Give birth again to the dream

Like Beyonce, Richard Blanco’s poem for Obama’s second inauguration got mixed reviews, but I’m ranged with those who liked it. It was simple and heartwarming, and it comprehended much that was unsaid in its arcs and gestures. It had lovely lines like this one “We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight / of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,” and sweet images of America’s streets and towns and classrooms and backyards abuzz with life. One of its naysayers was The Guardian’s Carol Rumens, who concluded that “the biggest problem with writing a public poem is that crude simplifications are forced on a reluctant poet.” I think it’s a mistake to assume simplifications are crude. Simplifications are the stuff of poetry, and poetry is the stuff of public occasion. If anything, poetry fits public utterance better than prose, since it can smooth without blunting the rough edges of history; it can exhume pain from experience and make it holy; it can be subversive without being threatening; it can sound authentically hopeful. More so than the best speech, poetry can glide clear of cynicism. Beyond the last double-tongued word of oratory, poetry can refresh the promise of language itself, and therefore of the world.

This is what the best inaugural poems can do, and Blanco’s was no exception. Indeed it was similar, in tone and theme, to both Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” (which I wrote about a couple of years ago) and Maya Angelou’s poem for Clinton’s first inaugural in 1993 (which I’ve mentioned in passing). All three poems are about struggle, unity, love, fulfillment of the American dream in its waking world. But there is a progression, from Angelou’s grand, primal evocation of time immemorial, through Alexander’s moral yearning toward history, to Blanco’s humble memorial to the diurnal. Are inaugural poems a good way to measure the movement of the zeitgeist? And if so, do these three line up to show a loss of ambition toward immortality? A diminishing of the dream? I don’t know. But of the three, on reflection I like Angelou’s best, and I have a feeling it will wear better than the others, as eternity tends to do. Here it is.

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Frost / Kennedy

On Monday, Barack Obama will be sworn in for a second term as America's president. As always, hopes are high for what he might say, particularly given the coincidence of this inauguration with Martin Luther King Day. As well as his speech, for which we have such high hopes, the ceremony will include music and poetry. This year's poet is Richard Blanco, a 44-year-old gay Cuban American civil engineer turned prize-winning poet. Last time around, it was Elizabeth Alexander whose poem, Praise Song for the Day", I've mentioned before. It's hard to imagine the pressure of conceiving or bringing a poem to that occasion, but I'm glad they still expect someone to try. And what else is poetry good for if not to be the “moment’s monument”? 

I was intrigued to learn that John F Kennedy was the first president to include poetry in the ceremony. The poet was Robert Frost, then 86 years old. Frost had named Kennedy as the next president long before Kennedy announced any intention to run in 1960. In his campaign, Kennedy would often close his stump speech with two lines from Frost: “But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” When he was elected, he asked Frost to read at his inauguration, and even named the poem he wanted: “The Gift Outright." Frost agreed, but then wrote another, much longer poem, which he typed up on hotel note paper in Washington the night before the ceremony. On the day, wind and glare made the typed poem hard for him to read, so he simply recited the other poem, Kennedy's first choice, from memory. Afterwards, his advice to Kennedy was to govern with “poetry and power,” to which Kennedy responded: “It's poetry and power all the way!" Read more about the poet and the president here

I find the story lovely, but the poem itself less so. It speaks to a different sensibility from the one Blanco will draw on and perhaps, if we're lucky, immortalise. I would have guessed it's not exactly the sensibility surrounding Kennedy's election, either, with its nostalgic backward glance and glorification of settlement, but I wasn't there. Kennedy obviously thought it was perfect for his moment, the monument he required. Here it is:
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become. 

She liked whate'er she looked on

Staying with the Brownings, this is among Robert's best known poems, and in my view a masterpiece worthy of Fra Pandolf himself. “My Last Duchess”, first published in 1842, is a monologue in the character of Ferrara, a 16th century Duke who married a Medici. Sinister notes sound in the Duke's speech, which grow louder though his tone varies not one jot. The result is a deep chill, as though his hand closed around your arm in seeming camaraderie but you felt in his fingers a murderous strength.  

FERRARA.

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf'” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:” such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace - all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, - good! but thanked
Somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech - (which I have not) - to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark” - and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! 

Robert Pinsky, a former US poet laureate, has a poetry column over at Slate. His post on this poem includes the wonderful recording of newsman Mike Wallace reading the poem at a literary event at Town Hall, New York, in 1998. He reads with great insight, and his reading shows up how seamlessly Browning could make rhyme sound like speech. Worth a listen.

I love your verses with all my heart

So wrote Robert Browning, on the 10th of January 1845, to Elizabeth Barrett, a famed poet who was also an invalid and a recluse. She wrote back.

Their story is one of the most romantic to be found in literary history, but it's not the romance of tragic infidelities, wrenching separations, narcosis, tuberculosis, and early death that attend so many other literary heroes. It's the truer romance of genuine kinship, kindling intellects, a full and free exchange of idea and emotion, and a flight to Italy where health, happiness and fertility crowned their marriage. And it all started with this letter.

...since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning and turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me - for in the first flush of delight I thought I would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration - perhaps even, as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some little good to be proud of hereafter! - but nothing comes of it all - so into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew [...] the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought - but in this addressing myself to you, your own self, and for the first time, my feeling rises altogether. I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart - and I love you too: do you know I was once not very far from seeing .. really seeing you? Mr Kenyon said to me one morning “would you like to see Miss Barrett?” - then he went to announce me, - then he returned .. you were too unwell - and now it is years ago - and I feel as at some untoward passage in my travels - as if I had been close, so close, to some world’s-wonder in chapel or crypt, .. only a screen to push and I might have entered - but there was some slight .. so it now seems .. slight and just-sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be! 

Well, these Poems were to be - and this true thankful joy and pride with which I feel myself

 Yours ever faithfully,

Robert Browning.  


The descending blue

Of all the images that come with Christmas, the one that's been in my mind this time is that of a seed. A tiny seed sprung from another world, struck into our old soil. Breaking through it, growing to fruit and shade - graft, and gift. So, rather than a poem of bleak midwinter, or Christmastide, it's Hopkins' “Spring” that I think of today. 

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. 
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.