In this installment, Charles Bernstein reads “The Grey Monk” by William Blake. Bernstein is the author of 39 books, ranging from large-scale collections of poetry and essays to pamphlets, libretti, translations, and collaborations. Recent full-length works of poetry include Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006), With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), and Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000). He is Donald T. Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and, in 2006, was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. With Bruce Andrews, Bernstein edited L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, which was anthologized as The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (Southern Illinois University Press, 1984). He has been host and co-producer of LINEbreak and Close Listening, two radio poetry series. For more information go to http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein.

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William Blake, “The Grey Monk”
[From the Pickering MS]

I die I die the Mother said
My Children die for lack of Bread
What more has the merciless Tyrant said
The Monk sat down on the Stony Bed

The blood red ran from the Grey Monks side
His hands & feet were wounded wide
His Body bent his arms & knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees

His eye was dry no tear could flow
A hollow groan first spoke his woe
He trembled & shudderd upon the Bed
At length with a feeble cry he said

When God commanded this hand to write
In the studious hours of deep midnight
He told me the writing I wrote should prove
The Bane of all that on Earth I lovd

My Brother starvd between two Walls
His Childrens Cry my Soul appalls
I mockd at the wrack & griding chain
My bent body mocks their torturing pain

Thy Father drew his sword in the North
With his thousands strong he marched forth
Thy Brother has armd himself in Steel
To avenge the wrongs thy Children feel

But vain the Sword & vain the Bow
They never can work Wars overthrow
The Hermits Prayer & the Widows tear
Alone can free the World from fear

For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing
And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King
And the bitter groan of the Martyrs woe
Is an Arrow from the Almighties Bow

The hand of Vengeance found the Bed
To which the Purple Tyrant fled
The iron hand crushd the Tyrants head
And became a Tyrant in his stead

admin Uncategorized charles bernstein, the grey monk, william blake

In this installment, R. Erica Doyle reads “Sonnet LXX” [From Elegiac Sonnets] by Charlotte Turner Smith. Doyle was born in Brooklyn after the riots of ’68. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Callaloo, Ploughshares, Best Black Women’s Erotica, Bum Rush the Page, Ms. Magazine, and is forthcoming in Bloom, Our Caribbean: Writing by LGBT Writers of the Antilles, and Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets. She has received grants and awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a fellow of Cave Canem: A Workshop and Retreat for Black Writers.

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Charlotte Turner Smith, “Sonnet LXX” [From Elegiac Sonnets]

On being cautioned against walking over a headland
overlooking the sea, because it was frequented by a
Lunatic.

IS there a solitary wretch who hies
To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow,
And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes
Its distance from the waves that chide below;
Who, as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs
Chills his cold bed upon the mountain turf,
With hoarse, half utter’d lamentation, lies
Murmuring responses to the dashing surf?
In moody sadness, on the giddy brink,
I see him more with envy than with fear;
He has no nice felicities that shrink
From giant horrors; wildly wandering here,
He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know
The depth or the duration of his woe.

admin Uncategorized charlotte turner smith, elegiac sonnets, r. erica doyle, sonnet lxx

In this installment, Elaine Sexton reads “Lines Written in Early Spring” by William Wordsworth. Sexton is the author of Sleuth, a collection of poems published by New Issues Press (Western Michigan University) in 2003, and Causeway, forthcoming with New Issues in Spring 2008. Her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous journals including American Poetry Review, ARTnews, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Women’s Review of Books, the Writer’s Chronicle (AWP), and online with Poetry Daily.

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William Wordsworth, “Lines Written in Early Spring”

I HEARD a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:–
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

admin Uncategorized elaine sexton, lines written in early spring, william wordsworth

In this installment, Yunte Huang reads “The Daffodils” by William Wordsworth. Poet and critic Yunte Huang is the author of numerous books, including Transpacific Displacement and Shi: A Radical Reading of Chinese Poetry. He has translated Ezra Pound’s poetry into Chinese. Huang teaches at the University of California-Santa Barbara. His reading for Romantic Circles was made on the occasion of the 2006 MLA “The Sound of Poetry, The Poetry of Sound” meeting.

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William Wordsworth, “The Daffodils”

I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:—
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

admin Uncategorized the daffodils, william wordsworth, yunte huang

In this installment, John Struloeff reads “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake. Struloeff is the author of the poetry collection, The Man I Was Supposed to Be, forthcoming from Loom Press in Fall 2007. His poems have appeared or are soon forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner, Zyzzyva, PN Review (UK), The Southern Review, and elsewhere. In 2005, he completed the Ph.D. program in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is currently (2005-07) a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University.

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William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper” [From Songs of Innocence]

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry ” ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curl’d like a lamb’s back, was shav’d, so I said
“Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.”

And so he was quiet, and that very night
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

admin Uncategorized john struloeff, the chimney sweeper, william blake

In this installment, Elaine Sexton reads “Lines Written in Early Spring” by William Wordsworth. Sexton is the author of Sleuth, a collection of poems published by New Issues Press (Western Michigan University) in 2003, and Causeway, forthcoming with New Issues in Spring 2008. Her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous journals including American Poetry Review, ARTnews, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Women’s Review of Books, the Writer’s Chronicle (AWP), and online with Poetry Daily.

download MP3

William Wordsworth, “Lines Written in Early Spring”

I HEARD a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:–
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

admin Uncategorized elaine sexton, lines written in early spring, william wordsworth

In this installment, R. Erica Doyle reads “Unknown Female Head” by Laetitia Elizabeth Landon. Doyle was born in Brooklyn after the riots of ’68. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Callaloo, Ploughshares, Best Black Women’s Erotica, Bum Rush the Page, Ms. Magazine, and is forthcoming in Bloom, Our Caribbean: Writing by LGBT Writers of the Antilles, and Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets. She has received grants and awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a fellow of Cave Canem: A Workshop and Retreat for Black Writers.

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Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, “Unknown Female Head”

I know not of thy history, thou sad
Yet beautiful faced Girl:—the chestnut braid
Bound darkly round thy forehead, the blue veins
Wandering in azure light, the ivory chin
Dimpled so archly, have no characters
Graven by memory; but thy pale cheek,
Like a white rose on which the sun hath look’d
Too wildly warm, (is not this passion’s legend?)
The drooping lid whose lash is bright with tears,
A lip which has the sweetness of a smile
But not its gayety—do not these bear
The scorch’d footprints sorrow leaves in passing
O’er the clear brow of youth?—It may but be
An idle thought, but I have dream’d thou wert
A captive in thy hopelessness: afar
From the sweet home of thy young infancy,
Whose image unto thee is as a dream
Of fire and slaughter, I can see thee wasting
Sick for thy native air, loathing the light
And cheerfulness of men; thyself the last
Of all thy house, a stranger and a slave!

admin Uncategorized laetitia elizabeth landon, r. erica doyle, unknown female head