Mr. Martin's lines transported me to childhood, adolescence and early manhood. My childhood was spent among Dominican nuns in the days before cape, coif, veil, habit and ponderous beads were replaced by the modern fashion of blue jeans and tee shirts. I remember them in their somber, black capes, kneeling in the first rows before the altar at 7:00 a.m. mass. I studied with them and was pruned and shaped under the tender mercies of modern day daughters of the Inquisition.
When I was nineteen I returned to visit an old nun whom I had loved. She received me in a little reception room with two arm chairs and small mahogany tables that showed no sines of use or wear. The room was a living diorama of the election of silence and solitude. At the end of my visit, Sr. Hildegarde took me into the nuns' small chapel, where we knelt in the soft lighting, and shared a prayer. I bever saw her again after that day. Later I found that she had died nine years later. Mr. Martin's poetry evoked memories of that last meeting in the dim lighting and sweet scent of bee's wax candles. No lark was there, only the invisible, silent comfort of a Paraclete that I had left in the shadows of another day.
Mr. Martin ponders the tension between thought and deed. His poem drew me into the silence that bridges memory and reflection.
Mr. Martin has a singular voice and style. I feel like it may take some getting used to, but once it all settles one, there is a sense that this poet has a very distinct voice that is uniquely his.
And he's not afraid to get philosophical in his verse in his own original way.
David, I read your words on Mr. Martin's poetry. While I would not care to remark on the "meaning" of his poems, especially Communion, I will venture a few remarks on aspects of diction in Communion, and their grounding in our poetic lexicon. Of course I only do so with the proviso that my remarks are mostly subjective and reflect what may seem an idiosyncratic approach.
Mr. Martin's woodlark, a cousin of the more frequently seen and heard skylark, is described in his poem as "fruitless." But perhaps the poems of English poets who have celebrated this woodland creature (among them Smart, Burns and Hopkins) are fruit enough for this gentle creature. I am particularly fond of Robert Burns' s summoning of the woodlark. Its plaintive yearning does not seem alien to the meditative strains of Mr. Martin's poem. In both Burns and Martin the bird, in keeping with the woodlarks of tradition, sings a song of plaintive yearning. For Burns the song is one of heartbreak. Mr. Marttin's bird is 'fruitless," but perhaps because of spiritual unrest than from the prodding of Venus. Here is Burns:
Address To The Wood-Lark.
By Robert Burns
Tune - "Where'll bonnie Ann lie."
I.
O stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay!
Nor quit for me the trembling spray;
A hapless lover courts thy lay,
Thy soothing fond complaining.
II.
Again, again that tender part,
That I may catch thy melting art;
For surely that would touch her heart,
Wha kills me wi' disdaining.
III.
Say, was thy little mate unkind,
And heard thee as the careless wind?
Oh, nocht but love and sorrow join'd,
Sic notes o' woe could wauken.
IV.
Thou tells o' never-ending care;
O' speechless grief and dark despair:
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair!
Or my poor heart is broken!
--------------
Here is Mr. Martin's text:
Communion
a nun takes the veil
The mist is frugal, and the forest green
and shady, where thin slats of sunlight weave
that sort of blind which leaves most eyes wide open.
Some sort of woodlark sings from high above
its “fruitless” song, which echoes even in
the depths of every shadow, like a bell
to summon every belle to ecstasy.
I too obey. And line up under one
abandoned pine, to take my cue from thyme
itself, whose scent envelops me in incense,
till each fresh tree seems like some monstrous feast.
They’re not! They’re only trees. (And even I
am only human.) - Please forgive me, lord,
for every crime I’ve mimed, but not committed.
***********
Right off I was struck by the prominence in the poem of the frugal mist and
the juxtaposition with the richness of the green forest. In scripture mist can be a symbol of abundance and generation (Genesis) or of hesitance and doubt (James).
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. KJV Genesis 2:6.
For what is your life? A smoke appearing at a little time, and afterward it shall be wasted. Wyc James 4:14
If we look to the Greco-Roman ground from which springs so much of our poetry and the vocabulary and imagery which is passed down over so many centuries that their origins, esoteric significance and universal mythopoeiesis survive in accretions of mutability and varying layers of conscious and often fortuitous interchange, we find for mist, rain and dew much of the same generative force encountered in Genesis. In the Rig Veda the gods of rain clouds do with their strength as a husband does with his seed (5.58.7). In Anth. Pal. 10.45, the epigrammatist Palladas uses a word, rhanis, for semen. Rhanis, literally a 'drop,' signifies moisture or water from the sky. In Anth. Lat.1.2.179-180, venae et anima fessula/eiaculant tepidum rorem niveis laticibus (veins and tired spirit/gush warm dew in snow white milk.
But what of the mist that is frugal? This last word is part of an etymological group rooted in the Latin words fruor, to enjoy, frux, fruit of the fields, and frugalis, pertaining to fruits, ripened, temperate, provident, etc. So it seems that the mist, which in the ancient conceit, issued from the heavens, is fruitful and provident, and impregnates the earth and the green forest.
And it appears that we may close the circle by a return to some sort of woodlark and
its “fruitless” song, which echoes even in
the depths of every shadow, like a bell
to summon every belle to ecstasy.
The woodlark, a rarer bird than it's cousin, the skylark, sings it's song which echoes like a bell, summoning every belle, every embodiment of beauty in flesh, to an ineffable ecstasy which seems distinct from Eros.
At this point the poet enters into the ritualized procession. As the knelling bells ring out for the belles, our poet sacralizes this moment in time/thyme with the pungent aroma of thyme, the fragrance of sacred, ritualized time. In the end he steps back through the curtain, through the veil , through the frugal mist, into the Silenus of his humanity, and utters a final meditative couplet that encompasses the narrow, paradoxical gap between reflection and act, between perhaps longing and gratification. The poem closes with this enigma:
Wow! I feel overwhelmed. To be taken so seriously by 'il miglior fabbro'. You've no idea what this means to me...
The 'fruitless' by the way was intended ironically. To most perhaps the song would be of little significance, but to the elect, of course, it means a great deal. Not that I am that familiar with its song.
For this post? Or for the others which are from the journals and/or archives?
The way Substack works, the latest posts are free, but if you want access to the full archive ie, the complete journals and/or 4 years of publication, then yeah, you might have to subscribe and pay a whopping $7/month or just get a year subscription.
Perhaps that does mean Mammon rules… The only question is for who?
I’d much prefer to support culture than, say, the drug, alcohol, military or other industrial complexes.
I’d like to think we’re a little more creative and diverse than the leading establishment mouthpieces who’ve done nothing but defend the security state and Wall Street bankers. And basically just lie and weave fables (with no moral) for a living.
No Carnegie, Guggenheim or Mellon endowments here lol.
Martin, your poetry floats like incense along paths of light and shadow, never quite touching the ground. I somehow lost your comment about my poems being published in the Aug. Hyper Texts. I owe it to you for your recommending my work to Michael. He is an amazing editor and a few subtle changes made a big difference in the quality of my work. Many Thanks. Bobby
The poet has some nice lines but gets bogged down in wordiness, in my opinion. Poets should avoid overuse of do-nothing words like "that/which" and "and." Also, repetition of words like "even," which begin to seem like like the poet straining. I suggest:
The mist is frugal, [ ] the forest green and shady,
where thin slats of sunlight weave
[blinds] which [leave] most eyes wide open.
Some sort of woodlark sings from high above
its “fruitless” song, which echoes [down]
the depths of every shadow, like a bell
[summoning] every belle to ecstasy.
I too obey, [ ] line up under [an] abandoned pine,
[taking] my cue from thyme itself,
whose scent envelops me in incense,
till each fresh tree seems like some monstrous feast.
They’re not! They’re only trees. ([While] I
am only human.) - Please forgive me, lord,
for every crime I’ve mimed, but not committed.
Again, some nice lines, but one would hope for cleaner execution.
I prefer to keep to a strict iambic pentameter. In other words I prefer to work within tradition. And in a way that relates the heartbeat to the breath. I'm not particularly interested in writing telegrams. I also like a certain amount of elbow-room. Wasn't it Walt Whitman who even went so far as to favour positive sprawl? As much as I appreciate discipline it should never be such that it makes either you, or the reader, uncomfortable. There should be a feeling of ease and relaxation, rather than uptightness. A poem should be a playground for the mind to wander in, not a prison to be chained up in. The muse may be exacting, but she is never cruel.
Also I believe in 'contrast of opposites, balance and variety' since I suspect that this is what constitutes the essence of beauty. And balance above all is of the very essence of poetry. And the finer that balance the better.
One possible contrast is between words that 'do nothing' and words that do a very great deal indeed. I hope I make full use of this opposition in all my work. Indeed, in this context, words that 'do nothing' can sometimes do even more than those words that do a very great deal.
A rigid adherence to arid rules smacks of idolatry, and can only get in the way of true communion. Any rule should be rooted in an overarching (and long-cogitated) theory of poetic composition, which in its turn is rooted in extensive practice, as well as in a comprehensive philosophy of life.
Purely arbitrary rules are worse than valueless.
Time-and-motion studies should really have no place in poetry. Which after all, as Keats pointed out, is the fruit of indolence. And also because they leave no room for extravagance of gesture. Not even the occasionally utterly appropriate V-sign.
From Communion, I get the impression the newly veiled nun has fallen prey to unchaste fantasies among all those arboreal erections. Glad she didn't try to mount one. Some horrific Goya drawings came to mind, will spare you the particulars.
Poetry suggests to me you won't feel deprived if you receive no love letters.
The word play’s a delight
That veils a deeper bite
Mr. Martin's lines transported me to childhood, adolescence and early manhood. My childhood was spent among Dominican nuns in the days before cape, coif, veil, habit and ponderous beads were replaced by the modern fashion of blue jeans and tee shirts. I remember them in their somber, black capes, kneeling in the first rows before the altar at 7:00 a.m. mass. I studied with them and was pruned and shaped under the tender mercies of modern day daughters of the Inquisition.
When I was nineteen I returned to visit an old nun whom I had loved. She received me in a little reception room with two arm chairs and small mahogany tables that showed no sines of use or wear. The room was a living diorama of the election of silence and solitude. At the end of my visit, Sr. Hildegarde took me into the nuns' small chapel, where we knelt in the soft lighting, and shared a prayer. I bever saw her again after that day. Later I found that she had died nine years later. Mr. Martin's poetry evoked memories of that last meeting in the dim lighting and sweet scent of bee's wax candles. No lark was there, only the invisible, silent comfort of a Paraclete that I had left in the shadows of another day.
Mr. Martin ponders the tension between thought and deed. His poem drew me into the silence that bridges memory and reflection.
Mr. Martin has a singular voice and style. I feel like it may take some getting used to, but once it all settles one, there is a sense that this poet has a very distinct voice that is uniquely his.
And he's not afraid to get philosophical in his verse in his own original way.
That's always nice!
David, I read your words on Mr. Martin's poetry. While I would not care to remark on the "meaning" of his poems, especially Communion, I will venture a few remarks on aspects of diction in Communion, and their grounding in our poetic lexicon. Of course I only do so with the proviso that my remarks are mostly subjective and reflect what may seem an idiosyncratic approach.
Mr. Martin's woodlark, a cousin of the more frequently seen and heard skylark, is described in his poem as "fruitless." But perhaps the poems of English poets who have celebrated this woodland creature (among them Smart, Burns and Hopkins) are fruit enough for this gentle creature. I am particularly fond of Robert Burns' s summoning of the woodlark. Its plaintive yearning does not seem alien to the meditative strains of Mr. Martin's poem. In both Burns and Martin the bird, in keeping with the woodlarks of tradition, sings a song of plaintive yearning. For Burns the song is one of heartbreak. Mr. Marttin's bird is 'fruitless," but perhaps because of spiritual unrest than from the prodding of Venus. Here is Burns:
Address To The Wood-Lark.
By Robert Burns
Tune - "Where'll bonnie Ann lie."
I.
O stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay!
Nor quit for me the trembling spray;
A hapless lover courts thy lay,
Thy soothing fond complaining.
II.
Again, again that tender part,
That I may catch thy melting art;
For surely that would touch her heart,
Wha kills me wi' disdaining.
III.
Say, was thy little mate unkind,
And heard thee as the careless wind?
Oh, nocht but love and sorrow join'd,
Sic notes o' woe could wauken.
IV.
Thou tells o' never-ending care;
O' speechless grief and dark despair:
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair!
Or my poor heart is broken!
--------------
Here is Mr. Martin's text:
Communion
a nun takes the veil
The mist is frugal, and the forest green
and shady, where thin slats of sunlight weave
that sort of blind which leaves most eyes wide open.
Some sort of woodlark sings from high above
its “fruitless” song, which echoes even in
the depths of every shadow, like a bell
to summon every belle to ecstasy.
I too obey. And line up under one
abandoned pine, to take my cue from thyme
itself, whose scent envelops me in incense,
till each fresh tree seems like some monstrous feast.
They’re not! They’re only trees. (And even I
am only human.) - Please forgive me, lord,
for every crime I’ve mimed, but not committed.
***********
Right off I was struck by the prominence in the poem of the frugal mist and
the juxtaposition with the richness of the green forest. In scripture mist can be a symbol of abundance and generation (Genesis) or of hesitance and doubt (James).
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. KJV Genesis 2:6.
For what is your life? A smoke appearing at a little time, and afterward it shall be wasted. Wyc James 4:14
If we look to the Greco-Roman ground from which springs so much of our poetry and the vocabulary and imagery which is passed down over so many centuries that their origins, esoteric significance and universal mythopoeiesis survive in accretions of mutability and varying layers of conscious and often fortuitous interchange, we find for mist, rain and dew much of the same generative force encountered in Genesis. In the Rig Veda the gods of rain clouds do with their strength as a husband does with his seed (5.58.7). In Anth. Pal. 10.45, the epigrammatist Palladas uses a word, rhanis, for semen. Rhanis, literally a 'drop,' signifies moisture or water from the sky. In Anth. Lat.1.2.179-180, venae et anima fessula/eiaculant tepidum rorem niveis laticibus (veins and tired spirit/gush warm dew in snow white milk.
But what of the mist that is frugal? This last word is part of an etymological group rooted in the Latin words fruor, to enjoy, frux, fruit of the fields, and frugalis, pertaining to fruits, ripened, temperate, provident, etc. So it seems that the mist, which in the ancient conceit, issued from the heavens, is fruitful and provident, and impregnates the earth and the green forest.
And it appears that we may close the circle by a return to some sort of woodlark and
its “fruitless” song, which echoes even in
the depths of every shadow, like a bell
to summon every belle to ecstasy.
The woodlark, a rarer bird than it's cousin, the skylark, sings it's song which echoes like a bell, summoning every belle, every embodiment of beauty in flesh, to an ineffable ecstasy which seems distinct from Eros.
At this point the poet enters into the ritualized procession. As the knelling bells ring out for the belles, our poet sacralizes this moment in time/thyme with the pungent aroma of thyme, the fragrance of sacred, ritualized time. In the end he steps back through the curtain, through the veil , through the frugal mist, into the Silenus of his humanity, and utters a final meditative couplet that encompasses the narrow, paradoxical gap between reflection and act, between perhaps longing and gratification. The poem closes with this enigma:
...They’re only trees. (And even I
am only human.) - Please forgive me, lord,
for every crime I’ve mimed, but not committed.
Wow! I feel overwhelmed. To be taken so seriously by 'il miglior fabbro'. You've no idea what this means to me...
The 'fruitless' by the way was intended ironically. To most perhaps the song would be of little significance, but to the elect, of course, it means a great deal. Not that I am that familiar with its song.
I keep seeing "upgrade to paid"
which confirms my established belief
that Mammon rules and nothing's
more valued than money made.
For this post? Or for the others which are from the journals and/or archives?
The way Substack works, the latest posts are free, but if you want access to the full archive ie, the complete journals and/or 4 years of publication, then yeah, you might have to subscribe and pay a whopping $7/month or just get a year subscription.
Perhaps that does mean Mammon rules… The only question is for who?
I’d much prefer to support culture than, say, the drug, alcohol, military or other industrial complexes.
Maybe I’m in the minority haha.
You're in good company, famous company anyway, The NY Times would approve.
I’d like to think we’re a little more creative and diverse than the leading establishment mouthpieces who’ve done nothing but defend the security state and Wall Street bankers. And basically just lie and weave fables (with no moral) for a living.
No Carnegie, Guggenheim or Mellon endowments here lol.
Martin, your poetry floats like incense along paths of light and shadow, never quite touching the ground. I somehow lost your comment about my poems being published in the Aug. Hyper Texts. I owe it to you for your recommending my work to Michael. He is an amazing editor and a few subtle changes made a big difference in the quality of my work. Many Thanks. Bobby
The poet has some nice lines but gets bogged down in wordiness, in my opinion. Poets should avoid overuse of do-nothing words like "that/which" and "and." Also, repetition of words like "even," which begin to seem like like the poet straining. I suggest:
The mist is frugal, [ ] the forest green and shady,
where thin slats of sunlight weave
[blinds] which [leave] most eyes wide open.
Some sort of woodlark sings from high above
its “fruitless” song, which echoes [down]
the depths of every shadow, like a bell
[summoning] every belle to ecstasy.
I too obey, [ ] line up under [an] abandoned pine,
[taking] my cue from thyme itself,
whose scent envelops me in incense,
till each fresh tree seems like some monstrous feast.
They’re not! They’re only trees. ([While] I
am only human.) - Please forgive me, lord,
for every crime I’ve mimed, but not committed.
Again, some nice lines, but one would hope for cleaner execution.
I prefer to keep to a strict iambic pentameter. In other words I prefer to work within tradition. And in a way that relates the heartbeat to the breath. I'm not particularly interested in writing telegrams. I also like a certain amount of elbow-room. Wasn't it Walt Whitman who even went so far as to favour positive sprawl? As much as I appreciate discipline it should never be such that it makes either you, or the reader, uncomfortable. There should be a feeling of ease and relaxation, rather than uptightness. A poem should be a playground for the mind to wander in, not a prison to be chained up in. The muse may be exacting, but she is never cruel.
Also I believe in 'contrast of opposites, balance and variety' since I suspect that this is what constitutes the essence of beauty. And balance above all is of the very essence of poetry. And the finer that balance the better.
One possible contrast is between words that 'do nothing' and words that do a very great deal indeed. I hope I make full use of this opposition in all my work. Indeed, in this context, words that 'do nothing' can sometimes do even more than those words that do a very great deal.
A rigid adherence to arid rules smacks of idolatry, and can only get in the way of true communion. Any rule should be rooted in an overarching (and long-cogitated) theory of poetic composition, which in its turn is rooted in extensive practice, as well as in a comprehensive philosophy of life.
Purely arbitrary rules are worse than valueless.
Time-and-motion studies should really have no place in poetry. Which after all, as Keats pointed out, is the fruit of indolence. And also because they leave no room for extravagance of gesture. Not even the occasionally utterly appropriate V-sign.
From Communion, I get the impression the newly veiled nun has fallen prey to unchaste fantasies among all those arboreal erections. Glad she didn't try to mount one. Some horrific Goya drawings came to mind, will spare you the particulars.
Poetry suggests to me you won't feel deprived if you receive no love letters.
No. I've had more than enough of all that!