tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74229742611313574732024-03-13T23:06:42.010-04:00The Milly Jourdain ArchivePoet and essayist Dawn Potter founded this archive as a way to organize her commentary on Milly Jourdain's poetry, which, at the suggestion of biographer Hilary Spurling, she is gradually reprinting online. If you have more information about Milly Jourdain's life or work, please be in touch.Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-78022074873634886872015-01-12T08:26:00.002-05:002015-01-12T08:26:31.419-05:00Here are two more Milly Jourdain poems, followed by some of my thoughts about them. I would love to hear your thoughts about the poems and my reactions to them, especially as they link to your own approach to writing and revision.<br />
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<b>Sheep in a Fog</b> </blockquote>
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i> </blockquote>
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The day was cold and wet with fog<br />
And all the earth was still,<br />
We drove along through unseen lands<br />
And half-way up the hill.<br />
We heard a rapid pattering sound<br />
Like sudden pouring rain,<br />
And then we saw a flock of sheep<br />
That stretched across the lane.<br />
They made themselves a narrow stream<br />
To pass us by with fear;<br />
We felt them push and breathe and press<br />
Till all the way was clear.<br />
And now the fog came closer round<br />
And all was white and chill;<br />
We heard the sounds of men and sheep<br />
Grow fainter down the hill.<br />
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<b>A Breath of the Past</b> </blockquote>
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i> </blockquote>
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A sudden beam shines from the dying sun<br />
Upon a flight of russet-coloured leaves,<br />
Making them golden birds with rustling cry,<br />
Whirled by the wind along the bone-dry road,<br />
The wind that ever blows from summer's heart.</blockquote>
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These two poems exhibit a stylistic contrast that is common throughout Jourdain's collection. The first poem, with its Hardy-like rhythms, stretches back toward the nineteenth-century elegiac pastoral. The second--unrhymed, with a shifting cadence and an intense present-tense focus on a handful of images--looks forward into twentieth-century modernism. At the same time, the poems exhibit another element that is common throughout Jourdain's collection. That is, in each poem she makes a "typical mistake"--which is to say that many of the poems in her collection exhibit one or the other of the following poetry-writing tics. Please note that I am surrounding the term with quotation marks to indicate that I am not speaking pejoratively but simply noticing the way in which her language slips within the context she has created in each poem.</div>
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The first of her tics is rhythmic. For instance, in "Sheep in a Fog," she opens the second stanza with a line that crams an extra syllable into the rhythm pattern. Is this a "mistake" or not? In this case, I can easily propose a rationale. The sound of "rapid pattering" imitates the chaotic, compressed, hoof-tapping noise of a herd of sheep; moreover, the two short <i>a</i> sounds are sonically attractive. Yet I can also easily complain about the line. In a poem that otherwise moves so smoothly, it is notably awkward in the mouth. And if replicating awkwardness was a goal, why bend only a single line instead of using a succession of rhythmic adjustments to give those two central stanzas a kind of Doppler effect of ovine anxiety?</div>
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The second tic involves both tone and observational focus. In "A Breath of the Past," Jourdain does a brilliant job of forcing me to experience the exact moment she describes, which is itself a moment of vivid action. I love the image of the "bone-dry road"--the way in which it evokes the dust whirling among the leaves, though she never says the word "dust." But then there's the "mistake": the final line--a sudden sentimental lurch that might not feel so surprising in an old-fashioned poem such as "Sheep in a Fog" but is a shock in this one.</div>
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Why did she feel the need to include that squashy last line? In a way, the poem reminds me of some of Anne Sexton's late poems. In many of those pieces, the first stanza is pitch-perfect; reading it is like being jabbed with a fork. But the second stanza wanders into a kind of push-button, loose-lipped self-hatred: the feelings are real and terrible, but the poetry is is an unformed clot on the page. Jourdain's poem is not so starkly divided, but the soft-focus last line fits uneasily into the imagistic clarity of the rest of the poem.</div>
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Still, the fact is that she did decide to include it. Why? Was she purposely pulling this twentieth-century exercise back in the nineteenth? If so, she set herself a very interesting task . . . the sort of task that, say, young Virginia Woolf was also beginning to set for herself. So if I look at Jourdain's "mistake" in that light, I begin to wonder if the poem is, in truth, unfinished. It can be easy to mistake a peculiar last line for an ending, when really that line is trying to push the poet into strange new territory. </div>
Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-25332615434533757622014-06-02T07:20:00.001-04:002014-06-02T07:20:50.577-04:00And on this mild June morning, I offer a late-autumn Milly Jourdain poem--<br />
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<b>November in Dorset</b> </blockquote>
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i> </blockquote>
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The yellow sunshine lying on the ground<br />
Is making golden light on trees and hills<br />
And shining on the dew-drops in the hedge<br />
And purple bramble-leaves.<br />
I turn and leave this sleeping rain-soaked land<br />
With all its memories of summer days;<br />
And then among the lonely fields I hear<br />
The lonely cries of lambs.</blockquote>
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I like this poem. I like metrical surprise of the short fourth line. I like the careful, patient images. I like the repetition of <i>lonely</i> in the last two lines. I like that it doesn't go out of its way to emote, or juggle big ideas, or draw connections, or build to a meaning-filled conclusion. Yet it nonetheless opens a window within me so that I do experience emotions and ponder ideas, connections, and conclusions. This poem, it seems to me, is a lesson in Keats's concept of negative capability, "when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." Still, the clarity of the language, the flexible confidence of the two sentences that comprise this poem, are the solidity that frames those "uncertainties, mysteries, doubts." The poem is the frame of the mystery, and that mystery is visible and physical and fleeting and evanescent. </div>
Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-30630301966475343642014-01-27T06:57:00.002-05:002014-01-27T06:57:35.078-05:00I haven't updated the archive since last summer, and today is the day to remedy that lack. As luck would have it, I've reached what I think is the most beautiful poem in her collection. I like this first poem so much that I'll be including it <i>The Conversation,</i> although the one that follows is also lovely. Both are Jourdain at her best: focused, precise, patient, lyrical.<br />
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<b>Watching the Meet</b><br />
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i><br />
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The air is still so new and fresh and cold,<br />
It makes a warm excitement in our hearts<br />
To drive beside the sad and lonely fields.<br />
And now we see a wider space of road<br />
Where groups of horsemen moving restlessly<br />
Are waiting for the quiet-footed hounds.<br />
The hounds come swiftly, covering the way<br />
Like foaming water surging round our feet.<br />
And then with cries and sound of cracking whips<br />
All, all are gone: the distant beat of hoofs<br />
Like trailing smoke of dreams, comes fitfully<br />
To tell how near they were a moment past.<br />
But we see only winter trees again,<br />
And turning homewards meet a drifting rain.<br />
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<b>The End of a Hunting Day</b><br />
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i><br />
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The dusk is creeping up the vale<br />
While on the hill we rest,<br />
And look across the wint'ry fields<br />
Towards the dark'ning west.<br />
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A ringing sound comes changefully<br />
Along the narrow way--<br />
Some horsemen going to their homes,<br />
After a hunting day.<br />
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They call "Good-night," and soon the dark<br />
Has swallowed them from sight:<br />
But still the sound lives on a while<br />
Lingering like a light.<br />
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And now it all grows lonelier<br />
Under the quiet sky,<br />
Until some sparks of life shall come<br />
And burn and then pass by.Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-50268203559744427652013-07-30T07:49:00.001-04:002013-07-30T07:49:28.707-04:00<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-8512297812103346879" itemprop="description articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 570px;">
I haven't given you a Milly Jourdain poem since May, so here is another pair. The second is, I think, my favorite of all of her poems. I like it so much that I've decided to include it in <i>The Conversation.</i> I hope Milly would be pleased.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The Huntsman</b> </blockquote>
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i> </blockquote>
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We drove along the narrow lane, all dark<br />With sodden leaves and mud, and paused to see<br />The misty vale, between the leafless trees.<br />Then all at once we heard the thud of hoofs,<br />And close to us some horses galloped by;<br />With passionate strength and heaving flanks they passed.<br />When they had gone, the earth seemed very still;<br />Only the trampled road and brambles torn,<br />And on the grassy side some deep hoof-marks.<br /><br /><br /><b>Watching the Meet</b> </blockquote>
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i> </blockquote>
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The air is still so new and fresh and cold,<br />It makes a warm excitement in our hearts<br />To drive beside the sad and lonely fields.<br />And now we see a wider space of road<br />Where groups of horsemen moving restlessly<br />Are waiting for the quiet-footed hounds.<br />The hounds come swiftly, covering the way<br />Like foaming water surging round our feet.<br />And then with cries and sound of cracking whips<br />All, all are gone: the distant beat of hoofs<br />Like trailing smoke of dreams, comes fitfully<br />To tell how near they were a moment past.<br />But we see only winter trees again,<br />And turning homewards meet a drifting rain.</blockquote>
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I love the image of the hounds as surging foam, I love the dramatic leap and release of this poem, and I love the way in which the weather conditions are folded into that drama. The poem has a Doppler-effect change in intensity, which is deft and natural. It pleases me every time I read it. </div>
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Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-81549282222145028162013-05-23T07:46:00.003-04:002013-05-29T13:43:29.929-04:00The Poems of Milly Jourdain<br />
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<i>Dawn Potter</i></div>
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<i><br /></i><span style="line-height: 32.727272033691406px;">As soon as I opened the flimsy paper cover of </span><i style="line-height: 32.727272033691406px;">Unfulfilment, </i><span style="line-height: 32.727272033691406px;">Joan Arden’s tiny volume of poems, out fell the publisher’s original review request: “Mr Basil Blackwell has pleasure in submitting the accompanying book for review. He will be glad to receive a copy when it appears.” Clearly this was a message from that past that I needed to take seriously, especially since, as far as I can tell, no one else has ever reviewed this book. In fact, hardly anyone seems to have read it. Published in 1924, the collection appeared in the “Adventurers All” series, which Blackwell advertised rather poignantly as “a series of young poets unknown to fame.” Several of these young poets did eventually become known to fame, including Dorothy L. Sayers, Aldous Huxley, and Sacheverell Sitwell. Joan Arden, however, did not.</span></div>
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The author’s published name was a pseudonym. Her real name was Melicent Jourdain, known to her family as Milly; and I first came across Milly’s poems as I was reading Hilary Spurling’s 1984 biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett, whose longtime companion, Margaret Jourdain, was Milly’s older sister. In addition to Margaret, an expert on furniture and the decorative arts, there were other fairly well known Jourdains in this large family: Philip, a mathematician and philosopher; Frank, a pioneering ornithologist; and Eleanor, who with a friend wrote a peculiar book in which they claimed to have seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette at Versailles.</div>
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Milly was the baby of the family and, like Philip, suffered from a hereditary disease known as Friedrich’s ataxia, a rapidly advancing form of multiple sclerosis, characteristically revealing itself in childhood and killing its victims in their twenties. Both Milly and Philip managed to hang on longer than expected, but they were crippled for most of their lives. Philip was dead by age forty, while Milly lived slightly longer, dying at forty-four, which is, oddly enough, my own age as I write these words. To a degree, this coincidence accounts for my interest in her, but only as an afterthought. For as soon as I stumbled across the scraps of poems in Spurling’s biography, I recognized that Milly was a real poet.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6540771071400993487" name="OLE_LINK1"></a> Here, for instance, is “Watching the Meet,” a poem that Spurling does not quote in her book but that struck me on first reading as a nearly perfect rendering of a fluid moment:</div>
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The air is still so new and fresh and cold,</div>
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It makes a warm excitement in our hearts</div>
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To drive beside the sad and lonely fields.</div>
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And now we see a wider space of road</div>
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Where groups of horsemen moving restlessly</div>
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Are waiting for the quiet-footed hounds.</div>
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The hounds come swiftly, covering the way</div>
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Like foaming water surging round our feet.</div>
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And then with cries and sound of cracking whips</div>
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All, all are gone: the distant beat of hoofs</div>
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Like trailing smoke of dreams, comes fitfully</div>
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To tell how near they were a moment past.</div>
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But we see only winter trees again,</div>
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And turning homewards meet a drifting rain.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Spurling had also recognized Milly’s stature. <i>Unfulfilment,</i> she writes, “records with singular terseness and clarity its author’s decline into paralysis and death.”</div>
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The height of delight in Milly’s poems is a single celandine or crocus in the grass, the feel of cold stream water, thin sunlight on glittering frost-covered hills. Perhaps she had learnt from Hardy or Wordsworth, perhaps simply from her own constricted life, the deceptive simplicity that matches an unobtrusive verse form with an equally unassuming truthfulness. . . .</div>
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There is no way of dating Milly’s poems. Some clearly gather intensity from being written in retrospect, after the Jourdains left Dorset in 1919, but all of them have a musicality, a concentration of thought and feeling, a desolate clarity.</div>
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Spurling’s words are as close to a review of Milly’s work as I can find. The book has more or less vanished from human memory; and when I did an Internet search, only one copy seemed to be available anywhere for purchase. I bought it; and thus did Blackwell’s review request come into my hands, tucked inside a frail forest-green volume, the cover so thin it might be construction paper, with title, author’s name, and publisher’s information printed on cream-colored paper and pasted austerely onto the green. The cheap, sad, scrapbook effect of the cover became even more noticeable once I caught sight of the glossy bookplate pasted inside; for, yes, someone else once owned this book: “Arthur Melville Clark of Herriotshall and Oxton,” whose name reposes elegantly beneath a heraldic insignia topped with the fighting Scots motto “blaw for blaw.”</div>
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Clark, at least career-wise, turns out to be less aggressive than his bookplate would indicate. He wrote several scholarly tomes, including studies of Sir Walter Scott and the playwright Thomas Heywood. In 1922 Blackwell published his book <i>The Realistic Revolt in Modern Poetry,</i> and Clark is described on the title page as “M.A. (Edin.)” and “sometime lecturer in English at University College, Reading.” Perhaps Blackwell had entertained hopes that Clark would review Milly’s book, but he doesn’t appear to have done so. Nonetheless, someone, presumably Clark, read it, and his rare pencil marks in the margins can be illuminating, in a melancholy sort of way.</div>
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Style-wise at least, Clark’s book on modern poetry is the usual sort of clotted, scholarly bombast. “It is,” he declares, “perhaps, unfair to emphasise the activities of the extremists—Messrs. Sassoon, Osbert Sitwell, T. S. Eliot, Edgar Lee Masters—but their very extravagance is instructive, as displaying in a greater degree the tendency more happily, if less obviously, illustrated by others.” Whatever his statement might mean, it doesn’t have much relevance to Milly Jourdain’s poems, which are so distinctly unextravagant as to be nearly invisible to her book’s marginal commentator. He marks only two poems in the collection. One is “Watching the Meet,” where he pencils an unexplained <i>X</i> beside two lines. The other is “The Leap over the Wall”:</div>
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Now in my narrow room, my memory hears<o:p></o:p></div>
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The waves break on the shore:<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think of all the pleasant things behind<o:p></o:p></div>
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That soon will be no more.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think of new-mown hay and summer days<o:p></o:p></div>
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And slowly fading light<o:p></o:p></div>
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And fields of white and shining snow that made<o:p></o:p></div>
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Me breathless with delight.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of running water slipping through my hands<o:p></o:p></div>
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And little pools most clear;<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yet all these things have only made me sad<o:p></o:p></div>
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And brought me close to fear.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But could I rest at length on some great hill<o:p></o:p></div>
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Watching the fading sky,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then I might know that peace above the earth’s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And only wish to die.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is by no means the strongest poem in the collection. Jourdain is at her worst when she incorporates rhyme, at which point the poems tend to slip into a singsong periodically jolted by uneven meter. Nonetheless, even these lesser poems reveal her pure diction, her clear eye, and her strange and straightforward communion with sorrow, an honest hopelessness that she balances so eloquently with her love for life. But what the pencil jotter says is “Morbid for no reason.”</div>
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On the whole, it seems we should be relieved that Clark never got around to reviewing <i>Unfulfilment.</i> Obscurity is a better fate than disdain, and Jourdain’s poems are, at least superficially, easy to docket as old-fashioned poetess pieces about flowers and sheep and fog and sadness. Yet they bear, in their simplicity and their unflinching gaze, a resemblance to some of John Haines’s tiny poems about the natural world. They are, as a friend said to me after reading a few excerpts, “a figure in three dimensions.” And when Jourdain allows herself to relinquish her stultifying rhyme schemes, her lines blossom, becoming, as in “The Floods Are Risen . . . ,” deft and idiosyncratic statements on the link between external awareness and the inner life:<o:p></o:p></div>
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The great white sea has flooded all the land,<o:p></o:p></div>
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And little waves are blown against the path<o:p></o:p></div>
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With tiny sounds like dry and restless throbs:<o:p></o:p></div>
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A white-sailed boat skims like a frightened moth<o:p></o:p></div>
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Into the dusk: the grey clouds grow darker<o:p></o:p></div>
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And dim the yellow light; we turn and leave<o:p></o:p></div>
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The cold wind blowing on the ruffled sea.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Occasionally she goes even further: “From a Road” layers unlineated stanzas of varying density to create a mélange in which the white space of the stanzas functions as the most delicate of line breaks:<o:p></o:p></div>
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Across the green valley the great hill raises its worn head through the pattern of fields which lie on its warm sides, brown in the summer sun.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Above the line of dark green hedges, beech copses straggle to the top: rooks fly over it and little white clouds.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The short grass is warm and the air is very clear.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For a moment I think I am walking on the hill, stooping and touching the ground with my hands.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But the trailing smell of honeysuckle from the hedge is blown to me, and I know that I cannot stir from the road.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Unfulfilment</i> was published two years before Milly’s death in 1926. I don’t know how many copies Blackwell printed or how many were sold. I don’t know whether Milly paid for the printing herself. I don’t know whether seeing her poems in print made her feel better or worse about the worth of her life and her imminent death. But the poems themselves . . . ah, they have not died. Just barely, their spark flickers. Cup your hands round that guttering spark, and it burns. A good-enough fate, most poets might say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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[First published in <i>The Reader,</i> no. 48 (2013). I gleaned biographical information about Milly Jourdain and her family from Hilary Spurling’s <i>Ivy: The Life of I. Compton-Burnett</i> (New York: Knopf, 1984), passim.]</div>
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Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-20923832186334694742013-05-08T07:13:00.001-04:002013-05-08T07:13:12.652-04:00<br />
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<b>Life and Light</b><br /><b><br /></b><i>Milly Jourdain</i><br /><i><br /></i>The twittering of swallows in the air--<br />The faintly distant hum of crowded life--<br />The rain drops on the petal of a rose--<br />The fresh juice of a pale and fragrant pear,<br />Make up the sweet taste of this friendly life.<br /><br />But when my eyes are blurred with mist and pain<br />And only through the choking gloom there sound<br />The crying needs of this poor maddened self,<br />Stumbling alone among the unseen rocks,<br />Then let me see a little of that light<br />Which I have seen in those remembered days.<br /><br /><br /><b>In a Garden</b><br /><b><br /></b><i>Milly Jourdain</i><br /><i><br /></i>The air is dry and dead,<br />The swallows flying low,<br />When from the church beyond the wall<br />A bell sounds thin and slow.<br /><br />Another man has died,<br />And lies beneath the grass.<br />He feels no more the heat and cold,<br />As changing seasons pass.<br /><br />On this dead sultry day<br />I wish the sun would shine<br />On plums and pear-trees by the wall,<br />But that the grave were mine.<br /><br />The two poems appear in this order in the collection. Once again, they seem to encapsulate Jourdain's uneasy willingness to depend on herself as a poet. When I read "Light and Life," I feel as if the poet is saying to herself, "I'm looking at my misery and remember good things and writing down what I think I ought to be feeling because I kind of do feel it but I'm also intellectualizing and standing outside the feeling." The poem's details aren't uniformly clean and sharp, though "poor maddened self" and "stumbling alone" do work to reach beyond the ladylike "rain drops on the petal of a rose." But she doesn't do enough work to synthesize the memory and the actuality. It feels like the poem she thought she <i>ought</i> to write rather than the poem that only she <i>could</i> write.<br /><br />"In a Garden" is better. The poet pulls me into the immediacy of this cemetery, the immediacy of her despair. It is constructed in simple sentences and mostly with plain nouns, and the cadence reminds me of one of those ballads in which every thing goes wrong. I could sing this song. "On this dead sultry day" is a surprise and a shiver. I like this poem.<br /><br />I bet you all have completely different reactions, however, which is good.<div style="clear: both;">
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Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-47680370933734326912012-07-21T10:26:00.001-04:002012-07-21T10:26:30.946-04:00<br />
Lobster and oysters last night, singing and fiddling tonight. In the meantime weeding and laundry and grass mowing. Possibly I'll find a spot to insert a verb into this litany. Possibly not. It seems to be a gerund kind of morning.<br />
<br />
What would Milly Jourdain say?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>White Poplar</b><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Milly Jourdain</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The sunshine lies along the winding road<br />
And white dry leaves are falling from the tree;<br />
We stay and watch them fluttering to the ground,<br />
For now we know the silver leaves are free.<br />
The leaves like still about the sun-dried lane,<br />
Waiting until the winter winds shall blow<br />
Their patient selves to heaps of sodden mould,<br />
Ready to help some other plants to grow.</blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;">Well, that's rather disappointing, isn't it? The first line is nice enough, but the poem rapidly descends into Hallmarkian tedium. I can imagine a needlepoint version of this poem. Oh well. I should have stuck with my gerunds. </span><br />
<br />
To cheer us all up after that disappointment, I offer you a few lines of a real poem: <i>Beowulf,</i> in Seamus Heaney's remarkable translation.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In off the moors, down through the mist bands<br />
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.<br />
The bane of the race of men roamed forth,<br />
hunting for a prey in the high hall.<br />
Under the cloud-murk he moved towards it<br />
until it shone above him, a sheer keep<br />
of fortified gold.</blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;">How do you think this would look in needlepoint?</span><br />Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-18837889755803027242012-02-27T07:21:00.002-05:002012-02-27T07:21:05.290-05:00<br />
<br />
<b>September Dawn</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<i>Milly Jourdain</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
The blue dark of my windows fades away<br />
And over all a flood of colder light<br />
Is softly spreading,<br />
Till through the mist I see the dull red leaves.<br />
<br />
The pure, chill air of dawn blows on my face,<br />
And in the room the sheets grow white again.<br />
<br />
A robin's song drops in the quiet air<br />
So sad and fresh and incomplete.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Sea Fog</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<i>Milly Jourdain</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
The fields below me are sodden and gray and the fog has blurred the line of the hills.<br />
<br />
I sit by the hedge and think that every year the darkness will grow closer around me.<br />
<br />
The fog has crept up and all is a sea of whiteness;<br />
My face is wet with its gentle touch, and I can only see a few steps in front of me on the road.<br />Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-37699800643895852082012-02-27T07:14:00.000-05:002012-02-27T07:14:02.920-05:00<br />
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[originally posted on my real blog in December 2011] <i>A soupcon of <a href="http://dlpotter3.blogspot.com/" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Milly Jourdain</a>: </i>Because I have to play Christmas carols for hours and hours tomorrow, I may have no available fingers for typing a blog post. So I'll give you the next two Milly poems. As the only living experts on her oeuvre, what do you think?</div>
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<div>
<b></b></div>
<blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; margin-right: 20px; margin-top: 1em;">
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<b>Beacon Hill</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<i>Milly Jourdain</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
I hear the deep sea sounding through the pines,</div>
<div>
I breathe the wash of air, all cold and clear</div>
<div>
And know the peace that lives among the stones</div>
<div>
</div>
<blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; margin-right: 20px; margin-top: 1em;">
<div>
With nothing near.</div>
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</div>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And then I try to see my little life,</div>
<div>
The huge and quiet earth around me spread,</div>
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And blue hills far away, that make me feel</div>
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Without a dread.</div>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The freshness of this scene is with me still</div>
<div>
--In Memory's freshness that can never wane--</div>
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And all the music of the many pines</div>
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<blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; margin-right: 20px; margin-top: 1em;">
I hear again.</blockquote>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>A Phantom Sea</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<i>Milly Jourdain</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
We saw from dull suburban streets</div>
<div>
A sudden space of light--</div>
<div>
A level line of misty hills</div>
<div>
And shiny spots of white.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
O how it made me long to feel</div>
<div>
The sea was really there</div>
<div>
The sharp wind blowing on my face</div>
<div>
And sea-sounds in the air!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The hills are like my shadowed life</div>
<div>
Where only I can sea</div>
<div>
The waves and white sailed ships that float</div>
<div>
On its immensity.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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</div>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-78156301353900611842011-05-23T06:49:00.001-04:002011-05-23T06:49:48.372-04:00<div><blockquote><div><b>Dovedale</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>There comes to me remembrance like a song,</div><div>Of slopes and rocks covered with thin brown grass,</div><div>And starred with scabious; there with eager hands</div><div>Grasping the slippery tufts of weeds, I climbed</div><div>To pick the bright red leaves of fading sorrel:</div><div>Then down I lay upon a sun-warmed rock,</div><div>And heard the shadowed river sing below.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>From a Road</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Across the green valley the great hill raises its worn head through the pattern of fields which lie on its warm sides, brown in the summer sun.</div><div><br /></div><div>Above the line of dark green hedges, beech copses straggle to the top: rooks fly over it and little white clouds.</div><div><br /></div><div>The short grass is warm and the air is very clear.</div><div><br /></div><div>For a moment I think I am walking on the hill, stooping and touching the ground with my hands.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the trailing smell of honeysuckle from the hedge is blown to me, and I know that I cannot stir from the road.</div></blockquote></div>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-45265128113854257892011-02-12T10:06:00.000-05:002011-02-12T10:07:16.268-05:00<b>"With Unbeclouded Eyes."</b><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>On these September days of softer light,</div><div>When reddened leaves are dropping from the walls,</div><div>And in the distant sky are sounds of birds,</div><div>And all is wet with dew--</div><div>Then I perceive a little of that land,</div><div>That land which human voices sometimes fill</div><div>With sudden sound; or in the hush of spring,</div><div>Or on some summer morning's early peace,</div><div>I hear its distant murmur.</div><div><br /></div><div>And although I strive so hard to hear and see,</div><div>All, all is gone like fragments of a dream</div><div>Leaving behind a trail of coloured mist</div><div>And dim forgetfulness.</div><div><br /></div><div>A poem such as this one is a reason for wading through the swath of Milly Jourdain's mediocre efforts. Admittedly, stanza 2 is a letdown, but stanza 1's "Then I perceive a little of that land, / That land which human voices sometimes fill / With sudden sound" is beautiful. I love the delicate repetitions, the line break between"sometimes fill" and "With sudden sound," the odd yet bracing focus on "land" rather than its details.</div><div><br /></div>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-88611361491642035962011-01-03T07:41:00.000-05:002011-01-03T07:42:15.614-05:00<i>First new post of a new school week:</i><div><i></i>Insomnia, followed by a 5:30 alarm and strong coffee. Boys up and out, almost eagerly. Tom unloading a laundry basket, cleaning ashes out of the woodstove, brewing the strong coffee, listening sardonically to NPR, and now quietly cutting photo mats. Me: reading the poems of Milly Jourdain; resulting mood-ring-like response: hopelessness punctuated by positive thinking. As Melville says: "Well, boys, here's the ark!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Today's activities include drinking more coffee; hauling a few 50-pound bags of feed out of the car, heaving them onto my shoulders, and lugging them gingerly over black ice to their destinations; copying out some of Wordsworth's <i>Prelude </i>because I'm dutiful; copying out several as-yet-unchosen Plath poems because I lay awake on the couch last night thinking about her dramatic control of the lyric; reading <i>Moby-Dick</i> because I'm actually in the mood for it; writing a few words of my Milton lecture; waiting for paying work to arrive in the mail; feeling guilty because it hasn't arrived even though I have no reason to feel guilty; watering houseplants; laundering sheets; writing a poem.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's today's Milly Jourdain poem, which is not at all like the poem I plan to write:</div><div><br /></div><div><b></b></div><blockquote><div><b>The Blackbird's Song</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Among the mists of dawn the blackbird sings</div><div>Of rivers running through the fields</div><div>And all the fresh young smell of growing things.</div><div><br /></div><div>He tells of primroses in copses bare</div><div>Or clustered on the lonely banks</div><div>Breathing a finer fragrance in the air;</div><div><br /></div><div>Of lilac blossom falling on the ground,</div><div>Of little winds and heavenly rain,</div><div>And summer nights whose breathing is a sound.</div><div><br /></div><div>And when the light is spreading down below</div><div>He flies away from listeners,</div><div>Whose hearts he touched with what they do not know.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>I plan to write a poem more like this one:</div><div><br /></div><div><i></i></div><blockquote><div><i>from</i> <b>The Pleasant Life in Newfoundland </b>(1628)</div><div><br /></div><div>Robert Hayman</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>To a worthy Friend, who often objects [to] the coldnesse of the Winter in Newfound-Land, and may serve for all those who have the like conceit.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>You say that you would live in Newfound-land,</div><div>Did not this one thing your conceit withstand;</div><div>You feare the <i>Winters</i> cold, sharp, piercing ayre.</div><div>They love it best, that have once wintered there.</div><div>Winter is there, short, wholesome, constant, cleare,</div><div>Not thicke, unwholesome, shuffling, as 'tis here.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>One of my favorite things about this poem is the variety of spellings of <i>Newfoundland:</i> in other sections it appears as "New-found-land" and, best of all, "Newfoundland-land." And if you follow the link to Hayman's <a href="http://www.heritage.nf.ca/arts/roberthayman.html">biography</a>, you can also read his "Reasons for the taking of Tobacco," which is an odd little discussion about the fine upstanding people who "drinke" it.</div>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-20020666625066692182010-10-15T08:09:00.003-04:002010-10-15T09:55:30.679-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">I want to mention Thomas's comment on Wordsworth, which appears after my October 14, 2010, post on <a href="http://dlpotter.blogspot.com/">my main blog</a>. I think he's really on to something there, and it's a point I touched on in my Milton memoir but that is far more evident in </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">The Prelude <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">than in </span>Paradise Lost.</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "> Thomas writes: "</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">The diffuse narrative drag interrupted by the magic of certain moments of beauty perhaps echoes the lived experience of our lives--lots of slog punctuated by events that our memories can't quite shake. But maybe we don't want to re-experience that dynamic in poetry itself--we want just those luminous moments without the prose." I think this sentence is a beautiful rendering of a question that continues to haunt my reading and writing life, and I wonder what you think about this conundrum.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And yes, I have managed to come around to Milly Jourdain--whom you might call my private symbol for slog punctuated by luminosity. I haven't copied out a poem from her collection since July, and here's what she's given me to work with today. Slog or luminosity: what label would you paste onto it? (P.S. I have no idea what those dots in the poem indicate, but they do appear in her book as I've typed them here.)</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">A Wish</span></span></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">Milly Jourdain</span></span></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">The fog had soaked the field all day</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And drops of wet hung on the trees;</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">Then from the west a sounding breeze</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">Blew all the quiet fog away.</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">. . . . . . .</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">To stand once more upon the crest</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And see the earth below me lie</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">All dim with mist, and watch the sky</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">Red, as the sun drops in the west.</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And in the gleam of dying light</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">To stretch my hands out to the rain,</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And never more be touched with pain</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">By footsteps in the road at night.</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And when I've felt again the best,</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And seen the earth grow dark and chill,</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">To turn my footsteps down the hill</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">And leave it all in cold and rest.</span></span></span></span></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-74781689890803783372010-07-14T10:29:00.000-04:002010-07-14T10:30:04.410-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><div class="post-body entry-content" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">I haven't copied out a Milly Jourdain poem for you since May, mostly because I've been getting tired of poor Milly. She somehow hasn't seemed to suit my impatience and my worked-up energies; and even when I'm gloomy, I don't seem to get gloomy in the way she does. Altogether, for the past few months, I've been been anything but Milly's alter ego . . . which, I do understand, is hardly fair to her. One thing about literature: I'm always looking for myself in it--explanation number 1 for why I never became a scholar.<div><br /></div><div>So, with an attempt at a fresh start with Milly, I offer you, forthwith, today's poem:</div><div><br /></div><div><b></b></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><b>Shadows</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Along the winding lane I often walk</div><div>Touching the trees--letting the grasses slip</div><div>Between my fingers. Seeing bluebells shine</div><div>Among the fading primroses. Beyond</div><div>The open fields sweet with the smell of spring</div><div>Look thro' the gate. And further far away</div><div>The fields and hedges lose themselves in mist</div><div>And yet it's all a dream. Each long day brings</div><div>The perfect images of vanished things.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>There are many, many deft and lovely words, rhythms, and images in this brief poem, but the ending is terrible, so altogether it just adds to my confusion--not only about Milly's qualities as a poet but about the definition of poetry, the meaning of poetry--by which I don't mean "What's this poem about?" but "What does it mean to have expressed these feelings?" I don't, at all, want to write poems like this; but at the same time I want the eye that sees this world. Judging the value of a poem is so very confusing, and I am glad, once again, that I have resigned from the <i>Beloit Poetry Journal</i>'s editorial board.</div><div><br /></div><div style="clear: both; "></div></div><div class="post-footer" style="margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(230, 77, 77); text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.1em; font: normal normal normal 78%/normal 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4em; "></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-86663082096781441812010-05-09T08:35:00.003-04:002010-05-09T08:37:31.346-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><b><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">Early spring lasts a long time in Maine: sometimes late spring retreats back to early; sometimes early retreats to winter. And Milly wrote a great deal about these advances and retreats, though she lived all her life in temperate genteel England.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></span></div></b><blockquote><b>The Long Night</b><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Milly Jourdain</span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Sometimes when still the night is dark,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">My thoughts go slipping with no will</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Like water running down a hill,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Sometimes when still the night is dark.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And when the sky is shining faint</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">With hope, I listen for that bird</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Whose song the earth has always heard</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">When now the sky is shining faint.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Over the grey fields of dawn</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I lie and hear the small birds sing</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">With rapture in the early spring,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Over the grey fields of dawn.</span></div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><b><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">One thing that interests me is the title of this poem, especially since the poem itself deals primarily with the end of night. It's a rather delicate framing device for insomniac misery. So even though Milly uses the irritating poetess word <i>rapture </i>along with clumsy sentimentalized syntax such as "when still the night is dark," I appreciate the understatement behind the title-poem link. And I also like the image-meter combination of "My thoughts go slipping with no will / Like water running down a hill." Those lines feel plain and exact and, to an insomniac, very recognizable. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></span></div></b></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-2433344606446599232010-03-18T07:21:00.003-04:002010-03-18T07:25:09.915-04:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'm taking the morning off from Malcolm X and driving to Farmington to drink coffee with my friend Nate. Nate will tell me gossipy horror stories about applying to grad school, and perhaps we will toast the memory of </span><a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/alex-chilton-musician-dies/?hp" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Alex Chilton</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Meanwhile, I leave you a Milly Jourdain poem to read. I'm sorry this is such a dull poem. I hesitated even to copy it out for you, but I've committed myself to taking the bad along with the good in Milly's work. Nonetheless, it's difficult to overlook the horrible metric bloopers in these stanzas.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I will try to cheer myself by thinking of it as the inverse of Malcolm X.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Relief</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></b></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Milly Jourdain</span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the sweet quiet of the early spring</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When winds are blowing chill,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I wander, hearing all the songs of the birds</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Which once were nearly still.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For then the dull pain had filled my mind, but now</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The difference unseen!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The sweet sounds of the birds are sweeter for</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The silence that has been.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Randomly chosen passage from</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Autobiography of Malcolm X</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If you've ever lindy-hopped, you'll know what I'm talking about. With most girls, you kind of work opposite them, circling, side-stepping, leading. Whichever arm you lead with is half-bent out there, your hands are giving that little pull, touching her waist, her shoulders, her arms, She's in, out, turning, whirling, wherever you guide her. With poor partners, you feel their weight. They're slow and heavy. But with really good partners, all you need is just the push-pull suggestion. They guide nearly effortlessly, even off the floor and into the air, and your little solo maneuver is done on the floor before they land, when they join you, whirling, right in step.</span></div><div><br /></div><div></div></blockquote></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-44140677351692199352010-02-23T09:30:00.001-05:002010-02-23T09:30:56.791-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; "><div>Here's a Milly Jourdain poem for the last week of February.</div><div><br /></div><div><b></b></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><b>Before the Break of Day</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>The silence of these hours before the dawn</div><div>Is like a world beneath the sea</div><div>Waiting in a dim, enchanted light</div><div>For morning's new felicity.</div><div><br /></div><div>At last there comes a distant breathless sound</div><div>Of bird songs, growing still more near,</div><div>Until the air is full of thrilling notes,</div><div>The sweetest music men can hear.</div><div><br /></div><div>But now the rain has washed it all away,</div><div>The silent world beneath the sea,</div><div>And all the plants are drinking deep of hope</div><div>And love of life's immensity.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Another mixed bag, quality-wise. But the underwater comparison is lovely.</div><div><br /></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-78146504483170853932010-02-01T07:38:00.003-05:002010-02-01T07:43:24.165-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I've just learned that the U.K. journal the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Reader </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">will publish my essay "The Poems of Milly Jourdain." As far as I can tell, this will be the first printed review of her work ever. I'm sorry it took almost 100 years to appear, but I hope Milly would be pleased that finally someone has written about her book. And I'm particularly glad that a British journal will be publishing the piece. To me, Milly seems quintessentially English, a writer who is devoted, Hardy-like, to her familiar landscapes. She belongs to her own country, not to mine, and I hope she would have overlooked my coarse American enthusiasms. As Henry James makes clear in his novels, our disconnects are, in the end, really all for the best.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So here's a Milly poem for a snowy Monday morning in the harsh New World. It's called "Fritillaries," which, according to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Webster,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> can be either butterflies or flowers. Regarding the flower, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Webster</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> says that </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">fritillaria</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> are "any of a genus . . . of bulbous herbs of the lily family with mottled or checkered flowers." I can't remember ever having seen a checkered flower, but maybe things are different in England.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fritillaries</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></b></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Milly Jourdain</span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In a flower-seller's basket,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bunches of fritillaries,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Purple and mysterious</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">With green and twisted stalks, are lying.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">How they wish they still were living</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the wet and open spaces</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Where the river winds are blowing,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Far beyond the old, grey city.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Though they stand among some blue-bells,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Still they hold themselves aloofly,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Drooping, with their darkened faces,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Lonely in their secret wildness.</span></div><div></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I think this is a beautiful poem. It does bring into question, however, a point-of-view issue that I've long been questioning.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">According to several poetry-journal editors, some of whom I've spoken to personally, this particular "error" makes a poem unpublishable.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Have you guessed what it might be yet? Reread the poem, and see if you can find the murderer.)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Well, I'll tell you: it's anthropomorphism. Yes, apparently inventing a situation in which a human speaker pretends that a non-human object has human characteristics is a shocking faux pas in a contemporary poem. I've never heard anyone satisfactorily explain why, other than offer a general mutter about "failure of imagination." But let me go on the record as saying that's crap. It's a different kind of imagination, a very human way of linking the speaker's imagination with the outside world, of making sense of that world. What else were the ancient gods if not an anthropomorphic explanation of nature? Sure, you can have bad anthropomorphic writing, but in my opinion Milly's works beautifully here. I love that second stanza, when the speaker moves suddenly from the looking at the flowers to internalizing them as characters. It's not unusual, and it's not dramatic, but it's swift and lovely and very believable. "How they wish they still were living/In the wet and open spaces." How I wish they were living there too.</span></div><div><br /></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-46530022308948084402010-01-14T07:12:00.001-05:002010-01-14T07:12:18.505-05:00Okay, two Milly Jourdain poems today. Poem #1 shows why she drives me nuts. Poem #2 shows why I'm doing this copying project. Try to write a better poem than Poem #2. You could, but it would be hard.<div><br /></div><div><b></b></div><blockquote><div><b>A Dream Journey</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The rain is falling cold and grey,</div><div>But spring is in the air;</div><div>And thinking of a warmer land</div><div>I wish that I were there.</div><div><br /></div><div>I see around me in the grass,</div><div>Like stars of tender blue,</div><div>The little crocus growing wild</div><div>And making all things new.</div><div><br /></div><div>I lie upon a sun-warmed hill</div><div>And thundering hear the waves below,</div><div>A breath from hidden violets</div><div>Comes when the wind doth blow.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anemones with coloured heads</div><div>And hidden deep-black eyes</div><div>Are growing near the glimpse of sea,</div><div>Whose slow noise never dies.</div><div><br /></div><div>At last I wake in evening light</div><div>And hear the sky-larks sing</div><div>Above the fields all glistening-wet</div><div>And green with early spring.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>"The Floods Are Risen . . . "</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The great white sea has flooded all the land,</div><div>And little waves are blown against the path</div><div>With tiny sounds like dry and restless throbs:</div><div>A white-sailed boat skims like a frightened moth</div><div>Into the dusk: the grey clouds grow darker</div><div>And dim the yellow light; we turn and leave</div><div>The cold wind blowing on the ruffled sea.</div><div><br /></div><div></div></blockquote><div>A poem like this second one leaves me thinking: what could she have been, this writer, if the cards had been stacked otherwise? Oh, that boat skimming like a frightened moth. I see it in my dreams.</div>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-63785276766305983372009-12-28T09:39:00.001-05:002009-12-28T09:39:28.674-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><div class="post-body entry-content" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Here I am, home again, yet I also managed to leave the power cord for my laptop at my in-laws, so I must borrow computer privileges from obliging family members until the cord arrives in the mail. Ah well. We always manage to forget something, and it could have been pants.<div><br /><div>I arrived home to find a charming Christmas card from a blog-and-<i>Tracing-Paradise</i> reader whom I've never met. But while she appears to enjoy most of what's going on here, she is not a Milly Jourdain fan. I think you fans-versus-non-fans may divide right down the middle . . . and as non-fans I include people who don't get my interest in her: she just doesn't seem exciting enough to like or dislike. Be assured that I barely get my interest in her. But since my reading life has always been guided by un-thought-out motivations, I am obliged to follow my trajectory here. Something will turn up; really, a few things have already turned up. They don't transform Milly into a great artist, but they do make her valuable to me.</div><div><br /></div><div>1. On the whole, I intensely dislike self-monickered nature poets. Mary Oliver, for instance, makes me itch. Probably I will lose a whole lot of readers by admitting this, but really I think she is a tremendously annoying poet. Milly Jourdain could be easily labeled as a genteel lady nature poet. Why, then, do I continue to copy out her work? I don't have the answer yet, but I suspect that the unabashed human presence in her visualized world may be part of why I believe in her.</div><div><br /></div><div>2. A large variety of people read this blog, running the gamut from professional writers to people with relatively little education and reading experience. I love this. And when I get messages from one of these less experienced readers that a Milly poem mattered to her--along with a brave venture into <i>why</i> it mattered to her--I feel as if poetry as a genre and a practice is doing its work. This particular reader noted the clarity of Milly's words. I agree: they are clear, and that is a beautiful thing. She is a non-ironic writer, usually unsentimental, with a sharp eye and a perceptive ear. Her dramatic control is flawed, her metaphors and diction can be trivial, but her articulated vision is as clear and forthright as a brook over stones.</div><div><br /></div><div>3. Which leads me to my next point. <i>Unfulfilment</i> was published in the mid-1920s. The world of poetry was changing, shifting from the nineteenth century's decorative wordiness to the twentieth century's imagist brevity and Poundian academicizing and Eliot-like irony. Milly may not have been a guiding light in that shift, but (as my friend Lucy the historian noted during our walk across some scary ice the other day) neither was she an uneducated milkmaid. She belonged to an educated family; was linked through her elder sister to Ivy Compton-Burnett, one of the craziest new novelists out there; and her work is perforce influenced by her knowledge of the changing styles of verse. I think her poems are an interesting acknowledgment of the power of the "show, don't tell" doctrine of contemporary verse. She has plain diction and an objective eye. Yet she is still, like her nineteenth-century predecessors, a non-cynical devotee of Beauty. This disconnect doesn't necessarily turn her poems into art; but at least to me, it does make her more interesting as a thinking human being. She is not jumping wholeheartedly onto the modernist bandwagon; she is looking back over her shoulder at Rossetti and Tennyson and Coleridge and Bronte and Keats, those devotees of Beauty whose books no doubt sat on her shelves. They sit on my shelf too, and they're considerably less dusty than my Pound and Eliot collections. Yet I, too, write as a poet of my times, one who has been influenced by my centuries and their art. I recognize Milly in myself. I also recognize my good fortune. Milly died at age 44 after a long and debilitating illness, but here I am at 45, full of beans. I've had some luck that she didn't have.</div><div><br /></div><div>4. Reading Milly's work is a way to thank life for my luck, a way to remind me that flawed work is not garbage, a way to shock myself into noticing the power of delicacy, a way to see why poems must be dramas in order to work as complete entities. How can this not be useful to me as writer and a person? The question, in a public forum such as this one, is whether or not it's useful to you as well. I'm sorry if she bores you, but at the very least perhaps she presses you to do your own thinking.</div><div><br /></div></div><div style="clear: both; "></div></div><div class="post-footer" style="margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(230, 77, 77); text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.1em; font: normal normal normal 78%/normal 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4em; "></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-22698238286038983382009-12-21T07:45:00.001-05:002009-12-21T07:45:49.811-05:00Lately, when I've been reading Milly Jourdain's poems, I find myself wanting to cry, or shake her, or do something abrasive, which I realize is not a kind response to the yearnings of a fragile invalid. But these poems keep rising to loveliness and then, one after another, nose-dive into a snap-the-suitcase-shut ending. It's starting to drive me crazy. Sometimes I think she is doing what many apprentice poets do: she is concluding the poem too early, generally when it has started getting very hard to write. At other times I think she is purposely pulling down the shades to keep me at bay. In any case these bland and/or hack endings are an unfortunate footnote to some beautiful internal lines.<div><br /></div><div>Here are two Milly poems.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">The Wind</span></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The wind blows wild across the gray river,</div><div>Against those dusky walls, and through the trees,</div><div>Along the level streets.</div><div><br /></div><div>With the same voice it blows across the sea,</div><div>Across those grassy fields and shadowed vales,</div><div>And down the grey village.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet again when I am nearing sleep,</div><div>I hear it softly blowing through the fields</div><div>And waving grass of youth.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Dorset</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Milly Jourdain</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I know a place where winds blow over wide</div><div>Wet downs, and where the yellow sheep</div><div>Like stars are crowded on a steep hill side;</div><div><br /></div><div>Where palest primroses shine down the lane</div><div>And blue-bells follow after faintly sweet,</div><div>And often all the land is blurred with rain;</div><div><br /></div><div>And when the little trees are cold and bare,</div><div>The lambs do cry like children in the mist,</div><div>And there's no other sound in the damp air.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the dark night, when I lie on my bed</div><div>In this old town of water and gray towers,</div><div>The wandering sheep-bells tinkle in my head.</div><div></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Do you see why I'm getting so frustrated? Because "And when the little trees are cold and bare,/The lambs do cry like children in the mist" is stunning, while "The wandering sheep-bells tinkle in my head" is not stunning.</div><div><br /></div><div>Argh. I don't know why I take her unevenness to heart, but I do.</div>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-73728955474163866562009-12-10T14:20:00.000-05:002009-12-10T14:21:32.957-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; "><h2 class="date-header" style="font: normal normal normal 78%/normal 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4em; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.2em; color: rgb(230, 77, 77); margin-top: 1.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-transform: none; ">First published on December 5, 2009</span><br /></h2><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-bottom: 1.5em; "><div class="post-body entry-content" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Here is today's Milly Jourdain poem, though I'm not sure all this sensitive springtime stuff is good for us at this waning time of the year.<div><br /></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">A Purple Crocus</span></div><div><br /></div><div>A purple crocus like a precious cup</div><div>Shining as silver in the cold grey light,</div><div>Has pushed its way above the winter grass.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hidden, and waiting in it shadowed depths</div><div>Until the sun shall touch the purple brim,</div><div>There is a tender tongue of burning fire.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now the harsh wind has blown the flower down;</div><div>Its eyes are closed, broken its milk-white stem;</div><div>But here, inside my room, it lives again.</div></blockquote><div>There's no doubt that she's got a few too many word bundles (see my <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Olive Kitteridge </span>post on my main blog for more about this): "shadowed depths, "burning fire." The "lives again" ending is rather saccharine. But the first stanza is delicate and lovely; "tender tongue" is also beautiful. If you ran a literary magazine, would you accept this poem? I'm not sure what I would do. Probably I wouldn't. I think I would read it twice, though.</div><div><br /></div></div></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-61391270942469233812009-12-10T14:19:00.001-05:002009-12-10T14:19:54.329-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 13px; "><h2 class="date-header" style="font: normal normal normal 78%/normal 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4em; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.2em; color: rgb(230, 77, 77); margin-top: 1.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-transform: none; ">First published on November 22, 2009</span><br /></h2><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-bottom: 1.5em; "><div class="post-body entry-content" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Perhaps you remember my telling you, a couple of weeks ago, that a journal had rejected my Milly Jourdain essay with the friendly caveat that the editors liked my writing better than hers. Well, an odd thing happened yesterday: I received an email from one of the editors saying that they'd changed their mind; that in fact they couldn't stop thinking about the resurrection of Milly (though they weren't necessarily prepared to admit her into the real-poet club); and could they publish the essay after all?<div><br /></div><div>This hemming-and-hawing exactly parallels my own attraction to Milly. I read Hilary Spurling's biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett; I stumbled over the excerpts from Milly's work; I thought, "Hmm. These aren't bad"; I finished the book and stuck it back onto the bookshelf. But days later, I couldn't quite forget Milly's words, so I took the book back off the shelf and read them again. I cannot argue that her poems are great literature, yet there is something about them--something mysterious and sad, and very fragile--that lingers in the mind. And it seems that this lingering is true for other readers as well.<br /><div><br /></div><div>The story doesn't yet have a happy ending: by the time I'd heard again from the editor, I'd already submitted the essay to a different journal, and I need to wait for that response. But it does seem that, in one venue or another, Milly's story will eventually have a larger readership than this blog.</div><div><br /></div><div>So in celebration of her small voice, here is today's poem:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Unseen Beauty</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Milly Jourdain</span></div><div><br /></div><div>I hear the distant sound of birds</div><div>All singing in the dusk of spring</div><div>Until the air is tremulous,</div><div>And mists about the river cling.</div><div><br /></div><div>It makes me sad to think of all</div><div>The beauty that is still unknown,</div><div>The flowers budding in the night,</div><div>The open fields where winds have blown.</div><div><br /></div><div>The air grows cold, the birds are still,</div><div>And only, in the fading light,</div><div>Along the streets a shivering wind</div><div>Blows from the unseen quiet night.</div></blockquote></div></div></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-9628273339060745472009-12-05T08:50:00.001-05:002009-12-05T08:52:31.186-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; font-size:13px;"><h2 class="date-header" style="font: normal normal normal 78%/normal 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4em; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.2em; color: rgb(230, 77, 77); margin-top: 1.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-style: italic; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-transform: none; font-family:Georgia;font-size:13px;">First published on November 12, 2009</span><br /></h2><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-bottom: 1.5em; "><div class="post-body entry-content" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">I have not posted a Milly Jourdain poem for a while, so this morning I turned to the next page in her book. And alas, it is a bad one. No matter how much slack I want to cut this poem, "smarmy" is the kindest descriptor I can dredge up. Oh well. She was an unformed poet with occasional, accidental, flashes of beauty. I recently received a very kind rejection of the review I wrote about her book <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Unfulfilment,</span> telling me that the editors liked my writing but not hers. Flattering yet depressing. Maybe I want poor Milly to be better than she is.<div><br /></div><div>In any case, here's today's not very exciting submission. Tomorrow I plan to talk about Ted Hughes and perhaps do a bit of language comparison.<br /></div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">A Day in February</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Joan Arden [Milly Jourdain]</span></div><div><br /></div><div>When winter frost has come and gone,</div><div> And spring-like days are near;</div><div>I hear the sweetest noise on earth,</div><div> The bird-songs everywhere.</div><div><br /></div><div>For all day long the thrushes sing,</div><div> Though little green we see,</div><div>And roads are damp, and air is soft,</div><div> And streams flow happily.</div><div><br /></div><div>And still we feel the hidden strength</div><div> Of winter frost and snow,</div><div>That makes the earth all pure and fresh</div><div> For heavenly seeds to grow.</div><div><br /></div><div></div></blockquote></div></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7422974261131357473.post-65812183239913779132009-12-05T08:50:00.000-05:002009-12-05T08:51:09.962-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; "><h2 class="date-header" style="font: normal normal normal 78%/normal 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4em; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.2em; color: rgb(230, 77, 77); margin-top: 1.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; text-transform: none; ">First published on November 12, 2009</span><br /></h2><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-bottom: 1.5em; "><div class="post-body entry-content" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">I have not posted a Milly Jourdain poem for a while, so this morning I turned to the next page in her book. And alas, it is a bad one. No matter how much slack I want to cut this poem, "smarmy" is the kindest descriptor I can dredge up. Oh well. She was an unformed poet with occasional, accidental, flashes of beauty. I recently received a very kind rejection of the review I wrote about her book <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Unfulfilment,</span> telling me that the editors liked my writing but not hers. Flattering yet depressing. Maybe I want poor Milly to be better than she is.<div><br /></div><div>If you're a new blog reader, you may not know that I have sort of resurrected this poet, who in 1924 published one now-forgotten book. You can search the blog for the history of the project; and in fact, I'm wondering if I should collect those posts into a separate linked blog. What do you think?</div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, here's today's not very exciting submission. Tomorrow I plan to talk about Ted Hughes and perhaps do a bit of language comparison.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="line-height: 1.3em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">A Day in February</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Joan Arden [Milly Jourdain]</span></div><div><br /></div><div>When winter frost has come and gone,</div><div> And spring-like days are near;</div><div>I hear the sweetest noise on earth,</div><div> The bird-songs everywhere.</div><div><br /></div><div>For all day long the thrushes sing,</div><div> Though little green we see,</div><div>And roads are damp, and air is soft,</div><div> And streams flow happily.</div><div><br /></div><div>And still we feel the hidden strength</div><div> Of winter frost and snow,</div><div>That makes the earth all pure and fresh</div><div> For heavenly seeds to grow.</div><div><br /></div><div></div></blockquote></div></div></span>Dawn Potterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07500960150846895633noreply@blogger.com0