The Milly Jourdain Archive

2011-05-23T06:49:00.001-04:00

Dovedale

Milly Jourdain

There comes to me remembrance like a song,
Of slopes and rocks covered with thin brown grass,
And starred with scabious; there with eager hands
Grasping the slippery tufts of weeds, I climbed
To pick the bright red leaves of fading sorrel:
Then down I lay upon a sun-warmed rock,
And heard the shadowed river sing below.

From a Road

Milly Jourdain

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.

Above the line of dark green hedges, beech copses straggle to the top: rooks fly over it and little white clouds.

The short grass is warm and the air is very clear.

For a moment I think I am walking on the hill, stooping and touching the ground with my hands.

But the trailing smell of honeysuckle from the hedge is blown to me, and I know that I cannot stir from the road.

2011-02-12T10:06:00.000-05:00

"With Unbeclouded Eyes."

Milly Jourdain

On these September days of softer light,

When reddened leaves are dropping from the walls,

And in the distant sky are sounds of birds,

And all is wet with dew--

Then I perceive a little of that land,

That land which human voices sometimes fill

With sudden sound; or in the hush of spring,

Or on some summer morning's early peace,

I hear its distant murmur.

And although I strive so hard to hear and see,

All, all is gone like fragments of a dream

Leaving behind a trail of coloured mist

And dim forgetfulness.

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.

2011-01-03T07:41:00.000-05:00

First new post of a new school week:

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!"

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 Prelude 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 Moby-Dick 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.

Here's today's Milly Jourdain poem, which is not at all like the poem I plan to write:

The Blackbird's Song

Milly Jourdain

Among the mists of dawn the blackbird sings
Of rivers running through the fields
And all the fresh young smell of growing things.

He tells of primroses in copses bare
Or clustered on the lonely banks
Breathing a finer fragrance in the air;

Of lilac blossom falling on the ground,
Of little winds and heavenly rain,
And summer nights whose breathing is a sound.

And when the light is spreading down below
He flies away from listeners,
Whose hearts he touched with what they do not know.

I plan to write a poem more like this one:

from The Pleasant Life in Newfoundland (1628)

Robert Hayman

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.

You say that you would live in Newfound-land,
Did not this one thing your conceit withstand;
You feare the Winters cold, sharp, piercing ayre.
They love it best, that have once wintered there.
Winter is there, short, wholesome, constant, cleare,
Not thicke, unwholesome, shuffling, as 'tis here.

One of my favorite things about this poem is the variety of spellings of Newfoundland: in other sections it appears as "New-found-land" and, best of all, "Newfoundland-land." And if you follow the link to Hayman's biography, 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.

2010-10-15T08:09:00.003-04:00

I want to mention Thomas's comment on Wordsworth, which appears after my October 14, 2010, post on my main blog. 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 The Prelude than in Paradise Lost. Thomas writes: "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.

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.)

A Wish

Milly Jourdain

The fog had soaked the field all day

And drops of wet hung on the trees;

Then from the west a sounding breeze

Blew all the quiet fog away.

. . . . . . .

To stand once more upon the crest

And see the earth below me lie

All dim with mist, and watch the sky

Red, as the sun drops in the west.

And in the gleam of dying light

To stretch my hands out to the rain,

And never more be touched with pain

By footsteps in the road at night.

And when I've felt again the best,

And seen the earth grow dark and chill,

To turn my footsteps down the hill

And leave it all in cold and rest.

2010-07-14T10:29:00.000-04:00

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.

So, with an attempt at a fresh start with Milly, I offer you, forthwith, today's poem:

Shadows

Milly Jourdain

Along the winding lane I often walk
Touching the trees--letting the grasses slip
Between my fingers. Seeing bluebells shine
Among the fading primroses. Beyond
The open fields sweet with the smell of spring
Look thro' the gate. And further far away
The fields and hedges lose themselves in mist
And yet it's all a dream. Each long day brings
The perfect images of vanished things.

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 Beloit Poetry Journal's editorial board.

2010-05-09T08:35:00.003-04:00

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.

The Long Night

Milly Jourdain

Sometimes when still the night is dark,
My thoughts go slipping with no will
Like water running down a hill,
Sometimes when still the night is dark.

And when the sky is shining faint
With hope, I listen for that bird
Whose song the earth has always heard
When now the sky is shining faint.

Over the grey fields of dawn
I lie and hear the small birds sing
With rapture in the early spring,
Over the grey fields of dawn.

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 rapture 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.

2010-03-18T07:21:00.003-04:00

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 Alex Chilton. 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.

I will try to cheer myself by thinking of it as the inverse of Malcolm X.

Relief

Milly Jourdain

In the sweet quiet of the early spring
When winds are blowing chill,
I wander, hearing all the songs of the birds
Which once were nearly still.

For then the dull pain had filled my mind, but now
The difference unseen!
The sweet sounds of the birds are sweeter for
The silence that has been.

Randomly chosen passage from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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.

2010-02-23T09:30:00.001-05:00

Here's a Milly Jourdain poem for the last week of February.

Before the Break of Day

Milly Jourdain

The silence of these hours before the dawn
Is like a world beneath the sea
Waiting in a dim, enchanted light
For morning's new felicity.

At last there comes a distant breathless sound
Of bird songs, growing still more near,
Until the air is full of thrilling notes,
The sweetest music men can hear.

But now the rain has washed it all away,
The silent world beneath the sea,
And all the plants are drinking deep of hope
And love of life's immensity.

Another mixed bag, quality-wise. But the underwater comparison is lovely.

2010-02-01T07:38:00.003-05:00

I've just learned that the U.K. journal the Reader 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.

So here's a Milly poem for a snowy Monday morning in the harsh New World. It's called "Fritillaries," which, according to Webster, can be either butterflies or flowers. Regarding the flower, Webster says that fritillaria 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.

Fritillaries

Milly Jourdain

In a flower-seller's basket,
Bunches of fritillaries,
Purple and mysterious
With green and twisted stalks, are lying.

How they wish they still were living
In the wet and open spaces
Where the river winds are blowing,
Far beyond the old, grey city.

Though they stand among some blue-bells,
Still they hold themselves aloofly,
Drooping, with their darkened faces,
Lonely in their secret wildness.

I think this is a beautiful poem. It does bring into question, however, a point-of-view issue that I've long been questioning. According to several poetry-journal editors, some of whom I've spoken to personally, this particular "error" makes a poem unpublishable.

(Have you guessed what it might be yet? Reread the poem, and see if you can find the murderer.)

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.

2010-01-14T07:12:00.001-05:00

Okay, 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.

A Dream Journey

Milly Jourdain

The rain is falling cold and grey,
But spring is in the air;
And thinking of a warmer land
I wish that I were there.

I see around me in the grass,
Like stars of tender blue,
The little crocus growing wild
And making all things new.

I lie upon a sun-warmed hill
And thundering hear the waves below,
A breath from hidden violets
Comes when the wind doth blow.

Anemones with coloured heads
And hidden deep-black eyes
Are growing near the glimpse of sea,
Whose slow noise never dies.

At last I wake in evening light
And hear the sky-larks sing
Above the fields all glistening-wet
And green with early spring.

"The Floods Are Risen . . . "

Milly Jourdain

The great white sea has flooded all the land,
And little waves are blown against the path
With tiny sounds like dry and restless throbs:
A white-sailed boat skims like a frightened moth
Into the dusk: the grey clouds grow darker
And dim the yellow light; we turn and leave
The cold wind blowing on the ruffled sea.

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.

2009-12-28T09:39:00.001-05:00

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.

I arrived home to find a charming Christmas card from a blog-and-Tracing-Paradise 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.

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.

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 why 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.

3. Which leads me to my next point. Unfulfilment 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.

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.

2009-12-21T07:45:00.001-05:00

Lately, 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.

Here are two Milly poems.

The Wind

Milly Jourdain

The wind blows wild across the gray river,
Against those dusky walls, and through the trees,
Along the level streets.

With the same voice it blows across the sea,
Across those grassy fields and shadowed vales,
And down the grey village.

And yet again when I am nearing sleep,
I hear it softly blowing through the fields
And waving grass of youth.

Dorset

Milly Jourdain

I know a place where winds blow over wide
Wet downs, and where the yellow sheep
Like stars are crowded on a steep hill side;

Where palest primroses shine down the lane
And blue-bells follow after faintly sweet,
And often all the land is blurred with rain;

And when the little trees are cold and bare,
The lambs do cry like children in the mist,
And there's no other sound in the damp air.

In the dark night, when I lie on my bed
In this old town of water and gray towers,
The wandering sheep-bells tinkle in my head.

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.

Argh. I don't know why I take her unevenness to heart, but I do.

2009-12-10T14:20:00.000-05:00

First published on December 5, 2009

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.

A Purple Crocus

A purple crocus like a precious cup
Shining as silver in the cold grey light,
Has pushed its way above the winter grass.

Hidden, and waiting in it shadowed depths
Until the sun shall touch the purple brim,
There is a tender tongue of burning fire.

Now the harsh wind has blown the flower down;
Its eyes are closed, broken its milk-white stem;
But here, inside my room, it lives again.

There's no doubt that she's got a few too many word bundles (see my Olive Kitteridge 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.

2009-12-10T14:19:00.001-05:00

First published on November 22, 2009

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?

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.

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.

So in celebration of her small voice, here is today's poem:

Unseen Beauty

Milly Jourdain

I hear the distant sound of birds
All singing in the dusk of spring
Until the air is tremulous,
And mists about the river cling.

It makes me sad to think of all
The beauty that is still unknown,
The flowers budding in the night,
The open fields where winds have blown.

The air grows cold, the birds are still,
And only, in the fading light,
Along the streets a shivering wind
Blows from the unseen quiet night.

2009-12-05T08:50:00.001-05:00

First published on November 12, 2009

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 Unfulfilment, 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.

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.

A Day in February

Joan Arden [Milly Jourdain]

When winter frost has come and gone,
   And spring-like days are near;
I hear the sweetest noise on earth,
   The bird-songs everywhere.

For all day long the thrushes sing,
   Though little green we see,
And roads are damp, and air is soft,
   And streams flow happily.

And still we feel the hidden strength
   Of winter frost and snow,
That makes the earth all pure and fresh
   For heavenly seeds to grow.

2009-12-05T08:50:00.000-05:00

First published on November 12, 2009

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?

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.

A Day in February

Joan Arden [Milly Jourdain]

When winter frost has come and gone,
   And spring-like days are near;
I hear the sweetest noise on earth,
   The bird-songs everywhere.

For all day long the thrushes sing,
   Though little green we see,
And roads are damp, and air is soft,
   And streams flow happily.

And still we feel the hidden strength
   Of winter frost and snow,
That makes the earth all pure and fresh
   For heavenly seeds to grow.

2009-11-23T21:14:00.001-05:00

First published on September 10, 2009

I think this poem is one of Milly's best and that the third stanza is the secret to its success. My question is, Does the stanza also contain a dangling modifier? Or is it grammatically accurate?

Spring in February

Milly Jourdain

A damp wind blew from the west over the frozen ground, and for days a cold mist lay on the earth;

Then the sun shone out on little drifts of snow-drops in the gardens, and a pleasant wind dried the roads.

Coming up the long gray village in the late afternoon, the sound of thrushes singing all round me before the dark fell was like pure water.

And I was made more happy than I can say; and my happiness was like their song.

Now off to feed the greedy little goats and to pickle peppers. I have never pickled peppers before, and I am looking forward to it.

2009-11-22T10:16:00.001-05:00

First published on August 18, 2009

Spring

Milly Jourdain

The gentle earth is waking from her sleep

And mist of early dawn is on the grass,

When through the apples' wintry boughs I see

Beyond the wall a mass of buildings rise.

O could these helpless hands but make a space

To see the distant hills and misty fields,

Where blackbirds sing among the nearer trees,

Like sunlit rivers running over stones.

The earth is stirring in her winter sleep,

Touching the secret life in waking things,

Till flowering trees and singing birds and grass

Shall make the country fresh with youth and hope.

Oh! all this bursting sweetness of the Spring,

And softly pushing life of little things,

And coloured crocus, and the faint fresh scents,

Are so much greater than my heart's dry pain.

Yet still my heart's uneasy when I think

The earth is stirring and I cannot stir,

But only watch the life that surges past,

And lie quite still, and hear the far off sounds.

2009-11-22T10:14:00.000-05:00

First published on August 6, 2009

Why do I feel compelled to mow all the grass (and there is a lot of grass, and all I have is a push mower) before going away for the weekend . . . meaning that I won't even be here to look at the result, which is not much of a lawn anyway but more of a shortish patchy meadow interrupted by gardens?

The gardens, however, are somewhat more fruitful than I expected, given our horrible summer. The red potatoes are late yet mysteriously perfect: not a scab on them. The carrots are strong and straight, despite my stony soil; and the green beans are weighing down the vines. But no tomatoes, no cucumbers. Alas, no gazpacho.

Because I ought to stop wasting time with this writing stuff and go feed goats and make bread, I will give you a Milly poem.

Spring Sickness

Milly Jourdain

The starlings clustered on the trees
Are gurgling in the rain;
From garden beds the white snow slips,
Leaving them bare again.

When shines the sun upon the earth,
And spring is everywhere;
Like Paradise, the apple trees
Are fresh and scent the air.

The spring will come to this gray town,
That stretches to the brink
Of rivers where the trees grow green
And almonds flush with pink.

A wish is mine, so fierce and vain,
A sudden wish to run
Where thrushes sing, and near the hedge
Are celandines in the sun.

To me, this poem is not one of her better efforts. Not only does it lean clumsily on its rhyme scheme, but it's also far more sentimental than her poems usually are. But maybe you like it and can show me why.

2009-11-22T07:54:00.003-05:00

First published on July 26, 2009

Responding to Milly Jourdain's "The Cherwell" and Edwin Ford Piper's "Big Swimming"

I've received several responses to the four water poems I posted on July 23. More people than you might think (and all of them women) dislike Thoreau, though not necessarily for stylistic reasons, while nobody has a cross word to say about Dickinson's eminence. Yet the ones who wrote to me didn't contact me because they wanted to talk about how much they loved Dickinson. Rather, they wanted to say how much they liked either the Piper or the Jourdain poem.

I think that's interesting. For clearly, neither of these poems is stunning. They take no linguistic risks, make no moral or emotional leaps, clarify nothing new. Yet both are full of charm and beauty, in large part, I'm beginning to see, because each qualifies a particular and familiar human reaction within a slightly unfamiliar frame. "Big Swimming" focuses on a weary traveler; "The Cherwell" deals with a person's simultaneous connection-disconnection with the natural world. Everyone can comprehend those themes. And neither poet goes any further with them than to make sure that we understand. Neither shoves us into unexpected corners, as Dickinson does in Poem 520, when she tyrannically manipulates our expectations of power.

Nonetheless, the poems are lovely. I particularly like how Piper gradually adjusts his stanzas, moving from 4 lines, to 6 lines, to 2 lines, to 1. It's a delicate, fluid movement; and in the final stanza, the weight of the traveler's task is stated so quietly and stoically that it took me a moment to understand exactly what the rider will have to do next. Here's the poem again, in case you want to check what I mean:

Big Swimming

Rain on the high prairies,
In dusk of autumnal hills;
Under the creaking saddle
My cheerless pony plods. . . .

Down where the obscure water
Lapping the lithe willows
Sunders the chilling plain--
Rusty-hearted and travel worn--
We set our bodies
To the November flood.

The farther shore is a cloud
Beyond midnight. . . .

Big swimming.

The Jourdain poem is one of my favorites in her book. I tend to like her non-rhyming poems better than her rhyming ones because they allow the clarity of her diction rather than a predictable pattern to control the sound of her lines. And her line breaks are exquisite: for instance, the break between lines 1 and 2. The speaker's point of view is also intriguing: it is nearly, but not quite, objective. Her early phrase "It's good" makes me imagine happiness, but her final line disabuses me of that notion, even as it reiterates happiness in "excellent." Throughout, the word choice is remarkably plain. Jourdain says what she means to say, and what she means to say is as little as possible. In a way, reticence is her favorite literary device:

The Cherwell

This bare bright day of early spring, when still
We feel the touch of winter in the wind,
It's good to watch the river's endless flow
And restless moving of the thin brown twigs;

To see the tree-trunks down in those cold depths,
To hear the rushing sound of wind-swept woods,
And see the yellow foam below the weir,
And wish our life could be as excellent.

I look forward to hearing any other thoughts you have about these poems, or the Thoreau and Dickinson pieces. I found it rather enjoyable to parse out my feelings about the four, which I chose quickly and without planning, except insofar as the Jourdain poem fit into my publishing project. Maybe I'll do this exercise again sometime.

2009-11-22T07:48:00.001-05:00

First published on July 23, 2009

Four water poems, in honor of yet another day. I've marked the authors' death dates so you can see who was more or less contemporaneous with whom. Two women, two men. Two famous writers, two not-famous writers. Three Americans (two New Englanders and a Nebraskan), one Brit. All white, all middle class. What's your conclusion about quality? Maybe I'll give you my opinion tomorrow.

The Cherwell

Milly Jourdain (d. 1926)

This bare bright day of early spring, when still
We feel the touch of winter in the wind,
It's good to watch the river's endless flow
And restless moving of the thin brown twigs;

To see the tree-trunks down in those cold depths,
To hear the rushing sound of wind-swept woods,
And see the yellow foam below the weir,
And wish our life could be as excellent.

I was born upon thy bank, river

Henry David Thoreau (d. 1862)

I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever
At the bottom of my dream.

Big Swimming

Edwin Ford Piper (d. 1939)

Rain on the high prairies,
In dusk of autumnal hills;
Under the creaking saddle
My cheerless pony plods. . . .

Down where the obscure water
Lapping the lithe willows
Sunders the chilling plain--
Rusty-hearted and travel worn--
We set our bodies
To the November flood.

The farther shore is a cloud
Beyond midnight. . . .

Big swimming.

Poem 520

Emily Dickinson (d. 1886)

I started Early--Took my Dog--
And visited the Sea--
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me--

And Frigates--in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands--
Presuming Me to be a Mouse--
Aground--upon the Sands--

But no Man moved Me--till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe--
And past my Apron--and my Belt
And past my Bodice--too--

And made as He would eat me up
As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion's Sleeve--
And then--I started--too--

And He--He followed--close behind--
I felt His Silver Heel
Upon my Ankle--Then my Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl--

Until We met the Solid Town--
No One He seemed to know--
And bowing--with a Mighty look--
At me--The Sea withdrew--

2009-11-22T07:46:00.000-05:00

First published on July 14, 2009

This week's Milly Jourdain poem:

The Thrush

Milly Jourdain

The pale grey light is spreading in the sky,
   And on the ground, until
I see the shining drops on grass and trees
   And all is soft and still.

The quiet earth is only half awake,
   And still breathes peacefully;
A thrush's voice fills all the waiting air
   Pure, cold as is the sea.

Not the triumphant song of spring which makes
   The wood so full of praise,
But a sweet sound, and fitful, fresh as rain,
   To lighten winter days.

2009-11-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

First published on July 3, 2009

Time, I think, for another Milly Jourdain poem. I'm beginning to have some thoughts of approaching a publisher about reprinting Milly's work in book form. But who knows if I'll actually bring myself to take that leap.

Restriction

Milly Jourdain

There is a finer freshness in the air
When winter days are lengthening and mild,
And notes of birds are still most pure and rare.

The yellow sun is dying in a haze
Of burning light; making the buildings blue,
And through a window by a street I gaze.

I stand no more beneath an open sky.
My life is cramped and hedged around, I see
Its narrowness, and hear the passers-by.

Yet as the window-panes grow dark and blurred,
O give me still a certainty of faith,
To know men's lives are not unseen, unheard.

2009-11-14T12:58:00.001-05:00

First published on June 24, 2009

Here is this week's Milly Jourdain poem:

January

The winter sunlight when it gleams
   So cold and fair;
Makes silver rivers of the roads
   All straight and bare,
And singing birds in misty trees
   Are no more dumb,
They sing of warmer days; I wish
   That they would come.

2009-11-14T09:42:00.001-05:00

First published on June 12, 2009

A few days ago, I received, with great pleasure, an email from biographer Hilary Spurling about my review of Milly Jourdain's forgotten 1924 poetry collection Unfulfilment. I hope she will not mind my sharing a few of her thoughts:

"You & I are almost certainly her only living readers, and we think alike. Re-reading her poems--the ones I quoted, & the ones you did--makes me sure we're right. A faint kinship in her neatness & low tone, & her sentiment or lack of it, with Emily Dickinson, don't you think? 'tiny sounds like dry and restless sobs' or the drifting rain & trailing smoke of dreams in 'Watching the Meet'. Of course she was always a guttering flame & soon snuffed out--you are the only reader who ever mentioned her to me--and I can't tell you how glad I am you did--and to know that pale flame burns again in Maine."

But today Hilary and I are not Milly's only living readers because you've read a few of her poems too. And Hilary wonders if I should, once a week or so, post one or another of her poems here. Maybe I'll do that, and maybe I'll also post them in their published order. It seems like a small gift to Milly and also, I hope, a small gift to Hilary, who first recognized their worth.

Unfulfilment

Milly Jourdain

I know too late how fluently my bow
Should skim the strings, my fingers giving birth
To living notes which sound about my ears
And make a heavenly music, though on earth.

And still I see how clearly shines the light
On winter branches, how the dripping rain
Deepens the colours on the hills, and how
To draw those horses plodding up the lane.

I know too late; my hands can do no more;
All powerless upon my lap they lie.
Only my sense of colour and of sound,
And biting pain, increases till I die.

2009-11-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

First published on May 29, 2009

Received Milly Jourdain's poems in the mail, and they are breaking my heart. More anon, because I am writing a review of them. Somebody has to. But I'll give you a poem:

Watching the Meet

Joan Arden [Milly Jourdain]

The air is still so new and fresh and cold,
It makes a warm excitement in our hearts
To drive beside the sad and lonely fields.
And now we see a wider space of road
Where groups of horsemen moving restlessly
Are waiting for the quiet-footed hounds.
The hounds come swiftly, covering the way
Like foaming water surging round our feet.
And then with cries and sound of cracking whips
All, all are gone: the distant beat of hoofs
Like trailing smoke of dreams, comes fitfully
To tell how near they were a moment past.
But we see only winter trees again,
And turning homewards meet a drifting rain.

Update: Well, I wrote the review at manic speed, in the space of three hours. Now I don't know what to do with it. Who publishes reviews of obscure, out-of-print poetry collections? I'll send it to you to read, however, if you'd like to see it.

2009-11-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

First published on May 26, 2009
A discovery: Midway through Hilary Spurling's biography of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, I began to run across scraps of poems by a woman named Melicent Jourdain. Known as Milly, she was the youngest sister of Ivy's companion, Margaret Jourdain. Both were also siblings of the mathematician Philip Jourdain. Like Philip, Milly was crippled and eventually killed, at age 44 (oddly enough, my own age at the moment), by Friedrich's ataxia, a hereditary form of multiple sclerosis characterized by childhood onset and rapid progress.

On the Internet, I found one copy of Milly's poems available, which I have ordered: a first edition, published in 1924 and titled Unfulfilment, under the pen name "Joan Arden." For this first edition (by which the seller means "only edition"), said to be in excellent condition, I am paying a mere 30 dollars. Apparently there is not a run on this book.

From the bits and pieces quoted in Spurling's biography, I can only say that Milly may be a quiet poet, but her eye and the purity of her diction are notable, as this tiny excerpt shows:

O only once to loose my hold, and slip
Down the familiar bank, and feel the chill
Of water lapping round my feet, and hear
The sounds of distant music in the wind.

I expect to be disappointed by her book, yet I'm hopeful also. Something about those lines moves me, rather as John Clare can move me, almost in spite of myself.

Really: look at this stanza . . . what could be more beautiful?

And still I see how clearly shines the light
On winter branches, and how the dripping rain
Deepens the colour on the hills, and how
To draw those horses plodding up the lane.