<p>Back to the love poems–another of Shakespeare’s greatest</p>
<p>Sonnet CXXX</p>
<p>My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.</p>
<p>I guess he was telling it like he saw it! Yep, she’s dowdy, frumpy, and colorless, talks like a lumberjack, has bad breath, and walks like a mack truck. But, man, I love that woman.</p>
<p>OK, so what did I misinterpret this time?!!! :)</p>
<p>No, astrophysicsmom, that’s what it says. But WS is getting back at her for sleeping with the “young man.” The sonnet cycle is a bit of a novel. First comes the beautiful young man, then the dark lady, then they sleep together, then the whole subject is “lust in action.”</p>
<p>So she might, in fact, be lovely, but this is her just desert for cuckolding the poet.</p>
<p>atomom, you probably know this already; CXXX was written in response to a contemporary sonnet that praised a lady in the same way. It seems that writing the opposite in response to a rival was a practiced game at the time, and Shakespeare did just that in many of his sonnets and plays.</p>
<p>I believe the original sonnet was included in Helen Vendler’s Shakespeare Sonnets but I don’t have the text in front of me until I go home tonight.</p>
<pre><code> You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine…
-Jacques Crickillon
</code></pre>
<p>You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.</p>
<p>However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.</p>
<p>It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.</p>
<p>And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.</p>
<p>It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.</p>
<p>I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.</p>
<p>I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.</p>
<p>Here is the original poem by thomas Watson that I alluded to in post 146. It is obscure, as it should be. </p>
<p>Hark you that list to heare what saint I serve:
Her yellowe lockes exceede the beaten goulde;
Her sparkling eies in heav’n a place deserve;
Her forehead high and faire of comely moulde;
Her wordes are musicke all of silver sounde;
Her wit so sharpe as like can scarce be found.</p>
<p>Each eybrowe hanges like Iris in the skies;
Her Eagles nose is straight of stately frame;
On either cheek a Rose and Lilie lies;
Her breath is sweete perfume, or hollie flame;
Her lips more red than any Coral stone;
Her neck more white than aged Swans it mone;</p>
<p>Her brest transparent is, like Christall rocke;
Her fingers long, fit for Apolloes Lute;
Her slipper such as Momus dare not mocke;
Her vertures all so great as make me mute
What other partes she hath I neede not say,
Whose face alone is cause of my decaye.</p>
<p>Love, death, nature, spiritual yearning. Mary Oliver:</p>
<p>The Summer Day</p>
<p>Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?</p>
<p>You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.</p>
<p>I like Tony Hoagland, just read and really like this one:</p>
<p>HOW IT ADDS UP</p>
<p>There was the day we swam in a river, a lake, and an ocean.
And the day I quit the job my father got me,
And the day I stood outside a door
And listened to my girlfriend making love
To someone obviously not me, inside, </p>
<p>And I felt strange because I didn’t care.
There was the morning I was born,
And the year I was a loser,
And the night I was the winner of the prize
For which the audience applauded. </p>
<p>Then there was someone else I met,
Whose face and voice I can’t forget,
And the memory of her
Is like a jail I’m trapped inside,
Or maybe she is something I just use
to hold my real life at a distance. </p>
<p>Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower
Plucked from a river of lava
And held aloft on a tightrope
Strung between two scrawny trees
Above a canyon
in a manic-depressive windstorm.</p>
<p>Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it,</p>
<p>And when you do, you will keep looking for it
Everywhere, for years,
While right behind you,
The footprints you are leaving </p>
<p>epistrophy—I really, really liked “Litany”. I instantly thought of D and her now-just-friends-hs-boyfriend-sortof… I just sent it to her. Cool!!!</p>
<p>There was a poem in the New Yorker a while ago. I think it was by Mary Oliver. It was about a boy long ago on some steps, in New York maybe, Irish references maybe.</p>
<p>I wish I could either remember it or forget it.</p>
<p>Oh Mary Oliver, love love love her. Some of my favorites have been posted.</p>
<p>Here is a beauty for my friend Alumother:</p>
<p>The Journey</p>
<p>One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.</p>
<p>I love Mary Oliver (have 5 of her books), and Billy Collins (3 of his), because they don’t play coy games with the language, or require their readers to perform all sorts of mental gymnastics in order to enjoy their work. Has anyone ever picked up the annual Best American Poetry books? I just bought the 2007 edition of Best American Short Stories, guest edited by Stephen King, and noticed that the 2007 Poetry edition is not available. They’ve expanded the series to include, Best American Comics, Essays, Mystery Stories, Nonrequired Reading, Science and Nature Writing, Spiritual Writing, Sports Writing, and Travel Writing. But Best American Poetry is no longer listed as being available (bummed me out :(). </p>
<p>Does anyone ever go to the Poetry Daily Website: <a href=“http://www.poems.com?[/url]”>www.poems.com?</a> There’s a new poem every day, and untold numbers in the archives. The majority are
take from little magazines and small presses. It’s a pretty neat site. At times, I print out one that I particularly like.</p>
<p>Garland – I love Tony Hoagland.
Poetsheart – I go on Poetry Daily daily. Also, Verse Daily daily.</p>
<p>And now for Stephen Dunn:</p>
<p>THE KISS</p>
<p>She pressed her lips to mind.
–a typo</p>
<p>How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.</p>
<p>She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.</p>
<p>Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?</p>
<p>I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,</p>
<p>defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.</p>