Emily Dickinson on Halloween!

One need not be a Chamber -- to be Haunted --

One need not be a House --

The Brain has Corridors -- surpassing

Material Place --

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting

External Ghost

Than its interior Confronting --

That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,

The Stones a'chase --

Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter --

In lonesome Place --

Ourself behind ourself, concealed --

Should startle most --

Assassin hid in our Apartment

Be Horror's least.

The Body -- borrows a Revolver --

He bolts the Door --

O'erlooking a superior spectre --

Or More --

I don't think Czech artists have a hard time celebrating Halloween!

The best I can do so far for Dickey's 'The Heaven of Animals'

Then the light by the barn again.

William Stafford, Poet Laureate, 1970-1971

The Light By The Barn 

The light by the barn that shines all night
pales at dawn when a little breeze comes.

A little breeze comes breathing the fields
from their sleep and waking the slow windmill.

The slow windmill sings the long day
about anguish and loss to the chickens at work.

The little breeze follows the slow windmill
and the chickens at work till the sun goes down--

Then the light by the barn again.

Picture Missing

 I've been looking for a picture to illustrate James Dickey's poem Heaven of Animals. All I've come across so far are either saccharin or suffocatingly Christian, but I like this game of pictures and poems, so I'll keep looking.

...in Moon’s eyes I see the moon

William Jay Smith, Poet Laureate, 1968-1970

Moon

I have a white cat whose name is Moon;

He eats catfish from a wooden spoon,

And sleeps till five each afternoon.

Moon goes out when the moon is bright

And sycamore trees are spotted white

To sit and stare in the dead of night.

Beyond still water cries a loon,

Through mulberry leaves peers a wild baboon,

And in Moon’s eyes I see the moon.

James L. Dickey, Poet Laureate, 1966-1968

The Heaven of Animals

Here they are. The soft eyes open.   

If they have lived in a wood

It is a wood.

If they have lived on plains

It is grass rolling

Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,   

Anyway, beyond their knowing.   

Their instincts wholly bloom   

And they rise.

The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,   

Outdoing, desperately

Outdoing what is required:

The richest wood,

The deepest field.

For some of these,

It could not be the place

It is, without blood.

These hunt, as they have done,

But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.   

They stalk more silently,

And crouch on the limbs of trees,   

And their descent

Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years

In a sovereign floating of joy.   

And those that are hunted   

Know this as their life,

Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge   

Of what is in glory above them,   

And to feel no fear,

But acceptance, compliance.   

Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,

They tremble, they walk   

Under the tree,

They fall, they are torn,   

They rise, they walk again.

He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. --Psalm 126

...wore at their hearts the fire's center...

Auden - Spender - Isherwood

Stephen Spender, Poet Laureate, 1965-1966

I Think Continually Of Those 

Who Were Truly Great

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

...In my good suit | In the meadow.

Reed Whittemore, Poet Laureate, 1963-1965

Inventory

To pass through the season of loss and emerge with a good suit

Is to thank God

And take inventory.

The season of waiting is slow.

The clouds hang listlessly.

Where the path bends into the woods

From the meadow

The light is a half light,

And one looks to the north to the hills,

Which are blue.

I will carry the meadow view

Back to the city.

But the woods are close. They crowd in officiously,

Shutting the heavens out.

One sits in the sullenness

With spiders.

I think that before I die I would like to live

In my good suit

In the meadow.

Howard Nemerov, Poet Laureate, 1963-1964

A Spell before Winter

After the red leaf and the gold have gone,
Brought down by the wind, then by hammering rain
Bruised and discolored, when October's flame
Goes blue to guttering in the cusp, this land
Sinks deeper into silence, darker into shade.
There is a knowledge in the look of things,
The old hills hunch before the north wind blows.

Now I can see certain simplicities
In the darkening rust and tarnish of the time,
And say over the certain simplicities,
The running water and the standing stone,
The yellow haze of the willow and the black
Smoke of the elm, the silver, silent light
Where suddenly, readying toward nightfall,
The sumac's candelabrum darkly flames.
And I speak to you now with the land's voice,
It is the cold, wild land that says to you
A knowledge glimmers in the sleep of things:
The old hills hunch before the north wind blows.

...mountains marching | Up against dawn with the stars on their shoulders...

Harald Oscar Sohlberg, Winter Night in the Mountains, 1901-02

Louis Untermeyer, Poet Laureate, 1961-1963

The Dark Chamber

The brain forgets but the blood will remember.

      There, when the play of sense is over,

The last, low spark in the darkest chamber

      Will hold all there is of love and lover.

The war of words, the life-long quarrel

      Of self against self will resolve into nothing;

Less than the chain of berry-red coral

      Crying against the dead black of her clothing.

What has the brain that it hopes to last longer?

      The blood will take from forgotten violence,

The groping, the break of her voice in anger.

      There will be left only color and silence.

These will remain, these will go searching

      Your veins for life when the flame of life smolders;

The night that you two saw the mountains marching

      Up against dawn with the stars on their shoulders;

The jetting poplars’ arrested fountains

      As you drew her under them, easing her pain;

The notes, not the words, of a half-finished sentence;

      The music, the silence. . . . These will remain.

...open cold...

Richard Eberhart, Poet Laureate, 1959-1961

The Eclipse

I stood out in the open cold To see the essence of the eclipse Which was its perfect darkness. I stood in the cold on the porch And could not think of anything so perfect As mans hope of light in the face of darkness.

Dauphin Island, Alabama

Just got back from Dauphin Island.  Off-season, it's quiet, people-sparse, and The Dauphin Inn, our B&B, was like being home, but in a mid-century ranch with palms in the front and a fountain with dolphin in the courtyard.  I'm convinced that walking in the surf resets my own saline rhythms, and I come away literally refreshed.

The love of bare November days...

Tom Thomson (August 5, 1877 – July 8, 1917) Canadian Group of Seven

Robert Frost, Poet Laureate, 1958-1959

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
  Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
  She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
  She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grady
  Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
  The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
  And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
  The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
  And they are better for her praise.

And as you cry, Impossible...

Marcel Duchamp Ascending A Staircase

2010
re-constructed photograph 

LOST PICASSO RECREATED IN SWEDISH LAB: Faint Image Recovered From Camera Lens by Hoku Matsui for Science World - April 2010 

What do science and scientists want with Pablo Picasso and the artist's old broken camera? What new revelations could a discarded box camera divulge? Even if it is Picasso’s now-famous camera whose cracked lens some believe led to the artist’s discovery of "planar distortion", or more precisely Cubism? According to its current owner Peter Hallstrom, the answer is "Everything." The camera’s cracked lens caused the facial plane in Picasso’s photo-portraits to be broken themselves, to be raised slightly on one side. Attributes he would soon utilize and transpose to his early sketches and preparatory drawings for the seminal LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON. On name recognition alone, Pablo Picasso is arguably the most famous artist throughout history. He is estimated to have produced over 50,000 artworks. Suddenly, forty years since his death, one final image can be added to that staggering list. Drawing on the most current techniques of spectral microscopy, a fragile photogene has been pulled from the cloudy surface of the cracked lens of Picasso's famous "cubist" camera from the early 1900s. A photogene is a visual image that persists after the source stimulus causing it has ceased to act. Current belief now is that this faint photogene, or, afterimage, survived because it was the last image targeted by the artist with the camera. To everyone’s even greater surprise, assisted by a combination of laser and digital reconstruction, the subject of this last "shoot" is now believed to be that of the equally famous artist Marcel Duchamp climbing a staircase, most likely at a summer home in Cadaqués where both artists were visiting the Pixot family in 1910. How it works: The diagramed mechanics of spectral microscopy combined with black-light fusion to enhance, trace and recreate the "fingerprinted" image left on Picasso's camera lens for 100 years. Courtesy Dr. Åke Neilsen In a letter postmarked from that period, Duchamp wrote: "Picasso is a beast. He is the bull in his drawings. We argued and debated everything from the dating of ancient Greek statues to the definition of art itself. After too much of the local wine, I found my way upstairs late and to bed ... I left early the next morning before anyone had risen." Swedish scientist Åke Neilsen explained that a thin layer of bacteria and fungi coating the lens may have acted as the net to catch the image of Duchamp. After-images or photogenes are now believed to be purely ‘spectral’ manifestations which are not yet colored, disproving the previous claim that real expanses of space, no matter how tiny, can be colored. This explains why the image is in black and white, and not in color as was first hoped. Photogenes are thought to be caused by the temporary decrease of sensitivity of the receptors on the surface of a lens that has been over-stimulated with age and usage. Picasso was known to be an avid photographer during the first half of the last century. At the time of the discovery, the camera was on loan to Detroit’s Museum of New Art and was being used to recreate "cubist" like photographs by the noted Norwegian photographer Stig Eklund. "From its age, the lens appeared quite murky. So I attempted to gently clean it, but soon realized that the milkish shapes were on the inner side of the lens. That’s when we called in Doctor Neilsen and his staff at Bergen University." Because light enters the camera and produces chemical changes in the lens over time, prolonged stimulation by any light source desensitizes portions of the lens. It does not respond as well to this new light input as to earlier exposures when the camera was much newer. This "weakened" area eventually appears as a negative afterimage, a dark milky area that matches the last viewed shape. Depending on usage, the afterimage may remain for 30 seconds or 30 years. This one remarkably remained for a full century. Such negative photogenes do not transfer from the lens to the actual film. This indicates that they are produced on the lens alone, and not in the silver nitrate of the film where the signals would have been fused or superimposed together with newer snapshots. Such a phenomenon is caused by the chemical rhodopsin, found in the rods of certain bacteria, some of which were discovered on Picasso’s camera. Rhodopsin, popularly called visual purple, is a light sensitive chemical composed of vitamin A and the protein opsin. You can use the increased presence of rhodopsin to take "afterimage photographs" of the world even without Picasso’s camera: Cover your eyes to allow them to adapt to the dark. It will take at least 10 minutes to store up enough visual purple to take a "snapshot." When enough time has elapsed, uncover your eyes. Open your eyes and look at a well-lit scene for a split second (just long enough to focus on the scene), then close and cover your eyes again. You should see a detailed picture of the scene in purple and black. After a while, the image will reverse to black and purple. You may take several such "snapshots" after each 10-minute adaptation period. Now imagine removing your hands from your eyes and seeing in front of you the picture of Marcel Duchamp ascending a flight of stairs. For young Eklund, this was the nearest thing "to finding an angel dancing on the head of a pin."

Randall Jarrell, Poet Laureate, 1956-58

Hope

The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.
The week is dealt out like a hand
That children pick up card by card.
One keeps getting the same hand.
One keeps getting the same card.
But twice a day -- except on Saturday --
The wheel stops, there is a crack in Time:
With a hiss of soles, a rattle of tin,
My own gray Daemon pauses on the stair,
My own bald Fortune lifts me by the hair.
Woe's me! woe's me! In Folly's mailbox
Still laughs the postcard, Hope:
Your uncle in Australia
Has died and you are Pope,
For many a soul has entertained
A Mailman unawares --
And as you cry, Impossible,
A step is on the stairs.
One keeps getting the same dream
Delayed, marked "Payment Due,"
The bill that one has paid
Delayed, marked "Payment Due" --
Twice a day, in rotting mailbox,
The white grubs are new:
And Faith, once more, is mine
Faithfully, but Charity
Writes hopefully about a new
Asylum -- but Hope is as good as new.
Woe's me! woe's me! In Folly's mailbox
Still laughs the postcard, Hope:
Your uncle in Australia
Has died and you are Pope,
For many a soul has entertained
A mailman unawares --
And as you cry, Impossible,
A step is on the stairs.

-- from "The Seven League Crutches"
September 7, 1952

If you can bring nothing...

Storm at Sea, Ludolf Backhuysen I (Dutch, 1630-1708)

William Carlos Williams, Poet Laureate, 1952

Dedication for a Plot of Ground

This plot of ground

facing the waters of this inlet

is dedicated to the living presence of

Emily Dickinson Wellcome

who was born in England; married;

lost her husband and with

her five year old son

sailed for New York in a two-master;

was driven to the Azores;

ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,

met her second husband

in a Brooklyn boarding house,

went with him to Puerto Rico

bore three more children, lost

her second husband, lived hard

for eight years in St. Thomas,

Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed

the oldest son to New York,

lost her daughter, lost her "baby,"

seized the two boys of

the oldest son by the second marriage

mothered them—they being

motherless—fought for them

against the other grandmother

and the aunts, brought them here

summer after summer, defended

herself here against thieves,

storms, sun, fire,

against flies, against girls

that came smelling about, against

drought, against weeds, storm-tides,

neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,

against the weakness of her own hands,

against the growing strength of

the boys, against wind, against

the stones, against trespassers,

against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands,

domineered over this grass plot,

blackguarded her oldest son

into buying it, lived here fifteen years,

attained a final loneliness and—

If you can bring nothing to this place

but your carcass, keep out.