[nyctom]

David:

Interesting comments on ED. She is a strange one, that Emily. Perhaps a thread on her would be useful--like the fascinating thread on here evaluating Frost. There is an old joke about her poems: you can sing almost all of them to the tune "The Yellow Rose in Texas." I love her, but I often find her incomprehensible (I have a similar reaction to Gertrude Stein's stuff, which is not nearly as good as ED's, but is fascinating in that way you feel when watching someone very drunk or stoned make a complete fool of themselves: "Oh my, what will she do next?!?!"). I am having trouble reading ESVM--I keep drifing off in the middle of the sonnets. I am not sure if that is because I am not resonating with her work or because I have too much on mind right now. I like some of the shorter poems though, the ones Alicia refers to as Dorothy Parkeresque (and I love DP's short poems and, especially, her criticism). I will keep trying though. Thanks for posting the poem.

nyctom

[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited September 19, 2001).]

[A. E. Stallings]

The reason Dickinson's poems can be sung to "The Yellow Rose of Texas"--or "Amazing Grace" or any number of other tunes--is that they tend to be in hymn or ballad meter--4,3,4,3. Hymns were a big influence on her prosody--including, I believe, the slant rimes. We will definitely take up Emily at some point (though I think she has been featured here before).

Actually, I'm kind of with David in that I might generally prefer Millay's sonnets, say, to much of Dickinson, who often leaves me cold. But I think Dickinson has a fierceness and originality that must place her in a different league altogether--preference aside. Dickinson was quite prolific, of course, and also must face the charge, if it is a charge, of great unevenness.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

Nobody is quite like Emily; she really is sui generis. But I've been a fan of ESVM all my life, and I'd like to post the sonnet from which that marvelous concluding couplet comes:

xlii

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughts more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Her sense of the line, her ability to place words in unexpected positions that jar the mind to attention, is uncanny. Look at "in me sings," where most would have said "sings in me," subtly different and less telling.

[robert mezey]

Of course Dickinson wrote a lot, and of course most of
it is very uneven and often impenetrable. But in fifteen
or twenty poems she is about as good as gets, one of the
handful of great lyric poets. Many many levels about
Millay. Millay can be good, but she tends toward the
easy and slick and sometimes sentimental. That Xmas
sonnet, for example---compare it to this one by E. A.
Robinson:

KARMA

Christmas was in the air and all was well
With him, but for a few confusing flaws
In divers of God's images. Because
A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,
Was he to answer for the axe that fell?
He pondered; and the reason for it was,
Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus
Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.

Acknowledging an improvident surprise,
He magnified a fancy that he wished
The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.
Not sure of that, he found a compromise;
And from the fulness of his heart he fished
A dime for Jesus who had died for men.


As for comparing her to Frost, give her a break!
Except for Dickinson (in those two dozen poems),
Robinson, maybe Stevens, maybe Emerson, there's
no American poet who could stand such a comparison.

[Golias]

Odd, and rather pathetic that no one mentions my favorite The Harp Weaver, one of the most affecting poems I have read in my entire life. I really don't care what supercilious technical or non-technical objections anyone may raise to it.

It IS a great poem, and if you don't think so, then you are WRONG.

I hope that's clear.

G

[nyctom]

I remember someone once reciting "The Harp Weaver" at a speech tournament and I remember being very moved by it. So I should read that again. It is a wonderful poem to read to a child.

I am reading Tim's book The Deed of Gift, and one of the poems in there strikes a similar feeling to a ESVM poem I have loved for years and forgot was by her (I can be very forgetful about names, but it is from the first poetry book I ever bought, an anthology called Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle And Other Modern Verse). I am going to post both. Both are just wonderful for all these luscious sounds. And both are wonderful walking poems. On the streets of NYC, I can walk and recite out loud or sing while I walk, which certainly helps when you are walking from the upper west side to the Village. No one cares. I am just another Nutty New Yorker.


Harvest of Sorrows
--Tim Murphy

When swift brown swallows
return to their burrows
and diamond willows
leaf in the hollows,
when barrows wallow
and brood sows farrow,
we sow the black furrows
behind our green harrows.

When willows yellow
in the windy hollows,
we butcher the barrows
and fallow the prairies.
The silo swallows
a harvest of sorrows;
the ploughshare buries
a farmer's worries.

Now harried sparrows
forage in farrows.
Lashing the willows,
the north wind bellows
while farmers borrow
on unborn barrows.
Tomorrow, tomorrow
the sows will farrow.


Counting-Out Rhyme
--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.


I hope Tim you are not pissed at me for posting the poem. But I was impressed by the virtuoso rhyme, to quote Mr. Wilbur. And it did make me remember the ESVM.

[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited September 19, 2001).]

[A. E. Stallings]

Nyctom--Thanks for posting the comparison--one of my favorite Muphy poems and one of my favorite Millay poems. Lovely rimes.

Golias--yes, the Harp Weaver is a favorite also. It has something of the curious quality of a folk song--simple on the surface, but also strange. I wonder if it has ever been set to music?

[Alan Sullivan]

On Moriturus: if ESVM had the sense to stop after six stanzas, she would have a superb poem. Alas, she rambles on and on!

On the contrast between Murphy and Millay: the former has something to say beyond rhyme and word play; the latter does not.

Of course, I'm not exactly objective...

A.S.

[Tim Murphy]

Thanks Tom. I don't think anyone's ever posted Murphy on this board. Warning, if you walk down Broadway reciting this, they'll think you're a real crazy New Yorker. I didn't know the Millay poem, which is lovely. Just shows that two sufficiently demented rhymsters can have similar ears for the music a couple generations apart.

[nyctom]

Yeah, Tim, right. Like they are actually listening to me and not babbling on their cell phones.

Alan, I just like the sound of both of them. I think they resonate. I really do have to wonder about dinner conversation up in North Dakota. Seed prices and prosody. Interesting combo.

Alicia, is there a difference between "rime" and "rhyme"? I can be an atrocious speller myself so am I misusing/misspelling the word?

Golias, if you can, can you post "The Harp Weaver"? It really is a lovely and sweet poem and would be worth taking a look at. Thanks.

nyctom