"Gift" by Leonard Cohen

"Gift" by Leonard Cohen

     You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
     This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.



So, guys. I have no idea where to even start with this poem. Help.
The only thing that comes to mind is the notion of poetry in silence... Thoughts, maybe? Emotion? An idea that "silence" is like poetry in that a silence cannot exist between two people without thoughts and emotion, which are the cornerstones of poetry?

What do you guys think?

Phil Kaye's "Beginning, Middle, & End" (2011)

I present to you all, my secret lover, Phil Kaye... Granted, he doesn't yet know that we are lovers, but trust me, he will. 

"Beginning, Middle, & End"

Every great story
has a beginning, middle, and ending –
not necessarily in that order.

We are all great stories.

Chapter 389:
The boy, hair still long, fingers still too short, is 98 years old.
He sits at a restaurant alone.
The stranger next to him is eating something that looks vaguely delicious, so
the boy takes his fork, sticks it in his meal, and takes a bite.
He says, “I am 98 years old…go ahead, say something, asshole.”

Chapter 14:
The boy is eight years old; he and his best friend
come up with a great idea for a prank; they are sure they will not get caught.
The next morning, every house on the street – except his own – has toilet paper on the front yard.
They get caught.

Chapter 146:
And the boy and the girl live happily ever after.

Chapter 231:
And the boy and the girl vow never to speak to each other again.

Every great story has a beginning, middle, and ending –
not necessarily in that order.
We are all great stories, but not all written as chapter books.
I know that there are moments not meant to be bound,
that we scribble too much in the margins to read our own page numbers.

Like the night you thought you were invincible,
ran out into the lightning storm with a million keys tied to a million kites, and
a clench in your jaw that said, “Take me with you, goddammit, I dare you.”
And the week you finally reached out to feel your father’s cheeks
and just found paper cuts.

I know the nights we shatter hourglasses to fall asleep,
the afternoons we take photographs of our own shadows
just to prove that we left a mark.

I know the wetness of your lips.
I know that you are the leaf off of the tree of your parents’ first kiss,
and if you hold your shrubs to the sky, you can see their veins there.
I know that in later chapters, you will complain
about how things were better back in your day.

Give yourself lots to complain about.

And know that your legs were made to run, your bones were made to heal,
so let yourself fall so deeply into somebody else that you do not know
which way is up,
knowing that one day, you may fall out –
know exactly which way is down.
Call your mother crying as the first day you were born.
“Baby,” she will call you, “Baby, it’s okay. Every great story has a beginning, middle, and ending,
not necessarily in that order.”

Chapter 189:
The boy, too old now to celebrate his birthdays and too young to treasure them,
uses his fists.
Punches his own reflection to see if it is real,
breaks his hand back into the opposite of a fist, a conch shell of sinew.
He holds it to his ear and can hear the ocean of his own bloodline:
“Stand up, boy, not just with your legs.
You, be your own story, six hundred words per minute.
You, glasses  by age seven.
You, never stopped to read the back cover even though you know
what happens at the end.”

Chapter 431:
Once upon a time, there was a boy.
He is not here anymore, but the branches he left all hold their leaves to the sky,
and you can see the outline of his shadow on the sidewalk.

Chapter 1:
Once upon a time, there was a woman and a man,
and the first night they kissed, a seedling blossomed from the back of her neck.

The narrator brings up random moments of his life throughout the poem, and I wonder if, when writing this, Kaye simply wrote down memories that came to him as they did. I imagine a man flipping through the pages of his own "life story," but a page cannot be written until after a day is lived. That said, we at nineteen will have fewer chapters that a man of ninety-eight. 

For some reason, I was reminded of the psychological notion of mood-state dependent memory, a theory stating that the memories one can retrieve is relative to the emotional state one is in (example, a person suffering from depression may be quick to reminder darker memories of his life, whilst finding it difficult to remember happier ones). We all have stories, ones with beginnings, middles, and ends, though "not necessarily in that order." If we are to think back on our lives, from where we are now, the memories we retrieve, or the chapters we first turn to, will be dependent on where we are now. 

Kind of an interesting idea, that the story we would tell of ourselves will change throughout our lives, even the first few chapters. Changing the order of the story may change the story itself. I have no idea if that was the point Kaye was trying to make, but that's an idea I pulled. 

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.


I found out about this poem thanks to one of my favorite bands, the Fleet Foxes; I Googled "Innisfree" because it was mentioned in their epic song "The Shrine/An Argument". I think it's a fairly simple, but enticing poem. Innisfree is clearly a paradise-like place of peace and nature, a place where the narrator could escape from all his troubles. Most of the poem is simply composed of idyllic imagery describing the serene landscape. But the last stanza is interesting - does the "deep heart's core" he mentions refer to his own heart? This would explain how he hears the lake water lapping - he's "hearing" it in his soul, as a longing feeling for a place like this.
Innisfree might not even really exist - it's not the name of any real world location, and the purple glow at noon sounds pretty fantastical. But this makes sense. People tend to imagine perfection even if it doesn't exist. I think a lot of us have some imagined place - although often in a figurative sense of the word - that we would like to come to one day. I'm not sure exactly what Yeats was saying with this poem - but I've learned a lot this summer about the hardships and strife people face in the world today, not to mention all that humans have done and are doing to damage the planet, and right now, the idea of a pristine paradise island sounds very nice to me. I'd be interested to hear any of your thoughts.
-Devon

Welcome!

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?' Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."
--John Keating, Dead Poets Society

Mr. John Keating, I couldn't agree more, which is why we decided to completely rip off your idea and turn it into a blog! Welcome to the Dead Poets Society (or the cheap, online imitation of it). Every week or so, a bunch of college-aged kids who are clearly way too obsessed with this movie and who should probably leave their computers more often will scramble around and bring you their personal interpretations of one or several poems. Read it if you'd like, become inspired, allow us to trick you into thinking we're all some sort of intellectual bohemians when in actuality we're... just... no. All that good stuff!

So enjoy! Pull from these poems whatever you may, think our interpretation wrong or right! Yadadada, go! Go forth and suck the marrow from life!

Poetry is not dead; it is the written word of human passion.