God is in the details...

Every Thought...

Week 20: Home

Home is not just the suburb I live in or where I once went to school.  Home is always a place within a place within a place: the place where I find “the heart I love.  I’m gonna take it with me when I go.” (Waits)


05/13:

TWL, Lines 69-76: Seen in the Crowd: You!

69     There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
70     “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
71     “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
72     “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
73     “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
74     “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
75     “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
76     “You! hypocrite lecteur! —mon semblable, —mon frère!”

69. STETSON, readers once believed, referred to Eliot’s friend Ezra Pound, who was known to wear the occasional Stetson cowboy hat and who, by being Eliot’s “lecteur,” or editor, was given the poem’s opening dedication. Eliot denied the Stetson-Pound connection but never gave a more satisfactory alternative, suggesting only that Stetson was not an actual person but a generic London banker with an arbitrarily common name. But there may be another more plausible explanation. In World War I, Australian troops, who would have been more associated with a naval battle and buried corpses than a London banker, wore felt Stetson hats, and it was among these troops at Gallipoli, where furloughed soldiers sang to Mrs Porter (see line 199), that Eliot’s friend Jean Verdenal died (see note 42).

70. THE BATTLE OF MYLAE (260 BCE) resulted in a Roman naval victory over Carthage, home of Aeneas’s onetime lover Queen Dido (see note 92).  In present tense, the battle is over and the surviving sailors are grounded.  Compare the return of troops at note 61, and see more references to Carthage at note 307.

71. THE PLANTED CORPSE: See 1 Corinthians 15: 37, 42-44:

“And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain ...So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:  It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”

In a Moravian tradition begun in Germany and adopted in America, Easter Sunrise Service is held in a churchside graveyard called “God’s Acre,” with hyacinths decorating the graves where the bodies of the dead have been “sown as seed.”  See the legend of the hyacinth at note 36.  See also Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, God’s Acre (1866):

“With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
 And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
 This is the place where human harvests grow!”

Compare Longfellow, Hyperion 2.9 (1836):

“...the green terrace or platform on which the church stands, and which, in ancient times, was the churchyard, or as the Germans more devoutly say, God's-acre; where generations are scattered like seeds.”

Thus, this Burial of the Dead section ends where it begins, with the possibility of stirring dull roots in spring.  The reader’s brother (mon semblable, mon frère) remains uncertain, though, and still perceives the season’s cruelty; he closes the section with questions and exclamations that are all earth, no air, water or fire.

74. KEEP THE DOG FAR HENCE: Eliot: “Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.”

See Webster, The White Devil 5.4.96-105.  This is Cornelia’s song as she lay flowers around a corpse, giving the impression that she has lost her mind:

“Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the fieldmouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm
And, when gay tombs are robb'd, sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.”

Compare this to Ophelia’s final actions in Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.7.166-169:

“Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.”

See note 172. The “Long purples” in her garland are hyacinths; see notes 36 and 71.

76. HYPOCRITE LECTEUR: Eliot: “V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.”

See Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil: Au Lecteur (To the Reader (my own translation)):

“See Boredom’s eye hold back a wanton tear
Welled up from gallows dreams and hookah smoke.
You’ve met him, reader, the consummated monster:
You! Hypocrite lecteur! My twin! My brother!”

See also Eliot, The Lesson of Baudelaire (1921):

“All first-rate poetry is occupied with morality: This is the lesson of Baudelaire.  ...English poetry, all the while, either evaded the responsibility, or assumed it with too little seriousness. ...On the other hand, the poets ...who know a little French, are mostly such as could imagine the Last Judgement only as a lavish display of Bengal lights, Roman candles, catherine-wheels and inflammable fire-balloons.  Vous, hypocrite lecteur!”

For other takes on the hypocrite reader, see the fortune teller at note 55, and recall the editor’s role at note 69.  See also “you” as reader, at note 311.5.

LITERARY CRITICISM, a la Eliot as lecteur, is also discussed at notes 130, 165, 172.5, 331, 403, 417 and 419.


05/14:

My Own Translation

Preface to Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire

To the Reader

Stupidity, error, sin and stinginess
Busy our minds and grind our bodies down,
And we, like beggars nourishing their lice,
Keep our remorse in comfort and well-fed.

Our sins are stubborn, our confessions weak
And for admissions we demand a price;
Then, with a smile, we’re on our muddy way
Believing that cheap tears will make us clean.

We rest our heads upon an evil pillow
With Satan Trismegiste at the cradle,
And in the vapor of his chemistry
We lose the noble metal of our will,

And with the Devil as our babysitter
Charming us with his repulsive toys,
Each day we’re lured another step away
From fear, into the dark and stench of hell.

And like the poor bum who would kiss and nibble
The battered nipple of an ancient whore
We steal the secret pleasures of our passing
And squeeze the last drop from each shriveled orange.

Tightened, swarming, like a million tapeworms
Within us are the Demons who throw parties,
Dropping the breath of death into our lungs
Like an unseen river and a mute complaint.

If the artistry of rape, drugs, knives and fire
Has not yet stitched sweet lines into our souls,
Have pity on our empty canvases
And sorry fates: we are too cowardly,

And yet among the jackals, panthers, apes,
The bitches, scorpions, vultures, serpents, beasts,
Of all the vile menagerie of our vices
That bark, howl, grunt and crawl upon the ground,

There’s one more ugly, wicked and unclean
Who without dramatic gestures or great cries
Would easily turn our planet into trash
And swallow up the world with just a yawn:

See Boredom’s eye hold back a wanton tear
Welled up from gallows dreams and hookah smoke.
You’ve met him, reader, a consummated monster:
You! Hypocrite lecteur! My twin! My brother!


05/15:

Rhymes For Mother's Day

(to the tune of any Dylan song)


A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.
— Samuel Butler

A mother’s basic instincts start and stop with being there
And everything revolves around the children in her care:
The raising up, the rearing, the protecting and preparing.
She just keeps keeping on, with evolution in the air:
She gets no formal training anywhere;
Her nest is made, her eggs are laid and all she does is care.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
 and the devil’s left behind.


The old brown hen and the old blue sky, 
Between the two we live and die...
— Wallace Stevens

She saw her mother do this from a different point of view;
The world was all around her then and everything was new:
The view itself, the air, the grass of green, the sky of blue,
The miles of horizon and a nagging hunger too,
And suddenly her mother coming through.
Nobody really told her what to do.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
 and the devil’s left behind.


Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
— William Shakespeare

And now she is the mother, got it all down to an art.
She’s facing danger daily, but she plays her precious part:
The watch, the cry, the flash of passion, every stop and start
Instinctively designed and yet distinctively so smart,
And even when things seem to fall apart
She takes the stage and plays it from her heart.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
 and the devil’s left behind.


If I were hanged on the highest hill, ...
If I were drowned in the deepest sea, ...
If I were damned of body and soul, 
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
— Rudyard Kipling

She cries out loud staccatos in a stuttered anti-phlegm
And then she starts performing her sublime dramatic gem:
The stumbled pace, the broken wing, the red beneath her hem,
To lead her looming enemies astray, away from them.
Some folks would automatically condemn
The way the mother has abandoned them.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details...


if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one.  It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
— e. e. cummings

This is my rhyme for Mother’s Day, a silly killdeer song
With scant connection to the mothers I’ve known for so long:
The mother of my children, like my mother too, was strong
And not inclined to cry or play the fool when things went wrong
And yet when evil ever came along
I guess it never stayed around for long.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
 and the devil’s left behind.


My mother is a poem
I’ll never be able to write,
though everything I write
is a poem to my mother.
— Sharon Doubiago

God is in the details...
— Anon.

(The author of this platitude nobody seems to know;
It’s randomly attributed to many people though:
To Flaubert, Nietzche, Einstein, even Michelangelo,
Le Corbusier, John Ruskin, or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
No one is certain but the truth will show,
Beyond all words and birds, everything we need to know.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
 and the devil’s left behind.)


05/16:

Fire And Water

from Walled Gardens

When love sets fire
to your soul
and lifts it from its place
its foot no longer
touches ground;
love whispers,
the ground moves
and stagnant reasons
disappear;
you are no longer there;
Your feet begin
to move, just as
a river finds the ocean
with no more talk
of searching; you
are nothing but the river
and there is nothing
in the end
but the ocean of God.


05/17:

Domesticus

A Passing Tribute To Robert Frost  

The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
   — Robert Frost

I’ve traveled miles and miles to find a bird
That’s different than the usual sorts I see
To supplement the life list that I keep
(To know the lovely dark and deep)
And live beyond the world surrounding me.

The bird I seek may have a special song
Or brilliant feathers or a way about it
That separates it from the daily throng
(Persisted in the woods so long)
And justifies the miles that I’ve devoted.

Perhaps the place I go they call a bird
Exotic that’s so everyday to me
I hardly hear (lost in the sweep
Of easy wind) its ordinary cheep;
Its ordinary looks I barely see.

And in this place, they keep lists of their own
And travel miles and miles just to find
Within the dreary world from which I came
(Having perhaps the better claim)
The gardenful of birds I’ve left behind.


05/18:

Redbellies

A celebration of the Springs
on the banks of the Suwannee River: the Day.

Lepornis Auritus, of the Breams
and the main course of many Southern fries: the Fish.

Inky black, purple and garnet
with rich plum, red currant, liquorice and oak: the Shiraz.

Indigenous to the Oz bushland
where the Angove family makes their wine: the Snake.

A vegetarian Piranha cousin
colossoma bidens to aquarians in the know: the Pacu.

A ranging fish in a narrow curving band
from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island west: the Dace.

A pet store Melanophryniscian
with fire and crickets in its belly: the Toad.

A hook-billed conure of the house
where men can talk, but hens just squawk: the Parrot.

A turtle with yellow lined head, neck and legs
called Cooter of the Chesapeake Bay: the Terrapin.

A South American quadroped
in a multimale-multifemale social system: the Tamarin.

An arboreal Guinean of Nigeria and Benin,
finding the wet parts of dry tropical forests: the Monkey.

Billardiere's pouched weasel,
a Pademelon to the Aborigines: the Wallaby.

An Amazonian revolving life around Mauritius Palms
with a reedy high-pitched scream: the Macaw.

A North American, pressing its torso to the trees,
showing red better in hand and up close: the Woodpecker.

And all that remains,
the solid biomass incompletely combusted: the Char.


05/19:

Moleskin 3.2: On To The Next River

With Dad trying hard to make our weekends special, we made a point to see and resee all the major Chicago attractions — two zoos, a half dozen museums, the lakefront, Wrigley Field — and we kept the tourist routine up long after we stopped feeling like out of towners. But let this scratchy record be reconciled: this was not our city. We didn’t live by that backwards river and we didn’t even reside in Chicago proper.  We lived along a drainage ditch in unincorporated Cook County, much closer to the Des Plaines River than Lake Michigan. As far as our distant cousins were concerned, we were still Chicagoans, and we preferred this tag over suburbanites, but in our neighborhood we made no claims. My newfound friends and I were content catching crayfish in the ditch and filling up our wagon with muddy water. We walked four blocks to school, when we didn’t find longer routes to take, and on weekends we rode our bikes on vacant lot dirt paths. I was still Huck Finn, a few miles out of town, and home was wherever I happened to live.