Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, is the useless anti-hero of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem by the same name. But what did Robinson mean by calling him a child of scorn?

The way I see it, it has to do with Miniver himself, not his childhood or the way his parents treated him, as some people seem to think. A child is the product of his parents, so since Miniver scorns everything around him, scorn is his true parent. So you can agree with me, or you can agree with all those commentaries on how it is about the poet himself because his momma really wanted a girl. I really doubt anyone got that particular explanation from Mr. Robinson himself.

What amuses me about this poem is, just like all people who think life would have been so glorious if they were born in a different time period or place, he assumes he would have been a prominent person when he probably would have been just another peasant.

I wanted to find you the best youtube recital on Miniver, but I don’t like any of them, so here’s the worst:

Okay, it’s really not that bad. It does have the words and at least he says “Medici” the right way.

Reely

Miniver Cheevy Study Guide link:
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/miniver.html

Tags: miniver cheevy

I started Early — Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –

And Frigates — in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground — upon the Sands –

But no Man moved Me — till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron — and my Belt –
And past my Bodice — too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion’s Sleeve –
And then — I started — too –

And He — He followed — close behind –
I felt his Silver Heel
Upon my Ankle — Then my Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing — with a Mighty look –
At me — The Sea withdrew —

by Emily Dickinson

Another poem from Emily for her birthday.

The only thing that occurs to me when I read this poem is “What happened to the dog?”

Reely

Tags: birthday, emily dickinson

Here are two excerpts from Reginald Gibbons’ book, Creatures of a Day:

THE YOUNG WOMAN
The young woman did office work,
wore short skirts and heels, made herself
up, in very still morning when
I was a hybrid of boy and
some creature without kind, she would
step out of the rented place, walk
through the coarse dew-damp grass across
our back yard, come out the clanking
gate in our chain-link fence, tiptoe
past the outside wall of the bedroom
my brother and I shared, …

Ode: at a twenty-four hour gas station
Around cold midnight, around the front end of my car with its hood up,
five young guys from Mexico, not like me, their father could be on
farms, are crowding in, staring at the workings, and knowing
one, after an hour and a half of waiting for the replacement parts
to be delivered and after having worked on other cars in the meantime,
teaching the others,

Is replacing the busted radiator, more for is audience than for me …

In this extraordinary book, Gibbons’ takes the reader along with him as he comes in contact with a cast of characters from a homeless woman in Chicago to the above encounter in a gas station. He also delves into the early life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when the Lake Poet was in his twenties, in comparison to his own life.

This is the type of collection to read and re-read and you may very well find yourself living in the poem’s moment as you recognize a similar feeling or experience, but just couldn’t put it down in writing quite like this.

Tags: life, modern poetry

A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 2003, Frank Bidart has been teaching at Wellesley College since 1972. He has been honored with many award throughout his life, the most recent being the Bollingen Prize in American Poetry last year.

Here is a poem of his that looks at the process of writing poetry:

The Old Man at the Wheel

Measured against the immeasurable
universe, no word you have spoken

brought light. Brought
light to what, as a child, you thought

too dark to be survived. By exorcism
you survived. By submission, then making.

You let all the parts of that thing you would
cut out of you enter your poem because

enacting there all its parts allowed you
the illusion you could cut it from your soul.

Dilemmas of choice given what cannot
change alone roused you to words.

As you grip the things that were young when
you were young, they crumble in your hand.

Now you must drive west, which in November
means driving directly into the sun.

(Frank Bidart, from the October 2007 issue of Poetry.)

Although, alas, he does not have a website, there is a free download of an audio of this poem at the Poets.org. The download includes readings by Rita Dove, Robert Hass, Lyn Hejinian, Galway Kinnell and many others.

Tags: modern poetry