Poetry in the news

This week I thought instead of studying a poem I would look around for some interesting articles on poetry as a whole. I have thoroughly enjoyed this and would really recommend it to others who are interested; even if poetry is not that much of an excitement to you I'd encourage anyone to research their favourite things in the news, because I know how easy it is to let the TV tell you what is important in the world today and forget that so many things are happening that they can't all be focused on and broadcast.

So I shall list a few places to start here with brief descriptions of my findings. Many of them were surprisingly science-based and thus all the more enjoyable for someone who no longer uses that part ofher brain in her studies.

There is fascinating research going into encoding writing in the DNA of microorganisms! Check out this article http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/30/christian-bok-the-xenotext-bacteria-poetry/

Article about a computer which writes poetry and to me some of it seemed beautiful because the words used were placed amongst others one would not normally consider, which to me is pure creativity in a human. It is a little hard to judge when you know what the author is but I was pleasantly impressed http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-machines-write-poetry

It is only briefly mentioned, but this woman went through depression at university whilst studying English (as I want to) and yet managed to undergo therapy to come out feeling stronger on the other side and now recite poetry about her experiences. I am glad to see that it is helping other people as it does me http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/29/counselling-therapy-anxiety-depression-university

Here is a great story about a poet reciting in a prison and the inmates actually enjoying it far more than they had expected. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/nyregion/bringing-poetry-to-rikers-island-where-they-cant-cage-your-mind.html?_r=0

I hope these give some food for thought and I would love to read anything anyone else finds!

And also because I can and want to I shall say HAPPY NEW YEAR :)

Cute Coleridge

As far as I am aware I have not yet looked at any of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry. I have briefly met him during a course on Wordsworth, his good friend, but know that he was a great writer in his own right.

That said, the title of this post might seem a little demeaning but ah! the things I will do for an alliteration. Plus, he admits himself in the title of this particular poem that his pondering is not of higher thought.

This is a little love poem; I cannot state about whom it was that he was thinking when he wrote this because he was married but unhappily. It therefore may not be about anyone in particular, showing how the poet can imitate and simulate emotions without feeling them at that very moment, either from memory or sympathetic observance.

Something Childish, but Very Natural
Written in Germany

If I had but two little wings
And were a little feathery bird,
To you I'd fly, my dear!
But thoughts like these are idle things,
And I stay here.

But in my sleep to you I fly:
I'm always with you in my sleep!
The world is all one's own.
But then one wakes, and where am I?
All, all alone.

Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids:
So I love to wake ere break of day:
For though my sleep be gone,
Yet while 'tis dark, one shuts one's lids,
And still dreams on.

The poem begins on that wondrous conjunction 'if'', used to give the immediate impression of childhood hope and imagination. By using left branching, Coleridge has allowed this word to have poetic prominence, framing the whole piece with a positive, hopeful outlook on love. This is closed off in the same way in the final line with the use of the verb 'dreams', again a supposedly childish lexeme that really should not be seen as such; people continue to dream throughout the whole of their lives. As I see it, being called childish is just another way for saying someone is happy. This is why he also calls it 'natural'.

Hope appears to diminish in the first stanza with the adversative 'but', but then another 'but' contradicts that one in the next stanza, returning to the positive outlook of the child. The constant to and fro that these buts create is like the flow of the lover's emotions, at one moment positive, the next negative. The mix of exclamations and questions also aids this portrayal. The final positive resolution comes with the fresh conjunction 'yet' to rid the narrator of the past 'but[s]'.

Imagination is the final indication of a childish nature in this poem. The first stanza speaks of transfiguration, then the second of imaginative play in dreams. The life of the adult is outside of these things and thus leaves one 'all, all alone'. I feel I share this outlook on life, for anything supposedly 'adult' appears a more negative outlook on life than that of the child. His victory comes when he is awake and yet still manages to 'dream', without the aid of sleep. The inner hopeful and happy child has overcome the lonely adult in the 'dark'.

Overall, I see this poem as more of a comment upon life and imagination than love, and I think the title shows Coleridge would have agreed.

Sorry to disappoint. You'll have to Woolf this down instead.

...so Leo Tolstoy didn't write any poems (at least none that I can find). What a bummer.


Onto plan B then, which is just as intriguing: Virginia Woolf. I am ashamed to say that I often confuse Woolf and Plath, perhaps because they were both working towards the same goal of female independence and both unfortunately committed suicide after suffering from depression. However, Plath died aged 30, whereas Woolf lived until the age of 59. Woolf was born in the 29th Century in England, Plath the 20th in the USA. Both great women whose linguistic power will never fade from literary memory, whether it's Woolf's novels or Plath's poems. They have both shed so much light on female representation and we must be forever grateful to them.


A little more focused background to Virginia Woolf: she had seven siblings/half-siblings because her parents had both been widowed prior to their marriage. The family lived in one large house in Kensington. her father was an author and a mountaineer, her mother a model for painters and a nurse.


The girls of the household were educated at home and utilised their Victorian library. Here at home she wrote a household newspaper, noting the family's goings-on. Sadly, this was also the place where, at the age of six, Woolf was sexually abused by her two half-brothers. To make matters worse, her mother died aged 49 in this period. Two years later, her half-sister also died, leading to a breakdown.


However, being the scholarly pioneer that she was, she still learnt languages at King's College London in the female department, meeting many radical feminists. Then her father suddenly passed away, causing Woolf to be taken to a mental rehabilitation centre, which sounds much fancier than it is.


During this time, her siblings had bought a house in the Bloomsbury area, meaning the family became a part of the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals and artists. Here, Woolf met her husband and the two loved each other throughout the remaining years of her life.


Virginia Woolf's death was what she chose it to be. She was afraid of her mental state and so decided to drown herself by putting stones in her coat pocket to weigh her down in a river. I won't say it's sad because she had the right to choose what she did with her life, as we all should do.


This is the only poem I have found under her name. Maybe it was not her work, maybe it was. Either way it links in so well with her death that I felt compelled to comment upon it.

The first line captures her mental state at the point of considering death. She cannot 'see' anything, whether that is the love her husband as for her or the fate of her own future or even any more reason to go on. The stanza break provides literal emptiness on the page to mimic this statement, making the reader feel how empty the narrator is.


The first person plural address that comes next in 'we may sink' could be seen as Woolf's split in body and mind; her body will sink and so will her spirit and the voices in her head, meaning that her 'ears' will be free to listen to the natural and real world. The tone therefore becomes schizophrenic almost. 'Settle' denotes peace and her final rest after the trauma of her life. She no longer wants to struggle and has already done so much for the female battle that now she wants to become one with nature.


I do not know for sure what the 'white petals' symbolise. it might be mimicking the passing of innocence as white darkens as if blemished. It might mean that the parts of herself that she found beautiful will no longer be. Maybe even the petals symbolise the memory people will have of her once she has gone, thus 'sink' implies that no one will remember her after initial grief. Whether she wanted to fade from memory or not, she needn't have considered it an option.


As with many other poets I study, my next step will be to read her novels as well.


On a different note, maybe I should do a Christmas poem next week?! Exciting!

Stop...It's Tolstoy Time!

Great, now I have that song in my head.

This week's post poet has been plucked from my pool of general ignorance once again. And to make matters worse, I have found out there are two Tolstoys; the writer of Anna Karenina is Leo Tolstoy, and the one I am to study (who is actually related to the other!) is A.K. Tolstoy. Next week I shall see whether Leo wrote poetry and hopefully enjoy his works.

Today's Tolstoy has written some sweet little poems, like 'My Little Almond Tree' but I want to look at a patriotic poem. So here is Russia, O My Russia, Hail!

Russia, O my Russia, hail!
Steeds as tempests flying,
Howling of the distant wolves,
Eagles high, shrill crying!
Hail, my Russia, hail! Hail high!
Hail thy green forests proud,
Hail thy silvery nightingales,
Hail Steppes and wind and cloud!

The initial personification in the first line epitomises the sense of ownership and belonging that is patriotism. Tolstoy lived in a time of turmoil in the political world, with the opposing views of the Capitalist West and Communist East, Russia being a part of the latter. Therefore, one can either read this poem as a real and natural reflection of what is good in Russia, purposely avoiding the bias of politics, or it could be a political message to the West about the natural goodness of the East being better than the West as Communism is made to seem more akin with the natural world. Either way, I'm glad I can focus on the wild and an ecocriticism.

It is important to know that 'Steppes' refers to an area in Serbia which is unforested and therefore Tolstoy hails the nature of Russia most significantly, because it is what ends the poem. Each line includes semantics on the physical and biological geography of the country. Animals are present in 'steeds', 'wolves', 'eagles' and 'nightingales'. It might be worth mentioning that two of these a repredators, perhaps conveying the strength and aggression of Russia to the reader, although this is subtle as the horse and bird are less violent and wild images.

Tolstoy recognises that nature is not a human possession (I'm sure Atwood would approve!) by using the third person possessive determiner 'thy'. However, if Russia belongs to him, then surely the possessions of Russia are in reality the narrator's? Sneaky...almost had me nodding along with that!

It is nice to see weather that would typically be depicted as bad or miserable being praised here. 'Wind and cloud' and 'tempests' are again the more violent parts of the discourse of weather, portraying further natural vigour. 'Silvery' as an adjective brings value to the description (Russia was proud of its mining). even though it is ascribed to a bird; I see it as a transferred epithet, where the country owns the wealth and riches of nature - showing the West that Communism did not equate with poverty.

You can read this poem with the political slant if you like, or you could merely see an appreciation for nature. Either way, the human stamp on nature still remains, what with 'steeds' and 'eagles' being animals which humans commonly tame and train.

Looking forward to Tolstoy number two next week to see how the two relations compare (today's one had read the next one's works).

 

Wintry words

Yesterday on University Challenge the writer D.H. Lawrence came up as an answer and I felt it was time to explore some of his works.

As it so happens, it is the 1st of December and I found an intriguing and apt little poem called A Winter's Poem.

Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,
And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go
On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.

I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf
Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;
But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half
Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.

Why does she come so promptly, when she must know
That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;
The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow—
Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?

The first thing you might wonder is, who is the woman? This question is brought about due to Lawrence's exophoric references; she is only referred to through the pronouns and possessive determiners 'she', 'her' and 'her'. By using the possessive determiner to first introduce her, Lawrence presents the action of making footprints as already in the past, as presumably is the relationship between the narrator and the woman.

The poem is set out with little hope from the start. The colour 'grey' denotes a lack of life and action. The life of the 'longest grass-leaves' has been quashed and concealed by snow, blanketing the past and the future. The snow, therefore, represents the narrator's memory, as she ahs made her footprints in it, with the adjective 'deep' conveying a longstanding aspect to the relationship, perhaps even a scarring one.

To me, the 'dull orange sky' is a hint to the fact that this once was a relationship between lovers (Lawrence did have such a one which lasted until the ends of winter) because it implies that the orange has faded from red, the colour of passion. Thus this passion has dimmed and therefore the narrator has to 'tell' her of this. However, the orange surrounds and conceals her, so perhaps she comes 'promptly' because her passion has faded quicker than his has and she has the same thing to tell; he goes with 'slow' steps, signifying a reluctance due to a remaining attachment. Perhaps this is the conclusion Lawrence wants us to come to when he asks the final rhetorical questions. This is enhanced by the 'frosty sobs' - passion would be symbolised by fire, so her heart is no longer ablaze as it once was. Yet she is still sobbing...or is she?

The narrator cannot see her, yet he thinks he knows she is sobbing; maybe he does not assume that she has experienced the same dwindling of love that he has.

I shall definitely return to this poet, also as an author. He went through the war and wrote about that in detail as he was ill and in sanatoriums, so I'd like to read more on that part of his life.

WWII poetry

I know I have covered a war poem already but I have read that there is great contrast between the literature that came from the two great wars.

First, I'll share a source I have used to read a range of WWII poems as it contains many indicative pieces, about the Holocaust, piloting and the life of soldiers after war:

http://world-war-2.info/poems/ This website also has general information on the war as a whole.

While we are on the subject of war poetry, I would like to highlight Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' as it is a beautifully emotive poem about earlier battle methods of the 1800s.

Now onto the poem of the week. I found this poem in an archived section of the BBC website and all copyright goes to the talented soul who posted it there (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/04/a4473704.shtml).

Best Friend

When I was four and almost a half
I loved you with a passion
Only experienced by little girls;
Best friend intensities,
Whispered confidences,
Heads together and joined at the hip,
World-oblivious, world- creating
Absorbed in each other
Through the endless days.

You were the last thing
I waved to at night
Face framed in the window opposite
And, throwing back curtains,
The person I greeted
When I surfaced,
Shooting awake ,
Racing to windows,
Sure in the knowledge
That you would be waiting
With strange signs and our secret language

Wild in the absence of fathers
And bane of our mothers' existence
Life centred around us.
Till the morning when I opened the curtains
And your house was gone.
Direct hit in the night,
While I slept safe
Under the stairs
In the arms of my fearless mother

I never saw you again
Though for months I looked
More awful than death
Was the disintegration
Of flesh And security And trust
But sixty years on
I still remember you.

Although this poem was not written during the war (conveyed by the last couplet) I still classify it as a war poem, as it speaks of the same events and was lived through by the writer, who suffered due to it, even though they did not fight; they lost both 'security' and 'trust', which are key concepts that make human life worth living without worry. The use of polysyndeton captures the sense of build in loss and grief.

Sometimes it is easier to remember those who lost their lives during the war than to remember those whose lives were irreparably damaged as a consequence of the deaths of others. The writer here uses pathos throughout the first two stanzas to recreate the emotions that are felt during a close friendship. 'Four and almost a half' immediately places the reader in their own mind at that age, how vulnerable a child can be in their hope and imagination. This is later returned to in the final stanza, when the narrator looked 'for months' in vain.

The metaphorical phrase 'shooting awake' has poignancy when we consider that a child might play a war game in their innocence, and the word 'shooting' has been used to indicate this dangerous innocence. By the end of the poem, weapons like these have killed her best friend and so could be a form of foreshadowing. To me, 'strange signs' and a 'secret language' do the same by giving connotations of war spies and espionage.

I suppose we can at least say that war does some good as it inspires the creative mind to speak out but would that it weren't necessary!

In respect for all those who have sufferd at the hands of terrorism

Today I thought it would be poignant to read some poems that have been inspired and driven by attacks on so many innocents around the world. Many of these have been written by amateur poets, including the one I am covering today. This means that the poetry is not swayed by the fact that it has to be published and has to sell; it is a very personal account. This one is in particular as the writer says they had a dream about an attacker and so wished to write from their point of view.


It is called 'Purification'


I soar the skies in a state of euphoria,
My lengthy hair fluttering in the gusts,
Lashing out at my heels as I plummet:
An architectural wonder anticipates my arrival.
I shatter the gleaming stained glass windows:
Faux renditions of a woman holding a child
(Rings around their heads: colourless glass).
A grin smears across my blood-covered face
And the light of a thousand candles gleams in my eyes…

Velvet draperies fall to the dirty floor;
Screams arise from the shouting priests as I
Drop down behind them and
Slit their unholy throats with my encrusted sword.
Groans of pain and tearing of flesh resounds
Beneath the echoes of the bullets as they fly
With thunderously wondrous abandon from my
UZI.

Merrily I laugh at the elated passion that
Surges through my veins like a prairie fire.
My mind calms and with pride I wade
Through my personal lake of blood, tears, and terror,
Blotting out the flames of the meaningless candles.
My teeth glimmer midst my ecstatic smile as I crush
With the tread of my shoe the remnants of countless crucifixes.
One more pointless conclave of lies annihilated.


As the whole world wonders how one human being could act so against another, this poem aims to encapsulate part of the thought processes that a terrorist might experience. Before I go further I would like to make clear that I will by no means cover all views on terrorism and do not aim to cause offence. I merely wish to show how poetry can help us consider and ponder the events that are happening around us. It is such a sensitive, difficult topic to handle and even my own views are not solid, so I will try to come across as unbiased on the matter, for who knows, some of the terrorists themselves could be seen as victims in their own right.


The poet has done well to show rather than tell where we are in the poem; we begin in the 'skies' headed for 'an architectural wonder', producing echoes of the Twin Towers attack. however, the 'stained' glass windows broaden the picture to any Christian church, a specific attack on religion, labelled as a 'conclave of lies'. The use of the present tense helps the reader gain the sense of immediacy and makes the 'euphoria' more tangible as we go through action by action with the narrator, seeing and feeling all that they do. The only past tense used is in the last line, when their task is done and the people, removed from the narrator's guilty mind by using the metonymy of 'conclave' to remove their humanity, are 'annihilated'. No back-story to the terrorist is given, we only know their present task and feelings, which perhaps highlights the problem that we are not reaching these people sooner and preventing conversion.


The verbs used are dynamic and violent, even where you wouldn't expect it, as with the hair 'lashing' and the grin as it 'smears'. This makes the poem rather sadistic, representing the twisted nature of terrorist preaching. Even the narrator's 'passion' is destructive, as it is likened in a simile to 'fire'. The glory of success is conveyed through the use of the adjective 'personal', which is ironic as terrorists remove their identity and also treat others in the same way, as if we are all the same, or should all be.


have you ever done something that you know you shouldn't have but enjoyed doing it for that very reason? In the eyes of a terrorist this is the same feeling, just multiplied, and I suppose they take this feeling as one given by god. if you are told that that is what it is and you are not given another option then you are going to believe this is true. You have to have human sympathy for these people, as with any child who is part of a religion purely because their parents were, because they are not given their individual choice but their whole life begins and grows around the one concept your parents have convinced you of, so by the time someone tries to argue differently, it is too late for you to give up such a great part of your life. just food for thought, these people are fundamentally no different from all others.

From one Eliot to another

Yes, today we are moving on to T.S. Eliot. Like Wordsworth, he believed in writing poetry as close to the forms of natural spoken language as possible. Hence, the poem below is one stanza without metre (it is in prose) or lines per say.

The poem would be rather ruined by any more introduction, in my opinion, and so I shall let you take a look at it before I say more.

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ...” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

I can hear your mental 'okaaaaay' from my study. I hope that somewhere in your mind there is also a little person struggling to compute the events which just unfolded before your squinting eyes. Let us therefore take the poem bit by bit to create a more rounded picture.

Firstly, the word 'hysteria' is derived from the Greek word for 'womb', so until recently (and even still today it would be odd to hear of a 'hysterical man') could only be applied to female madness, supposedly caused by the imbalance of hormones. So T.S. Eliot is targetting the seductive nature of a woman who has gotten a little excited - at the time (first half of the 20th Century) a woman could be called hysterical for acting in any way passionate and most women were considered to have the 'disease'.

So we have the paradox of men wanting women to be seductive but if they were they could be labelled as hysterical and therefore be devalued in society (I am really restraining my inner angry feminist right now). All that the woman in this poem is doing is laughing. And because she laughs for a long time (and because she is a woman) she is seen as mad. The imagery of the 'squad-drill' depicts her laughter as becoming uniform (due to its ongoing nature) and thus unnatural.

However, when the 'elderly waiter' becomes repetitive in his speech no such label is given. If we assume the waiter is male then he is merely shocked in the eyes of the poet and could not be hysterical as he is but male.

So he finds this laughter attractive because he thinks it is hypnotic and enjoys laughing himself (as anyone should be allowed!). Yet he thinks this expression of joy is superfluous; he is attracted by colour in the cloth and table and synaesthesia occurs when he next hears the repeated request, and therefore he fights to maintain self-control. And the only way in which he finds he can do this is to concentrate on her 'breasts'.

Don't misinterpret me, it is a very good poem, what with its asyndetic, complex sentences and vivid imagery. But my blood does rather boil at the notion of a female trying to enjoy herself only to be objectified sexually for it, whether or not the writer's tone is jocular. 'I decided' gives the male the cognitive power and reduces her to a problem of society which needs solving.

As always there is much more to be said about this poem and there are far more interpretations than my feminist criticism. Whatever the case, I hope you can extract a reading that suits you and also pleases you, as I have.

Mary Ann Evans A.K.A George Eliot

This week I was talking about poetry to a group of people, my mother included, and she made the comment that it took her years to find out that George Eliot was a woman. I, being ignorant, did not know that this was all but a joke. So today I thought I'd study the woman who gave up her name for the sake of literary acclaim, as many did in the 1800s (the Brontes included).

This is a simple enough poem but I like the pure message.

Count that day lost

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went --
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay --
If, through it all
You've nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face--
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost --
Then count that day as worse than lost.

I have immediately come across the problem of which name to call the poet. I shall choose Evans in the recognition of her true identity, methinks. I hope she would have preferred that, although I have noticed that even ingrained within this poem is the male mind-set; 'him who heard' uses the masculine pronoun in order to encompass both genders, giving male priority and superiority.

So, Evans is not asking much of the reader; the tricolon of 'one...' reinforces the fact that she believes a little kindness can go a long way, both for the recipient and for the soul of the giver. The tricolon is in fact descending, asking but a 'deed...word...glance', which evidences this belief.

The order of the stanzas aids the message the narrator is giving. By placing the positive stanza first, she praises those who act well in the world and they need not read on. The second stanza is therefore more strongly represented as bad as it comes as a clear contrast to the first stanza, especially with all the negatives ('but', 'no', 'nothing', 'worse', 'lost'). Even by placing 'nay' after 'yea' in the second line the negative tone is highlighted.

The last line is the only ambiguous line in the poem. How can a day be 'worse than lost'? Well, by ruining it, I suppose. One cannot just count the day as if it did not exist, it actually had a negative impact upon the world. She was clever to title the poem with the more simple 'count that day as lost' because the final line expands this unexpectedly, making the reader think more about her message. The imperative in 'count' is authoritative as well, truly making the reader feel bad if they have done no good that day, encouraging them to want to improve the next.

Overall, the poem reads as if advice given to a child which is nevertheless still applicable to any adult. The simple lexis and singsong rhyme make the poem accessible by all, whilst also being memorable, a constant reminder each day to be good to someone in some way. The 'sunshine' image is common, again making the poem read more universally as it is less complicated to decipher (she is capable of more complex writing, as in 'The Choir Invisible'). The use of this image in both stanzas creates an anaphoric reference to more clearly show what is good and bad.

Experimenting with Edmund

I began this week's blogging by searching 'quirky poems' as I needed a little pick me up. Scrolling through poems such as 'The Mating of Dinosaurs' and 'Oatmeal' I came to the name 'Edmund Spenser' and went to find out more.

My immediate face-palm reaction came when I realised this was the Edmund Spenser who wrote 'The Faerie Queen', as referenced in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. He wrote many a long (even epic) poem, but I have found a few shorter ones, this being 'Iambicum Trimetrum', which is the metre of the poem, anciently used in Greek and Latin tragedies and comedies by a speaking character (i.e. not the Chorus). This was used because the literary circle in which Spenser was involved, which included Sydney, wished to rejuvenate English poetry with 'quantitative' rhyming and accentuating.

Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state,
  Make thy self flutt'ring wings of thy fast flying
  Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be:
Whether lying restless in heavy bed, or else
  Sitting so cheerless at the cheerful board, or else
  Playing alone careless on her heavenly virginals.
If in bed, tell her, that my eyes can take no rest:
  If at board, tell her, that my mouth can eat no meat:
  If at her virginals, tell her, I can hear no mirth.
Asked why? say: waking love suffereth no sleep:
  Say that raging love doth appal the weak stomach:
  Say, that lamenting love marreth the musical.
Tell her, that her pleasures were wont to lull me asleep:
  Tell her, that her beauty was wont to feed mine eyes:
  Tell her, that her sweet tongue was wont to make me mirth.
Now do I nightly waste, wanting my kindly rest:
  Now do I daily starve, wanting my lively food:
  Now do I always die, wanting thy timely mirth.
And if I waste, who will bewail my heavy chance?
  And if I starve, who will record my cursed end?
  And if I die, who will say: "This was Immerito"?

First I will define a few words: 'board' here means table; 'virginals' were the equivalent of a small harpsichord; 'wont' means accustomed; 'immerito' translates from Latin as 'undeserved'. With that in mind let's do some analysis.

Spenser uses quite a few modifiers in this poem. Most nouns comes with an adjective, like 'unhappy verse', 'fast flying thought' 'heavy bed', etc. A few verbs come with a adverb, as in 'lying restless' (technically an adjective describing his 'love' but the juxtaposition works equally), 'playing alone', 'do i nightly', etc. This descriptive scene depicts his desperate state, helping the audience to comprehend the extent of his unhappiness.

The poem contains much parallelism. The repetition of 'unhappy' in the first line makes the poem not only a 'witness' but also a 'proof' of his state. The pattern of 'bed', 'board' and 'virginals' is repeated then transformed to the metonyms of 'sleep', food' and music. These are usually pleasures but the lack and transformation of good 'love' to a 'waking...raging...lamenting' one has spoiled them. This same triplet pattern is used again and again to emphasise that his senses are disused, along with the past tense in 'was wont'.

This repetition of the three ideas per three lines creates a climax each triplet, which then begins again when it recedes to the first idea of the three, rather like a wave; his emotions are reaching the brink of death and then returning to the problem to find that death is still the only answer, even though it is 'Immerito', which is capitalised and in Latin to make the narrator appear, ironically,  more worthy and heroic. The last triplet comes as three conditional and rhetorical questions, a typical device in love poetry as it highlights the absence of the narratee.

My favourite stylistic feature of the poem is the paranomasia of 'wont' and 'wanting', creating a contrast of what is normal for the narrator and how abnormal his situation is now. This is aided by the move from past to present, and then in the next triplet to the future, which is undecided and lacking in hope. Yet the poem does not fill one with utter despair, somehow. How? Because we know that the love is still alive (wheresoever she be) and also because the love appears so strong. Even if there is no hope for the narrator to be with his beloved, or even to continue existence, the poem's main focus is how great an affect love can have, and how sublime it is when things go according to plan. The hope is there for the reader rather than the narrator. At least, that's my take on it.

Have a good Halloween, dear reader. Perhaps next week I could theme my post around that...

Making my blog title actually accurate

Yesterday I realised that my blog does not yet actually cover 'what it says on the tin'. By this I mean I have studied a Keats poem but not a Yeats one. This was mainly because I have studied a lot of Yeats's works as a part of my AS Level English Literature course but now I feel I am beginning to miss his unique style, the way he contemplates life and death so transparently in his words but with such complex thought processes. He is also a great painter of portraits linguistically, as in 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death'.

Yeats' obsession with death and ageing means that one can estimate the age of the poet on accordance with his poems. My personal preference is for his younger poems, as they deal in elements of fantasy and by that I mean fairies. Irish fairies, though, not your cute Tinkerbelles and  tooth fairies. I love the sense of suspicion around the west of Ireland because it translates to any countryside and so sends shivers up your spine when you're next walking alone through woods or near streams. Please, if you have the chance, read 'The Stolen Child', it excites the imagination as though you were a child once again and things really did go 'bump' in the night.

The Hosting of the Sidhe (1899)


THE HOST is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.         
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band, 
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

Now, this poem has many cultural references, too many for me to describe here when they will be far better depicted in other sources. So if you really would like to learn more about the Irish folklore behind this, have a look around this delightful website: http://www.mythicalireland.com/mythology/tuathade/

From a slightly liberal humanist approach to this text, we could say that the poem focuses on the themes of activity and death. I might be mistaken but the 'host' reminded me of the 'Wild Hunt', the members of which take away the living person who saw them . This is slightly different to the belief that the Sidhe lived within the wind (as that is its translation from Gaelic) and so whenever someone saw a rustling of leaves in a whirlwind they were granted luck, but perhaps it was more of a blessing that they had not been taken by the host. Or maybe I just love the idea of a host of fairies and skeletons snatching people away. At least that would align with the chilling imperative 'Away, come away', as used in almost all Yeats' fairy poems to denote the ethereal nature of the fairy world, one which might bring profitable change or evil slavery.

The way the poem begins sets the reader on edge; the present tense 'is' and present participle 'riding' give immediate pace and action, meaning anyone could be taken. As I said before, the next time you go out you will look around twice and cast glances over your shoulder every so often. Graphologically, I think even the italics used in the speech pushes the host onward, leaning with the wind onto its next victim.

In Yeats's later poems, he still discusses mortality but with more of a sense of Christianity and faith. In his earlier works, the fairies take precedence, as if they were an alternative ending to human life. Yeats knows that neither option is entirely safe or secure, even though both promise such things.  Yet this option at least appears to offer some ort of active life after death; there is a semantic field of wildness, with words such as 'unbound', 'heaving', 'a-gleam', 'waving' presenting the host as liberating for a mortal. This is far more positive than the 'injustice of the skies' that God seems to offer to Yeats in 'The Cold Heaven'. In fact, this poem does greatly contrast to that afterlife through the 'burning' of Caolte's hair. Whether this is literal or an image for ginger, the hot, blood-red depiction denotes danger but in an exciting, virile way, much more appealing than his later musings of heaven.

Told you I love Yeats.

Marvellous Emanuel Xavier

Searching through more modern poets and I have found this gem. It certainly is very modern stuff and that is truly wonderful. Emanuel Xavier writes about many current problems in the world. I will only note that he is a gay poet because that is a key theme and perspective in his poetry and so needs to be read correctly; do not force a heterosexual reading that doesn't exist.

In some ways this makes me wish more heterosexuals would write about homosexuality as he does, although of course they could only write with sympathy rather than empathy, but it would still be a step forward. Maybe soon I will look into straights writing about gays.

This poem is the most PG but I do encourage anyone interested to look at 'A Simple Poem' and 'Walking with angels', which are slightly less for-all-ages but have such strong messages, aided by their strong wording I suppose.

The chosen poem still has strong themes, of abuse juxtaposed with forgiveness. It really touches your heart and fills you with sympathy.

He forgets that he used to call me mariconcito-
that I harbored years of hatred toward him
while hoping to find my real father. My
childhood memories of him reminding me
I was my mother's son, not his. I tried
to poison him once and scattered sharp nails
inside the shoes in his closet. By the time one
of his sons died of AIDS I was already lost
in contempt for the man I blamed for everything.
There was the time I was in love and he met my
boyfriend. Now he forgets to go to the bathroom

or where he is but he still remembers Michael
and asks about him. I help him walk slowly
outdoors to step outside the prison cell that is
the tiny apartment with no windows in which
I grew up abused by both of them. He barely
understands. His fate has been torture. I know
that I cannot be his savior. I used to pray for
him to die but here he is slowly fading. In his
eyes I see that he learned to love me and wishes
he could take it all back. He is unable to recall
those drunken nights and hateful words. I should

do the same. I left a long time ago but he still
remains haunted by the little boy who wanted
to belong. Like him, I want to forget that we
made mistakes and caused so much pain. I need
for both of us to remember how he taught me
how to ride a bike and how to swim and told
me, better late than never, that he loved me and
was proud of all I had done. I have to help him
settle into his favorite chair and let him know that
I forgive him. There is a place somewhere where
he will call me hijo and I will know him as my dad.

Where to start on this one? Each sentence comes as yet another shock, however understandable. The first line uses the very pejorative term 'mariconcito', equating to 'faggot' in English I think. Mr Xavier uses Spanish both to recall the memory as it literally was, i.e. not in translation, but also to create an intrigue in the ignorant reader. As this particular reader continues, they begin to theorise what the word could mean; I myself came to a similar conclusion, thus was filled with growing disgust and dread as the first stanza continued, with the climax of the boyfriend nearly confirming my thoughts.

This term is resolved by the one in the last line, of course; 'hijo' equates to something like 'little son', a far more endearing term. However this resolution is not yet complete as it appears in the future with 'will'. It is hopeful and promising but not yet achieved, making the final tone of the poem still unfulfilling, just as their whole relationship has been. By using the adverb 'somewhere' the 'place' is made even more distant and fantastical, highlighting the fact that this stage of their relationship will never be reached but will always be a goal (which is why the metaphor of place is used).

Mr Xavier focuses a lot on the stigma around 'AIDS' and so here the reference is all the more shocking as not even that can cause pity in the narrator. It is mentioned to create a grudging pity in the reader, as we have been previously persuaded to hate the man as the narrator does.

I find the reference to his 'boyfriend' sinister because the result of the meeting is not given. All we know is that 'he met' him. When we combine this with the insult in line one we are led to assume that the outcome was so horrific that we cannot be told. Mr Xavier wants us to imagine a horrific outcome, therefore, in order to highlight the dangers of homophobia.

This poem is also about change. The step father in question changes. The cause for his change is not given, other than that he is forgetting many of the bad things. This implies a mental deterioration, as well as a physical one (the piteous note about the 'bathroom'). I think that the narrator wrestles with the idea of forgiveness for so long because the question is whether or not his step father would have changed his opinions of his own accord. The important thing is not that he has changed but how.

This reading has forced me to re-read the line, 'His fate has been torture'. Originally I saw this at face value to mean that the step father has been physically pained by his illness, or even to read more like 'his punishment has been to be tortured'. But now I take it to show something more about the narrator. The fate of the step father has tortured the step son because he can never know if they would have found reconciliation on their own and he feels he must forgive the suffering man whether he deserves it or not. So by not giving an indirect object Mr Xavier can imply more meanings to the phrase.

By now I have realised that what this poem is trying to do is show how unfair life can be. The sufferer can escape primary suffering but can never be fully healed, and the one who causes the suffering will suffer too, which eventually is not what the original sufferer wants, even though they might think it at the time. Their empathy for suffering outweighs their original hatred because they do not want anyone else to go through what they themselves had to.

I do hope he keeps writing these striking poems, they reveal so much about society and personal relationships as well.

I'm keeping my promise!

I recollected that I had made some sort of plan for the next few posts, so went and checked my last one to find the theme is modernism. Before remembering I had wanted to do a poem in translation. That's fine, I say, I'll do both at once!

I do not know enough about Asian culture. I shall introduce myself to it in the best way I can think of, which is through poetry and perhaps a piece of art to accompany it at the end.

Niu Qingguo is this week's writer, the poem, 'The Old Donkey'. I wish I could appreciate the poem in its original form but alas I am not learned in the language. English shall have to suffice.

She is old, the donkey who plowed our field year after year.
The first revelation came the day she knelt on her front legs
and the cart was pushed uphill by Father
with every thread of his strength.

That evening, Father embraced the donkey’s skinny legs
like a man circling his arm around an old friend's shoulders.
He said, “We are old, you and I.”

Now, the donkey seemed to know she served no purpose
and lost interest in water and hay.
The ragged coat she had worn for a lifetime
showed a bald scar, the size of a hand.

I told Father to take her to the market,
but they always came back together
like a young couple, forced by parents to divorce,
leaving home at dawn and returning together timidly at dusk.

The other day, I stepped outside
and saw the donkey, chin on the fence;
she beckoned me with a trembling voice, so bleak and so sad,
but Father said he knew what she meant to say.

For the benefit of anyone who does know the language, here is the link so you can enjoy the original:

http://modernchinesepoetry.com/poems.php#niu_qingguo

What is different about this poem compared to the others I have covered so far is the central focus; the pastoral scene is set so well that the poem comes to speak of life and death, not only of the donkey but of the humans as well.

From the offset, the poem is made timeless. The donkey 'is' old in the present tense but she 'plowed' in the past. This gives the indication of retirement, creating pathos as the man is old too (he had to use all his 'strength', with 'thread' giving connotations of a struggle which was near to failure) but cannot retire himself, especially as he is now without his helper.

The pathos is enhanced with the direct speech given to the 'Father'. Addressing her as 'we', the personal pronoun creates unity, separating the pair from the son, who watches on with youthful eyes, as the reader probably does too. His sympathy cannot be converted to empathy yet but we all have the knowledge that this will probably be us one day too and it will have happened to someone we know. So the line between sympathy and empathy is blurred.

The image of the 'bald scar, the size of a hand' links endophorically with the man putting his arm around the donkey. The connection between the human and the animal is so strong that it has created an impression on the latter.

The connection forces the son to move out of his role and take on that of the Father by telling him to 'take her to the market'. This role reversal is intriguing as the boy does not seem to be so intrinsically invested in the donkey. Maybe this is because he realises that the two men  would not survive without one person detached and therefore focused.

This leads onto an exophoric reference; where is the mother in this household? She is not mentioned, even as absent. One reading is that the donkey replaces her emotional role in the text. She is depicted as part of a 'divorce' but of a 'young couple', perhaps showing what the old man lacks (both youth and a partner). The actual use of the plural noun 'parents' causes pain in the reader as it highlights the fact that the use for this boy should be singular.

With regards to the last words, or rather the fact that the donkey's are not given, I do not know what to conclude, other than the fact that the bond between the donkey and the man is proven so strong that it does not matter. Maybe the point is that he did not truly know what 'she meant to say' (notice that the personification could be literally read as if she were the mother) but he did not need to know because whatever she wanted to say would have been enough; she was trying to strengthen the bond through speech and that was the most he could gain from the relationship, especially now that she can no longer work.

I shall have to content myself, as with many poems and stories, with the knowledge that I shall have no more knowledge. The paradox of the scholar...

I'm going all modern on you

I am a very fickle person. Or at least my mood affects a lot of what I do. I warn you of this because I am about to make a statement which might well prove false by, say, next week.

For the next few weeks I have decided to look at modern poets. I know that the classics are brilliant and who could want more than their wisdom and pleasure, but I would like to broaden my horizons of the world around me as it is today as well as learning how we got here. I am not very au fait with the goings on in the literary world right now and I'd like that to change. I should not be a modernism snob when I live in the age of liberalism in writing.

Today I have found an American poet by the name of Deborah Landau. I have read a few of her poems, some more abstract than others (she plays around with stream of consciousness, it appears). I have found that she likes the flowing use of syntax across stanzas and similarly makes little use of capitalisation. Her poems are rather short, often, to make them to the point, and I suppose this reflects how little time people have nowadays for things like poetry; your message has to be given before the reader goes to check their phone or watch a fast-paced action film with instant gratification of plot, sex scenes etc.

This poem is rather different to the ones I have studied so far and is ironically anti-modernist in its content, though modernist in form (less dependence on rhyme, scansion etc.)

You've Got to Start Somewhere

I had the idea of sitting still

while others rushed by.

I had the thought of a shop

that still sells records.

A letter in the mailbox.

The way that book felt in my hands.

I was always elsewhere.

How is it to have a body today,

to walk in this city, to run?

I wanted to eat an apple so precisely

the tree would make another

exactly like it, then lie

down uninterrupted

in the gadgetless grass.

I kept texting the precipice,

which kept not answering,

my phone auto-making

everything incorrect.

I had the idea. Put down the phone.

Earth, leaves, storm, water, vine.

The gorgeous art of breathing.

I had the idea — the hope

of friending you without electricity.

Of what could be made among the lampposts

with only our voices and hands.

From the start of the poem, there is a sense of difference and solitariness. 'I' is contrasted with the indefinite pronoun 'others', portraying an initial focus on the self as apart from the generic, noisy crowed. It seems a pretty simple 'idea', mimicked in the simple lexis, but in reality it is quite a feat for some, unthinkable almost.

The next couplet introduces a nostalgia to entice the reader to miss how things used to be, not only in the music industry with 'records' but the connotations of that; every record shop would be on a street filled with other shops which we no longer have, like sweet shops and the local butcher and other family-grown trades, (nearly) all gone. One 'shop' brings back an entire section of memory for those who lived during those times, times of a community that didn't exist only on the internet, which is hinted at in the next line.

'A letter in the mailbox' is a minor sentence, using words purely to recall memory of a time before email. This again symbolises more than it seems; it symbolises correspondence with distant but faithful friends, the dedication to writing personally for a loved one, which contrasts to the reality of the 'mailbox' today: bills, bank statements, more bills.

The following few lines use the same short and minor sentences to recall memories in quick succession. This is broken by a question about how things feel now, the answer to which is inside itself; 'run' indicates that the writer thinks things, people especially, move too quickly to appreciate life fully now. Running connects to fast transport, such as planes, cars, trains, linking back to the initial 'rushed'.

Ms Landau mocks tech-speak with words like 'auto-making' and 'friending' to present the new world as false and petty, if not irritating and often counter-productive. I did not know whether the comment on the precise 'apple' eating was referring to GM products and scientific meddling (I think maybe not due to the positive sound of 'gadgetless grass' which follows) but if it doesn't then I don't know what point she is making, although I am sure it is seriously intellectual and would leave me thoroughly impressed with her grasp on the figurative world.

As a tech-baby I have some sympathy with this poem in a Utopian world but realistically I could not live the life she promotes; unfortunately she is right in observing that there is just not enough time in the day constructed by this society. But if we do want to change that, we have 'got to start somewhere'.

Poetical Pope

I cannot remember why but this week somewhere the name of Alexander Pope caught my attention and thus he is the next discovery on my list.

This week I will give you some context into the man as I rather feel I have been neglecting that important process.

Born in 1688, Pope was a part of a Catholic family, which was based in London until anti-Catholic legislation persuaded them to move to Berkshire. Alexander was self-educated, due to the fact that his religion barred him from attending schools etc.

I am rather astonished to read that this poem was written when the poet was aged merely twelve. I chose it prior to that knowledge and so will now read it in a slightly different light, perhaps. Or just with further awe.

The year that he wrote this poem was also the year in which he was diagnosed with a disease which would render him a hunchback of only four and a half feet.

I suppose then that is all the context needed to cover this poem. It does give a much more bitter note to the term, as if he knew his future was to be tinted by his deformities for the rest of his life.

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care

   A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

                            In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

   Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

                            In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

                            Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,

   Together mixed; sweet recreation;

And innocence, which most does please,

                            With meditation.

 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

   Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

                            Tell where I lie.

As I am participating in a course on Wordsworth at the moment, I find it apt to mention his 'Preface to the Lyrical Ballads' as well as his poem 'Michael', among others. Wordsworth, a century after Pope,  thought poetry should reflect the voice of the ordinary person and highlight the fact that emotions did not belong only to the nobility. To me, this poem of Pope's inclines towards these points before Wordsworth even got there. All at the age of twelve, apparently.

The reader would first come to this poem, due to its title, probably in rather a lonely mood themselves, or at least expecting a sombre poem. Pope surprises the reader by fronting the first line with the complement 'happy', which sets any later negative statements in a more positive light, as in the subordinate clause 'a few paternal acres bound' and the last stanza as a whole.

The technique of not repeating the main verb from clause to clause makes the poem shorter and therefore more simple. The trees 'yield' both shade and fire and 'milk', 'bread' and 'attire' are all indirect objects of the verb 'supply'. This mimics the simplicity of the life to which the poet aspires.

It is interesting that the poet describes the farmer (note how we are never given a title of the 'man') to have both 'study and ease'. The perception of the time was that those who worked the land were not educated and did not 'study' but Pope is claiming that they have a certain type of knowledge to learn. He does not say what though, only that it brings on 'meditation', implying that these country-folk are capable of higher thought and reflection.

Perhaps the knowledge of his disposition put thoughts about death into the young poet's mind. This would explain the final note about where he will 'lie' appearing peaceful, regardless of the solitary nature. The prefix 'un-' is used in a tricolon takes three participles ('-seen', '-known' and '-lamented') which are usually desirable after death and makes them sound very negative. However, this purposely contrasts to the overall positive message of the poem. The iussive subjunctive in 'let me' gives an urgency, as if death is to be greeted. The poet speaks of an almost taboo subject in conversational speech with contentment and almost excitement; 'steal' is etymologically related to 'stealth', giving connotations of an exciting escape by night to somewhere forbidden for whatever reason.

I find it both a solemn and an uplifting poem, the former for knowing the poet's context, the latter for the message it gives to other people. In an age dependent upon class structure, at least a few people could see that being at the top was not the be-all and end-all (isn't that a nice phrase, when one thinks about it?).

War Poetry

What with all the political unrest around the world at the moment, I decided I should try to connect more with the fighters and sufferers themselves by reading some war poetry. They are all inspiring and I appreciate the controversial portrayals of Christianity, which convey the disillusionment of the time.

Here dead we lie, by A. E. Housman

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

I chose this poem firstly because it is short and barely descriptive, which mimics the numberless deaths of people who were amalgamated into the general 'soldier'. Housman also cleverly uses the deictic 'here' to denote the fact that soldiers can die anywhere; the reader will question 'where is 'here'' and the ambiguity means that the poem can be applied to any fighter of any war.

The simplicity of the phrase 'to live and shame' acknowledges the heavy guilt that returning soldiers felt or were made to feel by those who had lost family and friends. The choice of the verb 'choose' can come across as sarcastic as it implies that those who lived had a choice, which they mostly did not and a war poet would be sensitive to this. Therefore 'choose' implies a sacrifice whilst shaming those who pour guilt onto those who 'chose' to come home and live.

The most solemn and disillusioned tone comes through when the poet claims that 'life.../Is nothing much to lose'. This again casts aside the losses of war, as it is impossible to feel grateful enough for the lives the fighters and helpers sacrificed. It sounds colloquial, meaning it also comes across as careless and unimportant, mimicking the message.

The final two lines begin with the discourse marker 'but', which gives a contradictory tone to denote the simple fact that the previous thought is hard to be fully understood and appreciated. The part that makes the heart turn is the repetition of the adjective 'young', which also ends the poem to leave the reader with the feeling of loss and wasted life and youth. The pathos is aided by the switch of tense from 'is' to 'were'.

I could go on further into this poem and its actual context but I rather like looking at it from afar as it can be applied to so many moments in time. Short poems always do get me going on far longer!

If anyone likes war poetry, I would recommend the song 'This song for you' by Chris du Burgh. Makes me cry every time.

Pre-print poets

This week I thought I'd set myself a trickier task and read my first medieval poem (not including a dabbling in Beowulf). As I have not read any Chaucer I thought it important that I should combine the two virginities into this one post.

I have to say the few I've read I will have to research a lot in order to understand them. Firstly because they are in Middle English and secondly because they are heavily contextual and I know little about the 14th Century.

Being a love poem, I managed to understand the gist of 'To Rosemounde', so have chosen that to focus on. I am afraid any comments I can make will be of a more simple nature than usual.

Madame, ye ben of al beaute shryne

As fer as cercled is the mapamounde,

For as the cristal glorious ye shyne,

And lyke ruby ben your chekes rounde.

Therwith ye ben so mery and so jocounde

That at a revel whan that I see you daunce,

It is an oynement unto my wounde,

Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

For thogh I wepe of teres ful a tyne,

Yet may that wo myn herte nat confounde;

Your semy voys that ye so smal out twyne

Maketh my thoght in joy and blis habounde.

So curtaysly I go with love bounde

That to myself I sey in my penaunce,

"Suffyseth me to love you, Rosemounde,

Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce."

Nas neuer pyk walwed in galauntyne

As I in love am walwed and ywounde,

For which ful ofte I of myself devyne

That I am trew Tristam the secounde.

My love may not refreyde nor affounde,

I brenne ay in an amorous plesaunce.

Do what you lyst, I wyl your thral be founde,

Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

The refrain to me conveys the essence of the narrator's unrequited love. All the words bar the last are monosyllabic and therefore emphasise how simple love is, especially in this story as only one person is in love. So Chaucer mimics the one-sided nature of the love but also the plain acceptance of that person that the other does not love back. He does not feel anything bad towards the woman for her refusal of him, highlighted by the politeness of the address in the very first line.

He feels a 'wounde' but it is healed merely by seeing her 'mery'. The antithesis here emphasises how the two people are separate and will never be together but also highlights the strength of his love for her if she can heal what she has unconsciously caused.

In the first paragraph the 'daliaunce' is literal as he cannot court her. By repeating it, however, Chaucer uses metonymy where a dance represents courtship and eventually any relationship at all. He seems removed, letting her do 'what [she] lyst', although he claims his love will not turn cold (tautology in 'refeyde' and 'affounde' to emphasise this). He appears almost as a stalker, saying he will be 'founde' wherever she goes. So this love is a very strong one but also an accepting one as he does not appear to beg for love or scold her for her distance. At no point does the narrator claim to have any interaction with the girl, so perhaps he has fallen in love without actually knowing the woman. This is supported by his immediate concentration on her 'beaute' and how at no point does he give us her actual character and the things he loves about her.

I am glad I did this; I like this poem and am sure there are other Medieval poets with equally pleasing works.