Dream Song

 

Dream Song #14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,

we ourselves flash and yearn.

and, moreover, my mother told me as a boy

(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored

means you have no

 

Inner Resources. I conclude now I have no

inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

Peoples bore me,

literature bores me, especially great literature,

Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes,

as bad as achilles, 

 

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.

And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag,

and somehow a dog,

has taken itself & its tail considerably away

into mountains or sea or sky, leaving 

behind: me, wag.

 

-John Berryman

 

I'm not especially bored at the moment, great literature does not bore me, but I do love this poem, which is pretty great literature. There's a new volume of Berryman, Only Sing, 152 Uncollected Dream Songs out recently, and I was reading a review of it, which brought me back to my favorite of the original dream songs.

 

John Berryman (1914-1972)  was an American poet. His volume 77 Dream Songs won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Henry is his alter ego, or maybe better id, that shows up in the Dream Songs.

 

It was my Dad rather than my Mom who was likely to give me conventional advice of this sort, though there was never a line about Inner Resources that I recall. But: where's your vim, vigor, and vitality?

 

 

 

Quoting Walt Whitman

 

Tears 

 

Tears! Tears! Tears!

In the night, in solitude, tears.

On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand,

Tears, not a star shining, dark and desolate,

Moist tears, from the eyes of a muffled head;

O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?

What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?

Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries,

O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!

O wild and dismal night storm, with wind--O belching and desperate!

O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace,

But away at night as you fly, none looking--O then the unloosen'd ocean,

Of tears, tears, tears!

 

-Walt Whitman

 

I've been reading Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts. Miss La Trobe writes and organizes a pageant depicting the history of England at a country house. It was a benefit to fund new lighting for the local church. The pageant was held outside, and the weather mostly cooperated, but it did rain for a bit in the middle. (It is England after all.) After the pageant is over, one of audience says, "While we're waiting, tell me, did you feel when the shower fell someone wept for us all? There's a poem, Tears tears tears, it begins. And goes on Oh then the unloosened ocean...but I can't remember the rest."

 

More than I ever knew. I was somewhat surprised to discover it was Whitman. I almost titled this post Still More Weather, but I'm still a little uncertain whether the poem is about weather, comparing a storm to a person crying, or about a person, calm enough during the day, but crying in the night, and comparing that person to a storm on the shore. Not that one really needs to decide, of course.

 

Post coming soon-ish on Between the Acts. 

 

More Weather

#315

He fumbles at your Soul

As Players at the Keys

Before they drop full Music on --

He stuns you by degrees --

Prepares your brittle Nature

For the Ethereal Blow

By fainter Hammers -- further heard --

Then nearer -- Then so slow --

Your Breath has time to straighten --

Your Brain -- to bubble Cool --

Deals -- One -- imperial -- Thunderbolt --

That scalps your naked Soul --

 

When Winds take Forests in their Paws --

The Universe -- is still --

 

-Emily Dickinson

 

It's possible thunderstorm weather for us, sticky, though now there's a breeze picking up.  Fainter Hammers have indeed been further heard. So far not any nearer. It's still possible any actual rain will blow right past us.

 

Emily Dickinson, of course, didn't title her poems with numbers--they had no titles--and the numbers I use come from the Thomas H. Johnson edition of 1955. It's popular and it's what I have. He numbers the poems in the order he believes they were composed. Last week's poem was number #316, and he assigns them both to 1862. Assuming his dating is right, she was working out a theme at the time. And just what was the weather like in Amherst in June of 1862?

The Wind

 

#316

The Wind didn't come from the Orchard -- today --

Further than that ---

Nor stop to play with the Hay --

Nor joggle a Hat --

He's a transitive Fellow -- very --

Rely on that --

 

If He leave a Bur at the Door

We know He has climbed a Fir --

But the Fir is Where -- Declare --

Were you ever there?

 

If He brings Odors of Clovers --

And that is His business -- not Ours --

Then He has been with the Mowers --

Whetting away the Hours

To sweet pauses of Hay --

His Way -- of a June Day --

 

If He fling Sand, and Pebble --

Little Boys Hats -- and Stubble --

With an occasional Steeple --

And a hoarse "Get out of the way, I say,"

Who'd be the fool to stay?

Would you -- Say --

Would you be the fool to stay?

 

-Emily Dickinson

 

This just seemed to fit the season. The wind frequently leaves Bur/pine cones on our doorstep, though I moved this one up a couple of steps to get the door in. We know where those come from: there's a giant pine tree in our front yard, so I Declare I have been there. Our backyard Orchard is two apples and a pear--none of which bear much fruit, alas, too shady and too many squirrels--but if we get blossom smells, which we did last night, it's from the lilac bushes of our neighbors to the north.

 

The Mowers have been busy this season, and we get plenty of Clover smell, too. So far--fortunately--no occasional Steeple has landed in our front yard, though the Anglican church is only a block away...

 

 

Template for a Conversation With a Single Friend (rondeau)

Template for a Conversation With a Single Friend

I'll call you back when Junior is in bed

(addressed to Isa/Janet/Winifred).

My hands are full of turkey parts and string;

I know you want to talk about the thing

that happened at the staff retreat with Ted.

 

I have to see the kids are bathed and fed.

Of course I'd rather talk to you instead.

I'm sure he doesn't view it as a fling--

I'll call you back.

 

I'm sure he only means to clear his head.

You can't expect a man to go to bed

with someone from the office and then ring.

You have a lot to give. Stop hollering,

stop saying that you wish that you were dead.

I'll call you back.

 

-Alexandra Oliver

 

I pulled this book off my shelf and was browsing through when I saw this witty rondeau. Having posted Leigh Hunt's half a rondeau, Jenny Kiss'd Me, not so long ago, when I saw this, I thought that's the ticket. Though the title poem is awfully good, too, and well, a whole bunch of the others as well. The book won the Pat Lowther award for best book by a female Canadian poet in 2014.

 

Who exactly is it that's hollering? I'm voting for Junior, with the narrator carrying on two conversations at once, but I suppose it could be Janet.

 

Alexandra Oliver is a contemporary Canadian poet.

 

And why did I have the book off the shelf? Consider this a teaser for a longer post on Ontario publisher Biblioasis... 

 

The Termite

 

The Termite

Some primal termite knocked on wood

And tasted it, and found it good,

And that is why your Cousin May

Fell through the parlor floor today.

 

-Ogden Nash

 

OK, obviously feeling a bit lazy this evening, but if you didn't already know the poem, you should! And if you do, it likely amuses you to be reminded, right?

 

Good Intentions is Ogden Nash's book of 1942. 

The Ars Poetica of Paul Verlaine

 

Ars Poetica

Music first and foremost! In your verse

Choose those meters odd of syllable,

Supple in the air, vague, flexible,

Free of pounding beat, heavy or terse.

 

Choose the words you use--now right, now wrong--

With abandon: when the poet's vision

Couples the Precise with Imprecision,

Best the giddy shadows of his song:

 

Eyes veiled, dark with mystery,

Sunshine trembling in the noonday glare,

Starlight, in the tepid autumn air,

Shimmering in the night-blue filigree!

 

For nuance, not Color absolute,

Is your goal; subtle and shaded hue!

Nuance! It alone is what lets you

Marry dream to dream, and horn to flute!

 

Shun all cruel and ruthless Railleries;

Hurtful Quip, lewd Laughter, that appall

Heaven, Azure-eyed, to tears; and all

Garlic-stench scullery recipes!

 

Take vain Eloquence and wring its neck!

Best you keep your Rhyme sober and sound,

Lest it wander, reinless and unbound--

How far? Who can say?--if not in check!

 

Rhyme! Who will its infamies revile?

What deaf child, what Black of little wit

Forged with the worthless bauble, fashioned it

False and hollow-sounding to the file?

 

Music first and foremost, and forever!

Let your verse be what goes soaring, sighing,

Set free, fleeing from the soul gone flying

Off to other skies and loves, wherever.

 

Let your verse be aimless chance, delighting

In good-omened fortune, sprinkled over

Dawn's wind, bristling scents of mint, thyme, clover...

All the rest is nothing more than writing.

 

-Paul Verlaine (tr. Norman R. Shapiro)

 

 

I've been reading Richard Hell's novel Godlike, which retells the romance of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, but setting the story in New York City in the 1970s instead of Paris of the 1870s. Pick your drug of choice: absinthe or something more modern. The novel is told from the point of view of the Verlaine character after the death of Rimbaud, with flashbacks to when the affair was at its hottest.

I didn't really know the poetry of Paul Verlaine at all, so I looked up some poems on-line to see what they were like. 

Richard Hell is coming to the main Toronto library to discuss the book. Will he sing a few bars from Blank Generation? Probably not, alas, he's supposed to be retired from performing music.

 

 

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

(in Springfield, Illinois)

 

It is portentous, and a thing of state

That here at midnight, in our little town

A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,

Near the old court-house pacing up and down, 

 

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards

He lingers where his children used to play,

Or through the market on the well-worn stones

He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

 

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,

A famous high top-hat, and a plain worn shawl

Make him the quaint, great figure that men love,

The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

 

He cannot sleep upon his hill-side now.

He is among us:--as in times before!

And we who toss and lie awake for long

Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

 

His head is bowed, he thinks on men and kings.

Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?

Too many peasants fight, they know not why,

Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

 

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.

He sees the dreadnoughts scouring every main.

He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now

The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn

Shall come;--the shining hope of Europe free:

The league of sober folk, the Worker's Earth,

Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp, and Sea.

 

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,

That all his hours of travail here for men

Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace

That he may sleep upon his hill again?

-Vachel Lindsay

 

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was an American poet who was born and died in Springfield. This is from his book The Congo and Other Poems of 1914. 

 

One wonders if he's walking again. 

 

The young Abraham Lincoln reading by firelight (at midnight?) is a pen-and-ink drawing by my grandfather. 

 

 

 

Symptoms of Love (#1961Club)

 

Symptoms of Love

Love is a universal migraine.

A bright stain on the vision

Blotting out reason.

 

Symptoms of true love

Are leanness, jealousy,

Laggard dawns;

 

Are omens and nightmares--

Listening for a knock,

Waiting for a sign:

 

For a touch of her fingers

In a darkened room,

For a searching look.

 

Take courage, lover!

Could you endure such grief

At any hand but hers?

 

-Robert Graves

 

Robert Graves (1895-1985) was an English poet who conveniently wrote a short book called More Poems 1961. What could be better for a year club poetry post, I ask you?  😉

 

 

Thanks to Kaggsy and Simon for hosting.

 

I don't actually have that first edition shown above, of course. Allow Gumby to introduce the beat-up paperback I do have:

 

 

Jenny Kiss'd Me

Jane Welsh Carlyle

 

 

Jenny Kiss'd Me

Jenny kissed me when we met

  Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

  Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

  Say health and wealth have missed me,

Say I'm growing old, but add,

  Jenny kissed me.

 

-Leigh Hunt

 

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) is better known as an essayist, but also wrote poetry. The story goes that in 1838, Hunt, just recovered from a bad illness, visited Thomas and Jane Carlyle at their home, and Jane Carlyle was so happy to see him recovered, she kissed him. That portrait doesn't make Jane Carlyle look like the jumping up and kissing type, but I guess you never know...

 

I pulled Virginia Woolf's The Second Common Reader off the shelf for its essay on George Gissing, and one of the other essays is about Jane Carlyle and how she is one of the great letter writers in English. That got me to thinking about the only other thing I know about Jane Carlyle, which was this poem.

 

Hunt called the poem a rondeau, though if so it's a simplified one. It starts with a refrain that's half the first line, and ends with that refrain occupying only a half-line. But a writer of the true French rondeau would have 'Jenny kissed me' as a half-line at least once more in the middle of the poem.

 

Not that it has much relevance to all that above, but I can't resist, while I have the Virginia Woolf off the shelf, quoting the final words of the last essay, 'How Should One Read a Book?'

"...the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, 'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have been reading.'" 

The Yak

 

The Yak

As a friend to the children commend me the Yak.

  You will find it exactly the thing:

It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back,

  Or lead it about with a string.

 

The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Thibet

  (A desolate region of snow)

Has for centuries made it a nursery pet,

  And surely the Tartar should know!

 

Then tell your papa where the Yak can be got

  And if he is awfully rich

He will buy you the Creature--or else he will not.

  (I cannot be positive which.)

 

-Hilaire Belloc

 

This is from Hilaire Belloc's The Bad Child's Book of Beasts of 1896.  

 

Off travelling and this was scheduled in advance. Not in Thibet...

How To Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors (#poem)

How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors

It's not rocket surgery.

First, get all your ducks on the same page.

After all, you can't make an omelette

without breaking stride.

 

Be sure to watch what you write

with a fine-tuned comb.

Check and re-check until the cows turn blue.

It's as easy as falling off a cake.

 

Don't worry about opening up

a whole hill of beans:

you can burn that bridge when you come to it,

if you follow where I'm coming from.

 

Concentrate! Keep your door closed

and your enemies closer.

Finally, don't take the moral high horse:

if the metaphor fits, walk a mile in it.

 

-Brian Bilston

 

I just came across this as 3 Quarks Daily, a cultural aggregator site, which among other things does a new poem daily. It definitely caught my eye, or ear, or something.

 

Brian Bilston is a pseudonym for Paul Millicheap, a British poet with several books out, but who generally releases his new poetry at that place formerly known as Twitter. As the photo suggests he prefers his privacy. Totally new to me, but I'll be keeping my eye out for more.

 

Is it really that easy to fall off a cake? Sounds difficult to me... 😉 

So Adam's offspring live...

 

from Vis and Ramin 

So Adam's offspring live, and put away

The happiness and grief of yesterday.

Why should you grieve for what's gone by? Forget!

Why brood on things that haven't happened yet?

Grief won't bring back the past, and all your scolding

Will not prevent the future from unfolding.

Enjoy a hundred years of victory

But one day's all your lifetime here will be ;

Whatever riches you might hope to win

One day alone is yours--the day you're in;

The best course is to look for pleasure, to

Enjoy the single day that's given you. [p. 264]

 

-Fakraddin Gorgani (tr. Dick Davis)

 

Sections in Vis and Ramin often ended in a bit of general wisdom, with applicability (possibly ironic) to what just happened. Just before this is in the story line Vis and King Mobad had been reconciled, and Mobad had given a stack of gifts to both Vis and her nurse. It wasn't to last, of course, and we knew it wouldn't even before what I quoted. "The moon-faced beauty lied, Mobad believed her/And asked her to forgive him that he'd grieved her."

 

I had copied out some other sections as I was reading but they didn't fit in my earlier post. But now, here I am thinking about Iran again... 

James Weldon Johnson's The Creation

 

The Creation

(A Negro Sermon) 

And God stepped out on space,


And He looked around and said,

"I'm lonely—


I'll make me a world."
And far as the eye of God could see


Darkness covered everything,


Blacker than a hundred midnights


Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,


And the light broke,


And the darkness rolled up on one side,


And the light stood shining on the other,


And God said, "That's good!"

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,


And God rolled the light around in his hands


Until He made the sun;


And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.


And the light that was left from making the sun


God gathered it up in a shining ball


And flung it against the darkness,


Spangling the night with the moon and stars.


Then down between


The darkness and the light


He hurled the world;


And God said, "That's good!"

 
Then God himself stepped down—


And the sun was on His right hand,


And the moon was on His left;


The stars were clustered about His head,


And the earth was under His feet.


And God walked, and where He trod


His footsteps hollowed the valleys out


And bulged the mountains up.

Then He stopped and looked and saw


That the earth was hot and barren.


So God stepped over to the edge of the world


And He spat out the seven seas—


He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—


He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—


And the waters above the earth came down,


The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,


And the little red flowers blossomed,


The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,


And the oak spread out his arms,


The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,


And the rivers ran down to the sea;


And God smiled again,


And the rainbow appeared,


And curled itself around His shoulder.

Then God raised His arm and He waved his hand


Over the sea and over the land,


And He said, "Bring forth! Bring forth!"


And quicker than God could drop His hand,


Fishes and fowls


And beasts and birds


Swam the rivers and the seas,


Roamed the forests and the woods,


And split the air with their wings.


And God said, "That's good!"

 
Then God walked around,


And God looked around


On all that He had made.


He looked at His sun,


And He looked at his moon,


And He looked at his little stars;


He looked on His world


With all its living things,


And God said, "I'm lonely still."

Then God sat down—


On the side of a hill where He could think;


By a deep, wide river He sat down;


With His head in His hands,


God thought and thought,


Till He thought, "I'll make me a man!"

Up from the bed of the river


God scooped the clay;


And by the bank of the river


He kneeled Him down;


And there the great God Almighty


Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,


Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,


Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;


This great God,


Like a mammy bending over her baby,


Kneeled down in the dust


Toiling over a lump of clay


Till He shaped it in is His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life,


And man became a living soul.


Amen.      Amen.

 

-James Weldon Johnson

 

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was an author, professor, and executive of the NAACP. This comes from his book of 1927 God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. That and the novel The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man are generally considered Johnson's two major works.

 

I first read (or maybe heard) the poem in sixth grade. Mrs. Lydia Gaines was one my favourite teachers in grade school. But for the longest time all I remembered (and that not quite accurately) was "Blacker than a hundred midnights/In a cypress swamp".  

 

Jean Toomer (#poetry)

November Cotton Flower

Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold,

Made cotton stalks look rusty, seasons old,

And cotton, scarce as any southern snow,

Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,

Failed in its function as the autumn rake;

Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take

All water from the streams; dead birds were found

In wells a hundred feet below the ground--

Such was the season when the flower bloomed.

Old folks were startled and it soon assumed

Significance. Superstition saw

Something it had never seen before:

Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,

Beauty so sudden for that time of year.

 

-Jean Toomer

 

This is from Jean Toomer's novel Cane of 1923; it's written in a mix of poetry and prose. This poem is in heroic couplets, but it is fourteen lines and can be viewed as a sonnet, though the turn comes after the ninth line. Brown eyes, as with Chuck Berry's 'Brown Eyed Handsome Man', stand in for brown skin, and loving without a trace of fear would probably be considered a rare enough moment for Blacks in rural Georgia (where the novel is set) at the time.

 

Poking around for pictures of cotton fields, I discovered that Marion Brown, the alto saxophonist, titled his album of 1979 'November Cotton Flower' and I have to assume he was thinking of this Jean Toomer poem. The title track from the album:

 

 

A Dream Deferred (#poetry)

Advice

Folks, I'm telling you,

birthing is hard

and dying is mean--

so get yourself

a little loving

in between.

 

-Langston Hughes

 

Testimonial

 

If I just had a piano,

if I just had a organ,

if I just had a drum,

how I could praise my Lord!

 

But I don't need no piano

  neither organ

  nor drum

for to praise my Lord!

 

-Langston Hughes

 

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

-Langston Hughes

 

I feel like Langston Hughes has been in the air lately. A couple of my regular poetry sources have featured him.

 

Hughes (1901-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and moved to New York City in 1921 for college. (Columbia.) He became an important writer in the Harlem Renaissance. These three poems all come from his volume Montage of a Dream Deferred of 1951, which represents voices heard around Harlem in one 24-hour period. The last one quoted is probably the best known poem of the book. It supplied Lorraine Hansbury the title for her hit play, as well as the title for a poem I've previously quoted on the blog. 

Washing Day

 

from Washing Day

The Muses have turned gossips; they have lost

The buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase,

Language of gods. Come, then, domestic Muse,

In slip-shod measure loosely prattling on,

Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream,

Or droning flies, or shoes lost in the mire

By little whimpering boy, with rueful face --

Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded washing day.

...

Then would I sit me down, and ponder much

Why washings were; sometimes, through hollow hole

Of pipe amused we blew, and sent aloft

The floating bubbles; little dreaming then

To see, Montgolfier, thy silken ball

Ride buoyant through the clouds, so near approach

The sports of children and the toils of men.

Earth, air, and sky, the ocean hath its bubbles,

And verse is one of them--this most of all.

 

-Anna Laetitia Barbauld

 

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) was a poet, essayist, literary critic, and a pioneering author of children's books. She was from a Dissenting family in the Midlands. 

 

The measure doesn't seem at all 'slip-shod' to me, but quite a solid blank verse. You can decide if you think she's 'prattling on'--I might say yes, but in a very amusing and ironic way. I've only quoted a quarter of the poem--the very beginning and the very end. You can find the entire poem here. The Montgolfier brothers were pioneers of flight by hot-air balloon.

 

I came on this because I recently finished reading Daisy Hay's Dinner With Joseph Johnson, which came out in 2022. Very good! Joseph Johnson (1738-1809) was an important left-wing publisher, also from a Dissenting background, who, in addition to first publishing Barbauld, was also the publisher of Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandfather), William Cowper, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Johnson published early Wordsworth and Coleridge, and was William Blake's primary employer. (Though Blake published a lot of his own books himself.) Johnson was famous for his weekly dinners--Benjamin Franklin would show up, until the American Revolution got under way, and Franklin left England--and when Johnson was imprisoned for selling books the government didn't like in 1799, he continued the dinners in prison.

 

I don't think I'd ever heard of Anna Laetitia Barbauld before, but part of the poem was quoted in the book--"Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded washing day." and I decided I had to find the rest of it.

 

 

 

The Long Voyage (#poetry)

The Long Voyage

Not that the pines were darker there,

nor mid-May dogwood brighter there,

nor swifts more swift in summer air;

  it was my own country,

 

having its thuderclap of spring,

its long midsummer ripening,

its corn hoar-stiff at harvesting,

  almost like any country,

 

yet being mine; its face, its speech,

its hills bent low within my reach,

its river birch and upland beech

  were mine, of my own country.

 

Now the dark waters at the bow

fold back, like earth against the plow;

foam brightens like the dogwood now

  at home, in my own country.

 

-Malcolm Cowley

 

One last bit of Malcolm Cowley and then maybe I'm done for now. Cowley's own country where he grew up was rural western Pennsylvania; his first book of poems was titled Blue Juniata for the left bank tributary of the Susquehanna.

 

This poem together with three others by Cowley first appeared in Poetry magazine of October 1938, along with others by Kenneth Fearing, Stephen Spender, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. In 1938, Cowley was living on the east coast, in Connecticut.

Brooms of Steel? Or Shovels of Plastic?

 

Looking northeast from my front stoop this evening

#1252 

 

Like Brooms of Steel

The Snow and Wind

Had swept the Winter Street -

The House was hooked

The Sun sent out

Faint Deputies of Heat -

Where rode the Bird

The Silence tied

His ample - plodding Steed

The Apple in the Cellar snug

Was all the one that played.

 

-Emily Dickinson

I searched for Emily Dickinson winter poem and this was what DuckDuckGo produced for me. I will have read it before but I didn't really remember it; it was suggested by this post.

 

It wasn't Brooms of Steel that shovelled that walk, but my nice kid (?25--that makes him a kid to me these days) neighbour to the north, who this morning not only shovelled his walk and the laneway between the houses, but then went on to do my walk as well. It continued snowing most of the day, but before I even got around to doing the touch up, he'd done it. I did manage to shovel the flat part of our roof--shovelling is not the worst of household chores I feel, and I--almost--missed having a chance to do it.

 

You might call what the city's snowplow has Brooms of Steel, I suppose. 

 

Our weather's been odd. Snow, a bit over a week ago, which suggested last week's Frost poem, but then everything melted again, and just today we had a significant new snow, so another snow poem was called for after all. The Deputies of Heat today were indeed fairly faint. (A high of 15F.)

Linda Sue Grimes, whose post I poached from, reminds that hooking is something one does to produce rugs (I can't give you any details) and suggests that the Steed the bird rides is a tree. Certainly the pine tree of our front yard in the picture is a welcome home to birds.

Dust of Snow

 

Dust of Snow

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

 

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

 

-Robert Frost

 

When I first thought of this poem a few days ago all the local pines were well-dusted in snow, but it rained all day yesterday and today was sunny and well above freezing. There's not much snow left. So I used an AI image generator for my picture. I never would have gotten a convenient crow anyway.

 

I'd like to think I'd behave like Frost and be cheered up in such a circumstance, but it's quite possible I'd just look up and think, stupid crow...more likely to have been a squirrel here in any case. 😉