Sure on this shining night Of star made shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground. The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole. Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone Of shadows on the stars.
James Agee
b. 1909, Knoxville, Tenn. – d. 1955, New York, New York
James Agee was known primarily for his work as a journalist, screenwriter and prose author. His account of Depression era sharecroppers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, is probably his best known work, followed by the semi-autobiographical A Death in the Family, describing a family whose father dies suddenly in an accident, as did Agee’s own father. However, he was also a poet, and in fact, all of his prose works were very poetic and almost deserve to be called long prose-poems.
Sure On This Shining Night was part of a collection, Permit Me Voyage, published in 1934. This beautiful poem was later set to music a song by the American composer Samuel Barber. There are many versions of it floating around on the Internet…I prefer the low-voice setting, for tenor or baritone, but the soprano soloist versions are also lovely. I also prefer the simple piano accompaniment because I think it lets the words be the focus.
But if you like something richer, there’s also a great choral version by the American composer Morton Lauridsen which is pretty stunning!
It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
Nocturne
Stuff of the moon Runs on the lapping sand Out to the longest shadows. Under the curving willows, And round the creep of the wave line, Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.
These two short, haiku-like poems are by Carl Sandburg, shown above, who wrote everything from multi-volume biographies of his fellow Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to children’s books retelling favorite American folk-tales to collections of American folk songs. Times have changed, and these things are no longer in style, although in his writing life – the first two thirds of the 20th century – they were very popular. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, one for History in 1940, and the others for Poetry in 1919 and 1951.
Carl Sandburg was a familiar figure to anybody living in America in the first half of the 20th century, and his blond Swedish hair – later silver grey Swedish hair – parted on the side was immediately recognizable. He was originally known for his poetry, which was considered “populist,” but later moved on to historical writing and research. He devoted much of his life to the collection of and retelling of Midwestern folk stories and folk music. You could consider him the first of the singer songwriters…he often sang and accompanied himself on the guitar. And he was well known for his radio readings of his own poetry.
He also wrote children’s books. As a child, I loved Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories, set in the Village of Liver-and-Onions and populated by interesting and bizarre characters. The great illustrations of the first edition in 1922 (frontispiece show below) were particularly memorable. They were by Maud and Miska Petersham, she American born and he a Hungarian immigrant, who did remarkable illustrations for everything ranging from collected stories of Shakespeare to a host of children’s books such as the Rootabaga Stories.
But times change, and now Carl Sandburg is nearly forgotten. But maybe he’ll come back someday…poets often do. We read a lot of Sandburg in New York City when I was in school in the 50s and early 60s, even though he was very identified with Illinois and the Midwest. He especially loved the city of Chicago, then as now a bit of a hard place to love and incomprehensible to us New Yorkers. His first big splash, in fact, was with the publication of his Chicago Poems in 1914, particularly the one simply entitled Chicago. This is Chicago of over 100 years ago, and while it has kept up its reputation for crime, I’m not sure it still qualifies for many of the more positive titles he gives it. But make your own decision, because here it is:
Chicago
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
This poem is usually known as “What Is so Rare as a Day in June,” but actually there is no poem by that name. The name of the poem is The Vision of Sir Launfel, a very long sorta historical poem in the tradition of Sir Walter Scott, dealing with the search for the Holy Grail. However, while the poem itself may be slightly unreadable, it is absolutely stuffed with what I think of as beautiful little mini-poems…that is, sections that can exist on their own. This little section is probably one of the best known of them.
James Russell Lowell was from the well known Lowell family of Massachusetts; they were quite the elite, very important in the world of politics and law and wealth, and the saying went that the “Lowells speak only to the Cabots (another, even more important family), and the Cabots speak only to God.” However, the family produced two poets, James Russell himself and his first cousin, Amy Lowell (who has already appeared on the Poetry Stand).
James Russell Lowell taught at Harvard and wrote poetry. He was politically active, like most New Englanders, involved in the abolition and other movements, but he never let his politics overwhelm his poetry. He remained with his eyes open to the human condition and to the world that needed telling. So even though he goes on a bit too long, by modern standards, you’ll find beautiful little gems of lines buried in there!
What Is So Rare As A Day In June
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten…
Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it…
The First Dandelion was published in the long-gone New York Herald on March 12, 1888. By a stroke of ill luck, the very next day, March 13, 1888 was the day the famous “Blizzard of ’88,” which is still considered the NYC blizzard to end all blizzards…although, of course, 132 years later there is no one alive who actually saw it. But most of New York’s worst blizzards seem to come in March or even later, so it shouldn’t have been a great surprise.
However, according to the notes on this poem in the Walt Whitman Archive (http://www.whitmanarchive.org), “The snow-bound took their ire out on Whitman in poems of their own: ‘The First Blizzard,’ Signed ‘After Walt Whitman,’ appeared in the Herald on 14 March…[and] a note from the Buffalo Express on 18 March, which explained how New Yorkers passed their time during the blizzard: ‘by printing poems of Walt Whitman’s on such seasonable themes as “The First Dandelion.” We join Walt in admiration for dandelion salad.”
Whitman, Walt. “The First Dandelion.” 12 March 1888. Ed. Susan Belasco, assisted by Elizabeth Lorang. The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 14 May 2020. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
I love Walt Whitman and wanted to put something by him on the Poetry Stand, but as a rule, Whitman did not write short poems. And his long ones are hard to excerpt in any way that makes sense. This short poem was eventually later added to the collection, Leaves of Grass.
The First Dandelion
Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close
emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics,
had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass—
innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,
The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful
face.
Whitman’s long poems are rich and magnificent torrents of words and images. I’ve never been sure whether my favorite is When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, a long meditation on the death of Lincoln and the death of a loved one in general, or Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, another meditation on the disappearance of a beloved and the universal presence of death.
Yet for all that, Whitman was anything but gloomy, and instead is famous for the ecstatic, over-the-top tone of his poetic reflections. Even in themes such as New York City, a place he lived in and loved and thus a frequent theme, he found a note of stunned wonder at the richness of it all.
A good YouTube of Marvin Miller, probably the world’s best reader of Whitman, can be found here:
The video was made by a creator who animates photos of long-gone poets and makes it appear that they themselves are reading their poems. Personally, I found this a little unnerving and I couldn’t watch much of it, although it was well done. But it’s worth it for the reading, which is taken, hissing and all, from an old vinyl recording of Marvin Miller reading Whitman’s poems.
OK, here are the poets and their first lines – or just lines I like – that we’ve had so far:
Wallace Stevens: Nomad Exquisite
As the immense dew of Florida/ brings forth/ the big-finned palm/ and green vine angering for life
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry/ we had gone back and forth all night on the ferry
Dylan Thomas: And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.
Emily Dickinson: The Brain Is Wider Than The Sky
The Brain - is wider than the Sky - For - put them side by side -
Robert Louis Stevenson: Where Go the Boats?
Dark brown is the river/golden is the sand.
Elizabeth Bishop: Florida
The state with the prettiest name/ the state that floats in brackish water
William Butler Yeats: The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree […] and live alone in the bee-loud glade.
I’ll put up the full versions of these poems if it’s legal because they’re no longer under copyright, but even if not, I’ll tell a little bit about the poet. Still, the poet really doesn’t matter. It’s not about him or her, but about the image, that is, the poem. And that’s what any poet, any creator of our language, would have wanted.
RECUERDO
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 a 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 pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Edna St Vincent Millay
b. 1892, Maine - d. 1950, New York State
Poem written 1923
The real name of the poem is not Staten Island Ferry, but Recuerdo, which means “Memory”, because the poem is a memory of a very happy trip on the Staten Island Ferry, which goes back and forth across New York City Harbor between the tip of Manhattan and the mostly residential area of Staten Island. Many people live on Staten Island, but many other people just go there and come back on the next ferry. Or go back and forth again and again.
This poem…about a trip on the Staten Island Ferry with a Very Good Friend…is one of my favorite poems about New York City. I grew up there and made that trip to Staten Island many times, not because I had any business there, but because you were on the ferry with a friend, of one kind or another, and at night it was a wonderful trip that made you feel you were floating. Which, of course, you were.
The “shawl covered head” refers to one of the many elderly Italian women, draped in black, who used to sit and sell fruit near the subway or transit exits in Lower Manhattan to commuters coming into Manhattan. They were there even when I was a growing up in the 1950s-60s.
Edna St Vincent Millay (1892 –1950) was born in Maine but died in Columbia County, NY (about 2 /12 hours north of NYC). Her middle name, St. Vincent, comes from St Vincent’s Hospital in NYC, where her uncle’s life had been saved years before her birth, with her mother commemorating this in Edna’s middle name. Like every other literary figure or artist in the 1920s, she went to Paris but eventually returned to the United States and lived in NY for many years. She moved Upstate and appears to have been a devotee of horse racing, becoming part owner of a racing stable. She was a prolific poet and is particularly remembered for her sonnets. After a very diverse career, which got her the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, she then went on to be considered a New York City literary figure.
One of my other favorites by Edna St Vincent Millay is Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare, about the Greek ur-geometer Euclid…yes, your horrible HS geometry class and all its exhausting theorems and proofs were based on his work. It may be hard to believe, but our poet has a different view, and sees Euclid as having understood the beauty of basic forms.
Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
Edna St Vincent Millay, 1922
Looking towards 59th Street from the Central Park Reservoir in 2019 and seeing the ugly “pencil buildings” …but we’ll skip over those and just think about riding the Staten Island Ferry in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s New York.
OK, so far our poets have been Wallace Stevens (Nomad Exquisite), Edna St Vincent Millay (Recuerdo), Dylan Thomas (Death Shall Have No Dominion), Emily Dickinson (The Brain is Wider Than The Sky) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Where Go the Boats? from A Child’s Garden of Verses).
I’ll go into detail about all of these later, but I just wanted to mention that there will be children’s poems out there on the Stand. My mother read us poetry, I read it to my children…and I don’t think enough people read it to their children now, or were even taught it themselves.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, and then spent a great part of his life traveling and writing. He wrote many famous adventure stories popular into the mid-20th century (such as Treasure Island), and even scary ones such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as charming accounts of his travels. My favorite is Travels With A Donkey, written in 1879 and telling of his trip (with his donkey) through Southern France.
But he traveled further, eventually marrying an American who was living in France at the time they met, then migrating across the US with her and ending up in San Francisco, where the family lived for awhile. But Stevenson and his wife and children then kept going west and ended up in Samoa.
He wrote fiction and poetry aimed at children and adults, but the book I love the best is A Child’s Garden of Verses, a collection of poems for children – 19th century children, so you’ll find lots of references to carrying a candle to light you to bed. For The Poetry Stand, I took a photo of one of the illustrations in the 1896 edition. These great drawings were done by the artist Charles Robinson.
Robert Louis Stevenson died suddenly of an aneurism in Samoa 1894 at the age of only 44. And here is how he looked to Charles Robinson.
A poet to the end, he wrote the epitaph that appears on his gravestone in Samoa:
Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me; “Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.”
In my yard on Forbes St. in Jacksonville, I have a Poetry Stand…that is, a stand that gives away poetry for free! All you have to do is walk by and look at it and it’s just like sharing a book.
In these times, when we are all encouraged to stay so distant from each other, we have probably never had more need of this gentle sharing. And I have decided to share it beyond my yard through this blog.
Of course, sharing poetry is much more complicated now because of the restrictions of copyright laws (although I’m sure most poets would much rather have more people read their poems) , so I can only quote a certain number of words here and hope that all the rest are out of copyright. And this isn’t a commercial site, so it shouldn’t be a problem. But I’m any case I can give you the name of the poem, a few factoids about the author, and then you can take it from there.
So I finish with a few words from Robinson Jeffers in his poem, To The Stone Cutters, where he reflects that carved stones have stood for millenia and
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