Joshua Beckman: 02.20.06-02.24.06

Beckman's poems range across subjects and styles. In one book, poems that are haiku-like both in their brevity and detail offer observations of daily life from his trips on the Staten Island Ferry. In his most recent book, a resonate wildness competes with Beckman's generous vision. The poems are rooted in domestic settings, and the arc of each charts an emotional narrative, one that swings, often in the same poem, from harrowing to humorous.

02.24.06

“And think’st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
An island queen amidst thy subject seas,
While vext billows, in their distant roar,
But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?
To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?
So sing thy flatterers;–but, Britain know,
Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.
Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
And whispered fears, creating what they dread;”

(Barbauld, “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven”)

Each day a day passes and continually we are set at the foot of something new and unimaginable in its scope and origin. Each day we wake to some impossible lie that covers up an even more impossible truth. What imagined resistance could work in such cases? What understandable action can do anything but slightly console us individually? How can we identify a task when we have come to believe that a reasonable task is born out of an understandable outcome? Amidst the constant measuring of everything we take out our recycling. We wait for something we don’t believe will come, to come. Days pass and the past appears, not finite but resolute. There is little in trying that doesn’t seem foolish. Every attempt is awkward and every revolution somehow silly. The presumption or the attire. Each day we cover over the indignity of walking across our part of a country that is doing something far worse than failing. We long for a healthy spiritual companionship of kindness. Or, if that is too much, fortitude. To strike. To strike down. To be struck. But not to disappear. Not to float into any future where one may rest. Not to accept that shadowed life of only having been. As much as we search for the great secret of morals and as often as we may feel we have found it, we are left lacking by its enormous and actual promise, we are left wanting something far more immediate. So to lack and want and long aloud. So to struggle with what little we have. Of poetry I meant to read you this: “For the most unfailing herald, or companion, or follower, of an universal employment of the sentiments of a nation to the production of a beneficial change is poetry, meaning by poetry an intense and impassioned power of communicating intense and impassioned impressions respecting man and nature.” and explain to you this: “The persons in whom this power takes its abode may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little correspondence with the spirit of good of which it is the minister. But although they may deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve that which is seated on the throne of their own soul. And whatever systems they may have professed by support, they actually advance the interests of Liberty.” And to share with you this: “They measure the circumference or sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit at which they are themselves perhaps most sincerely astonished, for it is less their own spirit than the spirit of their age. They are the priests of an un apprehended inspiration, the mirrors of gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they conceive not; the trumpet which sings to battle and fell not what it inspires; the influence which is moved not but moves.” and to leave you with this: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” But in and out of these books, in and out of this house, in and out of everything I have been trying to understand an ugly sound keeps returning, a single quote keeps coming back to me.

“So dear is power to the tyrants themselves neither then, nor now, nor ever, left or leave a path to freedom but through their own blood.” (Shelley)

02.23.06

“Turning towards the men, he said, ‘What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you, then, so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition?’” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein)

Astonished or not nearly astonished enough, I seem to have gone to work and come home from work, a full head of doing without any absolute occupation. Ten o’clock, two o’clock, six o’clock, home. Mary called and said, by degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment and I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings, but it wasn’t enough. How can sublimity be an unacceptable answer to atrocity? I ardently desired to become acquainted with every want to overcome bafflement, sadness and pain. But still it seemed so small. Our great talent seems adjustment. Our attempts relax like the wind and we are praised always for acceptance. She said, the pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring greatly altered the aspect of the earth. Men who before this change seemed to have been hid in caves dispersed themselves and were employed in various arts of cultivation. The birds sang in more cheerful notes, and the leaves began to bud forth on the trees. Happy, happy earth! Fit habitation for gods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and unwholesome. My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy. But, the golden dome of the shrine was reduced to a shell of brown masonry and twisted metal. The attacks continued through condemnation and confusion. Pour into your own cup whatever you would like, but we will drink and we will die. We will continue to ask of time’s equation stupid questions, like when, when. No less than a moment ago everything that was kept was lost. No further than an arm away. The gunman of Basra, the prison at Mina. Broadcast this:

My God! it is a melancholy thing
For such a man, who would full fain preserve
His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
For all his human brethren—O my God!
It weighs upon the heart, that he must think
What uproar and what strife may now be stirring
This way or that way o'er these silent hills—
Invasion, and the thunder and the shout,
And all the crash of onset; fear and rage,
And undetermined conflict—even now,
Even now, perchance, and in his native isle:
Carnage and groans beneath this blessed sun!
We have offended, Oh ! my countrymen!
We have offended very grievously,
And been most tyrannous. From east to west
A groan of accusation pierces Heaven!
The wretched plead against us; multitudes
Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on,
Steamed up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence,
Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth
And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
With slow perdition murders the whole man,
His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home,
All individual dignity and power
Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions,
Associations and Societies,
A vain, speach-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,
One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,
We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth;
Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
Yet bartering freedom and the poor man's life
For gold, as at a market! The sweet words
Of Christian promise, words that even yet
Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade:
Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent
To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth.
Oh! blasphemous! the Book of Life is made
A superstitious instrument, on which
We gabble o'er the oaths we mean to break;
For all must swear—all and in every place,
College and wharf, council and justice-court;
All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,
Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
The rich, the poor, the old man and the young;
All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
That faith doth reel; the very name of God
Sounds like a juggler's charm; and, bold with joy,
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
(Portentious sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringéd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, ‘Where is it?’

Thankless too for peace,
(Peace long preserved by fleets and perilous seas)
Secure from actual warfare, we have loved
To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
Alas ! for ages ignorant of all
Its ghastlier workings, (famine or blue plague,
Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,)
We, this whole people, have been clamorous
For war and bloodshed; animating sports,
The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,
Spectators and not combatants! No guess
Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,
No speculation on contingency,
However dim and vague, too vague and dim
To yield a justifying cause; and forth,
(Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names,
And adjurations of the God in Heaven,)
We send our mandates for the certain death
Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
And women, that would groan to see a child
Pull off an insect's wing, all read of war,
The best amusement for our morning meal!
The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, and who knows scarcely words enough
To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
And technical in victories and defeats,
And all our dainty terms for fratricide;
Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues
Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
We join no feeling and attach no form!
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch,
Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,
Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed;
As though he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen!
And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony
Of our fierce doings?

(S.T. Coleridge, “Fears in Solitude”)

02.22.06

“Wed. 16 Feb. 1825. Heard the Skylark sing at Swordy Well saw a piece of bayonet & gun barrel found while digging a stone pit this proves the story that superstition tells of a battle fought here by the rebels in Cromwell’s time—it is said were there is smoke there is fire & I often think were superstition lingers with her storys there is always some truth in them–brought home a bush of Ling or heath to plant in the garden” (John Clare, Journals)

“The savage brutality of the populace is proportioned to the arbitrary character of their government” (Shelley, “A Philosophical View of Reform”)

“There is a notion which has a direct tendency to make us unjust, because it tends to make us think God so; I mean the idea which most nations have entertained, that they are the peculiar favourites of Heaven. We nourish our pride by fondly fancying that we are the only nation for whom the providence of God exerts itself; the only nation whose form of worship is agreeable to him; the only nation whom he has endowed with a competent share of wisdom to frame wise laws and rational governments…When the workings of these bad passions are swelled to their height by mutual animosity and opposition, war ensues. War is a state in which our feelings and our duties suffer a total and strange inversion…A state in which it becomes our business to hurt and annoy our neighbor by every possible means; instead of cultivating, to destroy; instead of building, to pull down; instead of peopling, to depopulate: a state in which we drink the tears, and feed upon the misery of our fellow-creatures. Such a state, therefore, requires the extremest necessity to justify it; it ought not to be the common and usual state of society. As both parties cannot be in the right, there is always an equal chance at least, to either of them, of being in the wrong; but as both parties may be to blame, and most commonly are, the chance is very great indeed against its being entered into from any adequate cause, and it ought to make a large part of our humiliations on this day. When we carry our eyes back through the long records of our history, we see wars of plunder, wars of conquest, wars of religion, wars of pride, wars of succession, wars of idle speculation, wars of unjust interference; and hardly among them one war of necessary self-defence in any of our essential or very important interests. Of late years, indeed, we have known none of the calamities of war in our own country but the wasteful expense of it; and sitting aloof from those circumstances of personal provocation, which in some measure might excuse its fury, we calmly voted slaughter and merchandized destruction—so much blood and tears for so many rupees, or dollars, or ingots. Our wars have been wars of cool calculating interest….We should therefore, do well to translate this word war into language more intelligible to us. When we pay our army and our navy estimates, let us set down—so much for killing, so much for maiming, so much for making widows and orphans, so much for bringing famine upon a district, so much for corrupting citizens and subjects into spies and traitors…so much for letting loose the daemons of fury rapine and lust within the fold of cultivated society, and giving to the brutal ferocity of the most ferocious, its full scope and range of invention. We shall by this means know what we have paid our money for, whether we have made a good bargain, and whether the account is likely to pass” (Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “Sins of Government, Sins of Nations; or, a Discourse for the Fast”, appointed on April 19, 1793)

02.21.06

“Modern society is … an engine assumed to be for useful purposes, whose force is by a system of subtle mechanism augmented to the highest pitch, but which, instead of grinding corn or raising water acts against itself and is perpetually wearing away or breaking to pieces the wheels of which it is composed.” (Shelley)

Right now I am confused. I am confused by my own sense of urgent necessity, and my inability to meet it with action even slightly equal to its scope. I am confused by the role that I, as a poet, must take. And I am confused that I can learn more about what is going on around me from a pile of two hundred year old books than by the New York Times. I feel as though I am constantly and irritably reaching after fact and reason, though I know better, though I know that in a time of uncertainty I must be capable of being in uncertainty. In times of war there is nothing worse than uncertainty, there is nothing weaker in a soldier or more despised in a leader. The failings of body or intellect are thought trivial when compared to uncertainty. This is what our armies are built to believe and when daily we are told that every aspect of our lives is some sort of war, we are asked to be certain soldiers instead of citizens. And when we are asked this, it is far too easy to comply because we are at war and because we feel at war. But when we accept this certainty we are left with only it, and over time not even that, but simply the residue of its falsehood, an emptiness which clouds our ability to do or think or speak. Our own sincerity and honesty are undermined by this call for certainty, and it seems like we are left with either preaching to the converted or being silent because that is what we believe we would be doing. I see the definite smugness of power portrayed daily as truth and want to respond, not to the smugness but to the power, and instead find myself constantly in struggle with the falsehoods of these “truths.” And so here I sit having exchanged my confusion for anger, almost certain I’m losing.

“A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent necessity of reliance on the immediate impressions of the senses, do, we know well, render the mind liable to superstition and fanaticism … The absense of all foundation within their own minds for that, which they yet believe both true and indispensable to their safety and happiness, cannot but produce an uneasy state of feeling, an involuntary sense of fear from which nature has no means of rescuing herself but by anger.” (Coleridge, Autobiographia Literaria)

02.20.06

“There is secret sympathy between Destruction and Power, between Monarchy and War; and the long experience of all the history of all recorded time teaches us with what success they have played into each other’s hands. War is a kind of superstition; the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men. How far more appropriate would be the symbols of an inconsolable grief—muffled drums, and melancholy music, and arms reversed, and the livery of sorrow rather than of blood. When men mourn at funerals for what do they mourn in comparison to the calamities which they hasten with every circumstance of festivity to suffer and to inflict!”(Percy Bysshe Shelley, from “A Philosophical View of Reform”)

Daily, it seems, we are being called to task by the country we live in. We are asked to understand or to continue comfortably with a trust of something beyond our understanding. We are at odds not only with our government but with the actuality of our country and its role in the world. We are asked to be self-righteous about our country (its momentum, progress, and greatness) or we are asked to be self-righteous about our descent. In our public discourse we encounter wild abstractions presented with absolute certainty and the technical minutia of complex and enormous systems of power, and as citizens we are expected to come to an understanding of a reasonable presence in our particular time. But we are faced with the unreasonable. We have gathered our talents and our knowledge with the sense that they are the useful tools to make our way in the world and have found them far more than undervalued, we have found them embraced for the qualities that keep them neutralized. We are faced with constant deception and called on to challenge this with only a certainty that is beyond our own honesty. Our disbelief is so great that we must suspend it or crumble. But surrounded by action we are called to action, and left to tend to the regrets of our inability. Even to say we is an enormous leap of its own, but over and over a sense appears that not only is there a “we” but that it is the very notion that we build our optimism on. The idea then is that this “we” is organic and malleable, and the hope is that this “we” might grow beyond even humanity, to the world and all its inhabitants. But for me, today, the “we” is poets trying to live morally in a brutal and desperate country.

"The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting on the cause… Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.” (Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry”)