Companion pieces: Millay and others
When I hear a song or read a poem, other songs and poems often spring unbidden into my mind. They have some relation to the first, as a sort of harmonic vibration or echo.
Sonnets are a particular form of poetry I happen to love, and of course songs are—well, most of us are very drawn to songs. Here’s a post of mine in which I not only describe sonnets and what it feels like to try to write them, but offer a sonnet of own in praise of them. It goes like this:
I write some poetry from time to time,
And gravitate to forms, I must confess.
I crave some meter and a bit of rhyme.
Free verse can be illusory progress.
The sonnet with its prescribed fourteen lines
Presents a special challenge to be met,
A game that Frost, my hero, thus defines:
No point in playing tennis with no net.Ah, freedom! It’s a lofty modern goal.
And rules? Meant to be broken, don’t you see?
Let’s shed the last vestiges of stiff control
And revel in a life and art that’s free!
But rules are guides, not just constraints or chains.
Throw all out, and mere anarchy remains.
I can’t think of a song that reminds me of that one. But the following sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of the foremost practitioners of the sonnet form in the 20th century, sure has that effect:
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Here’s the song, by the McGarrigle sisters:
Then there is this pairing—again, a pensive sonnet by Millay (video of Tyne Daly reading it can be found here; the video can’t be embedded, unfortunately):
Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,””farewell!””the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.
The song is by Leonard Cohen (of course!):
[NOTE: Millay had a pretty raucous sex and love life, as you might imagine. I’ve written about her politics here; another interesting change story.
And then there’s this, about Millay’s voice.]
There’s something of a disconnect between Millay’s personal libertine sexuality and the romanticism of her poems on love and relationships. My favorite, I have not read many, is
Recuerdo
<i?We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “‘God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Perhaps the absence of romance in the raw sexuality in her life she provided for in her poems.
A plea to Millay:
If I had more patience and drive. If I
were new and true, toiled longer, and felt
deeper, longer, the pains, the raised blue welt.
If I were not, then I could make you try.
You will have your way. The darkened fortress
but for light and your forbidding bids come.
I know, I do! The deeds you’ve done,
that made the moon a song, a white buttress.
Speaking plane, the earth, will accept my gift.
We can follow, we can follow, we can.
Follow not the lies of candidate grift.
Upon conscience, we dictate, we stand.
If only I had more patience and drive.
I’d come to you and you and I’d survive.
Love your poem re free verse and think that one line “But rules are guides, not just constraints or chains,” is a succint and worthy description of the rebellious nature of postmodernism.
Here’s one for a written on returning to Chicago after thirty years away. It is a “mirror sonnet”:
ON HEARING, BUT NOT SEEING, A CARDINAL
On touching down I stepped into the heat
I’d been away from over thirty years,
A stranger now. Easy to find the street
I lived on, not much changed. No useless tears
Blurred recognition of my brothers’ names
Scrawled on the coach house wall. The crimson bird
Cried brightly from high foliage–all unchanged,
That loud, liquid whistle, same notes we heard
In childhood, the insistent Cheer, cheer, cheer!—
Dispelling melancholy. Still unseen
The singer flew off. But you reappeared
After an absence, dressed in red–I’d been–
Whistling, summoning some lost thing we share–
Remiss encountering you. Memory too bare–
Remiss encountering you. Memory too bare–
Whistling, summoning some lost thing we share,
After an absence. Dressed in red, I‘d been
The singer. Flew off. But you reappeared,
Dispelling melancholy. Still unseen
In childhood, the insistent Cheer, cheer, cheer!—
That loud, liquid whistle, same notes we heard,
Cried brightly from high foliage. All unchanged,
Scrawled on the coach house wall, the crimson bird
Blurred recognition of my brothers’ names.
I lived on, not much changed. No useless tears,
A stranger now. Easy to find the street
I’d been away from over thirty years.
On touching down I stepped into the heat.
Jamie Irons
In my first sentence I meant to say:
Here’s one for a physician friend written on returning…
Jamie Irons
“I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.”
How melancholy. Even though I am in the winter of life, the memories of the summer of life still warm me. How sad to have lost that
neo-neocon
I think you might enjoy this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-_Ebssv0is
“I only know that summer sang in me…”
Non semper erit aestas. And the fall is long, and the winter yet to come.
“A little while, that in me sings no more.”
NFFNSNC, for the plebeians.