6 Aug 2020: "Caelica 83" by Baron Brooke Fulke Greville

Today (years ago now, ~2016) I finished reading When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. It is a very cool book and I recommend it. He was an English major turned neuroscientist turned cancer patient. The book is a memoir about the author and his obsession with mortality while he raced against time to finish this book before he died. The perspective is very enlightening. Before I finished the book I wrote down many of the poetry references he made. These will be the poems for the first week. They will be about death. What better way to bring poetry to life?

"Caelica 83" by Baron Brooke Fulke Greville

Related Poem Content Details

You that seek what life is in death, 

Now find it air that once was breath. 

New names unknown, old names gone: 

Till time end bodies, but souls none.

            Reader! then make time, while you be,

            But steps to your eternity.

28 Nov: "Key to the Highway" by Mark Halliday

Key To The Highway

I remember riding somewhere in a fast car
with my brother and his friend Jack Brooks
and we were listening to Layla & Other Love Songs
by Derek & the Dominos. The night was dark,
dark all along the highway. Jack Brooks was 
a pretty funny guy, and I was delighted
by the comradely interplay between him and my brother,
but I tried not to show it for fear of inhibiting them.
I tried to be reserved and maintain a certain
dignity appropriate to my age, older by four years.
They knew the Dominos album well having played the cassette
many times, and they knew how much they liked it.
As we rode on in the dark I felt the music was,
after all, wonderful, and I said so
with as much dignity as possible. "That's right,"
said my brother. "You're getting smarter," said Jack.
We were listening to "Bell Bottom Blues"
at that moment. Later we were listening to
"Key to the Highway", and I remembered how
my brother said, "Yeah, yeah." And Jack sang
one of the lines in a way that made me laugh.
I am upset by the fact that that night is so absolutely gone.
No, "upset" is too strong. Or is it.
But that night is so obscure—until now
I may not have thought of that ride once
in eight years—and this obscurity troubles me.
Death is going to defeat us all so easily.
Jack Brooks is in Florida, I believe,
and I may never see him again, which is
more or less all right with me; he and my brother
lost touch some years ago. I wonder
where we were going that night. I don't know;
but it seemed as if we had the key to the highway.

—Mark Halliday

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/161.html

6 Nov: "The Good-Morrow" by John Donne

Donne from the "Whispers of Mortality." This wasn't from the book I read, but it relates to the last two poems. He is a metaphysical poet. Metaphysical poetry was a literary movement in the 1600s. Poets shifted how they expressed themselves. They used exaggerated and grotesque comparisons, often regarding love, religion, and death. Their investigations were through witty and rational discussions versus mystical expressions. A key literary device used by the metaphysical poets was conceits which are symbols beyond their meaning into philosophical symbols. In one sentence, metaphysical poets used crazy metaphors to investigate love, death, and religion in a rational and philosophical manner.


I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

4 Nov: "Whispers of Immortality" by T. S. Eliot

Webster was much possessed by death

And saw the skull beneath the skin;

And breastless creatures under ground

Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls

Stared from the sockets of the eyes!

He knew that thought clings round dead limbs

Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another

Who found no substitute for sense,

To seize and clutch and penetrate;

Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow

The ague of the skeleton;

No contact possible to flesh

Allayed the fever of the bone.

                         .  .  .  .  .

Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye

Is underlined for emphasis;

Uncorseted, her friendly bust

Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar

Compels the scampering marmoset

With subtle effluence of cat;

Grishkin has a maisonnette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar

Does not in its arboreal gloom

Distil so rank a feline smell

As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities

Circumambulate her charm;

But our lot crawls between dry ribs

To keep our metaphysics warm.