On Thursday, October 11th, 2012, I got back into the classroom for the first time in a long while. The week before I had dropped in on Dr. Bennet Shaber, Chair of the SUNY College at Oswego Department of English and Creative Writing, to drop off a couple of books for the Department’s display of faculty publications: Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets and my Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, both published in the same year. I was mildly surprised to see that Bennet seemed to be more interested in the former volume than in the book of literary criticism.
“I’m teaching the elegy this semester,” he told me. “It’s a seminar. How about coming to class next week and talking to my students?” he asked. “They’re smart and interested. These aren’t exactly ‘elegies,’ he observed, ‘but close.’”
I happily agreed, so I went home and prepared some materials. I asked Bennet to send me a list of the major elegies he had covered so far this year, and he sent me this list by email:
“Spencer's Astrophel, Nashe's A Litany in Time of Plague, Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Shelley's Adonais are the major poems so far. We've also read some more modern/contemporary poems by Dennis O'Driscoll, Richard Garcia, Tess Gallagher, and Sharon Olds. Next Tuesday they have a paper due, so I'll spend the class showing them some paintings that touch on pastoral elegy (Poussin's two Arcadian Shepherd paintings principally). Then Thursday is YOU! I've been using Sandra Gilbert's Inventions of Farewell to supply most of the modern poetry. I can have them bring it to class if you know the volume and want to read some of those as well as your own poetry.”
I wrote back, “Attached you will find the titles and pages that I will read your class.” This is the attachment:
ELEGIES
From The Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics, Fourth Edition:
Occasional Poetry, pp. 266-269;
Elegiac Distich, Elegy, and “Elegy for John,: pp. 201-203
From Fearful Pleasures, The Collected Poems of Lewis Turco:
“In a White Direction,” p. 41
“Lines for Mr. Stevenson,” p. 48
“Trilogy for J. F. K.,” pp. 51-54
“The Pilot,” pp. 179-180
“Cancer,” pp. 401-402
“The Recurring Dream,” pp. 403-404
From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court:
“Elegy Composed in a Watermelon Patch,” pp. 181-183
From The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition:
Sestina, pp. 334-344
“The Obsession,” pp. 341-342
Interestingly, at least to me, is the coincidence that another book just out, Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776, edited by Dennis Barone, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012, contains, among an unusual but thoughtful selection of four of my poems, two elegies, “The Recurring Dream,” and the third part of “Trilogy for J. F. K.,” listed above, a Pindaric ode on the first anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, titled, “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day 1964”:
ODE ON ST. CECILIA’S DAY 1964
by Lewis Turco
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 song.
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.
Here is an elegy written in the form of a ballade; listen to the author read it:
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.
From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback,
Suggested Writing Assignment:
Write an elegy in a form or meter of your choosing.
