Hello folks. The weekend is here. It's getting towards evening; the darkness may even be upon you now. Welcome it. Breathe it. Feel a nocturnal conversion coming. 'Cause thanks to the aptly-named DelicateMonster, our poetry theme for the week is Monsters. Make of it what you will --
Join us in the comments section for poetry from our own Kossacks. Or post your own!
But for now, let's see what successful poets have made of the theme.
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights hast thirty one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
- from Macbeth, (Shakespeare's bio here)
I had considered starting with a selection from Beowulf. But - we know that story, and I'm not a big fan. I've included a link for you. Instead, let's jump forward to a Romantic.
John Keats, born 1795 in London, eventually met some nice poets and writers like Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, and William Godwin. They encouraged him to publish his work - and thankfully he did. While working on his masterpiece "Hyperion," he contracted tuberculosis. "Hyperion" was never finished. However, the "Hyperion" volume ("Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems") contained his most appreciated poems of today. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" was there, along with his other fantastic odes. But now we turn to a selection from "Lamia" which describes the Greek demon.
Left to herself, the serpent now began
To change; her elfin blood in madness ran,
Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent,
Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent;
Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear,
Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear,
Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear.
The colours all inflam'd throughout her train,
She writh'd about, convuls'd with scarlet pain:
A deep volcanian yellow took the place
Of all her milder-mooned body's grace;
And, as the lava ravishes the mead,
Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede;
Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars,
Eclips'd her crescents, and lick'd up her stars:
So that, in moments few, she was undrest
Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst,
And rubious-argent: of all these bereft,
Nothing but pain and ugliness were left.
- John Keats, from Lamia
That's tough! The complete work ("Lamia") can be found here.
Romantic poetry gave us a collective emphasis on pastorals and intensities of feeling - even anger, horror - in poetics. The era also shed light on the (often excruciating) creative process involving in hashing out poems.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone;
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
- Shelley, from On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery
As previously noted, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a poet among poets. He was friends with Keats and others, and through this group met his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. By 19 - perhaps in reaction to the loss of their child at birth - Mary Shelley had penned the penultimate modern monster, Frankenstein.
Of Mary, Percy wrote: "They saw that thou wert lovely from thy birth, / Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child." So Romantic! You can read more about the couple, Mary in particular, here. A biography and selected works of Percy Bysshe Shelley is available here.
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Lest we skip the Victorian era, here is an excellent poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins. A preacher, he found poetry after he heard of the tragic sinking of a German ship, in which several nuns died. He is known for melding words to form new ones and for his right-sexy "sprung rhythm."
Another great monster? The vampire.
But what is a vampire? It's almost a human disease. They spread through biting other humans!
If you haven't noticed, we are getting closer and closer to "human monsters." That is - from a Frankenstein created by humans, we come to a Vampire that lives off of them. It's a far cry from Keats' mythical (and understood to be mythical) Lamia. In modern poetry, we may be approaching humans that aren't monsters, but whose experience is so horrific the person's function might be transferred in a sense.
The Distant Moon
I
Admitted to the hospital again.
The second bout of pneumocystis back
In January almost killed him; then,
He'd sworn to us he'd die at home. He baked
Us cookies, which the student wouldn't eat,
Before he left--the kitchen on 5A
Is small, but serviceable and neat.
He told me stories: Richard Gere was gay
And sleeping with a friend of his, and AIDS
Was an elaborate conspiracy
Effected by the government. He stayed
Four months. He lost his sight to CMV.
II
One day, I drew his blood, and while I did
He laughed, and said I was his girlfriend now,
His blood-brother. "Vampire-slut," he cried,
"You'll make me live forever!" Wrinkled brows
Were all I managed in reply. I know
I'm drowning in his blood, his purple blood.
I filled my seven tubes; the warmth was slow
To leave them, pressed inside my palm. I'm sad
Because he doesn't see my face. Because
I can't identify with him. I hate
The fact that he's my age, and that across
My skin he's there, my blood-brother, my mate.
III
He said I was too nice, and after all
If Jodie Foster was a lesbian,
Then doctors could be queer. Residual
Guilts tingled down my spine. "OK, I'm done,"
I said as I withdrew the needle from
His back, and pressed. The CSF was clear;
I never answered him. That spot was framed
In sterile, paper drapes. He was so near
Death, telling him seemed pointless. Then, he died.
Unrecognizable to anyone
But me, he left my needles deep inside
His joking heart. An autopsy was done.
IV
I'd read to him at night. His horoscope,
The New York Times, The Advocate;
Some lines by Richard Howard gave us hope.
A quiet hospital is infinite,
The polished, ice-white floors, the darkened halls
That lead to almost anywhere, to death
Or ghostly, lighted Coke machines. I call
To him one night, at home, asleep. His breath,
I dreamed, had filled my lungs--his lips, my lips
Had touched. I felt as though I'd touched a shrine.
Not disrespectfully, but in some lapse
Of concentration. In a mirror shines
The distant moon.
- Rafael Campo
Campo's excellent "The Distant Moon" has all the feel of a horrible situation, the venom of a monster, the purple, foreign blood -- but in the end, the patient is a human. A brother. We are related to these monsters somehow. You can read Rafael's biography here (he is a doctor!).
We'll end our selections with William Blake's poem "A Divine Image." I think this poem is relevant because it reinforces this notion that all our monsters, every one of them, are us: they are our expectations and fears from life, all our cruelties and distress, and all that we would vanquish (sans ourselves in the process).
A Divine Image
Cruelty has a Human heart
And Jealousy a Human Face,
Terror, the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy, the Human Dress.
The Human Dress is forgéd Iron,
The Human Form, a fiery Forge,
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd,
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.
- William Blake
Before we end, poet birthdays for the week of March 7-13 are in order. Happy birthday poets!
March 8 - Marcus B. Christian and Eric Linklater
March 10 - Samuel Ferguson, Manolis Anagnostakis, Ina Donna Coolbrith
So we end here. Except not. Meet us in the comments, please! Hopefully, many more kos-poets will post their own poetry below. You can follow the theme, see what you can tease out of our monsters, or you can post any old thing you like. Sonnets, haikus, lyrics, free verse - all welcome.
Don't forget to suggest a theme for next week: the "subject/theme" comment with the most tips will be next week's theme.
Hope you enjoyed it, and have a great weekend!
dKos Poets; Poetry Friday is a weekly diary, posted 8PM-EST.