The Poets' Corner

by John Lithgow

  Favorite Poems

  “To An Athlete Dying Young” “Terence, this is stupid stuff”

  “Wenlock Edge” “Stars, I have seen them fall”

  “White in the moon the long road lies”

  Housman was never entirely comfortable in his own skin, which is sad. But the window he opened to his heart and soul in his poetry reflects a stunning compassion for the universal aspects of human experience. His work and his life continue to intrigue and inspire—A Shropshire Lad is still one of the best-selling books of English verse of all time. Dozens of composers, from Arthur Somervell to Samuel Barber, have set his poems to music. The famous playwright Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love deals with Housman looking back at his life and loves. In 1996, a window in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey was dedicated to him.

  Reveille

  Wake: the silver dusk returning

  Up the beach of darkness brims,

  And the ship of sunrise burning

  Strands upon the eastern rims.

  Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,

  Trampled to the floor it spanned,

  And the tent of night in tatters

  Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

  Up, lad, up, ’tis late for lying:

  Hear the drums of morning play;

  Hark, the empty highways crying

  “Who’ll beyond the hills away?”

  Towns and countries woo together,

  Forelands beacon, belfries call;

  Never lad that trod on leather

  Lived to feast his heart with all.

  Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber

  Sunlit pallets never thrive;

  Morns abed and daylight slumber

  Were not meant for man alive.

  Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;

  Breath’s a ware that will not keep.

  Up, lad: when the journey’s over

  There’ll be time enough to sleep.

  Langston Hughes

  The Jazz Poet

  (1902–1967)

  One of Langston Hughes’s favorite ways to pass time was sitting in a jazz club and writing poetry. I think the melodies, the stop-time rhythms, and the trembling trumpet solos found their way inside his words. Hughes is 1920s Harlem personified, with all its life and movement, its bustling theaters and smoky blues clubs, and even its frustration with the present and hope for a brighter future.

  Hughes left his hometown of Joplin, Missouri, and went to Columbia University in New York to study engineering, as his father worried that he wouldn’t be able to support himself through writing. He dropped out of the program, but continued to write poetry—and managed not only to support himself through his writing, but also to earn a place as one of the most influential American poets of the century.

  Throughout his life, Hughes was exposed to discrimination and segregation, but he wrote, he says, “without fear or shame.” As a cultural beacon and a mentor for young black writers, he showed America a new vision for hope and justice. He traveled on the SS Malone headed for Africa in 1923, stopping in more than thirty ports; he lived in Paris, Venice, and Genoa before settling in New York. In Harlem, he discovered the bright society and the dazzling literature of the “New Negro Renaissance” writers: Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, and Eric Walrond. Hughes loved Harlem and was at the center of it all, pen in hand, capturing what he saw. And Harlem loved him back: the block where he lived, on East 127th Street, was renamed Langston Hughes Place after he died.

  I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street . . . [that] had the pulse beat of the people who keep going.

  —Langston Hughes

  The Weary Blues

  Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

  Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

  I heard a Negro play.

  Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

  By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

  He did a lazy sway. . . .

  He did a lazy sway. . . .

  To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

  With his ebony hands on each ivory key

  He made that poor piano moan with melody.

  O Blues!

  Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

  He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

  Sweet Blues!

  Coming from a black man’s soul.

  O Blues!

  In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

  I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—

  “Ain’t got nobody in all this world,

  Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

  I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

  And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

  Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

  He played a few chords then he sang some more—

  “I got the Weary Blues

  And I can’t be satisfied.

  Got the Weary Blues

  And can’t be satisfied—

  I ain’t happy no mo’

  And I wish that I had died.”

  And far into the night he crooned that tune.

  The stars went out and so did the moon.

  The singer stopped playing and went to bed

  While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.

  He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

  Favorite Poems

  “Dream Variations” “Harlem” “Night Funeral in Harlem” “I,

  Too, Sing America” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

  When “The Weary Blues” was published in 1926, Harlem was enjoying a renaissance: its theater was thriving, and jazz was beginning to give America a brand-new tune. This is a fabulous blues poem that evokes a very vivid, specific time and place. Hughes writes with a mixture of hot and cold, fast and slow, just like jazz. Can you hear the onomatopoetic “thump thump thump” in this poem, the rhymes holding it together, the cadence like a syncopated bass line? Once the singer gets it out of his system, he sleeps like the dead. To me the blues is all about the comfort of expression, the catharsis that allows us to move on.

  Randall Jarrell

  The War Poet

  (1914–1965)

  Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated from Vanderbilt University, where he was a student in the company of literary luminaries such as Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate. His first job after graduating was teaching at Kenyon College in Ohio, where he befriended fellow poet Robert Lowell. He taught for a while at the University of Texas, during which time his first book of poems, Blood for a Stranger, was published.

  In 1942, Jarrell enlisted in the Air Force, where he became an aviation instructor for his entire stint in the military. It was this experience that turned his steady eye to the subject of war. What distinguished him from the war poets before him was his unique, bird’s-eye perspective on modern war, or more precisely, on what would become the future of war. When he trained young men to fly in battle, he saw them as innocent children about to become entangled in the least innocent of human endeavors. His war poems reflect the machinery and precision and professional nature of war, along with its violent, senseless outcome on the most human levels. Lowell called him “the most heartbreaking poet of our time.”

  Jarrell wrote about more than war. He was a terrific scholar and enthusiast of modern poetry, and was as well-known for his brilliant literary criticism as for his own verse. Shortly before he died, he published a final book of poetry, The Lost World, that left a bright and creative last impression.

  War poets: a term that came into use during World War I to describe soldier-poets who wrote of their terrible and demoralizing experiences on the battlefield.

  The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

  From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

  And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

  Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of li
fe,

  I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

  When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

  Favorite Poems

  “Well Water” “Next Day” “Eighth Air Force”

  “Hope” “The Breath of Night”

  This is a very short poem with tremendous, permanently haunting impact. It features a vivid, horrific image of death in the air. A ball turret gunner was the person who sat inside a little bubble at the bottom of a bomber airplane and shot at enemy planes in order to protect his own. It was among the most dangerous jobs on a bomber, because you were out there in a very open, visible, and vulnerable spot, cramped up in a fetal position for up to ten hours on a mission. And you were situated right next to the fuselage of the plane, which meant that if the plane was hit there, you would not survive. This was the grimmest of scenarios for a soldier.

  I think this is why the feeling of helplessness is so clear in the poem. The man has nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from his fate in this war. The action here happens to him—it’s as if he has no control from start to finish. He is unavoidably one with the machine that takes him to his death, “Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life.”

  I am moved by the imagery of a mother’s womb, and that in the moment before death the gunner reflects on the very beginning of life. The poem gives the distinct sense of a dead man talking, as if the poet was right there in that ball turret. It is the ultimate close-up view of war, as the last line simply and horribly defines. This short poem alone should be enough to cure us of war, as if our daily newspaper headlines aren’t enough.

  Ben Jonson

  The Passionate Poet

  (1572–1637)

  Ben Jonson was bigger than life. An actor, playwright, and poet, he was a notorious character who ruled the literary roost in early- seventeenth-century London. With a legion of young followers known as the Sons of Ben (later known as the Cavalier poets), he cavorted and opined, dueled and argued, spending more than a few nights in jail over various royal controversies he instigated. And what an extraordinary time to be alive—William Shakespeare himself was in the cast of Jonson’s second play, Every Man in His Humour! At the time, though, Jonson was the man—Shakespeare wouldn’t become a literary hero until later.

  Jonson introduced a clear, classical form that harkened to the ancient Roman poets, such as Horace and Catullus, but that featured colloquial language that was different from the flowery, ornamental diction used by Edmund Spenser, the reigning dean of English poetry who preceded him. Jonson’s work reflected English life in a realistic vein, which was also quite different from the Spenserian approach.

  Jonson had a volatile temperament that seemed to create more devotees than detractors. In 1605, he was appointed court poet to King James I, which is a testament to his popularity at the highest level. He was probably his own best fan, though; he was not shy about expressing his high regard for his own talent. Friend and fellow poet William Drummond of Hawthornden wrote of Jonson, “He is a great lover and praiser of himself; a condemner and scorner of others; given rather to lose a friend than a jest; . . . he is passionately kind and angry.” Friends and admirers were forgiving of his flaws. When he died, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, under a marker that reads, “O Rare Ben Jonson!” Rare indeed.

  Favorite Poems

  “His Excuse for Loving” “An Elegy”

  “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare”

  “An Ode to Himself” “My Picture Left in Scotland”

  Inviting a Friend to Supper

  Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house and I

  Do equally desire your company;

  Not that we think us worthy such a guest,

  But that your worth will dignify our feast

  With those that come, whose grace may make that seem

  Something, which else could hope for no esteem.

  It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates

  The entertainment perfect; not the cates.

  Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate,

  An olive, capers, or some better salad

  Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,

  If we can get her, full of eggs, and then

  Lemons and wine for sauce; to these, a coney

  Is not to be despaired of, for our money;

  And though fowl, now, be scarce, yet there are clerks,

  The sky not falling, think we may have larks.

  I’ll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come:

  Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some

  May yet be there; and godwit, if we can,

  Knat, rail, and ruff, too. Howsoe’er, my man

  Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus,

  Livy, or of some better book to us,

  Of which we’ll speak our minds, amidst our meat;

  And I’ll profess no verses to repeat;

  To this, if ought appear which I know not of,

  That will the pastry, not my paper, show of.

  Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will be;

  But that which most doth take my Muse, and me

  Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,

  Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine;

  Of which had Horace or Anacreon tasted,

  Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted.

  Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring

  Are all but Luther’s beer to this I sing.

  Of this we shall sup free, but moderately,

  And we will have no Pooly, or Parrot by;

  Nor shall our cups make any guilty men,

  But at our parting we shall be as when

  We innocently met. No simple word

  That shall be uttered at our mirthful board

  Shall make us sad next morning, or affright

  The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight.

  Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.

  —Ben Jonson

  This is one of my favorite kinds of poems, the occasional poem. Jonson wrote this on the occasion of having a friend to dinner, and it reads like an invitation to a fabulous evening’s entertainment that would be hard to resist. Where Robert Herrick wrote of the beggar’s hope of a meal of crumbs, Jonson writes about the bounty of the table. Even though this poem is 400 years old, you can still enjoy the rollicking descriptions of the extraordinary food! Mutton and a short-legged hen. Partridge, pheasant, and woodcock. Knat, rail, and ruff—what’s that? I can only guess what Pooly, Parrot, and Canary wine might be like. You can’t help but be attracted to his portrayal of an evening rich in the finest poetry, the most wonderful food, and the liveliest conversation. I know I’d show up with bells on if I received this invitation!

  To Celia

  Drinke to me, only, with thine eyes,

  And I will pledge with mine;

  Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

  And I’ll not looke for wine.

  The thirst that from the soul doth rise,

  Doth ask a drink divine;

  But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,

  I would not change for thine.

  I sent thee, late, a rosy wreath,

  Not so much honoring thee,

  As giving it a hope that there

  It could not withered be.

  But thou thereon did’st only breathe,

  And sent’st it back to me;

  Since when it grows, and smells, I sweare,

  Not of itself, but thee.

  John Keats

  The Tragic Romantic

  (1795–1821)

  John Keats came from humble beginnings as the son of a London stablekeeper. His father died when he was a boy, followed by his mother’s death when he was a young teenager, after which he and his siblings were tended by his grandmother. Despite his rough start in life, Keats got an excellent education and showed an early love of literature. He became a surgeon’s apprentice and was o
n a path to becoming a doctor when he quit his medical studies to devote himself to writing.

  Keats’s family was plagued by illness, in particular the tuberculosis that killed his mother, his brother Tom, and eventually Keats himself. He began showing signs of his infection as early as 1818, and by the following year he felt so ill and sure of his imminent decline that he began referring to his life as his “posthumous existence.” In 1820, his doctors advised him to leave England and go to Italy, where the warm, dry climate might improve his health.

  By this time, Keats had published many individual poems and two volumes of poetry, most of which were not well received. These were lively times and there were critics and poets and artists aplenty, all cued up to criticize each other, jockeying for a slightly higher step on the literary ladder. Keats’s friendships with the editor Leigh Hunt and the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth gave him valuable artistic support, but could not protect him from the critics.

  Keats published what is considered his best work, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems in 1820. This volume featured several poems that came to be known as some of the finest ever written in English, including “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Melancholy,” and “To Autumn.” It is this work that gave him his place in the pantheon of great Romantic poets.

  John Keats died at the age of twenty-five in Rome, just months after finally achieving critical success. Besides his rich, deeply felt, beautifully crafted poetry, he left behind the legend of the tragic artist, gone too soon, like a nineteenth-century James Dean. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote an exquisite tribute to his friend, a poem called Adonais, that set that legend in stone forever. Every year, millions of Keats fans make a pilgrimage to his house on the Piazza di Spagna, right next to the Spanish Steps.

  Favorite Poems

  “Ode to a Nightingale” “Ode on a Grecian Urn”