rain fell with such force
each drop hit then jumped back up
staccato drumming
31 March 2014
Poem of the Week 2014/14
National Poetry Month begins tomorrow, but we're getting a jump on it with this poem, which begins the theme for this month: poets writing about other poets. And as a reminder: we live in a commercial culture, and any art that doesn't make a lot of money for corporate interests is increasingly marginalized (or simply declared "dead" by people who never paid attention to it anyway). But we all know that the margins are where the interesting things mostly happen. If you think someone is doing good work, or keeping the good work of the past alive, support that person by buying their books. If I've posted a poem that interests you, I hope you will go to Amazon, or the publisher, or your local independent bookstore, or wherever, and buy the book.
Emily Dickinson's Defunct
She used to
pack poems
in her hip pocket.
Under all the
gray old lady
clothes she was
dressed for action.
She had hair,
imagine,
in certain places, and
believe me,
she smelled human
on a hot summer day.
Stalking snakes
or counting
the thousand motes
in sunlight
she walked just
like an Indian.
She was New England's
favorite daughter,
she could pray
like the devil.
She was a
two-fisted woman,
this babe.
All the flies
just stood around
and buzzed
when she died.
Marilyn Nelson [Waniek]*
Contemporary American poet Marilyn Nelson cleverly adjusts our view of Emily Dickinson, who lived from 1830 to 1886 – prime pioneer woman days. She situates Dickinson in her habitat, New England, and simultaneously reminds us of New England's Puritan past, its influence on Dickinson, and her differences from it with a few deft lines: "She was New England's / favorite daughter, / she could pray / like the devil." Nelson emphasizes Dickinson's physicality (her body hair, her sweat: imagine, the poet orders, and emphasizes the word by placing it alone on its line) and her attachment to the natural world (the snakes – see Dickinson's A narrow fellow in the grass or Sweet is the swamp with its secrets; the motes in the sunlight; walking "like an Indian," that is, like someone who lives completely immersed in the natural world and can track his or her way through it; and at the end of the poem, stately use is made of I heard a fly buzz – when I died –). Dickinson's attachment to the natural world is well known as a feature of her poetry, but her physicality is less often considered; even the speculation on her sexual nature tends towards the theoretic and subliminal.
Given the common view of Dickinson (though perhaps less common than it once was, as her poetry becomes better known in more accurate editions – there was nothing resembling an edition that printed the poems as she wrote them until Thomas H. Johnson's in 1955 – and as critical views evolve and change) as the fey, reclusive woman in white, subject to odd fancies, it's really, really funny to think of her as "a two-fisted woman, / this babe." But those lines also capture something deeply true about Dickinson: she really was a two-fisted woman where it counts, in the only way that still matters to us about this long-dead woman: in her spirit, which was manifested in her aesthetic sense – she had to be aware that her way of writing poetry was not that of her time and place, and that it was in fact the type of art that has to create its own audience and its own posterity, as Proust puts it. Yet instead of trying to write in the style of her time, with more regular rhyme and meter (perhaps she knew such a style was not her gift, and therefore not to be attempted by her) she persisted in writing in her idiosyncratic style, and in preserving what she wrote, despite little expectation that she would be published in her lifetime, or even after.
* Marilyn Nelson wrote under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek from 1978 to 1995, and she appears under that name in the anthology from which I took this poem, Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945, edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton. But if you're looking for her books, you may find them under Marilyn Nelson.
Emily Dickinson's Defunct
She used to
pack poems
in her hip pocket.
Under all the
gray old lady
clothes she was
dressed for action.
She had hair,
imagine,
in certain places, and
believe me,
she smelled human
on a hot summer day.
Stalking snakes
or counting
the thousand motes
in sunlight
she walked just
like an Indian.
She was New England's
favorite daughter,
she could pray
like the devil.
She was a
two-fisted woman,
this babe.
All the flies
just stood around
and buzzed
when she died.
Marilyn Nelson [Waniek]*
Contemporary American poet Marilyn Nelson cleverly adjusts our view of Emily Dickinson, who lived from 1830 to 1886 – prime pioneer woman days. She situates Dickinson in her habitat, New England, and simultaneously reminds us of New England's Puritan past, its influence on Dickinson, and her differences from it with a few deft lines: "She was New England's / favorite daughter, / she could pray / like the devil." Nelson emphasizes Dickinson's physicality (her body hair, her sweat: imagine, the poet orders, and emphasizes the word by placing it alone on its line) and her attachment to the natural world (the snakes – see Dickinson's A narrow fellow in the grass or Sweet is the swamp with its secrets; the motes in the sunlight; walking "like an Indian," that is, like someone who lives completely immersed in the natural world and can track his or her way through it; and at the end of the poem, stately use is made of I heard a fly buzz – when I died –). Dickinson's attachment to the natural world is well known as a feature of her poetry, but her physicality is less often considered; even the speculation on her sexual nature tends towards the theoretic and subliminal.
Given the common view of Dickinson (though perhaps less common than it once was, as her poetry becomes better known in more accurate editions – there was nothing resembling an edition that printed the poems as she wrote them until Thomas H. Johnson's in 1955 – and as critical views evolve and change) as the fey, reclusive woman in white, subject to odd fancies, it's really, really funny to think of her as "a two-fisted woman, / this babe." But those lines also capture something deeply true about Dickinson: she really was a two-fisted woman where it counts, in the only way that still matters to us about this long-dead woman: in her spirit, which was manifested in her aesthetic sense – she had to be aware that her way of writing poetry was not that of her time and place, and that it was in fact the type of art that has to create its own audience and its own posterity, as Proust puts it. Yet instead of trying to write in the style of her time, with more regular rhyme and meter (perhaps she knew such a style was not her gift, and therefore not to be attempted by her) she persisted in writing in her idiosyncratic style, and in preserving what she wrote, despite little expectation that she would be published in her lifetime, or even after.
* Marilyn Nelson wrote under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek from 1978 to 1995, and she appears under that name in the anthology from which I took this poem, Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945, edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton. But if you're looking for her books, you may find them under Marilyn Nelson.
30 March 2014
29 March 2014
fun stuff I may or may not get to: April 2014
I've adjusted the format of the listings, hoping to make them less of a jumble, though they remain completely personal and arbitrary (I think the vogue word for that now is curated). There's a huge amount of really appealing stuff going on this month.
Theater
As mentioned last month, at Shotgun Players this month you can see Salvage, the third part of Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy; you can also see the first two parts separately, or on two marathon days: 5 April and 26 April. For extra Russian thrills, on 15 April they present a staged reading of A Month in the Country by Turgenev, who is one of the characters in Stoppard's play.
Cutting Ball presents the American premiere of Communiqué No. 10 by Samuel Gallet, translated and directed by Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose, 25 April to 25 May. Their Hidden Classics series has an interesting-looking offer on 27 April: Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in a one-woman show with Ponder Goddard, directed by Melrose.
The Aurora Theater presents Wittenberg by David Davalos, directed by Josh Costello, in which Hamlet, back for the new school year (this must have been before his return to Wittenberg was ruled "most retrograde to [Claudius's] desire") has classes with Martin Luther and Dr Faustus. Sounds positively Stoppardesque, in case Coast of Utopia at Shotgun hasn't slaked your thirst. That's 4 April to 4 May. Also, on 17 April they are also opening a new, even more intimate performance space, Harry's Upstage, with The Letters by John W. Lowell, directed by Mark Jackson.
Baroque Music
Philharmonia Baroque presents Vivaldi's oratorio, Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie, conducted by Nicholas McGegan, with the Philharmonia orchestra and chorale joined by soprano Dominique Labelle and mezzo-sopranos Cécile van de Sant, Vivica Genaux, Diana Moore, and Virginia Warnken. That's 2 - 6 April in their usual varied locations.
American Bach Soloists explores J S Bach and his legacy in a concert featuring motets and choral works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Sandström, and Nystedt. That's 25 - 28 April, in their usual various locations.
New Music
Cal Performances presents their resident new-music group, the Eco Ensemble, on 12 April, performing works by Gee, Harvey, and Lin. My thoughts on their last concert may be found here.
Cal Performances presents the Kronos Quartet in Beyond Zero: 1914 - 1918, a new work for quartet and film. As the dates might tell you, this work commemorates the centennial of the start of the first World War. The music is by Aleksandra Vrebalov and the film by Bill Morrison. That's 6 April.
The 2014 Switchboard Music Festival takes place Saturday, 12 April, from 2:00 to 10:00, at the Brava Theater in the Mission. More information here.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music remembers composer and faculty member Conrad Susa, who died last November, with an evening of his music, held at St Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. That's 5 April; more information here.
UPDATE: Thanks to Lisa Hirsch for pointing out (please see the comments) that this month also includes the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players festival of Electro-Acoustic Music, 24 - 27 April at Fort Mason. More information here. As I said to Lisa in reply to her comment, this is up against Opera Parallele's Weill/Poulenc double bill, and Mark Morris's world premiere production of Acis and Galatea, and American Bach Soloists, and Fort Mason has got to be one of the most difficult venues to get to in the Bay Area, so sadly this one is not happening for me. I used to get postcards and e-mails from SFCMP, but for some reason they stopped sending them, and though their programs always look interesting they persist in thinking that 8:00 PM is a good start time for concerts during the work week, which it is not for working people, so unfortunately I just don't think to check them much these days.
Opera
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents Dominick Argento's Postcard from Morocco, 10 - 13 April.
Opera Parallèle presents a double bill of Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel and Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias, conducted by Nicole Paiement and directed by Brian Staufenbiel, 25 - 27 April at the Yerba Buena Center. More information here.
Vocalists
San Francisco Performances presents bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni with pianist Wolfram Rieger, performing Beethoven, Reichardt, Brahms, and Liszt, on 1 April at the Nourse Theater.
Chamber Music
San Francisco Performances presents pianist Marc-André Hamelin, clarinetist Martin Frost, and violinist Anthony Marwood, performing Schubert, Debussy, Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Bartok on 28 April at the Nourse Theater.
Dance
Cal Performances presents the return of the Mark Morris Dance Group in the world premiere of Morris's new production of Acis and Galatea. Handel's music as arranged by Mozart will be performed by Philharmonia Baroque. That's 25 - 27 April in Zellerbach Hall.
The San Francisco Ballet presents the west coast premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's Shostakovich Trilogy, 2 - 13 April; and the world premiere of Caprice, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson to Camille Saint-Saens, along with the twentieth anniversary presentation of the first work Mark Morris did for the company, Maelstrom, to music by Beethoven, along with Yuri Possokhov's version of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, 4 - 15 April.
Theater
As mentioned last month, at Shotgun Players this month you can see Salvage, the third part of Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy; you can also see the first two parts separately, or on two marathon days: 5 April and 26 April. For extra Russian thrills, on 15 April they present a staged reading of A Month in the Country by Turgenev, who is one of the characters in Stoppard's play.
Cutting Ball presents the American premiere of Communiqué No. 10 by Samuel Gallet, translated and directed by Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose, 25 April to 25 May. Their Hidden Classics series has an interesting-looking offer on 27 April: Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in a one-woman show with Ponder Goddard, directed by Melrose.
The Aurora Theater presents Wittenberg by David Davalos, directed by Josh Costello, in which Hamlet, back for the new school year (this must have been before his return to Wittenberg was ruled "most retrograde to [Claudius's] desire") has classes with Martin Luther and Dr Faustus. Sounds positively Stoppardesque, in case Coast of Utopia at Shotgun hasn't slaked your thirst. That's 4 April to 4 May. Also, on 17 April they are also opening a new, even more intimate performance space, Harry's Upstage, with The Letters by John W. Lowell, directed by Mark Jackson.
Baroque Music
Philharmonia Baroque presents Vivaldi's oratorio, Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie, conducted by Nicholas McGegan, with the Philharmonia orchestra and chorale joined by soprano Dominique Labelle and mezzo-sopranos Cécile van de Sant, Vivica Genaux, Diana Moore, and Virginia Warnken. That's 2 - 6 April in their usual varied locations.
American Bach Soloists explores J S Bach and his legacy in a concert featuring motets and choral works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Sandström, and Nystedt. That's 25 - 28 April, in their usual various locations.
New Music
Cal Performances presents their resident new-music group, the Eco Ensemble, on 12 April, performing works by Gee, Harvey, and Lin. My thoughts on their last concert may be found here.
Cal Performances presents the Kronos Quartet in Beyond Zero: 1914 - 1918, a new work for quartet and film. As the dates might tell you, this work commemorates the centennial of the start of the first World War. The music is by Aleksandra Vrebalov and the film by Bill Morrison. That's 6 April.
The 2014 Switchboard Music Festival takes place Saturday, 12 April, from 2:00 to 10:00, at the Brava Theater in the Mission. More information here.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music remembers composer and faculty member Conrad Susa, who died last November, with an evening of his music, held at St Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. That's 5 April; more information here.
UPDATE: Thanks to Lisa Hirsch for pointing out (please see the comments) that this month also includes the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players festival of Electro-Acoustic Music, 24 - 27 April at Fort Mason. More information here. As I said to Lisa in reply to her comment, this is up against Opera Parallele's Weill/Poulenc double bill, and Mark Morris's world premiere production of Acis and Galatea, and American Bach Soloists, and Fort Mason has got to be one of the most difficult venues to get to in the Bay Area, so sadly this one is not happening for me. I used to get postcards and e-mails from SFCMP, but for some reason they stopped sending them, and though their programs always look interesting they persist in thinking that 8:00 PM is a good start time for concerts during the work week, which it is not for working people, so unfortunately I just don't think to check them much these days.
Opera
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents Dominick Argento's Postcard from Morocco, 10 - 13 April.
Opera Parallèle presents a double bill of Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel and Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias, conducted by Nicole Paiement and directed by Brian Staufenbiel, 25 - 27 April at the Yerba Buena Center. More information here.
Vocalists
San Francisco Performances presents bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni with pianist Wolfram Rieger, performing Beethoven, Reichardt, Brahms, and Liszt, on 1 April at the Nourse Theater.
Chamber Music
San Francisco Performances presents pianist Marc-André Hamelin, clarinetist Martin Frost, and violinist Anthony Marwood, performing Schubert, Debussy, Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Bartok on 28 April at the Nourse Theater.
Dance
Cal Performances presents the return of the Mark Morris Dance Group in the world premiere of Morris's new production of Acis and Galatea. Handel's music as arranged by Mozart will be performed by Philharmonia Baroque. That's 25 - 27 April in Zellerbach Hall.
The San Francisco Ballet presents the west coast premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's Shostakovich Trilogy, 2 - 13 April; and the world premiere of Caprice, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson to Camille Saint-Saens, along with the twentieth anniversary presentation of the first work Mark Morris did for the company, Maelstrom, to music by Beethoven, along with Yuri Possokhov's version of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, 4 - 15 April.
28 March 2014
27 March 2014
26 March 2014
Poem of the Week 2014/13 (part 3)
Sappho: Fragment 104, variations on a theme
Part 1 may be found here and Part 2 here.
Here are some poems that reference in various ways Sappho's evening star fragment. These are all from English-language traditions, so for example Catullus 62 is not included. They are presented in the order in which they were first (to the best of my knowledge) published.
Oh Hesperus, thou bringest all good things:
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer.
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.
from Don Juan, Canto III, stanza 107, Lord Byron (1821)
A moment of rest in a turbulent poet. Incorporating a well-known classical fragment was a recognized flourish in a poem, and not considered plagiarism, or the result of inadequate original ideas. The reader is supposed to notice the borrowing and admire the way the poet has referenced, repurposed, or extended the original. And unlike the related practice in earlier times of re-using Greek or Roman ruins as material with which to build new walls or fences, the original was not only left unharmed, but was enhanced by the prestige of becoming a poetic trope.
*************
Low-flowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the gloaming:
Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines.
Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,
Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall.
Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerily; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;
Deeply the wood-dove coos; shrilly the owlet haloos;
Winds creep; dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly:
Over the pools in the burn water-gnats murmur and mourn.
Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth:
Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline.
Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad
Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.
The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
from Leonine Elegiacs, Alfred Tennyson (1830)
This is an early poem by Tennyson, later dropped by him from his official catalogue. Instead of extending and elaborating Sappho's lines, as Byron did, Tennyson refers to her and quotes her lines, with the further dismayed reflection that life does not always work the way poetry does. Hyaline at the end of line 10 means something having a glassy, translucent appearance, so presumably the reference is to a lake. And of course it's there to rhyme with pine in the middle of the line. There's some fancy mid-line/end-line rhyming going on throughout this poem. I wonder if the water-gnats murmuring and mourning in line 8 flew in from the Keats ode To Autumn.
*************
Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings
All desired and timely things.
All whom morning sends to roam,
Hesper loves to lead them home.
Home return who him behold,
Child to mother, sheep to fold,
Bird to nest from wandering wide:
Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.
from Epithalamium in Last Poems, A E Housman (1922)
An epithalamium is a song or poem written to celebrate a wedding. Housman, by profession a classics scholar, exuberantly plays on that aspect of Sappho's lines. Poets love to add birds to this fragment. Birds are always poetical.
*************
The Evening Star
Penelope's maidens sing of the old father of the absent Odysseus yearning for his son's return:
His eyes toward the even
Age ever turns
Where fair in the heaven
Hesperus burns:
Hesper the herald
Who brings to their rest
Sheep to the sheepfold,
Babe to the breast;
For Hesper will gather
What Eos hath strown:
The son to his father,
The prince to his own!
from The Songs of Sappho, Marion Mills Miller (1925)
As mentioned yesterday, this particular edition of Sappho included prose translations of the Greek, accurate if archaic in style, by David Moore Robinson, along with more fanciful repurposings by Miller: in this case, the lines are imagined as a song for Penelope's maids, singing of Odysseus's father's longing for his son's return, when he will come into his own kingdom. Eos is the goddess of the dawn.
*************
The Evening Star
in memory of Catherine Mercer, 1994 - 1996
The day we buried your two years and two months
So many crocuses and snowdrops came out for you
I tried to isolate from those galaxies one flower:
A snowdrop appeared in the sky at dayligone;
The evening star, the star in Sappho's epigram
Which brings back everything that shiny daybreak
Scatters, which brings the sheep and brings the goat
And brings the wean back home to her mammy.
Michael Longley, included in Sappho Through English Poetry, edited by Peter Jay and Caroline Lewis (1996)
Longley is a contemporary Irish poet. Dayligone means twilight and a wean is a young child. The same lines that served Tennyson for melancholy recriminations and Housman for a joyful song serve Longley as the source of terrible pathos and irony: recollecting Sappho's lines, he also recollects a child that will never come home again.
*************
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime
from The Waste Land, ll 220 - 222, T S Eliot (1922)
And we'll end with Eliot's sardonic repurposing of Sappho's lines; he even draws attention to the origin in his footnotes to The Waste Land, to make sure you see.
Part 1 may be found here and Part 2 here.
Here are some poems that reference in various ways Sappho's evening star fragment. These are all from English-language traditions, so for example Catullus 62 is not included. They are presented in the order in which they were first (to the best of my knowledge) published.
Oh Hesperus, thou bringest all good things:
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer.
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear
Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.
from Don Juan, Canto III, stanza 107, Lord Byron (1821)
A moment of rest in a turbulent poet. Incorporating a well-known classical fragment was a recognized flourish in a poem, and not considered plagiarism, or the result of inadequate original ideas. The reader is supposed to notice the borrowing and admire the way the poet has referenced, repurposed, or extended the original. And unlike the related practice in earlier times of re-using Greek or Roman ruins as material with which to build new walls or fences, the original was not only left unharmed, but was enhanced by the prestige of becoming a poetic trope.
*************
Low-flowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the gloaming:
Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines.
Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,
Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall.
Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerily; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;
Deeply the wood-dove coos; shrilly the owlet haloos;
Winds creep; dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly:
Over the pools in the burn water-gnats murmur and mourn.
Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth:
Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline.
Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad
Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.
The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
from Leonine Elegiacs, Alfred Tennyson (1830)
This is an early poem by Tennyson, later dropped by him from his official catalogue. Instead of extending and elaborating Sappho's lines, as Byron did, Tennyson refers to her and quotes her lines, with the further dismayed reflection that life does not always work the way poetry does. Hyaline at the end of line 10 means something having a glassy, translucent appearance, so presumably the reference is to a lake. And of course it's there to rhyme with pine in the middle of the line. There's some fancy mid-line/end-line rhyming going on throughout this poem. I wonder if the water-gnats murmuring and mourning in line 8 flew in from the Keats ode To Autumn.
*************
Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings
All desired and timely things.
All whom morning sends to roam,
Hesper loves to lead them home.
Home return who him behold,
Child to mother, sheep to fold,
Bird to nest from wandering wide:
Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.
from Epithalamium in Last Poems, A E Housman (1922)
An epithalamium is a song or poem written to celebrate a wedding. Housman, by profession a classics scholar, exuberantly plays on that aspect of Sappho's lines. Poets love to add birds to this fragment. Birds are always poetical.
*************
The Evening Star
Penelope's maidens sing of the old father of the absent Odysseus yearning for his son's return:
His eyes toward the even
Age ever turns
Where fair in the heaven
Hesperus burns:
Hesper the herald
Who brings to their rest
Sheep to the sheepfold,
Babe to the breast;
For Hesper will gather
What Eos hath strown:
The son to his father,
The prince to his own!
from The Songs of Sappho, Marion Mills Miller (1925)
As mentioned yesterday, this particular edition of Sappho included prose translations of the Greek, accurate if archaic in style, by David Moore Robinson, along with more fanciful repurposings by Miller: in this case, the lines are imagined as a song for Penelope's maids, singing of Odysseus's father's longing for his son's return, when he will come into his own kingdom. Eos is the goddess of the dawn.
*************
The Evening Star
in memory of Catherine Mercer, 1994 - 1996
The day we buried your two years and two months
So many crocuses and snowdrops came out for you
I tried to isolate from those galaxies one flower:
A snowdrop appeared in the sky at dayligone;
The evening star, the star in Sappho's epigram
Which brings back everything that shiny daybreak
Scatters, which brings the sheep and brings the goat
And brings the wean back home to her mammy.
Michael Longley, included in Sappho Through English Poetry, edited by Peter Jay and Caroline Lewis (1996)
Longley is a contemporary Irish poet. Dayligone means twilight and a wean is a young child. The same lines that served Tennyson for melancholy recriminations and Housman for a joyful song serve Longley as the source of terrible pathos and irony: recollecting Sappho's lines, he also recollects a child that will never come home again.
*************
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime
from The Waste Land, ll 220 - 222, T S Eliot (1922)
And we'll end with Eliot's sardonic repurposing of Sappho's lines; he even draws attention to the origin in his footnotes to The Waste Land, to make sure you see.
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