from
James Schuyler
"Sonnet"
in The Home Book
while the trees lean in folds and the rose of Sharon bloomsthe lines themselves carry over like the overburdened shrub itself — it's that repetition that crosses the enjambement — almost toppling over
and blooms at each twig and branch tip like a toy tree
Edward Thomas has a keen observant eye. This is the ending of "Tall Nettles"
This corner of the farmyard I like most:Selected by James Reeves for Penguin's Georgian Poetry anthology.
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
After Forethought contained musings about a poem "Afterward" by James Schuyler. In a wry fashion, I indicated without undue bibliographic precision that the poem in question was to be found in the corpus. When my friend Fadi Abou-Rihan mentioned the blog post, I went to rekindle my acquaintance with the poem by picking up the Collected Poems and was puzzled to see that the ending ("This room needs flowers.") that had caught my attention was gone. Truncated, I believed. But the whole feel of the poem was off. It turns out that there are two poems entitled "Afterward"; one appears in The Morning of the Poem [That's the one I singled out for its smart ending to a poem about getting out of hospital.]; the other is in Hymn to Life [It is about snow and its effects; contrasts city and country.] The newly discovered for me (reading all out of chronological order) is the ending to the "Afterword" poem in Hymn to Life which also has a botanical desideratum in its conclusion.
Dreaming of a whiteOf course, both poems are in the Collected Poems which I did not have at hand. However, I am reminded by this little surprise of the advice to note bibliographic details meticulously when you have the object at hand. A piece of advice also iterated by Willard McCarty on the Humanist discussion list:
Vermont, scratched
By alders and firs.
By far the most helpful course I took as an MA student -- and the only one I remember -- was dedicated to research methods. The professor (who had done his PhD before photocopiers) told us that whenever we had a book in our hands we should write down everything bibliographic about it that we could, as well as take very thorough notes, because we might never again be able to obtain the book. [And he goes on to confess.] Sloppy brevity does catch me occasionally -- as it did yesterday, when I mistook my own comments in a note on a book for the words of the author.:)
A single line by Ferenc Juhász from "Crown of hatred and love" in The Boy changed into a Stag: Selected Poems 1949-2967.
The lilacs are creatures guided by other stars.And a few sprigs from James Schuyler "Hymn to Life" in the collection of the same name.
And that Washington flower, the pink magnolia tree, blooms nowAmy Lowell devotes some attention to the geographic dispersion of lilacs over New England by way of comment on their roots.
In little yards, its trunk a smoky gray. And soon the hybrid azaleas,
So much too much, will follow, and the tender lilac. Persia, we
Have much to thank you for, besides the word lapis lazuli.
Lilacs,Genus Syringa
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.
