E E Cummings on D G Rossetti

(from i: six nonlectures by E E Cummings, Nonlecture Two)


One ever memorable day, our ex-substantialist (deep in structural meditation) met head-on professor Royce; who was rolling peacefully home from a lecture. "Estlin" his courteous and gentle voice hazarded "I understand that you write poetry." I blushed. "Are you perhaps" he inquired, regarding a particular leaf of a particular tree "acquainted with the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?" I blushed a different blush and shook an ignorant head. "Have you a moment?" he shyly suggested, less than half looking at me; and just perceptibly appended "I rather imagine you might enjoy them." Shortly thereafter, sage and ignoramus were sitting opposite each other in a diminutive study (marvellously smelling of tobacco and cluttered with student notebooks of a menacing bluish shade)--the ignoramus listening, enthralled; the sage intoning, lovingly and beautifully, his favorite poems. And very possibly (although I don't, as usual, know) that is the reason--or more likely the unreason--I've been writing sonnets ever since.

The Holy Season (1985)

Despite the weather
(the orange winds of fall
and green of April),

God's children safely stay: the savior's hands
protect the small towns from the blizzard tides,
prevent the ark's timber from rotting
and keep the just-born babies, golden, asleep.

Never forgotten
(blessed by the raindrop)
is the landscape

where the youngsters learned to grow and fight
against adulthood creeping in from all sides.
Their wishes whispered to the dark have never
gone ignored, unanswered, wished in vain.

Words reach heaven
unseen through today's cry
of love and rain

but where is the saint or sage who can explain
the adolescent pair of sister suicides?
This question will echo long past the holy season
for the answer lies nowhere on this landscape.

The hilltop cross
sheds artificial light
each evening, despite.

And finally ...

The hokey-pokey in the manner of Dante Gabriel Rossetti:


O maiden mine, with passionate pale cheek,
And silver-sandalled foot so tender-hued,
It is not meet that we should sit and brood:
Let's hokey-pokey till the light grows weak!

So stick your left foot in and take it out,
With rapturous bliss at such insouciant fun:
Our two hearts pulse, by wondering love made one;
We shake our limbs with an impetuous shout!

O fondest thought of youth imperishable!
With cumbrous tread, we press the quivering grass
Till vesperal chanting fills the darksome air:

And join me once again, be charitable;
Consent with me these hastening hours to pass,
Most beauteous maiden, fugitive and fair!

Still hokeying, still pokeying

When Richard Quimby walked through Arlington,
    He set our eyes aflame with jealousy.
To have his wealth--oh, it'd be great fun!
    Such riches aren't for you and aren't for me.

Quimby would flaunt his graces, show his style,
    His stature grand, his bearing debonair.
He'd make our hearts leap when he'd flash his smile:
    See, Richard Quimby was a trillionaire.

We toiled and bled for every crust and husk;
    We drained the bitter wine down to its dregs:
And Richard Quimby, one calm summer dusk,
    Danced the hokey-pokey and broke his legs.

Celtic hokey-pokey

1) Seamus Heaney:

On Devenish I did the hokey-pokey
With stub-toed blunt-brogued farmhands from Fermanagh
And giggly strips of girls from the hedges of Glanmore.

Our soil was poor. My father worked this land
And thrust a fierce spade into the earth's black reek.
He'd scorn the reel and twist of country dances.

When Patrick forced and cursed the snakes away,
He hoisted his crozier and shook it all about
Like the leg of Suibhne doing the hokey-pokey.

The Devenish weather was gray.  All slate and sleet.
Bodies of buried boys beneath the boor-trees
Were numb to the bluff pressed heft of the dancers' tread.

2) Dylan Thomas:


Now as I was young and silly among the rustic dancers
About the country farm and happy as the wheat was high,
        The moon above the meadow milky,
            Time let me shake it all about
        Golden in the Sundays of his gaze
And honored among haystacks I was lord of the hokey-pokey
And once upon a twist and turn I boldly had the trodden grass
             Bend with the lyric breezes
Down the paces of the quaint and curious motion.

3) Gerard Manley Hopkins:


Glory be to God for the hokey-pokey:
    For couples, singles, dancing in a circle,
        For left foot thrust in, left foot taken out!
Strut-stepping, country-clumsy, jittery-jokey,
    Swains, maidens, twinned in a twisting miracle,
        Turning themselves and shaking themselves about!

All things rustic, mystic, silly and free,
    All things dopey, dippy, dorky and dumb!
        The stress of the step, the force of the festive tread!
Heaven engenders this stippled-with-sundown glee --
         So go ahead!

Three more

1) Wallace Stevens:

In the presto of the evening, dancers trod,
Glittering figures in a fictive perichoresis,
Angels of the winged imagination.

Light the first lights of dusk, as the fleet figures
Stick their left foot in, and take their left foot out,
Then, nabobs of New Haven, shake it about.

It is the memory of the dance, the hokey-pokey,
Which lingers in a celestial diminuendo,
After the revelry closes like a portal in Peoria.

2) Edna St Vincent Millay:

O you who stuck your foot in, took it out,
Recall those youthful blushing days gone by
When you would cut a rug and shake about --
They swept past in the winking of an eye.
I contemplate the hokey-pokey now
And obsolescent love, and dying roses:
I would return -- but who can tell me how? --
To nights of high stepping and playful poses.
One summer, on Matinicus, we'd dance
And drink the sweet juice of the bursting vine;
Carefree, we left our future all to chance:
We spun, we reeled, we drained the jug of wine.
My cheek has turned pale, and my blood grown cold;
Some thirty years have passed, and I am old.

3) Mary Oliver:


What is the meaning of the dance?
What is the hokey? And yes, what is the pokey?
I have danced by the lucid, fluent river,
and I have paid attention to the flashing of the stream,
to the wild and lively trout that dart here and there
as the circling figures stick their left foot in
and shake it like a feeble leaf
in an August windstorm.
I do not know how to pray as I should,
but I do know how to turn myself around
as the wings of the heron beckon me
to another hour of the hokey-pokey.
And is this not the meaning of life,
of the moments we have squandered in easy liberty?
And sometimes, on a summer day in Provincetown,
doesn't the seagull whirl in the carefree sky?
And at night, don't the voices of the owls
hoot in raucous revelry?

Once, in the chill gray of early morning,
I saw a deer in the mist-wreathed alders behind our cottage.
His questioning eyes knew nothing of human greed,
of brute rapacity and steely acquisition,
but he seemed to know about the hokey-pokey.
Tell me, dear friends, have you never done the hokey-pokey?
And is it not what it's really all about?

More hokey-pokey

Eliot:

I have seen the wood-nymphs doing the hokey-pokey.
I do not think that they will dance with me.

We have lingered in the vast land of the pasture
Shaking our dancing feet in a curious gesture
Till the fiddle snaps a string, and the dancers stop
And, like dead leaves in city gutters, drop.

Roethke:

I wake to dance, and do the hokey-poke.
I shake myself, and turn myself about.
I laugh at life as at a silly joke.

Of those so close beside me, wench or bloke,
Kick up your heels with a tremendous shout!
I wake to dance, and do the hokey-poke

God bless the rain! It gives our clothes a soak,
But still we dance, and sing, without a doubt!
I laugh at life as at a silly joke.

I turn, like any cartwheel's wooden spoke;
I reel like an enthusiastic lout!
I wake to dance, and do the hokey-poke.
I laugh at life as at a silly joke.

Dickinson:


There's a certain Twist of Limb --
Summer Afternoons --
That impresses Like the Hum
Of Country-Western Tunes

Blithe Dancers in their Overalls
Perform the Hokey-Poke --
The joyful Tread -- The gleeful Twirls --
We laugh -- as at a Joke --

The Left Foot In -- the Left Foot Out --
A wholesome madness sweet --
You start to shake it all about
And then -- you must switch Feet --

The Bobolink and Bumblebee --
Were strangers to such Bliss
As Courting Couples Stepping Free
Upon the humble Grass --

Each Body -- in the Happy Throng --
Spins in the gentle Zephyr --
And sings the Hokey-Pokey Song
Cavorting -- like a Jester --

Ginsberg:


I saw the best dancers of my generation, phallic, orgasmical, naked,
shaking all about in the dharma-dappled farmland, doing the celestial hokey-pokey
angelheaded rustics in happy cocksure glee, kicking up their heels,
cosmic cavorters to lysergic fiddles, bumpkin bedlamites,
sticking the left foot in, and taking the left foot out,
reeling in the void of Rockland, grooving to Buddha's tune
as the prophetic crazy ghosts of Blake and Mayakovsky and Carl Solomon
square-dance to the hepcat jive of the shimmering heroin meadow.

*

(Coming soon: Wallace Stevens and Edna St Vincent Millay)

Drunk monk limericks

A young Trappist from old Winnipeg
Loved Gregorian, named for Pope Greg.
He would chant up a storm
Whether chilly or warm --
Then he'd quaff pints of ale by the keg.

*

A Dominican friar named Bruce
Loved the wine that fat grapes would produce:
He would drink with such grace,
And grow red in the face,
Then he'd fall down upon his caboose.

*

Brother Andrew (his friends called him Andy)
Would never say no to a brandy:
Oh, he'd feel so alive
That instead of Psalm 5
He would sing Barry Manilow's "Mandy"!

*

Father Odo, a monk from Calais,
Was so spirited, carefree, and gay --
He once tried (and how!)
To milk beer from a cow:
"She won't give you that!" "Well, Chimay."

This was inevitable

Spectral figures in the gloaming,
pray, forsake your restless roaming,
by the turgid ocean foaming
        in the moonlight, pale and drear:
Time it is to do the hokey,
time it is to do the pokey!
(Switch your iamb for a trochee,
        poet with the haunted ear!)

Stick your left foot in the middle,
shake it, quake it just a little!
Hark, now, hear the Stygian fiddle
        play a sad and mournful dirge!
Time to switch feet, change your paces;
stick your right foot in the spaces
void of dancers, void of graces:
        tremble, if you get the urge.

Turn, revolve, O spectral dancers!
Twist, you rustic necromancers!
Roses plagued by hidden cancers
        never knew your dark delight!
Death will end our tale, it's certain,
cover with his shroud-like curtain
all these figures, fleet and flirtin',
        by the full moon's eerie light.

Going "ape"

Hey, Bob: I see your literary limericks, and raise you a double-dactyl obituary of a famous writer's spouse ...

Scribble-dee, scrabble-dee,
Valerie Eliot,
Great poet's widow and
Editrix bright,

Died last November, an
Octogenarian:
Dayadhvam, shantih, so
Long and good night.


And then, in the same form, an autobiography:

Rumble-dee, bumble-dee,
Thomas from Eastie wrote
Thousands of poems with
Lines brash and stout.

Readers grew sick of his
Superloquacity:
"When will the ink in his
Keyboard run out?"

(I have a less-than-perfectly-kind one about Auden that I won't post here.)

Thomas Hardy does the hokey-pokey

On a morning when the grey skies rained down sleet,
I stuck my left foot into the abyss;
I shook it to and fro, and then switched feet,
And thought how all must end with death's bleak kiss.
I twisted all around in primal pain,
Knowing some purblind god ordained my doom;
I did the hokey-pokey in the rain.
"Is this what it's about?" I cried.  The gloom
Made no reply, but stayed mute as the tomb.

20 songs that I rather like, actually

1. "Hit Em Up Style" by Carolina Chocolate Drops
2. "Country Girl" by Carolina Chocolate Drops
3. "Minuit, chrétiens" (O Holy Night in French)
4. "La chanson d'Eve" by Gabriel Fauré
5. "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers
6. "Give Me One Reason" by Tracy Chapman
7. Tuba mirum spargens sonum from Mozart's Requiem
8. "Moondance" by Van Morrison
9. "The Wonder of You" by Elvis Presley
10. "Rainy Days and Mondays" by the Carpenters
11. "Chantilly Lace" by the Big Bopper
12. "Have I the Right?" by the Honeycombs
13. "To Sir with Love" by Lulu
14. "One Less Bell to Answer" by the 5th Dimension
15. Ave Maria (either Schubert or Bach-Gounod)
16. "Gentle Woman" by Carey Landry
17. "Last Night I Didn't Get to Sleep At All" by the 5th Dimension
18. "If I Could Reach You" by the 5th Dimension
19. "Love Shack" by the B-52s
20. "Panic" by the Smiths

Honorable mention:
"Brandy, You're a Fine Girl" by the Looking Glass
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" by Dusty Springfield
"This Time of Night" by New Order

Evening

Vesperal hesitation. Pausing at dusk,
allowing wordlessness to get in edgewise,
the silence that is greater than ourselves.

I propose a toast

... to former Boston Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard. Best remembered for a historic gopher ball (Roger Maris's 61st home-run in 1961), he deserves credit for having held the likes of Mays, McCovey, and Clemente to under .200 against him. Not bad at all.

Here's to you, Mr Stallard!

Phos hilaron

O Gladsome Light
of the Holy Glory of the Immortal Father,
Heavenly, Holy, Blessed Jesus Christ!

Now that we have come to the setting of the sun
and behold the light of evening,
we praise God Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For meet it is at all times to worship Thee with voices of praise.
O Son of God and Giver of Life,
therefore all the world doth glorify Thee.

Fragment

I'm trying to remember this poem I wrote 27 years ago. It appeared in my highschool literary magazine in the fall of 1985. I can't find a copy of it anywhere. I've asked friends if they have copies: no luck. Here is all that I can remember of the poem.

*

THE HOLY SEASON
by Thomas D, 1985

Despite the weather
(the orange winds of fall
and green of April),

God's children safely stay:

[...]

protects [...] from the blizzard tides,
prevents the ark's timber from rotting
and keeps the just-born babies golden, asleep.

Never forgotten
(blessed by the raindrop)
is the landscape[?]

[...]

but where is the saint or sage who can explain
the adolescent pair of sister suicides?
This question will echo long past the holy season
for the answer lies nowhere on this landscape.

The hilltop cross
sheds artificial light
each evening, despite.

O Holy Night

As performed by Miss Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

 

The Cherry Tree Carol

As performed by Miss Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

 

Christmas sights

Peace Garden, St Leonard's Church, Hanover Street, North End, Boston

Outside St Stephen's Church, Hanover Street, North End, Boston

Christmas lights in The Red Hat, Bowdoin Street, Boston

A Carol

("Minuit, chrétiens": translated by Thomas D)


Midnight, O Christians, is the solemn hour
when God who is truly Man comes to you:
he shall remove the stain of our offenses;
he'll please his Father and make all things new!
The whole world trembles, chills of expectation:
the long-sought night which brings us saving grace
now has arrived!  O kneel in adoration!
Behold, behold the Child-Redeemer's face!

Now may the light of faith ceaselessly burning
show us the way to the cradle of birth,
just as of old, the brightest star in heaven
led Eastern sages across desert earth.
The King of Kings is born where beasts are feeding:
O powers-that-seem, so boastful of your place,
proud men and cold, now heed the silent teaching!
The Child is God, his Mother full of grace.

The Savior's strength has burst through every fetter;
our world is free, heaven open once again:
a lowly slave becomes a prince's brother;
chains break asunder.  United are men!
What shall we give the Lord for all his goodness,
made flesh for us, to suffer pain and death?
Rise from your sleep!  Deliverance is upon us!
A child is born: praise him with every breath.