Ella Wheeler Wilcox – The beginnings of an encounter

I came across the poetry of American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox in a collection (which I am reading now) through one of her poems called “Two Glasses” .. a thoughtful poem depicting the conversation between a filled to the brim wine glass and a a filled to the brim water glass on a rich man’s dining table.. with the wine glass expressing its arrogance in the control she has on humanity and her ability to undo them and the water glass replying politely its ability to sustain and resuscitate humanity in the exact opposite way. It is a nice poem and I read it multiple times over for the overall message it carried and conveyed in simple words. Piqued by the quality of the poem, I googled a bit and came to know that she was an American author and poet and lived between 1850 – 1919 and was the one who wrote the famous lines “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone.” in a poem called “Solitude”

On checking Gutenberg.org, found that she has written quite prolifically (about 1200 poems and as prolific as the other great poet EMILY DICKINSON) which have been published as collections of poetry titled around the themes that she covered viz. Poems of Purpose, Poems of Cheer, Poems of Experience, Poems of Passion, Poems of Optimism, Poems of Power, Poems of Pleasure and a few others including a autobiography of sorts….

Flipping through the collection, I came across a longish poem called “A Son Speaks” …. the theme of the poem is how woman misuse and abuse their freedom and demand for rights as told by a son who has seen a bit of the world to his innocent mother who has always been at home and begins with the following lines :

“Mother, sit down, for I have much to say
Anent this widespread ever-growing theme
Of woman and her virtues and her rights…….”

As it progresses the poem becomes philosophical, politely argumentative, develops a perspective of the society of the times and also gets to a conclusion which in today’s world would be nothing short of blasphemy. What surprised me were the following:
1. The poem is written by a Woman
2. Written at a time and age when the themes around freedom of women and their rights were just picking up in public consciousness
3. That it got published without much commotion….

I read the poem multiple times and was very puzzled.. more than the theme of the poem it is that sense of puzzlement (సందిగ్థత/उल्जन) that will last in me for a long time to come….

The world is not what it appears…irrespective of the age and time, there will always be rebels and contrarians.

“Forever—never! Never-forever!” – The magic of poetry….

While it unfailingly always informs and entertains, a particular kind of reading can become addictively stimulating. And on that front, the form of writing that can give real.. real highs is poetry… A good volume of poetry can be manifold more stimulating than reading the finest of fine prose. And all it takes is a few simple words, simple rhythms, simple cadences and the effect on the reader can be extraordinary… Today I chanced upon a poem by H.W. Longfellow titled ” The Old Clock on the Stairs”…. Before I began reading the poem I tried guessing what it could be and was expecting something simple, nice and something that could give words to a long forgotten feeling, observation or thought of mine but the actual experience was way too different and way too profound… Through the eyes of a silent grandfather clock standing midway on a staircase Longfellow spins magic with words.. The concluding lines are as follows:

All are scattered, now, and fled,—
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
“Ah! when shall they all meet again?”
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply,—
“Forever—never!
Never-forever!”

Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time, shall disappear,—
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,—
“Forever—never!
Never—forever!”

Highly recommend it…

A Cartoonist’s remorse…

Tom Taylor was a leading cartoonist with the famous “Punch” magazine and furnished many cartoons which sharpened the acerbity of opinion pieces that criticized Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln died, he wrote a moving poem admitting his remorse at what he did…. A longish and a bit difficult read for its context… Here is a extract from the poem where he is scolding himself for what he did

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet—
Say, scurril jester, is there room for you?

I quite liked the way he uses the term “Scurril Jester” to admonish himself – scurril is the short form for scurrilous… Tom had the humility to call himself a scandalous clown…

And the poem is called : Abraham Lincoln

ROMA/ROMANY/LAMBADA/GYPSY – AND TWO WONDERFUL POEMS OF RUDYARD KIPLING

I first happened to read about the Gypsies/Romany folks on the FB wall of Mr. Mohan Guruswamy and felt intrigued by it. The essence of the post was that a sizeable population of Gypsies/Romany that one finds in Europe today are of Indian origin and have migrated from North West India to various parts of Europe and that some of their traditions closely resemble Indian traditions and that their language has a large vocabulary culled from Indian languages Hindi/Marwari/Sindhi etc. While I need to check the overall veracity of the claims in the post, one claim that really took me by surprise was that one branch of the remnant Indian stock of the Gypsies are “Lambada Tribes” who are a very common occurrence in Telangana. There are many villages in Telangana which are exclusively populated by these Lambada tribes and are called “Thandas”. The Lambadas are in general a hardworking, (and in the past) heavy hooch drinking, predominantly agrarian community who also have a big hand in cattle rearing. In summers many of them migrate to nearby towns to work in the construction industry and the money earned during this period goes in as investment into agriculture which they carry on in their thandas at the onset of monsoon. Many have small holdings of land and depending on the place grow Paddy, Maize, Chilli and Vegetables. One can identify them with surnames like Banoth, Naik, Gugloth, Ajmeraa, Rathod, Bhukya….etc… They stiill carry an element of nomadism with them ( go along with cattle for months into the forests for grazing) but at least in Telangana it is all kind of settled agrarian activity. More importantly they have not much to do with Hinduism or any other religion of India…

The above aside, I have come across two fascinating poems written by Rudyard Kipling on the Romany/Gypsy folks. In English the opposite of Romany is “Giorgio” i.e. anybody who is a non-gypsy.

The poem “The Gypsy Trail” describes the trail taken by the Romany across various parts of the world and the second poem “Gypsy Vans” is telling about the lives of Gypsy to a Giorgio and urging him/her how not to be like them. Both are gentle, a bit maudlin and evoke pity/sadness towards the gypsies as a group. The links to both the poems are given below:

https://www.bartleby.com/364/99.html – The Gypsy Trail

https://www.poetryloverspage.com/po…/kipling/gipsy_vans.html – Gypsy Vans

For their word play, rhythm, the overarching themes and portraying the social conditions of the European Gypsies both these poems are top notch and are in a class of their own and deserve to be read out loud with a cadence which will come on its own while reading….

(Guy Ritchie’s two movies viz “Snatch” has wandering gypsies called Pikies and “The Game of Shadows” has Madam Samsa and her band play an important role in the overall story line)

 

SHINING & SENDING …

Remember the movie “Shining” – Stephen King’s eerie tale made into a brilliant movie by Stanley Kubrick with Jack Nicholson in the lead role? But what exactly is Shining?

“Shining” is, at its core, a fusion of telepathy and clairvoyance. Being able to shine means being able to communicate with others using the mind, and gives people the ability to see things that have happened in the past, or will happen in the future”

Today I have come across another word called “Sending” in Rudyard Kipling’s story “The Sending of “Dana Da” and it means:

“…a horrible arrangement, first invented, they say, in Iceland. It is a Thing sent by a wizard, and may take any form, but, most generally, wanders about the land in the shape of a little purple cloud till it finds the Sendee, and him it kills by changing into the form of a horse, or a cat, or a man without a face. It is not strictly a native patent, though chamars of the skin and hide castes can, if irritated, despatch a Sending which sits on the breast of their enemy by night and nearly kills him. Very few natives care to irritate chamars for this reason.”

In pre-independence India this also gave rise to a popular saying : ” When the Devil rides on your chest remember the chamar.”

So the words “Shining” and “Sending” have very different meanings…. The world around is not as simple as it sounds/looks….