Category Archives: Poetry

March 6, 2012

Schrödinger’s Cat

By Joe

Big Bang Theory is by far my favorite show on TV right now.  It is smart and funny without being mean-spirited or too bawdy.  On one of the earlier episodes, Leonard has asked Penny out on a date.  Neither knows whether or not they should go through with it, and both end up asking the socially inept Sheldon for advice. Sheldon’s answer to their queries is the story of Schrödinger’s Cat.  If you would like to see the clip in which Sheldon explains Schrödinger’s Cat, click this link here.  After seeing the episode several times, I decided that I would do a little research into Schrödinger’s Cat and I came across the following explanatory poem from The Straight Dope.  I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

A STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC FROM CECIL’S STOREHOUSE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
The story of Schroedinger’s cat (an epic poem)

May 7, 1982
Dear Cecil:

Cecil, you’re my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schroedinger’s cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously live and dead!
What I don’t understand is just why he
Can’t be one or other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I’m enlightened, the other I ain’t.
If you understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will and won’t see you in Schroedinger’s zoo.

— Randy F., Chicago

Cecil replies:

Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don’t worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
Win saw that the theory that Newton’d invented
By Einstein’s discov’ries had been badly dented.
What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, “Don’t panic,
No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.
If that’s not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat, though — my theory permits us to judge
Where some of ’em is and the rest of ’em was.”
Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E’en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, “Brother, suppose we’ve a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at —
Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got ’em,
One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or atom — whatever — but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder’s sealed. The hour’s passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring — or pushing up daisies?
Now, you’d say the cat either lives or it don’t
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won’t.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer, “Tough shit.
We may not know much, but one thing’s fo’ sho’:
There’s things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons — you’ll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed —
Which ruins your test. But then if there’s no testing
To see if a particle’s moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability — certainty, never.’
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
‘Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
“We’ve just flipped a coin and we’ve learned he’s a corpse.”‘
So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, “You’re nuts.
God doesn’t play dice with the universe, putz.
I’ll prove it!” he said, and the Lord knows he tried —
In vain — until fin’ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: “Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I’ll say of this saint:
Ten-to-one he’s in heaven — but five bucks says he ain’t.”

— Cecil Adams

3 Comments | posted in Funny, Poetry, Television

February 28, 2012

Teach Me

By Joe

TEACH ME
By Donald (Grady) Davidson

Teach me, old World, your passion of slow change,
    Your calm of stars, watching the turn of earth,
Patient of man, and never thinking strange
    The mad red crash of each new system’s birth.

Teach me, for I would know your beauty’s way
    That waits and changes with each changing sun,
No dawn so fair but promises a day
    Of other perfectness than men have won.

Teach me, old World, not as vain men have taught,
    —Unpatient song, nor words of hollow brass,
Nor men’s dismay whose powerfullest thought
    Is woe that they and worlds alike must pass.

Nothing I learn by any mortal rule;
Teach me, old World, I would not be man’s fool.

from The Fugitive, 1922

Donald (Grady) Davidson
1893–1968

Poet Donald (Grady) Davidson was born in Tennessee and was a member of both the Fugitive and Agrarian groups at Vanderbilt University. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Vanderbilt University and remained at the University his entire professional career (1920 – 1968) teaching English. In addition to being a teacher, Davidson enjoyed an international reputation as a poet, essayist, novelist, and critic. His first book of poems, The Outland Piper, was published in 1924. From 1931-1967 he spent his summers teaching at Bread Loaf School of English in Ripton, Vermont. He served in the military during World War I May 1917- June 1919. In June of 1918 he married Theresa Sherrer, a legal scholar and artist. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, American Folklore Society, American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and the Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government.

1 Comment | posted in Nudity, Poetry

February 21, 2012

Edwin Arlington Robinson

By Joe

I recently made my American Literature students read some of the poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson.  I will admit that I was not terribly familiar with him, but we are studying American poetry, and he was one of the poets.  The poems were fairly short and fairly straightforward, meaning that it would be easy for the kids to interpret.  I read the poems and fell in love with them.  Since then, I have gone back and read a few more of Robinson’s poems, and enjoyed them.  The two poems that we read, sort of resonated with me in a special way.

On December 22, 1869, Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine. His family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870, which renamed “Tilbury Town,” became the backdrop for many of Robinson’s poems.  His poems are sketches about different people in the town.  If you have never read the two poems below, I hope that you will read them now, or if you have read them before, I hope that you will enjoy them all over again.

The first poem is Richard Cory:

Richard Cory
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked,
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich–yes, richer than a king–
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

The two major things in this poem the wealth of Richard Cory and his suicide at the end are not what draws me to this poem.  I am not rich nor do I contemplate suicide.  This poem, which first appeared in The Children of the Night and remains one of Robinson’s most popular poems, recalls the economic depression of 1893. At that time, people could not afford meat and had a diet mainly of bread, often day-old bread selling for less than freshly baked goods. This hard-times experience made the townspeople even more aware of Richard’s difference from them, so much so that they treated him as royalty.  I think what I get out of this poem is how he doesn’t fit in because of something extraordinary about him.  In his case it is his wealth.  In my case, people often see me as smart and don’t often see me as a regular person.  I can tell a dirty joke, drink a beer, and be just as normal as the next person, but sometimes, people see my intelligence and often think, “He’s too smart for me.”  Or maybe because I am gay (or perceived as gay for those who don’t know for sure), people think that I do not enjoy sports, fishing, or other “manly” pursuits.  To truth is, I am just a normal guy who is smart and gay.  Neither of those are the central things about me.  We all have something that distinguishes us, but should that separate us from the crowd.  Maybe sometimes it does, and sometimes we want it to, but all in all, we are just people like everyone else.  Sadly, the people of Tilbury Town did not realize this about Richard Cory.

The other poem is the way I sometimes feel when I am studying particular periods in history.

Miniver Cheevy
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
     Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
     And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
     When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
     Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
     And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
     And Priam’s neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
     That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
     And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
     Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
     Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
     And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
     Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought
     But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
     And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
     Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
     And kept on drinking.

We may not take it as far as Miniver Cheevy, but I think all people who study history sometimes feel that they were born in the wrong time.  Then again, there have been very few times in history when it was as acceptable to be gay as it in this day and age, but then again who wouldn’t have loved to witness the Olympic Games of Ancient Greece, or traveled down the canals of Venice when the city was in its full glory, or any number of periods or events in history.  Personally, though I would love to visit those time periods, I like my modern conveniences and air conditioning.  Then again, the Roaring Twenties when I could have possibly partied with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Tallulah Bankhead or sat on the Seine with the Lost Generation or gone to the Cotton Club in Harlem at the height of the Harlem Renaissance.  Come to think of it, maybe, I was born out of time. I think I would have loved the 1920s (just not the Great Depression that followed).

How many of you have felt that you were born in the wrong time? Or that people didn’t appreciate you for who you are?

6 Comments | posted in Poetry, Uncategorized

February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine’s Day

By Joe

I started to do a post on the origins of Valentine’s Day and end with a favorite love poem. However, I changed my mind. The origins of Valentine’s Day is just a bit depressing with the martyrdom of two different men named Valentine in the third century (if you want to read about the origins, click on this article form NPR: The Dark Origins Of Valentine’s Day), so then I looked for a poem. After looking at several different poems, I had to come back to my favorites, even though they are a bit corny/sappy, and I couldn’t choose just one. I happen to think that sonnets are the most beautiful form of poetry, and so the first two are sonnets, one from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the other from Shakespeare. I am sure that all of you have read both of these first two, and I absolutely love them.

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day? (Sonnet 18)
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

The last poem, I found in a list of author’s favorite love poems for Valentine’s Day. This one is from Blake Morrison, a British poet and author whose greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? In his offering of a love poem, he states:

Love poems may be addressed to someone in particular but the “you” invariably remains unidentified or is represented only by a body part or item of dress – a sleeping head, a naked foot, an air-blue gown. Thom Gunn’s “Touch” is an extreme example of this. His lover is no more than a mound of bedclothes and embraces him in sleepy oblivion (“do / you know who / I am or am I / your mother or / the nearest human being”). This feeling of anonymity is important: it links the two lovers to the rest of us: they’re part of a “realm where we walk with everyone”. But the poem is also intimate and domestic: here are two people (plus cat) in their own bed – naked, cocooned, “ourselves alone”. Gunn was gay but his lover’s gender isn’t specified, since the theme is the inclusiveness of touch: the way it breaks down the “resilient chilly hardness” we all adopt to function in the outside world. The syllabic form enacts this dissolution or slippage, as the words seep gently from line to line, without the hardness of end stops. The word “love” isn’t used; the words “dark” and “darkness” recur three times. But the poem exudes warmth, familiarity and how it feels to lie naked with a fellow creature, whoever he or she may be.

Touch
by Thom Gunn

You are already
asleep. I lower
myself in next to
you, my skin slightly
numb with the restraint
of habits, the patina of
self, the black frost
of outsideness, so that even
unclothed it is
a resilient chilly
hardness, a superficially
malleable, dead
rubbery texture.

You are a mound
of bedclothes, where the cat
in sleep braces
its paws against your
calf through the blankets,
and kneads each paw in turn.

Meanwhile and slowly
I feel a is it
my own warmth surfacing or
the ferment of your whole
body that in darkness beneath
the cover is stealing
bit by bit to break
down that chill.

You turn and
hold me tightly, do
you know who
I am or am I
your mother or
the nearest human being to
hold on to in a
dreamed pogrom.

What I, now loosened,
sink into is an old
big place, it is
there already, for
you are already
there, and the cat
got there before you, yet
it is hard to locate.
What is more, the place is
not found but seeps
from our touch in
continuous creation, dark
enclosing cocoon round
ourselves alone, dark
wide realm where we
walk with everyone.

May each and every one of you have a happy and perfectly lovely Valentine’s Day!
It doesn’t matter if you are with someone or alone, know that I am sending my love, hugs, and kisses on this Valentine’s Day.

XOXO

5 Comments | posted in Nudity, Poetry

February 10, 2012

Under the Weather

By Joe

Common Cold
Ogden Nash
Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I’m not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever’s hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.
Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne’er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.
A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare’s plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!
Mr. Nash describes very well how I feel right now, though mine is sinus problems. This stanza is the best description:
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever’s hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
I’m still going to school today, so my students will get to be quiet and do some busy work (I hate giving busy work) and y’all get a relatively short post, with what I consider to be a cute little poem.
If you are wondering why I don’t just call in sick, it seems that we have a several other teachers out and we are having a problem finding enough substitutes.  So since I am not contagious, I will go to school and make it through the day, so that I can use the weekend to rest.

6 Comments | posted in Poetry

February 7, 2012

On A Dream

By Joe



ON A DREAM
By John Keats

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
    When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
    So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
    And seeing it asleep, so fled away,
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
    Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d that day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
    Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
    Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

4 Comments | posted in Nudity, Poetry

January 31, 2012

The Ballad of Hua Mulan

By Joe

This poem was composed in the fifth or sixth century CE. At the time, China was divided between north and south. The rulers of the northern dynasties were from non-Han ethnic groups, most of them from Turkic peoples such as the Toba (Tuoba, also known as Xianbei), whose Northern Wei dynasty ruled most of northern China from 386–534. This background explains why the character Mulan refers to the Son of Heaven as “Khan” — the title given to rulers among the pastoral nomadic people of the north, including the Xianbei — one of the many reasons why the images conveyed in the movie “Mulan” of a stereotypically Confucian Chinese civilization fighting against the barbaric “Huns” to the north are inaccurate.

Tsiek tsiek and again tsiek tsiek,
Mulan weaves, facing the door.
You don’t hear the shuttle’s sound,
You only hear Daughter’s sighs.
They ask Daughter who’s in her heart,
They ask Daughter who’s on her mind.
“No one is on Daughter’s heart,
No one is on Daughter’s mind.
Last night I saw the draft posters,
The Khan is calling many troops,
The army list is in twelve scrolls,
On every scroll there’s Father’s name.
Father has no grown-up son,
Mulan has no elder brother.
I want to buy a saddle and horse,
And serve in the army in Father’s place.

In the East Market she buys a spirited horse,
In the West Market she buys a saddle,
In the South Market she buys a bridle,
In the North Market she buys a long whip.
At dawn she takes leave of Father and Mother,
In the evening camps on the Yellow River’s bank.
She doesn’t hear the sound of Father and Mother calling,
She only hears the Yellow River’s flowing water cry tsien tsien.

At dawn she takes leave of the Yellow River,
In the evening she arrives at Black Mountain.
She doesn’t hear the sound of Father and Mother calling,
She only hears Mount Yen’s nomad horses cry tsiu tsiu.
She goes ten thousand miles on the business of war,
She crosses passes and mountains like flying.
Northern gusts carry the rattle of army pots,
Chilly light shines on iron armor.
Generals die in a hundred battles,
Stout soldiers return after ten years.

On her return she sees the Son of Heaven,
The Son of Heaven sits in the Splendid Hall.
He gives out promotions in twelve ranks
And prizes of a hundred thousand and more.
The Khan asks her what she desires.
“Mulan has no use for a minister’s post.
I wish to ride a swift mount
To take me back to my home.”

When Father and Mother hear Daughter is coming
They go outside the wall to meet her, leaning on each other.
When Elder Sister hears Younger Sister is coming
She fixes her rouge, facing the door.
When Little Brother hears Elder Sister is coming
He whets the knife, quick quick, for pig and sheep.
“I open the door to my east chamber,
I sit on my couch in the west room,
I take off my wartime gown
And put on my old-time clothes.”
Facing the window she fixes her cloudlike hair,
Hanging up a mirror she dabs on yellow flower powder
She goes out the door and sees her comrades.
Her comrades are all amazed and perplexed.
Traveling together for twelve years
They didn’t know Mulan was a girl.
“The he-hare’s feet go hop and skip,
The she-hare’s eyes are muddled and fuddled.
Two hares running side by side close to the ground,
How can they tell if I am he or she?”

3 Comments | posted in History, Poetry

January 27, 2012

The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

By Joe
The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

As is traditionally depicted, a certain group of seven scholar/musician/poets wishing to escape the intrigues, corruption and stifling atmosphere of court life during the politically fraught Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history habitually gathered in the obscurity of a bamboo grove near the house of Xi Kang in Shanyang (now in Henan province). Here they enjoyed practicing their works, and enjoying the simple, rustic life, always with too much Chinese alcoholic beverage (sometimes referred to as “wine”). This was contrasted with the theoretically and Confucian certified honorable and joyful duty of serving ones country; but, which at this time would have actually meant living (at least briefly) a life of attempting to perform governmental service amid the deadly dangerous political quagmires of the seats of power and changes of government. Rather than attempt to stay loyal to Wei through the rise of Jin by their active, personal involvement, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove instead stressed the enjoyment of ale, personal freedom, spontaneity and a celebration of nature — together with political avoidance.

The complexity of homosexual relationships inevitably led to the creation of poetic works immortalizing conflicting sentiments. Ruan Ji is usually mentioned first among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The other sages were Xi Kang his lover, Shan Tao, Liu Ling, Ruan Xian, Xiang Xiu, Wang Rong. They created an image of wise men enjoying life rather uninhibitedly, realizing the old dream of a Daoist concord of free men who are gifted with hidden wisdom “to be together, not being together” and “act jointly, not acting jointly”. The wine goblet, which became a symbol of being accustomed to “contemplating many wonders” pertaining to Daoism, united them even more than any principles. Ruan Ji talked in his works about “remote” things but about the “Bamboo Groove” he remained silent, although the group became the main focus of his searches for free and frank friendship.  Ruan Ji was one of the most famous poets to apply his brush to a homosexual theme. This work, one of several dealing with homosexuality from the “Jade Terrace,” a collection of love poetry, beautifully illustrates the stock imagery on which men of his time could draw in conceptualizing and describing love for another man.

In days of old there were many blossom boys —
An Ling and Long Yang.
Young peach and plum blossoms,
Dazzling with glorious brightness.
Joyful as nine springtimes;
Pliant as if bowed by autumn frost.
Roving glances gave rise to beautiful seductions;
Speech and laughter expelled fragrance.
Hand in hand they shared love’s rapture,
Sharing coverlcts and bedclothes.

Couples of birds in flight,
Paired wings soaring.
Cinnabar and green pigments record a vow:
“I’ll never forget you for all eternity. “

1 Comment | posted in History, Poetry

January 24, 2012

The Gay Love Letters of Bo Juyi to Yuan Zhen and others

By Joe

There is a very ancient and honorable homosexual literary tradition in China, and gay love poems are contained in the country’s earliest surviving anthology. Most gay men fulfilled their kinship interests (still the major factor in Chinese life today) by getting married, but they also maintained romantic homosexual affairs. The two major tropes for homosexual love – “sharing peaches”, and “the passion of the cut sleeve” – come from the story of Mizi Xia who gave a half-eaten peach to his lover Duke Ling of Wei (534–493 BC), and the story of how the Emperor Ai (reigned 6 BC to 1 AD) cut off his sleeve rather than wake his sleeping favorite Dong Xian. These ancient images demonstrate that male-to-male love rather than just sex was important for establishing a specifically gay identity, and how imaginative metaphors are at least as important as pejortive labels. For two hundred years the Han Dynasty was ruled by ten openly bisexual emperors, and detailed biographies were written about their favorites. During the Tang Dynasty, more records survive describing gay life and romantic friendship outside of imperial circles. The Chinese poet Bo Juyi (772–846) was one of the scholar-officials who served in the vast Chinese civil service, and became Governor of Suchow in 825. His fellow bureaucrats often were sent to provincial towns in the widespread empire, and he exchanged with them poems or verse-letters which are full of the expressions of romantic love. To his friend Qian Hui he sent a poetic souvenir of one winter night they spent together. His friend Yu Shunzhi sent him a bolt of patterned purple silk as a token of remembrance, and Bo Juyi replied how he would make this gift a symbol of their friendship. His greatest love was his fellow student Yuan Zhen (779–831). They were both Collators of Texts in the Palace Library at the northern imperial city of Ch’ang-an, and they exchanged intimate poetry for several decades when different careers separated them and Yuan Zhen was sent to the eastern city of Lo-yang. Bo Juyi wrote to his beloved,

Who knows my heart as I think of you?
It’s a captive falcon and a caged crane.

Even after a long separation – they both became commissioners in different provinces, and it could take almost a year for their letters to reach one another – Bo Juyi would sometimes dream that they were still together:

Awakening, I suspected you were at my side,
reached for you but there was nothingness.

Both poets got married; Yuan Zhen loved his wife but she died after only a few years; Bo Juyi’s wife “read no books” and he seems to have had no special intimacy with her; he built a cottage near a monastery where he would go to be alone. In his poem “Night Rain” (812) Bo Juyi speaks of his longing for Yuan Zhen:

There is one that I love in a far, far land;
There is something that harrows me, tied in the depths of my heart.
So Far is the land that I cannot visit him;
I can only gaze in longing, day on day.
So deep the sorrow that it cannot be torn away;
Never a night but I brood on it, hour, by hour.

In 814 Bo Juyi sent Yuan Zhan a sum of money equivalent to half a year’s salary,

Not that I thought you were bent on food and clothes,
But only because I felt tenderly towards you.

They were reunited briefly in 819, when both carved a poem on the rock outside a cave; they met again in 821–2 and in 829. The two men had made a pact to live together as Taoist recluses in their retirement, but Yuan Zhen died after a sudden illness before this plan could be put into effect. Bo Juyi wrote two formal dirges to recite at his beloved’s funeral and three songs for the pall-bearers to sing.

BO JUYI TO QIAN HUI     [early ninth century]

Night deep – the memorial draft finished;
mist and moon intense piercing cold.
About to lie down, I warm the last remnant of the wine;
we face before the lamp and drink.
Drawing up the green silk coverlets,
placing our pillows side by side;
like spending more than a hundred nights,
to sleep together with you here.

BO JUYI TO YU SHUNZHI

Thousand leagues, friend’s heart cordial;
one strand, fragrant silk purple resplendent.
Breaking the seal, it glistens
with a rose hue of the sun at eve –
The pattern fills in the width
of a breeze arising on autumnal waters.
About to cut it to make a mattress,
pitying the breaking of the leaves;
about to cut it to make a bag,
pitying the dividing of the flowers.
It is bettter to sew it,
making a coverlet of joined delight;
I think of you as if I’m with you,
day or night.

BO JUYI TO YUAN ZHEN     [805]

Since I left home to seek official state
Seven years I have lived in Ch’ang-an.
What have I gained? Only you, Yuan;
So hard it is to bind friendship fast. . . .
We did not go up together for Examination;
We were not serving in the same Department of State.
The bond that joined us lay deeper than outward things;
The rivers of our souls spring from the same well!

YUAN ZHEN TO BO JUYI     [816]

Other people too have friends that they love;
But ours was a love such as few friends have known.
You were all my sustenance; it mattered more
To see you daily than to get my morning food.
And if there was a single day when we did not meet
I would sit listless, my mind in a tangle of gloom.
To think we are now thousands of miles apart,
Lost like clouds, each drifting on his far way!
Those clouds on high, where many winds blow,
What is their chance of ever meeting again?
And if in open heaven the beings of the air
Are driven and thwarted, what of Man below?

BO JUYI TO YUAN ZHEN

Last night the clouds scattered everywhere,
for a thousand leagues the same moon color.
At dawn’s coming I saw you in dreams;
it must be you were thinking of me.
In my dream I grasped your hand,
asked you what your thoughts were.
You said you thought of me with pain,
had no one to send a letter through.

When I awoke, I still had not spoken in reply.
a knock-on-the-door sound, rap rap!
Saying, “A messenger from Shangzhou,”
he delivered a letter of yours.
From the pillow I rose sudden and startled,
putting on my clothes topsy-turvy.
I opened the seal, saw the hand-letter,
one sheet, thirteen lines.

SOURCE: Trans. Howard S. Levy, Translations from Po Chü-i’s Collected Works, 4 vols. (repr. New York, 1971); and Arthur Walley, The Life and Times of Po Chü-i (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949).

3 Comments | posted in History, Poetry

January 17, 2012

Let America Be America Again

By Joe

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

In Rick Santorum’s bid for the Republican nomination, he had used a line that echoed this poem as a campaign slogan. His slogan was “Fighting to make America America again.”  The line was apparently removed, when Santorum, a well-known conservative, backed away from the phrase — saying he had “nothing to do” with it — after being told it derives from a poem by Langston Hughes. Apparently, using a phrase by one of America’s greatest African-American (and probably most disturbing to Santorum) gay poets.

Hughes, who died in 1967, was an African American Communist who advocated for civil rights and social justice. A key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, evidence suggests that Hughes was gay; some of his poems were homoerotic and others defended gay rights.

Personally, I think Santorum and all politicians in America could learn from this poem.  Though the poem only alludes to the closet of homosexuality and the fight for equal right for the GLBT community.  If I were to add to this poem, it might look something like this:

I am the gay man, full of love and compassion,
Tangled in the rainbow of desire.
I am the American who begs for equality,
Who struggles each day in and out of the closet.
Where is the America for us?
Where is the America we were promised?

However, I am not much of a poet, so forgive me for the added stanza.

8 Comments | posted in Poetry, Politics