One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life that you could save.
About the Poem
“The Journey” by Mary Oliver is a poem that focuses on the need to leave behind what is bad and wrong and harmful and start out on a new path. It has become a popular poem for those seeking guidance and strength in their lives. Oliver is best known for her poems on nature. So, “The Journey” is different from most of her poems in that it is more involved with the life of a person who is struggling to find meaning in a relationship and with themselves. The references to the natural world are few and distant – this poem is about the necessity for change, leaving one dark situation and finding another that is more positive. This person who, one day, finally knew what they had to do, is someone who is coming in from the cold, into the light from the dark, re-joining the world of the whole, finding their own voice, no longer a broken individual.
The journey tells of a person who has waited a long time for this day to arrive when they are about to start on a journey out of the dark past and into a brighter future. Despite those voices from any number of people trying to drag them back, giving their “bad advice” as loudly as they could, the poet had made up their mind out of necessity. Note the use of the house which is a symbol of the self, how it was made to tremble, that is, how close this person came to completely collapsing. It’s not a home but an empty person. And the voices are powerful because they represent negative energy, old patterns that this person had to break out of.
In a repeat of the opening line, the speaker clearly declares determinedly that “you know what you had to do.” There is no looking back, no stopping, no chance of holding onto that past life. However, the wind is still at you, trying to destroy and undermine you. The person set off in the day but now it is night and chaos still might rule. This is the chaotic energy of the past still attempting to stop the new progress and end this journey voices are not enough to cause a halt. The poem tells us that we cannot cling to the past, we cannot afford to dwell on what has gone.
In the final dozen lines of the poem, the transition is nearly complete, ready for the next phase. Stars are visible once again, but the cloud cover is not strong enough to diminish their light. Stars, what the old navigators used, now you can use. The voice that had been drowned out by those negative false calls for help is renewed. And it is strong, and it is yours alone.
The emphasis is on coming back into the world following what has been a challenging, chaotic, and terrifying experience. To be able to listen again to that inner voice of wisdom and truth, a sort of companion throughout the ordeal. At the last moment, in the nick of time, before it was too late, the speaker (the person, ‘you’) began the journey and overcame the obstacles both real and imagined.
About the Poet
Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. It is characterized by a sincere wonderment at the impact of natural imagery conveyed in unadorned language. In 2007, she was declared to be the country’s best-selling poet.
Oh, is it, then, Utopian To hope that I may meet a man Who’ll not relate, in accents suave, The tales of girls he used to have?
The poem today is short and sweet. (I don’t know that Dorothy Parker was ever “sweet” in her prose. It’s just an expression.) Dorothy Parker always goes straight to the point, and usually in a humorous way. A founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker’s work was known for its scathing wit and intellectual commentary. She may have used humor, but there is often a lot of truth in what she says. In this poem, she basically is saying: In a perfect world, I would meet a man who won’t tell me about his past lovers. We probably have all known people who are constantly comparing people to others in their past. We may have even had a boyfriend who constantly told us about his ex-lovers. While it’s good to know about someone’s past, we don’t need to hear them compare us to those who they have known in the past.
De Profundis is Latin: “from the depths.” De profundis often refers to Psalm 130, traditionally known as the De Profundis (“Out of the depths”), from its opening words in Latin. There are several works in literature titled “De Profundis,” several of which include more serious poetry. These include:
De Profundis (letter), an 1897 work written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment, in the form of a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas
“De Profundis,” a poem by Federico García Lorca, set to music in the first movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14
“De Profundis,” a 1998 poem by Regina Derieva
“De Profundis,” a poem by J. Slauerhoff in the 1928 collection Eldorado
“De Profundis”, a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle written in 1892
“AMERICA ’62: De Profundis,” a 2007 prose piece by Panos Ioannides
Suspiria de Profundis, a collection of essays by Thomas De Quincey
Appropriately, the watermark at the bottom of the photo above reads, “GAYS WITH STORIES.”
He went to Paris looking for answers To questions that bothered him so He was impressive, young and aggressive Saving the world on his own But the warm Summer breezes The French wines and cheeses Put his ambition at bay And Summers and Winters Scattered like splinters And four or five years slipped away
Then he went to England, played the piano And married an actress named Kim They had a fine life, she was a good wife And bore him a young son named Jim And all of the answers and all of the questions He locked in his attic one day ‘Cause he liked the quiet clean country living And twenty more years slipped away
Well the war took his baby, the bombs killed his lady And left him with only one eye His body was battered, his world was shattered And all he could do was just cry While the tears were falling, he was recalling The answers he never found So he hopped on a freighter, skidded the ocean And left England without a sound
Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin’s And drinks his green label each day He’s writing his memoirs and losing his hearing But he don’t care what most people say Through 86 years of perpetual motion If he likes you he’ll smile then he’ll say Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic But I had a good life all the way
And he went to Paris looking for answers To questions that bother him so
Jimmy Buffett is probably best known for his tropical rock music, which often portrays a lifestyle described as “island escapism.” With his Coral Reefer Band, he is best known for songs like the hit “Margaritaville” and its namesake restaurants and for a sense of humor and irony exhibited in songs like “Cheeseburger In Paradise” and “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” (which originally had the words “and screw” added to the end but was dropped from the title by a lot of online retailers and websites). With this last weekend being Labor Day weekend, I can’t fail to mention “Come Monday.” But what often escapes the notice of so many is that this guy really is an accomplished, and often very serious, songwriter with hundreds of original titles to his credit. His songwriting gift showed up early in pieces like the much-lauded 1973 story song “He Went To Paris.” Though people know many of his other songs, many Jimmy Buffett fans (or Parrotheads, as they call themselves) might tell you that “He Went To Paris” is their favorite song. (My personal favorites are “Stars Fell on Alabama” and “Pencil Thin Mustache.”)
From his album A White Sport Coat And A Pink Crustacean, Buffett wrote the third-person narrative “He Went To Paris” about a Spanish Civil War veteran and one-armed pianist he’d met named Eddie Balchowsky. Released as the album’s final single, it didn’t chart, but in recent years, it has become well known, especially since Bob Dylan named it as one of his favorites and Buffett began to perform it live. With an unusual construction, the song opens and closes with the lines, “He went to Paris/Looking for answers/To questions that bothered him so.” In between those lines are four long verses that chronicle a life of 86 years that saw war, music, tragedy, and world travels, with the subject finally, gratefully and graciously, telling the singer, “Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic/But I had a good life all of the way.”
Buffett once explained the song’s origins, “The song was actually about a guy I met in Chicago, and he was the cleanup guy at a club called the Quiet Knight [where several prominent singer/songwriter careers were launched]. He had one arm. And so he started telling me stories about his days fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and when he got wounded, he came back to Paris for his treatment. The song is more reflective of stories that Eddie told me. All they did was accentuate the history in the books that I was familiar with from Hemingway and Fitzgerald. That song was written actually in Chicago of all places, and it was written based on the stories of Eddie. At that point I don’t believe I’d ever been to Paris. You put all that stuff together and mix it like a gumbo.”
Buffett was born on December 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and spent part of his childhood in Mobile and Fairhope, Alabama. After graduating from McGill Institute for Boys, a Catholic high school in Mobile, in 1964, Buffett enrolled at Auburn University and began playing the guitar after seeing a fraternity brother playing surrounded by a group of girls. Buffett left Auburn after a year due to his grades and continued his college years at Pearl River Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1969. After graduating in 1969, Buffett moved to New Orleans, often held street performances for tourists on Decatur Street, and played for drunken crowds in the former Bayou Room nightclub on Bourbon Street. I’m pretty sure I’ve read that Auburn granted him a degree after he became famous, even though he flunked out of the university.
Aside from his career in music, Buffett was also a bestselling author and was involved in two restaurant chains named after two of his best-known songs; he owned Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurant chain and co-developed the now defunct Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant chain. Buffett was one of the world’s richest musicians, with a net worth of $1 billion in 2023. Buffett was involved in many charity efforts. In 1981, Buffett and former Florida governor Bob Graham founded the Save the Manatee Club. In 1989, legislation in Florida introduced the “Save the Manatee” license plate, featuring an image of a West Indian manatee, and earmarked funding for the Save the Manatee Club. Buffett was also a longtime supporter of and major donor to the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory. He has organized several benefit concerts for hurricane relief and for the 2010 BP oil spill that devastated marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. Buffett was also a lifelong Democratic and hosted fundraisers for Democratic politicians, including several for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
After entering hospice care just five days prior, Buffett passed away peacefully in his sleep on September 1, 2023, at his home in Sag Harbor, New York, at the age of 76 from skin cancer (diagnosed in 2019) that had turned into lymphoma. I think it can safely be said that Jimmy himself would say of his life, “Some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic, but I had a good life all the way.” I hope God and Jimmy are having margaritas together and enjoying cheeseburgers in paradise.
Here is a live version from earlier this year (2/9/23):
I tried to find live recordings of the songs I provided links for throughout the post.
turns out there are more planets than stars more places to land than to be burned
I have always been in love with last chances especially now that they really do seem like last chances
the trill of it all upending what’s left of my head after we explode
are you ready to ascend in the morning I will take you on the wing
About This Poem
“An imago is, for many winged insects, the final form of its metamorphosis. The plural of imago is imagines, and this time in the insect’s life is called the imaginal stage. The insect at this point has reached sexual maturity and has also earned its wings.” —D. A. Powell
About The Poet
D. A. Powell was born in Albany, Georgia, on May 16, 1963. He attended Sonoma State University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1991 and his master’s in 1993. He received his MFA degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1996.
Powell is the author of the trilogy of books Cocktails (Graywolf Press, 2004), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Lunch (Wesleyan University Press, 2000), and Tea (Wesleyan University Press, 1998). His poetry collection Chronic(Graywolf Press, 2009) received the Kingsley Tufts Award and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent books are Repast: Tea, Lunch, Cocktails (Graywolf Press, 2014) and Useless Landscape, or a Guide for Boys: Poems(Graywolf Press, 2012).
Powell’s subjects range from movies, art, and other trappings of contemporary culture to the AIDS pandemic. Powell’s work often returns to AIDS; his first three collections have been called a trilogy about the disease. As Carl Phillips wrote in his judge’s note for Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Award for Powell’s work, “No fear, here, of heritage nor of music nor, refreshingly, of authority. Mr. Powell recognizes in the contemporary the latest manifestations of a much older tradition: namely, what it is to be human.”
Powell has received a Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener Center, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, among other awards.
Powell has taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, Sonoma State University, and San Francisco State University and served as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry at Harvard University. He currently teaches at the University of San Francisco.
At the touch of you, As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow, The arrows of delight shot through my body.
You were spring, And I the edge of a cliff, And a shining waterfall rushed over me.
About the Poet
“At the Touch of You” is presented in two tercets of irregular free verse with a theme of romantic love. The imagery in the first stanza is evocative of Greek mythology. The second stanza uses the image of a waterfall to create a beautiful metaphor. What drew me into this poem was the first line: “At the touch of you.” Most poems begin with mentioning the sight of the poet’s lover and describe their outer appearance, but Bynner instead felt his rush of emotions not when he saw his love, but when his lover touched him.
I feel like he is describing how it feels when his lover’s makes love to him. Without much doubt, this poem is very erotic. He touches him and as he enters him, his “arrow of delight” shoots through his body setting him off an erotic journey as his lover’s touch travels across his body setting him on an erotic edge of that cliff that brings him just to the edge of orgasm before that orgasm comes and rushes over him like a “shining waterfall.” That is quite an orgasm that is as powerful as a waterfall engulfing his body.
About the Poet
Witter Bynner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1881. He graduated from Harvard University in 1902. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter and, later, as the assistant editor of McClure’s magazine.
Bynner published his first poetry collection, An Ode to Harvard (Small, Maynard, & Co.), in 1907. He was also the author of New Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960); Take Away the Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947); The Beloved Stranger (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919); Tiger (M. Kennerley, 1913); and several other poetry collections.
Bynner was also known for his works in translation, including The Way of Life According to Laotzu: An American Version (John Day Co., 1944), and a literary biography, Journey with Genius: Recollections and Reflections Concerning the D. H. Lawrences (J. Day Co, 1951).
In 1916, Bynner and Arthur David Ficke published Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, under the pseudonyms Emanuel Morgan and Anne Krish. The book included poems and a manifesto on “spectrism,” a parody of Imagism. In 1918, Bynner admitted that the book was a hoax.
In 1922, Bynner settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his partner, Robert Hunt. He died there on June 1, 1968.
If You Must Hide Yourself From Love By Christopher Salerno
It is important to face the rear of the train as it leaves the republic. Not that all
departing is yearning. First love is a factory. We sleep in a bed that had once
been a tree. Nothing is forgot. Yet facts, over time, lose their charm,
warned a dying Plato. You have to isolate the lies you love. Are we any less
photorealistic? I spot in someone’s Face- book sonogram a tiny dictum
full of syllogisms. One says: all kisses come down to a hole in the skull,
toothpaste and gin; therefore your eyes are bull, your mouth is a goal.
About the Poem
“Love hurts, warned The Everly Brothers. Especially when we let passion trump reason. After all, as Plato suggests, there are any number of available ‘beds in nature’ to make one’s lovelife more complicated. As humans we struggle with the difference between physical, emotional, and intellectual love. Sometimes we simply need to bail out of the whole enterprise, and sometimes, after a great pain, we may need to censor it from our lives. To see sentimentality for what it is. Only then do we come back (to love) even stronger.”—Christopher Salerno
About the Poet
Christopher Salerno was born on June 13, 1975, in Somerville, New Jersey. He received an MA from East Carolina University and an MFA from Bennington College.
Salerno is the author of Sun & Urn (University of Georgia Press, 2017), winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize; ATM (Georgetown Review Press, 2014), winner of the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize; Minimum Heroic (Mississippi Review Press, 2010), winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize; and Whirligig (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006).
In the judge’s citation for the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize, D. A. Powell writes, “Salerno rifles through our empty wallets to show how much we’re missing. These poems are mystical transactions of body and soul, as dark as Faust and as illuminating.”
Salerno has also received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He currently serves as an editor at Saturnalia Books and teaches at William Paterson University. He lives in Caldwell, New Jersey.
On the walk back from the therapist to the office you rub your chest and say
It’ll be all right, my gurgush There’s a clusterfuck waiting at work, things that really aren’t personal
but slice you up anyway You’ll be all right, my malai ka doona It’ll all get done, my chhunmunita
You think of your mother whose love birthed all these names How often she hurt you
and it dawns on you, like a flash of lightning on an airplane: love is a bagad billa
At the pantry, you feed yourself a boxed lunch of baingan and channa and remember how she once
stood at the door, hours after she locked you up in a room a plate of aloo parathas in her hand
and a look that said you were ok now, the anger under your relief You swallow the last morsel, feeling it graze your heart. Back at work, hungry again.
About the Poet
Mrigaa Sethi is an Indian poet and writer who was born in New Delhi. They were raised in Bangkok and currently living in Singapore. Their poems have appeared in The Seneca Review, ep;phany and other literary magazines, and been anthologized in Call and Response 2 and EXHALE: an Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices. She is also a storyteller and has performed at Other Tongues: A Festival of Minority Voices, What’s Your Story Slam, the Singapore Night Festival and StoryFest.
They are also a journalist and writer/editor who covers lifestyle, business, and social issues across the Asia-Pacific region. Their freelance journalism has appeared in Quartz, the Wall Street Journal and CNN Travel, and she has produced jargon-free business content for clients such as Prudential, TM ONE, NinjaVan, and other start-ups. Outside of work, Their creative projects engage digital audiences across different mediums. Over the pandemic, she hosted a podcast series for the Singapore Writers Festival, ran a poetry-themed video series, and helped lead an online theatre festival for queer women in Singapore. Their newest passion project is growing Their LinkedIn network of thought leaders and followers, around topics such as creativity, diversity and inclusion, and content marketing.
Mrigaa’s mother is Bonny Sethi, a fashion designer whose one-woman studio in Bangkok – June Fifth by Bonny – specializes in bespoke Indian bridal wear. Mrigaa is quite the opposite of their mother. In an article for the Singapore women’s magazine Her World, she explains:
As a toddler, I would lie on the floor and shriek with displeasure when she put me in dresses and stockings. During my tween years, I would mope around at parties in the high-waisted skirts and floral blouses she picked out for me. I loathed the culottes the girls had to wear at my Catholic middle school – my mother refused to buy me the trouser option – and hid inside a sweaty oversized jacket.
As a teenager, I became more willful, insisting on wearing my father’s roomy flannel shirts and leather belts. Every dressy occasion – office parties, Diwali dos, wedding receptions – became a fashion battleground for my mother and me.
The tension wasn’t just about clothes. And as I grew older, my gender and sexuality became harder to deny. Fashion anguish aside, I had unrequited crushes on female classmates and teachers that my mother knew about but was unprepared to handle.
There was no word in Hindi for what I was. There wasn’t anyone like me in Bangkok’s conservative Indian community, where their child’s eventual heterosexual wedding was the dream twinkling in every parent’s eye.
After high school, she moved to the US. In both fashion and romance, she found the freedom she wanted but wasn’t able to find the right fit. Mrigaa found it hard to reconcile their sexuality with their Indian identity. She felt she could be queer or Indian, but never at the same time. Things seemed to come to a head when she moved back to Bangkok from the US seven years later and faced the choice of going back in the closet or being openly gay in the city where their parents’ Indian community resided. Their mother’s bridal business had taken off and become very well-known and was concerned that living with my partner would lead to gossip.
The integration of being queer and Indian took many years, but things changed for the better when their mother stopped negotiating on toned-down Indian women’s outfits for them and started designing clothes that made me feel good: more masculine sherwanis, Aligarh trousers, fitted Nehru collar jackets in rich prints with silk pocket squares. Eventually, it seemed like the cosmos sent their mother a gift. Mrigaa met their current partner whom they say is “beautiful, both inside and out.” On every visit to Bangkok, their mother showered their partner with all the dresses, jewelry, and handbags a fashionista mother could give a daughter.
About the Poem
Sometimes you read a poem and you immediately identify with it in some way. You may not understand the whole poem, but there is just something about it that speaks to you. “Names for Hunger” by Mrigaa Sethi did that for me. Mrigaa is lesbian and Indian, while I am white, s gay man from the southern United States. Being members of the LGBTQ+ though is not they only thing we have in common. Our relationships with our mothers are complex, and we are constantly trying to work through that complexity.
Speaking about this poem, Mrigaa Sethi said, “I lived in Singapore during the pandemic, and for a time my temporary office happened to be across the street from my therapist’s. After one particularly impactful session, I came back to my office and reheated my lunch of homemade Indian leftovers. They used to cause me great shame when I was a little immigrant kid, but in adulthood bring me great joy. This poem resulted from the collision of my ‘work self’ with some other selves that had lingered after therapy.”
Before I give my thoughts on the poem, I thought I’d try to give definitions for some of the words in this poem that were unfamiliar to me and will possibly be unfamiliar to you. I could not find a direct reference to the first three, but the last three were easy enough to find. If you are familiar with any of these words (some mean something very different in language other than Hindi), please let me know.
Gargush was the most difficult for me to understand. The word gargush is Hebrew for a traditional Yemenite Jewish headdress. I do not believe this is what the poet was referencing. I think it is more likely a Hinglish (a mixture of the English and Hindi) word for gorgeous, though I could not find this in my searches for the word’s meaning.
malai ka doona: Malaika is a Hindu girl’s name meaning “angel.” Doona is a type of quilt or duvet, but it also seems to mean “doubly.” By best guess is malai ka doona means a double angel, or maybe a very sweet and caring person. I could not find any actual equivalent in Hindi, so this is my best guess.
I assume that chhunmunita is the diminutive of Chhunmun, a girl’s name meaning “Cute.” Thus, chhunmunita would mean “little cutie” or something to that affect. Again, I could not actually find a meaning for chhunmunita. Chunmun is also a clothing store in India, which might mean there is a connection to Mrigaa Sethi’s mother.
Bagad billa an imaginary animal invoked to frighten children. Also, the name Bagadbilla is of Hindi origin and means “A cat which pretends to be a tiger.”
Baingan and channa is a flavorful vegan eggplant (baingan) and chickpea (channa) curry.
Aloo paratha is a paratha (flat bread dish) stuffed with potato filling that is traditionally eaten for breakfast.
The poet hears their mother’s voice in their head as they cross the street from their therapist to their temporary office. They know that “there’s a clusterfuck waiting at work.” As a queer Indian, the poet speaks of how often their mother hurt them and that love can be a terrifying monster (bagad billa) that pretends to be something that it is not but disguises itself as something that should be beautiful. As the poet eats their lunch, they realize that their mother did love them but found it hard to express that love through understanding. Eventually, the mother does accept the poet, and they go back to work still feeling hungry for the love that they had felt they lacked growing up.
I can understand the frustration of wanting to be accepted by your mother who believes that what she does, even though it hurts you, is done in love. My own mother lived in denial about my sexuality for years, and she still often hurts me with how she deals with it and the little nasty comments she sometimes makes. Yet, she wraps all of that in what she believes is love, when it is more hurtful than love ever should be. For some, like Mrigaa Sethi, acceptance eventually comes, but for others like me, I doubt it ever will. So, we press on, get back to work, and live our lives the best we can.
We hurry on, nor passing note By Digby Mackworth Dolben
We hurry on, nor passing note The rounded hedges white with May; For golden clouds before us float To lead our dazzled sight astray. We say, ‘they shall indeed be sweet ‘The summer days that are to be’— The ages murmur at our feet The everlasting mystery.
We seek for Love to make our own, But clasp him not for all our care Of outspread arms; we gain alone The flicker of his yellow hair Caught now and then through glancing vine, How rare, how fair, we dare not tell; We know those sunny locks entwine With ruddy-fruited asphodel.
A little life, a little love, Young men rejoicing in their youth, A doubtful twilight from above, A glimpse of Beauty and of Truth,— And then, no doubt, spring-loveliness Expressed in hawthorns white and red, The sprouting of the meadow grass, But churchyard weeds about our head.
About the Poet
During the 19th century the gay British poet Digby Mackworth Dolben was little known. He owes his poetic reputation to his cousin, Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1913 to 1930, who edited a partial edition of his verse, Poems, in 1911. Bridges guaranteed Dolben’s reputation with Three Friends: Memoirs of Digby Mackworth Dolben, Richard Watson Dixon, Henry Bradley (1932), as well as the careful editing of his poetry. Bridges said that the poems Dolben left behind were equal to “anything that was ever written by any English poet at his age.” Hopkins’ infatuation for Dolben and Dolben’s tragic death feature in Simon Edge’s 2017 novel The Hopkins Conundrum.
Digby Mackworth Dolben
Dolben was born February 8, 1848, in Guernsey and brought up at Finedon Hall in Northamptonshire. He was educated at Cheam School and Eton College. At Eton, his distant cousin Bridges was his senior and took him under his wing. Dolben caused considerable scandal at school by his exhibitionist behavior. He chronicled his romantic attachment to another pupil a year older than he was, Martin Le Marchant Gosselin, by writing love poetry. He also defied his strict Protestant upbringing by joining group of studetns of the Oxford Movement, a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. He then claimed allegiance to the Order of St Benedict, affecting a monk’s habit. He was considering a conversion to Roman Catholicism. On June 28, 1867, Dolben drowned in the River Welland when bathing with the ten-year-old son of his tutor, Rev. C. E. Prichard, Rector of South Luffenham in Rutland. Dolben was then aged 19 and preparing to go up to Oxford.
According to Simon Edge, the English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins was “so captivated by a brief meeting [with Dolben] that he spent the rest of his life mourning him.” In a letter to Bridges after Dolben’s death, Hopkins said “there can very seldom have happened the loss of so much beauty (in body and mind and life) and of the promise of still more as there has been in his case.” Hopkins also asked Bridges whether Dolben’s family had considered publishing his poems. Fortunately, the independently wealthy Bridges later published books of poems by both Dolben and Hopkins, or their poetry might have been lost to the world forever. Dolben’s poems were published in a single volume by Bridges in 1911; the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that his work stands “among the best of the poetry of the Oxford Movement.” Dolben’s death, it adds, “was the end of a life of exceptional poetic promise.”
In his biography of Dolben, Bridges identifies Dolben’s ardent affection for another of his Eton classmates, a particularly attractive (if in Bridges’s estimation somewhat vacuous) member of their high church circle. Bridges calls this an “idolization”, but infatuation is a better term; the poems are plainly homoerotic. While editing the book Bridges refused the suggestion put forth by mutual friends that he rewrite Dolben’s poems to read as though they had been written for a girl: but he did agree to suppress the identity of Gosselin, the seemingly oblivious young man who had so enamored Dolben. Gosselin, the British Minister to Lisbon and a knight, had himself died a few years before Bridges began his memoir. (His widow requested the suppression after denying access to his diary.) Bridges does not ignore Dolben’s sexuality. However, he is never direct, and his discussion of his sexuality is hesitant, extremely guarded without any direct or conclusive statement.
i lie around wondering what, if anything i should post on the internet about the government trying to legislate me out of existence i decided to say nothing too tired today birds make noise outside while my back aches from stress and bad sleep and worse dreams it’s autumn and the light comes in different this house inside looks different i haven’t breathed okay in a while maybe a few years can’t remember wish i could fall back asleep while staying aware of things that way i can guide the dream can make the light do its normal thing can inhale fully without walls compressing the air away can fly up above this city its modest downtown shrinking down to model size the people dotting around saying isn’t it just awful and what can we say to make it feel less awful and i’m there in the air singing nothing nothing nothing
About the Poem
I had found a different poem by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza called “It Is Important To Be Something” and while I was looking up information about her, I came across this poem on her Tumblr site. While a lot of “NOTHING” is about being trans, but when I read:
i lie around wondering what, if anything i should post on the internet about the government trying
I decided to use this poem instead. I had spent about an hour or so trying to come up with a poem to use today, and I was “wondering / what, if anything / i should post.” This happens to me more than I’d like to admit. My life is not exactly exciting, and sometimes, I am just not up to babbling on about things other people probably have no interest in. I like talking about politics, but a lot of people don’t like political discussions. I like talking about Star Trek, but again, not all people like to listen to things about Star Trek that I find interesting. There are numerous other topics as well: a recipe I found, books I’ve read, a restaurant I went to or want to go to, important news items, etc. And while I do sometimes write about these things, sometimes I don’t write about them because I am lazy.
I found “NOTHING” to be an interesting poem from beginning to end, especially the final lines:
and what can we say to make it feel less awful and i’m there in the air singing nothing nothing nothing
About the Poet
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet and the author of I Don’t Want to Be Understood (Alice James Books, 2024), There Should Be Flowers (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), and i’m alive / it hurts / i love it (Boost House, 2014). Espinoza’s work covers topics like mental illness, coming out as a transgender woman, as well as universal themes like love, grief, anger, and beauty. She is a Visiting Professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.
All yesterday it poured, and all night long I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat Upon the shingled roof like a weird song, Upon the grass like running children’s feet. And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed, Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed, Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist, And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast. But lo, there was a miracle at dawn! The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze, The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn, The songsters twittered in the rustling trees. And all things were transfigured in the day, But me whom radiant beauty could not move; For you, more wonderful, were far away, And I was blind with hunger for your love.
If you have seen the news, you probably know that there has been a lot of flooding in Northern New York and Vermont. In most of the towns around me, there has been some flooding as the local rivers have overrun their banks. Thankfully, I live on high ground, so I am not in any danger, though what the roads will look like on my way to work this morning is anyone’s guess. I will watch the morning news hoping I will hear more about road conditions.
I picked the above poem because the rain began Sunday afternoon and is supposed to continue through the early hours of this morning. Hopefully, it will have stopped by the time I leave for work. It poured all day yesterday.
About the Poet
Claude McKay, who was born in Jamaica in 1889, wrote about social and political concerns from his perspective as a Black man in the United States, as well as a variety of subjects ranging from his Jamaican homeland to romantic love.
Joe
The Closet Professor 