The poem-sharing

 Years back, when lots and lots of people had blogs - knitting blogs, reading blogs, cultural blogs, diary-type blogs - there was a tradition of sharing a poem on February 2. A Poem for Bridgid, some called it, referencing St. Bridgid, whose day is today. Or for Candlemass, the day of the blessing of the candles. Or for Imbolc, the day midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox (yes. We are now halfway to spring). Or for the Groundhog, which is what most Americans know this day for.

Over the years, I've posted most of my favorite poems (My all-time favorite is "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, which has the exquisitely beautiful line "What did I know, what did I know/ Of love's austere and lonely offices"). And I've posted some sillier ones - I think last year I shared that one about the tiger being out of his cage ("Yes. YES. The tiger is out). (Correction: it was year before last)

This year, I'm thinking of high school again, which is when we covered most of the poetry I remember studying. We had to memorize it, too - both for English class and for French, and get up and recite it.

The first poem I remember having to memorize was this one:

"The Self and the Mulberry" by Marvin Bell

I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry.
It had no trouble accepting its limits,
yet defining and redefining a small area
so that any shape was possible, any movement.
It stayed put, but was part of all the air.
I wanted to learn to be there and not there
like the continually changing, slightly moving
mulberry, wild cherry and particularly the willow.
Like the willow, I tried to weep without tears.
Like the cherry tree, I tried to be sturdy and productive.
Like the mulberry, I tried to keep moving.
I couldn't cry right, couldn't stay or go.
I kept losing parts of myself like a soft maple.
I fell ill like the elm. That was the end
of looking in nature to find a natural self.
Let nature think itself not manly enough!
Let nature wonder at the mystery of laughter.
Let nature hypothesize man's indifference to it.
Let nature take a turn at saying what love is!

 

 

There's an acceptance in there, and yet, I also feel an echo of WH Auden's "The More Loving One," about the stars that don't actually care about the humanity that cares about them. And yet, yes, there is mutual indifference between nature and humans. I barely remember the discussion of this poem (I do remember I flubbed my recital of it - stage fright) but I'm going to have to think about it more, now, these more-than-40-years-later to see what it means to me.

 

 The other one was the subject of a blue-book exam essay we all took Sophomore year, to determine our placement in Junior and Senior English classes. (I guess I did okay; I wound up in AP English as a senior). We were given the poem ahead of time and allowed to discuss among ourselves. A lot of people hung up on the line "bulging his pants" and tried to either assume a scatological or sexual interpretation; I figured it just meant that bears are fat and human clothes would fit them badly. 

As I remember, the tack I took was kind of the old Christian idea that we contain an animal nature as well as a divine nature, and that the poet was bemoaning the difficulty in overcoming animal nature - especially the part about "pawing" at his beloved (I cringe more at the image of that as an adult than I did as a relatively innocent teen)

Anyway: 

Delmore Schwartz' "The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me"

“the withness of the body”

The heavy bear who goes with me,   

A manifold honey to smear his face,   

Clumsy and lumbering here and there,   

The central ton of every place,   

The hungry beating brutish one   

In love with candy, anger, and sleep,   

Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,   

Climbs the building, kicks the football,   

Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,   

That heavy bear who sleeps with me,   

Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,   

A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,   

Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope   

Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.   

—The strutting show-off is terrified,   

Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,   

Trembles to think that his quivering meat   

Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,

Has followed me since the black womb held,   

Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,   

A caricature, a swollen shadow,

A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,   

Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,   

The secret life of belly and bone,

Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,   

Stretches to embrace the very dear

With whom I would walk without him near,   

Touches her grossly, although a word

Would bare my heart and make me clear,   

Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed   

Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,   

Amid the hundred million of his kind,   

The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

 

 

And I admit: this is one of the things I remember from the heyday of blogs and I miss now. It was just a nice moment of connection: people who liked poetry (or at least, liked ONE poem) sharing it with others, so others could see what it was. It was just one of those nice little non-monetized, non-commercialized, non-argumentative things that blogs used to do and that seems to be lost now.

 

(I also just realized I missed my blogiversary this year; the blog turned 22 the end of January, but I've kind of been preoccupied with healing from the sprained knee to remember it