Poems on Sri Ramakrishna's Tithi Puja

These two poems from an obscure source. Every once in a while I go looking for them, scouring the internet and want to post them here so I know where they are!

From John Moffitt Jr.'s book 'The Living Seed'. John Moffitt, Jr., known as Swami Atmaghanananda. was a novice and monk from 1932-1963, when he converted to Roman Catholicism. As a Hindu, he contributed poetry to various magazines, including The New Yorker. He corresponded with Salinger from 1953 to 1965, and the two discussed spirituality and its relationship to literature.

SPIRIT OF THE LAND
(Belur Math, India)
Out of unaging earth,
Out of a dark, soft, immemorial
Womb - not the thick paddies only,
Not the slim herons, not the buffalo
And the calm milch cow,
The lifted palm and sturdy deodar;
Not the thatched hut, the naked boy
On the road's edge, the grain winnowed
And piled on the road; not the flowing
Woman, the jolly hawker, the clasped hands
Of brothers joined in artless affection,
The spare, orange-clad monk striding alone;
Not the close bazars, the cozy
Lamps dotting the twilight,
The straining coolie, the round brass pot
Poised on the peasant woman's
Head; not the soiled white saris
Stretched in the sun to dry:
Not all these only, but above and beyond
And through all these, the veiled
Shape, the infinite Mother brooding,
The much affronted, the reviled, the secretly
Serene - long-suffering and forgiving:
She, rising out of this earth,
Above and beyond them all - it is she,
Mysterious and benign,
Whose presence, as you thread the crowded lanes,
Stills you, holds you,
Cheers you like a healing wind.


VIGIL
(Belur Math)
Unfathomable ray,
Which in me, this wide night,
Quietly answers to the tranced quality
Of a light a clean moon throws
Over sheer domes, slow Ganges shallows,
Thick-hung mango leaves: 
Say audibly for me here
In the still presence of this moon-touched air
A hidden word, dark only for simplicity,
To catch my faith's consent
And - past trees, water and white silences -
Gather me to me, 
Unfathomable ray.

---

Muddle

Semester Two is on now.
There is a huge list of books to read so, naturally, I'm not reading anything.
I'm in the middle of a couple of books and writing a few poems.
Just want to share this lovely quote on poetry from Stephen Fry's book on poetry.
Fry quotes Jan Schreiber:

"The writing of poetry has been made laughably easy. There are no technical constraints. Knowledge of the tradition is not necessary, nor is a desire to communicate, this having been supplanted in many practitioners by the more urgent desire to express themselves. Even sophistication in the manipulation of syntax is not sought. Poetry, it seems, need no longer be at least as well written as prose."

How true is that? Its why I revert to the canon. Because there are too many people who say with great ease that they write poetry (I might be one among them) and produce mulch.
This makes me, personally, hunger for the discipline. Its not about expressing oneself. That's what Dr. James Stewart says ( one of our Professors whom I revere). Art is impersonal. Or else I ought to return to the indulgent confines of my personal diary.


Fry goes on to say that he finds writing without form "fantastically difficult." Why? He quotes W.H. Auden:

"The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor."

So true.
I personally feel a real lack in "communication" as I read contemporary poetry. As if by speaking clearly we would muddle our meanings.

Alright, must go and sip from my cup of Tesco "anti cold and flu" brew.

Tom Hiddleston's Tweets

Happy New Year 2013!

For this first post of a brand new year I wanted to write about a topic which occupies a considerable area of my mindspace: Mr. Thomas William Hiddleston. And his Twitter.

If you read between the lines here, you might not only gauge some connubial proclivities on my part as far this gentleman is concerned, but also indulge in some psychoanalysis and discover the why he is such a hotbed of hopes where maidens such as myself are concerned.

Before that I would like to say, I straggled across The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield. Quite a beautiful story! And yet not designated for the list of favourites. This might be because I read it very slowly, with huge gaps in between (filled with the discovery of Monty Python and Black Adder), and also completed yet another book ("wheels within wheels" Monty Bodkin would say). Still, quite a beautiful story and recommended.

The other book, more highly recommended and got through with in a jiff of time, is Gabriel Josipovici's 'Infinity The Story of a Moment'.  Appealed to me in every way, so that I would marry the book, if it asked me. (No, not really!) Brilliant character, brilliant mix of discourse and story, and above all, a fascinating voice! Absolutely loved it! Even if it's about music which, I do not understand or know anything much about. I read it aloud and the voice would completely involve me, make me the character! Such a pleasure!

But, yes, Mr. Thomas William Hiddleston's tweets.
Firstly, it is not wise to follow anyone who ends their twitter description with "loon".(They sometimes think they're joking but they really aren't).This is unless it is prefaced with such a grand job description. In this case, "Actor". In this circumstance it becomes a question of great good taste. Both on the part of the follower and the followed.

So whats special about this Twitter feed?
Enthusiastic for one thing, intelligent in the extreme, cultured and kind! And funny!

There are regular "Song of the Day"posts (which I've never heard but which I find cool because it is sharing a part of yourself in art) sometimes these are accompanied with enthusiasm. Sample this:

Tom Hiddleston ‏@twhiddleston

MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" just came on @thisisheart radio. Is there anything better on a Thursday morning? Is there anything better? 

or the recent one:

On my way to work for my last day on THOR 2 before Christmas. @thisisheart is playing The Pogues and quite frankly all is well.  (22 Dec)

What is much more pertinent to my interests is that there is the occasional 'Poem of the Day' as well. And so far, I am happy to say, I always like the poems ( happy announcement soon?). Here are a few recent ones:

Poem of the Day: "Wild Geese", by Mary Oliver. http://say.ly/HSw4Ra3 (27 Dec)

Poem of the Day: "Love After Love", by Derek Walcott. http://say.ly/rbh4SbX (31 Dec)

and, my favourite:

Poem of the Day: "The Truly Great", by Stephen Spender. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241980 (15 Dec)

Now that I know that men who read poetry for the pure pleasure of it exist, I suppose, I shall have to stay single for longer than I originally intended. Such is life.

He has also quoted from 'Prufrock', Livy and Chinese proverbs. So if you have one of those grubby adenoidal existences (called  'teenagers')  festering under your roof, this gent's twitter feed might help inject a tidbit of wit into them.

Also, beautiful snippets from anywhere. Like this last evening: 

Perfect. RT “@exitthelemming: Baby and dog go walking. This may be the best short film ever http://bit.ly/XaJmec  /via @sturdyAlex”( 6 Jan)

He also seems a very idealistic being ( I know, no one with half a brain would fail to get that from the contents of his twitter), which I admire very much. 

So, funny, cultured, idealistic and passionate.

Recently voted Best Dressed Man. Advice given? "Try not to look like a tit!"

Humour. I kid you not!

And then interesting things happen to him. He does a spoof on MTV After Hours with a 'stache named Wendy, and his fans make him a book out of photos with them and wendystaches. The title is 'Project Wendy'. The back and forth was so warm and funny!

So, yes, his tweets are recommended on this blog.

Not that they need recommendation (395, 735 followers). There is a photo of him jumping when his army swelled to 50000.

I'm not sure he should be anywhere near terra firma now.

So that's my out-of-the-box recommendation for a New Year. A Twitter feed of an actor (who, by the way, has a double first in classics from Cambridge).

He's beautiful.

Updated to add: And he just retweeted Stephen Fry:
Absolutely achingly hilarious. “@stephenfry: Just in case you haven’t seen 2012’s finest autocorrect disasters: http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/the-25-funniest-autocorrects-of-2012 …

(I have laughed two seasons of Black Adder out)

The Sojourner: Carson McCullers

The Sojourner is a short story by the great Carson McCullers. I am somewhat happy because the doorstep to the exclusive club of my favourite authors has been darkened by her shadow. She looks set to enter!

I read this story as a child in one of those voluminous Reader's Digest collections, "The World's Best Short Stories" or some similar title it had. It's amazing when they come back to you in fragments. Songs, poems, stories, pictures. .  half forgotten and suddenly recognised. Oh the happiness of that moment!

Carson writes beautifully. Just the language I love. She almost joined Juilliard as a girl and it shows in her work. Rich with music, the narrative like a glissando, the unforgettable images! Filled with musical phraseology, metaphor.

The Sojourner is a simple story about a man who is a world traveller, a 'newspaperman' who has returned to Georgia for his long ailing father's funeral. On his last day in New York, before he returns to Paris, from his hotel window he sees his ex-wife crossing the street, and on an impulse calls her. She invites him over for dinner where he meets her new family. The next night, back in Paris, he goes to his lover's house. Her little boy is home alone, he has never before bothered much with the child but now, "[w]ith inner desperation he presse[s] the child close - as though an emotion as protean as his love could dominate the pulse of time."

Oh gorgeous, gorgeous!

It is one of the stories in 'The Ballad of the Sad Cafe'. I have two more to read in the volume, but very possibly, this one is already my favourite!

Quotefest: Absalom and Achitophel

Because I did not want to flood everyone's twitter feed.

And because I like this space better.

John Dryden,  important man! Poet Laureate!Once the madness of submissions subsided in Dundee, I felt an urging to read him. This was partly because in the second year of my undergraduate degree, I changed colleges and had missed quite a few classes. One of our papers offered us a choice between MacFlecknoe and The Rape of the Lock . The former had been covered in my absence by the lecturer and when I laid my hands on Pope's work, I could no more attend to Dryden's.

Another reason might have been the felt presence of a laureate's ghost glowering reproachfully at me. ( Lack of imagination I am not guilty of!) 
Well, as it was, after all these years, I decided to assuage the guilt about having ignored Dryden so utterly for entirely superficial reasons. And read MacFlecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel. A&A, I approached with some trepidation. It is a long poem (1031 lines), a political satire in heroic couplets. It is public poetry not something I am generally drawn to. . But I have found reading it quite a rewarding exercise.

Here I've decided to share some of the interesting quotes, and my trite opinions on them, where I have any.

God help the soul that comes searching for sparknotes stuff here!

All quotations are from NAEL:

Absalom and Achitophel [pp. 2091-2111]

1.  'A fiery soul, which, working out its way,

Fretted the pygmy body to decay,

And oér informed the tenement of clay.' (156-159)

2. 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide;' (163-164)

3. 'The ambitious youth, too covetuous of fame,

Too full of angels' metal in his frame. . .' (309-310)

4. 'Why am I scanted by a niggard birth?

My soul disclaims the kindred of her earth;

And made for empire, whispers me within,

'Desire for greatness is a godlike sin.' " (369-372)

Notice, that in quotation one and three, essentially the same fiery spirit is being referred to,filled with ambition and desires for glory. But if you're Achitophel, it is a case of something wrong with your very soul, not so if you're Absalom.

This is what is called being politically correct! True poet laureate stuff!

5. " 'Tis Nature's trick to propagate her kind.

       Our fond begetters, who would never die,

       Love but themselves in their posterity."  (424-426)

Harsh, but true. The sanskrit word for a son is 'Atmaja', born of the soul. The desire for children is an expression of the innate desire for immortality. This is vedantic philosophy. Well, obviously, some part of Dryden agrees.

 6. " 'Though now his mighty soul its grief contains,

 He meditates revenge who least complains;

 And, like a lion, slumbering in the way,

 Or sleep dissembling, while he waits his prey,

 His fearless foes within his distance draws,

 Constrains his roaring, and contracts his paws,

 Till at the last, his time for fury found,

 He shoots with sudden vengeance from the ground;

 The prostrate vulgar he passes o'er and spares,

 But with a lordly rage his hunter tears.' "

Points to note:

This is Achitophel speaking about the next in line to David's throne. In other words, the historical Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, speaking about James II.

Dryden has a delicate and difficult task here. He has to let Achitophel criticise the man in question, and yet criticise in such a way that the reader is not alienated from the next in line to the throne.

And he manages with such lightness as though whistling at his newly-manicured nails!

Then the poetry: the description of the lion , 'slumbering. . . Or sleep dissembling'; lots of alliteration!  I think Dryden loved alliteration like few have.

In three lines, he leaves the verb till the end to keep the sentence hanging, and show us the lion in slow motion.

'His fearless foes within his distance draws'

Constrains his roaring. . .

The prostrate vulgar he passes o'er and spares,

But with a lordly rage his hunter tears.'

The lion is avenging himself but sparing the vulgar, that is the common people, and it is with 'a lordly rage' that he tears his hunters apart. Well, who can blame such a lion? And would you not admire him the more for it? The hunter is getting no more than what he deserved, I feel, just as Dryden wants me to!

I do dare to question one thing, I'm not sure why Dryden didn't use 'claws' instead of 'paws'.

It gives more alliteration (surely, being Dryden, there is no such thing as too much alliteration!)

and claws have a ferocity which paws, in my mind, do not. But this is just a quibble. 

Also what is interesting to me is, in this image of a lion, there is no forest. There is no 'feral forest' or 'woods wild'. But such is the Augustan preoccupation with human nature.

7.  '. . . Zimri . . .

     A man so various, that he seemed to be

     Not one, but all mankind's epitome.

     Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong:

     Was everything by starts, and nothing long;

     . . .

     Railing and praising were his usual themes;

     And both (to show his judgement) in extremes:

    So over violent, or over-civil,

    That every man, with him, was God or Devil.(544-568)

   . . .' 

I can say little about it except quote Dryden. 'The character of Zimri in my Absalom is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem: it is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough; and he for whom it was intended was too witty to resent it as an injury.' Twenty-four odd lines versus a thousand and thirty-one! Quite a ratio. And yet, how true it is! Such deftness of stroke, such little parries and thrusts that if you were to worry about them, the more fool you would seem. And like all great art, how universally applicable! I know people who fit phrases of this description. Perhaps a few sit on me as well. And such a tickle! Such a chuckle! This is how you insult someone!

8.  '. . Innovation is the blow of fate.

      If ancient fabrics nod, and threat to fall,

     To patch the flaws, and buttress up the wall,

     Thus far 'tis duty; but here fix the mark;

     For all beyond it to touch our ark.'

I like it because it seems like the Augustan manifesto of art in some ways. Not that they didn't improvise, but just how much they did revere the greats from whom they were descended. Possibly a passage that a Romantic would hate!

9. ' The tampering world is subject to this curse,

      To physic their disease into a worse.'

Universal truth. Squeeze it into a conversation, and how learned will one be thought . . .

10. 'Some let me name, and naming is to praise.'

Just a gorgeous line, I wish I could write it! Simple and so beautiful. A name is a caress after all.

                                                         ***

If you care to read the poem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173436

1031 lines well-worth it!

One difficulty, if you're a lax reader like me, is to discern the change in voice.

When is it the Speaker and when is it Achitophel whose speaking to us?

Of course, Achitophel never speaks to us in the poem, he only speaks to Absalom but sometimes

in a very general fashion. You know, the whole demagogue routine!

And Dryden does give us inverted commas! But I wonder if such a poem went up

for appraisal today, would the reader complain? That the voices are not psychologically distinct enough?

Just a thought. . .

So here is my ounce worth of reading from Dryden. His plays do not interest me so I will not read them. (Unless his ghost comes and sulks at me in a few years time such as I rather suspect him of having done recently.)

If there's anybody who has and would like to share,that would be amazing. I would be grateful!

Dryden's other poem (his other important poem to me) Mac Flecknoe is so fun to read. That is what everyone should do to their enemies. If they have lives which are interesting enough to be making enemies in the first place. Sherlock would know!

Mac Flecknoe is shorter, lesser convoluted, and more plainly just Dryden taking off some steam.

So if A&A seems a bit much, MacF is easy to read! 

I'd chosen Pope's The Rape of the Lock over Dryden's MacFlecknoe years ago. Was I right? Yes, I was. But was I missing something? Yes, I was.

Cheers!

P.S. No no, MacF is not just Dryden taking off some steam! Essentially he has insulted a rival poet into eternal infamy. If you ever read this poem, you will never remember Mr. Thomas Shadwell for anything else! Dryden was the finest critic of his time and the poem is the greatest demonstration of his critical tenets on satire. It is not just taking off some steam; to punch Shadwell would have been simpler.

Phew!

(There, there Mr Dryden, I've said it correctly now. Leave me be! )

With Reading, Comes Writing: Whom are they writing for?

Whom to Write for?

This is under the broad heading of "How to Write."
Anyone who has spent any quality time on writing knows there are no rules.
Except the ones we choose to follow. Or the ones we break.
Grammar is also not an exception.

So the very act of putting words on page. It is an act of expression, it is pregnant with a sense of 'otherness'. I need to get the words out! Even if it's only the therapeutic presence of a journal. How many of them start with an invocation of the Witness? "Dear Diary..." or "Dear X. . ."
'X' being one's own self. The part which either needs to be told or needs to do the telling.
So, there is an otherness intrinsically present.

How much does that, or how much should that presence factor into our writings?
Will being aware of this make us better writers?
Should we actively engage with this 'Other' when we write?

Janice Galloway was here in Dundee recently and she said,

" If you're not writing for a reader, I can't imagine what on earth you're doing!"

To this she added something even more interesting,

"You forge the reader from a part of yourself."

It is a gesture, a wave when your drowning in this world, a gesture which says, "This is what it's like over here. Does anybody recognise that?"

And I realised then, she had articulated exactly what had been stirring in my subconscious. I was in the thick of writing essays and I was writing with a voice that would become a nervous squeak if I let my consciousness of the actual readership (Professors!) infiltrate my writings; alternately, the voice would come raspingly out if it was speaking to no one. It would lack conviction.

So I realised that I was writing for me, but not in an implosive way. I as a reader, was on the other end of the page. Waiting for the words, looking to find the hidden signals, and so on.

But this is NOT the only way.

Matthew McVarish was here in October and he said,

"Write the shit that scares you!" 

"If you write something that you don't want anyone to read. . . it's probably good."

And it sounds impressive. This is in line with the theory, and a valid theory it is, that write without ever intending to show it to anyone. And I know excellent practitioners of the art who practice this with great success.

A third perspective is writing as though it's a letter to a friend. An intimate conversation where you have the openness, the freedom to be vulnerable, and silly and profound and very truly yourself.

I suppose the bottom line is simply: Write! Get it out! 

We have to think about writing in a way that makes us more confident.
Will writing for a friend elicit a stronger response?
Will writing as if no one will ever read it make our words bolder?
Or will we choose to carve an ideal reader who is but a reflection of our selves to invoke the very best in us?

There are no rules. How glorious is that!




Whom do you write for?

P.S. This is an entry from my other, now exclusive, blog. I just think that questions on writing and reading are closely related. It is a strange and possibly not very good writer who is not also a close and reverential reader.

Poem by Matthew Prior: A Better Answer

Matthew Prior, a lesser known Queen Anne wit, friend of Pope and Swift, a poet and as nearly all poets of the age were, a public man of affairs.

I am reading excerpts from the Augustan age. I like the credentials they sought to judge art by: good sense, classicism, criticism, a delicacy of wit, and their perennial occupation with Nature; human nature, which studied with care in one, could reveal truths about all.

And although I meant to write here about John Dryden, I felt that in my current state of mind (where Messrs. Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston are jostling with each other for space) Dryden would not get his due. And while mulling over whether he ever would on this blogspace, I stumbled onto this poem by Prior:

A Better Answer

Dear Cloe, how blubber'd is that pretty Face?
Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurl'd:
Pr'ythee quit this caprice; and (as old Falstaf says)
Let us e'en talk a little like folks of this world.

How can'st thou presume, thou hast leave to destroy
The beauties, which Venus but lent to thy keeping?
Those looks were design'd to inspire love and joy:
More ord'nary eyes may serve people for weeping.

To be vexed at a trifle or two that I writ,
Your judgment at once, and my passion you wrong:
You take that for fact, which will scarce be found Wit:
Od's Life! must one swear to the truth of a song?

What I speak, my fair Cloe, and what I write, shews
The diff'rence there is betwixt Nature and Art:
I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose:
And they have my whimsies; but thou hast my heart.

The god of us verse-men (you know child) the sun,
How after his journeys he sets up his rest:
If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run;
At night he reclines on his Thetis's breast.

So when I am weary'd with wand'ring all day,
To thee my delight in the evening I come:
No matter what beauties I saw in my way:
They were but my visits; but thou art my home.

Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war;
And let us like Horace and Lydia agree:
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
As he was a poet sublimer than me.

***

Beautifully playful isn't it? Cowper said of Prior that he could 'make verse speak the language of prose without being prosaic.' (NAEL, 8th Ed.) And the Augustan age was an age of the cities, where consummate ease was the hallmark of art and conversation. I think those who say they don't like poetry because they don't get it will especially love this poem. It's just like an easy conversation!

Some times, after people read poems by Donne or Marvel or Herrick, they seem to state by way of criticism that , "He is just asking her to climb in to bed with him." Well, alright, that is true. . . just as it is true that a mango's juice is essentially carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a certain ratio. And yet is not the fruit so much more than that?

So here the Gentleman (let us not call him Prior, please no) is just making an excuse for having flirted and philandered all day. But he knows just how to! So pleasing! 
I like it for other reasons: in a poem itself, the speaker asks, 
"Od's Life! must one swear to the truth of a song?
This one line walks in wearing layers and layers of meaning, and we must cajole it with our attention to give them up. I love that sort of play!

And another really beautiful element of this poem, for me, is the reference to Horace and Lydia. Horace, in one of his poems has a dalliance with a girl named Chloe, before returning to Lydia.

(I haven't read Horace yet, gleaned this from the footnotes, which are a treasure trove). 
Prior rescues Chloe in this poem by giving her his Speaker. A philandering but charming speaker.

Just, lovely.