Today’s poem is a hip-hop interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Lenore” by the nerd rapper (and inspiring young poetry educator) MC Lars.
Click play below to listen. If desired, you can find Lars’ lyrics here, and Poe’s original poem here.
Enjoy.
Ellen
| Spring
Mother tried to take her life. Still, the garden quickened, and sticks and browning fruit, it doesn’t stop, like moonlight, |
Dress Rehearsal
Branches etch the film of ice The ballet master says, you are its mother. cold-wet air, the crow seems molded. I am smoke in darkness, climbing away |
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Hello Friends, I love that these two poems by Chloë Honum appear side-by-side in the November 2009 issue of Poetry magazine. The first line, “Mother tried to take her life,” escapes with the suddeness of a genie that can’t be put back in the bottle, and “Unless” hangs with an awesome sense of vertigo over a stanza break, giving a reader that glimpse into the moment of a child’s terror, staring down a fill-in-the-blank, the abyss of what didn’t happen. It’s the line about daisy chains that perhaps give us the best sense of the age at which the narrator is confronting this terror — that make the narrator small. And yet it’s that same line that sneaks a bit of comforting into this poem with that tiny two-letter subject “we”; this is not an “I” alone. As for “Dress Rehearsal,” being side-by-side with “Spring” infuses the ballet master’s line “you are its mother” with that extra emphasis on the ignorance of adults who know not what they say — what “mother” might mean to this girl. The title “Dress Rehearsal” gets to take on shades of meaning a girl practicing to become a mother, a mother trying but not succeeding at the performance of an act. Falling, falling, practice, practice. It amazes me, in the face of a work as widespread and vividly iconic as Poe’s “The Raven,” another poet in English can come along and write an entirely different poem about a crow appearing to her at a window — that is the magic of poetry; I just love that. And don’t even get me started on the perfect rhyme of that final tableau… Ok, it’s late, and that’s all for now. Best, |
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Hello friends,
Today is a day for reading aloud! You can listen to today’s poem at the following link:
http://bit.ly/basilrathbone
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.
Enjoy!
Ellen
Jabberwocky
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
*
Hello Friends —
Why would I send you a poem that every last one of you is already familiar with? Because some poems ought to be read, aloud, at least once a year — You can think of this practice as akin to the Queen’s practice of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast each morning. I challenge you to read this poem ALOUD to someone else today.
Have you ever thought about what it would mean to translate “Jabberwocky” into another language? Keith Lim has compiled a wonderful collection of “Jabberwocky” translations online. If you shy away from reading this poem aloud because you don’t know how to pronounce half of the words, you can also find Carroll’s own pronunciation guide reproduced on Keith’s site (under “Explanations”). If you shy away from reading this poem aloud because you don’t know what half of the words mean, I refer you to Humpty Dumpty (who can explain all the poems that ever were invented — and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet): “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” In order to read “Jabberwocky” aloud, you simply have to make choosing what you mean each of the poet’s words to mean a more conscious act.
Today’s poem, “Jabberwocky,” from Through the Looking Glass (1872) by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), is dedicated in loving memory to Edgar Lewis (yes, named for Poe and Carroll) — a giant pet white rabbit who hopped freely around on our front lawn for a decade’s worth of easters, entertaining countless neighboring children who finally got to meet the real easter bunny.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
P.S. Frabjous Birthday, Jane Nevins!
“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 19, 2010.