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Of Elizabeth Bishop
Ms. Bishop is one able–eyed observer;
her vision is acute, that’s plain to see.
Staring at her, I doubt I could unnerve her,
though from the page she sometimes unnerves me.
The variations she can ring on lines
that reach their end in (word, not fact!) “disaster,”
wherein her art so eminently shines,
show me I’m in the presence of a master.
She gives herself to utmost concentration,
a wonder weaver wondering at the world.
Nothing she lights on brooks her reservation:
through her clear gaze full–textured life’s unfurled.
My breath is caught, my ear too; but my time
with her I love more when she deigns to rhyme.
.
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Tribute to Roethke
—his “Death Piece” parodied
Dense forest stands where sunlit spots
_Had breathed with buttercup.
The homestead of ten thousand thoughts
_Lies shaded now, locked up.
Ideas suffused with energy
_Ran races round this place,
Where spiders’ dust–bedecked debris
_Forms leaden branches’ lace.
.
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Julian D. Woodruff writes poetry and short fiction for children and adults. He recently finished 2020-2021, a poetry collection. A selection of his work can be read at Parody Poetry, Lighten Up Online, Carmina Magazine, and Reedsy.
Yes, Julian, Elizabeth Bishop is an unnerving observer, and one who reserves wonders for concentrated effect. In other words, you’ve chosen your words well. And I agree about the effect of rhyme ringing through some lovelier variations of hers.
I find your “parody” of Roethke a little more pleasant to read than his original. Maybe nature has decomposed since he wrote–but theme and effect are recognizable.
Two good pictures of poets. I wonder whether Roethke was having a premonition of his unexpected death. But death poems represent a genre anyone can take up at any time–or many times. Just think of Emily Dickinson!
Thank you for your comment, Margaret–glad to find you in agreement with what I said.
On Roethke’s poem, you startle me a bit. Do you find him off-puttingly clinical here? I have to say, the lines “The hive … is now sealed honey tight” really impressed me: the metaphor, backed up by the double alliteration and finishing with the half-rhyming, hard consonant-bound word ‘tight,” to be a very powerful picture of finality.
Sorry to startle you, Julian. I merely prefer your scene set in the forest to Roethke’s set in a skull. Just my aesthetic sensibility. “Honey-tight” does have the finality of a permanently hardened sticky mess. Your parody tribute (literary attentive rather than comic satiric) is a good example of a kind of lyric almost as old as poetry itself.
Oh, Margaret! Thanks for explaining your take. My mind never went in such a physical direction. I just took “honey-tight” as maybe “naturally cemented.” Now I wonder if Roethke did have something much more definite in mind.
Julian, I enjoyed the tribute to Bishop! “Nothing she lights on brooks her reservation” – that’s quite the line, and so true of her. Brings to mind poems like “The Fish” and “At the Fishhouses” – of course, I realize neither of those poems rhyme 🙂 And yes, she would have been a hard one to unnerve!
Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Yes, the stink almost rises from the page in “At the Fishhouses.” She makes her points, with or without rhyme.
Not being familiar with either poet, the photos of each seem to fit the word picture you painted of them. Bishop has that look of an observer and Roethke looking as though anticipating death. There is much to commend your poems to other readers with their vivid detail and wonderful rhyme.
Thanks, Roy. Evan came up with excellent and appropriate photos, I agree. (It’s worth noting that the expressive range of both these giants is considerable.) I hope you take a look at Roethke–I think you’d like him.
Thanks for reading.
Roethke and Bishop were both brilliant poets, and like most workers of verbal elegance, they tend to be ignored by contemporary academics. I think your poem on Roethke is not so much a parody as a very adept development of his “Death Piece,” and one that stands out as just as perfect.
Although Roethke was an academic himself, he loathed the breed in general. He wrote a savage squib on the professions in his short poem “Academic” (I think that’s the title, but I’m quoting from memory):
The doctor’s report confirms all your fears —
You’re like to go on living for years,
With a nursemaid waddle and a shopgirl simper,
And the style of your prose getting limper and limper.
A heartening response, Joseph, especially since my “Tribute” has been shopped around for a while without finding a home or drawing any reaction.
Thanks, too, for quoting Roethke: “a nursemaid waddle and a shopgirl simper” shows both his own acute observation and his wonderful sense of humor (although by now the shopgirl simper has for the most part been replaced by blank indifference, hesitant confusion, or woefully misplaced self-confidence).
Julian, I have thoroughly enjoyed these two cleverly composed and inspirational poems on accomplished poets – I must try one of my own.
I am (of course) particularly enamored with this alliterative line in the Elizabeth Bishop tribute: “a wonder weaver wondering at the world”, and I love the smile of the adeptly rhymed closing couplet.
But my favorite of the two is “Tribute to Roethke” who I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of. I’m most grateful your poem sent me in his direction. I am beguiled by “Death Piece” which is impacting in its brevity, and what striking and surprising imagery – linguistic visions I can only aspire to… and the depth of meaning is breathtaking. Roethke has piqued my interest. Julian, you do him immense justice with your wonderfully woven words – the closing two lines are dazzling. Thank you!
Susan, thank you. You no doubt saw my response to Joseph’s comment above; I am deeply grateful for the encouragement your comment provides in the light of several rejections of “Tribute” by other publishers. And I agree with you, I think it is the better of the 2 pieces, but mainly because of the lift it gets from its source. I am so pleased to have been the link between you & Roethke; I hope you spend many rewarding hours with his poetry.
I hope you do have a go at writing a poetic tribute or appraisal of a poet who means something to you. I think critical attention to poetry is something this site could use more of. (Quite possibly that will prove the link between that poet and me.)
I enjoyed both too, Julian. And your description of the attitudes of contemporary shop girls as “blank indifference, hesitant confusion, or woefully misplaced self-confidence).” are perfect.
Thank you, jd. Glad you enjoy both the poetry & the comments.
Mr. Woodruff has chosen two poets who informed my early studies of poetry, Bishop and Roethke, in the early 1970s.
Although I still taught the Roethke poem “Elegy for Jane” in my American literature class until I retired, Bishop was a more decisive influence; for she was my teacher in at the University of Washington in the Spring of 1973. It was such an interesting class in several ways.
First, she taught Modern American literature: Cummings, Moore, Stevens, Lowell, et. al. What I liked most about the class of fifteen students and nine American Modernist poets was how knowledgeable she was. Her observations—like she thought Robert Lowell was the best poet in America at that time—were pronounced, or that she disliked that “The Fish” was her most anthologized poem.
Second, she gave me the best compliment of my writing that I have ever gotten. For my thesis in the class, I wrote a paper on Wallace Stevens’ “The Comedian as the Letter C”. She thought no undergraduate could have written such an essay; so much so, she made me come to her office where she tested my understanding of his diction. Though I answered every question succinctly and exactly, she still did not believe me. You just can’t convince some people. Nevertheless, throughout my teaching career, I taught “The Fish” and “Filling Station”.
Finally, over the span of my own poetic career, it was that precision of observation and diction, that informed my own poetic practice more of the two poets; though American writers, like Frost, Pound, Eliot, Cummings, Crane, and Stevens, were more influential.