Thomas Wyatt

This week, we are looking at the English ambassador, poet and perhaps lover of Anne Boleyn, Thomas Wyatt. Many of his poems are in fact love poems, with sombre tones. But as I am rather tired today, I feel like I would prefer something more upbeat. Unfortunately, it seems Wyatt does not write in a happy mode, so I shall have to be content with semi-wollowing, as in:

The careful lover complaineth, the happy lover counselleth

AH! Robin!
Joly Robin!
Tell me how thy Leman doth?
And thou shalt know of mine.
‘My Lady is unkind, perdie!’	5
Alack, why is she so!
‘She loveth an other better than me,
And yet she will say, no.’
RESPONSE. I find no such doubleness;
I find women true.	10
My lady loveth me doubtless,
And will change for no new.
LE PLAINTIF. Thou art happy while that doth last,
But I say as I find;
That woman’s love is but a blast,	15
And turneth like the wind.
RESPONSE. But if thou wilt avoid thy harm,
Learn this lesson of me;
At others fires thyself to warm,
And let them warm with thee.	20
LE PLAINTIF. Such folks shall take no harm by love,
That can abide their turn;
But I, alas, can no way prove
In love, but lack, and mourn.

So, I managed to find some happiness in this poem, although it ends on the complaints rather than happy advice. Most of Wyatt's poems do include the message that women are unfaithful or unloving. This is the only one I have found where he even lets the opposite opinion be voiced, that women are 'true'. Even then, the plaintif says that that will not 'last'.

I am trying to devise what lines 19-20 are trying to convey. Perhaps it is circumlocution for 'just listen to the advice of others and give advice back'. If it had been said by the plaintif, I would have said it were a more liberal view of giving up on monogamy, or maybe even wishing for a stronger relationship. But as the counsellor says it, it might be an encouragement of faith, to act more warmly towards his lover, so she will feel warmer towards him. Perhaps he should not question her about her fidelity, instead making her so comfortable and warm that she will not want to be with anyone else.

This interpretation would make sense with the final line; he cannot 'prove' her fidelity and so he remains sad in the lack of knowledge. He wishes he could be like others and ignore jealousy but he acknowledges that he is not of this 'folk', perhaps an envious, pejorative term. If only it could have ended on the 'joly robin' as it began.

Sleeping Sir Sidney

Philip Sidney is the poet this week. A 16th Century poet, who died at the age of 31 after being injured from a battle shot (we do like to know the in-depth torments of the poet, don't we). At least his is not a tale of suicide, as is so common amongst the greatest poets.

To dive into the poem this week, I would like to introduce why I chose it. The simple answer is insomnia. I do not suffer from it clinically, more in the metaphorical sense, as one might say they feel 'depressed' without meaning they have the mental illness. I sleep much more than many people do and so I am grateful, but I do spend many nocturnal hours tossing and turning, with my head buzzing with thoughts that will not stop. Thus, the poem immediately grasped my attention with its imperative phrase: 'Come, Sleep!'.

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw!
O make in me those civil wars to cease!—
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland, and a weary head;
And if these things, as being thine in right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

To contradict my introduction immediately, I would like to conjecture that this poem could be interpreted as a wish for the eternal 'sleep', 'death'. The capitalisation of the noun 'sleep' not only personifies it but also gives it greater significance, which is what led me to theorise about the matter. The whole poem can be read either way, which I find comforting. After all, Sidney may have specifically not wanted to draw comparisons with death as it is such a common metaphor, but it would be impossible to escape the implications due to this very fact.

I like the Marxist comment, that even the poor can have sleep and also prize it as the rich prize 'wealth' - the basics of human nature dictate that the elite classes only get more sleep than the commoners because they do not have to wake in order to work.

The metaphor of 'civil wars' is poignant; the mind wars with itself over purpose (sleeping) and function (thinking), perhaps as the poet himself did while fighting. The note about 'tribute' to me makes most sense when applied to death, i.e. that he will serve in the afterlife. But perhaps the tribute to sleep is this precise poem. Or perhaps he is giving to sleep his 'pillows' and 'bed', which to me represents the modern-day insomniac advice, that one should not use the bed for anything but sleeping. So the narrator will not read in his bed or write in his bed, but sanctify it in a way to 'Sleep'.

The final line on 'Stella' image' refers to the two lovers, Astrophil and Stella. I say lovers but Stella did not really return the feeling. This poem is part of a sequence of sonnets relating to the couple, and so the narrator is Astrophil ,when read in context. He, therefore, is saying that if sleep will not come to him, he will sit awake all night thinking about his love, Stella. The word means 'star' (Latin) and so out of context, read with the perspective that sleep is death, perhaps the narrator is saying that if death won't come, he will defiantly think of all the good and light in life. Loose interpretation, but it is there to me nonetheless. 

I might just read this the next time I feel my mind is too active...I wonder if any of you have other methods of coping with sleeplessness?

Let's beGinsberg again!

Unfortunately for you, I forgot to write a post last week and so you missed out on another punny title. I hope that the level of this week's one will satisfy you nevertheless.

In all sincerity, I apologise for missing a week, I suppose it had to happen eventually, and my only excuse is my focus on A Level revision during the Easter break. I should have come here to write and have a break but, alas, I forgot I had responsibilities.

I have no idea where I heard about this poet. Allen Ginsberg was writing in the late 20th Century and so many of the issues he covers are still pertinent today, like the state of the physical and political world, as discussed in the following poem:

Homework

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran

I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the

birds and elephants back in the jungle,

I’d wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,   

Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,   

Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love

Canal

Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,

Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow

return white as snow,

Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie   

Then I’d throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,

Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail

Gray of U.S. Central American police state,

& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean.

The layout of this poem is a little difficult to transpose here, so it night be best to find another copy of the poem, if you'd like.

The poet is American and so, reading the first line, I immediately tensed when I came across that final word 'Iran' attached to the adjective 'dirty'. Ginsberg makes the reader think he is just like his government, stereotyping and scapegoating other countries that they themselves have had too much involvement in. 'Dirty' appears to modify Iran because it complements it and is Iran's fault. But the next line is juxtaposed with this to plant in the reader's mind that the dirt has been caused by conflict with the USA.

I like how he then moves onto less political a message, about nature and how poorly we have treated it. His focus is external, not an American poem by and American poet but the work of a world citizen.

The metaphor of cleaning the world has been used before in colloquial terms, but I have not seen it extended to the image of one person casually cleaning one day. The fact that the narrator is alone in this poem and finishes it with the idea of '20 minutes or an Aeon' passing demonstrates how powerless each of us are in the battle for a better world when up against governments who will not deal with one another in a gracious manner. Hopelessness is not conveyed until this last line, and so comes as even more cynical, because surely the reader will have been thinking how impossible it is throughout the piece. Moreover, the brevity of the piece ironically contrasts to how long a real clean up would take.

I seem to like this poem and so will look further into Ginsberg, maybe trying to read 'Howl', a much longer poem.

Give William a welcome

I have an upcoming course which studies Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis'. Today I decided to read ahead so that I don't start behind, and found that contrary to my prior assumption, this is not a play but a poem (I suppose that was why I had not heard of it being performed anywhere!). Well, I can now share my thoughts on said poem here. (Also, how have I not done a Shakespeare poem before this?!)

Unfortunately it is a mini epic poem and so I cannot paste it here; it took me an hour to read the whole piece. But it was not a long hour. I enjoyed each line and only found that I drifted into my mind's limbo land once, but the culprit there was the smell of my roast dinner cooking and so Shakespeare's writing cannot be blamed.

Here is the link if you are interested:

http://www.shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/w_venus.html

The basic plotline is that the goddess Venus falls in love (very quickly, as Greek gods love to do) with a male youth astride his horse. She captures him in her embrace and begs him to love her (and all the rest). When this comes to no avail due to his shame and anger at love being forced upon him, and also since he has made plans to hunt with friends, she begs but kisses. Eventually he relents and after much struggling (and also the loss of his horse to the pursuit of a mare!) escapes to hunt, but (spoiler alert) he is killed by the boar, as Venus has prophesied. I know that Shakespeare loved Ovid's Metamorphoses and so have a strong feeling that this story was sourced from that work, especially since Adonis' body transforms into a flower, which Venus keeps with her evermore.

There are some beautiful and telling lines in this poem. I liked one so much that I put it into my special quotes book; when Adonis is entreating Venus to let him go, he uses the argument that she does not love him, only lusts for him, and thus we are given the line,

'Love comforteth, like sunshine after rain'.

I keep nuggets like this in the hope that one day they will fabricate me the perfect wedding speech, the intricate references of which I am sure only I will appreciate!

Other good lines come from the most talkative character in the poem, Venus herself. She is oh-so suggestive, coming out with giggle-fests such as,

'Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.'

Her persistence comes to nought, however, and when she sees him dead, she thinks him so lovely that the boar must have merely wanted to kiss him too and so 'nuzzling in his flank' fondly, he killed him. The message here surely is that the power of love is dangerous and though it wishes to prevent tragedy, it often causes it. Story of Shakespeare's characters' lives I suppose.

I shall leave you with a pretty picture of the pair to entice you to read it. You will laugh at some of the lines (as I am sure is intentional), yet you will also deeply consider what it is to love and be loved (or not).