The Poets' Corner

by John Lithgow

  In 1936, she said, “America is my country and Paris is my home town.” She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, lived for a time with her family in Europe, and eventually settled in Oakland, California, for the rest of her childhood. She attended Radcliffe College and then went to medical school at Johns Hopkins for a time. In 1903 Stein moved with her brother to Paris, where she made her home for the rest of her life.

  Stein’s house at 27 Rue de Fleurus became a salon where all the best and brightest artists, writers, and intellectuals gathered. The walls were crowded with paintings by some of her closest friends—Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and André Derain. Stein was a sort of godmother to a generation of modern artists and writers. She pushed them to do better, supported their experiments, and always provided a warm room, a soothing beverage, and stimulating conversation. Her writer friends included Ernest Hemingway (Stein was his son’s godmother), Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, and Guillaume Apollinaire. She wrote constantly, from essays to plays to poems. Her most popular work is the deliciously difficult Tender Buttons, a volume of poetry published in 1914 that is enigmatically organized by “Objects,” “Food,” and “Rooms.”

  Gertrude Stein is impossible to categorize. She was a fierce intellect, a puzzling writer, and a firm believer in simple common sense. And she was fearless. On one beautiful spring day during final exams at Radcliffe, she wrote at the top of her paper, “Dear Professor James [the famous psychologist William James], I am sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today.” The next day, the professor sent her a postcard reading, “I understand perfectly how you feel I often feel like that myself.” She received the highest grade in his course. Her recklessness extended to everything. A friend said of her driving, “She regarded a corner as something to cut, and another car as something to pass, and she could scare the daylights out of all concerned.”

  Stein famously called her writer friends in Paris a “lost generation.” The term stuck, and it still conjures up an era of disillusioned but brilliant women and men, caught between hope and two devastating world wars. Stein was in France for both wars. During World War I, she and her lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas, drove supplies to French hospitals, and during World War II she and Toklas hid in the French countryside. One night after the Germans had left France, Stein heard a man whistling on the street: “What a sense of freedom to hear someone at midnight go down the street whistling.” The times were terrifying, but Stein faced them resolutely. After the war, she welcomed dozens of GIs into her home, saying she felt like “everybody’s grandmother.” She died in Paris, an icon of an era.

  In 1905, Picasso painted a portrait of Stein. It is stark and almost gloomy, but she liked it. She said—in a way only she could say it—“I was and still am satisfied with my portrait, for me it is I, and it is the only reproduction of me which is always I, for me.” In return, some twenty years later, she wrote a poem portrait of Picasso. Just as he tried to capture her essence on canvas, she tried to express his genius in words—her kind of words.

  Listen to Gertrude Stein read “If I Told Him” at Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/stein/index.html). It will change the way you think of her. In fact, it will change the way you think! Also look at the portrait of Stein by Pablo Picasso at http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/picasso/stein.jpg.html.

  If I Told Him:

  A Completed Portrait of Picasso

  If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.

  Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he

  like it

  If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I

  told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if

  Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told

  him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him.

  Now.

  Not now.

  And now.

  Now.

  Exactly as as kings.

  Feeling full for it.

  Exactitude as kings.

  So to beseech you as full as for it.

  Exactly or as kings.

  Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and

  so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut

  and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so

  and also. And also and so and so and also.

  Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as

  exact as a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling,

  exactly in resemblance exactly a resemblance, exactly and

  resemblance. For this is so. Because.

  Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively

  repeat at all.

  Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.

  I judge judge.

  As a resemblance to him.

  Who comes first. Napoleon the first.

  Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they

  share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet.

  Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date.

  Who came first. Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first.

  Who came first, Napoleon first.

  Presently.

  Exactly do they do.

  First exactly.

  Exactly do they do too.

  First exactly.

  And first exactly.

  Exactly do they do.

  And first exactly and exactly.

  And do they do.

  At first exactly and first exactly and do they do.

  The first exactly.

  And do they do.

  The first exactly.

  At first exactly.

  First as exactly.

  At first as exactly.

  Presently.

  As presently.

  As as presently.

  He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and as and

  as he and as he and he. He is and as he is, and as he is and he is, he is

  and as he and he and as he is and he and he and and he and he.

  Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable.

  As presently.

  As exactitude.

  As trains.

  Has trains.

  Has trains.

  As trains.

  As trains.

  Presently.

  Proportions.

  Presently.

  As proportions as presently.

  Father and farther.

  Was the king or room.

  Farther and whether.

  Was there was there was there what was there was there what was

  there was there there was there.

  Whether and in there.

  As even say so.

  One.

  I land.

  Two.

  I land.

  Three.

  The land.

  Three

  The land.

  Three

  The land.

  Two

  I land.

  Two

  I land.

  One

  I land.

  Two

  I land.

  As a so.

  They cannot.

  A note

  They cannot.

  A fl oat.

  They cannot.

  They dote.

  They cannot.

  They as denote.

  Miracles play

  Play fairly.

  Play fairly well.

  A well.

  As well.

  As or as presently.

  Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.

  This poem is maddening and infuriating but utterly compelling to recite. It reminds me of some of Philip Glass’s serial music that also ha
s a hypnotic relentlessness. Still, it’s fascinating, how the words sound crazy, in all their repetitiveness and mysterious relation to each other. One word or phrase is worked and worked and spun and riffed on to the point of exhaustion, and then on to another. Reading this poem aloud cannot help but force you to regard language and the way words can relate to each other in a whole new way.

  Favorite Poems

  “Red Faces” “In Between” “A Light in the Moon”

  “A Long Dress” “A Mounted Umbrella”

  I am also, of course, reminded of the work of Stein’s friend, Picasso, about whom this poem is written. His paintings broke down shapes and forms, removing rationality, removing familiar connections of forms, and then reassembling to force an original interpretation. In this regard, this poem is a perfectly apt poetic portrait of Picasso, an original poetic likeness in the cubist manner.

  Gertrude Stein used words in loops and circles, as in her famous phrase, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Her experiments with words were meant to recall “the excitingness of pure being,” without any regard for the traditional forms and structures of poetry. She wanted to convey the living moment and challenged the reader to rise to the occasion and tackle her work head-on. I admire her intent, and even her accomplishment, but I have to admit, she really gets my goat.

  Wallace Stevens

  The Businessman

  (1879–1955)

  Surely no one who encountered the austere, dignified Wallace Stevens in his office at the insurance company where he worked all his life would have pegged him as a poet. But not only was he a poet, he also invented a completely original style of poetry, filled with imaginative flights of language, a sense of the absurd, puns and symbols that he insisted were merely the thing itself, not symbols at all.

  Stevens went to Harvard, studied law, and eventually joined the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in Connecticut, rising to vice president. He appeared to be a typical middle-class executive leading a calm, orderly existence. But while he walked back and forth to his office, he was composing some of the most exciting poems of the twentieth century. As early as 1919, Hart Crane wrote of Stevens, “There is a man whose work makes most of the rest of us quail.”

  Although he lived in a town many might call provincial, Stevens enjoyed the trappings of a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. On frequent trips to New York City, he visited art galleries and museums, saw concerts and plays, went antiquing, and dined well. He was a sensual man whose appreciation of the finer things, from Stravinksy and Garbo to cinnamon buns and ice cream, found their way into his poems in offbeat ways.

  Favorite Poems

  “The Snow Man” “Anecdote of the Jar”

  “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman”

  “Sunday Morning” “Tattoo”

  The Emperor of Ice-Cream

  Call the roller of big cigars,

  The muscular one, and bid him whip

  In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

  Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

  As they are used to wear, and let the boys

  Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

  Let be be finale of seem.

  The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

  Take from the dresser of deal,

  Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

  On which she embroidered fantails once

  And spread it so as to cover her face.

  If her horny feet protrude, they come

  To show how cold she is, and dumb.

  Let the lamp affix its beam.

  The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

  I love Wallace Stevens even though I am often perplexed by him. He said this was his favorite poem, and although it’s often included in anthologies, it’s not easy to fully appreciate after just one or two readings. The precision of its language and the discipline of its form are rewarding on their own—and Stevens would be the first to discourage any “interpretation” of a poem. But I like to think about what’s happening in it.

  There is a plot—the first part takes place in the kitchen where ice cream is being made, and the second in the bedroom where a corpse waits to be tended. An unnamed person is giving orders: “Call the roller of big cigars” to make the ice cream. “Take from the dresser” a sheet to cover the corpse. The roller of big cigars is muscular, but so is the kitchen stanza itself, and sensuous too, with reference to “concupiscent curds,” dawdling wenches, and boys bearing flowers. The second stanza is practical, addressing directly what needs to be done to the corpse. Where the first stanza is alive with people going about the business of life, the second is an unsentimental acknowledgment of age and death. The notion of a woman who embroidered fantails on the sheet that would cover her own corpse is sad, though. And her “horny feet” protruding from beneath the sheet— nothing looks more dead than a pair of dead feet.

  The arc of the poem is what’s compelling. Both the kitchen stanza and the bedroom stanza end with the same line: “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.” Even faced with death, we will still turn to our coarse appetites for food and beauty and physical desire. There’s no inherent judgment to that, just a simple matter-of-factness.

  Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

  —Wallace Stevens

  Dylan Thomas

  The Modern Romantic

  (1914–1953)

  Dylan Thomas was born in Wales and introduced to literature by his father, who was a university professor. He preferred his own course of study to school; this amounted to reading every word of D. H. Lawrence’s poetry, and anything by William Blake, Thomas Hardy, and James Joyce, to name a few. He dropped out of school at the age of sixteen and worked as a reporter for a short time. His first poems were published in literary journals, and he was just twenty when his first book, 18 Poems, was published in 1934 to immediate acclaim.

  Shunning Auden’s and Eliot’s trend toward intellectualism, Thomas was a romantic soul who wrote nostalgic poems about life, death, and lost innocence. He once said, “My poetry is the record of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light.” But the boy wonder lived a more complicated life than the one depicted in his idyllic works; by the time Thomas came to America for a speaking tour in 1950, he was a celebrity known as much for his heavy drinking, carousing, and misbehaving at dinner parties as for his wildly popular poetry.

  Critics didn’t agree as to his brilliance; some found his work to be narrow in scope and redundant in style, likely the influence of the Romantic poets whose work he tried to contemporize. But readers and audiences loved his vivid imagery and his soulful yet modern use of language. Even with all the swagger and swill, Thomas did much to popularize poetry readings. Known for his dramatic delivery and mellifluous voice, he also performed numerous programs for the BBC throughout his career. For Thomas, poetry was always more than words on a page— it was musical and alive.

  Too much poetry to-day is flat on the page, a black and white thing of words created by intelligences that no longer think it necessary for a poem to be read and understood by anything but eyes.

  —Dylan Thomas

  Do not go gentle into that good night

  Do not go gentle into that good night,

  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

  Because their words had forked no lightning they

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

  Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

  And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Grave men, near deat
h, who see with blinding sight

  Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  And you, my father, there on the sad height,

  Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  This poem, about the death of a father, is quite poignant to me because when I lost my father, a great lover of poetry, he actually did go gently. But unlike my father, giving himself over to a peaceful death, the poem is about the fight to stay alive, the rage against time and deeds undone, and the loss of what has not yet been experienced.

  The poem is a villanelle, which is a rhyming scheme that alternates between the last word of the first line (night) and the second line (day) throughout the entire poem. This is an odd form to use in a poem that’s about rage and fight; it is traditionally used in sweet, light verse. You understand the poet’s purpose, though, when you read this poem aloud. It lulls you even as it works you up to a fist-shaking fury. The tension between the subject and the form forces you to carefully consider what the poet is suggesting.

  Favorite Poems

  “Poem in October” “I see the boys of summer”

  “In my craft or sullen art” “And death shall have no dominion”

  “The Conversation of Prayer”

  This poem is often read at funerals and memorial services, usually for fathers. This is understandable but also ironic, because a funeral would indicate that the fight has ended, while the poem tells us to keep on fighting. Perhaps that’s because the poem is for us, not our fathers. In lamenting loss and anticipating grief, we can be inspired to make the most of our time. Good men, wild men, grave men—that’s all of us. And thinking hard about what might have been while there’s still something to do about it can be an uplifting exercise.

  Walt Whitman

  The Voice

  (1819–1892)

  Walt Whitman used to carry a little green notebook, bound with leather rings, in which he made notes about his everyday business transactions. But in the same notebook he wrote the four seminal words that would shape and define the rest of his life and work: “observing the summer grass.”