Sonnet 4 - Ah when you drift hover - Berryman

As mentioned in earlier post, John Berryman's (1914 - 1972) 115 sonnets were an accounting of the course of a love affair with a married woman.  By this one's number, it's at the beginning. 

It's not an "easy" poem after the first four lines.... but what first four lines they are!  They alone are worth it.  Who hasn't felt so enraptured, connected and complete that nothing else that moment matters - not life, not wondering "...the point of life..."!  Those lines are the gold-standard for describing the drug-like "high" of kissing a lover.  (There.  Now I've made you, dear reader - AND myself! - entirely self-conscious about the next time we kiss.   Yes, even each other!)  

The rest of the sonnet requires a bit more "work" for full appreciation, particularly with the classical references.  (I wrestled with whether to post this poem at all because of that.)  

However, as quick help, "swine-enchanted lover" is a reference to the Odyssey and Circe, the enchantress who turned Odysseus' crew into animals, notably pigs.  (Hmm.... is this where it comes from that women call men "pigs"?)  "Melpomene" was one of  the 9 Muses, the goddesses of dance, music, and song, in Greek mythology.  Each "covered" one area in the arts, and Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy.  "Erato", on the other hand, was the Muse of erotic poetry....so we know where Berryman was headed (if not already there).  He was a lustful, lively - and tormented - man who, like his father, eventually committed suicide (click on his name above for a link to a brief bio).  It's good to have in this poem - and many others - a record of his joy.
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Sonnet 4 – Ah when you drift hover

Ah when you drift hover before you kiss

More your mouth yours now, lips grow more to mine

Teeth click, suddenly your tongue like a mulled wine

Slides fire, -- I wonder what the point of life is.

Do, down this night when I adore you, Lise,

So I forsake the blest assistant shine

Of deep-laid maps I made for summits, swine-

enchanted lover, loafing in the abyss?

Loaf hardly, while my nerves dance, while the gale

Moans like your hair down here.  But I lie still.

Strengthless and smiling under a maenad rule.

Whose limbs worked once, whose imagination’s grail

Many or some would nourish, must now I fill

My strength with desire, my cup with your tongue,

          no more Melpomene’s but Erato’s fool?...

                                                      John Berryman

Little Children’s Prayer - Galway Kinnell

It’s always a delight when a poet of Galway Kinnell’s (1927-2014) stature addresses romantic love, particularly when better known for tying together big societal themes with how they crash and connect with the daily lives of people at every level.   A New Englander, Ivy Leaguer (Princeton), a civil rights and anti-war activist AND a veteran (Navy), he brought all those experiences together in poems that are accessible but also require a little “stretching” (at least for me) and are both thoughtful and feeling.  Some of those poems are quite unsparing in spot-lighting the ugly.  He won both a Pulitzer and a share of the National Book Award for poetry in the same year (1980) for his Selected Poems.

This one is a recent “discovery” for me and has grown with each reading.  Its note of hope is an elixir we can appreciate and contrast with Rod McKuen’s “To Benson Green On His 27th Birthday”, but it’s a hope that doesn’t ignore all that might be around the bend of the river of Experience.  I have hung a signed, limited edition broadside of it that I pass several times a day.


Little Chidren’s Prayer


We huddle together, like the hands
of someone who prays, studying the book
of the great world, the wind
blowing the pages over, desolate odd, desolate even, and
              otherwise.

When we come to
our own story, and read of its happy beginning
and of its ending happy enough for such as we will have been
and of all that’s needed to give clarity to the days and
                nights between,
may we find the love-flower,
that gives good faithfulness in love, pressed perfectly
long ago between some pages
of the slow going where only those who adore the story
                ever read.

And when we set out on our way
toward our loves, wearing our flower.
may we walk hand in hand a little while longer together
stretching the laughter of childhood
as far as we can into the days to come,
and may we hear,
from the other direction, another laughter
echoing back
from the graves where our next bodies will have lain down
             already and be laughing,
gently, at everything that once seemed so serious,
blessing with light heart our days and nights, even their sorrows.

                                               
                                                                           Galway Kinnell - American

The Surly One - Theodore Roethke

If this is the only Roethke poem you will read here, you'll be doing yourself a disservice.  Pleeease "click" on his name on the left and check out the others!  He has written some of the most dazzling love poems that I know: joyous, playful, with imagery that will surprise by their freshness.  This one is short and, thus, might look simple and not worth a second read.... but take your time!  Boil some water, and while the tea steeps let the lines loose among your emotional memories.  You will be surprised at what they can stir up, if you let them.  I like #1, perhaps because of my fondness for single malt whiskeys, as they evoke my chosen connection to Scotland.  (However, unlike Roethke, I SIP, not slug them down to drown memories.)  In #2, it's how he condenses so much truth in the last two lines. 
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 The Surly One

1

When true love broke my heart in half ,

I took the whisky from the shelf,

And told my neighbors when to laugh.

I keep a dog, and bark myself.

2

Ghost cries out to ghost –

But who’s afraid of that?

I fear those shadows most

That start from my own feet.

                                                                Theodore Roethke

Sonnet 36 – (Keep your eyes open when you kiss) - John Berryman

 Another selection from John Berryman's sonnets has been long overdue.  For some background, the 115 poems, written in the 1940s and in one volume, were a lineal account of a love affair and not published until the mid-1960s.  To me, they are on a par with Neruda's, sharing a richness and passion of expression that is dizzying.  Both are to be read aloud and large, be it in front of the loved one as declarations or alone, as lamentations.  Either way, they are bold and cathartic, with wine or whiskey, day or night.  Sometimes, the syntax in Berryman can sound "Yoda-ish" by its placement of nouns and verbs, and it takes a little bit of effort to "get" all he is doing with language.  But the prize.... the prize when you do is so satisfying that you'll be ashamed of having complained.  Here, in this early one in the arc of the relationship, he turns the traditional "close your eyes when kissing" on its head and riffs on it.... while sticking to the sonnet structure. Wow!

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 Sonnet  36 – (Keep your eyes open when you kiss) – John Berryman

Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when

You kiss.  All silly time else, close them to;

Unsleeping, I implore you (dear) pursue

In darkness me, as I do you again

Instantly we part . . only me both then

And when your fingers fall, let there be two

Only, “in that dream-kingdom”: I would have you

Me alone recognize your citizen.

Before who wanted eyes, making love, so?

I do now.  However we are driven and hide,

What state we keep all other states condemn,

We see ourselves, we watch the solemn glow

Of empty courts we kiss in . . Open wide

You do, you do, and I look into them.

                                                      John Berryman

" It Is Marvellous..." - Elizabeth Bishop

 I know that I am supposed to like Elizabeth Bishop (1911 - 1979) and I certainly respect her work - but she has never been appealing personally except for her translations of Brazilian poets.  As the biographical synopsis tells (click on her name above), she had a tragic personal life one wouldn't wish on an enemy.  Her father died when she was one year old, her mother placed permanently in a mental institution when Elizabeth was five years old, and later, her long-term lover in Brazil committed suicide.  Wealthy grandparents provided an education (Vassar) and financial freedom which led to travel abroad and, eventually, fourteen years in Brazil until returning to the USA in 1970 to teach at Harvard.  Work published work in her lifetime - only 101 poems - was good enough to win both a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for Poetry.  Her reputation has grown in stature since her death.  

This poem IS marvellous for how it paints scene, setting, and atmosphere to perfection.  The details build unrushed to the final result the way a cook adds each ingredient, in the right amount and at the right time, to make an edible perfection.  (I was making a smoked salmon corn chowder yesterday.)   Enjoy!

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“It Is Marvellous…”

It is marvellous to wake up together

At the same minute; marvellous to hear

The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,

To feel the air suddenly clear

As if electricity had passed through it

From a black mesh of wires in the sky.

All over the roof the rain hisses,

And below, the light falling of kisses.

An electrical storm is coming or moving away;

It is the prickling air that wakes us up.

If lightning struck the house now, it would run

From the four blue china balls on top

Down the roof and down the rods all around us,

And we imagine dreamily

How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning

Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;

And from the same simplified point of view

Of night and lying flat on one's back

All things might change equally easily,

Since always to warn us there must be these black

Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise

The world might change to something quite different,

As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,

Change as the kisses are changing without our thinking.

                                             Elizabeth Bishop

Song of Yue - Song Lian

Better known for his prose and role as a high court-official in the administration of the first Ming Dynasty Emperor, Song Lian was also charged with compiling the official history of the previous dynasty (Yuan).  This little poem comes by way of a small book of Chinese love poems edited by Qiu Xialong, about whom I've written earlier.  This streak of Chinese poems is not entirely intentional.  Tonight, I read poetry by Mary Oliver and several Brazilian poets looking for one that would be appealing, but was not successful.  

I chose this one for its perfect use of a pair of scissors to express separation and joining.  It's so simple, so elegant..... and written almost 800 years ago!  I am continually mindful of how emotional states know no boundaries of time or culture.  We yearn, we love, we mourn the same way, irrespective of time and place. 

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Song of Yue

                            transl. from Chinese by Qiu Xialong

It is not just a day or night that I have

missed you, Lord.

It is like a broken pair

of Bingzhou scissors –

one blade is far in the south, and the other,

far in the north.

When can the pair

be joined to cut out a wedding gown?

                                                    Song Lian  - Chinese 1310-1381

Untitled

Sulpicia, a Roman poetess from the 1st century BCE, is only known by her name and a handful of poems included with Tibullus’.  I am including this one for two reasons: the mid-line sentence that starts “Let my joy...”. And the last sentence, which amuses because, thanks to the word chosen by the translator, it connects with a famous line from a Seinfeld episode, thus making a connection across two thousand years, where how “worthiness” in a lover is measured a certain way.  (It’s also interesting because sponges WERE used for contraception in the ancient world!)  The reader will have to know American TV from a certain period to get the reference.


Untitled
                                 
                   transl. By Aliki and Willis Barnstone
                         
At last love has come.  I would be more ashamed
  to hide it in cloth than leave it naked.
I prayed to the Muse and won.  Venus dropped him
  in my arms, doing for me what she
Had promised.  Let my joy be told, let those
  who have none tell it in a story.
Personally, I would never send off words
  in sealed tablets for none to read.
I delight in sinning and hate to compose a mask
  for gossip.  We met.  We are both worthy.

                                                                     Sulpicia - 1st. Cent. BCE

Anonymous - Ancient Egypt

This is another of the poems translated into English by Ezra Pound and Noel Stock from Italian text translated, in turn, from hieroglyphic texts dating from between 1567 B.C. to 1085 B.C.). The Italian version is called "Liriche Amorose Degli Antichi Egizioni" (Milan, 1957).  Though the author will never be known, her sentiments are timeless and fresh across three millennia.  The plainness of the images reminds me of Archibald Macleish’s poem (also posted) to his wife.

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Untitled

                    Transl. By Ezra Pound and Noel Stock

I find my love fishing

His feet in the shallows.

We have breakfast together

And drink beer.

I offer him the magic of my thighs

He is caught in the spell.

Reply to "Phoenix Hairpin" (to the tune of) - Tang Wan

This is the only translation I could find (from The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry) of Tang Wan's poem in reply to her ex-husband Lu You's poem.  (See two postings below.)  There is something unsatisfying about it: I can't tell whether it's the poem or the translation.  Somehow, given how she must have felt, the fullness of her feelings doesn't come across.  There is flame but little heat and I can't believe that is how it was for her.  The sorrow of a love torn asunder, a love big enough to kill her less than a year after that meeting: it just doesn't come through strongly enough.  We know his broken heart lasted the rest of his life, another forty years, but that's what a great love will do. I wonder, if given the option of a short or long life after a loss like that, which would be the easier.  But we are not given that choice.  I know.

Addendum: Jan. 22, 2011.  Since no longer being able to add more poems after the fire of Dec. 21., I have been "visiting" poems whose physical copies burned.  I feel that I have done Tang Wan a disservice with my original remarks.  I see her sorrow now as so deep, so profound that it's past the stage of torrents of tears and words.  She is now at a place where what remains is the bleakness of the loss and a vocabulary of images as stark and limited as her life.  I remember reading somewhere that the purest truths are said in the shortest sentences and with the simplest of words.  (No, not Hemingway.)  Read with that in mind, I can feel her devastation in my marrow.  Contrast it with his, forty years after that chance encounter... and leave me a comment.)
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 Reply to “Phoenix Hairpin”  (to the tune of)  -  Tang Wan

Human relationships are short.

Human intentions are evil.

When rain accompanies evening, flowers fall easily,

but morning wind is dry.

Tearstains remain.

I want to write you my feelings

but I only whisper to myself, leaning against banister.

Hard!  Hard!  Hard!

We are separate.

Today is not yesterday.

My sick soul moves like a swing between us.

A cold blast from a horn.

The night is late.

Afraid of questions,

I swallow my tears and smile.

Hide!  Hide!  Hide!

                                                             Tang Wan - dates unknown, Song Dynasty ,

The Shen Garden - Lu You

 This is the poem that Lu You wrote forty years after the chance meeting with his beloved, Tang Wan, as described in the previous posting (Nov. 2nd).  The translation is by a very interesting person, Qiu Xiaolong, a Chinese-born poet/professor at Washington University who writes in both Chinese and English, as well as translating T.S. Eliot (!) and others into Chinese.  Qiu is also the author of a detective story series set in modern day Shanghai: they are a great read as both social commentary and a good crime yarn.  I highly recommend them.  (The first one is called "Death of A Red Heroine" and this is a link to a review of it.)

As previously noted, translations are tricky business, even between languages from the same "family", like the Romance languages.  (As close as Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are to each other, I've seen some terrible choices migrating a poem from one to the other.)  Going from a pictograph-based language like Chinese to English takes amazing skill and double sensitivity to intent and result.  Simply, it takes another poet, but a poet aware of his own ego, limitations, and biases.  Of the translations I have read, this one fulfills the task the best.

When revisiting the past by recalling a memory, nothing has aged.  Going back to a physical place, one must be prepared for the opposite, and the consequences depend on one's preparation and expectations.  In this poem, Lu appears to have been ready and thus not jarred by the changes: his tone is observational and accepting, not questioning or raging.  Someday, I hope to be that way myself about the past.
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The Shen Garden

                                    transl. by Qiu Xiaolong

I

The sun is sinking behind the city wall

to the sad notes of a shining bugle.

In the Shen Garden,

the pond and the pavilion appear

no longer to be the same,

except the heart-breaking spring ripples

still so green under the bridge,

the ripples that reflected her arrival

light-footed, in such beauty

as would shame a wild goose into fleeing.

II

It’s forty years since we last met,

the dream broken, the scent vanished,

in the Shen Garden, the aged willows

produce no more catkins.

I’m old, already turning into the dust

of Mount Ji, when I shed a drop of tear

at this old scene.

                                                      Lu You – 1125-1210