If Dylan Thomas hadn’t drunk himself to death in 1953, he might be celebrating his ninety-sixth birthday today, perhaps with a successor to the grand and glorious poem he wrote to celebrate his thirtieth.
He left us with a small number of poems so heart-wrenching that I cannot read them, even for the two hundredth time, without all of the symptoms of an emotional crisis. Take In Country Sleep, where a father reassures his daughter that she has nothing to fear from fairy tale villains—but only from the Thief who comes in multiple guises to take her faith and ultimately to leave her “naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come”. In Country Sleep was a standard bedtime poem in our house, and my daughter soon learned to anticipate “the part where Daddy cries”.
Then there’s the prose. Nobody is better at nostalgia and grief for time’s relentlessness:
Continue reading ‘Blogpost in October’
Our reader Jeff Poggi sent me a sonnet he wrote in honor of Darwin’s 200′th birthday, and kindly allowed me to reproduce it here. How many hidden Darwin references can you spot?
| On Darwin’s 200th |
| by |
| Jeff Poggi |
Charles much under winter gray knew life
Would be back, be full, be gullible, need
Life. If inches crept by like miles rife
With their own history, then just a seed
Or stone therein would tell the story of
All this earth–all. He can’t let it be, sees
The earth make new earth, sees new stars above
Reflected, fits royal needs while he flees
Into his life in these new waters, lands.
Home in his garden he takes walks and writes,
Suffers loss most dear and is forced to hand
To them who will not hear what sorely smites
Their hallowed place, their no less hallowed birth—
From such simple forms we populate the earth.
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A hat tip to my buddy Rosa, with hat tips once and twice removed to Tim Pierce and Doctor Memory.
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Let us please learn new words that mean as much as direction: wife.
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That single cryptic line is the complete text of a poem by Richard Brautigan that I first read almost forty years ago. I still don’t quite get it, but for some reason it’s always struck me as hauntingly beautiful. And, following a momentous weekend, it feels like the right thing to post today.
Edited to add: Apparently this post was as cryptic as the poem. One commenter writes:
You make it sound like you would like to get married but have not taken all necessary steps.
In fact, I took all the necessary steps this weekend. It was a lovely wedding.
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