The quiet of the sky The passion of the trees The wisdom of the rocks Educating me Unremembered kindness Murmurs in the breeze The wonders of a world That willed itself to be Experience the grandeur Of a world that isn’t clean Open up your senses Pull away from the screen by Richard W. Bray
Not Me and Max
As soon as Max sees me grab the leash, he goes into spasms of delight, jumping in the air and making little pirouettes. Joy. It’s not just for humans.
(I try not to say the word “walk” in front of Max unless I’m ready to take him for one. So in order not to tease him, I’ll say, “Maybe I’ll take Max for a ‘W-Word’ later this afternoon.”)
Like so many poets, Max is giddy for the natural world, and he cannot contain his enthusiasm for outside smells, sights, and sounds. And like Max, William Wordsworth began to cultivate his love of nature exploring “those few nooks to which my happy feet/ Were limited.”
Unlike so many human beings, however, Max is not overburdened by the demands of his quotidian existence. And I’m pretty sure he’s never given much thought to the meaning of life. It is therefore unlikely that Max could share with Mr. Wordsworth
That blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the things of life
But ecstasy also hurts. Wordsworth referred to such ecstatic moments as “spots of time.” Spots of time are often induced by nature, and as Sheldon W. Liebman explains, nature is “a domain in which the fundamental conditions of life are mixed, even paradoxical.” Ecstasy hurts because even in its thrall we realize that soon we will return to a world where
That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
Once we get beyond joy “And all its dizzy raptures” we are once again confined to “The still, sad music of humanity”
In the poem “Hamlen Brook,” Richard Wilbur calls this phenomenon “joy’s trick.” (Collected Poems 115).
Confronted with the immense beauty of the natural world, Wilbur laments his inability to “drink all this”
Joy’s trick is to supply
Dry lips with what can cool and slake,
Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache
Nothing can satisfy.
For his part, Robert Frost argues that “Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length” (Collected Poems 445).
There are many moments in Frost’s poetry when
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude. (445)
And the trick for human beings is to appreciate this happy now on its own terms. Frost explains in “Two Look at Two” (283).
‘This must be all.’ It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favor
Had made them certain earth returned their love.
by Richard W. Bray
As Dorothy Parker once said
To her boyfriend, “Fare thee well”
—Cole Porter Just One of Those Things
Years ago I was up late reading a poetry anthology when I came across a familiar passage from Wordsworth:
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!
I put the book down and thought, “You poor, poor man.” I was briefly flooded with empathy for Lucy and her chronicler. And this sensation connected my life and my various heartaches and disappointments with the turbid ebb and flow of human misery. (Soon I remembered that the people about whom I was reading had been dead for over a century. I picked up my book and went on to the next poem.)
Reading The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker, a women who “wore [her] heart like a wet, red stain,” I am reminded of the sage* who informs us that “Happiness is a sad song” (10).
Although I’m no stranger to heartache and self-pity, Mrs. Parker obviously possesses, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, a heart not so airy as mine.
The sun’s gone dim, and
The moon’s turned black;
For I love him, and
He didn’t love back. (151)
Just about every human being who has ever lived has had a similar experience. But how many of us could condense so much feeling into eighteen beautifully collocated metrical syllables?
(A note on Light Verse: Kurt Vonnegut complained that critics mistook Science Fiction for a urinal, and that’s how I feel about this dismissive term often applied to rhymed poetry which possesses a healthy meter. Even when, for example, Phyllis McGinley writes of serious topics like nuclear annihilation, critics belittle such poetry by classifying it as light verse. This is why I am heartened by the growing presence of poets such as Mrs. Parker and Ogden Nash in the anthologies.)
Of course, the poetry of Dottie Parker would be a dreary place were it not for the courage she demonstrates by climbing back on that horse no matter how many times it throws her.
Better be left by twenty dears
Than lie in a loveless bed;
Better a loaf that’s wet with tears
Than cold, unsalted bread (134)
And the existential vivacity of the tender heart which continues to grab life by the horns for all its gusto is heroic indeed.
For contrition is hollow and wrathful,
And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
There was nothing more fun than a man! (172)
Perhaps not coincidentally, the tenacity of Mrs. Parker’s amorousness is matched (if not bested) by the ferocity of her malevolence.
Then if friendships break and bend,
There’s little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die. (70)
Dorothy Parker is a legendary hurler of insults who penned several composites of enmity which she calls “hate poems.” Here are some of her more artful derisions:
(Serious Thinkers)
They talk about Humanity
As if they had just invented it; (224)
(Artists)
They point out all the different colors in a sunset
As if they were trying to sell it to you; (236)
(Free Verse)
They call it that
Because they have to give it away (237)
(Writers)
They are always pulling manuscripts out of their pockets,
And asking you to tell them, honestly—is it too daring? (237)
(Tragedians)
The Ones Who Made Shakespeare famous. (246)
(Psychoanalysts)
Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed,
And we can all be Jung together (263)
(Overwrought Dramaturgy)
Of the Play That Makes You Think—
Makes you think you should have gone to the movies. (265)
(Married “Steppers-Out”)
They show you how tall Junior is with one hand,
And try to guess your weight with the other. (359)
(Bohemians)
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man who solicits insurance! (120)
(Men)
They’d alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired. (73)
(Past boyfriends)
The lads I’ve met in Cupid’s deadlock
Were—shall we say—born out of wedlock. (147)
*Schultz, Charles Happiness is a Warm Puppy
by Richard W. Bray
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