Booktown Books, Grass Valley, CA
—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA
LEXICOGRAPHER
Blessings on you, big irascible
Samuel Johnson. Decked out
for the western-islands-of-Scotland tour
with black tricorn hat atop white wig,
dark heavy long coat
with kangaroo pockets;
each joey in each overstock pocket
a thick book, devotional, factual,
and each book if brand new soon
to be spine-cracked and bent back.
Like any old rampaging Saxon
a ransacker of book-knowings
older than kennings, newer than poems
by Buchanan in Scots Modern Latin,
or lyrics by Petrarch. All verse
from Sidney to Milton or Shakespeare,
science from Bacon to Boyle to Hooker;
Each accurate-back-then quotation
from chemistry, each teasing of one
word-entry into blossoming panicle-senses:
whatever’s the strict truth, as you held
fast to your own strict truth; whatever’s
a lie—and you distinguished lies
of two varieties, 1) the half-innocent
lie of the ignorant and 2) the lie told
though the liar is witting (“Sir, he lies,
and he knows he lies”)—all these
meticulous careful syllabic assemblies,
these reticulate sign-interstices,
our templates and Oxford’s…
You dance your sober-garbed
Lichfield country dance, your lexical
ecstasies and wit-pokes, your
sporadic small jest definitions of oats
and pensions and patrons.
How you flaunt your incunabula,
marginalia, glossaria. You,
father of words in the long long
catena of fatherly, motherly
words from the matrices. You, oldest
showrunner in the ongoing
sitcom seasons of culture and scribble.
Blessings on you, big irascible
Samuel Johnson. Decked out
for the western-islands-of-Scotland tour
with black tricorn hat atop white wig,
dark heavy long coat
with kangaroo pockets;
each joey in each overstock pocket
a thick book, devotional, factual,
and each book if brand new soon
to be spine-cracked and bent back.
Like any old rampaging Saxon
a ransacker of book-knowings
older than kennings, newer than poems
by Buchanan in Scots Modern Latin,
or lyrics by Petrarch. All verse
from Sidney to Milton or Shakespeare,
science from Bacon to Boyle to Hooker;
Each accurate-back-then quotation
from chemistry, each teasing of one
word-entry into blossoming panicle-senses:
whatever’s the strict truth, as you held
fast to your own strict truth; whatever’s
a lie—and you distinguished lies
of two varieties, 1) the half-innocent
lie of the ignorant and 2) the lie told
though the liar is witting (“Sir, he lies,
and he knows he lies”)—all these
meticulous careful syllabic assemblies,
these reticulate sign-interstices,
our templates and Oxford’s…
You dance your sober-garbed
Lichfield country dance, your lexical
ecstasies and wit-pokes, your
sporadic small jest definitions of oats
and pensions and patrons.
How you flaunt your incunabula,
marginalia, glossaria. You,
father of words in the long long
catena of fatherly, motherly
words from the matrices. You, oldest
showrunner in the ongoing
sitcom seasons of culture and scribble.
Keeping Accounts Straight
AT FAMAGUSTA, CYPRUS
Othello, master of the battle’s ranks,
Whip hand to whip up courage among the men
If not quite gifted to know men’s minds: what thanks
From Venice but to bestow on you a wren
For size, but hugely hearted, brimming love
Beyond limits, a senator’s daughter? Appetite
For bearing children, dark or fair. No dove,
Neither, but natural, woman-warrior-bright.
Now set you both down on a half-wild island
To crumble—Moor—your faith in the Creator:
On Cyprus, Latins and Greeks blend—like Scots’ Highland
For crowding vital heats, an incubator
Where plots hatch. Honor may teach you here to slay.
But Iago orders this war game today.
Othello, master of the battle’s ranks,
Whip hand to whip up courage among the men
If not quite gifted to know men’s minds: what thanks
From Venice but to bestow on you a wren
For size, but hugely hearted, brimming love
Beyond limits, a senator’s daughter? Appetite
For bearing children, dark or fair. No dove,
Neither, but natural, woman-warrior-bright.
Now set you both down on a half-wild island
To crumble—Moor—your faith in the Creator:
On Cyprus, Latins and Greeks blend—like Scots’ Highland
For crowding vital heats, an incubator
Where plots hatch. Honor may teach you here to slay.
But Iago orders this war game today.
Stone Mask
OCULAR DEMONSTRATION
Give me the ocular proof.
—Othello, to Iago
Othello deems his own speech acts too “rude.”
Yet begs of Iago what? Why, Rhetoric.
As Cicero writes, the truth may be construed
Through verbal vividness. A parlor trick?
The Roman figure Ocular Demonstration
So brilliantly describes events, we see,
Or think we see, them pass in demarcation
Of crisp outlines. The Real Reality
Iago “proves” by Cassio’s dream-kisses.
His interlude of “Dupe Meets Handkerchief”
(Othello catches Cassio’s half, but misses
The prompter’s cues) air-sculpts in high relief
The “ocular proof” best fitted to the need,
Othello’s eyes, his stomach, rumbling greed.
Hidden Rose
ALAS, POOR OPHELIA
In Gloriana’s court, all marriage ties
Are politics: Anne Cecil weds De Vere
Means even tighter bonds, in this queen’s eyes,
Between her and the Cecils—love and fear—
Than formerly. De Vere is doubly bound,
To Anne and monarch. Rare, when this Virgin Queen
Sees Maids of Honour married with no sound
Of envious fuss. Concealed in her serene,
Unconscious rage will out. Ophelia’s weeds
Are her “crownet,” Anne’s tiara,
countess-garland
(Soaked through with her clothes in the
“glassy stream”):
Her boatman’s-token, passage to the far land?
All this, quite clear to Gertrude-Eliza’s eyebeam:
She’s witnessed that whole episode of drowning
In detail. Sweeter to sentimentalize
Alas, poor mad girl, than that her mind’s dawning
Should sunburst her bubble. Act! Do
something. Spies,
Thieves, view such deaths inert. Yell danger, Queen;
Cry out to the “liberal shepherds” you call gross:
They won’t fear getting wet, won’t stand and preen,
But raise Ophelia from that medium, death.
Fastidious infernal Queen, her loss
Convicts you, wasting your time on candied breath.
Crack
FALSTAFF / HAL’S HALF
This is a bromance bound to end unwell:
A youth, though princely, shaped for tricks and pranks
By riotous friendships he keeps with fell,
Foul, sottish wits and sports he gives no thanks,
For, once he nears the crown, that “golden rigol,”
He sloughs off comrades like a nasty coat.
Try as he may, he can’t quite run or wriggle
Far from a youth misspent beside that bloat
King of corruptors, old Sir John Falstaff,
Who “lards the ground” of war with starved recruits
He shoves to the front lines—oh, how we laugh!—
Bribed to press-gang poor “scarecrows” without boots
By “toasts-and-butter” cowards of more wealth.
Who’s worse, the varlet or the prince? Disputes
May rage; Hal, Falstaff, split the prize for stealth.
Almost the first act of our hypocrite
Turned king? To spurn the knight with whom he’s reveled;
The plump knight, fool to believe his knockabout wit
Worthy of a court welcome—rightly leveled.
“Reformed,” this king can dangle fair prospects
Before banished Jack, of some return to favor,
If only he leaves off drink, erases debts:
A new start for Falstaff (addicted, sick of liver),
King Hal—er, Henry—knows he’ll never make:
A hand-rinsed Pilate king, and no mistake.
Tagged
GREAT “SHAKESPEARE”
The wisdom in your plays should have advised
Us readers: you saw courts, held privilege.
Such substance could not come from agonized
Lips moving at a horn-book pace. No dredge
Of isolate thought-scraps up from village mud,
No nights one tallow-stump’s flame guttered. Lore
Of thousandfold books took root in stately blood;
You strode Her Grace’s tessellated floor.
High politics you mastered to despise;
Your plays teach us what rich veneers conceal,
What pomp may drape proud robber-barons’ lies.
King Henry the Fifth’s prayers won’t reverse the steal,
His father’s, of his crown now. No making-moan
Fools you: subversive loyalist, one of Their own.
THEME AND THREE CONUNDRUMS
Were I a king I might command content,
Were I obscure unknown would be my cares,
And were I dead no thoughts would me torment,
Nor words, nor wrongs, nor love, nor hate, nor fears.
A doubtful choice of three things one to crave,
A kingdom or a cottage or a grave.
—Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (a.k.a. “Shakespeare”)
Were I a king I might command content…
—Does this line signify calm self-command,
Fit for a king? Or just insinuate
A peevish tyrant’s wish to have forebanned
All serious affairs up for debate?
Is this the itch of Claudius for drink?
Or “Shakespeare’s” hunt for lost content, through ink?
Were I obscure unknown would be my cares…
—Obscure to others? Or to earl De Vere,
Reduced in rank, a peasant? To conceal
Cares and sorrows from all the world is fear
Or courage, who knows? Never to reveal
Our sufferings to the world requires lies;
Hide from self-knowledge, bought with pain? Unwise.
And were I dead no thoughts would me torment…
Hard to escape the implication felt:
To wish for death, as ignorance is death,
Comes close, too close, to wishing spirit would melt,
Corrupt, as flesh does, after that last breath.
Suppose no soul: then dying voids all stigma.
If ghost survives, we’re back to our enigma.
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
But what if Shakespeare― and Hamlet―were asking the wrong question? What if the real question is not whether to be, but how to be?
―Gayle Forman, Just One Day
_____________________
Tom Goff and Katy Brown are teamed up in the Kitchen today to present us with some musings about the world of Shakespearianism, and we heartily thank them for their fine work!
Don’t forget to check out the UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS link at the top of this column for this weekend’s happenings. If you happen to be in Los Gatos today, Frank Andrick is reading at Meadowfest at the Chateau Liberté, 22700 Old Santa Cruz Highway, Los Gatos, CA. Gates open at 3pm: Janine Cooper Ayres (folk rock acoustic set) at 4pm; The LenCat Band (blues rock), 5-8pm; frank reads after that. $100 general admission. Info: www.facebook.com/frank.andrick.71/posts/755380049207980/.
_____________________
—Medusa
—Photo by Katy Brown
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
the primrose path~
