Jean Conder Soule

Jean Conder Soule's best-known poem is "Never Tease a Weasel," which could give anything by Dr. Seuss a run for its money.

Jean Conder was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1919. She married George Soule, who she met through her work at the press bureau. They got married, had three children, and lived in Springfield, Pennsylvania, according to her biography on Loganberry Books's website.

Her other well-known works include a poem about flying a kite and the lyrics to a religious song. The poem is called "For Keeps," and seems to be taught in elementary schools. The song is called "Take Up the Cross."

Other than "Never Tease a Weasel," and "Take Up the Cross," her poetry seems to have been forgotten - it's only available in out-of-print antique books and in dark and dusty corners of the internet.

My aunt found a copy of one which had been printed in a c. 1950's edition of the Episcopal Diocese of South Florida newsletter. The poem is titled, "A Mother's Prayer."

Is this my son, this solemn lad,
White cotta hiding a shirt of plaid?
How tall he looks! How straight he stands!
But if you watch, you will see his hands
Betray his awe, his small-boy-fright
Not yet at ease with the candle-light.

The service begins, There is nothing to fear
(The familiar words seem strangely dear)
He remembers his cues: to kneel, to pray,
To bow his head in a reverent way.
The priest and server prepare the bread;
The wine is poured and prayers are said.
(I thank you, God, for your help unfailing -
He didn't forget to close the railing!)

I wait and watch with misted eyes
As he takes his Communion, then I rise.
But before I receive my wafer and wine
I offer a prayer to the Source Divine,
Which gives me the privilege, the infinite joy,
Of sharing with You, one small cassocked boy!

I found another poem in one of those dark, dusty, internet corners - the internet Archives. This was printed in a 1957 edition of "Lighted Pathways," a Church of God publication. The poem is titled, "Tree-Rocket."

"It looks just like my maple tree, 
Athough it's full of boys, 
Their raucous shouts and laughter 
Fill the afternoon with noise. 

"I thought it was my maple tree; 
But maybe I was wrong. 
Here comes the local Atom-Squad — 
Full half a dozen strong! 

"Upon a branch, Space-Rangers lurk; 
And there, atop my tree, 
Resplendent in a worn-out sheet, 
A superman I see! 

"Good-by, my little maple tree, 
Be ready to journey soon! 
Flight X is leaving Earth Base now 
For blast-off to the moon!" 

Jean Conder Soule died in 2008. I wish more of her poetry was available publicly. I wish I had gotten to know her sooner. Maybe I'll get lucky, and someone will publish an anthology of her works.

Gertrude Stein (and Mina Loy, and Picasso)

While my other posts have mainly focused on the works of the poets, this one is different. This is the epic post you've been waiting for.

Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania in 1874, traveled to Europe with her parents, and returned to California in 1878. She studied psychology at Radcliffe, then medicine at Johns Hopkins, but did not finish either program. In 1903 she moved back to Europe with her partner and secretary, Alice Toklas, and "their home... soon became gathering spot for many young artists and writers," many of whom would go on to become famous (Academy of American Poets).

Reading her poem "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso," I knew it needed to be a video. A video with some slick editing. I had planned to do that this last week, but that poem is long, and video editing is difficult - I think I don't have the hardware or software to do it as well as I'd like. You can hear her reading it, here.

The poem in question is hers, of course, written to Pablo Picasso, upon the completion of his portrait of her (see the above right image).

This is my "practice poem" - I was still figuring out how to edit video, and do lighting and costuming and whatnot. It's me, doing a reading of "A Light in the Moon" - a much shorter poem than "If I Told Him." Gertrude Stein's poetry reads kind of disjointed, so it makes for a wonderful first-film-editing project. I wanted her phrases to seem kind of disconnected in my video. You can read the poem, here.

I wouldn't be the first to imitate Gertrude Stein, and Picasso isn't the only one to praise her with art. Mina Loy wrote a poem to her, too, which pays homage to her style in that the phrases are short, and the word-pairings are unusual:

Mina Loy - Gertrude Stein

Curie
of the laboratory
of vocabulary
she crushed
the tonnage
of consciousness
congealed to phrases
to extract
a radium of the word

Gertrude Stein - "Apple"

Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, colored wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato, potato and no no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece a little piece please.

A little piece please. Cane again to the presupposed and ready eucalyptus tree, count out sherry and ripe plates and little corners of a kind of ham. This is use.

Gwendolyn Brooks

According to the Poetry Foundation, Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American poet to win a Pulitzer prize. She was the poet Laureate for Illinois, though she was born in Kansas. As an activist, she worked to help African American poetry grow and take root. She was known for writing the culture of lower-class African Americans into her poetry, and later worked for the NAACP.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in 1917, moved as a child to Illinois, and died of breast cancer in Chicago in 2000. She published her first poem when she was 13.

While I've tried not to let this blog be a mirror of what we're doing in class, we read "A Song in the Front Yard," and I couldn't help but admire it. Much of her poetry is on the long side, but if you're looking for more, check her out on the Poetry Foundation (which boasts 35 of her poems) or on Academy of American Poets.

A Song in the Front Yard

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.  

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now  

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.  

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.  

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae  

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace  

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

I was hoping to find a recording of her reading "We Real Cool," and I wasn't disappointed. Reading the letters on the page, I knew they must have a rhythm, but I wasn't sure I was doing it right. I really like her intro to this poem, by the way. "I would prefer it," she says, "if the text-book compilers and the anthologists would assume that I've written a few other poems." This one was banned in some places because of the use of the word "jazz" - it was too sexy. Her intro is in this video. The one below includes Morgan Freedman's reading.

Nathalia Crane

I've had this song stuck in my head all day. I love the Clarinet in this piece, but Natalie is a little hard to hear. You can check out the lyrics, here.

The song is actually a poem by Nathalia Crane. It was fairly controversial when it was published, in 1926, The New York Times published her poetry, not realizing that it was written by a young girl. She was called the Brooklyn Bard when she was 13, but many were sceptical of her ability to write such "adult" poetry. Some thought she was a sort of medium, channeling a muse, while others thought her published works were a hoax. At one point, she was even asked to produce a poem with a journalist in the room. It was a time when children's poetry was being published, but the poetry wasn't as precocious as hers, didn't have as many obscure words, and was submitted along with the child's age.

Nathalia was born in Brooklyn in 1913, and died in 1998. She won $500 for a poem entered into a contest for poems about Lindbergh's flight to Paris. It was called "Wings of Lead." She eventually became an English professor.

She wrote this about an African American schoolmate:

Love Lane

In old Love Lane on Brooklyn Heights
There’s an ebony bob from Arabian Nights;
She sings each eve of the Tom Moore rose—
And the neighbors shut off their radios.
The people who pass through Henry Street.
They presently go with lagging feet,
For in old Love Lane a cantatrice shade
Is taking the thrills of Adelaide.
Shaking the sistrum—a blackberry bob,
Dulcing the treble and daring the sob;
Never a wonder that listeners perch
On the mansion steps near Plymouth Church.
They hear the birds by a waterfall,
They see the rose that was last of all;
The dim garages grow less profane,
For something with pinions is down in the lane.

Linda Pastan

Okay, I'm still working on what will be a pretty major ... thing. But it takes time, and it's not done yet. In the meantime, here's Linda Pastan.

For my first post for this blog, I looked for a poet who was from "home" - Oregon and/or Washington. Linda Pastan, besides coming with a sound recommendation (more on that later), was the poet laureate for my current state (Maryland) from 1991 to 1995. She was born in New York in 1932, but still lives in Maryland.

Linda Pastan's "Ethics" was suggested to me by a dear friend who also teaches a poetry class. It's still under copyright, and reprinted with permission by Shenandoah Literary, so I don't feel good about re-printing it here. It's been written about by students pretty extensively. All I really have to add to the conversation, is that it's remarkable how easy it is to ask the wrong question. Also, I really like this poem.

You can hear Garrison Keillor's introduction and listen to Linda Pastan reading her poem "Why Are Your Poems So Dark" in this video:

I've wanted a dog for a long time. Someday I will get one, and I hope it's like this:

The New Dog by Linda Pastan 

Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities--

as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.

Pears by Linda Pastan 

Some say
it was a pear
Eve ate.
Why else the shape
of the womb,
or of the cello
Whose single song is grief
for the parent tree?
Why else the fruit itself
tawny and sweet
which your lover
over breakfast
lets go your pear-
shaped breast
to reach for?

I Married You by Linda Pastan

I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your 
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
 under your shirt,
by your naive ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity—
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.

Dorothy Parker

Okay, interwebians. I'm working on my next post - it will be epic. In the meantime, here's Dorothy Parker to tide you over.

Dorothy Parker was born in 1893 as Dorothy Rothschild. She married Edwin Parker, but divorced him 11 years later. She went to a Catholic grammar school, and then to a finishing school, but "her formal education abruptly ended when she was 14." She married Alan Campbell in 1934. They divorced in 1947, remarried in 1950, and he died of a drug overdose in 1963.

She wrote poems and short stories, and was a drama editor for Vanity Fair. An influential voice in New York literary scene, she, along with Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood formed a social group called the Algonquin Roundtable, after the place where the meetings were held, the Algonquin Hotel. The group was also referred to as the Vicious Circle due to the sharp banter the participants engaged in. She was famous for saying - among many other very witty things: “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.” She also helped found the Screenwriter's Guild in Hollywood, and reported on the Spanish Civil War.

Dorothy Parker was involved in politics, fighting for civil rights, and the socialist party. Her involvement with the socialist party led to her being called in front of the House on Un-American activities in the 1950s, where she pled the fifth. Dorothy Parker struggled with depression and alcoholism and died in 1967 of a heart attack. She left her estate to Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Passionate Freudian to His Love

Only name the day, and we’ll fly away
 In the face of old traditions,
To a sheltered spot, by the world forgot,
 Where we’ll park our inhibitions.
Come and gaze in eyes where the lovelight lies
 As it psychoanalyzes,
And when once you glean what your fantasies mean
 Life will hold no more surprises.
When you’ve told your love what you’re thinking of
 Things will be much more informal;
Through a sunlit land we’ll go hand-in-hand,
 Drifting gently back to normal.

While the pale moon gleams, we will dream sweet dreams,
 And I’ll win your admiration,
For it’s only fair to admit I’m there
 With a mean interpretation.
In the sunrise glow we will whisper low
 Of the scenes our dreams have painted,
And when you’re advised what they symbolized
 We’ll begin to feel acquainted.
So we’ll gaily float in a slumber boat
 Where subconscious waves dash wildly;
In the stars’ soft light, we will say good-night—
 And “good-night!” will put it mildly.

Our desires shall be from repressions free—
 As it’s only right to treat them.
To your ego’s whims I will sing sweet hymns,
 And ad libido repeat them.
With your hand in mine, idly we’ll recline
 Amid bowers of neuroses,
While the sun seeks rest in the great red west
 We will sit and match psychoses.
So come dwell a while on that distant isle
 In the brilliant tropic weather;
Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed,
 We’ll always be Jung together.

Hat-tip to Dorothy Parker on FaceBook:
https://www.facebook.com/DorothyParkerQuotes

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse. 

August

When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;

Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by. 

Phillis Wheatley, to Leonard Nimoy

You may have heard Leonard Nimoy has passed away. If you haven't, I'm sorry to drop that bombshell like that (but, seriously, where have you been?!?). He was admired by many for not just role as Spock, but also for his support of full-bodied women and minorities. I didn't know much about him, but he seems like a really decent man. (By the way, the Bustle article above ["admired by many"] suggests that he was also a strong feminist and that the show he produced, Three Men and a Baby is absolutely in keeping with feminist ideals of equality. I agree.). While he wasn't a Christian minister, he was a fairly devout Jew.

Phillis Wheatley, who you may remember for her poems "On Being Brought From Africa to America" and "To the  Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth," was brought to America against her will when she was eight years old, and was bought to be a personal servant to Mrs. Susanna Wheatley. She learned English, as well as some Greek and Latin, and traveled to London with Mr. Wheatley, where she was well-received by critics. Because of the Revolutionary War and the terrible economy, although she had gained her freedom, she was hard-pressed to provide for herself. She eventually married and had three children, but none lived very long. She had planned a second volume of poetry (the first having been published in 1773), but could not get funds together. She died alone in a boarding house at 31 years old. Many of the poems for her second book have been lost.

One of her poems was an elegy in honor of a minister, "On the Death of Rev. Mr. George Whitefield." It might be seen as a little flippant, my suggestion that Phillis Wheatley's poem to a revered minister could apply to a Jewish actor, even one who is a really decent man, but that's not my intent. I think many of the qualities Phillis Wheatley praises in her elegy are present in Leonard Nimoy, and deserving of praise wherever they may be found.

On the Death of Rev. Mr. George Whitefield

HAIL, happy saint, on thine immortal throne,
Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown;
We hear no more the music of thy tongue,
Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.
Thy sermons in unequall'd accents flow'd,
And ev'ry bosom with devotion glow'd;
Thou didst in strains of eloquence refin'd
Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind.
Unhappy we the setting sun deplore,
So glorious once, but ah! it shines no more.
Behold the prophet in his tow'ring flight!
He leaves the earth for heav'n's unmeasur'd height,
And worlds unknown receive him from our sight.
There Whitefield wings with rapid course his way,
And sails to Zion through vast seas of day.
Thy pray'rs, great saint, and thine incessant cries
Have pierc'd the bosom of thy native skies.
Thou moon hast seen, and all the stars of light,
How he has wrestled with his God by night.
He pray'd that grace in ev'ry heart might dwell,
He long'd to see America excell;
He charg'd its youth that ev'ry grace divine
Should with full lustre in their conduct shine;
That Saviour, which his soul did first receive,
The greatest gift that ev'n a God can give,
He freely offer'd to the num'rous throng,
That on his lips with list'ning pleasure hung.
"Take him, ye wretched, for your only good,
"Take him ye starving sinners, for your food;
"Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream,
"Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme;
"Take him my dear Americans, he said,
"Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid:
"Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you,
"Impartial Saviour is his title due:
"Wash'd in the fountain of redeeming blood,
"You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God."
Great Countess,* we Americans revere
Thy name, and mingle in thy grief sincere;
New England deeply feels, the Orphans mourn,
Their more than father will no more return.
But, though arrested by the hand of death,
Whitefield no more exerts his lab'ring breath,
Yet let us view him in th' eternal skies,
Let ev'ry heart to this bright vision rise;
While the tomb safe retains its sacred trust,
Till life divine re-animates his dust.

*The Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Mr. Whitefield was
Chaplain.

Here's another of her perhaps lesser-known poems, "On Virtue," being read in a recitation competition.