LitLetter 229: Just Poetry
Donne, Shakespeare, and Thomas
The title speaks for itself. I had had a rest, a sleep, the novel is being researched, back to beautiful words standing in a certain order on a page or screen. So, not much commentary from me, more self-learning from you, my reader, and more creative imagination. Allow yourself, pray, to be swept away by the torrents of beautiful words. The allure of good poems is strong, no matter how much one may try to deny.
Mary Tabor (west coast America), one of the founders of Inner Life, quotes Dana Gioia, the poet:
Gioia: I think there are two ways of writing a poem. One is to create a fabric of sound, a tune, a verbal song. The other is to arrange print on a page. A typographic and a musical organization. My own sense, and I know this is heretical to most people, is that the musical organization has always been the central lifeblood of poetry. The visual organization, while genuine, has been a secondary way of doing it. When poetry loses its ability to enchant and almost hypnotize the reader into an emotional bond with it, it loses the magic that great poetry needs.
I will quote some of Dana’s poetry in future posts. It is lovely. Perhaps poetry is both the things he describes here – a song AND words on a page. His song comment reminds me to remind you to read poetry aloud every so often; then you’ll get the musicality from rhyme, alliteration, metre (beat) of the words. You will test for yourself the ability of poetry ‘to enchant and almost hypnotise you into an emotional bond’. Try reading aloud the three poems below, there’s the magic! Also Dana Gioia’s surname means joy in Italian. More magic!
To give you a sense, here is my voice reading aloud a poem by WH Auden – As I Walked Out One Evening.
https://www.loom.com/share/8a47e48d0bc442399f83cb0294811135
These poems are about death, another stage of life. One of the interesting things about the poems is the difference between the poets’ views on after death.
Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
For John Donne, death is a gateway to eternal life. What does William Shakespeare think?
Our Revels Now Are Ended by William Shakespeare
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
For William Shakespeare, death is the end. The Big Sleep as Raymond Chandler famously titled a novel.
For me, perhaps Dylan Thomas gets closest in this poem.
And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
Death shall hold no sway…yet this world, this consciousness shall not be as I now know it.