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Companion pieces: Millay and others — 8 Comments

  1. There’s something of a disconnect between Millay’s personal libertine sexuality and the romanticism of her poems on love and relationships. My favorite, I have not read many, is
    Recuerdo

    <i?We were very tired, we were very merry–
    We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
    It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–
    But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
    We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
    And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
    We were very tired, we were very merry–
    We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
    And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
    From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
    And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
    And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
    We were very tired, we were very merry,
    We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
    We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
    And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
    And she wept, “‘God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,
    And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

    Perhaps the absence of romance in the raw sexuality in her life she provided for in her poems.

  2. A plea to Millay:

    If I had more patience and drive. If I
    were new and true, toiled longer, and felt
    deeper, longer, the pains, the raised blue welt.
    If I were not, then I could make you try.
    You will have your way. The darkened fortress
    but for light and your forbidding bids come.
    I know, I do! The deeds you’ve done,
    that made the moon a song, a white buttress.
    Speaking plane, the earth, will accept my gift.
    We can follow, we can follow, we can.
    Follow not the lies of candidate grift.
    Upon conscience, we dictate, we stand.
    If only I had more patience and drive.
    I’d come to you and you and I’d survive.

  3. Love your poem re free verse and think that one line “But rules are guides, not just constraints or chains,” is a succint and worthy description of the rebellious nature of postmodernism.

  4. Here’s one for a written on returning to Chicago after thirty years away. It is a “mirror sonnet”:

    ON HEARING, BUT NOT SEEING, A CARDINAL

    On touching down I stepped into the heat
    I’d been away from over thirty years,
    A stranger now. Easy to find the street
    I lived on, not much changed. No useless tears
    Blurred recognition of my brothers’ names
    Scrawled on the coach house wall. The crimson bird
    Cried brightly from high foliage–all unchanged,
    That loud, liquid whistle, same notes we heard
    In childhood, the insistent Cheer, cheer, cheer!
    Dispelling melancholy. Still unseen
    The singer flew off. But you reappeared
    After an absence, dressed in red–I’d been–
    Whistling, summoning some lost thing we share–
    Remiss encountering you. Memory too bare–

    Remiss encountering you. Memory too bare–
    Whistling, summoning some lost thing we share,
    After an absence. Dressed in red, I‘d been
    The singer. Flew off. But you reappeared,
    Dispelling melancholy. Still unseen
    In childhood, the insistent Cheer, cheer, cheer!
    That loud, liquid whistle, same notes we heard,
    Cried brightly from high foliage. All unchanged,
    Scrawled on the coach house wall, the crimson bird
    Blurred recognition of my brothers’ names.
    I lived on, not much changed. No useless tears,
    A stranger now. Easy to find the street
    I’d been away from over thirty years.
    On touching down I stepped into the heat.

    Jamie Irons

  5. In my first sentence I meant to say:

    Here’s one for a physician friend written on returning…

    Jamie Irons

  6. “I only know that summer sang in me
    A little while, that in me sings no more.”

    How melancholy. Even though I am in the winter of life, the memories of the summer of life still warm me. How sad to have lost that

  7. “I only know that summer sang in me…”

    Non semper erit aestas. And the fall is long, and the winter yet to come.

    “A little while, that in me sings no more.”

    NFFNSNC, for the plebeians.

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