The formal Sylvia Plath

Color Record No. 18, Side A:

and—Sylvia Plath, in form:

The Death of Myth-Making

By Sylvia Plath

Two virtues ride, by stallion, by nag,

   To grind our knives and scissors:

Lantern-jawed Reason, squat Common Sense

One courting doctors of all sorts,

   One, housewives and shopkeepers.

The trees are lopped, the poodles trim,

   The laborer’s nails pared level

Since those two civil servants set

Their whetstone to the blunted edge

   And minced the muddling devil

Whose owl-eyes in the scraggly wood

   Scared mothers to miscarry,

Drove the dogs to cringe and whine,

And turned the farmboy’s temper wolfish,

   The housewife’s, desultory.

Whenever I have a day off :)

The B-side on Color Record No. 17:

and this poem that I saw for the first time today:

Circle Poems

By Lew Welch

Whenever I have a day off, I write a new poem.

Does this mean you shouldn’t work, or that you

write best on your day off?

For example, this is the poem I wrote today.

                                     *

When he was 20, he understood some of the secrets of

life, and undertook to write them down so simply that

even an idiot could understand.

“For,” he reasoned, “if I can’t do that, I don’t

understand it myself.”

He proved himself right.

When he was 50, he didn’t understand it himself.

                                      *

“Why is it,” he said, “that no matter what you say,

a woman always takes it personally?”

“I never do,” she said.

                                      *

John said, “Then I met that short fat guy with the

neat little beard, with a name like dawn.”

“You mean George Abend?”

“Yeah.”

“Abend means evening.”

                                     *

Blake on Math

Color Record No. 17, Side A:

One thing Blake had to say about Math:

from “Proverbs of Hell” in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

By William Blake

Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.

Blake!! :)

Color Record No. 16, Side B:

and this came up in class today!!  J

from “Proverbs of Hell” in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

By William Blake

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

The Pear Tree Blossometh! :)

Color Record No. 16, Side A:

This James Wright poem came up in class today:

To a Blossoming Pear Tree

By James Wright

Beautiful natural blossoms,

Pure delicate body,

You stand without trembling.

Little mist of fallen starlight,

Perfect, beyond my reach,

How I envy you.

For if you could only listen,

I would tell you something,

Something human.

An old man

Appeared to me once

In the unendurable snow.

He had a singe of white

Beard on his face.

He paused on a street in Minneapolis

And stroked my face.

Give it to me, he begged.

I'll pay you anything.

I flinched.  Both terrified,

We slunk away,

Each in his own way dodging

The cruel darts of the cold.

Beautiful natural blossoms,

How could you possibly

Worry or bother or care

About the ashamed, hopeless

Old man?  He was so near death

He was willing to take

Any love he could get,

Even at the risk

Of some mocking policeman

Or some cute young wiseacre

Smashing his dentures,

Perhaps leading him on

To a dark place and there

Kicking him in his dead groin

Just for the fun of it.

Young tree, unburdened

By anything but your beautiful natural blossoms

And dew, the dark

Blood in my body drags me

Down with my brother.

Paul Celan!

The B-side of yesterday’s color record:

and this classic  J

Todesfuge

von Paul Celan

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends

wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts

wir trinken und trinken

wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng

Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt

der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland

dein goldenes Haar Margarete

er schreibt es und tritt vor das Haus und es blitzen die Sterne

er pfeift seine Rüden herbei

er pfeift seine Juden hervor läßt schaufeln ein Grab in der Erde

er befiehlt uns spielt auf nun zum Tanz

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts

wir trinken dich morgens und mittags wir trinken dich abends

wir trinken und trinken

Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt

der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland

dein goldenes Haar Margarete

Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng

Er ruft stecht tiefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andern singet und spielt

er greift nach dem Eisen im Gurt er schwingts seine Augen sind blau

stecht tiefer die Spaten ihr einen ihr anderen spielt weiter zum Tanz auf

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts

wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends

wir trinken und trinken

ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete

dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen

Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus  Deutschland

er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft

dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts

wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken

der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau

er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau

ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete

er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft

er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein Meister aus

Deutschland 

dein goldenes Haar Margarete

dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

Jim

Color Record No. 15, Side A:

and a gem from Jim  J

You Know What People Say

By James Galvin

Sulky what-ifs.

Sulky what-ifs.

They bumblefuck the metastuff.

Diffidence their stock in trade.

Cozy hell—cozy, hell.

They make a mockery of irony.

They hold Special Olympics in wit.

What was Shakespeare’s blood pressure?

Vertical river, cloister of thunder,

Bleeds the ship’s fell sail.

God comes in for a landing. He lowers God’s landing gear.

He raises holy spoilers, lowers the sacred ailerons. He imagines

Reality.

Tried everything in life?

Sulky what-ifs are dumbstruck. Drumsticks.

Their spiritual actuality is empirical.

What if uppity angels?

What if there really were rules?

What if those angels melted in the rain?

If reality is an illusion, wouldn’t it stand to reason

That illusions are real?

A lot of dumb questions.

Impingement of external objects or conditions upon the body

Palpitate apostasy.

The oppressed must free the oppressors to free themselves, see?

The soul is euphemism for the body.

What does willing mean? Do you sense my sense?

Am I fashionable?

Objective as an angel in the rain?

Screaming from a safe place?

Nine smocked doctors, three unmasked.

One has left his face sewn to the pillow.

One holds a lace fan like a hand of cards she studies,

Considering the risks.

She is the loveliest doctor.

Her doctor-father scolds her right there in front of all the other doctors.

They are aghast.

They kneel and don carnival hats with feathers.

I don’t think they are really doctors.

The trees are real. They are green kachinas.

Dark rooms of wind are installed in the house of barbarism.

The norm is always incorrect. If what?

Hass

The B-side of Color Record No. 14:

It’s the long weekend, and I’m trying to channel the Robert Hass of this poem:

Measure

By Robert Hass

Recurrences.

Coppery light hesitates  

again in the small-leaved

Japanese plum. Summer  

and sunset, the peace  

of the writing desk

and the habitual peace  

of writing, these things  

form an order I only

belong to in the idleness  

of attention. Last light   

rims the blue mountain

and I almost glimpse  

what I was born to,

not so much in the sunlight

or the plum tree  

as in the pulse

that forms these lines.

Robert Herrick (again) (the famous one)

Side A of No. 14:

and the better-known Robert Herrick poem  J

Upon Julia's Clothes

By Robert Herrick

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!

Robert Herrick

The B-side of No. 13—

And Robert Herrick (there’s a story behind this one)—

Upon Julia’s Breasts

By Robert Herrick

Display thy breasts, my Julia, there let me

Behold that circummortal purity;

Between whose glories, there my lips I’ll lay,

Ravished in that fair Via Lactea.

Put a river in it! :)

Side A of Color Record No. 13:

and an old imagist poem with a river—

Wash of Cold River

By H. D.

Wash of cold river

in a glacial land,

Ionian water,

chill, snow-ribbed sand,

drift of rare flowers,

clear, with delicate shell-

like leaf enclosing

frozen lily-leaf,

camellia texture,

colder than a rose;

wind-flower

that keeps the breath

of the north-wind—

these and none other;

intimate thoughts and kind

reach out to share

the treasure of my mind,

intimate hands and dear

drawn garden-ward and sea-ward

all the sheer rapture

that I would take

to mould a clear

and frigid statue;

rare, of pure texture,

beautiful space and line,

marble to grace

your inaccessible shrine.

First day of class!

Here’s the B-side of Color Record No. 12:

One of the poems that came up in the conversation in class today is this sonnet of Keats:

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Iowa!

In Iowa City  J  Here’s side A of Color Record No. 12:

and here’s Melville doing blank verse:

The House-top      

By Herman Melville

  A Night Piece       

  (July, 1863)

No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air

And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such

As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,

Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.

Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads

Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.

Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf

Of muffled sound, the atheist roar of riot.

Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought

Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there.

The town is taken by its rats—ship-rats

And rats of the wharves. All civil charms

And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe—

Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway

Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,

And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.

Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,

And ponderous drag that shakes the wall.

Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll

Of black artillery; he comes, though late;

In code corroborating Calvin’s creed

And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;

He comes, nor parlies; and the Town, redeemed,

Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds

The grimy slur on the Republic’s faith implied,

Which holds that Man is naturally good,
And—more—is Nature’s Roman, never to be scourged.

Day before Iowa!

The B-side if Color Record No. 11:

and Emily Dickinson  J

We grow accustomed to the Dark –

By Emily Dickinson

We grow accustomed to the Dark -

When Light is put away -

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Good bye -

A Moment - We uncertain step

For newness of the night -

Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -

And meet the Road  - erect -

And so of larger - Darknesses -

Those Evenings of the Brain -

When not a Moon disclose a sign -

Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead -

But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight -

And Life steps almost straight.

"Sentencings"

Color Record No. 11, Side A:

and more Jane Hirshfield:

Sentencings

By Jane Hirshfield

A thing too perfect to be remembered:

stone beautiful only when wet.

*     *     *

Blinded by light or black cloth—

so many ways

not to see others suffer.

*     *     *

Too much longing:

it separates us

like scent from bread,

rust from iron.

*     *     *

From very far or very close—

the most resolute folds of the mountain are gentle.

*     *     *

As if putting arms into woolen coat sleeves,

we listen to the murmuring dead.

*     *     *

Any point of a circle is its start:

desire forgoing fulfillment to go on desiring.

*     *     *

In a room in which nothing

has happened,

sweet-scented tobacco.

*     *     *

The very old, hands curling into themselves, remember their parents.

*     *     *

Think assailable thoughts, or be lonely.

Change of century

Here’s the B-side of Color Record No. 10:

and here’s Jane Hirshfield!—

Sonoma Fire

By Jane Hirshfield

Large moon the deep orange of embers. 

Also the scent.

The griefs of others—beautiful, at a distance.