Off the Shelf Archive ~September

In preparation for changing out selections for the Archive, I was browsing poetry sites a bit earlier today and saw that there is a Wallace Stevens Award for Poetry, given by The Academy of American Poets. I was immensely saddened to find out I'd never heard of it, (or hardly any of the poets who've received it since it was established in 1994, except for W.S. Merwin and Adrienne Rich.)

Naturally, with my Wallace Stevens issues, I had to check it out, and found the 2011 recipient is contemporary poet Yusef Komunyakaa, born in 1947 in Bogalusa, LA, whose work is totally new to me, though he's been around and published for quite awhile. Since I hardly ever pick living poets, and rarely ones I haven't read extensively, I thought I'd make this next Off The Shelf page his poem:

  

The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems

Here's his biography for those who'd like to know more about him:

Yusef Komunyakaa on Poets.org

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And to make room for this new piece, we have below the last selection , moved here to the Archive, an excerpt from Four Quartets 1:Burnt Norton, by T.S. Eliot. Feel free to comment on either poem here as comments are disabled off the main page.

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton
(excerpt)

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.


II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance....

by T.S. Eliot

You can read the remainder of the poem here.

Photo:  'Pat Austin' English Rose, by joy ann jones

Off the Shelf Archive ~August

Time to shove in a new selection for the Off the Shelf Page before the month is completely gone. I recently ordered several poetry collections on sale, to replace lost originals or read a few new authors. Among them was a slim and cheap volume of T.S. Eliot, one of the most influential and widely read poets of the 20th Century. I'm not going to bother giving his bio as I imagine anyone who writes or reads poetry knows his name and has been exposed to his work, which is not very voluminous. Nonetheless, sometimes a rereading of words absorbed years ago reveals something new and valuable, and so it was for me thumbing through this new book of old poems of Eliot's. I've selected a portion of the first of his lengthy Four Quartets (Burnt Norton) the work Eliot considered his best, and responsible for his 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature. 

You'll find it here, in the  Off The Shelf Archive for September 

And to make room for Eliot, below is the previous selection, two shorter poems by D.H. Lawrence. As always feel free to make comments on either selection here, as comments are disabled off the main page, and suggestions for next time are always welcome.

Two Short Poems by D.H. Lawrence

Won’t It Be Strange—?

Won’t it be strange, when the nurse brings the newborn

     infant

to the proud father, and shows its little, webbed greenish

     feet

made to smite the waters behind it?

or the round wild vivid eye of a wild goose staring

out of fathomless skies and seas?

or when it utters that undaunted little bird-cry

of one who will settle on ice-bergs, and honk across the

     Nile?—

And when the father says: This is none of mine!

Woman, where got you this little beast?—

will there be a whistle of wings in the air; and an icy

     draught?

will the singing of swans, high up, high up, invisible

break the drums of his ears

and leave him forever listening for the answer?

The Gods! The Gods!

People were bathing and posturing themselves on the

     beach

and all was dreary, great robot limbs, robot breasts

robot voices, robot even the gay umbrellas.

But a woman, shy and alone, was washing herself under

     a tap

and the glimmer of the presence of the gods was like

     lilies,

and like water-lilies.

by D.H. Lawrence

Image: Mother, by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

1895, Oil on canvas