What the Quiet Accomplishes By Marshall D. Dury

What the Quiet Accomplishes

By Marshall D. Dury

Marsh.dury@gmail.com

20 Pages



Reviewed by Dennis Daly



This modest chapbook by Marshall Dury chronicles breaths, and whispers, and wordlessness. These are quiet poems, and at their best—haunting. There is a lot of soul-searching going on here in a very literal sense. In Cicatrix (Prelude) the poet considers the nature of memories,



tender the memories,

tender the changes.



a new softness rising in you,

the suppleness of skin, gone.



The body of his lover loses its suppleness as our memories of the past soften and lose their essential tension. As the strength of a mountain can erode, so can our past, which in this poet’s words is a “delicate vessel.” As the poet seems to imply, the past changes with time, becomes set as a story or series of stories, and then changes yet again. Then with time the past collapses into itself losing substance and eventually vanishing.

The poem Being Gift Enough celebrates the sweet breath of life. It seems to argue that life alone is blessing enough and that all of us should stop and take it in. This pantheistic vision is exhilarating with the breath of life literally dancing in one’s heart,



if you breathe it truly.

let it dance in the beautiful mess

of veins and heart





that the night is quiet, is still:

your dog’s soft chirps of dreaming,

your wife’s skin soft love, warm breath of joy,

that these, most any night,

be gift enough to truly know

what a blessing is.



By the way, dogs do really chirp in their sleep, while dreaming. At least my dog does. Good observation.

In Reverie, not only do we dream our life in nearby houses, but as we listen carefully the two realities merge, and the poet and his lover merge,



Where dreams show us what beauty our lives are now,

If we be willing to listen

If we be willing to live the reverie of this life together

Until there is no difference.



Sharing dreams do cement lovers together (even in other people’s houses) like nothing else.

In an unusual poem, entitled For Sylvia Plath’s Audience—The Ones Who Repeatedly Tried To Carve Out The Last Name ‘Hughes’ From Her Headstone, Dury attempts to explain the unexplainable with, I believe, mixed results. The poem is clearly aimed at Plath’s infamous husband, the well- known and accomplished poet, Ted Hughes. Dury mulls the complicated human desire for correcting great mistakes and wonders what a life would be if, by some magic, a destructive flaw could be chiseled out of the story of one’s life, in this case, Plath’s unhappy marriage. These lines show insight and are memorable,



Peeling away cold days

Like we can forget them

By choice. The motionless

Fissure where your chisel

May strip from stone

All that misunderstanding…



The poem entitled Plain upon Plain meditates on the mystery and artistry of writing. An internal geography emerges from the tip of the poet's ball point pen,



… words falling through the funnel of your pen—this ballpoint,

received as a wedding gift. You see:



dewed, silent hills. tall grass,

small twists of morning light..



And,



life held up, hoisted over your heart.

the inner country of your soul unfolds,

plain upon plain…



I think the best poem in the book is the last: On the Failing of Words. A fourteen year old boy seeks communication with his very sick brother. The poet details the limits of art. Sometimes words fall short. It’s one of the flaws in humanity,



because sometimes,

that is all you want.

for your words

simply to be

enough.



And sometimes they just aren’t. Dury nails this poem and a good many others in this surprising chapbook.

JABBERWOCKY

JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.




"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"


He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.


And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!


One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.


"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.




`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Sonnets

Four Sonnets (1922)
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
And drag me at your chariot till I die, —
Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts! —
Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie
Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,
Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,
Who still am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!
I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire,
Lifted my face into its puny rain,
Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire
As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!
(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,
Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

II
I think I should have loved you presently,-- 10 syllables/ unstressed/stressed
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride, 14 LINES
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,

A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two. Rhyming couplet

III
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you — think not but I would! —
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

IV
I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And vows were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far, —
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

FROM THE CHRYSALIS.

FROM THE CHRYSALIS.

My cocoon tightens, colors tease,
I'm feeling for the air;
A dim capacity for wings
Degrades the dress I wear.

A power of butterfly must be
The aptitude to fly,
Meadows of majesty concedes
And easy sweeps of sky.

So I must baffle at the hint
And cipher at the sign,
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clew divine

Persona Poem

This is a good house

Sometimes I drag my arse
across the hard flat carpet,
digging in as I get up speed.

The tree stump outside the back door
has rough bark that I scratch on
with a long, slow scrape of my claws.

The yard has a patch of concrete
where I take the sun,
and grass and gravel for rolling.

I loll on my back, I bend,
I turn and writhe and slide,
then jack-knife onto my stomach.

At night I curl in the cushions
of one of the empty chairs,
still warm from those big bodies.

Mornings I find my own place
at the end of their bed –
after the greeting and ear scratching.

In winter I stretch right out
alongside a small grey wall
which emanates beautiful heat.

In summer I lie on my back
near the tall white source of breeze
and my legs flop loose in the air.

In the house before this
the back yard belonged to a dog.
The front was hot and narrow.

The woman there shut me outside.
I crouched behind a bush,
cringing from passing cars.

Here they open the doors
when I want to come in and out.
They comb my fur, they talk to me.
This is a good house

Stein's writing is like a Cubist Painting

A Dog Stalking A Squirrel In Harvard Yard-- The Conceit

DOUG HOLDER
A Dog Stalking A Squirrel In Harvard Yard

How much academic distance is there?
We are riveted
as much as the dog.
Cunningly watching the innocent mastication of his prey
the lethal, studied steps
inching closer to the object of his blood lust.

We make it a point
to loudly tell each other
how we want this little, furry, gray
creature to escape
the trap of his jaws...

But don't we protest a bit too much?

Write a poem to Auden's face

Eliot/Poe Quiz

Compare Poe's "The Raven" and Eliot's "....Prufrock."


Do you think their outlook on life is similar? If so use images or symbols from both poems to explain. 2 examples from each poem.

If you don't think they are similar--use exceprts from their poems... (2 examples from each poem) to support your contention.

Bob Dylan/ Patti Smith/Character Study

Character Study Poem



4. Character Bio-Poem



Line 1: First name
Line 2: Who is...(three descriptive words that describe the character)
Line 3: Who loves...(three ideas or people)
Line 4: Who feels...(three ideas )
Line 5: Who needs...(three ideas)
Line 6: Who gives...(three ideas)
Line 7: Who fears...(three ideas)
Line 8: Who would like to see...
Line 9: Who shares...
Line 10: Who is... (repeat Line 2 or add 1-3 more descriptions)
Line 11: Who is a resident of...
Line 12: Last name

Mr. Tambourine Man By Bob Dylan

Mr. Tambourine Man
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seein’ that he’s chasing

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Writing an English Sonnet

Learn to write a sonnet in iambic pentameter, just like Shakespeare did. Discover the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the quatrains and couplets that make up a Shakespearean sonnet.

Here are the rules:
•It must consist of 14 lines.
•It must be written in iambic pentameter (duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH).
•It must be written in one of various standard rhyme schemes.
If you're writing the most familiar kind of sonnet, the Shakespearean, the rhyme scheme is this:

A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G

Every A rhymes with every A, every B rhymes with every B, and so forth. You'll notice this type of sonnet consists of three quatrains (that is, four consecutive lines of verse that make up a stanza or division of lines in a poem) and one couplet (two consecutive rhyming lines of verse).

Ah, but there's more to a sonnet than just the structure of it. A sonnet is also an argument — it builds up a certain way. And how it builds up is related to its metaphors and how it moves from one metaphor to the next. In a Shakespearean sonnet, the argument builds up like this:

•First quatrain: An exposition of the main theme and main metaphor.
•Second quatrain: Theme and metaphor extended or complicated; often, some imaginative example is given.
•Third quatrain: Peripeteia (a twist or conflict), often introduced by a "but" (very often leading off the ninth line).
•Couplet: Summarizes and leaves the reader with a new, concluding image.
One of Shakespeare's best-known sonnets, Sonnet 18, follows this pattern:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The argument of Sonnet 18 goes like this:

•First quatrain: Shakespeare establishes the theme of comparing "thou" (or "you") to a summer's day, and why to do so is a bad idea. The metaphor is made by comparing his beloved to summer itself.


•Second quatrain: Shakespeare extends the theme, explaining why even the sun, supposed to be so great, gets obscured sometimes, and why everything that's beautiful decays from beauty sooner or later. He has shifted the metaphor: In the first quatrain, it was "summer" in general, and now he's comparing the sun and "every fair," every beautiful thing, to his beloved.
•Third quatrain: Here the argument takes a big left turn with the familiar "But." Shakespeare says that the main reason he won't compare his beloved to summer is that summer dies — but she won't. He refers to the first two quatrains — her "eternal summer" won't fade, and she won't "lose possession" of the "fair" (the beauty) she possesses. So he keeps the metaphors going, but in a different direction. And for good measure, he throws in a negative version of all the sunshine in this poem — the "shade" of death, which, evidently, his beloved won't have to worry about.



•Couplet: How is his beloved going to escape death? In Shakespeare's poetry, which will keep her alive as long as people breathe or see. This bold statement gives closure to the whole argument — it's a surprise.
And so far, Shakespeare's sonnet has done what he promised it would! See how tightly this sonnet is written, how complex yet well organized it is? Try writing a sonnet of your own.

Anne Sexton Quiz

Metaphor--- a figure of speech that implies comparison--between two unsimilar things--which have something in common.

Her Temper boiled over.

Her home was a prison.

Her son's birth was new sunrise in her life.


What would be a metaphor for Sexton? Use specific examples from her poems to explain....

CONTEXT by Tomas Transtromer new Nobel Prize Winner for Poetry

CONTEXT by Tomas Transtromer from the great enigma


Look at the grey tree. The sky has run
through its fibers down in the earth—
only a shrunken cloud is left when
the earth has drunk. Stolen space
is twisted in pleats, twined
to greenery. —The brief moments
of freedom rise in us, whirl
through the Parcae and further

Sexton Reading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4VlcVfgFJk

Sylvia's Death by Anne Sexton
for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,
(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy
to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,
and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,
and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,
what is your death
but an old belonging,
a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?
(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)
O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

Slyvia Plath Quiz

It is said that Plath had a "conflicted" relationship with men. She had a love/hate relationship with her father Otto, and a love/hate relationship with her husband Ted Hughes. Using the Plath poems we have read so far describe how her conflicted relationship is manifested in the poems. Engage the text--quote--use examples of images Plath uses.

Mushrooms

Sylvia Plath - Mushrooms


Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

The Fish By Elizabeth Bishop

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.