Christmas Poems 2019

This is my fourth (kind of) annual Christmas Poem post. I never got around to writing one last year You can read the others here:

Christmas Poems 2015

Christmas Poems 2016

Christmas Poems 2017

And on a related note, last year’s Christmas Carol post.

Other posts on Christmas:

The Christmas Wars, Or, How To Use Christmas As An Excuse To Be A Jerk

Night Shift At The Hospital on Christmas Eve

The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens

Reading A Christmas Carol With My Kids

Gloria

Magnificat

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Let’s get things started with this jem from the incomparable Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets. Few poets can capture the details of nature in such brilliant fashion, and this poem exhibits her talent at its best. Most of my life, I have lived in places without show (well, except for that freak storm in 1999…), but I remember those few years living in the mountains with fondness. (And we still go places with snow, of course.) See if this poem doesn’t bring to life the amazing reality of a fresh snowfall. 

It sifts from Leaden Sieves -

It powders all the Wood.

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road -

It makes an even Face

Of Mountain, and of Plain -

Unbroken Forehead from the East

Unto the East again -

It reaches to the Fence -

It wraps it Rail by Rail

Till it is lost in Fleeces -

It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack - and Stem -

A Summer’s empty Room -

Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,

Recordless, but for them -

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts

As Ankles of a Queen -

Then stills it’s Artisans - like Ghosts -

Denying they have been -

A hike in the woods during a snowstorm.

 Sequoia National Park, May 2019

This next poem was one I discovered just a few months ago, while reading the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. That whole collection was a revelation, and rapidly became one of my favorite volumes. 

Millay wasn’t particularly religious, but wrote on religious themes. This one really hit home for me, where Christmas is everywhere and in one’s face, but little of Christ can be seen, particularly from those who speak his name the loudest. Christ has become a prop, an idol to be used to justify cruelty and hate. 

The sonnet form is used to perfect effect by Millay. The first quatrain encapsulates the commercialism contrasting with the reality of the first Christmas. The second is a snapshot of the fake religiosity that ignores the gospel. I can’t decide if the preacher is part of the problem or just ignored. “Honey and steel” certainly seems like the worst of professional preachers. The shift then occurs in line nine, as it should. The two tercets present the devastating reality. Nobody listens; the words mean less than the wind. Christ is in effect, dead, as he has had no effect. It’s not very optimistic, to say the least. But it sure fits our own times. 

To Jesus on His Birthday

For this your mother sweated in the cold,

For this you bled upon the bitter tree:

A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;

A paper wreath; a day at home for me.

The merry bells ring out, the people kneel;

Up goes the man of God before the crowd;

With voice of honey and with eyes of steel

He drones your humble gospel to the proud.

Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows

Are all your words to us you died to save.

O Prince of Peace! O Sharon's dewy Rose!

How mute you lie within your vaulted grave.

The stone the angel rolled away with tears

Is back upon your mouth these thousand years.

This next poem is an excerpt from a longer poem. A MUCH longer poem. As in, about two thirds the size of Paradise Lost. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but now I really want to. This particular part really spoke to me. W. H. Auden paints such a realistic picture of the post-Christmas experience. I can’t even decide what I like best. Maybe the “we have seen the actual Vision and failed /  To do more than entertain it as an agreeable / Possibility” line? Or the part about going back to materialistic assumptions? Or perhaps the last few lines. Hot dang, those are good. This is just a great poem, any way you slice it.  

Excerpt from For the Time Being

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –

Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully –

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought

Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now

Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry

And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly

Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be

Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment

We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;

Remembering the stable where for once in our lives

Everything became a You and nothing was an It. 

I’m going to call my choice of four poems a tradition. Hey, four years is enough to make a tradition, right? I’ll end with Paul Laurence Dunbar. After the kind of bitter taste of the two preceding poems, Dunbar’s exuberance and joy is refreshing. This, despite living in less-than-ideal circumstances. (Despite his education and obvious talent, he had to work as an elevator operator most of his life - Jim Crow and racism in action.) This is the ultimate hope of Christmas - that one day, all will be restored, healed, and made new. Ring out, ye bells indeed!  

Christmas Carol

  Ring out, ye bells!

   All Nature swells

With gladness at the wondrous story,—

   The world was lorn,

   But Christ is born

To change our sadness into glory.

   Sing, earthlings, sing!

   To-night a King

Hath come from heaven's high throne to bless us.

   The outstretched hand

   O'er all the land

Is raised in pity to caress us.

   Come at his call;

   Be joyful all;

Away with mourning and with sadness!

   The heavenly choir

   With holy fire

Their voices raise in songs of gladness.

   The darkness breaks

   And Dawn awakes,

Her cheeks suffused with youthful blushes.

   The rocks and stones

   In holy tones

Are singing sweeter than the thrushes.

   Then why should we

   In silence be,

When Nature lends her voice to praises;

   When heaven and earth

   Proclaim the truth

Of Him for whom that lone star blazes?

   No, be not still,

   But with a will

Strike all your harps and set them ringing;

   On hill and heath

   Let every breath

Throw all its power into singing!

Paid on Both Sides & Poems 1927-1932 by W. H. Auden

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

Date originally posted on Facebook: May 17, 2011

I’m finally done! This is the last of my old Facebook reviews to be re-posted on the blog. I still have a few guest posts on other blogs that I wish to reformat and post on my own blog, but am happy to finally be done with the old reviews.

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These notes are a continuation of my poetry project. I borrowed this book from the library, but hope to find my own hardback Auden collection in the future.

Wystan Hugh Auden was born in England in 1907. He later moved to the United States and is thus considered, like T. S. Eliot, to be an Anglo-American poet.  

On the one hand, Auden is strikingly different from the earlier and more traditional poets I have read. His poems are dense, often difficult to understand, perhaps intentionally incomprehensible. This fits with his classification as a modern poet. On the other, he often uses familiar rhyme, meter, and stanza schemes. In particular, these early poems show a use of blank verse and the three line stanza.

In this collection, Auden will occasionally attempt political commentary, often with apocalyptic language. I suspect much of this would have resonated better with those of that time and place – I am not up on British politics from the ‘20s and ‘30s to understand all of his points and references.

I read two distinctly different works in this case. Paid on Both Sides is a one act experimental play about love and a feud – somewhat similar in plot to Romeo and Juliet. In this case, the setting is the Scottish highlands in older days, but the play itself is staged with nothing but a wall and chairs. Thus, the dialogue and poetry take center stage, without the distraction of costume or action.

In addition to the Scottish setting, the play contains inside references to the English boarding school system, only a few of which I can claim to have recognized.

This play is at its best in the musings of the characters about the feud. For example:

           I will say this not falsely: I have seen

           The just and the unjust die in the day,

           All, willing or not, and some were willing.

The second section was the collected poems from 1927 through 1932. These are the earliest poems published by Auden. There is great debate as to whether the early poems or the later poems are better. Since I have read only a few of the later ones, I will leave the debate to more experienced at this time.

Many of these poems tell stories, often in blank verse. Auden at times sounds similar to Milton in meter and use of blank verse and in his syntax. The themes and topics are different. Auden focuses on detail and obscure characters rather than the sweeping themes and familiar types in Milton.

Also similarly to Milton, Auden uses subordinate clauses and verbals as a style of writing. (English majors will, I hope, forgive my limited analysis of the grammar)

Auden (and Milton) both start a section with a series of subordinate participle or gerund based clauses, delaying the main clause with its stronger verb until the end of the sentence. This gives a sense of building the foundation before allowing the final meaning to emerge. While this is effective if done well, it requires quite a bit of rereading.

An example here from the opening of “Half Way” may be illustrative:

           Having abdicated with comparative ease

           And dismissed the greater part of your friends, [compound participle clause?]

           Escaping by submarine

           In a false beard, half-hoping the ports were watched, [gerund phrase?]

           You have got here, and it isn’t snowing:

           How shall we celebrate your arrival?

The structure itself builds the suspense as to what the end result of the action that occurred in the past was.

Perhaps my English major friends can explain the mechanics of this better than I have. In any case, I found it interesting in its effects. Auden, like Milton, was a craftsman of the English language – the form itself adds to and bolsters the meaning of the words.

There are far too many excellent quotes to use in my review, but I will select a few that particularly resonated with me.

In “The Letter”, these lines appear:

           Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen

           The swallow on the tile, spring’s green

           Preliminary shiver…

Then later:

           Always afraid to say more than it meant.

Well written indeed.

I also enjoyed “Too Dear, Too Vague”, a musing on the nature of love too long to quote, but worth looking up. Auden uses short lines and frequent rhyme to good effect in creating a feeling of love cut too short.

Another moving poem is “Between Adventure”, which I read as discussing the line between acquaintance and something deeper, and the danger it implies. This poem uses the three line stanza mentioned above.

One interesting poem, if it may be called that, is entitled “Shorts”, and consists of a series of short aphorisms which may be connected to each other in a thematic sense, but only loosely.

           Pick a quarrel, go to war,

           Leave the hero in the bar;

           Hunt the lion, climb the peak:

           No one guesses you are weak.

And then:

           The friends of the born nurse

           Are always getting worse.

           When he is well

           She gives him hell,

           But she’s a brick

           When he is sick.

And less amusingly:

I’m beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

And one of my all time favorites:

           Let us honor if we can

           The vertical man,

           Though we value none

           But the horizontal one.

Although these were definitely not the easiest of poems to read and understand, I found many gems of both language and meaning there. The time I invested to work through them slowly and carefully was worth the effort and yielded rewards.