Poem of the Day: Ezra Pound

In a Station of the Metro 

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; 
Petals on a wet, black bough. 

--Ezra Pound

"What makes that a poem?" a student of mine once asked. "It's just a sentence broken up into two parts." 

Not a bad question, actually, when you learn that Pound originally had it printed like this: 

The apparition      of these faces       in the crowd

Petals      on a wet, black       bough

He wanted to emphasize the "ideogrammic" quality of the poem, the fact that it was inspired, as so much of his early verse was, by Chinese poetry. And it is sort of like a haiku by someone who can't count. 

So the next time I taught the poem, without telling the class who wrote it, I put it on the board alongside this: 

At a Subway Stop 

The specter of these visages in the throng; 
Blossoms on a damp, dark branch. 

And I asked the class which poem they liked better and why. I hoped they'd like Pound's version better, so we could talk about word choice and images and so on. And in fact most of them did. But there were some surprising votes for my paraphrase, and some interesting reasons. 

• In a Station of the Metro / At a Subway Stop -- Some of them didn't know that the Metro is the Paris subway, of course. So the chief reason for preferring my title was that it was clearer. 
• apparition / specter -- More of them knew what specter meant than apparition, which was a plus in its favor. And specter was "creepier." Those who did know what apparition meant argued that it was better because it implied something appearing suddenly, like people coming out of a subway, and there wasn't anything really creepy about flower petals on a limb. 
• faces / visages -- Those who preferred visages said it was a "fancier" (i.e., more "poetic") word, while faces was "sorta ordinary." 
• crowd / throng -- Throng was judged more poetic, too. Somebody said it gave a sense of movement, of thrusting forward, which crowd didn't.  
• Petals / Blossoms -- Someone said that blossoms were clusters of petals, which gave you more of a sense of people all crowded together. 
• wet, black / damp, dark -- The defenders of damp said that if the limb was really wet the petals would wash off. And there were those who liked the alliteration of damp and dark and the way the vowel sound of damp was echoed in branch.
• bough / branch -- Somebody said that bough was a nursery-rhyme word ("When the bough breaks") that nobody uses anymore, but they weren't sure whether that made it better than branch. 

Well, there's no accounting for tastes.    

Poem of the Day: Alexander Pope

From The Dunciad 

(Book I, lines 55-78) 
Here she beholds the Chaos dark and deep, 
Where nameless Somethings in their causes sleep, 
'Till genial Jacob, or a warm Third day, 
Call forth each mass, a Poem, or a Play: 
How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie, 
How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry, 
Maggots half-form'd in rhyme exactly meet, 
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet. 
Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes, 
And ductile dulness new meanders takes; 
There motley Images her fancy strike, 
Figures ill pair'd, and Similies unlike. 
She sees a Mob of Metaphors advance, 
Pleas'd with the madness of the mazy dance: 
How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; 
How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race; 
How Time himself stands still at her command, 
Realms shift their place, and Ocean turns to land. 
Here gay Description Ægypt glads with show'rs, 
Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flow'rs; 
Glitt'ring with ice here hoary hills are seen, 
There painted vallies of eternal green, 
In cold December fragrant chaplets blow, 
And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

(Book IV, lines 397-457) 
Then thick as Locusts black'ning all the ground, 
A tribe, with weeds and shells fantastic crown'd, 
Each with some wond'rous gift approached the Pow'r, 
A Nest, a Toad, a Fungus, or a Flow'r, 
But far the foremost, two, with earnest zeal, 
And aspect ardent to the Throne appeal. 
   The first thus open'd: "Hear thy suppliant's call, 
Great Queen, and common Mother of us all! 
Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this Flow'r, 
Suckled, and chear'd, with air, and sun, and show'r, 
Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, 
Bright with the gilded button tipt its head, 
Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it CAROLINE: 
Each Maid cry'd, charming! and each Youth, divine! 
Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays, 
Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze? 
Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline: 
No Maid cries, charming! and no Youth, divine! 
And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust 
Lay'd the gay daughter of the Spring in dust. 
Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades 
Dismiss my soul, where no Carnation fades." 
   He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mein, 
Th' Accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen. 
   "Of all th' enameled race, whose silv'ry wing 
Waves to the tepid Zephyrs of the spring, 
Or swims along the fluid atmosphere, 
Once brightest shin'd this child of Heat and Air. 
I saw, and started from its vernal bow'r 
The rising game, and chac'd from flow'r to flow'r. 
It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain; 
It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again. 
At last it fix'd, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd, 
And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seiz'd: 
Rose or Carnation was below my care;
I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere. 
I tell the naked fact without disguise, 
And, to excuse it, need but shew the prize; 
Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye, 
Fair ev'n in death! this peerless Butterfly." 
   "My sons! (she answer'd) both have done your parts: 
Life happy both, and long promote our arts.
But hear a Mother, when she recommends 
To your fraternal care, our sleeping friends. 
The common Soul, of Heav'n's more frugal make, 
Serves but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake: 
A drowsy Watchman, that just gives a knock, 
And breaks our rest, to tell us what's a clock. 
Yet by some object ev'ry brain is stirr'd; 
The dull may waken to a Humming-bird; 
The most recluse, discreetly open'd find 
Congenial matter in the Cockle-kind; 
The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss, 
May wander in a wilderness of Moss; 
The head that turns at super-lunar things, 
Poiz'd with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings. 
   "O! would the Sons of Men once think their Eyes 
And Reason giv'n them but to study Flies? 
See Nature in some partial narrow shape, 
And let the Author of the Whole escape: 
Learn but to trifle; or, who most observe, 
To wonder at their Maker, not to serve."

(Book IV, lines 627-656) 
   In vain, in vain, -- the all-composing Hour 
Resistless falls: The Muse obeys the Pow'r. 
She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold 
Of Night Primæval, and of Chaos old! 
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, 
And all its varying Rain-bows die away. 
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, 
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. 
As one by one, at dread Medea's srain, 
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain; 
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest, 
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; 
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might, 
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night. 
See skulking Truth to her old Cavern fled, 
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head! 
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before, 
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. 
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, 
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense! 
See Mystery to Mathematics fly! 
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. 
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires, 
And unawares Morality expires. 
Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine; 
Not human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine! 
Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd; 
Light dies before thy uncreating word; 
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; 
And Universal Darkness buries All. 

--Alexander Pope 

If Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton are the Big Three of English poetry, then Alexander Pope is a strong contender for fourth place. Not that I was ever able to convince college students of that when I was teaching them. And you may be skeptical, too, if all the Pope you ever read was in a survey course, and that consisted of The Rape of the Lock and maybe some excerpts from An Essay on Criticism and Essay on Man. Brilliant as they are, they don't suggest the full range of Pope's artistry. 

I think one of the chief stumbling blocks to an appreciation of Pope may be the heroic couplet. Pope wrote almost exclusively in this verse form, and if you're not attuned to its subtleties, it may sound to you like a typewriter (if you're old enough to have heard one of those): tappa tappa tappa tappa tappa ding! tappa tappa tappa tappa tappa ding! You have to break yourself of the habit of pouncing on the end rhymes and slow down and listen to the musical effects in the middle of the verse. 

And you have to learn to read footnotes: Pope is intensely allusive, not only to the classical literature of which most of us today are ignorant, but also to historical events and personages of his day. This is especially true in his satiric poems, which also happen to be his greatest ones. The Dunciad is a magnificent assault on all that Pope happened to think was wrong in the arts and sciences of his day: sloppy writing, craven fawning to and flattery of patrons, catering to the lowest common denominator in taste, and in the sciences especially, an emphasis on specialization without regard to the big picture. That's the point of the middle one of the selections reprinted above. 

Like Swift, who satirizes the same thing in Gulliver's Travels, Pope lampooned what he called "virtuosi" -- people who collected butterflies and bred new species of flowers. Pope and Swift's main target was the Royal Society, which they saw (mistakenly for the most part) as a collection of crackpots. The point of the reference to steering "on Wilkins' wings" above, is that John Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society, was fascinated by the possibility of traveling to the moon. We recognize today that specialization is necessary to the advancement of science, and Wilkins may be hailed as a pioneer rather than a lunatic (though in fact he may have been some of the latter) and the Royal Society as a beacon of enlightenment (and the Enlightenment). But Pope feared that scientists would lose sight of the higher aim of understanding God's creation. "The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss, / May wander in a wilderness of Moss" is a reference to specialists in the study of mosses. 


And the mind, lost in the footnotes to Pope, may lose sight of the rich sonorities of his verse, the dazzling skill with which he varies the meter of his iambic pentameter couplets. The great conclusion to The Dunciad, in which Dulness triumphs, is as good as anything in Milton, I think. And here, and in some of his Moral Essays, we see why Pope is valuable: He's a defender of good sense, of reason, of truth. Whenever I read him, I always wish he were around to turn his satire on the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

What I'm Reading

L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop)
By Émile Zola 
Translated by Robin Buss 

I had never read any Zola, so I figured it was about time, and I've had this paperback sitting on my shelves for several years. Unfortunately, it took me several months to get through it, not because it's a difficult read but because I decided to launch my Proust Project and because I had a few review assignments that intervened. Not much time for other reading. 

Actually, it was fascinating to read Zola and Proust together. Proust is so internal, Zola so exterior. In fact, I wouldn't call L'Assommoir a novel so much as a docudrama. Zola's great strength is as a reporter. True, he creates good characters, but in this novel at any rate he's not so strong on plot -- it's pretty much the rise (not very high) and fall of a woman whose chief enemies are some ne'er-do-well men and their (and her) weakness for alcohol. That's why the title is L'Assommoir, which translator Robin Buss explains was "a slang word for a working-class bar, derived from the word assommer, 'to bludgeon, to stun' (referring to the effects of cheap spirits on the consumer)." His translation of the title, "The Dram Shop," isn't much help to the contemporary reader, who has probably never heard the phrase. If I were translating it, I might call it "The Gin Joint," or maybe "The Dive." (I discovered, when I went to find a link on Amazon, that Penguin Classics has reissued what seems to be the same translation under the title The Drinking Den. L'Assommoir has also been published as Gervaise, which should have been its title to start with. She, more than the "drinking den" itself, is the focal point of the novel. It was also filmed as Gervaise in 1956 under the direction of René Clement; Maria Schell played Gervaise.)

But as I said, Zola is a great reporter. His depictions of the working-class side of mid-19th-century Paris are fascinating: He takes us inside foundries and bars and laundries and shops with a meticulous eye for detail. Here's a bit from a  scene where Gervaise, the novel's central character, goes to wash her clothes: 

The wash-house was a vast shed with a flat roof, supported by visible beams on cast-iron pillars and enclosed by wide clear-glass windows, which admitted the pale daylight so that it could pass through the hot steam that hung like a milky mist. ... A heavy dampness rained down, laden with the smell of soap -- a moist, insipid, persistent smell, in which, from time to time, stronger whiffs of bleach would dominate. Along the washing-boards that lined both sides of the central aisle were rows of women, their arms naked to the shoulders, their necks bare and their skirts tucked in to reveal coloured stockings and heavy, laced-up shoes. They were beating fiercely, laughing, throwing their heads back to shout something through the din or leaning forward into their tubs, foul-mouthed, brutish, ungainly, soaked through, their flesh reddened and steaming. Around and underneath them, a great stream coursed by, coming from buckets of hot water carried along and tipped out in a single movement, or else from open taps of cold water pissing down, ... all running off in rivulets across the sloping stone floor from the ponds in which their feet paddled. And, in the midst of the cries, the rhythmical beating noises and the murmurous sound of rain -- the tempestuous clamour deadened by the damp roof -- the steam-engine, over to the right, completely whitened by a fine dew, panted and snored away unceasingly, its flywheel shivering and dancing, seeming to regulate this monstrous din.

It's all there, sights, sounds and smells. And this is only one of many such passages that give the feeling of life in a particular time and place. There's a wonderful description of a working-class outing in the Louvre, gawking at the works of art. And there are scenes of the most abject misery, including a harrowing account of a man in the throes of delirium tremens.

To return to Zola and Proust, the latter is the great master of portraying the middle classes and the aristocracy, while Zola's forte is the down-and-out class. Between the two you can probably get a pretty good sense of life in 19th-century France. There's nobody in English I can compare Zola to: L'Assommoir was published in 1877, and no one then in Great Britain or the United States was writing with the same clarity and candor about the real world. 

Poem of the Day: Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Manche freilich müssen drunten sterben, 

Many, to be sure, must die down there

Wo die schweren Ruder der Schiffe streifen, 

 where the heavy oars of the ship scrape,

Andre wohnen bei dem Steuer droben, 

Others dwell above at the helm

Kennen Vogelflug und die Länder der Sterne. 

and know the flight of birds and the realms of the stars.

Manche liegen immer mit schweren Gliedern

Many lie forever with heavy limbs

Bei den Wurzeln des verworrenen Lebens,

at the roots of obscure life,

Andern sind die Stühle gerichtet 

others have chairs placed for them

Bei den Sibyllen, den Königinnen, 

with the Sibyls, the queens, 

Und da sitzen sie wie zu Hause, 

and they sit there as if at home,

Leichten Hauptes und leichter Hände. 

with light heads and light hands.

Doch ein Schatten fällt von jenen Leben 

Still, a shadow falls from those other lives

In die anderen Leben hinüber,

across these lives, 

Und die leichten sind an die schweren 

and the light and the heavy

Wie an Luft und Erde gebunden: 

are bound together as to the air and the earth: 

Ganz vergessener Völker Müdigkeiten

The weariness of quite forgotten people

Kann ich nicht abtun von meinen Lidern,

I can't shut away with my eyelids

Noch weghalten von der erschrockenen Seele

nor hold off from my horrified soul

Stummes Niederfallen ferne Sterne.

the silent fall of distant stars.

Viele Geschicke weben neben dem meinen,

Many fates are woven next to my own,

Durcheinander spielt sie alle das Dasein,

existence mixes them all up together,

Und mein Teil is mehr als dieses Lebens

and my share is more than this life's

Schlanke Flamme oder schmale Leier.

slender flame or thin lyre.

--Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hofmannsthal is now probably best known to opera buffs as the librettist for Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Elektra and other opera. But he was a fine poet whose poems have a haunting melancholy about them, a kind of Austrian Weltschmerz. Even his librettos have something of this -- if you know the Strauss operas, think of the Marschallin's meditation on time and aging, Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding, and Ariadne's invocation of death, Es gibt ein Reich.  

Poem of the Day: Paul Verlaine

Art poétique 

De la musique avant toute chose, 

Music before everything else,

Et pour cela préfère l'Impair 

and for that matter, prefer the odd,

Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air, 

more undefined and more soluble in the air,

Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.

with nothing in it that's heavy or static.

Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point 

And you must never set out

Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise; 

to choose your words without some imprecision;

Rien de plus cher que le chanson grise 

there's nothing dearer than a song that's cloudy,

Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint.

in which the indistinct and the precise are joined.

C'est de beaux yeux derrière des voiles, 

It's beautiful eyes behind veils;

C'est le grand jour tremblant de midi,

it's broad daylight trembling at noon;

C'est par un ciel d'automne attiédi, 

it's, cooled by an autumn sky,

Le bleu fouillis des claires étoiles!

the blue jumble of bright stars!

Car nous voulons la Nuance encor,

For we want nuance,

Pas la couleur, rien que la Nuance!

not color, nothing but nuance!

Oh! la nuance seule fiance 

Oh, only nuance joins together

Le rêve au rêve et la flûte au cor! 

Dream to dream and flute to horn!

Fuis du plus loin la Pointe assassine, 

Stay far away from the murderous barb, 

L'Esprit cruel et le Rire impur, 

cruel wit and impure laughter --

Qui font pleurer les yeux de l'Azur, 

which bring tears to heaven's eyes --

Et tout cet ail de basse cuisine!

and all that other garlic of bad cuisine!

Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou! 

Take eloquence and wring its neck!

Tu feras bien, en train d'énergie, 

You'll do well, while you've got the strength, 

De rendre en peu la Rime assagie.

to make rhyme a little smarter. 

Si l'on n'y veille, elle ira jusqu'ou?

If you don't pay attention to it, where will it wind up? 

O qui dira les torts de la rime!

O who can tell the wrongs done by rhyme!

Quel enfant sourd ou quel nègre fou 

What dull child or mad Negro

Nous a forgé ce bijou d'un sou

created for us this worthless jewel

Que sonne creux et faux sous la lime?

that sounds hollow and fake when put to the test?

De la musique encore et toujours! 

Music again and forever!

Que ton vers soit la chose envolée

Let your verse be a thing that flies

Qu'on sent qui fuit d'une âme en allée

so it feels like a soul traveling

Vers d'autres cieux à d'autres amours.

to other skies and other loves.

Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure

May your verse be a fine adventure

Éparse au vent crispé du matin

scattered to the blustery morning wind 

Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym ... 

that smells of mint and thyme ... 

Et tout le reste est littérature.

Everything else is literature.

--Paul Verlaine

Traduttore, traditore.That's an Italian pun which means "translator, traitor." Nice that the joke is lost in translation, because that's the point. 

I used to want to be a professional translator, and for my senior thesis in college (I had a double major in English and German), I translated a previously untranslated (so far as my professor knew) novella by Adalbert Stifter called Die drei Schmiede ihres Schicksals. I was in trouble right from the start because of the title, which means, literally, "The Three Smiths of Their Fates." But you can't call it that because it isn't really English. I finally settled on (I think) "Three Who Forged Their Fate." Which still stinks because "forge" means "fake" as well as "create in a foundry," and I was going for the latter meaning. (It occurs to me now that the best translation might have been something like "Three Self-Made Men.")

I'm going on about this (too long) because I wanted to mix things up here a little and post some poems in languages other than English. I used to read enough French, German and Latin to pass reading examinations in those languages, so I've still got some volumes of them around. So I pulled out my old copy of The Oxford Book of French Verse and picked out this famous poetic manifesto by Verlaine figuring I'd find a good translation of it on the Web. But the translations I found were all struggling to follow Verlaine's meter and rhyme scheme. When they hit on a rhyme, they had to wrench the meaning out of shape. (O qui dira les torts de la rime! indeed.) 

Finally, I decided to do a prose translation myself, which is what you see up there, interlineated with Verlaine. It's cobbled together using some of the online translations as a cheat sheet, plus I looked up a lot of words in the invaluable Google Dictionary. I've tried not to lose much in translation, but even in prose I had to cheat -- just as with the Stifter novella, there are some phrases that just don't sound like English if you translate them literally.  Pardonnez-moi, M. Verlaine!

High Tech, Low Tech, and Dead Tech

Geoffrey K. Pullum finds an anachronism: 

Sticking a label on a manila file of household papers this morning I noticed that the instructions on the sheet of labels said "Insert opposite end into typewriter." It wasn't so much the ridiculous controllingness that made me smile (the labels had no header strip, so they were symmetrical, and it would make absolutely no difference if you used the sheet one way up rather than the other); it was the quaint old lexical item typewriter. I wonder what young people would think of that advice, if they ever read the instructions on anything (they don't, of course; they learn the operating systems of their new cellphones by intuition). A typewriter? When did I last even see one? It was like coming upon a word like "spats" or "snuffbox" or "inkwell" in a modern business context. I wonder if the wording will survive unnoticed on every sheet of labels manufactured by that company until the phrase has become a sort of dead metaphor or incomprehensible incantation.

The comments on this Language Log item are kind of fun, too.  

Poem of the Day: Marianne Moore

What Are Years?    

   What is our innocence, 
what is our guilt? All are 
   naked, none is safe. And whence 
is courage: the unanswered question, 
the resolute doubt -- 
dumbly calling, deafly listening -- that 
in misfortune, even death, 
      encourages others 
      and in its defeat, stirs 

   the soul to be strong? He 
sees deep and is glad, who 
   accedes to mortality 
and in his imprisonment rises 
upon himself as 
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be 
free and unable to be, 
      in its surrendering 
      finds its continuing. 

  So he who strongly feels, 
behaves. The very bird, 
   grown taller as he sings, steels 
his form straight up. Though he is captive, 
his mighty singing 
says, satisfaction is a lowly 
thing, how pure a thing is joy. 
      This is mortality, 
      this is eternity. 

-- Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was famous for her three-cornered hat and her love of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and if she's famous at all today, it's probably for her poem about poetry called "Poetry," which is in almost every anthology used in introduction-to-poetry courses. It's the one with the line about "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." So people were shocked when the 1967 edition of The Collected Poems of Marianne Moore was published and she had revised "Poetry" to read as follows, in its entirety: 

I, too, dislike it.

    Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in 

    it, after all, a place for the genuine.

I suspect a lot of poets would like to cut the hell out of their anthology pieces, especially if they're always being asked "What did you mean by ...?" 

I find a lot of Moore's poems a little too arch and clever, but there are three or four that I really cherish. Her poem "Peter" is one of the few poems about a cat to rival Christopher Smart's. "What Are Years?" is often read as a simple inspirational poem of the "stand up straight, wash your hands, eat your vegetables" variety. And to some extent it is just that. But there's real emotional anguish leading to the recognition that "satisfaction is a / lowly thing" that comes only to the humble. She has found in it a place for the genuine: She knows why the caged bird sings.   

Poem of the Day: John Milton

From Paradise Lost, Book IV, lines 205-318 

Beneath him with new wonder now he views
To all delight of human sense expos'd
In narrow room Nature's whole wealth, yea more,
A Heaven on Earth: for blissful Paradise
Of God the Garden was, by him in the East
Of Eden planted; Eden stretch'd her Line
From Auran Eastward to the Royal Tow'rs
Of Great Seleucia, built by Grecian Kings,
Or where the Sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telassar; in this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant Garden God ordain'd;
Out of the fertile ground he caus'd to grow
All Trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste; 
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming Ambrosial Fruit
Of vegetable Gold; and next to Life
Our Death the Tree of Knowledge grew fast by,
Knowledge of Good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a River large,
Nor chang'd his course, but through the shaggy hill
Pass'd underneath ingulft, for God had thrown
That Mountain as his Garden mould high rais'd
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous Earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh Fountain, and with many a rill
Water'd the Garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether Flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And now divided into four main Streams,
Runs diverse, wand'ring many a famous Realm
And Country hereof needs no account,
But rather to tell how, if Art could tell,
How from that Sapphire Fount the crisped Brooks,
Rolling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold,
With mazy error under pendant shades
Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flow'rs worthy of Paradise which not nice Art
In Beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plain,
Both where the morning Sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierc't shade
Imbrown'd the noontide Bow'rs: Thus was this place,
A happy rural seat of various view:
Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gums and Balm,
Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rind
Hung amiable, Hesperian Fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interpos'd,
Or palmy hillock, or the flow'ry lap
Of some irriguous Valley spread her store,
Flow'rs of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose;
Another side, umbrageous Grots and Caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling Vine
Lays forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills, disperst, or in a Lake,
That to the fringed Bank with Myrtle crown'd,
Her crystal mirror holds, unite thir streams,
The Birds thir choir apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while Universal Pan
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance
Led on th'Eternal Spring. Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gath'ring flow'rs
Herself a fairer Flow'r by gloomy Dis
Was gather'd, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet Grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and th' inspir'd
Castalian Spring might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian Isle
Girt with the River Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Lybian Jove,
Hid Amalthea and her florid Son,
Young Bacchus, from his Stepdame Rhea's eye;
Nor where Abassin Kings thir issue Guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some suppos'd
True Paradise under the Ethiop Line
By Nilus head, enclos'd with shining Rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian Garden, where the Fiend
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind
Of living Creatures new to sight and strange:
Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native Honor clad
In naked Majesty seem'd Lords of all,
And worthy seem'd, for in thir looks Divine
The image of thir glorious Maker shone,
Truth, Wisdom, Sanctitude severe and pure,
Severe, but in true filial freedom plac't;
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as thir sex not equal seem'd;
For contemplation hee and valor form'd,
For softeness shee and sweet attractive Grace,
Hee for God only, shee for God in him:
His fair large Front and eye sublime declar'd
Absolute rule; and Hyacinthine Locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
Shee as a veil down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevell'd, but in wanton ringlets wav'd
As the Vine curls her tendrils, which impli'd
Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then conceal'd,
Then was not guilty shame: dishonest shame
Of Nature's works, honor dishonorable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubl'd all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banisht from man's life his happiest life,
Simplicity and spotless innocence.

-- John Milton 

Milton seems to me the third greatest poet in English, after Shakespeare and Chaucer, particularly for his ability to roll like thunder in great cascades of blank verse. I read these lines aloud (well, under my breath) as I was typing them, and it made me aware once again how much mastery he had over the sound of the language, and the various tricks -- assonance, alliteration, chiasmus ("Flow'rs of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose"), oxymoron ("coy submission, modest pride"), and so on -- that he brings to his verse. 

Of course, one reason I'm aware of all these things is that my copy of Paradise Lost is heavily scribbled over with the notes I took from my grad-school Milton course, which was taught by Douglas Bush. There was nothing Miltonic about Mr. Bush himself; he was a small, elderly man (though at the time he taught me he was probably younger than I am today) with a dry (oh, hell, it was dull) classroom delivery. But he knew his Milton. There's a probably apocryphal story that someone once asked him about a trip he took by train from Boston to Los Angeles, and Bush said that it was unfortunate that he forgot to bring a book with him. "But, Mr. Bush," the other person said, "I thought you used to recite poetry to yourself when you didn't have a book with you." "I did," said Bush. "But Paradise Lost only got me as far as St. Louis." 

For his course, we had to memorize a certain number of lines from Paradise Lost ourselves, and write them out on the final exam. I chose the passage beginning "Not that fair field / Of Enna..." which is why I posted it here. (My friend Russell Merritt decided to memorize one of Milton's Latin poems, and since his room was next to mine in the dormitory, I got to listen to him recite it and act as prompter. It begins: "In se perpetuo tempus revolubile gyro..." but that's all I remember. I'll bet Russell can still remember all of it.) 

Mr. Bush's particular bêtes noires were critics who subscribed to the idea that Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it, an idea proclaimed by Blake and picked up by Byron and Shelley, among others. The fact remains, however, that Satan is the most compelling figure in Paradise Lost, and his defiance of authority is immensely attractive. The passage above is actually from Satan's point of view -- his first glimpse of Eden -- as Milton reminds us when he notes that "the Fiend / Saw undelighted all delight."

Mr. Bush was around before feminist criticism gained the influence it has today, but he was defensive about what may as well be called sexism in the poem (e.g.,  "Not equal, as thir sex not equal seem'd; / For contemplation hee and valor form'd, / For softeness shee and sweet attractive Grace, / Hee for God only, shee for God in him"). It is pretty indefensible from a modern point of view. But Milton had an unhappy marriage -- lord knows he was hard to live with -- and he argued for a kind of "no-fault" divorce in several pamphlets that got him in trouble with the authorities. That trouble also influenced his famous argument against censorship in Areopagitica, where he wrote, "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Milton was a pretty complicated man. 

Actually, the best that can be said about Milton is that he wrote Paradise Lost, which, whatever you may think of its theology (and I don't think much of it myself), is a magnificent, if daunting, work of art. Samuel Johnson admired it too, but even he observed, "None ever wished it longer." 

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Barney Frank tries to fight the right-wing lie machine: 

This is what American political discourse has sunk to. 

Poem of the Day: Andrew Marvell

The Garden 

How vainly men themselves amaze 

To win the palm, the oak, or bays; 

And their uncessant labours see

Crown'd from some single herb or tree, 

Whose short and narrow verged shade 

Does prudently their toils upbraid; 

While all flow'rs and all trees do close 

To weave the garlands of repose. 

Fair quiet, have I found thee here, 

And innocence thy sister dear! 

Mistaken long, I sought you then 

In busy companies of men. 

Your sacred plants, if here below, 

Only among the plants will grow. 

Society is all but rude, 

To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen 

So am'rous as this lovely green. 

Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, 

Cut in these trees their mistress' name. 

Little, alas, they know, or heed, 

How far these beauties hers exceed! 

Fair trees! wheres'e'er your barks I wound, 

No name shall but your own be found. 

When we have run our passions' heat, 

Love hither makes his best retreat. 

The Gods, that mortal beauty chase, 

Still in a tree did end their race. 

Apollo hunted Daphne so, 

Only that she might laurel grow, 

And Pan did after Syrinx speed, 

Not as a nymph, but for a reed. 

What wond'rous life in this I lead! 

Ripe apples drop about my head; 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine; 

The nectarine and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach; 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 

Insnar'd with flow'rs, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasures less, 

Withdraws into its happiness: 

The mind, that ocean where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find; 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas; 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 

Casting the body's vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide: 

There like a bird it sits, and sings, 

Then whets, and combs its silver wings; 

And, till prepar'd for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state, 

While man there walk'd without a mate: 

After a place so pure, and sweet, 

What other help could yet be meet! 

But 'twas beyond a mortal's share 

To wander solitary there: 

Two paradises 'twere in one 

To live in paradise alone. 

How well the skillful gardener drew  

Of flow'rs and herbs this dial new; 

Where from above the milder sun 

Does through a fragrant Zodiac run;  

And, as it works, th'industrious bee

Computes its time as well as we. 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs! 

-- Andrew Marvell

Marvell is my favorite 17th century poet -- excluding Shakespeare, who really belongs mostly to the 16th century, but not excluding Milton, whom I admire more than enjoy. This is a much commented-on poem, and I don't want to add commentary to it. I'd rather go think some green thoughts.