The Poets' Corner

by John Lithgow

  I’ve gotsam.

  Does anybody want any jetsam?

  I can getsam.

  I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,

  I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.

  I can don or doff my shoes without tying or untying the laces because I

  am wearing moccasins,

  And I practically know the difference between serums and

  antitoccasins.

  Kind people, don’t think me purse-proud, don’t set me down as

  vainglorious,

  I’m just a little euphorious.

  . The Carnival of the Animals is an orchestral suite composed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886. This composition is beloved around the world and is a particular favorite of mine. I once had the unique pleasure of performing in a New York City Ballet production choreographed to this music, for which I wrote a rhymed narration that became a children’s book. Ogden Nash must have loved Carnival as much as I do, as he wrote a collection of funny poems to accompany each movement of the suite. I especially love his poem “The Lion,” which goes with the first movement:

  The lion is the king of beasts,

  And husband of the lioness.

  Gazelles and things on which he feasts

  Address him as your highoness.

  There are those that admire that roar of his,

  In the African jungles and velds,

  But, I think that wherever the lion is,

  I’d rather be somewhere else.

  This poem has everything I love about Nash—the vividness, the use of ridiculous words, and a giddiness to it all. It is exuberant and, well, euphoric! It’s the joy of words, as simple as that. And the pace, classic Nash, urges you along to the point that you can’t wait for the next line. There is the wonderfully true sense of what it feels like to be alive on a really great day—you can do anything, rise to any occasion, conquer any fear. You have the “agility of a Greek god” and you can “play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer”—that is a terrific day. You feel smart and snappy and like clicking your heels. Just the way this poem makes you feel.

  Nash had an edge of antiestablishment to him, but it was balanced by his good nature. He once quipped, “My field—the minor idiocies of mankind.” Yes, the idiocies, if you count the ordinary subjects of ordinary life, like work and marriage and families. But they’re also the joys, especially as Nash puts his inimitable spin on it.

  Dorothy Parker

  The Caustic Poet

  (1893–1967)

  I can’t help but think that Dorothy Parker would laugh out loud to find herself included in a collection along with Shakespeare and John Donne or Keats and T. S. Eliot. But included she is, as her poetry reflects a unique sense of perception and cuts like a knife—this is the essence of the one-and-only Dorothy Parker.

  Parker was born in West End, New Jersey, and grew up mostly in Manhattan. Her mother died when she was five and her father when she was twenty-one. She never described her family life or childhood with affection; her education ended when she was thirteen and she moved to a boardinghouse in New York at the age of eighteen. To support herself, she played the piano at a dance school, but within just a few years she was submitting poems to magazines and newspapers; her first published poem, “Any Porch,” was featured in Vanity Fair in 1914.

  So began a career of writing poetry and prose for magazines like Vanity Fair, Vogue, and eventually the New Yorker that would span her whole life. Her first volume of poetry, Enough Rope, was published in 1926 and was a critical and commercial success. She wrote a total of seven volumes of poetry and short stories, as well as plays, several successful film scripts, and a lot of popular literary criticism.

  It’s hard to imagine how Dorothy Parker had the time to produce such an impressive body of work—she lived a famously tumultuous life, with unhappy marriages, drinking problems, depression, and a long stint working in the film business that was racked with familiar Hollywood drama. She pronounced herself a Communist in the middle of the McCarthy era and promptly landed on the Hollywood blacklist.

  Parker was as acerbic in person as on paper, and though most of her friends stood by her throughout her career, some admitted it could be hard at times to love her. Yet it was just this biting demeanor that made her who she was—her dry, sardonic point of view informed everything she wrote, while her urbane wit gave her work an unmatched elegance and crispness.

  Listen to Dorothy Parker read more than two dozen of her favorite poems in An Informal Hour with Dorothy Parker, or go to www.dorothyparker.com/dotaudio.htm to listen to individual clips of these poems. Her gravelly voice sounds just the way you’d imagine it.

  Afternoon

  When I am old, and comforted,

  And done with this desire,

  With Memory to share my bed

  And Peace to share my fire,

  I’ll comb my hair in scalloped bands

  Beneath my laundered cap,

  And watch my cool and fragile hands

  Lie light upon my lap.

  And I will have a sprigged gown

  With lace to kiss my throat;

  I’ll draw my curtain to the town,

  And hum a purring note.

  And I’ll forget the way of tears,

  And rock, and stir my tea.

  But oh, I wish those blessed years

  Were further than they be!

  “Afternoon” is an elegant piece of poetry paced like a brilliant little joke that sets up with carefully drawn details and works toward a very ironic, caustic punch line. Classic Dorothy Parker. I love this poem for all kinds of reasons. First, what a funny notion, Parker wearing a dowager’s cap, tucked into a rocking chair, stirring her tea with “fragile hands.” There wasn’t a fragile bone in her body, and she had too much spit and fire to ever end up in a rocker, quietly lamenting her old age.

  This was a common trick of Parker’s, to make herself the main character in her poem, however unlikely the connection. Whether she wrote of unsuccessful love, youth, age, or modern life, she was not afraid to put herself right in the middle of the picture she painted and didn’t mind being the object of her own jokes.

  Dorothy Parker is pure 1920s and ’30s dry, cynical wit. She and her writer friends, a loosely organized lunch bunch known as the Algonquin Round Table, were famous for their clever banter and memorable quips. They made an art form out of traded barbs and structured jokes and became the literary masters of parody and putdown.

  One can’t just look at Dorothy Parker’s poetry without considering her life. The critic Brendan Gill described the titles of her books—Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, Laments for Living, Death and Taxes, After Such Pleasures, and Not So Deep as a Well—as a “capsule autobiography.” Whereas her contemporary Ogden Nash wrote with a kind of happy, upbeat irreverence, Parker had a dark streak that brought an edge of viciousness to her humor. She famously quipped, “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.” Which is a little something else she may have had in common with Shakespeare, besides appearing in this book.

  Favorite Poems

  “Little Words” “Men” “The Gentlest Lady”

  “Interior” “Symptom Recital”

  Edgar Allan Poe

  The Macabre Poet

  (1809–1849)

  Edgar Allan Poe was like a character in one of his own poems or short stories—troubled, obsessive, and probably not a little lacking in sleep! He has had his fans, from Charles Dickens to Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and William Faulkner. He has also had his critics, from Mark Twain to T. S. Eliot, who sniped that Poe had “the intellect of a highly gifted person before puberty.” Not everyone agreed as to the nature of his genius—whether it was a keen intelligence or a kind of madness—but his genius was undeniable.

  Born the son of two actors in Boston, Poe lost both his parents before he was three. He was taken in by a wealthy tobacco merchant from Richmond, Virginia, named John Allan,
who saw to Poe’s excellent education and made him a part of the Allan family. Poe and the Allans lived in Scotland and England from 1815 through 1820, before returning to Richmond. Poe attended the University of Virginia in 1826, but had to drop out after just a year, when Mr. Allan refused to help him pay his gambling debts. At the age of eighteen, Poe moved to Boston and anonymously published his first book of poetry, called Tamerlane and Other Poems.

  With no way to support himself, Poe enlisted in the army in 1827 and served for two years. After reconciling briefly with Mr. Allan, who arranged for his appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, he broke off from the quarreling Allan family for good and got himself kicked out of West Point for disobedience. By this time, in 1831, he had published his third book of poetry and was gaining a reputation as a poet and story writer, getting published occasionally in literary magazines and newspapers. Eventually he wrote for and edited several magazines, and circulations rose in the periodicals that published his work. By now he was writing poetry, short stories, literary criticism, and book reviews, and in 1845, when his poem “The Raven” was published, he became an overnight sensation.

  Though he wrote steadily and was published regularly, Poe’s work life was far from stable. Most of his experiences working for magazines ended badly, either due to personality difficulties or the effects of one of his regular bouts of drinking and depression. He had trouble at first convincing publishers to take on his macabre fiction—ironically, now the work for which he is most famous. He publicly feuded with fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was the most popular literary figure in America at the time. When Poe’s wife died of tuberculosis in 1847, Poe fell more deeply into his “darknesses,” and in October 1849 he turned up drunk and gravely ill in Baltimore, incoherent and wearing someone else’s clothes. He died a few days later.

  It’s tempting to account for Poe’s dark themes by pointing to his fractured and difficult life, and you might not be wrong. But he wasn’t a slave to his themes, rather a master craftsman in their service. And there’s no denying his considerable influence on style and structure in American poetry, and as the “architect” of the modern short story. For these contributions, he’s considered one of the first important and world-renowned distinctly American writers.

  Annabel Lee

  It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden there lived whom you may know

  By the name of Annabel Lee;

  And this maiden she lived with no other thought

  Than to love and be loved by me.

  I was a child and she was a child,

  In this kingdom by the sea:

  But we loved with a love that was more than love—

  I and my Annabel Lee;

  With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

  Coveted her and me.

  And this was the reason that, long ago,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

  My beautiful Annabel Lee;

  So that her highborn kinsman came

  And bore her away from me,

  To shut her up in a sepulchre

  In this kingdom by the sea.

  The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

  Went envying her and me—

  Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

  In this kingdom by the sea)

  That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

  Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

  But our love it was stronger by far than the love

  Of those who were older than we—

  Of many far wiser than we—

  And neither the angels in heaven above,

  Nor the demons down under the sea,

  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

  For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

  Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

  In her sepulchre there by the sea,

  In her tomb by the sounding sea.

  To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  This was Poe’s last poem, published two days after his death. You don’t need to know this to feel the feverish grief he expresses for the loss of his young wife, Virginia, two years before. You can imagine his descent into despair at losing her, as it fairly weeps off the words at every turn. And yet, in all his sadness, what amazing control he shows over this poem. The rhythm and the rhyme are carefully crafted to set up a soothing pace that belies the poet’s misery and dangerous obsession with his dead bride.

  “Annabel Lee” displays Poe’s signature musicality to perfect effect. Repeated phrases and a melodious use of language amp up the drama to tell the story like a ballad. It’s interesting that Poe’s parents were actors, as his poetry always begs to be performed as much as read. Like the best melodramatists, Poe was famous for his almost morbid affection for lost love. Yet this is also a deeply personal poem. When he says that “the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams” you absolutely believe he is speaking for himself.

  Poe once said, “Sleep, those little slices of death, how I loathe them.” This was his own world, the world of deep and troubling dreams as well as relentless insomnia, obsessive fixations, and reclusive isolation, all painstakingly, perfectly reflected back in his poetry and stories. He was a master craftsman to the end, right down to his last poem.

  Favorite Poems

  “A Dream” “The Bells” “The Oval Portrait”

  “The Raven” “Tamerlane”

  Alone

  From childhood’s hour I have not been

  As others were—I have not seen

  As others saw—I could not bring

  My passions from a common spring—

  From the same source I have not taken

  My sorrow—I could not awaken

  My heart to joy at the same tone—

  And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

  Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

  Of a most stormy life—was drawn

  From ev’ry depth of good and ill

  The mystery which binds me still—

  From the torrent, or the fountain—

  From the red cliff of the mountain—

  From the sun that ’round me roll’d

  In its autumn tint of gold—

  From the lightning in the sky

  As it pass’d me flying by—

  From the thunder, and the storm—

  And the cloud that took the form

  (When the rest of Heaven was blue)

  Of a demon in my view—

  Ezra Pound

  The Imagist

  (1885–1972)

  When the critic Hugh Kenner met Ezra Pound, he said, “I suddenly knew that I was in the presence of the center of modernism.” Like Wordsworth before him, Pound made it his life’s mission to usher in a new literary era. He succeeded famously, encouraging the work of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Marianne Moore, and Wyndham Lewis—a chorus of voices of modernism.

  Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, and graduated from Hamilton College in 1905. He left for Europe in 1908 and remained an expatriate for most of his life. Married in 1914, he worked in London as the editor of a literary journal until he moved to Italy in 1924. Later he lived in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, surrounded by the brilliant artists and writers of the Lost Generation. He frequented Gertrude Stein’s salon and the café Le Dôme, where he played chess on the terrace with the writer Ford Madox Ford.

  Although continuously writing his own poetry, Pound spent considerable time on essays promoting a poetic mo
vement called imagism. He was passionate about its precepts: to use precise imagery and clear, economical language, and to employ unconventional rhyme and meter. While not every poet raised his hand and joined the imagist club, the influence of this thinking was seen in most writers’ work at the time.

  Pound was proficient in Spanish, ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Japanese, Hindi, Anglo-Saxon, and ancient Egyptian. He translated works from Provençal and Chinese. A respected and feared critic, he was a great friend and supporter of poets in Europe and America. He got into hot water for supporting Mussolini’s Fascist politics while living in Italy; he was arrested and sent back to America in 1945, where he was tried for treason. An insanity plea resulted in twelve years in an institution.

  Despite his incarceration, Pound continued to write and was awarded the 1949 Bollingen Prize for his masterwork, Pisan Cantos. After his friends successfully campaigned for his release, he returned to Italy, where he died in Venice in 1972. Ezra Pound was a giant of the twentieth century, but he spent his last years a recluse, reliving his “errors and wrecks.”

  Favorite Poems

  Canto I “The Garden”

  “Exile’s Letter” “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”?

  The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

  While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

  I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

  You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

  You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

  And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

  Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

  At fourteen I married My Lord you.

  I never laughed, being bashful.

  Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

  Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

  At fifteen I stopped scowling,

  I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

  Forever and forever and forever.

  Why should I climb the look out?

  At sixteen you departed,