Sunday Poetry XLIII -- Harper's Anthology Disappoints, So I Apologize with William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Willams

Here's the biggest problem with poetry (2-fold): Primarily, there's so (maybe even too) much of it, and this is only exacerbated by the fact that its very nature undermines its potential to deliver its payload to any save the very determined few.

I sat down eager to dig up a few good pieces and post them here for your enjoyment.  I'd just come in from the garage where I found Harper's Anthology: Poetry and sat down at the computer.  I haven't gone through this particular anthology before (kind of the point, really, for bringing it in -- and half the impetus for me doing Sunday Poetry in the first place), opened the front cover.  Here is what I found at the outset (minus, of course, publication details and reservations of rights, etcetera):

           “  Colleges … have their indispensible office—to teach elements.  But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to drill but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires set the hearts of their youth on flame. ”

                             —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well, so far so good, I thought.  I like Emerson; and some of my favorite literary experiences were had via college collections.  It was the preface, following, that gave me cause to pause – and fear:

           “  Harper’s Anthology is a series of three volumes: Prose, Poetry, and an accompanying Manual of Instruction.  The last-named volume contains a brief statement of general ideas which underlie the collection as an educational instrument, together with some suggestions for its use in relation to composition. ”

From here I went on to the table of contents and became so depressed I hardly have the energy to type, much less find a poem to share. 

Not that the poems in the collection are bad, but because they are the very works—maybe even all of them—that create a problem with poetry, at least for students, even greater than the one I mentioned at the top: Poetry is boring.

I’m not saying poetry should pander to the lowest common denominator.  Not at all.  I’m all about the … er … exclusion of those who … uhm, never mind.  Anyway, I like a lot of these poems, even love some of them.  But I don’t see how the editors who penned the preface could be the same editors who honestly believed they were upholding the standard set by Emerson, of youthful hearts aflame.

So, all that said, I’m putting Harper’s back in the garage.  I’ll be right back with, hopefully, something … uhm … well, not better … more, let’s say, appealing to the modern, casual reader.

[10 minutes later – and with Six American Poets: An Anthology in tow]

I grabbed it because I’m short on space and shorter on patience, and this book’s got William Carlos Williams in it, whom I love, and I plan to find a poem of his I haven’t yet read and present it here.

[30 minutes later – and I can’t post just one (dang! I love WCW!)]

Mezzo Forte

Take that, damn you; and that!

          And here’s a rose

     To make it right again!

          God knows

     I’m sorry, Grace; but then,

It’s not my fault if you will be a cat.

Short Poem 

You slapped my face

oh but so gently

I smiled

at the caress

Mujer

Oh, black Persian cat!

Was not your life

already cursed with offspring?
We took you for rest to that old

Yankee farm, — so lonely

and with so many field mice

in the long grass —

and you return to us

in this condition — !

Oh, black Persian cat.

Complete Destruction

It was an icy day.
We buried that cat,

then took her box

and set match to it

in the back yard.

Those fleas that escaped

earth and fire

died by the cold.

Dance Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees, —

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

“I am lonely, lonely.

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!”

If I admire my arms, my face,

My shoulders, flanks, buttocks

Against the yellow drawn shades, —

Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?

I post the next poem, one of my favorites, only because it lends brilliant contrast to the one that  follows, that so perfectly follows in format:

From Spring and All

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chicken

Breakfast

Twenty sparrows

on

a scattered

turd:

Share and share

alike.

KIM XIX -- chapter 13: SWEARING LIKE A CAT

(MS Paint is fun.  Feel free to copy
and use this if you'd like; it's mine.)

I thought I might approach this chapter with a little positivity for a change.  Forget discussion questions and all their frustration.  I am, instead, going to list the literary moments—the little nuggets—of good, great, or excellent wit and sentence craft I encounter.  Indeed, there have been many such moments (as long as you don’t compare that number to the overall word count, of course).  Let's see what we get in chapter thirteen.

• "...drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air...."
• "All day long they lay like molten silver under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again."
• "...he mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn, inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their heads and the raindrops puddling in their foot-prints, waited on the weather."
• "He discoursed of botany and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends—he had been a trusted agent of the State for fifteen years, remember—was inexhaustible."
• "There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a wall."
• "...Kim hurried upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat...."
• And that’s it.  The end.  Of the chapter.  Not the book.  Sorry if I got your hopes up there.

*

If there is someone out there, anywhere, through the vast reaches of the ether and who loves this book, Kim, please tell me where I'm going wrong!  I wonder if it's possible that some personal prejudice is getting in my way and if so what I might do to right it.  My problem is that I see nearly no narrative skill in this book—with the English language, sure, but that’s a different animal.  Here in chapter thirteen, for example, there's a spot of violence.  It lasts a paragraph.  And don’t get me wrong, this is not to say I crave or require violence from the stories I read, but the moment here in Kim got my hopes up that maybe, just maybe, something interesting was about to happen or was in the process of happening.  And I think it was.  And that’s my point!  Even when something cool is happening, we don’t get to read about it!  Some pages later it's even mentioned that the "war was breaking out afresh," but there's no narrative evidence save shoddy dialog.  Is it but a cultural thing?  Am I, a 21st century American to far distant—in geography and time—from the events to get them?  I think I’m actually a pretty good—even skilled—reader.  I am frustrated!  This book is defeating me.