Poetry: sunsprung bright Julys
Despite the title of this post it’s August now, not July. And a lovely August it is.
The other day I was walking along the street in a beach town in New England on a sunny day. It’s the sort of place you see everywhere in New England in summertime; so cold and spare in the winter, now filled with people on vacation taking in the local color—the weathered buildings, the fishing boats and lobster traps, the ice cream parlors and the taffy shops.
This year dresses are in vogue for women. You still see a lot of women and girls in shorts, of course. But sundresses long and short, and usually very colorful, are everywhere. Everywhere also are young women, who happen to be the ones who look best in those dresses, women on the cusp of their adulthood, feeling the full power of their beauty, trim and athletic and sag-free and glowing.
What popped into my mind while I was studying all of this was a poem, of course. That poem is called “Siasconset Song,” and I can’t remember where I first read it but I know it was long, long ago—so long ago that these particular young girls I saw the other day not only hadn’t been born yet, but some of their mothers probably hadn’t yet been born, either.
Siasconset (also previously known as “Sconset”) is a small town on the eastern end of Nantucket, an island that is further away from shore than Martha’s Vineyard and a bit more rustic, although these days loaded with tourists.
It’s not a famous poem. But it is one of many favorites of mine, for its images, its unusual rhythm, and the way it perfectly evokes scenes such as the one I just described.
I wanted to find the poem, because I had something like a poetic earworm—a few phrases swirling in my head along with the title, although none of it was of any use in an internet search on my smartphone. I thought the poem might be in a book called The Treasury of American Poetry that I’ve owned for over twenty years.
But alas, no “Siasconset Song” could be found there. So, back to the internet, where a very assiduous and nitpicky search revealed the poem to be hiding on the 48th page of this document.
I cannot tell you how happy this made me.
So here it is:
Siasconset Song
The girls
of golden summers whirl
through sunsprung
bright Julys
with born right
sky-bright
star-night
eyes;everywhere
their tennis twirl
of young gold
legs and arms,
they singsong
summer-long
I-belong
charms;and through
the summer sailing swirl
they cut like
shining knives
in sun-told
never old
ever gold
lives.
Which brings us almost inevitably to a poem that is linked to that poem in my mind. I don’t know where I first encountered it (perhaps in the same book as the other, whatever that book may be).
This one is much more famous. It’s Ted Roethke’s “Wish For a Young Wife“:
My lizard, my lively writher,
May your limbs never wither,
May the eyes in your face
Survive the green ice
Of envy’s mean gaze;
May you live out your life
Without hate, without grief,
And your hair ever blaze,
In the sun, in the sun,
When I am undone,
When I am no one.
Roethke died not long after he wrote the poem.
[NOTE: Both poems remind me somewhat of the original Portuguese lyrics to the song “The Girl From Ipanema,” which I wrote about at some length here.]
Humm….. now that you mention it I am also seeing bright sundresses in many different places. They are so shocking after the endless schlubs in shorts that yesterday I actually complimented one such by saying, “Excuse me, but that is a very nice outfit.”
I am going to shamelessly hijack the thread to tell the only Massachusetts joke I know.
Governor Peabody (sounding like Peebiddy to my ears) was governor.
Do you know they named three towns after the governor?
Peabody, Marblehead and Athol.
I like it! Had never heard of Philip Booth, but get the immediate impression that he had heard of (amongst others) G M Hopkins and Belloc 🙂
Kinch:
I thought of Hopkins, too—although the theme is certainly different 🙂 .
Astrud looks so sad as she sings: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_1uEy-n4IsU
Tonanwanda:
I think that’s a compressed story.
Gov. Endicott Peabody had four towns named after him; your three and Endicott, MA.
Matthew Zapruder was my favorite young poet for a year or two, but I don’t much like his latest book. So now I prefer Matthew Rohrer.
From time to time you see a–usually accidental–collection of the sunsprung folk. The impact seems to be exponential, as the numbers go up.
It’s like Brigadoon. How do I get there and how can I stay?
It’s not just the girls. It’s the carefree–which is to say no problem with money–attitude. No problem with health, obligations, annoying and unkempt friends…..
What’s not to desire?
Beautiful imagery of another place. I remember NE area from my youth and wish I could return.
Meanwhile, in Texas, successive 100 degree + days for many weeks, with many days exceeding 107.
Imagine Hell if you can, radiating heat from pavement and earth alike, intense pressure from the sunlight itself. The overall brightness gives you a headache if you don’t wear sunglasses, and many days the excessive sunlight generates natural ozone to irritate your eyes and sinues.
For the northern folks, its like when you get into a hot black car where the windows have been rolled up in the bright sun That’s outside, all day and most of the evening. Getting into a car here is an order of magnitude above that. But hey, we got jobs.
Thank God for AC and swimming pools, cold beer, and the occasional thunderstorm.
Can’t wait for winter.
“What Narcissism Means to Me” by Tony Hoagland is also right there, but so far that’s the only book by him I’ve seen.
I don’t appreciate poetry readings much, as performing one’s work easily bleeds into entertaining the crowd, which for instance in poetry slams swiftly devolved into either stand-up comedy or identity-politics chants you had to agree with or risk being killed by the mob. In the world of fiction, some authors have turned book tours into show-biz cult of personality events, Chuck Palahniuk and T.C. Boyle being two of the most wildly popular.
I imagine you still have the dancer’s spring to your step that enables shameless wearing of sundresses.
My daughter was married in Massachusetts (near Cape Cod) in July. This is a lovely post. Just lovely
Less classy, but it reminds me of Gary Snyder, “A spring night in Shokoku-ji”:
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.
I couldn’t open your link, for whatever reason, but once commenter Kinch revealed the poet’s name, I went searching and found this link to a 1951 issue of the New Yorker, where the poem is recognizable (if not legible without a subscription):
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1951/07/28/siasconset-song
Gorgeous. Both poems make me think of the lyrics of this Bob Dylan song:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/foreveryoung.html
Richard Aubrey:
That is a better telling of the joke, and maybe as a foreigner I did not catch it all.
Irrelevant, but I worked (really devoted, a lot of time) when Bill Barnstead (a wonderful, wonderful man, who made stills and sterilizers) opposed Tip O’Neill three times in a row.
Bill did better and better each time.
Here are three things I learned so well from the experience.
1) The white working class folks I talked to had a total disconnect between their lives and beliefs, and Tip O’Neil. I had the same conversation hundreds of times with hundreds of lovely, smart, delightful people. Tip was their home guy, period.
2) Like many black people, many union people have an override which can be addressed if understood, meaning addressing the categorical aspect.
3) In a great, wonderful, amazing, fascinating story about real life only I know (maybe some others, possibly) Tip O’Neil was not truthfully and legally qualified to run in one of those years.
Out of utter laziness and lese majeste, he submitted qualifying petitions basically filled out by a small number of people doing the kitchen thing.
No expert was needed to see it. A child could see the same hands were used mechanically to get over the needed number.
Bill Barnstead challenged the petitions and hired a smart lawyer named Arthur Levine, who did an excellent job.
I will omit many details which are fascinating, but the reviewing electoral board denied the challenge.
The graphologist who testified to the obvious had been qualified as an expert 90 times before, before the same board.
This time, they found him unqualified. End of challenge.
There are so many NPR stories out there, great stuff anybody would love to hear, who do not fit the narrative.