bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Killers
Authors: Kenny Kevin
Published: November 2023

In the aftermath of the Paxton affair social order on the Pennsylvania frontier disintegrated. With no effective means of law enforcement much of the frontier was ungovernable. Indian affairs were in disarray. The boundary line set by royal proclamation in 1763 had little effect in stemming the westward tide of migration and the seizure of Indian lands. The provincial government had lost control over the aggressive vanguard of Ulster settlers in the lower Susquehanna Valley. In the Assembly, leaders of the still dominant Quaker party insisted that the chaos on the frontier arose directly from John Penn’s failure to pursue the Paxton Boys. They had not been investigated, let alone arrested, tried, or punished; they were free, it seemed, to do as they pleased, and the lesson was not lost on other western settlers.
Mediating Change
Authors: Thompson Gordon
Published: November 2023

Even the most musically adept producers relied upon a group of music professionals to help prepare arrangements, coach musicians, and conduct ensembles. The music directors, arrangers, and conductors who acted as interpreters for producers had often prepared for their roles as musicians in sessions or as music copyists, playing, reading, and learning from others. The quickly changing tastes of pop music audiences in the early sixties challenged many producers whose musical predilections frequently resided in the big bands of the forties. Producers needed musicians who understood the new musical styles, who could translate the producers’ ideas, and who could communicate effectively with other musicians. A good music director needed the abilities (a) to think through the formal structure of a performance, (b) to recommend possible instrumentations,
Introduction: Plausible Fictions of the Real
Authors: Allred Jeff
Published: November 2023

The varying focal lengths of Roosevelt’s lenses, so to speak, allow him to combine a masterful, continental vista in this passage with much more intimate looks: in a manner typical of the politics of the New Deal, the president figures both as a Prometheus capable of electrifying the Tennessee Valley and a trusted relative who soothes anxieties at fireside with commonsensical advice. He is also able to synthesize these disparate phenomena into a single matrix, such that his audience’s sentiments can cleave to the pathos of individual suffering as it is integrated into a broader social landscape of “millions” or, better, into a “nation” whose full integration awaits further state intervention. Finally, the magisterial survey of the realm implies a clear segmentation of the nation, such that two-thirds do the looking and one-third passively awaits this gaze. It is a small step from this implication to the next: the provision of the ill-housed, -fed, and -clad with the needs they never even have to voice, so powerful is the nation’s vision.
Charles d’Orleans (1394–1465)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

I am Forsaken

Care away, away, away, Murninge away!

I am forsake, another is take;

No more murne ich may. Ich: I

I am sory for her sake,

Ich may wel ete and drinke; When ich slepe ich may not wake,

So muche on her ich thinke.

I am brought in such a bale And brought in such a pine,

When ich rise up of my bed Me liste wel to dine.

I am brought in suche a pine, Y-brought in such a bale,

When ich have right good wine Me Liste drinke non ale.
William Dunbar (1460–1520)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

In Winter

Into thir dirk and drublie dayisdrublie: turbid

Quhone sabill all the hevin arrayis Quhone: when; sabill: black

With mystie vapouris, cluddis, and skyis, Nature all curage me denyis

Off sangis, ballattis, and of playis. sangis: songs; ballattis: ballads

Quhone that the nycht dois lenthin houris With wind, with haill, and havy schouris,

My dulé spreit dois lurk for schoir; My hairt for languor dois forloir

For laik of Symmer with his flouris.

I walk, I turne, sleip may I nocht; I vexit am with havie thocht,

This warld all ovir I cast about,

And ay the mair I am in dout mair: more

The mair that I remeid have socht.

I am assayit on everie syde: Dispair sayis, ‘Ay in tyme provyde

And get sum thing quharion to leif, Or with grit trouble and mischeif

Thow sall into this court abyd.’

Than Patience sayis, ‘Be not agast: Hald Hoip and Treuthe within the fast,

And lat Fortoun wirk furthe hir rage, Quhome that no rasoun may assuage

Quhill that hir glas be run and past.’

And Prudence in my eir sayis ay, ‘Quhy wald thow hald that will away?
Anonymous (published 1500)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

A Song of Ale

Back and side go bare, go bare, Both hand and foot go cold,

But belly, God send thee good ale enough Whether it be new or old!

But if that I may have truly Good ale my belly full,

I shall look like one, by sweet Saint John, Were shorn against the wool.

Though I go bare, take you no care, I am nothing a-cold,

I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old.

I cannot eat but little meat, My stomach is not good;

But sure I think that I could drink With him that weareth an hood.

Drink is my life; although my wife Some time do chide and scold,

Yet spare I not to ply the pot Of jolly good ale and old.

I love no roast but a brown toast, Or a crab in the fire;

A little bread shall do me stead; Much bread I never desire.

Nor frost, nor snow, nor wind I trow, Can hurt me if it would,

I am so wrapped within and lapped With jolly good ale and old.
Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton’s Wife

He first deceased; she for a little tried

To live without him, liked it not, and died.

A Hymn to My God in a Night of My Late Sickness

O thou great power, in whom I move, For whom I live, to whom I die, Behold me through thy beams of love, Whilst on this couch of tears I lie;

And cleanse my sordid soul within By thy Christ’s blood, the bath of sin.

No hallowed oils, no grains I need, No rags of saints, no purging fire, One rosy drop from David’s seed

Was worlds of seas, to quench thine ire. O precious ransom! which once paid, That Consummatum est was said:

And said by him that said no more, But sealed it with his sacred breath.

Thou then, that has dispunged my score, And dying, wast the death of death,

Be to me now, on thee I call,

My life, my strength, my joy, my all.
Sir John Davies (1569–1618)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Affliction

If aught can teach us aught, Affliction’s looks, Making us look into ourselves so near,

Teach us to know ourselves beyond all books, Or all the learned schools that ever were.

This mistress lately plucked me by the ear,

And many a golden lesson hath me taught; Hath made my senses quick, and reason clear,

Reformed my will, and rectified my thought.

So do the winds and thunders cleanse the air; So working seas settle and purge the wine;

So lopped and pruned trees do flourish fair; So doth the fire the drossy gold refine.

Neither Minerva nor the learned Muse, Nor rules of art, nor precepts of the wise,

Could in my brain those beams of skill infuse, As but the glance of this dame’s angry eyes.

She within lists my ranging mind hath brought, That now beyond myself I list not go;

Myself am centre of my circling thought, Only myself I study, learn, and know.

I know my body’s of so frail a kind

As force without, fevers within, can kill; I know that heavenly nature of my mind,

But ‘tis corrupted both in wit and will;

I know my soul hath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant in all;
Robert Burton (1577–1640)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

The Author’s Abstract of Melancholy

When I go musing all alone

Thinking of divers things fore-known. When I build castles in the air,

Void of sorrow and void of fear, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, Methinks the time runs very fleet.

All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy.

When I lie waking all alone, Recounting what I have ill done, My thoughts on me then tyrannise, Fear and sorrow me surprise, Whether I tarry still or go,

Methinks the time moves very slow.

All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so mad as melancholy.

When to myself I act and smile,

With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, By a brook side or wood so green, Unheard, unsought for, or unseen,

A thousand pleasures do me bless, And crown my soul with happiness.

All my joys besides are folly, None so sweet as melancholy.

When I lie, sit, or walk alone,

I sigh, I grieve, making great moan, In a dark grove, or irksome den, With discontents and Furies then, A thousand miseries at once

Mine heavy heart and soul ensconce, All my griefs to this are jolly,

None so sour as melancholy.
John Fletcher and/or Thomas Middleton (1579–1625; 1580–1627)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Melancholy

Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly!

There’s naught in this life sweet, If men were wise to see’t,

But only melancholy— O sweetest melancholy!

Welcome, folded arms and fixèd eyes, A sigh that piercing mortifies,

A look that ‘s fasten’d to the ground, A tongue chain’d up without a sound!

Fountain-heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves!

Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed, save bats and owls!

A midnight bell, a parting groan— These are the sounds we feed upon:

Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley, Nothing ‘s so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

The Mad Maid’s Song

GOOD-MORROW to the day so fair, Good-morning, sir, to you;

Good-morrow to mine own torn hair Bedabbled with the dew.

Good-morning to this primrose too, Good-morrow to each maid

That will with flowers the tomb bestrew Wherein my love is laid.

Ah! woe is me, woe, woe is me!

Alack and well-a-day!

For pity, sir, find out that bee Which bore my love away.

I’ll seek him in your bonnet brave, I’ll seek him in your eyes;

Nay, now I think they’ve made his grave I’ th’ bed of strawberries.

I’ll seek him there; I know ere this

The cold, cold earth doth shake him; But I will go, or send a kiss

By you, sir, to awake him.

Pray hurt him not; though he be dead, He knows well who do love him,

And who with green turfs rear his head, And who do rudely move him.

He’s soft and tender (pray take heed); With bands of cowslips bind him,

And bring him home—but ‘tis decreed That I shall never find him!
George Herbert (1593–1633)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Affl iction (I)

WHEN first Thou didst entice to Thee my heart, I thought the service brave:

So many joys I writ down for my part, Besides what I might have

Out of my stock of naturall delights, Augmented with Thy gracious benefits.

I lookèd on Thy furniture so fine, And made it fine to me;

Thy glorious household stuff did me entwine, And ‘tice me unto Thee.

Such stars I counted mine: both heaven and earth Paid me my wages in a world of mirth.

What pleasures could I want, whose King I served, Where joys my fellows were?

Thus argued into hopes, my thoughts reserved No place for grief or fear;

Therefore my sudden soul caught at the place, And made her youth and fierceness seek Thy face:

At first thou gavest me milk and sweetnesses; I had my wish and way:

My days were strewed with flowers and happiness: There was no month but May.

But with my years sorrow did twist and grow, And made a party unawares for woe.

My flesh began unto my soul in pain, Sicknesses clave my bones, Consuming agues dwell in every vein,

And tune my breath to groans,
Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Upon Some Distemper of the Body

In anguish of my heart replete with woes,

And wasting pains, which best my body knows, In tossing slumbers on my wakeful bed,

Bedrenched with tears that flowed from mournful head, Till nature had exhausted all her store,

Then eyes lay dry, disabled to weep more; And looking up unto his throne on high, Who sendeth help to those in misery;

He chased away those clouds and let me see My anchor cast i’ th’ vale with safety.

He eased my soul of woe, my flesh of pain, and brought me to the shore from troubled main.
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624–1674)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

A Discourse on Melancholy

A sad and solemn verse doth please the mind, With chains of passions doth the spirits bind. As pencilled pictures drawn presents the night, Whose darker shadows give the eye delight, Melancholy aspects invite the eye,

And always have a seeming majesty. By its converting qualities there grows A perfect likeness, when itself it shows.

Then let the world in mourning sit and weep, Since only sadness we are apt to keep.

In light and toyish things we seek for change; The mind grows weary, and about doth range. What serious is, there constancies will dwell; Which shows that sadness mirth doth far excel.

Why should men grieve when they do think of death, Since they no settlement can have in mirth?

The grave, though sad, in quiet still they keep: Without disturbing dreams they lie asleep,

No rambling thoughts to vex their restless brains, Nor labour hard, to scorch and dry their veins.

No care to search for that they cannot find, Which is an appetite to every mind.

Then wish, good man, to die in quiet peace, Since death in misery is a release.
James Carkesse (published 1679)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

On the Doctors’ Telling Him that till He Left off Making Verses He Was Not Fit to be Discharged

Desiring his imprisoned Muse to enlarge,

The poet, Mad-quack moved, for his discharge. He angry answered, ‘Parson, ‘tis too soon:

As yet I have not cured you of lampoon;

For know, New Bedlam chiefly for the infected With this new sort of madness was erected: Bucks both and Rochester, unless they mend, Hither the king designs forthwith to send.

Shepherd and Dryden too must on ‘em wait; For he’s resolved at once to rid the state

Of this poetic, wanton, madlike tribe,

Whose rampant Muse does court and city gibe. Thus Bedlam may be cured perchance, if it hits, After despair of physic, by the wits.’

The answer pleased; yet I have cause to fear The doctor flattered, as ‘tis usual here.

But if my brethren come, I’ve learned this lesson: In such good company, Bedlam is no prison.
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661–1720)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

The Spleen: A Pindaric Poem

What art thou, spleen, which ev’ry thing dost ape Thou Proteus to abus’d Mankind,

Who never yet thy real Cause cou’d find,

Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape. Still varying thy perplexing Form,

Now a Dead Sea thou’lt represent, A Calm of stupid Discontent,

Then, dashing on the Rocks wilt rage into a Storm. Trembling sometimes thou dost appear,

Dissolv’d into a Panick Fear;

On Sleep intruding dost thy Shadows spread, Thy gloomy Terrours round the silent Bed,

And croud with boading Dreams the Melancholy Head: Or, when the Midnight Hour is told,

And drooping Lids thou still dost waking hold, Thy fond Delusions cheat the Eyes,

Before them antick Spectres dance, Unusual Fires their pointed Heads advance, And airy Phantoms rise.

Such was the monstrous Vision seen,

When Brutus (now beneath his Cares opprest, And all Rome’s Fortunes rolling in his Breast, Before Philippi’s latest Field,

Before his Fate did to Octavius lead) Was vanquish’d by the Spleen.

Falsly, the Mortal Part we blame

Of our deprest, and pond’rous Frame, Which, till the First degrading Sin

Let Thee, its dull Attendant, in, Still with the Other did comply,

Nor clogg’d the Active Soul, dispos’d to fly,
Edward Ward (1667–1731)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

The Extravagant Drunkard’s Wish

Had I my Wish I would distend my Guts

As wide as from the North to Southern Skies, And have, at once, as many Mouths and Throats,

As old Briarius Arms, or Argos Eyes. The raging Sea’s unpallatable Brine,

That drowns so many Thousands in a Year, I’d turn into an Ocean of good Wine,

And for my Cup would chuse the Hemisphere: Would then perform the Wager Xanthus laid,

In spight of all the Rivers flowing Streams, Swill, till I piss’d a Deluge, then to Bed,

And please my thirsty Soul with Small-Beer Dreams.

Thus Drink and Sleep, and waking Swill again, Till I had drunk the Sea-Gods Cellars dry,

Then rob the Niggard Neptune and his Train Of Tritons, of that Wealth they now enjoy.

Kiss the whole Nerides, and make the Jades

Sing all their charming Songs to please my Ear, And whether Flesh or Fish, Thornbacks or Maids,

I’d make the Gypsies kind thro’ Love or Fear. And when thus Wicked and thus Wealthy grown For nothing good, I’d turn Rebellious Whig,

Pull e’ery Monarch headlong from his Throne, And with the Prince of Darkness make a League,

That he and I, and all the Whigs beside,

Might rend down Churches, Crowns in pieces tare, Exert our Malice, gratify our Pride,

And settle Satan’s Kingdom e’erywhere.
William Harrison (1685–1713)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

In Praise of Laudanum

I feel, O Laudanum, thy power divine,

And fall with pleasure at thy slumb’ring shrine: Lulled by thy charms I ‘scape each anxious thought, And everything but Mira is forgot.
William Collins (1721–1759)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Ode to Fear

Strophe:

Thou, to whom the world unknown With all its shadowy shapes is shown; Who see’st appalled the unreal scene, While Fancy lifts the veil between:

Ah Fear! Ah frantic Fear! I see, I see thee near.

I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye! Like thee I start, like thee disordered fly. For lo, what monsters in thy train appear! Danger, whose limbs of giant mould What mortal eye can fixed behold?

Who stalks his round, an hideous form, Howling amidst the midnight storm, Or throws him on the ridgy steep

Of some loose hanging rock to sleep;

And with him thousand phantoms joined, Who prompt to deeds accursed the mind; And those, the fiends who, near allied, O’er nature’s wounds and wrecks preside; Whilst Vengeance in the lurid air

Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare, On whom that ravening brood of fate, Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait; Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see, And look not madly wild like thee?
Christopher Smart (1722–1771)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Hymn to the Supreme Being, on Recovery from a Dangerous Fit of Illness

To DOCTOR JAMES

I

When

Israel’s ruler on the royal bed

In anguish and in perturbation lay, The down reliev’d not his anointed head,

And rest gave place to horror and dismay.

Fast flow’d the tears, high heav’d each gasping sigh

When God’s own prophet thunder’d—MONARCH, THOU MUST DIE.

II

And must I go, th’illustrious mourner cry’d,

I who have serv’d thee still in faith and truth, Whose snow-white conscience no foul crime has died

From youth to manhood, infancy to youth, Like David, who have still rever’d thy word

The sovereign of myself and servant of the Lord!

III

The judge Almighty heard his suppliant’s moan, Repeal’d his sentence, and his health restor’d;

The beams of mercy on his temples shone,

Shot from that heaven to which his sighs had soar’d; The sun retreated at his maker’s nod

And miracles confirm the genuine work of God.

IV

But, O immortals! What had I to plead

When death stood o’er me with his threat’ning lance,
Thomas Warton (1728–1790)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

from “The Pleasures of Melancholy”

Mother of musings, Contemplation sage, Whose grotto stands upon the topmost rock Of Teneriff: ‘mid the tempestuous night,

On which, in calmest meditation held,

Thou hear’st with howling winds the beating rain And drifting hail descend; or if the skies Unclouded shine, and thro’ the blue serene

Pale Cynthia rolls her silver-axled car, Whence gazing stedfast on the spangled vault Raptur’d thou sit’st, while murmurs indistinct Of distant billows sooth thy pensive ear

With hoarse and hollow sounds; secure, self-blest, There oft thou listen’st to the wild uproar

Of fleets encount’ring, that in whispers low Ascends the rocky summit, where thou dwell’st Remote from man, conversing with the spheres! O lead me, queen sublime, to solemn glooms Congenial with my soul; to cheerless shades,

To ruin’d seats, or twilight cells and bow’rs, Where thoughtful Melancholy loves to muse,

Her fav’rite midnight haunts. The laughing scenes Of purple Spring, where all the wanton train

Of Smiles and Graces seem to lead the dance

In sportive round, while from their hands they show’r Ambrosial blooms and flow’rs, no longer charm; Tempe, no more I court thy balmy breeze,

Adieu green vales! ye broider’d meads, adieu!

Thro’ Pope’s soft song tho’ all the Graces breathe, And happiest art adorn his Attic page;

Yet does my mind with sweeter transport glow, As at the root of mossy trunk reclin’d,
Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

from “In Memoriam”

III

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath,

What whispers from thy lying lip?

“The stars,” she whispers, “blindly run; A web is wov’n across the sky;

From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun:

“And all the phantom, Nature, stands— With all the music in her tone,

A hollow echo of my own,—

A hollow form with empty hands.”

And shall I take a thing so blind, Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood,

Upon the threshold of the mind?

IV

To Sleep I give my powers away; My will is bondsman to the dark; I sit within a helmless bark,

And with my heart I muse and say:

O heart, how fares it with thee now,

That thou should’st fail from thy desire, Who scarcely darest to inquire,

“What is it makes me beat so low?”
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief ?

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing— Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No lingering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.’

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

Carrion Comfort

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me

Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

To One in Bedlam

With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars, Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine; Those scentless wisps of straw, that miserably line

His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares,

Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars

With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchanted wine, And make his melancholy germane to the stars?

O lamentable brother! if those pity thee,

Am I not fain of all thy lone eyes promise me;

Half a fool’s kingdom, far from men who sow and reap, All their days, vanity? Better than mortal flowers,

Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep, The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!

Spleen

I was not sorrowful, I could not weep, And all my memories were put to sleep.

I watched the river grow more white and strange, All day till evening I watched it change.

All day till evening I watched the rain Beat wearily upon the window pane
Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Repression of War Experience

Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth; What silly beggars they are to blunder in

And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame— No, no, not that,—it’s bad to think of war,

When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you; And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad

Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts

That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand. Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen, And you’re as right as rain . . .

Why won’t it rain? . . .

I wish there’d be a thunder-storm to-night, With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark, And make the roses hang their dripping heads. Books; what a jolly company they are, Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,

Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green, And every kind of colour. Which will you read?

Come on; O do read something; they’re so wise. I tell you all the wisdom of the world

Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet

You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out, And listen to the silence: on the ceiling

There’s one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters; And in the breathless air outside the house

The garden waits for something that delays.

There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,— Not people killed in battle,—they’re in France,— But horrible shapes in shrouds—old men who died Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls, Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.
Ivor Gurney (1890–1937)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Strange Hells

There are strange hells within the minds war made Not so often, not so humiliatingly afraid

As one would have expected—the racket and fear guns made. One hell the Gloucester soldiers they quite put out:

Their first bombardment, when in combined black shout

Of fury, guns aligned, they ducked lower their heads And sang with diaphragms fixed beyond all dreads, That tin and stretched-wire tinkle, that blither of tune: ‘Après la guerre fini,’ till hell all had come down,

Twelve-inch, six-inch, and eighteen pounders hammering hell’s thunders.

Where are they now, on state-doles, or showing shop-patterns Or walking town to town sore in borrowed tatterns

Or begged. Some civic routine one never learns.

The heart burns—but has to keep out of face how heart burns.

The Shame

If the pain I suffer were of the Devil enemy of man

It might pass, might be proper, but from man’s self, O the black shame

Of torture, when, as some think, so easy were the plan Of kind life; but this is dreadfulness beyond name.
Louise Bogan (1897–1970)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Evening in the Sanitarium

The free evening fades, outside the windows fastened with decorative iron grilles.

The lamps are lighted; the shades drawn; the nurses are watching a little.

It is the hour of the complicated knitting on the safe bone needles; of the games of anagrams and bridge;

The deadly game of chess; the book held up like a mask.

The period of the wildest weeping, the fiercest delusion, is over.

The women rest their tired half-healed hearts; they are almost well.

Some of them will stay almost well always: the blunt-faced woman whose thinking dissolved

Under academic discipline; the manic-depressive girl Now leveling off; one paranoiac affl icted with jealousy.

Another with persecution. Some alleviation has been possible.

O fortunate bride, who never again will become elated after childbirth!

O lucky older wife, who has been cured of feeling unwanted!

To the suburban railway station you will return, return, To meet forever Jim home on the 5:35.

You will be again as normal and selfish and heartless as anybody else.

There is life left: the piano says it with its octave smile.

The soft carpets pad the thump and splinter of the suicide to be.

Everything will be splendid: the grandmother will not drink habitually.
(John Orley) Allen Tate (1899–1979)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Ode to Fear

Let the day glare: O memory, your tread Beats to the pulse of suffocating night— Night peering from his dark but fire-lit head Burns on the day his tense and secret light.

Now they dare not to gloss your savage dream,

O beast of the heart, those saints who cursed your name; You are the current of the frozen stream,

Shadow invisible, ambushed and vigilant flame.

My eldest companion present in solitude,

Watch-dog of Thebes when the blind hero strove: You, omniscient, at the cross-roads stood

When Laius, the slain dotard, drenched the grove.

Now to the eye of prophecy immune, Fading and harried, you stalk us in the street From the recesses of the August noon,

Alert world over, crouched on the air’s feet.

You are our surety to immortal life, God’s hatred of the universal stain— The heritage, O Fear, of ancient strife

Compounded with the tissue of the vein.

And I when all is said have seen your form Most agile and most treacherous to the world When, on a child’s long day, a dry storm Burst on the cedars, lit by the sun and hurled!
Anonymous (published 1930)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

from “Thoughts Suggested on a Thanksgiving Day Passed at the State Lunatic Asylum, Worcester, Mass., by a Patient”

Hark! ‘tis the chapel bell!—its lively peal,

At early morn, wakes, from their slumbering beds, The various members of this household band.

Forth to their several duties, each they hie—

The faithful “Nurse,” with beaming lamp in hand, The healing potion from the “doctor” bears; Which being administered, she speeds to arrange, In order due, the frugal meal.—Meanwhile,

As, careful of her trust, she goes from room

To room, to inquire the health, each little want To learn, the pleasant “Supervisor’s” voice

Is heard.—The worthy “Steward” too, whose care Unwearied, and whose generous deeds, have won Him many a well deserved epithet

Of fame, himself betakes the building o’er

T’ survey.—The clock strikes seven: the signal’s given, And now, with hair adjusted, person washed,

In neat attire, behold th’ assembled group Around the well set board; the pleasant word ‘s

Exchanged; the thoughts of many homeward turn, Which utterance find in words of sad regret

At separation thus from those they love, And in whose blest society they oft,

On day like this have swelled the thankful song. Some cheerful, happy, look; while other some, In listless reverie, seem mindful scarce

Of aught.—All now is life;—the breakfast o’er,

The cloth’s removed, while brooms and brushes quick Are plied, to sweep the gathered dust, t’ restore

That perfect neatness, which is wont to reign Within these walls. Here order, in its prime, Presides, system complete, that which could be
Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Visits to Saint Elizabeths

This is the house of Bedlam.

This is the man

that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the time of the tragic man

that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a wristwatch telling the time

of the talkative man

that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the honored man

that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the roadstead all of board reached by the sailor

wearing the watch that tells the time

of the old, brave man

that lies in the house of Bedlam.

These are the years and the walls of the ward, the winds and clouds of the sea of board sailed by the sailor

wearing the watch that tells the time of the cranky man

that lies in the house of Bedlam.
J. V. (James Vincent) Cunningham (1911–1985)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

from Interview with Doctor Drink

I have a fifth of therapy

In the house, and transference there. Doctor, there’s not much wrong with me, Only a sick rattlesnake somewhere

In the house, if it be there at all,

But the lithe mouth is coiled. The shapes Of door and window move. I call.

What is it that pulls down the drapes,

Disheveled and exposed? Your rye Twists in my throat: intimacy

Is like hard liquor. Who but I

Coil there and squat, and pay your fee?
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

In the Ward: The Sacred Wood

The trees rise from the darkness of the world. The little trees, the paper grove,

Stand woodenly, a sigh of earth, Upon the table by this bed of life Where I have lain so long: until at last I find a Maker for them, and forget

Who cut them from their cardboard, brushed A bird on each dark, fretted bough.

But the birds think and are still.

The thunder mutters to them from the hills My knees make by the rainless Garden.

If the grove trembles with the fan

And makes, at last, its little flapping song That wanders to me over the white flood On which I float enchanted—shall I fall? A bat jerks to me from the ragged limb And hops across my shudder with its leaf Of curling paper: have the waters gone?

Is the nurse damned who looked on my nakedness? The sheets stretch like the wilderness

Up which my fingers wander, the sick tribes, To a match’s flare, a rain or bush of fire Through which the devil trudges, coal by coal, With all his goods; and I look absently

And am not tempted.

Death scratches feebly at this husk of life In which I lie unchanging, Sin despairs Of my dull works; and I am patient . . .

A third of all the angels, in the wars

Of God against the Angel, took no part And were to God’s will neither enemies Nor followers, but lay in doubt:

but lie in doubt.
Howard Nemerov (1920–1991)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

To D——, Dead by Her Own Hand

My dear, I wonder if before the end

You ever thought about a children’s game— I’m sure you must have played it too—in which You ran along a narrow garden wall

Pretending it to be a mountain ledge So steep a snowy darkness fell away On either side to deeps invisible;

And when you felt your balance being lost

You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought For only an instant: that was when I died.

That was a life ago. And now you’ve gone,

Who would no longer play the grown-ups’ game Where, balanced on the ledge above the dark, You go on running and don’t look down,

Nor ever jump because you fear to fall.
Anthony Hecht (1923–2004)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

A Deep Breath at Dawn

Morning has come at last. The rational light Discovers even the humblest thing that yearns For heaven; from its scaled and shadeless height, Figures its difficult way among the ferns,

Nests in the trees, and is ambitious to warm The chilled vein, and to light the spider’s thread With modulations hastening to a storm

Of the full spectrum, rushing from red to red.

I have watched its refinements since the dawn, When, at the birdcall, all the ghosts were gone.

The wolf, the fig tree, and the woodpecker Were sacred once to Undertaker Mars;

Honor was done in Rome to that home-wrecker Whose armor and whose ancient, toughened scars Made dance the very meat of Venus’ heart,

And hot her ichor, and immense her eyes, Till his rough ways and her invincible art

Locked and laid low their shining, tangled thighs. My garden yields his fig tree, even now

Bearing heraldic fruit at every bough.

Someone I have not seen for six full years

Might pass this garden through, and might pass by The oleander bush, the bitter pears

Unfinished by the sun, with only an eye For the sun-speckled shade of the fig tree, And shelter in its gloom, and raise his hand For tribute and for nourishment (for he Was once entirely at the god’s command) But that his nature, being all undone, Cannot abide the clarity of the sun.
Richard Hugo (1923–1982)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

In Your War Dream

You must fly your 35 missions again.

The old base is reopened. The food is still bad.

You are disturbed. The phlegm you choked up mornings in fear returns. You strangle on the phlegm.

You ask, “Why must I do this again?” A man replies, “Home.” You fly over one country

after another. The nations are bright like a map. You pass over the red one. The orange one ahead looks cold. The purple one north of that is the one you must bomb. A wild land. Austere. The city below seems ancient. You are on the ground.

Lovers are inside a cabin. You ask to come in. They say “No. Keep watch on Stark Yellow Lake.” You stand beside the odd water. A terrible wind keeps knocking you down. “I’m keeping watch on the lake,” you yell at the cabin. The lovers don’t answer. You break into the cabin. Inside

old women bake bread. They yell, “Return to the base.” You must fly your 35 missions again.

Cape Nothing

The sea designed these cliffs. Stone is cut away odd places like a joke.

A suicide took aim, then flew out

in the arc he thought would find the sea.
Donald Justice (1925–2004)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Counting the Mad

This one was put in a jacket, This one was sent home,

This one was given bread and meat But would eat none,

And this one cried No No No No All day long.

This one looked at the window As though it were a wall,

This one saw things that were not there, This one things that were,

And this one cried No No No No All day long.

This one thought himself a bird, This one a dog,

And this one thought himself a man, An ordinary man,

And cried and cried No No No No All day long.

The Man Closing Up

1

Like a deserted beach, The man closing up.
Robert Bly (1926– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Depression

I felt my heart beat like an engine high in the air,

Like those scaffolding engines standing only on planks; My body hung about me like an old grain elevator, Useless, clogged, full of blackened wheat.

My body was sour, my life dishonest, and I fell asleep.

I dreamt that men came toward me, carrying thin wires; I felt the wires pass in, like fire; they were old Tibetans, Dressed in padded clothes, to keep out cold;

Then three work gloves, lying fingers to fingers, In a circle, came toward me, and I awoke.

Now I want to go back among the dark roots; Now I want to see the day pulling its long wing; I want to see nothing more than two feet high; I want to see no one, I want to say nothing,

I want to go down and rest in the black earth of silence.
Wiley Clements (1928– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Military Journalist

On the road outside Inchon, in nondescript attire,

part G.I., part civilian, less likely to draw fire, heading for the line,

first horror that I saw:

a charbroiled North Korean sprouting from the maw

of a rocket-shattered Russian tank, T-thirty-four;

black flower in the sun, the first of many more.

The next I came upon I had not seen die.

There beside his gun,

a bullet through his eye, a boy no older than myself, his skull a flower, petals of bone and skin.

A momentary shower

had washed the brain within white as ivory:

I stared and then walked on; he rose and walked with me.

Burned and shattered flowers, young men who had no say, dead soldiers, theirs and ours, walk with me today.
Ned O’Gorman (1929– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Peace, After Long Madness

After a long madness peace is an assassin

in the heart. Where there had been the clenched fist, the strung out sinew, the hamstrung grin, the erect eye and hand on every shadow like a spy, now the river springs from the crystal of its sleep in a sapphire lunge to the sea. A year of madness is a libation poured out of nettles and boiled herbs, of knives oiled with honey that cut silently to the spine. I was madness’s kin, no, more its parent blood, its coursing lymph, its skeleton.

I kept company with lunacy, broke bread with him, lay beside him, my head in his arms, felt him draw down the sheet to watch me as I shook and so it was one year till now.

Now the rocks become a sweetness

in the listless meadow, the lutist brays to

the ashes, flowers in the red crystal bowl push against the windowpane and I sleep again,

my hands beneath my cheek, legs straight out, eyes shut against the inward stratagem of dream and the bedsheets and counterpane lie upon me

no more leaded capes of knobbed steel, but companions of my skin, like the surface of my river is kindred

balm to the volcanoes and riven headlands that lie beneath it like pain.
Sharon Olds (1942– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Satan Says

I am locked in a little cedar box

with a picture of shepherds pasted onto the central panel between carvings.

The box stands on curved legs.

It has a gold, heart-shaped lock and no key. I am trying to write my way out of the closed box

redolent of cedar. Satan comes to me in the locked box and says, I’ll get you out. Say My father is a shit. I say my father is a shit and Satan laughs and says, It’s opening. Say your mother is a pimp.

My mother is a pimp. Something opens and breaks when I say that. My spine uncurls in the cedar box like the pink back of the ballerina pin with a ruby eye, resting beside me on satin in the cedar box.

Say shit, say death, say fuck the father, Satan says, down my ear.

The pain of the locked past buzzes

in the child’s box on her bureau, under the terrible round pond eye

etched around with roses, where self-loathing gazed at sorrow.

Shit. Death. Fuck the father. Something opens. Satan says Don’t you feel a lot better?

Light seems to break on the delicate edelweiss pin, carved in two
Timothy Dekin (1943–2001)
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Melancholy

Morning, old promise of relief, Asserts its presence with a light Unsympathetic, and too bright, And you are easier with grief,

The amber glowing through drawn shades. You sit and smoke. Through muted fire The dust shifts only to expire On quilt or rug. The bed’s unmade,

There’s nothing to be gained, or known, Or saved. Tomorrow you’ll be stronger. Rest here in peace a little longer.

Some cannot make it on their own.
R. L. Barth (1947– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Epigraph from Deeply Dug In

I swore I’d only be a three year cypher

But learn each sweaty midnight I’m a lifer.
Joseph Salemi (1948– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Sicilian Beachhead

He had to kill her, though it was not planned— He crawled up that warm beach at night, in war. Who could foresee a young girl on the sand,

A bicyclist along the moonlit shore?

She saw him. If he let the girl go free She might raise an alarm. He was afraid.

The blued-steel bayonet came out, and he Stabbed deep and hard, the full length of its blade.

Years later, troubled by a nagging ghost

Of doubt, he’d tell himself there was no blame. If she had been a sentry at a post

No question that he would have done the same.

But every night he felt her fragile breath—

He languished, pined, and drank himself to death.
Jimmy Santiago Baca (1952– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

This Dark Side

has always haunted me,

fiercely adamant in its opposition to all the good I create:

subversive and defiant.

While my spirit revels in light, it

gorges on cesspool pleasures leaving my spirit at times a fly

and maggot-infested carcass, dissembling my dreamwork, disintegrating it back to sand wind scatters, blows

back into my face

I have to lower in shame.

Imagine a ladder of light, a trellis of branches rising out of my soul in blossoming radiance, carving its own latticed speech in the sky toward the sun.

Imagine

my dark side freeing the termites to gnaw down these branches.

My soul

falls like a black oak tree cracked by an ice storm.

It stares up with a skull’s nightmare grimace of cruel suffering on its frozen face.

But hovering at dawn,

hope like a butterfly floats around it,

a powdery rainbow dust effusing the air with pervasive peace.

And then

the morning yawns forth like whispering lilac on the air.
Michael Lauchlan (1954– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

What You Hadn’t

One pain forgives another;

mashed thumb obliterates headache. Malaria returned, dragged your liver with all your other failures

from that ugly flat

where you burned so many pots of stew and chased your daughter’s beaus away.

“If we hadn’t lost the house,” I might say now, or “if you hadn’t driven the car

onto the basketball court.”

But there you sat, dozed, watched the televised war,

the burn scar from the barrel of the B.A.R. warning me not to be a softy.

Then you wept to the skinny boy

you pressed against it into your vast belly, against your sweat and breath,

saying, “Never touch a gun.”

So desperate,

cursed to drink by birth and war, beaten, slicing ham and cutting steaks in a disappointing sixties,

you’d nothing left to give a boy

but a clip with the shells dumped out.
Kelly Ann Malone (1963– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Devices on Standby

I’ve tucked away two forty-fours. They’re deep within a wall.

Their bullets line my dresser drawers and wait for me to call.

Two vials filled with cyanide are safe within their space.

I’ve stashed them in a pot outside beneath the Queen Anne’s lace.

Two gleaming knives to slit my wrists sit nestled in a shed.

I’ll use them if my grief persists to soak my ivory bed.

Two slipknots made of sturdy rope sit limp upon a chair.

It helps me when I cannot cope to know that they are there.

You ask me why they come in two’s? the need for added stress?

In case the first one that I choose is launched without success.

I’ve had these items in my house for over forty years.

I’ve hid them from my kids and spouse, my neighbors and my peers.

I tried to do it years ago, but then I had a boy.
Kevin Young (1970– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Coke® (The Real Thing)

His nose is open—

he wants him

some white girl, needs to score—

Might want to quit

her, but he’s

an addick

& she’s his dealer & only takes

ten percent.

Says she’ll hook

him up with Warhol—White

lines Blowin through my mind

And now I’m having

fun baby— Don’t be so nosy, he’s got it under

control. Just a chippie. Needs advice like another hole in his nose—
Coda Anne Stevenson (1933– )
Authors: Bauer Mark S
Published: November 2023

Letter to Sylvia Plath

They are great healers, English springs. You loved their delicate colourings— sequential yellows, eggshell blues— not pigments you preferred to use, lady of pallors and foetal jars

and surgical interiors.

But wasn’t it warmth you wanted most?

These Grantchester willows keep your ghost, young and in love and half way through

the half-life that was left to you.

The Cam still crawls through patient grass, preserving ephemerals in glass.

A bull thrush shouts from a willow thicket, Catch it! Catch it! Catch it! Catch it!

Catch what? An owl in a petalled dress? The gnarl at the root of a distress?

Dear Sylvia, we must close our book.

Three springs you’ve perched like a black rook between sweet weather and my mind.

At last I have to seem unkind and exorcise my awkward awe.

My shoulder doesn’t like your claw.
Crisis And Childhood
Authors: Weinstein Philip
Published: November 2023

Faulkner had probably just returned from the annual deer hunt at General Stone’s lodge, thirty miles west of Oxford, Mississippi, on the edge of the Delta. He was two months past his thirtieth birthday and had reason to be feeling good. Thanks to Phil Stone’s friendship over the years, he had grown accustomed to spending time with the larger Stone family—wealthy, privileged, and planterly, as Faulkner’s family was not. One of the pleasures of this connection was the renewed hunting it afforded. He may even have remembered Phil’s telling of his first bear—a vignette so vivid that it was as though it had happened to Faulkner too. Just fifteen years old, Phil had seen the bear, stood his ground, fired, and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the bear was sprawled out before him, dead. The other hunters put Phil through the ritual “blooding” that attends a boy’s first kill. They smeared his face with the bear’s blood, initiating him into the yearly hunting of wild creatures, in the company of men. Throughout his life, Faulkner would find ways to reenact the ceremony of hunting in the big woods, in the company of men. It confirmed—graciously, wordlessly— his sense of himself.