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.”

Ted Georgian was the best back-packing buddy I’ve ever had.  I’m the speaker in this poem; but he was there, and will vouch for its truth, I have no doubt.

Conversation with a Back-Packer

There is a path that slowly winds its way

Into the Hills.  In sudden switchbacks up

It rises from the Tallulah River basin

In North Car’lina, and curls around along

The ridges until it crosses the bowl between

Big Scaly and Standing Indian; then, back down

It curves to join the Tallulah once again

In northern Georgia where the valley’s broader.

It was a road put in to bring logs out,

But that was many years ago.  Today

It seldom sees a truck, though I have met

The hoofprints of a burro coming down,

Plain where the ground was soft from last week’s rain

Or in white scars where the iron had struck the sparks

Out of the flinty rocks in steeper places.

The beeches have grown for thirty years back in,

Along with scattered stands of birch and hemlock,

And hulks of patriarchs the woodsmen left

As monuments to the forest’s former glory,

And the ever-present patches of rhododendron.

Except for the week-old marks of man-shod hooves

And the absence of older trees in the mist of the roadway,

There was little sign that men had come that way

Since the fathers of the beeches had been laid low.

Were it not for the shelter by the spring

With names and dates inscribed in candle-smoke

Upon the beams as a memorial,

You might have thought that place had been forgotten.

Between the peaks the land is almost flat

And opens in what you’d almost call a meadow,

And there the spring comes up beside the shelter

And almost forms a pond before it forms

The stream which forms Beech Creek, which almost gets

To be a river itself before the Tallulah

Deprives it of its name on down the valley.

There where the water is gentle the deer come

To drink and browse in the quiet of the morning

Before the sun can look in over the broad

Shoulder of Standing Indian, who stands guard

Above them there.  If you are there some morning

You might see elven maidens in the distance,

Appearing and disappearing between the tree trunks.

Look closer and they will resolve themselves

Into the deer’s white rumps as they go bounding

Across the ground.  And now has come the time

You must be very still and very quiet.

You’ll want the camera from your pack, of course,

But if you move to get it, however slowly,

The rumps will flash just once more and be gone.

Resist temptation.  Clutch your bowl of oatmeal

And feel the heat go slowly out of it

As it goes still more slowly out of the fire

And up with the smoke in a grey, spiraled column

That could be one of the trunks of the young birches

‘Round which the doe steps out into the clearing,

No more than twenty feet from where you sit.

She looks at you, and you are sure she sees you.

She stands and stares as motionless as you do.

Then, being satisfied you’re not a hunter

(It’s said they know the day the season opens,

And what guns are, and partly I believe it),

The graceful head goes down and starts to tear

Away the undergrowth.  No, “tear”  is wrong–

For later when you go there, you will find

The leaves and stems are clipped away as neatly

As you could do it with a pair of hedge-shears.

But now, this living thing that stands before you,

Its breath as white as yours in the cold air!

Up here she wanders and lives out her life

Within the ancient hills and infant forest,

Depending on no man to come and feed her.

She mates and bears her young and crops her leaves

And dances with her fellows in the forest

And warily sniffs the air for signs of hunters

(As she does now: see how the head comes up

With eyes and ears and nose all sharply pointed

Toward me at the slightest sound or movement

For a brief eternity of fierce attention

To see if I am still behaving myself.

Then, satisfied, the slender neck goes down

To feed again).  All this she does and more,

And would even if I’d never come to see her.

You’ve seen deer in the zoos, no doubt, so tame

That children feed them milk from baby bottles,

And beautiful they are, but not the same.

The camera could not have told the difference

If I had gotten to it.  Paint on canvas,

Fanciful words on paper about elf-maidens,

Suggest it merely.  You must go yourself

And catch you own glimpse of the mystery.

There is no guarantee that you’ll see anything,

But give up guarantees, and go.  Remember,

Grace comes to whom it will.  There’s no explaining

Just why it touches one and not another.

You must be very still and very quiet.

Then if the deer comes, take it as a gift

Unearned.  You are her uninvited guest;

You are a pilgrim and a stranger here:

The spring and meadow high between the mountains

Belong to her and to her kind forever.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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 1980-81.  I have finished my course work for the PhD at the University of Georgia and been admitted to candidacy; all that is left is the minor detail of finishing my dissertation.  Meanwhile, I have been offered a job at UGA as full time Temporary Lecturer in Freshman English, just to make sure I don’t get too much work done on that dissertation.  Meanwhile there were stories to be told, some historical like the last one, some fictional, and some personal (a sub-set of historical).  The next poem is in the latter category.

On My Grandmother’s Father, His Wife,

Minnie Ellabella Huitt,

And a Tenuous Connection With Robert E. Lee

William Forney Lee had a long, white, drooping mustache

And a black string tie in the pictures in the drawer

At my grandmother’s house.  She was all I knew of him,

The old photographs and the stories that she told:

How his father had been sick and couldn’t go to fight the Yankees,

And old Marse Robert had come down himself to see him

And give such comfort as could be for such a woe,

And left him a daguerreotype, a new-fangled picture

Of himself on Traveler, and written on the bottom

With his own hand, “To my favorite nephew.”  That was all.

That was all!  It was enough.  To have such a contact

Was more than I have even yet begun to comprehend.

But was the story true?  There wasn’t any need to doubt it.

Her very own eyes had seen the picture more than once,

And that was back when she could see as well as anyone.

Well, now she is as old, almost, as William Forney’s wife

Had been when I, a boy, barely able to remember,

Had been led up to the wheelchair where the tiny woman sat,

Her hair up in a bun, the whitest white I’d ever seen,

And someone shouted, “This is Vera Lee’s boy, your great grandson,”

And slowly her ancient hand had reached out to touch me.

There was an old country house with a long porch, and horses

At the far end of the pasture, and a calf in the barn,

And bird-dogs in a pen who jumped up to lick my fingers.

There were long tables spread in the yard beneath the oak tree.

The spiced tea was strange on my tongue–I wouldn’t drink it,

But there was chicken and dumplings and a giant birthday cake,

And water that you drank with a ladle from a bucket

That you cranked up creaking on a rope from the well.

It was all Great Grandma Lee, it was all the Birthday Dinner,

And it happened every year.  When we came back again,

The horses and the bird-dogs were still there, but she was not.

Well, William Forney Lee had mouldered twenty years already,

And now twenty more have passed.  The horses and the dogs

Have followed both their mistress and their master into dust.

The old house is gone; there is a new brick one now,

With all the modern plumbing, but it does not have a porch.

Only the old oak tree remains as a reminder,

And the pictures I the drawer, and the pictures in my mind.

“But where is the daguerrotype?” I ask, but get no answer.

“Oh surely it is somewhere in the family, but I can’t say

Exactly where.  It’s been so long, there are so many branches.”

As many as the branches of the oak that was a sapling

When William Forney’s father took an unexpected present

From the kindest hand that ever held a sword.  And I have touched

The wife of the son of the man who was that nephew of Marse Robert,

And oh, I wish that I had known, I wish that I had known!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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.”

Is this too long for a blog entry?  I don’t care.  Narrative poetry needs to be revived.  Here’s a challenge:  How long will it take you to figure out who this is about?

Campfire Tale

“I will tell you a story.

It is a true story, I did not make it up.

I learned it word for word from the way the words

Followed each other like first stars in the dark

When they came to me the first time, long ago.

I am still learning it.

And though it grows in the telling, it does it the way

A seed grows into a cedar, because the cedar

Was there in the seed all along, and had to grow.

You can find them tall and majestic in the fields,

Daring the lightning, or stooped, twisted, stunted,

Clutching at some impossible crack in a rock,

Living on soil they had to grind themselves,

But living to scatter their seed.

You are hearing the story from me, I am telling it now.

The seeds ride on the wind.  If I should stop,

Sooner or later one would take root near you;

You find them growing in unexpected places.

I will tell you a story.”

“The story has no beginning, but we will start

With a cold night in the desert, the stars fierce,

A light wind stirring the sand, the hints of dawn

As yet too faint to challenge the blazing blackness.

There is no moon tonight, you must look closely.

You see that hill?  It seems to be moving.  Ha!

It is a tent collapsing.  There are camels

Kneeling to be loaded.  I hear bleating

Of sheep.  And there, that man off to the side,

He seems oblivious to the whole commotion,

Standing motionless against the sky

As if in meditation.  One of the servants

Approaches him now, but stops, patiently waiting.

That man must be the master here.  He sees

The servant, sighs, and turns back toward the others.

I’ve lost him, but he must be mounted now;

There go the camels, lurching, one by one,

Rising clumsily into the sky.

And now they’re moving.  What a host they’ve got!

How could we have missed those flocks?  They’re gone.

Before the sun is up the wind will sweep

Away all signs that they were ever here.”

The boy stared deep in the fire.  “You tell it as if

You were there when it happened, as if it were happening now.”

“And how do you know it isn’t?”  The old man’s eyes

Glinted.  He shoved a stick in deeper and made

The sparks fly up.  “The story is still going on,

And you and I are in it.  The man was traveling

With everything he owned, cattle, servants,

Their wives and children, deeper into the desert.

None of them knew where they were going or why.

His wife had asked him point-blank, and he had told her

That God had told him to go, and that was that.

Some of them even believed him!”  The light of the fire

Showed a smile that wrinkled the old man’s cheeks

At the point.  “Yes, there were some of them that believed him.”

The old man paused ‘til the boy thought he’d fallen asleep,

But then he shook his head.  “It is not to be thought

That the man knew fully himself why the journey was ordered.

He thought it had something to do with becoming a nation.

The begetting of seed was central in it somehow,

And some great blessing for all mankind was at stake.

He thought it had something to do with the Curse and the Promise

Of Eden, the Seed that was coming to bruise the Serpent.”

“So that old story’s the same as this one?”  “Yes.

There is only one story you know.  But all he knew

Was that Jahweh had told him to leave Ur of the Chaldees

And God had promised a land and a seed and a blessing.”

This time it was the boy who stirred the fire.

“And did he ever find the land he was seeking?”

The old man laughed.  “Well, we are here now, aren’t we?”

“And did he find the seed?”  The old man’s hand

Descended gently on the boy’s young shoulder.

“The story goes no further for tonight.

We’d better get some sleep now, for tomorrow

We’ll come to the place appointed for sacrifice.

Tomorrow night we may know more of the story,

And if we do we’ll tell it to each other.”

The fire was watchful beside them through the night,

And the silent tears of Abraham were tiny

Pools of mud in the dust by the sleeping form

Of Isaac the promised seed.  It was a cold

Night on the edge of the desert, the stars fierce,

The hints of dawn still faint, but growing stronger,

A light wind stirring the thicket where the ram

Had gotten himself entangled on the mountain.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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.”

This poem tries to capture a truly magical moment and reveal it as a useful image of a spiritual truth.  The relationships between appearance and reality, and between faith and sight, deserve more thought than they sometimes receive.

North Campus, The University of Georgia, Spring, 1980:

The Ninth Sphere Reflected in the First

“This mist just barely lets the moonlight through.

We’ll see no stars tonight.”  “But where the moon

Is shining, you can bet the stars are too.

No matter we can’t see them in this noon

Of silver foglight, for tonight the trees

Are all intent on standing in for them:

New dogwood blossoms, ranked in galaxies

And constellations, glow on every limb.

Somehow they gather in the diffuse light

And give it back in concentrated flares

Of brilliance, making dark the softer white.”

“What strange astronomy is this, that dares

Set stars ablaze so far from their own sphere?”

“Well, one that knows how much we need their light

And feels their unseen influence down here

And, having seen them once in their full height,

Thereafter walks by faith and not by sight.”

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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.”

Morning ground-fog hugging the low-lying folds of land when one is starting off on a journey as the sun comes up is one of the most beautiful—and ephemeral—things that Nature does.  No adventure begins quite right without it.

An Early Start

(To Shope Fork, N.C.)

Sonnet XXXIV

“Tonight the Fog will come to the bottoms to keep

A tryst with his bride, the River.  In the morning,

If we are careful, we’ll catch him quite asleep

Right there on the bank beside her still, scorning

To notice the stars fading, to take warning,

Knowing it takes most half a day for the sun

To reach this valley floor with any warming.

So over the meadow he spreads his blanket, spun

Of moonlight that shines on when the moon is done.”

The walkers were careful not to disturb the pair

Of lovers as they left.  When the peaks were won,

They returned; the River alone was waiting there.

“Where does he go?  No one has seen it aright.

I only know he’ll be back again tonight.”

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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.”

Rudolf Bultmann is no longer “hot” in biblical criticism, but his disciples continue to wreak their havoc on faith, not to mention common sense.  He thought we could no longer believe the New Testament because it was mythological, and that we had to “demythologize” it in order to find what was true there.  Never mind that anything that did not fit with Modernism, Rationalism, and Scientism was automatically dismissed as “mythology,” nor that when you removed the supernatural there was very little left.  Well, the joke is on the Bultmanniacs.  Did they really understand even mythology any better than they did the New Testament?

A Parable for Demythologizers

To Rudolf Bultmann

“We come with rusty hatchets to chop down

Old Yggdrasil, the mightiest of trees;

We come with buckets full of air to drown

Old Triton, ruler of the seven seas.

For we are Modern Men, the heirs of Time,

And won’t be ruled by anything that’s gone

Before.  So if we think it more sublime

To exorcise Aurora from the dawn,

Then who is there who dares to say us nay?”

And so the desert wind swept through their minds

And found no obstacle placed in its way

To stop the stinging dust, the sand that blinds.

Blistered, parched, and withered, one by one

They fell beneath the branches of the Tree,

Succumbing to the unrelenting Sun

In cool, green shade beside the roaring Sea.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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.”

OK, how about some more limericks?

Limerick # 5

There once was a limerick writer

Whose income grew tighter and tighter.

“If I want to make bread

With my verses,” he said,

“I will just have to be even snider.”

# 6

There once was a student of grammar

Who was an incurable crammar.

He studied his best

On the eve of the test

By beating it in with a hammar.

#7

A writer of verse from Hong Kong

Got all of his limericks wrong.

They started out fine

From the very first line,

But the last one was always invariably and without fail too long.

# 8

The colleges of education

Thought up many a grand innovation.

But when their reform

Became the norm,

Not a kid learned to read in the nation.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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.”

This was so much fun!  I wrote it because I could.

On the Writing of Sonnets

Sonnet XXXIII

A perfect sonnet must have fourteen lines,

Ten syllables in each, the evens strong

(In French the sonnet uses twelve and shines,

But twelve in English verse is just too long).

In Italy it rhymes A B B A;

A B B A again the Octave makes.

The Sextet then has three rhymes which it may

Arrange diversely when the sonnet “breaks.”

Elizabethan sonnets break three times,

Once after every quatrain, just for fun.

A B A B, and so forth, run the rhymes.

You end them with a couplet; here is one:

This sonnet is not great, but it is good,

A “perfect” sonnet if you’ve understood.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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.”

This was a fairly early sonnet, but I still think it’s one of my best.  It stems from the fact that Bethlehem in Hebrew (Beth Lechem) means “House of Bread.”  And so, some two millennia ago, it came to be.  The poem was in New Oxford Review, Jan.-Feb., 1982, p. 31.

Bethlehem

Sonnet XXXII

Bethlehem, Beth Lechem, House of Bread:

Your white stones waited silent in the sun

For long years (long as people feel them run).

The prophets wrote no more; the Rabbis read

The old words and unraveled every thread

And found your secret out:  You were the one.

Yet when the time can and the thing was done,

They spent the night at home asleep in bed.

Oh, they could put their fingers on the pages

That told the old fox Herod it was you.

But those uncircumcised, stargazing sages

Came first, and shepherds, wet with evening dew

Had long since been there, and had all been fed

In Bethlehem, Beth Lechem, House of Bread.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

 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.”

You’ve probably figured out by now that theology and literature are pretty inseparable disciplines for me, two areas of study that I feel compelled to pursue together, however well I may be able to integrate them.  The interesting thing about this poem is that it was inspired, not by Calvin, but by Chaucer, who wrestles with the question of predestination and free will in a number of his poems, “The Knight’s Tale” and “Troilus and Cressida” among them.  Of course, having read Calvin and a few other people didn’t hurt.

On Election and Free Will

All night long we’d sat up and debated

If Man is free, or if his will is fated

To choose as it has been predestinated.

Or, if Man is responsible and free

By God’s immutable and fixed decree,

Yet God rules all by strict necessity,

How can necessity and freedom mix?

The whole thing left my mind in such a fix

That I went walking, trying to explain

It all, and so got caught out in the rain.

The first drops turned to steam upon the road,

But then they all came thick and fast, and flowed

Together.  It was possible to tell

The precise moment they no longer fell

Directly on the pavement with a hiss

But joined to form a watery abyss

That rushed to pile itself up in a heap

Along the curbs, and soon was ankle deep.

And all that water had to go downhill

Until it found some river it could fill

Which, in its turn, would have to find the sea.

They did not ask advice from you or me

Or stop to talk abstruse theology,

But just went on about their business, free

To be what their own natures bade them be.

Donald T. Williams, PhD