Poems in the Manner Of

David Lehman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781501137396
• eBook ISBN: 9781501137419
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Poems in the Manner Of is an illuminating journey through centuries of writers who continue to influence new work today, including that of respected poet and series editor of The Best American Poetry David Lehman. "Very few writers can actually shape how you see the world. David Lehman is such a writer, " says Robert Olen Butler. Now the Best American Poetry series editor and New School writing professor channels, translates, and imagines a collection of "poems in the manner of" Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, Rilke, William Carlos Williams, and more.Lehman has been writing "poems in the manner of" for years, in homage to the poems and people that have left an impression, experimenting with styles and voices that have lingered in his mind. Finally, he has gathered these pieces, creating a striking book of poems that channels poets from Walt Whitman to Sylvia Plath and also calls upon jazz standards, Freudian questionnaires, and astrological profiles for inspiration.Intelligent and sparkling, this is a great gift for poetry fans and a useful resource for creative writers. These are poems of wit and humor but also deep emotion and clear intelligence, informed by Lehman's genuine and knowledgeable love of poetry and literature. From Catullus and Lady Murasaki to Wordsworth, Neruda, Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, and Charles Bukowski, Poems in the Manner Of shows how much life there is in poets of the past. And like Edward Hirsch's How to Read a Poem and Robert Pinsky's Singing School, this book gives you more than poetry. Whether you're reading for pure enjoyment or examining how a poet can use references and influences in their own work, Poems in the Manner Of is a treasure trove of literary pleasures and food for thought.

Part One

The unexpurgated Catullus is the most bawdy and profane of poets. He hurls insults with brutal candor and makes the reader feel like doing the same.

Two Poems in the Manner of Catullus

1. To a Critic

You made the mistake of praising my pain,

Flavius. This the connoisseurs of cool,

whose approval you seek and shall never gain,

could not condone. You should have known better.

They made you feel like a fool.

You joined in the laughter but it felt bitter.

And ever since you have panned

all work of my hand

with the result that I, too, despise you,

and I do not wish you well.

Yet I took no pleasure when I heard Junius tell

Calista your wife had cuckolded you

with her yoga teacher the same week

you faced a tax audit and ate a steak

with a side of fried poison, missed your train

and lost your job. I feel your pain,

Flavius. Not even a shmuck

like you deserves such lousy luck.

2. To a Rival

More beautiful than daffodils

in February or the face

that is always turned away

from the earth was Diana

a dance major at the High

School of Performing Arts

whose legs were long when

skirts were short, and what

was she doing with you

Junius, lecherous bastard who

tried to fuck every girl he met:

how could she fall for your shit?

Though I was born with a stutter,

Junius, I will denounce you yet

and win awards for my oratory

in a full session of parliament

When Ezra Pound translated Li Po, arguably the greatest poet in China’s Tang dynasty, he revolutionized two things at once: the craft of translation and the tone of modern poetry. He set the precedent that allows poets to translate from languages they do not know.

Poem in the Manner of Li Po

In the Tai-T’ien mountains

the master has gone who knows where

I search for his absence

With wine I, too, am absent

from the night

Petals fall after the storm

down secret streams I see

the ghost of a yellow moon

There are other heavens

than are known to you and me

When I read Lady Murasaki’s Tale of Genji in New York in 1973, what enchanted me most was the notion that you could punctuate a narrative with a haiku, a little like the way an aria punctuates an opera.

Poem in the Manner of Lady Murasaki

In the mist and gloom of twilight the prince, disguised in civilian clothes, approached Masuda Pond. Under a large gray rock glinting in the sunlight with brown, green, red, and blue layers of stone, he left a note for the young wife to decipher:

In the Eighth Month the nights grow long,

But the moon comes nearer than wind to the land.

Abandoned by her husband, who had traveled to the mainland on orders of his warlord, the Akashi lady blushed with an intensity of longing that surprised and frightened her. She thought:

I wonder who lives the fulfilled life:

The faithful wife or the ghost of her desire?

It was then that Genji remembered the shell of the locust: hollow, inanimate, yet it gave him the strength to confront a world of unrest. He gave the shell, attached to a long reed, to a boy who had earned his trust, and told him to bring it to the abandoned lady.

The wind carries my words to you,

Though you hear only the wind in the reeds.

And she of the white cheeks thought:

To be remembered is to be loved

If only until the frost nips the leaves.

Though the murmuring crowd expected him in Lotus Hall for the forty-ninth-day lamentations, Genji contrived to return to Masuda Pond. He dressed his lieutenant in his red satin robes and his ivory mask for the procession of scrolls. Then he trained the younger man for the ceremony, down to the minutest details. The apprentice imitated his master as a translator imitates a noble author of renown. When the day came, the congregants felt the spirit of Genji among them as they prayed for a bounty of grace. Disguised as a peasant Genji himself crossed the Uji River at daybreak and descended upon the bald scholar who had tutored him in Chinese poetry. To his mentor he confided his misgivings:

The lady has a single tear on her cheek, her husband gone,

But shall the prince reveal his love and not his name?

Slowly the elderly scholar and his eternal student sipped their Gyokuro tea. The prince said two words: “jade dew.” Delighted, his old professor ventured the opinion that the lady in question understood that the man comforting her had a secret identity. But (he added) “she is too well-bred to demand an explanation.”

In the house of the “evening faces,” the maidservants wondered what had happened to the Akashi lady. Had the wanton son of Chúko Province spirited her off to the “cloud of smoke”?

Genji suppressed a laugh. He wrote:

The lake is a cloud of smoke,

But there is no light in the mist of morn

On Masuda Pond, there followed three days of blissful serenity and no noise except the tunes of birds, the chirp of insects, the wind in the reeds, the belching frogs.

When Man and Woman speak without words

They hear the secret music of the world.

When the three days ended, the Akashi lady cried. Despite her protests, Genji returned her to her cabin and bade her swear to greet her husband with a feast upon his return from the wars.

The prince let no one see him weep. Disguising his handwriting he wrote on a fallen leaf:

Autumn will end, all things must end,

But when summer returns with her robes, shall I cease to cry?

Iago’s cunning use of the phrase “put money in thy purse” (Othello, act 1, scene 3) inspired these variations in the spirit of that cruel rhetorician.

Poem in the Manner of Iago

Put money in thy purse,

Thy purpose make money.

As brokers sell short

and buy on the dips—

As waiters wait for tips—

As litigants in court

rake in the chips—

Make money thy end,

By all means make money.

*

Let poverty be a curse

for others to bear

with dust on their lips

and ash in their hair

Let the buyer beware

Put thy trust

in no friend

even if he swear

Do what you must

But make money.

*

You will die

and when you lie

beneath the ground

you will hear no sound

Go ahead, right some wrongs,

write speeches or fatuous folk songs

Reserve an expensive hearse

Put money in thy purse,

I say make money.

The most famous statement of advice from a father to a son is Polonius’s speech to Laertes in Hamlet with its injunction “to thine oneself be true.” From Polonius’s “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” I derived “neither a follower ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Acknowledgments
• About David Lehman
• Copyright