The Poet Is Told to Fill Up More Pages

(Daily News by Dona Nelson, born 1947,
American artist)

Does poetry make any difference? Poets have disagreed in their answers to this question.

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” Percy Bysshe Shelley announced in A Defense of Poetry in 1821.

Poets, he wrote, “are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion.”

Not everyone concurs. More than a century later, for example, in his elegy on the death of the Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1939, W. H. Auden expresses a more ambivalent view about the power of poetry. He writes that poetry “makes nothing happen” but does acknowledge that it is not entirely powerless.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

Mary Oliver, for one, hasn’t given up on poetry, yet.

THE POET IS TOLD TO FILL UP MORE PAGES

But, where are the words?
Not in my pocket.
Not in the refrigerator.
Not in my savings account.

So I sit, harassed, with my notebook.
It’s a joke, really, and not a good one.
For fun I try a few commands myself.
I say to the rain, stop raining.
I say to the sun, that isn’t anywhere nearby,
Come back, and come fast.

Nothing happens.

So this is all I can give you,
not being the maker of what I do,
but only the one that holds the pencil.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.
Make of it what you will.

~ Mary Oliver, born 1935, American poet

Sonnet for Hélène

(Azalea by Carl Larsson, 1853-1919, Swedish painter
and interior designer)

The Italians have a saying, “Traduttore, traditore” or “a translator is a traitor.” It is impossible for a translator to avoid misrepresenting the original.

This is particularly true when translating poetry. There is no one way to proceed. Should the rhyme pattern be repeated? What about the meter? How should one translate figures of speech like metaphors and alliteration and onomatopoeia?

Some argue for a more literal translation of words and expressions, while others favor an indirect but poetic translation, focusing on the spirit of the original verse. Many do agree that the best translators of poetry often are published poets themselves.

The original poem below, in the French of the time of its first definitive publication in 1587, is part of a sequence of sonnets written by Pierre de Ronsard, a much-respected French poet. He is speaking to the much younger Hélène, who is declining his passionate offer of love.

from SONNETS POUR HELENE, livre II, xlii

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant :
Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j’estois belle.

Lors vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille resveillant,
Benissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.

Je seray sous la terre et fantôme sans os,
Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos:
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain:
Cueillez dés aujourd’huy les roses de la vie.

~ Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), French poet

This English version below, also in sonnet form, is a quite literal yet still poetic translation.

from SONNETS FOR HÉLÈNE, Book II: xlii

When you are truly old, beside the evening candle,
Sitting by the fire, winding wool and spinning,
Murmuring my verses, you’ll marvel then, in saying,
“Long ago, Ronsard sang to me, when I was beautiful.”

There’ll be no serving-girl of yours, who hears it all,
Even if, tired from toil, she’s already drowsing,
Fails to rouse at the sound of my name’s echoing,
And blesses your name, then, with praise immortal.

I’ll be under the earth, a boneless phantom,
At rest in the myrtle groves of the dark kingdom¹:
You’ll be an old woman hunched over the fire,

Regretting my love for you, your fierce disdain,
So live, believe me: don’t wait for another day,
Gather them now the roses of life, and desire.

~ translated by A. S. Kline, born 1947, English poet and translator

¹ myrtle groves of the dark kingdom – groves located in the underworld, according to classical mythology

At first glance, the second version of the poem in English below does not appear to be a translation of the original Ronsard sonnet. Its form is somewhat different, only three quatrains long, two lines shorter than a sonnet. Most significantly, it seems to tell a different story, of a woman in her old age sitting by the fire, reading a book rather than spinning wool. But W. B. Yeats is repeating Ronsard’s point, reminding his beloved that the great love of her youth remains faithful to her many years later, even after he is gone.

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And, nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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

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

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

(Glasses by Jacob Collins, born 1964, American painter)

A Latin expression, Ubi amor, ibi oculus or “Where there is love, there is the power to see” (oculus literally means “an eye”), describes what is so wonderful about a true friend, observes John Cuddeback in his book True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. “The true friend is especially capable of showing me truths about myself that I am incapable of seeing on my own.”

Below, the poet sees that his friend, being honorable, will be satisfied with having done his best. He does not need to be viewed as the victor.

TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO NOTHING

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

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

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

(William Butler Yeats, 1908 by John Singer
Sargent, 1856-1925, American portrait painter)

“Sometimes I told myself very adventurous love-stories with myself for hero, and at other times I planned out a life of lonely austerity, and at other times mixed the ideals and planned a life of lonely austerity mitigated by periodical lapses,” W. B. Yeats wrote in his Autobiography. “I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop-window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem ‘Innisfree,’ my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music.”

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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

Blowin’ in the Wind

(March for Peace at Arlington National Cemetery
on February 6, 1968, by John C. Goodwin, American
photographer; from left to right: unknown man,
Episcopal Rev. Roger Alling, Catholic Bishop James
Shannon, Lutheran Rev. Richard John Neuhaus in 2nd
row, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr., Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath
carrying the Torah, and Rabbi Everett Gendler)

Blowin’ in the Wind became an unofficial anthem in the Sixties. Bob Dylan composed it one night in April, 1962, after a long discussion about civil rights, when in his mind “an idea flashed — ‘your silence betrays you,’” Anthony Scaduto wrote in Bob Dylan, an intimate biography.

“If Dylan’s answer is vague, his questions are clear and sharp, and the song admirably fulfills Yeats’ definition of sincere poetry: ‘It must have the perfections that escape analysis, the subtleties that have a new meaning every day, and it must have all this whether it be but a little song made out of a moment of dreamy indolence, or some great epic made out of the dreams of one poet and of a hundred generations whose hands were never weary of the sword.’”

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

~ Bob Dylan, born 1941, American singer and songwriter

I Am Offering This Poem

(Quilt by women of Gee's Bend, Alabama)

Sometimes, you don't have anything to give except love.

I AM OFFERING THIS POEM

I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,
so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,

I love you,

Keep it, treasure this as you would
if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe,

I love you,

It's all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,

I love you.

~ Jimmy Santiago Baca, born 1952, American poet


HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

~ William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet and dramatist