Poetry Session – Feb 25, 2022

T.S. Eliot at age  10 in 1898 – he was never young according to Robert Crawford, his biographer

This was the year to celebrate two literary centenaries, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Appropriately a section of Eliot’s poem was read at the February session. But since Joyce’s poetic works are not as celebrated as his other works, here below we wish to remember the light touch Joyce had with lyric poems when he started out:

STRINGS in the earth and air
Make music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.
 
There's music along the river
For Love wanders there,
Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.
 
All softly playing,
With head to the music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument. 
(From Chamber Music, 1907)

Since February is Black History month in America, KumKum chose to read a young contemporary poet, Amanda Gorman, who has been named the first Youth Poet Laureate of America. Another black poet, Alice Walker also figured, whose parting advice is:
… expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

She stands in contrast to those who wrote poetry in their youth in the sixties, the beat poets like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Thomo chose Ginsberg and read from his poem Howl.  

Though it is not the ‘cruellest month,’ the change of season that comes about in northern climes in February inspires many poets – some with prosaic thoughts about a ‘small pink bumhole’ (Margaret Atwood), and Boris Pasternak with more care-worn lines about
… the melting snow, instilling
Dry sadness into eyes that weep.

The variety among the poems is attested by there being a woman Dogri poet, Padma Sachdev, in English translation represented, as well as Milton from the opposite end of the spectrum, describing the Biblical strongman Samson, given the epithet Agonistes, i.e. one engaged in struggle.

A souvenir mug for KRG readers was designed by Joe. One side shows the mug shots of the current 12 readers:

The obverse depicts the favicon of KRG's blog – the design for which is a stylised form of the coat of arms purchased by William Shakespeare for his father, John Shakespeare:

Arundhathy

Arundhaty chose two poems of W H Davies, fascinated by the story of a tramp transformed into a well known poet of his time.

William Henry Davies (3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer, who spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo in the United Kingdom and the United States, and yet became one of the most popular poets of his time.

He is said to have elevated idleness to an art form, urging a busy world to embrace the freedom of the great outdoors and take time to appreciate the small wonders of nature.

His biography is fascinating. Son of an iron monger he was born and did his schooling in Newport District . He lost his father at the age of six and his mother married again leaving him to be raised by his paternal grand parents.  When he was older his grandmother enrolled him with an ironmonger, a job he did not like.

He left Newport, took casual work and began his travels. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) covers his American life during 1893–1899, including adventures and characters from his travels as a drifter. During the period, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean at least seven times on cattle ships. He travelled through many states doing seasonal work.

Davies took advantage of the corrupt system of ‘boodle’ to pass the winter in Michigan by agreeing to be locked in a series of jails. Here with his fellow tramps Davies enjoyed card-playing, singing, smoking, reading, telling stories, and occasionally going out for a walk – all in relative comfort. At one point on his way to Memphis, Tennessee, he lay alone in a swamp for three days and nights suffering from malaria.

The turning point in Davies's life came after a week of rambling in London. He spotted a newspaper story about the riches to be made in the Klondike, a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada, and set off to make his fortune there. The Klondike Gold Rush, which started in 1896 and lasted until 1899. While attempting to jump a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario on 20 March 1899, he lost his footing and his right foot was crushed under the wheels of the train. The leg was amputated below the knee and he wore a peg-leg thereafter. Davies' biographers agree the accident was a turning point in his career.

His biographer Richard J. Stonesifer suggested this event, more than any other, led to Davies  becoming a professional poet. He returned to Britain, living a rough life, largely in London shelters and doss-houses.

Fearing contempt from fellow tramps, he often feigned slumber in the corner of a doss-house, mentally composing his poems, then later committing them to paper in private. At one point, he borrowed money to print poems, which he sold door-to-door in residential London.

Davies self-published his first slim book of poetry, The Soul's Destroyer, in 1905, with his savings. It proved to be the beginning of success and a growing reputation.
One of the copies went to Arthur St. John Adcock, then a journalist with the Daily Mail. On reading the book, Adcock said he recognised there were crudities and doggerel in it, but there was also some of the freshest and most magical poetry to be found in modern books.  He asked Davies to meet him. Adcock is seen as “the man who discovered Davies.”

Arun chose these poems, Leisure andThe Sleepers,  because what he wrote in the early 1900s is now even more relevant. From his famous poem, Leisure, here are lines that Arundhaty recited:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

The same busy-ness continues in our lives today. The second poem is about day-labourers being picked up as they wait for work and being taken in open trucks, huddled together. Th poet observes:

These people work too hard, thought I,

And long before their time they die.

Both her selections depict problems that are still with us – the scarcity of time has trapped us all.

The tradition of day-labour continues in all the cities of the world where workers with no social benefits such as health care or pension must depend on the chance they will be picked up for a day’s wages – if they are lucky. You have to be sorry for the ones who get left behind. Arundhaty thought we have not progressed much. Every morning in Thevara junction or Kadavanthara in Ernakulam you will see Tamilian labourers waiting by the roadside, with their baskets and mammatty (spade), said Devika.

KumKum said her children also work in a mad rush and have little time ‘to stand and stare’, but on the other hand they at least enjoy the auxiliary benefits of working in big companies. She mentioned Tamil women would come to work when her house was being renovated. At the end of the day, the labourers would have a bath, comb their hair, put on their sarees and depart with flowers in their hair. They seemed proud to have earned their day’s wages. She remembered the food they would bring: some fish fry, sambar, pickle, and a mound of rice. Arundhaty emphasised that the insecurity and poor state of casual workers and their harsh treatment by the sardars who recruit them, continues to demonstrate the rough edge of society. 

Davies’ themes included observations on life's hardships, the ways the human condition is reflected in nature, his tramping adventures and the characters he met. He is usually classed as a Georgian Poet, though much of his work is not typical of the group in style or theme.

Devika

Padma Sachdev – 17th April 1940 to 4th August 2021

Padma Sachdev developed an interest in poetry at a very young age. She was the first woman poet in Dogri. She also wrote in Hindi and has published many books too.

Born in Jammu, Padma Sachdev was the eldest of 3 children of a Sanskrit scholar and a schoolteacher. Her father was killed in riots during the partition in 1947. Her mother moved back to Purandmal, a village in Jammu which was their native place and started teaching in a school. 

Padma got married at the tender age of sixteen to the then editor of Sandesh, Ved Pal Deep, a prominent Dogri poet, twelve years senior to her. They fell in love with each other and got married against the objections of relatives on both sides. Padma describes it as fatal infatuation.

She moved to Srinagar to continue her further studies, while her then husband stayed back and few months following that she suffered the first bout of her serious illness – tuberculosis of the intestines – and had to remain in a hospital at Srinagar for about three years. She says, “Nobody expected me to survive but it never crossed my mind that I would lose, battling that tormenting disease.”

After a miraculous recovery from the illness, Padma returned to Jammu, and started working as a staff artist with Radio Kashmir, Jammu. Soon after, she separated from her husband. This step offended the conservative mindset which deemed marriage a ‘sacred bond for seven births.’ Conservatives besmirched  her as immoral for choosing her husband herself. Padma being an honourable person, doesn’t get into the details or reasons leading her to take such drastic decision at the time and speaks respectfully of her former husband.

She got alienated from the conservative middle class society of Jammu and found herself out of a job. She also got criticised by newspapers which once reported about her glowingly. According to Padma, it was the price of being in public eye, yet she never got intimidated by it.

She won the Sahitya Academy Award in 1971 and the Padma Shri in 2001 along with many more notable awards. 

Padma Sachdev has made the Dogras proud. She has left behind lyrical and thought-provoking poetry. Her novels give an insight into the realities of life and its beautiful shades and flavours. She will live on in the hearts and minds of lovers of literature.

When Devika was trying to figure out as to what she should choose for her reading for the next poetry session, she remembered the  book presented by her niece,  which she would flip through regularly to read stories and poems, all written by Indian women authors in the past 2000 years. This book being in English has been translated from different original languages.

Mother Tongue is a Dogri poem written by Padma Sachdev; it  is a lament for her lost mother tongue. Devika tried to find the original Dogri version through Google with no luck. Old languages like Dogri are being destroyed thanks to evolution of language and old scripts being no longer in use.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padma_Sachdev
http://www.thenewsnow.co.in/newsdet.aspx?q=92475
https://thedailyguardian.com/the-timeless-legacy-of-padma-sachdev/

As a postscript to her reading of the poem in Dogri by Padma Sachdev, she mused on the fact that the increasing Westernisation of urban life has removed people from the roots of their mother tongue. It requires an investment of time and effort to learn to read and write in the local language and become proficient enough to read novels in the language. The poem illustrates the case of Dogri, which used to be spoken in Jammu,  Himachal Pradesh and parts of Punjab. But now it has been displaced by other languages to the point that even if you go to these places and address a shopkeeper in Dogri, he will reply only in Hindi. So too, our children may not know even the little Malayalam we know and speak, for they have not learned to read and write the language.

Devika failed to find the Dogri text of Padma Sachdev’s poem which is now in the syllabus for school board exams. The book from which she selected the poem is called Unbound – 2,000 Years of Indian Women's Writing, edited by Annie Zaidi. She got it as a present for her birthday several years ago. It is very pleasant to delve into.

Unbound – 2,000 Years of Indian Women's Writing, edited by Annie Zaidi

The brave Indian woman model on the beautiful cover is unidentified. Though the book has 372 pages, only the English versions of the poems are presented, which is a pity. It should have been offered as a multilingual edition, the original language appearing side-by-side with the English translation.

Geetha

Geetha selected an excerpt from the tragic drama by John Milton, Samson Agonistes, published with the long poem Paradise Regained in the year 1671.

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual who wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). 

Written in blank verse, Paradise Lost is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literature ever written. He achieved international renown within his lifetime; his celebrated Areopagitica (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended into his style: he introduced new words (coined from Latin and Ancient Greek) to the English language, and was the first modern writer to employ unrhymed verse outside of the theatre or translations.

The Divorce Tracts of Milton are extremely interesting. In 1643 he argues for the legitimacy of divorce on grounds of spousal incompatibility in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.  One cannot know the disposition of their spouse fully before entering into marriage, he says. Marriage is so great a joy, and so wholesome a gift, that one should be given a second chance if the first choice yields nothing.

William Hayley's 1796 biography called Milton the “greatest English author”, and he is generally regarded as one of the pre-eminent writers in the English language. Poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy revered him. 

Samson Agonistes is a tragic closet drama (i.e. a play to be read rather than acted) by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's Paradise Regained in 1671. The title page of that volume reads: Paradise Regained / A Poem / In IV Books / To Which Is Added / Samson Agonistes. 

It is generally thought that Samson Agonistes was begun around the same time as Paradise Regained but was completed after the larger work, possibly very close to the date of publishing, but there is no certainty. On the title page, Milton wrote that the piece was a Dramatic Poem rather than a drama. He did not wish for it to be performed on stage, but thought that the text could still influence people. He hoped that by giving Samson attributes of other Biblical figures, including Job or the Psalmist, he could create a complex hero who would embody and help resolve theological issues. In writing the poem and choosing the character of Samson as his hero, Milton was also illustrating his own blindness, which afflicted him in his later life. 

Milton began plotting various subjects for tragedies in a notebook created in the 1640s. Many of the ideas dealt with the topic of Samson. His final choice of a title emphasises Samson as a warrior or an athlete, and the play was included with Paradise Regained and printed on 29 May 1671 by John Starkey. In the Hebrew Bible, Samson (‘man of the sun’) was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Book of Judges, one of the last leaders who “judged” Israel before the institution of the monarchy. 

The biblical account states that Samson was a Nazirite, and that he was given immense strength to aid him against his enemies and allow him to perform superhuman feats, including slaying a lion with his bare hands and massacring an entire army of Philistines using only the jawbone of an ass as weapon. However, if Samson's long hair were cut, then his Nazirite vow would be violated and he would lose his strength. 

Samson's Fight with the Lion (1525) by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Samson is betrayed by his lover Delilah who was sent by the Philistines officials to entice him; she orders a servant to cut his hair while he is sleeping and turns him over to his Philistine enemies, who gouge out his eyes and force him to grind grain in a mill at Gaza. While there, his hair begins to grow again. 

When the Philistines take Samson into their temple of Dagon, Samson asks to rest against one of the support pillars. After being granted permission, he prays to God and miraculously recovers his strength, allowing him to bring down the columns, thus collapsing the temple and killing himself as well as all the Philistines gathered. In some Jewish traditions, Samson is believed to have been buried in Zorah in Israel overlooking the Sorek valley.

Samson brings down the temple

Joe

Pedro Homem de Mello

Born in Porto on September 6, 1904

Died in Porto on March 5, 1984

He was buried in the cemetery of the small town of Afife, by his express will. He had a house there called Convento de Cabanas. It was the retreat from where he wrote works like Poetry, Dance and Songs of the Portugese People (1941).

He was born of well-to-do parents and studied law at the U of Coimbra and graduated in 1926. He practiced law for a while but became a scholar and taught in reputed universities. He promoted Portuguese folklore and participated in several musical groups in the town of Minho, and broadcast music on radio and TV. 

He contributed to literary magazines like Mundo Literário, Altura, and Prisma. He has written a large number of poems. The influence of the poet Lorca is strong in him. Nevertheless, his poems in the collection Povo que Lavas no Rio (The people  who wash in the river) would certainly not have gained their great popularity except that a well-known singer Amalia Rodrigues set them to music and sang them as songs in the mournful fado genre. The poet remembers when he first walked into  theatre in Lisbon and heard his poem sung in her voice, and the great ecstasy he felt; now his poems would belong to the people. At least 40 of his poems found their way into songs by Amalia Rodrigues. Here she sings a song from the poem Fria Claridade (Cold Clarity):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEM5OoHWh5I

In the midst of light

The day was sad, 

The city was vast – 

But none knew me …

In the end, things became difficult for him and he even had to sell his books in Porto to survive. He was forgotten. But when Joe visited the town of Afife in 2004 and stayed as a guest of his Belgian son-in-law’s uncle at his villa, he discovered the town was fairly crawling with poetic works displayed as azulejos tiles. The first one he saw stood as a plaque on the right of the entrance to the cemetery of Afife:

 

The poem expresses Pedro Homem de Mello’s wish that he should be buried in the town where he made his home for composing and thinking. Even the casual reader notices the four lines are rhymed, the town Afife with ‘esquife’ the word for coffin. And the word ‘homem’ which means man and is part of his name also, with ‘comem’ the verb to eat. So any sensitive translation should maintain the fact that he wrote a lyric, not just a dirge. 

A simple translation would be:

1. Last Wishes –

Bury my bones in Afife

In the wild garden where I came to manhood

So that I may have (just as the thistles eat too)

The pure hunger for the coffin.

Joe's looser translation is:

Last Wishes –

Afife is where you’ll bury my bones,

That garden so wild where I have grown

Where thistles still browse upon the earth

Hungering for a pure rebirth.

The next is just as short:

2. Eternity

The waters are for the sea,

The leaves are for the wind

Only the crags if they don't change!

Therein lies the thought.

As Joe understood the poet is contrasting the changeability of the sea and the wind with the constancy of rocks, hoping to fix his thought so well that it will have the same permanence.

When you walk into the cemetery in Afife there is a white marble grave inside to the right with a farewell message to the departed person from the poet:

Saudade – a gravestone poem by Pedro Homem de Mello taken by Herman Willems Sr.

A word on the title ‘Saudade’, Longing. It is word freighted with meaning in Portuguese, as many Fado songs lament in this mode, which is partly for oneself, partly for the memory of something vanished, partly for the loss of a person. It is a vague constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, a nostalgic longing for someone or something loved and then lost. 

Here’s a fairly literal translation:

3. Longing

In memory of dear Hilda

To live

… is it not to see others die?

Sad,

I let the garden go to seed without colour or scent

Thus it remains

The sea comes echoing a lament 

Only the hydrangeas seem human today

Nothing else speaks to us – nothing else,

There was sun in our Cabanas woods,

Where have they gone, the happy hours of yesterday?

The egg-white petals she loved so much –

No other flower could be so beautiful

When I see them I remember the sky behind the tears

They were blue, like her eyes.

Joe's hope is someone will write a remembrance like this when he is gone … KumKum replied, “Please write it yourself and I'll put it on your grave, if I'm alive.” Geetha asked if Joe knew Portuguese, seeing as he had translated these short poems. Joe replied he didn't know Portuguese but with some knowledge of the basic vocabulary common to Spanish also, and a dictionary, one can make out the sense, and then one has to feel what the poet is trying to get across. It's an excellent method of going to the heart of a poem, to try to translate it. We must be grateful to those who translate from languages we do not know.

Priya said someone in Fort Kochi sings fado songs. KumKum mentioned language classes conducted at the Bishop's House where they teach Portuguese. In Goa lots of people still know and speak Portuguese, and many have relatives in Portugal, Kavita said. Joe mentioned a friend, a former colleague named Aires Barreto, who is Goan, and has lots of relatives in Goa; he hosted a holiday there for Joe and KumKum along with other friends in 2010. 

 Kavita

Kavita chose a poem by Alice Walker whose novel, The Color Purple, we are going to read on March 24. She decided to check out AW's poetry also and found she liked this poem, Before you knew you owned it. It seemed to hold out sober advice for enduring our Covid times: live in the moment, for you do not know what can happen tomorrow. The poet also declares you do not need so much stuff to live:

... expect nothing. Live frugally

On surprise.

Geetha and KumKum remarked how finely relevant the poem was. KumKum was not aware AW was a poet too. Devika agreed that Covid and the lack of opportunity to go out and display, has made so much of our apparel irrelevant. Life has changed completely. Everyone agreed it was a good reminder about being immersed too much in the materialistic world of things. It is poignant coming from a poet whose early life was filled with privations.

Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Putnam County, Georgia. She is an accomplished American poet, novelist, and activist. Walker was the eighth and youngest child of Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Willie Lee Walker. Alice grew up in an environment rife with racism and poverty, which, along with her passion for gender issues, remains a large part of her narratives.

Her first book of poetry was written while she was a senior at Sarah Lawrence. The collection also contains a scrapbook of poetry compiled when Walker was 15, entitled Poems of a Childhood Poetess.

After graduating in 1965, Walker became a social worker and teacher, while remaining heavily invested and involved in the Civil Rights Movement. As a writer in residence at Jackson State College and Tougaloo College in Mississippi, she taught poetry while working on her own poetry and fiction. She contributed to groundbreaking feminist Ms. magazine in the late 60s, writing a piece about the unappreciated work of African-American author Zora Neale Hurston. 

Walker has proved time and time again to be a versatile writer. In 2004, she published Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart. Two years later, in 2006, she published a collection of essays, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Light in a Time of Darkness, and the well-received picture book There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me.

Continuing her work as a political activist, Walker also wrote about her experiences with the group Women for Women International in 2010’s Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel. She published another poetry collection, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, that same year.

Walker has said that the poem Women was written for her mother. Other important people to her were teachers: “I also had terrific teachers . . . Right on through grammar school and high school and college, there was one—sometimes even two—teachers who saved me from feeling alone . . .” 

They were women then 

My mama’s generation 

A Husky of voice—stout of Step 

With fists as well as Hands 

How they battered down Doors 

And ironed Starched white Shirts 

How they led Armies Headragged generals 

Across mined Fields Booby-trapped Ditches 

To discover books 

Desks 

A place for us

Kumkum

February is celebrated in the US and in Canada as Black History month. This annual celebration started in the US in 1926, but not until recently has the celebration become widespread, in the wake of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. 

Kumkum is happy that she chose to read a celebrated modern black poet, Amanda Gorman, only 24 years old. In January 2021, during President Biden’s inaugural ceremony Amanda Gorman read her poem, The Hill We Climb, to great acclaim. Gorman was sublime that morning. She was dressed in a bright yellow dress, with a band in her head, her beautiful dark face was calm, and her two slender hands swayed with the rhythm of the poem as she articulated each word emphatically. She was charming that day, winning the hearts of all Americans, irrespective of their Party affiliation or race.

Amanda Gorman reciting at President Biden's inauguration

Amanda Gorman, in her poems, acknowledges America’s contested history, and its contemporary turmoils; in her invocation of plural “We” she reminded us for good or ill, that our lives are connected. Hers was an invitation to move forward together.

Her new book of collected poems, Call Us What We Carry, was released in December 2021, she calls it an ‘Occasional Book’, meaning, its poems celebrate occasions or events of the present  time. The book became an instant favourite, and remained at the top of the New York Times’ best seller books for weeks. The poems Kumkum chose are from this book.

Amanda Gorman was born on March 7, 1998 in Los Angeles, CA. Her mother is Joan Wicks – she does not acknowledge her father. Amanda graduated from Harvard University. She is a performance poet and activist. Her work focuses on the issues of oppression, race, feminism, and the Environment. Gorman was the first poet to be named Youth Poet Laureate of America.

Pamela

The Waste Land was written 100 years ago in 1922.  The poem is still considered modern and contemporary, and studied in all literature classes as a masterpiece. The modernist movement started after WWI, said Pamela. There is much in common between The Waste Land and Ulysses by James Joyce, she said. Understanding the poem is unusually difficult. You have to know the background of the times, the background of T.S. Eliot and his method of composition. An analysis of the poem may be found here.

It would take a long time to go into the poem in depth and Pamela felt she could not do justice in 5 minutes. T.S. Eliot has referenced many literary works from the past, and has many allusions and quotations from literary works, which few would be familiar with today – Pamela was not, but she liked the poem nevertheless. WWI caused immense misery and death and Europe was left in upheaval and a sense of order being broken. Economies were devastated, people were displaced. T.S. Eliot himself was not in a good frame of mind and was undergoing treatment for mental health in 1921, Pamela said. Indeed, these lines in the poem hint at his mental troubles, for he and his wife Vivienne had problems:
My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.


Then Pamela started reading slowly,
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
…

Pamela had trouble navigating the German, Italian and French strewn here and there; and who is Madam Sosostris? She is a gypsy fortune teller from the literature of the time – named Sesostris, the sorceress of Ecbatana in Aldous Huxley's novel Chrome Yellow. Thus you are made aware that recognising the plethora of references in the poem requires a vast reading knowledge, not only of classical literature but of the books of that era that have been forgotten.

You can also read in the linked article about TWL as a history mental illness.

T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land as a history of mental illness

This was only the first part, The Burial of the Dead. The fifth and last section (What the Thunder Said) ends with the invocation

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

                  Shantih     shantih     shantih

The first three Sanskrit words mean “give,” “be sympathetic,” and “control,” which could be interpreted as a way of dealing with the chaos and disorder of post-war life.  Shantih, shantih, shantih

is, of course, the blessing of peace.

Thomas Steams Eliot was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. He was a central figure in Modernist poetry in the English Language .He was born on 26th September 1888, St.Louis,Missouri, U.S. and died on 4th January 1965 at Kensington,London, U.K. He studied at Harvard University and among many awards, he won the Nobel prize in Literature in 1948 “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.” He was in London more or less permanently since the summer of 1914 as an Oxford student. He later became a distinguished figure on the London literary scene. In the early days he was a Latin teacher, and later a bank clerk, while remaining a U.S. citizen.

The Waste Land was published in book form in four sections. Pamela had chosen the first section of the poem, beginning with the well-known line 

April is the cruellest month. 

TWL became a focal point for the culture wars of the time and brought Eliot a celebrity and an iconic status that he would never live down – and in a short time could not live up to.

Modernists such as Eliot, Ezra Pound and James Joyce were obsessed with the idea that the literary artist could create a text in any medium, be it the novel, poetry or a theatrical piece that would freely and enthusiastically break all the rules and fly in the face of centuries of conventional wisdom and traditions.. It could succeed in creating equally enduring works of literature that did more than just comment on human experience.

The world had radically changed between 1800 and 1900, a century that was and continues to be regarded as an age of revolution in virtually all fields of human endeavour. The modernist ways of thinking eschewed authoritarianism and absolutes and advocated in their place relativism in ways of thinking and perceiving reality. Eliot was unmistakably one who had cast his lot with these newer ways of thinking and of defining the relationship between the writer and the reader with the literary work.

TWL is a difficult read for a novice but with preparation and elaborate annotation (some provided by TSE himself), this elusive poem can be appreciated. A recent example is Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue who have published The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems  in which 346 pages are the text of the poems, and 965 pages are commentary. The ratio is similar in Volume 2. Pamela claims that understanding the times that produced it, and the place that it occupies in Eliot's development, are essential.

The First World War had revealed that the rationales of a supposed racial, managerial and entrepreneurial superiority – by which imperialists in Europe had justified colonising – were nothing more than a deceitful justification for greed and territorial expansion. Europe's vaunted superiority had been forever blasted. TWL embodies this emptiness that the war had left behind. It's a poem based on the ancient myth of a wounded King and a blasted land that is seeking a hero who will heal its deadly illness. At the end of the poem Eliot resolves everything softly in the ancient cry for peace in Sanskrit – Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.

Priya

While searching for poems for the February poetry session, Priya hit upon the idea of selecting poems about February and to her delight found that many poets have written poems based on months! She selected two poems of renowned poets: Boris Pasternak of the early twentieth century and Margaret Atwood, a contemporary poet of Canadian origin.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Soviet Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. His fame in Russia is mainly as a poet starting from his influential book of poems, My Sister, Life (1922). Pasternak's translations of plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderón de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences to this day.

Pasternak was born in Moscow with a Jewish background, though later in life he worshipped mostly in Christian churches. His father was the painter, Leonid Pasternak, a professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. His mother was a concert pianist. Pasternak had a younger brother Alex and sisters Lydia and Josephine. 

Gifted, brilliant, and non-conformist Pasternak did his schooling in a German Gymnasium in Moscow and then continued at the University of Moscow. Pasternak took up the study of musical composition for six years from 1904 to 1910. By 1912 he renounced music as his calling in life and went to the University of Marburg, Germany, to study philosophy under Neo-Kantian philosophers like Hermann Cohen.

Shortly after his birth, Pasternak's parents had joined the Tolstoyan Movement. Novelist Leo Tolstoy was a close family friend, as Pasternak recalled. Regular visitors to the Pasternak's home also included Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Scriabin, Lev Shestov, and Rainer Maria Rilke. 

Pasternak eschewed movements in poetry, although at first he was attracted to the ideas of Futurism. He followed his own, independent creative path. In 1914 he published his first verse collection (A Twin in the Clouds) and in 1917 his verse cycle, contained in the collection Above Barriers.

The Revolution and Civil War were scarcely reflected in his works, and the same is true of his verse collection (Life, My Sister), published in 1922. He considered artistic creativity to be incompatible with societal commitments.

Boris Pasternak portrait by Andrey Potapov (2019)

In 1934 Pasternak attended the 1st USSR Writers’ Congress. He was tolerated by Soviet regime by dint of his artistic talent and the fact that Stalin decided he was harmless; besides he had written well and translated Georgian authors (Stalin was from Georgia). Pasternak accomplished a great deal  of literary translation of the works of Goethe, Shakespeare, Kleist, Shelley, Verlaine, and Keats.

After World War 2, in addition to a number of poetic works and extensive translations, he concentrated on his novel Doctor Zhivago, which he began to write in 1948, although the ideas had been germinating before the war.

The novel outlines human relationships, based on such qualities as genuine feeling, love and purpose as an inner criterion of life. It is set in the period from the socialist revolution of 1905 to World War II. It has many poems embedded in the novel, coming from the pen of the protagonist, a surgeon, Yuri Andreivich Zhivago, who wrote poems in his spare time. Publication of the novel was refused in the USSR, but in 1957 it was smuggled abroad and published in Italy.

In 1958 the novel brought Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature. The CIA had a hand in that. He was then subjected to a smear campaign in the Soviet press and expelled from the USSR Writers’ Union and its Translators’ Section for the sin of “political and moral decadence and treachery' toward the Soviet people, the cause of Socialism, peace and progress.”

As a result of this campaign Pasternak was forced to renounce the Prize; because there was a clamour to banish Pasternak, he implored Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party, to be allowed to spend the rest of his life in his native country. It was granted but he wrote a bitter poem, not meant for publication:

I am lost like a beast in an enclosure,

   Somewhere are people, freedom, and light.

Behind me is the noise of pursuit,

   And there is no way out.

Dark forest by the shore of the lake,

   Stump of fallen fir tree,

Here I am cut off from everything,

   Whatever shall be is the same to me.

But what wicked thing have I done,

   I, the murderer and villain?

I, who force the whole world to cry

   Over the beauty of my land.

But, in any case, I am near my grave,

   And I believe the time will come

When the spirit of good will conquer

   Wickedness and infamy.

He later said it was written in a ‘black pessimistic mood’ that had since passed.

Boris Pasternak reading the telegram saying he had won the Nobel Prize, with his wife Zinaida (left)

Deprived of the right to publish his works and to meet friends and visitors, Pasternak spent his declining years in virtual isolation at his dacha in the village of Peredelkino, near Moscow.

You can read here about his first and second marriage, and his lover, Olga Ivinskaya, who inspired the character of Lara in the novel.

Boris Russian photographed with his muse and life companion Olga Ivinskaya and their daughter Irina, in the late 1950s

Priya chose to recite a February poem and appropriately chose the poem February from the collection of Pasternak’s verse by that name:

February – Poetry of Boris Pasternak, cover

Priya said the most appropriate choice would have been a poem by Ezra Pound named 1915: February. He sent it to H. L. Mencken for publication, but it remained unpublished until after Pound’s death. It’s an angry poem, about the manufacturing of weapons for the First World War, taking imagery from the poem in Old English, Beowulf. It makes you think of what’s happening in Ukraine now. Priya said. Pasternak has been read before, but she didn’t recall who read him. It was KumKum in June 2014, who read a poem titled, The Steppe.

Priya claims Pasternak started writing poetry seriously only after being rejected by a woman called Ida Davidona. The world of poetry owes a debt for her rejection.

Pasternak’s descendants were able to accept the Nobel Prize in his name in 1988. Doctor Zhivago has been part of the main Russian school curriculum since 2003.

Margaret Atwood

Regarded as one of Canada’s finest living writers, Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a poet, novelist, story writer, essayist, and environmental activist.

She was born in Ottawa in 1939 and earned her BA from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and an MA from Radcliffe College (the former Women's College of Harvard University) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She first came to public attention as a poet in the 1960s with her collections Double Persephone (1961 and The Circle Game (1964). 

Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. 

Atwood has won numerous awards and honours for her writing, including two Booker Prizes. Atwood’s 2007 collection, The Door, was her first new volume of poems in a decade. Reviewing the book for the Guardian, the noted literary critic Jay Parini maintained that Atwood’s “northern” poetic climate is fully on view, “full of wintry scenes, harsh autumnal rain, splintered lives, and awkward relationships. Against this landscape, she draws figures of herself.” Suffering is a common fate for the female characters in Atwood’s poems, although they are never passive victims.

Several critics find that Atwood’s work exemplifies the primary theme of survival, common in Canadian literature. Her examination of destructive gender roles and her nationalistic concern over the subservient role Canada plays to the United States, are variations on the victor/victim theme. Atwood believes a writer must consciously work within his or her nation’s literary tradition, and her own work closely parallels the themes she sees as common to the Canadian literary tradition.

Thomo

Thomo selected Allen Ginsberg’s Howl for the poetry reading session. The poem is a social commentary and it became the revolutionary manifesto of the Beat generation, a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post war era.

Of these Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, William S. Burroughs Lunch and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road are the best known. Thomo used a slightly modified name for his own book on travel by car around the world, On the Road Again.

Howl is elegiac in tone – the tone of mourning but it relies on linguistic grandeur, operatic catalogs, obscene references, and rambling digressions. Ginsberg presents the long list of the activities and the style is therefore called the catalog technique.

Howl is Ginsberg’s most famous poem. Ginsberg’s other well known poems are Kaddish, Plutonian Ode and Pull my Daisy. When Howl was published in 1956 it was seized by the US Customs and San Francisco’s police.

Ginsberg uses the word Moloch in almost every line in the 2nd part of Howl. Moloch is a name or a term which appears in the Bible many times, especially in the book of Leviticus. The Bible strongly condemns practices which are associated with Moloch, practices which appear to have included child sacrifice. 

Moloch has been understood to refer to a Canaanite god or a type of sacrifice on the basis of a similar term. The controversy continues as to whether the sacrifices were offered to Yahweh (the God of Israel) or another deity, and whether they were a native Israelite religious custom or a Phoenician import. Moloch has often been portrayed as a bull-headed idol with outstretched hands over a fire; this depiction combines the brief mention of Moloch in the Bible and with various sources, including ancient accounts of Carthaginian child sacrifice and the legend of the Minotaur.

Moloch statue from Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914), National Museum of Cinema (Turin)

Allen Ginsberg used Moloch to symbolise much more than sacrifice and false gods. Moloch represents a total ruin of society – evil governments, economic hardships and rejection are all part of Ginsberg’s Moloch. He wants society to see the evil around them but he wants them to see it on their own.

Howl presents the picture of a nightmare world.

Allen Ginsberg was born in New Jersey in 1926 into a Jewish family and died in New York City in 1997. His father Louis was a school teacher and sometime poet and his mother Naomi was a Russian émigré and a fervent Marxist.

Ginsberg vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression. He embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.

The Poems

Arundhaty – 2 poems by W.H. Davies

W.H. Davies (1781-1940) was a Welsh poet and writer, who spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo in the United Kingdom and the United States

1. Leisure 

WHAT is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,

And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

2. The Sleepers 

As I walked down the waterside

This silent morning, wet and dark;

Before the cocks in farmyards crowed,

Before the dogs began to bark;

Before the hour of five was struck

By old Westminster's mighty clock:

As I walked down the waterside

This morning, in the cold damp air,

I was a hundred women and men

Huddled in rags and sleeping there:

These people have no work, thought I,

And long before their time they die.

That moment, on the waterside,

A lighted car came at a bound;

I looked inside, and saw a score

Of pale and weary men that frowned;

Each man sat in a huddled heap,

Carried to work while fast asleep.

Ten cars rushed down the waterside

Like lighted coffins in the dark;

With twenty dead men in each car,

That must be brought alive by work:

These people work too hard, thought I,

And long before their time they die.

Devika  – poem by Padma Sachdev

Padma Sachdev who wrote in the Dogri language

Mother Tongue 

I approached a stem

Swinging on a reed

And asked him

To give me a quill.

Irritated, he said

I gave you one only the other day

A new one, what have you done with it?

Are you some sort of an accountant

With some Shah

Writing account books

Where you need a new pen

Every other day he asked.

No, I don’t work for a Shah

I said, but for a Shahni, very kind,

Very well off

And I am not the only one

Working for her

She has many servants

Ever ready to do her bidding

That Shahni is my mother tongue

Dogri

Give me, a quill, quickly

She must be looking for me

The reed cut off its hand

Gave it to me and said

Take it

I too am her servant.

Geetha – poem by John Milton

John Milton, a polemical and incendiary rhetorician

Excerpt from Samson Agonistes

A Messenger Speaks:

Occasions drew me early to this City,

And as the gates I enter'd with sun-rise,

The morning trumpets festival proclaimed

Through each high street: little I had dispatched

When all abroad was rumoured that this day

Samson should be brought forth to shew the people

Proof of his mighty strength in feats and games;

I sorrow'd at his captive state, but minded

Not to be absent at that spectacle.

The building was a spacious Theatre

Half round on two main Pillars vaulted high,

With seats where all the Lords and each degree

Of sort, might sit in order to behold,

 The other side was op'n, where the throng

On banks and scaffolds under Sky might stand;

I among these aloof obscurely stood.

The Feast and noon grew high, and Sacrifice

Had fill'd thir hearts with mirth, high cheare, & wine,

When to their sports they turn'd.

Immediately Was Samson as a public servant brought,

In their state Livery clad; before him Pipes

And Timbrels, on each side went armed guards,

Both horse and foot before him and behind

Archers, and slingers, Cataphracts and Spears.

At sight of him the people with a shout

Rifted the Air clamouring thir god with praise,

Who had made their dreadful enemy their thrall.

He patient but undaunted where they led him,

Came to the place, and what was set before him

Which without help of eye, might be assayed ,

To heave, pull, draw, or break, he still perform'd

All with incredible, stupendous force,

None daring to appear Antagonist.

At length for intermission sake they led him

Between the pillars; he his guide requested (For so from such as nearer stood we heard)

As over -tir'd to let him lean a while

With both his arms on those two massie Pillars

That to the arched roof gave main support.

He unsuspicious led him; which when Samson

Felt in his arms, with head a while enclined ,

And eyes fast fixt he stood, as one who pray'd ,

Or some great matter in his mind revolv'd .

At last with head erect thus cryed aloud,

Hitherto, Lords, what your commands impos'd

I have perform'd, as reason was, obeying,

Not without wonder or delight beheld.

Now of my own accord such other tryal

I mean to shew you of my strength, yet greater;

As with amaze shall strike all who behold.

This utter'd, straining all his nerves he bow'd ,

As with the force of winds and waters pent,

When Mountains tremble, those two massie Pillars

With horrible convulsion to and fro,

He tugg'd, he shook, till down thy came and drew

The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder

Upon the heads of all who sate beneath,

Lords, Ladies, Captains, Counsellors, or Priests

Their choice nobility and flower, not only

Of this, but each Philistian city round,

Met from all parts to solemnize this feast.

Samson with these inmixed, inevitably

Pulled down the same destruction on himself.

Joe  – 3 short poems by Pedro Homem de Mello

Pedro Homem de Melo (portrait by Júlio Resende)

1. Last Wishes

Afife is where you’ll bury my bones,

That garden so wild where I have grown

Where thistles still browse upon the earth

Hungering for a pure rebirth.

Ultimas Vontades

Enterrem os meus ossos em Afife, 

No bravio jardim que me fez homem.

Pois quero ter (se os cardos também comem!) 

A sua fome pura por esquife.

2. Eternity

The waters are for the sea,

The leaves are for the wind

Only the crags if they don't change!

Therein lies the thought.

Eternidade

As aguas são para o mar

As folhas são para o vento

Só as fragas se não mudam

Nelas fica o pensamento

3. Longing

In memory of dear Hilda  

To live

… is it not to see others die?

Sad,

I let the garden go to seed without colour or scent

Thus it remains

The sea comes echoing a lament 

Only the hydrangeas seem human today

Nothing else speaks to us – nothing else,

There was sun in our Cabanas woods,

Where have they gone, the happy hours of yesterday?

The egg-white petals she loved so much –

No other flower could be so beautiful

When I see them I remember the sky behind the tears

They were blue, like her eyes.

Saudade

À memória da querida Ilda

Viver

É ver morrer os outros?

Triste

Corro o jardim sem cor e sem perfume

E tudo em redor, hoje, ainda persiste

Em vir o mar nos ecos de um queixume

Só as hortenses hoje são humanas

E nada mais nos fala. Nada mais

Havia sol nos bosques de Cabanas

Horas felizes de ontem, onde estais?

Pétalas claras que ela amava tanto

nunca outra flor pudera ser tão bela

Ao vê-las lembro o céu por tras do pranto

Azuis eram também os olhos dela.

Kavita – poem by Alice Walker 

Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Before you knew you owned it 

Expect nothing. Live frugally

On surprise.

become a stranger

To need of pity

Or, if compassion be freely

Given out

Take only enough

Stop short of urge to plead

Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger

Than your own small heart

Or greater than a star;

Tame wild disappointment

With caress unmoved and cold

Make of it a parka

For your soul.

Discover the reason why

So tiny human midget

Exists at all

So scared unwise

But expect nothing. Live frugally

On surprise.

KumKum  – 2 poems by Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman

1. The Unordinary World

The worst is over,

Depending on who you ask.

This time, we are alone,

Not by command,

But because all we've ever desired

Is a second of our own, 

To be still & seeing,

Remote but non-distant,

Like a moon orbiting

The globe it's most fond of.

Now that the best has begun,

Depending on who you ask,

We will be no worm,

Shrinking from all that shines.

Our future is a sea

Flooded with sun,

Our souls, so solar & soldiering.

There is a cut of that burning in us all.

Who are we, if not

What we make of the dark.

2. EssexII

As the world came apart,

        We have come together.

Only we can save us.

        Our faces fill with the hour,

New meaning lapping

        Against us like mooned tides.

Laden with what we've lost,

        We are led

By what we love.

        As far away as it is,

 The late sun looks

        Peebable in our palm.

That is to say, distance

        Renders all massiveness

Carriable. It is the carrying

        That makes memory mutual,

The pain both private & public.

        Slowly, grief becomes a gift.

When we greet it, when we listen to our loss,

        When we indeed let it live,

It will not shrink in size,

        But lighten in load.

It lets us breathe.

         The densest despair takes

Us to no ordinary joy.

        Sometimes diving

Into the deep inside us

        Is the only way

We rise above it.

Pamela – poem by T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot – 1944 photo by Time/Life

The Waste Land Section I. The Burial of the Dead

                                  FOR EZRA POUND

                                IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

              I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

                      Frisch weht der Wind

                      Der Heimat zu

                      Mein Irisch Kind,

                      Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

  Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

  Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

Priya – Two February poems

Boris Pasternak, 1908

1.  February by Boris Pasternak

Black spring! Pick up your pen, and weeping,

Of February, in sobs and ink,

Write poems, while the slush in thunder

Is burning in the black of spring.

Through clanking wheels, through church bells ringing

A hired cab will take you where

The town has ended, where the showers

Are louder still than ink and tears.

Where rooks, like charred pears, from the branches

In thousands break away, and sweep

Into the melting snow, instilling

Dry sadness into eyes that weep.

Beneath — the earth is black in puddles,

The wind with croaking screeches throbs,

And-the more randomly, the surer

Poems are forming out of sobs.

– Boris Pasternak, 1912

(Translated by Lydia Pasternak)

2. February by Margaret Atwood 

Margaret Atwood – Photograph by Bernd Thissen

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here

should snip a few testicles. If we wise

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

(From Morning in The Burned House)

Thomo – poem by Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg, poet subjected to obscenity trial for his poem Howl

Howl (2nd part of the poem)

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street