April is Poetry Month: Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken
Bread and Music
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always;
They knew you once, oh beautiful and wise.
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Mamacita says: Once again, we have love, and grief, and memories.
Not just the memory of someone we loved, and love still, but the memories of that loved one’s touch on inanimate objects.
Have you ever noticed, and wondered about, the unique and lovely patina on old silverware? It’s not a special silver. That patina is made by being touched by human skin.
Your grandmother’s silverware looks like that because it’s been touched over and over again by the skin of people you loved.
New silver is just shiny. Old silver glows. Silver isn’t really beautiful until a lot of skin rubs up against it.
And even after people who touched and used these things daily are gone, the effects of their touch live on, and we add to it with our own skin.
When someone we love has gone, we look at “things” in new ways. We see, not a dish or spoon, but a dish or spoon being touched and used by the hands of our beloveds. We picture in our minds our loved one holding that book, using that comb, sitting in that chair, and these memories make those mundane things far more beautiful than they ever were when new and untouched.
Perhaps this is the difference between an antique and an old chair.
April is Poetry Month: William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
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Mamacita says: If one is fortunate enough to be loved by a poet, one becomes immortal. Wordsworth’s Lucy was unknown to the world, and her death changed nothing for most people. But because Wordsworth wrote about her, her LIFE is known to us – at least, the importance of that life to one man – and understanding that one little thing should make a huge difference to all of us.
How many people do you know who are out there living and loving and working hard and receiving little or no recognition for it? That would be most of us, I’d guess. Let us all take a little time to look around and genuinely notice those who are content – on the surface, anyway – to remain in the background, supporting, feeding, nurturing, nourishing in many ways.
I have loved this little poem of Wordsworth’s for many years. When I first encountered it, its wealth of love and emotion packed into a few brief lines hit me so hard I was glad I was sitting down.
Lucy’s life enriched the poet, and her death made a difference to him. O, such a difference. . . .
When my students study the Holocaust, or participate in a discussion of disaster, war, etc – really, any large-scale catastrophe – one of my main goals is to make sure they understand that large numbers – statistics – are really people, and that when the see the pictures of these tragedies, every single face belongs to a human being who was precious to someone. Husbands, wives, children, lovers, neighbors, friends. . . . one of the reasons I dislike statistics so much is that to deal with them objectively removes the humanity. Statistics are people.
Paul Brodeur phrases it even better: Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off.
The majority of people in Lucy’s world probably didn’t even know she existed, yet she was so important to Wordsworth that he immortalized her and what she meant to him in beautiful words that, well over a hundred years later, still have the power to kick us in the back of the knees.
Picture a violet by a mossy stone. One violet. Picture a star, one shining star, alone in the black night sky. Are these images not more uniquely beautiful than many violets, many stars? I think they are.
Romeo speaks of Juliet as a white dove trooping with crows. He is telling us that even in a crowd, she stands out, yes, that much. Imagery.
Oh, sure, I could lecture you about rhyme scheme and metaphors, but poets don’t write poems so their words could be dissected and analyzed. They write poems to help us see that the world is full of wonder. To dissect it is to kill it.
Imagery. Emotion. Love. Sorrow. Those are powerfully big punches to be contained in so few words.
That’s what poetry does, young Padawan.
A B A B, C D C D, E F E F. Now, poetry dissectors, we know all about it, don’t we.
April is Poetry Month: Sara Teasdale
Sara Teasdale
I Shall Not Care
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
— Sara Teasdale
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Mamacita says: I could lecture you about rhyme scheme, or hyphenated adjectives, or metaphors, or similes, or descriptive/figurative language, or death, or the difference between “shall” and “will,” or personification, or comparisons, sure, I could do that.
But what I would rather do is just ask you to read those few lines and picture it in your mind, and think about heartbreak and revenge.
