Category: Joseph Auslander

Words That Stumble Into Stars And Hide

Joseph Auslander

So there are no more words and all is ended; The timbrel is stilled, the clarion laid away; And Love with streaming hair goes unattended, Back to the loneliness of yesterday.

Joseph Auslander

I Know It Will Be Quiet When You Come

by Joseph Auslander  (1897-1965)
 

I know it will be quiet when you come:
No wind; the water breathing steadily;
A light like ghost of silver on the sea;
And the surf dreamily fingering his drum.
Twilight will drift in large and leave me numb
With nearness to the last tranquility;
And then the slow and languorous tyranny
Of orange moon, pale night, and cricket hum.

And suddenly there will be twist of tide,
A rustling as of thin silk on the sand,
The tremor of a presence at my side,
The tremble of a hand upon my hand:
And pulses sharp with pain, and fires fanned,
And words that stumble into stars and hide.

In Envy of Cows

by Joseph Auslander (1897-1965)

 

The cow swings her head in a deep drowsy half-circle to and over
Flank and shoulder, lunging
At flies; then fragrantly plunging
Down at the web-washed grass and the golden clover,
Wrenching sideways to get the full tingle; with one warm nudge,
One somnolent wide smudge
Sacred to kine,
Crushing a murmurous of late lush August to wine!

The sky is even water-tone behind suave poplar trees—
Color of glass; the cows
Occasionally arouse
That color, disturb the pellucid cool poplar frieze
With beauty of motion slow and succinct like some grave privilege
Fulfilled. They taste the edge
Of August, they need
No more: they have rose vapors, flushed silence, pulpy milkweed

 
 

The Caprice of Prosody

francesco-petrarch-4

Protest
by Joseph Auslander (1897 – 1965)

I will not make a sonnet from
Each little private martyrdom:
Nor out of love left dead with time
Construe a stanza or a rime.

We do not suffer to afford
The searched for and the subtle word:
There is too much that may not be
At the caprice of prosody.

From Cyclops’ Eye. Harper & Brothers, 1926

Sonnet 61

by Francesco Petrarch (1304 – 1374)
Translated by Joseph Auslander

Blest be the day, and blest be the month and year,
Season and hour and very moment blest,
The lovely land and place where first possessed
By two pure eyes I found me prisoner;
And blest the first sweet pain, the first most dear,
Which burnt my heart when Love came in as guest;
And blest the bow, the shafts which shook my breast,
And even the wounds which Love delivered there.
Blest be the words and voices which filled grove
And glen with echoes of my lady’s name;
The sighs, the tears, the fierce despair of love;
And blest the sonnet-sources of my fame;
And blest that thought of thoughts which is her own,
Of her, her only, of herself alone!

Pop Quiz.

  1. Can you name the current Poet Laureate of the United States?
  2. Does your state or province have a poet laureate? If yes, who is it?

My Answers:

  1. Tracy K. Smith (September 2017)
  2. Yes – Minnesota’s poet laureate is Joyce Sutphen.

The concept of a poet laureate as a function of recognition and civic artistic contribution to society goes all the way back to the 14th Century.  Petrarch was crowned Rome’s first poet laureate in 1341 and is the god-father of sonnets.   So it is only slightly ironic, or a planned coincidence, that the United States first poet laureate,  was Joseph Auslander.  One of Auslander’s many accomplishments as a writer was an English translation of Petrarch’s sonnets.

In upcoming blog posts I’ll share poems from current and former poet laureates. Here’s a poem from the current Poet Laureate.

Sci-Fi

by Tracy K. Smith

There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.

History, with its hard spine and dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance,

Just like the dinosaurs gave way
To mounds and mounds of ice.

Women will still be women, but
The distinction will be empty. Sex,

Having outlived every threat, will gratify
Only the mind, which is where it will exist.

For kicks, we’ll dance for ourselves
Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.

The oldest among us will recognize that glow—
But the word sun will have been re-assigned.

To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device
Found in households and nursing homes.

And yes, we’ll live to be much older, thanks
To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,

Eons from even our own moon, we’ll drift
In the haze of space, which will be, once

And for all, scrutable and safe.

Tracy K. Smith, “Sci-Fi” from Life on Mars. Copyright © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith.