In this last trip through the Birmingham Poetry Review volume 40, the Steiny Road Poet
humbly chases after L. S. Asekoff’s “Lyre.” While the Steiny Poet has tripped through
poems on themes of death, love,
poetry, the natural world,
and design/creation (David Starkey’s “The Ways of God to Man” on intelligent
design, Carmen Váscones’ sonic design poem “46)” as translated by Alexis
Levitin, Melanie Jordan’s ekphrastic poem “The Kiss of the Cage,” and Andrew
Sofer’s musically focused sonnet “Hautboys”), nothing reviewed so far matches
the vast reach of Asekoff’s “Lyre,” a free-verse poem written in one stanza of
44 lines.
“LYRE,” A
LOOK AT CIVILIZATION
As best as
the Steiny Poet can understand, “Lyre” is about civilization and the morality
and love that might happen in a chaotic universe. As the poem opens, the lyre is
addressed by an unidentified narrator whom the Steiny Poet presumes to be Asekoff.
You have
witnessed the sorrows of the rose-grower’s daughter,
The ivory
grin of the lacquered beast
&
where aging fingers once lingered lovingly.
The lyre
is a stringed instrument of the harp family. Relative to the size of modern day
harps, the lyre is small and hand held. In ancient Greece the instrument
accompanied poets or entertainers reciting poetry. The lyre is a symbol for the
Greek god Apollo, known as the god of music and poetry.
According
to Greek mythology, Hermes crafted the first lyre from a tortoise shell and the
intestines of cattle he stole from Apollo. Apollo forgave Hermes for the stolen
cattle when he heard the music produced by the lyre and then traded more cattle
for the musical instrument. Dear Reader, hang on to this image of the first
lyre being made from tortoise shell.
For now, the Steiny Poet is stumped by the reference to the
rose-grower’s daughter, but she thinks daughter
is a critical element but only understood by the closing lines of the poem.
PERSECUTION
OF THE ROMANI PEOPLE
So,
shipwrecked on the shores of time,
They hauled their great stringed
instruments
Upright over the wagons like sails.
The last
two lines are a quote from Isabel
Fonseca’s 1995 book about the Roma people, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. The quote
is about members of Papusza’s family who were harpists. Bronislawa Wajs (1908-1987), the most famous
Romani poet and also known as Papusza ("doll") stood out because she
defied her Polish Romani family and their people by learning how to read.
During World War II, German Nazis and Ukrainian fascists murdered Romani people
in Poland. Various governments also pushed Romanis to settle in one place and
so many gave up their carts and horses but retained their heavy lyres. With
this information at hand, the Steiny Poet thinks she now understand lines four
and five:
The dream of a man
wheels
Takes precedence
over the gathering of colors.
The Steiny Poet
thinks the gathering of colors might
refer to national flags and the various European countries lining up for war.
It might also refer to the gypsy predilection for brightly colored clothing.
THE CHANGING WORLD
AND HENRY ADAMS
Lines six and seven
are italicized and the Steiny Poet knows where part of the quoted passage
derives.
So the prosodic hallucinarium,
Physics stark mad in metaphysics,
Physics stark mad in metaphysics comes from The
Education of Henry Adams, a memoir by the same Henry Adams. Here’s the passage:
In these seven years [between 1895 and 1902] man had translated
himself into a new universe, which had no common scale of measurement with the
old. He had entered a supersensual world, in which he could measure nothing
except by chance collisions of movements imperceptible to his sense, perhaps
even to his instruments, but perceptible to each other, and so to some known
ray at the end of the scale. Langley
seemed prepared for anything, even for an indeterminable number of
universes interfused – physics stark mad
in metaphysics.
Historians undertake to arrange sequences,—called stories, or
histories—assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect. These
assumptions, hidden in the depths of dusty libraries, have been astounding, but
commonly unconscious and childlike; so much so, that if any captious critic
were to drag them to light, historians would probably replay, with one voice,
that they never supposed themselves required to know what they were talking
about.
This
passage goes on to say that Adams was not satisfied with ignorance and he
worked hard, but in vain, to uncover the meaning. Meaning comes only with
breakneck force. Adams continues:
Where he saw sequence, other men
saw something quite different, and no one saw the same unit of measure. He
cared little about his experiments and less about his statesmen, who seemed to
him quite as ignorant as himself, and, as a rule, no more honest; but he
insisted on a relation of sequence, and if he could reach it by one method, he
would try as many methods as science knew. Satisfied that the sequence of men
led to nothing and that the sequence of their society could lead no further,
while the mere sequence of time was artificial, and the sequence of thought was
chaos, he turned at last to the sequence of force; and thus it happened that,
after ten years’ pursuit, he found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at
the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the irruption of
forces totally new.
Returning
to Asekoff’s poem and picking up at lines six and seven, observe the interplay
between the Adams text and “Lyre,” especially the line “Shamed into speech by
such voluble silence”:
So the prosodic hallucinarium,
Physics stark mad in metaphysics,
The
theorist in pain
Playing
the black keys against the white
While
across the long twilight this windowless room
Offers a
door to the shoreline
With its
abundant shifting sands
&
self-delimiting sadness—
a glimpse
of an eighteenth-century sea.
Shamed
into speech by such voluble silence,
You think:
The hand, a tortoise; the mind, a hare.
The Prince of Infinite Space
inherits the Kingdom of Ends.
While the
Steiny Poet is not entirely certain, she believes that prosodic
hallucinarium refers to Asekoff’s poem “Lyre” and that the
theorist is Henry Adams (1838–1918) though the imagery of the piano
seems ascribed by Asekoff to the theorist and Adams was not a musician of any
measure, let alone the piano. Nonetheless Adams acknowledged the importance of
music in his education. In his memoire, Adams referenced the eighteenth century
frequently though he is clearly a man moving into the twentieth century.
However, he is formed by the Age of Enlightenment and his more famous
grandfather John Quincy Adams (1767–1848)
and great-grandfather
John Adams (1735–1826).
THE TALE
OF THE TORTOISE AND HARE
The
narrator tells us the theorist, put on the spot, begins to ascribe the tale of
the tortoise and the hare to himself, likening his hand (where action begins and is sustained)
to the tortoise and his mind, which is quicker than the hand but undisciplined, to the hare. Then Asekoff
makes a huge leap of imagination saying the
prince of infinite space inherits the Kingdom of Ends. Shakespeare has his
tragic hero Hamlet say, “O
God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite
space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” (Act II, Scene ii) Therefore,
Hamlet remains prince and seems to be bound in Asekoff’s statement by moral
imperative. Why? The Kingdom of Ends is a thought experiment in the philosophy
of Immanuel Kant and is tied to Kant’s categorical imperative. Rational beings
live in the Kingdom of Ends and must choose to act and be judged by a set of
standards that imply
absolute necessity (categorical
imperative).
DISCOVERING
THE FLOWERING ROSE
From
this point until the last three lines, the poem open out to the universe in a
description that seems to chart ritual and chaos theory and then the Steiny
Poet conjectures, that poem turns back to the gypsy life where two teenagers
steal away for their elopement which is hinted at with these phrases: half-closed buds open over unfurled leaves,
amorous
awakenings, lilies afloat in a pool, final inscription. The Steiny Poet
also believes now that rose-grower’s daughter may be someone depicted in
Forseca’s Bury Me
Standing.
Surfing
the night’s black static, neon glow
Everywhere
you see the golden section—
A
keyhole into the lesser dark.
Wind
blows over snowy windrows, rattles the corn.
The shaking
of a buffalo blanket spooks an Indian pony.
As the
range rises,
Fingers
move across strings of an invisible lyre—
Heartbeats,
flapping wings, water waves,
The
periodic motion of heavenly bodies,
Chirr
of cicadas, ticking clocks, a dream of stones.
Now a
colorless hiss zeroes in on
Random
fluctuations of electrical resistance.
Wandering
beyond the keys, a pale melody
Remembers
where it’s been;
The
dark sea points to a lovely flickering curve,
Underground
currents, spectral densities,
The
nervous system of Tokyo traffic flow,
Daring
conjectures of the changing landscape.
Haunted
by such arabesques,
Half-closed
buds open over unfurled leaves,
The longing of the asleep for
amorous awakenings,
A
frieze of water lilies afloat in a pool,
Adrift
& drifting as they are towed toward
The
perpetual velleities of their final inscription.
The Steiny
Poet imagines there are other ways to approach this impressionistic and
philosophic poem with it loose connections between lyre and the tale of the tortoise and the hare, between lyre and the piano which has an internal harp. For example, one could just talk about the engaging word choice and the music of the lines like “Wind blows over snowy windrows, rattles the corn.” Also Asekoff’s “Lyre” resonates with Kathy Fagan’s “Sycamore Envies the Cottonwoods behind Your Place.” Both have an other worldly dimension. One other observation is that Asekoff chooses to capitalize
the first word of every line. While the Steiny Poet sees this stylistic choice
as a throwback to the 19th century, other contemporary poets choose
this style element. Those in BPR 40
reviewed during this thirty-day project who capitalize the first word of each
line include Kathy Fagan in “Sycamore Envies the Cottonwoods behind Your
Place,” Daniel Anderson in “Someone Is Burning Leaves,” and Erica Dawson in
“Chinquapin Leaves on the Riverbank.”
SUMMARY OF
THE BPR LIT TRIP PROJECT
To sum up
the project, the Steiny Road Poet found the Birmingham
Poetry Review volume 40 to be an exceptional collection of book reviews and
contemporary poetry of varying styles, formats, and forms that also included
translation. The eye-catching artwork on the cover “Man Pretending to Read Like
a Hawk” by poet Debora Gregor makes a political statement about the state of
poetry today—not enough readers! The BPR,
printed on high-quality paper and beautifully laid out with an easy-to-read
font, is worthy of a wider audience.
This volume included 59 poets and the Steiny Road Poet reviewed one poem by 30
of these 59.
Poets
reviewed included: Claudia Emerson (the featured poet), Deborah Ager, DanielAnderson, L. S. Asekoff, Ned Balbo, Chad Davidson, Erica Dawson, Caitlin Doyle,
Jehanne Dubrow, Kathy Fagan, Joshua Gottlieb-Miller, Edward Hirsch, LesleyJenike, Carrie Jerrell, Melanie Jordan, David Kirby, Carmen Vásconesas translated byAlexis Levitin, James May, Laura McCullough, Nick McRae, Dan O’Brien, RicardoPau-Llosa, Todd Portnowitz, Jane Satterfield, Andrew Sofer, Jane Springer,
David Starkey, David Wagoner, Charles Harper Webb, Amanda Yskamp.
Other
poets included in BPR 40:
Betty Adcock, Tory Adkisson, Jo Brachman, Gaylord Brewer, Robert Collins (founder of the Birmingham Poetry Review), JamesDoyle, Alex Fabrizio, Brett Foster, Jeff Hardin, Katie Hartsock translating St.
Augustine, William Logan, David McLoghlin, Zachariah McVicker, Sandra Meek,
Erika Meitner, Homer Mitchell, Mary Moore, Emilia Phillips, John Poch (also
translating Enrique Barrero Rodriguez), Christine Poreba, David Roderick, F.Daniel Rzicznek, Martha Serpas, Megan Sexton, Patty Seyburn, Rawdon Tomlinson,
Sidney Wade, William Wright, and Matt Zambito.