------


## stlukesguild

I'll start the posting tomorrow evening (Friday). I am overly tied up with some issues at school and I want to post a brief bio/overview of Montale before we get started. I have been going through both _Cuttlefish Bones_ and the Galassi translation and have an idea where i want to start. I am looking forward to the participation of both JBI and Petrarch in this discussion considering their understanding of Italian and experience with the poets that formed a great part of the tradition in which and against which Montale works: Dante, Cavalcanti, Petrarch, Leopardi, Foscolo, D'Annunzio, etc...

----------


## Virgil

> That is one of them Petrarch yes! I owe you a future hypothetical lunch, and will PM you in a bit. I have to run for a few.


I have saved most of my New Criterion magazines. If Petrarch doesn't have it, I can go look in my basement and see if I still have that issue. Do you know what month it was included in?

----------


## Jozanny

> I have saved most of my New Criterion magazines. If Petrarch doesn't have it, I can go look in my basement and see if I still have that issue. Do you know what month it was included in?


Virgil, I will let you know. I sent Petrarch's Love one of my endearing short howls :FRlol: .

I will try to *do* Vine Street soon. I am willing to keep my gun concealed over Montale until I see if I can read him in Italian and back. I may need a few scribbles and a bug to my father, and so on, but as previously indicated, I am not much for reverence and bowing down to clever form if poets can't do it for me. I'm rotten that way, and agree with my former-prof that Shakespeare's end couplets on his sonnets can get pretty droll. :Smile:

----------


## stlukesguild

Well I'm currently reading up on Montale's bio and on some of the critical response to his work. I have also been refreshing myself with Arrowsmith's translations of Cuttlefish Bones. For those who are interested in getting a head start I am looking at tackling _Mediterranean_, which is a _poemetto_ or short-long poem. It is Montale's longest composition... something of a suite of nine parts possibly inspired in part by Debussy's _La mer_. I will be looking at the entire suite, but especially section 8:

If only I could force 
some fragment of your ecstasy
into this clumsy music of mine...

----------


## Jozanny

> Well I'm currently reading up on Montale's bio and on some of the critical response to his work. I have also been refreshing myself with Arrowsmith's translations of Cuttlefish Bones. For those who are interested in getting a head start I am looking at tackling _Mediterranean_, which is a _poemetto_ or short-long poem. It is Montale's longest composition... something of a suite of nine parts possibly inspired in part by Debussy's _La mer_. I will be looking at the entire suite, but especially section 8:
> 
> If only I could force 
> some fragment of your ecstasy
> into this clumsy music of mine...


 :Rolleyes:  @ luke. I am not translating his longest poem, but I also think his longest might be somewhat slightly intimidating to start with? Other members might be encouraged to join in if *we* took it easy on the opening drum roll? I am all for elitism luke, I just published an essay defending it--but I'd like to let the surf tickle my ankles before I sink into my bust line.

----------


## marly

Hey, I don't know if this is the right 'room/forum' to be in, but you all seem to enjoy the stuff your reading so maybe you could help me over the next couple of weeks. I am in the fourth week of an 'A' leve English lit' course and as I'm not as young as I used to be and it's been decades since I went to school it's a little harder than I anticipated. We're doing Hardy - poetry and Tess of the D'urbyviles - the poetry I can stand, but Tess goes on and on forever and it really gets me down! After Hardy we do Tenyson and then Stopard, and a couple of others I can't think of at the moment - 'my short term memory's suffered over the years, I'm sort of like a gold fish, - whops it's gone! Anyway, if there is someone out there who can help me out with a couple of hot tips I'd be really pleased to hear from you. thanks

----------


## Jozanny

Hi marly, no, this is the poetry book club, and we are just starting the Italian modernist, Montale, or we will if luke doesn't club me over the head :FRlol: 

Anyway, you might want to look in the author's list under Hardy, and start a thread or join one. Welcome to litnet!

One quick question before I log off to the shambles of my former nicely ordered writing life, which may take me another 24 months to reorder again, should I live so long, end vent--in the Arrowsmith Xenia quasi linked, the narrator is reading *Deutero-Isaiah*, which, if memory serves, most scholars believe is not the actual prophet, but either a disciple or imitator, or scribe-Isaiah. I have that right, right?

----------


## quasimodo1

Wasn't it S. Beckett who, when asked if he would go to a funeral, said "I never go to those celebrations."? Well, my funeral of the month is over so I can get on with...something. Montale might be a good place to go. Virgil will forgive me for posting this bit a academia, as I first thought it might not be helpfull but...here it is. Bly on Montale... http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html...l-Montale2.pdf It is interesting.

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## Virgil

My amazon order came in!! :Banana:  I have the book!!!! :Banana:  :Banana:  What's the first poem? I'm ready!!!!!!  :Cool:

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Darn, I knew I forgot something at the library today. I'll pick it up tomorrow and join in.

----------


## JBI

I get mine tomorrow also, I'll have to wait. If someone wants to suggest one though...

----------


## Jozanny

> My amazon order came in!! I have the book!!!! What's the first poem? I'm ready!!!!!!


 :FRlol:  @ Virgil's post. I will have to depend on quasi's or Petrarch's charity (ouch) until I can see what the main branch could do for me.

I could email them, but the glitch there is my card expired in February, and I have, oddly, not trekked over because I have too much reading in my own collection.

I could buy Montale just as I've bought Tate, but I am going to overwhelm myself if I get stupid on a spree just now. Hoping on early next week for a more real than virtual journey. :Biggrin: 

I think we're all a delightful riot, at that.

----------


## stlukesguild

*Eugenio Montale- A Brief Background*

Eugenio Montale was born in 1896 in Genoa to reasonably affluent parents. Most of his education was attained through his own reading or through his sister, Marianna. She introduced him to St. Augustine, Pascal, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc... A large portion of the experiential portion of his education came through the summers spent in the villa of Monterrosso on the Ligurian coast. The stark, harsh, rocky, sun-baked edge of the Mediterranean became etched into the soul of the poet... providing both a physical and a mythical/psychological geographical setting.

Music was Montale's earliest passion and his teacher, Ernesto Sivori, considered him "extremely promising" in his training as an operatic vocalist. Sivori's death in 1923, and his father's opposition to the notion of a career in music led him to abandon his plans. Montale also realized that he lacked the single-minded focus to succeed as a musician: "I had other interests, and maybe I wasn't so dumb: to be a good singer requires a mixture of originality and stupidity." 

The largest of these other "interests" was obviously poetry. Montale possessed a furious drive as an autodidact and a reader of world literature. Among his favorites were the French symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme, Valery, etc...), the great poets of the Italian tradition: Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Petrarch, Leopardi, Foscolo, Campana, and D'Annunzio, and among the English-language writers: Shakespeare, Browning, Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Henry James, and T.S. Eliot.

From the beginning Montale imagined a certain affinity with the efforts of T.S. Eliot. He too wished to bring a certain muscularity transcending the mannered, perfumed eloquence of Italian poetry of the time... the work of mandarins who deferred far to much to the authority of the Italian tradition... not unlike the worst examples of late Victorian poets against whom Eliot and the other Modernists struggled. At the same time, Montale wanted nothing to do with the notion of rejecting the tradition as put forth by the Futurists. he wished to embrace yet transcend this tradition: "I wanted to wring the neck of our old aulic language, even at the risk of counter-eloquence."

In a way, Montale imagined his own struggle not unlike those of Dante. Where Dante struggled to take what was largely considered a vulgar language (_vulgari eloquentia_) and infuse it with an eloquence, a poetry, a grandeur... Montale struggled with a language that in many ways had become too effete and florid. His means to this end included the use of colloquialisms and local dialects... but also a certain classical/Modernist starkness and a sort of "sprung rhythm" not unlike that of Hopkins. 

The central core of Montale's _oeuvre_ consists of the three brilliant volumes of poetry, Cuttlefish Bones (_Ossi di seppia_), the Occasions (_Le occasioni_), and The Storm (_La bufera_). Later volumes, including _Satura_ ae certainly essential to gaining a total picture of the poet... but they are also often seen as satirical comments upon the great achievements of these three volumes. 

Major elements among Montale's poetry include certain repeated images: the sun scorched Mediterranean coast, the sunflower, the cicada, the mirror, the ditch. Another major theme is the continual use of the poet's muse... an element that has guided Italian poetry across its entire history from Dante and Cavalcanti onward. Montale's muse continually evolves and metamorphoses... certainly building upon the experience of the poet's own lovers... but also alluding to the entire range of poet's muses from the Italian tradition: Cavalcanti's Mandetta, Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, Leopardi's Silvia... even Shakespeare's Dark Lady. Still another element... as already suggested... is the poet's writing at the point of a veritable "cultural saturation"... His work can be so heavily layered with allusion and quotation (again, not unlike Eliot) that his work seems an echo chamber or "collage of borrowings". Again... like Eliot... Montale does not use such quotation to out of mere shallow deference to tradition or a desire to raise his own work through a connection with this tradition... but often as a means of illuminating his own contrast with this tradition.

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## Virgil

> @ Virgil's post. I will have to depend on quasi's or Petrarch's charity (ouch) until I can see what the main branch could do for me.
> 
> I could email them, but the glitch there is my card expired in February, and I have, oddly, not treked over because I have too much reading in my own collection.
> 
> I could buy Montale just as I've bought Tate, but I am going to overwhelm myself if I get stupid on a spree just now. Hoping on early next week for a more real than virtual journey.
> 
> I think we're all a delightful riot, at that.


If it's not too ong, and many of the poems don't seem that long, I can type them out and email it to you Jozy.  :Smile:  Maybe we can take turns typing out a poem for you.

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## Jozanny

> If it's not too ong, and many of the poems don't seem that long, I can type them out and email it to you Jozy.  Maybe we can take turns typing out a poem for you.


Not if it is too much work mon ami. I think quasi has a system of some sort where he would just pm me copy, not sure--but in this instance, I actually desire a visit to Vine. I have done some research there in humanities, and the librarians seem to love me for putting them to work...but that is another issue.

I do appreciate it. :Tongue:

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## Virgil

> Not if it is too much work mon ami. I think quasi has a system of some sort where he would just pm me copy, not sure--but in this instance, I actually desire a visit to Vine. I have done some research there in humanities, and the librarians seem to love me for putting them to work...but that is another issue.
> 
> I do appreciate it.


We'll get you the poem my dear.  :Smile:  I guess no one has picked one yet.

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## stlukesguild

I suppose we may begin with Montale's _Mediterranean_. As I mentioned earlier it is a suite composed of nine sections. I will begin with section 8 ("If only I could force...")

If only I could force
some fragment of your ecstasy
into this clumsy music of mine;
had I the talent to match your voices
with my stammering speech-
I who once dreamed of acquiring
those salt-sea words of yours
where nature fuses with art-
and with your vast language proclaim the sadness
of an aging boy who shouldn't have learned to think.
But moldy dictionary words
are all I have, and that voice of mystery
dictated by love grows faint,
turns literary, elegaic.
All I have are these words, 
that like public women,
offer themselves to any takers;
all I have are these clichés
which student rabble might tomorrow steal
in real poetry.
And your booming grows, and the blue
of the fresh shadow widens.
My thoughts fail, they leave me.
I have no sense, no senses. No limit.

from _Mediterranean_, tr. William Arrowsmith

_Potessi almeno costringere 
in questo mio ritmo stento
qualche poco del tuo vaneggiamento;
dato mi fosse accordare
alle tue voci il mio balbo parlare: -
io che sognava rapirti
le salmastre parole
in cui natura ed arte si confondono,
per gridar meglio la mia malinconia
di fanciullo invecchiato che non doveva pensare.
Ed invece non ho che le lettere fruste
dei dizionari, e l'oscura
voce che amore detta s'affioca,
si fa lamentosa letteratura.
Non ho che queste parole
che come donne pubblicate
s'offrono a chi le richiede;
non ho che queste frasi stancate
che potranno rubarmi anche domani
gli studenti canaglie in versi veri.
Ed il tuo rombo cresce, e si dilata
azzurra l'ombra nuova.
M'abbandonano a prova i miei pensieri.
Sensi non ho; né senso. Non ho limite._

There is a long tradition of poets bemoaning the fact that they cannot live up to the examples of their predecessors. Even Dante makes such declarations. I cannot help but think of Bloom's "anxiety of influence"... not so much in a Freudian aesthetic Oedipal sense... but more along the lines of the very real insecurity that any artist feels in comparison with his or her idols. I also cannot help but think of Eliot's seminal essay, _The Tradition and the Individual Talent_.

Montale has a stated goal of transcending (if not surpassing) the great Italian tradition which he feels has become flabby... mannered... effete. Yet confronting this great tradition... perhaps the entire Mediterranean tradition... he cannot help but feel a bit overmatched: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi. Against such figures he but stammers with a "clumsy music". Against the "sea-salt words... where nature fuses with art" he has but "moldy dictionary words"... against the very real spirituality... faith... the "mystery dictated by love..." (or perhaps even in contrast to the stoic atheism of Leopardi... or Lucretius) he has something grown faint... "literary". 

Just throwing out some initial thoughts to get the ball rolling. I would be especially interested in JBI's and Petrarch's take on the original Italian... How does Montale's striving for a greater muscularity within a language that is so innately feminine... musical... fluidly poetic... read?

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## Virgil

Jozy, that is the entire poem. StLukes has done the typing.  :Wink: 

I'm off to bed to read it.  :Smile:

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## JBI

A quick read shows Almeno translated as only, though I think it would be more fitting, in terms of intention, to translate it as "at least", which seems to carry more of the connotation of "at best". Just a few minor pickings, I'd have to scan the poem with my dictionary to come up with other ones, but I thought they may be helpful for trying to understand the poem. The translation feels relatively loose, in comparison to the poem (though I confess, Arrowsmith's Italian is 100x better than mine) and seeks to establish itself as a "feel" translation, rather than a meaning translation. Also, the lines don't really follow each other, and seem to be re-ordered in translation to fit English grammar, and pragmatics better. Since, I guess, Montale has enjambed the first little bit significantly, Arrowsmith must have felt it necessary to play around with the order and feel of the words accordingly.

I leave it for tomorrow to make comparisons, though if you wouldn't mind, St. Lukes, could you perhaps post the same cutting from your second translation of the work, so as to compare?

As for the meaning, I think he is more talking about the naturalness, verses the cultivation. He seems to think his predecessors possessed a more natural, and less schooled command of what they were doing, their sea-salt fusion of nature and art, as he put it, whereas he is confined to the "academic" the old dictionaries, with their old clichés. His ending however, is rather difficult, since he seems to almost Whitmanize himself, in the sense that he abandons sense for the natural, a meaning which is instinctive rather than cultivated, not based on sense I.E. tradition, but on nature.

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## mortalterror

If only I could force
some fragment of your ecstasy
into this clumsy music of mine;
had I the talent to match your voices
with my stammering speech-
-Montale's Mediterranean, tr. William Arrowsmith

Hecuba: If by some magic, some gift of the gods, I could become all speech- tongues in my arms, hands that talked, voices speaking, crying from my hair and feet - then, all together, as one voice, I would fall and touch your knees, crying, begging, imploring with a thousand tongues - O master, greatest light of Hellas, hear me, help an old woman, avenge her! She is nothing at all, but hear her, help her even so. Do your duty as a man of honor: see justice done. Punish this murder.- Euripides' Hecuba, tr. William Arrowsmith

If I had 
A hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, a voice
Of iron, I could not tell of all the shapes
Their crimes had taken, or their punishments.
-lines 835-838, Book VI, Virgil's Aeneid, tr. Fitzgerald

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
-Julius Caesar Act 3 sc. II, Shakespeare

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## Dark Muse

I cannot concentrate too much right now. But the verse is beautiful, I just love the use of langauge within the poem. It has some absolutely wonderful lines. And the word choice is subpurb. If I tried to quote specific lines I would probably end up reposting almost the entire poem.

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## JBI

Hmm, I think I feel also, a little reverence for Leopardi in particular, especially around the parts with natural language, and natural feelings. That very much was the purpose of much of Leopardi's work, to create a natural poetics, one devoid of fancy nostalgic moments, and soft flowery language. I think perhaps Montale may be playing on that, to some extent, though perhaps he is alluding to Petrarch and Dante, the two obvious predecessors, amongst others. In truth though, I think, not from Virgil or Euripedes Montale got his stance, but from a strange reading of Song of Myself (I may be wrong, as I don't know at which time he read Leaves of Grass, though I know he read it, and was influenced it at some point in his life). I know he studied foreign languages as a youth, and it seems likely that he would have read Whitman, as many of his contemporary poets (Campana comes to mind first) were doing. I don't know - I'd need a biography to prove he read it, but under that assumption, I can feel Whitmanian tones running through the whole work.

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## Virgil

I think one needs to read all nine of the Mediterranian poems as a whole. They are a cohesive group. I did not really find any individual poem all that spectacular, but as a grooup the do have a certain beauty. They are somewhat interconnected, but my real first impression is that they are along the lines of individual mosaics that make up a composite. They are almost a collection of pansies of a field of flowers, to use an allusion to Pascal.

The central theme of the group is the contrast between himself and the sea.

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## stlukesguild

Virgil... I agree that there is the experiential aspect of the poet and the sea... the coast... the Mediterranean... The artist frustrated by his stuttering inability to compete with the experience of reality... nature? Still I also cannot help but sense the Mediterranean also stands for the tradition against which/within which the poet is working... seeking to develop his own language. I don't dispute JBI's sensing Whitman... but I am certain of his awareness and admiration of Eliot... who was himself deeply marked by Whitman. The notion of comparing ones self and the present with the past need not be limited to an artist/author's feeling of having been born too late, but also may convey a sense of a lost innocence... a lost naturalism... a lost spirituality (much of which is equally conveyed in Eliot's work).

Here is Gallassi's translation per JBI's request:

If at least I could force
some small part of your raving
into this halting rhythm;
if I could harmonize 
my stammer with your voices-
I, who dreamed of stealing
your briny words
where art and nature fuse,
the better to shout out the sadness
of an aging boy who shouldn't have been thinking.
But all I have are threadbare
dictionary letters
and the dark voice love dictates
goes hoarse, becomes whining writing.
All I have are these words
which prostitute themselves
to anyone who asks;
only these tired out phrases
the student rabble can steal tomorrow
to make real poetry.
And your roaring rises,
the new shadow waxes blue.
My ideas desert me at the test.
I have no sense and no sense. No limit.

I personally prefer Arrowsmith's translation and I especially prefer the manner in which he deals with the phrase _donne pubblicate_... "published women"... a euphemism for prostitutes. Arrowsmith's translation as public women strikes me a closer to capturing the double meaning of the original.

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## Jozanny

> Just throwing out some initial thoughts to get the ball rolling. I would be especially interested in JBI's and Petrarch's take on the original Italian... How does Montale's striving for a greater muscularity within a language that is so innately feminine... musical... fluidly poetic... read?


With cudos to you and Bly luke, and quasi's nice pdf posting shows that Bly has been bemoaning emasculation long before I knew of his reputation, what do you mean by *greater muscularity?* Can you define your terms with more precision?

I am not ready to analyze Montale on the few samples of Arrowsmith I've read, not just yet. I'd like to focus and call my father and see if he will help me with Montale in Italian. That being said, there is no question Dante hits the pavement with a decent pair of stones, at least in terms of lacking humility. It has also been quite a while since I have paid Petrarca any homage, but I do not see much machismo in the Arrowsmith Xenia. I cannot pretend I have the authority to upend Bly, since I am a man-girl as opposed to a tamed husband-man, but I do not think vitality is the sole province of testosterone.

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## stlukesguild

what do you mean by *greater muscularity?* Can you define your terms with more precision?

Coming on the heels of the _art pour l'art_ era, a great deal of the art and poetry at the tail end of the 19th century and the early 20th century revels in the overly sweet... romantic... florid. In painting one might think of the Pre-Raphaelites. In poetry one might think of the worst excesses of Swinburne, Rossetti, Tennyson ... and their lesser followers. In Italy of the time of Montale's early efforts at poetry, the poetic world was seemingly dominated by French Symbolism and the almost mythical figure of Gabriele D'Annunzio. A great deal of the poetry of the era... as seen by Montale... was overly extravagant... florid... grandiloquent... or sweetly poetic. To this one might add the fact that Montale felt a degree of discomfort with what he imagined to be the very nature of the Italian language... with its excess of vowel-endings and the ease of rhyme (as opposed to the harder sounds of English and the comparative difficulty of rhyme). Again... like Eliot... Montale expressed a desire to break away from flowery language... the stereotypical sweet and elegant language of the "superior dilettantism" and the bric-a-brac wrapped in "a sumptuous négligé cloak"(as Montale phrased it): "I waned to wring the neck of the eloquence of our old aulic language, even at the risk of a counter-eloquence." The Arrowsmith translation suggests a sort of simplified... pared-down classicism... a limited use of florid adjectives/adverbs. Of course one would need a mastery of both Italian and of Italian literary history... especially a solid knowledge of the poets immediately prior to Montale... to offer a real solid analysis of how his poetry differs in terms of muscularity from the poetry prior.

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## Petrarch's Love

Just had a spare moment to read the Bly, and the part of the poem as posted by St. Luke's. I may get more out of it when I have a chance to see the other parts, since I forgot once again to pick up the book at the library today (you can blame it on the discovery of an exquisite little 15th century Book of Hours in our Special collections holdings this afternoon). 


As for the Montale, the sound of the original is remarkably eloquent. I don't know that I would quite describe his style as "muscular," not only because of the sinuous, vowel ladden qualities of the Italian language, but because there's such a smoothness to the sound of his verse. It certainly, however, has a backbone to it, and a certain sharp, incisive quality. There's no sense of overly supple flowery language here and a lot of control. Though, as with all translation, much of the music and some of the layered sense is inevitably lost, Arrowsmith's translation does a pretty darn good job I think of conveying a sense of the poem, though as JBI pointed out, possibly at a slight cost to exact meaning. There are certain words that simply aren't going to come out right in English: the "veri versi" of line 20 lose their alliteration in the "real poetry" of the translation; the masterly feeling of "salmastre" doesn't quite come through in the English "sea-salt"; as St. Luke's has pointed out, the double play in "pubblicate" forces a choice on the translator that guarantees a loss of meaning. Most notably, the English "ecstasy," much as I think it's the best word for the job and wonderfully effective in the English, doesn't entirely capture either the raving quality or the open, expansive, quality of "vaneggiamento." On the other hand, I like the way Arrowsmith preserves some of the effect of the syntactical order in places, which is often a problem in translation. For example, here:

...that voice of mystery
dictated by love grows faint,
turns literary, elegaic.

I like the preservation of the "turns literary, elegaic" in one line, mirroring the transforming enjambment of "si fa lamentosa letteratura" which puts an emphasis on the way his poetic voice becomes something other, less forceful, than what he envisioned. Not all translators pay that kind of close attention to that sort of nuanced effect. In other places, of course, he does change the syntax around, not always to the best effect, but I do like the way he fronts the "moldy dictionary words," giving them a position of more emphasis than in the original (while not a direct translation of "fruste" I think "moldy," especially as colloquially paired with dictionary, works well in English). 

Just a few starting impressions. Based on this snippet I think I'm going to enjoy Montale. I'll comment a bit later about my reactions to the content of the poem.

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## JBI

Petrarch, how do you translate the word "balbo"? I can't find it in my dictionary, and I am curious as to how it translates.

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## Bitterfly

If he's trying to reject the previous tradition, why then does he say that he cannot compete with it? Is his tone ironical? I have trouble totally understanding your interpretation, but that's probably because I haven't seen what comes before.

I must admit I see the usual frustration of a poet struggling to express with words, the only tools he has at his disposition, something that seems to remain ineffable - nature, in its sublime state? 

And the regret that he's intellectualised something which is physical, natural, I don't know, just because putting it in words means thinking about it? And maybe that thought dries everything up? That raw emotion, "ecstasy" (something outside itself) once that it has passed through the medium of a thinking mind, interiorised in a subjectivity, becomes almost trite? But the end of the poem allows him to go outside himself, outside of thought, so in consequence there are no limits left?

And also, maybe, the - rather modernist - feeling that everything has already been said, so he can only use the words that others have used before him, that have become hackneyed, and cannot create an individual voice.

And I'm intrigued by the "where nature fuses with art"- does he consider nature as a work of art in itself? Or does he mean that he is seeing the sea through the prism of other, previous representations?

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## Virgil

I agree, "muscular" is not an adjective that would come to mind after having read all nine of the Mediterranian poems. I can't think of an adjective right now. Perhaps transcendental. I saw the Whitman comparison above, who was that JBI? I see where you're coming from, but if I'm going to associate him so far (truely unfair based on only this one poem but what the heck) with a Romantic I hear a sense of Shelley.

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## Jozanny

> Petrarch, how do you translate the word "balbo"? I can't find it in my dictionary, and I am curious as to how it translates.


I get "a kind of goatee" or "aircraft formation" for balbo, so I have to get hold of my father; he is still bilingual and I am obviously missing something. :Frown:

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## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch, how do you translate the word "balbo"? I can't find it in my dictionary, and I am curious as to how it translates.


It means stammering or babbling, just as he translates it. It's the (possibly colloquial...didn't find it in the dictionary) adjectival form of the verb balbettare. I think it's a wonderful word, with a lot of humor and clumsiness to it. It's a good example of the way Montale chooses diction in places with a clear mind toward not being too flowery, to ensuring a little jumpiness, or clumsiness to balance what otherwise could be a remarkably flawless style. "Balbo" comes bouncing along in a similar way that the uneven meter of the lines creates a certain intentional halting clumsiness.

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## stlukesguild

I'm not going to venture any guess as to the meaning of "balbo"... but I will note that critical comments point out that Montale made frequent use of colloquialisms and local dialects... so a possibility?

Oops... missed Petrarch's posting by a few seconds.

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## stlukesguild

If he's trying to reject the previous tradition, why then does he say that he cannot compete with it? Is his tone ironical? I have trouble totally understanding your interpretation, but that's probably because I haven't seen what comes before.

Like many artists I imagine Montale having something of a love-hate relationship with the work of his predecessors. I get the notion (from the critical comments I have read in both Arrowsmith's and Gallassi's books) that Montale wished to break free of the overly florid style of his immediate predecessors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He looks to the examples of the greatest artists of the tradition (Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi, etc...) but struggles with how to make his poetry speak of his time... his experience. 

And I'm intrigued by the "where nature fuses with art"- does he consider nature as a work of art in itself? Or does he mean that he is seeing the sea through the prism of other, previous representations?

I greatly suspect that it is both... that the poet struggles and stammers attempting to give form to what he has experienced in nature... but he feels a similar challenge presented by the work of his greatest predecessors who seemingly fused art and nature... spoke so "naturally"... as opposed to the modern self-conscious state?

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## Bitterfly

> I as opposed to the modern self-conscious state?


The rejection of self-consciousness and thought reminds me terribly of Lawrence, actually. And the "dark love" too, I suppose.

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## Jozanny

I have found balbattare Petrarch, thank you, but I cannot find balbo either in my own library or on Google Italian-English. I will have to refer back to Montale at a later date, as I don't feel I can do his work any justice without some study. My Nonna stopped teaching me a long time ago, and she was more fluent than my father.

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## Virgil

The more I'm reading this the more enamored I'm getting. I do really feel one must read all nine parts. I do not see the individual parts as single poems but one large poem of nine sections. I think it would do well to plot out the nine sections. There is a definite movement from first to ninth. Here's my quick attempt at a summary gist of the nine sections.

1. The hidden sea veiled but the sounds of the sea reaches his ears. And then the image of the streaking blue jays.

2. The poet is drunk with the voice of the sea as he absorbs the sea's voice within him. And then the image of the star fish corking up and down.

3. When the poet is not in rhythm with the circling seasons he finds the sea redeeming because it has been infused in his soul. And then the image of the plover (sea bird) plummeting for the shore.

4. The poets existence, his identity, and his destiny are all linked to the sea. He calls the sea father. No real crystal concluding image to this other than the surf speaking.

5. The poet pulls back and feels estranged from the sea. There is a emphasis of the contrast between the inanimate sea and living beings, including himself. There is bitterness, the bitterness a son feels for his father. Again no crystal concluding image.

6. Despite the distance of going away and of time, the voice of the sea, the memory of it, will always be seeded in the poet. Again no crystal concluding image.

7. His mortality contrasts with the elemental nature of the sea and its parts. The poet cannot be the ever constant, the ever persistent will. His human will needed to explore life. The concluding image here is somewhat abstract, the frenzy of the sea rising to the stars.

8. The poet wishes to take the seas voice and infuse it with his own. But he cannot. There is a contrast between the sublime reach of the seas voice with his limited human voice. . Again no crystal concluding image, and perhaps the most abstract, enigmatic conclusion of the nine parts.

9. The poet finds consummation with the sea. Whatever distance he has journeyed he returns, reenters its orbit. He commits himself to the sea and concludes with the image of a spark from a thyrsus (the staff of Dionysus) burning.

There is after all a narrative movement I believe. The poet is growing and time seems to move toward aging. I wonder if there is some numerology with the choosing of nine sections. I dont think thats accidental. And finally the meaning of the poem relies on the metaphor of the sea, and more specifically the Mediterranean sea. There are many internal momentary metaphors, but ultimately this poem rests on a grand complex metaphor of the seas significance.

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## Petrarch's Love

It's funny that "balbo" doesn't seem to be surfacing in anyone's dictionary. It seemed quite familiar to me, which made me think it must be relatively common. It is quite close to the latin _balbus_, which makes me wonder if it's an older word, and might explain why I was familiar with it from reading older poetry. It might be interesting in light of the discussion regarding influence on this thread, if Montale was employing intentionally archaic language. On the other hand, it could just be a northern colloquial word. It's entirely possible I picked it up during my study abroad when the word could easily have been applied to my means of communicatin in Italian.  :Tongue: 

I'll take off my etymological cap and get some sleep now. Promise some comments more relevant to the pith and marrow of the poem tomorrow.

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## stlukesguild

Virgil... I agree that the suite should be read as a whole. Of course I avoid posting it as such for a number of reasons... the foremost being that I'm not about to type the whole damn thing :FRlol: ... although JoZ's, Petrarch's and others' current lack of the text also comes into play. Another reason is that my own thinking is somewhat blurred. Having just recently finished a major work that had involved some month or two and 60+ hours of intense labor I am in the stage of coming to terms with the fact that it is finished... with the self-conscious feelings of frustration and uncertainty that often follow in the wake of a completion of such a labor... and a struggle to begin a new work. Endless ideas are whirling through my head and I am confronted with the state of knowing that I must hone these down until I have chosen the single idea/image upon which I will apply my efforts over the next month or two.

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## Virgil

Oh selecting one of the parts is justified. I do think that they stand individually, but I think the nine as a whole have more significance than any single part.

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## mortalterror

> I think perhaps Montale may be playing on that, to some extent, though perhaps he is alluding to Petrarch and Dante, the two obvious predecessors, amongst others. In truth though, I think, not from Virgil or Euripedes Montale got his stance, but from a strange reading of Song of Myself.


I'd hoped to let my quotations speak for themselves but now I see that I must further explain my ideas. I did not mean to imply that Montale was channeling Euripides, Virgil, and Shakespeare as influences or models. What I was trying to show was the similarity of their techniques. There are a few rhetorical devices which they have in common. 

If only I could force
some fragment of your ecstasy
into this clumsy music of mine;
had I the talent to match your voices
with my stammering speech-

All of the examples I've listed begin with a statement of adynaton, that the subject they are about to treat is too great for them. They long for the eloquence of another, which suggests that the subject can be treated properly just not by them. I felt that this was different from apocarteresis, which is what religious poets like Dante or Firdawsi do when they say there are no words for what they are trying to express, that their subject is beyond the best poets and beyond poetry itself. What this adynaton does is twofold. It's first effect is that of eironeia, a greek word meaning feigned ignorance from which we derive the word irony. Those of you who've studied your Plato know that Socrates does this all the time. He sets up this "I'm just a simple country lawyer" faux humble persona for the purpose of persuading his audience who are now off their guard with lowered expectations. The poet at this point can only surpass the expectations of his listeners or if he does not he is still as good as his word. Secondly, the fact that Montale knows of other artists greater than himself, and correctly understands the magnitude of the subject he's about to treat flies in the face of the statements he's just made. Furthermore, any reference to a greater power than himself would automatically place him in relation to that object in a type of hierarchy which could only reflect well on Montale as we begin to think of them together. We know that he is attempting something which others have done before him, and so they have at least this much in common.

So what do we have so far? Montale has set up his persona at the beginning of his poem as a humble man with an admittedly minor poetic talent. He is about to try something very difficult and possibly above his abilities. If he should fail, as his numerous protestations attest, then he is still a virtuous man and his audience will sympathize with him because of his virtues and ambition. Montale has heightened the stakes of his discourse, while lowering expectations about his competence. When he succeeds, it's the underdog story, and we all cheer even louder.

Those of you who know Italian might be familiar with a little term called sprezzatura, which is the art of appearing artless. Wikipedia says it was first used by Castiglione, and defines it as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it." That is what Montale is striving for in this section of his poem. He purposely undercuts the smooth erudition of his lines by inserting local colloquialisms and affecting a plain style. The writing of a poem such as this is a very delicate, very difficult affair, but it's made to seem commonplace for Montale. "Oh, this? Just something I dashed off. You know I don't play those literary games. I haven't the talent." Montale knows this is the best part of his book, and so he's purposely prefacing it with light hearted condemnation.

Does anybody else feel the lament running through this poem: "If only I could" "all I have are"? It seems very sad, as if the speaker were mourning something.

----------


## Virgil

Interesting how in the eith poem he actually picks up from the end of the previous. At the end of the seventh Montale has the sea in a state of high emotion: "And now your frenzy rises to the stars." And at the beginning of the eighth the poet wishes he could grab a piece of that frenzy: "If only I could force/some fragment of your ecstasy..." I don't think this pick up from the previous occurs in any of the other pieces. What stands out from the eighth part is how the poet belittles his voice: "stammering speech," "moldy dictionary words," "words...like public women," and cliches. 

I found this very interesting:



> and with your vast language proclaim the sadness
> of an aging boy who shouldn't have learned to think.


I find it interesting because it connects with the second to last line: "My thoughts fail, they leave me."
I'm not sure I understand what Montale is after. First he says he shouldn't have learned to think and then in the face of the "booming" voice of the sea his thoughts fail. Actually in the Italian the connection is even more pronouced: "pensare" and "pensieri." 

And that second to last line leads right into that most enigmatic concluding line, "I have no sense, no senses. No limit."

I have not been able to tease the meaning out of all that. Anyone?

----------


## Bitterfly

They go together, in my opinion, because the poet feels he thinks too much to be able to write - or maybe even understand - the sea (that's why I said earlier on that he reminded me on DH Lawrence a little), which doesn't think but just is, maybe. At the end he stops thinking and therefore the limits disappear. It seems to cohere with what you said about the ninth song, where he fuses last with the sea - because his thoughts are not there to block him anymore.

And perhaps he loses both senses and sense because he is in the process of fusioning with the sea- he's dissolving into something larger than himself. The "booming" has overwhelmed him.

I'm very much convinced by your explanation by the way, mortalterror. I was wondering as well whether he wasn't exaggerating his mediocrity a little bit!  :Tongue:  It reminded me of a means of captatio benevolentiae - you tell your audience you're rotten so they'll sympathize with you. But I didn't know it was called adynaton.

----------


## stlukesguild

Virgil... I don't ignore the fact that Montale speaks to the sea... the experiential is as valid and important as the symbolism that may lay beneath. I imagine that the Mediterranean is just that... that bit of the Mediterranean coast that Montale lived with for years as a child... that struck him with its starkness... its blaring sun... its jagged rocks and crashing waves... its intimations of the void and the infinite. At the same time I sense the Mediterranean is the Mediterranean tradition in which and against which he works to find a voice. "your vast language proclaim the sadness
of an aging boy who shouldn't have learned to think" may suggest the frustration of the educated, modern artist who senses that for all his sophistication he is but a stammerer in trying to come to terms with the "vast language" of nature... as well as the "vast language" of his great poetic predecessors. A great many modern artists in all genre turned to non-Western and "non-educated" sources (the arts of Africa, Asia, South America, the middle ages... the art of children, the mentally ill, or the self-taught artist) seeking what they imagined was a greater connection with nature... spirituality... all that made art real. How does a highly educated, sophisticated, urbane, agnostic artist come to terms with nature? Can he do anything but stammer in comparison with earlier poets for whom God and hell and nature were unquestionably real aspects of everyday life? Of course all his protestation is certainly ironic, as others have pointed out, as he clearly has some formidable poetic abilities.

Perhaps... as Virgil suggested... we should look at the other sections of the suite. Any parts that really strike you?

----------


## stlukesguild

I might note that Montale speaks of all his poetry as "waiting for the miracle"... and that it has been pointed out that there is commonly a problematic striving in his work due to the fact that he lacks the atheistic certainty of a Lucretius or even a Leopardi... but he also lacks the religious belief of a Dante. In his agnosticism he straddles the line... "waiting for the miracle"... looking for the ineffable... for something that he can't put his finger on.

----------


## Virgil

> I'd hoped to let my quotations speak for themselves but now I see that I must further explain my ideas. I did not mean to imply that Montale was channeling Euripides, Virgil, and Shakespeare as influences or models. What I was trying to show was the similarity of their techniques. There are a few rhetorical devices which they have in common. 
> 
> If only I could force
> some fragment of your ecstasy
> into this clumsy music of mine;
> had I the talent to match your voices
> with my stammering speech-
> 
> All of the examples I've listed begin with a statement of adynaton, that the subject they are about to treat is too great for them. They long for the eloquence of another, which suggests that the subject can be treated properly just not by them. I felt that this was different from apocarteresis, which is what religious poets like Dante or Firdawsi do when they say there are no words for what they are trying to express, that their subject is beyond the best poets and beyond poetry itself. What this adynaton does is twofold. It's first effect is that of eironeia, a greek word meaning feigned ignorance from which we derive the word irony. Those of you who've studied your Plato know that Socrates does this all the time. He sets up this "I'm just a simple country lawyer" faux humble persona for the purpose of persuading his audience who are now off their guard with lowered expectations. The poet at this point can only surpass the expectations of his listeners or if he does not he is still as good as his word. Secondly, the fact that Montale knows of other artists greater than himself, and correctly understands the magnitude of the subject he's about to treat flies in the face of the statements he's just made. Furthermore, any reference to a greater power than himself would automatically place him in relation to that object in a type of hierarchy which could only reflect well on Montale as we begin to think of them together. We know that he is attempting something which others have done before him, and so they have at least this much in common.
> ...


Well, certainly he undercuts his abilities, and the effect you describe is true. I'm just not sure that that's what montale is after. Yes he undercuts his talent but I think it's in a relativeness to the sublime talent of the sea. I think to Montale it's any mortal could not have the talent of the sea. I think that's subtlly different than adynaton.

By the way, I'm awed by your knowledge of rhetoric. Where did you learn all those terms?  :Smile: 




> Those of you who know Italian might be familiar with a little term called sprezzatura, which is the art of appearing artless. Wikipedia says it was first used by Castiglione, and defines it as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it." That is what Montale is striving for in this section of his poem. He purposely undercuts the smooth erudition of his lines by inserting local colloquialisms and affecting a plain style. The writing of a poem such as this is a very delicate, very difficult affair, but it's made to seem commonplace for Montale. "Oh, this? Just something I dashed off. You know I don't play those literary games. I haven't the talent." Montale knows this is the best part of his book, and so he's purposely prefacing it with light hearted condemnation.


Sprezzatura is a perfect word to apply to Montale. This is my first time reading him. I'm quite impressed.




> Does anybody else feel the lament running through this poem: "If only I could" "all I have are"? It seems very sad, as if the speaker were mourning something.


Yes, and I think a lamenting feeling runs throough all nine sections. But perhaps it is most poignant here.




> They go together, in my opinion, because the poet feels he thinks too much to be able to write - or maybe even understand - the sea (that's why I said earlier on that he reminded me on DH Lawrence a little), which doesn't think but just is, maybe. At the end he stops thinking and therefore the limits disappear. It seems to cohere with what you said about the ninth song, where he fuses last with the sea - because his thoughts are not there to block him anymore.


I see what you're saying. Yes, the poet reaches his limitless state by disolving his thoughts away, and that allows him to fuse with the sea in the nineth part. Excellent!! You know I'm an ameteur semi-expert on DH Lawrence and I didn't see what you meant earlier. But now I see and I think you're right. I don't think Montale is thinking along with Lawrence, but they are similar in some fashion.




> And perhaps he loses both senses and sense because he is in the process of fusioning with the sea- he's dissolving into something larger than himself. The "booming" has overwhelmed him.


Could be.

----------


## mortalterror

> By the way, I'm awed by your knowledge of rhetoric. Where did you learn all those terms?


Don't be too overawed. I spent about two and a half hours looking for the rhetorical terms that mean "false humility" and "feigned ignorance" and I wrote down all of the rhetorical terms which I thought applied as I went along. I don't know that stuff off the top of my head. In fact, I know there are more accurate terms which I just couldn't find. Eironeia is just as close as I could get before I gave up searching.

I read the first couple chapters of Aristotle's Rhetoric a few months back and I have a couple of rhetoric sites bookmarked which I combed for the devices I found. This is a good one, as is this one because it has excellent examples.

----------


## Bitterfly

> I don't think Montale is thinking along with Lawrence, but they are similar in some fashion.


No, I don't think he is thinking along with him either - that would be denying Montale his individual genius. I'm pleased you saw the similarity as well, though! Can you see why the "dark love" reminds me of Lawrence too, albeit in a fuzzier way? Something like the dark voice of the senses/sex, which here cannot be expressed while he is still in an intellectual relationship with it.




> Could be.


The reason I interpreted it that way was because the sudden connection between senses and sense (thought) bothered me. At first I had the impression that senses were important for him. But then I wondered whether he just didn't want to do away with everything that made up his individual consciousness, and sensory perceptions are part of that (what you perceive also reflects who you are). Dissolution into the whole is also, by the way, a Lawrentian idea!

----------


## stlukesguild

Perhaps it is time to begin going through the other parts of _Mediterranean_. It is very much intended as a whole... in spite of the fact that the sections may each stand on their own as independent poems. Montale mentioned that he was in part inspired by Debussy's _La Mer_... a musical cycle of (I believe) 3 parts.

A squall
of antic fleeting swoops
above my bent head.
The ground, crisscrossed
by twisted shadows of wild pines, scorches.
Far below, the sea is hidden
by trees, but more by the veil of haze
fitfully vented by the cracking soil.
Louder, then muffled, the sound of seething
breakers strangled
by a long line of shoals reaches my ears
...
I lift my gaze, suddenly the scolding stops; and down
to the boisterous waves streaks a flash
of blue-white arrows
two jays.

from _Mediterranean_ section one
tr. William Arrowsmith

_A vortice sabbatte
sul mio capo reclinato
un suono dagri lazzi.
Scotta la terra percorsa
da sghembe ombre di pinastri,
e al mare là in fondo fa velo
più che i rami, allo sguardo, lafa che a tratti erompe
dal suolo che si avvena.
Quando più sordo o meno il ribollio dellacque
che singorgano
accanto a lunghe secche mi raggiunge:
o è un bombo talvolta ed un ripiovere
di schiume sulle rocce.
Come rialzo il viso, ecco cessare
i ragli sul mio capo; e via scoccare
verso le strepeanti acque,
frecciate biancazzurre, due ghiandaie._

----------


## Virgil

> Don't be too overawed. I spent about two and a half hours looking for the rhetorical terms that mean "false humility" and "feigned ignorance" and I wrote down all of the rhetorical terms which I thought applied as I went along. I don't know that stuff off the top of my head. In fact, I know there are more accurate terms which I just couldn't find. Eironeia is just as close as I could get before I gave up searching.
> 
> I read the first couple chapters of Aristotle's Rhetoric a few months back and I have a couple of rhetoric sites bookmarked which I combed for the devices I found. This is a good one, as is this one because it has excellent examples.


 :FRlol:  I know what you mean. I've done the same. I have several books on Rhetorical terms and while I enjoy perusing them the concepts never seem to stick in my head or at my fingertips.




> No, I don't think he is thinking along with him either - that would be denying Montale his individual genius. I'm pleased you saw the similarity as well, though! Can you see why the "dark love" reminds me of Lawrence too, albeit in a fuzzier way? Something like the dark voice of the senses/sex, which here cannot be expressed while he is still in an intellectual relationship with it.


Where did you see "dark love" in Montale? I can't seem to find it? 




> The reason I interpreted it that way was because the sudden connection between senses and sense (thought) bothered me. At first I had the impression that senses were important for him. But then I wondered whether he just didn't want to do away with everything that made up his individual consciousness, and sensory perceptions are part of that (what you perceive also reflects who you are). Dissolution into the whole is also, by the way, a Lawrentian idea!


I think you're right. The loss of consciousness is required to absorb the natural elements. That does echo Lawrence. Though I think Lawrence at times wants to be absorbed into the natural elements in addition to absorbing them in.

----------


## Bitterfly

> Where did you see "dark love" in Montale? I can't seem to find it?


Oops, I don't have the text, so my memory sometimes plays tricks on me: it's actually the dark voice of love, and it's not in the Arrowhead translation but in the second one (suggested by - i think - stlukesguild).




> I think you're right. The loss of consciousness is required to absorb the natural elements. That does echo Lawrence. Though I think Lawrence at times wants to be absorbed into the natural elements in addition to absorbing them in.


Well, I have the impression that the same goes for Montale - since he fuses with the sea in the last part of the poem.

----------


## Bitterfly

> Montale mentioned that he was in part inspired by Debussy's _La Mer_... a musical cycle of (I believe) 3 parts.


Ah, I love it when there are interferences between literature and music. Funny how Debussy seemed to inspire a few authors, no? Didn't his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune inspire Mallarmé?

It's rather difficult to know what to say about the passage you suggested, apart the fact that's it's pretty animated (lots of movement, rather chaotic) and sensual (I mean by that that almost all the senses come into play), and that I wonder why the sea is first presented through sound and not sight, since it's doubly hidden, both by the tree and by the "veil of haze". Alas, I don't know what the word in Italian means, but "veil" also suggests a possible unveiling, therefore revelation.
I suppose that for us as well sound is more "important", because this is a poem, even it is pretty visual.

And the words used are violent: "twisted", "wild", "scorches", "fitfully", "cracking", "seething breakers strangled", "scolding". There's something of a hellish end of the world feeling - smoke coming out of the cracked earth, angry sounds, and darkness ("shadows").
He gets out into the light at the end though, with the "flash" and "blue-white" - but the "arrows" are still a threatening image. 
What part does it come from?

----------


## stlukesguild

This is from the first poem of the suite. I agree that it is wonderfully aural. I especially like "scolding" in the final few lines... where the sea suddenly ceases its noise (or so its seems in his mind?) as there streaks two blue-white arrows... the blue jays. It suggests that all the perception of the sea in terms of sound... crashing waves, etc... is suddenly interrupted by the unexpected visual experience.

----------


## Bitterfly

Oh, of course, you're right. I wonder why his head is bent at the beginning... a penitent's position? Prayer? Why does he finally look up? If it's the first poem, it's a pretty dramatic beginning... I can visualise it quite well - he lets the sounds wash over him first, before gazing at the sea and allowing us a glimpse at it, after all that sound.
And why jays? They're not exactly sea-birds, are they.

Ah, it's a little annoying not to be able to study the words... I'd like to know why he chose "squall" for the first line, but of course it's not the same word in Italian!  :Bawling:

----------


## Virgil

> Oh, of course, you're right. I wonder why his head is bent at the beginning... a penitent's position? Prayer? Why does he finally look up? If it's the first poem, it's a pretty dramatic beginning... I can visualise it quite well - he lets the sounds wash over him first, before gazing at the sea and allowing us a glimpse at it, after all that sound.
> And why jays? They're not exactly sea-birds, are they.
> 
> Ah, it's a little annoying not to be able to study the words... I'd like to know why he chose "squall" for the first line, but of course it's not the same word in Italian!


It's the most dramatic of the series of poems. There seems to be a trend toward more and more transcendental as one continues through the poems. This one is very physical.

I don't understand the jays either. I think the fact that its birds is significant and I think follows the tradition of bird symbolism in literature. Perhaps this is an American understanding of blue jays, but they are not sea birds, at least not here. I don't know if by the Mediterranian there are different jays. And why are there two jays? Another observation, there are plovers in the third poem and those are most defiitely sea birds.

----------


## Bitterfly

Bird symbolism in literature? I thought about that too, but wasn't quite sure what to compare them to apart from the dove of Noah's ark (the end of the flood, a sort of rebirth I suppose)... and my brain is too sluggish just right now to come up with others!! But I guess birds are often symbolically messengers of some sort, and bridges between two realms - air and land - maybe even water - so maybe between material and transcendental?

I went to look up jays and they're apparently talkative birds (don't you think it's wild what studying literature can teach you sometimes? i find out the oddest bits of information!  :Tongue:  ). Didn't see anything else that could be interesting, but I don't have a dictionary of symbols and besides maybe Montale wasn't that much into symbolism.

The birds seem really ambivalent to me as well: at the beginning they're swooping about his head, at the end they're arrows.. 'Tis strange, hum.

What do you think about "squall"? as it's of "antic fleeting swoops", he's mixing birds and water in a way - depends whether you understand squall as a cry or as rush of water or wind... interesting word.

----------


## Virgil

> Bird symbolism in literature? I thought about that too, but wasn't quite sure what to compare them to apart from the dove of Noah's ark (the end of the flood, a sort of rebirth I suppose)... and my brain is too sluggish just right now to come up with others!! But I guess birds are often symbolically messengers of some sort, and bridges between two realms - air and land - maybe even water - so maybe between material and transcendental?
> 
> I went to look up jays and they're apparently talkative birds (don't you think it's wild what studying literature can teach you sometimes? i find out the oddest bits of information!  ). Didn't see anything else that could be interesting, but I don't have a dictionary of symbols and besides maybe Montale wasn't that much into symbolism.
> 
> The birds seem really ambivalent to me as well: at the beginning they're swooping about his head, at the end they're arrows.. 'Tis strange, hum.
> 
> What do you think about "squall"? as it's of "antic fleeting swoops", he's mixing birds and water in a way - depends whether you understand squall as a cry or as rush of water or wind... interesting word.


Birds in literature: from dove in Noah's ark to holy spirit to Keat's Nightingale, to Shelley's Skylark to Checkov's Seagull to Coleridge's albatross to Yeats' swanns. Others Wallace Stevens, DH Lawrence, Ted Hughs. I bet the list is extensive.

I think if you look at the Italian it's definitely meant as water. But there is a parallel between the squall of water and the birds.

----------


## JBI

Birds usually in literature from what I understand represent a poet, or poetic force. Perhaps that is what Montale is playing on?

----------


## Bitterfly

> I think if you look at the Italian it's definitely meant as water. But there is a parallel between the squall of water and the birds.


Yep, it works better in Italian, just checked and it means whirlpool (should have known - vortex - a connection with vorticism?  :Tongue:  ) - so jays and sea come together from the start. By the way, I don't know if "s'abatte" is like the French "s'abattre", but it's more violent than just "swoops" - once again they're viewed as a bit of a threat, I have the impression. 

I wonder like you why they're a couple...

Thanks for the list of birds, and have thought of two more: Baudelaire's albatros (a metaphor for the poet) and Saint John Perse.

I like Montale more and more!!!!




> Birds usually in literature from what I understand represent a poet, or poetic force. Perhaps that is what Montale is playing on?


Ah yes!

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## stlukesguild

There is always the possibility that what Montale is relating is something he actually experienced... in which the question of why blue jays may simply be no unlike that which the poet felt upon the sudden shock... the sudden break in his focus upon the raging sounds of the sea as these two jays streak by. I also wonder whether the choice was coloristic... the white and the blue repeating the azure of the sea and the white of the sky. Again... just throwing out possibilities.

----------


## stlukesguild

Looking at the notes Arrowsmith suggests that the poet's reverie... his concentration upon the sounds of the sea is broken from the start:

A squall
of antic fleering swoops
above my bent head... 

I notice that I mis-copied the word *fleering* (or taunting) as fleeting. As I reread it it becomes a scene in which the poet's reveries... his meditations upon the sounds of the sea are broken by taunting sounds above his bent head. As the "scolding" ceases he looks up to see the jays streaking through the sky.

----------


## stlukesguild

Time to explore another from _Mediterranean:_ 

_Noi non sappiamo quale sortiremo
domani, oscuro o lieto;
forse il nostro cammino
a non tócche radure ci addurrà
dove mormori eterna lacqua di giovinezza;
o sarà forse un discendere
fino al vallo estremo,
nel buio, perso il ricordo del mattino.
Ancora terre straniere
forse ci accoglieranno: smarriremo
la memoria del sole, dalla mente ci cadrà il tintinnare delle rime.
Oh la favola onde sesprime
la nostra vita, repente
si cangerà nella cupa storia che non si racconta!
Pur di una cosa ci affidi,
padre, e questa è: che un poco del tuo dono
sia passato per sempre nelle sillabe
che rechiamo con noi, api ronzanti.
Lontani andremo e serberemo uneco
della tua voce, come si ricorda
del sole lerba grigia
nelle corti scurite tra le case.
E un giorno queste parole senza rumore
che teco educammo nutrite
di stanchezze e di silenzi,
parranno ad un fraterno cuore
sapide di sale greco_

What tomorrow will bring, joyful
or somber, no one knows.
Our roads may take us
to clearings untrodden by human foot,
to whispering steams of eternal youth;
or perhaps a last descent 
into that final valley,
all darkness, memory of light quite lost.
Foreign lands, perhaps
will welcome us once more; we will lose
the memory of our sun, our lilting rhymes 
will be forgotten.
And the fable
that expresses our lives will suddenly become
that grim tale no man will ever tell.
Still, O father, one legacy
you leave us: some small part of your genius
lives on in these syllables we bear with us,
humming bees.
However far our journey, we will always keep
an echo of your voice, like the brown grass
in dark courtyards between the houses,
which never forgets the light.
And a day will come when those unvoiced words,
seeded in us by you, nourished
on silence and fatigue,
will, to some brotherly soul, seem seasoned
with salt-sea brine.

from _Mediterranean 
Cuttle Fish Bones_
Eugenio Montale
tr. William Arrowsmith

----------


## Dark Muse

I know I have not been around lately but I have been caught up in other things, and caught behind in the dicussion, but seeing a new poem posted, I thought I would try to get back into things again. 

The poem is truly beautiful and makes use of such wonderful langauge. It has a very dream like quality to it. 




> What tomorrow will bring, joyful
> or somber, no one knows.
> Our roads may take us
> to clearings untrodden by human foot,
> to whispering steams of eternal youth;
> or perhaps a last descent 
> into that final valley,


I just love this passage. I find it to be very striking. 

This while poem seems to be about the journey of man through his life, and the desire that everyone has to be remmemberd "immortalized" in some after they have gone. For something of them to still remain. 




> you leave us: some small part of your genius
> lives on in these syllables we bear with us,
> humming bees.


These lines in particular struck me. Espcially the part about the humming bees.




> However far our journey, we will always keep
> an echo of your voice, like the brown grass
> in dark courtyards between the houses,
> which never forgets the light.


This is another set of lovely images. The annlogy of the brown grass is truly quite wonderful. 

The poem is just so very visual, you can really feel it, as if you could reach out and grab hold of it.

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## quasimodo1

This is not on topic, Stlukes...but Italian vocabulary is way more impressive than I imagined. My provincial attitude wouldn't you know. Also, according to my translating tool...some of Montale's words just don't have a direct equivelant.

----------


## mazHur

~ It's Rigged ~

It's rigged---everything in your favor.
So there is nothing to worry about.

Is there some position you want,
some office, some acclaim, some award, some con, some lover,
maybe two, maybe three, maybe four---all at once,

.maybe a relationship
with
God?

I know there is a gold mine in you, when you find it
the wonderment of the earth's gifts you will lay
aside as naturally as does
a child a
doll.

But, dear, how sweet you look to me kissing the unreal;
comfort, fulfill yourself in any way possible---do that until
you ache, until you ache,

then come to me
again. ...

by Jelaluddin Rumi
From Love Poems From God ,
translated by Daniel Ladinsky

----------


## mazHur

sorry, i was not knowing the rules of this thread...however, how about including Rumi as well??

----------


## quasimodo1

Arrowsmith in inimitable fashion, somehow inserts into his translation a sense of the romantic atmosphere and liquid sound of Montale's Italian. Montale supplies the honesty and sincerity without a bit of the maudlin and without any trace of being jaded...even in the sense of death as ultimate empty abyss following life except for a noble, poetic sentiment which will endure...."Still, O father, one legacy you leave us: some small part of your genious/ lives on in these syllables we bear with us/ humming bees."

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## stlukesguild

sorry, i was not knowing the rules of this thread...however, how about including Rumi as well??

Yes... Rumi is certainly worth discussing. The Poetry Bookclub Thread, however, is focused upon the in-depth discussion of a single poet and/or book of poetry voted upon by the group as a whole. I would be more than interested in discussing Rumi if you were to post him in an original thread... or even if you placed him within the thread entitled *Exempli Gratia: Classic Poetry* where we post and discuss "classic" poems and poets.

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## stlukesguild

Still, O father, one legacy
you leave us: some small part of your genius
lives on in these syllables we bear with us,
humming bees.

Again I am struck with the sense that the poet is speaking at once to the Mediterranean as a body of water... a landscape that has made a deep impression upon him ( "However far our journey, we will always keep
an echo of your voice..." ) but also symbolic. I imagine the Mediterranean... and all that entails to the poet (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi...) as also a father to the poet whose legacy is perhaps but just "some small part" of the whole of Mediterranean genius... like the humming of that sole single bee among the humming of the whole nest. Perhaps a Romantic... even fanciful interpretation on my part... but I greatly sense that Montale never limits his poems to a single simple "meaning".

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## stlukesguild

This is not on topic, Stlukes...but Italian vocabulary is way more impressive than I imagined. My provincial attitude wouldn't you know.

So Dante WAS on to something...? :Biggrin:

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## quasimodo1

Unfortunately, Collected Poems 1920-1954, revised, bilingual edition, is translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi.....I sincerely hope this translator will not detract from my appreciation re: Arrowsmith's superior work....At least it is all inclusive.

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## stlukesguild

Galassi's translations are also quite well respected. He may actually capture certain aspects of Montale's work that Arrowsmith doesn't. I simply prefer Arrowsmith... not least of all because he was the translator in whom I first encountered Montale.

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## quasimodo1

The following statement on "Reading Montale" by Jonathan Galassi:

Excerpt from READING MONTALE

...What do Italian readers hear in Montale? I'm going to offer a response,

informed by my reading in his critics, though of course no one not born
into a language can truly know how poetry sounds to those for whom it was written.
First, I believe they hear a nervous, astringent music, one that asserts its individuality
in sharp contradistinction to the prevailing norms of its era. Instead of orotund
mellifluousness they encounter harshness and abruptness, enclosed in predominantly 
short forms tending to the paratactic, which are often in themselves self-conscious 
ironic reprises of traditional stanzas. They encounter a large, often arcane vocabulary which, in its restless search for expressive authenticity, employs rare words from sources ranging from the highly artificial and archaic to local dialect, frequently deployed in surprising conjunctions calculated to 
"strike sparks." They find, as a rule, compressed expression and thematic reiteration
to the point of obsession, along with prodigious inventiveness in handling the inevitable,
even oppressive riches of Italian rhyme, and great variation in the use of the Italian
version if iambic pentameter-- the hendecasyllable-- which Montale alternates freely
with SETTENARI, OTTONARI, and NOVENARI, or seven-, eight-, and nine-syllable lines, 
in his search for constant rhythmic variety, occasionally resorting to longer forms as he
experiments with his own kind of Hopkinesque "sprung rhythm." In sum, Italian readers of 
Montale experience a restless will to reinvent, to renew the time-honored materials
of their poetry by submitting them to arduous contemporary challenges.

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## quasimodo1

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&...GkMsng#PPR9,M1

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## quasimodo1

While waiting for my Arrowsmith translation, Galassi's became available. When I went to pick up the Arrowsmith...the good people at B&N handed me Antonino Mazza.

Eugenio Montale

From The Bones of Cuttlefish
(translated by Antonino Mazza)

ALMOST A FANTASY

Day reappears, I present it
As a dawn of threadbare
Silver on the walls:
The shut windows stripe a glimmer.
The event of the sun
Returns and the diffused
Voices do not bring the customary uproars.

Why? I think of a day of enchantment
And with merry-go-rounds of hours too self-repeating
I reward myself. The power which once excited me
Will overflow, inanimate wizard,
From the great old days. Now I will lean out,
I will do away with tall houses, bare avenues. {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

Eugenio Montale


From Collected Poems 1920-1954
(translated by Jonathan Galassi)

From Cuttlefish Bones 1920-1927

LIKE A FANTASIA 

Day is dawning, I can tell
By the old-silver shimmer
On the walls:
A gleam edges the shut windows.
The coming of the sun returns again,
Without the scattered voices
And old noises.

Why? I fantasize a magic day
To counteract the hours game
Of sameness. The power pent up
In this unconscious magus for so long
Will overflow. Now I'll show myself
And subjugate high houses, empty avenues.
{excerpt}

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## Jozanny

I haven't been able to get to the library, and so regret that I haven't been able to really focus on Montale and come up with a decent evaluation worthy of my maturity, but of the few samples I've gleaned through the efforts of the club participants, I respond better to Montale than to Roethke.

I do not see the muscularity that luke responds to; for me it is closer to an avuncular, jovial irony, which is at most a preliminary empathy. I cannot parse for specific elements--but 20th century European poets are simply superior to their American counterparts. Roethke too consciously constrains himself in his couplets; it is irritating, as he is really not the master of the formalism wherein his mania is always threatening to burst. Montale is rather more comfortable in his own skin, and with the irony of playing with the past, yet being, ultimately, a modern man, quiet in a muted strength. How I get all that I don't know, given how little I invested back in really studying anything, but I responded to Xenia. There was a husband in whom my scars might have softened, in terms of the character he presented.

Juat as an aside, I am going to stay out of nominating unless I am sure I can get my hands on the collection, and really offer a decent conversation. I am weary of the chip on the shoulder arguments about the value of literature which ripple in the forums with tidal consistency, and I am intent from now on in focusing on authors, their texts, and appropriate comparison.

Thank you luke for your efforts in assisting me with some access to CB.

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## quasimodo1

In the Galassi trans. 4th line, second stanza...he uses the key words "unconscious magus" which compares grossly with "inanimate wizard" of Mazza. The Italian is "incosciente mago". I'd love to know how Arrowsmith translates this expression.

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## Virgil

> In the Galassi trans. 4th line, second stanza...he uses the key words "unconscious magus" which compares grossly with "inanimate wizard" of Mazza. The Italian is "incosciente mago". I'd love to know how Arrowsmith translates this expression.


Arrowsmith translates the first two stanzas this way:

ALMOST A FANTASIA

Daylight again, I sense it
in the dawning of old
silver on the walls:
a glimmer edges the shut windows.
The sun comes back 
again, but brings 
no diffused voices, no customary din.

Why? I think of a day of enchantment,
my reward for the pageant of hours
too much alike. In me the power
welling, unconscious wizard,
will overflow. Yes, I'll be standing at the window,
I'll overwhelm tall houses, treeless streets.
[SNIP]


Very interesting poem. I can't say I really understand it.

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## quasimodo1

Nor I, yet, Virgil. Can you say you understand any parts of it...perhaps. Does "divide and conquer" work in this matrix?

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## Virgil

> Nor I, yet, Virgil. Can you say you understand any parts of it...perhaps. Does "divide and conquer" work in this matrix?


Let me think over it for a while. It kind of makes sense in pieces, but let me see if I can put something coherent together.

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## stlukesguild

In the appendix/notes from _Cuttlefish Bones_ there is a commentary by Glaucon Cambon, author of _Eugenio Montale's Poetry: A dream in Reason's Presence_:

"The clearly affirmative note of _I limoni_ can rise to nearly triumphant pitch in _Almost a Fantasia,_ where the poetic self envisions a forthcoming spell of its own making that will efface the deadness of daily routine to create a snow-lit fairyland and summon up remembrance of all things past- like recovered childhood."

This poem strikes me as similar, in some way... difficult to put the finger on... to the crystalline poetry of Rilke. I am especially struck by the lines:

Before me will be a land of virgin snow,
but powdered, as in a tapestry.
From a fleecy sky a slow radiance will slide.
Flooded with invisible light, forests and hills
will sing in praise of joyous returnings.

Elated, I'll read the black
signs of branches on the white,
like an alphabet of being.
In an instant, and the whole past
will open out before me...

"Triumphant" is an understatement. This poem creates such images that are almost ecstatic. Thinking of the title and Montale's initial education and love of music I imagine this poem as conveying something of a true _fantasia_... a _symphony_ or visual images. The lines "I'll read the black/signs of branches on the white/like an alphabet of being..." clearly refers literally to the effect of the black branches silhouetted like so many written symbols... the calligrapher's ink... against the white parchment of the snow. I can't help but immediately think of Breughel's famous painting, _Hunter's in the Snow_:

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## stlukesguild

I think Cambon has really put his finger on it. Montale starts out with a description of day returning once more: the usual silver on the wall and the old glimmer around the edges of the shut windows. But this day is different. Why? He notices the lack of the usual noises and muffled sounds that accompany the start of day. I wonder if it is not the snowfall itself that has transformed this day into something "magical". Surely, we all have experienced the almost silent world of morning the snow has fallen and muffles the usual sounds. How common is such an experience in the Italy where Montale lived? Might it not be imagined as something even more magical...? Might it not trigger memories of the past... a childhood experience of the snow? But Montale transforms this experience into something even more poetic/ecstatic. He answers the question of "Why?" himself:

_Why? I think of a day of enchantment,
my reward for the pageant of hours
too much alike. In me the power
welling, unconscious wizard,
will overflow. Yes, I'll be standing at the window,
I'll overwhelm tall houses, treeless streets._

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## stlukesguild

By the way... the original:

_Quasi una fantasia

Raggiorna, lo presento
da un albore di frusto
argento alle pareti:
lista un barlume le finestre chiuse.
Torna l'avvenimento
del sole e le diffuse
voci, i consueti strepiti non porta.

Perchè? Penso ad un giorno di incantesimo
e delle giostre d' ore troppo uguali
mi riparo. Traboccherà la forza
che mi turgeva, incosciente mago,
da grande tempo. Ora m'affaccerò,
subisserò alte case, spogli viali.

Avrò di contro un paese di intatte nevi
ma lievi come viste in un arazzo.
Scivolerà dal cielo bioccoso un tardo raggio.
Gremite d'invisibile luce selve e colline
mi daranno l'elogio degl'ilari ritorni.

Lieto leggerò i neri
segni dei rami sul bianco
come un essenziale alfabeto.
Tutto il passato in un punto
dinanzi mi sarà comparso.
Non turberà suono alcuno
questa allegrezza solitaria.
Filerà nell'aria
o scenderà s'un paletto
qualche galletto di marzo._

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## JBI

the poem seems to be ambiguous in the extreme, so no accurate reading I think that can safely be done with any certainty, still I will attempt an interpretation of sorts here.

In the first paragraph the poet seems to be anticipating a return of a moment of pure clarity. This begins with him anticipating the 'return of the sun', shining on the 'old silver on the walls:'. But the problem is, what is this daylight bringing. We know that it is encroaching the illusion of the room, and beginning to spill in through the windows, but what does it symbolize? the last line is quite puzzling at this point, a return 'no diffused voices', implying a moment of clarity, without the 'customary din', seeming to echo the concept of line shining the truth on the moment/the life of the speaker.

In the second paragraph the speaker expands, 'Why?' he asks, as if asking what this means, to which he answers, the 'day of enchantment' is his 'reward for the pageant of hours / too much alike.' He then goes on to explain in further depth, that the sleeping power of his 'unconscious wizard', which has been 'welling' inside him will now 'ooverflow'. The light now shines on him and he proclaims "I'll overhwhelm tall houses, treeless streets." imply that something great is in store, in what is symbolized by the returning day.

The next paragraph takes a turn, explaining what awaits for him: a 'land of virgin snow," which "powdered, as in a tapestry." implying that it is free for him to leave a definite mark - the powdered snow being impressionable to the footprint, and being clear of the previous marks of others - and therefore ready for the taking/impressing, the Snow being transformed into a sort of canvas for his own designs.

The last paragraph takes another drastic turn; the speaker says his purpose and desire now - to, from his elated level, 'read the black / signs of branches on the white, like an alphabet of being.' The white here referring to the snow, being marred by time and nature, fallen branches symbolizing the growth and destruction of the tree in winter, in the time when the sun was down, and he was symbolically sleeping. He wishes to use these branches to view 'the whole past', for he believes they 'will open out before' him. They will say what has occurred while he hid behind his window, and the snow was down.

The last few lines through another curve ball. What is so significant about reading the branches? Well, if 'no sound will jar' his 'solitary joy' than it can be assumed that this act is bringing him clarity and understanding - a oneness with himself. The final lines take it into another direction all together - the 'hoopoe... come / to usher in the spring.' must symbolize the end of the winter, after the light has risen, and the spring, bringing rebirth, and the end of winter - and with it the end of his need for clarity.

The problem therefore, in the poem, I would think, is in interpreting the symbolism behind the branches on the snow, and what the speaker desires to get or understand from them. He mentions the whole past opening up before him, but what does he mean by that? It must be assumed then, that he is implying the tree branches are somewhat of the observer of time - the natural, and therefore eternal world, and therefore he can gain clarity about himself, and about time, before spring will come, and bring about a wanted fundamental change in him.

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## JBI

I think it would be unfair also to view this poem as just a collection of happy images, or of a Wordsworthian moment as seen in Wordsworth's prelude and Tintern Abbey. Montale is a very different poet, who builds more with metaphor and synechdoches, and likes to load his poems with symbolic depth, at this time probably influenced strongly by the symbolists, who were just finishing up. I think it is more sensible then, to consider the elements as a contrast - the night is cloaking the tree branches, and therefore not letting him enjoy the view of the past, and the future, and also the lack of understanding in the past is obscuring the future, and making it unwanted.

We must then consider the context - this was written a little after the first world war (my edition doesn't have an exact date, but the whole collection was from 1925, so we can assume somewhere after the war, and to this date) and the world was in a rather uncertain point.

It can be assumed then, that this poem pushes time from two fronts - the darkness before the sun returns, and the spring after the clarity occurs. Winter is a transitional period, awaiting the new growth, after sense and order can be divulged from the branches, from the past.

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## quasimodo1

Stlukes and JBI: Your analysis of this poem, i.e. both of you, is grounded as can be in academic terms. My question (which uncomfortably co-incides with a pet theory) arises from the expression "incosciente mago" and is this a key to the ultimate meaning? (= fantasy). My sense of the poem, albeit problematic because of the translation factor, is that this expression ...if it may mean Montale's unconscious prophet (or wizard if you must) ....turns the piece into a desire for the quiet period between to warring periods (as JBI mentions with regards to the poems historical place). Also, if true, this fantasy becomes an irony, being that the writer has as high desire for something most consider normal.

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## JBI

I took the 'unconscious wizard' to be in apposition to 'the power welling', thereby acts as him comparing the power welling inside him to an unconscious wizard, a sleeper ready to awake and throw fire. The term isn't significant, in my reading, I think it is just the speaker being metaphorical.

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## quasimodo1

Your interpretation is more likely but mine gives Montale more credit for a wider view. I'll go with yours.

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## JBI

> Your interpretation is more likely but mine gives Montale more credit for a wider view. I'll go with yours.


Don't; the poem is ambiguous, it can mean anything. I'm just making educated guesses; the poem could mean many other things..

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## quasimodo1

I'll look out on a land of untouched snows
But insubstantial, as if seen on a screen.
A slow ray will slide down from the cottony sky.
Woods and hills alive with invisible light
Will praise me for their joyful reoccurrence.
{Galassi's third stanza}



.................................................. .................................................. .................

Avro' di contro un paese d'intatte nevi
Ma lievi come viste in un arazzo.
Scivolera' dal cielo bioccoso un tardo raggio.
Gremite d'invisibile luce selve e colline
Mi diranno l'elogio degl'ilari ritorni.
{Montale's original Italian} This third stanza seems to me, unconnected to the others and in my almost non-existant knowledge of Italian...just evaluating some expressions word by translated word (and of course I'm using the Galassi translation) ... the most seems lost in translation. "A slow ray will slide down from the cottony sky." stands out from the text in several ways....the "slow ray" being light that defies the laws of physics and "from the cottony sky" is a more romantic (dramatic as well) expression then perhaps you find in the rest of the poem. The image produced is surreal and getting back to your historical placement...the line has a post-war feel, or post great -event feel to it. Again I see the whole poem going in a direction that is anything but fantasy.

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## stlukesguild

I think it would be unfair also to view this poem as just a collection of happy images, or of a Wordsworthian moment as seen in Wordsworth's Prelude and Tintern Abbey... probably influenced strongly by the symbolists, who were just finishing up.

I agree that it would be off to limit this poem to such a view. The fact that he presents the scene in anticipation of the event rather than in response to an actual "Wordsworthian" moment is quite different. Montale admits to having been deeply inspired by the Symbolists as well as Rilke. I certainly see much of that in this work. The images add up, to my reading, as something not unlike the work of many Symbolist poems... I'm thinking especially of Rimbaud's _Illuminations_... but also the more crystalline Modernist sound of Rilke.

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## quasimodo1

Stlukes has made a most cogent remark and in response let me admit after the denial...that I'm grasping on this one.

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## quasimodo1

Listen to me, the poets laureate
walk only among plants
with rare names: boxwood, privet and acanthus.
But I like roads that lead to grassy
ditches where boys
scoop up a few starved
eels out of half-dry puddles:
paths that run along the banks,
come down among the tufted canes
and end in orchards, among the lemon trees.
{first stanza of "The Lemons" translated by Galassi}

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## Virgil

> Arrowsmith translates the first two stanzas this way:
> 
> ALMOST A FANTASIA
> 
> Daylight again, I sense it
> in the dawning of old
> silver on the walls:
> a glimmer edges the shut windows.
> The sun comes back 
> ...


There are two keys I think to this poem. First this: "In me the power/welling, unconscious wizard,/will overflow." It echoes Wordworth's "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" the philosophic heart of Ramanticism. Second, is the shift in tense right after that sentence I just quoted. Before the sentence, Montale is in present tense and describing the scene deligently, especially highlighting the sun and daylight and the enchantment of day time as "pageant". After the sentence of the "power welling" Montale shifts into future tense, which is a conditional or imaginative situation. The imagination has taken over and induces all sorts of imaginative situations, of which i can't quite connect except to say they magnify the narrator's ego and inflate his feelings of power. I don't exactly know what Montale suggests by the various images or symbols, but I do see this poem coming from the Romantic tradition.

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## Jozanny

Although I am disrupting the remaining discussion, I am posting just to let the club members know I am stopping with the club for the time being. I am not very good at absorbing poets or experiencing them through posts. I did manage to get some sense of Roethke, but this process is too inchoate for me, as a poet myself.

I need time with poets and their work, not only to read it, but to hear it, age with it, as I have done with Dr. Creeley, and thus appreciate his experiments with compression.

Should I be a member on the forum long enough, I will return if or when a poet is nominated whom I feel confident about in offering analysis--and whose selection is, perhaps, less rushed in the making.

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## Virgil

> Although I am disrupting the remaining discussion, I am posting just to let the club members know I am stopping with the club for the time being. I am not very good at absorbing poets or experiencing them through posts. I did manage to get some sense of Roethke, but this process is too inchoate for me, as a poet myself.
> 
> I need time with poets and their work, not only to read it, but to hear it, age with it, as I have done with Dr. Creeley, and thus appreciate his experiments with compression.
> 
> Should I be a member on the forum long enough, I will return if or when a poet is nominated whom I feel confident about in offering analysis--and whose selection is, perhaps, less rushed in the making.


I completely understand. If I didn't have the book, I couldn't do it either.

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## Jozanny

> I completely understand. If I didn't have the book, I couldn't do it either.


It is more than having or not having a text Virgil, but I hope the book club continues and manages itself a little better, perhaps. I suppose it is a matter of coordination.

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## quasimodo1

To Joz: If it seems like I'm winging-it, i.e. the poetry bookclub, it's becasue I am. Always open to organizational suggestions. But you know that. In these days of poetry not just being in the cultural closet...but being in the back of that cluttered closet...well. any discussion is a plus. If the quality of that discussion can be improved in any way...please inform me. As for Montale, I think we'll finish up on "The Lemons" and start a new poet. I was hoping in my inimitably prejudiced way for Bishop.

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## Jozanny

quasi dear, no biggie if you are winging it; I in fact appreciate the exposure you've given me.

I cannot *wing it* tho, if I do not wish to come off like a posting imbecile. I don't have my doctorate like Petrarch, true, but I consider myself an accomplished author, if not an entirely successful one--and reading poetry worth reading is an investment I need the time to make--more for some poets than others, and Montale is the "more" here. Bishop would be the same, as her critical reputation is on the rise--and in this I do not merely parrot TNR, as she has been in the eddy of upward attention for a few years now.

I withdraw until I can find the time to focus, research, and *say* something choice. I can get away with bandying fiction round and about, but I cannot reduce good poetry to sound bite summaries.

I will message you later. Busy this week.

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## quasimodo1

OK THEN, your qualifications are noted. I still look forward to the occaisonal interruption.

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## JBI

We moving on to "Lemons"?

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## stlukesguild

Quasi... sorry I've been tied up lately. I should be able to throw together some thoughts tomorrow (too tired after a day at school followed by 5 hours in the studio) on Montale before we come to a close.

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## stlukesguild

It is a lovely poem... but I do think there are others also worth taking a look at before we call it quits. Like quasi I would certainly be open to suggestions for how to organize the discussion. I would certainly have liked some other input or suggestions by others for specific poems by Montale. I'd also like to see Petrarch drop by again and offer her insight.

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## Virgil

Is it time for another poem? I haven't offerred one yet.

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## quasimodo1

Yes, we're moving on to "The Lemonns" as Stlukes suggested earlier. I (we?) will await his intro. or not.

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## stlukesguild

Well certainly... _I limoni_ is it... but I am all for Virgil (or anyone else) offering another poem for discussion. I'm not up for making this my own show. 

*The Lemon Trees*

Listen: the laureled poets
stroll only among shrubs
with learned names: ligustrum, acanthus, box.
What I like are streets that end in grassy
ditches where boys snatch
a few famished eels from drying puddles:
paths that struggle among the banks,
then dip among the tufted canes,
into the orchards, among the lemon trees.

Better if the gay palaver of the birds
is stilled, swallowed by the blue:
more clearly now, you hear the whisper
of genial branches in that air, barely astir,
the sense of that smell,
inseparable from earth,
that rains its restless sweetness in the heart.
Here, by some miracle, the war
of conflicted passions is stilled;
here even we the poor share the riches of the world-
the smell of the lemon trees...

But the illusion dies, time returns us
to noisy cities where the sky is only
patches of blue, high up, between the cornices.
Rain wearies the ground; over the buildings
winter's tedium thickens.
Light grows niggardly, the soul bitter.
And one day, through a gate ajar,
among the trees in the courtyard
we see the yellows of the lemon trees;
and the heart's ice thaws
and songs pelt
into the breast
and trumpets of gold pour forth
epiphanies of Light!

from _The Lemon Trees_, tr. William Arrowsmith

_Ascoltami, i poeti laureati
si muovono soltanto fra le piante
dai nomi poco usati: bossi ligustri o acanti.
lo, per me, amo le strade che riescono agli erbosi
fossi dove in pozzanghere
mezzo seccate agguantanoi ragazzi
qualche sparuta anguilla:
le viuzze che seguono i ciglioni,
discendono tra i ciuffi delle canne
e mettono negli orti, tra gli alberi dei limoni.

Meglio se le gazzarre degli uccelli
si spengono inghiottite dall'azzurro:
più chiaro si ascolta il susurro
dei rami amici nell'aria che quasi non si muove,
e i sensi di quest'odore
che non sa staccarsi da terra
e piove in petto una dolcezza inquieta.
Qui delle divertite passioni
per miracolo tace la guerra,
qui tocca anche a noi poveri la nostra parte di ricchezza
ed è l'odore dei limoni.

Vedi, in questi silenzi in cui le cose
s'abbandonano e sembrano vicine
a tradire il loro ultimo segreto,
talora ci si aspetta
di scoprire uno sbaglio di Natura,
il punto morto del mondo, l'anello che non tiene,
il filo da disbrogliare che finalmente ci metta
nel mezzo di una verità.
Lo sguardo fruga d'intorno,
la mente indaga accorda disunisce
nel profumo che dilaga
quando il giorno piú languisce.
Sono i silenzi in cui si vede
in ogni ombra umana che si allontana
qualche disturbata Divinità.

Ma l'illusione manca e ci riporta il tempo
nelle città rurnorose dove l'azzurro si mostra
soltanto a pezzi, in alto, tra le cimase.
La pioggia stanca la terra, di poi; s'affolta
il tedio dell'inverno sulle case,
la luce si fa avara - amara l'anima.
Quando un giorno da un malchiuso portone
tra gli alberi di una corte
ci si mostrano i gialli dei limoni;
e il gelo dei cuore si sfa,
e in petto ci scrosciano
le loro canzoni
le trombe d'oro della solarità._

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## quasimodo1

Sorry about the pm, just noticed this posting while I was writing that.

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## stlukesguild

Almost my first thought upon reading this poem is to wonder whether Montale had read Goethe's _Minon_...

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunklen Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht,
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin! Dahin
Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, zieh'n.

(Do you know the land where the lemon trees blossom?
Among dark leaves the golden oranges glow.
A gentle breeze from blue skies drifts.
The myrtle is still, and the laurel stands high.
Do you know it well?
There, there
would I go with you, my beloved.) 

Some of the images seemingly suggest an awareness of Goethe's famous poem... albeit Montale's is certainly a very different poem.

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## quasimodo1

I really can't comment of Goethe but I'll take your word for the association Stlukes. This passage, to me, is the most intrigueing but just where Montale is going with it must be more than obvious. .................................................. ................................... See, in these silences where things
give over and seem on the verge of betraying
their final secret,
Sometimes we feel we're about
to uncover an error in Nature,
The still point of the world, the link that won't hold,
the thread to untangle that will finally lead
to the heart of a truth.

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## Petrarch's Love

Hi guys. I'm sorry to have been missing the Montale discussion, especially since the sound of his verse really knocks my socks off. I did finally pick up a copy of the book, but in my typical absent minded fashion I left it in my office. Fortunately, St. Luke's in his usual helpful fashion, seems to have posted "I Limoni" in full. I find that I just love his verse. The original is the kind of poetry that you read the first time hardly caring about the meaning because the sound of it and the feel of the way the words come together is so wonderful. Like the other poems we've seen by him on this thread, the imagery just quivers with life. It's immediate and intimate in the best possible way. On one level the poem reminds me of the actual experience of coming across those little hidden gardens that you periodically stumble across in Italian cities and of the beauty and lushness of the plants, often limoni, that grow there. That third stanza reminds me vividly of my feelings regarding a particular gated courtyard on my route home from classes in Siena. 

These are brief personal reflections, however. The Goethe is interesting for comparison, St. Luke's. I bet Montale had read it. The resonance seems to be there. In terms of the original versus the translation, the beginning and the end lines particularly struck me as different. In the Italian, the first line "Ascoltami, i poeti laureati" makes it sound almost as though he is telling the poet laureates to "listen up" until you get to the next line and realize he was addressing the reader. "Ascoltami" has a very familiar, perhaps almost intimate sense to it too, and I'm not sure if either of these things quite translates to the English "listen" which sounds more formal and more clearly addressed to the reader. The first line works, though, whereas I feel as though the end line has lost a lot. He's really done his best with "epiphanies of light" but it sounds a bit cheezy and cliche next "le trombe d'oro della solarità," especially with the strong connotations of the brilliance, power and clarity of the sun (sol) in the final word, which is just lost in the translation. Indeed, I think much of that finale doesn't come across as forcefully in the original. Take this last group:




> e il gelo dei cuore si sfa,
> e in petto ci scrosciano
> le loro canzoni
> le trombe d'oro della solarità.


One thing the translation misses is the force and feel of a word like "scrosciano," which doesn't just meant to "pelt" but potentially to thunder, to storm, and the actual sound of the word itself stands out, especially from the rather short less ornate diction that immediately precedes it, as sounding forceful, almost grating: maybe the sound of it is comparable to using an english word like "scorching" or "excruciating," though the meaning is not quite as harsh as either of those. Also there's a verbal suspense, a sense of building from the way "they pelt/thunder in the breast" to "their song" and finally to the subject, the producers of this sound, the trumpets. The two penultimate lines make a reference to them that at first seems vaguely associated with the melting heart, then ambiguous, then finally the source is made clear in the brilliance of the trumpet image. 

There are other places as well, for example in the passage quasi quoted above, "il punto morto del mondo" has a lot more force and complexity to it, with its overtures of death, than simply "The still point of the world." My sense is that in the English translation it comes across as a poem trying to be transcendent but sounding like something that has been done before, whereas in the Italian it transcends. Perhaps I'm being overly hard on the translation, however. Certainly you can still get a lot of the imagery and the idea out of the English version. I'll see how other people respond before adding anything further.

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## stlukesguild

Quasi... yes... and concluding:

These are the silences where we see
in each departing human shade
some disturbed Divinity.

I am struck by a number of layers of "meaning" involved in this poem. Again... at the start the poet begins with his rhetorical devise of suggesting his own lack of merit... longing for the eloquence of another (pointed out earlier by Mortal Terror)... although not so directly. He but alludes to his own deficiencies... unlike the great poets who only spoke of plants with "learned names" (ligustrum, acanthus, box) what he likes are the simple back alley ways... the drying puddles, etc... but even with these simple pleasures, Montale paints them in such a "classically" beautiful manner... and then the lemon trees.

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## quasimodo1

Petrarch: It is most difficult to add to your post; you're having such an intimate grasp of the Italian and you have enlightened me with your descriptions of just was said in English and meant in Italian.

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## stlukesguild

Petrarch... yes the hidden garden is what I sense... as opposed to Goethe's foreknowledge of the magical, classical garden. Here Montale seems to suggest something of that Wordsworthian/Romantic epiphany... an experience of richness and beauty that even the poor may share... and an intimation (rapidly lost) of the "divine". But it is just an "illusion"... quickly lost as one goes back about one's daily life.

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## Petrarch's Love

Yes, it's very resonant of the best stuff from the romantic period. Maybe little hints of "This lime tree bower my prison," though not so melancholy as that one. What is it about citrus and transcendence? 




> But it is just an "illusion"... quickly lost as one goes back about one's daily life.


Yes, the suggestion of its ephemeral and illusory qualities are suggested, but the poem doesn't end with an illusion dispelled. It ends, in that fantastic word, solarita, with a wonderful merging between the real warmth of the sun you imagine spilling through the outlines of the gate from the garden courtyard, and the brilliance of that light paired with the sonarity of the golden trumpets. Surely, too, the song of the trumpets is linked to the song of poetry in some way, referring us back to those poeti from the beginning. The pairing of the sun-like light and the song of the trumpets makes me think of those moments when Dante transcends from one level of purgatory to another, or ultimately when he makes it through to heaven. I'll have to get out my Commedia and see if there are any clear echoes going on here, or if this is just my own fancy at work. At any rate, I think it's important that the poem doesn't end with illusion but with a vision, pure and clear and ringing with truth. 

And now I have "the trumpet shall sound" from Handel's Messiah stuck in my head...I'm so literal minded sometimes.

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## Petrarch's Love

quasi--glad if my post could be helpful, but don't let your dependence on translation hold you back from commenting. You always have such good things to say.

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## Virgil

What a marvelous poem. I noticed this poem when I foist got the book. I will study this tonight and have some comments to add tomorrow. But it really is lovely.

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## stlukesguild

I think it's important that the poem doesn't end with illusion but with a vision, pure and clear and ringing with truth.

Agreed. Paradise Lost... and then regained. Montale always strikes me as striving for that vision... that epiphany... that spirituality that certainly in unquestioned in his poetic idol, Dante... but Montale lives in an era of doubt. 

By the way... the musical allusions might also be owed largely to the poet's own earlier education as a musician.

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## stlukesguild

I noticed this poem when I *foist* got the book.

Virgil... I know you are a New Yorker... but wouldn't "foist" actually be a Joisey accent (or so were my memories of my time in Jersey City. Sorry... I couldn't help myself. :Blush:  I'll go back to my corner now and bury my face in Montale again...

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## Virgil

> I noticed this poem when I *foist* got the book.
> 
> Virgil... I know you are a New Yorker... but wouldn't "foist" actually be a Joisey accent (or so were my memories of my time in Jersey City. Sorry... I couldn't help myself. I'll go back to my corner now and bury my face in Montale again...


 :FRlol:  No I meant when I *first* got the book. These fingers can't type.  :Biggrin:  But it does sound like a New Jersey accent.

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## Bitterfly

> I am struck by a number of layers of "meaning" involved in this poem. Again... at the start the poet begins with his rhetorical devise of suggesting his own lack of merit... longing for the eloquence of another (pointed out earlier by Mortal Terror)... although not so directly. He but alludes to his own deficiencies... unlike the great poets who only spoke of plants with "learned names" (ligustrum, acanthus, box) what he likes are the simple back alley ways... the drying puddles, etc... but even with these simple pleasures, Montale paints them in such a "classically" beautiful manner... and then the lemon trees.


I have the impression that he's not pointing to his own deficiencies here but really trying to detach himself from tradition and his predecessors. The "laureled poets" can only speak of what is orderly and tidily classified by scientists, with names that come from a *dead* language and that ordinary people cannot understand (funnily enough, acanthus also represents "love of art"  :Biggrin:  ). I also noted that lemon trees are ones that grow in winter (they can therefore represent sun and light in the midst of the most hostile months) and bear fruit, whereas the two plants that the learned poets use are decorative, and that laurels can be poisonous plants.

On the contrary, Montale seems to wish to sing of ordinary people and their drabness - boys from obviously poor families scrounging for food that is just as badly off as they are ("famished eels"), next to "drying puddles" (yuck) and "ditches" , later on "niggardly light" and "bitter" souls, and show that even in these surroundings one can discover moments of beauty (I agree that his description creates beauty) and epiphany. When you think about it, his final vision stems from not much: the glimpse caught of a few lemons in a courtyard (here he also seems to be in the position of a poor boy stealing glimpses of how the rich must live - "gold" and all that). But the poetry - the song - which comes out of it is beautiful.

I think the trajectory of the "paths" in the first stanza represents the difficulty of finding that beauty in such a hard environment (it first "struggles" then "dips" (falls), before finally arriving at a place of fruitfulness and fertility, the "orchards" and "lemon trees"). He really identifies himself with the poor, too ("we the poor"), which takes him even further from the laureled poets, whose path among the "shrubs" is anyway too easy.

I love the gradation from hearing to smell to sight in the second and third stanzas, and the final explosion which is rather synaesthetic. The last lines remind me of Revelations, because of the "trumpets of gold", and because of the visionary character of the lines. Maybe there are a few bibical overtones in the poem, with the word "miracle" and "even the poor share the riches of the world". The end resembles a little what one would expect Heaven to be like: lots of light, the angel's trumpets, and songs and warmth. After the winter of the soul.... it reminds me of Anderson's little matchstick girl, ha ha!! 

As that conclusion seems a little surprising for a modernist poet, maybe it's not entirely to be taken at face value? After all, the first moment of vision or rather smell is debunked as an "illusion" (probably because it rested upon a stilling of time - and here maybe Montale is reflecting on the inexorable passage of time, which dispels such moments of beauty, pleasure?). Why shouldn't the second vision be just as transitory, since after all it it depends on a door left ajar - which will then be closed after a while?

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## stlukesguild

Bitterfly... I don't dispute your interpretation of Montale as attempting to detach himself from his predecessors and from a tired tradition. But I never find him that simple... or rather there is always something ambivalent about his rejection of tradition in that it seems that he at once rejects it and even parodies it... but he is also deeply enamored of it. He is clearly deeply enamored of Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi... and the rest of the tradition.

As for the moment of epiphany... the Wordsworthian... or Blake-like vision... I'm not certain he wishes to debunk such... even as a Modernist. I think he is suspicious... doubtful... but he also admits that the whole of his poetry is "waiting for the miracle". I sense this in any number of other poems... a visionary sense of something miraculous... transcendent... is the least of experiences.

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## Bitterfly

Yep, I agree with you on both points. The first since I really haven't read enough of him, and ambivalence makes sense - it must be easier to determine when you read the original Italian for possible intertextuality, echoes of previous poets, too, I suppose (wistful sigh...). The second because it's difficult to be sure. And epiphanies were certainly an aim for poets/writers of the period. And I didn't see any irony there (except in the choice of the plants, ha ha!)... I was just wondering.

The door ajar keeps ringing bells, by the way, but I don't know which ones!!!

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## Virgil

> Yes, it's very resonant of the best stuff from the romantic period.


I think I've pointed that out in a few of his poems. I think we can safely say it is a conscious thread that runs through his work. I do think here (and here I mean this volume, which is his first work) I think Montale stands in the tradition of Romanticism. I think it's a base to his vision. However, there is more I think than just Romanticism. I'm not sure I can put my finger on it exactly or even if I can articulate it. But look at these lines from this poem:




> Here, by some miracle, the war
> of conflicted passions is stilled;
> here even we the poor share the riches of the world-
> the smell of the lemon trees...


We see there an acquienence of emotional feeling, a universal sharing. Now this is still rooted in Romanticism, and that third stanza is almost pure Romanticism. But look at the beginning of the final stanza:



> But the illusion dies, time returns us
> to noisy cities where the sky is only
> patches of blue, high up, between the cornices.
> Rain wearies the ground; over the buildings
> winter's tedium thickens.
> Light grows niggardly, the soul bitter.


This strikes me as the opposite of Keats' Grecian Urn. Time doesn't freeze but returns, and the emotions mellow and turn in what I think is an aging, a maturing. I can't recall such a maturing from the original Romantics. Keats' Ode to a Nightinggale perhaps, but there it seems like it's eternal youth in emotion or death. Here there is a realization that life ticks on to sadness, even bitterness, until once again, 



> And one day, through a gate ajar,
> among the trees in the courtyard
> we see the yellows of the lemon trees;
> and the heart's ice thaws
> and songs pelt
> into the breast
> and trumpets of gold pour forth
> epiphanies of Light!


Yes, it's quite Romantic with a Montale twist perhaps.  :Wink:

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## Virgil

> I think the trajectory of the "paths" in the first stanza represents the difficulty of finding that beauty in such a hard environment (it first "struggles" then "dips" (falls), before finally arriving at a place of fruitfulness and fertility, the "orchards" and "lemon trees"). He really identifies himself with the poor, too ("we the poor"), which takes him even further from the laureled poets, whose path among the "shrubs" is anyway too easy.
> 
> I love the gradation from hearing to smell to sight in the second and third stanzas, and the final explosion which is rather synaesthetic. The last lines remind me of Revelations, because of the "trumpets of gold", and because of the visionary character of the lines. Maybe there are a few bibical overtones in the poem, with the word "miracle" and "even the poor share the riches of the world". The end resembles a little what one would expect Heaven to be like: lots of light, the angel's trumpets, and songs and warmth. After the winter of the soul.... it reminds me of Anderson's little matchstick girl, ha ha!! 
> 
> As that conclusion seems a little surprising for a modernist poet, maybe it's not entirely to be taken at face value? After all, the first moment of vision or rather smell is debunked as an "illusion" (probably because it rested upon a stilling of time - and here maybe Montale is reflecting on the inexorable passage of time, which dispels such moments of beauty, pleasure?). Why shouldn't the second vision be just as transitory, since after all it it depends on a door left ajar - which will then be closed after a while?


Hey good point about the religious allusion. I think it's there. Epiphany has a religious context and trumpet of gold and the garden of eden.

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## JBI

So are we saying it is modernist, in the sense that it builds itself on an Italian pastoral, and then undercuts it with the "chaotic" modern horror?

In a sense, I think the poem is very modernist. It seems to take romanticism, and put it on its head, with the removal of the possibility.

It reminds me almost of the dawn scene in The Wasteland, where the Dawn itself is deformed and decayed and obscured.

Also, I see a hint of Leopardi in the poem, with the contrast of the pastoral vision against the brutal realistic vision. I feel especially, a connection with his early Idyllic works, especially "La Sera del dì di Festa"




> The night is sweet and clear, without a breeze,
> and the moon rests in the gardens,
> calm on the roofs, and reveals, clear,
> far off, every mountain. O my lady,
> the paths are still, and the night lights
> shine here and there from the balconies:
> you sleep, and sleep gently welcomed you
> to your quiet room: nothing
> troubles you: you still don’t know, or guess
> ...


Note this translation is weak, but taken because it is in the public domain.

If we throw this at it, and other Leopardi works, Montale seems to be lamenting the past, and the destructiveness of his time. The romantic link is there, but I think Montale builds on it, and manages to modernize it a bit, unlike Eliot or Pound did, though this one, I would think, relies more strongly on the romantic tradition than their work.

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## quasimodo1

Eugenio Montale and Jonathan Galassi



from READING MONTALE
[By translator/writer Jonathan Galassi]

".They also hear constant echoes of an entire tradition. Italian lyric poetry can be seen as constituting a remarkably concise and unified line, starting with the thirteenth-century "stilnovisti" and their exemplar, Dante, the defining presence in Italian literature and the first to move the language out of the shadows of the classical past which in some respects endure to this day. The major figures--Petrarch, Foscolo, Manzoni, Leopardi -- are relatively few, and all of them echo in Montale's work. The poetic novel that ends with La bufera, then, can be read as a resume', a summation, perhaps a farewell to the Italian lyric enterprise, that love story tinged with an aura of the religious which begins with Dante and his inspiration, Beatrice.

In Ossi di Seppia the Italian reader hears echoes, too, of Montale's immediate forebears, the "crepuscolari", the post-symbolist "twilight" poets of his native Liguria, and behind them the sweet, sentimental, inventive voice of their major precursor, Giovanni Pascoli. This domestic, naturalistic strain alternates with the overstuffed turn-of-the-century rhetorical grandeur, tilted toward grandiosity, of Gabriele D'Annunzio, the Victor Hugo of Italian letters, who did everything that could be done with the language of his time -- and via whom Montale makes his first approaches to the style and vocabulary of Dante. Ossi di Seppia has been seen as a rewriting of D'Annunzio's "Alcyone", an attempt at wringing the neck of its overweening eloquence -- though Montale cannot help but resort at times to the very excesses he is fighting to liberate himself from. The book is a series of experiments -- many of them French-influenced, post-symbolist, impressionistic, synesthetic -- in creating a voice, which he achieves, definitively, in the "ossi brevi", the brief lyrics at the heart of the book which express an unconsoled pessimism in terse, paradoxical formulations."

[pp 418, 419 of Collected Poems 1920-1954]

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## Virgil

I'd like to present a Montale poem. This may be the last one. And fittingly I pick the last poem of the collection.





> Seacoasts
> 
> Seacoasts,
> a spears of sawgrass
> waving from a cliff
> above the frenzy of the sea will do;
> or two faded camellias
> in deserted gardens,
> and a golden eucalyptus plunging
> ...


You'll have to look up the Italian. This was a lot of typing as is.

God, I love this "Days of tumbling and tossing/like cuttlefish bones in the breakers,/vanishing bit by bit".

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## stlukesguild

Quasi... a nice, concise overview of what Montale means within the tradition of Italian poetry. I read the same in the Gallassi book a few weeks back. Much of what he speaks of we must take on faith... at least as far as the influences of more recent Italian precursors goes. I've yet to come across them in English translation. I was waiting for Petrarch... and for Virgil to offer up a preferred poem... but both have admitted to being quite tied up when I last spoke with them. I just got back from a trip out of state... and am getting over strep... but I'd like to throw out a little gem that caught my fancy:

*Poems for Camillo Sbarbaro*

_Café at Rapallo_

Christmas in the gleaming 
tepidarium, cosmetic
fumes coiling from cups, curtained
shimmer of lights from beyond closed
panes, women profiled
in soft light among blazing jewels
and shot silk...
They've arrived,
the new sirens, on your native
shores! And now we need you, here,
old friend, Camillo, chronicler 
of thrills and desires.

From the street a wild racket.

Outside the café
an indescribable music paraded by-
a blare of tin bugles, a silvery
tinkle of children's baptismal saucers:
the music of innocence passed us by...

With it marched a goblin world
in a clatter of tiny donkeys and carts,
and a bleat of _papier maché_
rams, and a gleam
of sabers sheathed in foil.
The generals, cocked hats
of cardboard, brandishing nougat
lances, passed by;
and then the rank and file
with candles and lanterns
and little boxes
that rattled with the tinniest sounds...

(I listened and marveled)

The hoard passed with the roar...

It found shelter in that greening pasture
where you and I will never graze again.

excerpts from William Arrowsmith's tr. Eugenio Montale

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## quasimodo1

Stlukes: Your poem makes it clear to me that Arrowsmith is the superior translator of Montale; the scholarship of Galassi is just as impressive and I am taking on faith that passage from "Reading Montale". It was more than a posting...it was another learning experience re: Montale.

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## quasimodo1

Sweet captivity, today, of these coasts
for the man who yields, briefly succumbing,
as though reliving an old
never to be forgotten game.
O seacoasts, what a tang was in that drink
you gave to one bewildered adolescent boy:
humpbacked hills fusing with sky
of bright blue mornings; in sand
along the beaches, the undertow ran strong
but no stronger than that shiver of being alive
in a world on fire; and everything seemed consumed
by its own inward blazing.
.................Truly a beautiful passage...almost as though it wasn't translated at all. But that's the goal of a good translator...invisibility.

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## stlukesguild

The influences of which Gallassi speaks are clear: symbolism with the descriptive and sensory-laden images/words... and Impressionism. But Montale never seems to simply offer up but his own version of the past without some irony. Here I snese the great contrast between images of adult sophistication, modern worldliness, and even a sense-laden decadence... and suddenly this is interrupted by a vision (real? imagined?) of a cacophonous children's parade. Eventually the parade finds shelter in green pastures (the poet's past... memories of the past... lost innocence?) The notes make clear that there is a slight ironic self-mockery here... as part of the poet's lost pasts there were his earlier attempts at a sort of neoclassical pastoral poetry.

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## stlukesguild

Acck! Cross posting! :Blush:  I bow to Virgil... and will return to my poem later... if at all.

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## JBI

Hmm Virgil, it's an interesting poem, especially with the constant personification of the Seacoasts. What I think Montale is playing at is a sort of mature distortion of youth. The seacoasts I would assume symbolize to some extent the Genoese shores of his youth, and his past happiness before the war. But the problem is, he is returning after too much time, and the vision is distorted, and he cannot return. This was somewhat a popular preoccupation during Romanticism, but it is a little different in tone because of the layering of metaphor Montale approaches the Seacoast in.



The seacoasts seem to be the ones who have deserted Montale, and it is they which need to come back to him. That puzzles the reading, at makes the seacoast out to be somewhat of a different metaphor. To what though? The seas haven't changed of course, so what is meant by the changing, and rebirth a new. The sea is constant, as we are told in other works of his, and in other works of poetry. 

I think it is too easy to read this poem as similar to Wordsworth, or even Leopardi, but I think it means something more. The sea, we must remember, is something more than that to Leopardi. Perhaps he is implying that he feels to attached, and constrained to the land now to actually break away, and be enveloped again by the sea?

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## Virgil

I pretty much agree with everything you said JBI. In one respect it is traditional Romanticism, but I do feel it it layered with somethig else. What that something else is I can't quite articulate. In this poem that something else seems to lie in this passage:




> Ah, seacosts, if only someday
> I could believe in you again,
> funereal beauties, framing in gold
> the agony of every being.
> Today I come home to you
> a stronger man (or do I deceive myself), although
> my heart almost melts in memories, happy 
> but also bitter. Sad soul of my past,
> and you, fresh purpose summoning me now,
> ...


That division of soul seems modern to me. It's as if he's his personality, his persona itself, has fragmented with experience. Even the "(or do I deceive myself)" creates a sensation of split identity. I do believe that's modern. Though it would be interesting to compare this with Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey." There too there is a division of memory with persona, but I don't think (I do not have the poem fresh in my mind) I would go so far as saying it's a fragmentation as in Montale. without a doubt though Montale's roots are in Romanticism. Whether he advances it or not is possibly debatable.

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## JBI

Yes, but that bid is rather common in romanticism, for instance:

Tantramar Revisited by Charles G. D. Roberts

Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow;
Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and winter, and frost;
Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance,
Many a dream of joy fall'n in the shadow of pain.
Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded, or broken,
Busy with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored;
Even the bosom of Earth is strewn with heavier shadows, --
Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no change!
Here where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and woodlands,
Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base of the hills, --
Here, from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses,
Stained with time, set warm in orchards, meadows, and wheat,
Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward,
Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind.

Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband of meadow,
Shorn of the labouring grass, bulwarked well from the sea,
Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dykes from the turbid
Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores.
Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes, --
Miles on miles they extend, level, and grassy, and dim,
Clear from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the distance,
Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland Point;
Miles on miles outrolled, and the river-channels divide them, --
Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling gusts.

Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie.
There are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their feet.
Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and nearer
Still are the slim, grey masts of fishing boats dry on the flats.
Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark
Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!
Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels
Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea!
Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters
Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the wind
Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight, and sways them
Softly at will; or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft.

Now at this season the reels are empty and idle; I see them
Over the lines of the dykes, over the gossiping grass.
Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, thro' the lonesome
Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls.
Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them;
Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long,
Winnowing soft grey wings of marsh-owls wander and wander,
Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike.
Soon, thro' their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning,
Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening wind.
Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot shafts of the sunlight
Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled with dew
Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms of drift-net
Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land.

Well I remember it all. The salt, raw scent of the margin;
While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel, and the net,
Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled in its station;
Then each man to his home, -- well I remember it all!

Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of the landscape, --
Stranded boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush,
One grey hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of haystacks, --
More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes me home.
Ah, the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture, --
Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt!
Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marshland, --
Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see, --
Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,
Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change. 


I think the shattering of the national pastoral, which so preoccupied the late romantics and symbolists, is what Montale seems to be building on. The early idyllic existence which Montale so craves seems impossible. The problem though, is the ending, where he imagine s it created anew - that either implies something strange, or that he plans to die and be reobrn, or that someone else will be moved by the waters.

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## Virgil

Hmm, I don't think I see a fragmentation in that poem JBI. I see a similar theme as in Wordsworth: I had this sensation from nature and it has changed me and now I return to it a different man. Perhaps Montale is also along those lines. Perhaps I'm injecting too much into Montale. It just seems (tenuous I agree) that Montale is fragmenting his persona (he having two selves in response to the nature) rather than an evolution as in Wordsworth and that Roberts poem. Do see you what I'm trying to say? Whether I'm correct in saying that I don't know. I'm basing a lot on just a few words.

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## JBI

The problem though, the one I'm having anyway, is with the sense of rebirth. What does that imply? I am thinking it implies death, what do others think? I think he knows they cannot flower anew, and is being ironic, implying that such a thing is impossible in this life. The reunification with the Sea must, I would argue, come after death - after he escapes the distance imposed on their relationship by time.

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## stlukesguild

I'd like to join in this discussion... but I have to run. Social appearance I must make. I'll try to post some thoughts later.

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## Virgil

> The problem though, the one I'm having anyway, is with the sense of rebirth. What does that imply? I am thinking it implies death, what do others think? I think he knows they cannot flower anew, and is being ironic, implying that such a thing is impossible in this life. The reunification with the Sea must, I would argue, come after death - after he escapes the distance imposed on their relationship by time.


You're referrig to this section:




> If only,
> like these branches 
> yesterday bare and sere, bursting now
> with sap and quiverings,
> I could feel
> even I, tomorrow, among fragrances and winds
> fresh-running dreams, a wild rush of voices
> surging toward an outlet; and in the sunlight
> that swathes you, seacoasts,
> flower anew!


Hmm, I see what you're saying. I can't answer if that's ironic. Someone who really knows Italian needs to read it in the original. That's a meaning relying on tone that one can't trust to translation.

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## quasimodo1

"But the problem is, he is returning after too much time, and the vision is distorted, and he cannot return. This was somewhat a popular preoccupation during Romanticism, but it is a little different in tone because of the layering of metaphor Montale approaches the Seacoast in."



"The seacoasts seem to be the ones who have deserted Montale, and it is they which need to come back to him. That puzzles the reading, at makes the seacoast out to be somewhat of a different metaphor. To what though? The seas haven't changed of course, so what is meant by the changing, and rebirth a new. The sea is constant, as we are told in other works of his, and in other works of poetry." I am responding mostly to this posting of JBI and my only addition to the conversation is that many who lived through a world war (either one) feel the world and the seacoasts and by extension state boundries and personal boundries have changed for "real" and they can never look at their world the same. It wouldn't necessarily, in my opinion, require that one be a combatant or victim for this negative epiphany to be a hard and fast mindset.

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## stlukesguild

On one level there seems a clear echo of a Wordworthian return to a beloved landscape that held such import... such sense of timelessness... only to find that it/the poet has changed. What has changed him? "Days of tumbling and tossing/like Cuttle Fish Bones in the breakers/vanishing bit by bit/... melting away/in sunset colors, to dissolve as flesh..." But he admits to an inability to return to the past: he returns home "a stronger man..." "but also bitter..." And he imagines/longs for the ability to become as he once was... to be wiped fresh... new. If only he could be reborn like nature:

If only,
like these branches
yesterday bare and sere, bursting now 
with sap and quiverings...

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## quasimodo1

But the illusion dies, time returns us
to noisy cities where the sky is only
patches of blue, high up, between the cornices.
Rain wearies the ground; over the buildings
winter's tedium thickens.
Light grows niggardly, the soul bitter.
And one day, through a gate ajar,
among the trees in the courtyard
we see the yellows of the lemon trees;
and the heart's ice thaws
and songs pelt
into the breast
and trumpets of gold pour forth
epiphanies of Light!
...............Arrowsmith......................... .............  

But the illusion fails, and time returns us
to noisy cities where the blue
is seen in patches, up between the roofs.
The rain exhausts the earth then;
winter's tedium weighs the houses down,
the light turns miserly-- the soul bitter.
Till one day through a half-shut gate
in a courtyard, there among the trees,
we can see the yellow of the lemons;
and the chill in the heart
melts, and deep in us
the golden horns of sunlight
pelt their songs.
..............Galassi............................. ....................

But the dream fails and time returns
us to the raucous towns where the sky
shows only in broken pieces pinched high
between the cornices of buildings.
Now rain tires the earth, winter dullness
heaps upon the houses,
the daylight grows grudging, the soul is grim.
When one day through a gate left open
there appears among the trees in a courtyard
the yellow light of lemons;
and the icy heart melts
as in the breast roar
their songs,
the gold trumpets of solarity.
*
..............Millicent Bell.................................

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## stlukesguild

Repeatedly Montale alludes to the transformative... live giving... almost miraculous aspect of the sea. I am especially taken by an earlier poem in _Cuttle Fish Bones_:

*Falsetto*

Esterina, your twentieth year now threatens,
a cloud of grayish pink
that day by day enswathes you.
You know, and you're not afraid.
We'll see you in the waves, swallowed
by a smoky haze torn
or thickened by the raging wind.
Later you'll rise from ashen breakers,
more sunburnt than ever,
stretching toward some new adventure,
your face so intense
you might be
the huntress Diana.
Your twenty autumns mount,
springtimes past enfold you;
and now for you a presage rings
in Elysian spheres.
May it never be a cracked urn struck
you hear; my prayer for you 
is a peal of bells
ineffable.

Anxious tomorrows leave you unafraid.
All grace, you stretch
on the rock edge with salt
and burn your body in the sun...

How right you are! This happy moment
is yours! Live now, unafraid!
Already your gaiety engages the future;
a shrug of your shoulders
topples the bastion
of your unknown tomorrow.
You rise, step out on that small
thin plank above the screeching abyss,
profile incised 
against a background of pearl.
At the tip of the trembling board you hesitate,
laugh, and then, as though ravished by a wind,
plunge into the welcoming arms
of your divine lover.

We watch you- we, of the race of those
who cling to the shore.

(excerpt tr. William Arrowsmith)

In a manner this poem almost reminds me of Thomas Mann's _Death in Venice_ in which the elderly artist imagines/perceives something god(dess-like) in the youth on the beach. But it is just as much the sea as the young girl that he sees as something miraculous now somehow lost... removed from him... The sea is almost transformative... as Esterina... the beautiful young woman Montale watches... is "swallowed" by "a smoky haze" and rises "from ashen breakers" more burnt than ever... and more like a goddess... almost as if a Phoenix... rising from the fire and the ashes. And he watches her admiringly again dive into the "welcoming arms" of her "divine lover", the sea... but it seems as if he can no longer participate/believe in the transformative power of the sea... he can no longer rise from the ashes.

A similar feeling of something lost... and considering the age of the poet... a feeling of having prematurely aged... exist in the final poem, _Seacoasts_ as well that leads me in part to agree with Quasi's suggestion that the experience of World War I... which is never explicitly referred to in these poems... is still a motivation. Montale, I am aware, was profoundly inspired by Eliot... and certainly Eliot conveys a similar sense of fracture with a past belief in the rebirth... in being born again... spiritually and otherwise.

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## quasimodo1

Your twenty autumns mount,
springtimes past enfold you;
and now for you a presage rings
in Elysian spheres.
May it never be a cracked urn struck
you hear; my prayer for you 
is a peal of bells
ineffable.
These lines are "ineffable" even among the multiple great passages of Montale. I'm not sure I hear any Thomas Mann echoes...the atmosphere of "Death in Venice" is intensely dark trying to be light.

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## quasimodo1

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...=5&sq=Eugenio%

20Montale%20reviews&st=cse --- --- BETWEEN THE LOVE OF CLIZIA AND MOSCA 

By JOHN AHERN; JOHN AHERN IS THE DANTE ANTOLINI PROFESSOR OF ITALIAN LETTERS AT VASSAR COLLEGE. 
Published: February 23, 1986
THE STORM AND OTHER THINGS By Eugenio Montale. Translated by William Arrowsmith. 219 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & 

Company. Cloth, $14.95. Paper, $6.95. "WHEN Eugenio Montale received the Nobel 

Prize in 1975 for five formidable volumes of poetry (of which ''The Storm and Other Things'' is the third, most 

difficult and most beautiful), no one doubted that the prize had gone to the poems, not the public persona. Montale 

generated no legend. No shred of gossip clung to his heavyset, almost invisible figure. His career illustrated, it 

seemed, the irrelevance of a poet's private life to his work. The tight, acoustically intriguing poems with their 

murky private allusions blocked all attempts to extract an autobiography. At most, the frequency with which they 

addressed women, unnamed and named - Esterina, Gertin, Dora Markus, Liuba, Vixen, Mosca and, above all, Clizia - 

allowed one to surmise that for Montale life, like art, was quintessentially speech to a woman." --- --- --- ---

-"But now, five years after his death, we must learn to reread Montale's works, particularly this splendid book, 

against the background of his life, because the cunning poet himself deliberately broke the seal around his private 

life in 1967 by giving Luciano Rebay of Columbia University his correspondence with a friend, Roberto Bazlen. Those 

letters document a traumatic period when he was torn between the love of two women, ''Clizia'' and ''Mosca.'' 

Entrusting the bundle to Mr. Rebay, he dryly remarked that it might interest posterity. Later he gave journalists 

details of Clizia's life without revealing her name. By the late 1970's educated guesses about her identity were 

being made in private and in print. Two years ago Mr. Rebay lifted the veil when he published key portions of the 

letters with much new biographical information in the scholarly journal Forum Italicum." {first two paragraphs of this review}

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## JBI

Anyone up for resurrecting this discussion?

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## quasimodo1

Let me see if I can make another moot point.

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## JBI

I'm thinking we need a new poet, one with less a prolific output to choose from.

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## quasimodo1

This elegant poem is third in a group of four short poems, designated "Portovenere". It's short lines are 

reminiscent of Rilke but perhaps this is the after effect of translation. 

from Collected Poems, 1920-1954
[Revised Bilingual Edition, translated and annotated
by Jonathan Galassi]

{Portovenere, group of four poems}

(pp 50-51)

There the Tritone surges
into the breakers lapping
a Christian temple's floor,
and every coming hour
is ancient. Every doubt
is taken by the hand
like a little friend.

No one ever eyes himself
or listens for his own voice there.
.....

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## stlukesguild

Sorry... I've been tied up with familial issues: strep throat, a father-in-law in the hospital, family obligations over the holiday, and now my wife in surgery. I'd like to explore a couple other poems before moving on. I'll try to post over the next few days.

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## JBI

How about this: 

from House by the Sea

Here the journey ends:
in these petty cares dividing
a soul no longer able to protest
now minutes implacable, regular
as the flywheel on a pump.
One turn: a rumble of water rushing.
Second turn: more water, occasional creakings.

Here the journey ends, on this shore
probed by slow, assiduous tides.
Only a sluggish haze reveals
the sea woven with troughs
by the mild breezes: hardly ever
in that dead calm
does spiny Corsica or Capraia loom
through islands of migratory air.
...

My journey ends on these shores
eroded by the to-and-fro of the tides.
Your heedless heart, so near, may even now
be lifting sail for the eternities.

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## quasimodo1

[The following is a preliminary list of poets for the vote on the next round of poetry bookclub: Philip Larkin, Allen Ginsberg , Medbh McGuckian, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Earle Birney, Anne Herbert, Ali Ahmad Said Asbar (Adunis), Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Anne Carson and Boris Pasternak]

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## JBI

How we going to do this? Everyone pick 3 again? Or are we going to do everyone list them from most favored to least favored?

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## mayneverhave

> [The following is a preliminary list of poets for the vote on the next round of poetry bookclub: Philip Larkin, Allen Ginsberg , Medbh McGuckian, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Earle Birney, Anne Herbert, Ali Ahmad Said Asbar (Adunis), Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Anne Carson and Boris Pasternak]


Oh, I'm feelin' the Russian on this one.

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## Furbla

> Oh, I'm feelin' the Russian on this one.


Definately.
I would be interested in posting a piece, does it requre anything vividly?  :Smile:

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## Virgil

> How we going to do this? Everyone pick 3 again? Or are we going to do everyone list them from most favored to least favored?


Good queston. Quasi, how do we do this? Would you want me to set up a poll? That will require a new thread, I think.

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## quasimodo1

Virgil, How about you run the vote on this group and a new thread would be great.

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## Virgil

> Virgil, How about you run the vote on this group and a new thread would be great.


Oh I'm just seeing this now. Will do, sir. *snaps to attention and salutes*  :Wink: 

Edit: Before I do so, I need to understand something. Are we allowed one vote per person or can you vote for as many as you wish. I don't think the system allows you to only vote for three? We can go with unlimited and have a genteman's (and lady's  :Wink: ) to limit your voting to three. What should I do Quasi?

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## sohairakhalid

Um i need some help if anyone's interested :33

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