From the archives

November, a sonnet by Hartley Coleridge.

The poetry of autumn

David B. Hart at First Things' On the Square blog provides us with some of his favorite seasonal verse.

Vigilium nativitatis Dylan Thomas

To commemorate the occasion of the 95th anniversary of Dylan Thomas's birth, here is the voice of the poet reading "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London":

Catholic jokes

from fisheaters.com

The bilbo?

Emma Thompson learns English in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989):

Oddly prophetic

Somewhere toward the end of Dylan Thomas's poem "Lament," as the "old ram rod" is on his deathbed, he hears churchbells:

Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath

These lines were oddly prophetic. As Dylan Thomas lay comatose from his excesses, and from a doctor's unwisely injected morphine, he had the prayers of nuns for the welfare of his soul. He died in a Catholic hospital in New York. And chastity did indeed pray for him, and innocence not only "sweeten[ed] his last breath," but perhaps also rescued him from hell and brought him to the mercies of purgatory. We can hope.

(It is worth noting that the doctor who injected the morphine was not affiliated with St Vincent's Hospital, but was an unscrupulous character who would give the drug to just about anyone who complained of pain.)

Dylan Thomas in Italy

The heat! Old Elbanites on their flayed and blistered backs whimper about the heat. Sunblack webfooted waterboys, diving from cranes, bleed from the heat. Old scorched mineral-miners, fifty years in the fire, snarl at the heat as they drag the rusty trolleys naked over the skeleton piers. And as for us! The children all sun-and-sea-rashed, Brigit peeling like the papered wall of a blitzed room in the rain. And I can hardly hold this pen for the blisters all over my hands, can hardly see for the waterfalls of sweat, and am peeling too like a drenched billboard. Oh, oh, oh, the heat! It comes round corners at you like an animal with windmill arms. As I enter my bedroom, it stuns, thuds, throttles, spins me round by my soaking hair, lays me flat as a mat and bat-blind on my boiled and steaming bed. We keep oozing from the ice-cream counters to the chemist's. Cold beer is bottled God. If ever, for a second, a wind, (but wind's no word for this snailslow sizzle-puff), protoplasmically crawls from the suffering still sea, it makes a noise like H.D.'s poems crackling in a furnace. I must stop writing to souse my head in a bedroom basin full of curded lava, return fresh as Freddie Hurdis-Jones in Sodom, frizzle and mew as I sit again on this Sing-Sing-hot-seat. What was I saying? Nothing is clear. My brains are hanging out like the intestines of a rabbit, or hanging down my back like hair. My tongue, for all the ice-cold God I drink, is hot as a camel-saddle sandily mounted by baked Bedouins. My eyes like over-ripe tomatoes strain at the sweating glass of a Saharan hothouse. I am hot. I am too hot. I wear nothing, in this tiny hotel-room, but the limp two rivers of my Robins'-made pyjama trousers. Oh for the cyclonic Siberian frigidity of a Turkish bath! In the pulverescence of the year came Christ the Niger. Christ, I'm hot!

Dylan Thomas, The Collected Letters (Macmillan, 1985), pp. 656-7

Poem #405

by Emily Dickinson (1830-86)

It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness —
I'm so accustomed to my Fate —
Perhaps the Other — Peace —

Would interrupt the Dark —
And crowd the little Room —
Too scant — by Cubits — to contain
The Sacrament — of Him —

I am not used to Hope —
It might intrude upon —
Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place —
Ordained to Suffering —

It might be easier
To fail — with Land in Sight —
Than gain — My Blue Peninsula —
To perish — of Delight —

Cummings

my love
thy hair is one kingdom
    the king whereof is darkness
thy forehead is a flight of flowers

thy head is a quick forest
    filled with sleeping birds
thy breasts are swarms of white bees
    upon the bough of thy body
thy body to me is April
in whose armpits is the approach of spring

thy thighs are white horses yoked to a chariot
    of kings
they are the striking of a good minstrel
between them is always a pleasant song

my love
thy head is a casket
    of the cool jewel of thy mind
the hair of thy head is one warrior
    innocent of defeat
thy hair upon thy shoulders is an army
    with victory and with trumpets

thy legs are the trees of dreaming
whose fruit is the very eatage of forgetfulness

thy lips are satraps in scarlet
    in whose kiss is the combining of kings
thy wrists
are holy
    which are the keepers of the keys of thy blood
thy feet upon thy ankles are flowers in vases
    of silver

in thy beauty is the dilemma of flutes

    thy eyes are the betrayal
of bells comprehended through incense

(this poem by EEC posted in commemoration of the 115th anniversary of his birth)

Hey

Can anyone tell me why my "new and improved" fancy-shmancy Blogger blogroll doesn't automatically update when someone puts up a new post?

Addendum. OK, I think I get it. It updates when I publish something new. Which is a bit odd.

Columbus Day

And, in observance, a 1991 Time magazine column by Charles Krauthammer, "Hail, Columbus, Dead White Male."

Drinking tea with honey

and half-watching the Red Sox, who seem destined this year to make an early exit from the post-season.

Bones

Did anyone see Bones last night? I fell asleep before the identity of the murderer was revealed. So : whodunit?

Update, Sat. morn. 10.30 am : Okay, so now I've seen the episode in its entirety online, and I still don't get it. The ending was a bit too hastily contrived, and I still don't get the motive for the killing. I must be dense.

News of the world

Well. It's a step down from Messiah.

It's a bit like giving the Literature Prize to Rod McKuen, no? Or to Henry Gibson's rhymester character from Laugh-In?

The article notes that the nomination deadline for the 2009 Peace Prize was February 1st. Twelve days after January 20th.

Amazing.

Thursday note, late afternoon

Well! The interview seems to have gone fairly well. Unless I deceive myself, there are reasons for optimism. One more hurdle remains. (I know, I'm still being vague.)

Pleasant weather in this part of the world today. A bit windy and cool this morning. Lower sixties now.

Not a bad day. And evening approaches, accompanied by a considerable sense of relief. Deo gratias.

Wednesday evening note

This blog's anniversary (the seventh, to be precise) is tomorrow. Hurrah, etc.! Let joy be unconfined!

Also, I have an important appointment tomorrow. A sort of interview. Wish me luck! Or, better yet, send a prayer or two heavenward on my behalf.

Sunday note

It hasn't been the smoothest, or the happiest, or the most fun, last two weeks. One sizable calamity and several minor frustrations. But things might be looking up, a bit. Am being intentionally vague here so as not to "jinx" myself. But more on this, perhaps, later.