Ode to an Encyclopedia
By James Arthur

O hefty hardcover on the built-in shelf in my parents’ living
room,
O authority stamped on linen paper, molted from your dust
jacket ,
Questing Beast of blue and gold, you were my companion

on beige afternoons that came slanting through the curtains
behind the rough upholstered chair. You knew how to trim a
sail
and how the hornet builds a hive. You had a topographical map

of the mountain ranges on the far side of the moon
and could name the man who shot down the man
who murdered Jesse James. At forty, I tell myself

that boyhood was all enchantment: hanging around the railway,
getting plastered on cartoons; I see my best friend’s father
marinating in a lawn chair, smiling benignly at his son and me

from above a gin and tonic, or sitting astride his roof
with carpentry nails and hammer, going at some problem
that kept resisting all his mending. O my tome, my paper
brother,

my narrative without an ending, you had a diagram of a cow
broken down into the major cuts of beef, and an image
of the Trevi Fountain. The boarding house,

the church on the corner: all that stuff is gone.
In winter in Toronto, people say, a man goes outside
and shovels snow mostly so that his neighbors know

just how much snow he is displacing. I’m writing this
in Baltimore. For such a long time, the boy wants
to grow up and be at large, but posture becomes bearing;

bearing becomes shape. A man can make a choice
between two countries, believing all the while
that he will never have to choose.

About This Poem

When discussing this poem, poet James Arthur said, “It’s now almost unimaginable to me that for the first half of my life, I had no access to the Internet. What I did have is my parents’ hardbound, single-volume encyclopedia: a book that seemed to contain a scrap of information on almost every subject. For me ‘Ode to an Encyclopedia’ is about the openness of the open field; when we’re children, we can still believe that we’ll have time to go everywhere, see everything, and do it all.” I can remember the set of blue World Book Encyclopedias my parents had. We used them for many school projects, but what I temper most is that they spawned my love of knowledge. I’ll be turning 38 at the end of this month, so just like Arthur, the first half of my life I had no access to the Internet and it seemed like all the knowledge in the world were contained in those blue volumes. Now if something interests me and I want to know more, I Google it, but back then, I’d pulled down the appropriate encyclopedia and begin flipping through. The problem was, there were always things I’d see on the way to finding my main article that had drawn me to the books. With those other articles, I’d hold its place with a finger and continue on. By the time I had turned to the article I wanted, I usually had four or five fingers holding different things I wanted to read about next. One or more of them would lead me to putti that volume back up and getting down another and the process began again. Now with the Internet it is so much easier because you just right clicks, and open up a new tab. There’s an almost infinite number of tabs you can open though, but I only had so many fingers. I will get immersed in article after article, each one taking me to a new piece of knowledge.
James Arthur is the author of Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). He teaches at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Cheerfulness Taught by Reason
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint
To muse upon eternity’s constraint
Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,—
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road—
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints?—At least it may be said,
“Because the way is short, I thank thee, God!”

About This Poem

“Cheerfulness Taught by Reason” was published in Browning’s book A Drama of Exile: and other poems (H. G. Langley, 1845). It is true, we are often all too ready to complain, but God is on our side. God provides us with hope and happiness, it is only without Him that we could truly complain. If there was no God, we would have right to become weak and feel like our aspirations are constrained by an empty eternity, but because there is much more in life beyond that where there is God, we shouldn’t complain when we have a few bad days. Our cowardly hearts should be comforted and we should move on happily. Even if we come across some bad times, at least this life God has given us is short and afterwards we can have paradise for eternity. To put that more succinctly, on this journey to happiness, we must be prepared to run into bumps in the road, but know in the end it will get better. Even if in the end you feel as if the journey has taught you nothing, you must be thankful that the journey was short.

This poem was, in my opinion, a perfect companion to my post yesterday. My road has been bumpy and the journey has been arduous, but I persevered and kept God by my side, and I am much happier because of it.

Beginning
by Warren Hanson

This is the Beginning…
This is where it all will start,
on the Wings of some new Spirit with the Beat of some new Heart.

Every morning brings a Promise,
Every day has Gifts to give,
But Today…right now…This Minute….
is when I begin to Live.
And the air that I am breathing is the breeze of what could be,
as I stand here looking out on all the things that could be Me.
And the road that goes before me, leading somewhere out of sight,
is a brand new Opportunity for me to get it Right.
This is the Beginning. This is
Once Upon a Time….
There are dragons to be vanquished! There are castle walls to climb!
But this story isn’t written yet.
I’m only at page One.
The Adventure that’s awaiting me has only just Begun.
There are Mysteries and Treasurers.
There are daring deeds to do!
And if I speak the secret word, then all my Wishes will come true.
That Magic Word has powers that can make the heavens spin.
But it really is not Secret that the password is……”Begin!”
Oh the possibilities is this Beginning I have made!
I am Ready!…. but reluctant.
I am Excited!…. but afraid.

Afraid that starting something New leaves something Old behind.
Afraid that what I seek is something I may Never find.
Or, if I Find it, that it won’t be what I want at all.
That what I’ve left Behind is what I needed after all.

Beginning can be bittersweet, and hard to comprehend.
It can mean that some sweet, precious part of life is at an End.
And the Heart can feel so Hollow when it has to say Good-bye
that the thought of starting Over is too Hard to even try.

But when I reach the End, when all my days are nearly through,
I will Not want to look back on all the things I Didn’t do.
Nor regret the Joys and Passions of the me that Might have been,
if only I had found the simple Courage to Begin.
So…….This is the Beginning….
My Beginning……..My Rebirth.
I Awaken to the Wonder of what I am Really worth.
It is a Springtime for the Spirit, and it’s Giving me a Choice.
So I choose to Use this season as a reason to Rejoice!

I lift my voice in Sweet thanksgiving, singing Loud….and not alone.
A host of Harmonies accompanies my song of the unknown.
Loving Friends and willing Strangers, with their voices joining in,
create a chorus of Encouragement that begs me to Begin.

And the end?…..
It’s out there, Somewhere, farther than the heart can see.
And the Power that will take me there is Here, inside of me.
Though there is no way I can know how many trials I’ll endure,
nor the Joys that I may find,
there is One thing I know for sure…..

This is the Beginning…….

Warren Hanson is a gifted writer of books for children and adults alike. It’s amazing how closely it aligns with what I am feeling today. I’m putting the final touches on packing, loading my car, and telling people goodbye. I’m heading north tomorrow morning. As the poem says, “I am Ready!…. but reluctant. I am Excited!…. but afraid.” It’s so true that “Beginning can be bittersweet, and hard to comprehend.” It can be a bit overwhelming at times. This is a new adventure and a new job far away from home. I don’t know what the future will hold, but I look forward to getting settled and getting to work. This is the Beginning…….

When We Two Parted
George Gordon Byron, 1788 – 1824

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow–
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me–
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well–
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?–
With silence and tears.

Self-Portrait at 36 w/ David
By Ellen Hagan

Barnegat Light, New Jersey—April 4, 2015

Because looking at myself w/ out you beside me is unnatural
& though the light is all wrong—your camera slung & up

the light feels right to me, warm & soft, your chest pressed
towards my back, both our heads angling towards the dock,

boat slips on the bay—all the scallops secure in the sea still,
their bone-less bodies soft. & our own getting softer each day.

Sometimes the mirror makes our features fun-house style
& we’re way more old age than the teen age we most times feel,

or the slight of shutter promises supple & smooth, where edge
& ravine & straight up wrinkle have arrived & settled in

like vulnerable house guests we don’t have the heart to kick out.
How comfortable they’ve become all over our fine faces

& my neck—how they’ve become familiar w/ our privacy. How
we’ve begun to cradle them. Stitch & loom. In the photograph

there we are—chins tilted towards one another, mouths closed

& turned up. A type of satisfaction dead in this middle we’re both in.

 
Self-Portrait on the Street of an Unnamed Foreign City
By Jennifer Grotz

The lettering on the shop window in which
you catch a glimpse of yourself is in Polish.

Behind you a man quickly walks by, nearly shouting
into his cell phone. Then a woman

at a dreamier pace, carrying a just-bought bouquet
upside-down. All on a street where pickpockets abound

along with the ubiquitous smell of something baking.
It is delicious to be anonymous on a foreign city street.

Who knew this could be a life, having languages
instead of relationships, struggling even then,

finding out what it means to be a woman
by watching the faces of men passing by.

I went to distant cities, it almost didn’t matter
which, so primed was I to be reverent.

All of them have the beautiful bridge
crossing a grey, near-sighted river,

one that massages the eyes, focuses
the swooping birds that skim the water’s surface.

The usual things I didn’t pine for earlier
because I didn’t know I wouldn’t have them.

I spent so much time alone, when I actually turned lonely
it was vertigo.

Myself estranged is how I understood the world.
My ignorance had saved me, my vices fueled me,

and then I turned forty. I who love to look and look
couldn’t see what others did.

Now I think about currencies, linguistic equivalents, how lopsided they
are, while
my reflection blurs in the shop windows.

Wanting to be as far away as possible exactly as much as still with you.
Shamelessly entering a Starbucks (free wifi) to write this.

 
About These Poem:

When writing about “Self-Portrait on the Street of an Unnamed Foreign City,” Jennifer Grotz said, “Ut pictura, poesis: as with painting, so with poetry, the saying goes, and perhaps this is why from time to time poets, like painters, use the exercise of the self-portrait to practice seeing. If either the poet or the painter is lucky, sight leads to insight. In this unabashedly autobiographical poem, I use a shop window on a busy street, not a mirror, to view myself, and though my poem aims for truthful precision, I think it renders what, I’m convinced more and more, poems are meant to achieve, that is: registering what it feels like to pass through time.” I agree that poems are meant to evoke feelings; it’s the main thing that draws me to poetry. A hundred people can read the same poem, and each would probably have a different meaning. We tend to focus on what the “experts,” that is those literature professors and literary critics tell us what a poem is about, but a good poem as in any art form, it speaks differently to each person.

In another self-portraits through poetry, Ellen Hagan presents a very different picture. In her comments on “Self-Portrait at 36 w/ David,” she says, “There is something both jarring and seductive about the aging process—a thrill to be gathering years and moments and history (and hopefully wisdom), but too a railing against the media’s constant perception of youth and how to hang onto it. Writing has forever been a balm against all that keeps me awake at night. I look forward to writing the poems that will surely harness all the years to come.” My grandmother used to always say that you are only as old as you feel. In a way, this poem shows how the author sees herself as a woman who is young at heart, even if she looks older than she feels.

These are two very different portraits and two very different poems in content, though they have some grammatical similarities. Yet both are self portraits and tell how the poet sees herself.

The Stripling
Dante Micheaux

1 Samuel 17:56

The field soldiers remember the triumph,
a lithe boy’s naal on the head of giant,
before the king rode through the ranks
to inquire about his parentage or the prince
had him bathed, his hair scented with sweet herbs.

After the crowds dwindled, because neither
one’s cunning nor the adulation of the victorious
are nourishment, and the battle, having made him
hungry, alone and in silence, the boy
slowly ate the brain of the giant.

A stripling, to tell the truth, the boy grew—
mad with the taste—savored the giant brain
and learned its ways, became a giant,
begat giants, who craved and ate all
the people in the land, except their own.

About This Poem

“‘The Stripling’ is the marriage of a thematic obsession with beautiful boys (in this case, the youthful, ruddy and handsome David) and history’s tendency to perpetually recast the underdog and the favorite in its oldest stories.”
—Dante Micheaux

Dante Micheaux is the author of Amorous Shepherd (Sheep Meadow Press, 2010). He is completing a study on literary influence and sexuality. He lives in London.

The Song Of The Chattahoochee
Sidney Lanier, 1842 – 1881

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover’s pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried ‘Abide, abide,’
The willful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said ‘Stay,’
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed ‘Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.’

High o’er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, ‘Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall.’

And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone
— Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet and amethyst —
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call —
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.

Sidney Lanier composed “Song of the Chattahoochee” in November 1877 for a small paper in West Point, Georgia; nonetheless, at the time he considered it the best poem he had ever written, and critics have generally agreed that it is one of his finer efforts. Originally from Macon, Georgia, Lanier travelled much in Georgia, Maryland, Florida, and North Carolina for employment and for his health. He fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was eventually captured by Union troops. He spent the rest of the war in prison, where he relieved his own sufferings and those of his fellow prisoners with melodious tunes on the flute he had taught himself to play when he was younger. But unfortunately, he contracted tuberculosis, and he spent the rest of his life trying unsuccessfully to restore himself to good health. These circumstances—travel, flute-playing, military discipline, and a keen awareness of his own mortality—may account for the major elements of his poetry: nature, music, moral duty, and religion. Lanier was able to see much of the South’s natural beauty, and he found much religious and spiritual significance in it. As a poet, he is regarded as a minor writer in American literature whose prime contribution was to lyrical or musical poetry in the tradition of the American poet Edgar Allan Poe and the English poet Alfred Tennyson. “Song of the Chattahoochee” is primarily a musical poem whose words flow very much like the river that is its speaker. The river’s aim is to do its duty, answering the call of God.

The Chattahoochee River rises in what used to be Habersham County, Georgia. The county, originally comprised much of Northeast Georgia, was cut up dramatically in the latter half of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th Century. The “valley of Halls,” which refers to where the Chattahoochee flows through Hall County, Georgia, became Lake Sydney Lanier in 1953 with the damming of the Chattahoochee River.

I have always loved this poem, but it also always brings to mind the Alan Jackson song “Chattahoochee .”  Every time I think of the Chattahoochee River, I think of this lady I used to work with, who always turned red when this song came on.  It only took the opening stanza:

Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie
We laid rubber on the Georgia asphalt
We got a little crazy but we never got caught

You’re probably wondering why would that cause her to get embarrassed.  With her daughter, she had always used “coochie” as her word for a woman’s lady parts (Southern women just won’t call it what it is.  I know one that refers to it as a squirrel.). So when this song first came on, her daughter was very confused by the line “It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie.”  Most people seem to think that “hoochie coochie” refers to a hoochie, or sexually provocative woman, and a coochie, just what my old coworker had told her daughter.  In fact, this is not what it means at all.  It means a sexually provocative belly dance that originated at a Philadelphia Exhibition in 1876. And while some may think that Jackson was referring to the former and not the latter, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he used “hoochie coochie” because it was a phrase he had heard before and it rhymed nicely with Chattahoochee. It still makes me laugh though.

Mending Wall
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
The image at the heart of “Mending Wall” is arresting: two men meeting on terms of civility and neighborliness to build a barrier between them. They do so out of tradition, out of habit. The poem seems to meditate conventionally on three grand themes: barrier-building (segregation, in the broadest sense of the word), the doomed nature of this enterprise, and our persistence in this activity regardless. But, as we so often see when we look closely at Frost’s best poems, what begins in folksy straightforwardness ends in complex ambiguity. The speaker would have us believe that there are two types of people: those who stubbornly insist on building superfluous walls (with clichés as their justification) and those who would dispense with this practice—wall-builders and wall-breakers. But are these impulses so easily separable? And what does the poem really say about the necessity of boundaries?

Frost’s poem is often listed as one of the great friendship poems, and I believe it speaks wonderfully of some of the intricacies of friendships. I have wonderful friends close to home and some who live far away from me and are part of my camaraderie of cyber friends. My friends closer to home are those I went to school with, work with, or met through family or acquaintances. All of my blog friends, who by the way mean as much to me as my friends who live nearby, live in far away places (with one or two exceptions). I think though that with all friendships we build walls. Just as the speaker in “Mending Wall” asks why we need the wall, I too ask why we need the walls. I don’t know that I have an answer for that, but I think I might have an idea. I know there are certain things in real life that I don’t share with my friends. Different friends I will reveal different things to. It’s not that I’m lying to them, at least I don’t see it that way, but it is because different friends share different parts of my life. Most of my friends know that I a gay, but not all of them. Why don’t I tell them? I really don’t know, but part of it is that the subject never came up. They may or may not know or may think they do know, but it really doesn’t matter to me. It is really not my defining characteristic, so why should it matter.

Yet, I am very honest about myself within the context of my blog. A lot of that has to do with the anonymity of writing a blog. Some people know me personally who read my blog. I am very honest and open with those people. I trust them to be open and honest with me and many of them are. Some have become my greatest friends, and they know who I am talking about. I love them dearly, and I hope they know it. Others I’m just getting to know. I feel as if I can often be more honest with them, but are their still walls involved? Of course there are, usually that wall is the great distance between us, but I still endeavor to be completely honest with them. Some may get to know me and not like my honesty or some other aspect about me. When that happens, I rarely know what it is, even though I wish I did know. If I knew what I said or did I might could mend things. Then again, I might just have a fundamental flaw that they see that I don’t, but I would lie, to fix it if possible. Sometimes, I just want to know what changed so suddenly in the friendship, but that wall is there and my southern upbringing taught me that it is rude to be impolite. The walls are around us, and I know that we don’t need them, just as the speaker in this poem states. Yet, you still have to wonder, do “Good fences make good neighbors”?

Hell, I think I got off the subject here, yet I chose this poem to speak about friendships. I do love the poems of Robert Frost. “Mending Wall” is one of my favorites. I can’t wait until we get to Frost’s poetry in the American Literature class that I teach. I have always enjoyed teaching the poets.

I want to add one more poem to end this post. It is also from a favorite poet of mine and it speaks for itself.

Dear Friends
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say
That I am wearing half my life away
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.
And if my bubbles be too small for you,
Blow bigger then your own: the games we play
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.

And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;
And some unprofitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that he deplores;
So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singing is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.