I've been idling through the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins this sunny morning. Here's a remark from his notebooks, dated April 14, 1864:

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither. Yet from time to time more men go up and either perish in its gullies fluttering excelsior flags or else come down again with full folios and blank countenances. Yet the old fallacy keeps its ground. Every age has its false alarms.

I copied out one of his sonnets, and I was thinking as I did so that you might like to try copying it out yourself. The music of his metrics as well as his quite remarkable use of repetition became exquisitely apparent, once the poem was under my fingers. In his notebooks and letters, Hopkins frequently talks about Milton's prosody; and clearly his syntax alone shows a striking resemblance to the strange and beautiful grammatical contortions of Paradise Lost.

My Own Heart

            Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

 

I cast for comfort I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find

Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

 

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

 

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile

’s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies

Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

This would be an apt entry in a history of radical poetry.

The Little Vagabond

            William Blake

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold.

But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;

Besides I can tell where I am us’d well.

Such usage in heaven will never do well.

 

But if at the Church, they would give us some Ale,

And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale:

We’d sing and we’d pray, all the live-long day,

Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray;

 

Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing.

And we’d be as happy as birds in the spring:

And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church,

Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.

 

And God like a father rejoicing to see

His children as pleasant and happy as he:

Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel,

But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.

My poem "Coal," published in the Beloit Poetry Journal in 2003, is the journal's randomly generated "Poem of the Day." How pleasant it is to be randomly generated. I feel quite uplifted.

How I Could Have Spent My Allowance

As advertised in "Ambushed in Anarchia," an issue of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a comic book published in 1980:

SMOKE CLOUDS   Just light one--thick black clouds fill the room. $2/bag.

SUPER IRON-ONS    Just ask Mom to help you iron these Terrific FULL COLOR TRANSFERS onto your own favorite T-Shirt or garment. IT'S FUN!! [options include Grizzly Adams and Shaun Cassidy] $1/each.

Remember How Many Times You Felt Left Out Because You Were Broke! WELL, YOU'LL NEVER BE LEFT OUT AGAIN. Introduce GRIT to Friends, Relatives, Neighbors and Others.

CHILDREN'S 12" LP RECORD CLASSICS   Record #11 includes BOZO AT THE DOG SHOW--the original BOZO talks to dogs in a humorous and educational way. $4.95/record.

SNIPPYS: BE THE VERY FIRST TO OWN FABULOUS CARTOON SCISSORS [characters include Bugs Bunny et al.] START YOUR COLLECTION NOW ORDER THESE DYNAMITE SCISSORS TODAY!! $2/two pairs of scissors.

Enter the WONDERFUL WORLD OF AMAZING LIVE SEA-MONKEYS. SO EAGER TO PLEASE--THEY CAN EVEN BE "TRAINED." They swim, play, scoot, race and do comical tricks. Raise a Sea-Monkey family consisting of Mom, Dad and their babies in an ordinary milk glass. [I tried hard to convince my mom to let me buy sea-monkeys, but she was inexorable. Parents are so unreasonable.] $1.25/postage.

SUPER POSTERS [choices include Bay City Rollers, the Bee Gees, Ted Nugent, and Hoot Roots] $2.50/each.

Perhaps, like me, you have no memory of ever having heard of Hoot Roots. And my Google search turns up nothing. But the poster shows a lot of cartoon owls sitting in a tree.

John Updike may have been the only really famous writer I have ever laid eyes on. I won't say that I actually met him, although I did stand around in his kitchen looking out the window and drinking the cup of tea that his wife had made me. Meanwhile, John was wandering across the yard in his blue knit cap doing nothing in particular.

I went to college with his stepson and, due to series of unforeseen circumstances involving a commuter train strike, was temporarily stranded in Beverly Farms after a job interview. So Mrs. U picked me up at the station and brought me home until her son could arrive to drive me back to Boston.

I was 21 and had not yet read any Updike novels; so while I was certainly cognizant of his fame, I was actually more impressed by the fact that Mrs. Updike had made me tea in the microwave instead of using a tea kettle. This was 1986, and I had never lived in a house with a microwave. I think Mrs. U may have also picked me up at the station in some kind of fancy Jaguar-like sports car, but for some reason the microwaved tea made a deeper impression on me.

Unlike my own mother, Mrs. U had a coiffure and seemed altogether elegant and sophisticated. It struck me as odd, as I watched her husband wandering around the yard, that she had settled for a puttering middle-aged man in a frumpy hat.

Twenty years later her attachment seems less odd, especially now that I've read the Rabbit series so many times (except for the first book: see my War and Peace essay for an explanation). While Updike's work was certainly uneven, the Rabbit books have had a tremendous influence on my conception of character and motivation. They are so observant, so frighteningly observant, of the minutiae that form our lives. The only novelist who comes close is Richard Ford. But he doesn't surpass Updike.

Part of the problem with Updike's weaker novels is that his eye for minutiae can overwhelm his management of other novelistic elements. But the Rabbit novels strike a balance. Moreover, the later books in the series are stronger than the earlier ones, which has meant that rereading them has only intensified my attachment to Harry Angstrom and his preoccupations.

In my list of great books, the Rabbit novels would certainly appear. Maybe I will go back and read them right now. Maybe I'll even attempt to face the first one again.

It's been so cold here--20 below zero at dawn. Perhaps Maine has detached from the rest of the continent and is floating away on an arctic sea, like an iceberg.

Time for a Canadian sonnet.

Winter Evening (1899)

     Archibald Lampman

To-night the very horses springing by

Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream

The streets that narrow to the westward gleam

Like rows of golden palaces; and high

From all the crowded chimneys tower and die

A thousand aureoles. Down in the west

The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest,

One burning sea of gold. Soon, shall fly

The glorious vision, and the hours shall feel

A mightier master; soon from height to height,

With silence and the sharp unpitying stars,

Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel,

Out of the depth beyond the eastern bars,

Glittering and still shall come the awful night.

Still, as I type out this sonnet, I'm realizing that it's not all that scintillating a piece of work. Perhaps I will try to find another cold sonnet.

This one, for instance.

Cold Are the Crabs (I don't know the date but 19th century, of course)

     Edward Lear

Cold are the crabs that crawl on yonder hills,

Colder the cucumbers that grow beneath,

And colder still the brazen chops that wreathe

          The tedious gloom of philosophic pills!

For when the tardy film of nectar fills

The ample bowls of demons and of men,

There lurks the feeble mouse, the homely hen,

          And there the porcupine with all her quills.

Yet much remains--to weave a solemn strain

That lingering sadly--slowly dies away,

Daily departing with departing day.

A pea-green gamut on a distant plain

When wily walruses in congress meet--

          Such such is life--

Well.

Clearly melodrama is the best way to close this rapidly melting endeavor.

Sonnet

     Mary Locke (also 19th century)

I hate the Spring in parti-colored vest,

          What time she breathes upon the opening rose,

When every vale in cheerfulness is dressed,

          And man with grateful admiration glows.

Still may he glow, and love the sprightly scene,

          Who ne'er has felt the iron hand of Care;

But what avails to me a sky serene,

          Whose mind is torn with Anguish and Despair?

Give me the Winter's desolating reign,

          The gloomy sky in which no star is found;

Howl, ye wild winds, across the desert plain;

          Ye water roar, ye falling woods resound!

Congenial horrors, hail! I love to see

All Nature mourn, and share my misery.

"Congenial horrors, hail!" How do you think it would look on a t-shirt? Or do you think it would work better on a greeting card?

Dinner tonight: beef vegetable soup, popovers, green salad, and maybe I'll scald milk and make eggnog or hot chocolate for dessert, and then maybe I'll sit under the couch blanket and fruitlessly attempt to defend my household cribbage title.

I'm still working away at Adam Bede, thinking of reading some of James Baldwin's stories next, and I'm yearning to get back to my project of randomly copying out Dickinson poems. Rereading "Protestant Cemetery," which I posted yesterday, made me long to be writing again; but ironically, now that I've won a time-to-write grant, I seem to be snarled in tasks for other people. At the moment, Adam Bede is what passes for my private life. Without a book in hand, I would be as good as dead, which is a notion I've had since childhood, when I was fully aware that reading was only slightly less vital than breathing. Oddly, my need to have an animal living in my house has a similar urgency. On those terrible occasions when I've been "between dogs," I'm filled with restless anxiety, the choking sensation of being trapped somewhere with nothing to read, no dog toenails clacking across my kitchen floor, no air in my lungs.

It's strange how babyish we can be, all our long lives.

But suddenly I am in the mood to read Blake.