A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman

A noiseless, patient spider,
I marked, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Marked how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be formed—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.



     I believe we all have had this experience, when we feel alone in a crowded room, and we throw out “lines” to other people, hoping the lines will stick and then the gap will be bridged. This experience is often repeated throughout life to all relationships. Weather the person is an intra- or extra-vert, the desire for a deep, lasting, wholesome friendship is constantly sought after. Whitman creates a wonderful metaphor, comparing the spider casting its gossamer silks into the air, hoping they will connect, to the relationships people strive to have. (I find that a greater sense of beauty is added in this because spider silk is one of the strongest substances known compared to it’s size.)

     The pattern that Whitman uses is a great way to compare these two ideas and meld them into one. Bothe verses are five lines long, and each line is comparatively similar, except the last, when the first verse’s last line is about the spider releasing its thread constantly, and the last verse’s last line is about the hope that it will catch on something or someone.

Vergissmeinnicht by Keith Douglas

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonored picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

             The first thing that needs to be said is that “vergissmeinnicht” can either mean the flower, Forget-me-not, or the phrase “forget me not”, which is perhaps more applicable to this poem (but metaphors can be gleaned from the first.) From this, this small notation adds to the vibe that Douglas is trying to convey, a detached (one must either know German or at least understand the phrase to fully comprehend the poem, and Douglas gives no personal feeling on the subject) yet also profound meaning (just look to the last verse, this is probably the best example of this.)

            The meaning that is most fitting is the classic of how man is full of evil and hurt, but also of love, and how we can destroy things that are dear to others and us. The cadaver in the poem is the symbol of this duality, where the main character’s first impression of him in life was “like that of an entry of a demon.” However, in death, he is a calm, prostrate, almost more humane figure, with a note from his loved one that in his last moments was reading (a gunpit is a slit in a trench where a barrel of a gun rests) representing the humanity that once was or even is still in him. It is also interesting to note how in the last stanza Douglas gives the impression that the soldier’s death was not his fault, but Death’s.

A Thankful Poem

The Last Thursday

The Chill

Rushes through me.

I move toward

the door

looking for warmth

I take

a Knife

a Fork

a Spoon

wrap them in a

paper napkin

like a child

or as a carpenter

that wraps his tools in

leather, to protect

and use for great purpose

The carnage

is all that is left

from the feast

A battle field

of lost bits of

the innards of the yams

the flesh of hams

blood of jello

oozing with spilt gravy

the aroma was most appetizing

as any soldier can smell

be for the storm

now

it is all calm

Laughing

can be heard from the hearth

chairs pulled

around the

television

wondering who will win the game

a game of cards has been started

on the table were the entertainment was previously

the cousins are downstairs

apples to apples

and the air hockey is humming

Late in the evening

I sit

absorbed

in the uncles talk

of business

of livestalk

of general conversation

and speculation

the word’s warmth envelops me

The next day

I savor

and enjoy

the left-overs

and memories

of yesterday.

Curiosity by Alastair Reid

may have killed the cat; more likely 
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious 
to see what death was like, having no cause 
to go on licking paws, or fathering 
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious 
is dangerous enough. To distrust 
what is always said, what seems, 
to ask old questions, interfere in dreams, 
leave home, smell rats, have hunches 
do not endear cats to those doggy circles 
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches 
are the order of things, and where prevails 
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity 
will not cause us to die- 
only lack of it will. 
Never to want to see 
the other side of the hill 
or that improbable country 
where living is an idyll 
(although a probably hell) 
would kill us all. 
Only the curious 
have, if they live, a tale 
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible, 
are changeable, marry too many wives, 
desert their children, chill all dinner tables 
with tales of their nine lives. 
Well, they are lucky. Let them be 
nine-lived and contradictory, 
curious enough to change, prepared to pay 
the cat price, which is to die 
and die again and again, 
each time with no less pain. 
A cat minority of one 
is all that can be counted on 
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell 
on each return from hell 
is this: that dying is what the living do, 
that dying is what the loving do, 
and that dead dogs are those who do not know 
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

                Inspiring. Is not that everyone praises in a person? The ability to look to the horizon and not only admire the beauty of it (any dog can do that) but also wonder what is beyond that, and take it to the next level. Many fall into the normalcy of the everyday, not taking any chances, and wondering why they feel so empty. Others, however, realize that there can be more, if they are willing to pay for it. But in the end it was worth it, because the vibrancy is what life is all about. This can be easily explained with Eli Wiesel’s quote “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, its indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.” Great variance gives life its meaning, while entropy only gives a general life represented by the color beige.

            From a stylistic point of view, I liked also the format by Mr. Reid, with an almost introduction, a verse in pseudo-paragraph form, a second differently styled verse,  then the last verse much like verse one and the intro combined. Also, the metaphors contrasting the cats and the dogs was clever too.

The Possibility by James Fenton

The lizard on the wall, engrossed,
The sudden silence from the wood
Are telling me that I have lost
The possibility of good.

I know this flower is beautiful
And yesterday it seemed to be,
It opened like a crimson hand.
It was not beautiful to me.

I know that work is beautiful.
It is a boon. It is a good.
Unless my working were a way
Of squandering my solitude.

And solitude was beautiful
When I was sure that I was strong.
I thought it was a medium
In which to grow, but I was wrong.

The jays are swearing in the wood.
The lizard moves with ugly speed.
The flower closes like a fist.
The possibility recedes.

There is danger in believing solitude is the all encompassing escape, refuge, and inspiration of originality and creativity. And perhaps staying in a place for so long that the magical qualities are gone and becoming disenchanted with the once wonderful is just as important. This poem strikes a chord with me because I could see myself becoming in the future a botanist or forester, which would require immense amounts of solitude. The thing is, I am not scared of solitude, but rather I find comforting at times, just as at times a large crowd can become a frightening and/or dull place. I believe that Fenton was conveying the necessity of being brutally honest with ourselves, which is exemplified by stanza four, and especially when “I was sure that I was strong.” If we are not careful, we can isolate ourselves in an environment that is not suited for us “in which to grow,” but will stunt us and stifle us, whether that is in Isolation, like the environment of the poem, or in the opposite spectrum Publicity, which can be almost just like Isolation,  but with different lizards and flowers.

The Coming of Wisdom with Time by William Butler Yeats

Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.

Why would I choose such a short poem? Probably because something so small is often ultra-concentrated. Or maybe I just chose this poem because perhaps I’m feeling a bit melancholy. Is not the Truth the best thing for everyone? Is not it the most wonderful thing? Best I can tell, Yeats disagrees. To find out, one must pick the poem apart. With the poem being so short, one must take the poem one line at a time.

            “Though leaves are many, the root is one.” Straightforward. Any plant one is likely to find is made up of this. The leaves that in the summer convert the sun to usable energy, and the root, which stores the energy and collects nutrients from the ground.

            “Through all the lying days of my youth” The highlight is lying, which can mean either that he was telling un-truths in his youth, or that he (or the day, depending on who one interprets the subject is) is resting (beneath the shade of a tree perhaps?)

            “I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun” This brings an image of life, whether the swaying is celebration, dancing, or something else vibrant. Also, note the sun, which gives nourishment.

            “Now I may wither into the truth” Now the lying is revealed. No longer is he alive with a lie, but dead, dying, or at least retreating into himself, with the truth to stark for life to grow. The winter has entered his soul, and there is no sun.

The Halo That Would Not Light by Lucie Brock-Broido

When, after many years, the raptor beak   

Let loose of you,

                           He dropped your tiny body   

In the scarab-colored hollow

                           Of a carriage, left you like a finch   

Wrapped in its nest of linens wound

With linden leaves in a child’s cardboard box.   

Tonight the wind is hover-

Hunting as the leather seats of swings go back   

And forth with no one in them

As certain and invisible as

                           Red scarves silking endlessly

From a magician’s hollow hat

                           And the spectacular catastrophe

Of your endless childhood

                                                    Is done.

Oh what a despondent poem. From the very beginning, it has the sorrowful tone of something lost. And from the poem, the best guess of what is lost is a child. Take the title “The Halo That Would Not Light.” What beings have halos? Only things that are pure and gentile, ‘a little angel’ also comes to mind. But it would not light? Something is wrong. Brock-Broido uses these “once removed” clichés through her poem. (This sadness is not uncommon for her poems, a common subject of her poetry is death and mortality, according The Poetry Foundation.org) The second line says, “the raptor beak let loose of you.” What other Avian species are associated with birth? Only Raptor suggests something much more violent. After this, the childish diction continues, with “tiny body,” “carriage,” “linens,” among others, but is followed closely with more foreboding words, words that suggest at least dried-out-and-forgotten, like “scarab-colored hollow” (Egyptian mummy?), “linden leaves in a child’s cardboard box” (which by the way are heart shaped leaves) and no one in swings to be pushed. However, the real decisive factor is that the child never even lived is the very last line. If a childhood is endless, it means that the child never grew up. Moreover, if it is done, they are never going to grow up

A Personal Poem

Commentaries

Moves without ripples

Splashes with a

Devil may care

Lives for calm

Feels the tempest

Sees the

Tranquility

Flown

With the Outer Most

Stars

                        &

Find the Emptiness in Between

…***…

“

So You think you can tell

I hurt Myself Today

I know I’ll never be Lonely

Where was I?

A face of Puzzle Pieces

has a Madman

got a Quick hand

i can see the Magic in the Day

I’m on It

finding out about

it’s so re-arranged

WHY YOU IN SO MUCH HURRY-IS IT REALLY WORTH THE WORRY?

I’ll make out The Tides gonna turn

thefirstthingirememberihearditwasyourbirthday

There is a Light that will keep on shining

Just a little bit Shy

The Atmosphere is less than Perfect

Can You put your hands in my Head(?!)

Get a hold on Believe it

I Came To See The Light

Feelin Alright

if the course is right

\

…dlrow eht elur ot desu I…

/

That’s the way it seemed

something I Feel

No  Joke

͜͜

I don’t know how to tell

That

I’m at my wit’s End

”

“He’s like a Radio…”

Sure.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

I see in Color

Not because I always want to

My head hurts

I’ve Run

            For a Long Time

Just as much to as from

But mostly for the In-Between

To feel that feeling

of sweet-sour

Pain

and see it too.

A book is an aggregate escape

But it rips my Life away

pours some more in

a poor consistency

My life is pretty Plain

The Blind will see

Tomorrow
Is frightening

Infinity in more

or less

is

uncomprehendable

Mindbender

A spiral

Galaxy

Smallest of small

largest

to the edge of light

to come back

a clash

 of interest

more than that

paradigm

Red Shift

blue-shift

All the colors a-whirl

Proof that begs existence

All claim that, Don’t they?

                    t

All A sigh of a seashore.

Rockets Blazing

Cannons Razing

Fire Hazing

            the sky

Scholars Booking

Men Farming

People Looking

            to the sky

From the seed, Stem

Violent Flower

Bearing Fruit soon

I expect it to be sweet.

The mind is

Unfathomable

terribly deep well

A much better Window

But outside

It’s

so

foggy

            A Coating

            of

           

Stardust

…

Alternate Ending to Heart of Darkness

For all those that felt that Conrad did not end the story “right” with Marlow actually giving the truth, here is a possible ending in which he gives the truth to the Intended, coming in right after she asks him to give her Kurtz’s last words, and returning right before the perspective returns to the Narrator.

“I could feel the Darkness rising up, the fearful thing from the past colliding solidly into the present, trying to connect and re-live itself, to continue itself to infinity. Then I felt the fear, the pain, the insanity, the thing which had changed the memory of this Shade wrapped in the shadows into something else, something that would become the Kurtz I thought I knew, from the amount I could glean from the instants I felt his presence, this being, that had left the earth long before I would hear of him in the Darkness.

“Then I turned to her, and told her the feeling that was all around. The rising thing that had rose up in Kurtz at his last, ‘The Horror, the Horror.’

“She looked at me first as if this was impossible, that would not his beloved’s name be the only thing he could have thought at his lowest? Then, she changed, to question why I would commit such a crime as to give the painful, sharp Truth, which cut through all veils, and then her, too, like a bright, flashing saber. At last, she finished with understanding, as if she actually understood what Kurtz had meant in his view from and into the abyss, that the only horror was that he could not be there with her then in the present.

“She then turned, lost in thought, back into the shadowy recesses of the room, to dwell on her now seemingly complete memory of her devoted.

“I turned and left after as she did, horrified at what I had done, my mind petrified in what I could have done…”

Inoculation by Susan Donnelly

Cotton Mather studied small pox for a while,

instead of sin.  Boston was rife with it.

Not being ill himself, thank Providence,

but one day asking his slave, Onesimus,

if he’d ever had the pox.  To which Onesimus replied,

“Yes and No.”  Not insubordinate

or anything of the kind, but playful, or perhaps

musing, as one saying to another:

“Consider how a man

can take inside all manner of disease

and still survive.”

Then, graciously, when Mather asked again:

My mother bore me in the southern wild.

She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived

to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave.

           

This is such a rich poem. It is hilarious. But maybe I see that because I find satire and irony funny. And this poem is full of it. It seems every two lines or so, there is a spike that jabs at the point of life, and poor Cotton Mather is at the tail end of every joke. However, perhaps the most ironic point about it, and the subject of the poem, is the slave Onesimus. Biblically, Onesimus was a slave that ran away from his master, and encountered and became good friends with Paul the Apostle. Why he becomes worth notice in the Bible is because he becomes “useful” to Paul and the early Church. Here is the quote that mentions him.

“Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. It is as none other than Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— that I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.” Philemon 1:8-10

The ironic thing is that in Greek, onesimus means useful. So ‘formerly Useful was useless to you, but now Useful has become useful to you and to me.’ This is all meant to illustrate the fact that Onesimus to Mather was all that his name implied: Useful. It’s the end that brings this home, to be freed young only to become a ‘useful’ slave, and becoming an example to free others.

The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden---
     Send forth the best ye breed---
Go bind your sons to exile
     To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
     On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
     Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
     And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
     An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
     And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
     And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
     The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
     Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
     The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
     The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
     And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
     The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
     (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
     Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
     Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
     To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
     By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
     Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     Have done with childish days--
The lightly proffered laurel,
     The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
     Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
     The judgment of your peers!

What a poem that can be interpreted (or misinterpreted) in so many ways. One, on the surface, can understand this poem as a promotion of imperialize or colonization. I, in my interpretation, disagree. I see this poem not as a promotion, but instructions once did (perhaps it would have been better to call it ‘The More Fortunate’s Burden’ to avoid certain stigmas an confusion, but it does not have the same ring, nor were there the stigmas stigmas back then.) Nowhere in the poem does it say that one should go out and capture people and lands. The closest it comes to promoting this is "Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child." and "The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go make them with your living." However, the people are newly caught, not to be caught, and the new land does not have the roads and ports for they are not created yet. This is post-acquisition, not pre. 

            So what is one to do with a newly obtained land? That is what the poem is driving at, what one is obligated to do, not to abuse, subjugate, or misuse, but to lift up, empower, and free. Kipling even warns that it will not be easy, that the natives will probably hate anyone involved with their freeing, but his allusion to the Hebrews in “‘Why brought ye us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?’” assures that it’s for the best, to give them voice in the first place. To thanklessly fight the maladies of the ‘un-developed’ world will be reward in itself. In a way, he is almost daring a power to see if they can take up new land, do the right thing, and not get lost in persecution and slavery.

Mr Fear by Lawrence Raab

He follows us, he keeps track.
Each day his lists are longer.
Here, death. And here,
something like it.

Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams
what do you have for me tonight?
And he looks through his sack,
his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds
the right one. Maybe he's sorry.
Tell me, Mr. Fear,
what must I carry

away from your dream.
Make it small, please
Let it fit in my pocket,
let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.
Fear, let me have
a small brown bat
and a purse of crickets

like the ones I heard
singing last night
out there in the stubbly field
before I slept, and met you.

            What I love about this poem is it reminds me so much of Ray Bradbury’s themes on fear. Bradbury is perhaps one of my favorite authors, and reading of Mr. Fear and “a small brown bat and a purse of crickets” brings to mind “The Next in Line” or The Halloween Tree. Mr. Fear knowing what scares us, always bringing the future or the past (“like the ones I heard last night”) out to frighten us about what is out in the dark (“stubbly field”) or what is inside.

More specific to the poem, I find it clever how the author personifies those nightmares that happen, when something that happened during the day (“He follows us”) or an old memory (“he keeps track”) resurfaces as a bad dream at night (“what do you have for me tonight?”) Thankfully, we mostly forget the dreams or mind makes up during the night (“Let it fit in my pocket, let it fall through the hole in my pocket”) but occasionally we remember those seemingly innocent things of the day turn absurdly sinister at night that only we understand.