We’ve been featuring recently transcripts from a class given by Allen at Naropa on April 19, 1991 – on William Blake, (notably his “Auguries of Innocence“). We’ll feature today transcription from the very beginning of that class, before he gets on to properly discussing Blake. His subject this time is lyrics from another poet (whose identity he reveals after a while) – his father!
AG: I would like to read a couple of lyrics to begin with that are models on the example of A.E. Housman, by a later writer.
Night In Silver
“The night is set in silver,/The night is locked in pearl./ In all the windless silence/There is no leaf to curl./ The trees are mailed in silver,/They stand succinct and stark, /while all their branches scribble/ Silver upon the dark./ And with a shining crystal/ All shingled is the shed./ Each icicle shows in it/A moon is tenanted./ The hush of night unbroken/ Is all in silver set,/ Too glimmering and lovely/ For any epithet.”
Double World
“I never pass a wayside pond/ But I must pause to see unfurled/ The mirrored trees and sky beyond/ Repeated in a double world./ And since the years are much too slight/ And much too small the heart of man,/ I’ll lean upon this double sight/ For all the loveliness I can.”
He’s actually using the wayside pond, “the years are much too slight,” “for all the loveliness I can,” is actually a direct echo of Housman.
This (next) is Housman-esque, but Shakespearian Housman-esque:
I Met A Caterpillar
“A yellow caterpillar moved/ In slow installments through the grass/ I thought I’d have a chat with him/ And stopped to question how he was./ Surprised, it was a look of fear/ I saw the caterpillar don./ And yet I asked, “How do you glide/ So many feet you walk upon?” Something he had against me there -/ He sniffed suspicion on the wind;/ It must have been a branch I held. – No olive one but stripped and thinned./ Mistrust made him laconic then./ Thinking my branch was enmity,/The caterpillar crept away/ In hurried ripples to a tree./ Before he left he raised his head,/ As if to get a better view./He shrank a bit and then he said,/ “How do you manage only two?”
So, let’s see what else there is. There’s one other not bad:
Funeral
“The mockery of the sunlight/ Was brazen and bizarre./ Through aisles of ironies/ We rode in the callous car. We shrank to hear, offensive/ The garrulous wheel converse./ Then loud on the gravel approaches,/ Hissed the noisy hearse. Soon to the pick and shovel,/ “Quiet”, demurred the ground./ When clods dropped on her coffin. “Forever”, said the sound.”
So those are poems written by my father, actually. So I grew up with this form of verse. That’s where it, that’s why I have it built into my bones as kind of rhythmics, but I think probably the reason I’m good at free verse is that I have this kind of variety of meters inside, built into my nervous system from my father’s activity.
There was one very funny one that I still like which is, it’s, let’s see now, “Monometer” … you know, dimeter, trimeter, quad … tetrameter. So this is a thing called “Terse” – So it’s written in iambic monometer – iam –dah da, dah da, dah da, dah da, dah da … monometer, each line one, each line one foot:
Terse
“When terse/ Is verse,/ Its zest/ Is best, /So I/ Shall try/ To hammer/ My stammer/ And beat/ It neat/ Exact,/ Compact – / To file/ My style/ And pare/ It bare,/ And with/ More pith/ Possess/ With less/ Still more/ A core.”
Not bad, actually. I used to hate his poetry but now that he’s dead it’s not so bad. I didn’t hate it but I did fight with him quite a bit.
But his models, then, were Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eleanor Wylie, Edward Arlington Robinson. Those are poets you may not have heard of but are in the standard American anthologies of the early part of the century. But, above all, A.E. Housman.
And then “Golden lads and girls all must like chimney sweepers come to dust ...” The Shakespeare rhythms and the Shakespeare songs and the sonnets. That was his style and so it was built into his sensibility and got built into mine also. So, I would say, unless you can get with these meters, some way or other, some way of your own, you’re not in a very good position to be writing, not in such a great position anyway, to be writing free verse, ’cause you won’t have the.. some sense, some alternative regularity to beat your head on or check out.
to be continued