EPITHALAMIUM AND ELEGY

My single constancy is love of life:
Because we have entered no such formal pact
As dulls devotion between man and wife,
No bland acknowledgement, no binding fact,
No mingling of betrothal with divorce,
No dated bliss, no midnight certitude,
No sad necessity, no matter of course,
No pallid answer saying why we wooed;
Because she lets me love her as I can
Moment by moment, moments that always come
Beyond the calculation of a man
For joy or pain, for epithalamium
Or for elegy, and because, when I am spent,
Life shall have had her way, shall be content
Still to confer the sweet bewilderment
On someone else, shall loosen her lovely hair
To the wind, shall turn with bountiful intent
Toward anyone at all, and I not there,
Shall offer cool papayas, pale bamboo
And amorous guava to a later comer,
And none of her gifts, not even a drop of dew,
to me who had received them many a summer.
These are not harlotries but only joy,
These are the very tip-toes of delight.
This is the happiness she gives a boy,
With nothing of wickedness, nothing of spite,
In that immense, delicious, naked bed
Where anyone may lie, except the dead . . .
But I shall leave her. All that there is of rest
Shall be little enough, after so much of love;-
Wherever I move, she is there. Her open breast
Offers the tenderness I am dying of.
Her arm along my body like a snake
Has softly wound me into rings of sleep
And, every time again, stings me awake
And drowns me in her rhythms deep and deep . . .
Can I be tragical, in having had
My love of life by life herself subdued?
Since I am satiate with joy, can I be sad
In leaving? All that there is of solitude
Shall be little enough, after this vast embrace.
Give her some younger lover in my place.

LORENZO

I had not known that there could be
Men like Lorenzo and like me,
Both in the world and both so right
That the world is dark and the world is light.
I had not thought that anyone
Would choose the dark for dwelling on,
Would dig and delve for the bitterest roots
Of sweetest and sauvest fruits.
I never had presumed to doubt
That now and then the light went out;
But I had not known that there could be
Men like Lorenzo and like me
Both in the world and both so right
That the world is dark and the world is light.
I had not guessed that joy could be
Selected for an enemy.

DEFEAT

On a train in Texas German prisoners eat
With white American soldiers, seat by seat,
While black American soldiers sit apart,
The white men eating meat, the black men heart.
Now, with that other war a century done,
Not the live North but the dead South has won,
Not yet a riven nation comes awake.
Whom are we fighting this time, for God's sake?
Mark well the token of the separate seat
It is again ourselves whom we defeat.

Witter Bynner 1881 - 1968

Bynner's mother's family extended to an early president of Harvard, Charles Chauncy. When Bynner was born in Brooklyn, his father was a civil engineer; his father died in 1891. Then living in Brookline, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard in 1902. Called "Hal" by his friends, he was invited by editor Wallace Stevens to become a member of the Harvard Advocate. Among his teachers were Royce (philosophy), Kittredge (Shakespeare), and Baker (drama), as well as his friend and professor poet George Santayana.

Upon graduating Bynner was for four years an editor of McClure's in New York, where he paraded for women's rights on Fifth Avenue with John Dewey. His poems, An Ode to Harvard, came out in 1907, and he was invited to be a Harvard Phi Beta Kappa poet. Edna St. Vincent Millay accepted his proposal for marriage, but after they reflected, they declined. Witter's lover was a Swiss painter, Paul Theanaz.

In 1916 Hal coauthored Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, parodies spoofing Imagism written under an assumed name. This act led embarrassed critics who had been fooled to ignore his later work. It helped that Alfred A. Knopf published his many books, starting with Beloved Stranger (1918). In 1917 came his first trip to Japan and China. He was president of the Poetry Society of America from 1921 to 1923.

Upon moving to the tiny town of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1922, he developed a friendship with D. H. and Frieda Lawrence. A later result was Journey with Genius: Reflections and Reminiscences Concerning the D. H. Lawrences.

In 1929 Witter collaborated with Kiang Kang-hu in translating Chinese poems: Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology. His most popular book was his translation of the 2,500 year-old The Way of Life According to Laotse (1944), an abstruse interpretation which somehow sold more than fifty thousand copies.

Witter Bynner was a monogamous homosexual who was openly gay. His partner for thirty-four years in Santa Fe was Robert Hunt, twenty-five years younger.

His personal acquaintances were many: Mark Twain, Henry James, Georgia O'Keefe, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Igor Stravinsky, Isadora Duncan, Diego Rivera.

The poet died in Santa Fe after suffering a stroke following previous ills, near blindness (glaucoma), and prolonged painful shingles on the shoulders. James Kraft wrote a biography: Who is Witter Bynner? His remodeled home and gardens are now a bed and breakfast-the Inn of the Turquoise Bear.

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Miss Dickinson is gone;
Mr. Thoreau has lain
In deeper Concord for
Some three-score years and more.
I had thought these were bones
would rise like tawny pines.

Cabot came down this way,
Took five redskins away
To show for sixpence in
Alleys Shakespearian.
I had thought these were bones
would rise like tawny pines.

Newport, when Henry James
Was there, smelled of the Thames;
His polished jaw and eye
Furthered the heresy.
I had thought these were bones
would rise like tawny pines.

When Jonathan Edwards went
To live in a Berkshire tent,
The Indians knew the result:
His tongue was difficult.
I had thought these were bones
would rise like tawny pines.

Scholarship and time
Have brought them bookish fame,
Whose biographies on stone
Are paged by the careless rain.
I had thought these were bones
would rise like tawny pines.

John Malcolm Brinnin 1916 - 1998

Brinnin is remembered not only as a poet but as an extensive correspondent with poets and an able anthologist of modern American-British poetry. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, his family moved to Detroit. His higher education at the University of Michigan and Harvard led to his teaching at Vassar College from 1942 to 1947 and as Princeton Professor of English at Boston University from 1961 to 1978. Among his other experience was his editing for Dodd-Mead in New York and his memorable directing of the YM-YWHA Association Poetry Center in New York City.

Brinnin not only wrote Dylan Thomas: An Intimate Journey in America, but brought Thomas himself to America and accompanied him in traveling across the country. He also authored The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World, William Carlos Williams, and an autobiography, Here. Now. Always. Among his publications of verse are: The Garden is Political, The Lincoln Lyrics, and The Selected Poems of John Malcolm Brinnin. John Malcolm Brinnin was awarded the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Poetry. When in the Greater Boston Area, he lived in Cambridge and Duxbury.

FOR DELIVERANCE FROM A FEVER

When sorrows had begirt me round,
And pains within and out,
When in my flesh no part was found,
Then didst Thou rid me out.
My burning flesh in sweat did boil,
My aching head did break,
From side to side for ease I toil,
So faint I could not speak.
Beclouded was my soul with fear
Of Thy displeasure sore,
Nor could I read my evidence
Which oft I read before.
"Hide not Thy face from me!" I cried,
"From burnings keep my soul.
Thou know'st my heart, and hast me tried;
I on Thy mercies roll."
"O heal my soul," Thou know'st I said,
"Though flesh consume to nought,
What though in dust it shall be laid,
To glory I shall be brought."
Thou heard's", Thy rod Thou didst remove
And spared my body frail
Thou show'st to me Thy tender love,
My heart no more might quail.
O, praises to my mighty God,
Praise to my Lord, I say,
Who hath redeemed my soul from pit,
Praises to Him for aye.

Though children Thou has given me,
And friends I have also,
Yet if I see Thee not through them,
They are no joy, but woe.

O shine upon me, blessed Lord,
Ev'n for my Saviour's sake
In Thee alone is more than all,
And there content I'll take.

O hear me, Lord, in this request
As Thou before hast done,
Bring back my husband, I beseech,
As Thou didst once my son.

Ev'n while my days shall last
And talk to my beloved one
Of all Thy goodness past.

So both of us Thy kindness, Lord,
With praises shall recount
And serve Thee better than before
Whose blessings thus surmount.

But give me, Lord, a better heart,
Then better shall I be,
To pay the vows which I do owe
Forever unto Thee.

Unless Thou help, what can I do
But still my frailty show?
If Thou assist me, Lord, I shall
Return Thee what I owe..

TO MY DEAR AND LOVING HUSBAND

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East cloth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persevere
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Anne Bradstreet 1612 - 1672

America's first poet was no stranger to suffering. To escape persecution by the Church of England's Archbishop Laud, she left her native land where she had lived on the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where he father was the steward in charge. At the age of eighteen she was one of the Puritans who braved the Atlantic Ocean in the Arabella with her husband, her parents, and other pioneers. Three sickening months at sea, surviving on salt meats, brought them to meet starving survivors when they reached Salem.

One year after their arrival in the New World her father warned friends still at home in England:

If there be any endued with grace, let them come over. For others, I conceive they are not yet fitted for this business. There is not a house where is not one dead, and some houses many. The natural causes seem to be in the want of warm lodging and good diet. Those who landed at Plymouth in winter died of scurvy. Lady Arabella herself, who was aboard their ship which was named for her, died on land just months after they arrived.

These devout Puritan dissenters settled near the Charles River on land first called New Towne-later Cambridge. The cow pasture adjoining the space where they built their houses is now called Harvard Yard. The Bradstreet's house was located at what is now the corner of Brattle Street and John F. Kennedy Street, otherwise known as Harvard Square. After their most welcome first child, Samuel, was born in Cambridge, the family moved to a wilderness called Ipswich. After several years there, they moved to their permanent home in the still more remote wilderness which they developed and named Andover. Here America's pioneer poet found strength in spite of many illnesses to write increasingly excellent poems. She now also bore and cared for eight children in spite of the fact that the father's role as Governor of the community required much travel.

Anne Bradstreet's brother-in-law, the Reverend John Woodbridge-with or without her permission-released a series of her early poems for publication in London in 1650 titled: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. Her finest poems, however, were created later in the wild New World despite her lameness and death-threatening illnesses. The John Harvard Library edition of The Works of Anne Bradstreet published by Harvard University Press carries an introduction by Adrienne Rich.

Among her descendants are William Ellery Channing, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Henry Dana, and Wendell Phillips.

No portrait of Anne Bradstreet exists; her burial site is unknown. America's first poet, remains an unforgettably alive artist.

I caught a Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung like strips
like ancient wall-paper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wall-paper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
-the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly -
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
-It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
-if you could call it a lip-
grim, wet and weapon-like,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels - until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Elizabeth Bishop 1911 - 1979

A poet of observation, not of personal relationships, Bishop writes of the "Sandpiper," a bird seen running on the beach while it intently watches grains of sand. Bishop paints minutia of nature visible on land and sea. Her power to see was not the fruit of a life without pain. Her father died but mere months after her own birth-in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1921. Her mother was confined to a mental hospital when Elizabeth was only five, and she never saw her again.

After living with her father's parents, Bishop met Marianne Moore, who encouraged publication of her early poems written when she studied at Vassar College. Later, when living in New York, she became a close friend of Robert Lowell. Then Bishop was a consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress. When she lived in Florida for seven years, Bishop completed her first book of poems, North and South-A Spring (1955). It won the Pulitzer Prize.

Following her life-steadying lesbian love relation with Lota de Macedo Soares throughout their years together in Brazil, Bishop returned to America after Lota's suicide. She became poet-in-residence at Harvard in 1969. Her Complete Poems won the National Book Award in 1970.

A new source of strength for the rest of Bishop's life was her new partner, Alice Methfessel. Elizabeth Bishop taught at Harvard until death in her Boston apartment of a cerebral aneurism in 1979.

Summer Dream

To the sagging wharf
few ships could come.
The population numbered
two giants, an idiot, a dwarf,

a gentle storekeeper
asleep behind his counter,
and our kind landlady—
the dwarf was her dressmaker.

The idiot could be beguiled
by picking blackberries,
but then threw them away.
The shrunken seamstress smiled.

By the sea, lying
blue as a mackerel,
our boarding house was streaked
as though it had been crying.

Extraordinary geraniums
crowded the front windows,
the floors glittered with
assorted linoleums.

Every night we listened
for a horned owl.
In the horned lamp flame,
the wallpaper glistened.

The giant with the stammer
was the landlady’s son,
grumbling on the stairs
over an old grammar.

He was morose,
but she was cheerful.
The bedroom was cold,
the feather bed close.

We were awakened in the dark by
the somnambulist brook
nearing the sea,
still dreaming audibly

December

At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.

I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
my glasses on.

We Waves

WE, we waves,
That are rocking the winds
To rest--
Green cradles, we waves!

Wet are we, and salty;
Leap like flames of fire--
Wet flames are we:
Burning, extinguishing;
Cleansing, replenishing;
Bearing, engendering.

We, we waves,
That are rocking the winds
To rest!

My America

Its span is such
An eagle in its flight
My pulse does shriek and pound,
For America-
My America-
Ever coasting homeward bound.

To me
She sweeps and soars above
For ever she will be free,
She is America,
My America,
For justice-
In liberty.

So great her breadth
So wide her yar
A beauty to reckon with,
America,
She is my America,
Enforged of brawn
and myth.

And though she may retreat,
reverse,
fall back
and then seem to rest-
She is doing nothing of the sort,
but is ever gathering-
(while the UN is merely blathering)
Her audacious,
crowning breath.

So enemies,
you should be aware
As should our “friends” who jibe
and jest,
For America,
My America,
Though fallen to her knees-
Is a Renaissance at its best.

And through
and o’er the raging strife
And weary blow-ups
shall she roam,
America,
My America,
Ever will she come home.

For though “sophisticates”
may cavil hoarse
And some rurals
they may scorn,
In America,
My America,
These people
are her corps.

And in this country,
My America,
They’re Americans-
Peace or War