When Poetry Defined Lives, Adam Kirsch’s Eulogy

Helen Vendler died on the 23rd of April and Marjorie Perloff March 24th. The poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch took this as an opportunity to write a eulogy for the Atlantic entitled “When Poetry Could Define a Life” (available here without a paywall). Reading the article elicited contradictory emotions. The first was regretting every snippy thing I’ve ever written about Helen Vendler. In Shakespeare In Love, Viola De Lesseps tells Shakespeare that she’s never heard him praise Marlowe before. Shakespeare answers: He wasn’t dead before. Have I mentioned that I have nothing but praise for Vendler? Anyway, I acknowledge that Kirsch was writing a eulogy and that there are certain rules attached to that, such as the assertion that no other, like the deceased, shall ever walk the Earth again. To wit:

…the loss of these towering scholars and critics feels like the definitive end of an era that has been slowly passing for years. In our more populist time, when poetry has won big new audiences by becoming more accessible and more engaged with issues of identity, Vendler and Perloff look like either remote elitists or the last champions of aesthetic complexity, depending on your point of view.

Not only is it the end of Vendler and Perloff, but the end of an entire era. Fine. I won’t begrudge them their epic-ending panegyrics. Seldom are we so richly praised as when we die. But this sort of sentiment always reminds me of the quip attributed to Charles de Gaulle: The graveyards are full of indispensable men. But anyway, what “era”? The era “when poetry could define a life“?

But that’s not what caught my attention. What did was Kirsch’s statement that readers are more engaged with poetry because of greater accessibility and issues of identity. But Kirsch’s “Becoming more accessible” could mean just about anything. A poem by Megan Fox is lexically “more accessible” than anything by John Ashbery, and while the poems of the bland and generic W.S. Merwin are numbingly accessible, they still aren’t as interpretatively accessible as instapoetry. As regards “issues of identity”, I’m just not seeing the evidence. Maybe on college campuses? But go to any Barnes & Noble (let alone any best sellers list) and the big new audience of the populist age is crying out for self-soothing and self-healing. Poets like Kaur, selling books in the millions, are cutting straight to the chase. Her latest book is a self-healing poetry workbook—literally a therapeutic instapoetry workbook. And if you went to that second link in the first paragraph above, (as of this writing) Microsoft Start offered a “related video” entitled “Author releases collections of poetry to support healing and personal growth (KRON San Francisco)”. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.

And it’s striking how similar the poems of the instapoets are to Taylor Swift’s lyrics (or the other way around). Swift’s lyrics could easily fit between the covers of any self-help, self-actuating, self-affirming book by an instapoet.

I'm lonely, but I'm good
I'm bitter, but I swear I'm fine
I'll save all my romanticism for my inner life and I'll get lost on purpose
This place made me feel worthless
Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me and in my fantasies I rise above it
And way up there, I actually love it

Or

sweetheart
honey
babygirl
cutie

these are not my name
and I am not yours

but you use intimate words
to give yourself a false sense
of dominance over me

these are bullets you keep ready
for when you feel threatened
by my feminine energy

The first is by Swift and the second by Bridgett Devoue.

And then there’s Megan Fox’s recently released book, Pretty Boys are Poisonous. If I sampled one of her poems, you would be hard pressed to distinguish it from Swift or Devoue. It may seem random to mention Fox’s book, but we all know that no other contemporary book of poetry has remotely sold like celebrity Megan Fox’s. Let’s be honest, there’s a theme running through Swift’s lyrics, the poems of the instapoets, and Megan Fox’s poetry (and none of them are engaged with “issues of identity”). A Goodreads reviewer, reviewing Fox’s poetry, said it best: “this feels like a great therapeutic and cathartic experience for her to be able to finally speak her truth.”

In short, contemporary poetry has emphatically not won big new audiences by engaging with issues of identity but by engaging with issues of therapy and catharsis. Poetry books are literally turning into therapeutic regimens and the poems into therapeutants. Perhaps one can argue that therapy and catharsis entails “issues of identity” but I’ve read Kaur and the other instapoets (about 3 minutes per book) and dealing with identity, in the academic sense of the word, ain’t it.

Kirsch next contrasts Vendler and Perloff’s very different outlooks on poetry. For Vendler, “the best poets use all the resources of language—not just the meaning of words, but their sounds, rhythms, patterns, and etymological connections.” For Perloff, he writes, her preferred poetry is “drawn [from] the avant-garde tradition in modernist literature, which she described in her book Radical Artifice as ‘eccentric in its syntax, obscure in its language, and mathematical rather than musical in its form.’” Vendler was the traditionalist while Perloff insisted, in Kirsch’s words, that poets “had a moral duty to resist [the bland co-option of words by television and advertising] by using language disruptively…”

This leads Kirsch to lament that the values of Vendler and Perloff, who felt that the study of “poetry was valuable in and of itself” have together given way to a “desperate” attempt at relevance by teaching —wait for it — wait for it— Taylor Swift.

Today college students are fleeing humanities majors, and English departments are desperately trying to lure them back by promoting the ephemera of pop culture as worthy subjects of study. (Vendler’s own Harvard English department has been getting a great deal of attention for offering a class on Taylor Swift.)

Consider that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 (and by “Literature” we mean poetry), and we see a pattern. Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, Swift’s lyrics are being taught in Literature Departments, and the New York Times puts out headlines that read, The Artists Dismantling the Barriers Between Rap and Poetry.

What’s the take away? Have the last twenty years been, effectively, a repudiation of twentieth century poetics and criticism? Maybe? Finally? (That would be delightful—to me. I’m of the burn it all down and build it anew school of art. I find the latter 20th century to be as stultifyingly formulaic as the worst of the latter 19th century—the former for its vapid transparency and the latter for its vacuous opacity.) It might be argued that Sylvia Plath anticipated the twenty-first century’s use of poetry as therapy. Her poetry was nothing if not a “great therapeutic and cathartic experience” for her readers (though perhaps not for her—in the end). There’s also Robert Lowell, but who reads Lowell anymore? But poetry as the purview of academia’s high priests—namely Vendler and Perloff—has been repudiated at the sales counter. The “big new audience” of our “populist” times (is there the sniff of contempt in Kirsch’s appellation?) don’t want poetry that needs a Vendler or Perloff to explain it to them (and not that I don’t myself enjoy reading Vendler). Whole decades of twentieth century poetry written to the academic(?) taste for studied obscurity—largely pointless and unrewarding—are being confined to special order status. Is that good? Is that bad? Is poetry being improved by the Megan Fox’s of the world? Maybe not. Yet the history of art is the history of the rare genius only emerging on the shoulders of those with an equal passion, if not ability, for their art.

Lastly, Kirsch writes that there are “no obvious heirs to Vendler and Perloff in American poetry today”. William Logan might have an opinion as regards that assertion, and is still alive as far as I know. Besides that, here I am and here I’ve been—for well over a decade—writing, reading, and discussing poetry. I, and others like me, who devote themselves to the discussion and exploration of poetry, are the heirs to Vendler and Perloff. Kirsch qualifies his assertion by writing: “it seems unlikely that we will see a similar conjunction of scholarly authority and critical discernment anytime soon”. But what does he mean by “scholarly authority”? If he means having the imprimatur of academics like Kirsch, then no. Of interest in this regard, a New York Times essay entitled, Has Academia ruined Literary Criticism? Which writes:

“Professionalization, he argues, secured intellectual autonomy for criticism’s practitioners. They could produce knowledge about literature in a manner intelligible chiefly to others producing the same kind of knowledge—a project that became both increasingly specialized and increasingly justified by political concerns, such as race, gender, equality, and the environment. “This is a world in which some of us can specialize in the study of cultural artifacts, and within this category to specialize in literary artifacts, and within literature to specialize in English, and within English to specialize in Romanticism, and within this period to specialize in ecocriticism of Romantic poetry,” Guillory writes. The cost of this professional autonomy is influence. “How far beyond the classroom, or beyond the professional society of the teachers and scholars, does this effort reach?” he asks, knowing that the answer is: not far at all.”

But if not that, then he’s welcome to contrast and compare anything I’ve written to Vendler or Perloff in terms of scholarship. If I’ve made a mistake, I’ll correct it. If he finds nothing to complain about, then may he be as amenable to correction. Which is to say, poetry still defines my life, thank you very much.

And that’s my opinion about that.

Raven & Death

This is something I wrote this morning—a tale within the tale of my second book: WistThistle: Along the Way. A little background: Éhto is the main character throughout the four books of WistThistle, like Ged in Earthsea. Duni doesn’t speak the language of Éhto, but Éhto speaks Duni’s language and is translating Duni’s story for Ímah, the brother of her husband. Duni, who is in love with Ímah, is trying to explain to Ímah, in her way, why she has made the choices she made. Part of the novel’s world building is the language itself, hence the tone of the story’s language.

Duni began with a sing-song voice, saying. “Iy’ta èþé ürio!” which meant, Speak, will I, of the raven!

Then Éhto translated. “And Raven did not always fly; and Raven was not always hoarse of voice, and Raven was not always black of eye. Raven was a beautiful woman—fair and lithesome. And it was for her beauty that men came to seize her, to possess her, to say of her that she was theirs and obeyed no other.

“Ezū’ta èþé Bodfyil!” said Duni, as though she sang, which meant, Speak, will I, of the sorcerer!

And Éhto said, “And the sorcerer, who also was a King, possessed a cape that was of black feathers. And when the cape was worn by the Sorcerer King, then did the cape become great wings that carried him to Raven. Though she did not desire him, he took her against her will. Then did she swear that she would never obey him, but would take his cape and fly away. The cape belongs to me, he answered, and should you ever wear it, then it shall tear you limb from limb. But Raven said, if I am made to obey you, then shall my heart be torn limb from limb, and so in defiance of the Sorcerer King, she put on the cape and the cape tore her limb from limb until she was only the black wings, the black beak, and the black claws of the cape. She and the cape were made one being. Then did Raven fly from the Sorcerer King, and she said, My choice! My choice and no others! But Raven still possessed her voice, and it was the most beautiful voice in all the world.”

“Éloa’ta èþé Najati!” said Duni, as though she sang, which meant, Sing, will I, of the enchantress!

And Éhto said, “The Enchantress heard of a black bird. The bird’s voice was more beautiful than any other’s. And so that she might command Raven’s voice, the Enchantress went into the forest to capture her. With a magical art that was like the gray mists of morning, she took Raven in the net of her spells. Then did Raven swear that she would never sing for her, but would escape the cage and fly away. The Enchantress said to Raven: Though you may escape the cage, your voice cannot. But Raven said, if I am made to obey you, then shall my heart also be caged, and so one day Raven flew from her cage and left behind her voice. Then when she spoke, her noise was a hoarse caw, and yet her voice, still within the cage, spoke aloud, saying, My choice! My choice and no others!”

“Uéi otoza’ta séða!” said Duni, almost in song, for with her speech she kept rhythm with a hand on her flank, which meant, Here me, I speak of Death.

And Éhto said, “All living things know and fear death—all but Raven! When death came, Raven was unafraid. The moth hid among the thorns. The skoko burrowed into the earth. The mother fled with her child. The harvestman abandoned his field, but Raven did not fly away. Raven waited even as the winds turned black the leaves, and swept them away. Then Death stood beneath Raven, holding before him the cage made by the Enchantress, for he had long ago claimed the Enchantress, saying: Hear me, Raven, I come now to carry you away. And Raven answered: If I obey, O Death, my spirit shall be caged forevermore. And then—for Raven felt Death’s chill upon her—she flew into into the hollow of death’s left eye, to see what was to see within death’s skull; and there she saw an infinity of great beauty—the stars, sun and moon of our and every world— for all that we see and know is conceived of and known by Death. Raven was greatly moved, but she would not let her spirit be trapped in Death’s cage. She took out her eyes, hiding one by the emptiness of Death’s left eye and the other by Death’s right eye. By this means was her spirit able to find her way back to life. By this means, through Raven’s eyes, do we all, for when Death calls, our spirits fly into Death’s left eye and return anew—remade and reborn—through Death’s right eye. And thus it was that Raven flew out of Death’s right eye and returned to the limb of the tree—reborn and with eyes as black as Death. My choice! she cried. My choice and no others! Death bowed and put aside the cage. And so it is that Raven alone, having traded her eyes for Death’s, remembers the many lives that she and all of us have lived. That is Raven’s wisdom.”

This was a Poet | This, That and Who?

This was a Poet — 
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings —
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door —
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it — before —

Of Pictures, the Discloser —
The Poet — it is He —
Entitles Us — by Contrast —
To ceaseless Poverty —

Of portion — so unconscious —
The Robbing — could not harm —
Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
Exterior — to Time —

[FR 446/J448]

So. I’ve read a second interpretation of this poem, now by Cristanne Miller (the first by Helen Vendler) and both interpretations seem to fudge the final quatrain. Both seem to muddle. The reasons for the confusion, as with many of Dickinson’s more abstruse poems, are the “nonrecoverable deletions” (as Cristanne Miller nicely describes them). Essentially, because of the constraints of form, Dickinson chooses to delete connectives and syntax that would guide a reader’s understanding.

• Aside: I know it’s peak heresy to ask this question, but I do wonder to what degree Dickinson was aware of her poetry’s frequent obscurity. I’ll make the baseline assumption that her poems made perfect sense to her. If you had asked her what she meant by the final quatrain of This was a Poet, she might have looked at you like you were daft. (She didn’t take well to Higginson’s critiques and he learned—quickly—not to offer them.) And that makes me wonder if anyone ever asked her for clarification? She did send many of her poems to friends and relations, especially Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Based on my own lifelong experience as a poet, I’m going to say, No. On the other hand, maybe they didn’t need clarification? They were living in the same town, the same culture, spoke over tea and exchanged letters. We might expect a reader like Susan to fill in the blanks. So the question is this: Was Dickinson knowingly obscure or was she too familiar with her own poetry to recognize its obscurity? To say that she was knowingly obscure strikes me as out and out anachronistic. Poets in the mid 19th century were writing to be understood. Full stop. The 20th century’s infatuation with “pointless obscurity”, as William Logan nicely put it, just wasn’t a thing when Dickinson was writing. Does that mean that Dickinson was too familiar with her own poetry? There’s probably an element of truth to that. Another way of putting is that she might have expected too much from readers other than friends and family. Her syntactic compression/ellipsis/metonymy is part and parcel of her poetic art, but that’s a fine line. I wouldn’t have her poetry any other way, but sometimes, we must admit that her meaning is every reader’s best guess.

  This was a Poet — 
  It is That [poetry]
  Distills amazing sense
  From ordinary Meanings —
  And Attar so immense

My impression is that most readers interpret That as referring to the Poet. This would be Miller’s interpretation and, unless I’m mistaken, Vendler’s. I actually read That as referring not to the poet but to poetry in general. Normally this would be a four line stanza. R.W. Franklin notes that these lines are made four lines in “derivative collections” and Miller prints the poem this way (in her book A Poet’s Grammar). This makes the first line read: This was a Poet — It is That. Printing the poem this way makes it more tempting to associate That with the Poet. But if we print it according to Dickinson’s own lineation, then the assertion This was a Poet stands by itself. The statement is in the past tense and I read it, in a sense, as an epitaph. I read the poem as like a scene in a play. We’re accompanying Dickinson (or the speaker) on a nice afternoon’s walk through the graveyard (actually a thing in Victorian times). As we accompany Dickinson, she pauses at a grave stone we might have overlooked. She says,”This was a Poet.” Recognizing the poet’s grave, she then is reminded of his poetry and says, almost to herself, “It is That, that distills amazing sense from Ordinary meanings”. In her book “Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them”, Miller notes that in his “Letter to a Young Contributor”, Higginson wrote, “Literature is attar of roses, one distilled drop from a million blossoms”. This was the letter that prompted Dickinson to write Higginson and suggests that Dickinson’s own imagery was inspired by Higginson.

  And Attar so immense

  From the familiar species
  That perished by the Door —
  We wonder it was not Ourselves
  Arrested it — before —

  Of Pictures, the Discloser —

That Dickinson uses the word “immense” suggests Higginson’s “million blossoms”. Also worth noting, I think, is the notion that what “perished by the Door” was made into attar. Keep that in the back of your mind. The narrator, standing by the gravestone, next expresses appreciation for the genius of poetry. The poet’s skill is such that she wonders why we don’t ourselves “arrest”/grasp/comprehend what poetry, after the fact, makes self-evident. Poetry is “Of Pictures” (possibly meaning imagery) the “Discloser”. That is, poetry is the art that reveals truth through the language of imagery, archetype, and symbol.

So far, so good. It's the last third of the poem where matters get muddled. [Note: For an interpretation I find more convincing and simpler than my own, be sure to read the comment section; then decide for yourself.]

  The Poet — it is He —
  Entitles Us — by Contrast —
  To ceaseless Poverty —

  Of portion — so unconscious —
  The Robbing — could not harm —
  Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
  Exterior — to Time —

Now, here’s my thought: If we keep in mind that Dickinson, at the very outset of the poem distinguishes between two subjects, the Poet (deceased) and “Poetry”—the That that makes the perished into attar—we have the makings of a contrast. Dickinson even spells it out. “By Contrast—” she writes. The speaker returns our attention to the deceased Poet (after describing poetry’s power). That is, unlike his or her poetry, by contrast, the Poet will not be made into attar. The Poet has perished. It’s possible to break down these lines into three separate assertions:

  The Poet — it is He —
  Entitles Us — by Contrast —
  To ceaseless Poverty —

The death of the Poet, in contrast to his poetry, is a cause of ceaseless Poverty. Ceaseless because his death is final. Dickinson isn’t referring to the The Poet, but to Death. Then she moves on to her next thought:

  Of portion — so unconscious —
  The Robbing — (!)

In a highly compressed fashion, she is accusing Death of thoughtlessness and indifference. Of portion, she says sarcastically, Death is unconscious/thoughtless/indifferent. In other words, she expresses dismay at Death’s indifference to the “portion” that is really being robbed from us—not just a man but a great artist—a Shakespeare, a Keats or a Brontë. She expresses dismay at Death’s indifference to who he robs from us.

                  — could not harm —
  Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
  Exterior — to Time —

Now she moves onto her third thought. And here, if I’m interpreting the poem correctly, Dickinson’s final lines remind me very much of the closing lines to her poem, Because I could not stop for Death:

  Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
  Feels shorter than the Day

There’s that same sense of timelessness—not the timelessness of paradise, but of awareness exiled from time’s rituals—a nothing that is both death and deathless. That is, just as with the narrator in Because I could not stop for Death, the Poet’s centuries feel shorter than the day. The conclusion just as laden with contradiction—but also consistent. According to biographers, Dickinson refused to “accept Christ” (and presumably the afterlife that went along with that) but she also seemed unwilling to accept the death of the soul. This may disappoint some metaphysical naturalists among my readers (and you know who you are) but asking Dickinson, in her era and culture, to throw the soul out with the Christian bathwater, is probably asking too much.

Though Death has robbed us of the Poet, Death cannot rob the Poet of his “Fortune”. The Poet takes what is most precious about him with him (Dickinson was untroubled, according to Vendler, by the use of He/Him in reference to herself as a poet). He takes his creative genius—his Fortune—into that deathless death that is exterior to time. Death can rob us of the poet’s creative genius, but cannot rob the Poet himself. “[Death] could not harm—Himself [the Poet]”. To Him—to himself—the poet’s Fortune is now exterior to time. Yet one is very hesitant to read this as triumphing over Death. Dickinson ends the poem, as with Because I could not stop for Death, with irreconcilable contradiction. She is both deceased and conscious. And that might be part of the point. The contradiction, the dissonance, is part of the tragedy.

• From Vendler’s Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries: “Dickinson here uses a capitalized universalized “he” in reference to the Poet; I follow her reverent practice. She assumes the ungendered nature of the Platonic Idea of the Poet. She would not have said that she meant to exclude, by the pronoun “He,” the women Poets whose works she admired: Elizabeth Barret Browning, George Eliot, and Emily Brontë.” [p. 212-213]

Edit: It’s tempting to read “Exterior — to Time” as the poet’s poetry triumphing over time. In other words, his fortune—his poetry—is exterior to death and time. The problem with this reading is that it seemingly contradicts the speaker’s earlier assertion that He entitles us to “ceaseless poverty”. One has to explain this apparent contradiction. My own way around this is to treat her final lines as a reference to the deceased Poet rather than to His or Her poetry (and Because I could not stop may give us a precedence for such a reading).

Worth mentioning is that she could be describing herself in This was a Poet—commenting on her own death. In this sense, This was a Poet and Because I could not stop for Death can be read as describing the same event—her own death. The former is from the perspective of the living, reflecting on the poet’s death, while the latter is from the perspective of the deceased poet.

I haven’t said much about Vendler or Miller’s interpretations because they’re so different from mine. I don’t know how to summarize their readings (and frankly find them somewhat scattershot and confusing). How exactly does Vendler land on plagiarism, for example? What and where does that come from? Vendler summarizes the closing couplet this way:

“Dickinson points out the degree to which the Poet’s capacity to notice, to notice everything, and then disclose His “Pictures,” makes us notice things too… And third, Dickinson points out the indifference of the Poet to us (or to anyone else), an indifference arising not from self-esteem but from His (to him unconscious) Fortune. He is so unaware of the grace bestowed on Him, of the great “Portion” of wealth He has inherited, that no robbing from his worth can harm Him (plagiarism of His work by others does not affect our recognition of the true Poet). He moves in a world (in Dickinson’s great phrase) “Exterior — to Time — “… He is as unaware of Time (and its obverse, Eternity) as He is of us. [p. 213-214]

So you can see how different our interpretations are. Vendler doesn’t even interpret the poem as being that of a deceased Poet (and this despite describing the opening line as a past-tense epitaph in the very first sentence of her analysis). According to Vendler, if I understand her correctly, Dickinson is describing the archetypal experience(?) of reading poetry. It seems to me that Vendler spends less time interpreting the poem than ‘biographizing’. Miller interprets the poem as Dickinson expressing (for lack of a better term) gender resentment(?). She reads Dickinson as addressing male poets (and not the Platonic Idea of the Poet) in her use of He, and frames the contrast as one of “difference and of strength”.

“As a younger sister of a favored son and as a consciously female poet, however, Dickinson might well differentiate herself with some resentment from the poet who creates unconsciously and with ease, the man of ceaseless, inherited cultural wealth. Evidently during this time when she wrote or at least copied “This was a Poet” for her own safekeeping, the contrast between herself as artist and the world was particularly vivid. In the fascicle where she binds this poem, Dickinson precedes it with two poems on similar differences. In the first, “It would have starved a Gnat — / To live so small as I — ” (612), the speaker brags that she can live on even less that a gnat, and without his privileges to fly to more sustaining places or to die. In the poem immediately preceding “This was a Poet,” the speaker is a “Girl” poet “shut… up in Prose — ” by uncomprehending adults, whom she escapes “easy as a Star” by willing herself to be free (613).  Later in the fascicle Dickinson includes “It was given to me by the Gods” (454), a poem about another “little Girl” far richer with her handful of “Gold” than anyone could guess and richer than anyone else is: “The Difference — made me bold —” she confides. These are poems of difference and of strength, whether these qualities stem from unique starvation or mysterious wealth.” [Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar p. 120-121]

Miller interprets Dickinson’s use of That, in reference to the Poet, as suggesting the poet’s “lack of humanity”.

“The poet’s lack of humanity is further suggested by his peculair invulnerability in the last stanza: “a Fortune — / Exterior — to Time —” is glorious as a description of immortal poems but somewhat mechanical and materialistic as a description of a man. We are poor, capable of “wonder,” within “Time,” while He is alone, “Exterior” to our world, knowable only “by Contrast.” [p. 120]

“The poet/narrator who speaks in Dickinson’s poem considers herself a part of the admiring, ordinary crowd rather than separate from it. Her stance indicates that not all poets share “His” isolation from community.” [p. 121]

So, from Miller, we have a feminist critique based on a reading of He as a specifically gendered reference; and not, as Vendler asserts, a universalized He. It could be argued, in that respect, that Miller’s reading is potentially anachronistic (giving too much weight to the pronoun). Miller’s interpretation is also, arguably, based on reading the first two lines as one (which is not how Dickinson preserved the poem).

At any rate, there’s my 2 cents. Spend it how you will.

upinVermont | March 12 2024

Celebrating Veterans of War Protests | FR620 Much Madness is divinest Sense—

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for years. Whenever Veterans Day comes around, I think of my father, Gordon Gillespie, who died just last year. He was smart enough and brave enough to oppose the Vietnam War and he suffered for it.

Reading this poem by Emily Dickinson, just last night, reminded me of my father and the sacrifices he made for his conscience and for being right. There’s bravery in going to war, but there’s also bravery—and no less in my opinion—in standing up to the lies and corruption of ones own military and government. Because of my father’s opposition to the Vietnam War, he was straightaway labeled as dangerous and “handled with a Chain”, which is to say—in prison. The British Government was so frightened by him that they expelled him and the FBI, because he refused to assent, opened a dossier on him. He landed in Berlin, Germany, which is where I spent my early childhood.

Not all protestors are right, but there are unjust wars as well.

The necessary bravery to stand against the majority, to withstand the accusations of “starkest Madness” when the discerning Eye is needed most, is what I celebrate on Veteran’s Day.

Patrick Gillespie | November 11 2023

November’s Poetry

November is right around the corner. Sort of. I happened to be reading two (entirely?) forgotten poets (who I want to write more about) but who were very well known in their day. If you are looking for poetry by poets skilled in rhyme and meter, to set beside the likes of Robert Frost, then you will enjoy Dilys Laing (October 1906, Pwllheli, North Wales — 14 February 1960, Norwich, Vermont) and Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 — February 22, 1978). McGinley, according to Wikipedia, was the first poet to receive the Pulitzer for “light verse”. Dilys Laing, who writes in a more serious vein, gets almost no love at Wikipedia but you’ll find a good article about her here. Neither poet rises to the status of great poet, but neither are they any less worth reading than the many critically overrated poets of the same generation. Anyway, I was randomly reading through their collections and noticed they’d both written poems on November. I thought I would post them here alongside some other favorites, including my own.

November Abstract

All the green summer through it came incarnate
in scented snowflakes clustered on frail umbels
of Queen Anne's Lace, in goldenrod, in cymbals
of dandelion. My fingers have uptorn it
delicately in orchid, trillium, clover,
hepatica and all the tribe of daisies
and lodged it briefly in my bowls and vases:
beauty to ease my spirit of its fever.

And now I wander through the blond, bleached acres
sucked of their color by the North's sharp hunger,
and with a sober joy, from earth no longer
vital, but brought to death's pale browns and ochres,
I pluck the residual beauty, the bones of glamour:
grey goldenrod, brown burdocks, milkweed purses
and skeletal grass, and their dry beauty pierces
my kindred bones beyond the trust of summer.

— by Dilys Laing

November

Away with the vanity of Man.
  Now comes to visit here
The Maiden Aunt, the Puritan,
  The Spinster of the year.

She likes a world that's furnished plain,
  A sky that's clean and bare,
And garments eminently sne
  For her consistent wear.

Let others dick them as they please
  In frill and furbelow.
She scorns alike the fripperies
  Of flowers and of snow.

Her very speech is shrewd and slight,
  With innuendos done;
And all of her hard, thin light
  Or shadow sharp as sun.

Indifferent to the drifting leaf,
  And innocent of guile,
She scarcely knows there dwells a brief
  Enchantment in her smile.

So love her with a sparing love.
  That is her private fashion,
Who fears the August ardor of
  A demonstrated passion.

Yet love her somewhat. It is meet,
  And for our own defense,
After October to find sweet
  Her chilly common sense.

— by Phyllis McGinley

My November Guest

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
     She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
     The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
     And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
     The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
     And they are better for her praise.

— by Robert Frost

There’s nothing left but overall
Remnants of what had once been fall;
Even where a week before
A leaf or two blew through the door
The dwindling days have turned to soot
The little traveling underfoot.

Snow will follow soon enough
Careening through the unmown scruff
Of jimson weed and bush clover,
Nothing apt to be covered over
With just a midday’s squall—but soon
Winter will stay the afternoon.

Then who will afterward remember
The few days readied since September?—
The ghostly sighs of thimbleweed,
The bony knuckles of the reed,
Whole fields of startled hair turned white
Before the year end’s stricken flight.

I wouldn’t ask but that I know
It’s not just seasons come and go.
When ice gives way to watercress
And all of April’s loveliness,
Remember, though the days are few,
November has its flowers too.

November
by Me, Patrick Gillespie, and read here

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eyes, —
Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,
And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!

— by Emily Dickinson 

The Pity of the Leaves

Vengeful across the cold November moors,
Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak
Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,
Reverberant through lonely corridors.
The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,
Words out of lips that were no more to speak—
Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek
Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.

And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!
The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside
Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then
They stopped, and stayed there—just to let him know
How dead they were; but if the old man cried,
They fluttered off like withered souls of men. 

—  by EA Robinson

And if these have got you in the mood for cold November days, look here.

I likely shouldn’t write…

I likely shouldn’t write today.
  The afternoon goes by
And there are restless intimations
  Of nightfall in the sky.

Some say such dark and darker clouds
  Have beauty of their own
And it may be tomorrow I’ll say
  The same for being alone;

But the day goes on and on. I’ll write,
  Writing of rain and sorrow,
That sometimes there are days that soak
  Into the earth and marrow;
  
And I may write that if there’s beauty
  I looked for it in rhyme;
And yet the heart still breaks. There's nothing
  We do but give it time.


  Patrick Gillespie | July 18th 2023

I’ve been reading Helen Vendler’s book, Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, and also Dickinson on the side. She continues to inspire me to write ballad hymns. Vendler’s book is great and I’d recommend it to anyone who has ever been confused by Dickinson’s gnomic verse. And sometimes not even years of academia can sort her out. I’m also hoping to get back to some routine and working on this little poem, for all its sorrow, has cheered me up.

Murder Most Monstrous | The sloe-black crow…

  Who has heard the sloe-black crow—
  Her raucous pendulum
  Of heart and lung—as surely know
  That if none are as troublesome,
  As quick to love and hate;
  Yet none are as sure or fly as straight. 

I’m just writing the final pages of the novella, and thought I’d share one of the last spells Orobella casts. Orobella is one of the two fourteen year old heroines of the novella—and a witch. Maddie is her anti-witch companion—The Antiwitch— and the Sherlock Holmes to Orobella’s Watson. As the Antiwitch, Maddie can’t be affected by magic, but that also creates its own problems. She’s sort of anti-matter to magic’s matter. That is, until she and Orobella find the Coat of Bayonne (or possibly the other way around). Maybe the coat, sown by dragons from their own wings to protect themselves and the Antiwitch (of lore) finally found Maddie.

Forgeries

So I was just reading this article The husband-and-wife forgers who fooled the art market — and made millions, and thinking to myself: there’s no greater historian or critic than the forger. In order to produce the kind of forgery that can fool anyone but a chemist, one has to be greater expert and historian than any of the experts and historians examining your forgery. Not being an artist, I can only marginally imagine what goes into producing a convincing fake: what colors were available; how they were produced; brush strokes, the thickness of the application, the canvass itself, how it’s aged, etc… Literary forger happens too. the Britannica discusses literary forgery here. It’s not just a matter of imitating the poet or writer’s style, but one has to also (as with art forgeries) use the right paper and ink. My sense, reading the entry in Britannica, that if one is going to forge Steinbeck, for example, the smart money is on forging correspondence rather than a short story or novel. The reasons are obvious. It takes far less artistic competence to forge a letter than to forge a literary work. To judge by the success of art forgeries, it’s apparently easier to forge art than literature. Then again, a far more mundane explanation might be that there’s far less money in forging poetry or novels.

There have also been musical forgeries. You can find a discussion of that here. And I’m frankly disappointed that there aren’t more musical forgeries. That said, there are white hat forgers and black hat forgers. The white hat forgers are the ones like Robert Levin and Timothy Jones, who are so knowledgeable of Mozart’s composition that they can “forge” completions of Mozart’s incomplete works. And then there’s Rudolph Lutz. He goes a step further by creating entire compositions, from the ground up, in the style of JS Bach. Lutz’s understanding of Bach’s compositional technique is astonishing. But it’s more than that. Lutz composes. He has the knowledge and he possesses the compositional genius to make music out of that knowledge. As an example: Cantata 145. The original first movement is missing, so what did Lutz do? He wrote an instrumental introduction in the style of Bach. You can watch it here. Not only that, but Lutz also wrote an entire Cantata in the style of Bach, and it’s incredible. You can listen to that here.

There was the black hat forgery of Haydn’s piano sonatas that were so good they fooled the “great” quote-unquote Haydn historian Robbins Landon, who (when I was an 18 year old and naïve idealist) told me that the only reason he wrote his mammoth Haydn biographies was for the money. I kid you not. “Why, for the money! he said.” The forgeries also fooled the great pianist Paul Badura-Skoda. You can listen to Badura-Skoda playing them on Youtube: Hob XVI:2a – Keyboard Sonata No. 21; Hob XVI:2b – Keyboard Sonata No. 22 ; Hob XVI:2g – Keyboard Sonata No. 26; Hob XVI:2d – Keyboard Sonata No. 24; Hob XVI:2e – Keyboard Sonata No. 25; Hob XVI:2c – Keyboard Sonata No. 23. (Sadly, you won’t find these on Spotify because the whole affair probably embarrassed Badura-Skoda.) None of these sonatas are by Haydn but they’re very good. When I first heard them I thought they were oddly redolent of CPE Bach, but I didn’t put too much thought into it after that. Haydn was a great admirer of CPE Bach. Haydn, like Mozart, kept a catalog of the music he had written. In the case of these sonatas, he had written down four measure incipits (the theme on which each sonata was written). The sonatas were lost and only the incipits remained. So, all the modern forger had to do was to write sonatas, in Haydn’s style, based on Haydn’s own themes. I personally think they’re pretty good. I have no trouble listening to them and enjoying them. Even knowing they’re rank forgeries, I include them in my Haydn playlists. They fit right in. The most famous musical forgery, which really was a forgery intended to fool the recipient, was Franz Xaver Süssmayr completion of Mozart’s Requiem. Mozart died before completing the Requiem. In need of the money, Mozart’s wife commissioned Mozart’s hapless student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to complete the Requiem. Pity poor Süssmayr, a composer who Mozart once characterized as clueless as a duck in the thunderstorm, having to forge the music of one of the greatest composers who ever lived. In all honesty, and given his limited skill set, he did okay.

I’ve dabbled in forgeries myself. I understand how poets write. I see how they think and how they use language, similes, metaphor and imagery. I’m good at that. One of my “white hat” forgeries would be Sunday, which is not meant to fool someone into thinking it’s by Wallace Stevens, but imitates his habits of thought. It’s meant to be, in its way, an answer to his. Another would be Ulysses in Burlington Vermont, which riffs on Tennyson. I did, once, forge Shakespeare. I did such a good job that I was banned from the Shaksper Listserv (this would have been in the 90s). I typed the anonymous The Wisdome of Doctor Dodypoll “into the internet” and, because the devil whispered in my ear, I added a touch of “Shakespeare”. I’m an easy mark for the devil. For years, this version of Doctor Dodypoll could be found on the internet. Even when I wrote to websites telling them that they had reposted the forgery of a con artist, they didn’t believe me. Can you spot me?

Leander. My Lord, he fears that you will be angry with him.
Alphonso. You play the villain: wherefore should he fear?
I only proved her virtues for his sake,
And now you talk of anger. Aye me wretch,
That ever I should live to be thus shamed!
Alberdure. Madame, I swear the Lady is my love;
Therefore your highness cannot charge my father
With any wrong to your high worth of her.
Constantine. Sister, you see we utterly mistake
The kind and princely dealing of the Duke:
Therefore without more ceremonious doubts
Lets reconfirm the contract and his love.
Katherine. I warrant you my Lord – the Duke – dissembles.
It is not love doth speak, for such strong terms
Hath ever love. Dear Sister, do but note
The fruit tree giveth not that is not pruned
For nature teacheth us th’extravagance
Of outward show doth sap the inward stock
In substance and of worth. It is love
That like the gentle drop of rain speaks not
Its name unto the earth yet calls from forth
The ground the weary seed. (Nor yet the voice
Of angels can amaze the knotted bud
As doth a single drop of rain from heaven.)
And so true love should do, for that speaks not
That does in deeds what words may never do.
Alphonso. Here on my knees, at the alter of those feet,
I offer up in pure and sacred breath
The true speech of my heart and heart itself.
Require no more if thou be princely born.
And not of rocks or ruthless tigers bred.
Katherine. My Lord, I kindly cry you mercy now,
Ashamed that you should injure your estate
To kneel to me; and vow before these Lords
To make you all amends you can desire.
Flores. Madame, in admiration of your grace
And princely wisdom, and to gratify
The long wished joy done to my Lord the Duke,
I here present your highness with this cup,
Wrought admirably by th’art of spirits,
Of substance fair, more rich than earthly gems,
Whose value no man’s judgment can esteem.
Alphonso. Flores, I’ll interrupt the Duchess thanks
And for the present thou hast given to her
To strengthen her consent to my desires,
I recompense thee with a free release
Of all offenses twixt thyself and me.
Flores. I humbly thank your excellence.
Katherine. But where is now unkind Earl Lassinbergh,
That injures his fair love and makes her wear
This worthless garland? Come, Sir, make amends,
Or we will here award you worthy penance.
Lassinbergh. Madame, since her departure I have done
More hearty penance than heart could wish,
And vow hereafter to live ever hers.
Katherine. Then let us cast aside these forlorn wreaths,
And with our better fortunes change our habits.

Unfortunately for me, my forgeries have not made me a millionaire. Or maybe that’s a good thing. Looking at my Dodypoll forgery after 30 years, older and wiser, I know I could do better. The syntax wouldn’t fool a real Elizabethan/Shakespearean scholar, but now I’m betting I could. My only regret is that my forgery isn’t better. One of the best ways to learn how to write poetry is to imitate, and in truth it’s how most poets start out anyways—whether they know it or not.

The other question that forgeries bring up, and that others have discussed elsewhere, is if a forgery is good enough to fool the experts, then doesn’t that make it a work of art? If someone were to forge Mozart’s 28th piano concerto, and fool the world’s musicologists, wouldn’t that make the piano concerto as great an accomplishment as the 27th? The same question was asked of the Haydn forgeries. What does it mean to be a sonata by Haydn? Why should we treasure one and not the other? What, in truth, makes a work of art valuable? Getting back to the original article from CNN, why should Wolfgang Beltracchi’s forgeries be considered works of art? Shouldn’t they be? Isn’t the art of forgery an art in and of itself? Why not a Wolfgang Beltracchi exhibition a hundred years from now? Consider Salvator Mundi by Leonardo daVinci. Question Mark.

Most believe it to be by daVinci, but others don’t.

~ The British art historian Charles Hope dismissed the attribution to Leonardo entirely in a January 2020 analysis of the painting’s quality and provenance. He doubted that Leonardo would have painted a work where the eyes were not level and the drapery undistorted by a crystal orb. He added, “The picture itself is a ruin, with the face much restored to make it reminiscent of the Mona Lisa.” Hope condemned the National Gallery’s involvement in Simon’s “astute” marketing campaign. ~Wikipedia Feb 15th 2023

Before it was identified as possibly being by da Vinci, it was bought for $1,175. After being claimed as a Da Vinci (and being “touched/cleaned up”), it eventually made the rounds until it sold at Christie’s in New York on 15 November 2017 for $450,312,500. That’s right. You read that right. The same painting went from being worth just over a thousand dollars to almost half a billion. ‘But it’s a da Vinci!’ you say. But it’s also the same painting that was bought for just over a thousand dollars. What are you really paying for? The name or the art? The answer is obviously—the name. The same is undoubtedly true of the Haydn forgeries. They may be quite good, musically, and might do Haydn no shame, but they’re not “a Haydn”. Could you imagine if poetry sold like art? I’ve often thought that I should offer to sell my individual poems, written by me, by hand, on something like a canvass (or on the best paper money can buy). And framed. Should I? They won’t be cheap. There will only be a limited number. They will be “a Gillespie”—the poetry of the poet written in his own hand. Make me an offer because, you know what? They’re going to be valuable. I’m not famous now, but I will be. Whether that happens when I’m alive or dead is a whole other matter. Bet on dead (if you’re the betting kind).

When somebody bothers to forge my poetry, then I’ll have made it.

North of Autumn | Hymn #8 Butterflies

Just a reminder for anyone new to the blog. These poems are being written for a novel I’m writing (or at least will get back to once I’m back in Vermont) called North Of Autumn. (I’ll be back this coming Thursday). The poems are those of a deceased character who read and loved Emily Dickinson. The poem that follows is possibly the most “Dickinsonian” of them. I thought up this one while biking the Mauerweg, a bicycle path that follows where the Wall used to be. It’s mostly a paved and beautiful path. In just the roughly thirty years since the wall, towers, and mine fields were removed, a forest has grown up; but the most startling strangeness is the transition from former West Berlin to former East Germany.

The West Berliners developed right up to the Wall when it was still standing, while the East Germans deliberately left their side undeveloped, the farms and fields untouched. Now that the Wall is gone, the effect is surreal. Going south, the city just stops. It doesn’t gradually peter out. It just stops. There aren’t even roads. Just dirt footpaths. If you’re biking East, and if you look to your left, there will be houses and apartment buildings, roads, buses, playgrounds, etc. If you look to your right, there’s nothing but flat fields and trees as far as the eye can see. You would think you were somewhere deep in Germany’s farm lands. The fields would never last in the US. There would be stroads and strip malls in no time. I can’t help hoping this little piece of Berlin surreality remains unchanged.

  The seasons do not tabulate
    The yearly gross and net,
  And neither do they contemplate
    What quotas go unmet.

  The endless inefficiencies
    Give reason to be worried
  (There's no escaping winter's fees)
    Yet dreams will not be hurried.

  The dreary mind cannot affirm
    What nature testifies—
  The paltry labor of the worm
    Becoming butterflies.

  Written on the Mauerweg
  by Me
  August 12 2022 

My Last Husband

More poems now that I have time. This poem, or dramatic monologue, was written for Harriet Whitbread, who performed my poem, Erlkönigin. I wrote it over the week-end, with Bicycles finally done, and wanted to write her something she could really have fun with—my way of thanking her. If you’ve never read Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess, then you should read that first or you’ll be apt to miss the humor and inside jokes. As usual, I enjoy writing pastiches like these that turn the originals a little upside down and a little inside out. As I see it, why let the men have all the fun? Enjoy.

 
 My Last Husband
  
 L.A.
  
 [Enter Madame de B. wearing a caftan and sipping a whisky sour.]
  
 That’s my last husband pictured on the wall
 Looking as if he were alive. The great
 Photographer Pierre Blanchet insisted—
 And spent the week-end taking photographs.
 No doubt he would have stayed a few weeks longer. 
 I’ve since been told Pierre had fallen madly
 In love with him.  
             It mattered neither men
 Nor women, everyone who met him loved him.
 Yet after all these years I’m not surprised
 You didn’t recognize him—being younger.
 Fame, as they say, is fleeting. Even so
 And only having seen his photograph,
 You’re not the first to ask me who he was—
 What with that jaw, that brow, that piercing gaze.
 And not for me. Oh no. No. All of that
 Was for Pierre or rather I should say
 His camera.
                  Was I there? Oh yes, although
 You’d never guess. Before he was discovered
 He tended bars. He made me whiskey sours.
 That’s how he was. So thoughtful. Whisky sours
 For me and for Pierre a Cosmopolitan,
 A Mai Tai for the bellboy, Juleps for
 The scullery maid. They loved him. Everyone
 Adored him. Oh but they adored him. Why
 Any trifle batting eyes at him
 He’d treat as if he’d known them all their lives.
 A movie star! Imagine that! You’d think
 There was no point in living where we lived:
 This villa, planned by Lars van Alderhof;
 Its stunning view of the Pacific ocean;
 An architectural beacon!
                                         But I digress.
 As I was saying: Everyone who met him—
 Well, I was always being told how lucky
 I was. How fortunate. I was the envy
 Of womankind! Imagine being married,
 They’d say, to Jason of the Argonauts,
 To Robinhood, to Tamburlaine and Harry
 The goddamn Fifth! 
                       The day the photograph
 Was taken, on that very day, my agent
 Called to tell me I’d been chosen. Me!
 The starring role in La Belle Dame. I’m sure,
 Of course, you’ve heard of it. I won an Oscar.
 Alas but that my husband never knew.
 He knew that I would star. Was any man
 Supportive as he was? Was any wife
 So lucky? He at once made known to all
 That I, his unexampled wife, would star
 In La Belle Dame; then added sans merci.
 Indeed. The laughter was uproarious. Oh how
 They loved him. Sans merci. Indeed.
                                           I’m sure
 You know the story. Last that he was seen
 He’d driven off in his belovèd Aston Martin.
 Gone, but for this: his photograph; still smiling
 As if alive.
                     Shall we repair to the salon?
 My agent will of course review the contract—
 I’m sure a mere formality considering
 Your studio’s well-known—munificence.
 Just follow me.
                     And those? The magazines?
 I had the covers framed. Quite lovely. Taken
 Shortly after I had won the Oscar
 For La Belle Dame—and while touring Italy.
 The statue in the background overlooked
 A gorgeous cove and was quite famous. Sculpted
 By Hans of Strasbourg and entitled: Neptune
 Taming a seahorse. Tragically, there was
 An accident. 
            The workmen who’d been hired
 To clean and renovate the statue must
 Have loosened here and there a bolt, forgetting
 To tighten them—a cable snipped?—who knows.
 (Whatever does a woman know about
 Such things.) But down went Neptune, down
 Into the waves with nothing whatsoever
 To brake his fall. The chariot was found
 But never Neptune—no doubt swept out
 To sea. As luck would have it though, just Neptune
 And nothing else. 
                    The seahorse, so it’s claimed,
 Still stands just as it was—and still untamed.
  
 [Exeunt Madame de B.] 

Dedicated Harriet Whitbread

Needless to say, and just like Browning’s poem, mine is based on true events.