[MacArthur]

A poet neglected by publishers, and somewhat unfamiliar to the general reading audience-- yet championed by Formalists Dana Gioa and Randell Jarell, as well as free-verse advocates with formal interests like Harvey Gross.

...an irregular villanelle.

<u>#1, of Five Villanelles</u>

The crack is moving down the wall.
Defective plaster isn’t all the cause.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

It’s mildly cheering to recall
That every building has it’s little flaws.
The crack is moving down the wall.

Here in the kitchen drinking gin,
We can accept the damndest laws.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

And though there’s no one here at all,
One searches every room because,
The crack is moving down the wall.

Repairs? But how can one begin?
The lease has warnings buried in each clause.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

These nights one hears a creaking in the hall,
The sort of thing which gives one pause.
The crack is moving down the wall.
We must remain until the roof falls in.




[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited February 23, 2001).]

[Michael Juster]

I think this will be an interesting thread. With the advocacy of Dana Gioia and Donald Justice, many New Formalists have read Kees carefully--to the extent that there is a little bit of a backlash against "the cult of Kees" in certain quarters and some sentiment that his mysterious death has given him an undeserved aura. I personally think that's unfair, although I do think his body of great work is so small that he will always be, at best, on the fringes of the canon. I also think the "I have no daughter. I desire none." line (I'm doing it from memory so God I hope I have it right!) is one of the most stunning endings anyone will ever read.
I think this is a brilliantly eerie poem, with the deliberate off-key note of the irregular repetend adding a spooky music. It wouldn't work nearly as well if it weren't so close to a perfect rhyme.

[Kate Benedict]

Wow, Macarthur, I was poised to start a Kees topic myself. Great minds think alike.

Kees was a 20th C Renaissance Man in that he wrote poetry and music, made documentary and art movies, painted and pursued photography -- or so Justice's introduction to Kees' Collected Poems tells us. He is assumed to have killed himself by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1955 at age 41.

What little I know about Kees fascinates me. This multi-talented man, who seemed to "fit" so well into the intellectual and bohemian circles in New York and San Francisco, never felt that he fit; indeed, he found these scenes profoundly terrifying. An alter-ego keeps popping up in his poems, a chap named Robinson:

Aspects of Robinson

Robinson at cards at the Algonquin; a thin
Blue light comes down once more outside the blinds.
Gray men in overcoats are ghosts blown past the door.
The taxis streak the avenues with yellow, orange, and red.
This is Grand Central, Mr. Robinson.

Robinson on a roof above the Heights; the boats
Mourn like the lost. Water is slate, far down.
Through sound of ice cubes dropped in glass, an osteopath,
Dressed for the links, describes an old Intourist tour.
--Here's where old Gibbons jumped from, Robinson.

Robinson walking in the Park, admiring the elephant.
Robinson buying the Tribune, Robinson buying the Times. Robinson
Saying, "Hello. Yes, this is Robinson. Sunday
At five? I'd love to. Pretty well. And you?"
Robinson alone at Longchamps, staring at the wall.

Robinson afraid, drunk, sobbing Robinson
In bed with a Mrs. Morse. Robinson at home;
Decisions: Toynbee or luminol? Where the sun
Shines, Robinson in flowered trunks, eyes toward
The breakers. Where the night ends, Robinson in East Side bars.

Robinson in Glen plaid jacket, Scotch-grain shoes,
Black four-in-hand and oxford button-down,
The jeweled and silent watch that winds itself, the brief-
Case, covert topcoat, clothes for spring, all covering
His sad and usual heart, dry as a winter leaf.

---------

Has any other poet captured urban angst better than Kees, I wonder -- the horrific subtext of small talk, cocktail culture, prosperity itself.

Here is the sonnet Michael Juster referenced:

For My Daughter

Looking into my daughter's eyes I read
Beneath the innocence of morning flesh
Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed.
Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh
Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands;
The night's slow poison, tolerant and bland,
Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen
That may be hers appear: foul, lingering
Death in certain war, the slim legs green.
Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting
Of others' agony; perhaps the cruel
Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.
These speculations sour in the sun.
I have no daughter. I desire none.

[robert mezey]

Glad to see Kees' work in circulation. He was one
of the best of that generation (and better than
Lowell and Nemerov, for my money). Hadn't heard
about any backlash, but it sounds odd---most people
have never heard of him, let alone know how he died.
Here's one I'm sure you all know, that I find among
his most affecting:

1926

The porchlight coming on again,
Early November, the dead leaves
Raked in piles, the wicker swing
Creaking. Across the lots
A phonograph is playing Ja-Da.

An orange moon. I see the lives
Of neighbors, mapped and marred
Like all the wars ahead, and R.
Insane, B. with his throat cut,
Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.

I did not know them then.
My airdale scratches at the door.
And I am back from seeing Milton Sills
And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old.
The porchlight coming on again.

[MacArthur]

...and a curious sort of Additive Form. (Does anyone know anything about the form?)

<u>The Beach in August</u>

The day the fat woman
In the bright blue bathing suit
Walked into the water and died,
I thought about the human
Condition. Pieces of old fruit
Came in and were left by the tide.

What I thought about the human
Condition was this: old fruit
Comes in and is left, and dries
In the sun. Another fat woman
In a dull green bathing suit
Dives into the water and dies.
The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun
While the seascape arranges old fruit,
Coming in with the tide glistening
At noon. A woman, moderately stout,
In a nondescript bathing suit,
Swims to a pier. A tall woman
Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human
Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.

[Alan Sullivan]

Villanelle #1 reminds me of the Auden lines "And the crack in the teacup opens / A lane to the land of the dead."

Thanks for starting this thread Mac, and for your contributions, Kate and Robert. Individually, the five poems quoted are very striking. Collectively, they began to pall for me about the time we hit "The Beach in August."

This was the same reaction I felt on my first and only reading of Kees, about seven years ago. His dryness and loathing, however sincere, and ultimately tragic, are a kind of psychic poison. Like Plath, Kees is best appreciated briefly and infrequently, from a respectful distance. Get too close, and you might be sucked into the darkness.

Alan Sullivan

[robert mezey]

I don't believe it's any particular form; just one
he invented, with end-words repeated (mostly) but
not in any particular order. It strikes me too as
a dull poem. But on the whole, although I also find
Plath almost impossible to read---not wanting to be
infected by her hatred of life---I like a lot of Kees
and for whatever reason don't end by being simply
depressed. Certainly The Cats, Wet Thursday, The
Coming of the Plague, Praise to the Mind, White Colllar
Ballad, Homage to Arthur Waley, The View of the Castle,
Crime Club, The Smiles of the Bathers, Back, Round,
and this one, Colloquy:

In the broken light, in owl weather,
Webs on the lawn where the leaves end,
I took the thin moon and the sky for cover
To pick the cat's brains and descend
A weedy hill. I found him groveling
Inside the summer house, a shadowed bulge,
Furred and somnolent. ---"I bring,"
I said, "besides this dish of liver, and an edge
Of cheese, the customary torments,
And the usual wonder why we live
At all, and why the world thins out and perishes
As it has done for me, sieved
As I am toward silences. Where
Are we now? Do we know anything?"
---Now, on another night, his look endures.
"Give me the dish," he said.
I had his answer, wise as yours.

[Andrew Frisardi]

After taking out Weldon Kees's Collected today, the one edited by Donald Justice, I thought I’d take a look for what threads have been done on him here. Not surprisingly, there were two, this one and another one, here.

Justice says Kees is “one of the bitterest poets in history,” and it’s hard to argue with that. But I really like him, so I thought I’d bounce this thread up with another poem added to it, the one I was reading today.

I find this affirming more than morose and I don't know why that is, unless it's because I'm a glum bloke myself.

The Smiles of the Bathers

The smiles of the bathers fade as they leave the water,
And the lover feels sadness fall as it ends, as he leaves his love.
The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clock strikes, is hollow and old;
The pilot's relief on landing is no release.
These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect and public endings--
Water and wind and flight, remembered words and the act of love
Are but interruptions. And the world, like a beast, impatient and quick,
Waits only for those who are dead. No death for you. You are involved.

--Weldon Kees

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks for restarting this, Andrew. I've been trying to construct a useful addition since yesterday; sorry for delaying. But I need to find a Collected myself and read more.

In the poem you quote, I think it's that last phrase, "You are involved" that lifts it. It's ambiguous: you are inextricably wound up in this mess, which means you are alive. In love? In trouble? Could be anything.

There's a lot of Kees that's even darker, and I'm still trying to analyze why I like it. The Coming of the Plague is one like that.

[W.F. Lantry]

Then there's this one, an old favorite, but less well known:

CRIME CLUB

No butler, no second maid, no blood upon the stair.
No eccentric aunt, no gardener, no family friend
Smiling among the bric-a-brac and murder.
Only a suburban house with the front door open
And a dog barking at a squirrel, and the cars
Passing. The corpse quiet dead. The wife in Florida.

Consider the clues: the potato masher in a vase,
The torn photograph of a Weslyan basketball team
Scattered with check stubs in the hall;
The unsent fan letter to Shirley Temple,
The Hoover button on the lapel of the deceased,
The note: "To be killed this way is quite all right with me."

Small wonder that the case remains unsolved,
Or that the sleuth, Le Roux, is now incurably insane,
And sits alone in a white room in a white gown,
Screaming that all the world is mad, that clues
Lead nowhere, or to walls so high their tops cannot be seen;
Screaming all day of war, screaming that nothing can be solved.