Poetry Wednesday: Sluggish

Under the evening moon
the snail
is stripped to the waist.

—Kobayashi Issa

The other day, I read an article about a Nobel Laureate scientist, Dr. Eric Kandel, who researched the way memory works by examining sea slugs. Considering the state of my own memory, I found this stunningly appropriate. It also interested me that Dr. Kandel mentioned that he chose these slugs, called Aplysia, not only because their brains are simple, but because they’re fun to look at, too.

I checked ‘em out and it’s true—they are.

So naturally, I wondered, as anyone would,  if there were any poems about slugs. The answer is yes, but I can’t share the best ones—Jennifer Chang’s “Conversation with Slugs and Sarah” and Brain Swann’s “Slugs” here because I don’t have permission.

The ones I can share aren’t particularly good ones, though the  banana slug  ode had an interesting rhyme scheme—squishy isn’t the easiest word to pair up.

Luckily for bloggers worried about copyright, snails—who are just slugs with RVs—have apparently inspired poets for centuries.

Especially, as it turns out, anonymous gardener poets, who may not have Aplysian memories, but know how to hold a serious grudge:*

Remonstrance With The Snails
(Anonymous, 1847)

Ye little snails,
With slippery tails,
Who noiselessly travel
Along this gravel,
By a silvery path of slime unsightly,
I learn that you visit my pea rows nightly.
Felonious your visit, I guess!
And I give you this warning,
That, every morning,
I’ll strictly examine the pods;
And if one I hit on,
With slaver or spit on,
Your next meal will be with gods.
I own you’re a very ancient race,
And Greece and Babylon were amid;
You have tenanted many a royal dome,
And dwelt in the oldest pyramid;
The source of the Nile!  O, you have been there!
In the ark was your floodless bed;
On the moonless night of marathon
You crawled o’er the mighty dead;
But still, though I reverence your ancestries,
I don’t see why you should nibble my peas.
The meadows are yours, the hedgerow and brook,
You may bathe in their dews at morn;
By the aged sea you may sound your shells,
On the mountains, erect your horn;
The fruits and the flowers are your rightful dowers,
Then why—in the name of wonder—
Should my pea-rows be the only cause
To excite your midnight plunder?
I have never disturbed your slender shells;
You have hung around my aged walk;
And each night have sat, till he died in his fat,
Beneath his own cabbage-stalk:
But now you must fly from the soil of your sires:
Then put on your liveliest crawl,
And think of your poor little snails at home,
Now orphans or emigrants all.
Utensils domestic and civil and social
I give you an evening to pack up;
But if the moon of this night does not rise on your flight,
To-morrow I’ll hang each man Jack up.
You’ll think of my peas and your thievish tricks,
With tears of slime, when crossing the Styx.

Post-Script:
If darkness should not let thee read this,
Furtive snail,
Go ask thy friend, the glow-worm,
For his tail.

Richard Lovelace wrote a poem that describes snails beautifully without actually being about snails at all—you can tell because it goes on at great length about the “Wise Emblem of our political world,” which is a lovely bit of not-too-subtle sarcasm, if you hadn’t guessed.

But it works either way, as you can see from favorite verse, which might be even better if you keep in mind that he’s actually writing about politicians:

Thou thine own daughter then, and sire,
That son and mother art entire,
That big still with thy self dost go,
And liv’st an aged embryo;
That like the cubs of India,
Thou from thyself a while dost play;
But frighted with a dog or gun,
In thine own belly thou dost run,
And as thy house was thine own womb,
So thine own womb concludes thy tomb.

—”The Snail,” Richard Lovelace

I found several more recent snail poems, which can be found on The Poetry Foundation website.  I particularly like Thom Gunn’s “Considering the Snail,” which is actually about a snail, which is a nice change, you should pardon any potential puns, of pace.

____________________

*Personally, I’m a terrible gardener anyway, so I’m almost flattered when snails and other beasts think my plants are worth molesting.  Almost.

Poetry Wednesday: Sprained Spring

I’m knocking on wood as I speak, but it looks like the March weather we’ve been enjoying through gritted teeth, frostbitten smiles, and defective windbreakers is finally over—just in time for May.

It would be a criminal shame not to spend as much time as possible outdoors on a day like today, and as the great outdoors doesn’t provide natural WiFi, all I wanted was a quick poem or two that celebrated Spring, or at least those first breathless moments of awe before we start complaining about the heat, pollen, and humidity.

I’ll tell you, the search took me a lot longer than I thought. Turns out the majority of Spring poems meant for readers over the age of six tend to run along the same lines: Enjoy the beauty of Spring while you can, suckers, ’cause the hearts of the people we love are encased in permafrost and we’re all gonna die anyway. And soon.

Exhibit A:

The Spring
(Thomas Carew)

Now that the winter’s gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful Spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long’d-for May.
Now all things smile, only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal’d, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

Nothing like a spurned Seventeenth Century poet to make you wish for six more weeks of winter.   And who, I wonder, took a dump in Robert Herrick’s garden?

To Daffodils
(Robert Herrick)

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
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.

Remember, kids:  In Robert Herrick’s world, daffodils never dance.  They haven’t the strength.

Seriously—even Shakespeare can’t be trusted:

Spring
(William Shakespeare)

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are plowmen’s clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

Really, dude?

William Cullen Bryant comes closer to what I’m looking for:

The Yellow Violet
(William Cullen Bryant)

When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the blue-bird’s warble know,
The yellow violet’s modest bell
Peeps from the last year’s leaves below.

Ere russet fields their green resume,
Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare,
To meet thee, when thy faint perfume
Alone is in the virgin air.

Of all her train, the hands of Spring
First plant thee in the watery mould,

And I have seen thee blossoming
Beside the snow-bank’s edges cold.

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip,
Has bathed thee in his own bright hue,
And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,
And earthward bent thy gentle eye,
Unapt the passing view to meet
When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh.

Oft, in the sunless April day,
Thy early smile has stayed my walk;
But midst the gorgeous blooms of May,
I passed thee on thy humble stalk.

So they, who climb to wealth, forget
The friends in darker fortunes tried.
I copied them—but I regret
That I should ape the ways of pride.

And when again the genial hour
Awakes the painted tribes of light,
I’ll not o’erlook the modest flower
That made the woods of April bright.

But he still sneaks a virtue or two in at the end, bless him.

Luckily, Arthur Symons is there to save the day, even if he dates it a month late, which this year is hardly his fault:

April Midnight
(Arthur Symons)

Side by side through the streets at midnight,
Roaming together,
Through the tumultuous night of London,
In the miraculous April weather.

Roaming together under the gaslight,
Day’s work over,
How the Spring calls to us, here in the city,
Calls to the heart from the heart of a lover!

Cool to the wind blows, fresh in our faces,
Cleansing, entrancing,
After the heat and the fumes and the footlights,
Where you dance and I watch your dancing.

Good it is to be here together,
Good to be roaming,
Even in London, even at midnight,
Lover-like in a lover’s gloaming.

You the dancer and I the dreamer,
Children together,
Wandering lost in the night of London,
In the miraculous April weather.

That’s better!

And just as I stopped looking, Mr. Shelley had to have his brilliant, gorgeous say, just this side of fashionably late:

The Question
(Percy Bysshe Shelley)

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth

The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?

Oh!  Me!  Me! Over here,  Mr. Shelley!

That’s what I’m talking about.

How’s the weather where you are?

Book Review: Blood Moon

He moved on to the next aisle and found himself in front of a wall hung with sculptures, a theme of hearts: two blackened hearts bound together with rusted chain link, another pair of hearts twisted in barbed wire.

He felt something in his own chest twist at the sight.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Alexandra Sokoloff is one hell of a writer.

The first book in her Huntress/FBI thriller series, Huntress Moon, blew me away, as you can tell from my review.  An eerie merging of the logic and legwork of a police procedural and the intuition and symbolism of magical thinking—something at which the author has always excelled—it unearthed a fundamental connection between an unlikely serial killer and the man charged with tracking her down.

In the second book, that connection is becoming a serious problem.

The last time FBI Special Agent Roarke encountered the Huntress, he not only allowed her to escape, he used the information she supplied to take down her targeted prey.  At odds with his partner, who believes Roarke is becoming far too sympathetic to his quarry, he himself wonders if he’s losing all objectivity when it comes to the woman whose victims are the worst kinds of predator.

But as he and his team design the perfect trap for the Huntress, they find evidence that an old evil has returned after twenty-five years of dormancy, and may strike again during the next full moon—the Blood Moon.  And Roarke must decide whether to arrest the Huntress or work with her to take down the killer whose heinous crimes led Roarke into law enforcement and sent the Huntress into a life controlled by signs, portents, and ruthless murder.

Honestly, it was nearly impossible to set this book aside for mundane things like eating, driving,  and work and if I hadn’t misplaced the charger for my eReader (it’s been a heck of a week all ’round), I wouldn’t have tried to sneak it under the dinner table, too.  As it was, that virus actually came in handy, and I read the last hundred or so pages all at once—whew, what a ride!

This book is so tightly written that I can’t share much without spoiling it further than I have, but I think I can mention an extremely effective technique that I marveled at in the first book:  the switch between Roarke’s past tense and the Huntress’s present tense.  This helped delineate the two characters—his logical piecing together of the past versus her living from moment to intense moment .

This continues in Blood Moon, with one addition: Roarke experiences recurring dreams which are also shown to us in first person.  This not only intensifies those scenes, but brings his viewpoint that much closer to hers.  It’s subtle, but the impact is undeniable . . . and possibly inevitable.

If you haven’t read Huntress Moon—and if not, why not?—I recommend reading that one first.  Though Blood Moon does a good job of dropping information from the first book, it won’t be the same as experiencing it; in my opinion, you need to earn the Huntress’s real name with Roarke and his team and you’d be cheating yourself if you skip.

And I highly recommend reading the first two before the third comes out—because I honestly have no idea what’s going to happen next and I desperately want to know.

That’s a deliciously frustrating place for a reader to be.  Come enjoy it with me.

Libraries (and Librarians) are All That Poetry Contest Winner!

I’m still sneezing hard enough to peel an esophagus and generally feeling like the virus that hit me was driving a cement truck, but I’m lucid enough to know that I’ve been remiss in not declaring a winner sooner than this—I’m sorry again for the delay!

There were eight entries in this particular Contest—four by comments and four via e-mail—which is a terrific turnout and I thank you all for both playing along and for the lovely compliments you made to libraries and those who run ‘em on your behalf.

I couldn’t find the Pink Cowgirl Hat of Win—sadly, it may have passed out of our lives during the last Cleaning of Playroom—but Sunny’s Cubs Hat of Maybe Next Year worked just fine.

Special Recognition goes to Mike A., whose poem was a huge hit with our library pages; indyclause, who was put int the Hat twice because she managed to include Nantucket in a seemly manner; Kev, who was almost taken out of the hat for not managing the seemly; lilligriff, because she’s awesome; Lisa Blackman for making me cry (again, sheesh); Wandarer for working that rhyme scheme; ; senojeiram, whose poem contains everything  I love about libraries; and anonymice for a terrific sonnet that I wish s/he’d let me share.

But there can only be one winner because I run these things on a librarian’s budget, so—

The winner of the $20 gift certificate to Amazon  is

senojeiram!

Let me know where to send it, and I’ll do so!

Poetry Wednesday: Translating Rabindranath Tagore

Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning.
I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.
I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.
Perhaps you glance at me and think, “What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!”
Child, I have forgotten the art of being absorbed in sticks and mud-pies.
I seek out costly playthings, and gather lumps of gold and silver.
With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain.
In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.

— “Playthings,” Rabindranath Tagore

_____

Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European poet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West”.*

All true.

It is also true that this man did not need the approval of the Academy to be a big deal, at least not inside Bengal. He revolutionized the traditional forms and moved poetry out of formal Sanskrit and into colloquial Bengali (as so many of my favorite poets have). He’s considered The modern Bengali poet.

But I didn’t know this when I first read his work. I just knew I loved this poem:

O you mad, you superbly drunk!
(Rabindranath Tagore)

O you mad, you superbly drunk!
If you kick open your doors and play the fool in public;
If you empty your bag in a night, and snap your fingers at prudence;
If you walk in curious paths and play with useless things;
Reck not rhyme or reason;
If you break the rudder in two unfurling your sails before the storm:
Then I will follow you, comrade, and be drunken and go to the dogs.

I have wasted my days and nights in the company of steady wise neighbors.
Much knowing has turned my hair grey, and much watching has made my sight dim.
For years I have gathered and heaped all scraps and fragments of things;
Crush them and dance upon them, and scatter them all to the winds!
For I know ’tis the height of wisdom to be drunken and go to the dogs.

Let all crooked scruples vanish, let me hopelessly lose my way.
Let a gust of wild giddiness come and sweep me away from my anchors.
The world is peopled with worthies, and workers useful and clever;
There are men who are easily the first, and men who come decently next:
Let them be happy and prosperous, and let me be foolishly futile.
For I know ’tis the end of all works to be drunken and go to the dogs.

I swear to surrender this moment all claim to the ranks of the sensible.
I let go my pride of learning and judgment of right and of wrong.
I’ll shatter the vessel of memory, scattering the last drop of tears;
With the foam of the ruby red wine, I’ll bathe and brighten my laughter.
The badge of the proper and prim I’ll tear into shreds for the nonce.
I’ll take the holy vow of being worthless, and be drunken and go to the dogs.

Heady stuff for a woman trying to finish a degree, arrange and perform a Senior concert , and plan a wedding all in the same month.**

Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry always seemed remarkably straightforward to me.

I mean, it’s a given that the metaphors and symbols of Bengali poetry—all Asian poetry, really—won’t be entirely anchored in my own cultural strata, even if it’s contemporary; there must be subtle differences in how they’re meant to be interpreted. Even the cadences and repetitions are exotic to me, the emphasis of the words never quite where I’m expecting.

All of this forces me slow down and pay attention, which is all to the good—and I should really try that with Western poetry sometime.

But the OCD in me can’t forget that when poems are originally written in a language I don’t know—even a European language— I’m actually reading them through the translator’s idea of what the poet meant.

And this bugs me, because if I’m going to misinterpret a poem, I want to do it myself.

But then I found out that Rabindranath Tagore, that brilliant man, did his own translations into English.

And I relaxed.

And I simply enjoyed.

Which is, after all, the point.

Sing the Song of the Moment
(Rabindranath Tagore)

Sing the song of the moment in careless carols, in the transient light of the day;
Sing of the fleeting smiles that vanish and never look back;
Sing of the flowers that bloom and fade without regret.
Weave not in memory’s thread the days that would glide into nights.
To the guests that must go bid God-speed, and wipe away all traces of their steps.
Let the moments end in moments with their cargo of fugitive songs.

With both hands snap the fetters you made with your own heart chords;
Take to your breast with a smile what is easy and simple and near.
Today is the festival of phantoms that know not when they die.
Let your laughter flush in meaningless mirth like twinkles of light on the ripples;
Let your life lightly dance on the verge of Time like a dew on the tip of a leaf.
Strike in the chords of your harp the fitful murmurs of moments.

_______________________
* “The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913″. Nobelprize.org. 24 Apr 2013

**At one point, I thought I had correction fluid in my hair from my Educational Resources project —some had gone white from the stress. Even parenthood hasn’t managed that one. Yet.