It’s not a little thing When breakfast is ready Lunches are packed And the house is warm It’s not a little thing When dishes are done Laundry is clean And your coat’s by the door It’s not a little thing Who’s sleeping in your bed When it’s someone who supports Everything you do It’s not a little thing When you go out in the world Knowing that there’s someone Who really loves you By Richard W. Bray
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten–
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
(In other words, “I’ll choose my own life, Mister.” Marlowe’s shepherd painted a lovely portrait of a life for two, but he didn’t ask the nymph for her input until he was finished. That’s why I find the feminism of Raleigh’s nymph so appealing.)
No one has ever asked me to recite the fourth stanza of “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh. But my brain is constantly preparing itself for the task. Often I’m riding my bicycle when those twenty-seven marvelously collocated words decide to flow across my consciousness.
How long do I stretch out the three soons? (Listen to how Nancy Wickwire does it) How long do I pause after break and wither? How much sarcasm can I pack into the first syllable of reason? How long do I pause after reason and how hard do I hit the first syllable of rotten?
In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force–
Gold, of course.
Oh HEART! oh blood that freezes, blood that BURNS!
Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.
Love or war, which is better? It seems like such an easy question. So why do we waste so much of ourselves making war when we could be making love? The final stanza of Robert Browning’s “Love Among the Ruins” reminds us how absurd our priorities can be.
I love the way Steven Pacey reads “Love Among the Ruins.” He emphasizes the word heart as a hinge upon which the entire poem turns. He also emphasizes burns at the end of the line. Browning’s exclamation points suggests this reading is correct.
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
WHAT did I know, what did I KNOW
of love’s AUStere and LONEly offices?
So e.e.cummings isn’t the only poet whose father moved through dooms of love.
In marked contrast to Pacey’s reading of “Love Among the Ruins,” Robert Hayden’s rendition of “Those Winter Sundays” is subtle. In the penultimate line he emphasizes What a little bit and know even less. Hayden also breathes a little extra heart into the first syllables of austere and lonely in the last line.
by Richard W. Bray
I Wanna Hear
I listen to poetry on my ipod while I stretch at the gym before a workout. Guess what? England (Caedmon, BBC, etc.) really kicks our ass when it comes to recorded poetry. It’s easy to find poets like Dylan Thomas available on CD in addition to actors such as Boris Karloff reading Kipling or James Mason reading The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. There are also many recordings of fine stage performers reading just about every major British and Irish poet.
But it’s slim pickins for recorded American poetry. Poetry Speaks is a nice project, but it’s only four CDs. And even the excellent Voice of the Poet series has only one female poet available on CD (Adrienne Rich) and nothing on CD from Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke or Sylvia Plath.
I don’t think Americans will ever crave poetry the way people in other countries do. And I don’t expect to live to see a time when it is common to find people reciting poetry in front of large audiences in parks and amphitheaters.
But wouldn’t it be cool if, once in a while, instead of presenting music from some no-hit wonder, maybe Jimmy/Steven/Jimmy could feature:
CCH Pounder reciting If I Should Die by Emily Dickinson
Brad Pitt reciting Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot
Martin Sheen reciting Samurai Song by Robert Pinsky
Sigourney Weaver reciting Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers by Adrienne Rich
Holland Taylor reciting Bohemia by Dorothy Parker
James Earl Jones reciting anything by Carl Sandburg
Rosie Perez reciting Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath
Kelsey Grammer reciting Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
by Richard W. Bray
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