Poems from Poet Laureates
September 7
Joseph Auslander (1897-1965) Between 1937 and 1941 Auslander served as the first consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that would later become that of poet laureate of the United States. Note the title didn't change until 1986!!!! almost 50 years later.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Auslander
Allen Tate: (1899-1979) NPC 1943 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Allen-Tate
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) (NPC 1944 (NPL 1986) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Penn-Warren
Louise Bogan (1897-1970) NPC 1945-6 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louise-Bogan
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/louise-bogan
Karl Shapiro (1913 –2000) (NPC 1946-47) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Shapiro
Words That Stay Over by Joseph Auslander
Brief Message by Allen Tate
A Way to Love God by Robert Penn Warren
Elders by Louise Bogan
Americans Are Afraid of Lizards by Karl Shapiro
Why Do You Love the Poem? by Charles Bernstein
THE POEMS:
Words That Stay Over by Joseph Auslander
Having watched the wild gulls gather, disperse,
And knowing no better and no worse
What beauty is and the beating of wings in my eyes
And the wind beating in their cries;
Having seen white breast colour and of beaks
The rapid flash and the whistling streaks —
Something in me not to be quieted
Asserts itself like the sound of birds over water and speaks:
And I say: It would be a simple thing to bear
The weight of death, the impact of despair,
The pressure of contempt or even silence or yet
Endure a clamour I cannot forget;
All this would be a simple thing if words
And water and the bitterly radiant birds,
Gold dark twilight and one throat and one
Face mirroring stars, one mouth murmuring and eyes still wet —
If all this and all these and the little things
That have such terrible strength could beat like wings
On water once, like wings beating, like swords
On water beating ... and then no more! ... But words,
Words that stay over though the voice is dead
To the words; the terror of something someone said
Long ago somewhere and laughed at long ago —
These rust in the brain and grope like a wound that has never bled.
more poems: https://www.best-poems.net/joseph-auslander/poems.html
Brief Message by Allen Tate
This, Warren, is our trouble now:
Not even fools could disavow
Three centuries of piety
Grown bare as a cottonwood tree
(A timber seldom drawn and sawn
And chiefly used to hang men on),
So face with calm that heritage
And earn contempt before the age.
more poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/allen-tate
A Way to Love God by Robert Penn Warren
Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.
I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep.By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration.At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan.Theirs is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it.I have.
I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you
To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft,
On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence
Blows like wind by, and on the sea's virgin bosom unveiled
To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.
Everything seems an echo of something else.
And when, by the hair, the headsman held up the head
Of Mary of Scots, the lips kept on moving,
But without sound.The lips,
They were trying to say something very important.
But I had forgotten to mention an upland
Of wind-tortured stone white in darkness, and tall, but when
No wind, mist gathers, and once on the Sarré at midnight,
I watched the sheep huddling.Their eyes
Stared into nothingness.In that mist-diffused light their eyes
Were stupid and round like the eyes of fat fish in muddy water,
Or of a scholar who has lost faith in his calling.
Their jaws did not move.Shreds
Of dry grass, gray in the gray mist-light, hung
From the side of a jaw, unmoving.
You would think that nothing would ever again happen.
That may be a way to love God.
more poems: https://www.best-poems.net/robert_penn_warren/true_love.html
Elders by Louise Bogan
At night the moon shakes the bright dice of the water;
And the elders, their flower light as broken snow upon the
bush,
Repeat the circle of the moon.
Within the month
Black fruit breaks from the white flower.
The black-wheeled berries turn
Weighing the boughs over the road.
There is no harvest.
Heavy to withering, the black wheels bend
Ripe for the mouths of chance lovers,
Or birds.
Twigs show again in the quick cleavage of season and
season.
The elders sag over the powdery road-bank.
As though they bore, and it were too much,
The seed of the year beyond the year.
More poems: https://poets.org/poet/louise-bogan
Americans Are Afraid of Lizards by Karl Shapiro
My American host in Madras in his moist air-conditioned apart-
ment
Spotted a lizard and yelled for a servant to kill it, kill it!
And a beautifully turbaned, silent and grinning Hindu, beauti-
fully barefooted, beautifully servant,
Rushed in with a towel and pretending to smack it to death
Impounded it gently and carried it off to the gorgeous and sweat-
ing garden
To let it go.
In earlier years, on my first trip to the tropics,
I screamed at a lizard on my pillow,
And the fat Tahitian lady stuffed it in her hand
And grinned toothlessly and pointed to the ceiling
Frescoed with twenty or thirty of the pretty beasts
All vividly flicking their tongues at mosquitoes,
Or playing at making designs.
more poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/karl-shapiro - tab-poems
Why Do You Love the Poem? by Charles Bernstein
https://dcs.megaphone.fm/POETS9781963679.mp3?key=b20e75aa44b8356062842f173b827cca
For the sentiment. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the sentiment.
For the message. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the message.
For the music. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the music.
For the spirit. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the spirit.
For the intelligence. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the intelligence.
For the courage. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the courage.
For the inspiration. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the inspiration.
For the emotion. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the emotion.
For the vocabulary. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the vocabulary.
For the poet. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the poet.
For the meaning. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the meaning.
For what it stands for. — Then you don’t love the poem you love what it stands for.
For the words. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the words.
For the syntax. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the syntax.
For the politics. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the politics.
For the beauty. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the beauty.
For the outrage. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the outrage.
For the tenderness. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the tenderness.
For the hope. — Then you don’t love the poem you love the hope.
For itself. — Then you love the poem.
About this poem: “I’d prefer to leave this commentary blank. The kind of poetry I want doesn’t follow rules: it makes up its own rules. Perhaps my commentary needs a commentary? The poem is itself a series of commentaries. The idea of ‘blank’—letting the work stand for itself—is my commentary on the poem. In other words, if you love the poem for what it is about, you don’t love the poem but what it’s about. Or perhaps you could say the commentary is the poem and the poem the commentary. I get things all, well, Topsy-Turvy.”—Charles Bernstein
Note: Next week: Note, that Wm Carlos Williams --was appointed in 1952 but did not serve due to ill health but then also a political retraction withdrawing the invitation: check out:
In Al Que Quiere! (1917; “To Him Who Wants It!”) his style was distinctly his own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Que_Quiere!
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