I found the Bishop poem--what I didn't have was the shape of the poem, which is the key to its structure. It's stunning how rapidly things will lose their currency in our culture--the Hemans poem circulating for more than a hundred years, then poof: it's gone.



Casabianca



Love's the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite "The boy stood on

the burning deck." Love's the son

stood stammering elocution

while the poor ship in flames went down.



Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

or an excuse to stay

on deck. And love's the burning boy.





I don't see how I could have forgotten a few key words: elocution, obstinate.

Last night, I read an amazing Richard Powers' essay in the new Pushcart volume about how computers will affect books and the narrative in general--some lab has created a program that can produce quite effective and genuine and even autonomous characters and plots. I don't quite know what to make of it all--both the essay and the cyber-world. Am I turning my back on the real one? Or the book one? By wasting time with the blog.



But I must say there is a serendipity that comes with all this information overload. In regards to my brain's limited storage capacity, for example, I have always tried to hold there Elizabeth Bishop's poem Casabianca, which I think I know by heart, and as I don't have her book at hand I'll type it out as well as I can remember:



Love's the boy stood on the deck trying to recite

"The boy stood on the burning deck."

Love's the boy stood on the deck while the whole

proud ship in flames went down.



Love's the boy, the burning ship and even the swimming sailors who

would love to have a schoolroom platform too

or any excuse to stay on deck.

And love's the burning boy.



Since I typed that from memory, the line breaks are probably all wrong, as well as other glitches. But I always loved that poem and never knew what it meant, until the other day when Garrison Keillor e-mailed me his chosen poem for the day. It's long, but here's the beginning of it, by Felicia Dorothea Hemans.



Casabianca



The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.



Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though childlike form.





FDH lived 1793-1835: don't know if I'll research her more than that. But at last the mystery is solved.



Also the other day I found out who Gaspara Stampa was (a 16th century Italian writer of sonnets.) Her name figured into a contemporary poem I used to like, and use in class, but I can't remember much more about it than that it included a line about having "hands like eggbeaters." If anyone knows where that line comes from, let me know.

Partly why I remain a renegade of the blogosphere is that I've not yet learned my Milton, not only "When I Consider How My Light Was Spent" but his bang-up "On the Late Massacre of the Piedmontese." You must learn these if you're is going to spend any time on line at the Post Office, me having never been much good for toting something like a book. And I got hung up on Milton as a result of having gotten hung up on swimming, long story, hole in body, surgery etc.



So now my skin has been remade entire, and I plan to swim as soon as the slush melts, tomorrow maybe. But in this week of holing up I've been thinking about my essay on birds, the one that exists 92% in my head. Emily Dickinson's going to be in it, and whipping through her each time I always find a lot of poems that are new. This time I also got a sense of the sweep of the work: as far as birds go, and she goes far, her work seems to utilize them a lot at its beginnings, and then she moves to more metaphysical subject matter, which makes sense, if we accept the myth that she became more and more agoraphobic--windows will only take you so far. This is sad, to contemplate how the physical constraints of a life also control its artistic production, and it was in protest of this idea that I decided, this fall, to keep track of the birds as they migrate in and out of town (would have been a better idea last winter, when the weather was fair...)



A couple of days ago in the freak storm we did go look off the point, where the ducks were huddled in the bay. Very close and still, immobile.



It's clear that Dickinson equates her poetic gift with bird song, and toward the end of her life she knows she's shutting down (from the whirlwind years of her younger adulthood.) Here is a good short one, #1478:



One note from One Bird

Is better than a Million Word -

A scabbard has - but one sword



I guess this is sad: her self-knowledge of her own winding down. It is the subject of #1089:



The Opening and the Close

Of Being, are alike

Or differ, if they do,

As Bloom opon a Stalk-



That from an equal Seed

Unto an equal Bud

Go parallel, perfected

In that they have decayed -