Shijo -- Chong Chol

Guest poem submitted by Lisa:

(Poem #1503) Shijo The rise and fall of nations are myriad; Taebang Fortress is covered with autumn grass. To the herdsman's pipes I'll leave my ignorance of the past and I'll drink a cup to this great age of peace. -- Chong Chol

This poem appeared today in the Korean Herald, in their "A Poem for
Breakfast" feature.  I was struck by the first line, pointing to the
ephemeral nature of even great nations, as they rise, fall, and are
eventually become covered over with grass.  In the midst of daily bad news
from all corners of the world, much of it caused by nations attempting to
create some sort of permanence for themselves and their ideologies, a
sentiment such as this strikes me as, bizarrely, hopeful.  Nations come and
go, always.  I think I'll join Chong Chol in leaving my ignorance and
drinking a cup -- though I wonder if the age he lived in was really the
great age of peace!

The poem appeared here:
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/04/15/asp

The Korean Herald had this to say about the poem:
Chong Chol, the great poet-bureaucrat of the mid-Joseon period, treats one
of the great themes of literature, the ephemeral nature of human existence.
His stance is typically Korean. He says, concentrate on how good things are
now and forget the turbulence of the past! Taebang Fortress is today's
Namwon in North Jeolla Province, Chunhyang's town.

More information about the Joseon period can be found here:
[broken link] http://www.korea.net/learnaboutkorea/history/earlyjoseon.html
[broken link] http://www.korea.net/learnaboutkorea/history/latejoseon.html

More information on the Taebang Fortress (today the Namwon Castle) can be
found here:
[broken link] http://namwon.jeonbuk.kr/eng/sub/usan/nam.htm

--Lisa

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Law Like Love -- W H Auden

Guest poem sent in by Aseem Kaul

(Poem #1502) Law Like Love Law, say the gardeners, is the sun, Law is the one All gardeners obey To-morrow, yesterday, to-day. Law is the wisdom of the old, The impotent grandfathers feebly scold; The grandchildren put out a treble tongue, Law is the senses of the young. Law, says the priest with a priestly look, Expounding to an unpriestly people, Law is the words in my priestly book, Law is my pulpit and my steeple. Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose, Speaking clearly and most severely, Law is as I've told you before, Law is as you know I suppose, Law is but let me explain it once more, Law is The Law. Yet law-abiding scholars write: Law is neither wrong nor right, Law is only crimes Punished by places and by times, Law is the clothes men wear Anytime, anywhere, Law is Good morning and Good night. Others say, Law is our Fate; Others say, Law is our State; Others say, others say Law is no more, Law has gone away. And always the loud angry crowd, Very angry and very loud, Law is We, And always the soft idiot softly Me. If we, dear, know we know no more Than they about the Law, If I no more than you Know what we should and should not do Except that all agree Gladly or miserably That the Law is And that all know this If therefore thinking it absurd To identify Law with some other word, Unlike so many men I cannot say Law is again, No more than they can we suppress The universal wish to guess Or slip out of our own position Into an unconcerned condition. Although I can at least confine Your vanity and mine To stating timidly A timid similarity, We shall boast anyway: Like love I say. Like love we don't know where or why, Like love we can't compel or fly, Like love we often weep, Like love we seldom keep. -- W H Auden

In response to Michelle's call for poems about lawyers and the law, here's
one of my favourite Auden poems. Aside from the usual Auden brilliance (the
tone so nonchalantly conversational, the seemingly endless ability to carry
on with a single metaphor) this poem has always been special to me for three
reasons. First, that unlike many Auden poems this one comes to its "timid
similarity" right at the very end, so that having chuckled through the poem
once you are almost compelled to go back to the beginning and read it
through again, this time replacing Law with Love and realising how truly
brilliant the comparison is.

Second, that it's a poem that cries to be read aloud - even reading it in
one's head every stanza has it's own 'voice' creating an incredible
impression of movement as one jumps breathlessly from one person's
view--point to another's.

And finally, for a gem of a last line - one that both makes you laugh and
makes you want to cry with a terrible longing for our lost loves.  In a poem
that is otherwise fairly cheerful it introduces a note of honest grief, that
lifts the poem above the merely clever.

Aseem Kaul

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The Quality of Mercy is not Strain'd -- William Shakespeare

Guest poem sent in by Michelle Whitehead

(Poem #1501) The Quality of Mercy is not Strain'd The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there. -- William Shakespeare

           The Merchant of Venice, Act IV Scene 1

I am currently studying "Legal Ethics and Professional Conduct" at Uni. I
have been using the Minstrels site to spark discussion with my fellow
students about the portrayal of lawyers in literature. I was wondering
whether all the Minstrels out there would like to help me out by submitting
their favourite 'lawyer' poems, whether positive or negative?

Since it is not currently on the list I thought I would start the ball
rolling with Portia's speech from The Merchant of Venice, which is perhaps
the best known 'positive' representation of a lawyer in poetry - although
Portia was only impersonating a lawyer and thus could freely use the
language of religion and morality. However, Portia triumphs because she
knows the loophole in the legislation that favours her client. She works
within the man-made law to give effect to the 'higher law' which is the
subject of this poem. This is, in effect, a statement of her personal
ethics.

Other lawyer poems which are already archived by the Minstrels include:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1392.html
(The Law the Lawyers Know About - H.D.C. Pepler; suggests lawyers are
ignorant of natural and moral laws - presumably having spent too much time
with their noses in books, though there is also a suggestion of an inherent
lack of ethics; this poem obviously touched a nerve in some
poetically-inclined members of the legal profession...)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1393.html
(The Lawyers Know Too Much - Carl Sandburg; this poem is another
unflattering depiction of lawyers. It suggests they inhabit a dead world of
rhetoric, divorced from the real, living world, yet sucking it dry. I
personally find the rhetorical question which ends this poem to be a
wonderful image for prompting thought about legal ethics and the public
perception of lawyers!)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/868.html
(Partition - W.H.Auden; looks at Radcliffe's partitioning of India &
Pakistan; gives some sense of the harried nature of lawyers, particularly
mediators trying to do the best for both sides.)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1126.html
(The Shooting of Dan McGrew - Robert W. Service; very entertaining yarn from
the Yukon gold fields; in contrast with the cold, dispassionate environment
of the first two poems above, this poem introduces some of the drama of
courtroom narratives; lawyers are only mentioned in the last stanza, but
they are portrayed as dispassionate untanglers of the facts - the ones who
sift through the story to find the 'truth' - a truth which significantly
differs from the conclusion of the narrating witness, who is the involved
observer of human nature)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/842.html
(To a Goose - Robert Southey; once again, lawyers are only incidental to
this poem...  though here their portrayal as perpetually malevolent forces
in society is used more as an accepted cliche which the poem (very subtly)
questions. The other cliche in the poem is the 'love-sick poet's sonnet' -
but the poem is a sonnet which is anything but love-sick!  Hence an implied
questioning of the reliability of cliches.)

Cheers,
Michelle Whitehead

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John Keats -- J D Salinger

Guest poem sent in by Pavithra Krishnan

(Poem #1500) John Keats John Keats John Keats John Please put your scarf on. -- J D Salinger

          (From "Seymour An Introduction")

You know it's a good poem when you reach the quiet end and find something's
taken your breath away and left a knot in your throat instead. Couldn't Not
send this in after the Cullen's poem [Poem #1497]. His lines read wrenching,
read like they've been ripped from the dramatic depths of a poet's passion-
and pain.  This poem by contrast is more like a child tugging at your coat
sleeve.  Filled with persistence and a very vulnerable power. This is a poem
written by Seymour aged 8 and we only learn of its existence through Buddy,
his brother (both of them members of the Glass family created by J. D.
Salinger).

Seymour is an unusual child who grows up to be an unusual man and this
particular poem is just a throwaway detail in a book full of throwaway
details that for some reason you don't throw away, but stop at suddenly-
because they are saying so much that you almost didn't hear and they make
you wonder what else in your world might be saying crucial things that you
are drowning out in a profusion of detail. But what got me then and what
gets me now is the stark simplicity of this poem's understated pleading and
its tender tardiness, and sure I know that it's Salinger and not Seymour who
wrote it, but the thought of the thought of this poem in the head of an 8
year old child...

And suddenly I am sad inside, really sad for the first time for a boy-man
named John, John Keats who loved beauty and who wrote its truth, and who
died of tuberculosis when he was 25.

Pavi

[Links]

Biography: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/salinger.htm

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The Uncertainty of the Poet -- Wendy Cope

Guest poem sent in by Paramjit Oberoi

(Poem #1499) The Uncertainty of the Poet I am a poet. I am very fond of bananas. I am bananas. I am very fond of a poet. I am a poet of bananas. I am very fond. A fond poet of 'I am, I am'- Very bananas. Fond of 'Am I bananas? Am I?'-a very poet. Bananas of a poet! Am I fond? Am I very? Poet bananas! I am. I am fond of a 'very.' I am of very fond bananas. Am I a poet? -- Wendy Cope

Published in "Serious Concerns", 1992, Faber & Faber.
-------------------------------------------------------

This was the first Wendy Cope poem I read...  and it was the beginning of my
discovery of how much joy there could be in poetry.  I love the poem for its
wonderful irreverence, spartan simplicity, and just the fact that it always
makes me smile.  I have no idea what she's talking about though, so I'd
appreciate an analysis by one of you.

-param

[Martin adds]

I've always loved this one too, both for the fact that, like Paramjit, it
always makes me smile, and for the sheer playfulness with which Cope dances
the boundary between poetry and antipoetry. It doesn't really show off her
skill as a parodist as well as some of her other poems, but it strikes a
note of lightness (and, yes, unabashed silliness) that is delightful to
read. I also have a fondness for this particular sort of wordplay - easy to
do, but hard to do well.

martin

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On Discovering a Butterfly -- Vladimir Nabokov

(Poem #1498) On Discovering a Butterfly I found it and I named it, being versed in taxonomic Latin; thus became godfather to an insect and its first describer -- and I want no other fame. Wide open on its pin (though fast asleep), and safe from creeping relatives and rust, in the secluded stronghold where we keep type specimens it will transcend its dust. Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss, poems that take a thousand years to die but ape the immortality of this red label on a little butterfly. -- Vladimir Nabokov

While idly surfing the Minstrels archives (and if you haven't tried out
the 'random poem' feature, do!) I came again upon the excerpt from this poem
which Dr A Giridhar Rao had posted as a comment to Poem #1250. Quoting from
Dr. Rao's mail:

  But why a _red_ label? The biologist Stephen Jay Gould in a brilliant essay
  (in _I Have Landed_, 2002) gives the answer:

  Museum curators traditionally affix red labels only to "holotype"
  specimens -- that is, to individuals chosen as official recipients of the
  name given to a new species. The necessity for such a rule arises from a
  common situation in taxonomic research. A later scientist may discover that
  the original namer of a species defined the group too broadly by including
  speciments from more than one genuine species.... By official rules, the
  species of the designated holotype specimen keeps the original name, and
  members of the newly recognized species must recieve a new name. Thus,
  Nabokov tells us that no product of human cultural construction can match
  the immortality of the permanent name-bearer for a genuine species in
  nature. The species may become extinct, of course, but the name continues
  forever to designate a genuine natural population that once inhabited the
  earth.

Dr. Rao noted that the poem reflected the "vanity of human wishes", but it
speaks, too, of something more specific - the bid for immortality that
motivates even the "purest" of scientists. Scientific biographers speak,
often with palpable surprise, of the "pettiness" that scientists can display
in their quest for the all-important Precedence, but that is merely due to
an idealised notion of a scientist who is supposed to transcend all human
emotions in his quest for Truth. In reality, Scientists are as alive to the
seduction of fame as anyone else - and the brand of fame they seek makes
"the glories of our blood and state" look positively ephemeral.

Of course poets have long espoused the conceit that words are the surest
form of immortality - "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes,
shall outlive this powerful rhyme" quoth the Bard - but Nabokov trumps
even that with his "thus became [...] its first describer -- and I want no
other fame." And although he says "it will transcend its dust", the
temptation is irresistible to read, superposed on the "it", a triumphant "I".

martin

[Note]

The butterfly in question, incidentally, was a pug moth named 'Eupithecia
nabokovi' - and in an interesting essay I found on the web:

  Be that as it may, on solving a couple more Nabokov charades, one is
  tempted to ask the otherworldly VN whether he himself has noticed that
  hiding in the scholarly name of his Eupithecia Nabokovi is a "good monkey",
  Gr. eu-pithekos (which, to an extent, is also true of the bluntly English
  label Nabokov Pug, as it is from Gr. simos [flat-nosed, pug-nosed] that Lat.
  simia [monkey, ape] is derived). He must have, for that particular
  butterfly, the act of labeling, and the image of aping all converge on the
  closure of the poem celebrating VN's most cherished lepidopteral catch:

  Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss,/ poems that take a
  thousand years to die/ but ape the immortality of this/ red label on a
  little butterfly ("A Discovery", 1943; in reciting this poem, Nabokov
  especially stressed the word “ape”).

        -- http://www.usc.edu/dept/las/sll/eng/ess/nabpuzzl.htm

[Links]

Biography of Nabokov:
  http://www.booksfactory.com/writers/nabokov.htm

http://campus.queens.edu/faculty/jannr/Botany/taxonomy.htm is a nice
page on taxonomy - an excerpt:
  Groan-inspiring puns like Phthiria relativitae (a fly whose name sounds
  like "theory of relativity") and Ytu brutus (a beetle) suggest that some
  taxonomists might be drinking out of the specimen bottles.

If someone has a link to a picture of the celebrated pug moth, do send it
in.

martin

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For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty -- Countee Cullen

Guest poem submitted by Jeffrey Sean Huo, in response
to yesterday's poem:

(Poem #1497) For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty Not writ in water nor in mist, Sweet lyric throat, thy name. Thy singing lips that cold death kissed Have seared his own with flame. -- Countee Cullen

 From "Four Epitaths".

 In response to today's poem [ #1497, "Give Me Women, Wine, and Snuff" ],
Mr. Ramasubramanian recalls a response to Keat's famous epitaph that posited
that Keats' name ought to have been written in the sky in letters of fire.
Mr. Ramasubramanian was unable to recall that poem, and neither can I -- but
what I did find was three poems by three poets whose poems have been
featured in these pages before. One by Oscar Wilde, one by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, and the one I wish to feature, the one by Countee Cullen.

 In contrast to Longfellow's and Wilde's drawn out, overly-flowered, and in
the end, forgettable verses (included below), Cullen, in four short lines,
burns into your brain an absolutely unforgettable image: Keats, the poet of
such awesome passion and power, that even the cold lips of Death himself are
set afire.  The power and genius of poetry is the ability to capture
powerful, complex ideas in very short spaces. Longfellow and Wilde certainly
make clear the depth of respect and feeling each has for Keats. But it is
Cullen, in my opinion, which most succeeds in making Keats unforgettable.

 This poem is especially powerful for me for having come of age with a
relatively recent literary incarnation of the Grim Reaper. Not the grey,
hooded, skeletal spectre of so many past stories, but instead the
passionate, vibrant, immortal Lady Teleute of Neil Gaiman's _The Sandman_,
the cute Goth chick with the curl under her eye who was sister to Destiny,
Destruction and Dream. *That* Death, Neil Gaiman's gentle, beautiful lady
Death, she could definately be imagined taking Keats beyond in one final,
brilliant, blazing kiss. Influenced by the masterful way way Gaiman wove
tales of _The Sandman_ around such other historical figures as William
Shakespeare, Augustus Ceasar, and Haroun Al Raschid, Cullen's poem, imagined
through Gaiman's lens, is to me as unforgettable a memorial to Keats' legacy
as Keats could possibly hope for.

 Thank you again for the opportunity to share,

                 -Jeff.

 Longfellow's musings were as follows:

 "Keats"

 The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
 The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
 The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
 To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
 The nightingale is singing from the steep;
 It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
 Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
 A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
 Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
 On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
 Was writ in water." And was this the meed
 Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
 "The smoking flax before it burst to flame
 Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

        -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 Oscar Wilde wrote instead this:

 "The Grave of Keats"

 Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain,
 He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
 Taken from life when life and love were new
 The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
 Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
 No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
 But gentle violets weeping with the dew
 Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
 O proudest heart that broke for misery!
 O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
 O poet-painter of our English Land!
 Thy name was writ in water--it shall stand:
 And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
 As Isabella did her Basil-tree.

        -- Oscar Wilde

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