Personal Poetry

October 23, 2026: on reading which start out as a discussion on poetry, link here. Link: https://share.google/aimode/YBhZTD5b5kjxpzfCv.  

Transcribed from my personal diary.

Chapter Twenty-Two:  Poetry


November 25, 2013:

Many years ago, I asked Sebastian Voigt, a German married to my very close physician friend, Ruth Robinson, the definition of poetry; he taught German in American schools.

Somewhere in my diaries, I discussed the definition of poetry, but was unable to find it today. I ran across this, however:

The first critic to affirm the originality of Wuthering Heights as a triumph of art was Sydney Dobell in a remarkable review of the 1850 edition in Palladium. Sydney Dobell saw that a prose work can be structured like a poem: ‘The thinking-out of some of these pages ... is the masterpiece of a poet’ that, like a poem, it can embody its central meanings in imagery. He claimed that successful art is that which best serves the demands of the imagination, imagination working in obedience to no external principles, but to ‘the nature within her.’ Dobell resolves the problem which had baffled nearly all the earlier reviewers by coining the phrase ‘instinctive art,’ which he applies not only to Emily Brontë, but to all writers whose art serves to release their deepest ‘powers of insight,’ ‘intuition of character,’ and ‘infallible inspiration.’  This is from my notes found at “Art of Emily Brontë.”

I noted elsewhere that when I typed the entire Virginia Woolf novel Mrs Dalloway, I noted it was a prose poem. I write about that extensively elsewhere. 

See this link. Link: https://share.google/aimode/pSLbOnNYxikaRDYWt. 

****************************
Undated

[Undated, probably about 2004]  Periodically I return to poetry.  But when I start reading poetry, seldom do I enjoy it. I think poetry is a very personal endeavor and doesn’t “share well.”  Harold Bloom once said that “reading” is a private vocation; if so, then reading poetry is even more private.

Periodically I would like to write my own poetry; I certainly have enough experiences for subject matter.

Some thoughts:

Pateley Bridge walk at night

The white shooting stars.
The nights so black, so quiet.
But at dusk: the horse.


The Amazon at daybreak

Small flat-bottomed boat
Cool, breezy; the still water
The broad horizon

North Dakota back roads

Tall grass. Breezy, clear.
Soaring, a hawk, an eagle.
On edge: pronghorn deer.



HAIKU



Anticipation!
Saturday morning.  So much
To do.  Gone too fast.
    -- 21 Apr 03
 

Saturday morning has always been my favorite half-day of the week.  Friday evening is a close second.  But, whereas Friday evening is an evening of “doing, Saturday morning is a time of anticipation.  Anticipation always trumps doing.  Haiku must capture a moment in time; this one does, I believe.  “Gone too fast: does not mean that the weekend goes by too quickly; it refers to the fact that the moment of anticipation quickly dissipates when thoughts of weekend chores start arriving.



Yorkshire lambs huddling
Inside sheepfold; discussing
Finite universe.
    -- 21 Apr 03


This can only make sense to those who have spent time really enjoying the countryside of northern England; and it’s even more fun for those who are cognizant of latest cosmology theories.  Once I started trying to write haiku, I knew I had to one about lambs huddling along a stone fence, trying to stay out of the cold north Yorkshire wind.    

Some of my favorite reading concerns physics and cosmology (the study of the universe -- not cosmetology which is something quite different).  I was thrilled when I came up with the third line. There is currently renewed debate among cosmologists on whether the universe if finite or infinite.  Einstein “proved” that a finite universe was impossible, but some new data suggests that a finite universe is not only possible, but probable.
   
As for sheep, the stone fence is clearly the edge of their universe.  Sheep don’t know it, but they live in a world of multiple and parallel universes.  At least that’s true in northern England.
   
And just as human are unable to se “the other side of the universe,” these lambs are not able to see what’s on the other side of the stone fence.
   
I chose lambs, not sheep, because lambs are very special for an individual who is very special to me.


Cardinal -- red hot
Best-dressed bird -- flaming, fleeting!
Like best-dressed woman.

ALT

Cardinals -- red hot
Best-dressed birds -- flaming, fleeting!
Like best-dressed women.
    -- 22 Apr 03

    
    Definitely haiku -- captures a moment in time.  I once had the pleasure of spending time with the “best-dressed woman” at a remote overseas military site.  A local noncommissioned officer (NCO) had told her she was the best-dressed woman at that site; she was also the most feminine, sexiest, and smartest.  She told me God sent birds to watch over her.  When I returned to the states, one of the first birds I happened to see was a cardinal.  That cardinal immediately reminded me of her:  simply best dressed.


Not only drunkards
Know aspiration pneumonia.
But flight surgeons, too.
    -- 22 Apr 03

There is nothing great about this haiku.  But, again, it catches a moment in time.  While flying in the back seat of F-15s, I often got airsick and if I vomited at the wrong time, I ran the risk of inhaling my vomitus.  I only did that once to realize I never wanted to do that again.  I developed pneumonia with fever to 104 degrees for several days.  I had seen aspiration pneumonia while a student at the University of Southern California - Los Angeles County Medical Center in those who had passed out in an alcoholic stupor.  I never thought I would experience the same thing.

This was a favorite story of mine when talking to friends, so I thought I would try to capture it in haiku.  I think the Japanese reserved haiku for pleasant memories; they might be unhappy with this haiku.  In addition, I think haiku should be more universal and more about nature.  This one was neither.  

But the contrast between “Drunkards” and “flight surgeons” gives one pause to think these two have something in common.


Starry, starry night.
One in orange, one in black
Seeking streaking white.
    -- 23 Apr 03

 

Definitively catches a moment in time, and captures one of my favorite memories.

The nights were more often than not, beautiful, dark, and cloudless during my many months in England (2002 - 2003).  There was also very little light pollution in rural north Yorkshire; that lack of light pollution resulted in very dark skies and millions of stars on moonless nights.  I have always been captivated by meteors and I was surprised to see so many that summer of 2002.
    

A dear friend and I hoped for meteor-hunting conditions on our nightly walks.  We were seldom disappointed.  She always wore a bright orange waterproof coat; she was known as the woman in orange.  I wore an all-black outfit.    I couldn’t decide whether to go with “girl/boy” in this haiku, or “she/he.”  I will let someone else be the judge.  I knew it couldn’t be “woman/man.”  We were both very childlike on these walks.  Maybe for that reason “girl/boy” is the better choice.  I finally went with “one” in orange and “one” in black -- not sure if that will be final.

The rhyming (first line, third line) worked out unexpectedly; the colors (orange, black, white) also fit nicely together.  I suppose a first line could be “darkest, bluest night” which would add another color, and would have placed color in each line. And “starry, starry night” will lead to “teary, teary-eyed” for a future haiku.  (With apologies to Don McLean for “Starry, Starry Night” and Vincent van Gogh for “Starry Night.”)


Killing me softly,
Suicide is not painless,
Nostalgia.  Begone!
    -- 14 May 03

I am very, very sentimental and I definitely have mood swings from euphoria to feeling quite sad.  I have always been able to function very well, and I don’t think others have noted my depression.  However, I do know that I did not reach my potential because of my depressive tendencies.  I often thought of suicide but never followed through with any attempt, probably because of my close relationship with my family, especially my dad, and then with my own family, especially my two daughters.  Had I not had two daughters who depended upon me -- and I’m thinking more along emotional support rather than financial support - I might have committed suicide.  (In fact, financially they might be better off if I were to die while on active duty with military benefits and insurance policies.  But emotionally it would be devastating for Laura and Kiri.)
   
The three lines, of course, are taken from other sources: “killing me softly” from a Roberta Flack song; “suicide is [not] painless” from the movie Mash; and, “nostalgia.  Begone!” from Shakespeare.

Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.
Hot, hot, hot, humid, hot, hot.
San Antonio.

Probably the easiest haiku; certainly the simplest.


Crystal water falls
Stillness of moving water.
Quiet thoughts, loud splash.


I don’t like this particular haiku; it needs to be worked but I wanted to capture the paradox of the “stillness of moving water” (a quote by Howard Nemerov I came across in the book Hydrogen by John S. Rigden).  The “stillness of moving water” reminded me of two “bodies” of water while hiking through Yorkshire:  the water falls, and the brooks / rivers.


Better?

Crystal water falls
Stillness of a silent stream.
Quiet thoughts, loud splash.

Alliteration: stillness, silent stream, splash.



Rievaulx, Fountains, all
Abbeys frozen in time.
Jervaulx, Byland, more.

Again, this needs to be improved, but I wanted to capture the thought.

The dales

Swaledale, Wensleydale, 
Arkengarthdale, Wharfedale, Nidderdale.
Airport departure.
Teary, teary-eyed (with apologies to VVG and Starry, Starry Night)

Swaledale, Wensleydale, 
Arkengarthdale, Nidderdale.
Airport departure.



Not haiku, but from my journal:

All I see is a woman in red,
Arms outstretched.
Turning in the wind,
The North Yorkshire wind.
Smiling.
Always smiling.

From Nikolas Boyle’s biography on Göethe:

Ob erfüllt sey was Moses und was die Propheten gesprochen
    An dem heiligen Christ, Freunde, das weiss ich nicht recht.
Aber das weiss ich:  erfüllt sind Wünsche, Sensucht, and Träume,
    Wenn das liebliche Kind Süss mir am Busen entschläft.

Whether what Moses and the prophets said has been fulfilled
in sacred Christ, I do not, friends, rightly know. 
But this I do know:  Wishes, desires, and dreams
are all fulfilled when my little sweetheart drifts deliciously into sleep on my bosom.

        -- Göethe, 40, after the birth of his first child, a son


Edna St Vincent Milllay, 1931, age 39

        “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink    
        Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
        Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
        And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
        Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
        Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
        Yet many a man is making friends with death
        Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
        It may well be that in a difficult hour,
        Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
        Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
        I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
        Or trade the memory of this night for food.
        It may well be.  I do not think I would.”


Connecting the Dots

Sylvia Plath’s Ennui
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle


July 25, 2008: 

While reading Sylvia Plath’s Journals I came across “villanelles.”  I think I had heard of that term before but now that I saw the word again I was curious what villanelles were.  I went to wiki, found a short definition, and in the process of “cutting and pasting” that definition on my “Storytelling” chapter, I noted that I had not completed a sentence regarding a newly discovered poem by Sylvia Plath.

I “googled” a phrase from the incomplete sentence which took me directly to solving the nano-mystery: the lost Plathian poem was Ennui which then took me to Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and the Arts where I found the background of Ennui.

Blackbird appears to be a free site maintained by the Department of English at the Virginia Commonwealth University.
 

This site apparently owns the copyright or has access to much of Sylvia Plath’s works.  The site includes the text of Ennui as well as scanned copies of the original typewritten page of Plath’s.

From the web:  “Anna Journey, a graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University, discovered a previously unpublished poem by Sylvia Plath in the archives at Indiana University.  She claims the 14-line Petrarchan sonnet, Ennui, was created from notes Plath wrote in a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  The poem has been published in VCU’s online publication, Blackbird.”

The researcher, a student, came across “L’ennui” written in the margins of Sylvia’s copy of The Great Gatsby.  After reading the paragraph in The Great Gatsby, it appears Sylvia Plath responded with Ennui.
 

“Ennui” is boredom. In The Great Gatsby the female protagonist, Daisy, has just had her baby, weeping that it is a girl, weeping because she feels only men can live adventurous lives. Daisy states that a woman’s only hope in life is to be a “beautiful little fool.”  In the next paragraph, the female protagonist, who I believe is based on Zelda, the wife of Fitzgerald, was very, very bored at this point in her life.

In Ennui, does Sylvia Plath see herself as Zelda? By the time Zelda had her first (only child) she had seen in all, and is now bored, or at least she is in The Great Gatsby.  Sylvia, unlike Zelda, had not seen it all but maybe ennui/Ennui was her “Is That All There Is?”

Sylvia wrote this poem while she was at Smith College, living in Lawrence House. [From notes in her journals, edited by Kukil, Sylvia lived at Lawrence House from September 1952 until her graduation from Smith College in June 1955. She lived at Haven House during her first two years at Smith College, 1950 – 1952. It appears she spent a full five years at Smith.]

Earlier this morning I had read Faulkner’s comments on poetry in which he said it is much more difficult to write short stories than novels because every word counts more: “…it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless…In poetry, of course, there’s no room at all for trash. It’s got to be absolutely impeccable, absolutely perfect.”

Here is Ennui:

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump, [The Beast in the Jungle, Henry James]
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.

This site, http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v5n2/poetry/plath_s/ennui.htm, has interesting links regarding Ennui.
    
Ennui has only 14 lines, one verse of eight lines, the second six. As Faulkner noted about poetry, Sylvia packs a lot into those few lines. She talks of tea leaves and gypsies; knights, dragons, and princesses. She references James and The Beast in the Jungle. She talks of God and insouciant angels. And Sylvia even references the Roman crowds eagerly awaiting tigers and Christians entering the arena.

In 14 lines:

Faulkner talked of the importance of each word in a poem: “insouciant” is the perfect word for angels: “lighthearted unconcern, nonchalance, carefree, unconcerned, undisturbed.”
    
From wiki: “The Beast in the Jungle is almost universally considered one of James’ finest short narrative, this story treats appropriately universal themes: loneliness, fate, love, and death. The parable of John Marcher and his peculiar destiny has spoken to many readers who have speculated on the worth and meaning of human life.”

Now the dots start to connect: not just my research regarding the genesis and reading of Ennui, but also the dots – the data points – in Sylvia Plath’s own young life. Henry James never married, and “possibly never experienced a consummated sexual relationship.”
    
[Incidentally, William James was the brother of Henry James. William James formulated a landmark philosophy on psychology (Principles of Psychology, 1890), a subject Sylvia was much interested in. It would be interesting to learn whether Principles of Psychology was one of the standard textbooks in her psychology classes.]

Oh, yes, villanelles. From wiki: “A villanelle is a poetic form which entered English-language poetry in the 1800s from the imitation of French models. A villanelle has only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain.”

   

USE OF ALLITERATION:

Tea leaves thwart those (t’s) who court catastrophe (c’s),
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils (p’s) left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune (j’s) now: naïve knight (n’s)
finds ogres out-of-date (o’s) and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror (t’s) as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis (c’s);
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc (h’s), neither pleas nor prizes (p’s)
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady (d’s) or tiger.



Definitions:

Hardy: “Poetry is but emotion put into measure.”  (Martin Seymour-Smith’s biography, about p. 618

From my storytelling chapter:

Poetry:  A Definition

New Yorker, 6 Nov 06, Robert Gottlieb, quoting a 1950’s publisher:  “... a freshness and liveliness of feeling, a gift for imagery, and a power of expression that were quite exceptional -- in short, a poet.”

“Poetry is the connecting link between body and mind.  Every idea in poetry is grounded in emotion.” Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, c. 1990, p. 18.

From wiki:  Louise Bogan, 1897 – 1970; an American poet who felt that “lyric poetry” if it at all authentic…is based on some emotion – on some occasion, on some real confrontation.”

Personal thoughts:  one cannot be sentimental in novels (there can be sentiment, but the author cannot be sentimental); however, poetry is all about emotion, including sentimentality.