It’s rare when a POETS Day featured poet comes complete his own POETS Day call to arms, but such is the case with Paul Laurence Dunbar. “Sympathy,” one of his most popular works, contains the iconic line “I know why the caged bird sings.” Many know the 1899 poem and appreciate it on its merits, but most these days more are likely to know it by association with Maya Angelou’s eponymously titled autobiography. The poem, or at very least the line, is startling in the ready empathy it evokes; now an expression of black oppression and a powerful image for civil rights movements.
In 1897, Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore, soon to be Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar, moved to Washington D.C. where Paul had been hired as an attendant, which I assume is sort of clerk, at the Library of Congress. It must have seemed an exciting opportunity for the literary-minded poet. He hated it with a mad (poetic) passion. Alice told him to quit and focus exclusively on writing. I don’t think he was hard to convince. She wrote about what prompted him to write the poem in 1914.
I live in a city that is not prepared for cold weather. My northerly relatives laugh when we shut down for snow or icy conditions but we don’t have all the toys they have. If these were regular enough occurrences to justify a snowplow corps or whatever you call the truck that salts the road, we’d have one. But they aren’t. So we don’t. Or maybe we wouldn’t.
The truth is, we like the snow days – “snow days” being a catch all for any day off due to snow, freezing rain, or because James Spann or one of the lesser weatherfolks says there might be snow or freezing rain. Nobody can get to work except the people who own a liquor store and everybody can get to the liquor store. Kids, in particular, love snow days. Every so often we get a real event where cars are abandoned on highways and schools have to host impromptu sleep overs in the gym. Those are important because they give cover when the county preemptively calls a for closings when the weather forecast indicates the chance of something threatening and everybody wants a day off to go to the liquor store. “Better safe that sorry,” says the thirsty school board.
I’m reading A Survey of Modernist Poetry by Laura Riding and Robert Graves. This struck me:
“Yet the sonnet theory can be provoked in Shakespeare’s sonnets as all pre-Shakespearian dramatic theories can be provoked in his plays.”
The sentence is in service of the authors view that it’s not enough to present as evidence of experimentation an excellent poem as excellent poems may have in them borrowings as well as innovations. I very much liked the use of “provoked.”
My kids are out for summer vacation; have been for almost two weeks now. They got a preview of a classless existence twice in May. Their schools allow for a number of “snow days” every year so that should Alabama see a repeat of The Blizzard of ’93 (TM) and the world stops the kids still have the required amount of official school days on the books. If those days don’t get used the administration starts doling them out like a UN aid worker with food and nylons. Suddenly the kids are beaming on a Thursday at three o’clock because the weekend’s arrived a day early. Though floating snow days are nothing new, I was taken by surprise this year because I assumed that post COVID we all knew how to pretend that we got enough done online to meet state guidelines and wouldn’t need them anymore. But the free days popped up and graced early and mid-May Fridays with smiling children playing jacks and hopscotch on the sidewalk, sucking in their stomachs for the high-school lifeguards plus one-third their age, and doing other loveable scamp Rockwell fodder. Good for them. POETS Day knows no age restrictions. I’m taking the idea of unused excuses for off days and running with it. Never go into the half with timeouts in your pocket. Last week was my seventy-fifth POETS Day post for Ordinary Times and it passed right by me, unnoticed. I’m sure some of you were puzzled why I didn’t mention it, but I didn’t realize. This week I’m calling for a POETS Day SNOW Day where POETS stands for Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday like always and SNOW stands for Skedaddle Now. (The O and W are part of NOW so the acronym actually does work. It’s like the A would be in NASA if instead of National Aeronautics and Space Administration it was National Space Administration and they still kept it NASA, because people wouldn’t mind the A from National bleeding into the Space because they like vowels in words. A lot of people probably do think it is National Space Administration and they’ve never complained, so… it’s fine.) Take the belated celebratory free day with my tardy apology. Tell your boss you’re pissing off early in honor of the POETS Day Diamond Jubilee… No. Tell him you’re pissing off early in honor of the Diamond Jubilee. He’ll know.
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When I first decided to write a weekly series about poets and poetry I mapped out what I wanted to do and set a few parameters. One of the first rules was that there would be no translations. I’ve broken that rule a few times but I didn’t want to be caught in a situation where I was unsure if I enjoyed the work of the poet, the translator, or the combination. When I read Pound’s Cathay, or more specifically when I read about how Pound’s Cathay came to be, my conception of translations changed.
Back when I managed a pirate’s crew of waiters and bartenders I grew to accept that a set percentage of my charges was damaged, irredeemable, and blessedly transient. Exhibit A would be Stony McStonerton (not her real name.) Stony was the illegally baffled eighteen year old child of a large wealthy family. You knew she grew up rich because both her first and last names were last names. We got the dirt on her from one of our other employees, her cousin, who had the same two last names but in a different order. Stony struggled to be the black sheep in a family full of sootiness. The competition proved daunting so she retreated into a bong and watched the parade, figuring whatever direction trouble came from there would be a bail out so why not enjoy the show. One big weekend – Valentine’s or some such – when we needed all hands she asked off to see a band in Atlanta. We couldn’t let her go so she gave us the usual shrug, but there was something different about the gesture this time. In retrospect I’d say it lacked her trademark resignation. Five minutes before the Friday shift she called in sounding miserable and claiming sickness. The caller ID said Holiday Inn, Atlanta, GA. Stony was terrible at POETS Day. Her version of the Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday battle cry whimpered along I-20 and flounced, exhausted, in the restaurant’s back office. But… but you have to admire that she stayed true to herself. She could be counted on not to be counted on and through her lack of effort we confirm that the POETS Day spirit dwells within us all, just longing to be free. This POETS Day let’s reach out to those least capable of deceit and include them in our plans, and not just as convenient patsies if things go south or because they might put everything on some uncle’s credit card again. Get out of work early, soak in some sun, and see what bands are playing. It’s your weekend. Don’t wait for permission to get it started. In the meantime, maybe a little verse?
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I just read that villanelles are sometimes called villanesques. I’ve not heard that before but suddenly I wish that they were usually called villanesques and only sometimes called villanelles. I’m picturing a poetic Legion of Doom with Hilaire Belloc and Sylvia Plath as Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, a mustachioed Rupert Brooke twirling Snidely Whiplash style in the corner, and a cackling Marianne Moore studying tarot cards while absently twisting the arm off an Ida Tarbell voodoo doll. T.S. Eliot makes a natural Moriarty.
“What manner of villainy are you poets up to?”
“We’re not up to any villainy, detective. It’s just a little villanesque.”
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the episodes of Days of Our Lives dutifully unwatched by a somnambulist workforce blindly attending to responsibilities. Thanks to the protestant work ethic supposedly dying in the United States, the world’s longest running scripted T.V. (television) show is now streaming on something called Peacock Network; premium subscription only. Want to know how Kristen reacts to the revelation that she and Megan are really sisters? What Brady, who won’t take Kristen’s desperate jailhouse calls, will do now that Vic’s name came up during her hypnosis session with Steph? Too bad. That’s for Premium Members only. This is on you, POETS Day people. Daytime shows die when people slack off viewing in favor of work. Days of Our Lives lost its regularly scheduled slot, but it’s not too late to save Judge Judy, Let’s Make a Deal, and so many others. There are good, honest, salt-of-the-Earth types in Hollywood. They don’t ask much. Just Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. That three or four hours at the end of the week is what?… Time to write a sales projection report for your employer? Maybe an inventory of pre-stressed cement planks? It doesn’t seem like a lot to you and me, but that little bit of extra viewing might mean a new Fendi stroller for a Hollywood pre-toddler or a new Grayson Perry ceramic vase lending his trademark incongruity to a lonely Hollywood etagere. So lie, dissemble, fudge the truth, whatever you need to do to get out of work in the wee PM hours and get a jump start on the weekend. Go to a neighborhood watering hole. Ask the barman to turn off the afternoon baseball game and turn on something Wapneresque. Even thirty minutes a week watching I Love Lucy reruns on a fledgling local network may raise the ratings enough to interest a plaintiff’s attorney in purchasing a life giving ad spot. Act now before all our gameshows, small claims court dramas, tabloid talk formats, and yes, even our stories are gone. The next Oprah is out there waiting. But as always, make time for a little verse.
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The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance
The jeweled steps are already quite white with dew, It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings, And I let down the crystal curtain And watch the moon through the clear autumn.
By Rihaku.
Note. – Jewel stairs, therefore a place. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain, of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has come early, for the dew not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach.
Ezra Pound once wrote that he was, not without cause, accused of selling his notebooks. If you’ve ever read “How to Read” or any of the essays in ABC of Reading you’ll know what he means and be grateful for it. His prose invites a peak into his thought process and breadth of comparison. The above is an excerpt from his book Cathay, Translations by Ezra Pound and lengthily subtitled For the Most Part from the Chinese of Rihaku, from the Notes of the Late Ernest Fenollosa, and the Decipherings of the Professors Mori and Ariga. The above poem is the only one from that collection with appended notes making it the most interesting entry in the collection.
It’s POETS Day! Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday… yay…
Look. I’m trying to be enthused about sneaking out of work and starting the weekend early, but the college football season is done. Party’s Over, Endure The Sabbatical feels a better fit. August 26 is a long way off and I’m full of existential questions. “Are you really a Saturday if no one misses a holding call?” “How are you not just a secular Sunday?” Justify yourself, Saturday.
I guess all the non-football related fun stuff is still out there and once the pain of loss ebbs I’ll pick up and remember that weekends are still worth living for and shift hours are still damned tools of the oppressor but right now my heart just isn’t in it. Sure, you could dissemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully durable civilization as per usual, but why? There’s no college football methadone out there. The rules are still the same though let’s face it. We’re just going through the motions here. All means are a-okay in service of the urge to prematurely escape the bonds of employment and settle in at a friendly neighborhood joint a few hours before even happy hour begins, lay comfortably in the grass at a local park, go for a swim, or God forbid, go for a light jog. It’s your weekend, I guess. I’ll need a bit to mourn and acclimate. Thankfully, there’s still verse to pass the time.
Sometimes I feel bad for people who don’t speak English and are stuck calling their master lyricists words like poeta, digter, imbongi, or tusisolo that don’t form tidy acronyms encouraging their better hedonist angels. Thankfully we are blessed by the vision of William the TBA who noticed that Godwinson was busy in York dealing with family issues and figured even if Harold could get to Hastings in time, he’d have to force march his men with out any bathroom breaks. William won and French words marginalized German words. Instead of the dubious Diners In Cardiff Hate Tasting English Rarebit we get the dulcet Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday, so Happy POETS Day! Disassemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully durable civilization. Nearly all means are justified by the urge to prematurely escape the bonds of employment and settle in at a friendly neighborhood joint a few hours before even happy hour begins, lay comfortably in the grass at a local park or cemetery, take a schvitz, or God forbid, go for a light jog. It’s your weekend. Do with it as you will, but in homage to the mighty Norman acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse? It’s a particularly good way to pass time waiting on friends who may not run as roughshod over the delicate pieties and were not as successful as you were in engineering an early exit.
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In October of 1944, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien spent an evening in discussion with Roy Campbell, this week’s featured poet. Lewis was put off by Campbell’s, according to Lewis, “particular blend of Catholicism and fascism.” Tolkien, who was writing The Lord of the Rings at the time, reportedly took Campbell as inspiration for a mysterious hobbit character named Trotter who he would over time rewrite as a man, rename Strider, and reveal as Aragorn. People didn’t react mildly to Campbell. Even when they were ostensibly friends and admirers of each other’s literary abilities and fellow members of The Inklings, Lewis wrote a mean poem at him.
Real life, Twitter, TV, articles… this keeps coming up. I want to be clear. The game they are playing at odd hours on the corpses of immigrant workers far off in the desert is called soccer. No “in America” or “by Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, the Irish, Pakistanis, South Africans, Nigerians… et al.” clarification needed. The game is Association Football, shortened by weird Oxford students who add -er to the end of everything to Soccer Football and later just Soccer. The game falls under the same identifying umbrella as Rugby Football, Gaelic Football, American Football, Australian Rule Football, and Hockey (field for certain – I’m not sure about ice.)
No sane person has a problem with anyone calling the game football in a context that makes it clear which of the many games you are referring to that are encompassed by the word. The British can say football all they want, knowing that those around them understand what is being referenced is the type of football known as Association Football, just as I casually use the word football to refer to the American Football type in which Alabama just beat Alabama Polytechnical Institute 49 to 27. I do have a problem when some East End denizen thousands of miles away gets a bee in his trunk or a local hipster with a crisp on his shoulder and a copy of Proust sitting on his night table that he’s started six times gets high and mighty because I or someone else is more specific than he wants to be.
Thanksgiving dinner is intended to be a convivial affair. Much is made of the idea that we should stop and consider our blessings, note the good that others have done for us, count the times that we have feared but not lost, and the recognize than when we have lost the sadness felt was in proportion to the joy we were lucky enough to share in. I’ll not object to such exercizes. We should enumerate and recognize the things that make our lives better and give thanks for them each and separately. I don’t think I’ve ever done that, but we should. To me, and I assume many others, the wonder of Thanksgiving comes from less the mental tabulations – again, worthy activities – than time set aside to spend in communion with those we love; the feelings of thanks flowing effortlessly from and through the fellowship and unbidden forming yet another entry on the grand ledger for which we give even further thanks. Properly set, the Thanksgiving dinner table is a familial perpetual emotion machine. At least, it should be. We do our best. That’s why I’m so loathe to bring this up.
We all have that relative who is going to disrupt the Thanksgiving dinner harmony this year. It’ll likely be a man. I don’t want to be sexist, but it will. Your brother, uncle, brother in-law, father, grandfather, or cousin is going to say something controversial. Ideally, I’d sit on my hands and hope his inane thoughts get ignored and he moves on to other subjects, but these days there are devoted cable stations, web sites, and all manner of social media clamour feeding the bubble he lives in and god knows how many circular bias reinforcing bar conversations he’s a veteran of. He’s been marinating in this fantasy and has enough ammunition to blather on from soup to nuts. In addition to annoyed eye rolling adults, there’s the matter of any children present at the table. Should you sit by while a supposed authority figure fills their minds with this? You have to weigh his intrusion on their formative mind against the risk of upsetting your host and having it out with the offending presence right then and there (in which case I believe your host and probably all of the other guests will be secretly relieved and thank you later.) I say have it out. If you are cutting and decisive you may have him vanquished and silent before anyone sits at the table because when he sees Detroit playing Buffalo on TV he won’t be able to help but smugly inject some variation on “Flip channels so we can watch some real football. Brazil and Serbia, man! World Cup!” Properly armed you can end this now.
The Columbo Game 