Tag literature

* beyond mockery with philip larkin

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Shared some of Philip Larkin’s work with students this week. I see him as a good example of playing content rebelliously while within formal structures.

In the poem below, one can see what I mean in these lines about the moon:

Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements!

There’s something beyond mockery going on here. He starts with an exaggerated phrase very much in the style of Renaissance poets (the title refers to a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney), but by the time one reads “wolves of memory,” there’s a self-deprecating edge apparent to the pronouncements, which is also in keeping with the overall meditation of aging in the poem.

* lozenge of what now? *

* lozenge of what now? *

Sad Steps – Philip Larkin

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There’s something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate—
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

***

Happy undiminishing!

Jose

* another world with robert bly

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

The Moose – Robert Bly

 

The Arctic moose drinks at the tundra’s edge,
swirling the watercress with his mouth.
How fresh the water is, the coolness of the far North.
A light wind moves through the deep firs.

 

* fir crying out loud *

* fir crying out loud *

Reading this week, I came across these two short lyrics by Robert Bly. I love how in the lyric above there is a sound repetition going on: “moose drinks” followed by the sounds of “swirling the watercress” and on into the next line in “fresh” and “coolness” – all of it a subtle surge of sound.

A similar sense of sound governs the poem below, but also with it is a bit of that Deep Image mojo Bly and others helped to perfect. With the aptness and pacing of a great tanka, the lyric goes from a note on nature to a more personal, inner note. The last line leveled me with its directness: after the tension created between the fanciful note on the herons and the speaker’s inner turmoil, the clarity suggested in the last line evokes “another world” indeed.

Herons – Robert Bly

After trailing their bony legs the herons dance
in their crystal house far up near the clouds.
I need you in sand, touching your hand I weep.
In another world I am clear and transparent.

***

Happy clearing!

Jose