All Posts Tagged With: "poetry"
The Legendary Life of Bullet Bill
The blessed crowd retells his stories
But without the same grin and flare
The Marines born decades after him
Play trumpet taps for my grandfather
As his bride cries and leaves roses
For the man who made her laugh
It is rare to see my father cry
But my eyes are never my own
On grave days
Transient Power, Infinite Ideas
I recently read Edward Abbey’s Good News. The book describes post-apocalyptic skirmishes between good and evil in America. Some kind of nuclear war destroyed civilization. The West is wild again. I have not been able to find good discussion of this book on the Internet; I have a dim hope that this post will initiate some. I wrote an essay about the book, but I am only going to post a small portion of it.
Abbey makes frequent mention of brand names being dead and buried in the sand. Cars that used to be expensive and cherished line all lanes of the highway attempting to escape from Phoenix. Abbey mentions these decayed brands to show their insignificance and transience. The post-apocalyptic world does not value them. It doesn’t care for them. Human necessity and roots do not give a damn about them. They are transient. Abbey wrote:
They ride at a brisk walking pace, due west, up the broad avenue littered with fragments of paper and glass, flanked now with dehydrated palm trees, abandoned automobiles, decaying office buildings with sagging walls of lathing, chicken wire, stucco, crumbling bastions of cinderblock. Old voices speak from dangling signs, dead for a decade: Lou Grubb Chevrolet: “the Friendly Folks”; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; Ace Liquors; Goldwater’s; Ramada Inn East’ Fannin Makes It Move!; Big Surf; Food Giant; Yellow Front; Checker Auto Parts; McDonalds: “Over Two Hundred Billion Served”; Denny’s; Valley National Bank; No-Tel Motel: “Adult Movies in Every Room” . . .
Abbey’s description of decayed decadence reminded me of a poem taught to me by John Bottiglieri in my High School English class. Thanks, Mr. Bottiglieri. I coincidentally saw him a couple of weeks ago at the Ebert Film Festival. We attended Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. It’s a cool and weird movie, my preferred flavor.
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem called Ozymandias in 1818. I love it. Ozymandias is another name for Pharaoh Ramesses the Great. The poem reveals the transience of power. It implicitly argues that ideas, like Shelley’s poem itself, endure. The genuine kings of humanity write or speak about ideas. The student rebels in Good News cherish the one remaining music record that they have. The piano player only wishes to play beautiful classical music until humans regain their sanity. Shelley purportedly wrote the poem for a friendly competition with Horace Smith. They wrote on the same subject and published their poems in the same magazine. I prefer Shelley’s poem. I was not aware of Smith’s poem, but it coincidentally relates to Good News. The conclusion of Smith’s poem has a “Hunter” wondering at the ruins of London in what could be a post-apocalyptic world or simply the fall of London as a major city. I have copied the two poems below:
Ozymandias – Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Ozymandias – Smith
IN Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
“The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
Did Cohen Plagiarize or Allude to Longfellow?
Many critics and songwriters consider Leonard Cohen to write lyrics that match the quality Bobby Dylan’s words. I have always been skeptical of this view, but Cohen does have some gems. I have been studying many of the best lyricists and months ago I came across a video of Cohen reading Tower of Song – something he wrote that has been covered about 20 times. I vaguely recall being jealous of Cohen’s writing abilities when I first heard Tower of Song.
Here’s a great video recording of Cohen singing Tower of Song with a great backing band named U2. The Edge plays a sweet sad guitar:
Got to Beg Louder
Ya Got to Beg Louder Boy (In Chicago)
The City passes you by without saying hi
The City doesn’t care if you’re lonely or high
The City breathes with metallic lungs
And speaks in a rambling tongue
And coughs on the beat of his makeshift drum Read more…
Happy Halloween (From Bruce Springsteen and Dante)
Happy Halloween everyone. I recently attended a talk at Krannert by W.S. Merwin, Richard Powers, & Robert Pinsky. They are all well regarded authors and poets. Powers has an interesting biography that includes the University of Illinois and being a computer programmer “until an encounter with the 1914 photograph “Young Farmers” by August Sander, at the Museum of Fine Arts, inspired him to quit his job and spend the next two years writing his first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published in 1985.” They discussed the vivid and dark imagination of Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s translation, Dante’s first canto describes feverishly wandering through his dark forest.
Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Orange Warm
and Jimi sings by coincidence to me,
“Well, the night I was born,
Lord I swear the moon turned a fire red.”
An orange warm
Luna is born.
Later a silver sliver
The smooth curve of Colt’s trigger
Stars stab the black blanket,
Even dreams riding
On wild horseback cannot fathom,
Infinite we cannot imagine.
Wait.
A still moment.
All of my chores fade.
For an instant,
I am infinite.
Merry Christmas to all
This is a T.S. Eliot poem my father introduced me to last year. It’s now a part of my own personal Christmas tradition. On this blessed day, enjoy.
The Journey of the Magi
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Epic Precipice
I have recently become very interested in songwriting. I cannot claim to be any good at all and I have no musical talent. But here is the rough draft of my first attempt at songwriting. It begins poorly but gets a little better. Admittedly, it needs a lot of work. I would appreciate honest criticism. I have quite a bit more that I may share if this doesn’t make you physically ill.
Epic Precipice
The places others may travel by drugs or dream
I can find with just my mind
I wander caverns and catacombs by candle light
My imagination on horseback
Never sure where I’m going
A nightmare of consciousness always follows
Falling through the merry go round
Tumbling through the sun and the ground
My mind takes me places no one else has gone
I’m dancing with good and evil
I’m balancing on the epic precipice
I see dark blue dreams ahead of me
I am cursed by my spark in the dark
I am blessed by my spark in the dark.
I’m focusing now
My mind is again my own
Consciousness runs back
Floods my brain
Swells my veins
Slow and slow that step,
Do you hear those castle bells?
Atop a man I never know,
plays my song, slows my mind
All the perfect meet and twine
To shove me into life again
I see beauty and I cry.
I’m dancing with an angel and a devil
I’m balancing on the epic precipice
I see dark blue dreams ahead of me
I am stabbed by my spark in the dark
I am healed by my spark in the dark.
Only a few have ever found the spark
It lights your mind
Flows your soul
Twists your heart
It’s not safe from here on out
But this was not my choice you say
Why am I not the same?
But I do remember that day
I lit my spark in the dark.
You’re plagued by the one disease
You’d never leave but prefer to have never seen
The one disease that won’t cure
I promise you will never be pure
But the complicated souls
Are the most beautiful
I’m dancing with my sanity
I’m balancing on the epic precipice
I see dark blue dreams ahead of me
I am lost by my spark in the dark
I am guided by my spark in the dark.
You dangle on the edge
The precipice of insanity and epicness
If you fall you are lost
If you balance you are infinite
There was a time when I could look up
And hold the universe
Each star wrapped around my body
All the blackness in my hand
I am infinite for an instant
The writer rips his soul and feels the violence
The artist opens her lungs and spills her blood
They lie naked for humanity to see
I’m dancing with beauty and violence
I’m balancing on the epic precipice
I see dark blue dreams ahead of me
I am dead by my spark in the dark
I am alive by my spark in the dark.
As I twist in bed
Someone’s drillin’ my skull
The wraith is screaming
Sleep is the only time
that I am not dreaming.
The fairy came to me last night,
She said follow and you will see
Places in your mind, a tortured fantasy
Grows beneath the twisted tree
She’s my plague of imagery.
I’m dancing with her and her
I’m balancing on the epic precipice
I see dark blue dreams ahead of me
I am abyss by my spark in the dark
I am ablaze by my spark in the dark.
Hold on to me, I can’t suffer this alone
Hold on to me, I can’t wander this alone
I’ve been waiting for you since I lit my spark
Now I’ve let you go
Let us wander the dark.
I saw a heart beating in the basement,
Blood rushed the cracks in the pavement
Then I realized it was my own
Have I always been this alone?
Can two sparks fall in Love?
Or will they burn too hot,
Turn into black ‘n’ abyss?
Spark in the dark.
Epic precipice.
Spark in the dark.
Epic precipice.
Spark in the dark.
Epic precipice.
Invictus
I recently reread a poem that I used to love, Invictus. It is made all the more inspiring by quickly reading William Ernest Henley’s biography. While it can certainly hold many meanings for readers, to the author invictus was about his resilience following the amputation of his foot when he was 12 years old. In latin, “invictus” means unconquered. In a broader sense, this poem is about will, character, and living manfully.
by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
Stump Speaking, Story Telling, and a U of I Legend
This evening I read All Politics is Local by former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. It is a breeze of a read, and I’d recommend it to those in the agora who are future public servants or just political junkies. It is a collection of short stories to illustrate what O’Neill calls the “rules of the game.”
I wanted to one of his lessons with the agora:
“One day Jim Curley heard me make a speech and told me I was lousy. He invited me to go around to his home. ‘I’m going to give you ten poems and essays to memorize,’ he said. ‘Never again will you be in the position you were in the other night, because you can always recite one of these to fit the moment. Believe me, people love it when you give them a quote, especially when you do it off the top of your head. They might not remember anything else from your speech, but they’ll remember that.’”
Below is the list:
- Polonius’ speech to his son Laertes from Hamlet
- “The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith
- “It Can Be Done” by Edgar Guest
- “Abou Ben Adhem” by Leigh Hunt
- “Around the Corner” by Charles Hanson Towne
- “If” by Rudyard Kipling
- “Friendship” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “The Man in the Glass” author unknown
- “Rules of the Road” by John Boyle O’Reilly
I am not familiar with several of these, and sadly, I have only committed one to memory, but I’m going to read through these later this week. This post reminded me of the value of having a little bit of canned material, and inspired me to share a hidden treasure I recently discovered on the website of the University of Illinois College of Law.
One of the most revered legends of the University of Illinois is former Chancellor and Dean John Cribbet. Dean Cribbet was known for being able to seize any crowd with only a handful of different stories, which he could adapt to illustrate virtually any principle. The law school recently created this tribute to Dean Cribbet that tells some of his stories for a whole new generation of students. The most widely known, is Dean Cribbet’s “big picture” story from his days serving as senior aide-decamp to Lieutenant General Troy Middleton, who served under General Patton. Please take a look.
A dear friend and mentor of mine worked with Cribbet for years and he told me that Cribbet liked to joke about how he only had 4 or 5 stories in his repertoire. Cribbet gave each of them a number, and when he returned from an event he’d say, “I told them number 1, 2 and 4.” This joke picked up enough momentum that Cribbet could just say “number 3″ and his staff would get a laugh, until one day when he said “number 3″ and no one laughed. When Cribbet asked why no one laughed, someone quipped, “you just didn’t tell it right that time.”