From my most recent poetry blog......

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog on The Great Poet-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Blog Posted:2/18/2021 4:37:00 PM
Blog on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

Three Poems by Longfellow…



The Day is Done
-- BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.



I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

That my soul cannot resist:



A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.



Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.



Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.



For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

And to-night I long for rest.



Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;



Who, through long days of labor,

And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.



Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.



Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.



And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.



******

The Arrow and the Song
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.



I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?



Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.



*******



Aftermath
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

When the summer fields are mown,

When the birds are fledged and flown,

And the dry leaves strew the path;

With the falling of the snow,

With the cawing of the crow,

Once again the fields we mow

And gather in the aftermath.



Not the sweet, new grass with flowers

Is this harvesting of ours;

Not the upland clover bloom;

But the rowen mixed with weeds,

Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,

Where the poppy drops its seeds

In the silence and the gloom.



*******

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_...rth_Longfellow



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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"Henry Wadsworth" redirects here. For the actor, see Henry Wadsworth (actor).

"Longfellow" redirects here. For other uses, see Longfellow (disambiguation).

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1868

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1868

Born February 27, 1807

Portland, Maine, U.S.

Died March 24, 1882 (aged 75)

Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

Occupation Poet

Professor

Alma mater Bowdoin College

Spouses Mary Storer Potter

Frances Elizabeth Appleton

Children Charles Appleton Longfellow

Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow

Fanny Longfellow

Alice Mary Longfellow

Edith Longfellow

Anne Allegra Longfellow

Signature

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England.



Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. He studied at Bowdoin College and became a professor at Bowdoin and later at Harvard College after spending time in Europe. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first wife Mary Potter died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife Frances Appleton died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. He died in 1882.



Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. He has been criticized by some, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses.





Birthplace of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Portland, Maine, c. 1910; the house was demolished in 1955.

Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine,[1] then a district of Massachusetts.[2] He grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather was Peleg Wadsworth, a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress.[3] His mother was descended from Richard Warren, a passenger on the Mayflower.[4] He was named after his mother's brother Henry Wadsworth, a Navy lieutenant who had died three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli.[5] He was the second of eight children.[6]



Longfellow was descended from English colonists who settled in New England in the early 1600s.[7] They included Mayflower Pilgrims Richard Warren, William Brewster, and John and Priscilla Alden through their daughter Elizabeth Pabodie, the first child born in Plymouth Colony.[8]



Longfellow attended a dame school at the age of three and was enrolled by age six at the private Portland Academy. In his years there, he earned a reputation as being very studious and became fluent in Latin.[9] His mother encouraged his enthusiasm for reading and learning, introducing him to Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote.[10] He published his first poem in the Portland Gazette on November 17, 1820, a patriotic and historical four-stanza poem called "The Battle of Lovell's Pond".[11] He studied at the Portland Academy until age 14. He spent much of his summers as a child at his grandfather Peleg's farm in Hiram, Maine.



In the fall of 1822, 15 year-old Longfellow enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, along with his brother Stephen.[9] His grandfather was a founder of the college[12] and his father was a trustee.[9] There Longfellow met Nathaniel Hawthorne who became his lifelong friend.[13] He boarded with a clergyman for a time before rooming on the third floor[14] in 1823 of what is now known as Winthrop Hall.[15] He joined the Peucinian Society, a group of students with Federalist leanings.[16] In his senior year, Longfellow wrote to his father about his aspirations



(Much more information at link given above .. Robert)



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2.

https://interestingliterature.com/20...e-should-read/



LITERATURE

The Best Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poems Everyone Should Read

The best Longfellow poems



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the most popular and influential American poets of the nineteenth century. Longfellow (1807-82) is best-known for The Song of Hiawatha, and for growing a beard to hide the marks of a family tragedy, but he also wrote many other celebrated poems. But what are Longfellow’s very best poems? Some poems immediately spring to mind, such as The Song of Hiawatha, but Longfellow was a prolific poet who wrote a great deal of great poems, not all of which are as well-known. Below, we pick – and discuss – ten of Longfellow’s greatest poems



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Three Tribute poems-- composed by me,

For Longfellow blog….

(1.)

Glory Of Faith's Triumphant Golden Crowns



The rays of morn took their first golden breath

Dispersing powers of night's darkling mists

First gleams romancing sweet the earthen shores

Beating back dark shadows with glowing fists

Demanding night accept its coming death!

Triumphant crowns!



Dawn's first yawning, a parade of new dreams

Waking Fate and its ever growing lists

With dancing echoes of showers to fall

Beating back dark shadows with glowing fists

Birthing flowers born from resplendent streams!

Triumphant crowns!



Sweet the softest callings of better days

With man rising to earn his daily bread

And Nature singing true to cheer life's all

Earth no longer mourning yesterday's dead

Future hope setting sail as sunbeams play!

Triumphant crowns!



Humanity follows its usual course

Teeming hordes traversing their daily treks

While bright blue-set skies rejoice overhead

Across well-worn pathways from life's great wrecks

Amidst the carnage of loss and remorse!

Triumphant crowns!



Father Time speaks demanding to be heard

Above the din of crowds surging about

Commanding its fleeing hours to obey

Sternly obeyed were its arrogant shouts

And the infinite powers of each word!

Triumphant crowns!



Sun was setting, its daily chores all done

Mortals noted the rapid fleeing light

All had felt the ever changing new course

Some with increasing joy, others with fright

Dark shadows arose screaming lets have fun!

Triumphant crowns!



The moon sped brightly forth taking top stage

Stars came twinkling across heavenly skies

The wise old owl took its same midnight flight

Night spread its woven cloak of evil lies

While the sleeping crowds await first new page!

Triumphant crowns!



The rays of morn took their first golden breath

Dispersing powers of night's darkling mists

First gleams romancing sweet the earthen shores

Beating back dark shadows with glowing fists

Demanding night accept its coming death!

Triumphant crowns!



Robert J. Lindley, 2-17-2021

Romanticism, ( That Man Could Wake To See Coming Of Eternity )

Blog poem.



*****

(2.)

Love's Fever Burns In The Air, As We Kiss Anew



As my angel passed by, sweet the rustling leaves

And amidst world's accursed worries, life so grieves

Her soft footfalls, gift promise of far better days

Removing anguish birthed by darkened greys

A reprieve if you will, a blessing to arrive

A soft gentle breeze, love proving one is alive!



As she looks at me, her glowing smile, beaming bright

My heart begs this eager soul, pray to hold on tight

For such is a treasure so truly Heaven sent

Bountiful gift, to relieve such earthly torment

And wouldst I dare to question this exquisite gift

As just mere sight of her this spirit so uplifts!



As my bliss turns to my asking is this a dream

Is it a spell, fairies casting a golden stream

Nay, lonely heart replies, this is romance born true

Love's fever burns in the air, as we kiss anew

She grabs my hand and whisper darling, shall we dance

Again, we enter paradise of our romance!



As she looks at me, her glowing smile, beaming bright.

My heart begs this eager soul, pray to hold on tight!



Robert J. Lindley,

Romanticism, ( The Fever Of Love, If A Mere Dream, May I Never Wake )

Blog poem.



*****

(3.)

That Summer Day At That Resplendent, Ancient Weeping Tree



Around that tall, wide spread ancient weeping tree

Where singing meadows and smiling sky looking down

Upon a wandering searching child, namely me

Far, very far away from our small farming town

Gazing up to see where hides the Olympic gods

Seeking life's approval by their wizened nods!



Yet the gods had vanished leaving bright blue sky

Its deep beauty, vestige of all that was to be

I stood transfixed, bravely questioning the why

Could not life and happiness be given for free

Puzzled by the cold hard-set silence falling down

At last seeing, fled were the gods with their false crowns!



As such thoughts invaded a newly minted mind

A child decided best to further knowledge seek

For how ever was a soul to life's great truths find

And verify, blessings come to those humbly meek

Thus acknowledge power of words my father spoke

And prove too, life was love, light- God's masterful stroke!



That summer day at that resplendent, ancient weeping tree.

I found truth- God put an innocent, loving soul in me.



Robert J. Lindley, 2-16-2021

Romanticism-

( A poetic narrative, Wherein One Great Truth Was Found )

Blog poem.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

New Blog, Why Dark Poetry Fascinated So Many Famous Poets..
Blog Posted:6/11/2021 8:26:00 PM
New Blog, Why Dark Poetry Fascinated So Many Famous Poets..



(1.)

Poe's Nightmare And Penitence



The statue in the hall, moved ever so slightly,

I saw this movement upon every midnight stroke-

Alone, eagerly waiting for this dark magic nightly

Shivers given, very addictive but sadly were no joke,

Anticipation burned awaiting that movement refined

For each night at midnight it moved just a bit more

And sat I, there to watch as I so greedily dined,

Upon the tender, ethereal flesh of my love, Lenore!



As the darkened years swiftly raced into the mists:

I prayed to the dark gods for mercy evermore,

And Lenore's name was always on my pleading lists

Come back, come back again to me- my sweet Lenore!



Last year, that eerie, moving statue began to smile

A wicked little grin, a grimace for to be sure

My mind confused, for this was not in her style

The movement and soft grace of my Lenore so pure;

Aha! Could this be the spirit of the Raven gone?

Returneth to plague and so vex my tired old Soul,

Or my mind deranged from its loneliness trying to atone

For a grieving hate-darkened heart as black as coal?



Now the statue has made it all the way to the door,

There was no creaking and groaning as it slowly walks

Nor any of the great beauty resplendent in my Lenore

Yet for years now, we've had our mystical, nightly talks!



Last night the door opened and away she magically flew

By all the dark gods, I cried for her to not fly away!

Please stay and in this dark dungeon reside, just we two,

Alas! Aghast at this penitence my ruined heart to pay;

Where once the sheer brightness of her love and name,

Would heal my wounds and thus join us in bright light of day

Raven! What hellish playing you've done in this wicked game

For now I grieve ever the more, for my Lenore to love and stay!



Robert J. Lindley, 11-27-2015



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The Beast, Hideous Monster That Lived To Kill



PART 1



It was a dark beast, hellish in fury and deep hate

I that came to know it, wondered its wicked fate

And mysterious way its unlucky victims it chose

Insanity of violence and leaving the red rose

Humanlike, the way it rearranged each torn dress

Always their hair combed neat, tho' each a bloody mess

Why did it scratch my door night of its deadly attacks

From behind my barn leave its hideous bloody tracks!



O'how I worried that somehow me they would accuse

True, I had a temper and record of a short fuse

Yet they knew me and as a truly kind hearted-man

And a courageous soul, the kind that never ran

Did not those savage attacks happen ten miles away

Always at moonlit night, never at light of day

Had seen it, had trailed it to its forest lair

But no further, even found chunks of its black hair!



Then it came to me, an idea why it killed

What a clever thought, in my heart it so thrilled

Could it be acts of dark vengeance it was doing

Well thought plan it was diligently pursuing

For six months the beast killed at least once a week

Fierce, so deadly, nothing about it mild and meek

Always a victim that was innocent and weak

And I just behind it, waiting to take a peek!



With newfound knowledge a clever plan came to me

To take action, no longer hide behind a tree

First step, find a deadly weapon, one sure to kill

A long blade too cut it, O' what a wondrous thrill

With a new plan and a fine weapon in my hand

Tonight I would dare it, take a brave hero's stand

Strike the massive beast down before it did the deed

And stand there in wanton delight, watching it bleed!



Then it stopped no more scratching on my front door

I felt lost, into aching heart a hole it tore

Why, why had it so suddenly abandoned me

Could it somehow into my sad, lonely heart see

A whisper, passing phantom or was it a dream

Had we not both become a great night-stalking team

Then in the mirror hairy image did I see

Only this, savage beast staring right back at me!



Robert J. Lindley, 6-11-2021

Dark poetry-

As A Tribute to Edgar Allan Poe



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(1.)



https://interestingliterature.com/20...bout-darkness/





LITERATURE

10 of the Best Poems about Darkness

The greatest dark poems selected by Dr Oliver Tearle



Poetry isn’t all sweetness and light, of course. In fact, much of it is concerned with the darker aspects of the natural world, whether it’s the mystery or solemnity of night-time darkness or some other, more abstract or metaphorical kind of darkness (‘O dark dark dark’, as T. S. Eliot put it in Four Quartets). Here, we offer ten of the best poems about darkness of various kinds.





1. Charlotte Smith, ‘Written near a Port on a Dark Evening’.



All is black shadow but the lucid line

Marked by the light surf on the level sand,

Or where afar the ship-lights faintly shine

Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land

Misled the pilgrim …



This sonnet was written by one of the great proto-Romantic poets of the second half of the eighteenth century. Smith’s sonnets anticipate Romanticism partly because nature in her poetry is so often feared with an awesome power that verges on the terrifying: ‘life’s long darkling way’ is brooding and full of menace here.



2. Lord Byron, ‘Darkness’.





I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day …



This poem was inspired by a curious incident: the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which drastically altered the weather conditions across the world and led to 1816 being branded ‘the Year without a Summer’. The same event also led to Byron’s trip to Lake Geneva and his ghost-story writing competition, which produced Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein.



For Byron, the extermination of the sun seemed like a dream, yet it was ‘no dream’ but a strange and almost sublimely terrifying reality.





3. Robert Browning, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’.



If at his counsel I should turn aside

Into that ominous tract which, all agree,

Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

I did turn as he pointed: neither pride

Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,

So much as gladness that some end might be …



A grotesque quasi-medieval dramatic monologue detailing the quest of the titular Roland, this poem was produced in an attempt to overcome writer’s block: in 1852 Browning had set himself the New Year’s Resolution to write a new poem every day, and this vivid dreamscape is what arose from his fevered imagination.





Browning borrowed the title from a line in Shakespeare’s King Lear; the character of Roland as he appears in Browning’s poem has in turn inspired Stephen King to write his Dark Tower series, while J. K. Rowling borrowed the word ‘slughorn’ from the poem when creating the name of her character Horace Slughorn.



4. Emily Dickinson, ‘We grow accustomed to the Dark’.



We grow accustomed to the Dark –

When Light is put away –

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Good bye –





A Moment – We Uncertain step

For newness of the night –

Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –

And meet the Road – erect …



The first line of this poem also provides the poem with its main theme: the way our eyes adjust to the darkness, just as our minds adapt to the bleakness of life and contemplation of the ‘night’ that is death.



5. Thomas Hardy, ‘The Darkling Thrush’.



At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead,

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited.

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,

With blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom …





This classic Hardy poem captures the mood of a winter evening as the sun, ‘the weakening eye of day’, sets below the horizon and gives way to dusk on New Year’s Eve. Hardy hears a thrush singing, and wonders whether the thrush is aware of some reason to be hopeful for the coming new year, some reason of which Hardy himself is unaware.



In ‘The Darkling Thrush’ itself we are given clues that religion is on the speaker’s mind. In the third stanza, when the thrush of the title appears (‘darkling’ is an old poetic word for ‘in darkness’ – it also, incidentally, echoes Matthew Arnold‘s use of the word in his famous poem about declining faith, ‘Dover Beach’, published in 1867), its song is described as ‘evensong’, suggesting the church service, while the use of the word ‘soul’ also suggests the spiritual. (Such a religiously inflected analysis of Hardy’s poem is reinforced by ‘carolings’ in the next stanza.)



6. Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’.





I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light’s delay …



One of Hopkins’s ‘Terrible Sonnets’, this poem is one of the finest evocations of a sleepless night that English poetry has produced. When we wake to find that it’s not yet morning but we are still surrounded by darkness, and undergo some sort of ‘dark night of the soul’, we often feel as Hopkins describes here. For him it is a spiritual battle as well as a mere case of insomnia.



As so often with Hopkins, the spiritual and psychological are experienced as a vivid visceral force that is physical as well as metaphysical: his depression and doubt weigh upon him like heartburn or indigestion (‘heartburn’ picking up on the poet’s more abstract address to his ‘heart’ in the third line of the poem, but also leading into the ‘blood’ mentioned a couple of lines later).





7. Carl Sandburg, ‘Moonset’.



This short poem is almost actively ‘unpoetical’ in its imagery, and offers a fresh look at the moon. The poem’s final image of ‘dark listening to dark’ is especially eye-catching.



8. Edward Thomas, ‘The Dark Forest’.



Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead

Hang stars like seeds of light

In vain, though not since they were sown was bred

Anything more bright …



This poem from the wonderful nature poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917) begins by describing a forest at night, above whose trees the stars shine like ‘seeds of light’.





9. Joseph Campbell, ‘Darkness’.



One of the first ‘modern’ poems written in English, this short lyric by the Irish-born poet Joseph Campbell (1879-1944) shares affinities with the poems of T. E. Hulme, and seems in some respects to prefigure the ‘bog’ poems of Seamus Heaney. You can read Campbell’s ‘Darkness’ by clicking on the link below, which will also take you to three other short poems by Campbell.



10. Philip Larkin, ‘Going’.



Philip Larkin never learned, in Sigmund Freud’s memorable phrase about King Lear, to make friends with the necessity of dying. ‘Going’ is an early example of Larkin’s mature engagement with the terrifying realisation that death will come for us all.



In ten unrhymed lines, ‘Going’ explores death without ever mentioning it by name, instead referring to it, slightly elliptically, as ‘an evening’ that is ‘coming in’. Larkin uses the metaphor of the coming evening – an evening which ‘lights no lamps’ because there is no hope of staving off this darkness, the darkness of death.





Continue to explore classic poetry with these short poems about death and dying, our pick of the best poems about eyes, and these classic poems about secrets. We also recommend The Oxford Book of English Verse – perhaps the best poetry anthology on the market (we offer our pick of the best poetry anthologies here).



The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.





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(2.)



http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/thema...ark_poems.html



Dark Poems and Poetry



A Collection of Dark Poems and Poetry from the most Famous Poets and Authors.



25 POEMS-



Under Her Dark Veil by Anna Akhmatova

Senlin: His Dark Origins by Conrad Aiken

The House Of Dust: Part 01: 06: Over the darkened city, the city of towers by Conrad Aiken

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 01: The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea by Conrad Aiken

The Door in the Dark by Robert Frost

An Electric Sign Goes Dark by Carl Sandburg

My Country in Darkness by Eavan Boland

Behold, As Goblins Dark Of Mien by Robert Louis Stevenson

From the Dark Tower by Countee Cullen

In the Dark Pine-Wood by James Joyce

The Dark Hour by William Henry Davies

Dark Night by Frank Bidart

The Dark Forest by Edward Thomas

When the Dark Comes Down by Lucy Maud Montgomery

The Night is Darkening Around Me by Emily Bronte

Night is Darkening Around Me, The by Emily Bronte

Written near a Port on a Dark Evening by Charlotte Smith

Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning

Through the Dark Sod -- as Education by Emily Dickinson

Not quite dark yet by Yosa Buson

Darkness by Lord Byron

My Soul is Dark by Lord Byron

My wheel is in the dark! by Emily Dickinson

We grow accustomed to the Dark by Emily Dickinson

I see thee better -- in the Dark -- by Emily Dickinson





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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...-clifted-shore



Huge Vapours Brood above the Clifted Shore

-- BY CHARLOTTE SMITH

Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,

Night o'er the ocean settles, dark and mute,

Save where is heard the repercussive roar

Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot

Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone

Of seamen, in the anchored bark, that tell

The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone,

Singing the hour, and bidding "strike the bell."

All is black shadow, but the lucid line

Marked by the light surf on the level sand,

Or where afar, the ship-lights faintly shine

Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land

Mislead the pilgrim; such the dubious ray

That wavering reason lends, in life's long darkling way.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Blog A Week, Honoring Each Week One Chosen Famous Poet , First Week, Randall Jarrell



Blog Posted:9/17/2021 7:39:00 AM
A Blog A Week, Honoring Each Week One Chosen Famous Poet , First Week, Randall Jarrell

(1.)

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nyti...-crutches.html



October 7, 1951

With Wild Dogmatism

By ROBERT LOWELL

THE SEVEN-LEAGUE CRUTCHES

By Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell is our most talented poet under 40, and one whose wit, pathos and grace remind us more of Pope or Matthew Arnold than of any of his contemporaries. I don't know whether Jarrell is unappreciated or not -- it's hard to imagine anyone taking him lightly. He is almost brutally serious about literature and so bewilderingly gifted that it is impossible to comment on him without the humiliating thought that he himself could do it better.



He is a man of letters in the European sense, with real verve, imagination and uniqueness. Even his dogmatism is more wild and personal than we are accustomed to, completely unspoiled by the hedging "equanimity" that weakens the style and temperament of so many of our serious writers. His murderous intuitive phrases are famous; but at the same time his mind is essentially conservative and takes as much joy in rescuing the reputation of a sleeping good writer as in chloroforming a mediocre one.



Jarrell's prose intelligence -- he seems to know everything -- gives his poetry an extraordinary advantage over, for instance, a thunderbolt like Dylan Thomas, in dealing with the present. Jarrell is able to see our whole scientific, political and spiritual situation directly and on its own terms. He is a tireless discoverer of new themes and resources, and a master technician, who moves easily from the little to the grand. Monstrously knowing and monstrously innocent -- one does not know just where to find him ... a Wordsworth with the obsessions of Lewis Carroll.



"The Seven-League Crutches" should best be read with Jarrell's three earlier volumes. "Blood for a Stranger" (1942) is a Parnassian tour-de-force in the manner of Auden; nevertheless, it has several fine poems, the beginnings of better, and enough of the author's personality for John Crowe Ransom to write in ironic astonishment that Jarrell had "the velocity of an angel." "Little Friend, Little Friend" (1945), however, contains some of the best poems on modern war, better, I think, and far more professional than those of Wilfred Owen, which, though they seem pathetically eternal to us now, are sometimes amateurish and unfinished. The determined, passive, sacrificial lives of the pilots, inwardly so harmless and outwardly so destructive, are ideal subjects for Jarrell. In "Losses" (1948) and more rangingly in "Seven-League Crutches," new subjects appear. Using himself, children, characters from fairy stories, history and painting, he is still able to find beings that are determined, passive and sacrificial, but the experience is quiet, more complex and probably more universal. It's an odd universe, where a bruised joy or a bruised sorrow is forever commenting on itself with the gruff animal common sense and sophistication of Fontaine. Jarrell has gone far enough to be compared with his peers, the best lyric poets of the past: he has the same finesse and originality that they have, and his faults, a certain idiosyncratic willfulness and eclectic timidity, are only faults in this context.



Among the new poems, "Orient Express," a sequel, I think, to "Dover Beach," is a brilliantly expert combination of regular and irregular lines, buried rhymes, and sestina-like repeated rhymes, in which shifts in tone and rhythm are played off against the deadening roll of the train. "A Game at Salzburg" has the broken, charmed motion of someone thinking out loud. Both, in their different ways, are as skillful and lovely as any short poem I know of. "The Knight, Death, and the Devil" is a careful translation of Durer's engraving. The description is dense; the generalizations are profound. It is one of the most remarkable word-pictures in English verse or prose, and comparable to Auden's "Musee de Beaux Arts."




"The Contrary Poet" is an absolutely literal translation from Corbiere. The original is as clearly there as in the French, and it is also a great English poem. "The Night Before the Night Before Christmas" is long; it is also, perhaps, the best, most mannered, the most unforgettable and the most irritating poem in the book. Some of Jarrell's monologues are Robert Frost for "the man who reads Hamlet," or rather for a Hamlet who had been tutored by Jarrell. In "Seele in Raum," he masters Frost's methods and manages to make a simple half-mad woman speak in character, and yet with his own humor and terror.



My favorite is "A Girl in a Library," an apotheosis of the American girl, an immortal character piece, and the poem in which Jarrell perhaps best uses both his own qualities and his sense of popular culture. The girl is a college student, blonde and athletic.



But not so sadly; not so thoughtfully

And answers * * * guilelessly: I'm studying.



I quote the ending:



Sit and dream

One comes, a finger width beneath your skin,

To the braided maidens singing as they spin;

There sounds the shepherd's pipe, the watchman's rattle

Across the short dark distance of the years.

I am a thought of yours: and yet, you do not think ...

The firelight of a long, blind dreaming story

Lingers upon your lips; and I have seen

Firm, fixed forever in your closing eyes,

The Corn King beckoning to his Spring Queen.



"Belinda" was once drawn with something of the same hesitating satire and sympathy.



Mr. Lowell, who received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1947, is author of "The Mills of the Kavanaughs."

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(2.) A video link- Jarrell speaking

Randall Jarrell Reads from His Work


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September 1948

The King's Hunt

BY RANDALL JARRELL

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https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org...andall-jarrell

******************

My two tribute poems- composed to honor this truly gifted

and totally amazingly brilliant poet…

****

(1.)

As I Sit Here Chilling On My Front Porch



As I sit here chilling on my front porch

Yet still wonderment in this aged soul

Tho' I feel far too fast fading life's torch

Seeking to find more than, world's heavy toll

Watching this world dancing through my front yard

Sipping hot coffee, daring to be free

Soaring fodder for a want to be bard

Or a brave captain sailing stormy seas.



Now I see trees swaying and waves crashing

Thunder blasting, arriving tempest roars

Fate cries, you chips you will soon be cashing

I say, go away now you simply bore

Sun and its golden rays beam as scene change

On my black mustang I am now riding

Across a desert prairie, open range

Searching through life while no longer hiding.



Ahead a glistening purple mountain

Destination for a sad broken heart

Treasure found as a renewal fountain

As dreaming depicted on my star chart

There awaits golden gems and lover's touch

An angel as promised ages ago

Nirvana, as true love delivers such

From there into Heaven away we go.



I sit here just chilling on my front porch

Yet still wonderment in this aged soul

Tho' I feel far too fast fading life's torch

Seeking to find more than, world's heavy toll.


Robert J. Lindley, JULY 11TH, 2021

Romanticism- Tribute poem for

Randall Jarrell

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(2.)

Wherein, Innocent Children Once Played.



Beyond the fall of that shimmering veil

With the folds of life's mysterious walls

Imprisoned in the dark pits of hell

Innocents that failed to heed this call

Soft beckoning into a warming light

Enticement to live in a sweeter state

Devoid of fear of life and evil night

As always forbidden there any hate.



For only joy and happiness resides

Among bright gardens and its golden walls

Left behind vanity and foolish prides

One only enters by Heaven's dear call

Time banished and true love reigns supreme

Peace there is the feast on which all may dine

Eradicated all the world's dark schemes

There is no greedy, this stuff is all mine.



Yes, truly such a treasure does exist

Wherein wicked world can never invade

Just beyond the purple veil's falling mist

Wherein, innocent children once played.


Robert J. Lindley, 9-17- 2021

Romanticism- Tribute poem for

Randall Jarrell

**********

Note-

This blog was started months ago- due to health issues then, was abandoned.

All that was needed was the second poem.

That was last night and finished this morn..

I leave it as it was first composed- unedited.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

My new poetry form, Lind30 has been used by over a dozen poets in these last few days since I presented the new form.
It has now scored not one but -TWO- POEM OF THE DAY AWARDS in the last 3 days.

Jan 15, 2022 "Grip Of Autumn" harry horsman Verse


Jan 12, 2022 "Winter Barns" Paulette Calasibetta Free verse

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Grip Of Autumn

Summer's passed on to meltdown
Nature sways in winds of change
A flowing cascade hastens
Woodland stage waits another dawn breaks.

© Harry J Horsman 2022

Emulating Robert Lindley's new form, 'Lind30'

********

Winter Barns



Silos stand like sentinels
Weathered barn doors creak, cows moo
The snow dances with delight
Birds find shelter in the arms of eaves


Poem is written in "Lind30" form. A form developed by Robert Lindley
7/7/7/9 syllable or word count; poets choice.

For: Winter Wonders Within Nature Contest
Sponsored by: M.L. Kiser

Copyright © harry horsman | Year Posted 2022