25 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month - Permafrost

I don't know if April is really the cruelest month, but it's certainly the busiest for me, just by the nature of my job. Consequently, I tend to fall behind on these projects later in the month. 

So let's see what we can do about correcting that.

Today's story is Permafrost, and it's another rare one where the poem came first. 

I do love Edna st. Vincent Millay. I'm reasonably certain that Snuff introduced me to to her writing when he paraphrased First Fig (My candle burns at both ends;/It will not last the night;/But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—/ It gives a lovely light!) when they set the baskets alight. I couldn't find a home for that one, but I like What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

Permafrost is cold but not unfeeling, a kind of dormancy, or emotional hibernation. The characters live with loss and the awareness of everything that might have been but never will be.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

24 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month -Doorways in the sand

This is, in large part a concession to my wife who wanted this poem as part of this circle, though Whitman certainly deserves a spot due to Roadmarks.

Up today, Doorways in the Sand!

I had to bump a different Whitman piecem Song of Myself (paired with Bridge of Ashes ("I am large, I contain multitudes") to make room.

However, I think this deserves a spot. Fred's entire personality is a rejection of learned expertise in favor of lived, intuitive experience, just like the speaker in the poem.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

23 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month - Roadmarks

I thought this would be an easy one. Roadmarks. The Road Not Taken, right? Easy Peasy. (Though Baudelaire or Whitman also have their own claim. (Along with the Marquis de Sade, I now realize)

But the Road Not Taken has the bonus of winding up my friend Greg, Doctor of Mordred Studies, who hates Robert Frost for reasons that have never been entirely clear to me.

However, I began to noodle on it. I wasn't quite satisfied with that selection.  It was right in some ways, ("Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" is perfect for a Roadmarks poem) and it's not like I haven't taken the lazy or obvious route before, but I just kept looking until I found what I wanted to use.

Roads, by Edward Thomas, which was possibly the inspiration for the better known poem.

I love roads:
The goddesses that dwell
Far along invisible
Are my favorite gods.


Roads go on
While we forget, and are
Forgotten like a star
That shoots and is gone.


On this earth 'tis sure
We men have not made             
Anything that doth fade
So soon, so long endure:


The hill road wet with rain
In the sun would not gleam
Like a winding stream
If we trod it not again.

 
They are lonely
While we sleep, lonelier
For lack of the traveller
Who is now a dream only. 
                
From dawn's twilight
And all the clouds like sheep
On the mountains of sleep
They wind into the night.


The next turn may reveal
Heaven: upon the crest
The close pine clump, at rest
And black, may Hell conceal.
 
Often footsore, never
Yet of the road I weary,                  
Though long and steep and dreary,
As it winds on for ever.

 
Helen of the roads,
The mountain ways of Wales
And the Mabinogion tales,
Is one of the true gods,
 
Abiding in the trees,
The threes and fours so wise,
The larger companies,
That by the roadside be,


And beneath the rafter
Else uninhabited
Excepting by the dead;
And it is her laughter
 
At morn and night I hear
When the thrush cock sings
Bright irrelevant things,
And when the chanticleer


Calls back to their own night
Troops that make loneliness
With their light footsteps’ press,
As Helen’s own are light.


Now all roads lead to France
And heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead
Returning lightly dance:
 
Whatever the road bring
To me or take from me,
They keep me company
With their pattering,


Crowding the solitude
Of the loops over the downs,
Hushing the roar of towns
and their brief multitude.

22 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month - The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current

Here's a story that I haven't even reviewed yet. Zelazny himself didn't like it and I'm kind of surprised it ever saw the light of day. It's the predecessor to Hangman but not quite there. An interesting, mostly forgettable footnote, if not for the outstanding title.

It's also maybe the only story for this month where the poem came first. The selection is, of course, The force that through the green fuse drives the flower by Dylan Thomas. Thematically, not the best match, but how could I pass up the chance to pair them together?

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

21 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month - The Graveyard Heart

I tend to use my copy of the Collected Stories as a my go-to reference for the shorter works. I have dozens (hundreds?) of Zelazny paperbacks scattered across various bookshelves, but I always know where my Collected Stories are. 

Second dinosaur head on the right and then straight on 'til morning

Plus, the books well-indexed, cleanly organized and comprehensively annotated. They're nice to hold too. So I went to my copy when I needed to look up The Graveyard Heart. The thing was, I couldn't remember what volume it was in. I figured it would be quicker to thumb through the volumes than to check, so that's what I did, starting with Volume 2: Power & Light, and working my way up. I got all the way to volume 4 before I decided to loop around to the first book and there it was. 

It's such a mature story. I thought it came later in his career. 

My original intent had been to pull some of Unger's poetry to serve as the poetry for this book, which is of course Zelazny's own poetry, which he had pulled and adapted from his own writing.  It is, I admit, a little strange to have none of Roger Zelazny's poetry in what I trumpet as "Roger Zelazny Poetry Month". However, the thing is, I like to include a link to the poem I'm referencing and there aren't many examples of his poetry online. And I liked the idea less the more I thought about it. It just seemed like cleverness for its own sake.

So, instead, I have gone with Love After Love by Derek Walcott. I think it represents Moore's calculus in reinventing himself to join the Set and woo Leota. 

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.