A Wandering Minstrel I -- W S Gilbert

About time we ran this one...

(Poem #1814) A Wandering Minstrel I A wandering minstrel I -- A thing of shreds and patches, Of ballads, songs and snatches, And dreamy lullaby! My catalogue is long, Through every passion ranging, And to your humours changing I tune my supple song! I tune my supple song! Are you in sentimental mood? I'll sigh with you, Oh, sorrow, sorrow! On maiden's coldness do you brood? I'll do so, too -- Oh, sorrow, sorrow! I'll charm your willing ears With songs of lovers' fears, While sympathetic tears My cheeks bedew -- Oh, sorrow, sorrow! But if patriotic sentiment is wanted, I've patriotic ballads cut and dried; For where'er our country's banner may be planted, All other local banners are defied! Our warriors, in serried ranks assembled, Never quail -- or they conceal it if they do -- And I shouldn't be surprised if nations trembled Before the mighty troops of Titipu! Chorus: We shouldn't be surprised if nations trembled, Trembled with alarm Before the mighty troops, The troops of Titipu! And if you call for a song of the sea, We'll heave the capstan round, With a yeo heave ho, for the wind is free, Her anchor's a-trip and her helm's a-lee, Hurrah for the homeward bound! Chorus: Yeo-ho -- heave ho -- Hurrah for the homeward bound! To lay aloft in a howling breeze May tickle a landsman's taste, But the happiest hour a sailor sees Is when he's down At an inland town, With his Nancy on his knees, yeo ho! And his arm around her waist! Chorus: Then man the capstan -- off we go, As the fiddler swings us round, With a yeo heave ho, And a rum below, Hurrah for the homeward bound! With a yeo heave ho, And a rum below, Yeo-ho, heave ho, Yeo-ho, heave ho, Heave ho, heave ho, yeo-ho! A wandering minstrel I -- A thing of shreds and patches, Of ballads, songs and snatches, And dreamy lullaby! And dreamy lulla-lullaby, Lullaby! -- W S Gilbert

Note: From "The Mikado", sung by the character Nanki Poo

Unsurprisingly enough, the main motivation for today's poem is historical -
as long-time readers of the list are aware, it was Gilbert's "wondering
minstrel" who inspired our name. That aside, this is a wonderful song from
my favourite operetta, and one that would happily take its place in any
best-of collection.

There is one minor problem with running it here, though - while the
collaborative genius of Gilbert and Sullivan melded three very different
pieces smoothly and neatly into a single song, it doesn't quite work on the
printed page; the transitions are disconcertingly abrupt without the music
to ease them along. If you're unfamiliar with the music, I suggest viewing
this as a sequence of three poems (they're nicely self-contained) and not
being unduly distracted by the differences in style between them.

The first segment is by far the weakest (excepting the initial four lines,
which serve more as an introduction to the whole) - Gilbert's weakness at
writing love songs, even (or perhaps especially) in parody, shows up once
again, and even Sullivan's music strikes me as uncharacteristically lacking.

The improvement in the next piece is immediate - both Gilbert and Sullivan
are in their element here, with wonderfully quotable (and singable!) bits
like
  Our warriors, in serried ranks assembled,
  Never quail -- or they conceal it if they do --

Gilbert at his satirical finest.

And finally, for yet another shift in tone, the "song of the sea" is a
different kind of 'parody' altogether - despite the twist on the traditional
theme, I find it more thought-provoking than satirical. Sailors in the
audience, feel free to chime in :)

martin

p.s. While on the subject of The Mikado, I cannot resist sharing this
delightful cryptic clue by Thomas Thurman:

  What the town of Titipu was to the Mikado (8)

The answer in ROT13 (paste into the box at http://www.retards.org/projects/rot13/ to decipher):
FHOGVGYR (gur pbzcyrgr gvgyr vf "Gur Zvxnqb, be Gur Gbja bs Gvgvch")

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Nothing to Fear -- Kingsley Amis

Guest poem submitted by Derek Lowe:

(Poem #1813) Nothing to Fear All fixed: early arrival at the flat Lent by a friend, whose note says Lucky sod; Drinks on the tray, the cover-story pat And quite uncheckable; her husband off Somewhere with all the kids till six o'clock (Which ought to be quite long enough); And all worth while: face really beautiful, Good legs and hips, and as for breasts - my God. What about guilt, compunction and such stuff? I've had my fill of all that cock; It'll wear off, as usual. Yes, all fixed. Then why this slight trembling; Dry mouth, quick pulse-rate, sweaty hands, As though she were the first? No, not impatience, Nor fear of failure, thank you, Jack. Beauty, they tell me, is a dangerous thing, Whose touch will burn, but I'm asbestos, see? All worth while - its a dead coincidence That sitting here, a bag of glands Tuned up to concert pitch, I seem to sense A different style of caller at my back, As cold as ice, but just as set on me. -- Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis was one of the major British novelists of the last half of the
20th century, but he began as a poet. (His close friend Philip Larkin, for
his part started out as a novelist). In his literary criticism, Amis hated
to see authors dealt with as if their characters' views were the same as
their own, but there's little doubt that this poem is at least partly
autobiographical.

Amis, as his novelist son Martin put it, "lived for adultery", especially
during the 1950s and 60s. (Historian and writer Robert Conquest was one
flat-lender from this era; there were surely many others). He left his first
wife and their three children for another woman, but that relationship fell
apart eventually. Amis actually spent his last years living again with his
first wife - and her current husband. This seems to have worked out rather
well...

Derek Lowe.

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Please Remember To Wash Your Hands -- Sandra Greaves

(Poem #1812) Please Remember To Wash Your Hands There are wolf thickets. There are culverts full of bears. There are alpine hares that were lost children. Do not talk to strangers. Do not cross the road. Make a ring of fire. Do not play with matches. There are migrant birds that shouldn't be here. There are people listening. There are ill considered consequences. There are no answers to your liking. There are precautions you can take. Switch off the lights. Remove sharp objects on entering the liferaft. Suck fish eyes to stave off thirst. There are many things that do not come alive except in the small hours before the day makes it. Wolf thickets. Half silences. The distance between lovers. -- Sandra Greaves

This is a marvellously quiet poem; Greaves makes very effective use of the
repeated, passive "there are" to stitch together a series of images into a
compelling, coherent whole. I love the way it starts off as a parody of the
litany of advice children are subjected to, and then gradually gets darker
and more serious, pivoting around the lines

  There are ill considered
  consequences. There are
  no answers to your liking.

and then taking another wholly unexpected turn in the penultimate stanza
until the whole poem crystallises in the last two lines.

I was reminded of my favourite Atwood poem, "Variations on the Word 'Sleep'"
[Poem #1093] - there is the same sense, towards the end, of being gradually
enveloped in a tangible, organic silence that is composed in equal parts of
love and distance. There is also, in counterpoint, a pervasive note of
darkness and night that conjures up terrors only reinforced by the
"childish" tone at the start, the whole adding up to a poem whose richness
and depth belies its surface simplicity.

martin

[Links]

I couldn't find out much about Greaves;
http://www.thepoem.co.uk/limelight/greaves.htm says "Sandra Greaves was born
in Edinburgh and now lives in London." Anyone knowing more about her is, as
usual, encouraged to write in.

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A Drinking Song -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Janice:

(Poem #1811) A Drinking Song Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh. -- William Butler Yeats

I was going through the Yeats collection on Minstrels and noticed that this
wasn't part of it. "A Drinking Song" has been one of my favourite poems for
years. It captures, at least I feel it does, the sweet, underlying sadness
that runs through a large number of his poems ("The Song of Wandering
Aengus", "He Gives his Beloved Certain Rhymes", "Cloths of Heaven", "Adam's
Curse" and many more), this sense of great loss and longing, of something
that remains just out of reach. I love the simplicity of these lines, their
poignancy, the inbuilt harshness of 'before we grow old and die' and the
soft despair of 'I look at you, and I sigh'. And though the title evokes a
celebration, it's a song mingled with sorrow. Probably the best kind.

Hope you enjoy the poem,
Janice.

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In a Bath Teashop -- John Betjeman

(Poem #1810) In a Bath Teashop "Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another -- Let us hold hands and look." She, such a very ordinary little woman; He, such a thumping crook; But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels In the teashop's ingle-nook. -- John Betjeman

I must admit, when I first read this poem (several years ago), it did not
strike me as being particularly noteworthy. Pleasant enough, perhaps,
enjoyable and well-crafted as Betjeman always is, but more reminiscent of a
poem dashed off in an idle moment than anything really great.

And yet - there are some poems that my mind packs away, holding them in
readiness for the right trigger, when it will produce them with a flourish,
mostly for the sheer pleasure of finding an apt quotation, but as a welcome
side effect, giving me the chance to examine the poem in a new light.

"In a Bath Teashop" is one of those poems that I've found myself mentally
quoting on several occasions, but it was only yesterday, when a friend said
something that brought it to mind again, that I realised why my subconscious
at least had found it so memorable - it sums up a universal truth with
surprising simplicity and elegance, so much so, in fact, that its beauty is
entirely unobtrusive. Many of Betjeman's poems have a salient, sparkling
brilliance that impresses me anew each time I read them, and is, indeed, the
main reason I enjoy his poetry so much; today's poem, with its quiet
perfection, may not have struck me as forcibly, but over time I have come to
believe that it is one of his finest.

martin

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In Memoriam A. H. H., Section 5 -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Guest poem submitted by Mark Penney :

(Poem #1809) In Memoriam A. H. H., Section 5 I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold; But that large grief which these enfold Is given outline and no more. -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

So _In Memoriam_ is vast, and kind of out of style.  But that doesn't mean
that it doesn't have some great stuff in it.

A. H. H. stands for Arthur Henry Hallam.  Hallam was a close friend of
Tennyson's who was also engaged to Tennyson's sister.  He died before the
wedding; he was 22.  Naturally enough, this caused Tennyson to be catatonic
with grief.  As a way of working through it, Tennyson wrote _In Memoriam,_
which consists of 133 sections; each section is in turn composed of
quatrains of iambic tetrameter rhymed abba.  Since Tennyson invented that
stanza form for this poem, and since you've read several hundred of them by
the time you're done reading the poem, that form is called the "In Memoriam
stanza".

The poem as a whole, as you might expect, is about coming to terms with
grief.  Tennyson assays his grief, expiates it, and finds a way to move on.
That's the arc, anyway.  In the midst of that, you get an idea of who Hallam
was and what he meant to Tennyson.  There are also digressions on a few
other topics.  The In Memoriam stanza is a perfect microcosm of the arc of
the poem as a whole:  abba:  conflict, then resolution.  Does that make any
sense?

I love this section in particular: it's about the inadequacy of words to
express grief; and yet at the same time words are the only tool we have.  So
what can you do?  Wrap yourself in words, like weeds.  Weeds, as in mourning
dress, but also weeds as in the plants that clog an untended garden.  Words,
too, like narcotics, numbing the pain.  And what is this poem, but words?
The grief is literally too large to be contained here, but somehow he has to
find a way to cram it in, so he knows his project will never work: it's
"given outline, and no more".  In short, words must fail, yet _must_
succeed.  There's a lot of punch packed into these twelve lines.

Mark.

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Looking Out -- Mitsuye Yamada

Apologies for the hiatus - this should mark a return to your regularly
scheduled Minstrels...

(Poem #1808) Looking Out It must be odd to be a minority he was saying. I looked around and didn't see any. So I said Yeah it must be. -- Mitsuye Yamada

How can you not love a poem like this? I had never heard of Yamada before I
read today's little gem, but the combination of pointed message and dry wit
she displays here have definitely marked her as someone I need to read more
of (recommendations welcomed!).

A quote I found in her Wikipedia entry is telling:

  "I have thought of myself as a feminist first, but my ethnicity cannot be
  separated from my feminism."

It is an uncomfortable truism, but a truism nonetheless, that "minority
artists" are almost forced into having their minority status inform their
work, if only by the legions of critics who insist on loudly analysing their
output through that lens, or by other members of the group who expect them
to be Making a Statement. Yamada's poem is richly ironic when viewed in that
light, simultaneously speaking for her status as an ethnically Japanese
American and shaking her head at people who can't see her as anything else.
To quote her again:

"White sisters should be able to see that political views held by women of
color are often misconstrued as being personal rather than ideological.
Views critical of the system held by a person in an out-group are often seen
as expressions of personal angers against the dominant society."

martin

[Links]

  Yamada's Wikipedia entry:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsuye_Yamada

  An essay on "Cultural Diversity and the Use of Literature":
    [broken link] http://www.mtsu.edu/~socwork/frost/crazy/culturaldiversitypaper.htm

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