Love Poetry Out Loud (7 page)

Make a drumbeat,

Put it on a record, let it whirl,

And while we listen to it play,

Dance with you till day —

Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

 

Broadway Boogie-Woogie

Langston Hughes often sought to catch the cadences of blues music in his poetry, and he certainly does in this one, a vignette of Harlem at night in the mid-twentieth century
.

Tone =
Read it as a verb, to
tone … down.

 

STRANGE SHORES

Anne Bradstreet didn't want to go to America in 1630, when her husband decided to do so, because it meant leaving behind civilized English society at age eighteen to raise a family on the frontier in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She went out of love and a sense of duty. Centuries later John Berryman wonders how
.

 

Love and Money

Marriage is a bargain between two people, and this sonnet by Bradstreet (ca. 1612–1672) is framed in terms of value received. She values his love more than money, and that's all she asks of him in order to deal with the trials of colonial life
.

Ought but =
Other than
.

Persever =
Persevere; pronounce it “per-sever.”

Anne Bradstreet

I
f ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay,

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let's so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

John Berryman

1

The Governor your husband lived so long

moved you not, restless, waiting for him? Still,

you were a patient woman —

I seem to see you pause here still:

Sylvester, Quarles, in moments odd you pored

before a fire at, bright eyes on the Lord,

all the children still.

“Simon …” Simon will listen while you read a Song.

2

Outside the New World winters in grand dark

white air lashing high thro' the virgin stands

foxes down foxholes sigh,

surely the English heart quails, stunned.

I doubt if Simon than this blast, that sea,

spares from his rigour for your poetry

more. We are on each other's hands

who care. Both of our worlds unhanded us. Lie stark,

3

thy eyes look to me mild. Out of maize & air

your body's made, and moves. I summon, see,

from the centuries it.

I think you won't stay. How do we

linger, diminished, in our lovers' air,

implausibly visible, to whom, a year,

years, over interims; or not;

to a long stranger; or not; shimmer and disappear.

 

Love across the Centuries

After reading the poems, journals, and letters of Anne Bradstreet, three hundred years later, John Berryman writes a love letter to her ghost. He later said he began it thinking it would be seven or eight stanzas long, but ended up writing fifty-seven stanzas. Here are the first three
.

Governor =
Her husband, Simon Bradstreet (1603–1697), governor of the colony after her death
.

Sylvester, Quarles =
Favorite writers of Bradstreet's
.

Ben Jonson

D
rink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine:

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

I sent thee, late, a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee,

As giving it a hope that there

It could not withered be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe

And sent'st it back to me,

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee.

 

ROSY SCENARIOS

When you follow the florist's advice and “say it with roses,” you're not only sending flowers, you're sending a message. Roses have traditionally been associated with blood and soul, and both carnal and spiritual love
.

 

Flirting

There's a long poetic tradition in which the poet, constrained by good manners, politics, and jealous rivals or parents, can't come out and say what he means openly. Look for secret messages
.

Jove =
Jupiter in Roman mythology
.

Wreath =
A classical symbol of victory and celebration
.

Sent'st it back =
Refused it
.

 

Global Warming?

Robert Burns had another sort of warmth in mind in the late 1700s, when he published this. Ornate and self-consciously witty verse was all the fashion, and his simple Scottish folk poems were considered unconventional. The Romantic poets of the next century admired them, though, and the poems have lasted, while many of the eighteenth century's more sophisticated poets are largely forgotten
.

Rose =
For Burns, the rose that represents his love may carry classical associations, but mainly it's a simple flower
.

Gang =
Go
.

Robert Burns

O
my luve's like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June;

O my luve's like the melodie

That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!

And fare thee weel a while!

And I will come again, my luve,

Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

 

CLASSICAL BEAUTIES

Here are two poets steeped in the classics, discoursing on beauty. Thomas Carew, in the tradition of John Donne and his circle, uses classical images and ideas to represent the attractions of his beloved. Randall Jarrell starts to do the same thing, then finds himself getting a little carried away
.

 

Cavalier Attitude

The light, bantering attitude of this poem, and its deep grounding in classical mythology and literature, is typical of the “Cavalier poets” — the gentlemen-soldiers of the court of King Charles I. Carew is thought to have died before the outbreak of the English Civil War
.

Orient =
East, where the sun rises
.

Causes =
The beloved's beauty gives rise to flowers
.

Atoms =
The particles of dust that twinkle in sunbeams
.

Dividing throat =
When the beloved sings or speaks
.

Sphere =
In the Ptolemaic conception of the universe, a sphere of fixed stars lay beyond the sun and planets
.

Phoenix =
The mythical fire-bird associated with the sun
.

Thomas Carew

A
sk me no more where Jove bestows,

When June is past, the fading rose;

For in your beauty's orient deep

These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray

The golden atoms of the day,

For, in pure love, heaven did prepare

Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste

The nightingale when May is past;

For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light

That downwards fall in dead of night,

For in your eyes they sit, and there

Fixèd become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west

The phoenix builds her spicy nest;

For unto you at last she flies,

And in your fragrant bosom dies.

 

The Books of Love

What college student hasn't dozed off while studying in a carrel at the library? A dangerous business, that! You never know when some tweedy English professor is going to spot you snoozing there, fall in love, and make a poem out of you — a poem about waking you up from your dreamy childhood into an enlightened, but somehow more terrible, life as an adult
.

Waist =
The girl is no classical beauty, though the poet nevertheless finds her charming
.

Decrescendo, bars =
Musical terms that bring to mind an operatic aria
.

Murders =
Oedipus, subject of an opera by Igor Stravinsky based on the ancient Greek play by Sophocles, murdered his father and married his mother, not knowing who they were
.

Egyptian Helen = An opera by Richard Strauss; one version of the Helen of Troy story held that she never actually reached Troy
.

Brünnhilde =
Soprano role in Richard Wagner's four-opera cycle
The Ring of the Nibelungen.

Salome =
Title role of another Strauss opera
.

What doest thou here? =
God's question of the prophet Elijah, who was hiding in a cave in I Kings 19:9
.

Randall Jarrell

A
n object among dreams, you sit here with your shoes off

And curl your legs up under you; your eyes

Close for a moment, your face moves toward sleep …

You are very human.

But my mind, gone out in tenderness,

Shrinks from its object with a thoughtful sigh.

This is a waist the spirit breaks its arm on.

The gods themselves, against you, struggle in vain.

This broad low strong-boned brow; these heavy eyes;

These calves, grown muscular with certainties;

This nose, three medium-sized pink strawberries

— But I exaggerate. In a little you will leave:

I'll hear, half squeal, half shriek, your laugh of greeting—

Then,
decrescendo
, bars of that strange speech

In which each sound sets out to seek each other,

Murders its own father, marries its own mother,

And ends as one grand transcendental vowel.

(Yet for all I know, the Egyptian Helen spoke so.)

As I look, the world contracts around you:

I see Brünnhilde had brown braids and glasses

She used for studying; Salome straight brown bangs,

A calf's brown eyes, and sturdy light-brown limbs

Dusted with cinnamon, an apple-dumpling's …

Many a beast has gnawn a leg off and got free,

Many a dolphin curved up from Necessity —

The trap has closed about you, and you sleep.

If someone questioned you,
What doest thou here?

You'd knit your brows like an orangoutang

(But not so sadly; not so thoughtfully)

And answer with a pure heart, guilelessly:

I'm studying. …

If only you were not!

Assignments,

recipes,

the
Official Rulebook

Of Basketball
—ah, let them go; you needn't mind.

The soul has no assignments, neither cooks

Nor referees: it wastes its time.

It wastes its time.

Here in this enclave there are centuries

For you to waste: the short and narrow stream

Of life meanders into a thousand valleys

Of all that was, or might have been, or is to be.

The books, just leafed through, whisper endlessly …

Yet it is hard. One sees in your blurred eyes

The “uneasy half-soul” Kipling saw in dogs.

One sees it, in the glass, in one's own eyes.

In rooms alone, in galleries, in libraries,

In tears, in searchings of the heart, in staggering joys

We memorize once more our old creation,

Humanity: with what yawns the unwilling

Flesh puts on its spirit, O my sister!

So many dreams! And not one troubles

Your sleep of life? no self stares shadowily

From these worn hexahedrons, beckoning

With false smiles, tears? …

Meanwhile Tatyana

Larina (gray eyes nickel with the moonlight

That falls through the willows onto Lensky's tomb;

Now young and shy, now old and cold and sure)

Asks, smiling: “But what is she dreaming of, fat thing?”

I answer: She's not fat. She isn't dreaming.

She purrs or laps or runs, all in her sleep;

Believes, awake, that she is beautiful;