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  • Commentaries on Paramahansa Yogananda’s Songs of the Soul

    Image: Commentaries on Paramahansa Yogananda’s Songs of the Soul 

    Commentaries on Paramahansa Yogananda’s Songs of the Soul

    Each time my father, mother, friends
    Do loudly claim they did me tend,
    I wake from sleep to sweetly hear
    That Thou alone didst help me here.
    —from Paramahansa Yogananda’s “One Friend”

    for Ron Grimes, my soul mate with whom I travel the spiritual path

    This collection of personal commentaries is a companion to the book of spiritual poems, Songs of the Soul, written by Paramahansa Yogananda, the “Father of Yoga in the West.”  While these commentaries offer elucidation of each poem, they cannot offer the beauty and majesty experienced by reading the poems themselves.  

    I have included only an excerpt from each poem preceding each commentary.  I, therefore, humbly suggest that you acquire a copy of the great guru’s poems to experience them for yourself, along with my commentaries.  

    Paramahansa Yogananda’s Songs of the Soul is available at the Self-Realization Fellowship bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online outlets, as well as in bookstores everywhere.

    These commentaries are my personal responses to the poems in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Songs of the Soul.  If they assist any reader in understanding the poetic language on a deeper level, then that is a bonus, for my only purpose is to offer my own personal, humble reading.

    Brief Publishing History of Songs of the Soul 

    The first version of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Songs of the Soul appeared in 1923. He continued to revise the poems during the 1920s and 1930s, and the definitive revision that was authorized by the great guru was published in 1983, featuring many restored lines that had been excised from the first publication of the text. 

     The 1923 version of the collection of poems appears online at Internet Archive.  For my commentaries, I rely on the printed text of the 1983 version; the current printing year for that version is 2014.  The 1983 printing offers the final approved versions of these poems.

    Special Purpose of the Poems in Songs of the Soul

    The poems in Songs of the Soul come to the world not as mere literary pieces that elucidate and share common human experiences as most ordinary successful poems do, but these mystical poems also serve as inspirational guidance to enhance the study of the yoga techniques disseminated by the great guru, Paramahansa Yogananda.  

    He came to the West, specifically to Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States of America, to share his deep knowledge of yoga through techniques that lead the mind to conscious awareness of God, a phenomenon that he called “self-realization.” 

    The great guru published a series of lessons that contain the essence of his teaching as well as practical techniques of Kriya Yoga. His organization, Self-Realization Fellowship, has continued to publish collections of his talks in both print and audio format that he gave nationwide during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.  

    In addition to Songs of the Soul, the great guru/poet offers mystical poetic expressions in two other publications, Whispers from Eternity and Metaphysical Meditations, both of which serve in the same capacity that Songs of the Soul does, to assist the spiritual aspirant on the journey along the spiritual path.

    Please visit the official website for Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship for more information about the lessons offered by the organization.  And for an overview of Kriya Yoga, please see “Kriya Yoga Path of Meditation.”

    THE COMMENTARIES

    This section features the commentaries, one for each of the 101 poems in Songs of the Soul.  Each commentary is preceded by a brief introduction and excerpt from the poem.  Here I am offering the first commentaries, each with an excerpt from the poem.

    1.  “Consecration”

    In the opening poem, titled “Consecration,” the speaker humbly offers his works to his Creator.  He offers the love from his soul to the One Who gives him his life and his creative ability, as he dedicates his poems to the Divine Reality or God. 

    Introduction and Excerpt from “Consecration”

    Paramahansa Yogananda, the great guru/poet and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship, known as the “Father of Yoga in the West,” dedicates his book of mystical poems, Songs of the Soul, to his earthly father and consecrates it by offering it to his Heavenly Father (God—the Divine Creator). In dedicating his collection to his earthly father, the great guru writes,  

    Dedicated
    to my earthly father,
    who has helped me in all my spiritual
    work in India and America

    The first poem appearing in the great yogi-poet’s book of spiritual poems is an American (innovative) sonnet, featuring two sestets and a couplet with the rime scheme AABBCC DDEFGGHH. 

    The first sestet is composed of three rimed couplets; the second sestet features two rimed couplets and one unrimed couplet that occupies the middle of the sestet.  

    This innovative form of the sonnet is perfectly fitted to the subject matter and purpose of the Indian yogi, who has come to America to minister to the waiting souls, yearning for the benefits of the ancient yogic techniques in which the great guru will instruct them.

    The ancient Hindu yogic concepts offer assistance to Westerners in understanding their own spiritual traditions, including the dominant Christianity of which many are already devotees.  

    Excerpt from “Consecration”

    At Thy feet I come to shower
    All my full heart’s rhyming* flower:
    Of Thy breath born,
    By Thy love grown,
    Through my lonely seeking found,
    By hands Thou gavest plucked and bound . . . 

    *The spelling, “rhyme,” was introduced into English by Dr. Samuel Johnson through an etymological error.  As most editors require the Johnson-altered spelling of this poetic device, the text of Songs of the Soul also adheres to that requirement featuring the spelling, “rhyming.”  However, when I employ that term in my commentaries, I use the original spelling, “rime.”

    Commentary

    These spiritual poems begin with their consecration, a special dedication that offers them not only to the world but to God, the Ultimate Reality and Cosmic Father, Mother, Friend, Creator of all that is created. 

    First Sestet:  Dedication of Poetic Effort

    The speaker proclaims that he has come to allow his power of poetry to fall at the feet of his Divine Belovèd Creator.  He then avers that the poems as well as the poet himself are from God Himself. 

    The Divine Belovèd has breathed life into the poems that have grown out of the speaker’s love for the Divine.  The speaker has suffered great loneliness in his life before uniting with his Divine Belovèd.

    The spiritually striving speaker, however, has earnestly searched for and worked to strengthen his ability to unite with the Divine Creator, and he has been successful in attaining that great blessing.  

    The speaker/devotee is now offering that success to his Divine Friend because he knows that God is the ultimate reason for his capabilities to accomplish all of his worthwhile goals.  As he feels, works, and creates as a devotee, he gives all to God, without Whom nothing that is would ever be.

    Second Sestet:  Poems for the Divine 

    In the second sestet, the speaker asserts that he has composed these poems for the Belovèd Creator.  The collection of inspirational poetic works placed in these pages contains the essence of the guru-poet’s life and accomplishments made possible by the Supreme Spirit. 

    The writer asserts that from his life he has chosen the most pertinent events and experiences which will illuminate and inform the purpose of these poems.

    The speaker is metaphorically spreading wide the petals of his soul-flowers to allow “their humble perfume” to waft generously. 

    He is offering these works not merely as personal effusions of shared experience for the purpose of entertainment or self-expression but for the upliftment and soul guidance of others, especially for his own devoted followers. 

    His intended audience remains the followers of his teachings, for he knows they will continue to require his guidance as they advance on their spiritual paths. 

    The Couplet:  Humbly Returning a Gift

    The speaker then with prayer-folded hands addresses the Divine directly, averring that he is in reality only returning to his Divine Belovèd that which already belongs to that Belovèd. He knows that as a writer he is only the instrument that the Great Poet has used to create these poems.  

    As the humble writer, he takes no credit for his works but gives it all to the Prime Creator.  This humble poet/speaker then gives a stern command to his Heavenly Father, “Receive!” 

    As a spark of the Divine Father himself, this mystically advanced speaker/poet discerns that he has the familial right to command his Great Father Poet to accept the gift that the devotee has created through the assistance of the Divine Poet.

    2.  “The Garden of the New Year”

    In “The Garden of the New Year,” the speaker celebrates the prospect of looking forward with enthusiastic preparation to live “life ideally!”

    Introduction and Excerpt from “The Garden of the New Year”

    The ancient tradition of creating New Year’s resolutions has situated itself in much of Western culture, as well as Eastern culture. As a matter of fact, world culture participates in this subtle ritual either directly or indirectly.   This tradition demonstrates that hope is ever present in the human heart.  

    Humanity is always searching for a better way, a better life that offers prosperity, peace, and solace.  Although every human heart craves those comforts, each culture has fashioned its own way of achieving them.  And by extension, each individual mind and heart follows its own way through life’s vicissitudes.

    The second poem is titled “The Garden of the New Year.”  This poem dramatizes the theme of welcoming the New Year, using the metaphor of the garden where the devotee is instructed to pull out “weeds of old worries” and plant “only seeds of joys and achievements.”  

    The pulling out of weeds from the garden of life is a perfect metaphor for the concept of a New Year’s resolution.  We make those resolutions for improvement and to improve we often find that we must eliminate certain behaviors in order to instill better ones.

    The poem features five unrimed versagraphs*, of which the final two are excerpted.

    Excerpt from “The Garden of the New Year”

    . . . The New Year whispers:
    “Awaken your habit-dulled spirit
    To zestful new effort.
    Rest not till th’ eternal freedom is won
    And ever-pursuing karma outwitted!”

    With joy-enlivened, unendingly united mind
    Let us all dance forward, hand in hand,
    To reach the Halcyon Home
    Whence we shall wander no more . . . 

    *The term, “versagraph,” is a conflation of “verse paragraph,” the traditional unit of lines for free verse poetry.  I coined the term for use in my poem commentaries.

    Commentary

    This poem is celebrating living life “ideally,” through changing behavior that has limited that ability in the past.

    First Versagraph: Out with the Old and in with the New

    The speaker is addressing his listeners/readers as he asserts that the old year has left us, while the New Year is arriving.  The old year did spread its “sorrow and laughter,” yet the New Year holds promises of brighter encouragement and hope.   

    The New Year’s “song-voice” offers grace to the senses, while commanding, “Refashion life ideally!” 

    This notion is universally played out as many people fashion New Year’s resolutions, hoping to improve their lives in the coming year.  Because most people are always seeking to improve their situations, they determine how to do so and resolve that they will follow a new path that will lead to a better place.

    Second Versagraph:  Abandoning the Weed to Plant New Seeds

    In the second versagraph, the speaker employs the garden metaphor to liken the old problematic ways to weeds that must be plucked out so that the new ways can be planted and grow.

    The speaker instructs the metaphoric gardener to pull out the weeds of “old worries” and in their place plant “seeds of joys and achievements.”  Instead of allowing the weeds of doubt and wrong actions to continue growing, the spiritual gardener must plant seeds of “good actions and thoughts, all noble desires.” 

    Third Versagraph:  The Garden Metaphor

    Continuing the garden metaphor, the speaker advises the spiritual aspirant to “sow in the fresh soil of each new day / Those valiant seeds.”    After having sown those worthy seeds, the spiritual gardener must “water and tend them.” 

    The perfect metaphor for one’s life is the garden with its life-giving entities as well as its weeds.  As one tends a garden, one must tend one’s life as well to make them both the best environment for life to thrive.  By careful attention to the worthy, good seeds of attitudes and habits, the devotee’s life will become “fragrant / With rare flowering qualities.”

    Fourth Versagraph: New Year as Spiritual Guide

    The speaker then personifies the New Year as a spiritual guide who gives sage advice through whispers, admonishing the devotees to employ real effort to wake up their sleeping spirit that has become “habit-dulled.”    This new spiritual guide advises the spiritual aspirant to continue struggling until their “eternal freedom” is gained. 

    The spiritual searchers must work, revise their lives, and continue their study until they have “outwitted” karma, the result of cause and effect that has kept them earth-bound and restless for aeons. 

    The beckoning New Year always promises a new chance to change old ways.  But the seekers must do their part.  They must cling to their spiritual path, and as soon as they veer off, they must return again and again until they have reached their goal.

    Fifth Versagraph:  A Benediction of Encouragement

    The speaker then offers a benediction of encouragement, giving the uplifting nudge to all those spiritual aspirants who wish to improve their lives, especially their ability to follow their spiritual paths.  The speaker invites all devotees to “dance forward” together “With joy-enlivened, unendingly united mind.”  

    The speaker reminds his listeners that their goal is to unite their souls with their Divine Beloved Who awaits them in their “Halcyon Home.”  And once they achieve that Union, they will need no long venture out into the uncertainty and dangers as they exist on the physical plane. 

    The New Year always holds the promise, but the spiritual aspirant must do the heavy lifting to achieve the lofty goal of self-realization.

    3.  “My Soul Is Marching On”

    This amazing poem, “My Soul Is Marching On,” offers a refrain which devotees can chant and feel uplifted in times of lagging interest and seeming spiritual dryness.

    Introduction and Excerpt from “My Soul Is Marching On”

    The poem, “My Soul Is Marching On,” offers five stanzas, each with the refrain, “But still my soul is marching on!”  The poem demonstrates the soul’s power in contrast with the weaker powers of entities from nature.  For example, as strong as the light of the sun may be, it vanishes at night, and will eventually be extinguished altogether in the long, long run of aeons of time.

    Unlike those seemingly forceful, yet ultimately, much weaker physical, natural creatures, the soul of each individual human being remains a strong, vital, eternal, immortal force that will keep marching on throughout all time—throughout all of Eternity.

    Devotees who have chosen the path toward self-realization may sometimes feel discouraged as they tread the path, feeling that they do not seem to be making any progress.  But Paramahansa Yogananda’s poetic power comes to rescue them, giving in his poem a marvelous repeated line that the devotee can keep in mind and repeat when those pesky times of discouragement float across the mind.

    Included here are the epigram and first two stanza of the poem, “My Soul Is Marching On.”

    Excerpt from “My Soul Is Marching On”

    Never be discouraged by this motion picture of life.  Salvation is for all.  Just remember that no matter what happens to you, still your soul is marching on.  No matter where you go, your wandering footsteps will lead you back to God.  There is no other way to go.

    The shining stars are sunk in darkness deep,
    The weary sun is dead at night,
    The moon’s soft smile doth fade anon;
    But still my soul is marching on!

    The grinding wheel of time hath crushed
    Full many a life of moon and star,
    And many a brightly smiling morn;
    But still my soul is marching on! . . . 

    Commentary

    Before beginning his encouraging drama of renewal, Paramahansa Yogananda offers an epigram that prefaces the poem by stating forthrightly its intended purpose.  In case the reader may fail to grasp the drama of the poetic performance, the epigram will leave no one in doubt.  

    The Epigram:  A Balm to the Marching Soul

    The great guru avers that there is no other reality but the soul’s forward march.  Despite all circumstance to the contrary, the soul will, in fact, continue its march. 

    The devotee simply has to come to realize that fact that all “wandering footsteps” return to their home in the Divine.  The guru then states unequivocally, “There is no other way to go.” 

    This amazing, inspiring statement culminates in the refrain that allows the devotee to take into mind  a chant for upliftment anytime, anywhere it is needed. 

    First Stanza:  The Soul Marches on in Darkness

    The speaker begins by asserting that the bright bodies of the stars, sun, and moon are often hidden.  The stars seem to sink into the black backdrop of the sky, or even remain hidden by day, as if never to be seen again, yet other times, they are completely invisible.

    The largest dominant star of all—the sun—also seems to completely vanish from the sight of world-weary inhabitants of planet Earth.  The sun seems to be “weary” as it has crossed the diurnal sky and then sinks out of sight.

    The moon whose glow remains less bright compared to the sun, nevertheless, also fades out of sight.  All of these bright orbs of such tremendous magnitude glow and fade, for they are mere physical beings.

    The speaker then adds his marvelous, encouraging claim that becomes his refrain—”But still my soul is marching on!”  The speaker will continue repeating this vital assertion as he dramatizes his poem to encourage and uplift devotees whose spirits may from time-to-time lag. 

    This refrain will then ring in their souls and urge them to keep marching because their souls are already continuing that march.

    Second Stanza:  Nothing Physical Can Halt the Spiritual

    The speaker then reports that time has already smashed moons and stars and obliterated them from existence.  Many cycles of creation and recreation have come and gone from the annals of eternity. 

    That eventuality remains the nature of physical creation:  it emerges from the depths of the body of the Divine Creator and then later is taken back into that Divine Body, disappearing as if they had never been.

    But regardless of what happens on the physical level, the soul remains an existing Entity throughout Eternity.  The soul of each individual continues its journey.  It makes no difference on which planet it may appear; it may continue from planet to planet, if necessary, as it marches back to its Creator. 

    The soul will continue to “stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds” because that is the nature of the indestructible soul, the life energy that informs each human being.

    That soul will continue its march to the Divine, despite all cosmic activity.  Nothing can prevent the soul’s forward march, nothing can stop the marching soul, and nothing can hinder that march.  The refrain shall again and again ring in the mind of the devotee who has begun this march to self-realization.

    Third Stanza:  The Evanescence of Nature 

    The speaker then reports on other natural phenomena.  Marvelous, beautiful flowers have offered their colorful blooms to the eyes of humankind, but then they invariably fade and shrivel up to nothingness.  The evanescence of beauty remains a conundrum for the mind of humankind.  

    Like the beauty yielding flowers, the gigantic trees offer their “bounty” for only a while, and then they too sink into nothingness.  The naturally appearing entities that feed the human mind as well as the human body all mysteriously come under ” time’s scythe,” appearing and disappearing again and again.

    But the soul again remains in contrast to these wonderful natural entities.  The soul continues its eternal march, unlike the outer physical realities of flowers and trees. 

    The human soul will continue its march, as will the invisible souls of those seemingly vanishing nature’s living beings.  The refrain must take hold in the mind of the devotee, who in times of lagging interest and self-doubt will chant its truth and become re-invigorated.

    Fourth Stanza:  As Physical Life Fades, The Soul Continues Unabated  

    All of the great emissaries sent by the Divine Creator continue to speed by.  Vast swaths of time also speed by as creation seems to remain on a collision course with ultimate disaster. 

    The human being must remain in a perpetually vigilant state of mind just to remain alive in this dangerous and pestilent-filled world.  Even human against human remains a continued concern as “man’s inhumanity to man” prevails in very age in every nation of planet Earth.

    But the speaker is not only referring to the small planet at a short period of time; he is speaking cosmically of the entire history of all Creation.  He is averring that being born a human being at any time in history brings that individual soul into the same arena of struggle. 

    As each human being lets fling his arrows in battle, the individual finds that all of his “arrows” have been used up.  He finds his life ebbing away.

    But again, while the physical body remains the battle ground of trials and tribulations, the soul is unaffected.   It will continue on its path back to its Divine Haven, where it will no longer need those arrows.  The devotee will continue to chant this truth again and again to spark his march to greater heights.

    Fifth Stanza:  The Refrain Must Remain 

    The speaker has observed that his fight with nature has been a fierce one.  Failures have blocked his way.  He has experienced the ravages of death’s destruction.  He has had to face obstructions blocking “his path.” 

    All of nature has conspired to “block [his] path.” Nature has always been a challenging force, but the human being who has determined to overcome the ravages of nature will find that his “fight” is stronger than that of nature, despite the fact that nature remains a “jealous” power.

    The soul continues to march to its home in God, where it will never again have to face the fading of beautiful light, the vanishing of colorful flowers, the failures that obstruct and slow one’s pace. 

    The soul will continue to march, to study, to practice, to meditate, and to pray until it at last experiences success, until it as last finds itself totally awake in the arms of the Blessed Divine Over-Soul, from which it has come.  The devotee will continue to hear that amazingly uplifting line and continue to know that his/her “soul is marching on!”

  • If My Words Could Rise & Other Poems

    Image: If My Words Could Rise & Other Poems

    Dedicated with my love and gratitude 
    to my sweet Ron

    The following poems appear in my collection titled If My Words Could Rise, available on Amazon as paperback or Kindle.

    1 If My Words Could Rise

    Dedicated to my sweet Ron

    If my words could rise
    Like smoke
    They would form your face
    In the clouds
    They would hang
    In the tops of the trees
    Looking for a nest
    Where a mother bird sits
    On eggs
    The color of your eyes

    2 In the Tops of the Trees

    “As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the trees, then attack, for God has attacked in front of you to defeat the Philistine army.” —2 Samuel 5:25 Common English Bible

    –for the moldman, who screeched, “That’s my line!”

    No, dude, that is not your line!
    No matter how many times
    Or with how much spit
    You spew it.

    Trees and their tops
    And the words they live in
    Belong to all of us.  Go!
    Dig your hole–grovel in your slime.

    3 Dreams and Days

    “His tongue cuts / Slices of meat / From the hearts / And livers / Of those / Who would love him” – “Between Slices of Bread” —from Linda Sue Grimes’ At the End of the Road

    I quote myself, well then,
    I quote myself —
    I include multitudes —
    Uncle Walt taught me that much.

    The man in the poem
    Cannot bring himself to say
    Or to pray about his own lividness
    He shuts out spaces and commas
    Lives in his own relevance.

    He murders his own children
    With his viper attitude
    And nibbles the ankles
    Of prostitutes
    Who erase his will to power on.

    You have seen him
    Perhaps did not recognize him —
    He has sat in your parlor
    Sipping your coffee
    Dusting off his duplicitous moves —

    He fears death but not yours
    He imagines you at the bottom
    Of a cold, black ocean
    Your tongue bait for the fishes
    His Bolshevik brain conjures.

    Your freedom is a fantasy 
    If you remain too close to his heat
    Get your life back – get your love back
    Where God made you in his image
    And you are close to seeing it.

    4 Flesh and Desire

    “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”  —T. S. Eliot

    Into the fire of wisdom, thoughts go to perish.
    “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Christ commands.
    But we still wobble behind the Devil
    Hoping to be snatched from the arms of death
    In time for supper and for the many tomorrows
    We image we still possess.
    In the valley of dreck and poison, I have lived
    Even as I knew better or thought I did.
    No, I am not here to testify.
    Although a word or two of testimony
    May slip out every line or so!
    I can pound sand with the best of them.
    But I can also bitch and moan.
    Where is the beginning of joy and rectitude?
    One might ask.  Where is the promise?
    O, come on!  You know where the promise is . . .
    Yes, just testing the waters and they are warm.
    Every time I delay, I am warned.  Just pray
    And wait and listen close and tight to the hum
    In the brain.  I will follow.  I will follow close.
    Yes, I will.  And flesh with its crude desire
    Will no longer taint the years
    With their distractions.
    The mercy of Spirit will wipe my tears. 

  • At the End of the Road & Other Poems

    Image:  At the End of the Road & Other Poems

    At the End of the Road & Other Poems

    Dedicated to the memory of my father and mother:
    Bert Richardson, January 12, 1913–August 5, 2000
    & Helen Richardson, June 27, 1923–September 5, 1981

    The following poems appear in my collection titled At the End of the Road & Other Poems available on Amazon.

    1 Earned Pain

    —owed to Emily Dickinson’s “Joy to have merited the Pain“

    Earned pain fades into joy,
    Gains a vivid, long liberation.
    Each phase dissolving into joy –
    Then paradise on the horizon.

    Absolved, my eyes grow strong,
    Peering into the ancient eye,
    Improved and brooking no wrong
    Approaching paradise, I realize.

    That these eyes glimpse Thine eye
    And that Thou glimpst mine atone
    And attest that my brown eyes
    And Thy sacred sight are one.

    Thou consumest all time, remaining
    Infinitely present, never astray –
    An eastern spirit explaining
    Morning to the day.

    Evoking Thy highest peak
    And the valley far below,
    My voice can speak
    Inside the darkest shadow,

    Spiritualizing all space and time
    As years drop eternally
    Ghost day by ghost night
    Journeying through eternity. 

    2 A Summer Dream Phantasm

    sweet dreams for the monster

    At the edge of the water
    We sit together
    Talking about heaven & earth
    Poems & love.

    You ask if I still think of you
    While you are away.
    I throw a stone into the water.
    The answer is the ripples.

    3 In Dreams We Happen to Meet

    for Mr. Sedam, my poetry benefactor

    “I protest your protest its hairy irrelevancy” —”Malcolm M. Sedam’s ‘Desafinado’“

    In dreams we happen to meet
    On some mystic, planetary hill —
    Poetry eludes us yet we commence
    Talking about the sham progress
    Bleeding hearts have inflicted.

    The professor in you wants to align
    Wokeward but you cannot bring yourself
    To spring into the claptrap that clamped
    Shut on Ginsbergian filth, deviance
    And that mayhem of hairy irrelevance.

    You think of your children
    Wading into the waters of vipers
    Nipping their ankles
    Snapping their necks
    Erasing their freedom and will.

    You would have those you love
    Experience their own close calls —
    You crashed into your own
    As you flew those planes
    Over the Pacific, fighting that war —

    Facing death, watching death
    Take soldier after soldier
    Leaving you with the intuition
    Outcomes cannot be guaranteed
    By bureaucratic Bolsheviks.

    Only freedom of opportunity
    Guarantees free will remains free
    And life continues to beget life
    In the magnolious scheme that God
    Made man after His Own image.

    4 Bone Couplets

    “Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone…”  —Anne Bradstreet

    They outshine the flesh in the reign of desire
    Where pink like a blush goes on shining like fire.
    Fat necked imbeciles, brain-numbed and wrong
    On every backboned thought that ever ran along
    The confines of the apple of Adam sweetened
    In the birdless cage rump-driven and weakened.
    Greed and swagger click the gangling matter
    Knuckles cling and circle each limb to tatter.
    Hipbones narrow in the faulty weather.
    The bare truth flies out on filth-tinged feather.
    Bring me back to the place where life can stand!
    Let me feel the smooth relief of pounding sand!
    This belly swore it would unburden the green.
    Within the sulking skull it makes its way to preen.
    In the sweet toned laughter where children move
    And every old fart says he will not prove
    Until the night breaks over those who pray
    And every chime kinks the ear heaven to delay.
    Relevant as an old donkey on an extended beach
    The moon sinks into ripe flesh as if to teach
    Those angry cells to leave off all that hunger.
    No years will ease—no one will grow younger
    Than the moth whose flame has singed his wings
    Clacking bare truth to the mercy of things.

    5 A Terrible Fish

    “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
      Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.  —Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”

    The nightmare repeats itself:
    A daughter clamped tight to each foot
    Pulling her down under
    The brute waters of the dark, deep lake —
    She gasps — imagines she’s drowning
    While her husband watching from the levy
    Wrings his hands, faints in the heavy fog.
    A terrible fish looms under her nose;
    She smells blood dripping
    From a dozen hooks dangling
    From his mouth.
    His eyeballs slide out easy
    As the drawer of a cash register.
    Each eye-socket a window
    To her own soul — $ bills
    With little jackpots on them
    Jump up and dance like clowns
    Poking out their tongues,
    Flapping signs of slogans
    With hammers, sickles, swastikas —
    She believes – ¡Sí, se puede!
    Morning shivers her awake again,
    Stumbling to the bathroom
    Where the mirror flashes
    In her face that same terrible fish
    That has been catching her dreams
    And throwing them back
    As she chases each $,
    Never quite able to grasp enough.

  • Turtle Woman & Other Poems

    Image:  Turtle Woman & Other Poems

    Turtle Woman & Other Poems

    for Ron, who brings out the poetry in my life

    The following poems are from my published collection, Turtle Woman & Other Poems, available on Amazon.

    1  Turtle Woman

    “When the yogi, like a tortoise withdrawing its limbs, 
    can fully retire his senses from the objects of perception,
     his wisdom manifests steadiness.”     —Bhagavad Gita II:58

    Will you still love me if I finish first?

    Slow as I am to you whose speed is your god, I move.
    Admiring really your shell-less existence—
    On my back it’s sometimes hard to right myself.
    In the soup they call me a delicacy,
    So I praise vegetarians,
    Though I myself sometimes snap
    At insects, small fish, & moving fingers.

    But what’s a creature so heavy-laden to do?

    O, lest I sound maudlin
    Or sorry for my webbed feet,
    I withdraw my questions
    Along with my head & legs
    And drop out of your race.

    2  Starvers

    for K. R.

    She starves
    Her body
    & her mind
    Stands vacant  haunted
    She’s dying
    To be thin
    She’s not
    Concerned
    With curves
    She wants
    Angles
    Points
    Narrow
    Hollow
    Spaces
    What she craves
    All starvers
    Understand
    A bulge around the middle
    Is a sin against God
    Thighs that spread out over a chair bottom
    Make you sick
    Breasts that mound under a sweater
    Make you gutter for breath
    Round arms  full face  big calves  wide hips  double chin
    A mighty army marching over your skeleton
    Capturing your pleasures
    Holding your life hostage
    You’re a prisoner in a guardhouse
    A dog in a pound
    Weight and measurement
    Are not useful tools
    They are obsessions
    She has starved
    Her body
    Thin
    But she cannot
    Exorcise that last
    Ghost of flesh
    That ghost that keeps adjusting the damn mirror that throws
    Back a size in your face  a size that screams
    Just a little smaller
    Just a little thinner
    And then
    Everything
    Will be OK . . . 

    8  Metaphysical Reminders

    Where that brain stores its loot
    There stands a cabin by the river,
    Where it dreamed a body too good
    For flesh and bones,
    Too good for breath and blood
    Where the clock spills stars,
    Hands that milk until honey flows,
    And a mouth that torches neck to toe.

    And as it worked itself out there
    On that bed of river mud
    Squeezing and kneading
    Lust from every pore,
    As hips pushed and crushed,
    The end of an era seemed at hand,
    And if you slept through the night,
    You would awake with the clock 
    And a note on your pillow
    Telling you to get yourself out of there—
    The river is rising.

    24  Greek Skin 

    for my mother’s father, Gus Johnson

    In a Kentucky coal mine he fell across the track
    and a loaded coal car cut off his right arm.

    This world offers no shelter to nervous pilgrims; 
    this world takes a dim view of pain even as it inflicts it, 
    as if some people were meant to starve, 
    as if some people were meant to speak 
    English with a Greek accent, 
    but my mother loved him so much that his death
    became her deepest grief, and when she crossed
    the bridge that connects this world with his, I hope
    he met and greeted her with both arms,
    he won’t let her fall through a hole in the sky, will he? 
    And though he never had the chance to speak
    a word to me, I think he must have been a multitude
    of races and climates, my blood senses his Greek skin
    was tinged with Africa, my mother’s darkness
    and my father’s whiteness left me an odd shade of gray.
    It’s not so much confusion as an unwillingness to pray—
    Yet many fold their hands when trees lash in the violent air.

    But if he knew my concern, he could wipe from my mind 
    the dust that blew in from faraway places 
    where they cut down all the trees 
    and cut off the hands of innocent thieves
    and Greek slaves slaughtered each other
    to entertain a Roman tyrant.

    92  Alex as Artist

    It’s a dog’s life.

    When he curls up beside me on the couch 
    and settles into steady breathing,
    his ease of comfort flows like a polished sonnet.
    He has mastered the art of comfort.

    When I cook, he perfects his craft of begging.  
    Taking bits of food off 
    the ends of fingers requires precise placement
     of teeth and tongue. 
    He’s mastered the art of eating.

    Some say he’s cowardly, but he’s just careful. 
    The artist’s eye and ear perceive the world 
    to be a dangerous place, 
    so he’s crafty to run from loud noises 
    and sudden moves.

    Some say he’s dumb, but he’s just deliberate.
    He wants to keep body and soul together
    and retire a well-matured craftsman.

    Unlike schemers, shams, and fantasizers,
     he takes his art quite literally,

    and he has learned to simplify: beg food, bark, 
    and sleep  sleep  sleep.

    Since publication of Turtle Woman & Other Poems, I have revised “Alex as Artist” into the form of an American-Innovative sonnet:

    Alex as Artist

    It’s a dog’s life.

    When he curls up beside me on the couch and settles into steady breathing,
    his ease of comfort flows like a polished sonnet.
    He has mastered the art of comfort.

    When I cook, he perfects his craft of begging. Taking bits of food off 
    the ends of fingers requires precise placement of teeth and tongue.
    He’s mastered the art of eating.

    Some say he’s cowardly, but he’s just careful. 
    The artist’s eye and ear perceive the world to be a dangerous place,
    so he’s crafty to run from loud noises and sudden moves.

    Some say he’s dumb, but he’s just deliberate.
    He wants to keep body and soul together
    and retire a well-matured craftsman.

    Unlike schemers, shams, and fantasizers, he takes his art quite literally,
    and he has learned to simplify: beg food, bark, and sleep sleep sleep.

    ***

    To read my prose commentary on this poem, please visit, “Original Poem: ‘Alex as Artist’ with Prose Commentary” at Discover.HubPages.

  • Command Performance: Singing for God and Guru

    Image:  Command Performance 

    Command Performance: Singing for God and Guru

    To Thee I humbly offer my songs
    That Thou hast given me

    Introduction

    These poems grow out of my experience serving as harmonium player/chant leader for our Nashville Self-Realization Fellowship Sunday Readings Service.  

    I title this collection Command Performance for I have attempted to retire from the chant leader position, offering it to other devotees, but no one thus far wishes to take it from me.  

    And often I have come to the chapel Readings Service, thinking I would merely be attending, only to find that the scheduled chant leader was unavailable and so the service leader would prevail upon me to fill the void; thus, another “command performance.”  

    I reason that Guruji Paramahansa Yogananda is commanding me to continue performing this function, as long as I am capable. 

    Poems from Chants

    These original poem were all inspired by the chant, whose title is offered following the poem title.

    Who says, She is Dark?

    —after “Thousands of Suns and Moons”

    Her smile beams
    With the rays
    Of a millions suns.

    Her skin glows
    With the light
    Of a million moons.

    Who says, She is dark?

    Only those who refuse
    To open their eye
    To her light.

    Joy, Joy, Joy!

    —after “Ever New Joy”

    Joy, joy, joy—
    Morning has broken in joy.
    Light of starlight, hiding
    Behind the sun.

    Joy, joy, joy—
    Noon breaks bread
    Lovingly baked
    By God-guided hands.

    Joy, joy, joy—
    Evening calls the faithful
    To rest from a full day’s labor
    Practiced by Divine decree.

    Joy, joy, joy—
    Night covers maya’s delusion
    So the spiritual eye
    May bound in brilliance.

    Thou art That

    —after “Hymn to Brahma”

    Beyond my thoughts,
    Beyond my ideas,
    Beyond my knowledge,
    Far beyond my wisdom—
    Thou are That.

    Beyond my body,
    Beyond my mind,
    Beyond my energy,
    One with my soul—
    Thou art That.

    Drowning in Glory

    —after “I Am the Bubble, Make Me the Sea”

    You wake my senses to clear sight, glorious sound,
    Intelligent touch, pure fragrance, tempered taste.
    You wake my senses by drowning them in Glory
    Inundating them in the silence of Your vastness,
    Spilling on them the majestic light show
    Of Your body, bound by boundlessness.

    In the ocean of Your love, my bubble heart
    Contracts and expands to eternity.
    My restless brain shrinks and extends
    Its reach to unknown realms of wisdom.
    My soul knows itself in the crash of breaking worlds
    Where it stands unshaken hand in hand with You.
    As You do, so I wish to do forever,
    Drowning in the Glory of Your sacred presence.

  • Sara Teasdale’s “I Am Not Yours”

    Image: Sara Teasdale

    Sara Teasdale’s “I Am Not Yours”

    In the hands of a less skilled artist, the love theme of this lyric often trots out a tired cliché, but Sara Teasdale’s speaker makes it fresh and new.

    Introduction and Text of “I Am Not Yours”

    Taking the theme of deep and lasting love, the speaker in Sara Teasdale’s “I Am Not Yours” employs the poetic device of hyperbole to convey her emotion.  Three riming quatrains using the traditional scheme of ABCB unfold the poem’s drama.

    I Am Not Yours

    I am not yours, not lost in you,
    Not lost, although I long to be
    Lost as a candle lit at noon,
    Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

    You love me, and I find you still
    A spirit beautiful and bright,
    Yet I am I, who long to be
    Lost as a light is lost in light.

    Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
    My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
    Swept by the tempest of your love,
    A taper in a rushing wind.

    Commentary on “I Am Not Yours”

    While lovers are prone to exaggerate in artistic endeavors the level to which they have become part of their love one, this speaker on Sara Teasdale’s “I Am Not Yours” dramatizes a very different approach: a series of negative exaggerations that emphasize the positive.

    First Quatrain:  No Romantic Exaggeration

    I am not yours, not lost in you,
    Not lost, although I long to be
    Lost as a candle lit at noon,
    Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

    The speaker directs her words to her beloved in an extraordinary manner, by claiming that she is not possessed by him and that she has not lost herself in his charms.  While lovers are prone to exaggerate in artistic endeavors the level to which they have become part of their love one, this speaker dramatizes a very different approach.

    Thus this speaker then changes her direction as she proclaims that even though she is “not lost in [him],” she desires wholeheartedly that she might become so. She, therefore, states that she would like to be as is “a candle lit at noon.”  A candle at noon would barely show light at all as it would meld with the natural sunlight.

    The speaker then asserts that she would like to become part of her beloved as “a snowflake in the sea.” The oceanic presence of her beloved has engulfed her heart in such as way that she can liken herself to the smallness and malleability of a flake of snow melting in the ocean.

    The original claim that she does not belong to the addressee has now been set on its head.  Although literally it will always be true that she is not his and she is not lost in him, her desire for that blending has caused her imagination to conjure such a state in a majestic manner of metaphorical supremacy.

    Second Quatrain: Total Melding of Body, Mind, Soul

    You love me, and I find you still
    A spirit beautiful and bright,
    Yet I am I, who long to be
    Lost as a light is lost in light.

    The second quatrain confirms that the speaker is, indeed, loved by the target of her desire.  As she claims, “I am I,” she hungers for annihilation of self, that is, to melt into her lover. Her drama continues the seeking after total blending of body, mind, and spirit with the beloved.

    The speaker continues to wish for that complete melding with her lover, as she has shown from the beginning of her drama.  She wants to be totally consumed in the love she feels for him:  to be “lost [in him] as light is lost in light.”

    Third Quatrain:  Annihilation of Separation

    Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
    My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
    Swept by the tempest of your love,
    A taper in a rushing wind.

    The final quatrain finds the speaker essentially begging for the awareness of her wish to experience complete emersion in her beloved. She pleads, “Oh plunge me deep in love.”  The speaker desires to exist so close to her beloved that she has no need to hear or see. 

    His love and affection will be her only awareness and guide.  She begs that all her sense awareness become “swept by the tempest of your love.”  Again, the speaker returns to the candle metaphor.  She wishes to be so completely subsumed in him that she becomes a “taper in a rushing wind.” No longer is there a separation between the two lovers.

    Avoiding the Tired, the Obnoxious, the Clichéd

    The theme of this love lyric is a common one for lovers; pop lyrics use it over-abundantly. The idea of becoming so consumed by love that one wishes to melt into one’s lover has long been a cliché; the serious artist who employs this theme works to dramatize it in fresh, original ways.

    That freshness is achieved by Teasdale in her opening remarks, “I am not yours, not lost in you” and in her use of light as the substance to which she compares her desired union with her beloved.

    She avoids all of the tired and obnoxious sexual connotations that usually appear in portrayals of this theme. This lyric’s elocution remains so elevated that it could be interpreted as a devotee’s prayer to the Divine.

  • Renée Nicole Macklin’s “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”

    Image: Created by Grok

    Renée Nicole Macklin’s “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”

    The eight movements in this piece of postmodern doggerel serve to indict the scribbling as nothing more than a postmodern workshop exercise.  It remains one of the most flagrant tells that something is wrong in education culture in the USA: this poem won the 2020 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize at Old Dominion University.

    Introduction and Text of “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”

    This piece “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” does not merely fail on its own terms; it exemplifies a system that has mistaken posture for poetry and grievance for vision. The entire spectrum along with its habits have become unmistakable—and depressingly standardized.

    On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs

    i want back my rocking chairs,

    solipsist sunsets,
    & coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy
    legs of cockroaches.

    i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores
    (mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—
    the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of
    zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):

    remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they
    burned the hairs inside my nostrils,
    & salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.
    under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat
                   ribosome
                   endoplasmic—
                   lactic acid
                   stamen

    at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—

    i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to
    anymore, maybe my gut—
    maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

    it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.
    can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom

                   now i can’t believe—
                   that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my
    ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—
    all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:
    life is merely
    to ovum and sperm
    and where those two meet
    and how often and how well
    and what dies there.

    Commentary on “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”

    Line breaks are not thoughts; failure to capitalize signals nothing profound.  This piece strains to be original to the point of exhaustion.  Its sprawling placement on the page does not equate to anything Whitmanesque; its mindless juxtapositions do little more than startle and stun and then fall flat.

    First Movement: Nostalgia as Substitute for Form

    i want back my rocking chairs,

    solipsist sunsets,
    & coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.

    The piece opens with a whine rather than an image: “i want back my rocking chairs.” This awkwardly phrased salvo is not memory shaped by art; it is desire announced without effort. The rocking chair is a prefabricated symbol, wheeled in to signal premodern calm without earning it.

    The gesture toward “tercets” and “pentameter” is particularly revealing. These features are not forms the poem employs but instead are terms it waves at the reader like credentials: “look I know some poetry terms I learned in my creative writing class.” 

    Meter becomes metaphor, form becomes flavoring. As Helen Vendler insists, poetry requires a thinking ear, not a decorative vocabulary [1]. This poem treats form the way lifestyle branding treats craft: as an aesthetic aura, not a discipline.

    Second Movement: Desecration as Cultural Credential

    i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores
    (mashed them in plastic trash bags… the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):

    Here we arrive at the first ritual sacrifice. Sacred texts are not confronted, questioned, or even read; they are disposed of theatrically. The Bible appears only as an evangelical pamphlet, never as literature, theology, or intellectual inheritance.

    Such effusion is not critique; it is credentialing. George Steiner warned that modern art’s fixation on desecration often signals creative exhaustion rather than courage [2]. The poem performs disbelief the way a résumé lists internships. As Harold Bloom observed, contemporary poetry often avoids agon—the struggle with strong precursors—in favor of symbolic vandalism [3]. Trash bags replace thought.

    Third Movement: Science as Vocabulary Trauma

    remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they
    burned the hairs inside my nostrils,
    & salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.
    under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat
                   ribosome
                   endoplasmic—
                   lactic acid
                   stamen

    Science enters the poem not as inquiry but as irritation. Scientific terms are recited like curse words, their meanings irrelevant. The poem resents knowledge without attempting to understand it.

    James Longenbach has noted that free verse collapses when it merely records annoyance rather than transforming it [4]. Here, scientific language is treated as an assault on sensitivity, revealing not science’s limitations but the speaker’s refusal to engage it beyond syllabic discomfort.

    Fourth Movement: Specificity as Alibi

    at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—

    This line is the system’s shibboleth. The named diner is not symbol, setting, or pressure point—it is proof of authenticity. The poem assumes that coordinates equal meaning.  Randall Jarrell warned that poetry which merely reports experience degenerates into prose with line breaks [5]. This IHOP does nothing but exist, which the poem treats as sufficient.

    Fifth Movement: The Soul, Shrunk for Convenience

    maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

    Here the poem congratulates itself for modesty by reducing the soul to runoff. Unlike metaphysical poetry, which used bodily imagery to heighten spiritual stakes, this poem uses anatomy to flatten them.

    Christopher Ricks argued that metaphor should increase imaginative pressure [6]. This one relieves it. The soul becomes small enough not to trouble anyone—including the poet.

    Sixth Movement: The Straw-Man Dialectic

    this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom

    Faith and science are staged as cartoon antagonists: faith as comfort blanket, science as rude undergraduate. This weasel language is not dialectic; it is melodrama for the intellectually uncurious.

    As T. S. Eliot warned, poetry that mistakes emotional dissatisfaction for insight substitutes complaint for thought [7]. The poem invents a conflict it cannot articulate and then sulks about it.

    Seventh Movement: Wonder Infantilized

    the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to…

    Wonder here is not earned but remembered—and remembered only as childhood comfort. Sacred texts become maternal figures, soothing rather than demanding.

    Eliot cautioned against confusing regression with depth. This passage does exactly that. The poem inadvertently admits that its concept of wonder cannot survive adulthood and then blames knowledge for the failure.

    Eighth Movement: The Grand Reduction (a.k.a. The Sulk)

    life is merely
    to ovum and sperm
    and where those two meet
    and how often and how well
    and what dies there.

    The poem concludes with the system’s obligatory finale: a reduction so crude it pretends to be brave. Life is reduced to sex and death, as though no one has ever thought this before.

    No serious scientist, philosopher, or poet holds such a view, and the poem does not pretend to argue it. As Eliot observed, exhaustion presented as revelation is still exhaustion. The poem ends not with insight, but with a pout.

    An Afterword: Dissatisfaction Does Not Bring Wisdom

    Macklin’s “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” exemplifies the current rot that passes for poetry because it wants the authority of crisis without the labor of understanding. It rejects form while gesturing at it, dismisses belief without engaging it, and resents knowledge without learning it. 

    It longs for rocking chairs but refuses carpentry. What it offers instead is the familiar debris of postmodern workshop verse: fragments of feeling, gestures of rebellion, and the unexamined belief that dissatisfaction is a form of wisdom.  It is not.

    Readers might notice that this essay does not even begin to address the awkwardness of language use this piece, which would require another essay to fully engage the issue. Suffice it to say that said awkwardness could, in fact, result either from intent or simply lack of language acumen of the doggerelist.

    Either reason aligns with postmodern thought that dismisses utility for heft and originality for quaint novelty. For the postmod mindset, Ezra Pound’s diktat “make it new” [8] has become “make it shockingly ugly.”

    Sources

    [1] Helen Vendler. The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Harvard UP, 1997.

    [2] George Steiner. Real Presences. University of Chicago Press, 1989.

    [3] Harold Bloom. The Anxiety of Influence. Oxford UP, 1973.

    [4] James Longenbach. The Resistance to Poetry. University of Chicago Press, 2004.

    [5] Randall Jarrell. Poetry and the Age. University Press of Florida, 2001.

    [6] Christopher Ricks. The Force of Poetry. Oxford UP, 1984.

    [7] T. S. Eliot. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. Harvard UP, 1933.

    [8] Ezra Pound. Make It New: Essays.  Faber and Faber. 1934.

  • Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”

    Image:  Sylvia Plath

    Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror”

    The speaker in Sylvia Plath’s masterpiece “Mirror” employs a double metaphor of personifying a mirror and then a lake to report the experience of observing a woman obsessed with the disfiguring of her aging face.

    Introduction with Text of “Mirror”

    One of the best American poems of the 20th century, Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” plays out in only two unrimed, nine-line verse paragraphs (veragraphs). The theme of the poem focuses on the reality of the aging process. The personified mirror dramatizes its amazing skill in reflecting whatever is placed before it exactly as the object is.  

    A lake serving as a mirror performs the same function of truth-telling.  It is the mirror as lake, however, who is assigned the privilege of reporting the flailing agitation and tears of the woman who watches and senses that her aging face resembles “a terrible fish” that is rising toward her. 

    The death of Sylvia Plath at the tender age of thirty renders unto this awesome poem an uncanny quality. Because Plath left this earth at such an early age, the poet put an end to the actuality that she could have undergone the aging process as the woman in the poem is doing.  

    Plath is grouped with the 20th century “Confessional Poets,” but she often wrote poems that cannot be labeled confessional in that they do not reflect her life experience.  Rather than confessing in “Mirror,” the young poet is merely speculating through a speaker, as most poets of any stripe usually do.

    Mirror

    I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
    Whatever I see I swallow immediately
    Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
    I am not cruel, only truthful‚
    The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
    Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
    It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
    I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
    Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

    Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
    Searching my reaches for what she really is.
    Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
    I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
    She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
    I am important to her. She comes and goes.
    Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
    In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
    Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

    Reading of “Mirror”  

    Commentary on “Mirror”

    The poem “Mirror” is arguably Sylvia Plath’s best poetic effort, and it is arguably also one of the best poems in American poetry.

    First Versagraph:  The Mirror Speaks

    I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
    Whatever I see I swallow immediately
    Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
    I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
    The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
    Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
    It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
    I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
    Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

    The personified mirror opens the poem with a clear and accurate boast that he holds no prior prejudice against or for whatever appears before him. The mirror continues to proclaim his uncanny truthful ability for over half the versagraph.  He reports that he takes in whatever is placed before him with no compunction to change the subject in any way. 

    The mirror cannot be moved by emotion as human beings are so motivated. The mirror simply reflects back the cold hard facts, unfazed by human desires and whims. The mirror does, however, seem almost to possess the human quality of pride in its ability to remain objective. 

    As the mirror continues his objective reporting, he claims that he is “not cruel, only truthful.” Again, he is making his case for complete objectivity, making sure his listeners understand that he always portrays each object before him as the object actually is. 

    However, again he might go a little too far, perhaps spilling his pride of objectivity into the human arena, real as he proclaims himself to be as the eye of “a little god, four-cornered.” By overstating his qualities, and by taking himself so seriously as to deify himself, he begins to lose his credibility.

    Bu then as the listener/reader may be starting to waver from too much truth telling, the mirror jolts the narrative to what he actually does: he habitually renders the color of the opposite wall that has speckles on it.  And he avers that he has concentrated so long on that wall that he feels that the wall might be part of his own heart. 

    The listener/reader can then understand that a mirror with a heart might actually tend to exaggerate and even take on some tinge of human emotion, even though it is likely that a mirror’s heart would toil quite differently from the heart of a human being. 

    The mirror confesses that as the objects confront him, as these “faces” and “darkness” come and go, they effect a flicker that would no doubt agitate the mirror’s sensibilities, regardless of how objective and truthful the mirror remains in human terms.

    Second Versagraph:  The Lake Metaphor

    Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
    Searching my reaches for what she really is.
    Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
    I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
    She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
    I am important to her. She comes and goes.
    Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
    In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
    Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

    Reading a poem can deliver the reader into a state of “narrosis”—a state once rendered by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”  A reader must allow him/herself to believe, if only temporarily, what the narrative is saying. 

    It is with this “poetic faith” that a listener/reader must accept the claim that the “mirror” has now become a “lake.”  The dramatic effect is all important here in order to have the woman bending over the water to continue that search for herself. 

    The woman hopes to find “what she really is,” according to the mirror/lake.  While the mirror might believe that the woman is searching for her real self, readers will grasp immediately that her obsession centers on her desire to hold on to her youth.

    The mirror/lake then ridicules the woman for wanting to believe, “those liars,” that is, “the candles or the moon,” whose lighting can be deceptive, filling in those facial wrinkles, allowing her to believe that she does not look as old as she really does in the full light of day. 

    The mirror/lake has come to understand how important he is to the woman, despite her agitated reaction as she looks into that aging face.  While he might expect gratitude for his faithful reporting, the mirror/lake does not seem to receive any thanks from the woman.   

    Yet despite not being thanked for his service, the mirror/lake takes satisfaction in knowing how important he has become to the woman.  After all, she looks into the mirror/lake every day, no doubt, many times a day.  Such attention cannot be interpreted any other way by the mirror:  he is convinced of his vital rôle in the woman’s daily life.

    As the woman depends on the mirror to report her aging development, the mirror/lake has come to depend on the woman’s presence before him.  He knows that “her face” will continue to “replace[] the darkness” every morning.   

    The mirror/lake knows that whatever the woman takes away from his reflection every morning has become such an internal part of her life that he can count on her being there.  He will never be alone but will continue to report his findings, objectively and truthfully.  The mirror/lake’s final statement is one of the most profound statements to ultimatize a poem:  

    In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
    Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

    Plath’s genius in fashioning a mirror that morphs into a lake allowed her to create these marvelous two final lines of her magnificent poem.  If Sylvia Plath had produced nothing more than this poem, she would likely have become the great voice she is as a major twentieth-century poet. 

    No one can deny that a mirror becoming a lake is a stretch of the imagination that a in the hands of a less skillful wordsmith could have remained banal and even silly.  But in the hands of a master poet that final two-line sentence grasps the mind of its readers/listeners.  The genius of those lines delivers the poem into the natural world without one extraneous thought or word, rocking the world of literary studies.

    Image: One of Sylvia Plath’s Many Self-Portraits 

  • Sara Teasdale’s “Barter” 

    Image: Sara Teasdale Britannica

    Sara Teasdale’s “Barter” 

    Sara Teasdale’s “Barter” is a lyrical musing on the importance and value of beauty, stressing the indispensability of giving oneself up completely to any moment of loveliness that happens to appear before one’s consciousness.

    Introduction and Text of “Barter”

    Sara Teasdale’s “Barter” was first published in 1917 in her collection titled simply Love Songs. It is likely the poet’s most anthologized poem, for it remains one of  her most crystallized expressions on loveliness, self-surrender, and sublimity. 

    In “Barter,” the poet has created a speaker who professes the belief that beauty is all encompassing in all of its aspects including its presence in nature, or in love between individuals, or in the soul’s quiet musings.  To purchase such a rare commodity, one must be willing to pay any price.

    Barter

    Life has loveliness to sell,
         All beautiful and splendid things,
    Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
         Soaring fire that sways and sings,
    And children’s faces looking up
    Holding wonder like a cup.

    Life has loveliness to sell,
         Music like a curve of gold,
    Scent of pine trees in the rain,
         Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
    And for your spirit’s still delight,
    Holy thoughts that star the night.

    Spend all you have for loveliness,
         Buy it and never count the cost;
    For one white singing hour of peace
         Count many a year of strife well lost,
    And for a breath of ecstasy
    Give all you have been, or could be.

    Commentary on “Barter”

    The title “Barter”offers the first hint that the controlling metaphor of the poem will be that of commerce in the marketplace. The speaker then moves from description of worldly things of beauty to exhortation in demanding the audience’s complete surrender in order to acquire that beauty.

    First Stanza:  What Life Possesses

    Life has loveliness to sell,
      All beautiful and splendid things,
    Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
      Soaring fire that sways and sings,
    And children’s faces looking up
    Holding wonder like a cup.

    In the opening line, the speaker establishes the controlling metaphor for the poem: life is similar to a marketplace where its products are myriad forms of beauty.  The speaker thus is personifying “Life” as a vendor, who is selling “loveliness.” 

    The speaker then begins a catalogue of examples of the things that are lovely, that is, they are “[a]ll beautiful and splendid things” such as ocean waves that whiten as they beat up against “a cliff,” fire that soars, sways, and sings, and the faces of little children as they look up in wonderment.  The structure of the stanza features a quatrain with the rime scheme ABCB, and the final two lines are a rimed couplet.  This structure is repeated in the remaining two stanzas.

    Second Stanza:  Things of Beauty

    Life has loveliness to sell,
      Music like a curve of gold,
    Scent of pine trees in the rain,
      Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
    And for your spirit’s still delight,
    Holy thoughts that star the night.

    Opening the second stanza, the speaker repeats the line “Life has loveliness to sell,” creating a chant-like rhythm and continuing the commerce metaphor.   Then again following the same structure, the speaker offers another catalogue of the items for sale that are beautiful.

    The four senses of hearing, smell, sight, and touch are represented.  For hearing, there is music with its “curve of gold,” suggesting both melody and shape, along with value and warmth; this auditory image melds aesthetic and moral value: music soothes and inspires while gold glitters and is long lasting.

    Representing the olfactory image, the “[s]cent of pine trees in the rain” brings to mind a pungent oder, wherein rain further enhances the scent by drawing out the resinous sharpness of the trees.

    The sense of sight finds its ocular image in the “[e]yes that love you,” and the tactile image in the  “arms that hold.” The human element brings to the poem an aura of intimacy and love, as these two images engage the emotion involved in the human acts of affection and protection.  

    The final couplet moves from the physical to the spiritual level of existence. The spirit (soul) also is afforded the quality of beauty in this marketplace.  “Holy thoughts” offer pleasure to the soul as the stars offer loveliness to the night time sky.

    Third Stanza:  The Vital Importance of Experiencing Beauty

    Spend all you have for loveliness,
      Buy it and never count the cost;
    For one white singing hour of peace
      Count many a year of strife well lost,
    And for a breath of ecstasy
    Give all you have been, or could be.

    In the final stanza, the speaker moves from announcement and description to a direct command.  Replacing the incantatory “Life has loveliness to sell” is the command to spend all that you possess in order to purchase this commodity called “loveliness.” Further commanding, the speaker insists that her listeners continue to purchase and give no thought as to how much is the price.

    Conjoining color, sound, and time, the speaker commands her listeners to find it prudent to have lost “many a year of strife” for acquiring the amazing experience of “one white singing hour of peace.” 

    In the final couplet, the speaker presses forth her most intense commanding statement:  for even a moment of the highest bliss, give up yourself entirely, including all you have been and all you could ever be. For this speaker the importance of experiencing even a brief moment of joyful beauty is worth all one can sacrifice.  

    Such a suggestion implies that the speaker believes that most beauty is lost through the human acts of non-observation and non-involvement with the things of this world that are indeed lovely if one looks with seeing eyes and an open loving heart.

    Full Image: Sara Teasdale Britannica

  • Robert Bly’s “The Cat in the Kitchen” and “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter”

    Image:  Robert Bly – NYT– Robert Bly striking one of his melodramatic poses

    Robert Bly’s “The Cat in the Kitchen” and “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter”

    The following sample pieces of doggerel “The Cat in the Kitchen” and “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” by Robert Bly exemplify the style of the poetaster and the types of subjects he addresses.

    Introduction with Text of “The Cat in the Kitchen”

    Two versions of this piece of Robert Bly doggerel are extant; one is titled “The Cat in the Kitchen,” and at the other one is titled “The Old Woman Frying Perch.”  They both suffer from the same nonsense:  the speaker seems to be spouting whatever enters his head without bothering to communicate a cogent thought.

    Bly’s 5-line piece “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” consists of a fascinating conglomeration of images that results in a facile display of redundancy and an unfortunate missed opportunity.

    Robert Bly’s penchant for nonsense knows no bounds.  Most of his pieces of doggerel suffer from what seems to be an attempt to engage in stream-of-consciousness but without any actual consciousness.   The following summary/paraphrase of Bly’s “The Cat in the Kitchen” demonstrates the poverty of thought from which this poetaster suffers as he churns out his doggerel: 

    A man falling into a pond is like the night wind which is like an old woman in the kitchen cooking for her cat.

    About American readers, Bly once quipped that they “can’t tell when a man is counterfeiting and when he isn’t.”  What might such an evaluation of one’s audience say about the performer?  Is this a confession?  Bly’s many pieces of doggerel and his penchant for melodrama as he presents his works suggest that the man was a fake and he knew it.

    The Cat in the Kitchen

    Have you heard about the boy who walked by
    The black water? I won’t say much more.
    Let’s wait a few years. It wanted to be entered.
    Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand
    Reaches out and pulls him in.

    There was no
    Intention, exactly. The pond was lonely, or needed
    Calcium, bones would do. What happened then?

    It was a little like the night wind, which is soft,
    And moves slowly, sighing like an old woman
    In her kitchen late at night, moving pans
    About, lighting a fire, making some food for the cat.

    Commentary on “Cat in the Kitchen”

    The two versions of this piece that are extant both suffer from the same nonsense:  the speaker seems to be spouting whatever enters his head without bothering to connect a cogent thought to his images.  Unfortunately, that description seems to be the modus operandi of poetaster Bly.

    The version titled “The Cat in the Kitchen” has three versagraphs, while the one titled “The Old Woman Frying Perch” boasts only two, as it sheds one line by combining lines six and seven from the Cat/Kitchen version.

    First Versagraph:  A Silly Question

    Have you heard about the boy who walked by
    The black water? I won’t say much more.
    Let’s wait a few years. It wanted to be entered.
    Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand
    Reaches out and pulls him in.

    In Robert Bly’s “The Cat in the Kitchen,” the first versagraph begins with a question, asking the audience if they had heard about a boy walking by black water.  Then the speaker says he will not “say much more” when, in fact, he has only asked a question. If he is not going to say much more, he has ten more lines in which not to say it.  However, he then makes the odd demand of the audience that they wait a few years. 

    The speaker’s command implies that readers should stop reading the piece in the middle of the third line and begin waiting”a few years.” Why do they have to wait? How many years?   By the middle of the third line, this piece has taken its readers down several blind alleys. So next, the speaker, possibly after waiting a few years, begins to dramatize his thoughts: “It wanted to be entered.”  It surely refers to the black water which is surely the pond in the fourth line. 

    The time frame may, in fact, be years later because now the speaker offers the wobbly suggestion that there are times during which a man can get pulled into a pond by a hand as he walks by the body of water.  The reader cannot determine that the man is the boy from the first line; possibly, there have been any number of unidentified men whom the hand habitually stretches forth to grab.

    Second Versagraph:   Lonely Lake Needing Calcium

    There was no
    Intention, exactly. The pond was lonely, or needed
    Calcium, bones would do. What happened then?

    The second verse paragraph offers the reasoning behind a pond reaching out its hand and grabbing some man who is walking by.  The pond didn’t exactly intend to grab the man, but because it was “lonely” or “needed / Calcium,” it figured it would ingest the bones from the man. 

    Then the speaker poses a second question: “What happened then?” This question seems nonsensical because it is the speaker who is telling this tale.  But the reader might take this question as a rhetorical device that merely signals the speaker’s intention to answer the question that he anticipates has popped into the mind of his reader.

    Third Versagraph:  It Was Like What?

    It was a little like the night wind, which is soft,
    And moves slowly, sighing like an old woman
    In her kitchen late at night, moving pans
    About, lighting a fire, making some food for the cat.

    Now the speaker tells the reader what it was like.  There is a lack of clarity as to what the pronoun “it” refers.  But readers have no choice but take “it” to mean the phenomenon of the pond reaching out its hand, grabbing a man who was walking by, and pulling him into the water because it was “lonely, or needed / Calcium.” 

    Thus this situation resembles what? It resembles soft, night wind which resembles and old lady in her kitchen whipping up food for her cat.   Now you know what would cause a lonely, calcium-deficient pond to reach out and grab a man, pull him into its reaches, and consequently devour the man to get at his bones.

    Alternate Version: “The Old Woman Frying Perch”

    In a slightly different version of this work called “Old Woman Frying Perch,” Bly used the word “malice” instead of “intention.” And in the last line, instead of the rather flabby “making some food for the cat,” the old woman is “frying some perch for the cat.” 

    The Old Woman Frying Perch

    Have you heard about the boy who walked by
    The black water? I won’t say much more.
    Let’s wait a few years. It wanted to be entered.
    Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand
    Reaches out and pulls him in. There was no
    Malice, exactly. The pond was lonely, or needed
    Calcium. Bones would do. What happened then?

    It was a little like the night wind, which is soft,
    And moves slowly, sighing like an old woman
    In her kitchen late at night, moving pans
    About, lighting a fire, frying some perch for the cat.

    For Donald Hall

    While the main problem of absurdity remains, this piece is superior to “The Cat in the Kitchen” because of two changes:  “malice” is more specific than “intention,” and “frying perch” is more specific than “making food.”

    However, the change in title alters the potential focus of each piece without any actual change of focus.  The tin ear of this poetaster has resulted in two pieces of doggerel, one just a pathetic as the other.   Robert Bly dedicates this piece to former poet laureate, Donald Hall—a private joke, possibly?

    Full Image:  Robert Bly striking his melodramatic pose

    Introduction with Text of “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter”

    Technically, this aggregate of lines that constitute Robert Bly’s “Driving to Town to Mail a Letter” could be considered a versanelle.   The style of poem known as a versanelle is a short narration that comments on human nature or behavior and may employ any of the usual poetic devices. I coined this term and several others to assist in my poem commentaries.

    Robert Bly’s “Driving to Town to Mail a Letter” does make a critical comment on human nature although quite by accident and likely not at all what the poet attempted to accomplish.   Human beings do love to waste time although they seldom like to brag about it or lie about it, as seems to be case with the speaker in this piece.

    Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

    It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
    The only things moving are swirls of snow.
    As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.
    There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
    Driving around, I will waste more time.

    Commentary on “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter”

    This 5-line piece by doggerelist Robert Bly simply stacks untreated image upon image, resulting in a stagnant bureaucracy of redundant blather.  The poet missed a real opportunity to make this piece meaningful as well as beautiful.

    First Line:  Deserted Streets on a Cold and Snowy Night 

    It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.

    The first line consists of two sentences; the first sentence asserts, “It is a cold and snowy

    night.”   That sentence echoes the line, “It was a dark and stormy night, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose name became synonymous with atrocious writing for that line alone. 

    There is a contest named for him, “The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest,” with the subtitle where WWW means “Wretched Writers Welcome.”  The second sentence proclaims the emptiness of main street. The title of the poem has already alerted the reader that the speaker is out late at night, and this line supports that claim that he is out and about so late that he is virtually the only one out. 

    This assertion also tells that reader that the town must be a very small town because large towns will almost always have some activity, no matter how late, no matter how cold. 

    Second Line:  Only the Swirling Snow

    The only things moving are swirls of snow.

    The second line reiterates the deserted image of the first line’s second sentence, claiming that the only movement about his was the swirling snow.  Of course, if the street were deserted, there would be no activity, or virtually no activity, so the speaker’s redundancy is rather flagrant. 

    The reader already knows there is snow from the first image of a cold and snowy night; therefore, the second line is a throwaway line.   The speaker is giving himself only five lines to convey his message, and he blows one on a line that merely repeats what he has already conveyed, instead of offering some fresh insight into his little jaunt into town.

    Third Line:  Cold Mailbox Door 

    As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron

    The third line is incredible in it facileness: the speaker imparts the information that he can feel the cold iron of the mailbox door as he lift it before depositing his letter. Such a line might be expected in a beginning poet’s workshop efforts. 

    The speaker had to have a line that shows he is mailing a letter, and he, no doubt, thinks this does it while adding the drama of “lift[ing] the mailbox door” and adding that he feels the coldness in the letter-box’s iron.  

    It’s a lame drama at best; from the information offered already both the cold iron and lifting the mailbox lid are already anticipated by the reader, meaning this line adds nothing to the scene.

    Fourth Line:  “There is a privacy I love in this snowy night”

    There is a privacy I love in this snowy night

    This line offers the real kernel of poetry for this conglomeration of lines. If the speaker had begun with this line, perhaps revising it to “I love the privacy of a snowy night,” and let the reader go with him to mail his letter, the experience could have been an inspiring one.

    The images of the cold, snowy night of privacy, the deserted main street, the swirls of snow, the mailbox door could all have been employed to highlight a meaningful experience.  Instead, the poetaster has missed his opportunity by employing insipid redundancy resulting in the flat, meaningless verse. 

    Fifth Line: Wasting Time Driving Around

    Driving around, I will waste more time

    The final line gives the flavor of James Wright’s “I have wasted my life” in his excellent poetic performance, “Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota.”

    There is a major difference between Wright’s poem and Bly’s doggerel: Wright’s speaker is believable, genuine, authentic.   Bly’s empty verse is quite the opposite in every aspect, especially as Bly’s speaker proclaims he will ride around “wasting more time.” That claim is non-sense. Does he actually believe that mailing a letter is a waste of time?   If he does, he has not made it clear why he would think that. It just seems that he has forgotten what the poem is supposed to be about.

    Image: Robert Bly painting by Mark Horst

    On My Meeting with This Sacred Cow of Po-Biz 

    In Memoriam:  Robert Bly
    December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021

    Requiescat in Pace.

    Poetaster Robert Bly, one of the greatest flim-flam artists that po-biz has ever foisted upon the literary world, has passed on to his reward.   Still, Bly remains one of the sacred cows of the contemporary literary world—so often praised that most critics, scholars, and commentarians shy away from pointing out the failings of this celebrated poetaster. 

    Ironically, among his hagiographies will remain criticism like the one by Suzanne Gordon, “‘Positive Patriarchy’ Is Still Domination: ‘Iron John’: Robert Bly’s devoted followers seem not to grasp what his message really means to women.”  

    While his recycled mythos, Iron John, surely earned him more financial rewards and much more recognition that his doggerel ever had, that twisted tome will also remain as testimony to the man’s warped thinking.    Ironic indeed that the man who thought of himself as a feminist turned out not to have had a feminist bone in his body.

    I met Robert Bly at Ball State University during a poetry workshop in the summer 1977.  He held private sessions to offer us budding poets criticism of our poetic efforts.  As I approached him, he planted a big kiss upon my lips before beginning the critique.  Shocked at the impertinence, nevertheless, I just figured that was his way and then flung the incident down the memory hole.

    The advice he offered regarding my poem was less than worthless.  For example, I had a line, “slow as sorghum on the lip of a jar.”    He called that vague and suggested that I somehow work my grandmother into the line, something like “my grandmother’s jar had a rim of sorghum.” (I was 31 years old at the time, but no doubt looked little more than 12).  

    That idiotic suggestion has colored my view of the man’s poetry, even more than his deceitful claims of “translations.”   At the same workshop, he had taught a group of us how to “translate” poems, which was little more than reworking other people’s actual translations. 

    Anyway, may he rest in peace.  He was persistent in his folly, and although William Blake infamously opined, “If a fool persists in his folly, he becomes wise,”  it remains doubtful that claim actually applies, especially in Bly’s case.