How dull it is to pause!

It's time for Dover Bitch to hang 'em up. This blog has been neglected by me for some time, but I've been waiting until an appropriate day to put it to rest, and that day is finally upon us.

It is the end of an era, at last: The country is now out of Dick Cheney's cold grip. Many of us survived. Some spectacular people did not.

When I started this blog, it did not actually occur to me that anybody would read it. I had zero ambition for it. It was to be my online catharsis.

The day I met Digby, I gave her a poem by Theodore Roethke, "Against Danger." The word "against" is the greatest of all adpositions. Unlike "on," "within" or "among," the word "against" carries with it a vitality. There is an implied force behind it. A will. And to have been a left-leaning blogger during the Bush years was certainly to have been "against danger."

During the anthrax attacks, I had an epiphany while re-reading Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" and Anthony Hecht's "Dover Bitch." In short, it occurred to me that it was presumptuous to assume that the woman in both poems was the "bitch." Perhaps it was Arnold (Hecht makes Arnold the speaker of his own poem). Perhaps it's the man in "Dover Bitch." Perhaps it's all or none of them. A situation can certainly be a bitch. The complaints of both speakers could be bitching.

But the revelation I had is that attempts to reject the world fail. Arnold looked out his window and did not realize the world he despised was right there in the room with him. In fact, his window is a part of that world. He, too, is a part of the world. It is reason I named this blog Dover Bitch and gave it the description: Your window to the world is a part of the world and so are you.

With that spirit, I tried to do more than be "against danger." More often than not, I think I failed. But I learned quite a bit, mostly through my interactions with other bloggers and commentators. And so I would like to thank a few of them.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Digby. Guest posting at Digby's blog is a real fast way to discover how much better she is than everybody else (or at least, than I). I'm happy to say that I think I saved my best post ever for General JC Christian's blog. Thanks for everything, General! I'd also like to say thank you to Glenn Greenwald, who definitely made blogging a more rewarding experience.

Other people who made my blogging days rewarding (and I'm sure I will forget more than a few), some of whom I was fortunate to meet and some of whom I was lucky to engage in correspondence (some I only read) are: Atrios, TRex, Steve Gilliard, Roy Edroso, Dengre, Batocchio, Jane Hamsher, Christy Hardin Smith, Suzanne, SteveAudio, Greg Sergent, Josh Marshall, Steve Benen, Brad R, David Neiwert, MJS, Lindsay Beyerstein and Kagro X. I'd also like to thank a certain Maverick, whom I was never able to lure into the world of blogging. He would have made this a much better blog with his own personal touch, but he influenced it, nonetheless.

Finally, it is not only because Obama will be president in just a few days that I'm shutting down today. This blog actually began on the anniversary of Anthony Hecht's death, and it seems fitting to end it on his birthday, January 16th. So in tribute to him, I say farewell on this day.

Maybe I'll see you around in the comments somewhere. Maybe one day I'll feel compelled to call myself a blogger again. I don't expect to. But I wish you all health, happiness and peace, and I leave you with one of Hecht's finest poems...

-DB

Riddles

And the Spirit of God
moved upon the waters

Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list,
   Water is touched with a light case of hives
Of wandering gooseflesh. The strange power and gist
   Of whatever it is that animates our lives

Scrawls with a lavish hand its signature
   Of ripples gathered into folds and pleats
As indecipherable, chiselled, pure
   And everlasting as the name of Keats.

The surface wrinkles in spirit-shapes that sprint
   Like small rapids or frightened schools of fish;
They blot out images of cloud, the print
   Of passing hulls, obeying something's wish.

These vagrant hieroglyphs, now here, now there,
   In which the fate of everything lies writ
By the invisible majesty of air,
   Prove we are one and all illiterate,

And should be asking: "What do they portend?"
   Other, please God, than those fiery words for coins
That signified to Belshazzar the end
   Of all his hopes and the issue of his loins.

Zzzzzzzzz... did I miss something?

Oh. I guess that was McCain's acceptance speech.

I'm heading away for the weekend. Need to clean out my brain after all this washing. While I'm gone, I'll leave you with a few things...

Once again, if you have some coin to spare, consider keeping good satire flowing through the tubes.

Here's the dumbest paragraph I've seen today:

Culturally, there is little for the Heartland to dislike. By now, you've probably seen picture or two of Palin sporting a rifle. Apparently, she's left carcasses strewn across the Alaskan wilderness. In some places -- areas where the nation is growing -- owning a gun is not yet a sin. And unlike Obama, Palin seems to believe that the Second Amendment means the exact same thing in rural Alaska as it does in the streets of Chicago.

Aside from Harsanyi's deep understanding of the "Heartland" as seen from New York City (where I believe he still resides), he appears to be implying that Chicago's streets should be littered with carcasses. A sort of 12 Monkeys vision of the future under McCain/Palin.

I forgot to thank Digby, dday and tristero for having me over at Hullabaloo. It was a pleasure to spend time there, as always. Thanks also to Batocchio, who did a bang-up job posting there with me.

Finally, it's been a while since I posted a poem. Here's one I like:

The Revenant by Billy Collins

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--

that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.

McUlysses

Cross-posted at Jesus' General

One of the most interesting things about a great poem is the fact that a reader's understanding of it depends largely on his or her own self-awareness, combined with an understanding of the world in general.

It is largely through experience, for example, that one begins to understand that Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is not a pep talk or fight song. It takes real loss in real life to read that poem and, rather than feeling inspired to rage, instead hear the defeat in Thomas' voice as he begs fruitlessly for his father to live another day.

A reader might be similarly inspired by Tennyson's Ulysses. After all, it is the screed of a triumphant hero, conjuring up the courage to continue shaping the world despite the fact that his time has nearly passed.

However a closer reading tells us something much different. We might just wonder to whom Ulysses is speaking? Himself? Some poor servant who brings him his soup and has to hear this rant every evening?

Ulysses hates his home, is no longer interested in his wife and holds the people he rules in disdain:

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

If he is not surrounded by people who love him, then he must be alone. Those are "both" scenarios in his mind:

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

He recounts his adventures and makes sure to point out that he, himself, was the most important ingredient in every chapter:

For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

In the second part of the poem, he talks about his son, yet another important person in his life for whom he feels astonishingly little:

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

Well-loved of me? Blameless? He works his work, I mine?

In short, here is a man with little connection to the present. He's something of an ego-maniac who feels trapped in an old body and wants nothing more than to relive his glory days fighting the last war. He has little interest in actually governing, which he essentially equates with a delicate act of taming animals. Ulysses knows his days are numbered, but he refuses to let go. He sees in the ships one last opportunity to go out with divine glory:

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

He rallies the troops he no longer commands:

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

And he understands that there's a pretty good chance that, this time, he'll command a sinking ship, but he doesn't care.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Though he's completely self-absorbed and living in former glory, Ulysses does know how to lead. What fantastic language at the end! The kind of language speechwriters mimic and borrow all the time.

Which brings me to the point of this post. At the Wellstone's Donkey Democratic Club in Second Life tonight, the General will be playing Ted Kennedy's speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention. Anyone who was listening then will remember that speech. It was one of the greatest in political history.

Kennedy understood that his campaign was over, but even more, that his presidential ambitions were over. It was in this context that Kennedy chose to end his speech with Tennyson's words:

And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:

"I am a part of all that I have met
To [Tho] much is taken, much abides
That which we are, we are --
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Kennedy was to continue fighting, though the time for his greatest personal ambitions to be realized had passed. His campaign was finished, but there was time, yet, for "the cause," for "hope," for "the dream" to live on.

In recent days, we have heard Tennyson borrowed once more: John McCain's first general election ad.

Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong. Do not yield. Stand up. We're Americans. And we'll never surrender.

This is how McCain begins his first commercial. Think about that for a moment. Kennedy recognized in these words the value in persisting even at the end of a campaign. McCain is launching his general election campaign with the furious call to action of a man whose time has passed.

This is a candidate who is as quick to drop names ("foot soldier in Reagan's army") as Ulysses ("see the great Achilles, whom we knew"), despite the fact that neither should need to reaffirm to anyone their worth through past relationships.

This is a candidate who sees a "transcendental battle of our time" in the same inflated way Ulysses seeks to strive with Gods.

This is an man would be the oldest president, still fighting the battles of the last generation and refusing to "surrender."

This is a candidate relatively uninterested ("The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should") in "the sphere of common duties" and focused primarily on the terrific and glorious battles across the sea.

This is a man who left his first wife upon returning from battle and is now "matched with an aged wife" who learned, the hard way, not to mention his thinning hair ("At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c**t.")

This is a presidential hopeful who doesn't care if the "gulfs will wash us down." He's ready to double-down on the war in the Gulf, despite the last six years' carnage.

McCain truly is Ulysses.

This election (I assume Obama will be the nominee) will be a stark contrast between the past and the future. No speech in recent memory invokes the theme of change and progress more than JFK's inaugural.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Just last week (as Hillary Clinton was associating herself with a dark episode in the Kennedy family history), Obama was speaking to Cuban-Americans and reminded us that it is time, once again, for a new chapter in America:

[I]t is time to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions. There must be careful preparation.

You can learn a great deal about a candidate by looking at the language he or she uses or borrows. You can learn quite a bit about who they think they are and who they want to be by surmising what they think the words they use really mean. I think it's clear why Ted Kennedy wants Obama to be the next president.

I also think it's clear why McCain would be a disaster.

Away

DB was lured out of vacation, but I'm truly taking time off indefinitely. Here's another poem until I return:

Away, Melancholy
by Stevie Smith

Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.

The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat.
Away, melancholy.

Man, too, hurries,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.

Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man's thoughts, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man's good, growing,
By man's called God.
Away, melancholy, let it go.

Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;

Beaten, corrupted, dying
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
It is his virtue needs explaining,
Not his failing.

Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.

Vacation

DB is taking a break from blogging for a bit. Not sure how long. Here's a poem:

A Statesman's Holiday
by William Butler Yeats

I lived among great houses,
Riches drove out rank,
Base drove out the better blood,
And mind and body shrank.
No Oscar ruled the table,
But I'd a troop of friends
That knowing better talk had gone
Talked of odds and ends.
Some knew what ailed the world
But never said a thing,
So I have picked a better trade
And night and morning sing:
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

Am I a great Lord Chancellor
That slept upon the Sack?
Commanding officer that tore
The khaki from his back?
Or am I de Valera,
Or the King of Greece,
Or the man that made the motors?
Ach, call me what you please!
Here's a Montenegrin lute,
And its old sole string
Makes me sweet music
And I delight to sing:
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

With boys and girls about him.
With any sort of clothes,
With a hat out of fashion,
With Old patched shoes,
With a ragged bandit cloak,
With an eye like a hawk,
With a stiff straight back,
With a strutting turkey walk.
With a bag full of pennies,
With a monkey on a chain,
With a great cock's feather,
With an old foul tune.
Tall dames go walking in grass-green Avalon.

The Arc of Icarus

This is going to be an extremely busy few days for DB, with another voyage scheduled later in the week. Just in case I won't be able to post anything, as usual, I offer a poem. This one is dedicated to Glenn Greenwald, whose excellent book A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency arrived in my mailbox this week. I'll write more about it when I finish reading it. So far, I find it to be as methodical and damning an accounting of the Bush administration's disastrous tenure as the best posts on Glenn's blog, Unclaimed Territory at Salon.

Here's a poem for all Dover Bitch readers, picked out for you, Glenn:

Musee des Beaux Arts
by W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Out to lunch

DB spent too much time at a fantastic lunch today and won't have time to write anything tonight. So here, as always in my absence, is a poem -- a fine piece of work from a man who was at his best while eating lunch:

As Planned
by Frank O'Hara

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

From one Issa to another

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) voted against allowing the federal government to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare in January 2007 and against the reimportation of prescription drugs in 2003, a year in which he received a dismal 12% rating from the American Public Health Association.

Yesterday, he made an appearance at the screening of Michael Moore's Sicko on Capitol Hill:

WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) -- In an atmosphere that was part political rally and part tent revival, film director Michael Moore brought his scathing healthcare critique, "Sicko," to Congress Wednesday.

[...]

At the Capitol, Moore showed clips of the film and threw his support behind a House bill -- which has gotten little traction since it was introduced in 2003 -- that would eliminate private insurance companies altogether in favor of extending Medicare-like coverage to all Americans.

Surrounded by a host of supportive representatives and vocal activists, Moore pulled no punches when it came to criticizing health insurance executives and pharmaceutical company lobbyists.

[...]

The chamber briefly cooled with the unexpected arrival of Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican who represents the area around San Diego.

Chiding the Democrats for not inviting him, Issa called for universal healthcare coverage but stopped short of endorsing the state-run system spelled out by the bill.

"It is a bipartisan issue," he said. "We may agree to disagree on nuances, but we must act."

Spectators fell silent, but Issa was given a firm handshake by Moore after Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., invited him to become the first Republican co-sponsor of the legislation.

Poor Darrell Issa wasn't invited to the movie. It's just not fair. After the largest health care legislation in decades was written behind closed doors, without any Democratic input whatsoever, put up for a vote before anybody could possibly read the 678-page bill and was passed after the GOP-controlled Congress bent the rules to keep the 15-minute vote going for three hours, Darrell Issa is whining that the Democrats didn't invite him and his lousy voting record to see a movie about the crisis for which he's partly responsible.

DB has some traveling to do and I always try to leave a good poem in my absence. This one isn't long, but I think it fits:

No doubt about it
by Kobayashi Issa

No doubt about it,
the mountain cuckoo
is a crybaby.

Gone fishing

DB is taking off for about a week. First, I'll be subbing for the sensational TRex at Firedoglake tonight (here and here.) But after that, I'll be heading out of town. I'll try to post if I get a chance, but it probably won't happen until Thursday.

So here's another poem to keep you going:

The Fish
by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung like strips
like ancient wall-paper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wall-paper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly -
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
- It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
- if you could call it a lip -
grim, wet and weapon-like,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels - until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Happy Memorial Day

Apologies... DB went away for the weekend and didn't say goodbye or even post a poem. In the meantime, I see another exceptional piece about the importance of hate crimes legislation at Ornicus. (Thanks for the link, Dave.)

Here's a poem for Memorial Day. This is one of DB's favorites:

For the Union Dead
by Robert Lowell

Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gently tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!- a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!

Happy Mother's Day

Mother, Summer, I
by Philip Larkin

My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,

And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.

Surrender Watch: Poet Alert

In DB's search for GOP attempts to label the Democrats as the "party of surrender," this Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) soliloquy came up:

Mr. Speaker, the Iraq defeat bill that this House has passed sets the day certain that American troops will leave Iraq. By doing so, Congress is trying to legislate ``defeat day'' no matter the consequences.

In other words, retreat, retreat, at any price, retreat. Quit, quit, at any price, quit. Withdraw, withdraw, at any price, withdraw. Flee, flee, at any price, flee. Surrender , surrender , at any price surrender .

Congress has changed the phrase, ``when the going gets tough, send in the U.S. Cavalry, send in the U.S. Marines,'' to, ``when the going gets tough, leave,'' leave in the darkness of the night and let the Iraqis go it alone.

I am sure there is joy in ``Desertville'' in the fanatical minds of the enemies of freedom. Mr. Speaker, war is hard. This war is hard. But we cannot neglect our duty because it is hard.

The stability of the region and our national security depend on our U.S. success in defeating the enemy. We need to make it hard on them. Give them a day to remember.

And that's just the way it is.

A poet! That's even his name! "Poe, T."

As my readers know, DB can certainly appreciate poetry, especially on the House floor.

For that spectacular effort, here's a poem for you, Congressman Poe, by the wonderful A.R. Ammons:

Shit List; Or, Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity

You'll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are:
gosling shit (which J. Williams said something
was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout

shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit,
sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit
(awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit,

horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar shit (so many dark
kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby rhinoceros
shit, splashy jaybird shit, mockingbird shit

(dive-bombed with the aim of song), robin shit that
oozes white down lawnchairs or down roots under roosts,
chicken shit and chicken mite shit, pelican shit, gannet

shit (wholesome guano), fly shit (periodic), cockatoo
shit, dog shit (past catalog or assimilation),
cricket shit, elk (high plains) shit, and

tiny scribbled little shrew shit, whale shit (what
a sight, deep assumption), mandril shit (blazing
blast off), weasel shit (wiles' waste), gazelle shit,

magpie shit (total protein), tiger shit (too acid
to contemplate), moral eel and manta ray shit, eerie
shark shit, earthworm shit (a soilure), crab shit,

wolf shit upon the germicidal ice, snake shit, giraffe
shit that accelerates, secretary bird shit, turtle
shit suspension invites, remora shit slightly in

advance of the shark shit, hornet shit (difficult to
assess), camel shit that slaps the ghastly dry
siliceous, frog shit, beetle shit, bat shit (the

marmoreal), contemptible cat shit, penguin shit,
hermit crab shit, prairie hen shit, cougar shit, eagle
shit (high totem stuff), buffalo shit (hardly less

lofty), otter shit, beaver shit (from the animal of
alluvial dreams)-a vast ordure is a broken down
cloaca-macaw shit, alligator shit (that floats the Nile

along), louse shit, macaque, koala, and coati shit,
antelope shit, chuck-will's-widow shit, alpaca shit
(very high stuff), gooney bird shit, chigger shit, bull

shit (the classic), caribou shit, rasbora, python, and
razorbill shit, scorpion shit, man shit, laswing
fly larva shit, chipmunk shit, other-worldly wallaby

shit, gopher shit (or broke), platypus shit, aardvark
shit, spider shit, kangaroo and peccary shit, guanaco
shit, dolphin shit, aphid shit, baboon shit (that leopards

induce), albatross shit, red-headed woodpecker (nine
inches long) shit, tern shit, hedgehog shit, panda shit,
seahorse shit, and the shit of the wasteful gallinule.

Labels

DB has (finally) finished retroactively adding labels to old posts, taking advantage of this new blogger feature. Apologies to Dover Bitch readers who use the RSS feed and have been seeing old posts appear in the recent post list.

I'm sure the arbitrary system I came up with isn't the best, but it will have to do.

Here's an awesome poem to make amends:

Danse Russe
by William Carlos Williams

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,-
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades-

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

The Geranium

Theodore Roethke wrote one of DB's favorite poems of all time. I'll save that one for a special occasion, but in the meantime, Roethke has been on my mind, so here's The Geranium:

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine--
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--
And that was scary--
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

Gonzales Haiku

Here's DB's FDL Alberto Gonzales Haiku:

I don’t remember
I’m not prepared to answer
I cannot recall

Looks like he might as well send it to the Hill.

(corrected spelling in post title)

Back from Europe

DB went to Europe for the first time since just before 9/11. What an excellent vacation.

I'll be back to blogging soon. Sorry for the cobwebs here.

In the meantime, here's a sensational poem by Archibald MacLeish

YOU, ANDREW MARVELL

And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night

To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under the the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...

Been busy

Dover Bitch has been swamped with important deadlines and a desire to avoid moving to the new blogger. Sorry for the paucity of recent posts. Here's a poem to tide you over:

"You Fit into Me" by Margaret Atwood

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

Our Prayer Of Thanks

DB is off for the holiday. Hope yours is safe and rewarding. Here's a Carl Sandburg poem (the second in a week here) to start things off right.

Our Prayer Of Thanks

For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and
bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white
arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles
on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war
days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are
forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and
the system; and so for the break of the game and
the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.

This Side Of The Truth

DB wanted to blog today... too busy. Instead, here's an all-time favorite by Dylan Thomas, written for his son, Llewelyn. (You could do a lot worse than to stumble upon something like this while surfing the Web)

This side of the truth,
You may not see, my son,
King of your blue eyes
In the blinding country of youth,
That all is undone,
Under the unminding skies,
Of innocence and guilt
Before you move to make
One gesture of the heart or head,
Is gathered and spilt
Into the winding dark
Like the dust of the dead.

Good and bad, two ways
Of moving about your death
By the grinding sea,
King of your heart in the blind days,
Blow away like breath,
Go crying through you and me
And the souls of all men
Into the innocent
Dark, and the guilty dark, and good
Death, and bad death, and then
In the last element
Fly like the stars' blood

Like the sun's tears,
Like the moon's seed, rubbish
And fire, the flying rant
Of the sky, king of your six years.
And the wicked wish,
Down the beginning of plants
And animals and birds,
Water and Light, the earth and sky,
Is cast before you move,
And all your deeds and words,
Each truth, each lie,
Die in unjudging love.

Hear Dylan Thomas read this and other poems here.

Here's to Hecht

DB takes its name from a poem by Anthony Hecht, who died exactly a week before this blog went online.

In his honor, a double dactyl:

Macaca, Mucaca
Senator George Allen
told us he's Jewish, yet
still, he eats ham.

Nooses and deer heads hurt
electability.
Candidates with brains don't
schmooze with the Klan.

UPDATE: While we're at it:

Ickity, Sickity
Congressman Mark Foley
asked of his page, would you
measure your schlong?

Despite this disgusting
cybersoliciting
Hastert and Reynolds could
see nothing wrong.