The Odyssey (film)

My love of The Odyssey goes way back. 

 

I am pretty sure my first introduction to it was, of all things, the iconic episode of Duck Tales. Perhaps the lost city of Ithaquack was irresistible…

 

Anyway, I first read The Odyssey in my teens - I still have that paperback of the E. V. Rieu prose translation. I re-read it at least once in the years that followed, and also eventually obtained a hardback of the classic Robert Fitzgerald poetic translation, which I then read. 

 

It has been a while since I re-read it, however. During high school, each of my kids in turn has read at least excerpts, and in some cases, the entire thing. I do need to return to the work, and recently purchased the newish Emily Wilson translation. 

 

I have also read a number of works, ancient and modern, that are related to the Trojan War and the stories told about it. I will list my recommendations below, and, if applicable, link to my blog posts about them. 

 

So, in any case, I care about The Odyssey, and am fairly familiar with its details. I also am fully aware that no movie can capture a book. Even the best, which take many hours of screen time - the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice and the original Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies - will omit things, and change others to fit the new medium. 

 

I thus went into this movie expecting that it would be different from the book and be missing things I thought were important. In this case, seeing it with my teenagers, we were able to compare our own thoughts on what should not have been left out. 

 

There are several reasons I wanted to see the movie, despite knowing that it would disappoint in some ways. First, friends with good judgment enjoyed it, so that was a bonus. Second, from what I could tell, Christopher Nolan genuinely loved the Homer original, and made a good-faith attempt to capture its magic. (And I will say that I think he succeeded.) 

 

Third is that certain right-wing assholes were quick to whine about the casting. For entirely predictable reasons. I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to support art that gave the middle finger to bigots. 

 

Maybe I should start with the casting, because I thought it was excellent. And also, for the most part, age appropriate. 

 

Let’s get the stupidest part out of the way first: of COURSE the casting isn’t “accurate.” The movie is filled with actors of northern European descent, which would not have been what Mediterranean peoples would have looked like 2500 years ago. Calypso should not have been blond. 

 

To the extent that a fictional story could be said to be “accurate,” the casting should have been mostly ethnic Greeks for the Greeks, and mostly ethnic Turks (and Armenians) for the Trojans. There should have been a lot more Arabic people, and the most “white” the actors should have been was Italian. 

 

Oh, and Mentor should have been played by a woman, right? Because Athena, yo. 

 

In fact, the presence of black people in the movie is actually the most “accurate” part of the casting. 

 

So right wingers can go soak their heads. 

 

It should be obvious that I am being snarky and silly here. There is no “correct” way to cast a fictional story, particularly one that is ancient and has been told and retold for literally thousands of years. 

 

I mean, we need a Muppet version of this, right? With Animal as Polyphemus, and Miss Piggy as Calypso? I’m down. 

 

If right wingers can’t handle the idea that the face that launched a thousand ships might be black, or that the Greeks might have accepted a bit of gender bending, then they probably would be unable to handle actual ancient Greek literature. Just saying. 

 

So, on the casting decisions that I loved. First, Matt Damon was perfect for the role. I loved the performance, and I loved how he brought out the themes of the movie in a believable way. 

 

Likewise, Tom Holland was believable as Telemachus, and John Leguizamo was outstanding as Eumaeus. I also love Anne Hathaway, and she was fine as Penelope. Even Robert Pattinson pulled off the villain role. 

 

I also liked Elliot Page, particularly when he became a shade. (I suspect a lot of the right wing rage at him is because they are furious he is no longer a young woman they fantasized about fucking.) 

 

I think, though, that my favorite part about the casting is that it was age-appropriate. In a prior era, Penelope would have been played by a woman in her 20s. Because ya gotta have the hot woman, right? Instead, at age 43, Anne Hathaway is precisely a believable age for a woman whose husband left her with a young child 20 years prior. Matt Damon at 55 may be older than her, but entirely likely for the era - and the aging of Odysseus from 35 at the time of the war to 55 on his return seems about right. After all, Odysseus is already the elder statesman at the start of the war. 

 

Likewise, Circe (Samantha Morton) and Helen (Lupita Nyong’o) are in their 40s, while Calypso (Charlize Theron) is in her 50s. Yeah sure, they are all more attractive than average - they are movie stars - but they are also not a generation younger than the male characters. Major kudos to Nolan for these choices. 

 

There aren’t that many women in the original, so there aren’t that many in the movie. The two younger actors are Zendaya as Athena (fascinating and totally defensible), and Mia Goth as the faithless servant girl Melantho (and she should be young.) 

 

I also want to note that I find the complaints about the use of “modern” language - probably also meaning American English rather than the King’s English - and certain anachronisms to be a bit silly. Yes, that is a Viking ship, but whatever. Even my 18 year old, who is passionate about ships and can freebuild stuff from the Age of Sail with legos, thought that the ship was great, and the sailing scenes far more realistic because they were real. 

 

My next thought on the film: why was it rated R? Yes, it is violent, but not that graphic. As various online commenters have noted, if the movie had used light sabers and blasters instead of swords and arrows, it would have been PG-13. There is very little language. And essentially no nudity except for the sirens seen at a long distance through fog. I mean, there is nothing more provocative than you would find in The Simpsons. Seriously. 

 

So I have no idea why it got an R rating. 

 

Now, about the omissions and changes. Each of us had something that we missed. My 15 year old noted that she missed Odysseus first calling himself “no man,” then blowing it by revealing his real name. I agree that this should have been in the movie, and that the change was not for the better. 

 

I do understand why certain things were cut. For example, I was not at all surprised that the episode with Nausicaa was left out. We knew that there was no way the servant girls all get murdered at the end. And I can go along with the merging of the island of the lotus eaters with Calypso. I can see leaving out the bag of winds. I can even see leaving the gods mostly out of it, given Nolan’s wish to focus on ethical issues and the responsibility we humans have for our own behavior. We have blamed the gods for too long as it is. 

 

What I was most disappointed to miss was near the end. One of the most important character developments was when Telemachus and Odysseus realize that Telemachus is fully capable of stringing his father’s bow. At that moment, Telemachus becomes a man, and that doesn’t really happen in the movie. So a bit of a fail there. 

 

There were a lot of things I did love, however. Overall, the cinematography was exceptional, mostly done without CGI. The cyclops was primarily puppetry, and the Laestrygonians were an old school combination of large and small body doubles and forced perspective. Scylla was really the only major digital creation. All of the live-action effects help the movie avoid the feeling so many modern movies have of physics not really applying. Every fall feels real and heavy and painful, and I heartily approve. 

 

The shipwreck scene in particular was brilliantly filmed. That was a real wow moment, and by using old-school special effects, including lighting, it felt real. 

 

I also loved that Nolan incorporated other elements of Greek mythology. Including the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy made sense not only because it is a crucial part of the story that The Odyssey just assumes the reader knows, but also because of the film’s focus on Zeus’ Law and the duty we owe to our fellow humans. For Odysseus’ character arc, understanding his guilt for his betrayals, both of the Trojans and later the Cicones (although these are somewhat blurred in the movie), is important to understand why he cannot stay in Ithaca. 

 

Likewise, it is helpful to understand the aftermath of the war for Agamemnon, who has used his brother’s wife as an excuse to invade and destroy Troy. Honestly, Agamemnon is the source of so much evil that follows. His sacrifice of his own daughter leads to his own death and a sequence of revenge and murder. His greed and arrogance in taking Achilles’ sex slave forms the center of The Iliad and leads to the prolongation of the war and much needless death. 

 

It also is good to remind (or inform) audiences that Helen and Clytemnestra were sisters. There is a whole dynamic there for sure. (Brothers marrying sisters? What could go wrong?)

 

Nolan didn’t just draw in ancient sources either, but acknowledged the later works that commented on and remixed the ancient story.

 

In particular, Tennyson’s poem Ulysses is woven throughout the movie. I didn’t entirely notice it at first, but at the end, when there are a few phrases and ideas from the poem, as Ulysses prepares to depart for the West. Looking back, however, it can be seen that the poem has haunted the movie from the beginning. 

 

Nolan runs with Tennyson’s idea that Telemachus is better than his father at the soft arts of governance. That he is more just and less violent by nature. Here is how Tennyson puts it:

 

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

 

Odysseus is the trickster, the cunning fighter, the deceiver, the destroyer. Telemachus is the builder, the thinker, the alliance-builder. 

 

And so in Nolan’s vision, Odysseus travels to the west not merely to have one final adventure, or some final great work to do, but to do penance for his past, to in some way make right what he can. 

 

I will admit that the ending of the movie made me tear up. I have always loved the Tennyson poem, and hearing just enough at the end was moving. And it also did so much to tie the themes of the movie together. To make Odysseus a complete character. To be a return to being the man that Penelope loved, not the monster the war made of him. 

 

All of this, to me, was a great thematic choice. It would have been easy to make a hero out of Odysseus - there have been plenty of bombastic action movies set in ancient times already, and they sell. It would have been possible to make Odysseus into a villain - Shakespeare already went there. 

 

Instead, Nolan goes with the opening line of the original, as interpreted by Emily Wilson:

 

“Tell me about a complicated man.”

 

Because that is what Odysseus ultimately is, in any of the versions of the story. He is both good and evil, loyal and faithless, cruel and kind, humble and arrogant, honest and devious. He is human in the best and the worst ways. 

 

To me, that was the heart of the movie, along with the condemnation of war and invasion. Odysseus’ complexity, his humanity, and the way his ordeals lead to the awakening of his conscience and a change in his viewpoint. 

 

Sure, that isn’t what Homer focused on - the poem is firmly rooted in Honor Culture and the glorification of war and violence. And of course, it assumes that women are subhuman and the property of men. 

 

What Nolan did with this film is to me, admirable. Nobody owns a story, particularly one that has been around for millennia. Just as King Arthur and Robin Hood and Aladdin have been told and retold and reimagined and reinvigorated, so too with the old Greek tales. And so with our sacred stories from our religious traditions. 

 

What is static belongs in a museum, and a single meaning will become stale and dated. A story draws its life from being flexible, from evolving, from containing multitudes of meaning. Nobody “owns” the meaning for The Odyssey, and there is no single “true meaning.” 

 

As with any work of art, there are better and worse versions. For me, while no movie could capture all of the nuance and detail and meaning of a book, a movie can be its own work of art containing the same basic story. 

 

This movie was not a disappointment to me, even though I can (and of course have) quibbled about specific details. It isn’t the book, and doesn’t try to be. Instead, it is a solid, entertaining, and thoughtful retelling of a classic story. 

 

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

***

 

One of the good things that seems to have come from the movie is that The Odyssey is apparently selling really well. If this movie leads people to seek out one of the excellent translations of Homer’s work, that is a huge plus. 

 

***

 

I should mention that I have not yet read Emily Wilson’s brutal review of the movie. I kind of figure I want to read her translation first, untainted by her vitriol. I think she made a misstep here, much like people who hate a genre of music often make when criticizing it. It is fine to say you don’t like, say, Rhianna’s style, but to decide that she is a worthless poser is to miss the point. Wilson here seems to have gone beyond “I don’t like Nolan’s take on the story” to deriding a movie that is worthy art in its own right, not a mere imitation of the book. 

 

That said, I still will be reading her translation, and will probably have an opinion about it. Because translation is an art, not a science, and her choices in translation are themselves meaningful and artistic. I probably will not agree with all of them, but may very well enjoy the overall work. We shall see.

 

***

 

The list of related books, plays, operas, and movies:

 

The Iliad by Homer - I read this in my teens, before The Odyssey, believe it or not. While it definitely has its moments, I think Homer needed an editor - too many similar deaths, and they were basically fan service for his audiences - everyone’s ancestors got a line. 

 

The Aeneid by Virgil - I read this in my 30s. Aeneas was (in the myth) a Trojan who survived and went on to found Rome. And have a torrid and tragic affair with Dido, queen of Carthage. Like The Iliad, this one is filled with the detailed deaths of everyone’s ancestors.

 

Agamemnon by Aeschylus - the aftermath of the Trojan War, when the bill comes due for Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter in exchange for favorable winds. 

 

Electricidad by Luis Alfaro and Elektra by Richard Strauss and Hugo Hofmannsthal - the next episode in the cycle of violence and revenge - Orestes avenges the murder of his father by killing his mother and her lover. 

 

Troilus and Cressida by Shakespeare - a play that parallels the Iliad but topples all of the heroes, except maybe Hector. Achilles and Odysseus in particular become villains, more or less. Shakespeare makes the point long before Nolan that war is immoral and soul-destroying.

 

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - a reimagining of the Iliad from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ lover. 

 

Circe by Madeline Miller - In part, a reimagining of the Odyssey from the perspective of Circe, but the book also brings in a bunch of other Greek and Roman myths. One of the best books I have read. 

 

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood - Penelope’s side of the story, a pushback against the male-centric viewpoint of the old myths. 

 

Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes - a non-fiction book that takes on the misogyny of many of the old stories about women. But it also looks at the fact that all the old myths have multiple versions, with different elements and perspectives. A reminder that there is no "definitive" version of these stories. 

 

O Brother Where Art Thou? (film) - a must-see for fans of The Odyssey. It really is a fun spin on the story. 

 

Ulysses by James Joyce - I read this with a friend a couple years ago, and it was definitely an experience. One could spend a lifetime finding all of the connections to Homer’s version. 

 

 

 

20th Century American Poetry (DOB 1900-1902)

Source of book: I own this

 

This is the third installment of my reading from this Library of America volume, American Poetry: The Twentieth Century Volume Two. You can read the previous installments linked below.

 

20th Century American Poetry (DOB 1894-1896)

20th Century American Poetry (DOB 1897-1899)

 

Because the book is organized by the date of birth of the poet, the actual poems can date from a variety of dates. Any given poet may have a few dozen poems, or as few as one. Many of the names are familiar, at least to fans of American poetry, but some are definitely new to me. 

 

While I will not discuss every poet, here are the ones I read this time:

 

Edward Dahlberg, Yvor Winters, Sterling A. Brown, Robert Francis, Lindley Williams Hubbell, Laura Riding, Arna Bontemps, Kenneth Fearing, Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, and Eve Triem.

 

The first one I decided to feature was Yvor Winters. I have read some of his poems before, some of which were featured in this book. I chose to avoid the ones I had quoted on the blog previously, and look at new ones. 

 

Two Songs of Advent

 

I.

On the desert, between pale mountains, our cries -

Far whispers creeping through an ancient shell.

 

II.

Coyote, on delicate mocking feet,

Hovers down the canyon, among the mountains,

His voice running wild in the wind’s valleys.

 

Listen! listen! for I enter now your thought. 

 

At his best, Winters writes haunting poems involving nature, and this one spoke to me this time. 

 

Here is another one of his that I liked:

 

The Fall of Leaves

 

The green has suddenly

Divided to pure flame,

Leaf-tongued from tree to tree.

Yea, where we stood it came.

 

This change may have no name,

Yet it was like a word

Spoken, and none to blame,

Alive where shadow stirred.

 

So was the instant blurred.

But as we waited there

The slow cry of a bird

Built up a scheme of air,

 

The vision of despair

Starts at the moment’s bound,

Seethes from the vibrant air

With slow autumnal sound

 

Into the burning ground.

 

Next up is Sterling A. Brown, who I was not particularly familiar with - a bit embarrassing since I love the Harlem Renaissance. He was an African-American writer and scholar, the son of a formerly enslaved man. Initially, he was more well known for his decades of teaching, in which he pioneered what we might now call Black Studies, incorporating everything from jazz to folk tales into his classes. He also wrote non-fiction and fiction. 

 

The poetry mostly came later: he retired from his academic career and devoted himself to poetry. And also to his work with the NAACP. 

 

His poems often are written in dialect, which seems a bit dated, but others remain fresh in our own time. I selected my two favorites out of many worthy works. This one is an example of a dialect poem that tells a story - there are several of these in the collection, and all of them are good. 

 

Scotty Has His Say

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!

 

‘Cause Ise crazy ’bout muh woman,
 An’ ef yuh treats huh mean,
 I gonna sprinkle goofy dus’
 In yo’ soup tureen.

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!
 Muh brown what’s tendin’ chillen in yo’ big backyahd.

 

Oh, dat gal is young an’ tender,
 So jes’ don’ mistreat huh please,
 Or I’ll put a sprig of pisen ivy
 In yo’ B.V.D.’s.

 

I got me a Blackcat’s wishbone,
 Got some Blackcat’s angel dus’,
 An’ yuh crackers better watch out,
 Ef I sees yo’ carcass fus’ —

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!
 Muh brown what’s wringin’ chicken necks in yo’ backyahd.

 

‘Cause muh brown an’ me, we’se champeens
 At de St. Luke’s Hall;
 An’ yo’ cookin’ an’ yo’ washin’
 Jes’ ani’t in it, not at all,

 

Wid de way we does de Chahlston,
 De Black Bottom an’ cake walkin’,
 Steppin’ on de puppies’ tail;
 Whuh folks, ain’ no need in talkin’, —

 

You is got nuh purty brownskin
 In yo’ kitchen an’ yo’ yahd,
 Lemme tell yuh rebs one sho thing
 Doncha wuk muh brown too hahd —

 

Whuh folks, whuh folks; don’ wuk muh brown too hahd!
 Who’s practisin’ de Chahlston in yo’ big backyahd.

 

The next one is not in dialect, but is equally fascinating and profound. Do later generations forget how hard-won their freedoms were? Do they truly understand the suffering it took to break the evil of enslavement? And, come to think of it, is this what Brown’s father said to him, the young whippersnapper who grew up free? 

 

Children’s Children

 

When they hear

These songs, born of the travail of their sires,

Diamonds of song, deep buried beneath the weight 

Of dark and heavy years;

They laugh.

 

When they hear

Saccharine melodies of loving and its fevers, 

Soft-flowing lies of love everlasting;

Conjuring divinity out of gross flesh itch;

They sigh

And look goggle-eyed

At one another.

 

They have forgotten, they have never known, 

Long days beneath the torrid Dixie sun

In miasma’d riceswamps;

The chopping of dried grass, on the third go round

In strangling cotton;

Wintry nights in mud-daubed makeshift huts,

With these songs, sole comfort.

 

They have forgotten

What had to be endured -

 

That they, babbling young ones,

With their paled faces, coppered lips,

And sleek hair cajoled to Caucasian straightness,

Might drown the quiet voice of beauty

With sensuous stridency; 

 

And might, on hearing these memoirs of their sires,

Giggle,

And nudge each other’s satin clad

Sleek sides….

 

The next poet I want to discuss is Robert Francis, whose biography is almost as interesting as his poetry. 

 

He was a pacifist and a vegetarian in an era when neither position was common. He built his own house, grew his own vegetables, and lived on a tiny income from his writing. Yet unlike many who live a similar lifestyle, he wasn’t snobbish about it, having rather a reputation as a kind and gentle person. 

 

Francis was also gay, although in a somewhat unusual way. His first sexual experience didn’t come until his late 50s, with another man. Despite the risk, and despite his tendency to live a private life, he revealed this in his autobiography. 

 

His poetry shows some influence from Robert Frost, but it is also uniquely his, and beautiful. I picked a pair of poems that are representative of his different styles.

 

A Broken View

 

Newcomers on the hill have cut the trees

That broke their view. Now they have all the west

From north in an unbroken sweep to south.

Outdoors or out of windows looking westward

Anywhere there is the west, the view.

An afternoon ago we stood with them

And saw their view. Hills beyond hills shading

From green to blue and clouds from white to blue.

Open places of pasture on the hills

And sky among the clouds. It was enough

For anyone to love for all a lifetime.

 

Yet we were thinking (though we didn’t say so

And wouldn’t of course have said so ever to them

Or even wished to) how we loved a broken

View better, a view broken by trees,

Under and over and through the branches of trees.

A view that didn’t give you everything

At once or anything too easily.

One that changed as you went from window to window

And changed again as you went from month to month,

Closing in in spring and opening

In fall.

 

What we felt was not regret.

We had no sighs for trees that were not there.

Trees grow again in time or others grow

To take their places, more slowly than a house 

Is built, but still they grow. Young trees were growing

Among the stumps there even while we looked 

Over their heads,

            Perhaps we had a view

Through time, like a view trembling through leaves, of a time

When not these newcomers but a child of theirs

Or a child of that child living on the hill,

Growing up with trees upon the hill

Might see as we had seen, loving both trees 

And view, loving them more each for the other. 

 

And this one:

 

Waxwings

 

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berrybush

in sun, and I am one. 

 

Such merriment and such sobriety - 

the small wild fruit on the tall stalk -

was this not always my true style?

 

Above an elegance of snow, beneath

a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds. Can you mistake us?

 

To sun, to feast, and to converse

and all together - for this I have abandoned

my other lives.

 

The next poet, Lindley Williams Hubbell, also had a significant life event in his 50s. He left his position at the Randell School and move to Japan, becoming a Japanese citizen and taking a Japanese name. 

 

In this case, I picked two poems, one more typically American, and the other with a decidedly Japanese flavor, a concentrated image like a haiku. 

 

Ordovician Fossil Algae

 

This is the oldest book

That I can read with pleasure.

The Cambrian trilobite

Is an unpleasant sight,

As for Pre-Cambrian algae I look and look

And cannot see them, though I’m told they’re there.

 

But these

Exquisite fern-like forms

Printed upon the rock,

These fragile plants that have survived the storms

Of some odd billion years

Move me almost to tears.

 

So I come here often

To see these delicate stems

Breathed on the rock like frost crystals on a window,

But permanently,

But forever.

This rock is my favorite book, my favorite picture,

My dependable scripture, 

My sense of wholeness, a billion years at my elbow.

 

I suspect my geology kid will appreciate that one, although we both know that trilobites are actually super cool. 

 

The second poem is a real gem, and one of my new favorites.

 

Waka

 

I am not a person.

I am a succession of persons

Held together by memory.

 

When the string breaks,

The beads are scattered. 

 

This particular era of poets was filled with so many memorable characters. The next one I wanted to talk about was Laura Riding. 

 

She was married to historian and writer, Louis Gottschalk, for five years, and after the divorce went on to have a series of affairs with married men, attempt and survive suicide, live a rather unconventional life, and write poetry that was controversial in its time, with critics and poets on opposing sides as to whether her works were any good. 

 

I am on the side of finding her original and interesting. Here is my favorite of the poems in this collection:

 

Prisms

 

What is beheld through glass seems glass.

 

The quality of what I am

Encases what I am not,

Smooths the strange world.

I perceive it slowly,

In my time,

In my material,

As my pride,

As my possession:

The vision is love.

 

When life crashes like a cracked pane,

Still shall I love

Even the strange dead as the living once.

Death also sees, though distantly,

And I must trust then as now

A prism - of another kind,

Through which one may not put one’s hands to touch. 

 

There are several Harlem Renaissance poets born around the turn of the century. The next one in this collection is Arna Bontemps, who I knew mostly through his fiction. His ancestors were free people of color rather than enslaved persons, so his perspective was often unique. 

 

As a college professor, writer, and activist, his legacy is not merely through his writing, but through the many younger men and women that he aided and inspired to seek better opportunities and make the most of them. 

 

I picked the following as my example of his poetry:

 

Southern Mansion

 

Poplars are standing there still as death

and ghosts of dead men

meet their ladies walking

two by two beneath the shade

and standing on the marble steps.

 

There is a sound of music echoing

through the open door

and in the field there is 

another sound tinkling in the cotton:

chains of bondmen dragging on the ground.

 

The years go back with an iron clank,

a hand is on the gate,

a dry leaf trembles on the wall. 

Ghosts are walking.

They have broken roses down

and poplars stand there still as death.

 

In an era when there is a weird trend among certain white conservatives to hold lavish weddings at the old historic plantations, it is good to be reminded of the real meaning of the Southern mansions, their genesis in the blood and toil of the enslaved. 

 

Kenneth Fearing is most associated with the Great Depression, as a leftist poet who spoke out against the injustices that ground the poor during this era. His poetry is pretty modernist, and reminds me not a little of the prose-poetry of John Dos Passos. I could have picked any of his poems from this collection, but this one was my favorite, in part because of the wonderful ways of describing music:

 

American Rhapsody(4)

 

First you bite your fingernails. And then you comb your hair again. And then you wait. And wait.

(They say, you know, that first you lie. And then you steak, they say. And then, they say, you kill.)

 

Then the doorbell rings. Then Peg drops in. And Bill. And Jane. And Doc.

And first you talk, and smoke, and hear the news and have a drink. Then you walk down the stairs.

And you dine, then, and go to a show after that, perhaps, and after that a night spot, and after that come home again, and climb the stairs again, and again go to bed.

 

But first Peg argues, and Doc replies. First you dance the same dance and you drink the same drink you always drank before.

And the piano builds a roof of notes above the world.

And the trumpet weaves a dome of music through space. And the drum makes a ceiling over space and time and night.

And then the table-wit. And then the check. Then home again to bed.

But first, the stairs.

And do you know, baby, as you climb the stairs, do you still feel as you felt back there?

Do you feel again as you felt this morning? And the night before? And then the night before that?

 

(They say, you know, that first you hear voices. And then you have visions, they say. Then, they say, you kick and scream and rave.)

Or do you feel: What is one more night in a lifetime of nights?

What is one more death, or friendship, or divorce out of two, or three? Or four? Or Five?

One more face among so many, many faces, one more life among so many million lives?

 

But first, baby, as you climb and count the stairs (and they total the same) did you, sometime or somewhere, have a different idea?

Is this, baby, what you were born to feel, and do, and be?

 

Langston Hughes has long been one of my favorite poets. He is, perhaps, the author that first comes to mind when many of us think of the Harlem Renaissance, and for good reason. His poem “Let American Be America Again” is perhaps the most profound musing on the disconnect between the aspirational America and the lived reality of a majority of its citizens. 

 

I have already written about two decades of Hughes’ poetry, that of the 1920s and the 1930s. For this post, I have avoided the poems I featured in previous posts. That said, I wrote down so many more poems by Hughes than any of the others, and this is both because they are short and because they are so very good. Also, I will mostly be quoting portions of poems, not entire ones, particularly for the epic long work from 1951, Montage of a Dream Deferred. 

 

I want to start, however, with one section of “A House in Taos.” This poem is from the 1920s, but I didn’t quote anything from it when I previously wrote about that decade. 

 

Wind

 

Touch our bodies, wind.

Our bodies are separate, individual things.

Touch our bodies, wind,

But blow quickly

Through the red, white, yellow skins

Of our bodies

To the terrible snarl,

Not mine,

Not yours, 

Not hers,

But all one snarl of souls.

Blow quickly, wind,

Before we run back

Into the windlessness -

With our bodies - 

Into the windlessness

Of our house in Taos.

 

The next sections are all from Montage of a Dream Deferred.

 

College Formal: Renaissance Casino

 

Golden girl

in a golden gown

in a melody night

in Harlem town

lad tall and brown

tall and wise

college boy smart

eye in eyes

the music wraps

them both around

in mellow magic

of dancing sound

till they’re the heart

of the whole big town

gold and brown

 

Passing

 

On sunny summer Sunday afternoons in Harlem

when the air is one interminable ball game

and grandma cannot get her gospel hymns

from the Saints of God in Christ

on account of the Dodgers on the radio,

on sunny Sunday afternoons

when the kids look all new

and far too clean to stay that way,

and Harlem has its

washed-and-ironed-and-cleaned-best out,

the ones who’ve crossed the line

to live downtown

miss you,

Harlem of the bitter dream,

since their dream has 

come true.

 

And this one is probably the most famous of the sections, in part because it is the source of the title and the opening quote for Lorainne Hansberry's iconic play, A Raisin in the Sun. 

 

Harlem(2)

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

 

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore -

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over - 

like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

 

And one final passage:

 

Same in Blues

 

I said to my baby,

Baby, take it slow.

I can’t, she said, I can’t

I got to go!

 

There’s a certain 

amount of traveling

in a dream deferred.

 

Lulu said to Leonard,

I want a diamond ring.

Leonard said to Lulu,

You won’t get a goddamn thing!

 

A certain 

amount of nothing

in a dream deferred.

 

Daddy, daddy, daddy,

All I want is you.

You can have me, baby - 

but my lovin’ days is through.

 

A certain

amount of impotence

in a dream deferred.

 

Three parties

On my party line - 

But that third party, 

Lord, ain’t mine!

 

There’s liable

to be confusion

in a dream deferred.

 

From river to river,

Uptown and down,

There’s liable to be confusion

when a dream gets kicked around. 

 

The final poet I want to feature in this post is Ogden Nash. I have been disappointed at how few people these days seem to be familiar with him. He was, after all, one of the great humorists of the 20th Century, and many of his poems hold up really well today, even the more serious ones. 

 

For this collection, the editors appear to have focused mostly on the serious ones, which is a bit of a shame, as there is so much humor they could have added. Oh well, I guess this means I am due to read one of my several Ogden Nash books. 

 

I will note that there are a couple of longer poems in there that assert that if you are going to sin, you should stick with “sins of commission,” because they are at least fun at the time, while “sins of omission” lack any associated pleasure. 

 

I did decide to highlight one of his more serious poems for this post, although even it has a solid dose of wry and dry humor. Enjoy. 

 

A Necessary Dirge

 

Sometimes it’s difficult, isn’t it, not to grow grim and rancorous

Because man’s fate is so counter-clockwise and cantankerous.

Look at all the noble projects that die a-borning,

Look how hard it is to get to sleep at night and then how hard it is to wake up in the morning!

How easy to be unselfish in the big things that never come up and how hard in the little things that come up daily and hourly, oh yes,

Such as what heroic pleasure to give up the last seat in a lifeboat to a mother and babe, and what an irritation to give some housewife your seat on the Lexington Avenue Express!

How easy for those who do not bulge

To not overindulge!

O universe perverse, why and whence your perverseness?

Why do you not teem with betterness instead of worseness?

Do you get your only enjoyment

Out of humanity’s annoyment?

Because a point I would like to discuss

Is, why wouldn’t it be just as easy for you to make things easy for us?

But no, you will not listen, expostulation is useless,

Home is the fisherman empty-handed, home is the hunter caribouless and mooseless.

Humanity must continue to follow the sun around

And accept the eternal run-around.

Well, and if that be the case, why come on humanity!

So long as it is our fate to be irked all our life let us just keep our heads up and take our irking with insouciant urbanity. 

 

I hope this post introduced my readers to some new poets and worthy poems. I believe poetry is a human necessity, connecting the power of words to the power of sound and music. Whatever I can do to encourage people to read poetry - particularly aloud - and experience its magic, will be something that makes my life worthwhile.