 Poetry: May 01, 2013 Issue [#5649] |
  Poetry
This week: John Crowe Ransom Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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Painted Head
by John Crowe Ransom
By dark severance the apparition head
Smiles from the air a capital on no
Column or a Platonic perhaps head
On a canvas sky depending from nothing;
Stirs up an old illusion of grandeur
By tickling the instinct of heads to be
Absolute and to try decapitation
And to play truant from the body bush;
But too happy and beautiful for those sorts
Of head (homekeeping heads are happiest)
Discovers maybe thirty unwidowed years
Of not dishonoring the faithful stem;
Is nameless and has authored for the evil
Historian headhunters neither book
Nor state and is therefore distinct from tart
Heads with crowns and guilty gallery heads;
Wherefore the extravagant device of art
Unhousing by abstraction this once head
Was capital irony by a loving hand
That knew the no treason of a head like this;
Makes repentance in an unlovely head
For having vinegarly traduced the flesh
Till, the hurt flesh recusing, the hard egg
Is shrunken to its own deathlike surface;
And an image thus. The body bears the head
(So hardly one they terribly are two)
Feeds and obeys and unto please what end?
Not to the glory of tyrant head but to
The estate of body. Beauty is of body.
The flesh contouring shallowly on a head
Is a rock-garden needing body's love
And best bodiness to colorify
The big blue birds sitting and sea-shell cats
And caves, and on the iron acropolis
To spread the hyacinthine hair and rear
The olive garden for the nightingales.
Dead Boy
By John Crowe Ransom
The little cousin is dead, by foul subtraction,
A green bough from Virginia's aged tree,
And none of the county kin like the transaction,
Nor some of the world of outer dark, like me.
A boy not beautiful, nor good, nor clever,
A black cloud full of storms too hot for keeping,
A sword beneath his mother's heart—yet never
Woman bewept her babe as this is weeping.
A pig with a pasty face, so I had said,
Squealing for cookies, kinned by poor pretense
With a noble house. But the little man quite dead,
I see the forbears' antique lineaments.
The elder men have strode by the box of death
To the wide flag porch, and muttering low send round
The bruit of the day. O friendly waste of breath!
Their hearts are hurt with a deep dynastic wound.
He was pale and little, the foolish neighbors say;
The first-fruits, saith the Preacher, the Lord hath taken;
But this was the old tree's late branch wrenched away,
Grieving the sapless limbs, the shorn and shaken.
On April 30, 1888 Minister John James Ransom and his wife Ella Crowe Ransom welcomed son John Crowe Ransom into their family. The Ransom’s lived in Pulaski, Tennessee. The couple had five children together with John being the middle child. John went to school in Nashville at Bowen Preparatory School, where he excelled in his classes. He started at Vanderbilt University at the age of 15. John became a Rhode Scholar at University College, Oxford in 1910. In 1914 John accepted an instructorship in English at Vanderbilt.
Ransom first volume of poetry “Poems about God” was published in 1919. During Ransom time teaching he began the method of teaching: close analysis of individual texts with emphasis on the uses of language. This method was used in the teaching of literature in American colleges and universities for close to thirty years. Ransom spent most of his career teaching at Vanderbilt and writing in his spare time. He was called into active duty during World War I and did a short term at the University of Grenoble. In 1922 Ransom and fellow group of writers began to publish the “Fugitive” a magazine that last 19 issues and published Ransom volumes of poetry “Grace after Meat” in 1924 and “Chills and Fever” in 1925. “Two Gentlemen in Bonds” was published in 1927 and contained Ransom best poems, “Dead Boy,” “Blue Girls,” Janet Waking,” and “Vision by Sweetwater.”
Ransom went on to write “In God without Thunder,” in 1930 followed by in "I’ll Take My Stand that same year. A lot of Ransom works focused on his religious ideas and his views on the Old South. He focused on farming, family, respect for the way things used to be, and an appreciation for the world and art. In 1936 Ransom wrote and published an article “Who Owns America,” followed by his poetic theory ”The World’s Body,” in 1938 and “The New Criticism ,” in 1941.
In 1937 Ransom accepted his final teaching position at Kenyon College in Gambier Ohio. While teaching there he founded the Kenyon Review. Ransom was editor for the Kenyon Review from 1939-1959, where he published great works from other southern writers such as Andrew Lytle, Randall Jarrell, Caroline Gordon, and Flannery O'Connor. John Crowe Ransom died July 2, 1974.
Prelude to an Evening
by John Crowe Ransom
Do not enforce the tired wolf
Dragging his infected wound homeward
To sit tonight with the warm children
Naming the pretty kings of France.
The images of the invaded mind
Being as the monsters in the dreams
Of your most brief enchanted headful,
Suppose a miracle of confusion:
That dreamed and undreamt become each other
And mix the night and day of your mind;
And it does not matter your twice crying
From mouth unbeautied against the pillow
To avert the gun of the same old soldier;
For cry, cock-crow, or the iron bell
Can crack the sleep-sense of outrage,
Annihilate phantoms who were nothing.
But now, by our perverse supposal,
There is a drift of fog on your mornings;
You in your peignoir, dainty at your orange cup,
Feel poising round the sunny room
Invisible evil, deprived and bold.
All day the clock will metronome
Your gallant fear; the needles clicking,
The heels detonating the stair's cavern
Freshening the water in the blue bowls
For the buck berries, with not all your love,
You shall he listening for the low wind,
The warning sibilance of pines.
You like a waning moon, and I accusing
Our too banded Eumenides,
While you pronounce Noes wanderingly
And smooth the heads of the hungry children.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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Fire place burnt till the wee hours of silence,
Familiar red hot cinders, crackling fire diminished.
O little Maiden, my unheard voice is whispering to you.
People believe walls have no hearts,
Yet I feel your pure silent pain.
Sword in one hand, knife blade on the other,
You must be an unknown warrior.
Your dancing shadow tells me your story,
I embrace them within these four walls,
Exactly how they capture portraits in halls.
When you ponder over life near my blessed window,
Mister spider sometimes enjoins you in goodness.
You gaze at the night sky, filled with celestial bodies.
Tonight, the candle wax turns red in your blood.
Once again, I whisper the word "endure" in your ears.
You lie down restlessly in that cosy bed,
Then you stare right through me.
With a blink or two,
You paint poetry with those mysterious eyes.
I get mesmerized instantly as I dissolve in your storm.
Scattered grey words everywhere,
Save me, forgive me, love forgotten,
Poignant, motionless, catastrophe,
Beloved, mortals, eternity,
And I can’t reminisce what else.
Soft morning rays diminished the daunting night,
I wait for your true love to break me down,
Brick by brick.
For I vowed your future shall not be bleak,
You have to see the horizon, least take a peek.
Kept you long in these four walls,
Fallen in love with your divine soul.
Now it is time for you to shine,
As I shiver upon my destruction.
O dear maiden of my world,
You spread nothing but euphoria.
I will remember your poetry,
Just keep these four walls,
That were your shield in your memory,
For only they know your untold story.
Honorable mention:
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These are the rules:
1) You must use the words I give in a poem or prose with no limits on length.
2) The words can be in any order and anywhere throughout the poem and can be any form of the word.
3) All entries must be posted in your portfolio and you must post the link in this forum, "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] by May 24, 2013.
4) The winner will get 3000 gift points and the poem will be displayed in this section of the newsletter the next time it is my turn to post (May 29, 2013)
The words are:
shore, wild, mouth, futile, stains, gaze, mask, tender
 Good luck to all
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