25. Music, when soft voices die

This poem by Shelley... I found it first on an lp my parents had, Vincent Price (!) reads Shelley.

I've always felt it had a kinship with Bécquer's: "Los suspiros son aire..."

It was my Platonic idea of the perfect lyric poem.

24. Los jardines

I should warn you before I post this line, that it gave me serious ear-worm once, for an extended period of time:

"de muchas tardes, para siempre juntas."

The last line of Jorge Guillén's poem "Los jardines" is "Sí, tu niñez, ya fibula de fuentes." Lorca took that line and used it as the beginning of another poem, which has nothing at all to do with Guillén. The line's meaning is completely altered by the new context.

I have the 1928 Cántico checked out of the library. It is the 1st edition and it is going to live with me in the office indefinitely, if I have to renew it 80 times. This should be in the rare book room, but my efforts have failed.

23. Las ascuas

Las ascuas de un crepúsculo morado...

I remember precisely when I read this poem by Machado, trying to puzzle it out in my deficient Spanish. My dad who knew no Spanish, overhearing me discuss it with a classmate of mine, suggested that the capitalized "Amor" was a statue of cupid. I was 17.

22. Tal vez la mano en sueños

Tal vez la mano, en sueños,
del sembrador de estrellas,
hizo sonar la música olvidada

como una nota de la lira inmensa,
y la ola humilde a nuestros labios vino
de unas pocas palabras verdaderas.

I'm sorry. There are poems so great, that I remember the emotion I read them with in 1977 and still feel that way today. The best poetry of Machado, Lorca, and Hernández almost makes me feel physical pain.

Compare to Bécquer: "Yo sé un himno gigante y extraño."

21. Los suspiros son aire...

Los suspiros son aire y van al aire;
las lágrimas son agua y van al mar;
dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida
¿sabes tú adónde va?

Here's a perfect little poem by Bécquer. My rule for this series is only to include poems I have memorized. I'm quoting here from memory so I made up my own punctuation.

20. My father in downtown red...

This is a chorus from Mexico City Blues. There's a point in this book where Kerouac hits his stride and can do no wrong.

My father in downtown red
walked around like a shadow
of ink black, in hat, nodding,
in the immemorial lights of my dreams.

One of the lines I like the most is "straw hat, newspaper in pocket, liquor on the breath, barbershop shine." It just defines an image through four associated facts.

19. Oh rose thou art sick

Oh rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the Howling storm...

I know that I've known this poem since high school. I may have had to rememorize it once, but that consisted of looking at it briefly.

18. La encina

La encina, que conserva más un rayo
de sol que todo un mes de primavera,
no siente lo espontáneo de su sombra,
la sencillez del crecimiento, apenas
si conoce el terreno en que ha brotado.
Con ese viento que en sus ramas deja
lo que no tiene música, imagina
para sus sueños una gran meseta.
Y con qué rapidez se identifica
...

This 3rd section of Don de la ebriedad still blows my mind. I've re-learnt it many times since I first read it in the 80s to do my dissertation.

17. Caminante, son tus huellas

Here's another one I've known for a long time. "Caminante, son tus huellas / el camino, y nada más." A. Machado.

This poem is extraordinary because if its redundancy. It uses about 10 times more words than necessary to make its point, but this is actually a good thing here.

16. Flowers by the sea

Here's another poem I memorized when I wrote about it in graduate school. I also included it in my first published article. I still think that's a good article.

15. Nothing in that drawer

This poem is by Ron Padgett. It is that line, "Nothing in that drawer.", repeated 14 times. A kind of sonnet?

14, Iris (WCW)

A burst of iris so that come down for breakfast we searched through the rooms for the sweetest odor and at first could not find its source...

I wrote about this poem in my first published article and have not forgotten it. Its dynamism come in part from line breaks, but I don't bother to re-memorize those, in this particular case.

13. Nothing Gold can Stay

This is a poem I disagree with, but it is a perfect little machine of a poem. Nature's first green is gold / Her hardest hue to hold..." It is hard not to memorize it once you hear of it.

It is true that nothing gold can stay, but I still don't like the way the poem cuts off possibilities. Pretty much my 50s have been my best decade so far.

12. No Second Troy

Yeats here is talking about Maud Gonne. Since there was no second Troy for her to burn, she had to do her damage to Irish politics and to the poet's heart: why should I blame her that she filled my days / with misery, or that she would of late / have taught to ignorant men most violent ways..." The disgust against poor people arising against their betters is palpable. Her mind is "simple." She is simple-minded, not through lack of intelligence, but because her purpose is singular, uncomplicated. Her beauty is stern like a bended bow.

11. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

This I always associate with "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought." They have the same argument. When I am feeling blue, I think of you. Yet the emotional tone is completely different. In one, the poet is wallowing in self-reflective grief, revisiting grievances from the past that should have been put to rest already. In the other, he is besieged by current self-doubt.

10. "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought..."

Everyone should know this Shakespeare Sonnet. I used to think Proust was thinking of it when he named his sequence of novels "Remembrance of Things Past." Later I learned that this was the translator's contribution. But, really, that sounds better than "In Search of Lost Time," in English that is.

For the series, I'm trying not to list poems I once knew and have forgotten, but poems that I have permanently memorized, a much smaller subset.

9. The Jungle

I wrote a paper about WCS's "The Jungle" in grad school for Al Gelpi. Of course I memorized the poem, and I still know it, though I think I had to re-learn it at some point, complete with line breaks. "It is not the still weight of the trees, the breathless interior of the wood, tangled with wrist-thick vine, the flies, reptiles, the forever fearful monkeys, screaming and running, in the branches..."

I remember I went to the rare book room and compared the original periodical publication of the poem with the final version.

When you forget a poem, a technique for remembering it is to not think about it too much, the word that you have forgotten, just see if you tongue provides it at the right moment.

8, Breakfast

This poem by WCW is unforgettable:

Twenty sparrows
on

a scattered
turd

share and share
alike


For some reason it is not as famous as the wheelbarrow. Ah well.

7. When you are old and gray and full of sleep and nodding by the fire take down this book and slowly read and dream ...

This poem by Yeats is also easy to memorize. I probably learned it 18 years ago. It is based on another by Ronsard:

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille réveillant,
Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.

Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos :
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

6. Prologue to Henry V

Oh for muse of fire, etc...

I performed this at the Spanish dept. talent show recently. I learned it probably 19 years ago. It is a hymn to the imagination. It also works fine as a prologue to the play.