Friday photo 2015/45

evening sky, San Leandro, California, 2015

fun stuff I may or may not get to: November 2015

There's kind of an overwhelming number of things going on this month, with a lot of problematic conflicts. But I am glad that at last we have some autumnal weather. What better way to celebrate the beautiful chill in the air than by walking home through it late at night after a wonderful live performance?

Theatrical
Aurora Theater presents The Monster-Builder by Amy Freed, directed by Art Manke. My recollection from the season announcement is that this is a comic take on Ibsen's Master Builder, though the website doesn't make that clear. Performances start 6 November and run through 6 December. You may buy tickets on the website, but since they don't allow you to pick your own seat you may be better off calling 510-843-4822 from Tuesday through Friday between 1:00 and 5:00.

Incidentally I just saw the Wallace Shawn/Andre Gregory/Jonathan Demme A Master Builder and it's a powerhouse. Shawn did make a significant structural change which I won't give away but I ended up being OK with it, though at first I thought it might simplify things too much. Highly recommended! Or, instead of listening to me, you could listen to the person on Netflix who said, "This was a terrible movie. I won't not waste [sic] my time watching it. I feel all the people in the movie were crazy. It is not worth rating but will give it a one [sic] star."

San Francisco Playhouse presents Stage Kiss, a back-stage drama by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Susi Damilano. That runs 17 November to 9 January 2016.

At Shotgun Players, Aphra Behn's The Rover continues until 15 November (and just as I posted this, I received the message that the show has been extended to 21 November). And as part of their reading series, on 9 - 10 November they present The Mechanics of Love by Dipika Guha, directed by Beth Wilmurt. This is a switch from the play previously scheduled for this slot, Penelope Skinner's The Village Bike, which is now being done as a full-scale production next season. (Honestly, though: to me, The Mechanics of Love sounds like a more interesting play. I think a lot about how upcoming shows are presented to us, and what makes some appealing to me and others not. It's all such a strange and shifting thing. Obviously everything is meant to sound enticing, but more often than not I'll read a description and think nope. Sometimes it's just that everything is laid out in a line or two and I know just what to expect – for instance anytime a character is described as being "not what she seems" – possibly she's not, but too often she's exactly what I expect. . . Enticing people is a tricky art, prone to inevitable failure. This may be especially true for me because I'm not really big on "plot" or "social issues" and that's often what people go for. Years ago I attempted to describe to a friend the "plot", such as it is, of The Magic Flute, and he finally said, "Patrick, you're not really selling me on this." I was mildly stunned, because it had never occurred to me that anyone would need to be sold on the Magic Flute – I mean, it's Mozart, right? – and if I had realized I had to do that, I would have avoided the plot almost altogether.)

Speaking of readings, Cutting Ball Theater's Hidden Classics Reading Series presents Racine's Phèdre, directed by Ariel Craft, on 8 November at 1:00. You may get a ticket here. Like the San Francisco Opera, Cutting Ball has a new website which has lots of white space and attractive pictures but not so much in the way of easily accessed and useful information. If there's a way to find the Hidden Classics series on the website, I couldn't find it, and I wouldn't have known about the reading if they hadn't sent out an e-mail.

The Douglas Morrisson Theater in Hayward presents Love's Labor's Lost, a musical by Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers, based on the play by Shakespeare, directed by Lisa Tromovitch. It runs 5 to 29 November.

The sixth season of the SF Olympians Festival runs 4 - 21 November (Wednesdays through Sundays) at the Exit Theater. Each night features a brand-new play (or plays) based on a theme from Greek mythology; the theme this year is The Wine-Dark Sea. You can check out the full schedule here. Every year I vow to make it to this festival and every year I miss it (I tend to be already booked on weekends and increasingly reluctant to go to week night shows that don't even start until 8:00.) I'm hoping this will be the year the stars align for me and the Olympians.

Cal Performances presents the Rude Mechs in Stop Hitting Yourself, 19 -22 November in the Zellerbach Playhouse.

Mummenschanz returns to Cal Performances on 27 - 29 November (all performances are matinees) in Zellerbach Hall.

Choral
Here's a great way to celebrate Veterans Day (11 November): head to the War Memorial Veterans Building in Civic Center and attend the Heroes' Voices Veterans Concert. Heroes' Voices is an organization that uses music to help returning vets handle the multiple physical and psychological stresses from their service and their re-entry into civilian life. Performers include Pete Escovedo and his Latin Ensemble, OSA Vocal Rush, and the Heroes' Voices Bluegrass Band. The concert is free for vets, who may request vouchers on or before 8 November here. Others may buy tickets here.

Paul Flight conducts Chora Nova in two works by Haydn: the Lord Nelson Mass and the Autumn section of The Seasons. The soloists will be soprano Jennifer Paulino, alto Gabriela Estephanie Solis, and baritone Jeff Fields. That's 21 November at First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley (at the corner of Dana and Channing).

Volti presents new choral music, featuring works by composer Amy Beth Kirsten as well as Forrest Pierce, Stacy Garrop, and Žibuoklė Martinaitytė. That's 7 November at the Piedmont Center for the Arts and 8 November at St Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.

Ragnar Bohlin leads Cappella SF in Songs for the Earth, music celebrating and exploring our relation to the natural world. That's 7 November at Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco.

Modern/New Music
The Ensemble Intercontemporain visits Cal Performances on 6 - 7 November, with a different program each night.

If you want to get an early start on Christmas, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music is offering an evening of new Christmas carols by American composers, in conjunction with the release of a new CD, December Celebration. Composers include Mark Adamo, Jake Heggie, Joan Morris & William Bolcom, David Garner, and Gordon Getty; and performers include soprano Lisa Delan, baritone Bruce Rameker, Volti, members of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and pianist Steven Bailey. The concert is 20 November and it's free but reservations are required, and you can get them here.

See also Volti's concert under Choral and Jennifer Koh/Shai Wosner under Chamber Music. And as always you can find lots of intriguing stuff listed at the Center for New Music.

Operatic
San Francisco Opera has a revamped website. I do not feel it is an improvement on the old one, unless you've been longing for fewer words and bigger pictures that all load very slowly. My immediate impression is that it's more difficult to find information that might actually be useful, like what is playing when and who's in it. Anyway: the big item this month is Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Years ago I read Fr Owen Lee's short book on this opera, and he makes a powerful case for the work, though it has always been my least favorite of Wagner's works. I feel that if I'm going to sit in a theater for over five hours, the end needs to give me something like the Universe burning down rather than a hymn to Holy German Art. The San Francisco cast, though, looks particularly strong, with Greer Grimsley, Brandon Jovanovich, Sasha Cooke, and Alek Shrader, conducted by Mark Elder (since I typed out that sentence, Grimsley has had to drop out for medical reasons and James Rutherford has stepped up as our Hans Sachs). Performances are 18, 21, 24, and 27 November and 2 and 6 (matinee) December. Evening performances start at 6:00 and the matinee at 1:00. I know scheduling can be tricky, but it seems odd to me that there is only one matinee for an opera that is notoriously long.

In conjunction with these performances, the Wagner Society of Northern California is presenting an all-day symposium on Die Meistersinger, featuring Evan Baker, Scott Foglesong, Arthur Colman, and Simon Williams. That will be 21 November at the Jewish Community Center on California Street. The entrance fee includes lunch. The Society's Symposia are always interesting and fun. You can find out more here.

The Magic Flute also continues at SF Opera, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia starts up at the end of the month. Daniela Mack is in Barbiere; I liked her a lot in Partenope last year.

Baroque / Early Music
Richard Egarr leads Philharmonia Baroque in Brandenburg Concertos 1, 3, 4, and 5 on November 12 (San Francisco), 13 (Stanford), 14 and 15 (Berkeley).

I'm sticking this next event under Baroque/Early Music because it always gets referred to as Janet Cardiff's The Forty Part Motet and I think Thomas Tallis deserves at least some of the credit, because the forty-part motet is his massive masterpiece Spem in alium. What Cardiff cleverly did is arrange a recording so that individual voices come out of forty elevated speakers arranged in a circle. On one of my sadly infrequent trips to New York City I was at the Museum of Modern Art and I heard something I never expected to hear there: Renaissance choral music. I thought, that sounds like Spem in alium! and I wandered over and spent some time in the installation. It's pretty remarkable. You can stand right next to each speaker and hear the individual voices, or stand in the middle and hear them all, or walk around and notice which parts rise and fall in prominence. Even if you're lucky enough to attend a live performance you can't do these things, especially the one about standing very close to each singer while he or she is singing. Unfortunately I saw it at MOMA's clunky, sterile renovated building, but our own SF MOMA (no relation) is presenting it at the Fort Mason Center, which is sort of out of the way but in an attractive seafront locale once you get there. Advanced tickets are free and recommended by the museum. You can find out more here.

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents The Baltimore Consort in a Shakespeare-themed concert called The Food of Love, featuring songs from the plays and related music. You can catch them on 20 November in Palo Alto, 21 November at St John's Presbyterian in Berkeley, or 22 November at St Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.

Symphonic
The Oakland Symphony presents Lost Romantics on 13 November at the Paramount. The program features Stokowski's arrangement of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto 1 with soloist Llewelyn Sanchez-Werner, arias by Offenbach and Lehar with tenor Brent Turner, and Danish composer Victor Bendix's Symphony No 3 from 1895. Nice to see some of the less-explored corners of the symphonic repertory getting an airing.

At the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas leads two works by Sibelius – The Swan of Tuonela and the Violin Concerto with soloist Leonidas Kavakos – along with Schumann's Rhenish Symphony, on 13 - 15 November. Tilson Thomas also conducts Schumann's Spring Symphony, along with Richard Strauss's Serenade and Brentano Lieder (with soloist Laura Claycomb) on 19 - 22 November.

Chamber Music
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Shai Wosner present the first two of their four Bridge to Beethoven concerts, presented by San Francisco Performances in newly renovated Herbst Theater. They will perform Beethoven's ten sonatas for violin and piano, along with new pieces designed to reflect on or connect with the Beethoven. For the first concert, on 4 November, they will play Beethoven's Op 12, No 1 in D Major and the Kreutzer sonata, followed by Vijay Iyer's Bridgetower Fantasy in conversation with Kreutzer. For the second concert, on 7 November, they will play Beethoven's Op 23 in A Minor; Op 12, No 2 in A Major; and the Spring Sonata, along with Jörg Widmann's Sommersonate. The third and fourth concerts are in March and April; more information may be found here.

Cal Performances presents violinist Leila Josefowicz and pianist John Novacek in a program of Falla, Messiaen, Schumann, Erkki-Sven Tuür, and John Adams; that's on 8 November.

The Danish String Quartet visits Cal Performances on 22 November with a program of Adès, Haydn, and Beethoven.

Vocal
San Francisco Performances presents the second of Anonymous 4's two farewell concerts; this one commemorates the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War with a program of American music; that's 15 November at St Mark's Lutheran.

Piano
San Francisco Performances and the San Francisco Symphony co-present Leif Ove Andsnes, playing works by Sibelius, Beethoven, Debussy, and Chopin; that's 18 November in Davies Hall.

Sarah Cahill and violinist Stuart Canin play Brahms, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and other works at Old First Concerts on 13 November.

Dance
San Francisco Performances and the Yerba Buena Center present the Akram Khan Company in Kaash, 20 - 21 November at the YBCA Theater.

The Alonzo King LINES Ballet performs in collaboration with singer Lisa Fischer at the Yerba Buena Center from 6 to 15 November.

Poem of the Week 2015/44

To the Tune "The Silk Washing Brook"

I cannot permit myself
To give way to too many cups of thick amber wine,
Or I will become so drunk
I will lose control of myself.
The first scattered bells
Are borne on the evening breeze.
Auspicious Dragon incense fades
Like my interrupted dream.
The delicate gold-bird hairpins
Fall from my tangled hair.
I awake
In the empty night
Face to face with a
Guttering red candle.

Li Ch'ing-chao, translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung

The speaker begins by cautioning herself against the temptation to drink too much wine. She is afraid of losing control; she is acutely aware that she is not as young as she once was, or as carefree, and perhaps that is another reason she craves the giddiness wine brings. She seems caught in a life she is aging out of, but its beauty seems reason enough to cling to it: the glowing wine, the curling incense, the delicate gold-bird hairpins. She seems to be floating through time; we hear about scattered bells on the evening breeze (they're the first scattered bells, which seems to indicate that it's early evening); moments (or a few brief lines) later, she's waking up in the middle of the night. Has there been a party which ended? Does she remember it? Why is her hair tangled? There is a delicate dishevelment to the scene. She refers to her interrupted dream; is this an actual dream she was having, or is it her life? She seems to be alone when she wakes up; she refers to the empty night, but the adjective spreads over the whole scene. She is face to face not with another human but with a guttering candle, a light going out, a symbol of the brevity of youth and pleasure and life itself. The candle is red, which is a traditional good luck color in China. Is this an ironic touch, or a reminder of how fortunate we are even amid a scene of anxiety and solitude?

This is a poem about the passing of time. But the very existence of this poem, written almost nine hundred years ago in China and brought to us by a mid-twentieth century American poet, suggests that Art is an escape from Time. Li Ch'ing-chao's words, evoking a sense of fragility and pain at the rapid passage of life, stand monumental centuries later, available to anyone who wants to read them over.

The poem is from The Complete Poems of Li Ch'ing-chao, translated and edited by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung. The poet's name is sometimes transliterated Li Qingzhao, but I'm using the version Rexroth and Chung used in their book.

Friday photo 2015/44

a street in San Francisco, September 2015

I can't remember the name of this street. I'm pretty sure it's one of the small streets named after trees that branch off of Van Ness Avenue. I was walking down to the Civic Center BART from St Mark's Lutheran on O'Farrell & Franklin when the late afternoon sun made me stop and take a few pictures. I used to think I was bad with street names because I don't drive. Then I realized I'm just bad with street names.

Poem of the Week 2015/43

The only Ghost I ever saw
Was dressed in Mechlin – so –
He wore no sandal on his foot –
And stepped like flakes of snow –

His Gait – was soundless, like the Bird –
But rapid – like the Roe –
His fashions, quaint, Mosaic –
Or haply, Mistletoe –

His conversation – seldom –
His laughter, like the Breeze –
That dies away in Dimples
Among the pensive Trees –

Our interview – was transient –
Of me, himself was shy –
And God forbid I look behind –
Since that appalling Day!

Emily Dickinson

What is the Mechlin that this ghost is dressed in? It is a type of lace that originated in Mechelen in Flanders. Most definitions single out its delicacy, and at least one specifies that it is generally used in women's clothing (though the article goes on to mention its occasional use in cravats, at least among the British royal family in a period predating Dickinson). But the speaker here merely says the ghost is dressed in Mechlin, which suggests more than a cravat or cuff. The lacy garb may be a reference to the traditionally filmy nature of ghosts. But it's also the first reference in a pattern in which this ghost, specified as male, is described in and surrounded by traditionally feminine terms and comparisons.

He's dressed in lace. His step is light, like a snowflake, even soundless. His walk is compared to a bird's, or to a roe's (a roe is a small deer). The comparison is not to traditionally martial and manly birds like the eagle, but to a little one, soundless on the snow; and not to a stag, much less a bear or lion, but to a small deer, of the sort that is easily startled and rapid when it runs away. He speaks little, and his laughter is compared to a dying breeze gently rustling through the leaves. [T]hat dies away in dimples is a brilliant evocation of how leaves turn and flutter as a gentle, failing wind ripples through them, but it also associates this male ghost with dimples, and pensiveness. His fashions are quaint. He is shy. None of this suggests anything traditionally masculine.

Much attention is paid to the ghost's "fashions". The edition I use (for which see below) capitalizes Mosaic, suggesting a connection to Moses: perhaps the clothes are old-fashioned, even ancient like nomadic draperies, or associated in some way with religious regulations. But other editions have the word as mosaic, suggesting something patched out of small pieces. And capital-M Mosaic doesn't preclude this suggestion, since Dickinson also capitalizes (among other words not usually capitalized) Mistletoe, Breeze, Dimples, and Trees. Mistletoe can play into both interpretations. It is a plant that grows parasitically on certain trees and shrubs, which suggests something connected but disconnected, something partial which can also take over its space, which might be in tune with mosaic. But it is also associated with Christmas (as well as ancient Druidic religious rituals), which might be in tune with the religious implications of Mosaic. The poet mentions sandals rather than the shoes you might expect when the next line brings in snow – do sandals perhaps have a Biblical resonance here, furthering (along with Mosaic and mistletoe) an association between the ghost and traditional religions? When she says, near the end of the poem, God forbid I look behind, is God forbid just an everyday phrase, or does she mean it to sound like a more strictly religious injunction? (Remember that Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt through disobeying the divine command not to look back when fleeing Sodom.)

As ghosts go, this one sounds quite mild-mannered and attractive: he is associated with gentle, even pretty things, and delightful natural phenomena, rather than with moaning torments, hell-fire, and sulfurous damnation. He speaks little, the encounter is fleeting, and he is shy around the poet. So it's a surprise to find the strength of horror present in the last two lines. As discussed above, there is a Biblical intensity underlying what might seem the everyday exaggeration of God forbid I look behind. And she increases the emotion by calling not just the encounter but the entire day of the encounter that appalling Day (complete with exclamation point). The rhymes help mark this break in the emotions we might expect from what seems a gentle ghost. In the earlier quatrains, we have had very regular and complete rhymes on each second and fourth line: so / snow, Roe / Mistletoe, Breeze / Trees. In the final quatrain, we have shy / Day. There's a bit of a visual rhyme there (both are three-letter words ending with a y) and the words chime together. But the lack of the exact rhyme the poem has led us to expect is contextually jarring and marks an emotional disruption.

Appalling is an interesting word here. It conveys something terrible, but with the connotation that this thing has left you sort of stunned and emotionally drained. As the pall in there might tell you, the word derives (via Old French and Latin) from one that means to grow or to make pale. In other words: if you are appalled, you grow as pale as a ghost. Is there a suggestion here that encountering this epicene apparition has not only shocked the poet but made her resemble it in some way? People are, generally, disturbed on an irrational level by variations on gender norms and assumptions: is that what is appalling the poet and making her possibly resemble the ghost? Do his androgynous qualities connect to or startle something in her? Or is her strong reaction owing to the religious implications of the poem: does this strange presence from another world show a connection with or a deviation from the traditional theologies suggested by some of the language?

There are many questions, and no definite answers. Like many of Dickinson's poems, this one hovers between the domestic and the apocalyptic. It seems like a charming ghost story suitable for a chilly autumn evening, but the closer we look, the more deeply disturbing and perplexing it becomes. We may end up feeling as if we too have had an encounter with an appealing but unsettling spirit. The poem creates in us a version of the experience it describes.

(As an amusing sidelight on the poem's play with both gender and religion: when I typed epicene above the word-processing system flagged it and suggested only one other alternative as the word I must have intended: Nicene, as in the Nicene Creed. Perhaps Dickinson's deep knowledge anticipated the poetic links made by spellcheck.)

This is from the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson.

Friday photo 2015/43

outside wall of Edwards Field at the University of California - Berkeley, September 2015

Poem of the Week 2015/42

The Town Witch

Crab-faced, crab-tongued, with deep-set eyes that glared,
Unfriendly and unfriended lived the crone
Upon the common in her hut, alone,
Past which but seldom any visitor fared.
Some said she was a witch and rode, wild-haired,
To devils' revels: on her hearth's rough stone
A fiend sat ever with gaunt eyes that shone –
A shaggy hound whose fangs at all were bared.
So one day, when a neighbor's cow had died
And some one's infant sickened, good men shut
The crone in prison: dragged to court and tried:
Then hung her for a witch and burnt her hut. –
Days after, on her grave, all skin and bones
They found the dog, and him they killed with stones.

Madison Cawein

Sonnets are often associated with love poetry, and in a way that's what we have here: an unacknowledged and disrespected love between two unlovely creatures, a crabbed old woman and her belligerent dog. The form is a classic Italian or Spenserian sonnet: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, divided into an octave and a sestet, rhyming abbaabba / cdcdee.

The octave sets the scene and presents the characters: an old woman with glaring eyes, unfriendly and also unfriended – she does not seek out her neighbors, and they avoid her. (I wonder if there's a pun in "past witch [witch] but seldom any visitor fared.") She lives in a "hut" upon the common, which is, as the name implies, open space for public use, but since the townsfolk avoid her shabby dwelling, she seems to be a squatter there, taking up public land. We are not specifically told anything about the town – the time and place are not specified – but its inhabitants are also major players here. The ambiguity of time and place gives the story a fairly general application and a fable-like aura, though the belief in witches and devils' revels, and a hut upon the commons, and the hanging of a witch and the stoning of her dog are all going to suggest Puritan New England, in particular the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. (Cawein himself, though American, is not a New England poet; he lived in Louisville, Kentucky, around the turn of the twentieth century.)

But there really isn't anything here specific to Salem, or even America; this could be in any number of small towns in the United States or Europe during any earlier times that believed in witchcraft as an evil force (in fact, we still sometimes hear about accused witches being killed by fellow villagers in rural areas of Russia or Africa). The situation here lines up with historical studies that have shown that many of those accused of and killed for witchcraft were odd, alienated, outsider women, like our subject here. We are not given her name or history; we see her only as an old woman, and only in connection with her surroundings (the title emphasizes this: she's the Town Witch, as if she filled a certain role in this town, and is trapped within her town's perception of her). It's interesting how many compound adjectives are used to describe her: crab-faced, crab-tongued, deep-set (eyes), wild-haired. Perhaps this is meant to evoke early Anglo-Saxon poetry, adding to the sense of a certain timeless quality in the poem.

The first half of the octave gives us this isolated, cantankerous old woman; the second half gives us the townsfolk's view of her: Some said she was a witch and rode, wild-haired, / To devils' revels. . . . Hair is often deeply sexualized; think of how some religions require women to cover their hair, or the way long hair on men became a controversial social issue in the United States in the 1960s (the "hippies" were almost invariably described with the Homeric epithet long-haired, suggesting that you could not tell hippie men and women apart, and that this was a strange and dangerous thing). The devils' revels (nice little internal rhyme there, also) were usually thought of as orgies. So it's interesting that the "wild hair" of this solitary and aged woman is specifically mentioned in the descriptions of her as a witch, bringing in an aura of loose, threatening sexuality, despite her age and isolation.

As we continue with this outside view of the old woman, we see she has a "fiend" always with her – and witches were always accompanied by a "familiar," a demon who attends them, often in the form of an animal. But in this case, it is gradually revealed that this fiend, this demonic familiar, is just a dog. The townsfolk are legitimately frightened, though, of this hostile, menacing animal. There are some dogs that are aggressive towards anyone besides their owner – or perhaps this dog picked up on his owner's attitude and was following along. In either case a dog's bared fangs are another good reason to distrust the old woman and her hut.

In the sestet, we get the action of the poem: there's the usual run of bad luck (a cow dies, a child falls sick), and it gets pinned on "the witch." She is rapidly disposed of and her hut (encroaching on the commons) is burnt by the God-fearing and orderly. I do think that the italicization of good to emphasize the irony is a bit heavy-handed, but it's also true that I grew up in a society in which the God-fearing and law-abiding officials were almost automatically assumed to be self-serving hypocrites, and that was not necessarily the assumption in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America. And I wouldn't be too dismissive of the townspeople, or too sentimental about the old woman: she is nasty, and her dog is potentially dangerous.

Up until the final couplet, we've seen the old woman and her dog from the villagers' point of view. We don't necessarily share it, but their perspective is the one given to us: she's hostile, isolated, strange, most likely a witch; her dog is aggressive and vicious and most likely a devil. In the concluding lines, we are given a glimpse of the so-called witch's inner life. She has no friends, and there is no mention of any husband or children either living or dead. What emotional connection, what love, has ever entered this woman's life? The horrible dog, now starving ("all skin and bones") without his mistress to feed him, lingers by her grave, faithfully, It's a touching image, suggesting a deep bond between the two isolated and unloved creatures. The good folks of the town kill him with the resonantly Biblical punishment of stoning. Nothing has changed their perspective; ours diverges even further from theirs.

This poem is from Monster Verse: Poems Human and Inhuman, a new anthology edited by Tony Barnstone and Michelle Mitchell-Foust for the Everyman's Library Pocket Poetry series. The cover has a beautiful painting of a sea-serpent, which is enough to sell me on a book.

Friday photo 2015/42

end of the season, October 2015

Poem of the Week 2015/41

The Parklands

(originally entitled Pour Envoyer à Sir Oliver Lodge)

Through the Parklands, through the Parklands
Of the wild and misty north,
Walked a babe of seven summers
In a maze of infant wrath.

And I wondered and I murmured
And I stayed his restless pace
With a courteous eye I held him
In that unfrequented place.

Questioning I drew him to me
Touched him not but with an eye
Full of awful adult power
Challenged every infant sigh.

"Of what race and of what lineage,"
Questioning I held him there,
"Art thou, boy?" He answered nothing
Only stood in icy stare.

Blue his eyes, his hair a flaxen
White fell gently on the breeze,
White his hair as straw and blue
His eyes as distant summer seas.

Steadfastly I gazed upon him
Gazed upon that infant face
Till the parted lips gave utterance
And he spake in measured pace:

"All abandoned are my father's
Parklands, and my mother's room
Houses but the subtle spider
Busy at her spinning loom.

"Dead my father, dead my mother,
Dead their son, their only child."
"How is this when thou art living
Foolish boy, in wrath beguiled?"

"Ask me not," he said, and moving
Passed into the distance dim.
High the sun stood in the heavens,
But no shadow followed him.

Stevie Smith

Pour envoyer à Sir Oliver Lodge means to be sent to Sir Oliver Lodge, who was an English physicist and also President for several years of the Society for Psychical Research. He lived from 1851 to 1940. He saw no contradiction between his scientific studies and his interest in Spiritualism; in fact it was his work on electro-magnetic radiation that bolstered his belief that a spirit world existed in a light-related ether that filled the universe (this theory on the nature of light and the universe was undermined by twentieth-century developments in physics). Lodge was drawn to Spiritualism even before his son was killed in World War I, though after the war such deaths led many parents and grieving friends to try contacting the dead through seances.

Sir Oliver Lodge is one of those fascinating odd characters whose fame gradually vanishes with time, so I enjoyed looking up information on him, but I also wish Smith had deleted the reference. It tips her hand on what's really going on in this odd encounter; beneath the spooky trappings there is a weirdly comic clash between an assertive and cluelessly rational adult and a mysterious child.

The spooky trappings I mentioned start with the poem's form: it's a ballad, a form associated with ancient, often anonymous, tales, frequently dealing with murder and the uncanny. Ballads are typically quatrains with a 4-3-4-3 beat, rhyming abcb, which is what we find in this poem. Smith furthers the association by using archaic language, though some of these terms might also be dialect current in the rural north: thee and thou, babe of seven summers, stay meaning to halt, and race and lineage to mean parentage. North itself is a direction traditionally associated with witches and Satan, and the poet emphasizes the connection with the supernatural by calling it the wild and misty North. Parklands is a fairly common English name for fields and woods surrounding an aristocratic estate, lending a touch of Gothic romance to the setting of this poem. Ballads often use repetitive language, and Smith starts us off with Through the Parklands, through the Parklands and later gives us Questioning I drew him to me and Questioning I held him there as well as I gazed upon him / Gazed upon that infant face and also Dead my father, dead my mother, / Dead their son among other examples.

The first stanza immediately sets the stage and introduces the strange child: only seven, but wandering alone through the neglected parklands, in a maze of infant wrath – that's such a great line! Anyone who's spent any time with children will have seen such outwardly inexplicable, inwardly revolving anger – I remember being in such states myself. There's something a bit comic about this child stalking about, stewing in his own juices, in the way babies have of sometimes looking like Winston Churchill, but there is also something deeply touching in the image of this troubled child; maze suggests that he is trapped inside what seems like an endless series of false starts and wrong turns; maze might also bring to mind the Labyrinth (though there are technical distinctions between the two types of traps), which might suggest a monster lurking at the center.

The fifth stanza, the description of the boy, is one of those pauses in the action that intensifies suspense. It also heightens the oddness of the child, as even the resolutely forthright and down-to-earth speaker is struck by something strange in his appearance. His hair is pale as straw or flax, his eyes as intensely blue as "distant summer [and therefore presumably cloudless and clear] seas". These comparisons link him to the vast natural world, rather than to any human setting. Even his stare is icy (another reminder of the wild and misty north). The language here, too, uses the repetition characteristic of ballads.

The narrator is amusingly full of herself, feeling free to stop the child because she wonders at his restless pace, conscious of her courteous eye despite her awful [in the sense of awe-inspiring] adult power, which allows her to challenge a total stranger merely because he is a child whose behavior she finds peculiar. She is aware enough of the proprieties, however, so that she does not touch him (and of course, touching him would reveal his corporeal state). The boy, too, has been brought up in a certain way, and responds to her questions in measured pace (perhaps contrasted to the restless pace of his walk). She gazes upon him steadfastly until she receives an answer, which she will promptly reject as nonsensical. You feel that steadfast gazing at people is pretty much how she manages her social relations.

He tells her that his father's estate is abandoned, and his mother's rooms are empty except for the spiders that move in when housekeeping lags (the spider busy at her spinning loom nicely evokes a world of fairy tales, and the mysterious enchantments that often involve spinning wheels). Then, perhaps understanding the type to whom he is speaking, he spells out the situation explicitly: Dead my father, dead my mother / Dead their son, their only child. Yet our narrator persists in her comically dense mode: How is this when thou art living / Foolish boy, in wrath beguiled? She refers back to the infant wrath that led her to stop him in the first place. Beguiled suggests that he has been charmed or enchanted by wrath – and perhaps he has been, though not in the way she means. She suggests that his anger has led him to state something foolish and wrong. But perhaps his wrath is what moved his spirit to walk his father's abandoned lands (we are given no information on how, when, or why the family perished, which increases the aura of mystery around the spectral boy).

The imperious child refuses to enlighten her further (and what more can he say than what he's already said?). He passes into the distance dim, a nicely alliterative way of suggesting a ghostly vanishing. At the very end comes the kicker: the sun is high in the sky, but the boy casts no shadow. The poem ends with a spectral chill in the bright sunlight: is this enough to make even our narrator realize what she has been speaking to?

This is from the Collected Poems of Stevie Smith. I first heard of Smith when I went to see Stevie, an interesting movie about the poet, which I was drawn to mostly because Glenda Jackson was the star. It was released in 1978 , seven years after the writer's death. Unfortunately it seems to be currently unavailable. One of my minor goals with this series has been to post something by Smith that is not Not Waving But Drowning, easily her most famous poem, so I can cross that one off the list.

Friday photo 2015/41

koi pond at Evergreen Nursery, San Leandro, California