Don Williams’ Blog

Don December 11th, 2008

XXX 

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.”

            There was a guest lecturer once.  I do not remember whom nor where nor when nor on what subject, but I do remember one question he asked us.  “On you way to class, how many leaves did you actually see?”  We had all passed a profusion of them in all their autumn glory, but no one could recall a single one.

            This poem did not flow from that lecture, which I believe was from a much later date, but from a particular finely veined maple leaf whose memory would make me think the lecturer had asked a very good question.

 TO A LEAF 

I’ll press you now in this great book

And then, years later, I will look

                                                            At your color and design

Preserved in such a fragile form!

And still with power my heart to warm

                                                            And prod my weary mind

To think of Him who made you

                                                            And your kind.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don November 28th, 2008

XXVIII 

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.”

            It is now time for my senior year at Taylor University.  At Taylor in those days we had a winterim session which in your junior year was devoted to a course called “Junior Practicum.”  I got to serve mine working with Dr. C. S. Kilby in the then fledgling Wade Center for the study of the Inklings at Wheaton College in Illinois.  Getting to know Kilby, then the dean of American Lewis scholars, was a great blessing.  He was already advanced in years, and his elderly head with its bright eyes is still my personal picture of Bilbo in his declining years at Rivendell.  We kept in touch, and this poem was the result.

 TO CLYDE S. KILBY 

I

I wandered through the silent trees

                                                            Of fair Loth Lorien;

At Cerin Amroth, saw the leaves

                                                            Blow o’er the tomb of Arwen.

I wandered north to Rivendell,

                                                            To Elrond’s homely halls,

And watched as evening shadows fell

                                                            On long deserted walls.

And West I turned, past hill and tree,

                                                            ‘Till I stood by the shore.

But Cirdan was gone, and elves to the sea

                                                            Down Anduin sail no more.

II

And I have stood as tall as a king

                                                            On a hilltop windy and bare

And drunk the air of a Narnian spring

                                                            When no one else was there.

And I have seen Cair Paravel

                                                            And stood by Aslan’s Howe;

But where the king was none could tell,

                                                            For no one goes there now.

III

And homeward I my feet have turned,

                                                            But home I never came,

For in my soul a fire burned

                                                            And “home” was not the same.

And human eyes I seldom find

                                                            Who seem to understand

The longing of a pilgrim mind

                                                            For distant Faerie lands.

But when I find such eyes, I call

                                                            The man who owns them “friend.”

And together we wander in leafy halls

                                                            In fair Loth Lorien.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don November 25th, 2008

XXVII 

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.”

            Part of a poet’s ongoing quest is to match form to mood and content.  The Sonnet is good for certain things, Ballad Stanza for others, etc.  Those who have only one form at their disposal—whether it be Free Verse or the Royal Couplet or the Sonnet—must perforce have a limited range of thought or sentiment, however good they might be within that range.  I was learning the pensive, meditative nature poem from the Romantics, and found this form congenial to that mood.  The way the repetition of the A rhyme sets up the return of the B rhyme in the shortened trimeter last line of the stanza seems to echo the feel of a tentative thought meandering slowly toward its conclusion.

 MEDITATION XIII 

I wandered by a restless sea

As western lights were going out,

And mingled with the deep my tears,

And let the salt spray soothe my fears

And wash away my doubt.

For few things cleanse a mind so well

From shreds of hanging gloomy dark

As the spray that’s blown from the ocean’s swell

And the rhythm of surf and the rough sea-bell:

Such, Nature’s healing art.

But though she washes fresh and clean,

She will not leave you light or gay,

But melancholy, though serene,

With a pensive peace that’s deep, unseen,

And lasts perhaps a day.

But there’s a peace that’s deeper still

And will not flee with coming night.

It warms the heart amidst the chill

Of winter’s death, when all is still

And covered with deadly white.

It comes when captive earthly lives

Are joined to the one Life that transcends

The earth and all that in her lies:

Her oceans, continents, and skies,

Her beginning and her end.

For the door is opened to him who knocks;

The seeker is the one who finds

The deepest down, most solid Rock

And roots his soul firm in the Rock

And finds true peace of mind.

Yet all who seek won’t walk the Way.

Not finding but accepting Light

Is that which turns the night to day

And brings the deep, calm joy that stays

Forever pure and bright. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don November 12th, 2008

XXVI 

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.”

Not only did I hit a better stride with the sonnet, but, inspired by Sidney and Spenser, I began to wonder if the sonnet cycle might be revived for modern readers.  There are only three in this one, not a hundred or so, but they are interlocked by the repetition of last lines as first ones, coming full circle back to the very first sonnet in the last line of the third.  Since the one in the last entry got it started, I will repeat it here so you can get the full effect.

 SONNET IV 

A new-born leaf and an ancient, lofty star

                         Converge in space and time before my eye;

                         The one as near as is the other far,

                         And both are wondrous things—but both will die.

The leaf will wither in the summer sun

                         Or else be blasted by chill winter air

                         And wither just the same—it all is one;

                         But while it lives, it lives, and it is fair.

 Before man woke to see, this star was bright,

                          And when the last man sleeps it will remain.

                          But someday there will be a starless night,

                          And nothing, ever again, will be the same.

And yet we pray to Him who outlives all

                        And know that He will hear us when we call!

 SONNET V 

We know that He will hear us when we

Because of who He is and what He is:

Creator, Master, Savior, Lord of all,

Whose laughter is the thunder; dew, his kiss.

He feeds his children with a varied feast

That He grows from soil and sun and summer rain.

His Word shines out like lightning from the East

And flashes to the West, and back again.

And hark!  The piercing, clarion trumpet’s cry

That cuts the still night air, unbearably sweet:

It is the signal of His passing by

Some lowly, maybe mortal man to meet.

And at His name, the planets, Venus, Mars,

Bow in joyful silence with the stars.

 SONNET VI 

The planets bow in silence and the stars,

With one exception:  Earth, the haughty, proud

Kingdom of Lucifer, shackled with iron bars,

Who neither Joy nor Love nor Peace allows

To pass the warlike borders of his realm.

He fails!  For he  cannot keep out the dew

Nor still the thunder, nor the wind-in-elm,

Nor blot out the lightning!  Not a few

Slaves’ hearts’ bonds have been shattered, charged with light

As bright as noonday sun, and made to live

A new life by this mystic lightning’s strike.

Redemption sure it offers; life it gives.

This wonder we proclaim as Lord of all,

And He it is who hears us when we call!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 27th, 2008

XXIII 

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.”

The limerick is perhaps the most universally recognized form of light verse used for comic effect.  It consists of two lines of (usually) iambic or anapestic trimeter, two of dimeter, and one more of trimeter, rhyming AABBA.  Something about the two short rhyming lines returning to the longer line with the original rhyme lends itself to the comedic effect, perhaps by helping to set up the last line as a “punch line.”  Here is my first attempt at one, justly mocking the false pretensions of negative biblical criticism and the “assured results of modern scholarship.”

 LIMERICK # 1 

A high-critical biblical scholar

Wrote books that all caused quite a holler.

He claimed that St. Paul

Wrote The Campaigns of Gaul,

And he made about three million dollars.

            The assonance and consonance in the first line, the contrast of scholarly phrases like higher criticism with a colloquial vocable like holler, and the use of the rhymes in lines three and four to highlight the ironic discrepancy between the biblical author and a work he had nothing to do with all contribute to the humorous effect, one hopes.  Unfortunately, the likes of Dan Brown and Bart Ehrman can now make much bigger piles of money for the same kind of nonsense than what was intended as a hyperbole back in the seventies.  For that reason alone, the poem is, alas, now somewhat dated.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 25th, 2008

XXII 

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.”

            Any growing poet needs to be nurtured by the great poetry (and other literature, too) of the past, both for the sake of learning technique and of deepening his own soul.  I wasn’t the first to find the Psalter essential for both.  The Psalms are a catalog of the full gamut of religious emotion.  Not just exercises in pious ejaculations, they sometimes show impiety wrestled with and overcome.  David and his fellow psalmists were not afraid to question God; they were not afraid to ask the hard questions.  They were not afraid to reveal their own doubts and their own sufferings.  But they always win through to peace in the end.  Oh, yes, there are some good lessons there!

 ON DAVID WRITING THE PSALMS 

Such words were never uttered unless by

Some battered brain’s true trial- and tear-taught try

To cry the thing, heart’s clearly seen lament

Before insight intense is spent

Diffused, dispersed, immersed and rent

By hurried passing Time.

Holy Spirit stooping, molding,

Prodding, soothing, moving, goading,

Guiding, forming in this writing

Sword or torch of Truth abiding,

Made to smite complacence in its nest,

To bore into the soul, unbidden guest,

And wake the wound that slumbers in man’s breast:

A memory of the universe at rest.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 18th, 2008

XXI 

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.”

It is now the Fall of 1971, the beginning of my junior year of college.  Realizing that I do not have the talent to be principal clarinetist with the Atlanta Symphony, and loving music too much to subject myself to the dreary fate of being a junior high band director, I change my major from music to English.  Giving up one lifelong dream, I realize another and enroll in Koine Greek class to satisfy my new foreign language requirement.  But these upheavals are minor events compared to the annual changing of the seasons.

 ODE TO A SHIRT 

I could never wear this shirt in summer;

Winter, spring, were just as bad: 

This is a shirt for wearing in autumn,

Full with autumn colors plaid.

Bright the glory of the leaf-host,

Brown the windblown stalks of corn,

Chill the frost on pumpkin orange

Seen while walking, early morn.

The spirits of these things lie sleeping,

Woven deep among the threads.

Tomorrow will be time for wearing;

Indian summer now has fled.

I could never wear this shirt in summer;

Winter, spring, were just as bad: 

This is a shirt for wearing in autumn,

Full with autumn colors plaid.

            I miss that shirt.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 16th, 2008

XX 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.”   

            Our base of operations in Cartagena, Colombia, on that South American tour, was a hotel from which we could walk straight out onto the beach and gaze North across the Gulf of Mexico toward home, which lay over the horizon.  There is nothing better than the rhythm of the surf to get one in the right frame of mind for practicing the rhythms of poetry, and capturing the spirit of poetry too.

Choir of stars and the sea

To the rhythm of my feet on the sand:

This is the music that follows me

And calls me away from the land.

I hear the waves and feel the spray;

The horizon’s lost in shadows of night.

But there lies a maid who’s as fair as the day,

As fair as the sweet morning light.

            The maid turned out not to be so permanent a part of life as I then thought.  But the far horizon and the promise of something beckoning from beyond it has turned out to be more so than I could then have imagined. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 13th, 2008

XIX 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.”   

            The summer after my sophomore year I traveled with an ensemble from the Taylor University Band on a tour of South America, visiting Honduras, Colombia, and Ecuador.  It was my first significant cross-cultural experience, and also introduced me to Pinchincha, the mountain that towers over the 10,000 foot high bowl in which rests the city of Quito.  I made it up to First Peak, about 13,000 feet, and learned something new about majesty and transcendence.

 PINCHINCHA 

I have walked and talked intimately with the clouds

On the slopes of Pinchincha,

And I have left the clouds behind and gone

Where they did not care to follow.

And there I stood alone with the universe and sang

Songs of praise to its Creator.

And there I learned wisdom that cannot be made in to poems,

But this I can tell you:

It is difficult to doubt Him when he thunders at you

With such silence. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don August 26th, 2008

XVIII             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.”   

            It is good to have experienced Winter as a metaphor for a bleak eternity, as the oppressive and inexorable descent of entropy over the universe at the end of time when all the stars have gone out.  It teaches you that Spring does come after all, that death is not the final word, even as it forces you to take death’s role as the final enemy with full seriousness.  If Spring is the Resurrection, then Fall is this life.  And every cycle of the seasons gives you a new chance to appreciate and try to grasp these metaphors and the mystery they hint at.

 NOVEMBER, 1970 

I stand on the knife-edge ‘twixt Autumn and Winter

And watch the spent leaves blow.

To remember is to be

And to love, to know—

And so—

The leaves are turned to snow.

 VISION 

That cloud

And that horizon

And those trees

Arranged in just that way that I now see

Give just the very faintest ray

Of hope that this long Winter may

Indeed, at long, long last, give way

To Spring.

            It is good, I say, to have lived in the upper Midwest and learned such lessons.  It is also good to have come back to the South so that one can remember them in the lingering beauty of a proper Spring or Fall!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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