On poetry: poetry, by Marianne Moore

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician–
nor is it valid
to discriminate against ‘business documents and

school-books’; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
‘literalists of
the imagination’–above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’, shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

-Marianne Moore

Rainy day poem: Elizabeth Bishop

The sky is raining cats and dogs down on Southern California today. Here’s a reflective, even romantic rainy day poem, back from the college days:

It is marvellous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvellous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
To feel the air suddenly clear
As if electricity had passed through it
From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
All over the roof the rain hisses,
And below, the light falling of kisses.

An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
If lightning struck the house now, it would run
From the four blue china balls on top
Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
And we imagine dreamily
How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;

And from the same simplified point of view
Of night and lying flat on one’s back
All things might change equally easily,
Since always to warn us there must be these black
Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.

-Elizabeth Bishop

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a quick breath

This term has flown, flown by. For once in my life I would like to try a semester system, as I think 10-week quarters are insanely brief. Still, I’ve learned quite a bit:

1. Students are, and will be, the soul of my intellectual career. I have been blessed with a wonderful group of freshmen who have energized my academic work. I leave our discussions feeling alive and happy, and sometimes, if I’m very lucky, useful. Feeling useful is not something that occurs much in the ivory tower. I’m a little embarrassed by how much they seem to trust me, and humbled by their effort. I can’t say that I was ever so diligent. Of course, I have my fair share of barely-conscious GE seekers, but nonetheless…I am impressed and humbled by my students.
2. Graduate school is not a refuge from the 9-5. These days, I am on campus often from 9-6 attending to my TA responsibilities and 2nd job, and then come home to read my own books from 8ish to midnight.
3. Procrastination devours. The old beast pursues me still.

One thing I realized over the refreshing Veteran’s Day weekend was that I need to connect with art. History can be a painful discipline, and the arts renew. So, Mr. P and I determined to read a poem together before bed each night, something I think I can keep up even when he’s not here.

Here’s yesterday’s poem, a Robinson Jeffers excerpt taken from one of my favorite (sadly defunct) blogs, the Scrivener:

Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.

-Robinson Jeffers, from Tamar

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