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radiantfractureThis one, a little unusual for Oliver, spoke to me today:
The Poet With His Face in His Hands
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need any more of that sound.
So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water-fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
* * * * * *
That's from the new poems at the beginning of Volume 2 of the New and Selected. Poking around, I find that it was published in the New Yorker on April 4, 2005.
For fun, I search "New Yorker poem April 21" and the April 21, 1967 issue comes up. The only poem I find is called "The Committee" by Ann Stanford. The New Yorker cannily won't let me read more than the first half of the first line without logging in. Here it is:
Black and serious, they are dropping down one by
I judge this to be a poem about crows.
(There is also a great typo in the Talk of the Town title, "LOMG-WINDED LADY," foreshadowing the future's acronymic speech.)
As it happens, I used to have an account with the New Yorker, and I really should be able to access their archive, but at some point or another my data was purged.
Stanford has an entry on poetryfoundation.org, but not for that poem. So here is another in its place, "The Messenger," published in Poetry in 1963.
The Messenger
I don’t deny that I believe in ghosts
Myself being one. No, not the ultimate last
Spirit, I mean, but this a messenger.
Soft, soft, last night half falling into sleep
I rose like smoke, up, curving past the window
Floating, a grey cloud seaward, slow and pale.
And then, the wings!
Did you hear the birds piling against your window?
A snow of wings, crowding and gentle, crying
Over and over, each with the single errand
Light cannot bring, nor ever my tongue would say.
Archaic doves, rustling your sleep, and calling
Crowding upon you, drifting and crying love.
* * * * * *
I liked that the best of the poems of Stanford's I found. The first stanza has that rather stiff Shakespearean echo, but after the turn I like it very much (an overwhelm of the senses being My Thing) and though it's not similar in sentiment, there is something Oliverish about the accretion of imagery.
{rf}
The Poet With His Face in His Hands
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need any more of that sound.
So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water-fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
* * * * * *
That's from the new poems at the beginning of Volume 2 of the New and Selected. Poking around, I find that it was published in the New Yorker on April 4, 2005.
For fun, I search "New Yorker poem April 21" and the April 21, 1967 issue comes up. The only poem I find is called "The Committee" by Ann Stanford. The New Yorker cannily won't let me read more than the first half of the first line without logging in. Here it is:
Black and serious, they are dropping down one by
I judge this to be a poem about crows.
(There is also a great typo in the Talk of the Town title, "LOMG-WINDED LADY," foreshadowing the future's acronymic speech.)
As it happens, I used to have an account with the New Yorker, and I really should be able to access their archive, but at some point or another my data was purged.
Stanford has an entry on poetryfoundation.org, but not for that poem. So here is another in its place, "The Messenger," published in Poetry in 1963.
The Messenger
I don’t deny that I believe in ghosts
Myself being one. No, not the ultimate last
Spirit, I mean, but this a messenger.
Soft, soft, last night half falling into sleep
I rose like smoke, up, curving past the window
Floating, a grey cloud seaward, slow and pale.
And then, the wings!
Did you hear the birds piling against your window?
A snow of wings, crowding and gentle, crying
Over and over, each with the single errand
Light cannot bring, nor ever my tongue would say.
Archaic doves, rustling your sleep, and calling
Crowding upon you, drifting and crying love.
* * * * * *
I liked that the best of the poems of Stanford's I found. The first stanza has that rather stiff Shakespearean echo, but after the turn I like it very much (an overwhelm of the senses being My Thing) and though it's not similar in sentiment, there is something Oliverish about the accretion of imagery.
{rf}
