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Here are three poems mourning fallen trees by three different English poets -- William Cowper (1731-1800), John Clare (1793-1864), and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89).
To me, the rise in concern over the environment provides an example of how poetry will come in and out of fashion depending on whether it speaks to our concerns. John Clare is a prime example -- throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, natural description wasn't what people considered "poetry." Instead, poetry depended on the imagination and the singular genius. But then, when the environmental movement takes hold, all of a sudden, John Clare says something that speaks to us. I wouldn't say that poetry is timeless, because a single poem or poet will never speak to all people at all times, but it's nice how a certain poet will come back into vogue depending on the concerns of a generation or two. All of a sudden, we have beautiful, exquisite poetry that we can use as protest poetry! Yay!
The Poplar Field -- William Cowper
The poplars are fell'd! farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade!
The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charm'd me before
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.
My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.
The change both my heart and my fancy employs,
I reflect on the frailty of man and his joys;
Short-lived as we are, yet our pleasures, we see,
Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we.The Fallen Elm -- John Clare
Old elm, that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many coloured shade
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made--
While darkness came as it would strangle light
With the black tempest of a winter night
That rocked thee like a cradle in thy root--
How did I love to hear the winds upbraid
Thy strength without--while all within was mute.
It seasoned comfort to our hearts' desire,
We felt thy kind protection like a friend
And edged our chairs up closer to the fire,
Enjoying comfort that was never penned.
Old favourite tree, thou'st seen time's changes lower,
Though change till now did never injure thee;
For time beheld thee as her sacred dower
And nature claimed thee her domestic tree.
Storms came and shook thee many a weary hour,
Yet stedfast to thy home thy roots have been;
Summers of thirst parched round thy homely bower
Till earth grew iron--still thy leaves were green.
The children sought thee in thy summer shade
And made their playhouse rings of stick and stone;
The mavis sang and felt himself alone
While in thy leaves his early nest was made.
And I did feel his happiness mine own,
Nought heeding that our friendship was betrayed,
Friend not inanimate--though stocks and stones
There are, and many formed of flesh and bones.
Thou owned a language by which hearts are stirred
Deeper than by a feeling clothed in word,
And speakest now what's known of every tongue,
Language of pity and the force of wrong.
What cant assumes, what hypocrites will dare,
Speaks home to truth and shows it what they are.
I see a picture which thy fate displays
And learn a lesson from thy destiny;
Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways--
So thy old shadow must a tyrant be.
Tnou'st heard the knave, abusing those in power,
Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free;
Thou'st sheltered hypocrites in many a shower,
That when in power would never shelter thee.
Thou'st heard the knave supply his canting powers
With wrong's illusions when he wanted friends;
That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers
And when clouds vanished made thy shade amends--
With axe at root he felled thee to the ground
And barked of freedom--O I hate the sound
Time hears its visions speak,--and age sublime
Hath made thee a disciple unto time.
--It grows the cant term of enslaving tools
To wrong another by the name of right;
Thus came enclosure--ruin was its guide,
But freedom's cottage soon was thrust aside
And workhouse prisons raised upon the site.
Een nature's dwellings far away from men,
The common heath, became the spoiler's prey;
The rabbit had not where to make his den
And labour's only cow was drove away.
No matter--wrong was right and right was wrong,
And freedom's bawl was sanction to the song.
--Such was thy ruin, music-making elm;
The right of freedom was to injure thine:
As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm
In freedom's name the little that is mine.
And there are knaves that brawl for better laws
And cant of tyranny in stronger power
Who glut their vile unsatiated maws
And freedom's birthright from the weak devour.Binsey Poplars -- Gerard Manley Hopkins
felled 1879
MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
All texts are taken from public domain sources on the internet, hence the punctuation of Clare.
I was reading this analysis today of a student work that was exploring that well-known poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke. What surprised me is that the writer was using the piece to argue about child abuse. I never saw that interpretation in the poem at all. Here is the poem:
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
--Roethke
To me, this poem is simply about a young boy being swept up in his father's drunken exuberance. There may or may not be abuse in this relationship, but I certainly don't see any indication of that in this poem. It seems to be that the narrator is remembering back to when he was a boy and how his father would come home drunk, and they'd dance around the kitchen. But it feels like a sweet memory, if one that is slightly tinged with fear, perhaps.
Yet the writer the student refers to insists that there are all these indications of abuse: the mother's frowning face, the face scraping the buckle, the hand holding the boy's wrist.
Anyway, the last time I spent any time thinking about this poem was about 15 years ago, but I'm just curious if this "abuse" angle is some standard interpretation of the piece nowadays in academia...it'd be a shame if so since I always found this to be a lovely little piece.
i bought myself a book of poetry. "outlaw poetry". the outlaw bible of american poetry.
1. Sushi is a rare and wonderful thing; I love it.
2. Once painted a Japanese-style portrait of Wen's cat, Zeeb (notreallyahabit tho).
3. Alice Notley is my favorite poet, however Ken Mikolowski is up there too...
4. My sister and I visited Barcelona in 2000 and smoked some great hash.
5. Long term memory fantastic; short term memory not so much (see #4).
6. My favorite coffeeshop is Cafe Zola.
7. Gauloises when I lived in Munich, American Spirits in the States.
8. I write poetry almost every day, baring my breasts so you'll bare yours...
9. Triangles.
10. Other poets.
"I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind."
--from the poem "PLANETARIUM"
Phonologically driven generative poetry, explored as a response to the standard orthographically driven electronic poetry (and its precursors: Oulipo, Dada).
A genetic algorithm operates on "Poemes" made up of lines. The goal for this instance is to maximize the consonance and assonance of adjacent consonants and vowels, respectively. A new poem-population is created every 200 generations.
The visualization shows the movement of the poem over time in an approximate consonant space (blue) and vowel space (orange).
English language information drawn from the Moby Project. Built with Processing in
Eclipse. For more information about classification of speech sounds,
one place to start is the Wikipedia article on the International
Phonetic Alphabet.
via Kyle McDonald
More of his work can be found here.
Sanity
If sanity is contagious,
and sane is what we are,
God help us all!
The main site for Verbal Penetrations is now open. An urban poetry lounge
Please join and upload your videos, photos and poetry, each month we will feature a different poet and have contests.
Verbal Penetration
www.verbalpenetrations.ning.com
Your Host:Unknown Silence
WET LINES
By: Yeslin "Unknown Silence" Escobar
Lips drink from warm rivers ....
Breath confesses the secrets of a mingling ....
White, wet, lines drip off Her Earth
and from the crack of Her 'Damn' ....
Honey-milk of Her skin washing over
the buttery cinnamon of my yearnings—
flooding my pores—
swallowing my poetry—
drowning my poetry
into the gorgeous dark of Her delicious breathlessness ....
Hot embers in fingertips unfurl wings—
receive the pheonix of me ....
Prostrated prayers echo
out of the holy temples of Her spread-openness—
inviting 'US-moments' ....
Edible smells whisper "you can pray here" ....
Embrace my confession—
new scriptures.
Copyright2 March 2008Unknown Silence
Verbal Penetrations
http://verbalpenetrations.ning.com
LEAVE PAW PRINTS
By: Yeslln "Unknown Silence" Escobar
Split me open ....
Rip me to pieces with your lion hunger —
swallow my scatteredness
and give me re-membering through your roar ....
Leave paw prints,
so I can follow them into your feast cavern —
feed me to the pride —
invite others —
allow me to become the hunt.
Scorch me with sun ....
Melt my snow-owl
and drink my winter ....
Tear off my wings
and sculpt me new ones
from the gold-pain of your martyrs ....
Stalk my flight
with your skyness —
tame the bird-giant inside me —
teach me to fly you again,
so I can land on heart-mountains,
perch on soul branches,
and listen with eyes and spirit.
copyright4 March 2008Unknown Silence
Verbal Penetrations
http://verbalpenetrations.ning.com
