Poetry Wednesday

“My Childhood-Home I See Again”

My childhood-home I see again,
….And gladden with the view;
And still as mem’ries crowd my brain,
….There’s sadness in it too.

O memory! thou mid-way world
….’Twixt Earth and Paradise,
Where things decayed, and loved ones lost
….In dreamy shadows rise.

And freed from all that’s gross or vile,
….Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle,
….All bathed in liquid light.

As distant mountains please the eye,
….When twilight chases day—
As bugle-tones, that, passing by,
….In distance die away—

As leaving some grand water-fall
….We ling’ring, list it’s roar,
So memory will hallow all
….We’ve known, but know no more.

Now twenty years have passed away,
….Since here I bid farewell
To woods, and fields, and scenes of play
….And school-mates loved so well.

Where many were, how few remain
….Of old familiar things!
But seeing these to mind again
….The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day—
….How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood grey,
….And half of all are dead.

I hear the lone survivors tell
….How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
….And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
….And pace the hollow rooms;
And feel (companions of the dead)
….I’m living in the tombs.

And here’s an object more of dread,
….Than ought the grave contains—
A human-form, with reason fled,
….While wretched life remains.

Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,—
….A fortune-favored child—
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
….A haggard mad-man wild.

Poor Matthew! I have ne’er forgot
….When first with maddened will,
Yourself you maimed, your father fought,
….And mother strove to kill;

And terror spread, and neighbours ran,
….Your dang’rous strength to bind;
And soon a howling crazy man,
….Your limbs were fast confined.

How then you writhed and shrieked aloud,
….Your bones and sinnews bared;
And fiendish on the gaping crowd,
….With burning eye-balls glared.

And begged, and swore, and wept, and prayed,
….With maniac laughter joined—
How fearful are the signs displayed,
….By pangs that kill the mind!

And when at length, tho’ drear and long,
….Time soothed your fiercer woes—
How plaintively your mournful song,
….Upon the still night rose.

I’ve heard it oft, as if I dreamed,
….Far-distant, sweet, and lone;
The funeral dirge it ever seemed
….Of reason dead and gone.

To drink it’s strains, I’ve stole away,
….All silently and still,
Ere yet the rising god of day
….Had streaked the Eastern hill.

Air held his breath; the trees all still
….Seemed sorr’wing angels round,
Their swelling tears in dew-drops fell
….Upon the list’ning ground.

But this is past, and nought remains
….That raised you o’er the brute.
Your mad’ning shrieks and soothing strains
….Are like forever mute.

Now fare thee well: more thou the cause
….Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs, but time’s kind laws,
….Hast lost the power to know.

And now away to seek some scene
….Less painful than the last—
With less of horror mingled in
….The present and the past.

The very spot where grew the bread
….That formed my bones, I see.
How strange, old field, on thee to tread,
….And feel I’m part of thee!

–Abraham Lincoln

Updated: “Outspoken” features anti-Zionist poet(s)

I was Googling the participants in tonight’s Diversity Comissionsponsored Spoken Word event Outspoken. Infuriatingly enough, of the three participants, only one, Andrea Gibson, has a Wikipedia page. But another, Kevin Coval, had another platform; publication on the Huffington Post. The seventh item to return a Google search for Coval’s name produces the article, “Why I am not a Zionist,” originally published Nov. 3, 2009:

Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I’d written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently I, and the poet I was to read with at the conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others.

We decided to hold our reading anyway in Washington, DC during J Street’s inaugural conference at an alternative location. We were hosted by Busboys and Poets. The room filled with a spectrum of ideas. We read our poems and during the Q&A, no one was shouted down. Not the Israeli army Refusnik, not the liberal Zionist apologist, not the Palestinian student who asked us to include more about the Palestinian people in our poems, not just the land or idea of nation-state, a point beautifully made and incredibly profound. No one shouted down moderator Lalia Al-Arian, brilliant journalist and activist, whose father was a Palestinian political prisoner in America, now freed because of his daughter’s persistence. The crowd was cool and civil, though broad in opinion.

The third of the next three sentences I had to read several times to believe:

Since the Second Intifada I have thought, wrote, and spoke about these issues, but over the course of these last several weeks, I have arrived at a new beginning. Prior to now, I muddled this issue in complexity. But I have come to realize it is actually simple and clear.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict “simple and clear”? It would be a “simple” issue if the Palestinians were peaceable, quietist sufferers, but that is not the case. Since 2001, Palestinians have fired over 8,600 rockets into Jewish-populated areas. One of the primary Palestinian political parties is the terrorist organization Hamas. And the taste of political power hasn’t softened or moderated that party, either. I remember several years ago reading about Hamas’ first electoral gains; one of their legislative representatives openly discussed helping her son prepare a suicide vest.

Coval continues:

I am a Jewish-American man in solidarity with Palestinian people. I am in solidarity with Israeli and American and all people who work and risk their lives and livelihood for justice. I am not restricted to working within the confines of the Jewish-American community. Justice and the resistance to imperialism is a global, human concern for all people down to struggle. For Jews, yes, but not Jews alone. For Palestinians, yes, but not Palestinians alone. It will take us all to push and demand governments and corporate interests to create fair, equitable living conditions. It will take all people to hold history accountable for the atrocities that occur.This is analogy. America celebrates Columbus day even though Columbus and American settlers killed, enslaved and pushed Indigenous people off land they lived on. Tragically Indigenous people have been nearly wiped out of existence and pushed to the furthest margins of our culture that revels in amnesia. Main St., mainstream American culture does not expect Native Americans to celebrate Columbus, nor care or know or imagine if they do or not. Native Americans are not a demographic population Hallmark cares to account for. It is preposterous to think Jews would celebrate Kristallnacht, the night of glass when SS troops stormed and terrorized their German ghettos. In Israel, Independence Day is called Yom Ha’atzmaut. Communities gather to play music, dance and watch fireworks. The Chief Rabbinate has declared this day a Jewish holiday in which prayers should be said. But Palestinians remember 1948 and the formation of the State of Israel as al-Nakba, The Catastrophe. A day of murder, displacement, and forced Diaspora. A day families are torn apart and ripped away from their homes. A state sanctioned celebration of their dehumanization and second-class citizenship. For this reason alone, I cannot believe in the integrity of the Zionist project.

…

This is not a complex issue. There is the brutality of government(s) and the need for the liberation of a people, all people. I am a Jewish person who stands with Palestinian people relegated to second-class citizenship and Israeli soldiers who refuse to enact racist militarism. I am not a nationalist; therefore I am not a Zionist. I am against the oppression of any person and people. I am not a builder of walls. I believe in equity and democratic practice, therefore I am not pro-Israel. I am an advocate for truth, justice and reconciliation. I believe in this. I believe in this now. I believe in the work ahead.

Because Hamas is so deeply committed to “democratic practice”. And they’re so utterly and completely opposed to nationalism, militarism, and, especially, racism.

 

I’m not denying that Isreal has committed some military and policing actions which could be considered atrocities in its history. But it is revisionist in-of-itself to claim the Palestinians are mere victims. Israel’s military has overreacted sometimes, but this is to be expected when 8,600 rockets rain on your civilians in a decade.

And of course, the Diversity Comission can host anyone they want to yadda yadda and Coval is entitled to his opinions yadda yadda. But I have to wonder if the Comission’s was aware of Coval’s crassness. (And I do think it is fair to say anyone who declares the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “simple” in print is crass.)

I don’t know if Coval will be discussing the Middle East tonight. But the show starts in about fifteen minutes. Hopefully I’ll have time to do at least a brief writeup afterwards. I’ll also be writing a review of it for a class; I might seek permission to publish that here.

Update: 10:04 PM April 10 2010-I spoke with a Diversity Commissioner. She said the DC had not heard of Coval, but only invited him upon the recommendation of the event’s host, Dasha Kelly.

Coval himself did not mention Israel tonight. Coval didn’t, but a verse of Andrea Gibson’s spoke of “turning Palestine into a gas chamber.”

I hope I don’t have to elaborate into the irreducible distastefulness of comparing Israeli policing policy, however overzealous it can sometimes be in its implementation, to the Nazi’s extermination factories.

For shame, Gibson! Granted, her pieces on anti-gay bigotry and sexual violence are brave and commendable. But she lacks any world-historic perspective or, curiosity for the motivations of people she declares villains.

Saudi woman attacks radical clerics on reality show

Via NY Times’ The Lede:

A Saudi woman received a death threat last week after she appeared on “Poet of Millions,” Abu Dhabi’s version of the game show “American Idol” — which features aspiring poets instead of singers — and recited a poem attacking clerics for “terrorizing people and preying on everyone seeking peace.”

This week she returned to perform a similar poem and was rewarded by the judges who made her the first female contestant to reach the show’s final round.

As the newspaper The National reports from Abu Dhabi, the woman, Hissa Hilal, “sparked controversy in Saudi Arabia, especially on Internet forums.”

“According to reports, many viewers praised her for her courage, but others attacked her for criticizing clerics and reciting her poems in public,” the newspaper wrote. “One website called for her death.”

The NY Times post includes a rough translation of her most recent verse:

I have seen evil from the eyes of the subversive fatwas in a time when what is lawful is confused with what is not lawful;

When I unveil the truth, a monster appears from his hiding place; barbaric in thinking and action, angry and blind; wearing death as a dress and covering it with a belt [referring to suicide bombing];

He speaks from an official, powerful platform, terrorizing people and preying on everyone seeking peace; the voice of courage ran away and the truth is cornered and silent, when self-interest prevented one from speaking the truth.

Poetry Thursday

No matter what happens this year, what will (hopefully) be the year of my graduation, and the year I hunt for real work in a stagnant economy and dying industry, there is one failure I am not doomed to. I can mark 2009 as the last year I had not read Titus Lucretius Carus’ On the Nature of Things in its entirety. In 2010, I might find myself with a useless degree and no work, but what cannot be taken from me is my digestion of the most perfect summation of the tetrapharmakos.

There is much of baseless speculation and unfounded prescriptions in the poem; Lucretius argues that sour tastes arise from hook-shaped atoms embedding themselves in the tongue, claimed roosters projected invisible rays from their bodies which stung lions’ eyes, and recommends of more ferarum for couples wishing to conceive. However, the poet also gives a more perfect expression to the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 1:4 which declares nothing abides, yet there is nothing new under the sun, for nature is an economy. And he answers, a century before Paul, the apostle’s fatal query (1 Corinthians 15:55):  

Old order always passes, thrust out by the new, and one thing has to be made afresh from others; but no one is delivered from the pit of black Tatarus: matter is wanted, that coming generations may grow; and yet they all, when their life is done, will follow you, and so, no less than you, these generations have passed away before now, and will continue to pass away. So one thing will never cease to arise from another, and no man possesses life in freehold–all as tenants. Look back also and see how the ages of everlasting time past before we were born have been to us nothing. This therefore is a mirror which nature holds up to us, showing the time to come after we at length shall die. Is there anything horrible in that? Is there anything gloomy? Is it not serener far than any sleep?

[De Rerum Natura, Bk. III, lines 961-977]

Poetry Thursday!

Since I need a distraction from this gawdawful colonial literature paper I’m “writing” at the moment, here is some poetry early on this Thursday morning.

The Passion Flower

By: Margaret Fuller

My love gave me a passion-flower.
I nursed it well – so brief its hour!
My eyelids ache, my throat is dry:
He told me that it would not die.

My love and I are one, and yet
Full oft my cheeks with tears are wet –
So sweet the night is and the bower!
My love gave me a passion-flower.

So sweet!  Hold fast my hands.  Can God
Make all this joy revert to sod,
And leave to me but this for dower –
My love gave me a passion-flower.

The Tribune’s (somewhat misleadingly packaged) MU WGSP piece

So, today the Tribune ran a story on the Women and Gender Studies Program. In the print edition,* the story is headed with a collage-type  graphic featuring the pictures of 20 students, 10 men and 10 women of all stripes: Contemplative Looking Woman! White Dude with Dreadlocks! ROTC Guy! Cheerleader! Hipster! Totally Nondescript Males No. 1-3! Girl in Hijab! Basketball Player! Man on Cell Phone! I hadn’t realized the WGSP hosted such a diverse array of persons. Heck, I didn’t even realized there were twenty people in the program.

That’s because there aren’t. The program, as the piece itself notes, has five (5) people enrolled for WGS major, and eight (8) for the minor. Whereas most readers would be predisposed to assume a collage of portraits posted in conjunction with a story about a major/minor pictured people actually enrolled in it, this does not seem to be the case unless seven people are there for filler. It seems the people photographed were selected simply because they were people with genders.

Of course, the reporter cannot necessarily be faulted for the graphics to go with the story. However, they are responsible for a somewhat narrow focus which might leave interested parties with questions. Only reporting how many people are majors and minors misrepresents the real scope of the program. There are dozens, more likely hundreds of students enrolled in courses that count towards the completion of a WGS program. Obviously, dozens of people enrolled in classes like Women in Literature, Intro to Feminist Philosophy, Psychology of Sexuality, Sociology of Gender or suchlike could probably guess their courses count. But I enrolled in a WGSP class without even realizing it. It wasn’t my first choice, but my schedule was wonky and I needed an elective, so for spring I signed up for Comm. 4100, Mass Media and the American Family. Only in the second step of registering did I see the WGSP notation.

The Tribune piece points readers to a few people they could talk to about breaking into the program, but doesn’t list or describe any of the actual coursework that it would entail. Instead, most of the piece concerns itself with what “gender” is, the history of the department and what it calls itself (for this section, there are big pink-purple graphics), and paraphrasing of quotes about the reception of the program.

Dunno. I can’t presume to speak for the administrators of WGSP, who for all I know might appreciate the publicity. Anyone enrolled have an opinion on the piece? Are my criticisms fair, or I am merely the Spirit that negates/convinced all that comes to be/deserves to perish wretchedly?

*The online edition’s illustration is a kind of A Chorus Line silhouette lineup.

Update: I realized “dishonestly” wasn’t an entirely fair descriptor, and have changed the headline accordingly.

Poetry “Thursday”

Another failed Poetry Thursday, my bad. Poetry Thursday should really be called “Poetry whenever Logical Operator remembers to post poetry day”. So here it is… Oh! And it’s not exactly poetry this time…

Tomorrow Never Knows

By: Paul McCartney and John Lennon

Turn off your mind, relax
and float down stream
It is not dying
It is not dying

Lay down all thought
Surrender to the void
It is shining
It is shining

That you may see
The meaning of within
It is being
It is being

That love is all
And love is everyone
It is knowing
It is knowing

That ignorance and hate
May mourn the dead
It is believing
It is believing

But listen to the
color of your dreams
It is not living
It is not living

Or play the game
existence to the end
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning

In memorium

This I found on the blog of, of all blogs the esteemed century-old journal of liberal opinion, The New Republic. It’s a story about the death of Solange Magnano, 38, and mother of two. Her death is deemed newsworthy because she is a former Ms. Argentina, and because she died as a result of glutal plastic surgery, the story is being milked for laughs–for example, when the reporter choses the word “dernier”.  Jon Chait, a commentator I always respected even when I could not agree with him, reposted the story under the jokey headline, “Dolce Et Decorum Est Pro Ass Mori,” a play on a verse of the Latin poet Horace, ” Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” or,  in English, “It is glorious and honourable to die for one’s country.” Even the ABC news outlet proclaims, in bold 42-sized font, “Former Miss Argentina Dies ‘For Firmer Ass.'”

Magnano is beyond dignity and indignity now. But her family at least could be considered.

Two birthday poems

The translucent hands of the Jew
Work in the penumbra, crystals
& the evening, dying, is dread & chill.
(Evenings to evenings are equal.)

The hands & space of hyacinth
Waning in the confines of the Ghetto
Almost do not exist for the man so quiet
Who is dreaming a clear labyrinth.

He’s not perturbed by fame, that reflection
Of dreams in the dream of another mirror,
Nor by the timorous love of maidens.

Free from metaphor & myth
He works a hard crystal: the Infinite
Map of That which totals His stars.

-Jorge Louis Borges

Wait, what day is it?

Sorry folks, I have failed to post Poetry Thursday! two weeks in a row now. But as you all know all the cool video games come out in the fall and obviously those take precedence over all else. (Just kidding, see the next post for details). So here are two little poems for you to make up for those missed weeks:

A Song of Degrees

by Denise Levertov

Pearblossom bright white

against green leaves that frame

each tuft, black

pinewoods, graybrown buildings–

but rich

cream against strewn

feathers of cloud that float

slowly through new

blue of April morning.

 

Watching TV

by Denise Levertov

So many men– and not the worst of them,

the brutally corrupt, no, others,

liberal, intelligent if not

notably imaginative,

men with likable eyes–

have mouths that are weak, cruel, twisted,

alien to desire:

mouths that don’t match their eyes.

And our wretched history

utters through those mouths

the perfidies their hurt eyes evade.

 

This last poem reminds me of a Radiohead quote: “Most people gaze neither into the past nor into the future;
they explore neither truth nor lies. They gaze at the television.”