Once, ever few years, I write a couple of poems. As an elementary schooler I loved writing them and did it quite often. Since then I’ve fallen off the poetry-writing wagon, but do get back on it every once in awhile. While I have also enjoyed writing poetry, outside of Edgar Allen Poe, I’ve never really gotten into reading poetry. It probably has a lot to do with the socialization of poetry as being “for girls.” Not counting Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss I didn’t grow up with poetry that much. When I’m not reading history stuff for school, I tend to stick to genre fiction, usually something in the sci-fiction or fantasy category. I also just don’t know how to read poetry very well. Like anything else, non-fiction, fiction, whatever, poetry has rules, conventions and norms. I profess no familiarity with the forms typical rituals. Reading sonnets like I read a science-fiction book does make for a pleasing experience. The closest I got to learning these rules happened when I took a World War One Literature class. Every week the professor assigined us a few poems and every week I realized I missed a whole slew of things that went on in these poems. The best poems burst at the seams, stuffed with allusion, reference, and emotion. Stuff that I usually miss. Rich texts indeed. Getting the full measure of a poem requires just as much work as getting the full measure of a novel.
I’ve never really interrogated why I like doing writing poems. I’m not particularly good at it. My poems, except to prehaps a psychologist, do not exactly overflow with meaning. I don’t have the patience for complicated meters or rhyme schemes, and my understanding of what good writing entails doesn’t go far beyond “avoid ‘to be’ verbs,” and “don’t use adverbs.” I know what a metaphor entails, but I do not have an eye for them. In general, I think my attempts at being poetic or beautiful come out more as pretentious, cack-handed, and just plain bad. So despite this being my newsletter, a newsletter that I can publish anything that I want in, I will not subject you to my poetry. Instead I’ve collected a few poems that I enjoy, just for you. I haven’t provided any commentary on them. Any commentary that I’d provide would just ruin the beauty fo the poem. These poems have been commented on and analyzed, and deserve commentary, just not from me. All the poems tend to ruminate on evil in some way or another, all have sinister undertones. They all remind me of a creepy forest. But that’s sort of the mood in the world right now. I’ve also picked poems that skew older. So a few words may come across as a little archaic. In any case, I like them. Enjoy them for their words and descriptions. Read them a few times. None of them are too long.
Another Dark Lady - Edwin Arlington Robinson
Think not, because I wonder where you fled,
That I would lift a pin to see you there;
You may, for me, be prowling anywhere,
So long as you show not your little head:
No dark and evil story of the dead
Would leave you less pernicious or less fair—
Not even Lilith, with her famous hair;
And Lilith was the devil, I have read.
I cannot hate you, for I loved you then.
The woods were golden then. There was a road
Through beeches; and I said their smooth feet showed
Like yours. Truth must have heard me from afar,
For I shall never have to learn again
That yours are cloven as no beech’s are.
Invocation To The Earth, February 1816 – William Wordsworth
I
'REST, rest, perturbed Earth!
O rest, thou doleful Mother of Mankind!'
A Spirit sang in tones more plaintive than the wind:
'From regions where no evil thing has birth
I come--thy stains to wash away,
Thy cherished fetters to unbind,
And open thy sad eyes upon a milder day.
The Heavens are thronged with martyrs that have risen
From out thy noisome prison;
The penal caverns groan
With tens of thousands rent from off the tree
Of hopeful life,--by battle's whirlwind blown
Into the deserts of Eternity.
Unpitied havoc! Victims unlamented!
But not on high, where madness is resented,
And murder causes some sad tears to flow,
Though, from the widely-sweeping blow,
The choirs of Angels spread, triumphantly augmented.
II
'False Parent of Mankind!
Obdurate, proud, and blind,
I sprinkle thee with soft celestial dews,
Thy lost, maternal heart to re-infuse!
Scattering this far-fetched moisture from my wings,
Upon the act a blessing I implore,
Of which the rivers in their secret springs,
The rivers stained so oft with human gore,
Are conscious;--may the like return no more!
May Discord--for a Seraph's care
Shall be attended with a bolder prayer--
May she, who once disturbed the seats of bliss
These mortal spheres above,
Be chained for ever to the black abyss.
And thou, O rescued Earth, by peace and love,
And merciful desires, thy sanctity approve!'
The Spirit ended his mysterious rite,
And the pure vision closed in darkness infinite
Evil - Marie E. J. Pitt
NOT Beelzebub, but white archangel, I
Turn the dim glass and shift the sands again,
And touch the eyelids of the sons of men
Lest they forget—forget and drowsy lie
In Fate’s unfurrowed fallow till they die—
As seed that quickens not for dawns that leap
From out the dark of immemorial years,
With kiss of wind and sun and wizard tears
Of fugitive clouds to wake them from their sleep.
With milestones I have set the crumbling sod
Of human judgement that they stray not wide,
Nor languish lost in labyrinths alway;
And smile in pity when I hear them pray
That Wrong’s rude whips from them be turned aside,
Who call me Evil—not discerning God.
The Poet As Hero – Siegfried Sassoon
You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,
Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why
Of my old, silly sweetness I've repented--
My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry.
You are aware that once I sought the Grail,
Riding in armour bright, serene and strong;
And it was told that through my infant wail
There rose immortal semblances of song.
But now I've said good-bye to Galahad,
And am no more the knight of dreams and show:
For lust and senseless hatred make me glad,
And my killed friends are with me where I go.
Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs;
And there is absolution in my songs.
Dulce et Decorum Est – Wilfrid Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Songs From An Evil Wood - Lord Dunsany
There is no wrath in the stars,
They do not rage in the sky;
I look from the evil wood
And find myself wondering why.
Why do they not scream out
And grapple star against star,
Seeking for blood in the wood,
As all things round me are?
They do not glare like the sky
Or flash like the deeps of the wood;
But they shine softly on
In their sacred solitude.
To their happy haunts
Silence from us has flown,
She whom we loved of old
And know it now she is gone.
When will she come again
Though for one second only?
She whom we loved is gone
And the whole world is lonely.
And the elder giants come
Sometimes, tramping from far,
Through the weird and flickering light
Made by an earthly star.
And the giant with his club,
And the dwarf with rage in his breath,
And the elder giants from far,
They are the children of Death.
They are all abroad to-night
And are breaking the hills with their brood,
And the birds are all asleep,
Even in Plugstreet Wood.
II.
Somewhere lost in the haze
The sun goes down in the cold,
And birds in this evil wood
Chirrup home as of old;
Chirrup, stir and are still,
On the high twigs frozen and thin.
There is no more noise of them now,
And the long night sets in.
Of all the wonderful things
That I have seen in the wood,
I marvel most at the birds,
At their chirp and their quietude.
For a giant smites with his club
All day the tops of the hill,
Sometimes he rests at night,
Oftener he beats them still.
And a dwarf with a grim black mane
Raps with repeated rage
All night in the valley below
On the wooden walls of his cage.
III.
I met with Death in his country,
With his scythe and his hollow eye
Walking the roads of Belgium.
I looked and he passed me by.
Since he passed me by in Plug Street,
In the wood of the evil name,
I shall not now lie with the heroes,
I shall not share their fame;
I shall never be as they are,
A name in the land of the Free,
Since I looked on Death in Flanders
And he did not look at me.
Annabel Lee – Edgar Allen Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.