Archive for July, 2008

XVII

Don July 8th, 2008

XVII Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

A writer who was and continues to be extremely important to me is C. S. Lewis. I was moved to write this poem for him on hearing W. H. Auden do his elegy for William Butler Yeats at a public reading at Ball State University. The form is that of the irregular ode again. I would like to think my first live exposure to a truly good poet occasioned a jump in artistic maturity as well as motivation.

TO C. S. LEWIS

On the not long past, convulsive day That Kennedy bled and died.

One far greater went away And we noted not his passing,

But in other worlds they cried

For Joy and grief, and knew that he was gone.

Eerie voices, speaking late that night

In dusky Stonehenge, shrouded in the gloom,

Whispered to the stones that he had gone.

The beavers and the conies passed the word

Excitedly from lip to beastly lip,

And crickets on that night, and all the birds

Were hushed because they knew that he was gone.

A tall sorn standing all alone

Gazing on a distant speck of light,

Procession of singing hrossa in the night,

Pfiffltrig slowly shaping brittle stone,

Fell silent and stood still like graven stone

And were saddened, for they knew that he had gone

And gladdened, for they knew that he was Home.

A faun with an umbrella stopped to sniff the air;

Man-odor there;

But strangely changed.

And Aslan’s roar of Joy bounced off the cliffs,

For Aslan knew,

And Aslan called his name,

And so he came

With clear grey eyes and did not turn away

But strode with steady foot from night to day

And bowed, and Aslan smiled as if to say,

“Well done.”

                                                                                                                                              Donald T. Williams, PhD

XVI

Don July 7th, 2008

XVI Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

           

I’ve skipped a number of poems that were too long to fit into a blog, too juvenile for me to bear to include them, or simply had nothing to contribute to the theme of what I’ve learned from trying to be a poet.  And so we come to 1970-71, my sophomore year at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, and to various other poems that deserve to be skipped for various reasons.  And then we come to a more ambitious experiment with form, which can be achieved not only by various ways of exploiting meter and rhyme, but also by other kinds of parallelism.

 CONSUMMATION  

a broken figure                                                a kingly Figure

scrawls obscenities                                          carves his Name

on a blackened sun, and his                              in the heavens and the

hollow laughter is swallowed                            planets bow in

by the void                                                      reverent silence

a burnt-our figure                                            a majestic Figure

spits at the foot                                               sits on the right

of a throne, and his                                         of the throne, and his

spittle falls and dries                                        glance is like the piercing

on his chin                                                       of a sword

a shrouded figure                                            a shining Figure

crawls through the ashes                                 stands amid a crown

of the universe, and his                                    of flaming stars, and his

funeral wail is swallowed                                 cry of triumph resounds

by the void                                                      from the ends of infinity

a quenched, spent figure                                 a tall, royal figure

falls ever in the void,                                       receiving the worship

followed by the millions                                  of the universe, sheds a bitter

who have spent their lives                                tear for those whose knees

to buy his image                                              are bowed by force

                                               

amen . . .

                                                            amen.

Donald T. Williams, PhD