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Poetry Month
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Published: Apr 09, 2013
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Poetry
Poetry Month. About time. There’s never enough poetry in our lives. Do savor this smorgasbord of Head Butler poetry favorites.
C.P Cavafy Cavafy was a journalist, then a clerk — for thirty years — of the British-run Egyptian Ministry of Public Works. As for his poems, he had many of them privately printed and distributed them only to his friends. Beyond his perfectionism, Cavafy had a good reason to publish privately. While many of his 154 poems deal with classical or historical themes, some — for me, the best — are about love and sex. And Cavafy was homosexual.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind/ To arrive there is your ultimate goal./ But do not hurry the voyage at all/. It is better to let it last for many years;/ and to anchor at the island when you are old,/ rich with all you have gained on the way,/ not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Raymond Carver For the poet and short story writer Raymond Carver, a fatal diagnosis of lung cancer in September 1987 was really a cruel irony. Carver had already died once — killed, in effect, by his own hard life. This was a man who had married at 19, fathered two kids by 21, and then set out on a path of bad jobs and drinking. That’s never a good combination, but then, as Carver said, “You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.” He was hospitalized for alcohol abuse four times in 1976 and 1977. He nearly died. Then he got sober, hooked up the poet Tess Gallagher, and had a decade of productive writing and literary celebrity. And then, at 49, the fatal diagnosis.
And did you get what/You wanted from this life, even so?/ I did./ And what did you want?/ To call myself beloved, to feel myself/ Beloved on this earth.
Anna Akhmatova In 1921, Nikolay Gumilyov, her former husband, was shot without a trial — the first important poet to be executed by the Bolsheviks. In 1935, her son, Lee Gumilyov, was arrested. Boris Pasternak wrote to Stalin, and he was released. But he was arrested again in l938, then jailed and tortured for months. Like many other mothers, Akhmatova stood outside Leningrad’s Kresty jail every day, hoping to get a package for her son accepted.
Not under the protection of foreign skies/ Or saving wings of alien birth,/ I was there with my people/ There, where my people unhappily were.
Donald Hall It is easy to say that Hall is the successor to Robert Frost. His family had a farm in New Hampshire, he met Frost when he was young and impressionable, and many of his poems are set in the world of farmers — gruff men, in a harsh landscape. Theirs is a hard life, but then, Hall seems to say, in poem after poem, so is all life.
Once in an old house we talked for an hour,/ while a coal fire brightened in November twilight/ and wavered our shadows high on the wall/ until our eyes fixed on each other. Thirty years ago.
Dorothy Parker She was one of the most celebrated writers of her time, but she’s much better remembered for her big mouth. Day after day, she sat with America’s greatest wits at the Round Table in the bar of New York’s Algonquin Hotel and quietly devastated the all-male group with her one-liners. She was as much a symbol of the 1920s as the flapper, the flivver and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Or so the legend has it. The fact is, Dorothy Parker had no trust fund, no wealthy husband. She was a working writer. And much of her work involved — try imagining a career like this now — poetry. She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1915 for $12, a tidy sum back then.
When all the world was younger/ When petals lay as snow/ What recked I of the hunger/ An empty heart can know?/ For love was young and cheery,/ And love was quick and free;/ Tomorrow might be weary,/ But when was that to me?/ But now the world is older,/ And now tomorrow’s come./ The winds are rushing colder,/ And all the birds are dumb./ And icy shackles fetter/ The brooklet’s sunny blue/ And I was never better/ But what is that to you?
Kabir He was born to a virgin mother in 1398 — maybe. He died in 1518 — perhaps. Did he really live for 120 years? Was he married? Did he have a religion? Ah, he was a weaver: one of the few hard facts we know about him. And one more: He wrote about 700 verses.
Kabir will tell you the truth:/ this is what love is like:/ suppose you had to cut your head off and give it to someone else,/ what difference would that make?
Randall Jarrell He looked like a poet. He wore beautiful tweeds. His beard was just-so. He drove a sports car. He was ferociously well educated. His classes were legendary. And he had a tragic death: hit by a car as he walked along a highway at dusk.
Be, as you have been, my happiness;/ Let me sleep beside you, each night, like a spoon;/ When, starting from my sleep, I groan to you,/ May your “I love you” send me back to sleep./ At morning bring me, grayer for its mirroring,/ The heavens’ sun perfected in your eyes.
Bertolt Brecht Though not a Communist, he was a lifelong Marxist who seemed to enjoy East Berlin much more than Los Angeles. He resisted personal hygiene and reportedly stank like a badger. And yet — go figger — he leapt from bed to bed. And from home to home. As he says, “We changed countries more often than we changed our shoes.” As a playwright, Brecht disliked emotion; his goal was to make audiences think. In his poems, though, he could balance rationality and emotion.
Traveling in a comfortable car/ Down a rainy road in the country/ We saw a ragged fellow at nightfall/ Signal to us for a ride, with a low bow./ We had a roof and we had room and we drove on/ And we heard me say, in a grumpy voice: No, we can’t take anyone with us.[ We had gone on a long way, perhaps a day’s march/ When suddenly I was shocked by this voice of mine/ This behavior of mine and this/ Whole world.
Sharon Olds She does not read newspapers or watch TV. “The amount of horror one used to hear about in one village could be quite extreme,“ she explains. “But one might not have heard about all the other villages’ horrors at the same time.” Also, she doesn’t drink coffee or smoke, and she limits her wine. Her life, for decades, was marriage, kids, work. Which, she says, accounts for accessibility of her poems.
I could not tell I had jumped off that bus,/ that bus in motion, with my child in my arms,/ because I did not know it./ I believed my own story: I had fallen, or the bus had started up/ when I had one foot in the air./ I would not remember the tightening of my jaw,/ the irk that I’d missed my stop,/ the step out into the air, the clear child gazing about her in the air/ as I plunged to one knee on the street,/ scraped it, twisted it, the bus skidding to a stop,/ the driver jumping out, my daughter laughing/ Do it again. I have never done it again, I have been very careful./ I have kept an eye on that nice young mother/ who lightly leapt off the moving vehicle onto the stopped street,/ her life in her hands, her life’s life in her hands.
Rumi He was born in 1207 and died in 1273. His father was rich, a Sufi mystic and theologian. There’s a famous story of Rumi, at 12, traveling with his father. A great poet saw the father walking ahead and Rumi hurrying to keep up. "Here comes a sea followed by an ocean," he said. Rumi studied, became a noted scholar. When he was 37, he met Shams of Tabriz, a thorny personality. But Shams was God-intoxicated; nothing else mattered. And so their meeting was catalytic. As Rumi said: “What I had thought of before as God I met today in a human being.”
No matter how fast you run,/ your shadow more than keeps up./ Sometimes it’s in front./ Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow./ But that shadow has been serving you!/ What hurts you, blesses you./ Darkness is your candle./ Your boundaries are your quest.
Wislawa Szymborska In 1996, Wislawa Szymborska (l923-2012) won the most money in the history of Nobel awards and the most money ever won by a poet: $1.2 million. You or I might have upgraded our real estate. She stayed in her small apartment — a fifth-floor walk-up. Her output was small, just 350 poems. Why so few? "I have a trash can in my home.”
My nonarrival in the city of N. took place on the dot./ You’d been alerted in my unmailed letter./ You were able not to be there at the agreed-upon time./ The train pulled up at platform 3./ A lot of people got out./ My absence joined the throng/ as it made its way toward the exit./ Several women rushed to take my place in all that rush.
