Rosie Schapp: Cocktails and Blake. Exquisite taste. Onward!
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I share an experience similar to Rosie Schaap's youthful encounter with the grave of Robert Frost. As a college student, I often frolicked about the Glen Helen nature preserve in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Those youthful revels were, like Ms. Schaap's, less than sober. In my case, they were obscured not only by alcohol, but also by wisps of pot and some occasional, clumsy canoodling.
In 1929 Chicago industrialist Hugh Taylor Birch established Glen Helen in memory of his daughter Helen Birch-Bartlett, an American poet. At the center of the preserve he placed a stone to mark Helen's untimely passing in 1925. Upon the stone is a plaque that bears the opening lines of her poem "Up in the Hills":
"The earth smells old and warm and mellow, and all things lie at peace.
I too serenely lie here under the white-oak tree, and know the splendid flight of hours all blue and gay, sun-drenched and still."
Unlike Ms. Schaap, I didn't begin reflecting "soberly" on Helen’s memorial until I was well into middle age. I suppose I might well regret my carefree, willful ignorance of things eternal when I was young. On the other hand, if I had been obsessing on my inevitable death and decay back then, my youth would hardly have been “a splendid flight of hours all blue and gay.” Far better to have experienced those hours undisturbed by images of an elderly bent figure (my own) hobbling arthritically toward Helen’s stone to reflect on her words for the thousandth time.
In 1929 Chicago industrialist Hugh Taylor Birch established Glen Helen in memory of his daughter Helen Birch-Bartlett, an American poet. At the center of the preserve he placed a stone to mark Helen's untimely passing in 1925. Upon the stone is a plaque that bears the opening lines of her poem "Up in the Hills":
"The earth smells old and warm and mellow, and all things lie at peace.
I too serenely lie here under the white-oak tree, and know the splendid flight of hours all blue and gay, sun-drenched and still."
Unlike Ms. Schaap, I didn't begin reflecting "soberly" on Helen’s memorial until I was well into middle age. I suppose I might well regret my carefree, willful ignorance of things eternal when I was young. On the other hand, if I had been obsessing on my inevitable death and decay back then, my youth would hardly have been “a splendid flight of hours all blue and gay.” Far better to have experienced those hours undisturbed by images of an elderly bent figure (my own) hobbling arthritically toward Helen’s stone to reflect on her words for the thousandth time.
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I lived in London several years ago and worked near that cemetery. I would often eat lunch on a bench near the markers for William Blake's and Daniel Defoe's graves. It was a a very peaceful spot.
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I find it odd that Ms. Schapp chose to edit Blake's deathbed statement, censoring out the reason for his expression of happiness which was "hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ." Whether one is atheist, agnostic, or Christian, without the full statement the reader is unjustly robbed of Blake's words and meaning. The entire quote is: "He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see & expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ. Just before he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven." A poet of Blake's stature deserves to be quoted properly.
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I suspect, per her comment that Richmond's "account is probably not the whole truth," that Ms. Schapp suspects Richmond of expanding upon Blake's last words, perhaps by adding a formal expression of Christian faith that may have been more that of the friend than the poet. Given that, it is not necessarily Blake who has not been quoted properly, but rather the witness of record.
The first 56 lines of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" were written in a laudanum stupor. It's best escried through a Blakean lens, and a toke or two. The two Romantic goodfellows had much in common. The leading essayist Charles Lamb has a nice recollection of one:
"Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee -- the dark pillar not yet turned -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- Logician, Metaphysician, Bard -- How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar -- while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy!" --- excerpt, Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago.
"Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee -- the dark pillar not yet turned -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- Logician, Metaphysician, Bard -- How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar -- while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy!" --- excerpt, Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago.
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Very fine and evocative piece. I share Ms. Schaap's passion for cemeteries, which was spawned more than 30 years ago when my wife and I began seeking out the graves of long-gone Hollywood figures in Los Angeles. I have visited Bunhill Fields twice but the uncertainty of the precise location of Blake's grave kept me from fully experiencing the curious shivery pleasure that comes from being near the remains of a very great artist (Ms. Schaap, incidentally, neglects to mention that John Bunyan rests in the same graveyard). I have lost count of the number of gravesites to which I have made pilgrimages (including, like Ms. Schaap, the profound experience of visiting that of Brecht), but oddly, the only one at which I have found myself moved to tears was the grave of the great French film director Eric Rohmer, whose work means so much to me. Buried under his given name of Maurice Scherer. M. Rohmer whiles away eternity in the Cimitiere Montparnasse in Paris, an essential stop for anyone seeking macabre epiphanies.
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Our guide at Bunhill stated that it is believed that as many as 140,000 are buried there, mostly on top of each other. John Wesley is similarly interred across the street at the Wesley Chapel, with several Methodist ministers who followed him. It was a sedate, though stunning visit as outlined by the author.
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William Blake believed he was in communication with the dead, most notably with his brother Robert and the poet Milton. Most remarkable is the number of "Blake adepts" who have experiences, often in the form of coincidences or bibliomancy which are extraordinary in their specificity and defy all logic. Yeats and Ginsberg are probably the most famous of these adept. I have had a number of Blakethroughs and have had friendships start with them.
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Consider the possibility that poetry's subject and method is the nature of the soul.
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," an Attic Greek said.
‘‘I cannot consider death as anything but a removing from one room to another.’’
See, this is the childishness of the imagination. Death is not defined by life. It is not a transition to another "room." We didn't come through a "transition" at birth. We come through hellish physicality, and we will exit our physicality hellishly.
See, this is the childishness of the imagination. Death is not defined by life. It is not a transition to another "room." We didn't come through a "transition" at birth. We come through hellish physicality, and we will exit our physicality hellishly.
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Not really Death can be an easy transition to another room or state of being simply by a gentle going to sleep and not waking up. Having been at few deaths, some were looked at as being very welcomed. people do tire of living at times. birth? Again sometimes very hard, the first kid a woman pushes out tends to be harsh I guess, after that they can be come easier and easier. As a male I will never know other seeing my own kids born. 2nd one just popped out and was there. Do we remember our own birth is a good question. I have no recollection of mine but that doesn't mean some remembrance is there packed away somewhere between some brain synapses way down deep perhaps. Most deaths because of modern medicine can be made quite gentle. State of mind going in can make it hellish I guess. But knowing its inevitable and that what's on the other side just might be good makes difference. Then again being a Buddhist and not wanting rebirth as something slimy and grotesque with no sense of consciousness is hellish to think about. Does a slug know its a slug? Must live the right life to lessen that possibility I think. LOL LOL
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No we won't, joymars. There are assisted-suicide laws in 5 states, and as the NYT article several weeks ago, middle-aged white males are making their final exit in record numbers, by choice. Opioids obviate hellish death throes, and did so for my 65 y.o. cousin in NJ who died yesterday of brain cancer after 24 month of advanced treatment.
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The ambiguity of his resting place reflects that of his poems.
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He claimed to have died many times, and he told his friend Henry Crabb Robinson, ‘‘I cannot consider death as anything but a removing from one room to another.’’
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One of the 6 visionaries at Medjugorje, a group whose ecstatic trances have been analyzed by medical teams from Italy and Austria in real-time since 1981, said "Dying is as easy as crossing the room." Near-death experiences confirm the same viewpoint.
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One of the 6 visionaries at Medjugorje, a group whose ecstatic trances have been analyzed by medical teams from Italy and Austria in real-time since 1981, said "Dying is as easy as crossing the room." Near-death experiences confirm the same viewpoint.
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Well, I'm glad that's settled.
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As are all humans confronted with their own mortality, Roy. Stay optimistic.
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In grad school one professor assigned a wonderful book, "To The Palace of Wisdom," by Prof. Martin Price. Along with Wordsworth and Coleridge, Blake was in the front rank of innovators.
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I have no disbelief; quite the opposite. 5 years after a friend was decapitated in a car accident in 1968, he appeared to me in a dream, on a path I used to take home from grammar school, but I did not know him then, he lived in another town, and he had no way of knowing which route I took to/from school, which varied. I saw him just yards in front of me as I crossed the street. "But Dennis, you're dead" I began to say, but before the word "dead" came he threw back his head as he'd done in life, bellowed a loud laugh -- not a blemish on his neck, despite his decapitation -- and then looked me right in the eye and said, "I never died!" The dream ended then. Fearful symmetry?
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Yes, symmetrical with Ichabod Crane.
3
And Joe Hill.
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But Ichabod Crone was a fictional creation, Roy. My friend was, and is, real. "There are more things in heaven and earth," Roy, "than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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boris johnson, the mayor of london, is set to approve the building of a skyscraper no one wants which will permanently enshadow bunhill fields burial ground. he keeps doing this to the east end, giving builders permission previously denied by local authorities.
http://spitalfieldslife.com/2016/02/04/a-shadow-over-bunhill-fields/
http://spitalfieldslife.com/2016/02/04/a-shadow-over-bunhill-fields/
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Great link! Thanks. And a poke in the eye with a very large sharp stick to Boris, the Butcher of London.
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Boris is a pillock.
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I love cemeteries, and especially in cities. They are oases of quiet and contemplation. Thanks for reminding me of my ramblings around graves of artists who have meaning for me in London many years ago.....
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Thank you for this magnificent piece. As a lifelong lover and teacher of poetry I too have made a habit of visiting poets' graves. For me, one of the most beautifully haunted and haunting places on earth is Rome's Protestant Cemetery, just off a clamorous traffic circle and nestled behind a Roman replica of an Egyptian pyramid. John Keats's grave is there, isolated on a patch of green, with its heartbreaking epitaph--"Here lies one whose name is writ in water." And Shelley's grave, in a more crowded part of the cemetery, commemorating his death by drowning in those lines from The Tempest about the "sea-change" that turns the drowned sailor into "something rich and strange."
The last time I visited it was with two young poets, former students, and I remember saying to the British caretaker, "This is *our* Vatican."
The last time I visited it was with two young poets, former students, and I remember saying to the British caretaker, "This is *our* Vatican."
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In 1971, I was lucky enough to have Richard Jacobson as my third year Romantic Poetry professor at UVA , where I was an English major.
We spent a goodly amount of time on Blake and the differences between the Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake's wonderful engravings around each poem were an important component to understanding the different worlds in the human imagination portrayed in Innocence versus Experience. For example, I commend the contrasting treatments in each song set of a seemingly identical subject: "The Chimney Sweeper."
I was and am perhaps most moved by Blake's social conscience flowing through his searing commentary on the effects of England's incipient industrial revolution on the people and culture of Britain. In my time the Clash's Joe Strummer was a troubadour of a similar ilk, especially on the unsurpassed London Calling album.
The fullness of time has established that Blake was in the first order of English poets of any age, and was a man of intellect, ardor, exemplary character, but most of all, humanity.
And that is why I named my first born son, in part, after him and in his honor.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets."
-Jerusalem
We spent a goodly amount of time on Blake and the differences between the Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake's wonderful engravings around each poem were an important component to understanding the different worlds in the human imagination portrayed in Innocence versus Experience. For example, I commend the contrasting treatments in each song set of a seemingly identical subject: "The Chimney Sweeper."
I was and am perhaps most moved by Blake's social conscience flowing through his searing commentary on the effects of England's incipient industrial revolution on the people and culture of Britain. In my time the Clash's Joe Strummer was a troubadour of a similar ilk, especially on the unsurpassed London Calling album.
The fullness of time has established that Blake was in the first order of English poets of any age, and was a man of intellect, ardor, exemplary character, but most of all, humanity.
And that is why I named my first born son, in part, after him and in his honor.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets."
-Jerusalem
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For the same reason, I long admired Robert Blake, esp. in "Electra-Glide in Blue," having owned 3 choppers, denuded Electra-Glides.
I have transcribed to audio tape Wm. B. Yeats reading Wm. Blake's 'Songs'. I walk the Walkman when then just the three of us is a mighty crowd indeed.
1
Thank you for a lovely piece. The writing and the imagery show how we can escape to private and powerful places amid the city, and that a piece of stone, and the words of a poet, can carry meaning.
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a delightful column and a sane interlude in the cacophony of the day's news
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I think the uncanny experience of your friend Winner shows that Blake was more a Prophet than a madman.
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E. A. Poe was the madman across the water.
The Friends of Blake assert that the Blake's actual resting place has been found, quite nearby the official marker. Their research here:
http://friendsofblake.com
and
http://friendsofblake.com/downloads/blakegraveFeb2009.pdf
http://friendsofblake.com
and
http://friendsofblake.com/downloads/blakegraveFeb2009.pdf
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