Poet's Musings

Thursday, November 26, 2020

"A Thanksgiving," by W.H. Auden

Recorded this one a long time ago; in it, Auden thanks those who influenced his poetry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsRCU-ulPZo

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

"The Composer," by W.H. Auden

Reading/video of a short poem by Mr. Wystan Hugh Auden in which he distinguishes between music and other arts. Poem is from his Collected Poems from Knopf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1M48EyRsKQ

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

It's 1954, And Emmett Kelly Remembers . . .

. . . the Hartford, Connecticut, circus fire,

1944: the big tent went up, blazing,

and people panicked like animals,
but the big cats got strangely calm.

The famous clown rushed from
the small dressing-tent in makeup,

managed more authority than a cop
because a clown's not supposed

to speak, so when he spoke,
the wild eyed customers listened.

They let him save their lives
with a frown. Back in his tent,

he said to Willie in the mirror,
"No show tonight. No show

in Clown Alley." Other clowns
entered, hysterical, told who'd lived,

who hadn't. (168 hadn't.)
'You were wonderful, ' they told Emmett,

who had removed half of Willie's face.
Kelly shrugged, said: 'I did what I could.'

Now in 1954, Madison Square Garden,
Emmett's put on half of Willie's face.

He feels weary. He tells an interviewer,
"Clowning is nothing you can study for."

Monday, November 23, 2020

A Pebble in the Gravel

Fly-fishing in the North Yuba River

made for miniature revelations

that rose out of casting
and catching, wading and releasing;
out of breathing, walking, slipping,
falling, rising; from deepening dusks, darkening
pools. Sometimes the stream

clarified underwater gravel and boulders;
whorls of debris appeared as if
magnified: and a trout came up,
stared at duplicity, declined. Water
returned to its blurred blend
of liquid window, liquid door.
Sometimes a hatch of gnats
exploded into existence--its own,
mine, the canyon's, Earth's. Or: suddenly

a snake. Or: a deer, staring, black
nostrils flaring. Or: kingfisher, ouzel,
hawk, robin. Bat. Or: one's awareness
of one's self as a loose knot
of ambition, instinct, appetite,
motor skills, boredom--together cast
briefly over water, offered.

Sometimes the stream
roared quietly, mumbled forcefully,
and against such sound (North
Yuba, North Yuba), awareness
of one's thin, tentative presence
in presence might rise briefly,
leap, re-submerge.