‘Tis the final day of National Poetry Month for 2022! I always enjoy Poetry Month a great deal and come out of it resolving to read more poetry throughout the year, and even though I do read quite a bit of it, somehow I always feel that it’s not enough. I do plan to post more about poetry, moving forward. Maybe I’ll even make poetry a regular feature in the newsletter I’m planning to launch this summer. [makes note about that] [also makes note to write about the newsletter I’m planning to launch this summer]

We’ll close out the month with a bit of a lightening of the mood. But first, a shot is needed across the bow of the continually dark-and-grim tone in our collective approach to Art. I’ve written about these matters before and will doubtless do so again, but here now is a non-poetic excerpt from the collection The Norton Book of Light Verse, by the book’s editor, Russell Baker:

The point of all this is that light verse really needs no introduction because we have known it from the cradle and should be at ease with it. Most of us, indeed, probably are at ease with it and can even recite a limerick or two from memory. What is easily enjoyed, however, must often defend itself against charges of low aspirations.

The very term “light verse” suggests inferiority, for in the Anglo-Saxon world at least, lightness is considered contemptible, except in the female figure. Such terms as “light-hearted”, “lightweight”, and “light entertainment” are little sneers meant to caution us against people and things that are, well, not quite…worthy.

We are dealing with the ancient prejudice against comedy, which is part of the residue of Puritanism, a doctrine defined by H.L. Mencken as the terrible suspicion that somebody somewhere may be having a good time. Thus the term “light verse” is universally accepted, even by poets who should know better, as poetry’s equivalent to the surgeon-general’s warning about cigarettes:

“Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.”

You will note that there are no collections of “heavy verse” or of “ponderous verse”, though there is more than enough around to past up a dozen volumes. Nor will you ever see an “Anthology of Serious Verse” or “A Compendium of Solemn Verse”.

The explanation is that the public today expects poetry to be heavy, ponderous, serious, or solemn. Why confirm their worst fears? The public’s position on this, let me hasten to say, is badly outdated. Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O’Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

I speak here with some humility, because I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world. Assembling this collection, though, introduced me to dozens of contemporary poets whose work is full of wonders. Most of them are not much read. That’s a pity because it seems to me that, contrary to popular supposition, this is a good age for poetry in America.

Most of these contemporary poets do not write verse that asks to be classified as “serious” or “light”. When doing their work they obviously find it unnecessary, perhaps impossible, to distinguish between light and heavy. Perhaps this is what makes them feel so in touch; the world we have made here at the end of the twentieth century is simultaneously light and serious, grave and absurd. Our terrible tragedy is also our low comedy, and vice versa.

Some of this new poetry is very serious indeed, yet makes me smile; some of it reads light enough, but turns weighty in the digestive system.

Oh, how I could not possibly agree with that more! I’m always thrilled to find someone stating my position, in more eloquent terms than I can muster, about the American tendency nowadays to consistently value darkness over light in our art. I know people who, when asked to name their favorite books or movies or teevee series, will rattle off a list of very dark and grim works without a single comedy among the lot. Comedy films almost never win Best Picture, and even in genre circles the prejudice stands: ask a Star Wars fan why they think The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie in the saga, I flat-out guarantee that the first words out of their mouth will be something along the lines of “It’s darker….”

Darkness is fine. I like darkness, and I’ve written some of it. In fact, just this week I was struggling with a very dark scene that traumatizes a couple of my characters. But darkness is just a quality that we use once in a while. It’s a tool in the shed, a spice in the cabinet, a color on the palette, whichever metaphor you wish. Our error is to conflate darkness with quality, and that does harm to our art and to ourselves.

And I suppose, given Mr. Baker’s words quoted above, that I should revise my estimations for how recent a phenomenon this is, because The Norton Book of Light Verse came out in 1986. Those words, which apply perfectly well to our popular culture here in 2022, are almost forty years old.

(By the way, I just looked up Mr. Baker, and it turns out he died in 2019, at the age of 93. On the basis of this introduction, I’m suddenly interested in looking up his other work, even moreso after reading him described as “like some fourth century citizen of Rome who is amused and intrigued by the Empire’s collapse but who still cares enough to mock the stupidities that are hastening its end.” Oh, how I relate to that….)

And now, some actual verse. I’m basically thumbing through Mr. Baker’s anthology and choosing poems almost at random. Enjoy!

“Advice”, by Langston Hughes

Folks I’m telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean–
so get yourself
a little loving
in between.

“The Star System”, by Richard Wilbur

When you’re a white-hot youth, emit the rays
Which, now unmarked, shall dazzle future days.
Burn for the joy of it, and waste no juice
On hopes of prompt discovery. Produce!

Then, white with years, live wisely and survive,
Thus you may be on hand when you arrive,
And, like Antares, rosily dilate,
And for a time be gaseous and great.

“New Jersey Turnpike”, by Richard Cumbie

It’s been this way for some time:

  misguided through the middle
  to view the worst of it

  a dime for my waste at the
  Walt Whitman service station

  Howard Johnson’s over light
    (the flavor of America)
  no truckers in sight

I paid graciously to be allowed Delaware.

“From a London Bookshop”, anonymous

Holy Scripture, Write Divine,
Leather bound, at one and nine,
Satan trembles when he sees
Bibles sold as cheap as these.

“Against Broccoli”, by Roy Blount, Jr.

The local groceries are all out of broccoli,
Loccoli.

“Local Note”, by Arthur Guiterman

In Sparkhill buried lies that man of mark
  Who brought the Obelisk to Central Park,
Redoubtable Commander H.H. Gorringe,
  Whose name supplies to long-sought rhyme
  for ‘orange’.

“Inventory”, by Dorothy Parker

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d be better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

“On Tomato Ketchup”, anonymous

If you do not shake the bottle,
None’ll come, and then a lot’ll.

“Reflections on Ice-Breaking”, by Ogden Nash

Candy
is dandy
But liquor
is quicker.

“The Fool and the Poet”, by Alexander Pope

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

That’ll do it. Keep reading poetry, folks–your literary world will be better for it!

Poet Ethridge Knight. Image from DailyKos.com

Etheridge Knight was a Black poet who lived 1931-1991. His rise to poetic prominence came via a book of poems he wrote while incarcerated for robbery, Poems from Prison. This ended up being a theme in Knight’s work, as he produced another collection called Black Voices from Prison, in which he collected his own works plus works from others. Knight was born April 19, which makes this his birth-month; in nine years we will reach his centennial.

I found Knight’s work via selections in a recent book acquisition, the Library of America’s African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song. The work of Knight’s that is featured in that book spotlight hard, almost harsh rhythms in the verse; these are poems that challenge one to speak them aloud and hear the pain inherent in the American Black experience and the fact that for many in that community, the reality is a carceral state that is inherently punitive in ways that white people simply don’t experience.

I sometimes wonder if white people look at people like Etheridge Knight and use their examples to reinforce the wrong conclusions: “See, if you do your time and then work hard, look at what you can accomplish!” and all that sort of thing. We don’t take nearly enough account of having made a world where the feelings that Etheridge Knight, and so many others, end up expressing should be experienced by anyone at all.

Here are two poems by Etheridge Knight.

“Haiku”

1

Eastern guard tower

glints in sunset; convicts rest

like lizards on rocks.

2

The piano man

is stingy, at 3 A.M.

his songs drop like plum.

3

Morning sun slants cell.

Drunks stagger like cripple flies

On jailhouse floor.

4

To write a blues song

is to regiment riots

and pluck gems from graves.

5

A bare pecan tree

slips a pencil shadow down

a moonlit snow slope.

6

The falling snow flakes

Cannot blunt the hard aches nor

Match the steel stillness.

7

Under moon shadows

A tall boy flashes knife and

Slices star bright ice.

8

In the August grass

Struck by the last rays of sun

The cracked teacup screams.

9

Making jazz swing in

Seventeen syllables AIN’T

No square poet’s job.

Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/424816177347725860/

I’m just going to get out of the poem’s way today. Listen to Loreena McKennit’s classic setting afterward!

“The Highwayman”, by Alfred Noyes

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

         His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.

He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,

But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,

Then look for me by moonlight,

         Watch for me by moonlight,

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

         (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;

And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,

When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,

A red-coat troop came marching—

         Marching—marching—

King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.

But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

There was death at every window;

         And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.

They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!

“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—

Look for me by moonlight;

         Watch for me by moonlight;

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years

Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,

         Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.

Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.

She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;

For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

         Blank and bare in the moonlight;

And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

The highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!

Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,

Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

         Her musket shattered the moonlight,

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood

Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!

Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear

How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

         The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.

Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;

When they shot him down on the highway,

         Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

.       .       .

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

A highwayman comes riding—

         Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.

He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.