Poets on Poets Blog

Aaron Anstett reads "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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In this installment, Aaron Anstett reads “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Anstett is the author of Sustenance and No Accident, selected by Philip Levine for the 2004 Backwaters Press Prize. In his introduction, Levine wrote, "Aaron Anstett's No Accident is here for anyone who needs to replenish the belief that American poetry is as healthy and useful as it ever was." Anstett has held fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. He currently lives in Colorado.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

I

THE AWFUL shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us,—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
Like memory of music fled,—
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery

II

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?

III

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given—
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone—like mist o’er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.

IV

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers’ eyes—
Thou—that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not—lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

V

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard—I saw them not—
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

VI

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the envious night—
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou—O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.

VII

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past—there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm—to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

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Joshua Weiner reads "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802" by William Wordsworth

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In this installment, Joshua Weiner reads “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802” by William Wordsworth. Weiner’s collections of poetry include The World's Room (2001) and From the Book of Giants (2006). He was a Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellow in Literature at the American Academy in Rome and his writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nation, Best American Poetry, and The Threepenny Review. He currently lives in Washington, DC.

William Wordsworth, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802"

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

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Robert Thomas reads "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" by John Keats

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In this installment, Robert Thomas reads “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats. Thomas’s Door to Door (Fordham University Press, 2002) was chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa as the winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize.  He received a 2003 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his poem "Quarter Past Blue" appeared in the 2004 Pushcart Prize anthology.  His most recent book of poems, Dragging the Lake, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press.  He has an MFA from Warren Wilson College. He and his wife live in South San Francisco.  Learn more about Thomas's work here.

John Keats, "On first looking into Chapman's Homer"

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

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Ira Sadoff reads "London" by William Blake

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In this installment, Ira Sadoff reads “London” by William Blake. Sadoff is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Grazing and Barter. He is also the author of a novel, Uncoupling, and The Ira Sadoff Reader (poems, stories, and essays). His work has been widely anthologized, appearing in both The Harper Anthology of American Literature and St. Martin's Introduction to Literature; he has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA and has taught at the University of Virginia, the Iowa Writer's Work Shop, and the M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College. Currently, he teaches at Colby College and is a core faculty member at New England College's low-residency M.F.A. program. For more information on his work, see here or here.

William Blake's "London"

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

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Marie Harris reads "Song from Pippa Passes" by Robert Browning

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In this installment, Marie Harris reads “Song from Pippa Passes” by Robert Browning. Harris, New Hampshire Poet Laureate 1999-2004, is a writer, teacher, editor, and businesswoman. In 2003, she produced the first-ever gathering of state poets laureate. She has served as writer-in-residence at elementary and secondary schools throughout New England, and has written freelance articles for publications including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Hampshire Sunday News, and Corvette Fever. She is the author of four books of poetry--the most recent of which being Your Sun, Manny: A Prose Poem Memoir--and is the editor of several poetry anthologies. She has written two books for children: G is for Granite: A New Hampshire Alphabet, and Primary Numbers: A New Hampshire Number Book. In 2003, Harris was named Library Trustee of the Year by the New Hampshire Library Trustees Association. Currently, she is working on a project involving America's first woman composer, Amy Beach.

Robert Browning, "Song from Pippa Passes"
["The year's at the spring"]

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!

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Johanna Drucker reads "Stanzas" ["Could Love for ever"] by George Gordon, Lord Byron

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In this installment, Johanna Drucker reads “Stanzas" [“Could Love for ever”] by George Gordon, Lord Byron. Drucker is an artist and writer known for her experimental books of visual poetry and typography. She has written and published widely on topics related to the aesthetics of visual language, contemporary art, digital humanities, and the history of design and typography. Her creative publications are in special collections in libraries and museums in the United States and Europe. Her most recent titles include A Girl's Life (with Susan Bee, Granary), Quantum (Druckwerk), Emerging Sentience (with Brad Freeman), and From Now (Cuneiform Press, due in Fall 2005). She recently published Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity (University of Chicago Press). She is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Stanzas"
1
Could Love for ever
Run like a river
And Time's Endeavour
Be tried in vain,
No other Pleasure
With this could measure
And like a Treasure
We'd hug the chain.
But since our sighing
Ends not in dying
And formed for flying
Love plumes his wing,
Then for this reason
Let's love a Season,
But let that Season be only Spring.--

2
When lovers parted
Feel broken-hearted,
And all hopes thwarted
Expect to die,
A few years older
Ah! how much colder
They might behold her
For whom they sigh;
When linked together
Through every weather
We pluck Love's feather
From out his wing;
He'll sadly shiver
And droop forever
Without the plumage that sped his Spring. --

3
Like Chiefs of Faction
His Life is Action,
A formal paction,
Which curbs his reign,
Obscures his Glory,
Despot no more, he
Such Territory
Quits with disdain.
Still--still--advancing
With banners glancing
His power enhancing
He must march on;
Repose but cloys him,
Retreat destroys him,
Love brooks not a degraded throne!--

4
Wait not, fond Lover!
Till years are over,
And then recover
As from a dream.
While each bewailing
The other's failing
With wrath and railing
All hideous seem;
While first decreasing
Yet not quite ceasing,
Pause not--till teazing
All passion blight;
If once diminished
His reign is finished,
One last embrace then, and bid Good Night!

5
So shall Affection
To recollection
The dear connection
Bring back with joy,
You have not waited
Till tired and hated
All passions sated
Began to cloy.
Your last embraces
Leave no cold traces,
The same fond faces
As through the past,
And Eyes the Mirrors
Of your sweet Errors
Reflect but Rapture not least though last.

6
True! Separations
Ask more than patience--
What desperations
From such have risen!
And yet remaining,
What is't but chaining
Hearts, which once waning
Beat 'gainst their prison;
Time can but cloy Love,
And Use destroy Love,
The winged Boy Love
Is but for boys.
You'll find it torture
Though sharper, shorter,
To wean and not wear out your Joys.

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Johanna Drucker reads "Stanzas to [Augusta]" by George Gordon, Lord Byron

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In this installment, Johanna Drucker reads “Stanzas to [Augusta]” by George Gordon, Lord Byron. Drucker is an artist and writer known for her experimental books of visual poetry and typography. She has written and published widely on topics related to the aesthetics of visual language, contemporary art, digital humanities, and the history of design and typography. Her creative publications are in special collections in libraries and museums in the United States and Europe. Her most recent titles include A Girl's Life (with Susan Bee, Granary), Quantum (Druckwerk), Emerging Sentience (with Brad Freeman), and From Now (Cuneiform Press, due in Fall 2005). She recently published Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity (University of Chicago Press). She is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Stanzas to [Augusta]"

1

Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

2

Then when nature around me is smiling
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling
Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion
It is that they bear me from thee.

3

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd
To pain--it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn--
They may torture, but shall not subdue me--
'Tis of thee that I think--not of them.

4

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake,--
Though trusted, thou didst not betray me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.

5

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one--
If my soul was not fitted to prize it
'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

6

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

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Bill Berkson reads "So we'll go no more a roving" by George Gordon, Lord Byron

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In this installment, Bill Berkson reads “So we’ll go no more a roving” by George Gordon, Lord Byron. Berkson is a poet, art critic, and professor of Liberal Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute. His books of poetry include Serenade, Fugue State, a collection of his 1960s collaborations with Frank O'Hara entitled Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings, and Gloria (with etchings by Alex Katz). The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, a selection of his criticism, appeared from Qua Books in 2004.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, "So, We'll Go no More a Roving"

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

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Bill Berkson reads "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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In this installment, Bill Berkson reads “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Berkson is a poet, art critic, and professor of Liberal Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute. His books of poetry include Serenade, Fugue State, a collection of his 1960s collaborations with Frank O'Hara entitled Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings, and Gloria (with etchings by Alex Katz). The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, a selection of his criticism, appeared from Qua Books in 2004.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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Bill Berkson reads "She walks in Beauty" by George Gordon, Lord Byron

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In this installment, Bill Berkson reads “She walks in Beauty" by George Gordon, Lord Byron. Berkson is a poet, art critic, and professor of Liberal Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute. His books of poetry include Serenade, Fugue State, a collection of his 1960s collaborations with Frank O'Hara entitled Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings, and Gloria (with etchings by Alex Katz). The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, a selection of his criticism, appeared from Qua Books in 2004.

George Gordon, Lord Byron "She walks in Beauty"

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

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