The Falling Fruit, The Certain Spring

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS"PRODUCTIVITY" by Addison Jordan
ECONOMIC CONCEPT CALENDAR, NOVEMBER 2011
INDIANA COUNCIL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION
[click ICEE, scroll down to page 7 for calendar contest winners,
click winning entries link for a look at the 2012 calendar,
click illustration above to enlarge text for reading]

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"Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion."
~ D. H. Lawrence ~
My last post, "Daffodils of Autumn" featured two seasonal songs by Adrian Henri, both dedicated to his predecessor A. E. Houseman (click or scroll down). Yet another of Henri's autumnal poems is dedicated to modernist poet and novelist D. H. Lawrence. Henri offers an "Epilogue" to Lawrence's long poem "The Ship of Death," a ten - part extended analogy, in which Lawrence writes bleakly of death as a choppy voyage into the unknown, rounded out with the faint promise of rebirth:

I
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.

II
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?

And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.

III . . .

from IV
O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!

How can we this, our own quietus, make? . . .

from V
Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.

And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.

Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise. . . .

from VI
Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises. . . .

from VII
. . .
Now launch the small ship . . .
launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith . . .

from VIII
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone. . . .

IX
. . .
Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion.

Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.

Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.

A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.

from X
. . .
And the little ship wings home . . .
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace. . . .

Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

excerpts from "The Ship of Death"
by D. H. Lawrence

click here to read the entire poem
and here for further analysis of the poem

Henri responds to Lawrence's poem by personifying and embracing the Dark. He dispels the fear of a long dark late autumn night with an open invitation of hospitality and in-gathering:

Epilogue
(for D. H. L.)
Autumn
and leaves swirl at the roadside
splatter on windscreens
summer hopes gone
fears for the dark
the long night ahead
light ebbing to the slow horizon

"Autumn,
The falling fruit,
The long journey,"

Prepare for the dark
O bring it home with you
tuck it into bed
welcome him into your hearth
into your heart
the familiar stranger at the evening fireside

Wind howls in the trees
and toads curl into beds of leaves
night moves into day
moths into velvet
hedges brown with dying willow-herb

Open your door to the dark
the evening snow drift in unheeded
light dies from the sky
gather the stranger close on the pillow

seeds lie buried
safe under hedgerows
gather him to you
O gather him to you

Take the dark stranger
Cold under blankets
Gather O Gather
Alone in the darkness

Adrian Henri ~

For Lawrence there is the flush of rose, the cycle beginning again. For Henri there are the seeds, buried safely under the hedgerows. And in this next poem, there is the certain spring:

The Burning of the Leaves, Part I*
Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke
Wandering slowly into a weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.

The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust;
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost;
Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for the burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before:
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there;
Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind.
The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
from squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

~Laurence Binyon

The way Binyon places his trust in the certainty of spring is always linked in my mind with what Elizabeth Jennings says about the seasons: "We want the certain, solid thing" (you can read her poem "Song at the Beginning of Autumn" on my daily post from last September: Childhood Autumn; and "Autumnal Equinox," 2018).

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*Binyon wrote "The Burning of the Leaves (I - V)" in 1944, during World War II,
and published the following poem during World War I:

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

~Laurence Binyon
The London Times, September 21, 1914

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Daffodils of Autumn

A FADING AUTUMN GARDEN
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"COME CLOSE, MY LOVE, AND TELL ME / APRIL WILL NEVER END
THAT DAFFODIL LIKE GORSE BUSH / WILL LAST TO THE YEAR'S END"
~ Adrian Henri ~

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Detail of Daffodil Tiffany Lamp

Tonight at noon . . .
The first daffodils of autumn will appear
When the leaves fall upwards to the trees
~ Adrian Henri ~
Liverpool poet Adrian Henri (1932 - 2000), master of literary allusion and intertextuality, has written a couple of poems in response to earlier selections from A Shropshire Lad by modern British poet A. E. Houseman (1859 - 1936). The rhythmic accessibility of Houseman's poetry has inspired many a poetic comedian; but Henri, although he surely loved a joke, did not choose parody this time. In these poems, his touch is subtle and his sadness matches that of Houseman.

In poem XXXI, "On Wenlock Edge," Houseman takes in the forest, the huge hill, the windy gale, the River Severn, imagining the scene as it would have been centuries ago when it was the site of an ancient Roman city:

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

~A. E. Houseman

Adrian Henri feels Houseman's pain. That "old wind in the old anger," those selfsame "thoughts that hurt" the long ago Roman soldier -- and the more recently departed Houseman -- are now experienced by the contemporary wandering narrator:

A Song for A. E. Houseman
I walk the lanes of Wenlock
And dream about the night
Where every leaf is shrivelled
And every berry bright

In Wenlock Town the drink goes down
The laughter flows like wine
In Wenlock Town the leaves are brown
And you're no longer mine

Day turns to night in Wenlock
Laughter to early tears
Down by the hill I follow still
The path we walked this year

Come let it snow on Wenlock
Fall down and cover me
Happy I was in Wenlock
Happy no more I'll be.

Footpath on the SW end of the Wrekin
"Climbing the Wrekin. . . a steep pull up through the trees,
then at the top of the forest, the views open up . . .
to Wenlock Edge . . . and the Severn Valley."

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Henri has also written a companion piece to go along with Houseman's tribute to the cherry in full bloom, "Loveliest of trees," one of the best known poems from the Shropshire Lad cycle:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

More realistically, Houseman observes in poem XXIX, ’Tis spring; come out to ramble," that the spring bulbs have a short season, barely a month: "there's the Lenten lily / That has not long to stay" and the short - lived daffodil "That dies on Easter day."

Whenever I read Henri's response to Houseman's woodland ramblings, I'm never quite sure which month or season has the prior claim. "April" is clearly featured in the title, but "cold November" and "chill October" play the trump card. Henri can't help projecting. He begins the vernal season with an inescapable sense of doom, already anticipating the decay of autumn. He counters every joyful image of springtime with the gloom to come -- and now it's here.

Thinking ahead to the inevitable passing of days and years, Houseman is determined to relish the cherry blossoms even more. He knows his days are numbered, but what's a poet to do? Hope for a long life and absorb as much loveliness as possible. Henri responds in kind, but with a heavier heart, imploring his beloved to convince him that all is not lost. To assure him that the daffodils will not be gone by Easter day but will, in fact, last out the year:

A Song in April
(another song for A.E. H.)
The buds of April bursting
Into the flowers of May
Await a cold November
Forgotten in the clay

The lambs of April playing
Are due to die in June
The loves of April laughing
Will come to tears too soon

The loves of April blossom
And last a summer long
Come close, for chill October
Will come to end the song

Come close, my love, and tell me
April will never end
That daffodil like gorse-bush
Will last to the year's end

That lambs will dance for ever
And lovers never part;
Come close upon the pillow
And still my restless heart.

~Adrian Henri



To accompany the daffodil imagery of
Liverpool poet Adrian Henri,
these beautifully drawn daffodils
are from the Botany collection at the
World Museum, Liverpool.
To send as e-cards, click
HERE (L)
HERE (R)

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, November 28, 2011

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

See also my previous Adrian Henri posts:Brush With Greatness

Holy Connection and Coincidence Batman!

Which Season: Summer or Fall?

Tonight at Noon, Equinox, Harvest Moon

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child

Happy Batday

Happy Batday

A STATION WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Flash your Batsign over Lime Street" ~Adrian Henri
Elephants at Lime Street Station, Liverpool
"Holy Historical Circus Parade, Batman!"

Everywhere I went the other day, I kept hearing "We all live in a yellow submarine." It was playing on the IPOD as we were driving to the Sunrise Diner for breakfast; and a few minutes later, it was playing on the restaurant sound system as we placed our order. Maybe not all that much of coincidence, except that the night before I had added Yellow Submarine to my netflix list, and I had been up early that morning, re-reading The Mersey Sound (1967), a collection of Beatles Era poems by the three contemporary British writers known as the Liverpool poets: Adrian Henri (1932 - 2000) Roger McGough (b. 1937), and Brian Patten (b. 1946). These three poets emerged in the 1960's from the cultural explosion described by Edward Lucie-Smith as "The Liverpool Scene," which included most prominently the advent of The Beatles and the success of their performances.

Of all their poems, the most endearing (to me, anyway) are the Bat Poems, part of "an affectionate, half-frivolous, half-serious cult of Batman and Superman." Henri's "Batpoem," McGough's "Goodbat Nightman," and Patten's "Where are you now, Superman?" (an alternate version of which is entitled "Where Are You Now, Batman?") further mythologize these "folk heroes of pop" who are already admired precisely because of the ease and skill with which they cross the boundaries between the real and the fantastic. For more background on the Liverpool Poets, check out Lucie-Smith's book, The Liverpool Scene (1968), a blog-style collection of "poetry . . . with photographs of the poets and their surroundings . . . direct quotations taken from tape-recordings with the three poets . . . quotations from other sources . . . rambling conversations." In this way, Lucie-Smith conveys not only the poetry, but also the "scene," surrounding the poets and their work (see pp 5, 8, 9).

In the Bat Poems, Henri, McGough, and Patten present an authentic populist political agenda, pondering issues such as street crime, the war in Vietnam -- and the ability of Batman and Robin to heroically "clean up the town," "smash the Vietcong," and "attract the attention of passing solutions." McGough's poem is the bedtime prayer of a hopeful narrator who numbers Batman and Robin among those friendly neighborhood law enforcement officials in whom he places an innocent trust. This same sense of innocence and security appears in his whimsical description of their bedtime routine.

Goodbat Nightman
God bless all policemen
and fighters of crime,
May thieves go to jail
for a very long time.

They've had a hard day
helping clean up the town,
Now they hang from the mantelpiece
both upside down.

A glass of warm blood
and then straight up the stairs,
Batman and Robin
are saying their prayers.

They've locked all the doors
and they've put out the bat,
Put on their batjamas
(They like doing that)

They've filled their batwater-bottles
made their batbeds,
With two springy battresses
for sleepy batheads.

They're closing red eyes
and they're counting black sheep,
Batman and Robin
are falling asleep.

~Roger McGough

Henri's "Batpoem" is an imperative call to action, somewhat more forceful than McGough's nighttime reverie but equally sentimental. The speaker, who longs to be just like Batman, has pinned all his hopes on the arrival of the great crime fighter. He requests Batman's assistance not only in matters of local crime and foreign wars (satirizing the solipsistic nature of imperialism) but also in his love life. Gotham City is a romantic never-never-land of dreams come true and twentieth-century damsels in distress (confident and sexually sophisticated, they are kind of the inverse of Bill and Ted's "Chaste Medieval Babes"). Growing up in post-industrial Liverpool proved to be a rich resource for Henri, McGough, and Patten, ideal for the Gotham-like environment of their poetry. In the Bat Poems, mythical Gotham City and contemporary Liverpool have merged to provide a setting that is crime-ridden yet arcadian.

Batpoem
Take me back to Gotham City
Batman
Take me where the girls are pretty
Batman

All those damsels in distress
Half-undressed or even less
The Batpill makes 'em all say Yes
Batman

Help us out in Vietnam
Batman
Help us drop that Batnapalm
Batman

Help us bomb those jungle towns
Spreading pain and death around
Coke 'n candy wins 'em round
Batman

Help us smash the Vietcong
Batman
Help us show them that they're wrong
Batman

Help us spread democracy
Get them high on LSD
Make them just like you and me
Batman

Show me what I have to do
Batman
'Cause I want to be like you
Batman

Flash your Batsign over Lime Street
Batmobiles down every crime street
Happy Batday that's when I'll meet
Batman

~Adrian Henri

Patten's vision is the least hopeful, an "amalgam of innocence, bizarre situation, childhood daydreaming, pathos and tenderness" (British Poetry 1964 to 1984: Driving Through the Barricades, Martin Booth 136). He revives the ubi sunt lyric in his nostalgic, cynical poem of lost innocence and childhood heroics, making an ambiguous comment upon the superhero concept. In his poem, Captain Marvel, the Purple Monster Sir Galahad, Zorro, Clark Kent -- all are missing, dead, or worse. The popular heroes, now that their audience has grown up to embrace "Real Life," have been rendered powerless. The daring escapades they once performed were made possible, it seems, only by the simple faith, the pocket money, and the "celluloid imaginations" of the narrator and his childhood peers. Nowadays, their faded belief in the triumph of good over evil resurfaces only occasionally. Instead, a resigned world weariness has replaced the naive, implicit trust of McGough's "Goodbat Nightman" and the adventurous hope of Henri's "Batpoem."

Where are you now, Superman?
The serials are all wound up now,
Put away in small black boxes
For a decade or so. Superman's asleep
In the sixpenny childhood seats.
Batman and Robin are elsewhere
And can't see the Batsign thrown out
By kids with toffee-smeared mouths.
Captain Marvel's SHAZAM! echoes round the auditorium,
But the magicians don't hear him,
Must all be dead . . .

The purple Monster who came down from the Purple Planet,
Disguised as a man, is wandering aimlessly about the streets
With no way of getting back
Sir Galahad's been strangled by the Incredible Living Trees,
Zorro killed by his own sword.
Blackhawk's buried his companions
In the disused hangers of innocence
And Flash Gordon likewise wanders lonely,
Weeping over the girl he loved 7 universes ago.

We killed them all simply because we grew up;
Who made them possible with our uneducated minds
And with our pocket money
And the sixpences we received
For pretending to be Good.
We think we are too old to cheer and boo now,
But let's not kids ourselves.
We still cheer and boo
But do it quietly or at General Elections
Where it is still possible to find a goodie
Now and then.

Clark Kent (alias Superman)
Committed suicide because he failed to find new parts.
The bullets that bounced off him on the screen
Wormed their way in to Real Life.
But who cared then for real life?

We had our own world with our own celluloid imaginations
And now we have a different world,
One that's a little more cynical
And that we are convinced is more real.

Our batsignals now questions flung into space
To attract the attention of passing solutions . . .

~Brian Patten
[nothing omitted, all ellipses appear in original]

The Liverpool poets are famous for combining high-brow and low-brow. They wrote in reaction to conventional form and content, favoring a more inclusive style to accurately express the evolving social / cultural consciousness of their contemporaries. According to Henri, they brought "the domain of the marvellous within the confines of everyday life." In his theoretical work, Henri observes that "Art could go into the streets, be a political act, take away the barrier between fantasy and reality, affect the quality of daily life, seek inspiration from humble and despised objects, create an environment of its own" (Total Art: Environments, Happenings, and Performance, 27). Their poetry relies on a complex, intertextual network of literary traditions and popular culture, including comic books, television shows, movies, children's games, songs, graphic novels, advertisements, slogans, and folk motifs. The Bat Poems exemplify this democratic intertextuality, eliminating cultural hierarchies, bridging social gaps, assimilating literary and popular traditions, and extending the conventional boundaries of poetry.

Contemporary writer, reviewer, and artist of many kinds, Curtis Cotrell (also my old friend from James Joyce ~ Quarterly days), has done something similar in his cleverly titled poetry sequence, "Comics Trip," an alphabetical ode to an entire generation of cartoon characters and superheroes. What a nostalgic trip it was just to sit down and read through the wealth of cartoon imagery he has organized in these poems! I also like the way that, like the Liverpool poets, Cottrell weaves in serious current events:

The Great Pumpkin
Good grief! A pumpkin
Has taken root in my yard:
Washed up by the flood
From Hurricane Katrina
Just in time for Halloween.

& social commentary:

Nancy
Nancy and Sluggo,
Quite an unlikely couple.
Right way and wrong way
Or is it a class conflict
Culture assimilation?

& creative existentialism:

Green Lantern
Imagination
Focused through alien lens
Brings the ring power.
You are only limited
By the freedom of your will.

Not to mention
an aesthetics of common decency
(in manner of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
and startling imagery:

from Plainclothesmen
Hawk nose and square jaw,
A grotesque hieroglyphic
Of law and order:
Law of commercial design;
Art of sequential order.

Icon of action:
Car curves around a corner;
Tracy dodges past,
Swasticated arms and legs,
Coattail signifying speed.

A reader complains,
"Your villains are so ugly!"
Popular phrenology
Characterizing affects.
There's nothing cute about crime.

& retro recollections:

Beany and Cecil
The big seasick sea serpent
Had buttons for eyes.
They began as hand puppets
Before they became cartoons.

& last but never least -- my favorite! -- the intertextual pun:

"Et tu, Bluto?" exclaims Popeye!

My Heroes: Pirate & Batman, Halloween 1997

STAY TUNED FOR
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Take a look at
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com