Poetics and Ruminations

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Monday, November 30th, 2009

R.I.P. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

November 30, 1554 – October 17, 1586

 

Philip Sidney

Loved his kidney

Pie and sonnets

On shepherdesses

With their tresses

Clad in bonnets.

HEALTHCARE PLAN BLUES: An Interview

  

 

Sunday, November 29, 2009. Special to the Dresden Mills Gazette. By Wesli Court, Blues Reporter.

DMG. At the moment I am standing in front of the candy counter of the Dresden Texaco and Take-Out in Dresden, Maine, having a conversation with Republican Senator Gloria Monday. Good morning, Senator Monday.

GM. Good morning.

DMG. The Democrat-controlled Senate recently voted to send to the floor of the United States Senate for debate a health care bill that was crafted by the Democrats. As a Republican senator from Bluestate, how do you feel about that?

GM. As you know, I voted with all the other members of my Republican Party against sending that bill to the floor.

DMG. Why was that?

GM. Although I feel that the health care system desperately needs to be reformed, I was against the bill’s containing a Public Option provision.

DMG. What is wrong with the Public Option?

GM. It will lead inevitably to Socialism in our Republic.

DMG. How so?

GM. It will create a system in which the government will weigh in with a heavy hand on our citizens’ rights to choose their own health care, and it will tell our doctors and medical practitioners how much they can charge for their services.

DMG. Aren’t you ignoring the word “option” in the bill? Citizens will keep their right to have the health insurance program of their own choosing, if they already have one.

GM. I don’t feel it is ever a good idea to have the Government involved in health care. People will eventually drop their private insurance coverage in favor of the Public Option.

DMG. Doesn’t that imply the private companies would be providing worse care, like deciding if a person covered by their policies has a “pre-existing medical condition” that they don’t want to pay for, or like choosing to drop a person’s coverage arbitrarily?

GM. Oh, I don’t think so. Government health plans are likely to be much worse than private ones, tied up in red tape, run by committees that decide who should live or die.

DMG. Excuse me, Senator, but Senior Citizens are all covered by a “Public Option,” Medicare. Doesn’t Medicare do a decent job?

GM. Medicare is beset by problems, like fraud and waste.

DMG. “Fraud” is a crime. That’s really not a part of the plan, is it? That requires investigation by law enforcement agencies. Are you suggesting that the Government is being remiss in not enforcing laws against medical fraud?

GM. That may very well be the case.

DMG. Perhaps the Congress should appropriate more money for law enforcement?

GM. That is a different subject than the one we were discussing.

DMG. That’s true. To get back to the idea of the “Public Option,” aren’t all members of the Armed Forces — the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard — all covered by a Government health care system? Not to mention veterans of all the services, who are covered by the U. S. Veterans Administraton.

GM. Yes, they are, but there’s a very good reason for that system.

DMG. Although it’s run by the Government, the USVA hospitals are both efficient and effective, aren’t they?

GM. In general, yes, but again, they had better be. Our service men and women deserve the best care available. But that’s not the kind of “Public Option” I was talking about.

DMG. Well, how about the “Public Option” that the U. S. Congress is covered by? Do you find that you personally receive decent health care?

GM. Er, ah…, uh, well, yes, of course.

DMG. And how about the health care option that covers ALL government workers? All Civil Service employees, employees of the Postal Service, and the various “public options” that cover State, County, and Local government employees?

GM. I am against specialty options for American citizens.

DMG. You mean like Medicaid that helps the very poor?

GM. No, no….

DMG. Isn’t it true, Senator Monday, that the “Public Option” included in the current Senate bill would apply only to those people who are covered by no health care plan at all? In other words, a relatively small segment of the population who are falling through the cracks of the current “system” of health care?

GM. Um. Well. Perhaps….

DMG. And isn’t it true that the bill also contains provisions for those states — primarily Republican Red States, one would assume — that would have another kind of option: the option to “opt out” of the coverage outlined in the bill if they wished?

GM. Well, yes, but….

DMG. Thank you, Senator Gloria Monday, Republican of Bluestate. You have been most helpful. I’m sure the readers of the Dresden Mills Gazette will find your remarks enlightening.

REMARKS

Well, Wesli,

You certainly nailed that interview! How can that dodo ever show her face in public again?

But wasn't Senator Monday implicated in the recent, notorious Seven-Day Escort Ring scandal involving the Washington call-girl known as Ruby Tuesday? Their boss was the sinister and secretive Mr. Friday, who ran the operation from a fortified island in the South Pacific.

Rhina Espaillat

 

You're making me Thursday. Good thing I have a cup of coffee in my hand.

Wesli

 

Love It, Lew.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving & post-tryptophan days.

Moira Egan

 

Lew,

Thanks for sending the hilariously pathetic interview.  The responses, I mean, not the interview questions, which are terrific.

Clarinda Harriss 

  

Lew,

Didn’t you just interview this woman? (click on link:)

Understanding Our Hollow "Centrists"

Dennis Morton

  

Thanks, Lew. 

It's about time Someone gave Anyone the straight dope on the option. It's 

possible no one can persuade a Monday, though — the week's most recalcitrant day-- 

 
Ruth Harrison

It infuriates me that so many people are so purblind. EVERYBODY knows about the Public Options we already have. They're just determined to be stupid, apparently. I could hardly believe it when I saw all those old people who are clearly on Medicare waving signs AGAINST the "public option." And how politicians can actually get up in front of a camera and act like THEY are not on the Public Option themselves boggles the imagination. They must have gonads of brass if male and ???? if female. It requires tremendous amounts of cynicism on everyone's part. Lew

Yes.  The pretense at not grasping a truth which is straightforward and plain — it's shoddy indeed.  But that has been the nature of the Reps the past three decades or so, and by now it's an accepted technique — pretend something else is true if you do not like the truth before you.  You've got it — it's determined stupidity.

Am I wrong, or has it become more pronounced of late? 

Maybe I'm just old and crotchety ...

Ruth

 

No, you're correct, but probably we're both as old and crotchety as those morons waving those stupid placards.

Lew

 

Thanks, Lew. Enjoyed reading the Wesli Court interview!

Don Kimball

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Saturday, November 28th, 2009

R.I.P. WILLIAM BLAKE

November 28, 1757-August 12, 1827

 

He saw a “Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night,”

And lived his life, for Heaven’s sake,

Until the Night took William Blake.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Thursday, November 26th, 2009

R.I.P. WILLIAM COWPER

November 26, 1731 – April 25, 1800

 

Although he was himself bi-polar,

His songs and hymns were popular.

The melancholy William Cowper

Sang on through ecstasy and stupor

And kept on growing just like Topsy

Until at last he died of dropsy.

Thanksgiving Sonnet

 

Listen to Lewis Turco read his poem, "Thanksgiving Sonnet" --

 

The turkey's found its silence. So have we,

The youngsters and the elders of this hall

Who welcomed back both staid and prodigal

With equal eyes.  Each knows his own degree

 

Of happiness on any other day

But this when neural tides must flood or fall

To reach the level common to us all

And flagrant colors fade to neutral gray.

 

This room's a simple basin of the sea

We yearly swim.  Here lies the quiet bay

Where no one claims the single right of way,

Where each is bound to set the other free.

 

The beaches of this cordial shore forestall

The breakers dimly heard beyond our wall.

 

Wesli Court

Hidden Lake, Connecticut. Photo credit:Walter Hekster.

Related articles

At Home: A Poemoir

Trilogy for J. F. K.

I. The Moment Before

II. November 22, 1963

 

Weeping, I write this:  You are dead.  The dark

animal of the heart, the beast that bides

stilly in its web of flesh, has stolen

flight again out of the air.  What is there

to say?  That I wish we were gods?  That the

mind of man were equal to his lusts?  It

is not -- not yet.  You were a man, but more:

you were an idea dreamt in a sweet

hour while the spider slept.  We make our

web; its habitant makes greatness of its

prey.  We are ourselves victim and victor.

You were and are ourselves.  In killing you

we murder an emblem of what we strive

to be: not men, but Man.  In mourning you,

good Man, we grieve for what we are, not what

we may become.

                                  Sleep, John.  We will try

once more.  Sleep, sleep now.  We will try again.

 

 

III. Ode on St. Cecilia's Day 1964

 

1.  Of the Past

 

Some music, then, for this day.  Let it be

Suitable to the mood of fallen snow,

The veil of a virgin saint.  Quietly

Let it come now, out of the silence; now

While the birds inexplicably forsake

The elm, the oak, the seed in the lilac....

Instead, drumrolls muffled in an old year,

An echo of trumpets in the streets.  Clear

But muted, there is a ragged tattoo

Of hooves, image of a sable horse, wild-

Eyed, resisting the rein, skittish among

The twin rows of witness citizens who,

Their voices frozen, give up to the cold

Air of the marble city an old son.

 

2.  Of the Present

 

But it’s another year, Cecilia’s day

Again, another part of the land.  So,

Let the phantoms of those dead days lie

Under these new burdens of snow.  Allow

That chorus of stricken men to dim like

Shadows into blackening film, the dark

Merging with the riderless horse.  Feature

By feature, let the scene fade into near

Distance, into perspective, then shadow.

This is music for St. Cecilia.  Yield

To her the lyric due her.  Let us sing

For her patronage -- her martyrdom grew

Out of a summer heart: she is our shield

Against the winter.  She is always young.

 

 

3.  Of the Moment

 

Here beyond the window the campus lies.

The students pass in mufflers and coats, eyes

Almost hidden against the wind.  The sound

Of radio music settles around

The furniture, into the carpeting.

Choral voices: a requiem.  Distant

And urgent, the November church bells ring.

Outdoors a dog rags something.  An instant

Pause in his play -- he has caught a squirrel

Which tosses and tosses in the gray air.

The mongrel, in the midst of his quarrel

With life, is assaulted by three girls.  There,

At the base of a tree, the limp ruff falls

From insensate jaws, starts to inch up walls

Of oak bark toward some invisible

Sanctuary.  The dog begins to howl.

The girls watch the squirrel into the limbs.

Cecilia’s radio is done with hymns.

 

From  Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

Late Elegy for an Old Suicide

 

On May 27^th, 1992, my wife Jean and I were touring England with two friends, Tom and Mary Loe [who was photographing our trip with a camcorder]. Jean was keeping a journal, and she wrote, “Very close to Bath is Bristol, so we drove there after dinner at a small place in Bath with some strange 1950s [American] motifs for decoration.  Lew wanted to see the church St. Mary Redcliffe at which the father of the poet Thomas Chatterton had been sexton.  The church was easy to find, and as big as a cathedral.  We weren't able to see the inside [because there was choir practice going on, and when we opened the door the director turned toward us and told us loudly to get out], but the outside was beautiful.”  [And I shed a tear or two for young Thomas who wrote this]:

 

SONG FROM AELLA

 

O sing unto my roundelay,

O drop the briny tear with me;

Dance no more at holyday,

Like a running river be:

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

Black his crown as the winter night,

White his brow as the summer snow,

Red his lips as the morning light,

Cold he lies in the grave below:

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

Sweet his tongue as the throstle’s note,

Quick in dance as thought can be,

Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;

O he lies by the willow-tree!

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

Hark! The raven flaps his wing

In the briery dell below;

Hark! The death-owl loud doth sing

To the nightmares, as they go:

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

See! The white moon shines on high;

Whiter is my true-love’s shroud;

Whiter than the morning sky,

Whiter than the evening cloud:

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

Here upon my true-love’s grave

Shall the barren flowers be laid;

Not one holy saint to save

All the coldness of a maid:

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

With my hands I’ll dent the briers

Round his holy corpse to grieve:

Ouph and fairy, light your fires,

Here my body I shall leave:

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,

Drain my red heart’s blood away;

Life and all its good I scorn,

Dance by night, or feast by day:

         My love is dead,

         Gone to his death-bed

All under the willow tree.

 

Thomas Chatterton

 

[And I wrote this ballade]:

Listen to Lewis Turco read Late Elegy for an Old Suicide

 

In memory of Thomas Chatterton 1752-1770

"There's nothing that agrees worse

Than a proud mind and a beggar's purse."

 

Descendant of Redcliffe's deacons, a Bristol boy,

         St. Mary's ghosts were native to his blood.

He haunted Canyng's tomb.  His only joy

         Was in his own invention: "Rowley" stood

         More clearly in his sight than real life could,

                  Of greater substance than apprentice wages.

         He made the priest his mask, put on his hood....

                  Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

He built a myth, turned Bristol into Troy

         And Camelot combined.  The Sacred Wood

Grew at the gate, and time became his toy.

         He brought the rill of local lore to flood

         And made St. Mary's cross the Holy Rood —

                  All for Rowley's sake.  Upon those pages

         He worked till Rowley's lyrics stood enthewed.

                  Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

At last he went to London to employ

         Himself and Rowley in the common good;

He managed but to starve himself, annoy

         Great Walpole, tender Johnson.  When his food

         And pence ran out at seventeen, he rued

                  The day that he'd been born.  London's sages

         Looked the other way, cried "Hoax!" and "Fraud!"

                  Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

Envoy:

         Yet what he wrote was true, the lines imbued

                  With haunting skill.  Death was his early wages.

         God rest his bones, however misconstrued.

                  Tom's suicide aches still across the ages.

 

Originally published in The Sewanee Review, xcviii:4, Fall 1990, and gathered in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM. 

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Friday, November 20th, 2009

R.I.P. THOMAS CHATTERTON

November 20, 1752-August 24, 1770

 

Chatterton, the genius boy of Bristol,

Peered through his father’s occult ball of crystal,

Invented the ancient poet-priest called Rowley,

Then swallowed poison rather than starve slowly.

 

R.I.P. JOHN FREDERICK NIMS

November 20, 1913-January 13, 1999

 

Were he alive, he'd pick these lines

To nits, turn wrinkles into wrines.

God now submits his choir's hymns

To Poetry's John Frederick Nims.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Thursday, November 19th, 2009

R.I.P. ALLEN TATE

November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979

He was a Fugitive a while

And an Agrarian with style

Who often would confederate

With others much like Allen Tate.

Uncle Wesli’s Daily Epitaph for Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

R.I.P. WILLIAM SHENSTONE

November 18, 1714 – February 11, 1763

 

When he retired the poet William Shenstone

Had land but little talent and no pension.

He spent his pounds and talents on a garden

Until his arteries began to harden.