Month: January 2020

The Sometime Dancer Blues

by Donald Justice

When the lights go on uptown
Why do you feel so low, honey,
Why do you feel so low-down?

When the piano and the trombone start,
Why do you feel so blue, honey,
Like a rubber glove had reached in for your heart?

Oh, when the dancers take the floor,
Why don’t you step on out, honey,
Why won’t you step out with them anymore?

The stars are gone and the night is dark,
Except for the radium, honey,
That glows on the hands of the bedside clock,

The little hands that go around and around,
Oh, as silently as time, honey,
Without a sound, without a sound.

*****

I always wanted to write poems like this.

The poem itself is not complicated. It’s just 15 lines, 3 lines per stanza. It doesn’t refer to Shakespeare or Plato or anything high-minded from history. It’s just a little blues-music pattern, used to describe a feeling. But that feeling is as complex, as the poem itself is simple.

I enjoyed this poem so much, I named this website after it-

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

***

This poem is just 1-2 run-on sentences, but spoken with some flourishes that make it a bit hard to track. If you read it slowly enough, you can get the basic pattern of the first sentence:

‘one must have a mind of winter…. and have been cold a long time….. to behold <all this cold, empty stuff>, an not to think of any misery <in it all>.’

Who has that ‘mind of winter?’ The Snow Man of course. But is it really a snow man, like the ones we make out of real winter snow in our own backyard, with carrot-nose and all? Or is it someone more human?…a ‘listener in the snow?’

Whoever it is, apparently this listener is engaged in a very Zen experience. He seems not to miss the things he does not see; and to take the nothingness around him in stride. I imagine he may be a monk of some kind; or ‘nothing himself’ he may be one who has achieved enlightenment.

A listener with a ‘mind of winter’ can recognize there is no misery; there is no emptiness, there is no barren place. Pull the thread and it’s all gone. And the listener (‘nothing himself’) is gone with it.

This poem has been taught in so many Southern Literature classes, it may itself be a kind of cliche. Some find this poem simplistic and trite. Others have written volumes deciphering it.

I love this poem; it has everything a great poem needs while consuming only 14 lines.

The poem first, then a few comments below:

Piazza Piece

by John Crowe Ransom

—I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying
To make you hear.  Your ears are soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all,
They want the young men’s whispering and sighing.
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lovely lady soon,
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.

—I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what gray man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.

***

This poem rewards slow reading. You can speed-read it in 30 seconds or less and get the basic information… but this poem is not about conveying basic information. It is about two interesting characters.

First: Who is this man?!? At first he seems to be old and humble, wearing his dustcoat, and admitting he’s not what she’s looking for. He’s trying and apparently failing to get her attention. But later in the first stanza, we can see this man is not to be trifled with. He points ominously to the roses dying, and warns her to ‘hear the spectral singing of the moon.’ The what?!? Is this some kind of wizard or necromancer? or even worse? Or is this just an average middle-aged man, who understands how beautiful things grow old and die? I love the mystery…. we are not told exactly who he is. By being potentially any one of these things, the man is all of them at once.

The lady in waiting? We know her much better. Probably we have all met her and rolled our eyes at her. This fainting-Scarlett-O’Hara act makes us laugh, and also makes us cringe. A man of some deep wisdom (and maybe possessing dark powers) is wooing her, trying to tell her things of great meaning. Her response: demand he get back or else she’ll scream. Ah, the cluelessness of youth.

The first and last lines of each stanza, ‘I am a gentleman… / I am a lady…’ make this feel like a set piece in a high school play. For me, these lines give the poem a kind of formality that help me pay attention to it.

I love the word ‘spectral’ in this poem. The word refers to a thing which is ghostlike; but also to natural patterns found within nature (in waves of light, sound, etc.). To be honest I still don’t know what the ‘spectral singing of the moon’ is. But if this guy does, I’m keeping an eye on him.