Horatius at the Bridge

The "Massive Online Open Course" (MOOC) class in Modern and Contemporary Poetry I've been studying with great enjoyment for ten weeks ended last Monday. Fortunately, the discussion forums and videos will remain open for another year, so my 36,000 fellow students and I can continue participating on our own.

Following is my fourth and final essay for the class. The topic is aleatory or "chance" poetry, and our assignment involved performing chance operations on any poem to create a new version of that poem and do a close reading of it.

Option A: The Mesostomatic (based on John Cage's Mesostics)

Visit the link to the Mesostomatic exercise: www.euph0r1a.net/mesostomatic/. Fill in the fields for the spine and textual data and select any number of mesostics before submitting. Please insert into the "textual data" field a URL (web address) for one of the poems we've read in ModPo or the URL of another poem that interests you. Insert a word or phrase or a name as the "spine." Using the Mesostomatic, you will be "writing through" the chosen poem. 

Horatius at the Bridge

                    Hand
                   cOmmons seized
                 baR,
                    And
               smoTe
below. MeanwhIle
                   tUscan
                 flaShing

                   bAck
                     The

                 lighT, rank
                  beHind
                   likE,

                     Bright of
         gold, fouR
                   wIth
          measureD
               ensiGns
                 sprEad.

With its antique diction, gasping rhythm, and flickering images of war, this could be a fragment of some ancient eyewitness account. 

Accidental though it may be, this version has grammatical integrity and a logical progression through the stanzas--a steady enlargement of the pictorial frame. First a hand, then a Tuscan soldier, then by synecdoche many Tuscans, then banners streaming above the assembled ranks of Tuscan soldiers.  

It begins "in medias res" with a main character, the Roman hero through whose eyes we see the battle, but whom we know only by the action of his hand, seizing a bar and smiting the enemy below him. "Meanwhile" our mental eye is drawn upward again, because the Tuscans' armor reflects the light back upward, revealing rank upon rank of soldiers "bright with gold." The impression of vast expanse is heightened by the assonance of "light," "like" and "bright." As the picture expands to its maximum breadth with overarching ensigns coming into view, it also gains energy for a conclusive ending with the assonance of "measured ensigns spread," the nasal resonance of /m/, /n/, and /r/ in the same phrase, and the repeated stops of /d/ and /p/ in "measured" and "spread." These evoke, though don't quite speak, the word "dead" --can there be any fate for this outnumbered hero, but death?

The poem offers several other points that its phantom poet might have arranged on purpose: The ragged, staggered rhythm of the stanza breaks (8,2,3,6), not corresponding to any natural phrasing, suggests the lurching motions and confused disorder of battle. "Rank behind like" does the work of "rank upon rank," but is fresher and emphasizes the disciplined unity of the Tuscans. After this numerless multiplicity of soldiers, specifying that exactly four ranks have banners spread is a welcome contrast and realistic touch. The definite article does not always appear where expected, (eg. "seized bar" instead of "seized the bar") giving the utterance, depending on how you read it, what might be a breathless, hurried effect, or a stoic brevity.

Following is the source text (verses 34 and 35 of 70 ) by Thomas Babington Macaulay:

XXXIV

Now while the Three were tightening
Their harnesses on their backs,
The Consul was the foremost man
To take in hand an axe:
And Fathers mixed with Commons
Seized hatchet, bar, and crow,
And smote upon the planks above,
And loosed the props below.

XXXV

Meanwhile the Tuscan army,
Right glorious to behold,
Come flashing back the noonday light,
Rank behind rank, like surges bright
Of a broad sea of gold.
Four hundred trumpets sounded
A peal of warlike glee,
As that great host, with measured tread,
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly towards the bridge’s head,
Where stood the dauntless Three.

The distilled, mesotic version of these stanzas actually does echo, recognizably, the action and tone of the original, but is pleasingly open and compelling. Stripped of the high-toned mythic quality, a real person seems to emerge. 

I not only like this  mesotic poem, I like the process of making it and the fresh language which resulted from the process, so different from what I usually produce, and so invigorating! This exercise has also increased my tolerance for tackling difficult poems: if I can't get everything out of one, I will nevertheless see what can be got, for have I not, on my own like Horatius, just made something like sense out of four computer-generated clusters, with measured ensigns spread?

Close Reading of a Dickinson Poem

This essay was written as an assignment for the Coursera.com free online course, "Modern and Contemporary Poetry," taught by Al Filreis of the University of Pennsylvania. I did not ascribe a meta-poetic interpretation to the poem--I steadfastly and rather grumpily resisted one--on the grounds that it read best to me as a nature poem. But after many more weeks of studying, I warmed up to the meta-poetic view and now do believe, along with some thousands of my classmates, that Emily's euphoria arose not so much with the sun as with her powerful experience of writing about it.

I taste a liquor never brewed (214)
by Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed –  From Tankards scooped in Pearl –  Not all the Vats upon the Rhine Yield such an Alcohol! Inebriate of air – am I –  And Debauchee of Dew –  Reeling – thro' endless summer days –  From inns of molten Blue –  When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee Out of the Foxglove's door –  When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –  I shall but drink the more! Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –  And Saints – to windows run –  To see the little Tippler Leaning against the – Sun!       When we face a poem whose vocabulary announces it to be about Nature, it doesn't immediately quicken our pulses. Sky, sun, clouds and dew are familiar to us and generally tame; we think of them, if at all, as unobtrusive backgrounds to more interesting activities. If--fleetingly--they are sublime and we notice them as being sublime, they make us feel....what? We don't know, and can't say. Then the glorious sunrise or "l'heure bleu" is quickly over and we've moved on.  So when we approach Emily Dickinson's “I taste a liquor never brewed,” one of the things we want to see is how she overcomes our sluggishness: how she will reveal--in often drearily-ordinary things--extra-ordinary attractions and sensations to charm and dazzle us. Form One of her strategies is to keep the poem short. Here we have just sixteen lines, divided into four verses of four lines each--inviting rather than daunting. The rhyme scheme is ABCB, but in addition to the rhyming end-words she also makes artful, careful use of repeated sounds and partial rhymes. These are pleasing to the ear and help knit the poem's lines together. The form used is the Ballad, four verses of iambic tetrameter. It was very familiar to Dickinson from church services, but she uses this hymn-like structure to hold ideas that are not typical of traditional sacred music. One might think of Emily Dickinson as writing her own private hymnal, an alternative book of self-sacred songs for her own kind of praise and meditation. That may be why she numbered them as hymns in a hymn book are numbered, rather than titling them. She invites the reader to meditate with her. Conceit of “I taste a Liquor never brewed” The fresh approach Dickinson offers us in this poem is the conceit or extended metaphor that the “I” or Speaker is so exquisitely sensitive to nature that it has the effect of liquor on her; while others would merely feel mildly pleased by morning twilight, she is inebriated by it. And she asserts that this is extraordinary behavior which supernatural beings (seraphs and saints) will want to see —or else she will drink and drink until they do come to see and salute her. Punctuation As is typical with Dickinson’ poetry, “Liquor” is punctuated mostly with dashes. Is this also one of her strategies to pull readers into the poem? It may do so by creating ambiguities or double-meanings to intrigue readers; by provoking them to explore the dashes' effect by reading the poem aloud; and by heightening the effect of other punctuation marks when they appear. In other words, the two exclamation points in this poem are all the more exclamatory for being so stark among the dashes; likewise the quotation marks draw attention to themselves as doubly intentional and meaningful. As the little tippler begins to lurch and stagger, so do the dashes. First Verse The speaker piques our interest by telling of a mysterious mixture she drinks, comparable to none other in the world we know. I taste a liquor never brewed -- If brewing is of nature, natural, then this liquor could be supernatural,  unnatural, extra-natural or maybe hyper-natural. Like the Biblical “city not made with hands” it exists, but owes nothing to human effort for its existence. From Tankards scooped in Pearl -- Like a head of froth on beer,  pearly clouds are scooped up in a rounded shape on top of her tankard. Not all the Vats upon the Rhine -- On the famous German river, these could be wooden vats for wine or copper vats for beer. Probably beer is the drink she’s suggesting: beer is drunk from tankards, in long, thirsty drafts, as she does the air--not little sips from small glasses. Also, beer is the beverage that would have a “scoop of pearl” or head of froth on the top. Yield such an Alcohol! -- Alcohol is maybe not a very poetic word. It sounds rather scientific to the ear; under normal conditions it would be clinker of a word. Yet somehow in this poem we glide right over it, perhaps because she has prepared us for it so well with "liquor," "vat," and "tankards." Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: liquor/never; scooped/brewed; |k| in tankard/scooped; |t| in taste/tankard/scooped; pearl/alcohol. Second Verse The effect of this heady mixture of early-morning air and dew is to make the poet feel elevated, exultant, exhilarated, glorified. Inebriate of Air -- am I – “Inebriate” is a Synonym for “drunk.” Now we find out what is inside the tankard with the scoop of pearl on top--it's air. The line invites one to imagine what kind of air could inebriate a person—sweet, pungent, aromatic, delicious, faintly spicy, pure, 100-proof! And Debauchee of Dew -- A debauchee is a person who habitually indulges in debauchery or dissipation--in this case, drunkeness. If she is debauching on “Dew,” she does it in the early morning. Ordinary drunks are up late, but this one is up early. Reeling -- thro endless summer days – “Reeling” denotes a lurching walk, as a drunk would do. “Endless summer days” evokes joy: eternal heaven, a permanent state of bliss. There’s no need to beware of inclement weather, and the drunkard’s hangover or DT’s or offensive behavior are not to be thought of. With this liquor, one can be drunk every day, with each day as beautiful as the last. From inns of Molten Blue -- An inn is a place a drunkard may drink. For the speaker, it’s the sky, but more than the sky. She offers us a super-charged new word describing the intense blue of the twilight sky. “Molten” is not an adjective we’d normally choose for blue—red or yellow like glowing lava is more “molten.” But by giving us “molten blue,” she is asking us to imagine a blue so charged and intense that pigment could never reproduce it. There must be a powerful erupting volcano nearby to produce it, and so there is—the sun. There are many such molten-blue inns--perhaps different vantage points from which she views the sky?--and she reels drunkenly from one to the next. Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: long |e| in inebriate/debauchee/reeling; |n| in endless/inns/molten; |u| in dew/thro/blue; |d| in debauchee/dew/endless/days; dew/blue. Third Verse Even if other creatures should cease feeding on nature's elixirs, the Speaker never will. When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee In quotes, “landlords” become imaginary miniature proprietors of the Foxglove Inn where bees drink nectar. Possibly Dickinson believes that without quote marks around “landlords,” we will float past her intended idea and light instead on the image of human landlords waving bees away, which she does not want. Out of the Foxglove's door -- The image of Bees getting ejected by miniature bar bouncers is rather comical. Foxgloves are tall, elegant flowers. Only bees may sup there indiscriminately: foxgloves produce digitalis which can be, like alcohol, medicinal up to a point but poisonous beyond it. When Butterflies -- renounce their "drams" – Drams are small drinks of whiskey or other spirits. Dickinson was an acute observer of nature: she knew that butterflies also live on liquids—not only nectar from flowers, but also tree sap, rotting fruit, etc. (http://www.kidsbutterfly.org/faq/behavior/3) If butterflies renounce their “drams”—if they swear off nectar and “wine”—they will die. Does the Speaker feel that neither could she live, if this kind of drinking were denied her? I shall but drink the more! Dickinson uses “when” clauses here, but they can be understood as “if” clauses—“if” in the sense of “not at all likely.” It calls to mind e e cummings’ usage in “when serpents bargain for the right to squirm.” Even if bees and butterflies should cease drinking their nectar, I shall drink more than I did before! Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: |n| in landlords/turn/drunken; |s| in foxglove’s/ butterflies/renounce/drams; door/more. Fourth Verse One effect of the Speaker's inebriation is elevation--she rises to inhabit the sky with angels, saints, and the sun. The heavens she has feasted on have taken her up. Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats -- This is a difficult line. Seraphs are angels; while they are sometimes depicted with halos, angels are not widely known to wear hats.* “Snowy” is often found in religious texts to mean pure, white, or clean—surely an appropriate kind of hat for angels to swing, given that they have one. Swinging a hat seems like a joyful, ebullient gesture—a celebratory salute to the tippler, perhaps. And Saints -- to windows run -- The references to seraphs and saints may be intended as a slight jab at the church-goers who listen to hymns with traditional lyrics. In other words, the sitters in pews may think they are the holy ones, and that the Speaker over-imbibing celestial air is a sinner; yet she claims that the true heavenly holy ones—seraphs and saints—will be interested in and exultant about her activity rather than theirs; they will run to the windows of heaven to view it. To see the little Tippler “Tippler” is the “I” or speaker of the poem, “tippling” being another synonym for drinking alcohol. Leaning against the -- Sun -- The speaker of the poem has drunk and drunk and is no longer capable of reeling, as she was in verse 2—now she must simply lean for support on the sun. In the mind’s eye, the two are not disproportional: the creature who sups like birds and butterflies on the morning air is perceived to be a fair size for leaning against the sun as it peers, along with the seraphs and saints, over the horizon at her. The dashes before and after "Sun" wrap it with special emphasis, even if we aren't sure what that emphasis is to mean. Perhaps it lends a feeling of "At last!" to the line, as in, "At last I have risen so high, I am so high, as I have been desiring to be, up through the clouds and the sky until I rest on the--at last!--sun itself!" Repeated sounds and partial rhymes: |s| in seraphs/swing/snowy/hats/saints/windows/see/against/ sun; short |a| in seraphs/hats; |l| in till/little/tippler; |t| in till/to/saints/little/tippler/against; |w| in swing/snowy/windows. As if gathering force to end the poem conclusively, the lines of verse four are more than usually united with the repeated sounds of many S’s. As we have seen, Dickinson certainly did find a fresh and personal way to shake us out of our doldrums about nature; she has a gift for it. Her conceit of drunkenness is surprising, yet not at all off-putting because first, we know this is a delicate and sensitive young lady speaking, not some burly, bluff imbiber. Second, the language is delicate, precise, and beautifully calculated to invoke an effect that is none the less convincing for being whimsical. She loves to rise very early, to watch the sky turn molten with the approach of the sun, to drink in the air moist and sweet with dew, and to exult in these sensations. She has expressed all this in a way that invites us to exult with her—and to wave our snowy hats at her, too, should we have one to hand. * I don't believe Emily Dickinson would have used "hat" for "halo." Though I may be mistaken, I believe haloes were depicted mainly in Roman Catholic art, which would not have been so much regarded in Protestant New England.

Faribault School Loom

I just acquired a Faribault School Loom,  9 x 12, (price: free!) and found this old advertisement in "School Arts," a google book from 1909, to document it. Now I can make a homey rug!

The Clements go to Cousin Charlotte's Wedding, 1968

I wrote this personal essay about eight years ago. It was a writing exercise for which you were to find some old item you've always kept and tell the story behind it.

Things I Won’t Throw Out:

Part 1 of a Potentially Never-Ending Series

Item: a pale pink nylon half-slip, girls’ size 9, white trim with pink embroidered rosettes. Circa 1968.

Actually, it wasn’t circa 1968, it was exactly 1968--the year our cousin Charlotte was married in Chicago. Charlotte was a beautiful and elegant young woman whose father was our much-loved Uncle Todd. No expense was spared to turn us out properly for the occasion: Mary, Jean, and I each got a shopping trip with Mom for new outfits and underclothes.

I was to be all in pale pink: pale pink square-toed, wing-tip shoes; pale pink “wet look” stockings; a pale pink princess-line dress with long sleeves and white lace flounces at the wrist and throat; and for underneath, the pale pink half-slip. I had fallen radiantly in love with the dress at first sight in the store; it was the only one I would try on. And because I was a growing girl in springtime, I also got a beautiful new spring coat, green the color of Easter basket grass on the outside, but reversible, with a lining of mod-color stripes inside.

There is a picture of Dad, Mary, and me taken at just this hour, standing in front of Charlotte’s house on Sawyer Street. I am in my grass-green coat—you can’t see my dress or my beautiful shoes, unfortunately, but you can see the colors of the mod-stripe lining peeking out at the wrists. I’m clutching Dad’s arm with my head against his shoulder, smiling. On his other side, her arm linked through his, Mary looks pretty and demure in her navy sailor coat, while Dad is trying to look pleased—he hated having his picture taken.

For the trip to Chicago, my beautiful clothes were bundled with my father’s suit and the other ladies’ dresses on hangers, covered with plastic dry cleaner bags and suspended from hooks over the side windows in the back seat of our Dodge Polera. They blocked our view of the smoggy landscape of Gary, Indiana and the other sights we drove by, but as I had to sit in the middle anyway, it didn't matter. I could see quite well out the front window. I remember Mom didn’t want Dad to smoke his cigars in the car and get our nice clothes all smelly.

In Chicago we checked into the motel where we would stay for the weekend. My parents had to leave again almost immediately for some last minute necessity, and Mary and Jean both wanted to go along with them--but I didn’t. This was very unusual, giving my parents pause: could I be trusted to stay there alone, and would I be safe? I was only just turning eleven and this was the big city. I could see by their faces they were leaning toward making me go along where they could keep an eye on me, so I put up a storm of avowals that never would I even think of opening the motel door to a stranger. Satisfied, they finally left.

I was happy to be alone at last. A fascinating wart had appeared on the bottom of my right foot and I wanted to study it in private. Years later I would read Lewis Thomas’s appreciative essay on warts from his “Lives of a Cell” and immediately relate it to the wonderful plantar wart of my eleventh year. Now, as I noticed, this one had suddenly gone from solid white to translucent—I could see right through it. I wiggled and poked at it for several absorbing minutes. When it seemed there was nothing more to be learned from it, I took a pair of fingernail clippers and, for the sake of scientific inquiry, clipped the top of it painlessly off. End of wart.

But not the end of the wart's story. It seemed that clipped warts could possibly bleed. Within five minutes of my family's return, they were rolling their eyes in standard “We should have known better” fashion as I gazed down at my legs in surprise. Gracious, what a fuss they were making! Everyone had seen my blood before, plenty of times. Didn’t I have scars on both legs, and hadn’t they all seen me acquire them? Hadn't I looked much worse the day I tried riding my bicycle no-handed downhill while seated on the back fender? This was nothing. Dad gave me a lecture on the hazards of wart-picking, but I inwardly dismissed it. Anyone lucky enough to own a wart would certainly have done the same.

Well, we survived that evening; the next day was the day of the big wedding, and I finally got to dress up in my beloved pale pink clothes. The chastened wart made a bump in my wet-look stocking and a dent in the sole of my right pale-pink shoe, but I don’t remember it hurting at all.

Our hairstyles were under the direction of my oldest sister Mary. She could do anything with hair, just as she could do anything with a drawing pencil, or cake frosting, or the rhymes of a poem. “Would you like to wear your hair like Angelique wears hers?” she asked me. She was referring to the witch Angelique from the television show “Dark Shadows,” who wore a cascade of ringlets high on the crown of her head. Angelique was very beautiful, so I said yes, and Mary set about making it so. When Dad said it was time to go, I was ready.

We were to meet with other relatives at the bride’s home to get directions, and then proceed from there to the church.

My ensemble and I are immortalized again in a photograph taken just a few hours later at the reception. All the guests are seated at round tables, which the professional photographer is visiting one by one. At our table, he stands just behind me so that I have to sit sideways in my chair and look over my shoulder to get my face in the picture—not a flattering angle for my square jaw, and my cascade of ringlets is sagging. But I am smiling, so I must have gotten over my chagrin at missing the wedding.

That's right, I missed the wedding. Not Mom or Dad or Mary or Jean, just me—Ruth, Poopsie, Weed, Rufus Rubberneck—I, and only I, of our family, missed the wedding. It didn’t surprise me: I was the only bicyclist in the family to be hit by a car, I was the only sleeper in our tent to be stung by a hornet, I was the only family member swimming in the lake to get swimmer’s itch, to get ear infections, impetigo, warts—not that I minded the wart—and, later, acne. And I missed Charlotte’s wedding.

           

            While we were still at the bride’s receiving our directions, Uncle Elwin and Aunt Winnie invited me to ride to the church with them. Their children were grown up and hadn’t made the trip, so I thought a kid’s presence would please them. Moreover, it was a chance for me to act like the poised and gracious young lady I truly was without interference from my sisters. I chatted most unselfconsciously with my aunt and uncle, not about the wart, all during the drive. But it seemed the way to the church was confusing; my uncle got lost in the side streets of Chicago; we never found the right place. We did find the reception in time, though, and I rejoined my family there. I expected teasing and jeers from my sisters over the mix-up, but to my surprise they offered none—they seemed to feel sorry for me.

           
           However, that photograph reassures me that I am remembering correctly: I really did have a wonderful time at the reception. The circle of relatives at my table was relaxed and happy, the food was tasty and not too difficult for me to cut up by myself, and we ate cake! I had such a wonderful time that I didn’t even give it a thought when Uncle Todd, not knowing about the driving mix-up, introduced me to Charlotte’s new in-laws with, "And here’s my niece Ruth Clement—a wedding just wouldn’t be a wedding without her!”

I had a wonderful time because I got to see the bride, who with her new husband made the rounds of each table of guests to say hello and thank us for coming. And what was a wedding ceremony to me but a chance to view the bride? To see what her dress was like, what her veil was like, her shoes and her flowers and her hair? Was her gown as lovely as the ones on the wedding page of the Sears catalog? Was she as pretty as the models?  Well, in Charlotte’s case, she certainly was, and prettier still. Seeing her and maybe her bridesmaids was all I really cared about, and see them I did, close up, at the reception.

            And I had a wonderful time at the reception because I was wearing and being seen in my pale pink dress with my pale pink square toe shoes and my wet-look stockings. I’m sure I never wore that dress again: by 1968 we’d stopped going to church, even on Easter, and I’d have outgrown it before too long. The cherished shoes would have started to pinch, and the wet-look stockings would have developed runs.  But I wore the pink half slip a long time: it still fit me in high school, it was not too long for the short skirts I wore then. And somehow it has always found a spot in whatever dresser drawer I keep my stockings in, except for a few years when my daughter wore it. Whenever it turns up, it reminds me of things that happened once, and who I used to be.  Someday I may be so unsentimental as to throw it out. But not today. 

           

Penelope the Third

I'm about sick of reading books, classics or no. So I made another Penelope doll. Penelope is a pattern designed in the 1980s by Colette Wolff of Platypus Patterns, a name sacred to cloth dollmakers. She is to be outfitted and wardrobed and bestowed on a small grand-niece. As you see, a first skirt is done; a fleece poncho is on the cutting table. Since she's going to a modern young lady, she shall have a modern ensemble.