my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead he called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely)stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why man breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

The Book of Psalms: A Translation With Commentary trans. Robert Alter

Any time one deals with a book which has been translated, you’re opening up a whole new can of worms above and beyond the quality of the book itself. I noted this with some hesitancy when I reviewed Orhan Pamuk’s Snow—or, more accurately, a translation of Orhan Pamuk’s Snow.

Biblical translation is even tougher: the politics it involves go beyond mere word choice and touch things which people hold as sacrosanct. Maybe you think I’m exaggerating, but consider as an example the movement of Christians who believe that the only correct version of the Bible is the King James Version. Mess with canon at your own peril.

I’ve reviewed one other piece of Biblical translation—The Book of Job—and it, like Psalms, is a translation of the Hebrew: New Testament books, whose original incarnations tended to be in Greek, generate less ambiguity and controversy. Hebrew is a complicated language, with a lot of meaning and structure which is particular to it. Much of this is often lost when translated, either because the sensitivity of King James translators was not sufficiently high, or because modern translations tend to focus overly much on readability rather than historicity.

In fact, the farther one delves in Hebrew translation, the easier it is to see why devout Jews will learn Hebrew to read the Torah, or Muslims will learn Arabic to read the Koran—and why keeping these original versions as canonical is so important to them. I imagine that Robert Alter would agree: a professor of Hebrew as UC-Berkley, the man has translated a number of Biblical books: the Pentateuch, the story of David from [1,2] Samuel, several books on biblical narrative and poetry, and so forth.

The biblical poetic tradition is important when talking about the Psalms because they are first and foremost a sort of poetry, and they tend—Psalms were gathered from a number of places, and possibly altered over the years—to follow a particular pattern. What’s more, there is a particular quality to them in the original Hebrew that is so often lost in English translations. I won’t repeat Alter’s introduction, which explains his approach to the translation and layout; needless to say, Alter’s translation is one of extreme care and craft. The resulting text is different (though hardly unrecognizable) from what you know: there’s less emphasis on salvation history, for instance, which was never present in the original and was only added through the (unintentional?) effort of Christocentric translators. Psalms are, after all, Jewish, and the Jewish relationship with Yahweh is a bit different than that of mainstream Christianity.

Here, for example, are three different versions of part of Psalm 1.

You can see the subtle differences; “sinner” here is replaced with “offender,” since the persecutions of the Psalms were less theological and more worldly, and therefore “offender” tracks the meaning of the Hebrew better. The NIV version is actually shorter and more concise in this case, though much of Alter’s translation focuses on restoring the characteristic brevity and crispness of the lines in Hebrew; these are, after all, poems, and to some degree they are supposed to scan or correspond. The theological motivations of most translators are vested almost entirely in meaning as opposed to form, which sells the Psalms short.

All of this begs the question: what does Alter’s translation give us that is good or desirable? Consider the King James translation which is not only venerable, but has the added benefit of classical-sounding style and syntax. Putting aside for a moment our considerations of which translations are or are not canonical or authoritative, what is the motivation of English-speaking readers to pick up Alter’s book as opposed to our well-worn KJV, or even some insipid “Good News” translation? If our sense of modern poetry is inspired by Milton and Keats and fine English traditions of that sort, to which such translations as KJV obviously appeal, does a translation which hews more closely to the Hebrew have a place on our shelves? The answer is a definitive yes, but explaining why is more involved.

For one thing, a little less than half of the text in the book is made up of the psalms themselves; the operative word here—”commentary”—comes from the subtitle, and it is partially what makes the book such a gem. Like any heavily-annotated book, the extra information can be overwhelming, but understanding why Alter glosses the way he does gives us not only an appreciation for the work of transliteration, but also gives us a deeper insight into the Psalms themselves, what passions informed their writing, and what literary tropes the writers used. In this way, The Book of Psalms is not merely a translation of the work, but a book about them: language is as much about history and culture as it is about phonemes, and what modern translations of the Bible don’t do as narratives is explain the history.

Alter, then, is giving us a look at the uniquely Hebraic character of the Psalms, not necessarily as a replacement for the more theological lens of our leatherbound volumes, but as a separate and distinct celebration of the psalms’ other virtues and special character as poetry, as Hebrew literature, and as historical documents.

Posthumous Keats by Stanley Plumly

Here is the answer to what is perhaps a burning question: what happens when poets write biographies?

Stanley Plumly is the poet laureate of the state of Maryland, a professor at the University of Maryland, and an accomplished (read: published) poet; I am otherwise unfamiliar with the man’s poetry, but I take it upon quick research that he is famous in the skeletal sort of way that modern American poets can be. By this I mean that unless you live in Maryland, or perhaps are the sort of person who buys books of poetry by modern poets, you’ve likely never heard of him, and this is indicative of a much larger issue about modern poetry: everybody writes it (at least when they’re young), but it’s ceased to be a matter of prestige, or a form of art held dearly by the public. Where perhaps it may once have been fashionable, it’s been usurped by pop music, which is a more immediately accessible form of art which fulfills the desire for catharsis.

In the same way that even those who don’t listen to or appreciate classical music would know the names of Beethoven or Mozart, so John Keats would join the pantheon (I think) of poetic greats whose names have exceeded their art—add to this the names of Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou. One may assume even before opening the book that Plumly is a fan of Keats, but what I was interested to see is how a man who views Keats as a literary giant would explain the phenomenon in a culture that has to a great degree forgotten poets—or perhaps Plumly would only write to the audience that does care.

Perhaps some of the fascination with Keats lies in the fact that he died so young (of “consumption” or tuberculosis at the age of 25); like so many modern superstars who died young—James Dean, Elliot Smith, Heath Ledger, Jeff Buckley, and Jim Morrison, just to name an obvious few, and I would also submit the name of Tristan Egolf—it becomes easier to ascribe genius to those whose potential was cut short, and therefore the sum of their professional or artistic legacy necessarily includes not simply what they’ve done, but what we posit they would have done.

In Keats’ case, his career as a writer spanned all of 3 or 4 years; his best (though not best-known) work is the long form Endymion:

A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

It becomes difficult, therefore, to separate Keats from his lingering death, and indeed Plumly in this respect is significantly morbid: each of the 7 chapters, which loops around and covers Keats’ life from a slightly different angle, draws special attention to Keats’ expectoration of blood, his gauntness, and the poet’s moribund final days. But as if to apologize for his focus on Keats as a dying man, the author takes special care to emphasize that it is perhaps unwise and dangerous to reflect on Keats as the comet come and gone too soon—the rock star dead young, in other words—because of the danger of forming a fictional character. Put another way, Plumly posits two versions of Keats: a posthumous Keats about whom we may coo when we read “Ode to a Grecian Urn” in our Norton Anthology, and the living Keats who was a much more complicated and in some ways much less sexy figure.

What Plumly seems most interested in is twofold: first, how the moribund poet’s familiarity with death, his romance with Fanny Brawne, or his quixotic notions of legacy influenced his poetry; secondly, how the dead Keats transmogrified into such a different person than the living one. His first chapter deals primarily with an introduction of the dying Keats in Rome with his friend/nurse/painter Joseph Severn, and contrasting the likenesses of Keats drawn during his final days with later portraits (original works or copies of copies), wherein the miserable humanity afforded Keats by his illness is buffed away and only Keats the Young English Poet, the textbook Romantic, remains.

Having not read any of the other notable biographies of Keats, it would be difficult for me to compare Plumly’s “personal biography” to an of the other (“impersonal?”) ones. It is, as you might expect, less an exhaustive chronicle of Keats’ life, times, and literary corpus and more an extended essay about Keats, and more largely about death and legacy, for which the former is a perfect example.

1 hundred hiccups by Michael Kadela

1 hundred hiccups is a book of poetry by a semi-local poet of my (very general) acquaintance. Actually, my (signed) copy is disturbingly well-worn. I bought it back in 2002 when Mike Kadela and his publisher showed up at a reception for a literary magazine (I was only a high school senior at the time); at the time, I had heard only a small portion of Kadela’s repertoire (including some that I’ve never seen published). I’ve posted a poem by him before; I’ve also reviewed a fellow “slam poet,” Jack McCarthy.

I’ve read the whole book several times, but it’s usually been picking poems at random. This week, I sat down and read the whole thing from cover to cover. When I could guarantee my privacy, I liked to read them aloud, occasionally gesticulating or frothing slightly. The assonance and playful nature sound even better when vocalized and inflected.

It is difficult to review 1 hundred hiccups without devolving into a spew of fawning superlatives. It might simply be my own biases, but there’s a particular effortlessness with words here, a natural talent for the poetic voice that imbues all hundred pieces.

It’s bits like

the great of us doubts the many parts of it
the lesser of us suits the query heat
like forthy knees — a hundred ants debating grass

and

she captures
carries
every thorn
of blood gone drop
of heart born still
but still
in me there is a smile
for I have danced
with heat
and she has dipped me
low to breath beneath
her smoke
awhile

that leave me feeling dizzy.

Kadela’s poems run the gamut in terms of both type—mostly freeform, but with haiku and sonnet and some other more structured works—and content, though I think Kadela’s particular niche is the love poem, where he manages to convince us that he is a consummate romantic in a way that’s so earnest, so pleading, so absolutely gorgeous, that one has a hard time not getting swept up in the sentiment.

now, spring may argument, I love You is spring
but spring is not so big a place
as is big a place
as I love You is
and spring
though filled quite completely
is filled quite completely
only
with spring

I love You is a summer and a deathbed and a pencil
it is a big place, filled
with Laundromats and asthma attacks
and tapeworm waltzes
and other strange dances
that explain not a thing
to the curious watchers

except that there is room to spare for those inclined to dance

There’s a persistent cant to all these works that seems to infiltrate the reading—either real or imagined, part of my exposure to the poems’ live performance. But the cup of this poetry runneth over not just with self-expression (don’t they all?) but with the sheer joy of language: how it sounds, how it fits, how certain phrases evoke such powerful imagery and reaction to the assonance—”a regiment of infancies / who waiting patiently to weep / will bide their time in shoeboxes / on radiators, incubating” (“XXIII”). I find myself at a loss to portray it without either quoting at length (obviously) or turning to overly florid language. Why describe Kadela’s metaphors with other metaphors?

Kadela’s publisher is EM Press, who put out excellent work by local artists. Get the book—see for yourself. It is, by and large, the best poetry I have ever read.

Say Goodnight, Grace Notes by Jack McCarthy

Some readers may be aware of my intense admiration for Mike Kadela. He has a book out on EM Press, a small speciality press co-owned by my friend and former teacher, Mark Eleveld.

I recently had the benefit of attending a live performance by another poet on Mark’s label—one Jack McCarthy. I’d seen Jack perform once before, when Mark gamed him into performing a set at my old high school back in 2000 or 2001. In fact, Mark got a lot of his published poets to perform at local functions.

At this particular reading—which ended up being a small and cozy affair—I managed to feel like an ass by starting to request a certain funny poem that I remembered from 200X (specifically, “Car Talk II”), having him guess that I was asking for one of his flagship poems—a bait-and-switch that lures you into chuckles and then emotionally devastates you with the last stanza—and then essentially saying, when everyone was breathless and silent from the last lingering line, “No, do the funny one—you know, the car thief one.”

I say this not to highlight my social gaffe, or underline my ability to seem like a knuckle-dragging philistine, but rather to illustrate that Jack McCarthy wields a variety of poetic weapons. In fact, I remembered the sad, devastating poem as well, but had decided gainst requesting it in fear that the venue—a bar, albeit a nice one—wasn’t appropriate.

McCarthy is such a damned intriguing mix: his delivery has shades of George Carlin—the barest hint of an accent, a certain matter-of-factness, and a wry, depracating wit—interplayed with an incredible tenderness. One gets that he is full of love—for his wife, his daughters, his father, his mothers, his experiences—and also a world-weary cynicism so often held by a person of Jack’s age.

I woke up 4 AM
from a dream of coining a Latin verb
the way men who have gambled their lives
for a chance to serve God
actually make words up
in the bowels of the Vatican
in order that pronouncements might be made
in a dead language
about occasions of sin
implicit in emerging technologies

Jack doesn’t have the rhetorical flair that some of his labelmates do, but he has a certain power that is immense and frightening and wonderful. Nor should I entirely discount the mechanics of his verse: in a live setting, it is easy to lose track of the rhythm—the bits of assonance and consonance sprinkled liberally throughout and the carefully-constructed lines and stanzas—because Jack’s readings are less like the recitation of a poem and more like being regaled with stories and life lessons by a favorite grandfather. “May I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is all good and fine, but “It’s as if we both broke down outside the same gas station at the same time” is uproariously funny and heartachingly poignant without boxing itself in a realm of romantic fantasy.

Say Goodnight, Grace Notes is short, bookwise—just over 100 pages—but it is an absolutely marvellous compilation of poems. It manages to be personal without being obscure; touching without being maudlin; funny without being merely novel; approachable without being simplistic. McCarthy brings a particular well-honed knowledge of his craft to these pages. Each work is a treasure, each page a joy. I only wish all of you could see him perform, hear his inflections and watch the memories play out in his eyes. This book may be the closest you’ll come. If you’re a fan of poetry—or even if you want a good introduction—get this book.

She is a holocaustic heat
which flares my dampened match,
and births a heaving heliotrope
with seceding burn of forge,
alight in writhing fire.
She is a conflagrating ring
that traces further aureoles
with bits of blinding white;
and mantle—pushing solemnly the breath—
beneath the bloodred spire.

She is an answer
to many things that never
deigned a question mark;
and pale halos of twilight
that flay pink strips from the stretch of sky;
that swear recidivistic stars
will touch the treeline once again.
but neither ray nor shade bely us:
whether argentine or aureate arcs above,
We will Love, She and i.

mouths hung with paraffin, fingers still with viburnum,
they flank the Euphrates, floating violets down the
curves of this portrait’s carnal current,
drifting ever further on the lips of gaping lotuses
and rivulets of laudanum.

such is the amaranth of her promise;
this wanton, this wayward one
whose lusty suspiring inspires
laburnum in the hearts of lilies.

datura candida, she resounds an angel’s trumpet
to the star of bethlehem, bleeding saffron
into black bryony.

rend her then, sage + sorrel, laurel, linden, lantana camara;
with burning straw beguile and limn her,
nought but embers and caprice.