Ode On a Grecian Urn

 

Here is the full text of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats

 

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

       Of deities or mortals, or of both,

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

 

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

         For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

                For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

 

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

 

I like "Ode to a Grecian Urn" because Keats has the gift of making the sounds of words mirror the sense.  You can see this especially in the stanzas on young love and on sacrifice. The entire poem is reproduced below but in the first part of the post, I have commented on some individual lines. 

The second and third stanzas on music and love abound with long-e sounds.This effect mirrors our own language. Long-e sounds are associated with fun and happiness: free, glee, merry, cheer, dear, the child whoosing down a slide and crying "Whee."  Are there exceptions? Yes, of course. Fear and tear have the long-e sound and yet express a negative emotion, still, most of the time, this sound signals happiness. 

 

But look at some of the individual lines in Keat's brilliant poem: 

In the second stanza, the line "Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave" contains 3 long-e sounds: beneath, trees, and leave. 

 

Note the lines on unrequited love in the second stanza. About romantic frustration, these lines contain fewer such sounds: in the first three lines, there is but one long-e sound, in grieve. But the last line offers consolution: "For ever wilt though love and she be fair" contains two in just one line. 

 

 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

 

Now, contrast these lines of (mostly) happiness with a fourth stanza on animal sacrifice: lots of o-sounds: O, lowing, shore, morn, evermore, soul, desolate. The full Stanza:

 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

 

Obviously, I am making a generalization.  The "happy stanzas" have a few long-o sounds and the mournful ones have a few e-sounds, but the pattern of sounds is clear. 

 

The fifth stanza seems to be an attempt to reconcile the joys and sorrows of life and to argue that art offers consolation and serves as a friend to man. .Thus, this stanza mixes these e- and o-sounds:

 

O sounds: old, woe, ours, 

e sounds: remain, beauty, ye need

         When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to Write About: Choosing the Best Emotional Distance

 

One of the tricks to writing good fiction is finding the proper emotional distance to make the story work.  Any story I have ever written that stemmed from a personal grievance was beyond lousy. All were abysmal. The reason? Here, I am drawn to an insight by mystery writer Gillian Roberts:

 

          "Know thyself" is nifty advice but it's almost impossible on or off paper. "Love, defend, and justify yourself" is closer to reality,             and your writer self won't be aware of all the times you'll censor possibilties and hobble your mystery."

Nothing is more boring that a story in which the writer is trying to exorcise personal demons. The stories read like a therapist's notes--or perhaps like a defense lawyer's summation to a jury--and not like fiction. 

On the other hand, a story in which the writer has no emotional investment is sure to be bland and lifeless. 

 

The trick is finding the balance. Every writer has to find that balance for himself or herself. Since I have a strong, albeit layman's interest in history, I find writing stories about events I feel passionate about produces better stories. 

 

Here are some examples from my own writings. My family was small, conflicted, and geographically dispersed. As a consequence,  I have not known relatives outside my nuclear family. My maternal grandmother died before I was born and my mother severed her relationship with her father; hence, I did not know him either. I only know them through my mother's stories about them.  

 

Thus, when I write about them, I am not writing about anything personal I have to defend or justify. Still, because they are family, I do have an interest in them: what they endured during the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, how infidelity affected their marriage, how one person's stern religious views affected other family members. By setting the story "Some Small Gain" during a troubled era and exploring how larger social issues interacted with personal ones,  I wrote a story that was about more than therapy session notes. Because I did not know my grandparents except through very general descriptions from my mother, I was able to use my imagination to develop their characters. 

 

Is it the greatest story ever written? It is not--but it is far better than the ones mired in grievances. 

 

The Instagram promo

 

Link to "Some Small Gain"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A photo of Theodore Roethke taken at Saginaw State University

Varying Meter Skillfully: A Reflection on Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"

 

 

One of the tricks to writing in a regular meter is knowing when to vary the meter in a way that emphasizes the meaning the poem is trying to convey.  To illustrate this idea, I will look at Theodore Roethke's  My Papa's Walz:

 

My Papa’s Waltz

By Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath   

Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy.

 

We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

My mother’s countenance   

Could not unfrown itself.

 

The hand that held my wrist   

Was battered on one knuckle;   

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

 

You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

 

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Roethke's use of form is masterful. His choice of iambic trimeter--three stresses per line--mirrors the musical structure of a waltz with its distinct 3 beats per measure. The dance itself has 3 steps as well: a step forward or backward, a step to the side, and a step to close the feet together.

 

While many of his lines have exactly 6 syllables, some of the lines include an unstressed 7th syllable.  This extra syllable adds to the musical flow but it also, in my view, signals a slight irregularity that corresponds to the boy's discomfort at dancing with an inebriated father as these extra syllables tend to occur in lines describing the child's ambivalent reaction to the dance. 

 

Look at two lines:

 

  1. The whiskey on your breath- and "My right ear scraped a buckle"-note the pattern of stresses: stressed syllables are the first syllable of whiskey, on, and breath. The line has an even 6 syllables. 
  2. Now, compare that line "My right ear scraped a buckle." We can read that line metrically as right, scraped, and the first syllable of buckle as being stressed and that makes sense following the iambic trimeter pattern. But notice that the words themselves work against that pattern. After "my" the next three words are monosyllabic: right ear scraped. It would be our tendency to want to emphasize "ear" because it is a noun and vital to what is happening in the poem. In this way, all three words--right, ear, and scraped feel like they should be stressed.  This line is totally unlike "The whiskey on your breath" in which the second syllable of whiskey is unstressed, both in the way it is pronounced and in the way it fits the meter. The other unstressed syllables are the, a mere article and hence not that important, and your, an adjective far less important than breath. Only on, a preposition and hence a "minor" word works against this idea. The meter emphases whiskey and breath, the most important ideas in this line. 

 

In "My right ear scraped a buckle", Roethke strains against the expected rhythm to convey the irregularity of the situation. 

 

The metrical irregularity is even more pronounced in the line "With a palm caked hard by dirt."  If we follow the metrical pattern, two of the stressed syllables are an article and a preposition--while the noun palm and adjective hard are unstressed. If you try reading that line out loud following the regular metrical pattern indicated by the bolded words above, you will hear how unnatural it sounds and the way in which the meter you have come to expect is at odds with the actual wording and how this variation adds further emphasis to the meaning of the poem--the father's odd behavior, and the boy's uneasiness. 

Note too that the line "with a palm caked hard by dirt" has seven syllables. Several other lines, those ending with words  dizzy and easy, contain seven syllables but that seventh syllable is unstressed. This lack of a final stress helps convey the gliding movement of a waltz. But in this line, the seventh syllable is stressed--or at least it feels like it should be stressed. Once again, the irregularity of the situation is emphasized by the irregularity of the meter.