Yes, those are very, VERY significant oversights, Phil. A return to jealousy, it seems to me.
Without the particulars of the relevant education, I can't speak to 'all-time greatness,' but I feel I can trust the wisdom of those who have it and can. I can also speak to what I love. These are two:
Divinity
Were I a clumsy poet
I'd compare you to Helen;
Ransack the mythologies
Greek, Chinese, and Persian
For a goddess vehement
And slim; one with form as fair.
Yet find none. O, Love, you are
Lithe as a Jew peddler
And full of grace. Such lightness
Is in your step, instruments
I keep for the beholder
To prove you walk, not dance.
Merely to touch you is fire
In my head; my hair becomes
A burning bush. When you speak,
Like Moses I am dumb
With marvelling, or like him
I stutter with pride and fear:
I hold, Love, divinity
In my changed face and hair.
By Irving Layton
From The Selected Poems of Irving Layton
Hugh Kenner, who wrote the Introduction, goes on to comment on these lines. To use an un-analytical term, this poem
WoWs me.
This book came to me as a
VERY appreciated gift from Kevin W.M.LastYearsMan. It's such a well-bound book, I have to struggle to keep it open to the pages I need. I can't even 'crack' it into place, it keeps bounding back to its closed position. I hope I don't wreck it, just trying to quote from it.
Here is another that, whilst speaking of Shakespeare [and I'm glad to see Irving's appreciation of him], reminds me of Shakespeare, for all the ground he covers with regard to man's desire for immortality, through some means, the breath, the written or spoken word, music, or genetics, the passing of the family name, the family business, or others' memories of, hopefully, one's own greatness, to whatever degree the achievement of that was possible. In addition, the hopes one places in one's child as to how
they will, hopefully, impact the world and leave their own, lasting mark. The conflicts that arise from wanting to be a hero and to have given birth to a hero.
As a person raises a child, honesty and truth are paramount in that process. When meeting with his child, his son, at this crossroads, the struggle he was forced to deal with is wrought and forged in the integrity of his words. How life reportedly became, later, with his children doesn't do a thing to minimize the importance of the moments described here. I'm not a parent, but how could a parent not relate to the 'agonies' of these moments and the necessary admissions. The 'growing pains' that come with raising a child. Especially, in this case, a parent who's a poet himself, not just a 'casual' or 'serious' poet, but a poet striving for greatness, to at least leave an indelible mark on his landscape. I see many generations of people's lives in this poem. As 'comparisons' go, I'm reminded of the dealing with 'self' and 'truth' that occurred with the father in "Fiddler on the Roof." Eternal themes in both. For all the times that Irving was accused of insufferable arrogance, he clearly had his times of profound humility. Forced through a child, his own child, to confront his own hopes, dreams, and aspirations for their meaning and significance. Exploring in depth and with humour, one's life purpose within the scope of eternity... bringing Nature and the human condition, desirous of immortality, to bear. I love this poem.
Shakespeare
My young son asks me:
"who's the greatest poet?"
Without any fuss I say, Shakespeare
"Is he greater than you?"
I ho-ho around that one
and finally give a hard "yes."
"Will you ever be greater
than . . . a splatter of lisped S's
and P's . . . ?"
I look up at my son
from the page I'm writing on:
he too wants his answer
about the greatness of Shakespeare
though only six and carefree;
and I see with an amused hurt
how my son has begun to take on
one of those damned eternal fixtures
of the human imagination
like "God" or "Death" or "the start
of the world"; along with these
it'll be with him the rest
of his life like the birthmark
on his right buttock; so as though
I were explaining God or Death
I say firmly without a trace
of ho-ho in my voice: No, I'll never
be greater than William Shakespeare,
the world's greatest poetic genius
that ever will be or ever wuz
hoping my fair-minded admission
won't immediately blot out
the my-father-can-lick-anyone image
in his happy ignorant mind
and take the sine away
that's presently all around my head.
That unclimbable mountain, I rage;
that forever unapproachable star
pulsing its eternal beams from a far
stillness onto our narrow screens
set us up as Palomar libraries and schools
to catch the faintest throb of light.
Damn that unscalable pinnacle
of excellence mocking our inevitable
inferiority and failure
like an obscene finger; a loud curse
on the jeering "beep . . . beeps"
that come from dark silence
and outer galactic space to unscramble
into the resonant signature of
"Full many a glorious morning" or
"The quality of mercy is not strained"
or "Out, out, brief candle . . . "
NO poet for all time, NO poet
till this planet crack into black night
and racking whirlwinds EVER
to be as great as William Shakespeare?
My God, what a calamitous burden
far worse than any horl or incubus:
a tyrant forever beyond the relief
of bullet or pointed steel . . .
What a terrible lion in one's path!
What a monumental stone
in the constrictive runnel of anyone
with an itch to write great poems
-- and poets so cursed beyond all
by vanity, so loused up in each inch
of their angry, comfortless skin
with the intolerable twitch of envy!
Well, there's nothing to be done
about that bastard's unsurpassable
greatness; one accepts it like cancer
or old age, as something that one
must live with, hoping it will prod us on
to alertest dodges of invention
and circumvention, like the brave spider
who weaves his frail home in the teeth
of the lousiest storm and catches
the morning sun's approving smile;
Anyhow there's on saving grace:
that forever smiling damned bastard,
villain, what-have-you, is dead
and no latest success of his
can embitter our days with envy,
paralyze us into temporary impotency,
despair rotting our guts and liver;
yes, though the greatest that ever wuz
or ever will be he's dead, dead,
and all the numerous flattering busts
keep him safely nailed down
among the worms he so often went raving
on about when his great heart burst
and all the griefs of the world
came flooding out. His ghost may wander
like Caesar's into my tent
by this rented lake, and I'll entertain
him; but he must also stand outside
begging for entry when I keep his volume
shut, and then he's out in the cold
like his own poor Lear. And -- well --
there'smy six-year-old son
who says of the clothes flapping
on the clothesline: "Look, they're
scratching themselves," or compares
his mother's nipples to drain-plugs
he says he wishes to pull out, or
tells me the rain is air crying
-- and he only four at the time;
and though I swear I never told him
of Prospero and his great magic
asked me the other day: "Is the world real?"
So who really can tell, maybe one day
one of my clan will make it
and there'll be another cock-of-the-walk,
another kind-of-the-castle; anyway
we've got our bid in, Old Bard.
By Irving Layton
From The Selected Poems of Irving Layton
For his daughter, Naomi:
Song For Naomi
Who is that in the tall grasses singing
By herself, near the water?
I can not see her
But can it be her
Tahn whom the grasses so tall
Are taller,
My daughter,
My lovely daughter?
Who is that in the tall grasses running
Beside her, near the water?
She can not see there
Time that pursued her
In the deep grasses so fast
And faster
And caught her
My foolish daughter.
What is the wind in the fair grass saying
Like a verse, near the water?
Saviours that over
All things have power
Make Time himself grow kind
And kinder
That sought her
My little daughter.
Who is that at the close of the summer
Near the deep lake? Who wrought her
Comely and slender?
Time but attends and befriends her
Than whom the grasses though tall
Are not taller,
My daughter,
My gentle daughter.
By Irving Layton
From The Selected Poems of Irving Layton
Oh, to have been able to hear this one read by him. To have been able to hear any of these read by him. All of them.
For a woman, for a man, for a son, for a daughter... this man knew how to write a tribute. Unswerving passion. They sure feel and resonate as being "GREAT" to me
.
~ Lizzy
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