Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry, Reviews

‘Beowulf: A New Translation and Commentary,’ by Andrew P. Boynton

Leave a comment 
A lone Geatish widow   a death-wail
braided for Beowulf.   Bound hard, 
she sang sorrowfully   of how she in full 
dreaded the dark days   that soon would come, 
a flock of the slain,   the fear of the folk, 
thralldom and shame….

Andrew P. Boynton is a friend of mine on Facebook, so I may be prejudiced, but I was greatly impressed by his recently released Beowulf: A New Translation and Commentary.

Boynton, unlike some modern translators who’ve opted for rhymed verse or prose, has taken up the challenge of recreating Old English alliterative poetry (very similar to Norse). Lee Hollander took the same approach to Eddic poems. This is difficult to do in modern English, which lacks the flexibility of diction the old languages possess. One way to increase your options is to employ obscure words (something Hollander did too). However, these words are explained here in the copious notes. Tolkien fans (and Tolkien’s influence is a constant presence) will welcome the word “mathom,” though Boynton uses it to mean “treasure,” which is not quite how Tolkien used it.

I found Boynton’s Beowulf vigorous and enjoyable, though sometimes difficult to follow (the notes help). Seasoned fans of the poem will find it very satisfying. The Commentary seems to me (as an amateur) very good; the best modern scholarship is referenced, and Tolkien is there in abundance.

I will make this one recommendation – the paper version is probably better for most readers. I got the ebook, and this particular work is awkward to use in that format. It’s set up for facing pages – the translation on one side, the original Old English text on the other. That means the pages are tied to one another, so you can’t adjust typeface size as in an ordinary Kindle book. The print was quite small for me, so I had some trouble reading.

Otherwise, I recommend Beowulf: A New Translation and Commentary.

Poetry

There was a DISTINGUISHED Old Fellow

2 Comments

May 12th is Limerick Day, perhaps for the arbitrary reason any day is a national day of some kind. May 9th is Lost Sock Memorial Day as well as National Sleepover Day. May 17th is Cherry Cobbler Day, which must not be allowed to carryover into May 18th, because that, honey child, is Cheese Soufflé Day. There are so many of commemorative days for every day of the year it’s no wonder Congress can’t get anything passed between the cobbler and soufflé.

But I was talking about limericks, being an apt subject for the distinguished readers of this blog.

The form of the limerick is believed to have been created as a party or festival song that invited participants to spin their own verse of the marvelous attractions or mishaps of Limerick, Ireland. Each verse would be capped by a chorus inviting everyone up to Limerick. I get this from The Complete Limerick Book by Langford Reed, published in 1925.

Reed notes the artist and author Edward Lear is the name many people associate with limericks and could easily believe to be the one who created them whole clothe. Of all that he accomplished in his life, his Book of Nonsense is the main thing for which he is famous. Reed offers these lines on the subject of fame:

A goddess, capricious, is Fame;
You may strive to make noted your name
But she either neglects you
Or coolly selects you
For laurels distinct from your aim.

In honor of the day, let me repeat one of the most excellent of tongue-twisters, this one from Ogden Nash:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “let us flee!”
“Let us fly!” said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

Poetry, Writing

Snow and poetry

1 Comment
Photo credit: Andrew Small @ andsmall. From Unsplash.

Remember that snow I said we’d probably still get, because you can’t get out of March in Minnesota without an encore or two? It came last night. A couple inches, and it’s already starting to melt. I guess some’s coming tomorrow too. But Spring has the big momentum now. Even if the snow keeps coming back, it’ll be in short, vicious snaps, like a rat dying in a trap.

Here’s something I don’t think I’ve written about before here. Poetic prose. I am, as I’ve often said, a poor poet, even when I bother. (I was fairly well on in years before I even started to figure out what poetry is.) But over the years I’ve picked up some ideas about adding poetic touches to my prose. Father Ailill in the Erling books, stage Irishman that he is, is particularly prone to poetic flights, which is one of the things that makes him fun to write. And with St. Patrick’s Day coming up, this might be a good winter’s day to discuss the subject.

A while back I was in a gathering where someone mentioned, cautiously, that they’d been writing poetry, and what did we think of it? And they read some of it. I think that person was hoping I’d say it was great, but I said nothing. Because it wasn’t very good. I wished I had the opportunity to talk to them about it one-on-one, but I didn’t get that.

Here’s what I wanted to say to them:

You think you’re writing poetry here, but what you’re actually doing is just writing prose, the way you’d write prose any time, and then breaking the lines up. Poetry is more than just the way you lay your words out on the page. It’s about using words, and loving words, and manipulating words, marshaling the power of words to say more than bald prose can.

When I think of good poetry, one line comes to mind – my favorite line of poetry in the world. I’m not generally much interested in Dylan Thomas, but his poem, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” amazes me. Just the first line (which is also the title), actually. I think it’s almost perfect.

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
“Drives my green age…”

Look what Thomas does with that first line.

Eleven syllables. Of those syllables, each is single word, except for the last one.

Such a sequence constructs a picture in the listener’s mind:

Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-double.

Which translates, semi-visually, to:

Stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-FLOWER.

It’s a picture of a flower.

But then the poet takes that picture of a flower and manipulates it. The stem becomes a “fuse.” “Fuse” is obviously a loaded word. Slightly sinister. Suddenly, instead of a mental picture of a flower, the picture is of a fuse burning down toward a dynamite charge. And when the fuse gets to the end, the charge explodes, and that explosion is a flower.

Suddenly we see the flower in a whole new way. It’s not just a pretty (kind of effete) plant sitting in the ground, looking decorative. It’s a little explosion, driven by some kind of a “force.” The rest of the poem expands on that idea of a life force. This is not one of Wordsworth’s daffodils. This is a dangerous flower, a flower from a rough neighborhood.

That’s what poetry is. It exploits the sounds of the words, the rhythm of the words, the associations of the words, and even the way the words look on paper, to turn ideas into little explosions in your head. You think in a new way, and you see in a new way.

It’s like a workout for your brain. And your spirit. It makes the muscles stronger, capable of doing things you never knew they could do.

Poetry

A Threshold Crossed: 30 Robertson Poems

Leave a comment

Each threshold crossed a point of no return;
each turn of the door knob a turn of fate.
Take each step boldly, confident you’ll earn
access to behold some mystery great
with import or delight, that dawn will break
on an undiscovered country with stores
of adventure and peril that can slake
the greatest thirst––all this and so much more
awaits you on the other side of every door.

“Enter” by Steven R. Robertson

Robertson spent November 2020 writing a poem a day, the above being his first offering (I hope he doesn’t mind me copying it here.)

Poetry is a difficult art, easy for good-hearted folk to do badly. That’s isn’t a sin, of course. If they enjoy crafting their poems, who can say they have wasted their time? Robertson’s poems are rather good, each in a different style. The one above is a Spenserian Stanza.

Short poems like these are a bit like flash fiction; they present you with an idea or emotional picture and sometimes a clever turn of phrase, but they are easily sipped up and forgotten. Reading these things within a social group may motivate readers to pause long enough to reflect on them. Do blogs still provide that kind of social group, or has the world moved on to shinier things?

Photo by Gisela Bonanno on Unsplash

Poetry

Who Wrote the Footprints Poem?

2 Comments

One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

This is the start of the famous, anonymously written “Footprints” poem. Many have tried to establish ownership. Justin Taylor makes a few notes and points out an introduction to one of Spurgeon’s sermons that takes the footprints in the sand imagery in a better direction than the poem did.

Poetry

‘And Some Seed Fell’

2 Comments

I’m making slow progress on the book I’m reading, so no review today. I’m not sure if the book is long, or if I’m just reading it slowly (a disorientation sometimes found in reading e-books). There’s this strange sense that, though I’m interested in the story, I’m not making very rapid progress with it.

I wrote a poem. As I’ve said before, I don’t consider myself a very good poet (and this one was written off the cuff). But I think it’s obscure enough to challenge the reader.

And some seed fell
On a gloomy place.
O’ershadowed by 
The cliff’s hard face.
The roots reached down,
The ground was dry,
And looming rock
Warped out the sky. 
That plant no flower
Would ever know
And on the breeze
No seed-stuff blow.
A little drink
The dew might give,
And sunlight blink
Enough to live.
Poetry, Reviews, Uncategorized

‘The Fall of Arthur,’ by J. R. R. Tolkien

Leave a comment

Not long ago I reviewed Beren and Luthien, Christopher Tolkien’s scholarly reconstruction of much-revised textual material left behind by his father, J. R. R. Tolkien. I judged the book a sort of a scholarly exercise.

I’d have to say the same about The Fall of Arthur. Tolkien, always a promoter of Anglo-Saxon literature, wanted to demonstrate what he could do with Anglo-Saxon-style verse (pretty much the same as Old Norse verse), by re-telling the story of King Arthur in that meter. There’s a certain irony in that project, as the real King Arthur (if he ever existed) spent his life fighting the Anglo-Saxons.

Still, to the extent that it was finished, the poem works extremely well. There’s real vigor in alliterative verse, and the way it “sings” is strongly reminiscent of passages in The Lord of the Rings. One sees where Tolkien acquired his highly effective literary style.

Foes before them,
flames behind them
ever east and onward 
eager rode they, 
and folk fled them  as the 
face of God,
till earth was empty, and 
no  eyes saw them, 
and no ears heard them in 
the endless hills,
save bird and beast  bale-
ful haunting 
the lonely lands….

The poem, unfortunately, was left as a fragment, breaking off before it’s properly underway. Arthur is returning from his campaign in Europe, having been warned that Mordred has raised a rebellion in his absence. Much has been made of the fact that Lancelot, who betrayed the king with Guinevere, has not been summoned to help him. No doubt more would have been made of that, and this could have been a pretty rousing work of literature. But as it is, what we have is another interesting scholarly exercise.

There are notes at the end, and a couple essays by Christopher Tolkien. I should have read those, but wasn’t aware of them until just now.

Poetry

No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn!

Leave a comment

Quaker, poet, and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier wrote “The Corn Song” in 1850, and it became one of the things elementary teachers recommended to students to read every Thanksgiving. He was one of our most popular poets at one point, but perhaps you haven’t seen this one.

Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;

We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest-fields with snow.

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers
Our ploughs their furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.

We dropped the seed o’er hill and plain
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.

All through the long, bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and fair,
And waved in hot midsummer’s noon
Its soft and yellow hair.

And now, with autumn’s moonlit eves,
Its harvest-time has come,
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.

There, richer than the fabled gift
Apollo showered of old,
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,
And knead its meal of gold.

Let vapid idlers loll in silk
Around their costly board;
Give us the bowl of samp and milk,
By homespun beauty poured!

Where’er the wide old kitchen hearth
Sends up its smoky curls,
Who will not thank the kindly earth
And bless our farmer girls?

Then shame on all the proud and vain,
Whose folly laughs to scorn
The blessing of our hardy grain,
Our wealth of golden corn!

Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard’s fruit,
The wheat-field to the fly:

But let the good old crop adorn
The hills our fathers trod;
Still let us, for His golden corn,
Send up our thanks to God!

(Image: Whittier’s Birthplace by Boston Public Library)

Poetry

Happy Are the Unknown, Contented on Their Own Land

Leave a comment

“Ode on Solitude,” by Alexander Pope, written at age twelve about 1700 AD

Happy the man, whose wish and care
   A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
                            In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
   Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
                            In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
                            Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
   Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
                            With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
   Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
                            Tell where I lie.

Poetry

He Thinks Himself Immortal

Leave a comment

Of man’s miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, “That all men are about to live,”
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel; and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise,
At least their own; their future selves applauds;
How excellent that life they ne’er will lead!
Time lodged in their own hands is folly’s vails;
That lodged in Fate’s, to wisdom they consign;
The thing they can’t but purpose they postpone.
‘T is not in folly not to scorn a fool;
And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage: when young, indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal but themselves;

A few lines from the international bestseller, The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality. Night I. On life, death, and immortality, by Edward Young, published in nine parts 1742-45.