Quote of the Day (Helen Hunt Jackson, on October, ‘Lavish’ and ‘Scornful’)

“The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.”—American poet, fiction, and travel writer Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885), “October,” in Verses (1888), reprinted in The Pioneer Valley Reader, edited by James C. O’Connell (1995)

Quote of the Day (Lewis Carroll, on ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’)

“The Walrus and the Carpenter
   Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
   Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
   And waited in a row.
 
"‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
   ‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
   Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
   And whether pigs have wings.’"—English children’s book author, poet, mathematician, and photographer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
 
By now, you’d think I’d know better than to listen to sports radio. I keep tuning, for instance, to my local version of the form, WFAN-FM, hoping for news or insights into my favorite sports teams—the Yankees, the Knicks, the Giants.
 
But as often as not I have to put up with idiotic ravings that fill up the airspace featuring the hosts’ hobbies, family lives, or, God help me, political leanings.
 
Even so, I was a little surprised the other day when, on WFAN’s afternoon show, Craig Carton and on-air partner Chris McMonigle, in a not particularly inspired bit of free association, came up with “the carpenter and the walrus.”
 
These two figures, the pair thought, were from a “fable.” If that was the case, Carton believed, maybe it was from Aesop’s Fables, as he was “an Aesop man.”
 
By now, their producers perhaps have told them this is not the case. Not that this would matter, because next week the pair could come up with an equally wrongheaded misattribution and make their schoolteachers roll over in their graves.
 
Even so, maybe someone can tell them that the Walrus and the Carpenter don’t appear in a fable but in a narrative poem enclosed in the fantasy novel Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Better yet, could someone please send them a copy of these verses?

By the way, the image accompanying this post, of the Walrus and the Carpenters speaking to the oysters, was created by English illustrator Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) for the original edition of Through the Looking-Glass.

Quote of the Day (Robert Browning, on How ‘Truth is Within Ourselves’)

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise    
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.     
There is an inmost centre in us all,    
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,  
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,            
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.         
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh          
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,          
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,               
Than in effecting entry for a light      
Supposed to be without.”—English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889), Paracelsus (1835)

Quote of the Day (Edna St. Vincent Millay, on How Autumn ‘Shudders’ and ‘Clambers’)

“Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root.
Far and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.
 
“Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame,
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), “Autumn Chant,” in Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems, edited by J. D. McClatchy (Library of America edition, 2003)

Quote of the Day (William Butler Yeats, on ‘The Clouds About the Fallen Sun’)

“These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
    The majesty that shuts his burning eye;
    The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
    Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
    And discord follow upon unison,
    And all things at one common level lie.” —Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet-playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), “These Are The Clouds,” in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, edited by Richard Finneran, with revisions and additional poems by Anne Yeats (1989)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (George Herbert, on Prayer, ‘The Church’s Banquet’)

“Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth.”—English “metaphysical poet” and Anglican minister George Herbert (1593-1633), “Prayer,” in The Complete Poetry, edited by John Drury (2015)

Quote of the Day (Sara Coleridge, on What July Brings)

“Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.”—English poet and translator Sara Coleridge (1802-1852), “The Garden Year,” in Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children; with Some Lessons in Latin in Easy Rhyme (1834)
 
“Hot July”? More and more the last few decades, it means a heat wave—and it looks like this year will be no different, at least where I live.

Quote of the Day (William Butler Yeats, on ‘The Innocent and the Beautiful’)

“The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time.”—Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet-playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz,” originally published in 1927, reprinted in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, edited by Richard Finneran (1989)

Quote of the Day (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on What It Takes ‘To Move the Masses’)

“I hold you will not compass your poor ends
Of barley-feeding and material ease,
Without a poet's individualism
To work your universal. It takes a soul,
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,
To move the masses ... even to a cleaner stye:
It takes the ideal, to blow a hair's breadth off
The dust of the actual.–ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within.”— English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), “Aurora Leigh” (1856)

Quote of the Day (Langston Hughes, on the ‘Little Sleep Song’ of April Rain)

“The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.”—African-American poet, librettist, translator, and fiction writer Langston Hughes (1901-1967), “April Rain Song,” originally published in 1921, reprinted in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel (1994)
 
I had a somewhat different reaction to overnight rain than Langston Hughes did: I awoke to hear its soft patter outside my window this morning, rather than falling asleep to it.
 
But I recalled that I had just heard yesterday about this poem. It’s a lovely set of verses (only five more lines than you see here) and easy to find on the Internet. I urge anyone who’s never encountered it to look it up.

Quote of the Day (W.H. Auden, on ‘The Situation of Our Time’)

“The situation of our time
Surrounds us like a baffling crime.
There lies the body half-undressed,
We all had reason to detest,
And all are suspects and involved
Until the mystery is solved
And under lock and key the cause
That makes a nonsense of our laws.”— British-American poet, playwright, and essayist W.H. Auden (1907-1973), “New Year Letter (January 1, 1940),” from Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson (1976)

Quote of the Day (Sir William Watson, on April’s ‘Golden Laughter’)

“April, April,
Laugh thy golden laughter,
But, the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!”—English poet Sir William Watson (1858-1935), “Song,” in The Poems of Sir William Watson (1936)
 
I had never heard of this poem until last week, when I watched Katharine Hepburn reciting these lines in Without Love (1945), the third of her nine films with Spencer Tracy. I’m not sure who was responsible for including this literary allusion: screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart or Philip Barry, who created the original Broadway play.
 
All of this got me wondering about other instances of poetry used in films. “S.G.,” the creator of the blog “Rhyme and Reason,” had a useful May 2016 post, “My Top Twelve Poems in Movies.” I’d like to add just one more: Joyce Kilmer’s “Rouge Bouquet,” recited movingly by the actor portraying him, Jeffrey Lynn, in this clip from the 1940 movie The Fighting 69^th.

Verse of the Day (W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, on a Long-Kept Secret)

“At last the secret is out,
as it always must come in the end,
the delicious story is ripe to tell
to tell to the intimate friend;
over the tea-cups and into the square
the tongues has its desire;
still waters run deep, my dear,
there's never smoke without fire.”— English-born American poet, critic and playwright W. H. Auden (1907-1973) and Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, and diarist Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), The Ascent of F6: A Tragedy in Two Acts (1936)
 
Well, in the case of The Person Formerly Known as Prince Andrew, Duke of York, that would be secrets, plural. And they are probably not all out, but so many have emerged about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein that he has been stripped of his royal title and, as of last week, arrested on “suspicion of misconduct while in office.”
 
Before his (since terminated) marriage, this ex-royal enjoyed something of a reputation on Fleet Street of what might be called in the British Isles “a bit of a lad.” But nothing prepared the country for the firestorm surrounding e-mails and photos released from the Epstein files that further undermined Andrew’s disastrous attempt at damage control a few years ago.
 
Like Mark Twain, I have long believed that “the kingly office…is no more entitled to respect than the flag of a pirate.” But these days, I think that the British are doing far more to hold to account those in the highest positions of their country than we are here in the United States.
 
And that goes for the fellow here who would like to hold all power, with nobody to second-guess him. All his talk about the Epstein revelations having “exonerated” him only leaves most of us exasperated. If he’s really innocent, why not release the remaining 3 million documents?
 
(The image of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor that accompanies this post was extracted from a photo of him with Juan Manuel Santos, President, Republic of Colombia. It was taken on Nov. 9, 2017, on the presentation of the Chatham House Prize, and was made available by Chatham House. Since then, Andrew’s title, along with his smile, has disappeared.)

Quote of the Day (Percy Bysshe Shelley, on a Cloud Sifting ‘Snow on the Mountains Below’)

“I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.”— English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), “The Cloud,” originally published in 1820, reprinted in The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994)
 
As I type this, some form of winter precipitation is falling outside my window. I’ve thrown up my hands on whether, or how much of, it will amount to snow. (Forecasts for my county predict anywhere from 4 to 9 inches, but the “Weather” app on my iPhone says my town will get 1 to 3 inches, with the rest being rain or “wintry mix.”)
 
I have certainly had my share of snow in my lifetime, though it has diminished in the past couple of decades. Even so, that experience consisted of at best short hills in the northern New Jersey suburb where I have long resided. I had nothing like the experience that Shelley and his young wife Mary had in 1816 when they were staying in the Swiss Alps.
 
(The image accompanying this post, of Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, was taken on Apr. 10, 2011, by Carlosvi04london.)

Verse of the Day (A.M. Juster, on an Ambitious Government Bureaucrat)

“Your uphill climb will never stop;
   scum always rises to the top.” —Poet, translator, and essayist A.M. Juster (pseudonym for Michael J. Astrue, former head of the Social Security Administration), “To My Ambitious Colleague,” in Sleaze and Slander: New and Selected Comic Verse, 1995-2015 (2016)

Quote of the Day (Robert Frost, on Acceptance)

“Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be be.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), “Acceptance,” in West-Running Brook (1928)

Quote of the Day (John Buchan, on Poetry and ‘A Time of National Crisis’)

“A time of national crisis is the very time to turn to poetry. A poet writes, not for the common round only, but for the great moments of life. The greatest poets, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Dante, have written not in times of peace but amid war and unsettlement. There is something in such epochs of crisis which quickens the imagination and the mind, and brings the spiritual world of the poet closer to our common life.”—Scottish novelist, memoirist, soldier, and Canadian Governor-General John Buchan (1875-1940), “The Immoral Memory” (address to the London Burns Club, Jan. 25, 1918), The John Buchan Journal, Spring 2004, Issue 30

Quote of the Day (W.H. Auden, on Why ‘We Must Love One Another or Die’)

“All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.” — English poet-critic W.H. Auden (1907-1973), “September 1, 1939”

Quote of the Day (Richard Wilbur, on a Job of Poetry)

“One of the jobs of poetry is to make the unbearable bearable by clear, precise confrontation.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), “The Art of Poetry No. 22” (interviewed by Peter A. Stitt, Helen McCloy Ellison and Ellesa Clay High), The Paris Review, Issue 72 (Winter 1977)

Quote of the Day (Robert Francis, on the Pitcher’s Art: ‘Eccentricity’)

“His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,
 
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.”—American poet Robert Francis (1901-1987), “The Pitcher,” from The Orb Weaver (1961)
 
When I read these lines, the pitcher that came to mind for me was Greg Maddux (pictured), a remarkably consistent pitcher who thrived despite not throwing a terribly hard fastball (ranging from the high 80s to low 90s in MPH). 

As a youngster, this future Baseball Hall of Famer recalled in a 2007 interview, his coach “worked with me when I was 15 years old, and he taught me that movement was more important than velocity. He helped me make the ball move and sink as opposed to seeing how hard I could throw it.”
 
His 78-pitch complete game in July 1997 was just one example of how he worked, using pinpoint control and an ability to outthink batters to hamstring the Chicago Cubs lineup that day.
 
His intelligence particularly impressed his peers on the mound, according to Ed Graney’s July 2007 article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “No one thought the game better than Maddux. No one understood how to take advantage of its perplexing components more than he did.”