New at IWP Books: Leonard Bacon, 1943, Day of Fire.

Men and Poetry

Men write poetry,
 If they can.
Poetry! Poetry!
 What a thing is man,
Dreaming, scheming,
In the gloom or in the gleaming,
To find redeeming
 In a line’s thin span!

`A cry that echoes,
 An echo that cries,’
Takes him, wakes him
 To Paradise.
The strong verse, thundering
Through the brain blundering,
Sets him wondering,
 Unseals his eyes.

Wars bellow round him.
 They will blow by
And be forgotten
 Before the cry
Of a voice lifted
Over the rifted
Desert, sand-drifted,
 Where the bones are dry.

Evil Days

The field constricts,
 The view narrows.
Poor Hope conflicts
 With the slings and arrows.

The storm rises
 And overtakes.
The squall surprises,
 The wave breaks.

Ours is no light
 And healthy mood.
Old griefs bite.
 Sick thoughts intrude.

What we did ill
 Is written plain,
Against our will,
 Across the brain.

What we did well
 Can play no part
In the strange Hell
 Of the strange heart,

To itself a stranger,
 Staring with dim
Eyes at danger
 Beyond the rim

That all things known
 Obscurely girds
And will not own
 The rule of words.

Though Hell unchain
 The cataract,
Never complain!
 Act! Act! Act!

The Bulwarks Break

Now all the bulwarks sunder
 That stood so strong before.
We and our kind go under
 The slow wave of war.

We shall not judge all matters
 Henceforward from afar.
For now disaster batters
 At all we were and are.

The instant of decision
 Too openly has shown
The dullness of our vision,
 Our thought’s dim monotone.

The scheme of things that fitted
 Some pattern that we knew
Now proves device half-witted,
 Which we ourselves see through.

What if our every blunder
 Show clear in ghastly light?
Though all the bulwarks sunder,
 Now look alive and fight!

What Our Enemies Ignore

By force or indirection,
 In ignorance unchecked,
They seek their own subjection,
 Who labor to subject.

To the Huns and those who lead ’em
 This never has been known:
Only in others’ freedom
 Can nations find their own.

Zero-Hour

Now in the hour when our hopes tremble,
 When they whom we abhor decide,
It does not help us to dissemble,
 Though triumph be as yet denied.

Their conquest? In the end what victory
 Can crown a system and a plan,
In every aspect contradictory
 To the vision and the hope of man?

To every faith, to every dream,
 That moves sweet creatures young or old?
We must not pander to that scheme,
 Accept the domination cold

That palsies man into a type,
 A marionette in uniform,
Contented with a Sergeant’s stripe,
 And `kept mechanically warm.’

God send we keep ourselves as free
 As the great woods our fathers knew,
As waters of ‘the Ocean-Sea’
 Their crank blunt cock-boats blundered through.

From William James’s Pragmatism.

I find myself willing to take the universe to be really dangerous and adventurous, without therefore backing out and crying ‘no play.’ I am willing to think that the prodigal-son attitude, open to us as it is in many vicissitudes, is not the right and final attitude towards the whole of life. I am willing that there should be real losses and real losers, and no total preservation of all that is. I can believe in the ideal as an ultimate, not as an origin, and as an extract, not the whole. When the cup is poured off, the dregs are left behind forever, but the possibility of what is poured off is sweet enough to accept.

As a matter of fact countless human imaginations live in this moralistic and epic kind of a universe, and find its disseminated and strung-along successes sufficient for their rational needs. There is a finely translated epigram in the greek anthology which admirably expresses this state of mind, this acceptance of loss as unatoned for, even tho the lost element might be one’s self:

  A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast,
  Bids you set sail.
  Full many a gallant bark, when we were lost,
  Weathered the gale.

New at IWP Books: Arthur Guiterman, 1924, A Poet’s Proverbs.

Don’t tell your Friends abour your Indigestion:
“How are you!” is a Greeting, not a Question.

A House begins to be a Ruin, when
A Fallen Tile is not put back again.

The Past’s a Book wherein some Truths are found,
But not a Chain by which Men’s Feet are bound.

If all the World looks drear, perhaps the meaning
Is that your Windows need a little Cleaning.

No Path can give Delight
To him whose Shoes are Tight.

Adventurers who dare not sail their Ships
Till Wind and Tide are fair, will make Few Trips.

Sailor bold, be not too bold;
The Ship is Young, the Sea is Old.

He that’s called the Fearless One
Oft is he that Feared to Run.

You’re sure that you are Right? How fine and strong!
But were you never just as Sure — and Wrong?

Who takes one Stroke in turn at Every Tree,
Fells None, however sharp his Ax may be.

If Errand-running be your Part,
Raise Errand-running to an Art.

The Wise must seek the Dull, else Wisdom dies;
For hardly will the Dull seek out the Wise.

“Our Cause is Just!” so all Men say
“God send us Victory!” But long
I look for One who dares to pray,
“God send Defeat if I am Wrong!

Men often think they do not Care to do
The Deeds they really do not Dare to do.

New at IWP Books: Leonard Bacon, 1928, The Legend of Quincibald. From the introduction:

To anticipate criticism has generally been considered poor judgment on the part of a writer, and may be so in this instance. To the reader who is by nature hostile to the methods I have chosen, I have nothing to say whether of praise or blame. He has his limitation as I have mine. But to the reader who has some disposition to discover in these verses certain aspects of his own mystery, I should like to say a word.

This poem is an attempt to deal with the stuff of personality in the only way in which that stuff can be dealt with — that is to say, symbolically. The persons and things which have a place in the poem, have that place because no simpler expression will perform their function. I wish it could, but for the present at least such simplicity is impossible. A reader who surrenders himself to the succession and flow of the images, will, I think, find a meaning in the poem, and that no light one. A reader who endeavors to torture the symbolism into allegory, and the allegory into what he would call plain English, will find what I never meant, and what in point of fact means nothing. If he desires to do this I cannot stop him, and indeed have failed as far as he is concerned. But I hope with all my heart that there will be readers who, by experience painful or otherwise, have learned that at times fantasy is more practical than logic, and that a mechanical sorites can be the most deadly enemy of truth. Such persons will I hope find in this poem an order of things congenial to their imagination within and to their contact with the world without. They may not be better than others, but they are a great deal luckier.

New at IWP Books: Arthur Guiterman, 1920, Chips of the Jade: Being Chinese Proverbs With More Folk-Sayings From Hindustan and Other Oriental Countries.

Eight Sailors; Seven want to steer.
That Junk won’t come to Port, I fear.

Fear not lest Men say Evil Things of you,
But fear to do the Ill they say you do.

This One Makes a Net,
 That One stands and wishes;
Would you like to bet
 Which One gets the Fishes?

Four Words upon the Prison Gate
 Are written: “These Repent Too Late.”

Since Riches lead to Vice,
 And Poverty to Theft,
Outside of Paradise
 Is any Virtue left?

Recorded Words are Fetters;
 When Angry, don’t write Letters.

The New will last perhaps a score
 Of Days; the Old, a Year or more.

The Street will be as clean as Heaven’s Floor
When Each Man sweeps before his Own Front Door.

A Day, or a Minute? A Year or a Moon?
Now, which does he mean when he says, “Pretty soon!”

Small Ills are the Fountains
 Of most of our Groans.
Men trip not on Mountains,
 They stumble on Stones.

“My Wisdom aids the World!” — How sweet
 That Secret Thought of Great and Small!
The Sea-gull sleeps with Upturned Feet
 To catch the Sky when that shall fall.

My Home is a Shell
 With an Empty Shelf!
Oh, bring me a Well
 And I’ll drown myself!

Avoid Suspicion: When you’re walking through
Your Neighbor’s Melon-patch, don’t tie your Shoe.

Who dares not hoist the sail till all agree
 That Danger’s dead, will never put to Sea.

I’ll make it Rain as soon as Men
 Will all agree and tell me when.

New at IWP Books: Leonard Bacon, 1935, The Voyage of Autoleon: A Fanstatic Epic.

………………………………..
Till Leonymus cried out: “To this self-pity, how much longer will you cleave?
“Though the universe die round us not vain is the passion of the soul.
“Without the wound, it may be the wounded man could never be whole.
“Though Achilles were a cowardly hireling, the fair Helen but a jade,
“And our souls undone for that, the dream is in us whereby they are remade.
“To the height and the depth the wound draws me. Thrice blessed the spear.
“Our hope was most false in the great battle. So now is the fear
“That has smitten us all and has robbed us of all beauty and worth.
“For here once was beauty. The Undying shall not perish from the earth.
“It shall live in a song or in a gesture, in a sorrow that is sore,
“Or haply in their vision that endeavor to discover it once more.”
And we pushed out the galley from the sea-beach and departed from the shore.
………………………………..

New at IWP Books: Leonard Bacon, 1934, Dream and Action, a retelling in ottava rima of some episodes from the life of Arthur Rimbaud. The opening stanzas:

Any one who thinks this work should correspond
With the actual facts behind has my permission
To go to Sheol and all points beyond,
And to continue there in such condition
As Satan may determine, who is fond
Of suchlike persons, whom the obstetrician,
Unfortunately skilful, at their birth
Should have prevented from cumbering the earth.

When one becomes entangled in an art,
All sorts of dreadful things may supervene.
You comprehend the scheme only in part,
Little suspecting what that part may mean.
The mental lapse, worse yet, defect of heart
Shatter conception, vitiate the scene
That was to carry out the grand effect.
O broken heart! O wretched intellect!

So with my story of Arthur Rimbaud,
A poet doomed to ultimate renown,
Whose poetry you probably don’t know,
Though that won’t hurt him. I’ve ventured to set down
My views about him, which partly may be so.
He was the flower, the glory, and the crown
Of France — a child that knew all lights and heats
Of the spirit, worthy to have stood with Keats.

From Ulug Beg by Leonard Bacon (“Autolycus”):

Women know too much. Out of their wombs we come
From nowhere in particular, and go —
Whither? — The best authorities are dumb
Upon this question since they do not know,
Though there are various theories venturesome.
See Palladini, Oliver Lodge and Co.
But whether death await us or survival,
Women have lots to do with our arrival.

New at IWP Books: Leonard Bacon, 1938, Bullinger Bound and Other Poems.

John Jay Chapman

Gleaming courage without fault,
When the night has come, must halt.
Knight of the single hand,
Star-touching, star-crossed,
Even in this land
It is not lost.

Dangerous Acquaintance

Sir William Batten, Sir William Penn,
And Sir John Minnes were Navy men.
They had chicken-livers and pasty faces
And their principal interest was their places.
Their intellects resembled a sheep’s
And they were detested by Samuel Pepys,
Who set it down as one in the face of God
In the time of the second Charles by the grace of God.
Sir William Batten no doubt was shady.
His wife wasn’t pleasant to Pepys’s Lady.
Sir William Penn, though his son turned Quaker,
After all had taken Jamaica.
And Sir John Minnes, though he wasn’t able,
Was excellent company at table.
There is a question which gives me the creeps:
Am I acquainted with Samuel Pepys?
That chap I beat in a lawsuit recently,
Is he handling my character rather indecently;
Hitting me off in phrases too fiery
For my satisfaction in some damned diary?
I can see his pen on the white page flickering:
“Bacon was there. Hence the usual bickering.
“It’s perfectly clear that he thinks he’s funny,
“But if he’s amusing, then I’m Gene Tunney.”
With the further addition nothing can soften,
“Why does he come to the club so often?”
He’s probably working while we are sleeping.
Ten to one Samuel Pepys is peeping.
Can you feel the edge of his scimitar?
He sees us not as we think we are.
We may be a good deal better perhaps.
We may, in fact, be excellent chaps.
He may not reach our heights and our deeps —
But he sees what he sees. What we sow he reaps.
And one cannot argue with Samuel Pepys.

New at IWP Books: Leonard Bacon, 1932, The Furiso.

………………………..
Pio Speranza at Trascara sat
At his drugstore-door, slowly recovering from
One of the worst of modern ailments that
Can hit a hero — shell-shock. He would go numb
At moments, since that bomb had knocked him flat,
And foam at the mouth — a little — and be dumb,
And a prey to loathly reflexes, until
He could beat ’em by an effort of the will

Which was wont to wander ever so far away,
Leaving him feeling weak and insecure
And comfortless, afraid of night and day
And people, undefended and unsure.
Even his wife had got at times that grey
Look all things had, which he could not endure.
But her eyes summoned something to their deep.
And sometimes in her bosom there was sleep,

When came queer visions of a ship that sailed
Somewhere. Bound whither? His mind, it seemed, was tired.
The question, whatever it implied, entailed
Effort he could not make, though he desired
To know. Once was a spirit-ship. He quailed
Before an enigma. Perhaps the thing had fired
His nature once — before he was like this,
Afraid, and on the edge of an abyss.

He had a cigarette, he had the paper,
And did not know quite what to do with either,
If his leaping nerves were always going to caper.
But will came from deep waters for a breather,
And made him feel she was once more the shaper
Of his fortune, trampling vast despair beneath her.
He strove to read. With an effort greater yet
He lighted the vibrating cigarette.
………………………..