Literature moment: Thomas Hardy

Currently I am reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles--book review to come next week. But when I was reading the intro to the novel, there was a piece of biographical information that brought back to mind my studies of Thomas Hardy in my British Literature survey course I was required to take at University. Oddly enough it wasn't Hardy's novels that we studied--but his poetry. Before he made a name for himself as a novelist with books such as The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure, he started out with poetry. His poems weren't originally well received, and so he turned to fiction, with great success--until the "scandalous" nature of his last two novels, Tess and Jude, created such an uproar of Victorian sensibilities that he turned from fiction back to poetry. He was a famous Victorian era novelist--and became a famous twentieth century poet, who inspired the likes of T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden (also favorites of mine). Because poetry isn't generally read as widely as fiction nowadays, I wanted to share a couple of my favorite Hardy poems. I think it is such a shame that his poetry isn't as well known as his novels, because that "bifurcation" of his career, from Victorian novelist to twentieth century poet is for me both brilliant and intriguing. The first poem, "Neutral Tones," was an early poem, published in 1898. I love the stark images, the ominous tone, the line, "alive enough to have strength to die," sends chills down my spine every time I read it. Pure brilliance. The second poem was written in 1914, is about WWI, and references in the title a line from Jeremiah 51:20, "Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms."

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing. . . .

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
and wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.



In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

Babies Make Things Shorter

I've been writing more poetry since I got pregnant. I haven't suddenly become more abstract or sentimental, but I do have less time. So . . . novel writing has become short moments while feeding the baby or while he's napping, and brainstorming has turned to verse.

Here are a few that I've been working on recently. There is music that accompanies the lullaby--ask Randy and he'll sing it for you. That being said, I may have to tweak some of the verse to make the music fit. The last selection is something I actually wrote a while ago in a poetry class, but I ran across it the other day and it made me smile. Feel free to add any (constructive) criticism, as I am not part of any writing groups at the moment and could use any feedback available. (That means you, Krystal!)


Bavarian Winter

Looking back now
I see two people standing there
holding hands in the rain.
It's hard to know now
whether we were coming, going
meeting once more to try again
or parting

I only remember a vague uneasiness
a chill in the street lamp, settling over
the pavement and me and you--

But your hands were warm
like the last long evenings of summer
or the times when we laughed
over all the stupid games we played
in the kitchen, over steaming pots
and pasta

I don't remember how or when
things changed
Just the seasons of wind and ice
and too late springs
the long lazy summers apart
but still we waited.

Holding hands on other streets
in other mists
Your hands warming mine
Laughter caught in the damp air
around our faces

Wesley's Song

hands so small
eyes so bright
you hold my heart
as I hold you tight

I would protect you
from every harm
cuddle you close
through every storm

So sleep my love, till
with the dawn above
the sun will shine through
the warmth of my love

Small awkward smiles
rain down on me
The sweetest rewards
are given for free

Darkness will come
but you need not fear
I will be there
to dry every tear

So sleep my love, till
with the dawn above
the sun will shine through
the warmth of my love


My Sexy Little German Man

"Bring a little German home with you,"
He said, with a wry smile
And eyes that laughed at his own jest
The over-used joke between us was not so funny
Anymore, but merely one more way to say
I love you.
I pictured comical hats and lederhosen
On a miniature man
Waiting on some cobblestone boulevard
Hip jutted out, eyes scanning the street
Like some elfin hooker, looking for a date
With me.
When I came home that night, I forgot
To bring the German--
What I brought instead was half-Italian,
One quarter Irish, an eighth French
And all mine.

The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument

The Spirit is too blunt an instrument

to have made this baby.
Nothing so unskillful as human passions
could have managed the intricate
exacting particulars: the tiny
blind bones with their manipulating tendons,
the knee and the knucklebones, the resilient
fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae
in the chain of the delicate spine.


Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescent
fingernails, the shell-like complexity
of the ear with its firm involutions
concentric in miniature to the minute
ossicles. Imagine the
infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections
of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments
through which the completed body
already answers to the brain.


Then name any passion or sentiment
possessed of the simplest accuracy.
No, no desire or affection could have done
with practice what habit
has done perfectly, indifferently,
through the body's ignorant precision.
It is left to the vagarities of the mind to invent
love and despair and anxiety
and their pain.


--Anne Stevensen

Translation

The soul is too terrible a device
to have created
this language. Untongued, reckless,
Wildly optimistic--
unseen forces of will, desire, and abject
Sensibility. Can you, my friend
understand me? I think not--
for I, in all my years of careful
Study and tedious reasoning
make out very little.
I can only speak to your obvious
heartache with my
Abstractions of experience, poor tools
and I am left
with only tears to answer your questioning pain.
I comprehend your joy
through a kaleidescope of colors
and lights and bits of liminal bliss--
Waiting to be shattered in the
Silence between.
You speak--and I listen.
But only my heart, with its
gentle fears, and hopes, and universal suffering
can begin to understand.

-A.J.

A Road Less Traveled

Randy and I have been talking a lot lately about what we want out of life, where we want to go, how we want to approach family/careers etc. The conclusion we arrived at is that we don't want normal lives--or perhaps we just weren't built for them. Both of us are pretty restless and maybe we want too much . . . I don't know. In any case, I doubt very much that either of us will ever hit the corporate track, at least not any time soon.
To this end, we made some decisions. First off, Randy is looking for a job that doesn't involve sitting at a computer all day calling people trying to sell them credit help. He got several new piano students as well. Both of us are still working at Credit Attorney on Saturdays, so at least we can be miserable together! With all of this set, Alicia is taking the next couple of months until Randy starts up school again to write the "next great American novel." We know we are young and probably insane, but it seemed like the best time to do something off the beaten track. That said, my free-spirit still dreads disappointing family expectation, on both sides. But in four or six months if my novel doesn't sell, then I can still go back and get one of those careers everybody talks about. I just want the chance to succeed or fail--failure doesn't even mean that much to me as long as I had the chance. Most people who want to write don't because they never get around to it, and I didn't want that to be the reason I was never published. If I'm not good enough, fine. But I at least need the time to see that.
So, there you have it. We may be a couple of crazies, but hopefully we are lovable ones. As to the progress of the novel so far . . . I have a working title, a preliminary outline, and characters sketched out. I have to admit that I have the most wonderful husband in the world. Not many men would be so supportive of my crazy need to do this, and Randy is so supportive of my dreams. Before we got married I read him my favorite poem by Yeats as a model of how I want our interactions to be:

Had I the heavens embroidered cloths
Enwrought with golden and silver light
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I being poor have only my dreams
I have spread my dreams under your feet
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.