Today is World Poetry Day, and since much of the East Coast is housebound from the snow storm, what better excuse to light the candles, pour some tea (or cognac) and enjoy some rhyming verse by Ivy Style’s founder Christian Chensvold and special correspondent G. Bruce Boyer. Both men studied English in college (Boyer even taught it) and began writing poetry around that time.
While at school Chensvold recited poetry (in shirt and tie) at his local cafe, self-published a volume upon graduation entitled “Photos of My Brain,” and had a piece published in Poet Magazine circa 1995. The sonnet below was composed last November, his first composition in two decades (well, save for the Ivy Style photo shoot), and was received with cold indifference by the woman who inspired it.
Boyer’s work has appeared in The Rake. “I don’t write poetry regularly,” he says, “only when I experience something that strikes me as insightful, usually in a psychological way. I tend to agree with Robert Motherwell when he wrote, ‘It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.'” The following poem, entitled “Old Children,” is published here for the first time.
* * *
Old Children
By G. Bruce Boyer
“The tragedy is not that we grow old, but that we don’t.” — Oscar Wilde
Sometimes it seems life’s fated results
Are we never really end up adults.
From childhood to age in one fleet clip,
The years between a blurry trip.
Age has its comforts they say with a smile,
The spirit still strong, though the body turns vile.
We wouldn’t go back, they hasten to say,
Full knowing the choice has been taken away.
But sadder than those are the ones who still know
They haven’t grown old, even clutched in death’s throe.
Wilde got it right, as he so often did,
We just go to the grave with our children well hid.
* * *
To E——
By Christian Chensvold
In the darkest year of my life, the end
of a long-tossing inner tempest,
of stumbling along through crook and bend
without a star to guide me from the forest,
I thought these sullen woods would ever be
my mournful home, full of dragons wise
in torment, but which I came with time to see
were mirages glimpsed through half-shut eyes.
And then lo there shone in the heavens an astral aide
to guide me from gloom with glorious beam,
and I came upon a church, where inside was a maid
whom I’d seen before as if in a dream,
with moonwashed skin and hair to blanket sorrow,
who spoke her name to me, and in doing so,
became real, though still like some damsel of yore,
and in my heart I felt open a long-closed door.
Is it just me, or does it look like the fellow in the painting is wearing a button down collared shirt with french cuffs beneath his dressing gown? Comments upon the substance of this post to come. So far; quite enjoyable!
Kris Kristofferson, “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33”
See him wasted on the sidewalk in his jacket and his jeans
Wearin’ yesterday’s misfortunes like a smile
Once he had a future full of money, love and dreams
Which he spent like they was goin’ out of style
And he keeps right on a-changin’ for the better or the worse
Searchin’ for a shrine he’s never found
Never knowin’ if believin’ is a blessin’ or a curse
Or if the goin’ up was worth the comin’ down
He’s a poet, oh, he’s a picker, he’s a prophet, he’s a pusher
He’s a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned
He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth, partly fiction
Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home
He has tasted good and evil, in your bedrooms and your bars
And he’s traded in tomorrow for today
Runnin’ from his devils Lord, and reachin’ for the stars
And losin’ all he loved, along the way
But if this world keeps right on turnin’, for the better or the worse
And all he ever gets is older and around
From the rockin’ of the cradle, to the rollin’ of the hearse
The goin’ up was worth the comin’ down
He’s a poet, an’ he’s a picker, he’s a prophet, an’ he’s a pusher
He’s a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned
He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction
Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home
There’s a lot of wrong directions, on that lonely way back home
@EvanEverhart: See “Tony Curtis and the French Buttondown”: http://www.ivy-style.com/tony-curtis-and-the-french-buttondown.html
I greatly enjoyed both poems. I hope this won’t be too out of place among poetry by the two accomplished writers featured in this post, but here’s something from me.
Short Poem for Jessica
Why do I linger on the thought of your lips,
as if thinking a moment longer might bring you near.
Or the thought of your eyes,
as if their half concealed smile might ease our time apart.
How can I reason with the vacancy I feel,
reason cannot know the void I endure without you here.
Nor can science know my spirit,
no calculus is enough to measure the changes in my heart.
If I could make genuine the world of dreams,
and within my own mind conjure figures of you, life-like,
I would think myself wise in joy or a fool in love,
though I would count myself contented, and twice-right.
Teasing Tom was a very bad boy,
A great big squirt was his favourite toy
He put live shrimps in his father’s boots,
And sewed up the sleeves of his Sunday suits;
He punched his poor little sisters’ heads,
And cayenne-peppered their four-post beds;
He plastered their hair with cobbler’s wax,
And dropped hot halfpennies down their backs.
The consequence was he was lost totally,
And married a girl in the corps de bally!
Love After Love
-Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
When asked whether he should be considered a poet, Bob Dylan replied: ” “I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man.”
THE SOLDIER
-Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once more, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s breathing English air,
Washed by rivers, blest by sons of home.
And think this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
THE night was thick and hazy
When the ‘Piccadilly Daisy’
Carried down the crew and captain in the sea;
And I think the water drowned ’em;
For they never, never found ’em,
And I know they didn’t come ashore with me.
Oh! ’twas very sad and lonely
When I found myself the only
Population on this cultivated shore;
But I’ve made a little tavern
In a rocky little cavern,
And I sit and watch for people at the door.
I spent no time in looking
For a girl to do my cooking,
As I’m quite a clever hand at making stews;
But I had that fellow Friday,
Just to keep the tavern tidy,
And to put a Sunday polish on my shoes.
I have a little garden
That I’m cultivating lard in,
As the things I eat are rather tough and dry;
For I live on toasted lizards,
Prickly pears, and parrot gizzards,
And I’m really very fond of beetle-pie.
The clothes I had were furry,
And it made me fret and worry
When I found the moths were eating off the hair;
And I had to scrape and sand ’em,
And I boiled ’em and I tanned ’em,
Till I got the fine morocco suit I wear.
I sometimes seek diversion
In a family excursion
With the few domestic animals you see;
And we take along a carrot
As refreshment for the parrot,
And a little can of jungleberry tea.
Then we gather as we travel,
Bits of moss and dirty gravel,
And we chip off little specimens of stone;
And we carry home as prizes
Funny bugs, of handy sizes,
Just to give the day a scientific tone.
If the roads are wet and muddy
We remain at home and study,—
For the Goat is very clever at a sum,—
And the Dog, instead of fighting,
Studies ornamental writing,
While the Cat is taking lessons on the drum.
We retire at eleven,
And we rise again at seven;
And I wish to call attention, as I close,
To the fact that all the scholars
Are correct about their collars,
And particular in turning out their toes.
Charles Edward Carryl
I was particularly struck by Mr. Boyer’s “Full knowing the choice has been taken away.” Wisdom in that poem.
CC seems to have had a breakthrough year. Congratulations!
Christian Chensvold
when it comes to men’s fold
ing of their pocket squares
says it is best to do it naturally, and not put on airs.
A clerihew, for those who were curious.
Clerihew: a short comic verse consisting of two rhyming couplets with lines of unequal length, typically referring to a famous person.
Named after Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), the English writer who invented it. In my opinion Henry deserves the trophy here.