On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

(John Keats, 1795-1821, English Romantic poet)

John Keats is a Romantic poet like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and John Clare.

Writing in the Petrarchan form, he composed the sonnet below after his friend Charles Cowden Clarke had introduced him to the translation of the Greek poet Homer by the Elizabethan dramatist George Chapman (circa 1559-1634). Clarke recalled how Keats “shouted with delight” at certain passages and then went home to write the poem.

“It is not hard to imagine Clarke’s amazement as he read the sonnet over,” Aileen Ward writes in John Keats: The Making of a Poet. “The poem was a miracle; not simply because of the mastery of form, or because Keats was only twenty when he wrote it, or because he wrote it in the space of an hour or two after a night without sleep [reading Chapman]. Rather because nothing in his earlier poetry gave any promise of this achievement: the gap between this poem and his summer work could only be leaped by genius. . . . The unity of form and feeling that begins in the first line and swells in one crescendo of excitement to the final crashing silence was instantaneous and unimprovable.”

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER

Much have I travel’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer¹ ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez² when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien³.

¹ deep-brow’d Homer – Homer, the great Greek intellect
² Cortez – an error of no import to this poem: it was the Spanish explorer Balboa, not Cortez, who first gazed upon the Pacific after crossing the Isthmus of Panama in 1513
³ Darien – an area in Panama

The Odyssey

Each Friday we provide the link to the blogger who is hosting a celebration of poetry around the blogosphere. At that site you can find the links to the many other blogs that are posting poems (new and old), discussions of poems, and reviews of poetry books. It’s also a great way to explore the internet.

Enjoy the festivities!

The host this week is Diane Mayr.

You can visit her here at Random Noodling.


(Penelope by John Roddham Spencer-Stanhope,
1829-1908, English artist)

The poet Homer is thought to have lived in the ninth century B. C. in Ancient Greece. He is believed to be the writer of two of the greatest works of Western literature.

His two epic poems recount the legend of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

The first, The Iliad, is a vivid tale of warfare, revealing how wrath and pride and a desire for vengeance lead the hero, Achilles, to tragedy and destruction. He has the heart of a warrior.

There are scenes of fighting in The Odyssey, too, but this is more the story of Odysseus, a man with the heart of a husband, father, and builder.

Having helped to lead the Greeks to victory in the ten-year war, Odysseus is now determined, at all costs, to return home to his wife, Penelope, and to his son. That journey will take another ten years, during which he will have to defeat the monsters and dangers the gods throw in his way before he can be reunited with his beloved.

Over the long course of those twenty years, Penelope remains faithful and true. Everyone thinks she has been widowed. It is a lonely time for her, and difficult, for she is surrounded in her house by aggressive suitors for whom, because of custom, she has to provide food and shelter. She has resorted to ruses to ward off their demands. For three years, for example, she promised to announce her choice after she had finished weaving a burial cloth for her father-in-law. Each night she would unravel her day’s work.

In the excerpt below, Odysseus finally arrives home. He has slain the suitors who had menaced his wife. Penelope knows the man sitting before her is her husband — he bears a distinctive scar on his foot — but after twenty years away from her, is he the same man?

from THE ODYSSEY

Odysseus came from the bath
Like a god, and sat down on the chair again
Opposite his wife, and spoke to her and said:

“You’re a mysterious woman.
The gods
Have given to you, more than to any
Other woman, an unyielding heart.
No other woman would be able to endure
Standing off from her husband, come back
After twenty hard years to his country and home.
Nurse, make up a bed for me so I can lie down
Alone, since her heart is a cold lump of iron.”

And Penelope, cautious and wary:

“You’re a mysterious man.
I am not being proud
Or scornful, nor am I bewildered — not at all.
I know very well what you looked like
When you left Ithaca on your long-oared ship.
Nurse, bring the bed out from the master bedroom,
The bedstead he made himself, and spread it for him
With fleeces and blankets and silky coverlets.”

She was testing her husband.

Odysseus
Could bear no more, and he cried out to his wife:

“By God, woman, now you’ve cut deep.
Who moved my bed? It would be hard
For anyone, no matter how skilled, to move it.
A god could come down and move it easily,
But not a man alive, however young and strong,
Could ever pry it up. There’s something telling
About how that bed’s built, and no one else
Built it but me.

“There was an olive tree
Growing on the site, long-leaved and full,
Its trunk thick as a post. I built my bedroom
Around that tree, and when I had finished
The masonry walls and done the roofing
And set in the jointed, close-fitting doors,
I lopped off all of the olive’s branches,
Trimmed the trunk from the root on up,
And rounded it and trued it with an adze until
I had myself a bedpost. I bored it with an auger,
And starting from this I framed up the whole bed,
Inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory
And stretching across it oxhide thongs dyed purple.
So there’s our secret. But I do not know, woman,
Whether my bed is still firmly in place, or if
Some other man has cut through the olive’s trunk.”

At this, Penelope finally let go.
Odysseus had shown he knew their old secret.
In tears, she ran straight to him, threw her arms
Around him, kissed his face, and said:

“Don’t be angry with me, Odysseus. You,
Of all men, know how the world goes.
It is the gods who gave us sorrow, the gods
Who begrudged us a life together, enjoying
Our youth and arriving side by side
To the threshold of old age. Don’t hold it against me
That when I first saw you I didn’t welcome you
As I do now. My heart has been cold with fear
That an imposter would come and deceive me.
There are many who scheme for ill-gotten gains.”

Beautiful Dreamer

(Moonlight by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910, American artist)

Stephen Foster (1826-1864) has been called America’s first songwriter. Many of his compositions are like folk songs — they could have been created around the campfire by anonymous composers. And they were very popular. A friend said, “They seemed to travel like the wind from city to city and one had hardly heard them in Pittsburgh when they were being whistled on the streets of New York.”

Foster wrote two kinds of songs. The first were more public, the “stage songs” written for minstrel groups who performed in black face, with some lyrics that derisively mimicked the speech of blacks in language that was “trashy and really offensive,” as Foster once said. These reflected the sad and unfortunate mores of the time, of ante-bellum mid-nineteenth century America. Today, we sing only the cleaned-up verses of songs like Oh! Susanna.

But Foster did change and his songs do show us that. My Old Kentucky Home, for example, was inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was published several months earlier, the story of the unbearable separation of a slave family. Frederick Douglass, the famous black abolitionist, admired the sentiments of this song, for “they awaken the sympathies for the slave in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish.”

Foster is also known for a second kind of song, the quieter “household songs” written for the piano in the parlor. The melodies are simple and wistful, even melancholy. One critic has observed that many of these sentimental songs feature heroines, like Gentle Annie, Cora Dean, and Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, who are either asleep or dead. Nelly Was a Lady, about the death of a black boatman’s wife, became notable because it was the first popular song to treat an African-American woman with dignity and humanity.

The song below is one of Foster’s best known. It speaks of “the wild Lorelei,” an allusion to a German folktale about the siren song of a lovely mermaid who lures sailors to their watery doom in the Rhine River.

My favorite version is this one by Raul Malo.

BEAUTIFUL DREAMER

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,
Lull’d by the moonlight have all pass’d away!
Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life’s busy throng,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea
Mermaids are chanting the wild Lorelei;
Over the streamlet vapors are borne,
Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.
Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
E’en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

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

Brown Penny

(The Bridle Path, White Mountains, New Hampshire,
1868 by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910, American artist)

There’s no love without taking a chance.

BROWN PENNY

I whispered, “I am too young,”
And then, “I am old enough”;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
“Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.”
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
’Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

~ William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet and dramatist and winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature

Since Hanna Moved Away

(Apple Picking, watercolor by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910,
American artist)

It’s a new month.
    
In the next few days, we finish our exploration of Philia or friendship. Then, for the rest of August, we look at poems about Eros or the kind of love which lovers are “in,” as C. S. Lewis described it.

SINCE HANNA MOVED AWAY

The tires on my bike are flat.
The sky is grouchy gray.
At least it sure feels like that
Since Hanna moved away.

Chocolate ice cream tastes like prunes.
December’s come to stay.
They’ve taken back the Mays and Junes
Since Hanna moved away.

Flowers smell like halibut.
Velvet feels like hay.
Every handsome dog’s a mutt
Since Hanna moved away.

Nothing’s fun to laugh about.
Nothing’s fun to play.
They call me, but I won’t come out
Since Hanna moved away.

~ Judith Viorst, born 1931, American writer, journalist, and poet

My Grandmother’s Love Letters

(Moonlight, watercolor by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910,
American artist)

Memories in the family can be fragile. Explore them carefully, says the poet.

MY GRANDMOTHER’S LOVE LETTERS

There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother’s mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?”

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

~ Hart Crane (1899-1932), American poet

On the Birth of His Son

(The Whittling Boy by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910,
American artist)

What was true a thousand years ago still applies today. We all want the best for our children.

ON THE BIRTH OF HIS SON

Families, when a child is born,
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.

~ Su Tung-p'o, also known as Su Shi (1037-1101), Chinese poet and satirist

Valentine’s Day

(Boy and Girl on a Hillside by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910,
American artist)

This children’s ditty is a variation on the traditional sentiments of the day.

VALENTINE’S DAY

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you.

Roses are red,
Cabbages are green,
If my face is funny,
Yours is a scream.

~ Anonymous

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp)

(Snap the Whip by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910,
American artist)

For many kids in the early Sixties, this ditty was their first introduction to opera. It is sung to the tune of Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours” from the opera La Gioconda.

To sing along with Allan Sherman, click on this link (you may have to cut and paste):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Hx_X84LC0

HELLO MUDDAH, HELLO FADDUH (A LETTER FROM CAMP)

Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh,
Here I am at Camp Grenada.
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining.

I went hiking with Joe Spivy.
He developed poison ivy.
You remember Leonard Skinner.
He got ptomaine poisoning last night with dinner.

All the counselors hate the waiters,
And the lake has alligators,
And the head coach wants no sissies
So he reads to us from something called “Ulysses.”

Now I don’t want this should scare ya
But my bunkmate has malaria.
You remember Jeffrey Hardy.
They’re about to organize a search party.

Take me home, oh Muddah, Fadduh.
Take me home, I hate Grenada.
Don’t leave me out in the forest
Where I might get eaten by a bear.

Take me home, I promise
I will not make noise
Or mess the house with other boys.
Oh please don’t make me stay,
I’ve been here one whole day.

Dearest Fadduh, darling Muddah,
How’s my previous little bruddah?
Let me come home if ya miss me.
I’ll even let Aunt Bertha hug and miss me.

Wait a minute, it stopped hailing,
Guys are swimming, guys are sailing,
Playing baseball, gee that’s better.
Muddah, Fadduh, kindly disregard this letter.

~ Allan Sherman (1924-1973), American comedian and writer of parodies