WHATEVER YOU DO IS WRONG

When you sit in the blind awaiting the flight

Of the white-breasted northern sprig,

While they circle high and think to light,

And they look so close and big,

You whisper your pard, as you both crouch low,

“Now! – Don’t wait too long!”

You shoot – too far – and off they go;

Whatever you do is wrong!

 

Then you curse yourself for a fool greenhorn,

Your pride has had a blow;

Sullen you sit and smoke and mourn,

When – in comes a bunch, fair low!

You watch them circle ‘round and ‘round,

“Just let them work along!”

When – off they swing, southward bound;

Whatever you do is wrong!

 

And so, through life, a poor wretch tries

To do what he thinks is right,

To place his funds so that when he dies

His family’ll be sitting tight;

To raise the young with the best in mind,

And sometimes it works like a song,

But often he finds like the man in the blind,

Whatever you do is wrong!

 

Still, I think that the God who sits in His sky,

And watches each man in his blind,

When it comes time for the hunter to die,

Surely, He’ll keep in mind

That each tried to do what it seemed he ought,

And He’ll put us where we belong;

For He’ll understand the fellow that thought

Whatever he did was wrong!

Nicotine

Goddess of the murmuring courts,
Nicotine, my Nicotine,
Houri of the mystic sports,
trailing-robed in gabardine,
Gliding where the breath hath glided,
Hidden sylph of filmy veils,
Truth behind the dream is veiléd
E'en as thou art, smiling ever, ever gliding,
Wraith of wraiths, dim lights dividing
Purple, grey, and shadow green
Goddess, Dream-grace, Nicotine.

Goddess of the shadow's lights,
Nicotine, my Nicotine,
Some would set old Earth to rights,
Thou I none such ween.
Veils of shade our dream dividing,
Houris dancing, intergliding,
Wraith of wraiths and dream of faces,
Silent guardian of the old unhallowed places,
Utter symbol of all old sweet druidings,
Mem'ry of witched wold and green,
Nicotine, my Nicotine:

Neath the shadows of thy weaving
Dreams that need no undeceiving,
Loves that longer hold me not,
Dreams I dream not any more,
Fragrance of old sweet forgotten places,
Smiles of dream-lit, flit-by faces
All as perfume Arab-sweet
Deck the high road to thy feet

As were Godiva's coming fated
And all the April's blush belated
Were lain before her, carpeting
The stones of Coventry with spring,
So thou my mist-enwreathéd queen,
Nicotine, white Nicotine,
Riding engloried in their hair
Mak'st by-road of our dreams
Thy thorough-fare.

Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972) was indeed an eccentric, self-obsessed, difficult person who died a recluse after finally being released, after many years, from St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Center in Washington. A rebel without a cause. He had been deemed a traitor to the US during WW2. But who knew he was an expert fencer, and W.B. Yeat's fencing coach? Or that he was William Carlos William's college pal at Penn? I didn't. He has always been more influential than read. An "imagist" poet, his definition of the literary image remains the best: "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." Bob Dylan learned story-telling from Woody Guthrie, and "imagism" from Rimbaud, Pound, William Carlos Williams,T.S.Eliot, and the old-time bluesmen like Robert Johnson...not putting him in that Pantheon, but he has music, too.

1967 photo from here.

Revolution

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
we all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know you can count me out, in
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright Alright

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
we'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We're all doing what we can
If you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright Alright

You say you'll change the constitution
Well you know
we'd all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know know it's gonna be alright
Alright ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT

3/14 is naturally World Pi Day. Most good geeks celebrate with a pie or two.

Here's an easy way to remember pi to 22 decimal places. Why "pi"? It's the Greek letter p, an abbreviation for the Greek "periphereia."

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
     When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
     The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
     Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
     Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be 
     The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
     The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
     Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
     Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
     The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
     Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
     In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
     Upon the growing gloom. 

So little cause for carolings
     Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
     Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
     His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
     And I was unaware.

Hardy wrote 15 novels, 47 stories, and later in life turned to poetry. A fine photographic tour of Hardy's Dorset here. A comprehensive Hardy site from Marist College here.

Yes, we usually do good poetry on Saturday, but for once, some Broadway Lyrics from Bernstein and Sondheim's West Side Story - of course.

Gee, Officer Krupke 

Music: Leonard Bernstein/Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim



RIFF:
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringing up-ke
That get us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks,
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!

RIFF and QUARTET:
Gee. Officer Krupke, we're very upset;
We never had the love that every child oughta get
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood,
Deep down inside us there is good!

RIFF:
There is good!

ALL:
There is good, there is good,
There's an tapped good,
Like inside, the worst of us is good.

SNOWBOY(imitating Krupke):
That's a touchin' good story!

ACTION: Lemme tell you to the world!

SNOWBOY ("Krupke"):
Just tell it to the judge!

RIFF(to "Judge"):
Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough,
With all the marijuana,
They won't give me a puff.
They didn't wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin' lizards, that's why I'm so bad!

DIESEL ("Judge"):
Officer Krupke, you're really a square;
This boy don't need a judge, he needs an analyst's care!
It's just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.
He's psychologic'ly disturbed!

Flow Gently Sweet Afton

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes!
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise!
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream ---
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream!

Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear ---
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair!

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far mark'd with the courses of clear, winding rills!
There daily I wander, as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.

How pleasant thy banks and green vallies below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild ev'ning weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides!
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As, gath'ring sweet flow'rets, she stems thy clear wave!

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes!
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays!
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream ---
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream!

(The tune, of course, is one also used for Away in a Manger, but the tune preceded that Christmas song. For a little etymology on Afton - Gaelic for River, same word as Avon)

Thanks to Catullus website. I like the metaphor of the watery island for a desired sexy girl. I won't vouch for the translation - will have Dylanologist translate the next Catullus - his choice. If you are deficient in knowledge about Catullus, the Roman aristocrat-soldier-poet-bohemian-skirtchaser who died about 50 years before Christ was born and was a family friend of Julius Caesar, check the website.

Excerpt from Love Among the Ruins, by Robert Browning:

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop-
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

A Man and a Maid 

There was a little man,
Who wooed a little maid,
And he said, “Little maid, will you wed, wed, wed?
I have little more to say,
So will you, yea or nay,
For least said is soonest mended-ded, ded, ded.”
The little maid replied,
“Should I be your little bride,
Pray what must we have for to eat, eat, eat?
Will the flame that you’re so rich in
Light a fire in the kitchen?
Or the little god of love turn the spit, spit, spit?”

Another ribald tale of good times at Madame Lipsky's.
Giorgio Finogle had come in with an imitation of the latest Russian poet,
The one who wrote the great "Complaint about the Peanut Farm" which I read to
      you last year at Mrs. Riley's,
Do you remember? And then of course Giorgio had written this imitation
So he came in with it...Where was I and what was I saying?
The big beer parlor was filled with barmaids and men named Stuart
Who were all trying to buy a big red pitcher of beer for an artiste named Alma Stuart
Whom each claimed as his very own because of the similarity in names -
This in essence was Buddy's parody - O Giorgio, you idiot, Marion Stuart snapped,
It all has something to do with me! But no, Giorgio replied,
Biting in a melancholy way the edge off a cigar-colored paper patterned envelope
In which he had been keeping the Poem for many days
Waiting to show his friends. And actually it's not a parody at all,
I just claimed it was, out of embarassment. It's a poetic present for you all,
All of whom I love!

From "The Pleasures of Peace" by Kenneth Koch, who also wrote two excellent books about teaching poetry to children (see link): Rose, How did you get so Red? and one of the best-titled books of all time: Wishes, Dreams, and Lies.

Ye flowery banks o' bonie Doon,
   How can ye blume sae fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
   And I sae fu' o' care?

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
   That sings upon the bough,
Thou minds me o' the happy days,
   When my fause love was true.

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
   That sings beside thy mate,
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
   And wist na o' my fate.

from Ye Flowery Banks (Bonie Doon) by Robert Burns. Read entire: Click here: RPO -- Robert Burns : Ye Flowery Banks (Bonie Doon)

And now, Big Master, I'm broken and bent and twisted and scarred,
But I've held my job, and Thou knowest, and Thou wilt not judge me hard.
Thou knowest my sins are many, and often I've played the fool -
Whiskey and cards and women, they made me the devil's tool.
I was like a child with money, I flung it away with a curse,
Feasting a fawning parasite, or glutting a harlot's purse,
Then back to the woods repentent, back to the mill or mine,
I, the worker of workers, everything in my line.
Everything hard but headwork (I'd no more brains than a kid).
A brute with strength to labor, doing as I was bid;
Living in camps with menfolk, a lonely and loveless life,
Never knew kiss of sweetheart, never caress of wife.
A brute with strength to labor, and they were so far above -
Yet I'd gladly have gone to the gallows for one little look of love.

from The Song of the Wage-Slave, by Robert Service. Read entire: Click here: RPO -- Robert W. Service : The Song of the Wage-slave

Leaves of Grass

150th Anniversary of Leaves of Grass. A good time for a Whitman-fest at the Virginia Quarterly Review. They are a subscription site, but many of the articles are free online.

From the intro by Ted Gennoway:

There's a manuscript in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia that I consider the most important single sheet of paper in American literary history. It doesn't look like anything so grandiose. In fact, it looks like little more than a scrap of paper with a few scrawled lines. There are words scratched out here and there in the penciled script, alternate words tried out, question marks inserted over uncertain choices, but the words could hardly be more significant:

The spotted hawk salutes the approaching night;
He swoops by me, and rebukes me hoarsely with his invitation;
He complains with sarcastic voice of my lagging
I feel apt to clip it and go;
I am not half tamed, yet.—

VQR's Whitman issue here. Their interesting gallery of Whitman photos here.

The Poetry Issue

The New Criterion's annual  poetry issue is out, covering Richard Wilbur, Eliot, Lord Rochester, etc.

And including a fine essay on Formalism by poet David Yezzi. Excerpt:

"Today, as I have said, it is not necessary to understand prosody at all in order to write a successful poem in English or to be a successful poet. Still, I can’t help wondering if the art isn’t made poorer by contemporary poets’ self-assured disregard of traditional verse technique. As Brander Matthews himself once famously said: “A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should have at least forgotten it.” Prosody is not far behind Latin in terms of its obsolescence, even within the specialized discipline of poetry. And this goes for readers and critics, as well as for poets."
Read entire here. 

As I sit looking out of a window of the building
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new
    metal.
I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
And envy them--they are so far away from me!
Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning
    out of the window a little,
Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!
City I wanted most to see, and did not see, in Mexico!
But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,
Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!
The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.

from The Instruction Manual, by John Ashbery. Read entire: Click here: [minstrels] The Instruction Manual -- John Ashbery

Poetry

Maggie's Farm is determined to do its part in bringing poetry back into style. We have always been intellectual fashion leaders..really! Cutting edge, or as J.S. says, "bleeding edge."  Poetry is just the words - without the music. Our souls have to add the music, mainly by reading it out loud. My beef with Shakespeare education is that they make the dopey kids READ it. Wrong!  as Jim Cramer would say.  It has to be seen and heard - it was never meant to be read in study hall (and - dont forget, Teacher - it is called entertainment). It's the difference between looking at a blueprint and walking through a building. Anyway, I am so pleased that the good old liberal Camille Paglia has done this book. At Maggie's, we have had the belief that good poetry crystallizes chunks of life in a magical way. How you narrow it down to 43 is beyond me (cannot be done), but she did a book-thing. Snappy title: Click here: Amazon.com: Books: Break, Blow, Burn : Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

from A Dream within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe. Read entire: Click here: E. A. Poe Society of Baltimore