October 19, 2017

Poets’ Roundtable

Nota bene: Go to the end of this entry to find the notes on tension in poetry for the meeting on October 26, 2017 at 1 PM!!!

Welcome

We'll be minus Trish and Rich today as we apparently will miss those with short names.

News and Jabber

Richard Wilbur:  Here is a link to a remembrance of him.

http://www.wbur.org/artery/2017/10/17/remembering-poet-richard-wilbur.

He died at 96. I first studied him in college and cannot find the poems I liked best then. Nonetheless, read the selections in the article for their rhyme, meter and overall skill, let alone the wonderful poetry.

In a Churchyard
by Richard Wilbur

 That flower unseen, that gem of purest ray,
Bright thoughts uncut by men:
Strange that you need but speak them, Thomas Gray,
And the mind skips and dives beyond its ken,

Finding at once the wild supposed bloom,
Or in the imagined cave
Some pulse of crystal staving off the gloom
As covertly as phosphorus in a grave.


Void notions proper to a buried head!
Beneath these tombstones here
Unseenness fills the sockets of the dead,
Whatever to their souls may now appear;

And who but those unfathomably deaf
Who quiet all this ground
Could catch, within the ear's diminished clef,
A music innocent of time and sound?

What do the living hear, then, when the bell
Hangs plumb within the tower
Of the still church, and still their thoughts compel
Pure tollings that intend no mortal hour?

As when a ferry for the shore of death
Glides looming toward the dock,
Her engines cut, her spirits bating breath
As the ranked pilings narrow toward the shock,

So memory and expectation set
Some pulseless clangor free
Of circumstance, and charm us to forget
This twilight crumbling in the churchyard tree,

Those swifts or swallows which do not pertain,
Scuffed voices in the drive,
That light flicked on behind the vestry pane,
Till, unperplexed from all that is alive,

It shadows all our thought, balked imminence
Of uncommitted sound,
And still would tower at the sill of sense
Were not, as now, its honeyed abeyance crowned

With a mauled boom of summons far more strange
Than any stroke unheard,
Which breaks again with unimagined range
Through all reverberations of the word,

Pooling the mystery of things that are,
The buzz of prayer said,
The scent of grass, the earliest-blooming star,
These unseen gravestones, and the darker dead.

Also, I was interested in this article, here in its entirety, which gave me pause to wonder at the great poetry that has not appeared in some languages. And what poems have not appeared in English. I cannot name a single Dutch poet and wonder if this is because there aren't any or they are not available in English.

"Lake District poet's work finds new audience thanks to new Dutch translation

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Rob and Cobie te Nijenhuis fell in love with the poet’s work when they visited his home at Rydal Mount this summer.Rob and Cobie te Nijenhuis fell in love with the poet’s work when they visited his home at Rydal Mount this summer.Lakeland romantic poet William WordsworthLakeland romantic poet William Wordsworth

Rob and Cobie te Nijenhuis fell in love with the poet’s work when they visited his home at Rydal Mount this summer.

Lakeland romantic poet William Wordsworth

By Oscar Lynch

18 October 2017 3:26PM

ONE of the most famous poems in the English language is set to reach a new international audience as a couple from the Netherlands have translated Wordsworth's Daffodils into Dutch.

Rob and Cobie te Nijenhuis fell in love with the poet’s work when they visited his home at Rydal Mount this summer.

As great fans of the Lake District, they have been coming to the area for 26 years and now act as social media ambassadors for the region. This was their first visit to the house near Ambleside where William Wordsworth spent most of his life.

“We had seen Wordsworth’s grave and heard he wrote a poem about daffodils, but he’s not well known in the Netherlands,” said Rob, a retired banker from Hummelo.

 We heard he wrote a poem about daffodils, but he’s not well known in the Netherlands 

All that is set to change as Rob, a prolific tweeter who spends much of his time on social media telling the world all about the wonders of the English Lakes, has become a great Wordsworth fan. He translated the poem after he and Cobie visited Rydal this summer as guests of the curator Peter Elkington, and has now sent a copy of the poem in Dutch to Peter.

A story about the couple’s love affair with the Lakes has also been published in their local newspaper.

“The Lake District is the most beautiful place in the world,” Rob said. “We love England, but especially the Lakes.”

Rob and wife Cobie, who works as a commercial publisher, have stayed in Little Langdale on every holiday, originally at Wilson Place Farm and then at Damson View Cottage.

Peter said: “We were delighted to meet Rob and Cobie this summer and will now put their translation of the poem on display in the house.”

The translation follows a more famous Dutch interpretation of Wordsworth's beloved poem.

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Dutch brewing company Heineken featured the poet in a popular advertisement that appeared on UK TV screens in the 1980s. The advert parodies Wordsworth's creative process, depicting the poet struggling for an opening line despite the stunning Lake District scenery.

"I walked about a bit on my own" and "I strolled around without anyone else" are dismissed, before a sip of a cold glass of Heineken inspires the immortal "I wandered lonely as a cloud."

The Dutch version in full:

Narcissen, door William Wordsworth

Ik wandelde als een eenzame wolk Die hoog over valleien en heuvels drijft Toen ik opeens een menigte zag Een leger gouden narcissen Naast het meer,onder de bomen Fladderend en dansend in de bries

Continue als de sterren schijnen En op de Melkweg twinkelen Ze strekten zich uit als een oneindige lijn Langs de kant van een baai In een flits zag ik er tienduizenden Hun hoofden opengooiend in een levendige dans

De golven naast hun dansten: maar zij Deden of zij de sprankelende golven ingleden Een Poëet kon niet anders dan homo zijn In zulk vrolijk gezelschap Ik heb gekeken en gekeken, maar kleine gedachten De weelde die de show mij had gebracht

Vaak, als ik op mijn divan lig In vacante of nadenkende stemming Knipperen op dat innerlijke oog Welke het geluk van eenzaamheid is En dan is mijn hart met geluk gevuld En danst met de narcissen

Who was William Wordsworth?

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in 1770, and spent much of his working life based in the Lake District.

Daffodils was first published in 1807 as part of his Poems in Two Volumes, and was later revised in 1815.

Inspiration for the poem came when he encountered the eponymous daffodils while walking around Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater - this area is now known as Wordsworth Point.

In a BBC Radio 4 poll to determine the nation's favourite poem, Daffodils came fifth."

The Current Assignment

How did it go? My hope was that you take the poem seriously since it will be an essential part of the special meeting on tension in poetry. That is still scheduled for the 26th but may change depending upon whether most of you can make the meeting.

The Next Assignment

Read a book of poems by an author you are unfimiliar with. Tell us about it.  Write a new poem  of  your own-- any style, any topic.

The Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Thursday, November 2, 2017.

DON'T FORGET THE MEETING ON OCTOBER 26, 2017 AT 1PM ON TENSION IN  POETRY.

Bring your copy of "The Groundhog." Check the notes included here to get some footing on the ground we'll try to cover.

Intension:  In linguistics, logic, philosophy, and other fields, an intension is any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase, or another symbol.[1] In the case of a word, the word's definition often implies an intension. For instance, intension of the word 'plant' includes properties like "being composed of cellulose" and "alive" and "organism", among others. Comprehension is the collection of all such intensions.

Extension: In any of several studies that treat the use of signs—for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, and semiotics—the extension of a concept, idea, or sign consists of the things to which it applies, in contrast with its comprehension or intension, which consists very roughly of the ideas, properties, or corresponding signs that are implied or suggested by the concept in question.

In philosophical semantics or the philosophy of language, the 'extension' of a concept or expression is the set of things it extends to, or applies to, if it is the sort of concept or expression that a single object by itself can satisfy. Concepts and expressions of this sort are monadic or "one-place" concepts and expressions.

So the extension of the word "dog" is the set of all (past, present and future) dogs in the world: the set includes Fido, Rover, Lassie, Rex, and so on. The extension of the phrase "Wikipedia reader" includes each person who has ever read Wikipedia, including you.

The extension of a whole statement, as opposed to a word or phrase, is defined (since Frege 1892) as its truth value. So the extension of "Lassie is famous" is the logical value 'true', since Lassie is famous.

Tension is the shared experience of the poet's, the poem's and the reader's sense of the human condition in an instant of understanding that leaves an "unformulable residuum that harrows the reader."

It emerges from a concatenation of sound and sense, overt (denotative) and, more importantly, implied (connotative), that prepares with craft and art and that the reader is invited into and adds to; thus widening, exploding, into a moment's experience of Truth so profoundly that it literally shocks the body/mind continuum.

Tension is the accumulated effect of sound and sense elements that struggle with each other and result in a  certain degree of ambiguity and implied meaning that in effect overtake the reader with an ineluctable confrontation with the human condition. In this state ambiguities and implications are not resolved but are ineffably, almost mystically, balanced.

Negative Capability

A term used many times on this website...

'The concept of Negative Capability is the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems.'

Keats was a romantic poet, full of intense passion and desire, yet shy and reserved. He was a young man with all the determination and melancholy of a teenager on a romantic quest to be among the English poets when he died.

He is an inspiration to all of us, full of colourful language and imagination. He battled through tuberculosis and only lived to be 25. He wanted to be famous, and he has well and truly lived up to his dream.

Keats longed to find beauty in what was often an ugly and terrible world. He was an admirer of Shakespeare, and his reading of the Bard is insightful and intriguing, illustrating the genius of Shakespeare's creativity. In a letter to his brothers, Keats describes this genius as 'Negative Capability':

'At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously- I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'

This description can be compared to a definition of conflict:

'An emotional state characterized by indecision, restlessness, uncertainty and tension resulting from incompatible inner needs or drives of comparable intensity.'

These two definitions are very similar; the meaning of conflict sounds very negative and hopeless. However, Keats' creative concept seems positive and full of potential by leaving out 'restlessness' by avoiding an 'irritable reaching after fact and reason'

From <http://www.keatsian.co.uk/negative-capability.php> 

The poem does not merely
eventuate in a logical conclusion. The conclusion of the
poem is the working out of the various tensions — set
up by whatever means — by propositions, metaphors,
symbols. The unity is achieved by a dramatic process,
not a logical; it represents an equilibrium of forces, not
a formula. It is “proved" as a dramatic conclusion is
proved; by its ability to resolve the conflicts which have
been accepted as the donnees of the drama.

From <https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.34395/2015.34395.Well-Wrought-Urn-Studies-In-The-Structure-Of-Poetry_djvu.txt>

"The Groundhog"

Richard Eberhart

In June, amid the golden fields,

I saw a groundhog lying dead.

Dead lay he; my senses shook,

And mind outshot our naked frailty.

There lowly in the vigorous summer

His form began its senseless change,

And made my senses waver dim

Seeing nature ferocious in him.

Inspecting close maggots' might

And seething cauldron of his being,

Half with loathing, half with a strange love,

I poked him with an angry stick.

The fever arose, became a flame

And Vigour circumscribed the skies,

Immense energy in the sun,

And through my frame a sunless trembling.

My stick had done nor good nor harm.

Then stood I silent in the day

Watching the object, as before;

And kept my reverence for knowledge

Trying for control, to be still,

To quell the passion of the blood;

Until I had bent down on my knees

Praying for joy in the sight of decay.

And so I left; and I returned

In Autumn strict of eye, to see

The sap gone out of the groundhog,

But the bony sodden hulk remained

But the year had lost its meaning,

And in intellectual chains

I lost both love and loathing,

Mured up in the wall of wisdom.

Another summer took the fields again

Massive and burning, full of life,

But when I chanced upon the spot

There was only a little hair left,

And bones bleaching in the sunlight

Beautiful as architecture;

I watched them like a geometer,

And cut a walking stick from a birch.

It has been three years, now.

There is no sign of the groundhog.

I stood there in the whirling summer,

My hand capped a withered heart,

And thought of China and of Greece,

Of Alexander in his tent;

Of Montaigne in his tower,

Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.

The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Other Jabber