THEY COME TO ME LIKE EAGLES

The above from the "Cetology" chapter of Moby Dick, which I am somehow reading for the first time, exempting a lackadaisical attempt in high school.

What a seaquake of a book it is! I regret that I was such a feckless idiot in my teenage years as to somehow wimp out on Melville - but perhaps I should instead compliment myself on my foresight, for having reserved such pleasure for my wintry middle twenties.

(Is Melville's orotundity infecting my own writing? Almost certainly; but there are worse diseases and scabbier vectors.)

Robert Herrick's "To Anthea, Who May Command Him Anything," recorded for an upcoming Poetry Foundation Project.

"Heard in a Violent Ward"

In heaven, too, You'd be institutionalized But that's all right,– If they let you eat and swear With the likes of Blake, And Christopher Smart, And that sweet man, John Clare.

-Theodore Roethke

"I do declare, everything that man did was sad."

-Mrs. Smuckles

"The third day I satisfied my hunger by eating the grass on the roadside which seemed to taste something like bread. I was hungry and eat [sic] heartily till I was satisfied; in fact, the meal seemed to do me good."

-John Clare, regarding his return on foot from an private asylum in Epping Forest to his home in Northborough, a distance of some 80 miles.

M nrl wrn t & wnt t hr frm Nbd wll wn M r hv m t n prc & wht hv dn D knw wht r n m Dbt — kss’s fr tn yrs & lngr stll & Ingr thn tht whn ppl mk sch mstks s t cll m Gds bstrd & whrs p m b shttng m p frm Gds ppl t f th w f cmmn snse & thn tk m hd ff bcs th cnt fnd m t t hrds hrd

Drst Mr r fthfll r d thnk f m knw wht w sd tgthr — dd vst m n hll sm tm bck bt dnt cm hr gn fr t s ntrs bd plc wrs nd wrs nd w r ll Frnchmn flsh ppl tll m hv gt n hm n ths wrld nd s dnt believe n th thr nrt t mk mslf hvn wth m drst Mr nd sbscrb mslf rs fr vr & vr

-Jhn Clr

...There may be a tendency for the terrible story of Clare's life to outweigh his memorable poems or reduce them to symptoms.

-Robert Pinsky

Old customs O I love the sound However simple they may be What ere wi' time has sanction found Is welcome and is dear to me

Leontyne Pryce and Fritz Reiner's Chicago Symphony - "Song of the Will-O'-the-Wisp," from Manuel de Falla's EL AMOR BRUJO

VERSUS