थे इस्ले ऑफ़ होप

We went in silence,
Together,
To the cold marsh,
In the winter night,
To dip our sins
In clarity,
In brisk, icy freedom.
Dressed in white,
Gossamer,
Shimmering samite,
We go down together,
And pause
To breathe in the event
To breathe in together,
Each other.

Sunrise

Here we sit
You and I and them
The they of ethereal ambitions
We
The us
Of drunken stupors
Of idealistic rants
Gentle emotions
Raked
And wandering
Towards a sunrise on an apocalypse
We might have two
Seconds of a grandeur
Of a moment to see
And an instant to feel
Something like the truth

The Elements of Style

“Either we are builders
Or we are nothing more than poets
And philosophers in coffee-shops”

And we look to each other
The moments slipping by
In thoughtful connections

And wasting away
Time immemorial
Until we are standing
Alone in the thickness
Of our doubt

Whizzed by birds
And bats
And bees
And allusions to fate
That we will never have

A fire and an instant
A spark and an eternity
And we are dying
Beneath the weight of our own dreams.

The Process

We write
We send
We sit
We wait

No hesitation
No cumbersome guilt

And every letter
Coming back
Every “we are sorry”
Every time we hear “no”

We drink
We cry
We scream
We die a little

And then

We write
We send
We sit
We wait

july 4th

Here I am, here we are, standing beneath the same olden oaks and Spanish moss that have respired with Washington, and shaded Sherman’s conflagrations long enough to get him drunk on Chatham Artillery punch. They have heard the two hundred summers of mock cannon fire, and do they still shudder? Do we tremble together, you and me, and these thousands of oaken giants to hear the gunpowder concoctions glow vivid in midair? What of these 60,000 tourists, our cities guests, do they guess who once stood where their feet hold fast? Do we all bend an ear in timid anticipation and pause with widened eye to glint a flash of color from over rooftops? Do we forget the terror that the soldiers felt, at every firing, every combustion of that volatile brew? Like the foretold equestrians come to reap all that life has sown these cannon blazing brilliant in a near midnight sky seem a paltry semblance to all afore fallen, and my gaze is distracted by the near living at my side. Someone screams, “I was there, I felt the cannon’s roar”. The crowd around him laughs a moment, then, in unison returns their gaze to the blue and yellow detonations. Do we think, as surely they must have, “We Are Here! This moment is ours”. Another thunderous clap resounds above us. Ear splitting sound, after ear splitting sound and we stand in awe, together.
As other’s eyes stay fixed towards the proverbial fiery heavens, mine gazed lazily upon the throng. The sultry southern air carries all our breathing just below the falling gunpowder. In and out, soft and effortlessly. The scent of cheap cologne, wafts towards me, overpowering the sweat and beer, the gunpowder and magnolia blooms. The Marine in front of me, speedily purchased the last bottle available in an airport, moments before slipping out of one uniform and into another, the one that includes Dark Wash 505s, an ironed white polo and a consummating Ed Hardy baseball cap. He looks good and smells like a quick night waiting to happen. A moment of fervor, conjured and poised, frozen beneath a well-trained exterior. I cannot help but watch the way he holds his arms, crossed fastly against his chest, and his stance, the way his legs hold like defiant pillars amidst the din.
The smoke travels up and around us, through branches to a clear night sky, and beyond us all sits the moon. As she has for millennia, witness to us all, since the first.
The Vietnam Veteran is yelling again. This time I am the only one who hears. “I was holding his head as he drew his final breath. I watched them come over the hill. I see them everywhere. Every light, every slamming door, every blessed firework above our heads tonight, I can see him die.” You are standing next to me and as the finally starts, the air now thick beyond drawing breaths, you grab my hand, gently grasping at some ideal. The sound envelops all others, relinquishing the sense of hearing to preternatural realms. All that we see are the explosions in the sky. You mouth something and I look at your profile against the colors. I think I hear you. I think I hear the fireworks screaming an agonizing truth, “That was the sound of Jefferson’s heart”.
I look forward towards a clinking, clacking metal sound… The marine is reaching for the chain around his neck, an icon known nationwide, and in the light of the last explosion’s light, I see him, the well-camouflaged marine, lift his tags, his labels of U.S. property, to his lips and there they linger in a forgiving exchange.

Sublimity and the Inevitable Phrasing of Romantic Poetry

“The ancient idea of the Sublime, as set forth by the Hellenistic critic we call ‘Longinus,’ seems to [be] the origin of [the] expectation that great poetry will possess an inevitability of phrasing. …In the experience of the Sublime we apprehend a greatness to which we respond by a desire for identification, so that we will become what we behold” (Bloom 21). For Keats, Shelley, and Byron there is a distinct sense of this ideal. Their words and visions are dedicated to a sagacity of revolution and prophetic thought intended to be possess-able by the reader, which we identify in their carefully crafted words and vision. In this prophetic state of mind there is the knowledge of the physical revolution, the storming of the Bastille and the eradication of the French Monarchy, and taking this physical revolution to heart writers saw the slate had been wiped clean, that there was a space to be filled and they took it as their duty. The musings of these writers are not without dark, Gothic tones which help to temper what might otherwise be an assortment of ambivalent and unapproachable ideals. Keats writes of the immortal moment, Shelley of the mortal quest, and Byron of the un-heroic hero. These authors present the reader with moments and stories that, while highlighting the combination of the perfection of language, the possibility of the poetic voice to explore the revolutionary spirit, and the aesthetic darkness of the Gothic do so through the success of including the reader in their experience.
The endeavor to include the reader means that these poets are responsible for coalescing thoughts into words and phrases in a manner so as to create what Harold Bloom attributes to only the most perfect of poems, inevitable phrasing. He alleges that great poetry has unavoidable word choices, that great poets know their words are the only possible choice for their poems. This thought is not new to Bloom, as early as Aristotle’s dramatic and poetic critique there was present the idea that a piece of a whole must be essential to the perfection of the work, and if that piece should prove non-essential then it never was a piece at all. It then follows that poetry which is striving to attain a sense that the reader is part of the experience in a way that follows with the revision of the Hellenistic ideals that pervaded the Romantic period would need, by definition to fulfill this ideal.
John Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” utilizes the aforementioned elements of the Hellenistic High Romantics, in a way that illustrates the Aristotelian dramatic principle and Harold Bloom’s assertion. The first way in which this poem illustrates the points is in the avant-garde voice. The revolutionary spirit is not at once present in the forthright words of the poem. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” does not indicate the revolution as a literal event, but induces it as a revolution on the contemporary thoughts as emerges from the evocation of diametric entities within the poem. In this poem Keats asserts a relationship between the immortal moments depicted on the Urn and the mortal moments in which he and all humans live.
As the poem begins Keats leads into the opposing forces present in the poem with the lines of question “What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? /What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? (NAEL 905, 8-10). Thus Keats aligns our interests with the possibility of finding answers to these questions. This questing mood is directed towards duality in the next stanza with the line “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ are sweeter” (NAEL 905, 11-12). Now we are intrigued, and Keats pulls us along with the introduction of the complex idea of this duality existing in the realm of mortality. He speaks of the figures on the urn, “She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss/ For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair” (NAEL 905, 19-20). With these lines there is a tinge of pain borne in the understanding that while the woman, the object of the affection will not wilt, the bloom forever fair, the lover will never know that touch, that intimate moment of culmination of erotic fervor is unattainable. This painful realization is carried on in the lines “Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu” (NAEL 905, 22) where we realize that the natural order of life has been disturbed, there is no autumnal season in these lives. Then again we visit this idea in the last stanza of the poem when Keats exclaims “Cold Pastoral”. Here is the introduction of the death scene through the use of two conflicting terms. Up to this utterance there has been affirmation after affirmation of the state of immortality upon the urn, it is here that the narrative voice realizes that they will die, we will die and the urn will go on.
Bloom and Aristotle thought of such precise wording, one missing and the entirety of the piece changes, but one must also think of the precision used in the application of punctuation in a poem. Keats’s line “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty” (NAEL 906, 49) is an example of where punctuation can change the entire meaning of the poem. It was in the original publication of this piece that there were quotations, later that year when published in Annals of the Fine Arts the quotations had been removed. The shift in meaning cannot go unobserved. In the original printing, with the quotation marks, the argument could be made for the urn speaking to the narrator, without the quotes the line may just be another narrative observation. Each interpretation ads an element to the poem which is imperceptible in the other option, illustrating the critical nature of the poet’s choice.
This distinct control over perception, Keats ability to move us as he wills until we see his meaning is what aligns Keats with the great poets of all time. His ability to manipulate a fictional object into a profound statement on duality and mortality through the use of divergent elements makes him a visionary. It is the marriage of all of these abilities with precision word choices that makes Keats a voice of revolution and a Romantic that epitomizes the Aristotelian ideal of construction.
In the vein of upheaval Percy Bysshe Shelley presents us with a sense of the radical spirit, searching for the answers and revelations which were promised by the upheaval of the status-quo, but when the French revolution turned bloody and the results which had been sought were not attained the people were left still wandering. This aspect of the revolutionary tone of Romanticism is depicted most eloquently by Shelley’s poem “Alastor”. While holding true to the Aristotelian principles of unavoidable phrasing he shows the mortal ends to what seems an unending quest for fleeting moments of perfection. Shelley asserted that this work was a most complex piece when he himself said that it tangles with “‘doubtful knowledge’ --- matters that are humanly essential but in which no certainty is humanly possible” (NAEL 745). Even a poet in full knowledge of the challenge at hand would be composing a less than perfect piece if not for their capacity to utilize the language towards the execution of an idyllic string of words which showcase the poet’s intention without compromise when taking on a challenge as portentous as this.
In the introduction to the poem Shelley says of the bard in the piece “He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. …the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself.” (NAEL 746) Shelley then delves into this thought in the first stanzas of his poem, showing that the poet so insatiate with principal learning goes into the world to see what can be learned from experience. With precise terms Shelley says “When early youth had past, he left/ His cold fireside and alienated home/ To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands” (NAEL 749, 75-77). With these words Shelley illustrates what his preface described. Once the reader knows that the poet in the poem is so alienated and inadequately fulfilled by his knowledge of the world, the reader begins to expect an answer. What does this poet do? This is the affliction visited upon the reader by Shelley’s particular language, we are now with the main character, and we begin to share that feeling of insatiate longing.
As the poet continues his drifting he makes his way to the greatest of monuments of man. “His wandering step/ Obedient to high thoughts, has visited/ The awful ruins of he days of old” (NAEL 749, 106-108) and in going to such places the poet takes us with him. We see Athens, Tyre, Balbec, These, Babylon, we see all these monuments with him and are awestruck at the idea of the epitome of human creativity and construction. As the poet passes these sights and is yet unquenched we too go with him. It is throughout the next stanzas that we begin to understand the severity of the struggle the poet is facing.
Shelley tells the reader that this poet ignored the tangible beauties of a girl enamored with him and in doing so missed the connection of human intimacy, which was the knowledge that the poet had been missing. In the night, Shelley tells us “A vision on his sleep/ There came, a dream of hopes that never yet/ Had flushed his cheeks” (NAEL 750, 149-151). Shelley has now, in three lines illuminated the struggle of the poet. This of intimacy is fleeting and starts the poet on his pursuit, which is to be as lonely and as cold a quest as Frankenstein’s. Shelley writes

The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
The Distinct valley and the vacant woods,
Spread round him where he stood. (NAEL 751, 193-196)

Shelley maintains this motif through to the poem’s end. As he does so he continues to use choice words “mocking”, “strange charms”, “immeasurable”, “slimy caverns”, “grey precipice”, “musical motions”, “black gulphs[sic]”, “yawning caves”, and others so evocative of precise emotional responses which are often at odds with one another until we, as readers, take on the sense of frustration and dismay with which the central character is filled. This construction technique comes to a climax in the lines “When on the threshold of the green recess/ The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death/ Was on him” (NAEL 761, 625- 627). We know now that this journey has led only to the ironic demise of the poet, much as the questing and ideals that led to the beginning of the revolution were only to end in the fatality of hundreds and the ruin of an empire.
From this grim perspective came, arguably, the most illustrious of the Romantic voices, that of Lord Byron. Byron’s poetry included an element of himself which readers of the day attached to immediately. This character, the Byronic Hero also known as the Satanic Hero, has become synonymous with the romantic ideals of revolution and the counter-culture of the period. The Byronic Hero is the ultimate un-hero. These characters are aloof, cunning, with little or no respect for cultural norms and expectations, they are exceedingly handsome, exceptionally intelligent, sophisticated, narcissistic, adaptable, and possibly above all they have made a choice to be apart from society, either physically or mentally they are isolated. The Byronic hero represents the throws of the revolution paired with the Gothic nuances of obscurity and mystery. To pull off the complex nature of the Byronic Hero, Byron must pair all the sensibilities of the Romantic period as aforementioned with the poetic intelligences of the Aristotelian doctrine. In his dramatic poem “Manfred” Byron showcases all these elements and in doing so constructs “[a] most impressive representation of the Byronic Hero” (NAEL 636).
To begin the poem Byron quotes Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, “There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.5. 168-69) “Manfred” is at once cast in a dark light of question and intrigue. This is Byron’s first perfect choice of phrasing. If this introduction had been of another nature, or had not existed the reader would not enter into the poem with the same pretense of darkness and question. Byron makes us ask ourselves what there may be beyond our perceptions and philosophies, essential in establishing the Gothic elements and the groundwork from which the Byronic Hero emerges. As the poem builds Byron makes another essential phrasing choice when Manfred states “I have had my foes, / And none have baffled, many fallen before me” (NAEL 637, 19-20). Here Byron sows the seeds of egoism when, through the use of precise language he lets the reader be privy to the way Manfred views those who have and would oppose him. This statement can also be tied to the idea of the revolutionary spirit of the era which the Byronic Hero unabashedly personifies. Byron continues the development of this dramatis persona when Manfred, in seeking to explain the state of the world around him utters “The burning wreck of a demolish’d world, / A wandering hell in the eternal space” (NAEL 637,45-46).
As the poem progresses Byron makes more calculated choices about the journey upon which he is taking the reader. He shows Manfred communing with otherworldly spirits, sets him in the wilderness apart from humanity, has Manfred argue with an abbot over the principles of religion, and finally had Manfred confess his crimes and troubles with integrity all the while deliberately showing him to be unaffected by the temptations of ultimate darkness as well as the contrivances of the status quo. While all these episodes in the dramatic poem are well and purposefully worded to perfect affect Byron’s ultimate work of unavoidable phrasing comes in the last lines of the poem. Manfred says to the elderly Abbot who is counseling him in hopes of averting Manfred’s suicide attempt, “Old man! ‘tis not so difficult to die” (NAEL 668, 151). This line is so essential to the poem that when it was originally omitted in a publishing Byron retorted by telling the publisher that “You have destroyed the whole effect and moral of the poem by omitting the last line of Manfred’s speaking” (NAEL 668).
This statement makes total the importance which the poets of the Romantic period placed on their words, especially Keats, Shelley, and Byron. Each word is an essential piece in the culmination of emotion, character, and revolution which the High Hellenistic Romantics sought to attain. Remove a single phrase, neigh word, and you alter forever the work proving by Aristotelian assertions, and Bloom’s measures that these works are of the most elevated status. This superiority is shown by their ability to craft poetry which creates an experience for the reader where they are transported with the poet, breaking the limitations of understanding through language. These poets create the Sublime experience of the High Hellenistic Romantic movement.

Lost Moments, Found Somewhere in the Blitz

Mirrored perspective . . . mirrored and possessed, like a heart clenching its fists at the world, strangle me slowly, strangle me softly, and bring me down in a throw of ecstasy. . I need you one more time to reject my advances, and warn me away, back into introspection that cannot be helped, user user user, a user and a pusher, an enabler and a conduit, come screeching to a stop in their over the top personalities as I tell them they want the wrong things at the wrong prices, their lives were saved by ions and protons but they don't even understand the atom, Adam, the genesis or the Adamic language of compassion. . . . there is a wood in a world far from here or near to here depending on where here is, and in this wood the trees engulf you, the smell of damp and fertile earth tilled the many millennia by the roots of giants which no longer sway in the wind but bend with the earth's slow turn, standing in this wood there is a sound of creatures whispering and their whispers are carried to you on the thick moisture of the forest, breathing in deeply drinking in this air there is a sense of the supremacy, of the force of these living behemoths that have engulfed you, and in the moment you lose control, you give over to the knowledge that you are an animal, that you are ancient as the earth, that your energy has been around since the dawn of time, you are falling under the spell of the innate world and falling into indulgent and appreciative thought, there was no beginning there is no end, this is the forever. . . . .

Then in the moment closest to nirvana, the shrill voice of a car horn comes from somewhere miles away, and disgust fills every pore of your being in the realization that somewhere along the line we forgot we are eternal, somewhere along the eras we forgot we are animals.

Equal Rights Don't Include Bank Accounts

Do you feel it? The alien itch has arrived…. I CANNOT read, I cannot think, I cannot understand …. I feel like this is the beginning to the worst of the best of the beat mantra, and yet I know nothing of this world… eat well of this world so that the universe is within you and that there will be no judgment, so that there is nothing you have not seen, nothing you have not known…. And always look into the universal, into the heavens with a sense that wonders never cease and sometimes the wonder isn’t cast towards a bumbling moron who has more money than you would ever need to survive but insists on buying crap James Patterson novels because they reinforce the idiotic dogmas and totalitarian idealist movements founded in corruption…. Where silence from the intelligent is taken as acceptance, not what it really is…. A mortification of the brain, a stripping of the soul, a modern enactment of psychomachia… taking all vile natures to a trial held behind the circle K and enforced with stolen baseball bats and for-sale signs… violent? Sure….. but so is our repression….

Mr. Aristotle, would you be so kind?

Its all gone quiet. My heart. My head. The pounding notion I felt when the neighbor would stick her head out the window to watch me check the mail. All gone quiet. Grey grey skies, that look heavy like they are waiting for the funeral. But there isn’t any. There isn’t anything. Or anyone. That’s a lie, there is someone. And I am watching him carefully. Drink his coffee. And look up at me between drawing well plotted lines on graph paper. When did we first meet? Do you remember what you said? The first time I left you standing alone at the door? He remembers. And he smiles. He wants to kiss me. But just looks at me. And pleads for me to tell him, yes, no…anything. He has eyes that dance when they look at me, and I know they dance only for me. I know he means everything he has ever said to me, and I know he will always mean everything he has ever said, A man of little words. But the knowing runs two ways and He knows I am not happy with this reserve. And his eyes are sad, they too are waiting for a funeral.

River Daughters

It has been raining, yesterday and today. Leaving a heaviness in the air, that is lifting, as the sun moves to its final place today. Looking over the river, I notice the tugboats, the muddy, soot colored shores, ancient oaks and white pines heavy with dew already settling and tree frogs starting their chorus. The shrimp-boats are coming in, a few crabbers. I hear the engines, but I hear the laughing of the men on board and I smell the cigarettes that hang loosely on lips and from hands. These same lips and these same hands from which they have hung for lifetimes. Round women with colorful cloths wrapped around their long hair come to the edge of windows and finally to the edge of the dock. They haggle, laughing then scolding the men, who in turn laugh and scold the round women. Tall daughters follow, with tight jeans that do not reach all the way down, showing slender ankles, some with silver chains dangling down by bare soles, some with bright black tattoos ecclesiastically wrapped around their delicate leg. The sun is fading swiftly, I hear the men on the boats telling me so. And they are right. Quickly the boats are unloaded and more quickly the river walk is filling with humming. Steady humming of bottles opening, music wafting from bars, mugs sitting, slamming on wood, pool cues put in motion, shoes on cobblestone, and the easy, easy laughter of tall daughters as they carry shellfish to restaurant kitchens.

The Girls from the Girls

I am sitting, watching from over the top of my book, between notes from a front porch on a quiet, southern street cooling in an afternoon breeze. My legs hang over the edge just brushing the petals of columbines and cornflowers. A clear, clean sound cuts the air, more of a buzz than a bell, distinct, School Is Out. And a swarm, what seems to be hundreds, children fill the space, the street, the silence. Faces and voices, a throng lasting only a moment. When the dust has settled, and the restless offspring gathered by loving arms, five girls linger on a porch across from me. Petite, modest bodies, with faces the color of caramel and river clay. One of them drops her backpack and runs inside, letting the screen door slam her presence. The others stay, gathering in the shade of the awning. The resident runs back out, a huge piece of white chalk in hand. There is mumbling, and a gathering around her. In a moment the circle breaks up and they walk, jump, amble down the steps. The girl with the chalk holds the instrument out, arms length in front of her, the biggest girl, with a black bow in her hair reaches out to take it from her, she pulls back, resisting in jest, only a moment, and then the prompter has it. She kneels down black bow, and all, the others gather close behind. Quickly she works, scything out the secret on the steps. Abruptly she stands, pushing the others back. There is a mumbling, a disordered instruction being smoothed out, then an orderly cue forms… The Scribe at the back, herding, and conducting, and peering over shoulders, this is her show now. One-by-one, these candy and earth colored girls make their way up the stairs to the beat of a hop-scotch pattern. The first declares upon her landing, “Dis our porch. Girls only!” She turns around and extends her hands towards the next girl, who, in turn performs the ritual exactly. Taking the hands of her waiting comrade upon completion, she repeats the exclamation. And again, and again. Now it is the Scribe’s turn. This is her ritual, her incantation. She puts her hands high in the air before she begins and stretches, a neo-classical fourth position to one side, then a plie. She takes the first step in style, then each step punctuating them with a pause, allowing her audience a chance to gasp and applaud. All is going well. Black bow still intact, she makes it to the final step. There she is met by the smallest of the bunch, an open palm to her face. The Scribe pauses, dead center leap, “What chu doin?” The Smallest smiles, “Dis our porch. Girls only!” The Scribe never wavers, and opens her mouth, first in surprise then, with a shake of her hand and a bob of her head, “Shuh, Din I must be da cutest boy ever”.