Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it—he sought, For his lost heart was tender, things to love But found them not, alas! nor was there aught The world contains, the which he could approve. Through the unheeding many he did move, A splendour among shadows, a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove For truth, and like the Preacher found it not
A Question by Shelley
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Then what is life?” I cried. From his rent deeps Of soul the poet cast that burning word; And it should seem as though his prayer was heard, For he died soon; and now his rest he keeps Somewhere with the great spirit who never sleeps! He had left us to murmur on awhile And question still most fruitlessly this pile Of natural shows, What life is? Why man weeps? Why sins?–and whither when the awful veil Floats on to him he sinks from earthly sight? Some are, who never grow a whit more pale For thinking on the general mystery, Ground of all being; yet may I rather be Of those who know and feel that it is night.
If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d, And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet Fetter’d, in spite of pained loveliness; Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d, Sandals more interwoven and complete To fit the naked foot of poesy; Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d By ear industrious, and attention meet: Misers of sound and syllable, no less Than Midas of his coinage, let us be Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown; So, if we may not let the Muse be free, She will be bound with garlands of her own.
Today is the 200th anniversary of John Keats death. Keats died at the age of 25 from tuberculosis. Keats did not die peacefully, he was in agony, denied opium for his pain by his doctors, fearing he would intentionally overdose, they offered him no respite, forcing him to suffer at the end. He had moved to Rome in his final months hoping the climate would help cure him, but his disease was too far progressed to prevent his death.
Keats is a great example its not quantity but quality that is the lasting legacy of a poet. He wrote poetry for only six years. In his life time only about 200 copies of his three volumes of poetry were sold. Yet, Keats has gone on to become immortalized as one of the great English poets because of the sheer beauty of his work.
He himself doubted his poetry’s staying power, in part because of his limited publishing success. In a letter to Fanny Brawne a year before his death he wrote “I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov’d the principle of beauty of all things…” Keats’ work became loved by generations of readers, due in part to Shelly and Hunt’s admiration keeping his work in front of the public through their ongoing tributes and support after his death. Keat’s poetry is an example that great lyric poetry never goes out of style. Beauty remains beautiful when it is created for the pure artistic pleasure of the writer.
Shelley penned and published Adonais in the year following Keats death and it brought a wider audience and interest to Keats work that would build and build throughout the remainder of the 19th century. Keats wrote sonnets in a style and at a time when lyric poetry was revered.
I believe that if Keats were alive today, his sonnets would garner attention for their sheer beauty, but he might find his publishing success might not be that dissimilar to what he experienced 200 years ago. So it is ironic that modern tastes have moved wide of his mark, and yet it would be interesting to estimate how much money publishers have made publishing Keats poetry while it has been in the public domain? I’d wager its a very large sum. There’s something that feels like a tear in the cosmic universe about publishers benefiting handsomely from poets long dead.
In a recent trip to my Barnes and Noble I stopped by the poetry section and was disappointed that I could not find a single new book of poetry that interested me, the current tastes of publishers running to one or two lines of free verse confessions with stick figure illustrations that look more like memes to my eyes and ears than poetry. Is that the attention span of readers these days for poetry? Maybe the pendulum will swing so far towards simplicity that it will start swinging back towards the beauty of more complex lyric poetry again. Maybe the beauty of Keats will inspire a new generation of readers to reach further into their imaginations, to expect more of writers, publishers and of ourselves in the poetic vision of our modern world.
Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
(An Excerpt)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
XXXIX
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken’d from the dream of life;
‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who
Through public scorn,–mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless–a book sealed;
A Senate, Time’s worst statute unrepealed,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
Not much has changed in 200 years. “Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know” is the exact same disenfranchisement millions around the globe have felt in the protests following George Floyd’s murder. It in no way excuses the vandalism, looting and burning of buildings that are largely small business owners and community resources. More violence won’t move us forward. Change is going to have to come from soul searching and willingness to reinvent ourselves as a society where inclusion and common goals might mean real equity and freedom comes at the cost of some having less so that as a whole we have more.
In searching for poetry that helps me process what has played out in the past 10 days, poetry that bridges the impassioned, courageous, realistic and hopeful with anger and righteous indignation, I stumbled across this poem by Frank Yerby, a writer known more for his novels than poetry. I was struck by the poem below. The third stanza speaks to me. I think many of our brains have been boiling with injustice and insanity.
Yerby has the distinction of being the first African American author to reach 1 million sales mark in 1946 with his southern historical romance novel, The Foxes of Harrow. In all he wrote 33 novels, many of them historical fiction and romances. Yerby would break another barrier in 1946, when he became the first African-American to have a book purchased for screen adaptation by a Hollywood studio. 20th Century Fox optioned Foxes and the film of the same name was released in 1947 starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O’Hara.
I really enjoyed Yerby’s poem The Fishes and The Poet’s Hands. There is a lot going on in it. The gruesome description of Shelley’s funeral pyre, contrasted with the brutality of racism and state sanctioned violence against African Americans is striking. The poem builds across the three stanzas. I agree, that this is not a time for “pretty rhyming words.” But resilience comes in some part from finding modest continuity in the midst of choas; the cup of tea brewed on the battle field, a willingness to find civility in the middle of barbarity. Call me shallow, but I’ll continue enjoying a little rhyming poetry, despite the more weighty problems facing my community, simply to renew my sense of hope, that there is still beauty in the world and art and words. And even if in the end the battle between the elite and the oppressed has not changed in 200 years, we can do our best to move forward and keep hope alive through art.
George Floyd mural in South Minneapolis at the site where he lost his life.
The Fishes and the Poet’s Hands
by Frank Yerby
I
They say that when they burned young Shelley’s corpse
(For he was drowned, you know, and washed ashore
With hands and face quite gone—the fishes had,
It seems, but small respect for Genius which
Came clothed in common flesh) the noise his brains
Made as they boiled and seethed within his skull
Could well be heard five yards away. At least
No one can hear mine as they boil; but then
He could not feel his burn; and so I think
He had the best of it at that. Don’t you?
II
Now all the hungry broken men stand here
Beside my bed like ghosts and cry: “Why don’t
You shout our wrong aloud? Why are you not
Our voice, our sword? For you are of our blood:
You’ve seen us beaten, lynched, degraded, starved;
Men must be taught that other men are not
Mere pawns in some gigantic game in which
The winner takes the gold, the land, the work,
The breath, the heart, and soul of him who loses!”
I watch them standing there until my brain
Begins to burn within my head again—
(As Shelley’s burned—poor, young dead Shelley whom
The fishes ate) then I get up and write
A very pretty sonnet, nicely rhymed
About my latest love affair, how sad
I am because some dear has thrown me for
A total loss. (But Shelley had me there,
All his affairs turned out quite well indeed;
Harriet in the river drowned for love
Of him; and Mary leaving Godwin’s house
To follow where he led—quite well—indeed!)
III
You see this is ironical and light
Because I am so sick, so hurt inside,
I’m tired of pretty rhyming words when all
The land where I was born is soaked in tears
And blood, and black and utter hopelessness.
Now I would make a new, strong, bitter song,
And hurl it in the teeth of those I hate—
I would stand tall and proud against their blows,
Knowing I could not win, I would go down
Grandly as an oak goes down, and leave
An echo of the crash, at least, behind.
(So Shelley lived — and so at last, he died.
The fishes ate his glorious hands; and all
That mighty bulk of brain boiled when they burned him!)
IN Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
“The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Where does inspiration arise? In the case of Shelley’s famous poem, it came from a little gamesmenship between two friends, a modest wager of who could write the better poem after seeing a drawing of Ozymandias pictured above. Smith was a friend of Shelley’s and the two each wrote a sonnet after reading a portion of Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca historica, a history of the known world in the last century BC, much of which survives.
It does not seem such an odd place for poetic inspiration. My parents invested in a complete Encyclopedia Britanica as a child, a very expensive addition to our library, and placed it on the lowest book shelf to give all of us easy access. It served two purposes as a child. It was the perfect building material for adding height and variation to hot wheel tracks, when hot wheels were only powered by gravity, and on rainy days, I would sit by the heater with the cats, and pull out a letter and browse through it, stumbling upon all kinds of interesting things I knew nothing about. In grade school the Encyclopedia was the first place you went to begin a book report or paper on any subject. Today, you see them out for free at yard sales, the owners hoping someone will cart them off.
I will never completely succumb to the lure of the simplicity of the digital era. I don’t want an algorithm dictating what I do and don’t see based on past searches. I want the freedom to stumble across something completely foreign and inviting. I still look at maps, instead of relying on GPS for the same reason. A map gives you context. A map can tell you things about your surroundings that you had no idea existed. A map can help you take the detour that turns out to be your real destination after all. And I still enjoy finding an encyclopedia and pulling out a letter and opening it up randomly to find out what cool thing in Volume W might contain.
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
life is more true than reason will deceive
by e. e. cummings
life is more true than reason will deceive
(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose:higher than have
—but beauty is more each than living’s
all multiplied by infinity sans if
the mightiest meditations of mankind
cancelled are by one merely opening leaf
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)
or does some littler bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete;pasts are unborn
(here less than nothing’s more than everything)
death, as men call him, ends what they call men
—but beauty is more now than dying’s when
“Why do you write?” (Shelley) “Because I haven’t the ability to prevent it.” (Lord Byron)
Byron – The Movie
Lord Byron (1788- 1824)
To Augusta
by George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)
Though the day of my destiny’s over
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find.
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted.
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted.
It never hath found but in thee.
Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of many with one;
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
“Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perish’d.
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish’d.
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.
To Augusta is a six stanza poem, I have included only the first and fifth and sixth stanzas. I find Byron interesting. There are parts of his personality that are repellent; he was a cad, narcissistic, he took advantage of women in his relationships, but he was true to his nature, recklessly so, for taking your half-sister as your lover is not for the faint of heart, it simply isn’t done in any time period.
One of the powerful themes within the Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin is who are you allowed to love? This question stems from the relationship between a brother and sister, Cersei and Jamie Lannister, and the lies, the deception, the chaos that this incestuous legacy of children that it creates. Incest, even in fiction, is an uncomfortable and difficult subject, I can’t imagine what it was like for Byron and Augusta in real life.
Percy Shelley was a good friend of Byron, Shelley matching him in strength of character, writing ability and unconventionality in lifestyle. Shelley was largely unpublished in his lifetime, his writing viewed as too radical in reflecting a bias towards atheism and for his liberal views in supporting social justice. He was hugely influential after his death among generations of poets, writers and political thinkers who saw in Shelley a beautiful courage.
The sonnet, To Wordsworth, is a touching memorial, but I wonder if is written in honor to more than just one poet? The lines “wept to know That things depart which never may return” had to be influenced by the deaths that surrounded Shelley in his short life, particularly the deaths of several of his children. Shelley seemed to have been stalked by tragedy, himself drowning shortly before his 30th birthday while sailing in the boat Don Juan, after a meeting to set up a new journal called The Liberal. His body was cremated on the beach in Italy where his body washed ashore, as was customary at the time, his friends Trelawny and Byron attending. Shelley’s remains are buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. His grave bears a few lines of “Ariel’s Song” from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.”
To Wordsworth
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,
–Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
“An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.”
Billy Bragg
There is magic that occurs sometimes during live concerts, an interplay between the musicians and the audience, an amplification of energy, where each feeds off the other to create something unique, a time stamp of emotion, melody and percussion, that raises the hairs on the back of your neck with pure joy. I love the sonic improvisation by skilled musicians of favorite songs that transform them into rock and roll jazz, an experience that will never be recreated note for note.
I had that feeling again last night at a Wilco concert at the Palace Theater in St. Paul. The final performance of a masterful band before taking a break to allow each great individual talent to pursue solo projects. Last night it was impossible to tell who was having more fun, the audience or the band, a night where Wilco strayed from the previous night’s set list and dived head long into an expansive array of music, created over several decades.
I try to keep a trail of bread crumbs between my blog posts. Obscure though it may be, I attempt to playfully connect dots between poets and artists to create a flow in my writing and thought process. The concert reminded me of another creative project where the torch of creativity was passed from one artist to another after one of their deaths, just like Auden in translating Hammerskold’s Markings. Early on in the evening, I said to my sister between songs, “I hope they play something from Mermaid Avenue.”
Billy Bragg and Wilco released two CDs, Mermaid Avenue Volumes I and II, in 1998 and 2000 respectfully. They are both compelling recordings of a unique musical partnership between musicians that took on the challenge of marrying unrecorded lyrics by Woody Guthrie to their original compositions. Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie, contacted Billy Bragg in 1992 during a tribute concert on what would have been Woody’s 80th birthday. Nora asked Bragg if he would be interested in examining nearly 3000 songs that Nora had found in her father’s home that he had penned lyrics but for which no song composition existed. Either Woody hadn’t written the music yet or he didn’t need to write it down, as it was in his head. Many of the songs are quite different from the socialist political repertoire that Woody Guthrie is famous. Nora Guthrie saw in Bragg a younger British version of her father, a brash and talented defender of working men and women through music. Bragg accepted the challenge but it wasn’t until he sought out Wilco after hearing their 1996 album Being There that the project built momentum. Bragg recognized in Wilco kindred musicians who had the musical chops to venture into a wide range of styles from folk, rock and blues that would be needed to bring Woody Guthrie’s legacy of alive.
It is impossible for me to listen to California Stars or Voodo Hoodo, both of which Wilco played during the concert with a complete flourish of joy and imagine that Woody could have performed them any other way. The songs are too complete. The spirit of Guthrie lives with Bragg and Wilco and guides their hands and voices.
Poetry was as powerful an outlet to give voice to social issues in the 1800’s and early 1900’s as rock music is today. The list of rock star poets is long, but in my mind Shelley, Yeats, T. S. Elliot and Dylan Thomas all fit that bill. They are poets who influenced at least a generation of men and women across the political and economic spectrum, just like great rock music.
Shelley’s poetry is rebellious in its themes and imagery. Though the terms socialism and communism had yet to be coined, the sentiments of some of Shelley’s poetry fit squarely within those doctrines. Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias speaks eloquently on the corruption of power concentrated in hands too few. It is about the insanity of Kings who build monuments to mock the very people who built them, an empty legacy, a desert where power corrupts absolutely.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Fourteen Lines 