Robert Pinsky: 2017 Poetry Colloquium

Robert Pinsky at
Poetry Colloquium (3-9-2017)
Robert Pinsky

2017 Colloquium

Terrace Room (4th floor),
Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg 460
Stanford University

Thursday, March 9, 2017, 11 am
Edited by Peter Y. Chou
WisdomPortal.com

Robert Pinsky at
Poetry Colloquium (3-9-2017)

Preface: The 2017 Mohr Visiting Poet, Robert Pinsky gave a Poetry Reading on January 25, 2017, where he read ten poems. His Colloquium originally scheduled for February 22 was postponed to March 9. I got the 9:53 am Bus #40 at Rengstorff to Showers Drive; got the 10:16 am Bus #522 to Palo Alto Train Depot; The Palm XPress "P" Shuttle usually gets to the Oval in 9 minutes. However after 10:03 am, "P" Bus goes to the Medical Center & gets to the Oval in 21 minutes. So the 10:25 am "P" Bus got to the Oval at 10:40 am. The Terrace Room on the 4th floor was not packed, and I got a seat in the 3rd row. Eavan Boland asked Pinsky to talk about Yvor Winters, so he did that. Pinsky said he came to Stanford 40 years ago as a Stegner Fellow in Graduate School. He felt he was a hot-shot poet from East Coast. He showed his poems to Yvor Winters, who said "There's a gift here, but you're so ignorant! Nobody could write great poetry who has not read that much." Winters was not interested in Pinsky's reading all the contemporary poets, but has no idea of 16th century British poets such as Fulke Greville (1554-1628) George Gascoyne (1535-1577) Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) (Queen Elizabeth I's lover & later beheaded). Pinsky read from John Williams English Renaissance Poetry (2nd Edition, 2016) When this book first came out in 1963, Yvor Winters sued Williams & Doubleday for stealing his ideas. He was furious. It was an interesting and informative anecdotal seesion as Pinsky told stories of his early studies at Stanford. Pinsky signed the 8x10 photo t hat Bill Morrison took of him and me together 10 years ago. The free luncheon didn't have their usual sandwiches, salad with tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, olives, fancy lettuce; thin noodles & spinach leaves dish, curry egg-shaped muffin, lemon juice.

Robert Pinsky: Eavan Boland, Director of Stanford's Creative Writing Program, asked me to talk about my poetry experience at Stanford 40 years ago with literature and Yvor Winters (1). I came to Stanford as a Stegner Fellow (1963) around the time of the Birmingham Church Bombing (September 15, 1963). I sent two checks, mine and Yvor's to Birmingham, Alabama, in support of rebuilding the Church. There were two things on his wall— a portrait of Herman Melville and a poster of California Wine (?) (Poem: "In Praise of California Wine")

Yvor Winter's "A Summer Commentary" Poet's Choice
(By Robert Pinsky, Washington Post, 7-3-2005)

When I was young, with sharper sense,
The farthest insect cry I heard
Could stay me; through the trees, intense,
I watched the hunter and the bird.

Where is the meaning that I found?
Or was it but a state of mind,
Some old penumbra of the ground,
In which to be but not to find?

Now summer grasses, brown with heat,
Have crowded sweetness through the air;
The very roadside dust is sweet;
Even the unshadowed earth is fair.

The soft voice of the nesting dove,
And the dove in soft erratic flight
Like a rapid hand within a glove,
Caress the silence and the light.

Amid the rubble, the fallen fruit,
Fermenting in its rich decay,
Smears brandy on the trampling boot
And sends it sweeter on its way.

from The Giant Weapon (1943) by Yvor Winters, New Directions
It's like drinking Keats' "beaded bubbles" "Ode to a Nightingale"

Yvor Winters literature criticisms of the 1950s are still read today. I came to Stanford from the East Coast, thinking I was a great poet already, not knowing Yvor Winters. He looked at my poems and said "There's a gift here, but you're so ignorant!" [Pinsky noted: "Nobody ever called me ignorant before."]

Winters: "What have you read before 20th century?"I mentioned Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman. But he asked if I had read the Medieval poets. I told him on reading Andrew Marvell & John Donne. Winters said "Nobody could write great poetry who has not read the 16th century British poets."

Winters offered "History of the Lyrics" class in the fall and it was too late to take the course. However, I impressed him with my ardor, and he gave me his syllabus. Winters was 63 years old at the time. He wanted me to read the 16th century British poets— Thomas Wyatt [1503-1542] and George Gascoigne [1535-1577].

What they do with their lines is purity of a foreign idiom, not found in the poems of Allen Ginsberg, Alan Dugan, Allen Tate, or Philip Levine. Here there was psychology and powerful ideas. The next year, I audited Winters' "History of Lyrics" class.

John Williams wrote English Renaissance Poetry (1963). Winters denounced the book, saying Williams stoled his syllabus.
In Poetry Magazine (February 1939 issue), there's an essay by Yvor Winters. . He gave us a sticker suing Doubleday for publishing Williams' book. I wrote the Preface to The New Anthology of John Williams, English Renaissance Poetry: A Collection of Shorter Poems from Skelton to Jonson (2016) published by New York Review Books Classics.

I'm not sure whether John Williams has met Winters. His novel Stoner (book character's name) is like a battle in The Iliad—
a story of a farm boy who goes to an Agriculture School, but got interested in English literature and embraces a scholarly life. His Augustus won the 1973 National Book Award. It contains letters from Horace and Seneca. His Butcher's Crossing (1960) is a novel about cowboys of the West, on buffalo hunt, and stranded up in the mountains. Anecdotal framing of Yvor Winters and John Williams.

I gave my English 192 class Sir Walter Raleigh's poem "Nature, That Washed Her Hands in Milk"

Nature, that washed her hands in milk
And had forgot to dry them,
Instead of earth took snow and silk
At Love's request, to try them
If she a mistress could compose
To please Love's fancy out of those.

Her eyes he would should be of light,
A violet breath, and lips of jelly,
Her hair not black nor over bright,
And of the softest down her belly:
As for her inside, he'd have it
Only of wantonness and wit.

At Love's entreaty, such a one
Nature made, but with her beauty
She hath framed a heart of stone,
So as Love, by ill destiny,
Must die for her whom Nature gave him,
Because her darling would not save him.
But Time, which Nature doth despise,
And rudely gives her love the lie,
Makes hope a fool and sorrow wise,
His hands doth neither wash nor dry,
But, being made of steel and rust,
Turns snow and silk and milk to dust.

The light, the belly, lips and breath,
He dims, discolors, and destroys,
With those he feeds (but fills not) Death
Which sometimes were the food of Joys:
Yea, Time doth dull each lively wit,
And dries all wantonness with it.

O cruel Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.

Pinsky Commentary on Slate (Nov. 29, 2011)
How poets like Walter Raleigh reported on the quick flickers and sudden changes in emotional life.
[also in Pinsky's Singing School (2013), pp. 100-101]

This poem is written in a plain and ornate style (Petrarch),
used trope (figure of speech), no odor penetrating into rock,
"Nature washes her hands in milk and forgot to dry them" (fancy metaphor)
Monosyllables slow poem down. Polysyllables speed poem up.

"Turn silk and milk to dust.
shuts up the story of our days."

This poem is a lesson in style— he divides the line asymmetrically,
Raleigh was the boyfriend of the Queen [Elizabeth I] and beheaded [by King James I for treason, 1618].

Fulke Greville [1554-1628] has a 6-line poem in his Caelica 83
You that seek what life is in death
Now find it air that once was breath:
New names unknown, old names gone,
Till time end bodies, but souls none.
Reader! then make time, while you be,
But steps to your eternity.

Pinsky's commentary
[also in Pinsky's Singing School (2013), p. 132]

I've distributed two handouts of Greville's poems—
Caelica 56:
Pinsky's Commentary (Slate, March 17, 2009)

All my senses, like beacon's flame,
Gave alarum to desire
To take arms in Cynthia's name
And set all my thoughts on fire:
Fury's wit persuaded me,
Happy love was hazard's heir,
Cupid did best shoot and see
In the night where smooth is fair;
Up I start believing well
To see if Cynthia were awake;
Wonders I saw, who can tell?
And thus unto myself I spake:
"Sweet God Cupid, where am I,
That by pale Diana's light,
Such rich beauties do espy,
As harm our senses with delight?
Am I borne up to the skies?
See where Jove and Venus shine,
Showing in her heavenly eyes
That desire is divine.
Look where lies the milken way,
Way unto that dainty throne,
Where while all the Gods would play,
Vulcan thinks to dwell alone."
I gave reins to this conceit,
Hope went on the wheel of lust;
Fancy's scales are false of weight,
Thoughts take thought that go of trust.
I stepped forth to touch the sky,
I a God by Cupid dreams;
Cynthia, who did naked lie,
Runs away like silver streams,
Leaving hollow banks behind
Who can neither forward move,
Nor, if rivers be unkind,
Turn away or leave to love.
There stand I, like Arctic pole,
Where Sol passeth o'er the line,
Mourning my benighted soul,
Which so loseth light divine.
There stand I like men that preach
From the execution place,
At their death content to teach
All the world with their disgrace.
He that lets his Cynthia lie
Naked on a bed of play,
To say prayers ere she die,
Teacheth time to run away.
Let no love desiring heart
In the stars go seek his fate,
Love is only Nature's art.
Wonder hinders Love and Hate.
None can well behold with eyes
But what underneath him lies.

Greville is going to a married woman's house, he sees a naked woman
in the moonlight, and thinks he's in heaven— all his senses are set on fire.
He uses "dainty throne" [line 22] instead of vagina or genitals
"Conceit" [line 25] is like ship of love, temple of love.
It's like a male peacock telling the female
"I'm so elegant and you don't want to go to bed with me."
"Fancy" [line 27] is inner sense (imagination). Reason is the outer sense

"Teacheth time to run away" [line 47] refers to "Ars morales"
In the crudest way, don't do your celebration, until you're on top of her.
Greville has better source than Adrienne Rich or Allen Ginsberg.
Picasso and Braque looking at Japanese papers and African masks
inspired them to invent a new art [of cubism in early 1900s].

My first book was titled Sadness and Happiness (1975).

George Gascoigne [1535-1578] wrote "Woodmanship"
address to his patron [Lord Grey of Whilton]
When I hit something, it was a pregnant doe.
"There stood a doe, and I should strike her dead,"

Gascoigne: "The Lullaby of a Lover" [1572]

Sing lullaby, as women do,
Wherewith they bring their babes to rest,
And lullaby can I sing too
As womanly as can the best.
ith lullaby they still the child,
And if I be not much beguiled,
Full many wanton babes have I
Which must be stilled with lullaby.

First lullaby my youthful years;
It is now time to go to bed,
For crooked age and hoary hairs
Have won the haven within my head.
With lullaby, then, youth be still;
With lullaby content thy will;
Since courage quails and comes behind,
Go sleep, and so beguile thy mind.

Next, lullaby my gazing eyes,
Which wonted were to glance apace.
For every glass may now suffice
To show the furrows in my face;
With lullaby then wink awhile,
With lullaby your looks beguile;
Let no fair face nor beauty bright
Entice you eft with vain delight.
And lullaby, my wanton will;
Let reason's rule now reign thy thought,
Since all too late I find by skill
How dear I have thy fancies bought;
With lullaby now take thine ease,
With lullaby thy doubts appease.
For trust to this: if thou be still,
My body shall obey thy will.

Eke lullaby, my loving boy,
My little Robin, take thy rest;
Since age is cold and nothing coy,
Keep close thy coin, for so is best;
With lullaby be thou content,
With lullaby thy lusts relent,
Let others pay which hath mo pence;
Thou art too poor for such expense.

Thus lullaby, my youth, mine eyes,
My will, my ware, and all that was.
I can no mo delays devise,
But welcome pain, let pleasure pass;
With lullaby now take your leave,
With lullaby your dreams deceive;
And when you rise with waking eye,
Remember then this lullaby.

In "Lullaby and Laughter", Pinsky writes about the strange appeal
of George Gascoigne's self-inspecting humor (Slate, May 3, 2011)
[also in Pinsky's Singing School (2013), pp. 139-140]
Dante: Evil is an absence; Darkness is absence of light energy.
It's a self-inflicted wound;

Greville's Caelica 100:
"Down in the depth of mine iniquity,
the faithless doom to desperations;
Deprived of human graces not divine,
Even there appears this saving God of mine."

Even in the darkest soul, Grace is infinite.

Gascoigne didn't know how to sulk up to people.
He bought fancy clothes to impress others,
instead of bribes that would have been better.

Ending of Gascoigne's "Woodmanship":
"Methinks it saith, old babe, now learn to suck,
Who in thy youth coulst never learn the feat
To hit the whites which live with all good luck.
Thus have I told my Lord (God grant in season)
A tedious tale in rhyme, but little reason."

Pinsky's Colloquium ended promptly at Noon.