Toni Frissell, “Woman wearing headscarf seated at table with drink” (detail) (ca. 1940)
I NEVER saw that you did painting need…
— Sonnet LXXXIII
I never saw that you did painting need
Tag: poetry
The Waiting Game
WHEN you are very old, at evening
You’ll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,
Humming my songs, “Ah well, ah well-a-day!
When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing.”
None of your maidens that doth hear the thing,
Albeit with her weary task foredone,
But wakens at my name, and calls you one
Blest, to be held in long remembering.I shall be low beneath the earth, and laid
On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade,
While you beside the fire, a grandame grey,
My love, your pride, remember and regret;
Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet,
And gather roses, while ’tis called to-day.
— Pierre de Ronsard, “Of His Lady’s Old Age” (Tr. Lang)
A Late Walk
Rainy day, Paris, August, 1984
WHEN I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words.A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.
— Robert Frost, “A Late Walk”
ephemera
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
Tide be runnin’ the great world over:
T’was only last June month I mind that we
Was thinkin’ the toss and the call in the breast of the lover
So everlastin’ as the sea.Heer’s the same little fishes that sputter and swim,
Wi’ the moon’s old glim on the grey, wet sand;
An’ him no more to me nor me to him
Than the wind goin’ over my hand.
— Charlotte Mew, “Sea Love”
“Poetry Was Like This”
David Stroble, “Students at Band Practice at Cathedral High School…” (ca. 1975)
Poetry was the memory of adolescence…
Poetry was Ayesha Akhter of my village school
with her long loose flowing hair.
— Al Mahmud, “Poetry Was Like This” (Tr. Chowdhury)
Emily’s Epistemology
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
ADVENTURE most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Its own Identity.
— Emily Dickinson, The Single Hound
“Wanting to Move”
Image by Niek Verlaan via Pixabay
Continually, a bell rings in my heart.
I was supposed to go somewhere, to some other place,
Tense from the long wait—
Where do you go, will you take me
“With you, on your horses, down the river, with the flame
of your torches?”They burst out laughing.
“A tree wanting to move from place to place!”
Startled, I look at myself—
A tree, wanting to move from place to place, a tree
Wanting to move? Am I then—
Born here, to die here
Even die here?
Who rings the bell, then, inside my heart?
Who tells me to go, inside my heart?
Who agitates me, continually, inside my heart?
— Vijaya Mukhopadhyay, “Wanting to Move”
End Song
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
When you break your heart
It changes
All exits are open…
— Ruth Krauss, End Song
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
cf. photograph by Nathan Anderson via Unsplash
One day I asked the mirror facing me,
Friend, what’s true?…How about my heart, mirror?…
Silence.
O mirror, I see.
I need a human friend
True enough
To reflect my heart.
— Tialuga Sunia Seloti
She moves me
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
HAVE you got a brook in your little heart…
Then look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
And the bridges often go…
— Emily Dickinson
Something in the Way She Moves
“House of Spring”
cf. Photographs via Unsplash and Pexels
Hundreds of open flowers
all come from
the one branch
Look
all their colors
appear in my garden
I open the clattering gate
and in the wind
I see
the spring sunlight
already it has reached
worlds without number
— Musō Soseki (Tr. Merwin & Shigematsu)
Rebel Rebel
“the oxford companion to modern poetry”
the oxford companion to modern poetry
…the major part of his verse is published on his very sparsely visited WordPress blog.
He is still part of the Romantic school even though this mode has long been repudiated.
His work lumbers through the same recurring themes over and over again —
the failed (or failing) romance, the ever popular carpe diem trope and a kind of bitter melancholic nostalgia that this reviewer, for one, finds distasteful.
An early instructive example is “Astrophysics (Halley’s Poem)”.
Here the lover is unflatteringly compared to Halley’s Comet.
She left the poet in 1986 traveling at high rate of speed and the grandiose Galileo quotation would only gild the lily if there was a lily to gild.
His more recent work such as “And the operator said, ‘May I help you please?’” again finds the poet au fait with loving and losing.
Poems such as these have this reviewer wondering whether Tennyson’s famous aphorism is generally applicable.
Providentially his verse is interlarded with songs from the 1970s (the poet’s salad days) and occasionally (and regrettably) some hair metal classics.
We do not expect a volume of his collected works at this time but anticipate further elaboration of these leitmotifs on his blog.
— J.S.
Julie, Julie, Julie, do ya love me?
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1958) (edited collage by me)
Time’s on the wing,
Life never knows the return the spring.
— John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
All I’ve got is a photograph
cf. Elmer Underwood, “Gossip at a wayside inn at Botten…” (ca. 1905)
And Benedick, love on; I will requite thee…
— Much Ado About Nothing
When I was stone blue I knew what to do.
cf. National Geographic Magazine (1948)
EXERT thy voice, sweet harbinger of Spring!
This moment is thy time to sing,
This moment I attend to praise,
And set my numbers to thy lays.
Free as thine shall be my song;
As thy music, short or long.Poets wild as thee were born,
Pleasing best when unconfined,
When to please is least designed,
Soothing but their cares to rest:
Cares do still their thoughts molest,
And still th’ unhappy poet’s breast,Like thine, when best he sings, is placed against a thorn.
She begins, let all be still!
Muse, thy promise now fulfil!
Sweet, oh sweet! still sweeter yet!
— Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, “To the Nightingale” (excerpt)
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Jaroslav A. Polák, “…Old Couple”
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
— Sonnet LXXIII
My precious queen, forbear, and give true evidence to his love, which stands an honorable trial.
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1965)
ANTONY:
Hear me, queen:
The strong necessity of time commands
Our services awhile, but my full heart
Remains in use with you.
— Antony and Cleopatra
And the operator said, “May I help you please?”
National Geographic Magazine (1948)
I waited all night, I remember that
smoked a cigarette
watched TV
went out and saw some friends
drove by your house
went to a bar and had a beer
got back home and tried to sleep…
— J.S.
I knocked the phone off the nightstand
And the operator said, “May I help you please?”
and I said “No thanks, baby tonight there ain’t no help for me —
see I just had a bad dream, that’s all that’s wrong with me
see I just had a bad dream.”
“avowal”
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1962)
avowal
all along the avenue
every evening
indulging in reminiscence
ofttimes
umbrella unavailing
and sometimes why?
— J.S.
Right Place, Wrong Time
Bob’s Love Affair (1915)
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June —
Hold on to what you’ve got
Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay
In youth when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet…
But age with his stealing steps
Hath clawed me in his clutch…
— Hamlet
Sonnet CXLV
Photograph by Amarpreet Singh via Pixabay
THOSE lips that Love’s own hand did make
Breath’d forth the sound that said ‘I hate,’
To me that languish’d for her sake:
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was us’d in giving gentle doom;
And taught it thus anew to greet;
‘I hate,’ she alter’d with an end,
That follow’d it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away.
‘I hate’ from hate away she threw,
And sav’d my life, saying—‘Not you.’
— Sonnet CXLV (in late 1582 William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway)
Takin’ Care Of Business
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1964) and Maclean’s Magazine (1961)
If seriously I may convey my thoughts
In this my light deliverance, I have spoke
With one that in her sex, her years, profession,
Wisdom, and constancy hath amazed me more
Than I dare blame my weakness…
— All’s Well That Ends Well
“The Road Taken”
George C. Laur, “Students on Their Way to Senior High School…” (ca. 1975)
The Road Taken
Two hundred roads diverged from a yellow house,
And sorry I could not travel all two hundred
And be one traveler, briefly I stood
And looked down one and thought it was good;
And looked down the other one hundred and ninety nine
And thought they were mine.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Even knowing how way leads on to way losing track,
I never doubted that I could come back.
I am telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages ago:
Two hundred roads diverged —
I took number one ninety nine to my regret,
And that is what I can’t forget.
— J.S. (cf. Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”)
Falstaff’s armamentarium
OSU Special Collections & Archives: Commons, “Woman slicing potatoes for potato chips” (2008)
[Enter Mistress Page and Mistress Ford.]
FALSTAFF:
…Who comes here? My doe?MISTRESS FORD:
Sir John? Art thou there, my deer, my male deer?FALSTAFF:
…Let the sky rain potatoes,
let it thunder to the tune of “Greensleeves,”
hail kissing-comfits, and snow eryngoes;
let there come a tempest of provocation,
I will shelter me here.
[He embraces her.]
— The Merry Wives of Windsor
[He reads the letter.]
cf. Toni Frissell, “Woman and man lying on a dock” (ca. 1969) and video by 5239640 via Pixabay (edited, modified and collage recomposition by me)
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
— Hamlet
We’ll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again
I’m in love with the other woman
Two Women (ca. 1915)
‘For further I could say “This man’s untrue,”
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;
Heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew…
— A Lover’s Complaint
The Dewey Decimal System
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Young people working in Library” (1964)
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire.
They are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
— Love’s Labor’s Lost
The Ghost Of Christmas Past
cf. Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Christmas Shoppers…” (detail) (1969) (Edited by me)
FALSTAFF [to Doll]:
Thou dost give me flattering busses.
DOLL TEARSHEET:
By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart.
FALSTAFF:
I am old, I am old.
DOLL TEARSHEET:
I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young
boy of them all.
— Henry IV, Part 2
Organic Chemistry
cf. Warren K. Leffler, “George Mason College, Va.” (detail) (1964)
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
— Hamlet
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
‘Cause when I get close to you, not much to say.
Warren K. Leffler, “Teen age [i.e., teenage] economy” (detail) (1964)
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity.
— A Midsummer Night’s Dream
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—
Every wise man’s son doth know.What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,—
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
— from Twelfth Night
Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes
Bipolar Depression
antique
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1962)
antique
dost thou think it fire?
dost thou think it fleeting flame?
thou knowest the stars in the sky
and my heart
— J.S.
Sonnet CXXXIX
cf. Gold Bell Catalog (1963)
O! CALL not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart…
Bipolar Disorder
Photograph by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!
— Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Debt
meditating upon the meaning of the line “clams on the halfshell and rollerskates” in the song “good times” by chic
cf. photograph by Thomas J. O’Halloran, “The Plum disco dancing [1119 21st St. NW]” (1977) and
video by Luiz-Jorge-Artista via Pixabay (edited and recomposed collage by me)
go away, you bitter cuss. it’s still 1980 somewhere, some corner
of your dark apartment
where the mystery of the lyric hasn’t faded. and love is in the
chorus waiting to be born
— D. A. Powell, meditating upon the meaning of the line “clams on the halfshell and rollerskates” in the song “good times” by chic (excerpt) (Poetry, September 2006)
Oberon on the request line
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “WFC-AM & WKYS-FM radio operation” (1977)
OBERON:
Sound music.
[Music.]
Come, my queen, take hands with me,
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be…
[Titania and Oberon dance.]
— A Midsummer Night’s Dream
souvenirs
Morning Announcements
cf. Screen Magazine (2003)
BENEDICK:
Come, come, we are friends. Let’s have a
dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our
own hearts and our wives’ heels.LEONATO:
We’ll have dancing afterward.BENEDICK:
First, of my word! Therefore play, music.—
Prince, thou art sad. Get thee a wife, get thee a wife…
— Much Ado About Nothing
Greeting Card
cf. TV commercial (ca. 1987)
Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
Bright are the stars that shine Dark is the sky
Love seeketh not itself to please,
If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love’s sake only
And to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him.
She knew she was by him beloved
All passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love,
And in Life’s noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
Love is not a feeling to pass away
My heart’s so full of joy, That I shall do some wild extravagance
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.
You who suffer because you love, love still more.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
I love thee, as the good love heaven.
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
Imparadis’d in one another’s arms.
Love is the crowning grace of humanity,
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
Love’s too precious to be lost,
We love but while we may
Love will conquer at the last.
Omnia vincit Amor; et nos cedamus Amori.
To see her is to love her,
Oh my luve’s like a red, red rose,
❤️
— J.S.
Echo
Library of Congress, “Reflection” (ca. 1910)
COME to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
— Christina Rossetti, “Echo”
The Waste Land
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1969) and The Mechanical & Landscape Photo Co., “bedroom interior…” (ca.1870)
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain…
Antony and Cleopatra
John Ferrell, “…Good Humor ice cream truck” (detail) (1942)
“Give me some music—music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.”
— Antony and Cleopatra
Et tu, Brutè? (a true story)
cf. Kim Rintling, “IMG_5859” (1980) (edited)
Et tu, Brutè? (a true story)
I stepped out of my office to have a cigarette.
It was about 11 o’clock and I needed a break.
I was standing near the parking lot when I noticed a large shadow.
I could vaguely hear a muffled argument.
I looked up and to my horror and surprise I saw the Little Caesars blimp
coming in fast, low and right towards me.
I could see the pilots arguing in the gondola so I started waving in what must have seemed like a futile gesture.
The wind picked up and the blimp began to fishtail down the street —would it hit me, my office or my car?
It must have been headed to a grand opening or something but my office had nothing to do with it.
I tried to light another cigarette out of nervousness but it’s difficult in the wind and then I realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to have an open flame in the area.
After what seemed like an eternity the ship seemed to right itself and it sauntered past me and down the adjacent street.
I ran inside and tried to pull myself together.
— J.S.
Miles to go before I sleep (Phoenix, Arizona, Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A. and Northern California)
Solitaire
W.E. Daugherty, “Solitary” (ca. 1904)
BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
— Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper
I’m thinking of you Mary Anne…
Well, as much as I try I can’t forget about us
cf. TV commercial (edited and modified)
ADVENTURE most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Its own Identity.
— Emily Dickinson, The Single Hound: I
O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide
O! FOR my sake do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu’d
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renew’d;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
— Sonnet CXI
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, comes home again, on better judgment making.
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1962)
FAREWELL! thou art too dear for my possessing
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but, waking, no such matter.
— Sonnet LXXXVII
[Storm still.]
cf. Image by Engin Akyurt via Pixabay (edited)
This tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there…
O, that way madness lies. let me shun that;
No more of that.
— King Lear
Beethoven: Grosse Fuge, Op. 133
A bad time to be in love
My magic won’t work on you
cf. Image by Enrique Meseguer via Pixabay (edited, modified and 3D recomposition)
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have ’s mine own,
Which is most faint…
— The Tempest
Time has but half succeeded in his theft— Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.
Frances S. Allen, “The difficult step” (ca. 1900)
OH that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’
— William Cowper, “On the Receipt of My Mother’s Picture out of Norfolk”
Dépression à Tucson
cf. National Geographic, 1953
A little less returned for him each spring.
Music began to fail him. Brahms, although
His dark familiar, often walked apart.His spirit grew uncertain of delight,
Certain of its uncertainty, in which
That dark companion left him unconsoledFor a self returning mostly memory.
Only last year he said that the naked moon
Was not the moon he used to see, to feel(In the pale coherences of moon and mood
When he was young), naked and alien,
More leanly shining from a lankier sky.Its ruddy pallor had grown cadaverous.
He used his reason, exercised his will,
Turning in time to Brahms as alternateIn speech. He was that music and himself.
They were particles of order, a single majesty:
But he remembered the time when he stood alone.He stood at last by God’s help and the police;
But he remembered the time when he stood alone.
He yielded himself to that single majesty;But he remembered the time when he stood alone,
When to be and delight to be seemed to be one,
Before the colors deepened and grew small.
— Wallace Stevens, “Anglais Mort à Florence”
The Birth of Bacchus
La Dolce Vita (1960)
But if he be indeed the thund’ring Jove,
Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,
Descend triumphant from th’ etherial sky,
In all the pomp of his divinity,
Encompass’d round by those celestial charms,
With which he fills th’ immortal Juno’s arms…
— Ovid, Metamorphoses (Tr. Garth, Dryden, et al.)
footfall
cf. Photograph by Shane Rounce (detail) via Unsplash and CGI by pixel shox
footfall
i stepped back into time
waded into the same river twice
you know, nick had some really good advice for gatsby
it’s easy to get lost
romance glancer
true love chancer
happiness chaser
gone again spacer
— J.S.
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?…
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare…
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new…
— Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
“Flying High Again” Randy Rhoads Guitar Track
storm on saturn
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Polaroid by Andrei Tarkovsky
I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wish’d-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw in gradual vision through my tears
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years—
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ‘ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
‘Guess now who holds thee?’— ‘Death,’ I said. But there
The silver answer rang— ‘Not Death, but Love.’
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese: i
