c h a n g e l o g

Poem 13: “The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse”

Monday, April 13th, 2009 | British Literature, poetry | No Comments

I have a running list of poems to include this month, but none of them were singing to me. There’s a bit too much stress in my world right now to feel very poetic. That is until I Googled around a bit and remembered "The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse."

What a perfect poem for a day when I’m feeling all my many bills and my very empty checking account.

The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse
A Supplication to King Henry
 
To yow, my purs, and to non othir wyght
Complayne I, for ye ben my lady dere!
I am so sory, now that ye been lyght;
For certes, but yf ye make me hevy chere,
Me were as leef be leyd upon my bere;
For which unto your mercy thus I crye,
Beth hevy ayeyn, or elles mot I dye!
 
Now voucheth sauf this day, or hyt be nyght,
That I of yow the blisful soun may here,
Or se your colour lyk the sonne bryght,
That of yelownesse had never pere.
Ye be my lyf, ye be myne hertes stere,
Quene of comfort and of gode companye;
Beth hevy ayeyn, or elles mot I dye!
 
Now purs, that ben to me my lyves lyght
And saveour, as doun in this worlde here,
Out of this towne helpe me thurgh your myght,
Syn that ye wylle nat ben my tresorere;
For I am shave as nye as any frere.
But yet I prey unto youre curtesye,
Beth heavy ayeyn, or elles mot I dye!
 
Lenvoy de Chaucer
 
O conqueror of Brutes Albyoun,
Which that by lyne and fre eleccion
Ben verray kyng, this song to you I sende;
And ye, that mowen alle oure harmes amende,
Have mynde upon my supplicacioun.

The Guardian Book Blog Poem of the Week has more details on the poem if you’d like background (or to see what medieval pennies looked like).

Poem 12: “Easter, 1916”

Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | British Literature, poetry | 1 Comment

If the beginning of April must be marked with The Canterbury Tales and The Waste Land, Easter must be celebrated with a reading of William Butler Yeats’s "Easter 1916."  I think I learned 99% of what I know about Irish history from Yeats’s works. Maybe 75% would be more accurate. Need to make room for Synge, Shaw, and Joyce. Oh, and Swift.

I could spend this entry explaining all the historical allusions in "Easter 1916," but the Wikipedia entry has done a reasonable job of that already. I do wish their analysis addressed the duality of some of the imagery as religious motifs. Expanding that entry a bit would make a nice student assignment actually.

As I was exploring resources for this entry, I found an online exhibition from the National Library of Ireland (Flash required) that includes audio and images of Yeats’s artifacts and papers. Launch the exhibition, click on the "Interactives" button, and choose the "EASTER, 1916" resources. The manuscript images for the poem are represented by the four pages in the lower right corner of the exhibit case. Click on the pages in the case, and details appear below the case. From there, you can reach images of each of the 4 pages of the manuscript.

Those who know me know that I’m a sucker for a manuscript. While I can identify most of the words on the manscript, I do wish it were about twice the size so I could study the details more carefully. A bit more information on the manuscript pages would be nice as well. Page three shows the most revision. The other pages are relatively unchanged. Still, it’s the poem, in the poet’s hand—and that is always a glorious thing, especially to the part of me who would love to be a special collections librarian, free to frolic in manuscripts all day, every day!

Poem 11: “Jabberwocky”

Saturday, April 11th, 2009 | British Literature, poetry | No Comments

Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" is wonderfully fun as a nonsense poem. Many consider it the best example of a nonsense poem that we have in fact. How can you look on the opening lines and not smile?

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

If you’re totally lost, the Wikipedia entry on the poem adds some definitions and helpful explanations, as well as an excellent list of allusions and derivative works.

The poem is one of my favorites to use in grammar lessons, especially when I was teaching sentence diagramming in a senior-level grammar class for English majors and pre-service teachers. Students had to rely on word forms and syntactical placement to figure out the parts of speech for each word—and since the words were nonsense, everything was open to discussion and multiple meanings.

I’m not likely to teach sentence diagramming again, but "Jabberwocky" is still a great poem to use for mini-lessons on diction and syntax.

Poem 5: “Locksley Hall”

Sunday, April 5th, 2009 | British Literature, Uncategorized, poetry | No Comments

Tennyson’s "Locksley Hall" isn’t the Victorian poem I like the most, but it is the one that gave me the publication bug. For a survey class, I was asked to write an analytical paper on something we’d read. I had gotten into the habit of looking up every mythological reference. Early in the poem, the speaker explains:

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
 
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

I spun the references to Orion and the Pleiads into an explanation of how the mythical figure’s life parallelled that of the speaker. When the graded paper was returned, Professor Peter Graham had written in the end comment that he thought the paper was publishable. Two years later (damn you, slow print publication world), I had my first vita line: 

"Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall.’" Explicator 44.2 (Winter 1986): 23–24.

It’s one of those papers that I reread and wonder whether that was really me. I guess my voice and style have developed a good bit since then. But one thing hasn’t changed—I still want to see my name in print. A lot. Thank you Tennyson (and Dr. Graham).

Tags: Tennyson

Poem 2: The Waste Land

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | American Lit, British Literature, poetry | 1 Comment

Because of the opening lines below, the other poem that everyone expects to hear at the beginning of April is T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. (I., 1–4)

It’s been dark and rainy all day here.  I had to ford a huge puddle, cursing myself for wearing the Crocs with the holes on the sides, just so that I could drag the garbage can back from the street.

The forsythia in the yard is making a showy splash of yellow,  I really should take some pictures of that forsythia, but I digress. Not even the thousands of little yellow flowers can brighten up all the dark, rain-soaked twigs and leaves that lie about, having lost the battle to a recent wind storm. The yard here is as much a waste land as any Eliot might journeyed.

It’s been more than a decade since I’ve studied The Waste Land as a real reader. All my notes and research are still in Illinois, so I can’t even pull them out. Once I could read the lines and round up all the connections in my thoughts, but it’s been too long. The poem is a mass of allusions and biographies and mythologies that I have to check. I wish so much that I could grab my copy of The Golden Bough and my facsimile of the edited manuscript with Pound’s editorial notes. But none of that is within reach.

If I tell truth, at this moment, the poem is lost for me. I can’t read it as a knowledgeable reader. I can’t read it with the joy I once could. That fact breaks my heart. There are so many pieces of literature I laid aside in the past 15 years that I want to spend time with, that I miss.

Yet some essence of the poem has always stayed with me. Eliot speaks to some deep inner place in my soul, though The Waste Land is not my favorite of his poems. I’ll share that another day. For me, I think The Waste Land, moreso than, say, "Prufrock," represents modern poetry. While I’m a medievalist at heart, the poet in my soul wants to be a modernist. I’ve tried my hand at poetry, but all I muster are soulless heavy lines and "A heap of broken images" (I., 22). April does seem a cruel month at times.

Tags: Eliot, Waste Land

Poem 1: The Canterbury Tales

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | British Literature, poetry | 3 Comments

It’s terribly obvious to begin with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but it’s not here for the obvious reasons. This is the poem I think of every April. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t opened my Chaucer texts in years. These are the lines that I whisper to myself every Spring:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne;
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

I never think of a modern English translation. A college professor had us memorize those 18 lines when I was an undergraduate, so they’ve been tucked away in my memory ever since.

I had changed my major to English (from Elementary Ed) by the time I met up with Chaucer in college. He turned me into what I’ll call an amateur medievalist. I would never claim to be a true medieval scholar. I just don’t know enough to wear that title gracefully, but in my heart, I am a medievalist.

Everyone knows (well, at least those of us who are English teachers know anyway) that The Canterbury Tales is a great poem for beginnings—the start of spring, the start of an epic pilgrimage, the start of a classic poem.

For me, The Canterbury Tales kicked off my love for all things medieval. Occasionally I daydream about getting a PhD in medieval studies. It’s not that I have any great desire to have a PhD in literature at this point. Instead, I know that would be the only way I could justify spending days lost in medieval texts.

It’s certainly the only way that I’d ever get access to a real medieval manuscript. I’ve seen wonderful facsimiles, but if I ever had an actual Chaucer manuscript on the library table in front of me, I’m certain I’d break down in tears. The idea of it even makes me weepy. I’ve tried to resign myself to the fact that it will never ever happen, but on the first day of April, as I recall the poem that started me down this path, I think it’s okay to dream on it a little more.

Tags: Canterbury Tales, Chaucer