Ojai at 100 Degrees

With the other slash and burn city slickers

We went to see the sulphur sommelier,

The one who captures forbidden notes

From adjustments in the hot spring pipes

Of scents once inconceivable to quaff

To our rotten egg ancestors:

Root beer float, mulled Manhattan,

Cinnabar marmalade, orange grove at sunset,

The real sticky icky, because that’s how many

Toxins we carried through Oxnard and need to cleanse,

But when we got there, at the golden hour no less,

He was booked, it turned out, for months on end,

So we had to be content with picking white sage

At sunset, high up on a hillside crisp with flax,

Like we were someone else’s memories, and hadn’t

Seen the sommelier’s kind face and slower hands.

We were left with a mountain that eclipsed what we knew,

But it too came with a bouquet, bearing duende

At the rusted motor homes thrown past ends of streets

On Eucalyptus Ranch, where the horses have gone crazy

And the only people left who know what to do

Wait for the moon, so they might dance with a doom

That someone said would finally come through their old

Movie rooms like softer chairs. They were lost in the wars,

Victims of the paradise of fake names, their yellow homes

And front yard stones couldn’t counter the choking

Feyness, of internecine nagging and mansplaining.

The curtains still are drawn late afternoon,

For when it comes it’s over. No forgiveness or explaining.

Here’s hoping for that long and dusty trail on up the hill

Where wild animals and the end of the sky can still

Be seen – but not too clearly.

Pieces of China

I like her lies even more than I like mine,
For hers very well could be true.

It's perilous to steer a mutually-exclusive reality
With merely the rudder of my own,

But at the pink moment the hero learns why
He journeyed this far, past the utility of breathing,

For now he knows how to mourn
The kind fools who came before him

Who thought there was something to be gained
Beyond the gift of getting nothing.

The river leads whatever life I need to live —
How tragic that I needed her to show me.

Back of a Postcard

The dysfunctional California family on the beach,
Their only witness a robotic lifeguard,
They dredge crabs because they can into a yellow pan all day
As children leap transparent in the spray.

They've become a part of the sun and sand,
Leaving not much behind for an examinable life
But blue beach cruising with the etiquette of chill.
The sea has bleached the color from their soul.

At some point the water turns white,
The gulls return in synchronized flight
And the sun makes the beach full of shadows ...

Migrant children have joined them now
Doing the job the seagulls wouldn't.

Odes by Hölderlin: Voice of the People

[Second version]

You are God's voice, without that I would believe

Youth is holier; yes, and still I say it!

To be careless of all our wisdom

The rivers still murmur and rush, and yet,

Who does not love her? She moves me to the heart,

In the distance I hear the disappearing,

But my road’s not full of foreboding,

Though sure enough it hurries to the sea.

The wish for the Gods was fulfilled, the entire

Recipe, in forgetful oblivion

Gladly embraced; what is mortal when

Open eyes wandered once on their own course?

That’s the shortest path back to the all; thus fall

The waters of the stream down, he seeks repose,

It ruptures, pulls against his will, from

Cliff to cliff, the rudder of destiny,

The wonderful yearning for the bottomless

Gulf; the unbound teases and people are seized

As well by the desire for death and

Cities boldly, after they gave their best,

Carry on the work from year to year, they have

Sounded the holy depths; the earth remains green

And silence lies in front of the stars,

As does the prayer, thrown across the sand,

Vanquished by choice the one here reaches for art

Before the inimitable there; Man’s work,

Himself, is broken with his own hand,

In honor of the high one, the artist.

But he is not thought less of by the people,

Who will love again, as they were loved before,

And will continue to impede man's

Path, when reaching for the light he is glad.

And not just the children of the eagle, thrown

By the father from the nest, so they will not

Stay too long with him, we also force out

The impeccable thorn of the sovereign.

For those, who have gone off into the silence,

And fallen ahead of time, they too, even

Those sacrificed, like the first of the

Fruits of the harvest, they have found a part.

On Xanthos, in the time of the Greeks, lay a

City, where, for the greater ones currently

Resting there, it was their destiny

To overcome the holy light of day.

But they came to die, not in the open of

Battle, but by their own hand. It’s terrible,

What happened there, the miraculous

Legend that came to us from the East tells.

The kindness of Brutus tormented them. For

When he ran out of fire, he offered himself

To help them, while he, at the same time,

As a general, stood in siege at the gates.

But the servants threw what he sent them from the

Walls. And as the fire grew ever livelier,

They rejoiced cackling among themselves

And even stretched out their hands to Brutus.

And all were beside themselves. Jubilant cheers

Arose amid their cries. Men and women threw

Themselves into the flames, as boys crashed

Through the roof and into their fathers swords.

It’s not advisable to defy heroes.

But long ago it was prepared. The fathers

Too, as once they were taken, and as

The Persian army violently pressed,

Incited, seizing the reed in the torrent,

That they would find the open, the city. House

And temple taken, but people flew

Away from the flame for holy Aether.

That is what the children heard, and the legends

Probably are good, since a memory is

The highest thing to them, the only

Thing we have to interpret the holy.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Stimme des Volks

[Zweite Fassung]

Du seiest Gottes Stimme, so glaubt ich sonst

In heilger Jugend; ja, und ich sag es noch!

Um unsre Weisheit unbekümmert

Rauschen die Ströme doch auch, und dennoch,

Wer liebt sie nicht? und immer bewegen sie

Das Herz mir, hör ich ferne die Schwindenden,

Die Ahnungsvollen meine Bahn nicht,

Aber gewisser ins Meer hin eilen.

Denn selbstvergessen, allzubereit, den Wunsch

Der Götter zu erfüllen, ergreift zu gern,

Was sterblich ist, wenn offnen Augs auf

Eigenen Pfaden es einmal wandelt,

Ins All zurück die kürzeste Bahn; so stürzt

Der Strom hinab, er suchet die Ruh, es reißt,

Es ziehet wider Willen ihn, von

Klippe zu Klippe, den Steuerlosen,

Das wunderbare Sehnen dem Abgrund zu;

Das Ungebundne reizet und Völker auch

Ergreift die Todeslust und kühne

Städte, nachdem sie versucht das Beste,

Von Jahr zu Jahr forttreibend das Werk, sie hat

Ein heilig Ende troffen; die Erde grünt

Und stille vor den Sternen liegt, den

Betenden gleich, in den Sand geworfen,

Freiwillig überwunden die lange Kunst

Vor jenen Unnachahmbaren da; er selbst,

Der Mensch, mit eigner Hand zerbrach, die

Hohen zu ehren, sein Werk, der Künstler.

Doch minder nicht sind jene den Menschen hold,

Sie lieben wieder, so wie geliebt sie sind,

Und hemmen öfters, daß er lang im

Lichte sich freue, die Bahn des Menschen.

Und, nicht des Adlers Jungen allein, sie wirft

Der Vater aus dem Neste, damit sie nicht

Zu lang ihm bleiben, uns auch treibt mit

Richtigem Stachel hinaus der Herrscher.

Wohl jenen, die zur Ruhe gegangen sind,

Und vor der Zeit gefallen, auch die, auch die

Geopfert, gleich den Erstlingen der

Ernte, sie haben ein Teil gefunden.

Am Xanthos lag, in griechischer Zeit, die Stadt,

Jetzt aber, gleich den größeren, die dort ruhn,

Ist durch ein Schicksal sie dem heilgen

Lichte des Tages hinweggekommen.

Sie kamen aber, nicht in der offnen Schlacht,

Durch eigne Hand um. Fürchterlich ist davon,

Was dort geschehn, die wunderbare

Sage von Osten zu uns gelanget.

Es reizte sie die Güte von Brutus. Denn

Als Feuer ausgegangen, so bot er sich,

Zu helfen ihnen, ob er gleich, als Feldherr,

Stand in Belagerung vor den Toren.

Doch von den Mauern warfen die Diener sie,

Die er gesandt. Lebendiger ward darauf

Das Feuer und sie freuten sich und ihnen

Strecket' entgegen die Hände Brutus

Und alle waren außer sich selbst. Geschrei

Entstand und Jauchzen. Drauf in die Flamme warf

Sich Mann und Weib, von Knaben stürzt' auch

Der von dem Dach, in der Väter Schwert der.

Nicht rätlich ist es, Helden zu trotzen. Längst

Wars aber vorbereitet. Die Väter auch,

Da sie ergriffen waren, einst, und

Heftig die persischen Feinde drängten,

Entzündeten, ergreifend des Stromes Rohr,

Daß sie das Freie fänden, die Stadt. Und Haus

Und Tempel nahm, zum heilgen Aether

Fliegend, und Menschen hinweg die Flamme.

So hatten es die Kinder gehört, und wohl

Sind gut die Sagen, denn ein Gedächtnis sind

Dem Höchsten sie, doch auch bedarf es

Eines, die heiligen auszulegen.

A Memory of Visiting My Grandma

The Emmett Kelly Room at the Comedy School

Teaches the kind of homelessness where you

No longer see your own reflection in the diner,

And teaches the kind of sadness where even

A banana peel is tragic, where there’s no

Pretending to be happy, or anything at all
But what drops out at that moment
When the one you thought had befriended you
Admits he's uncomfortable hanging in that space

Where all your hopes lie undivided.

He needs something more than you can give

Not to break out of character,
In order to torment the doomed.

He still teaches, although not seen anymore

Except in this one velour oil behind velvet ropes

Like the paint-a-clown art school test,

The perfect model, remembered only by the French.

You come to him with truth

And he shows you all the people you have hurt.

Blood Moon Denoument

The final hue of lavender on a wind-messed day,

Families on the way out down the long pink shadows

From where they floated in smiles through ocean ruffles,

The surface pearl perhaps embodying what they feel.

The ball drops from a cloud like phosphorescent Jupiter

As the misty docks display their night-time lights.

The anger has been in the air all day, just ready to be held

But the foam rolls in so sweet and warm, and the fire

As it dissolves tells nothing of the way things went.

The madness seems so ordinary, the unreasonable requests

That were impossible to ignore, the judgments, the shaming,

Seem colorings from another realm on the surrendering shore.

What now is only glistening cools in the arriving collapse

Of all that once was righteous and refused to change its course.

How easy everything moved out of its willful way

Despite whatever ridicule came with the flailing.

How natural it seems in a light that begins its dimming
As birds and children extricate themselves from having to see

What consciousness insists are higher, wiser thoughts,

These perverse insistences that gravity means nothing.

Stevens Textplication #44: To the One of Fictive Music

“Sister and mother and diviner love,” this poem from 1922 begins. One cannot help but think of the then-recent deaths of Stevens’ mother (often referred to indirectly in his poems to this date) and his beloved sister Kate as the impetus for this uncharacteristically elegiac reflection on poetic inspiration. They are in fact, as we will see, the addressee’s, and are shown to be, in more direct terms than Stevens otherwise uses, the reason he writes poetry. Here’s the poem:

Sister and mother and diviner love,

And of the sisterhood of the living dead

Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,

And of the fragrant mothers the most dear

And queen, and of diviner love the day

And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread

Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown

Its venom of renown, and on your head

No crown is simpler than the simple hair.

Now, of the music summoned by the birth

That separates us from the wind and sea,

Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,

By being so much of the things we are,

Gross effigy and simulacrum, none

Gives motion to perfection more serene

Than yours, out of our own imperfections wrought,

Most rare, or ever of more kindred air

In the laborious weaving that you wear.

For so retentive of themselves are men

That music is intensest which proclaims

The near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom,

And of all the vigils musing the obscure,

That apprehends the most which sees and names,

As in your name, an image that is sure,

Among the arrant spices of the sun,

O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom

We give ourselves our likest issuance.

Yet not too like, yet not so like to be

Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow

Our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs

The difference that heavenly pity brings.

For this, musician, in your girdle fixed

Bear other perfumes. On your pale head wear

A band entwining, set with fatal stones.

Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:

The imagination that we spurned and crave.

  

It’s hard not to read the first stanza as a direct and even perhaps mawkish address to his literal mother. Who else of “fragrant mothers” would be “most dear / and queen”? Who else (with the inclusion of his sister) would be “most clear, most dear” of “the sisterhood of the living dead”? They live inside him, even though they are dead – this is not a difficult concept. That his imagination is colored by his loving memory of them is also pretty straightforward – perhaps so much so it seems beneath Stevens to be so easy to follow.

Yet to hear many critics tell of it, the identity of the goddess muse figure this poem is dedicated to is akin to that of the mysterious “dark lady” of the Shake-spear sonnets, completely opaque. Stevens himself may have contributed to this, with these characteristically reticent responses when his publisher asked him in 1935 the seemingly simple question: “who is the sisterhood of the living dead?”

It is a muse: all of the muses are of that sisterhood. But then, I cannot say, at this distance of time, that I specifically meant the muses; this is just an explanation. (Letter 297)

Nothing in this “explanation,” of course, detracts from the above. In true lawyer’s fashion, he withholds the actual identity of the muse, while pontificating mightily about whether the muses were part of the much more poetically vague sisterhood.

He apparently thought better of that explanation, writing back one day later:

The purpose of writing to you this morning is that, as I copied the [poem] last night, I felt that the figures in the sisterhood had never been any clearer in my mind than they are in the poem … No muses exist for me. The One of Fictive Music is one of the sisterhood; who the others are I don’t know, except to say that they are figures of that sort. I felt as though I should have to say this to you in order to enjoy Thanksgiving properly (Letter 298)

Copying (by hand) a 12-year old poem already published twice in book form almost immediately after being asked about it? Not being able to enjoy Thanksgiving properly without providing an even vaguer response? Clearly something in this exchange, as they say today, triggered Stevens. Understand that the poems he was writing in 1935 were ALL about how “no muses exist for me.” The easy identification with art, the imagination, knowledge, other people and poetic tradition on display in his first book Harmonium had, after seven years of silence, turned into profound doubt about whether a world external to his imagination existed at all. Thus when he says “the figures in the sisterhood had never been any clearer in my mind than they are in the poem,” it is not as simple as “I had a vague idea but nothing more.” The mother, the sister, the muse, none of them can be said to exist outside the boundary of his imagination. The poem, as a product of the imagination, expresses who they are most clearly. He had, in fact, reached a similar conclusion as early as 1928, when in another letter he said the point of the poem was that “the imaginative world was the real world” (Letter 252). In other words, the grief and reflection that had motivated the composition of the poem had been transmuted over time into an understanding that, again as they say today, “it was all me.”

Actually, the progression from identifiable figure to imaginative construct (who is both the creator of fictive music and fictive herself) is in the original poem (one of the last composed for the original edition of Harmonium).  Ironically for a tribute to females, Stevens relies heavily on the diction and style of his two go-to male poetic role models, De Vere and Shelley, neither of whom were strangers to addressing the fictive muses. As such, there’s an elegant awkwardness to the expression here, and an overwrought philosophical grandeur that lulls the reader into believing it’s an exploration of the question “what is poetry?” when in fact there’s something far different going on.

The poem starts – as muse poems often do – with an enumeration of the qualities the deified female has that are essential for poetic cultivation. She is free of the “venom of renown” and is not honored as queen with a crown other than her “simple hair.”  Women, in other words, never get the credit for making men chase down their heart. Poetry is “music summoned by the birth / That separates us from the wind and sea, / Yet leaves us in them ...” The purpose of this muse is to mediate the interchange between the corporeal and non-corporeal. Until, that is, the life that is in the non-living makes the living world seem dead (“… until earth becomes, / By being so much of the things we are, / Gross effigy.” Another problem: The art created on earth by mortals is built “out of our own imperfections,” not out of the “laborious weaving” of perfection worn by the inspiring figure from the other side.

The reason for this is that man impulsively chases the “near” and “clear”, two qualities the speaker had earlier ascribed to the heavenly mother figure. Men (figuratively or literally) are “so retentive of themselves” they seek objects around themselves to value, and of the “obscure” only apprehend that which is already named or pictured. This results in the women who are unattainable – either as objects of desire or, as in this case, have passed into the inaccessible space – are seen only in terms of superficial feminine qualities (“among the arrant spices of the sun”) and the men, instead of transmitting these women’s higher and more sacred knowledge, become shrubbery (“O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom / We give ourselves our likest issuance”).

Still, there’s a “little” left over that’s not earth-bound, “to endow / Our feigning [pretending] with the strange unlike …” It is this ineffable sign of spirit in the work of earthly art that makes humans worthy of sympathy (“…, whence springs / The difference that heavenly pity brings”), presumably because man is both clueless and aware enough to know how little he knows. The “music” of poetry is how the heavenly mourn the pathos of the mortal. Man is both of the heavens and hopelessly separate, just as humans are shaped by their parents and ancestors but may be forever separated from them in life.

“For this,” the speaker continues, turning suddenly from deference to demand, the heavenly “musician” should give us “other perfumes,” different kinds of inspiration, and wear a headband as if dramatizing themselves as a “pale” human, “set with fatal stones,” doomed like humans to fall and die and be (in the original usage of the word fatal) “destined by fate.” Only then, presumably, could humans reach –even in their minds – the sources of their inspiration.

Thus, the muses are “unreal.” And so, the speaker asks they “give back to us … the imagination that we spurned.” The poem ends on this note of silence between the realms and an unbridgeable distance. There is no happy conclusion, like “since the Goddesses won’t cooperate, we might as well imagine everything into existence,” or even “I’ve reached closure with the fact that you will no longer speak to me.” It’s a request into air.

And that’s where the poem rises from the countless English verses to Greek muses and other thinly-disguised female objects of desire. The fictive muse has been revealed to be a femme fatale, who misleads but can’t be turned away from easily. When one does, there is only the cry into the void, where those on the other side – here, his mother and sister – are the only ones who can provide the wisdom he needs in order to create.

That is a difficult position indeed. Just as the world becomes imagination (as Stevens in his letters suggested), there is no source for the imagination but the memory of what is no longer there, that – taking the implication a step further – one never really had or knew in the first place.

Stevens’ poetry, seen in this way, is not quite the triumph over imaginative limitations it has seemed but something altogether more tragic, an attempt to capture the trace of the real in a sea of nothingness. It is all him.

The River of Opinion

                                            On it rolls, the music
And the falls, an endless acquisition over an ever-

Moving target, the slow parade that no one sees

Of straps unloosening, hats waved, flags aired,

Trash billowing across deserted streets, soon

Disappearing as if the whole confected machine

Was never there.

                                                The river glistens.

From the roofs of houses the oceans inside each 

Droplet fall to patterns, then to mirrors, then to seas. 

But the one thing, unique, from the mountain, never

Came to anything. It merely joined the clogged rush

Of oneness, not wanting to connect. We hear it 

Hiss as it goes down. It never begins, never ends. 

Its purpose is moving from one incomplete 

Destination to another.

                                                  Oh how the houses

Bind at their anchors! Their satellite engines orbit away

Only to be led back to the center, which is no center at all,

Just a spot where a seed didn’t die. They're hooked up now

To wires, comforted by grass, hiding a particular purpose

As if anonymity is how they're supposed to be.

                                                      How strange the
Unaccountable, radiant and unarguably new,
Emerges each day from this, the same sun and trees,

What was impossible even yesterday.

Slow News Day

"We will never again be under their control.” – Q, 7/25/18

Fiji folded, Europe blinked, Facebook naked took a chin,

The bankers capitulated without saying a thing,

The long-awaited trials can begin.

Even the President glints some ring

Instead of the ass he usually lets us see

As he stanched the traffic in blood through Long Beach,

Dismantled clown caves from a triggering breach,

Offered the blackmailed a chance to be free

From bloodlines that report up to star frequencies.

Peace is a weapon when war is the prize

In islands offshore where on children they dine

And supplies now are low on ceremonial wine

And their symbols can't save them, known now to the wise,

And no one senses their fear. The sun on the rise

Won’t betray the game played among spies.

It goes on without need of us hearing the cries

Or knowing the crimes of those we trusted

Or even our own minds, daily crop dusted

‘Til our efforts fed death and division, envy and lack,

As if our desire is to smile as we pull the clip back.

How will we know that it’s safe to be free?

When do they tell the country,

When so many people scream in their sleep

And the sentries awake still so lonely?

So long we have waited for what we had already,

The chains on all we see unsheathed finally.

The eyes of those who see are enough I guess;

Universes were created from less.

On Q's Reference to Revelations

The corporeal trees are

Equally non-corporeal

Such a simple thing

For those who see

So hard when it’s a matter 

Of belief

The tool of the spy

Is your mind

How it only perceives

What it wants to believe

And what it believes in

Is others

Who know of the trap doors

The guises and plays

And can guide it to

Somewhere that’s safe

Where one can evince

At the evil in man

To the face of a member

Of a different clan

And feel that the truth

Is in hand

What kind of lamb

Stands above them

Prodding them on

Like rocks?

The shepherds have pilfered

Their flocks so long

No one expects anything

Anymore from God

Just a well-deserved

Spare of the rod

But the world has ended

Only to begin

The kept reptiles of

The Vatican

Can’t pour enough concrete

To erase the bones

The theorists of an end

Must dip into the fund

Of infinite debt

To make ends meet

And now the light

By which we read

The palpable word

And its no-longer mysteries

Will play on the eyelids

Of those who sleep

And the mind that can be freed

Can wander freely

Where the visible

Can be seen

And the formerly real

Can be allowed to be invisible

The chimeras we spent

Our frequencies chasing

Turn out to be no different from

The rituals of the mighty

It's kingdoms for a story

To believe in

The only problem

We want to know the end

So badly we forget

In the waiting is the meaning

Odes by Hölderlin: The Poet’s Vocation

The banks of the Ganges heard the joy of God

Triumph, as from the Indus came the highest

Supreme, the young Bacchus, with healing

Wines to awaken the peoples from sleep.

And you, the angel of the day, do not wake

Those who are still in slumber? Give us laws, give

Us life, prevail, master, but you have

Only the right, like Bacchus, to conquer.

Notwithstanding what is mankind's skill and woe

Inside the home and under the open sky,

Man, nobler because he’s prey, fights back

And feeds himself, an equal kind of woe

To that entrusted to the care of writing

Poems! We’re suitable to the highest one

By bringing Him closer, ever new

In song, and heard in the welcoming heart.

Yet nevertheless, O you heavenly all,

And all your sources and your shores and groves and

Wonderful plateaus, where first the curls

Caught hold, and the unforgettable came

Upon us in its unexpected genius,

The creative, the divine, that silently

Became sense to us and, as of a

Radiance stirred, the skeleton trembled …

His unsettled actions in a wider world!

His fated day, his severing, when the god

Of quiet beginnings directs where

The gigantic, drunk with rage steed brings him,

We should not tell him, and if, from the steady

Stillness of the year, in us melodies sound,

That's what they’re for, to echo how brave

And futile is the child of the masters.

Are the pure, consecrated chords touched in jest?

And that's why you have, belonging to you, poet,

The Asian prophets and the Greek songs

And have newly heard the thunder, so does

Spirit require the service of your presence

To rush to the good, in ridicule, and to

Disavow the stupid, heartlessly,

And herd the hunted in a venal game?

Until you recall, goaded by the sting of

The original fury, and cry, and call

The master, before you’re called under

Overgrown death, lifeless you will be left.

The divine has been subservient too long,

And all heaven’s powers used up, thrown away

By the gentle, with desire but

Without thanks from the sly, who think they know,

When the more sublime is formed upon their fields,

The daylight and the thunderer, and who peer

Through the telescope and count only

The stars they’ve given names to in the sky.

But the Father blankets with a holier

Night, so that we might want to keep closed our eyes.

He does not love beasts, but never forces

The far-reaching violence of heaven.

Still it’s good to be too wise. He knows your thanks.

But He does not keep it easily alone,

He gladly returns it, so you’ll know

Help, to another Himself a poet.

Alone before God, man remains unafraid,

Such that He must protect their simplicity.

He needs neither weapons nor deceit,

As His absence for so long will sustain.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dichterberuf

Des Ganges Ufer hörten des Freudengotts

Triumph, als allerobernd vom Indus her

Der junge Bacchus kam, mit heilgem

Weine vom Schlafe die Völker weckend.

Und du, des Tages Engel! erweckst sie nicht,

Die jetzt noch schlafen? gib die Gesetze, gib

Uns Leben, siege, Meister, du nur

Hast der Eroberung Recht, wie Bacchus.

Nicht, was wohl sonst des Menschen Geschick und Sorg

Im Haus und unter offenem Himmel ist,

Wenn edler, denn das Wild, der Mann sich

Wehret und nährt! denn es gilt ein anders,

Zu Sorg und Dienst den Dichtenden anvertraut!

Der Höchste, der ists, dem wir geeignet sind,

Daß näher, immerneu besungen

Ihn die befreundete Brust vernehme.

Und dennoch, o ihr Himmlischen all, und all

Ihr Quellen und ihr Ufer und Hain' und Höhn,

Wo wunderbar zuerst, als du die

Locken ergriffen, und unvergeßlich

Der unverhoffte Genius über uns

Der schöpferische, göttliche kam, daß stumm[47]

Der Sinn uns ward und, wie vom

Strahle gerührt, das Gebein erbebte,

Ihr ruhelosen Taten in weiter Welt!

Ihr Schicksalstag', ihr reißenden, wenn der Gott

Stillsinnend lenkt, wohin zorntrunken

Ihn die gigantischen Rosse bringen,

Euch sollten wir verschweigen, und wenn in uns

Vom stetigstillen Jahre der Wohllaut tönt,

So sollt es klingen, gleich als hätte

Mutig und müßig ein Kind des Meisters

Geweihte, reine Saiten im Scherz gerührt?

Und darum hast du, Dichter! des Orients

Propheten und den Griechensang und

Neulich die Donner gehört, damit du

Den Geist zu Diensten brauchst und die Gegenwart

Des Guten übereilest, in Spott, und den Albernen

Verleugnest, herzlos, und zum Spiele

Feil, wie gefangenes Wild, ihn treibest?

Bis aufgereizt vom Stachel im Grimme der

Des Ursprungs sich erinnert und ruft, daß selbst

Der Meister kommt, dann unter heißen

Todesgeschossen entseelt dich lässet.

Zu lang ist alles Göttliche dienstbar schon

Und alle Himmelskräfte verscherzt, verbraucht

Die Gütigen, zur Lust, danklos, ein

Schlaues Geschlecht und zu kennen wähnt es,

Wenn ihnen der Erhabne den Acker baut,

Das Tagslicht und den Donnerer, und es späht

Das Sehrohr wohl sie all und zählt und

Nennet mit Namen des Himmels Sterne.

Der Vater aber decket mit heilger Nacht,

Damit wir bleiben mögen, die Augen zu.

Nicht liebt er Wildes! Doch es zwinget

Nimmer die weite Gewalt den Himmel.

Noch ists auch gut, zu weise zu sein. Ihn kennt

Der Dank. Doch nicht behält er es leicht allein,

Und gern gesellt, damit verstehn sie

Helfen, zu anderen sich ein Dichter.

Furchtlos bleibt aber, so er es muß, der Mann

Einsam vor Gott, es schützet die Einfalt ihn,

Und keiner Waffen brauchts und keiner

Listen, so lange, bis Gottes Fehl hilft.

The Day the Cheek Didn't Turn

Good always loses
          because it only has one side,
                    the truth that needs no defense.
Evil needs the dual,
          the invisible mirror, the forking line,
                    to show that you are not who you pretend,

That you are no different, in fact,
          than your enemy, who
                    loves you just the same,
And compels you with those petty
          deceptions of the partisan
                    to prove him wrong

Instead of tending, say, your garden,
         but you can never prove him wrong,
                    there are no words to save him
From hurting other people for an idea,
         diminishing the mind for a cause, throwing
                    truth on a bonfire if it promises justice.

The light dissolves all temporary things,
         makes poetry manifest.
                    To walk to it, can you turn away
From the glare, the not yet said,
         the victim in the shadows helpless
                    and needing to be wrong? 

Ocean and Poppy

Tide blooms embossed in rocks ...
Exploration as a recollect,
The rose scent wind recalls
Another coast, another age ...

Cave bells can conjure
Any mysterious witch.
The sea that seizes
Seems universal.

To let go of this nostalgia
Is to find what little there is,
To be cataloged
For spellbound eyes,

While beachcombers keep theirs peeled
For what is new,
The eternally recurring
Crab.

Stevens Textplication #43: Floral Decoration for Bananas

Let’s get one thing straight before we begin: Floral decorations with bananas, as shown in the picture above, are ridiculous. Faced with this, how can our refined flaneur transcend such an ennui-generating presentation? One could righteously and humorously complain about the total breach of aesthetic protocol, something that would make life more rich in that moment, or one could elect the approach Stevens took, mine the situation for as much symbolic and intellectual material as possible, thereby creating a work of art that is still thought about 95 years later. Here it is:

  Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do.

               These insolent, linear peels

               And sullen, hurricane shapes

               Won't do with your eglantine.

               They require something serpentine.

               Blunt yellow in such a room!

               You should have had plums tonight,

               In an eighteenth-century dish,

  And pettifogging buds,

               For the women of primrose and purl

               Each one in her decent curl.

               Good God! What a precious light!

               But bananas hacked and hunched....

               The table was set by an ogre,

               His eye on an outdoor gloom

               And a stiff and noxious place.

  Pile the bananas on planks.

  The women will be all shanks

  And bangles and slatted eyes.

  And deck the bananas in leaves

               Plucked from the Carib trees

               Fibrous and dangling down,

               Oozing cantankerous gum

               Out of their purple maws,

               Darting out of their purple craws

               Their musky and tingling tongues.

The poem is crystal clear by Stevens’ standards, a few exotic words, ambiguous phrases and irregular rhyme schemes aside. The speaker is a comic guide in the proper table etiquette. He explains in stanza one what’s wrong with the setting, in stanza two what a proper floral decoration with eglantine (sweet briar rose) would look like, in stanza three why the banana decoration is so detrimental to harmonious relations, and in stanza four – with precise detail – how a banana should properly be presented.   

What lifts it beyond this surface, of course, is the rich suggestiveness the poet brings to the discussion. It’s clear from the start that, with apologies to Freud, sometimes a banana is more than a banana. Poems about sex by great, long-dead poets are somewhat analogous to the thought of sexual relations between one’s parents, but sexual torment practically screams at the reader from the outset. Even the use of the archaic term “nuncle” (meaning uncle) calls to mind how the fool addressed King Lear by this term when talking of perverted things:

LEAR: When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?

FOOL: I have used it, nuncle, ever since thou madest thy daughters thy mothers. For when thou gavest them the rod, and put’st down thine own breeches (sings) Then they for sudden joy did weep / And I for sorrow sung, / That such a king should play bo-peep / And go the fools among. Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie. I would fain learn to lie. 

LEAR: An you lie, sirrah, we’ll have you whipped.

As the fool tells the truth to the king of his own debasement, so the speaker reveals how the emperor has no clothes when it comes to the placing of phallic objects (“linear … blunt”) in the midst of femininity. The speaker prefers the sexually charged alternative of “plums … buds … (pink) primrose … curl” as if female sexuality should not have a male involved at all. “Bananas hacked and hunched… stiff … noxious” forces women to be “shanks … bangles ... slatted eyes”, almost an exact description of a hand job. Instead, bananas, like the forbidden fruit in Eden, should be covered in leaves. But that leads to the even more suggestive reveal – in an exact description of a banana tree – of “cantankerous (cankerous?) gum … oozing … out of purple maws,” where “purple craws” have “musky and tingling tongues.” One way of parsing this soft-core porn poetry is to say: If the male sexual organ is to be so prominently displayed, so should the female genitalia.

In the sexual reading of this poem, stanza one shows the “insolent” and “sullen” male desire, “blunt yellow” (erect) instead of “serpentine” (flaccid). Stanza two shows female desire, dressed and prissily prepared but only “precious light,” something only to look at that is somehow false in the artificiality of its expression. Stanza three presents a “bunch” of men, like sailors from a “plank” having to be rudely serviced by women/prostitutes, as opposed to, in stanza four, letting the natural coupling of male and female occur, however garish it might appear.  

Such a seemingly straightforward account of the differences in male and female sexual response would have had to be disguised behind a socially acceptable cover (a table decoration, for example) to be discerned in the more puritanical times in which it was written. One would think this reading would be more readily embraced today, when sexuality is frankly and openly discussed. Ironically, however, contemporary critics view this poem’s view of sex as very complex and problematic, mostly because this age no longer protects women’s power with modesty but by calling attention to the imbalance in the relative power positions of men and women. The viewpoint that patriarchal privilege fundamentally oppresses and controls women has to dismiss as a theoretical possibility the extraordinary sexual power women have had over men throughout history. Thus the common sense suggestions in the poem – so daring in its day – are largely viewed from today’s lens as nonsensical.

Less nonsensical – but even more offensive to today's tastes – is the idea that the speaker is gay. The poem indeed can be read as a caricature of the gay fusspot hypersensitive to even the smallest violations of taste. That the disgust ("an ogre") resolves naturally to a condemnation of heterosexual relationships in general seems less than coincidental. Better to leave the bananas alone to themselves! 

If this line of thinking makes you squeamish, fortunately there are other readings available. The poem, in fact, is a good example of the open-ended way Stevens used symbols. Bananas can be read in artistic, political and even spiritual terms, in the same suggestive but non-dogmatic way they can be read as a sexual drama.

Eleanor Cook put it rightly, “this is another Stevens poem on how the tropics affect someone from a northern temperate zone.” Stevens however isn’t content with mere contrast. He uses the strange primitivism of the tropics to signify the exotic core of modern art, a subject Stevens and others felt compelled to explore, as it represented a new way of expressing and thinking about art. Bananas, like the African and Asian motifs that inspired the modernists to reinvent traditional Western forms, co-exist uneasily with an antithetical (“eighteenth century”) tradition. The starkness, crudity and dynamism of modern methods, in fact, can come to dominate the aesthetic landscape, as they undoubtedly did in all the arts, from African American blues forms to the simple lines of the International architectural style. Their “musky and tingling tongues” denote a more natural and powerful language of expression than the strict meters and straightened subject matter of pre-war poems. The point, to Stevens, is not to make them “fit” the old, but to make space for the new in a more supportive environment (like the revolutionary Measure little magazine in which this poem was first published).

   

If this is too hypothetical for your taste, bananas can also be used to provide trenchant political commentary. The term “banana republic” was coined by O. Henry around the turn of the century to capture the abuse the colonies had endured at the hands of white exploiters. Bananas became a commercial product almost accidentally. In 1871 – eight years before Stevens was born – American businessman Minor C. Keith was given a rich land-holding opportunity in Costa Rica if he could do what no one had been able to accomplish to that point, build a railroad line from the coffee growing regions to the Caribbean port of Limon. He accomplished this, in part, by growing bananas on the side of the tracks to feed the workers. He also included bananas with the coffee he eventually exported, and it became an instant sensation, becoming one of the dominant commercial crops of Stevens’ times. Unfortunately for the native populations, technically savvy entrepreneurs like Keith had negotiated extravagant deals with the poor host countries that kept banana workers living under abject conditions, without any power to compete, to the point where companies like United Fruit (where Keith’s interests were later merged) essentially ran the countries. Increasing awareness of this social injustice was like the unwelcome guest to the well-made American table, which was by and large trying to imitate European models and spoke a language of equal rights and democracy (except where Jim Crow was concerned). Bananas intrude on such a fragile comity by reminding people of the violence and injustice used to bring such pleasures to the American people. Once the injustice is known, the people become, as the poem rolls on, complicit, no better than the harsh banana traders and dehumanized workers, becoming the “purple craw” of a primitive society trying to scream out its enslavement.

If this is too strident for you, you could look at bananas as the original fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, as the Koran proposes, or the secret to fecundity, as the Hindu religion believes. We resist them in our civilized denials, but must ultimately accede to their primal truth.

There are many interpretative possibilities here, all created by the contrast between the simple facts depicted and the emotionally charged rendering. How could bananas cause such consternation? Why would table decorations be such a matter of good and evil? It comes down to the poetic urge, which seeks to express the largeness of emotion hovering just above the surface. Such emotion may be, as in this case, comically false as to the details at hand, but it opens up an uncomfortable truth all around the facts that cannot be so easily suppressed.

Stevens, who wrote this poem as he was preparing his first book for publication, was almost explicitly pointing to a larger and richer interpretative field with which to view his work, and the work of all poets.

Objectification and its Discontents

There is me

And there are billions

Of little me’s

Looking in, judging,

Seeing how I relate

To them.

Do I provide

A story they can steal,

That has what they need

To tell about themselves,

Like an offering of bread?

Or will they, seeing

My kind, knowing eyes,

Want to talk to me themselves,

Share their stories, dreams and

Overheard facts and data?

I can’t see how

The me that’s here

Cannot but be dissolved

By the me out there.

Will they keep me

Next to their hearts

Like a long-lost amour

Or a campaign pin?

Will they quote me

As an authority

Or as a soft place

To help others land?

Will they take my name in vain

When toiling in the fields

And growing every moment

More angry at the commands?

It seems, in contrast,

My lot is to be ignored,

As if I am a scraping leaf,

Nothing in it for them

Of use,

Except perhaps

For maybe a poem,

About the words that

Seem to come forth

From the trees.

When the Town Turns Gray

It could slip, in an instant, from your grasp

Because it wasn’t real to begin with,

All those things you thought your worry and

Work had earned: game tokens!

At some point there are no more other people,

There is only the you that you can never see.

You’re not even an extra in your movie like Stan Lee

But a theory, like Duality or Mercy.

There are patterns to investigate, yes,

Where the rules are less concealed:

The same number twice in one day,

Two cars that cut in front of you the same way

Are the guns in act one to be fired in act three.

Aren’t you curious how the story will end?

Or are the decisions of the moment too momentous

To have faith in any conclusion?

Always the past and what it should have been

Acting as if now is finally its time,

And always the pieces that move to the future by themselves

In the only way hindsight can justify.

At last you’re on the path, you say, to vindication,

And can reconcile God with your lot.

But the player of your role doesn’t know you,

Or even realize you exist, much less 

Your unshakeable need to have a reason

When there is only sun and wind as evidence of a mind

And the auteur of the film is invisible amid the

Gaffing umbrellas, bust of Abraham Lincoln and such.

These are the things to talk to, to express what you know 

In a safe zone, with no hidden cameras

Or script doctors needing to be right, 

Where you might be noticed in fact 

By surrogates at least, if not the real empressario 

Lurking behind your eyes.

Still Life with Pathos

Bonfires at the pink hour
As the white sun drops purple from the clouds,
Gulls tiptoe the shore,
Another day of trickery done.

At each drape of wave another one
Digs at bubbles with an orange beak
To swallow crabs whole along the ribbons of suds.
Scrappy and heartless, feathers ruffled
By the wind, they shine in molten light
Feathers of surf bring in.

There are always others watching,
They mill around atop the rise
As if outside a bar, waiting for trouble
To reveal itself in one of its many guises,
Heartless their black eyes below the thick
Marine conspiratorial clouds.

Some beige and white outcasts forage for sand fleas
Around the uninterpretable scrapings of humans,
They appear to be starving, poor heartless things,
As they drop balls of kelp like hair ties loosened
By a woman too full of desire and irritation
Thoughtlessly, its rat tail snaking across
The fabric of sand, as if to be returned.

The gulls have perfected walking
As their preferred communication
But are quick as razors to lift away
From any asks in gusts of black formations
That glide below the peach translucence
Shining through the ocean greys.

Heartless, they put it all on you
As usual, the one who shows compassion,
The plastic bag taken elicits shrieks
Of heartbroken accusation,
Their creaking rasps so strong
It reminds you how you agreed
Long ago to take this on,
To bear a thankless karma
That seemed somebody else's
Without a hesitation,
Not knowing what it would feel like
To see the painful trudging
To some impossible goal, unaware of
Who they are or what they are doing.
You only knew there was something
In it for you, to learn.

Odes by Hölderlin: Sung under the Alps

Holy Innocence, you the most intimate

Loved one of the people and Gods! You like them

Seated before your feet, out of doors or at

                                            Home, the ancient one,

Full of imperturbable wisdom; in some

Things man knows what is good, but is astonished,

This wild peer, even to the sky, how clean, pure

                                            All things are to you!

Look! The rough animal of the field gladly

Serves and trusts, the tongueless forest speaks to you,

As if still in the ancient days, its sayings

                                           To teach the mountains

Your holy laws, and what even now to us,

Who have learned so much, is obvious, when you’re

Called the great father you can brightly proclaim

                                           To us by yourself.

To be alone so with the heavenly, and

Look beyond the light, and stream and wind, and time

A constant rushes to the scene before them,

                                           To possess an eye,

I’m blessed to know and wish for nothing, so long

As I’m not taken, like a field, by the flood,

That I will be well taken care of, lazy

                                           Sleeping in the waves;

But there remains at home, she who gladly holds

The divine in her loyal breasts, to be free

To sing, as long as I’m allowed, all her tongues

                                           Of heaven to you!  

---------------------------------------------------------------

Unter den Alpen gesungen

Heilige Unschuld, du der Menschen und der

Götter liebste vertrauteste! du magst im

Hause oder draußen ihnen zu Füßen

                                           Sitzen, den Alten,

Immerzufriedner Weisheit voll; denn manches

Gute kennet der Mann, doch staunet er, dem

Wild gleich, oft zum Himmel, aber wie rein ist,

                                           Reine, dir alles!

Siehe! das rauhe Tier des Feldes, gerne

Dient und trauet es dir, der stumme Wald spricht

Wie vor alters, seine Sprüche zu dir, es

                                          Lehren die Berge

Heilge Gesetze dich, und was noch jetzt uns

Vielerfahrenen offenbar der große

Vater werden heißt, du darfst es allein uns

                                          Helle verkünden.

So mit den Himmlischen allein zu sein, und

Geht vorüber das Licht, und Strom und Wind, und

Zeit eilt hin zum Ort, vor ihnen ein stetes

                                         Auge zu haben,

Seliger weiß und wünsch ich nichts, so lange

Nicht auch mich, wie die Weide, fort die Flut nimmt,

Daß wohl aufgehoben, schlafend dahin ich

                                         Muß in den Wogen;

Aber es bleibt daheim gern, wer in treuem

Busen Göttliches hält, und frei will ich, so

Lang ich darf, euch all, ihr Sprachen des Himmels!

                                        Deuten und singen.

Forbidden Beauty in Huntington Beach

Why does poverty shine so brightly down every street,

Screaming “pay attention to me” with blue balloons

And 50’s finery, some weeds in parking cracks

If one is lucky? The rusted bus stops with sun-bleached

Canopies, where shopping bags hang swaying in the breeze,

Are all one can bear not to see, and the carts parked

Too easily at Blue Wave Liquor across the street, next to

The pet cemetery that’s been there forever, and a vacant

Field for lease. It’s not the rot and mildew one has to

Attend to soon, in the cool drive through this clean and sunny

Boulevard, that’s even cleaner and even sunnier

Than the one’s one used to know, when one still thought

About the homeless under cottonwoods, and the

Hammered scraps of planks and boards  

High up the neighbor’s tree, not fit to be a crow’s nest,

Instead a squatter’s flag, that advertises, in the quiet

Smirk of green, the maw of what was never said,

The forbidden beauty of want on which one could not

Look away.

End of Day in Canyon Park

The residents pretend there are no people here.

Birds whistle to be heard above

The sirens and the floating children cries,

To be heard at all, with the hiss of acacia,

The whispering oaks: So much to say,

So little told. The moments pass too quickly

Not to be remembered continually

To swirls of wind that lift the leaves already lost,

As if what hadn’t yet been said was too sacred

To allow a past at all.

Still the giant lifeless fronds hang down

Ominous and golden like they own the place,

And their brown blades on the ground

Release the green to be taken by the sun,

Leaving summer’s dead, the unholy ones,

To bask in piles of dust.