Collecte Works (51 page)

afloat. Bigwigs wrote

lines 13-end:

of music” as one of them now sums it up

to grandchildren of her own.

“And gathered around the first kerosene

lamp, how we shone.”

For Thure the solitary tattler

opened a door

to learned birds—with their latest books—

who walked New England's shore.

One day by the old turnpike that still crosses

the marsh, down in the ditch

he found a new aster—to it he gave

his name as tho he were rich.

The trouble with war for a botanist—

he daren't drop out of the line of march

to examine a flower. What flower?

Shell-burst—observe a sky-exotic

attract a bomber-bird.

Dear little curlew

how are you on Willow St.

your ear on us pipers

who bleat?

Substantial condensations occur to produce the finished “
Thure Kumlien
” These revisions are first seen when sent to LZ on the MS titled “Changes in
FOR PAUL
” (Jan. 19, 1955): the poem is revised to the present text plus a not yet omitted final stanza, “The trouble with war for a botanist…attract a bomber-bird.” FPOP omits this final stanza. (At this point, in Jan. 1955, LZ appears to have returned to the MS of “I'd like to tell you about a man” dated “earlier than Jan. 18, 1951” and noted her condensations in the margin.)

The second MS, dated Jan. 18, 1951, expands on the earlier version:

He was here before the wild white swans died out

and old country courtesy. Boston bigwigs wrote:

Dear Thure, tell us about the sandhill crane,

is it ever white with you…please send us

Solitary Tattlers' eggs. A latin scholar,

“shut up in the woods”, he broke land,

made knives and forks, fumbled English gently:

“Now is March gone and I have much undone…”

Snow. Christine sick. There are two kinds of artists,

those who write for the people and those who write

for art's sake. Strong storm with colors. Marsh grass

over my head. Sent 500 insects to Berlin.

When the money comes from Leyden we'll buy coats

and shoes. Chopped five lengths of ash. Both hens laid.

Cleaned grain in the wind. Baby's coffin—I owe

two basswood boards…when the money comes from Leyden.

He saw Wilson's Phalarope, the beauty

among the waders. Grandchildren played

with his mounted birds. Imagine playing horse

with a pink flamingo, sighs one of them who now

has grandchildren of her own. And how they shone

gathered around the first kerosene lamp.

In the ditch by the old turnpike that still crosses

the marsh he found a new aster and gave it his name.

…

The trouble with war for a botanist—

he daren't drop out of the line of march

to examine a flower. Or when half the world

is shell-burst, observes a sky-exotic attract

a bomber-bird.

…

Dear little curlew

how are you on Willow St.

your ear on us sandpipers

as we bleat.

Soon after writing this draft, she would begin the substantial revisions that lead to “Shut up in woods,” poem XVIII of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP TWO,
”
New Mexico Quarterly
21.1 (Spring 1951): 210. There it is revised to the present text with lines 1, 4-5, 6-9 enclosed in quotation marks. LN's “Changes in
FOR PAUL
” (Jan. 29, 1955) notes that she has removed the quotation marks.

Your father to me in your eighth summer:    Unpublished in book form [FPOP].

Poem IV of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP III
” MS, dated Sept. 27, 1951.

“FOR PAUL: CHILD VIOLINIST,
”
Quarterly Review of Literature
8.2 (1955): 117.

On FPOP, LZ suggests that LN omit the poem. However, she saves lines 10-14 as the fifth stanza of the condensed version of another poem, “Dear Paul” (see p. 153).

To Paul now old enough to read:    
T&G, MLBW
[FPOP, EA].

The present text has its origins in a much longer poem, an undated, possibly 1945, MS:

Crèvecoeur                                  

                                                                   Letters from an

                                                                   American Farmer (1782)

What a shame, said my mind, or something that inspired my mind,

that here, with no masters to bleed us

thee shouldst have employed so many years tilling the earth

and destroying so many flowers and plants

without knowing their structures and uses…

In a little time I became acquainted with every

                 vegetable that grew in my neighborhood;

in proportion as I thought myself more learned,

                 proceeded further…

perched within a few feet of a humming bird,

its little eyes like diamonds reflecting light on every side,

elegantly finished in all parts,

quicker than thought.

Thought: man, an animal of prey, seems

to have bloodshed implanted in his heart.

We never speak of a hero of mathematics

or a hero of the knowledge of humanity.

Men are like plants, the goodness, flavour of the fruit

comes out of the soil in which they grow;

we are nothing but what we derive from the air,

climate, government, religion, and employment.

Men of law are plants that grow in soil cultivated by the hands of others,

once rooted extinguish every other vegetable around.

In some provinces only they have knowledge,

as the clergy in past centuries in Europe.

In Nantucket, but one lawyer finds the means to live,

grazing land held in common.

I once saw sixteen barrels of oil boiled out of the tongue of the whale.

No military here, no governors, no masters but the laws

and their civil code so light.

Happy, harmless, industrious people,

after death buried without pomp, prayers and ceremonies—

not a stone or monument erected—

their memory preserved by tradition.

I saw, indeed, several copies of Hudibras.

Astonishing how quick men learn who serve themselves.

At night the fireflies can be caught and used as a reading light.

A Russian came to me, interested in plants.

Why trouble to come to this country?

Who knows, he said, what revolutions Russia and America may one day

                                                                                                       bring about.

(coda)

Men who work for themselves learn

fast. The firefly

two pairs of wings and a third to read

by

     disappearing.

The next surviving draft is much revised. Poem V of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP III
” MS, dated Sept. 27, 1951, departs from the present text in stanza one:

To Paul reading books: Once

there lived a farmer, Crèvecoeur,

who tried to save his heart

from too much hurt.

and in line 17: Learn Crèvecoeur and learn fast

FPOP omits the above first stanza and retains the line 17 above.

Revised to the present text for
Combustion 15/lsland
6 (n.d.): 32.

What horror to awake at night    
T&G, MLBW
[FPOP].

Poem II of “
FOR PAUL:
Group III” MS, dated Sept. 27, 1951. Variant line 5 in MS and FPOP: I've spent my life doing nothing.

An undated letter from LZ to LN praises the poem, particularly its use of sound. LZ notes with approval echoes of T. S. Eliot's “Fragment of an Agon,” of Lord Rochester's “Ode to Nothing,” and Robert Burns's “This ae night.”

Sorrow moves in wide waves,    
T&G, MLBW
[FPOP].

As poem I of the “
FOR PAUL: GROUP FOUR
” MS (undated, probably 1951), the poem merges with “Old Mother turns blue and from us,” creating a four-stanza poem.

By the time of FPOP, the four stanzas have divided into two discrete poems. At the end of “Sorrow moves in wide waves,” LN acknowledges her source: “(after Henry James).” LN ignores LZ's suggested omission of “illimitable” on FPOP.

In
T&G
the poem is subheaded “H.J.”

MLBW
mistakenly capitalizes the first letter of line 2.

Jesse James and his brother Frank    
T&G, MLBW
and May you have lumps in your mashed potatoes    
T&G, MLBW
[FPOP, EA].

As poems VI and VII of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP III,
” these were independent poems until their linked appearance in
T&G
and
MLBW.

Although “Jesse James and his brother Frank” is omitted from FPOP at the time of “Changes in
FOR PAUL
” (Jan. 29, 1955), I include it here for copytext reasons.

“May you have lumps in your mashed potatoes” appeared alone in
Origin
ser. 2, 2 (July 1961): 28.

Old Mother turns blue and from us,    
T&G, MLBW
[FPOP].

In its “
FOR PAUL: GROUP FOUR
” MS appearance (undated, probably 1951) the poem forms the third and fourth stanzas of “Sorrow moves in wide waves.” Thereafter, it is an independent poem.

Origin
ser. 2, 2 (July 1961): 28.

I hear the weather    Unpublished [FPOP].

Very likely a descendant of the “weather poem” with a “fugue of r's” referred to by LZ in a letter to LN dated March 9, 1938.

Poem II of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP FOUR
” MS (undated, probably 1951), lines 3-4:

or is it my mother

                      breathing

“Changes in
FOR PAUL
” (Jan. 29, 1955) offers variant lines 3-4:

or is it my breathing

                        mother

Revised to present text for FPOP.

Dead   
T&G, MLBW
[FPOP],

Poem III of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP FOUR
” MS (undated, probably 1951) is substantially different:

The shining brown steel casket—

What is its value really,

we already have a concrete vault.

“I don't know, they seem to want it.

Look at your automobiles—”

She who wheeled dirt for flowers

lay there deaf to death

                     parked

in her burnished brown motorless automobile.

She could have grown a good rutabaga

in the burial ground

                    edged by woods.

What is life

            in those woods one of her pallbearers

                       after a deer

“I like a damfool followed a deer

            wanted to see her jump a fence

never'd seen a deer jump a fence—

pretty thing

             the way she runs.”

FPOP and
Black Mountain Review
6 (Spring 1956): 191, omit the opening line of the present text. In
BMR
it is part of a numbered group of “
FOUR POEMS.
”

Can knowledge be conveyed that isn't felt?   Unpublished [FPOP].

Poem VII of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP FOUR
” MS (undated, probably 1951).

On FPOP, LZ suggests she omit “Generator boy, Paul,” in line 7.

Ten o'clock   Unpublished [FPOP].

Poem I of the “
FOR PAUL: GROUP SIX
” MS, dated Oct. 22, 1952, is followed by three bullets and two additional stanzas:

Gun-night, said the kid next door,

hit the feathers, flatten,

tomorrow oil up your squeak box

and saw it off in Manhattan.

Who
is
this Shakespeer? Gimme a gander—

beard like a sea cook's. Rounded the Horn?

What kind of man is he? Why, of mankind.

Okay, like us, he was born.

“Changes in
FOR PAUL
” (Jan. 29, 1955) notes her omission of these stanzas.

On Aug. 30, 1955, MS sent to Dahlberg, the final line replaces “me” with “us.”

On FPOP, LZ suggests that she omit the entire poem.

Adirondack Summer
   Unpublished [FPOP].

Poem II of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP SIX
” MS, dated Oct. 22, 1952, where the poem is untitled.

On FPOP, LZ suggests that she condense the title
“Adirondack Summer”
to
“Summer
.”

A trace of this unpublished poem appears in “
PAEAN TO PLACE,
” stanza 20:

Maples to swing from

Pewee-glissando

Spelling of “peewee” in MS and FPOP changes to “pewee” in
T&G
and
MLBW.

The slip of a girl-announcer:   Unpublished [FPOP].

Poem III of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP SIX
” MS, dated Oct. 22, 1952.

LN to LZ, Aug. 12, 1952: “Your letter is
TERRIFIC.
…It prompts me to descend practically to doggerel.…Dare I use it
FOR PAUL?
” (
NCZ
197).

Now go to the party,   Unpublished in book form [FPOP].

Poem IV of “
FOR PAUL: GROUP SIX
” MS, dated Oct. 22, 1952.

Origin
ser. 2, 2 (July 1961): 30.

Dear Paul:   
T&G, MLBW
[FPOP, EA].

This is a condensation of the original five-page poem, titled in MS, “
FOR PAUL: PART V
” and dated Dec. 12, 1951:

Dear Paul:

the sheets of your father's book of poetry

are to be bound for England?

At last, after the hardships

He can say: take back to your ship

a gift from me,

something precious, a real good thing…

such as a friend gives to a friend.

You ask what kind of boats in
my
country

on my little river.                                                                  10