Poetry@Princeton

The Sunne Rising

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,

Why dost thou thus,

Through win­dowes, and through cur­taines call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers sea­sons run?

Sawcy pedan­tique wretch, goe chide

Late schoole boyes, and sowre prentices,

Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,

Call coun­trey ants to har­vest offices;

Love, all alike, no sea­son knowes, nor clyme,

Nor houres, dayes, mon­eths, which are the rags of time.

Thy beames, so rev­erend, and strong

Why shouldst thou thinke?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke,

But that I would not lose her sight so long:

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Looke, and to mor­row late, tell mee,

Whether both the’India’s of spice and Myne

Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.

Aske for those Kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,

And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

She’is all States, and all Princes, I,

Noth­ing else is.

Princes doe but play us; compar’d to this,

All honor’s mim­ique; All wealth alchimie.

Thou sunne art halfe as happy’as wee,

In that the world’s con­tracted thus;

Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee

To warme the world, that’s done in warm­ing us.

Shine here to us, and thou art every where;

This bed thy cen­ter is, these walls, thy spheare.

John Donne  [c.1601]

 A TRUE ACCOUNT OF TALKING TO THE SUN AT FIRE ISLAND

The Sun woke me this morn­ing loud
and clear, say­ing “Hey! I’ve been
try­ing to wake you up for fif­teen
min­utes. Don’t be so rude, you are
only the sec­ond poet I’ve ever cho­sen
to speak to personally

so why
aren’t you more atten­tive? If I could
burn you through the win­dow I would
to wake you up. I can’t hang around
here all day.”

“Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talk­ing to Hal.”

“When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt” the Sun said
petu­lantly. “Most peo­ple are up
already wait­ing to see if I’m going
to put in an appearance.”

I tried
to apol­o­gize “I missed you yes­ter­day.“
“That’s bet­ter” he said. “I didn’t
know you’d come out.” “You may be
won­der­ing why I’ve come so close?“
“Yes” I said begin­ning to feel hot
won­der­ing if maybe he wasn’t burn­ing me
anyway.

“Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you’re okay. You may
not be the great­est thing on earth, but
you’re dif­fer­ent. Now, I’ve heard some
say you’re crazy, they being exces­sively
calm them­selves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you’re a bor­ing
reac­tionary. Not me.

Just keep on
like I do and pay no atten­tion. You’ll
find that peo­ple always will com­plain
about the atmos­phere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.

If you don’t appear
at all one day they think you’re lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don’t worry about your lin­eage
poetic or nat­ural. The Sun shines on
the jun­gle, you know, on the tun­dra
the sea, the ghetto. Wher­ever you were
I knew it and saw you mov­ing. I was wait­ing
for you to get to work.

And now that you
are mak­ing your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won’t be depressed. Not
every­one can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes.“
“Oh Sun, I’m so grate­ful to you!”

“Thanks and remem­ber I’m watch­ing. It’s
eas­ier for me to speak to you out
here. I don’t have to slide down
between build­ings to get your ear.
I know you love Man­hat­tan, but
you ought to look up more often.

And
always embrace things, peo­ple earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appro­pri­ate sense of space. That
is your incli­na­tion, known in the heav­ens
and you should fol­low it to hell, if
nec­es­sary, which I doubt.

Maybe we’ll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am spe­cially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell.”

“Sun, don’t go!” I was awake
at last. “No, go I must, they’re call­ing
me.“
“Who are they?”

Ris­ing he said “Some
day you’ll know. They’re call­ing to you
too.” Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

Frank O’Hara [1958]

An Extra­or­di­nary Adven­ture Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovksy In A Sum­mer Cot­tage

A hun­dred and forty suns in one sun­set blazed,
and sum­mer rolled into July;
it was so hot,
the heat swam in a haze—
and this was in the coun­try.
Pushkino, a hillock, had for hump
Akula, a large hill,
and at the hill’s foot
a vil­lage stood—
crooked with the crust of roofs.
Beyond the vil­lage
gaped a hole
and into that hole, most likely,
the sun sank down each time,
faith­fully and slowly.
And next morn­ing,
to flood the world
anew,
the sun would rise all scar­let.
Day after day
this very thing
began
to rouse in me
great anger.
And fly­ing into such a rage one day
that all things paled with fear,
I yelled at the sun point-blank:
“Get down!
Stop crawl­ing into that hell­hole!”
At the sun I yelled:
“You shift­less lump!
You’re caressed by the clouds,
while here—winter and sum­mer—
I must sit and draw these posters!”
I yelled at the sun again:
“Wait now!
Lis­ten, gold­brow,
instead of going down,
why not come down to tea
with me!”
What have I done!
I’m fin­ished!
Toward me, of his own good will,
him­self,
spread­ing his beam­ing steps,
the sun strode across the field.
I tried to hide my fear,
and beat it back­wards.
His eyes were in the gar­den now.
Then he passed through the gar­den.
His sun’s mass press­ing
through the win­dows,
doors,
and cran­nies;
in he rolled;
draw­ing a breath,
he spoke deep bass:
“For the first time since cre­ation,
I drive the fires back.
You called me?
Give me tea, poet,
spread out, spread out the jam!”
Tears gath­ered in my eyes—
the heat was mad­den­ing,
but point­ing to the samovar
I said to him:
“Well, sit down then,
lumi­nary!”
The devil had prompted my inso­lence
to shout at him,
con­fused—
I sat on the edge of a bench;
I was afraid of worse!
But, from the sun, a strange radi­ance
streamed,
and for­get­ting
all for­mal­i­ties,
I sat chat­ting
with the lumi­nary more freely.
Of this
and that I talked,
and of how I was swal­lowed up by Rosta,
but the sun, he says:
All right,
don’t worry,
look at things more sim­ply!
And do you think
I find it easy
to shine?
Just try it, if you will!—
You move along,
since move you must;
you move—and shine your eyes out!”
We gos­siped thus till dark—
Till for­mer night, I mean.
For what dark­ness was there here?
We warmed up
to each other
and very soon,
openly dis­play­ing friend­ship,
I slapped him on the back.
The sun responded!
“You and I,
my com­rade, are quite a pair!
Let’s go, my poet,
let’s dawn
and sing
in a gray tat­tered world.
I shall pour forth my sun,
and you—your own,
in verse.”
A wall of shad­ows,
a jail of nights
fell under the double-barreled suns.
A com­mo­tion of verse and light—
shine all your worth!
Drowsy and dull,
one tired,
want­ing to stretch out
for the night.
Suddenly—I
shone in all my might,
and morn­ing ran its round.
Always to shine,
to shine every­where,
to the very deeps of the last days,
to shine—
and to hell with every­thing else!
That is my motto—
and the sun’s!

Vladimir Mayakovsky [1920]

Cy Twombly, Unti­tled [from Bloom­ing. A Scat­ter­ing of Blos­soms And Other Things], 2007

The Cloud Cor­po­ra­tion
By Tim­o­thy Donnelly

1

The clouds part reveal­ing a mythol­ogy of clouds
assem­bled in light of ear­li­est birds, an orig­i­nary
text over water over time, and that with­out which

the clouds part reveal­ing an apol­ogy for clouds
implicit in the air where the clouds had been
recently wit­nessed rehears­ing depar­ture, a heart­felt phrase

in the push of the air­borne drops and crys­tals
over water over time—how being made to think
one­self an obstruc­tion between the observer

and the object or objects under sur­veil­lance or even
desired—or if I am felt to be beside the point
then I have wanted that, but to block a path is like

not being imma­te­r­ial enough, or being too much
when all they want from you now is your sta­tion
cleared of its per­sonal effects please and vanish—

not that they’d ever just come out and say it when
all that dart­ing around of the eyes, all that shaky
cam­ou­flage of paper could only por­tend the begin­ning of the

end of your tenure at this orga­ni­za­tion, and remem­ber
a capac­ity to draw mean­ing out of such seem­ing
acci­dence landed one here to begin with, didn’t it.

2

The clouds part reveal­ing an anatomy of clouds
viewed from the midst of human spec­u­la­tion, a busi­ness
project under­taken in a bid to acquire and retain

con­trol of the for­ma­tion and move­ment of clouds.
As late after­noons I have wit­nessed the dis­tant
tow­ers bor­row lus­ter from a bour­bon sun, in-box

empty, sur­round sound on, all my money made
in lieu of conversation—where con­ver­sa­tion indi­cates
the pres­ence of desire in the par­ties to embark on

exchange of spirit, hours forzando with heart­felt phrase—
made metaphor for it, the face on the clock tower
bright as a meteor, as if a torch were held against

like­li­hood to illu­mi­nate the time so I could watch
the calm silent progress of its hands from the lux­ury
appoint­ments of my office suite, the tumult below

or behind me out of mind, had not my whole atten­tion
been riv­eted by the human fig­ure stood upon
the tower’s top­most pin­na­cle, him­self surveying

the clouds of the future part­ing in antiq­uity, a fig­ure
not to be mis­taken, tran­quilly pac­ing a plat­form
with author­ity: the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of clouds.

3

The clouds part reveal­ing blue­prints of the clouds
built in glass-front fac­to­ries carved into cliff-faces
which, prior to the fac­to­ries’ recent construction,

pro­vided dorms for clans of hamadryas baboons,
a species revered in ancient Egypt as atten­dants
of Thoth, god of wis­dom, sci­ence, and measurement.

Fans con­vey­ing clouds through alu­minum ducts
can be heard from up to a mile away, depend­ing on
air tem­per­a­ture, humid­ity, the absence or presence

of any com­pet­ing sound, its ori­gin and its char­ac­ter.
It is no more impos­si­ble to grasp the baboon’s
full sig­nif­i­cance in Egypt­ian reli­gious symbolism

than it is to deter­mine why clouds we man­u­fac­ture
pro­voke in an audi­ence more pos­i­tive, last­ing
response than do com­pa­ra­ble clouds occur­ring in nature.

Even those who con­sider nat­ural clouds prod­ucts
of con­scious man­u­fac­ture seem to pre­fer that a merely
human mind lie behind the prod­ucts they admire.

This devel­op­ment may be a form of self-exalting
or else another adap­ta­tion in order that we find
the hum of machin­ery com­fort­ing through darkness.

4

The clouds part reveal­ing there’s no place left to sit
myself down except for a sin­gle wing­back chair
backed into a cor­ner to face the win­dow in which

the clouds part reveal­ing the insou­ciance of clouds
cavort­ing over the backs of the peo­ple in the field
who cut the ripened bar­ley, who gather it in sheaves,

who beat grain from the sheaves with wooden flails,
who shake it loose from the scaly husk around it,
who throw the now threshed grain up into the gently

palm-fanned air whose steady cur­rent car­ries off
the chaff as the grain falls to the floor, who col­lect
the grain from the floor painstak­ingly to grind it

into flour, who bake the flour into loaves the priest will offer
in the sanc­tu­ary, its walls washed white like milk.
To per­form it repeat­edly, to per­form it each time

as if the first, to walk the dim cor­ri­dor believ­ing that
the con­fer­ence it leads to might change every­thing,
to adhere to a pos­si­bil­ity of reward, of betterment,

of mov­ing above, with effort, the con­di­tion into which
one has been born, to whom do I owe the plea­sure
of the hum to which I have been lis­ten­ing too long.

5

The clouds part reveal­ing the advo­cates of clouds,
believ­ers in peo­ple, ideas and things, the work­ers
of the united fields of clouds, sup­port­ers of the wars

to keep clouds safe, the devo­tees of heart­felt phrase
and belief you can change with water over time.
It is the habit of a set­tled pop­u­la­tion to give ear to

what­ever is desir­able will come to pass, a caress­ing
confidence—but one unfor­tu­nately not borne out
by human expe­ri­ence, for most things peo­ple desire

have been desired ardently for thou­sands of years
and observe—they are no closer to real­iza­tion today
than in Ram­ses’ time. Nor is there cause to believe

they will lose their coy­ness on some near tomor­row.
Attempts to speed them on have been under­taken
from the begin­ning; plans to force them overnight

are in copi­ous, antag­o­nis­tic oper­a­tion today, and yet
they have thor­oughly eluded us, and chances are
they will con­tinue to elude us until the clouds part

in a flash of autonomous, ardent, local brain­work—
but when the clouds start to knit back together again,
we’ll dis­miss the event as a glitch in transmission.

6

The clouds part reveal­ing a con­gre­ga­tion of bod­ies
united into one imma­te­r­ial body, a fic­tive per­son
around whom the air is blurred with money, force

from which much harm will come, to whom my wel­fare
mat­ters noth­ing. I sense with­out turn­ing the light
from their wings, their eyes; they preen themselves

on the fire escape, the win­dowsill, their pink feet
vulnerable—a mis­take to think of them that way.
If I turn around, the room might not be full of wings

capa­ble of act­ing, in many respects, as a sin­gle being,
which is to say that I myself may be the source of
what I sense, but am no less pow­er­less to change it.

Always around me, on my body, in my mouth, I fear them
and their love of money, every­thing I do with­out
think­ing to help them make it. And if I am felt to be

beside the point, I have wanted that, to live apart
from what depends on killing me a lit­tle bit to keep
itself alive, and yet not hap­pily, with all its needs

and com­forts met, but fat­tened so far past that point
I am engrossed, and if I pic­ture myself out­side of it
it isn’t me any­more, but a par­a­site cast out, inviable.

7

The clouds part reveal­ing the dis­tinc­tion between
words with­out mean­ing and mean­ing with­out words,
a phe­nom­e­non of nature, the west­bound field

of low air pres­sure devel­op­ing over water over time
and warm, sat­u­rated air on the sea sur­face ris­ing
steadily replaced by cold air from above, the cycle

repeat­ing, the warm mov­ing upward into mas­sive
thun­der­clouds, the cold descend­ing into the eye
around which bands of thun­der­clouds spi­ral, counter–

clock­wise, often in the hun­dreds, the atmos­pheric
pres­sure drop­ping even fur­ther, mak­ing winds
accel­er­ate, the clouds revolve, a con­fu­sion of energy,

an incom­pre­hen­si­ble vol­ume of rain—I remem­ber
the trick of think­ing through infin­ity, a crowd of eyes
against an asphalt wall, my vision of it scrolling

left as the crowd thinned out to a spat­ter and then
just black until I fall asleep and then just black again,
past mar­ket­ing, past focus groups, past human

resources, past man­age­ment, past per­sonal effects,
their insignif­i­cance evi­dent in the eye of the dream
and through much of the debrief­ing I wake into next.

Cy Twombly, Unti­tled, 2007

_________________

Tim­o­thy Don­nelly was on cam­pus Fri­day April 26th, 2013 for “Lament of the Mak­ers: Con­cep­tu­al­ism and Poetic Free­dom” a sym­po­sium on con­cep­tual poetry orga­nized by the Con­tem­po­rary Poetry Col­lo­quium. “The Cloud Cor­po­ra­tion” is from his col­lec­tion The Cloud Cor­po­ra­tion, Wave Books, 2010.

George Innes, The Lack­awanna Val­ley, 1855

For­got­ten Amer­i­can Poets of the 19th Cen­tury
by Kent Johnson

                                                           —for John Bradley, in the 21st

 
Absa­lom William Moore is a poet who thought poetry was an anchor in the drift of the world.

Ade­laide Mary Brown is a poet who inspired strong feel­ings among the bach­e­lors of her town.

Bartholomew Der­rick Tay­lor is a poet who spoke to us inti­mately, from an almost suf­fo­cat­ing nearness.

Obe­di­ence Sophie Walker is a poet who believed there’s another world where we will read to each other high on a moun­tain in the wind.

Cuth­bert Eli Mor­gan is a poet who always seemed to con­nect with the choir.

Abiah Char­lotte Sanders is a poet who spun her gold down through the mov­ing deep lau­rel shade all day.

Chauncey Thad­deus Pow­ell is a poet who believed that there are no grounds for belief.

Lucre­tia Flo­rence Jenk­ins is a poet who believed they will have to believe it as we believed it.

Cor­nelius August Parker is a poet who thought he was lit up like morn­ing glo­ries and was show­ered by the rain of his symbols.

Cyrus Wiley But­ler is a poet who believed long poems are “much closer to a whole real­ity” than shorter poems, but too late.

Fre­do­nia Anna Ross is a poet who believed she had spent the after­noon blow­ing soap bubbles.

Obe­diah Vir­gil Fos­ter is a poet who believed the day was gloves.

Hes­ter Wilma Camp­bell is a poet who was sud­denly cov­ered at the party by the wasps of the doorsill.

Ebenezer Charles Free­man is a poet whose last words were “The pool is cov­ered in slime.”

Per­me­lia Mar­garet Holmes is a poet who believed that when a screen door banged in the wind it made one of her hinges come loose.

Epa­phrodi­tus Ben­jamin War­ren is a poet who didn’t and doesn’t really care where poetry is now.

Pru­dence Alice Grant is a poet who rode a mule until the mule had to be carried.

Phineas Der­rick Knight is a poet who thought of him­self highly, believ­ing the nature of what is per­sonal imi­tates oblivion.

Tem­per­ance Clarissa Hamil­ton is a poet who wrote poems in French with the design that they be trans­lated into the Eng­lish of the Queen.

Hiram Josiah Hunt is a poet who dragged a rot­ten log from the bot­tom of a stag­nant pond.

Jede­diah Louis Mason is a poet who nested at the end of a tun­nel, where he was dis­cov­ered beneath a bank.

Eli­jah Aquilla Burns is a poet who loved Rochester, and who flows north­ward like two joined sewers.

Zachariah Thomas Hayes is a poet who believed we go back to poems as to a wife, leav­ing the boyfriend we desire.

Malv­ina Pene­lope Smith is a poet who shouted prim­i­tive slo­gans and shot sym­bolic smoke out her gills.

Olive Martha Weaver is a poet who believed she could sim­ply choose to “wan­der away” from an optional apocalypse.

Nathaniel Edward East is a poet who won­dered how the singing of the house­finch rings in finch­skull, which won­der­ing made him mad.

Electa Joan McCoy is a poet who believed it was a mis­un­der­stand­ing, mud slid­ing from the side where the thing was let in.

Mabel Ellen Greene is a poet who believed the whole bril­liant mass comes spat­ter­ing down.

Hezekiah Zan­der Fox is a poet whose two stalks pushed from the brain, through a series of mirac­u­lous infold­ings to form optic cups.

Kesiah Relief Riley is a poet whose hair was black, and whose eyes were black, and from whose long fin­gers the spir­its were conjured.

New­ton Dun­can Stone is a poet who believed Orpheus liked the glad per­sonal qual­ity of the things beneath the sky, which on that strange day began to rain frogs.

Isaac Davis Gib­son is a poet who had a cow’s head on his shoul­ders and can­dles sprout­ing from his back.

Abi­gail Isabel Hicks is a poet who has dis­ap­peared into libraries, into microfilm.

Jere­miah Cross Shaw is a poet who went mad and had rela­tions with Longfel­low, his steed.

Tryphosia Syb­rina Chap­man is a poet who believed our joust­ing ends in music, like saplings do, after a typhoon.

Loretta Judith Porter is a poet who liked it when it was snow­ing in Paris, a city which does not exist.
Priscilla Eli­nam­i­fia Woods is a poet who wrapped you in the burnoose of mem­o­ries against the dark temp­ta­tions of the flesh.

Fran­cis Quiet Bryant is a poet who entered the for­est, fol­lowed a path, and was eaten by The Bear, or The Witch.

Judah Robert Daniels is a poet who dis­cov­ered a way to trans­late East­ern texts so that West­ern men could read Ori­en­tally, down at the beach of agates.

Lafayette Blessed Strongly is a poet who thought he was ahead of his time, but now he is regarded as apocryphal.

Pleas­ant Reunion Wash­ing­ton is a poet whose last line was “I don’t think the leeches are suck­ing anymore.”

Jack­son Auc­tion Black is a poet whose clas­si­cal meters were all blasted to ruins in defense of Charleston.

Hen­ri­etta Troy Mills is a poet who was stolen by the Apache and became an Apache, it is rumored.

Edward Azariah Cole is a poet who knew he would show them, those who had laughed and mocked him, but alas.

Anne Liza Bishop is a poet who insisted on sign­ing Anony­mous and so for­ever does.

Martha Damaris Tucker is a poet who did not doubt that her hands or her whole body were hers, as the grain of sand to the haboob or the shrimp to the tsunami.

Winifred Fullest Hart is a poet who, like Thomas Jef­fer­son, saw grass enough for myr­i­ads of oxen to grind between their teeth.

Ken­ward Lin­wood John­son is a poet who at one end of his line had a knot, and at the other end a hook, and he sat fish­ing for a camel until he was called to come back.

Expe­ri­ence April Weaver is a poet whose sor­row was so wide you couldn’t see across it, if sor­row could be seen.

___________

On Fri­day April 26th, 2013, Kent John­son joins us in con­ver­sa­tion with Tim­o­thy Don­nelly, Jena Osman, Mon­ica de la Torre and a keynote address by Vanessa Place.  “Lament of the Mak­ers: Con­cep­tu­al­ism and Poetic Free­dom” is a sym­po­sium on con­cep­tual poetry orga­nized by the Con­tem­po­rary Poetry Col­lo­quium with fund­ing and sup­port from the Lewis Cen­ter for the Arts, The Pro­gram in Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies, The Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity 250th Anniver­sary Fund, and the Eng­lish Depart­ment. The event will take place at 127 East Pyne from 3Pm — 6:30PM.