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Patriotism

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:28:06 GMT

The village was in tatters, smoking before it spoke,
shrapnel in a lung, a toothache in a guilty mouth.

There's something in the back of my mind I'd like
to remember, rubble there and a shovel for digging.

We stood in the deep muck for years. I wrote
love notes to nurse him back to health. If he dreamed

origami cranes I kept folding this paper inward
and inward until it bloomed and found velocity.

To get inside the earth's black center, I must have tools.
I must be alert and willful. I sat on the ground

to get down deeper, below kneeling, below bowing
and scramble, and boulder. And when you get that low,

you can mount the cry, the zero. What happened
in the marriage between the heart and its territory?

The tools were man-made, the tools worked slowly with labor.
The work was not without toil. When I found him there

face up, I put my mouth to his mouth, exhaled
for many years, my tongue waving like a flag.

Perdre

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 06:44:56 GMT

Leave me here
amidst the underworld
of pickaxes. Anvils. Work
horses and sawdust.

The afternoon light
was the texture of language—

dust before a death.

I want to release
memory. Pull this torture
away from its own
handle

and watch its heft fall
like a feather striking
a body.

Don't let me
remember my son every time
a hawk's shadow moves
over the earth.

I can't forget the edge
of a wing pressed
into being,

a ghost of beeswax
glazing my old thumb.

The last time I observed light
was remarkable enough
to kill me.

I remember the soar
of his laughter
as he took off.

Epithalamium

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:55:26 GMT

Night creaked about them like a game of chairs;
They looked for safety and again and again
Clung to the eroding island of each other.

Pale blue, their shipwreck eyes beseeched us
Like eyes of Christian martyrs at the circus—
Still, no one wanted to talk to the newlyweds.

Abraham Lincoln’s Favorite Poem

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:28:34 GMT

On Feb. 20, 1862, 150 years ago, young William Wallace Lincoln, third son of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary, died. He was just 11 years old and the likely cause was typhoid fever. You have to wonder if the president in his grief that day turned to his favorite poem for solace, a poem he had always loved but didn’t know the author of at the time. It’s called “Mortality.”

John Miller, director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College, tells the story of Lincoln’s love for the verse in a recent article in Wall Street Journal.

“Lincoln was a lifelong fan of poetry,” Miller told Robin Young. “He liked Robert Burns, he liked Lord Byron. He had good taste in poetry. This was his favorite poem. He first encountered it when he was in his 20s. It was given to him by a friend in Illinois. It was probably printed anonymously in newspaper. He loved it he memorized it and he would perform it, but he didn’t know the author of it until just before he died.”

It turns out the author of “Mortality” was the Scottish poet William Knox, and it’s unrelentingly about death, how it comes to us all. And something Lincoln has seen plenty of. His mother died when he was a boy. His sister died when he was a teenager. The young girl he loved and wanted to marry, Ann Rutledge, died when he was in his 20s. I remember the author Joshua Shenk telling us a few years ago that after Ann died, Lincoln could not bear to see rain fall on her grave.

“And of course he was the president, and during the Civil War hundreds of thousands of young men died on battlefields, so he was surrounded by death,” Miller said. “He thought about it a lot.”

Lincoln recited the 56 lines of “Mortality” so many times that people thought he had written it. Finally late in the Civil War, a listener recognized it, told the president who the author was, and sent him a copy of the collected works of William Knox.

Miller says there’s a story that’s been passed down that Lincoln performed the poem a final time hours before he was shot on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater. “The evidence for this is not good,” Miller said, “but it’s interesting to think that it might be true.”

Poem of the week: The Blacksmiths

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:44:00 GMT

This week's marvellously cacophonous poem, usually known as "The Blacksmiths," was written some time around the middle of the 15th century. As shown by William Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman, the Old English alliterative tradition had begun, earlier in that century, to enjoy a revival. Was there a nationalist literary movement afoot?

Alliterative metre does not preclude lyricism and grace, and its sounds are not often as relentlessly percussive as here. The anonymous portrayer of the "Smoke-blackened smiths" has seized an opportunity to use alliteration at its palate-cracking best to mimic the sound-scape of a busy forge. In fact, Anon adds further sound effects to ensure we hear the huff-puffing bellows, the hammering and crashing of steel against steel. This is very skilfully done. Notice how, when "Lus, bus" changes by a vowel to "Las, das", the clashing actually seems to get louder and harsher.

Besides "the din of here dintes" ("the din of their blows"), resounding throughout the poem, the writer conjures the noisiness of the smiths themselves: they yell for more coal ("Col! Col!"); they spit, gnaw, gnash, groan and "spellen many spelles." RT Davies, the editor of Mediaeval English Lyrics, the anthology where I first discovered this poem, translates "spellen many spelles" as "tell many tales" – which is plausible. But other translations give "reel off many charms" and that's an attractive reading, too, because blacksmiths have traditionally been associated with magic. Even in the Middle Ages they were held in awe for their control of fire and their ability to bend metal. So the poet may be tempering the enormous realism of his/her description with a little bit of folklore about magic powers. Similarly, "kongons" – translated by Davies as "changelings" – who are either "snub-nosed" or "crooked" ("cammede") is suggestive of the myths about the first blacksmiths. A looser translation, nicely in the alliterative spirit, offers "hunched hobgoblins".

Davies is surely right when he says that the poet must be writing from first-hand experience. Perhaps he worked as a farrier. Or perhaps Anon was the wife of a blacksmith, or someone unluckily living next door to a smithy. The poet is a brilliant journalist, giving us both the atmosphere and the close-up detail. He/she knows the aprons are made of bull-hide, and the smiths' legs are protected against flying sparks, and has clearly witnessed the complicated iron-working by the master-smith described in lines 17 and 18 – where a change of rhythm and a longer line contribute to our sense of the finer motor skills involved. Another lively quality is the personal feeling expressed. Those imprecations may be half-humorous, but there's no doubt of the underlying wrath of "Christ, give them sorwe!" These smiths are devilishly annoying, especially when they work at night.

The poster on another forum who described the author as a "15th-century Victor Meldrew" makes a good point. Like the grumpy protagonist of the popular British sitcom, One Foot in the Grave, the poet may be exaggerating commonly held sentiments, and perhaps at the time would have qualified as "the people's champion" against the irritants of modern life.

"The Blacksmiths" is a one-off. Love-lyrics, ballads, sacred poems are common at the period, but not this sort of realistic evocation of the chores of daily life. It shows, I think, the hand of a skilled literary artist. Chanted aloud, it must have won sympathy and laughter from the audience – perhaps an audience including blacksmiths?

The poem comes from the BM Arundel collection. Davies has modernised the spelling to a judicious extent, so that, with some glosses, the poem can be understood without too much brain-bursting. It's best read aloud, remembering that the "e" at the end of a word would have usually been sounded.

The Blacksmiths

Swarte-smeked smethes, smattered with smoke,
Drive me to deth with den of here dintes:
Swich nois on nightes ne herd men never,
What knavene cry and clattering of knockes!
The cammede kongons cryen after 'Col! Col!'
And blowen here bellewes that all here brain brestes.
'Huf, puf,' saith that on, 'Haf, paf,' that other.
They spitten and sprawlen and spellen many spelles,
They gnawen and gnacchen, they groan togedire,
And holden hem hote with here hard hamers.
Of a bole hide ben here barm-felles,
Here shankes ben shackeled for the fere-flunderes.
Hevy hameres they han that hard ben handled,
Stark strokes they striken on a steled stock.
'Lus, bus, las, das,' rowten by rowe.
Swiche dolful a dreme the Devil it todrive!
The maistre longeth a litil and lasheth a lesse,
Twineth hem twein and toucheth a treble.
'Tik, tak, hic, hac, tiket, taket, tik, tak,
Lus, bus, las, das.' Swich lif they leden,
Alle clothemeres, Christ hem give sorwe!
May no man for brenwateres on night han his rest.

Glossary

Dintes – blows
Knavene – workmen, helpers
Cammede kongons - snub-nosed, or crooked, changelings
"That all here brain brestes" – fit to burst their brains
Spellen many spelles – tell many tales?
"Holden he hote" – keep themselves hot
Bole hide – bull's hide
Ben – are
Barm-felles - aprons
Shakeled for – protected from
Fere-flunderes – literally "fire-finders"
A kenning "sparks"
Steled stock – steel anvil
Rowten by row – (they) crash in turn
"Swich dolful a dreme the Devil it todrive – May the Devil put an end to such a miserable vision (Davies has "so miserable a racket" )
Longeth – lengthen (a piece of iron)
Lasheth a lesse – hammers a smaller piece
Toucheth a treble – strikes a treble note?
Alle clothemeres – all who clothes horses (mares) in iron armour
"May no man for brenwateres no night han his rest" – no man can sleep at night for (the noise of ) the smiths burning water.
Another great kenning: smiths are dubbed "burnwaters" because they dip hot metal in water.

“The Assumption,” by Bryan D. Dietrich (WordFarm, 84 Pages, $15

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:06:08 GMT

In spite of the title, these are not religious poems. ... Or are they? Though Dietrich doesn’t use the word “Assumption” to mean clearly the taking into heaven of the Virgin Mary, he does seem to have in mind the taking-it-for-granted that Something above us exists.

Some of the lines in these 57 poems suggest that the Something may be God. But Dietrich, a professor at Newman University, comes closer to identifying some heedless power, as in the shivery fifth poem of the section called “The Astronomer,” which asks us to imagine an “interstellar intelligence / of protoplasmic cloud ... a casteless, chlorophyllic civilization.” Having imagined that, the poet says, “Now try to imagine such species care, or give a techno-damn.”

Well, Dietrich does care, at least in this collection. That — the intensity of his questioning, his imagining — is what gives the poems the power to keep a reader butting through the tangles of recondite allusions to monsters, myths, current events, wars and philosophies, not to mention the syntax that can be as jungly as this, referring to our inevitable lack of knowledge about unseen things: “that great gaping lack smacks us with its loss / of being loss, becomes a presence, lung / for those who cannot breathe, but wholly, space.”

In spite of the modern-plus effects these poems make, their forms are traditional. All but the last two poems are sonnets of the standard 14 lines, though the lines are of irregular length and meter. The poems within each section are connected to each other tail-in-mouth. They even rhyme, mostly.

The modernness comes in good part from Dietrich’s snatching of sounds and images like grains from whatever cosmic dust clouds come screaming past his head. He can read, as a result, like a parody of Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Each rock-pocked rockpile robots maneuver, / each rocket-picked planetary pocket emptied of ‘sin,’ / ceases to astound with silence.”

The final poem in the collection, not a sonnet, has the narrator as a grade-school student discovering, and being horrified by, a book saying the universe must end. “Burn it, hide it,” he tells his teacher.

And the 56th and last of the sonnets, in the section called “The Believer,” ends with something like relief after the groping, often brilliant turmoil of most of the book. “When / those great glowing prayer wheels ... / come suckling for me like all God’s children / drawn down from the deep,” it says, “I will go, cold, without question, / even trusting. It’s a fusty blade, religion.” Then, as if the poet had paused to reflect that this final sonnet should convey an extra bit of assurance, he adds a 15th line, “We all must greet it, fleshless, in the end.”

Bush poet pens rhyme for Bombing

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:58:47 GMT

Waldo the bush poet has released a new work called The Bombing of Darwin 19th February 1942 to remember the events that unfolded during the attack. The poem reads in part: "The bombs rained down on Darwin, what a sad and sorry day. "Prayers said for those who perished, what a shocking price to pay. "The war had reached our golden shores and some northern country towns. "While the people south of the Brisbane line thought they were safe and sound."

Victorian poets in love: Barrett and Browning letters go online

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:19:43 GMT

Forget the chocolates this Valentine’s Day. Candles? Dinner? Clever repartee? That’s all so, well, 20th century. For a truly 21st century celebration of love, you have to go back to the 19th -- and the Web has supplied a virtual time machine.

Starting Tuesday, anyone with a computer, tablet or the right mobile telephone can shift the paradigm with just a click -- and become involved in a passion for language that spilled over into an enduring, even legendary, Victorian love. It was a love that overcame chronic illness, a prohibition on marriage and disinheritance.

“I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” poet Robert Browning wrote to his future wife. “How Do I Love Thee? Let me count the ways,” Elizabeth Barrett wrote in her most famous poem, after meeting the man who would be her husband.

Now, through the marvels of technology, the couple’s 573 love letters are available online so that anyone can see them -- in a semblance of what they were. The letters are being offered via a digital collaboration between Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Baylor University in Texas, home of the world’s largest collection of material related to the couple.

Don’t expect any literary revelation -- the couple's poetry has been long available and oft published. But if the substance is not new, the format certainly is, giving fans a chance to see the letters as they were written, faded ink and all.

The story isn’t too shabby either, with the poets seeming to duel in their efforts to describe the other with terms more glowing, to adorn the other’s verse and life with compliments more graceful.

“You are too perfect, too overcomingly good & tender -- dearest you are, & I have no words with which to answer you,” Barrett wrote to Browning in 1846, months before the couple were secretly married. Months later, Browning wrote: “Write to me one word more -- depend on me.”She did.

Poetry journal celebrates its tenth anniversary with new collection

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:32:36 GMT

It was in March 2002 that Les Merton – firm in his belief that Cornwall should have its own poetry magazine – produced the first issue of Poetry Cornwall/Bardhonyeth Kernow. It was an act of faith if ever there was one. Published without funding of any kind, the initial response from subscribers and poets was so positive, it encouraged him to continue.

"But it wasn't all fair weather sailing," said Les. "In the beginning I received some very nasty anonymous letters from someone who didn't agree with my policies. I found this very hurtful and I understood then what it must be like to receive hate mail."

That was not be the worst of his editorial problems. On St Piran's Day of all days – March 5, 2005 – Les lost all his possessions, among them everything relating to Poetry Cornwall/Bardhonyeth Kernow in a fire at his Redruth home. An event which would have put paid to most poetry magazines, he somehow managed to get the pending issue into print.

"Working from a hostel, as I was homeless, I managed to trace most subscribers and to get the issue out," he said. "It was at this time that I received the only funding the magazine ever received. South West Arts gave me £2,000 for a new computer and to help get everything back to normal."

Undeterred by misadventure, in that same year he organised a Poetry Cornwall festival, as a fund-raiser for the Campaign for a Cornish Assembly. A three-day event which was a great success, since then he has published any number of well-received poetry collections, and as part of the tenth anniversary celebrations of Poetry Cornwall/ Bardhonyeth Kernow he is planning a "perfect bound anthology" containing all the poems relating to Cornwall.

Full details of this are in the current issue, Number 33, of Poetry Cornwall/Bardhonyeth Kernow. It contains contributions by well over 70 poets, among them three with work in two languages. Published by Redruth-based Palores Publications, printed in Camborne by ImageSet and edited by Les Merton, Poetry Cornwall/Bardhonyeth Kernow Issue 33, is priced £4.50.

Makoni publishes “healing” poems

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:14:54 GMT

Entitled “A woman, Once A Girl - Breaking Silence”, the book comes after women and girls asked the activist to share her inspirational story.

“I started writing poetry when I was in Grade 7, as a way to take out the pain I had about my mother,” she said. Her mother died after heavy beatings by her husband.

“It was my own way of mourning the woman who was close to my heart. It was also a musical way of keeping myself going. Then when I started my work for girls, I used poetry as therapy and to keep me strong. Each time a girl came seriously traumatised by rape I helped her, but in turn I had so much pain that I had to nurse myself. Then every trace of pain was described in my words.”

She said that in 1999 her poems started “speaking” to her about the world of girls, her work and what she wanted to get out of it.

“My poems were recited by girls when they graduated. My poems also spoke to me when some people discouraged me and I used them to soothe myself when the work was tough. I found in them a way to get rid of my anger and stress,” says Makoni, now in the UK.

She also used poems to speak to people about things they should do in the world, like protecting children, helping them with education and making them “see life as something to be lived”.

“I wrote about death and loss. Everything became a solution in my poems. I did not want to live with questions, so every poem gives a journey I took since I was young until now... I was inspired by many literature books I read. William Shakespeare touched my heart, his poetic drama was something that connected me to a set of Shona prose poems. I found my contrast style to be what I wanted to use ...where I compare that which is and another which is not.

“I have written over 500 Shona and English poems since I was in grade 7, but I chose only 36 best of my unpublished poems and left them in simple Zimbabwean English -a mixture which slightly tends to be Shonglish.”

Makoni’s book was published by Trafford, but is available at Amazon and other online shops. It will also be available in Zimbabwe by end of March.

Makoni is a global award winner and CNN hero for protecting the powerless. She is the Founder of Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe and through her hard work, the organisation has grown from classroom to global level.