{"id":246,"date":"2002-12-17T14:18:37","date_gmt":"2002-12-17T18:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=246"},"modified":"2002-12-17T14:18:37","modified_gmt":"2002-12-17T18:18:37","slug":"poetry-corner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=246","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Corner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henceforth, From the Mind<\/span><\/p>\n

Henceforth, from the mind,
\nFor your whole joy, must spring
\nSuch joy as you may find
\nIn any earthly thing,
\nAnd every time and place
\nWill take your thought for grace.<\/p>\n

Henceforth, from the tongue,
\nFrom shallow speech alone,
\nComes joy you thought, when young,
\nWould wring you to the bone,
\nWould pierce you to the heart,
\nAnd spoil its stop and start.<\/p>\n

Henceforward, from the shell,
\nWherein you heard, and wondered
\nAt oceans like a bell
\nSo far from ocean sundered —
\nA smothered sound that sleeps
\nLong lost within lost deeps,<\/p>\n

Will chime you change and hours,
\nThe shadow of increase,
\nWill sound you flowers
\nBorn under troubled peace —
\nHenceforth, henceforth
\nWill echo sea and earth.<\/p>\n

–Louise Bogan<\/p>\n

Two things to notice about this poem. The first line in the third stanza is a metrical miracle. The poem is written in iambic trimeter, and the first lines of the first two stanzas omit the first unaccented syllable. “Henceforward” puts it back in, but with a variation on “henceforth,” accentuating the time shift in a way that is beyond my powers to describe but no less real for that. If you do not hear it then you are not reading this poem, or poetry in general, with the attention to sound that it requires.<\/p>\n

The poem says that as abstraction becomes more interesting, experience, that blooming buzzing confusion, becomes less so. One has to be of a certain age and temperament to understand this thought, and most people who read poetry are neither. This is why the several great poems on this theme (like this one<\/a>) are obscure and underrated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henceforth, From the Mind Henceforth, from the mind, For your whole joy, must spring Such joy as you may find In any earthly thing, And every time and place Will take your thought for grace. Henceforth, from the tongue, From shallow speech alone, Comes joy you thought, when young, Would wring you to the bone, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}