Poems for May 1-2-- and an extra note about Bill Heyen, E.B. White and Hesse!

 A new month!  I should have paid attention to "Earth Day" celebrations last week, and try somewhat to make up for it with this week's selection: 

A fitting place to start and as follow-up to Bill Heyen's delightful sharing and reading at the Pittsford Library 4/21 is his book Nature: New and Selected Poems (2020) from 10 of his books produced between 1970-1991. For a sample of poems,  reviews of the individual books represented, the Table of Contents, and a hefty sampling of poems from Depth of Field (1970) see: https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Selected-New-Poems-1970-2020/dp/9390202027?asin=9390202027&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

Bill Heyen wanted to be sure everyone knows the 2020 version of Nature published by Mammoth is the one to consult.  The edition of Nature on Amazon is the paperback published in India, not the beauty from MAMMOTH books

Both Nature  and Diaspora: New and Selected Poems (2024)  from 15 of his collections, are available through the Monroe County Library system. 

Opening Quotations from Nature:

"If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer."-- Thoreau

 

As a blind man, lifting a curtain, knows it is morning,

I know this change:

On one side of silence there is no smile;

But when I breathe with the birds,

The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessing,

And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.

-- Theodore Roethke (strophe from Part II, "Journey to the Interior"

Poems for discussion : Depth of Field by William Heyen; The Poems of our Climate by Wallace Stevens;   Meditation  by William Stafford;  Emancipation Proclamation by William Heyen;  Tell me a story Robert Penn Warren; Fana al-Fana by William Heyen; For the Anniversary of my Death by W. S. Merwin;  

In addition to an apology  for the typo of "fun" on the 3rd line of .  the first line of the William Stafford "Meditation" should be "Animals filled of light" for good reason.  Several people picked up on the typo 3rd line, and is loaded with darkness is indeed a gun.

The O Pen session May 1 indeed provided rich fodder for a discussion of "dark vs. light", good vs. evil and all manner of religious and philosophical commentary.  Maria Popova's blog this week seemed perfectly suited, to continue with an examination of the dangers of "the dark side of certitude", especially when it adopts a self-righteous attitude which can deludes us.  I highly recommend:  https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/24/jacob-bronowski-ascent-of-man-knowledge-certainty/?mc_cid=ca2c397ca3&mc_eid=2e713bf367 Also she mentioned E.B. White's "soul-stretching" epistles in Letters of Note.  This one could be written for all of us: 

Dear Mr. Nadeau:

 

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

 

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

 

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

 

Sincerely, E. B. White

It accompanies  Herman Hesse  writing to a despairing young man after World War I:  "I believe your state of mind and soul to be the right one. Not to know whether there is a God, not to know whether there is good and evil, is far better than to know for sure."

Although I did not include in the poems for May 1,  Whitman's "A Clear Midnight" it should figure in my summary of 4/21 as he referred to it several times, adding  the anecdote about Whitman being asked "what about Shakespeare, Dante?"  To which Whitman replies:  "Apples and Oranges.  Shakespeare and company are poets of an art language.  I don't want to write an art language."

A Clear Midnight by Walt Whitman 1819 –1892

 

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

 This wonderful interview of Bill talks about his book about Whitman"Yawp" ! and many of the references he made.  https://www.beforeyourquieteyesbooksandart.com/projects-2

 There are two parts to the interview one about Heyen's book Yawp about Whitman;  The other is a Q&A which goes into the question of audience and who is reading who which leaves me with a kinder sense about his comments about his journal.

He minored in Philosophy and Aesthetics, so I think any comment he makes about writing poetry goes make to an Emersonian and Whitmanesque sense of unity, where the benefit of writing a poem is to find the gift it provides -- it continues to surprise and lead you to ask questions!

He mentions his 13 syllable "Scherzi" and repeats the W.S. Merwin "I'm in a strange garment" idea.  He also adds Wallace Stevens, "Of Modern Poetry"  that helps us understand perhaps what Emerson said about a poet needing to think with the flower of the intellect. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/of-modern-poetry.html

Of Modern Poetry  by Wallace Stevens

 

The poem of the mind in the act of finding

What will suffice. It has not always had

To find: the scene was set; it repeated what 

Was in the script.

                                    Then the theatre was changed

To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

 

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.

It has to face the men of the time and to meet 

The women of the time. It has to think about war

And it has to find what will suffice. It has

To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage, 

And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and

With meditation, speak words that in the ear,

In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,

Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound

Of which, an invisible audience listens,

Not to the play, but to itself, expressed

In an emotion as of two people, as of two

Emotions becoming one. The actor is

A metaphysician in the dark, twanging 

An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives

Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly

Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,

Beyond which it has no will to rise.

                                                It must

Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may

Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman

Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

**