To read aloud…

Posted by: Lori on: December 17, 2006

• In: Book Links | Poetry | Quotes
• 17 Comments

This bit of Anglo-Saxon pleasure from Earle Birney needs to be read aloud. Some background on Old English Poetry:

Old English poetry was very formulaic, with the same patterns being re-used with variations time and again. Additionally, alliteration and stress were used in the place of rhyme, which can sound strange but powerful to the modern ear. Another striking feature of Old English poetry was the use of many metaphors or kennings for common subjects: The sea could be referred to as the ‘whale’s way’, ‘gannet’s bath’, ‘swan’s riding’ and so on.

Or, as the great Seamus Heaney points out when he writes about his task of translating Beowulf:

I had noticed, for example, that without any conscious intent on my part certain lines in the first poem in my first book conformed to the requirements of Anglo-Saxon metrics. These lines were made up of two balancing halves, each half containing two stressed syllables – ‘The spade sinks into gravelly ground: / My father digging. I look down…’ – and in the case of the second line there was alliteration linking ‘digging’ and ‘down’ across the caesura. Part of me, in other words, had been writing Anglo-Saxon from the start.

Wow…a lot of ‘ado’ before I get to the poem for today.

Canadian poet, Earle Birney (1904-1995), probably best known for his long poem, David (I wish there was a link!) — read in many a classroom! One of my favourites is Anglosaxon Street…

A memorable poem, with the rhythms of Old English, some brilliant images, and, yes, some rather strong (ooo, controversy!) language. Here it is:

Anglosaxon Street
by Earle Birney

Dawndrizzle ended   dampness steams from
blotching brick and   blank plasterwaste
Faded housepatterns hoary and finicky
unfold stuttering   stick like a phonograph

Here is a ghetto   gotten for goyim
O with care denuded   of nigger and kike
No coonsmell rankles   reeks only cellarrot
attar of carexhaust   catcorpse and cookinggrease
Imperial hearts   heave in this haven
Cracks across windows   are welded with slogans
There’ll Always Be An England   enhances geraniums
and V’s for Victory   vanquish the housefly

Ho! with climbing sun   march the bleached beldames
festooned with shopping bags   farded flatarched
bigthewed Saxonwives   stepping over buttrivers
waddling back wienerladen   to suckle smallfry

Hoy! with sunslope   shrieking over hydrants
flood from learninghall   the lean fingerlings
Nordic nobblecheeked   not all clean of nose
leaping Commandowise   into leprous lanes

What! after whistleblow   spewed from wheelboat
after daylong doughtiness   dire handplay
in sewertrench or sandpit   come Saxonthegns
Junebrown Jutekings   jawslack for meat

Sit after supper   on smeared doorsteps
not humbly swearing   hatedeeds on Huns
profiteers politicians   pacifists Jews

Then by twobit magic   to muse in movie
unlock picturehoard   or lope to alehall
soaking bleakly   in beer skittleless

Home again to hotbox   and humid husbandhood
in slumbertrough adding   sleepily to Anglekin
Alongside in lanenooks   carling and leman
caterwaul and clip   careless of Saxonry
with moonglow and haste   and a higher heartbeat

Slumbers now slumtrack   unstinks cooling
waiting brief for milkmaid   mornstar and worldrise

Toronto 1942