Preface to Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire (a new translation)

To the Reader

Stupidity, error, sin and stinginess
Busy our minds and grind our bodies down,
And we, like beggars nourishing their lice,
Keep our remorse in comfort and well-fed.

Our sins are stubborn, our confessions weak
And for admissions we demand a price;
Then, with a smile, we’re on our muddy way
Believing that cheap tears will make us clean.

We rest our heads upon an evil pillow
With Satan Trismegiste at the cradle,
And in the vapor of his chemistry
We lose the noble metal of our will,

And with the Devil as our babysitter
Charming us with his repulsive toys,
Each day we’re lured another step away
From fear, into the dark and stench of hell.

And like the poor bum who would kiss and nibble
The battered nipple of an ancient whore
We steal the secret pleasures of our passing
And squeeze the last drop from each shriveled orange.

Tightened, swarming, like a million tapeworms
Within us are the Demons who throw parties,
Dropping the breath of death into our lungs
Like an unseen river and a mute complaint.

If the artistry of rape, drugs, knives and fire
Has not yet stitched sweet lines into our souls,
Have pity on our empty canvases
And sorry fates: we are too cowardly,

And yet among the jackals, panthers, apes,
The bitches, scorpions, vultures, serpents, beasts,
Of all the vile menagerie of our vices
That bark, howl, grunt and crawl upon the ground,

There’s one more ugly, wicked and unclean
Who without dramatic gestures or great cries
Would easily turn our planet into trash
And swallow up the world with just a yawn:

See Boredom’s eye hold back a wanton tear
Welled up from gallows dreams and hookah smoke.
You’ve met him, reader, a consummated monster:
You! Hypocrite lecteur! My twin! My brother!


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with Annotations (and other explanations)

Rush Hour

every day, Chicago, every morning we crawl
down your lethargic distressways, the rivers named

with dignity — the Stevenson, the Kennedy,

and all the paths aimed purposefully at your heart.

we want to beat with you; the coffee in our blood

would have us flow through these veins to offer you life

but every morning, Chicago, every day, life

is slow to start as each cell of our self must crawl

through the same veins/at the same time/with angry blood

meeting on that hour so insistently named— 

unwittingly converging, en route to your heart,

with words, the very rush, of John F. Kennedy,

“countrymen, ask what you can do,” cried Kennedy,

speaking now to citizens, who choose to do life

by committing themselves to fuel a city’s heart

yet sacrificing themselves—to wit, their great crawl.

to you, Chicago, our commitment is duly named;

for you, Chicago, we submit this daily blood.


from March to December

Moleskin 3.1: Life

Life

Chicago. Home and hub of the Midwestern Irish, who paint their river green every March; of traveling Poles, their collective numbers second only to Warsaw; of transplanted Mississippi Deltans, giving the city its own brand of blues.  Windy City. Second City. City on the Lake. Home of Al Capone and Ernie Banks, Mayor Daley and our very own Bozo the Clown. In 1972 it was where the Cubs were still freshly reeling from the Billy Goat curse, the Bears still answered to Papa George Halas, the Hawks had known Bobby Hull for 15 years and the young Bulls had their first fifty win season. History —the Chicago fire, the Haymarket Riots, the stockyards —was entering modern times: the El still looped around the heart of the city, but the Hancock defined the skyline and the Sears Tower was climbing above it, and further out, O’Hare was outpacing Midway. I heard all about it that first year of being a Chicagoan —the sassage accent, the skunk-onion story of the city’s name, the constant sound of politicians, the pride of being the beat of the Heartland.

Crossing Quatrains

How long 
     will this river flow
the country’s culminated streams
connecting unseen mountain sources
    to the ocean,
bringing dreams to distant dreams?

How long 
     will the water run
beneath this road turned into bridge,
    beneath the feet
of all who pass from bank to bank
half grateful for this lifted street?

How long 
     will this stretch of street
    in time remain
suspended shore to shifting shore
above the rise and sink of seasons,
of mountain trickle and ocean roar?

    This river will
outlast us, all our lives combined
and every street along the way,
and even as I form these words,
     I feel 
the bridge begin to sway.

This bolted iron in the wind
is likely to outlast us too;
     we may 
grow old together, but
if time’s the measure we cannot do
    what bridges do.


from Calendrums

River Cinquains

water                                       secrets
ever bending                              untold stories
discovers the ocean                    ducking behind corners
delivers the distant mountain          hiding beyond the horizons
water                                       secrets


river                                         journey
slowly turning                             stretching travel
reveals only ripples                     to a destination
of its whitewater history                left to the imagination
river                                         journey


                     bridges
                    river crossings
                   giving me perspective
                   over the ever-bending water

                   bridges

from Calendrums

Andrew on the Bridge

from Calendrums

The Flowing Crowd of an Unreal City

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 60-68





          Unreal City,

                    Eliot’s note: “Cf. Baudelaire: ‘Fourmillante cite; cite; pleine de rêves,
                    / ‘Ou le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.“ From Charles 
                    Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal: Les Sept Vieillards  (The Flowers of 
                    Evil: The Seven Old Men, 1867, tr. James Huneker, 1919):

                    O Swarming city, city full of dreams,
                    Where in full day the sceptre walks and speaks.

                    The UNREAL CITY recurs at lines 60, 207, 259 and 377. Unreal or
                    not, the City is the popular name for London's long-standing
                    financial district.

                    For other nods to LONDON, the City and beyond, see the notes at
                    TWL 66 and 67 below and at TWL 208, 214, 258, 259, 264, 275,
                    276, 289, 293, 296 and 376, and see TWL 180, 207 and 260.

          Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

                    The brown fog may allude to “the embrowned air” in Dante 
                    Allighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno 2.1 (ca. 1321; tr. Henry
                    Wordsworth Longfellow, 1867).

          A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

                    The crowd of lifeless city workers flows over the bridge, up the
                    hill and down the street, with no mention of any water flowing
                    under the bridge and only a brown fog above them. The human
                    flow also reflects the “silent sea of faces” in Walt Whitman,
                    Leaves of Grass, Memories of President Lincoln 6 (1892),
                    suggesting a metaphor for the stream of dead and injured soldiers
                    being sent home after the war. The shadow of WORLD WAR I is
                    cast throughout this poem; see also the notes at TWL 18, 70, 115,
                    139, 199, 289, 331, 374 and 418.

          I had not thought death had undone so many.

                    Eliot’s note: “Cf. Inferno III, 55-57: ‘si lunga tratta / di gente,
                    ch’io non avrei mai creduto / che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.’”
                    From Longfellow’s translation:

                    ... so long a train
                    Of people, that I ne'er would have believed
                    That ever Death so many had undone.

                    As he writes this, the poet is at the gates of hell; see Inferno
                    3:35-36, where he notes:

                    ...the melancholy souls of those 
                    Who lived withouten infamy or praise.

                    Death has undone them by denying them; see Inferno 3:43-46:

                    And I: ‘O Master, what so grievous is
                    To these, that maketh them lament so sore?’
                    He answered: ‘I will tell thee very briefly.

                    These have no longer any hope of death...’

                    Compare this with the Sybil’s wish to die in the epigraph of
                    The Waste Land:

                    ‘I would that I were dead.’

          Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

                    Eliot’s note: “Cf. Inferno IV, 25-27: ‘Quivi, secondo che per
                    ascoltare, non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri, che l’aura
                    eterna facevan tremare.’” Again, from Longfellow’s translation:

                    There, as it seemed to me from listening,
                    Were lamentations none, but only sighs,
                    That tremble made the everlasting air.

                    Dante and Virgil have now passed through the gates of hell and
                    are entering Limbo and an even lower level of hopelessness; see
                    Inferno 4:41-42:

                    Lost are we and are only so far punished,
                    That without hope we live on in desire.  

                    Compare Eliot, Little Gidding 2:60-61 (1942):

                    The death of hope and despair,
                    This is the death of air.

                    See also Heracleitus, On Nature (ca 475 BC):

                    Fire lives in the death of air; water lives in the death of earth; 
                    and earth lives in the death of water.

          And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
          Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

                    Eliot worked near King William Street as a Lloyd’s Bank clerk from
                    1917 to 1926, a “stopgap” to make ends meet. See Valerie Eliot, 
                    Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922 (1988).

          To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

                    St Mary Woolnoth Church is at the corner of Lombard and King
                    William Streets.  The current structure was built in 1666, but the
                    first Wilnotmaricherche dates back to 1191 and evidence of even
                    earlier Roman and pagan worship at the site has been discovered
                    beneath the building’s foundation. For references to other
                    CHURCHES, see TWL 202 and 389 and the notes at TWL 71, 76a,
                    264, 388 and 389.

          With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

                    Eliot’s note: “A phenomenon which I have often noticed.”  Nine is,
                    among many other numerological curiosities, the hour of Jesus’s
                    death, the start of the workday, Beethoven’s ultimate symphony and
                    the final circle of Dante’s Hell.


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Bridge Sonnet

Each road’s another story:  paved or gravel-
Roughed or leveled, mud or dirt,
always life extending ridge to ridge;
Down one of them I came upon a bridge
Across a valley’s hidden hurt,
of bolted metal topped with graded gravel
Stretched from bank to bank across a river.
If not for journeys of my own
I would take time to learn the river’s song,
The something pushing pulling it along;
instead I turn to what is known:
The road that takes my path across the river.

God grant me all the power I have to travel
through the shadows of each vale,
Look after me God, bless my soul, deliver
My heart my weary way from ridge to ridge
and road to road, and with each tale to tell
Apply me steadfast to the grinding gravel
But lead me not into the mystic river
of unknown sources heavened or helled
And let me walk instead across this bridge.


from Calendrums

Illinois Beach State Park

                       ...Excuse me
                       I'm just trying to find the bridge
                       Has anybody seen the bridge?
                       Have you seen the bridge?
                       I ain't seen the bridge!
                       Where's that confounded bridge?

                                       --- Robert Plant


from Calendrums

Moleskin 2.10

Chapters, a whole book, could be devoted to why we moved that year, but for now let me tell it as I saw it, having just turned ten. The move was fairly sudden, not quite three months into the school year, and there were no long goodbyes to my father’s congregation. We took two vehicles: our station wagon, carrying Mom and Gordon Hammedahl and my two brothers, and a U-Haul truck with my dad and Susan Hammedahl and myself. The Hammedahls were helpful neighbors, and they were always close friends to us, but then I remember Dad stopping along the way to buy Susan a rose. There were very few words said about that flower, and it would take years for me to see beyond its single thorny stem, or to notice the budding romance in the car ahead of us, but when we got to Chicago, suddenly Dad was living in a different place. He found a factory job and, for several years, he was no longer a preacher. And now it was an urban, backwards flowing river we were perched upon.

Villanelles - 3

Here on the prairie everything is true

And in your face: the sun, the wind, the rain
And all of God’s creation touches you

And you can feel the weight of it and you
Can sweat the sweet of it and know the pain
of where you’ve been.
Here on the prairie everything is true

As sure as it is real, as good as new
And you know what will be has always been,
will be again,
And all of God’s creation touches you

With earthy tones of yellow, brown and blue
And every range of color in between,
each shade and stain.
Here on the prairie everything is true

But should the color of your point of view
Turn you around, just turn around again
to where you’ve been
And all of God’s creation touches you:

The wilderness, the world that spins with you,
The marshes and the waves of wild grain.
Here on the prairie everything is true
And all of God’s creation touches you.

from Stillwater Symposia (III, "Villanelle for a Thirteen Year Old")

Villanelles - 2

Bow down to what you know, but know as well

You’re at the mercy of God’s time and place; Within your temples God cannot be held. In humble service you can give yourself To the giver of all things in sacrifice And bow down to what you know, but know as well As you breathe God’s air and thrive beyond the realm Of your contrived ability to embrace, Within your temples God cannot be held. As you live, move and exist between heaven and hell Within God’s great unknowable universe, Bow down to what you know, but know as well Within this world and of the world itself You will inevitably find a godly place Yet within your temples, God cannot be held. As you find yourself at last compelled to build Your worship house, no less your private place, Bow down to what you know, but know as well Within your temples, God cannot be held.

from Thirty Birds ("Gnostos Agnostos") 

Villanelles - I

 I

I look for God in every godless place
Plagues send me, sounded in retreats of prayer To an unknown God. I offer sacrifice On altars built with stones of sage advice Directed by such sheep that lead me there. I look for God in every godless place Of gold and silver, crafted artifice Finely designed with dedicated care To an unknown God. I offer sacrifice Wherever sheep lie down to pay the price, Poor creatures ignorant and unaware. I look for God in every godless place Where emptiness reflects on every face That peers into uncertainty, and there To an unknown God I offer sacrifice But carry to the altar only this Sublime insistence: God is everywhere I look, in every godforsaken place, Accepting each unknowing sacrifice.

from Thirty Birds ("Gnostos Agnostos") 

A Wicked Pack Of Cards

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 43-59





          Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

                  See Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow, 27 (1921), introducing Sesostris, 
                  the Sorceress of Ecbatana, a transvestite palm-reader who predicted 
                  the manner of clients’ deaths and ended sessions with an abrupt 
                  “Thank you.” Huxley’s influence on Eliot has been disputed, but the 
                  coincidence is still remarkable.  

          Had a bad cold, nevertheless

                  See Flamineo's dying words in John Webster, White Devil 5.6.311-313
                  (1612), a play about moral corruption: 

                  I have caught
                  An everlasting cold; I have lost my voice
                  Most irrecoverably. Farewell, glorious villains.
                  This busy trade of life appears most vain,
                  Since rest breeds rest, where all seek pain by pain.
                  Let no harsh flattering bells resound my knell;
                  Strike, thunder, and strike loud, to my farewell!    [Dies]

                  The thunder theme will be picked up in Part V.

          Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
          With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

                  See Eliot's note: 

                  I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, 
                  from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The 
                  Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two 
                  ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of 
                  Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage 
                  of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the 
                  Merchant appear later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water 
                  is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member 
                  of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.  

                  For more on the TAROT CARDS, see notes at TWL 208 and 311.5. 
                  See also Eliot's opening credit to Jessie L. Weston, 
                  who compared the Tarot suits and those of our modern deck of cards to 
                  symbols of the Grail legend: 

                  Cup (Chalice, or Goblet)–Hearts.  Lance (Wand, or Sceptre)– Diamonds. 
                  Sword–Spades.  Dish (Circles, or Pentangles, the form varies)–Clubs.

          Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
          (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
          Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
          The lady of situations.

                  See Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910): The 
                  Queen of Cups is a “beautiful” woman, or belladonna, who sits at the 
                  water’s edge with rocks at her feet.  Reversed (rotated 180̊ ), she is a 
                  woman not to be trusted, a femme fatale.  Belladonna is also the 
                  scientific term for the poisonous nightshade plant. Visually, this card 
                  aligns with Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna of the Rocks (1486, 
                  a/k/a Lady of the Rocks).   

Tarot Deck: Queen of Cups, William Rider & Sons (1909)

Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna of the Rocks (1486)

          Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

                  See Waite, Tarot: The Three of Wands shows a “calm, stately 
                  personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff's edge at ships 
                  passing over the sea.” He has three staves and is called the 
                  “merchant prince.” The Wheel of Fortune card represents cycles of 
                  change, e.g., winter to spring.  The Six of Pentacles shows the one-eyed 
                  profile of a merchant giving coins to those around him.  He 
                  represents gratification and vigilance, and is “one who must not be 
                  relied on.” Compare the Smyrna merchant at TWL 208.

          ...and this card,
          Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
          Which I am forbidden to see... 

                  The blank card, not part of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, is an extra card 
                  that says nothing or at least shows nothing that the card reader can see.  
                  This would seem to describe the fraudulent “clairvoyance” of Madame 
                  Sosostris herself, a fortune teller who cries out “Look!” but fails to see 
                  beyond the crowds of people around her (TWL 54-56, 60); contrast 
                  this with Tiresias, who is blind but can see and even perceives and 
                  foresuffers (see TWL 218 and 219, and see TWL 218-248 for what the 
                  merchant carries).

          ...I do not find
          The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
          I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

                  As there is no water in the Hanged Man card, the admonition to 
                  fear death by water appears to introduce a separate card, one that refers 
                  both backward (TWL 47) and forward (TWL 312-321) to the Phoenician 
                  Sailor. This, again, is “your card” (TWL 47); its closest Tarot 
                  correspondence might be the King of Cups, which shows a floating 
                  king holding a scepter and chalise, and of which Waite says, “Beware of 
                  ill will ...and of hypocrisy pretending to help.”

                  See also Waite, Tarot: The HANGED MAN represents life in suspension, 
                  a “seeming martyr.” Eliot’s Hanged God of Frazer (see above) refers to a 
                  description in James Frazer, The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and 
                  Religion, 3d Ed. (1914)., describing the annual hanging in effigy of Artemis, 
                  the goddess of fertility.  Eliot also associated the hanged man, whom 
                  Madame Sosostris fails to find, with the one who walks beside the disciples 
                  (TWL 360). 

          Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
          Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
          One must be so careful these days.

                  Mrs. Equitone is, by her name at least, a more even-tempered person than
                  Madame Sosostris; compare Tiresias’s “lovely woman,” who, after her lover 
                  leaves, “smoothes her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the 
                  gramophone” (see TWL 255-256).


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Beginning of May

Originally there was a song in my head
    It was not sweet, like candy,
but fresh, like wind through the trees.

Once I was drawn to the songs of birds,
    until I began to hear the harmonies
of leaves, dancing ---

    less, I suppose, what the birds
        were singing about
    than where they were singing from.

from Turning the Metaphor

Paraphrase (Para-pathy)

I can accept my solitude

but I’d rather be in Minnesota

than here in Chicago,

and I’d rather be there with someone

than to walk these paths of solitude alone.


from March to December

Moleskin 2.9

We perched for four years on the edge of the Buffalo River, and it was a peaceful place for a kid in his Huck Finn days. But the world was getting bigger. The sociopolitical scene of the late sixties and early seventies would dawn on me sometime afterwards; for the moment it was a greater deal to me that my family of four and then five was much bigger than our tributary bounds could hold. We vacationed, locally to an aunt and uncle’s cottage on Pelican Lake, a little farther to our grandparents’ newly built house on Lac La Belle, an extended family fishing vacation —guys only —to Lake of the Woods; and we visited cousins in North Dakota, southern Minnesota, and one summer all the way out to California. In the summer of ‘71 we had eighty people gather on the Buffalo River for a Vold Reunion, and in the summer of ‘72 we traveled to Chicago to see our cousins there. Then, in the fall of that year, the world changed more than I thought it ever would, when Chicago became our home.

Annotations of O Solitude by John Keats (1816)

O Solitude (personified, addressed)! (a weary exclamation) 
if (resignation) I must with thee (Solitude) dwell (linger, live), 
Let it not be (not resigned to the parameters of Solitude: something must change)
among the jumbled heap (the city: the present condition described)
Of murky buildings (conventional structures); 
climb with me the steep, -- (first 8 lines, a chained Italian sonnet: ABBA, ABBA)
Nature (personified)'s observatory (an alternative building) 
-- (emphasis added by break in rhythm, a visual dash) whence the dell (valley), 
Its flowery slopes (alternative to grey walls of steel), 
its river's crystal swell (and glass), 
May seem a span (bridge, another alternative structure); 
let me thy (Solitude’s) vigils (diligent (holy) watches) keep (holding on to the beauty)
'Mongst boughs pavilion'd (another alternative building), 
where the deer's swift leap (what the vigilant one sees)
Startles the wild (abrupt rhythm break; startling within while the vigilant one remains detached) 
bee from the foxglove bell (more break in rhythm: emphasis). 
But (sextant, new thought, moving beyond the beauty beheld) though I'll gladly 
trace (outline, scant sketch of the outer profile) these scenes with thee (Solitude), 
Yet the sweet (what Solitude isn’t) converse (what Solitude doesn’t) 
of an innocent (undefiled) mind (rhythm breaks, emphasizing the new thought), 
Whose words (what Solitude lacks) are images 
of thoughts refin'd (purified) (last 6 lines break from Italian sonnet structure: CDD CDC), 
Is my soul's pleasure; 
and it sure must be (trying to be committal)
Almost (non-committal - he doesn’t know) the highest (sweetest, most innocent, most refined) 
bliss of human-kind (not the 19th century “mankind,” thus suggesting womankind), 
When to thy (Solitude’s) haunts 
two kindred spirits (he longs for companionship) flee.


from March to December