Howdy

I'm getting a little sparse with the posts here. But these seem to be keeping me going. Another Monday, another poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Today we've got an untitled poem known by its first line, "my own heart let me more have pity on; let"

MY own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
’s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

There is a very important thing to know about my relationship with GMH: half the time i have very foggy grasp of what the hell it is he's on about. But that doesn't bother me because it's at least as much about the way it sounds as it is about the imagery & the existence or lack of any sort of narrative elements. One thing i love about this poem in particular is the enjambment. I don't think i've seen any other poem where the possessive s falls on the other side of the line break from where the word it's attached to is.

And, okay, even with it being so elusive and difficult to grasp, there's something really poignant about the whole second stanza. I love how the speaker goes from this despairing language to a sort of sad hopefulness. And there's something about the idea that you can get pretty low but you just need to try to lay off the nasty thoughts and give yourself a little space, a little root-room, so that some sort of joy can come around. & it's not really up to you when that joy's going to come anyway.

also, how can you not love the phrase "betweenpie mountains" ?? Not because it's so perfect but because the words sound so good and yet don't really semantically mesh. at all. (hoo boy, that was a long one. sorry, folks.)

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Bringing some Maine flavor to the blog today, I would like to force everyone to read this itsy bitsy little poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It won't take more than a minute, so why not ponder the truly pretty way she puts words together. I'm a big fan of single-image poems. I like how this poem, Ebb, prefigures the imagists that would come by so soon after Millay rose to prominence. That... and it's just pretty.

Ebb

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

(i know i lost the formatting. i don't know how to do anything about it. ugh.)

GMH Monday

This GMH Monday finds me listening to yakobli's "girlfriend in a coma" cover and thinking about a Hopkins poem that i memorized this fall, called Spring & Fall. Memorizing is one of those things that's actually a really interesting way to get deep into a poem; i strongly suggest giving it a whirl with a favorite poem or few of yours. It's like, in some tiny way, you appropriate a little bit of the poem's magic and it becomes yours a little bit. in that mode of mind, then, i share a poem that's a little tiny bit mine.

Spring and Fall
to a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Tea & Oranges Daydream Extravaganza!

April 11th, Saturday. Hastings Formal Lounge on the Gorham campus of USM. The Tea & Oranges Daydream Extravaganza. DIY madness, art for sale, beautiful music by wonderful, wonderful people. It's going to be killer. Absolutely everyone should go because it's totally free, anyone of any age, and it promises to be a night of pretty things. Jakob Battick will be selling cds. Stefan Henegar will play, along with Ryan Cutler is a Tree and all sorts of other Tea & Oranges friends. Even if i warn't in Maine, I'd make the trek for this shindig. I hope to see lots of my wonderful readers & friends there.



For more info, click the link above, you turkey.

HOLY WOW! OOPS!

Some poetry-blog proprietor i am... April is national poetry month and i had no idea! at least i found out at the end of the first day and not like on the 28th. To celebrate...honestly it's just going to be more of the same: cool events, my poems & much better poems by incredible people. One such is Federico García Lorca. His images are absolutely mad at times (in an essay he describes the concept of duende as a giant arsenic lobster about to fall from the sky. let that one sink in a bit) and just incredibly beautiful. So today we've got Song of the Barren Orange Tree, translated by the brilliant W.S. Merwin. He will certainly come up another day. Suffice it to say that he's an untouchable poet in his own right and one of my favorite translators.

And what would an April be without the opening lines to The Waste Land?

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Bear with me here

I'm posting one of my favorite poems ever, which is self-evidently brilliant. It's by Catullus, the Roman poet--who is incredibly funny and irreverent and incredible to hear and experience in Latin--and i'll post it in Latin and English (my translation, though it's not too much to translate). Note to defray looking pompous: it's not like I can just pick up Latin poems and read them like Parade (eww, why did I think of THAT!?) but despite the work they have their particular beauty. A lot of the time it's not nearly as satisfying as reading in English but I encourage you to explore the textures of this poem because frankly it's short and something about it makes it just as visceral in Latin as poetry in my native language tends to be.

85
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.


I hate and i love. You ask, perhaps, why i do this.
I do not know; but i feel it happening and am tormented.

The online text i used pointed out something i hadn't thought of: the poem has 8 verbs, no nouns, no adjectives. Hadn't thought of it like that. DEAL WITH IT CATE BLANCHETT!

The Decision is Final

I will be an M.A. student in the English Dept. at Lehigh University in the fall. HOO-RAAAY FOOR MEEEE. I'm pretty excited about it, but I've also got a fancy fancy frozen pizza that needs to be put in an oven, so... Sounds like a fancy celebratory dinner to me.