Collecte Works
Page 27
In an alternate group titled “TRACES OF LIVING THINGS,” Origin ser. 3, 9 (April 1968): 41.
High class human NC, MLBW.
In an alternate group titled “TRACES OF LIVING THINGS,” Origin ser. 3, 9 (April 1968): 41.
Ah your face NC, MLBW[EA,VV].
Included in “HOMEMADE POEMS” and “HANDMADE POEMS” (1964) (see p.200).
Origin ser. 3, 2 (July 1966): 20.
Sewing a dress NC, MLBW [EA,VV].
Origin ser. 3, 2 (July 1966): 30.
I walked/on New Year's Day NC, MLBW [EA].
In a group of eleven poems titled “HEAR & SEE,” Origin ser. 3, 7 (Oct. 1967): 57, with a variant final stanza: Each spoke:/Peace
Titled “I Walked” in New Poetry Out of Wisconsin, ed. August Derleth (Sauk City, Wis.: Stanton & Lee, 1967) 172.
J. F. Kennedy after/the Bay of Pigs NC, MLBW [EA].
An undated MS in the Roub Collection has variant lines 5-6:—and walk the South Lawn/By Sun
Revised to the present text for a group of eleven poems titled “HEAR & SEE,” Origin ser. 3, 7 (Oct. 1967): 53.
LN to LZ, May 10, 1961: “I can't get over Cuba invasion and J.F.K. with the Republicans—that it turned out unsuccessful seems beside the point (NCZ 281).
Mergansers NC, MLBW.
In a group of eleven poems titled “HEAR & SEE,” Origin ser. 3, 7 (Oct. 1967): 54, with variant lines 4-5:
Thoughts, things
fold, unfold
“Shelter” NC, MLBW [EA].
In a group of eleven poems titled “HEAR & SEE,” Origin ser. 3, 7 (Oct. 1967): 56.
Also in New Poetry Out of Wisconsin, ed. August Derleth (Sauk City, Wis.: Stanton & Lee, 1967) 172.
WINTERGREEN RIDGE NC, MLBW [EA,VV].
Caterpillar 3/4 (April-July 1968): 229-37, with the following variant stanzas:
stanza 67:
(wintergreen)
grass of parnassus
And beyond:
stanza 73: “in a bathtub…in liver and head” is omitted.
stanza 86:
which ‘cannot be stopped’
the pollened ragweed
sneezeweed
stanza 91:
mourn the loss
of humans
no wild bird does
VV uses the following excerpts: stanzas 1-2 (“Where the arrows…of matter”), stanzas 68-70 (“ferns…water lily”), and stanzas 84-end (“So far out of flowers…of Equinox”).
1968-1970
T&G: The Collected Poems (1936-1966) was published by Jonathan Williams's The Jargon Society in 1969. In June 1969, LN responded to CC's offer to publish a book by preparing two typescripts: “The Earth and Its Atmosphere” and “The Very Veery.” Al Millen retired, and in Sept. 1969, LN and Al moved permanently to their Black Hawk Island home. CC and his wife, Shizumi, visited LN and Al in Nov. 1970.
PAEAN TO PLACE MLBW [EA, VV].
A draft dated August 1968 in the Roub Collection shows the following variants:
stanza 1, lines 1-3:
F natural
and the sensuous s
Fish, fowl, flood
stanza 10, line 5: rail's
stanza 12, line 5: Knew duckweed
stanza 13, line 3: what lay
stanza 15, lines 4-5:
Underneath he must net Run
Lonely
stanza 16:
His bright new car—
my mother—her house
next his—queried:
Can a hummingbird
haul?
stanza 25, line 4: while she piped
stanza 30, line 1: Effort in us
stanza 31, lines 2-4:
that freely descend
to oceans' black depths
In us an impulse toward
stanza 33, lines 3-4:
Saw no snake
in the house Where were They?—
stanza 35, lines 3-4:
Hope the long-stemmed blue
speedwell renews
stanza 37, lines 3-5:
Leave things unbought—
all one in the end
Possession—
stanza 38, line 2: the word:
stanza 40, lines 3-5:
It was not always
so In Fishes
rose
stanza 41, lines 1-3:
red Mars
stream-imaged
in my mind
Stony Brook 3/4 (1969): 32-35. Stony Brook and MLBW omit the three bullets in the segment beginning “I grew in green” between “slime-/song” and “Grew riding the river.” They are present in the two MS versions and in EA.
VV uses the following excerpts: “Fish/fowl/flood…to water,” “Anchored here…of her hair,’” and “On this stream…on the edge.”
Alliance MLBW [EA,VV].
An undated MS in the Roub Collection has a variant line 6: in yukka
Revised to the present text for Stony Brook 3/4 (1969): 31, and all other appearances.
Bash Unpublished [VV].
Related to the poem above, “Alliance.”
The man of law Unpublished in book form [EA].
The second of four “POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE” in Stony Brook 3/4 (1969): 32. Another version of the poem—an undated MS in the Roub Collection—published posthumously in Origin ser. 4, 16 (July 1981): 36:
Jefferson—statesman
Hopkins—poet
on the uses
of grief
Hopkins
Jefferson
on the law
of the oak leaf
Not all harsh sounds displease— Unpublished in book form.
The third of four “POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE” in Stony Brook 3/4 (1969): 32.
Another version of the poem, an undated MS in the Roub Collection, was published posthumously in Origin ser. 4, 16 (July 1981): 36:
Not all harsh sounds
displease—
Yellowhead blackbirds cough
thru rushes
as thru pronged
bronze
JEFFERSON AND ADAMS Unpublished.
MS dated Jan. 1970 in the Roub Collection, published posthumously in Origin ser. 4, 16 (July 1981): 26-27.
Katharine Anne Unpublished.
MS dated March 1970 in the Roub Collection, published posthumously in Origin ser. 4, 16 (July 1981): 34.
A gift to Gail and Bonnie Roub on the birth of their first daughter.
War Unpublished in book form.
Origin ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 53, and posthumously in BC (1976).
HARPSICHORD & SALT FISH
LN prepared the typescript of H&SF in 1970 and sent it to James Laughlin at New Directions without success. It was unpublished at the time of her death on Dec. 31, 1970. Cid Corman tape recorded her reading from the typescript in Nov. 1970; his transcriptions of the tape recording provide the text for many of the poems in Blue Chicory. H&SF was published posthumously by Pig Press in Durham, U.K., 1991.
THOMAS JEFFERSON Unpublished in book form [VV, H&SF].
An early undated MS appears in the Roub Collection:
Latin and Greek
my tools
to understand
humanity
I rode horse
away from a monarch
to an enchanting
philosophy
1
Martha!
She's seen four
of our children buried
My wife is ill!
and I sit
waiting for a quorum
2
Fast ride
his horse collapsed
Now he saddled walked
Borrowed a farmer's
unbroken colt
to Richmond
Richmond How stop
Arnold's
redcoats there
3
Elk Hill destroyed—
Cornwallis
carried off 30 slaves
Jefferson:
he'd have done right
4
South of France
To gaze
alone through the whole
Speculate
on the causes of sea color
Here concur
air, earth and water
…
Men at Paris die
from great cold
as do our American cattle
reasons the same—
want of feed and housing
Ill-governed France
but its soil good
For America
I taste their glorious wine
note how they make
Parmesan cheese
Under penalty of law
slip rice out of Lombardy
Around Nantes the ragged people
eat rye
and the women smite the anvil
….
Roman temple
“simple and sublime”
Maria Cosway on
his mind
white column
and arch
of the truest
proportions
5
To daughter Patsy: Read—
read Livy
No person full of work
was ever hysterical
Learn music, drawing
dancing
(I calculate 14 to 1
in marriage
she will draw
a blockhead)
Science also
Patsy
6
I was confident
the French Revolution
would end well
Adams differed: What is freedom
to their thousands upon thousands
who cannot read or write—
“impracticable as for the Elephants Lions
Tigers Panthers Wolves and Bears
in the Royal Menagerie of Versailles”
I gave the Lafayette dinner
ten days before the fall
of the Bastille
Their cool argument
“disfigured by no tinsel”
worthy of Xenophon
Plato, Cicero
7
Agreed with Adams:
spermaceti oil to Portugal
(for their church candles)
and salt fish
U.S. salt fish preferred
above all other
8
Jefferson of Patrick Henry
backwoods fiddler statesman:
“He spoke as Homer wrote”
Henry eyed our minister at Paris—
the Bill of Rights hassel—
“he remembers…
in splendor and dissipation
He thinks yet of bills of rights”
9
True, French frills and lace
for Jefferson, sword and belt
but follow the Court to Fontainbleau
he could not—
house rent would have left him
nothing to eat
…
He bowed to those he met
and talked with arms folded
He could be trimmed
by a two-month migraine
and yet
stand up
10
Dear Polly:
I said No—no frost
in Virginia
The strawberries were safe
I'd have heard—I'm in
that kind of correspondence
with a young daughter—
if they were not
Now I must retract
I shrink from it
11
On view in the capital
his invention
the moldboard plow
Robert Fulton's dynamometer
tested the amount of force
to pull it
On view—to turn the ground
of knowledge
12
Political honors “splendid torments”
“if one could establish an absolute
power of silence over oneself”
When I set out for Monticello—
My grandchildren, could they
not know me?
a good housejoiner will go with me
How are my young chestnut trees?
13
What is my religion?
Don't pin me down on the mysteries—
three are one and one is three
and yet the one not three
and the three not one
Let us accept the precepts common
to all religions and let alone
the particular dogmas
in which all religions differ
14
The old grudge would always pop up
Adams: Where was you?
Dear Adams: I was there—I was a Stoic
but I longed for Tranquility
Horace, Epicurus
I value the passions
(the senses stimulate the mind)
though yours drew you away from me
Adams: I have no doubt you was “fast asleep
in philosophical Tranquility
when ten thousand People paraded
the streets of Philadelphia”
15
Hamilton and the bankers
would make my country Carthage
I am abandoning the rich—
their dinner parties
I shall eat my simlins
with the class of science
or not at all
Next year the last of labors
among conflicting parties
Then my family
we shall sow our cabbages
together
16
We must hope for a natural aristocracy
of philosophy and art
Remember—Adams again: the greengrocer's daughter
she walks the streets of London dayly
spinach on her head
The Painters see her lovely face
elegant figure, she sitts for them
“The scientific Sir Wm. Hamilton
outbids the Painters, sends her to Schools
for a genteel Education, marries her
The Lady not only causes the Triumphs of the Nile
of Copenhagen and Trafalgar
but separates Naples from France
and banishes the King and Queen of Sicily
Such is the aristocracy
of the natural Talent of Beauty”
17
The delicious flower
of the acacia
or Mimosa Nilotica
from Mr. Lomax
18
Polly Jefferson at 8 had crossed
to father and sister in Paris
by way of London—Abigail
embraced her—Adams said
“in all my life I never saw
more charming child”
Death of Polly, 25,
Monticello
19
My harpsichord
my alabaster vase
and bridle bit bound
for Alexandria, Virginia
The good sea weather
of retirement
The drift and suck
and die-down of life
20
These were my passions:
Monticello and the temples
of learning and of law
I passed on to carpenters
bricklayers what I knew
and to an Italian sculptor
how to turn a volute
on a pillar
Approach the campus rotunda
from lower to upper
terrace—Cicero
had levels
21
Adams envied him
his “Eyes, hand and Horse”
his own eyes dim
Ah one should not envy
Tom Jefferson's cantering
rheumatism
>
22
Body leaving, let mind leave
Let dome live, the spherical dome
and colonnade
Martha (Patsy) stay
The Committee of Safety
must be warned
Stay youth—Anne and Ellen
the telescope, the bantams
and the seeds of the senega root
Revised to the present text for Origin ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 57-64, with variant Arabic numerals.
BC uses Roman numerals and omits the final line of VI (“Patsy”).
VV excerpts only
My wife is ill!
And I sit
waiting
for a quorum
The Ballad of Basil Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Stony Brook 3/4 (1969): 31, and posthumously in BC (1976).
Wilderness Unpublished [H&SF].
On her tape recording, she titles the poem, “Wild Man,” hence BC's use of the same title. CC's transcription of “Wild Man” used posthumously in Montemora 2 (Summer 1976).
Consider Unpublished in book form [H&SF].
Untitled in Origin ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 56, where the poem begins: Consider the alliance—
Copytext for posthumous publication in BC (1976).
Otherwise Unpublished [H&SF].
In the 13-poem MS dated Jan. 1958, where the poem is titled “Letter/of Gerard Manley Hopkins,” a variant line 9 reads: By the way I've not found
Revised to the present text for H&SF.
For BC, CC transcribed LN's tape-recorded reading of the poem, hence the variant lineation and the title “Gerard Manley Hopkins.”
Nursery Rhyme Unpublished [H&SF].
On the tape recording, she omits both title and subtitle, hence its untitled appearance in BC. LN's “that” of her line 9 is easily mistaken on the tape recording for the “It” of CC's transcribed line 8 in BC.
LN to LZ, Nov. 18, 1962: “Mont[gomery] Ward man came and fixed pump—he cdn't have done better if he'd been ‘the greatest plumber in all London’ as Hunt's neighbors called the one that lived near em. A model now of silent perfection, that pump, between drawings of water. Greatest plumber poem finished…” (NCZ 325).
Three Americans Unpublished [H&SF].
An early version dated July 23, 1970, forms part of the Roub Collection:
I
John Adams was our man
but delicate beauty
touched the other one—
an architect
and a woman artist
walked beside Jefferson
II
Abigail
(long face horse-name)
of stony acre
cheesemaker, chickenraiser
spoke, wrote
for John and TJ to savour
III
The tragedies
The men in the boxes—
Jefferson mourned: to arrive
in Paris just too late
to see Diderot
alive
LN's annotation: “(I give three packages of gum and cattails in tall grass for a title) (But o my God what travail till this was completed) Abigail is Mrs. John Adams. The name Gail is wonderful but that terribly prosaic and kitchen-maid Abi preceding is horrible. But what a wonderful original woman.”