POETS Day! Useful Lines and a Favorite from Pound

There is a new Inspector Rebus TV adaptation out, at least if you’re in England or Australia. We can’t watch yet, but I have Brit Box, so hope springs. I misread the release date for the new novel. Midnight and Blue, the twenty-fifth book in the series, comes out on October 15^th. Not August 15^th, as I was anticipating. I am bereft.

I named my dog Rebus, if that gives any idea of how much I enjoy the books. He’s a good dog, considerate but determined when he wants something and not above cutting corners, much like his namesake. Sir Ian Rankin, the series author, responded on Twitter with wishes to a picture of him chewing on his birthday toy one year, and a birthday wish again the following two – prompted, but still. That may be the only interaction I’ve had with a peer.

It was in those books that I first came across the POETS Day concept. Rebus and Siobhan, who’s gone from supporting role to near co-protagonist, were calling it a day one Friday afternoon. POETS Day isn’t an invention of Rankin’s. Apparently, the idea has been around long enough for lost origins. But I first heard is called such by John Rebus. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

I can’t believe I have to wait another two months for that book. Time for some verse.

***

I use a line – overuse, my children might say – from Yeats whenever the opportunity pops up; “O saddest harp in all the world.”

It’s from his epic “The Wanderings of Oisin,” the work that elevated him from frequent contributor to various literary journals to poet to be reckoned with. In the poem, the legendary hero Oisin is given a harp to play in response to the joyful song of fairies,

But when I sang of human joy
A sorrow wrapped each merry face,

I don’t know if Yeats intended it to be as funny as I take it to be, but in comparison to the fairy’s supernatural happiness, Oisin’s mortal best sounds to magical ears like misery and woe. It’s a good line to deploy when a child gives you “But, I did my best!” when even without bending down you can see piles of Legos pushed under the bed in a supposedly picked up room.

There’s another line of Yeats’s, this one from “A Second Coming,” that I mumble every so often, this one usually said quietly to myself when I’m surprised by an outcome I might have anticipated had I been less hasty or when there are things set in motion that despite evidence no one claims to have set in motion. That’s kin to what Yeats meant by it, though not exact. It suits me. The poem is probably best known for “the centre cannot hold,” “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity,” and, these days thanks to Didion and Bork (together forever), “Slouches towards Bethlehem.” The one I’m speaking of is “The falcon cannot hear the falconer.”

There was a time when the falconer was the height of killing technology. We had projectiles, but they required attention and aiming. I’m sure there’s some falconer guidance involved in the direction a hunt is to take, but for the most part, death is let loose. The falconer becomes an observer. We weren’t always even that in the mechanics of the Great War. Artillery crews shot beyond their senses; gas attacks left evidence to be recorded later. We extended ourselves beyond immediacy of consequence.

Bits of poetry stick with me for all manner of reasons.

from The Map
Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?

Over a year and a half ago I wrote of the above,

“The first stanza of the poem begins as a straightforward description of where water and land meet. The language is simple, conversational. The personae is not Beatrice introducing the wonders of paradise. She’s addressing the reader as a frequent guest who knows where everything is and can help themselves to whatever is in the kitchen. There’s no attempt to impress. As ballast, she makes sure you know this is a poem. The rhyme scheme draws attention, oddly pairing ‘green’ with ‘green’ and ‘under’ with ‘under.’ In the first four lines she tells you she will be dealing with boundaries. It should be noted that, within the metaphor, the image is literally fluid. She lays out the thing to be considered. The next four lines invite the reader to experience the thing through ‘the ardor of conception’ and to become with her ‘the mind thinking.’”

I’m fond of that poem and those lines come to me whenever it occurs to me that I might be looking at something the wrong way or when I realize assumptions may be clouding my judgement.

It’s not entirely unfair to say that Robert Graves’s shorter poems seem to be a variation on a theme. So many come across as late-night thoughts of a man watching his lover sleep, adoring and in awe of her. They’re sorcerers and beguilers, mysteries to be cherished and recorded. “At Best Poets,” “Man Does, Woman Is,” and “Expect Nothing” all run along the same fascination, as does this one.

The Why of the Weather
Robert Graves (1895-1985)

Since no one knows the why of the weather
Or can authoritatively forecast
More than twelve hours of day or night, at most,
Every poor fool is licenced to explain it
As Heaven’s considered judgement on mankind,
And I to account for its vagaries, Myrto,
By inklings of your unaccountable mind.

I paraphrase as “Every fool is licensed to try.” More often than not, I say it at my weather app. I can’t explain how bad Google is at predicting Alabama weather. Just three weeks ago they forecast rain for every day except Tuesday, so I set aside Tuesday to mow my lawn. It rained only on Tuesday. Damnit. It’s a handy deployment regarding all manner of unknowables.

Ezra Pound’s “Portrait d’une Femme” opens with “Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.” “Sargasso Sea” makes easy shorthand for a dangerous but attractive destination, maybe with a little doom about the expedition. It’s a favorite poem of mine and the kernel for this post about associations and lines of poetry insinuating themselves into casual use. Technically there’s nothing special about it. The blank verse is kept up more or less throughout; only a few negligible breaks in stress. I suspect the title was of a part with Pound’s fetishization of French phrasing, the same that led to “Imagiste” as the name for his movement, or the movement of which he was one of the leaders, depending on who you read. Amy Lowell said he thought the name sounded sophisticated. Des Imagistes, edited by Pound, was followed by Some Imagist Poets, edited by Lowell. He wore a green velvet suit with blue glass buttons. So many affectations.

The poem is about woman as muse, object of desire, and destination, though the journey may be for all or nothing. Everything is appended, so it’s about propriety and assumptions too. I’ve read it twelve ways to Sunday and satisfied myself with finality at least half of those times. Every time I come back, I see it a different way. I’m glad for that.

Meaning aside, it’s beautiful to hear. When asked what my favorite movie or band is I’m flummoxed and usually give a top five or so in no uncertain order and with little consistency over time. I don’t think that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has been off the list since I saw it at fifteen or sixteen. “Portrait d’une Femme” is like that. I can’t tell you what my favorite poem is, but this one has been in consideration since my first reading. It’s weathered all manner of moods and curious tangents. You should read it out loud.

Portrait d’une Femme
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you — lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind —   with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that’s quite your own.
Yet this is you.