The Triple Fool

(Couple with Bird’s Nest, eighteenth-century
English woodcut)

“She saw no reason against their being happy. Louisa had fine naval fervor to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike. [Captain Benwick] would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry.” ~ Jane Austen, from Persuasion

THE TRIPLE FOOL

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where’s that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th’earth’s inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water’s fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme’s vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when ’tis read.
Both are increasèd by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

~ John Donne (1572-1631), the finest of the English Metaphysical poets, lyric poets whose work displayed a subtlety of thought and fanciful imagery and often used one surprising metaphor to bring together two very different ideas

Marriage

(Waiting for an Answer by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910,
American artist)

“Elizabeth’s spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her.

“‘How could you begin?’ said she. ‘I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?’

“‘I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.’”

~ Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice

MARRIAGE

Years later they find themselves talking
about chances, moments when their lives
might have swerved off
for the smallest reason.

What if
I hadn’t phoned, he says, that morning?
What if you’d been out,
as you were when I tried three times
the night before?

Then she tells him a secret.
She’d been there all evening, and she knew
he was the one calling, which was why
she hadn’t answered.

Because she felt —
because she was certain — her life would change
if she picked up the phone, said hello,
said I was just thinking
of you.

I was afraid,
she tells him. And in the morning
I also knew it was you, but I just
answered the phone

the way anyone
answers a phone when it starts to ring,
not thinking you have a choice.

~ Lawrence Raab, born in 1946, American poet and screenwriter

In Praise of My Sister

(Two Sisters on the Terrace by Pierre-Auguste
Renoir, 1841-1919, French Impressionist painter)

“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply.” ~ Jane Austen, Manchester Park

IN PRAISE OF MY SISTER

My sister doesn’t write poems
and it’s unlikely that she’ll suddenly start writing poems.
She takes after her mother, who didn’t write poems,
and also her father, who likewise didn’t write poems.
I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof:
my sister’s husband would rather die than write poems.
And, even though this is starting to sound as repetitive as Peter Piper,
the truth is, none of my relatives write poems.

My sister’s desk drawers don’t hold old poems,
and her handbag doesn’t hold new ones.
When my sister asks me over for lunch,
I know she doesn’t want to read me her poems.
Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives.
Her coffee doesn’t spill on manuscripts.

There are many families in which nobody writes poems,
but once it starts up it’s hard to quarantine.
Sometimes poetry cascades down through the generations,
creating fatal whirlpools where family love may flounder.

My sister has tackled oral prose with some success,
but her entire written opus consists of postcards from
vacations
whose text is only the same promise every year:
when she comes back, she’ll have
so much
much
much to tell.

~ Wislawa Szymborska, born 1923, Polish poet and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature

Walks in the Woods

(The Silence That Is the Lonely Woods by
John Everett Millais, 1829-1896, English
painter and illustrator)

“As she returned by a different circuit to the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, of wandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence of such solitary rambles.” ~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

from WALKS IN THE WOODS

Oh, I do love to force a way
Through woods where lone the woodman goes,
Through all the matted shades to stray,
The brambles tearing at my clothes;
And it may tear; I love the noise
And hug the solitary joys.

The woodman, he from top to toe
In leathern doublet brushes on;
He cares not where his rambles go,
Thorns, briers, he beats them every one;
Their utmost spite his armor foils;
Unhurt, he dares his daily toils.

Knee-deep in fern he daily stoops
And loud his bill or hatchet chops,
As snug he trims the faggot up
Or gaps in mossy hedges stops;
While echo chops as he hath done
As if she counted every one.

~ John Clare (1793-1864), English Romantic poet