Poem for November: Autumn, by Thomas Nashe

Autumn

Thomas Nashe

Autumn hath all the summer’s fruitful treasure ;

Gone is our sport, fled is poor Croydon’s pleasure.

Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace,—

Ah, who shall hide us from the winter’s face?

Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease,

And here we lie, God knows, with little ease.

From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord deliver us!

London doth mourn, Lambeth is quite forlorn ;

Trades cry, Woe worth that ever they were born.

The want of term is town and city’s harm ;

Close chambers we do want to keep us warm.

Long banished must we live from our friends ;

This low-built house will bring us to our ends.

From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord deliver us!

I’m not so much a fan of winter. I memorized this poem simply so I could declaim the last line in each stanza on particularly nasty days.

This was somewhat challenging to memorize, mostly because I wasn’t sure what some of the references were. Because I memorize while walking, I tended to forget to look up “Croydon” (now a commercial center south of London) and “Lambeth” (a district of South London) and see what they were. For difficult lines I tend to associate words with a picture in my mind. This is very hard to do when you don’t have any idea what the poet is talking about. And “want of term” what does that mean? Ah! I’ve just googled it and found a link with a website that tells me. It means “lack of an end” which makes sense now. It also helpfully decodes Croydon and Lambeth. Thanks, Poets Corner!

Poem for October: To Be of Use

Because Marge Piercy is still alive, and I’m concerned about copyright, I will link to the poem. Find it here: http://www.northnode.org/poem.htm

I found this poem by flipping through the readings in the back of the UU hymnal one Sunday in late September. I needed a poem for October and the last two stanzas were a responsive reading. Memorizing it wasn’t too hard, though Piercy is very precise in her words and I wanted to be doubly sure I would get each phrase right. I’m having trouble with actually remembering to include the third stanza, I want to jump straight from the “mud” to the “work of the world,” bypassing the fields entirely. This is even though I love saying “parlor generals and field deserters” and the image of work done in common rhythm.

I also enjoy the lines about everyday work vessels being put in museums. Sometimes, when looking at something historical on display, I like to imagine all the hands that have touched said item, through its long history.

Marge Piercy has a few of her poems excerpted as readings in our hymnal. And she wrote one of my top five books of all time (Gone to Soldiers.) I expect we will be seeing her again.

A Poem Encounter

This was on  a power pole in Northwest:

When I google “13th head prose and poetry” this is the first link.  When I google phantom billstickers ltd I found that they are a New Zeland firm that specializes “in the production and placement of street posters, shop posters & flyers (retail), programs, brochures, postcards & handbills promoting music, arts, events and street culture.”  The web site goes on to explain that they have offices on Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, & Dunedin.  So how the heck did this get put up in Portland?

Ah-hah!  A visit to the site’s blog leads to this entry about a “poster run” in Seattle and Portland which happened in October.  There are multiple blog entries on poster runs to different American cities, so this is apparently something the company does.  The blog entry is worth reading, though the author mostly talks about Seattle.

What a fun thing to discover.  Thanks phantom billstickers!

Poem for September: The Walrus and the Carpenter.

By far the longest poem I have memorized, it was good I picked this month to do it as it was the Bike Commute Challenge, and I had a lot of memorizing time on my hands, or on my bike, as it were.  By the end of September I was pretty sick of the first quarter of it, because that was the section I had said the most times.  I think the next time I pick a long poem I will physically divide it up into four parts and only take one section per week then mesh them all together the last week.

That said, this is a pretty easy poem to commit to memory as it’s ballad type nature easily lends to putting pictures of what comes next in your head.  And it’s fun to try different voices for the characters.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Lewis Carroll

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright–
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead–
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand!”

“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

“O Oysters, come and walk with us!”
The Walrus did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.”

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head–
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat–
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn’t any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more–
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

“But wait a bit,” the Oysters cried,
“Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!”
“No hurry!” said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,
“Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed–
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.”

“But not on us!” the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
“After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!”
“The night is fine,” the Walrus said.
“Do you admire the view?

“It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!”
The Carpenter said nothing but
“Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf–
I’ve had to ask you twice!”

“It seems a shame,” the Walrus said,
“To play them such a trick,
After we’ve brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!”
The Carpenter said nothing but
“The butter’s spread too thick!”

“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
“You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none–
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.

Poems and why you should memorize them. I’m not the only one.

Before we discuss September’s Poem, here are some excerpts from a delightful article about memorizing poetry.  These observations of Jim Holt are things I’ve found to be true in my short time memorizing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/books/review/Holt-t.html

Got Poetry?
By JIM HOLT
Published: April 2, 2009

The process of memorizing a poem is fairly mechanical at first. You cling to the meter and rhyme scheme (if there is one), declaiming the lines in a sort of sing-songy way without worrying too much about what they mean. But then something organic starts to happen. Mere memorization gives way to performance. You begin to feel the tension between the abstract meter of the poem — the “duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA” of iambic pentameter, say — and the rhythms arising from the actual sense of the words. (Part of the genius of Yeats or Pope is the way they intensify meaning by bucking against the meter.) It’s a physical feeling, and it’s a deeply pleasurable one. You can get something like it by reading the poem out loud off the page, but the sensation is far more powerful when the words come from within. (The act of reading tends to spoil physical pleasure.) It’s the difference between sight-reading a Beethoven piano sonata and playing it from memory — doing the latter, you somehow feel you come closer to channeling the composer’s emotions. And with poetry you don’t need a piano.

Nor, as I have found, will memorizing poetry make you more popular. Rather the reverse. No one wants to hear you declaim it. Almost no one, anyway. I do have one friend, a Wall Street bond-trader, who can’t get enough of my recitations. He takes me to the Grand Havana Cigar Club, high above Midtown Manhattan, and sits rapt as I intone, “The unpurged images of day recede. . . .” He calls to one of the stunningly pretty waitresses. “Come over here and listen to my friend recite this Yeats poem.” Oh dear.

I hope that I have at least dispelled three myths.

Myth No. 1: Poetry is painful to memorize. It is not at all painful. Just do a line or two a day.

Myth No. 2: There isn’t enough room in your memory to store a lot of poetry. Bad analogy. Memory is a muscle, not a quart jar.

Myth No. 3: Everyone needs an iPod. You do not need an iPod. Memorize poetry instead.

Jim Holt

Poem for August: not Casey at the Bat.

Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer was the original choice for the month. I enjoyed the story, and thought it appropriate for August. I had more than two weeks off from work which would give me ample time to memorize. We were “go” on this plan.

Then I started to actually attempt to memorize it. The problems began. This month, I learned that if I am going to spend a month committing a poem to memory, it better be one I like. The more time I spent with this poem, the less I liked it.

First of all, it has way too many names.

From the first stanza:
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

From the third stanza:
But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,

I knew ahead of time that those names would cause me trouble in the far future. “Was it Barrows who died at first? Cooney? Who died first?” I could hear my future self wondering.

Secondly, the more time I spent with this poem the less enchanted I grew with the writing. Last month, memorizing The New Colossus gave me a greater love of the poem. By committing the words to memory, the jerky motion of the poem on paper smoothed right out. Not so for this poem. Four stanzas in, I realized this poem’s choices of words were not something I loved. The rhyme scheme really reaches in places too:

The second stanza
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that –
We’d put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.


I was initially confused about who exactly the straggling few were. Because the first stanza discusses the lineup, I thought that the straggling few were players coming to bat. But eventually it became clear to me that it was the fans who were getting up and wandering off.

AND. I found Thayer’s use of the word “and” a bit too much:

Fourth stanza:
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

And appears four times in this stanza. It was too much for me. Ernest, could you have rewritten this a bit?

After slogging through those four stanzas we get to one I really like, as I feel it nicely captures a turning point in the game:

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

That is as far as I got with this poem. The other problem was the more than two weeks off. I had not realized it, but I do most of my memorizing on the commute to or from work. On days I take the Max I work on a few lines while walking to the Max stop, on days I ride my bike I’ve got 25 good minutes of memorizing time. With all the time off from work, there was no built in time to commit poetry to memory.

Mid-month I gave up on Casey. Instead, I substituted an Emily Dickinson poem that I had recently encountered:

This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies
And lads and girls;
Was laughter and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls;

This passive place a summer’s nimble mansion,
Where bloom and bees
Fulfilled their oriental circuit,
Then ceased like these.

This poem was committed to memory happily.

Poem for July: The New Colossus

The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I had a passing “thing” for the Statue of Liberty in the 1980’s. It coincided with Lady Liberty’s one-hundredth anniversary. Because of my fascination, I liked this poem, though, like most people, I was very familiar with the last five lines and not well acquainted with the beginning.

I chose this poem because it is short (my first sonnet!) and I got started late this month, due to my vacation. It is also July, which lends itself to patriotic poems.

In memorizing this poem, I really fell in love with it. In it’s brief lines it really encompasses what I love about the United State of America. In fact, when I was memorizing it, I sometimes had to not think too deeply about the meaning of the poem because if I did, I would choke up.

Now that this poem is lodged in my brain, I love it even more. On the page it is jerky and choppy. When I speak it, the whole thing just flows.

Trivia bonus: the “twin harbors” Lazarus refers to are Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Poem for June: Richard Cory

Richard Cory
Edwin Arlington Robinson.

WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I first encountered this poem in yet another English anthology textbook. As a teenager, I responded to the “things aren’t always what they seem” aspect. As an adult, I still like that, and I also enjoy the first two lines of the last stanza, which succinctly encompass the passing of years in the workaday world.

Memorizing this wasn’t too hard, the difficult part was figuring out where to put the inflections when reciting it. The first line of the third stanza in particular caused me great pains. Delivering that line without sounding overly theatrical took a lot of experimentation. So this month, I discover that this project doesn’t just involve me putting words in my head in a certain order, but also figuring out the best way to get them out of my mouth.

Those of a certain age, or who spend the time Googling “Richard Cory” know that Simon and Garfunkel have a song by the same name. I had assumed, because Simon and Garfunkel are incredible nerds*, that the song was this poem set to music. In fact, I stayed away from the song because I didn’t want how they sang the song influence how I said the poem. Listening to the song just now, I learn that the song is actually quite different, though clearly inspired by, the poem. It is from the perspective of one of Richard Cory’s factory workers. You can have a listen yourself.

*Seriously, incredible nerds. I mean, they have a song titled, “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright.” How nerdy is that? Who writes a song to an architect except a tremendous nerd? And the chorus? “Architects may come and Architects may go/and never change your point of view/When I run dry/I stop awhile and think of you.” Nerd-y! There’s even a flute solo, which as Will Farrell pointed out in Anchorman, is perhaps the nerdiest instrument.

And even, “You Can Call Me Al” with Chevy Chase? Great song, great funny video, incredibly nerdy. I like Simon and Garfunkel, don’t get me wrong, but they are uber-nerds.

Poem for May: Sea Fever.

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

John Masefield

I first encountered this poem in an anthology I read for English class in High School. I really loved the sea at the time, especially because I rarely got to go down to the sea, being a resident of a land-locked state.

This is a great poem to memorize; the words flow together and the initial memorization only took me a few days. I spent the rest of the month making sure it was stuck fast in my head. The hardest part was figuring out the best way to get by the word “spume” which, depending on the audience might cause giggles. The word sounds vaguely naughty–one can imagine it being utilized in a porn title–and means foam, froth or scum.

While reciting the poem, I was struck that few people I know have such a need to “go down to” their job. Who would write such a poem about coding, or filling prescriptions or being a secretary at a charter school?

The only poem I’ve ever memorized

Juke Box Love Song
Langston Hughes

I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem’s heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day–
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

I studied Langston Hughes my junior year of high school. We each had to pick an American author to read for the year and I chose Hughes, partially because of this poem, partially because he was black, and partially because I knew that it would be easy to read the majority of his works because poetry goes down more quickly than prose. I was a lazy high school student.

I enjoyed reading Langston Hughes much more than I thought I would and so I will always be thankful for Mrs. Pirose and that year-long assignment. Though Mrs. Pirose and I didn’t get along. I ended up transferring out of her class three-quarters of the way through. Still, there was some good with the bad.

I am embarking on a new project. Each month, I will choose a poem to commit to memory. I think someone famous like Winston Churchill said that if you have memorized good poems, you will always have good company. On my bike rides back and forth to school, I have ample time to declaim to myself. Check back at the end of the month to see how I did with this month’s selection.