December 14: Smarter Than You

As the Daily Mail article said, "Presumably spelled this way for the benefit of Sean Connery imitators."

I've hardly read Andrew Marvell, outside of "To His Coy Mistress," which I guess many people have run into in English class ("Mistress"! So spicy!). But he's a Metaphysical poet, and I like the Metaphysicals, so I liked his poems, all of which were new to me.

(Digression: I almost wrote "I like me some Metaphysicals," but I think this usage is tired and MUST BE STAMPED OUT. "I like me some X" is the "talk to the hand" of our time.)

One of the things I like about the Metaphysical poets, I must confess, is the idea that these poems are for the Smart Set, people who would become ever so bored by constancy of meter:

SEE with what simplicity
This nymph begins her golden days!
In the green grass she loves to lie,
And there with her fair aspect tames
The wilder flowers, and gives them names;
But only with the roses plays,
And them does tell
What colour best becomes them, and what smell.

However it's not as conceited (i.e. conceit-heavy) as Donne. Marvell, also, was apparently a little cleverer about managing his career, as this poem, a "Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return From Ireland" attests. "Horatian" is appropriate, as I take Horace to be another poet who knew which way the wind was blowing. While praising Cromwell, Marvell carefully puts in some to-be-sure stanzas upon the previous absolute ruler:

That thence the Royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn:
While round the armèd bands
Did clap their bloody hands.

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try;

Nor call’d the Gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right
But bow’d his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.

In fact, just before this, there's some lines that might justify the idea of trimming your sails to catch those prevailing winds:

Though Justice against Fate complain,
And plead the ancient Rights in vain—
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak,

Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,
And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.

It's basically like, "Power isn't given -- it must be taken!" I was kind of surprised, though, to find Marvell on the side of Cromwell. I don't know where I got the idea that the Metaphysicals were Royalists -- probably from Eliot, a king of smarter-than-you poetry. (I think Ashberry might be the reigning king. Everyone tells me he's great, but I can't follow it at all.)

Oh, and here's his ode to the Hollywood Farmer's Market:

What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine 35 Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Except for the "grass" part, that is; in Hollywood (the actual neighborhood, not the shorthand for showbiz), "glass" would be better -- as in, broken glass from car windows. And this poem doesn't have the young dudes in goatees who play bluegrass. But otherwise it's pretty accurate.

October 3: House to house fighting.

OK, now picture him reciting Chaucer

If, on a sitcom, your writers' room is run well, then problem areas in a script are clearly identified and attacked; indeed, they're identified at the story-breaking level so you don't have to rewrite them in the script, which can be much harder. But when your room is not run well, you spend a lot of time during rewrites arguing over straight lines and words within straight lines -- "since" vs. "because" or "maybe" vs. "perhaps," and you start backpedaling away from jokes that worked perfectly well and don't have obvious replacements, and it takes you forever and you eat dinner out of takeout containers and see your spouse at breakfast. Whereupon I would often say, "House to house fighting."

I think there are some people who enjoy house to house fighting, because it seems like their image of real comedy writing -- we're supposed to be eating takeout dinner in a room that still smells like takeout lunch! As if we were in a Neil Simon play or something. I can't stand it myself, mostly because I'm lazy and like to be home, but also because I like flow. I like flow in hockey games and rappers and in writing; writing shouldn't be that difficult (rewriting, that's another story). And writing that's supposed to be funny and enjoyed by a large audience -- I don't think that should feel difficult to do. As a rule -- there will always be difficulties, that's where you have to be good at your job. It's like what the pro athletes say -- I play for free, what you have to pay me for is practice.

I bring all this up because I have nothing to say about today's reading, the first 350 lines of the Canterbury Tales. I remember reading them, indeed I was required to recite the first 16 lines for English 125, and still can in a way that makes my wife (an actual English major) burst out laughing. I sound like someone doing the worst Swedish Chef impression in the world. But reading it is house to house fighting.

In listes thryes, and ay slayn his foo.
This ilke 40 worthy knight hadde been also
Somtyme with the lord of Palatye, 41
Ageyn another hethen in Turkye:
And everemore he hadde a sovereyn prys. 42
And though that he were worthy, he was wys,
And of his port 43 as meek as is a mayde.

Observe all the footnotes. The whole thing is like this. They're like fish bones. I'm a poor General Reader -- perhaps I should be busted down to Corporal Reader -- but all the Chaucerian irony, the existence of which I dimly remember being instructed about, is lost on me. Shakespeare doesn't bug me at all (because I wound up reading a lot of sixteenth-century history, no doubt), but I'm afraid this is too much.

Aug 2: From the beginnings of the Bummer Tradition

The whole point of this is that I am a thrall to the Daily Reading Guide; someone sitting in an office a hundred years ago culled these selections and I follow them; my will doesn't enter into it; they bind me and take me where I do not want to go. It's restful, in a way, and only occasionally are my "What the hell?" sensors engaged. Today is such a day, for, under a fine early August sky, where we might expect people with the means to buy a set of the Harvard Classics to be on vacation, we have this (from "To My Lute" -- super-fruity already, I know, but bear me out):

...Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?

Emphasis added by me for woefulness. These ten poems of William Drummond, the "Scottish Petrarch" (thereby answering that trivia question), have a 9:1 ratio of bummerness, which shows you that being a Laird in the early 17th century can be just as oppressive as being a young dude with a band is today. And, like a good Ramone, Drummond knows how to keep it short:

MY thoughts hold mortal strife;
I do detest my life,
And with lamenting cries
Peace to my soul to bring
Oft call that prince which here doth monarchize:
—But he, grim grinning King,
Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprize,
Late having deck’d with beauty’s rose his tomb,
Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.

I don't know what "caitiffs" is either, but I feel like I got the idea back in line 2. And yet Drummond hung on for 64 years, pretty good for the time, and doesn't appear to have missed any meals, so just going to all the trouble of writing a poem, to me, kind of undercuts the detestability factor.

The love poem starts out by being addressed to Phoebus and, in the context of the other poems, seems insincere; Drummond doesn't need to drag in a bunch of divine Greek mechanicals to get his bummer poems off the ground. Here's the one I like the best -- called "Human Folly," naturally:

OF this fair volume which we World do name
If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care,
Of him who it corrects, and did it frame,
We clear might read the art and wisdom rare:
Find out his power which wildest powers doth tame,
His providence extending everywhere,
His justice which proud rebels doth not spare,
In every page, no period of the same.
But silly we, like foolish children, rest
Well pleased with colour’d vellum, leaves of gold.
Fair dangling ribbands, leaving what is best,
On the great writer’s sense ne’er taking hold;
Or if by chance we stay our minds on aught,
It is some picture on the margin wrought.

(Lit-crit note: I wonder if living in a Latin-soaked world made writers and readers less sensitive to word order. "...which we World do name" sounds a little forced, but if you're more used to waiting around for the verb to bring up the rear maybe it feels more natural and less capital-P Poetical. Actual English majors are welcome to weigh in.)

June 25: Sexy Priest

Hello, handsome!

Robert Herrick, we are told, was a parish priest back there in the 17th century. One wonders if he started out his sermons like this:

A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:—

Or this:

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!

I guess that's a little gay, with all the talking about the flowing line of the clothes, so it's more like what we expect from priests, these days; but still. Today's selections are delightful, frolicsome lyrics concerning 1) how awesome pretty women are, and 2) death.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a Spring!
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the Summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew
Ne’er to be found again.

When you put it that way, a nice silk starts to mean more.

June 11: Spenser is a fanboy

"Epithalamion," if I'm cutting and pasting that correctly, is a poem written to celebrate a marriage. So what better time to read one than in June, month of weddings? And how much cooler would that poem be if it were "comprised of 365 long lines, corresponding to the days of the year; 68 short lines, representing the sum of the 52 weeks, 12 months, and 4 seasons of the annual cycle; and 24 stanzas, corresponding to the diurnal and sidereal hours"? Way much cooler, that's how much.

So, if you haven't guessed it already, Edmund Spenser was a nerd. Who else would begin his own wedding poem with "Ye learnèd sisters"? But the big tipoff is how much Greek mythological knowledge he drops:

Like unto Maia, when as Jove her took
In Tempe, lying on the flowry gras,
Twixt sleepe and wake, after she weary was,
With bathing in the Acidalian brooke.

How nice it must have been in the pre-spelling era! And how charmed his wife must have been with all the references to Hymen and Juno and the Nymphs of Mulla! Because if there's one thing women like, it's references -- the more recondite the better, in my experience. And whereas these days, fanboys have more places to whet their expertise -- sports, soul music, what have you -- in Spenser's day I guess it was either the saints or Greek myths.

Of course, we don't know how his wife took it, or was likely to take it, because in the action of the poem, which takes place during the course of her wedding day, she doesn't say a mumbling word, or even take any action (she is brought to the altar):

Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheekes,
...
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
Are governèd with goodly modesty,

It's nice that she's so quiet -- more oxygen for Edmund!

As to the poem as poem, I'm not so sold on it. I enjoy the alternation of long and short, but the one really striking image in the following passage (her breasts are like uncrudded cream!) doesn't float my boat:

Tell me, ye merchants daughters, did ye see
So fayre a creature in your towne before;
So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she,
Adorned with beautyes grace and vertues store?
Her goodly eyes lyke Saphyres shining bright,
Her forehead yvory white,
Her cheeks lyke apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips like cherryes charming men to byte,
Her brest like to a bowle of creame uncrudded,
Her paps lyke lyllies budded,
Her snowie neck lyke to a marble towre;
And all her body like a pallace fayre,
Ascending up, with many a stately stayre,
To honours seat and chastities sweet bowre.

I do like the idea that the ultimate arbiters of taste are merchants' daughters. Some things indeed never change.

NOTE: Sorry for the formatting, by the way. It's the cutting-and-pasting-stuff-with-line-breaks issue again.

May 21: Warning: more verse

Soul on a roll but you treat it like Pope on a rope/Cause the beats in the lines are so dope

Five metric feet crawl up a misanthrope:
It's "Happiness," by Alexander Pope.
In flawless couplets fearless concepts roll:
Enjambment's scorned, and dark nights of the soul.
Shaded by a hierarchical sun,
Pope sheds his light: "Places, everyone!"

"Whatever is, is right" -- if discontentment breeds,
Tough: God (by definition) met your needs.
You toil, and the wicked take your bread?
Your cupboard full of virtue keeps you fed!
Want money stacked as far as eye can see?
Don't, says Pope. (He echoes B.I.G.)
Nor in fame should wise men place their hope
(Does not apply to Alexander Pope).

Still, I'm too harsh. (It's what rhymed couplets bring --
A sitcom moppet's artificial zing.)
Pope says that all the shit for which we strive
Seems much smaller when it does arrive,
And that seems true. But what to do instead?
"Be excellent to all," like Bill and Ted.

Pope's recipe: take some thrift-shop Stoic,
Accessorize with rhymes -- behold! heroic.

May 20: Fourteen lines of madness (remix)

Concerning Shakespeare's sonnets, what's to say? "They're great"? Who am I, Helen Vendler? My Daily Reading Guide says, "...they reveal the inner Shakespeare more truly than do any of his great plays." How they're so sure, I don't know, but it says "Harvard" right there on the label so they must be right.

There might be something to it after all, for the "I" in the sonnets does resemble a writer -- he keeps track of his rivals ("Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope"), he is alternately boastful ("Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme"), and then he hates his writing ("These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover"). He is even bald ("Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.")

Like a writer, but, of course, a better writer than most. I like poetry with stunts in it, and Shakespeare obliges:

FAREWELL! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter;
In sleep, a king; but waking, no such matter.

I wonder if he had a draft where it was all "ing" words up until the couplet. Or this one, my favorite of this batch -- well, "That time of year thou may'st in me behold" is one I've always liked, and the middle quatrain of When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes has popped into my head from time to time -- but this one was one that I'd forgotten about, and just once I would like to go to a wedding where it was read instead of "Let me not to the marriage of true minds". A wedding of two political staffers, say:

TIRED with all these, for restful death I cry,—
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive Good attending captain Ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my Love alone.