Castles And "The Fond Dream"

The castles that we construct in our minds our quite amazing, aren't they? Bright and inviting realms and dark and foreboding realms.  Either way, the building and the dismantling and the re-building never end.  I am reminded of a poem by C. H. Sisson.

       The Mind of Man

The mind of man is nothing but
A repertoire of what is not,
Never was, and can never be:
So, at least, it is with me.

C. H. Sisson, Antidotes (1991).

             Harold Speed, "The Alcantara, Toledo, By Moonlight" (1894)

What is one to do about this?  Perhaps nothing needs to be done.  I do not pretend to possess any wisdom on the matter.  I do know that the beguiling but false worlds of the media and advertising and entertainment and politics and social science try their best to convince us to be dissatisfied with ourselves, and to accede to their artificial visions of utopia.  But they all have an agenda, don't they?  And they know absolutely nothing about each of us as individual souls.  All I can come up with is this:  if we cannot help but construct castles, we should at least take care to construct our own.

       The Fond Dream

Here's the dream I love.
     Stay, old Sleep, allow me this
     Yet one moment, godlike bliss.
Here's the dream I love.

Tell us then that dream?
     O, it's nothing, nothing at all.
     But I was walking young and small
In a scene like a happy dream.

What especial scene?
     None especial:  pure blue sky,
     Cherry orchards a brook runs by,
And an old church crowns the scene.

Only that?  If so,
     All would be well; but, dreams have changed.
     Dreamers are banished, joys estranged.
I wake; it is not so.

Edmund Blunden, Poems of Many Years (1957).

                         Harold Birchall, "Reflections, Etruria Vale" (1949)

"Words At Once True And Kind, Or Not Untrue And Not Unkind"

On more than one occasion, Philip Larkin suggested that his discovery of the poetry of Thomas Hardy was one of the things that enabled him to come into his own as a poet.  It was the subject matter of Hardy's poetry -- its humanity and its emotional content -- that had an impact upon Larkin.

When asked by an interviewer what he had learned from Hardy, Larkin replied that Hardy had taught him "not to be afraid of the obvious."  He continued:

"All those wonderful dicta about poetry: 'the poet should touch our hearts by showing his own', 'the poet takes note of nothing that he cannot feel', 'the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own' -- Hardy knew what it was all about."

Philip Larkin, "An Interview with Paris Review," Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (Faber and Faber 1983), page 67.

The following poem by Larkin goes well with Hardy's "A Two-Years' Idyll" (which appeared in my previous post).  Perhaps it can be thought of as a sort of coda to the "idyll" described by Hardy: the aftermath when "romance straight forsook/Quickly somehow/Life when we sped from our nook."

                                           Paul Nash, "Coronilla" (1929)

               Talking in Bed

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us.  Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings (Faber and Faber 1964).

The final two lines of the poem are, of course, classic Larkin.  How you react to the lines is, I think, a rough litmus test of whether Larkin is your cup of tea.  If you slap yourself on the forehead and/or shake your head in delight and wonder and/or smile to yourself, you will likely enjoy Larkin's company.  I first read "Talking in Bed" about three decades ago, and I still do one or more of these three things each time I read it.

                                                          Paul Nash
                                "Riviera Window, Cros-de-Cagnes" (1926)

"We Are Never At Home, We Are Always Beyond"

We tend to spend a great deal of time looking forward to -- or worrying about -- the future.  In the meantime, the present moves into the past.  Of this tendency, Montaigne writes:

"Those who accuse men of always gaping after future things, and teach us to lay hold of present goods and settle ourselves in them, since we have no grip on what is to come (indeed a good deal less than we have on what is past), put their finger on the commonest of human errors . . . We are never at home, we are always beyond.  Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the feeling and consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be."

Michel de Montaigne, "Our Feelings Reach Out Beyond Us," The Complete Essays of Montaigne (translated by Donald Frame) (Stanford University Press 1958), page 8.

                                 William Ratcliffe, "Attic Room" (1918)

Montaigne's thoughts bring to mind a poem by Thomas Hardy.

           A Two-Years' Idyll

              Yes; such it was;
       Just those two seasons unsought,
Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;
              Moving, as straws,
       Hearts quick as ours in those days;
Going like wind, too, and rated as nought
       Save as the prelude to plays
       Soon to come -- larger, life-fraught:
              Yes; such it was.

              'Nought' it was called,
       Even by ourselves -- that which springs
Out of the years for all flesh, first or last,
              Commonplace, scrawled
       Dully on days that go past.
Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings
       Even in hours overcast:
       Aye, though this best thing of things,
              'Nought' it was called!

              What seems it now?
       Lost: such beginning was all;
Nothing came after: romance straight forsook
              Quickly somehow
       Life when we sped from our nook,
Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall. . . .
       -- A preface without any book,
       A trumpet uplipped, but no call;
              That seems it now.

Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922).

I suspect that most of us have had this sort of experience, and it is not one that is limited to romantic relationships.  Of course, "hindsight is 20/20" (as the saying goes), so perhaps it is unfair of us to judge ourselves for not appreciating what was passing us by unawares as we dreamed upon the future.  "A preface without any book" is a very nice way of putting it, I think. This is why the Chinese T'ang poets and the Japanese haiku poets would have us look at the world around us, at this moment.

                              William Ratcliffe, "Cottage Interior" (1920)

"The Emperor Of Ice-Cream"

I suspect that "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is Wallace Stevens's best-known poem, most likely because of its distinctive title.  As I have mentioned in the past, Stevens is, in my humble opinion, a master (often in a humorous way) of the titling of poems.  Reading the table of contents to a volume of his poems is, in itself, greatly entertaining.

But, back to the poem at hand.  In 1945, Stevens wrote to his publisher, notifying him that the Secretary of the Amalgamated Ice Cream Association had sent a letter to him asking what "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" "was all about."  Holly Stevens (editor), Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966), page 502.  I am in the same position as the Secretary of the Amalgamated Ice Cream Association.  But I don't mind not knowing what the poem is "all about."  It simply means what it says.

                            Frances Hodgkins, "Wings Over Water" (1930)

     The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).  In line 11, "fantails" means fantail pigeons.  Holly Stevens (editor), Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966), page 340.

                          Frances Hodgkins, "Berries and Laurel" (c. 1930)

By suggesting that the poem "simply means what it says" I may be accused of being glib and of ducking such issues as who "the roller of big cigars" is, what "concupiscent curds" are, why "the dresser of deal" is missing "the three glass knobs," et cetera.  Perhaps.  But I like to think that I am taking my cue from Stevens.

In 1933, Stevens participated in an anthology in which the editor asked various poets to identify their favorite poem among the poems that they had written, and to submit a statement explaining why it was their favorite. Stevens selected "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," and wrote the following explanation:

"I think I should select from my poems as my favorite 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream.'  This wears a deliberately commonplace costume, and yet seems to me to contain something of the essential gaudiness of poetry; that is the reason why I like it.  I do not remember the circumstances under which this poem was written, unless this means the state of mind from which it came. I dislike niggling, and like letting myself go.  Poems of this sort are the pleasantest on which to look back, because they seem to remain fresher than others.  This represented what was in my mind at the moment, with the least possible manipulation."

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997), page 768.

Stevens said something similar, but more direct (perhaps), later in his life. Asked about the "meaning" of "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," he wrote in a letter:  "But, after all, the point of that poem is not its meaning."  Holly Stevens (editor), Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966), page 500.  This explanation is good enough for me.  To wit:  "Let be be finale of seem."

                            Frances Hodgkins, "The Lake" (c. 1930-1935)

"The Planet On The Table" Revisited

About a year or so ago, I came across the following poem by T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) and immediately thought of Wallace Stevens's "The Planet on the Table" (which appeared in my previous post).  Hulme died in World War I (in September of 1917 at the age of 34).   He wrote only a few poems during his short life.  All of them are brief and "imagistic."

He is perhaps better known for his critical and philosophical writings and for his out-sized personality, which had quite an impact on the early 20th-century "modernists" (e.g., Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and others).  Interestingly (and on an entirely different literary front), Hulme and Robert Frost got to know each other when Frost was living in England from 1912 to 1914.

                      Eliot Hodgkin, "Nine Peaches in a Paper Bag" (1961)

                         The Poet

Over a large table, smooth, he leaned in ecstasies,
In a dream.
He had been to woods, and talked and walked with trees.
Had left the world
And brought back round globes and stone images,
Of gems, colours, hard and definite.
With these he played, in a dream,
On the smooth table.

T. E. Hulme, in Alun Jones, The Life and Opinions of T. E. Hulme (1960), page 163.

"The Poet" sounds like a poem that Stevens could have written.  It is interesting to see the two poets exploring similar territory.  The common theme in the poems is creation: in Stevens's words, "makings of [the] self" and "makings of the sun."  Hulme's suggestion that the act of creation is akin to being "in a dream" may find some parallel in Stevens's reference to "Ariel" (the sprite in Shakespeare's The Tempest) being the creator of his poems.  But I don't want to get too carried away with this sort of thing.  I just think that the two poems go well together.

                                Eliot Hodgkin, "Two Dead Leaves" (1963)

"The Planet On The Table"

I have often referred to the excellence of Wallace Stevens's late poems, particularly those that he wrote in his seventies.  Few poets have written so well at that age.  (Although I should note that Thomas Hardy has Stevens beat: he continued to write fine poetry into his eighties, and dictated his final poem on his death-bed at the age of 87.)

The following poem reflects Stevens's lifelong subject: the back-and-forth between the world and the imagination, and the results of that continual movement.  This creative movement was, for Stevens, the essence of what it means to be human.

        Thomas Henslow Barnard, "Landscape with Ludlow Castle" (1952)

        The Planet on the Table

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

Wallace Stevens, "The Rock" (1954) in Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997).

Although Stevens writes about his own poems in "The Planet on the Table," I believe that he would recognize that all of us -- whether poets or not -- are capable of creating our own "poems" ("makings of the sun" and "makings of [the] self") whenever we engage in the back-and-forth movement between the imagination and the world.  We are all capable of creating a planet on a table.

                                  Thomas Henslow Barnard, "Still Life"

"Times Have Changed"

When a politician makes a public pronouncement, do you get the feeling that he or she thinks that the people to whom he or she is speaking (i.e., you and me) are credulous yokels?  Do you get the same feeling when a government bureaucrat or a media shill holds forth?

Do you notice that politicians, bureaucrats, and media shills have an infinite capacity to be both disingenuous and supercilious, no matter how sincere they attempt to sound?

It has ever been so, of course.  One Dark Age follows another.  Only the outer particulars change.

                                   Stanley Spencer, "The Bridge" (1920)

         Change

Times have changed.
Remember the helplessness
Of the serfs,
The inexplicable tyrannies
Of the lords.

But times have changed.
All is explained to us
In expert detail.
We trail the logic of our lords
Inch by inch.

The serfs devised religions,
And sad and helpful songs.
Sometimes they ran away,
There was somewhere to run to.
Times have changed.

D. J. Enright, The Old Adam (1965).

I harbor no illusions that we can dispense with this cast of characters.  I do know this: you can keep them away from your thoughts and your feelings. And, remember: they have absolutely nothing to do with poetry and art, which, to them, are alien and unreal spheres.  How fortunate for the rest of us.

                                Stanley Spencer, "The Roundabout" (1923)

Illuminations

I'd like to stay with the subject of "fair after foul weather" for a moment longer.  The following two poems are about unexpected illuminations in a literal sense.  But there are other dimensions implied as well.

                                          Benozzo Gozzoli (c. 1420-1497)
                                "The Journey of the Magi" (detail) (1459)

   Illumination: On the Track by Loch Fewin

Suddenly the sun poured
through an arrow-slit in the clouds
and the great hall we walked in -- its tapestries
of mountains and parquet of rich
bogland and water -- blazed on the eye
like the Book of Kells.

For four days a cloud
had sat like a lid on the round
horizon.  But now
we walked in a mediaeval manuscript --
doves flew over the thorn, the serpent
of wisdom whispered
in our skulls and our hands
were transparent with love.

Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009). Loch Fewin (or "Fionn Loch") is located in northwestern Scotland.

                      Benozzo Gozzoli, "The Journey of the Magi" (detail)

The following poem by R. S. Thomas (which has appeared here before, but which is worth revisiting) is remarkably similar to MacCaig's poem both in atmosphere (although the setting is Wales, not Scotland) and in spirit. (And not solely because the word "illumination" appears in one poem, while the word "illuminate" appears in the other!)  It is, I think, one of Thomas's finest poems.

                       Benozzo Gozzoli, "The Journey of the Magi" (detail)

            The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it.  But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it.  I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.  Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past.  It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R. S. Thomas, Laboratories of the Spirit (1975).

                      Benozzo Gozzoli, "The Journey of the Magi" (detail)

"Interval"

"Fair after foul weather" -- the subject of my previous post -- got me to thinking about one of my favorite poems by Edward Thomas.  Thomas started writing poetry in December of 1914, and he wrote the following poem during that month.

When Thomas was debating with himself whether to begin writing poetry, Robert Frost suggested to him that he should, as a start, turn some of his descriptive prose passages into verse.  "Interval" is not, unlike some of Thomas's poems, traceable to a specific passage in his prose writings. However, one can see that he took Frost's advice to heart: the first six stanzas are wholly descriptive.  Of course, to call them merely "descriptive" is to sell them short: very few poets (or writers in general) are capable of writing with such deceptively simple depth.

Then, in the final two stanzas, the touch that makes Thomas who he is (and, I believe, a great poet) comes to the fore:  the sudden turn into a wider realm that is intensely personal and, at the same time, common to us all. Very few poets are capable of carrying this off on a consistent basis. Thomas is one of those who does so, again and again.

                                   Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927)

      Interval

Gone the wild day:
A wilder night
Coming makes way
For brief twilight.

Where the firm soaked road
Mounts and is lost
In the high beech-wood
It shines almost.

The beeches keep
A stormy rest,
Breathing deep
Of wind from the west.

The wood is black,
With a misty steam.
Above, the cloud pack
Breaks for one gleam.

But the woodman's cot
By the ivied trees
Awakens not
To light or breeze.

It smokes aloft
Unwavering:
It hunches soft
Under storm's wing.

It has no care
For gleam or gloom:
It stays there
While I shall roam,

Die, and forget
The hill of trees,
The gleam, the wet,
This roaring peace.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008).

Note how each of the first six stanzas is a single sentence.  Each stanza is similar in spirit and in imagery (although not in form) to a haiku.  (I am not suggesting that Thomas modeled the stanzas on the haiku form.  This is simply how they strike me.)  The final two stanzas -- which make the turn into the wider realm -- consist of a single sentence that runs across the stanzas.

As is often the case in Thomas's poetry (and prose), death makes an appearance. But, please note: Thomas is not morbidly obsessed with mortality.  Honesty was always his instinctive governing principle.  If death makes an appearance -- or love or beauty -- so be it.  Whatever is in one of his poems is there because it is true to what Thomas thought and felt.  Remember: "True and not feigning."

                                  Paul Drury, "March Morning" (1933)

"Hope Well And Have Well: Or, Fair After Foul Weather"

Perhaps it is the news of the world.  Or perhaps it is simply this week's weather forecast: five days of rain.  Whatever the cause, I feel the need for a gleam of sunlight, for bright blue and gold.  Robert Herrick and Derek Mahon may do the trick.

       Hope Well and Have Well:
      Or, Fair After Foul Weather

What though the heaven be lowering now,
And look with a contracted brow?
We shall discover, by-and-by,
A repurgation of the sky;
And when those clouds away are driven,
Then will appear a cheerful heaven.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).

                    Claughton Pellew, "The Windmill, Sheringham" (1925)

     Everything Is Going To Be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

Derek Mahon, Poems 1962-1978 (Oxford University Press 1979).

                            Laura Knight (1877-1970), "Valley at Evening"