Four Halloween Poems from "Why Am I Grown So Cold" by Myra Cohn Livingston (posted by Jenny Factor)

            HOUSE FEAR

Always--I tell you this they learned--

Always at night when they returned

To the lonely house from far away

To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,

They learned to rattle the lock and key

To give whatever might chance to be

Warning and time to be off in flight:

And preferring the out- to the in-door night,

They learned to leave the house-door wide

Until they had lit the lamp inside. 

                        --Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 

   I called to the wind,

"Who's there?"........Whoever it was

    still knocks at my gate.

                --Kyorai, trans by Harry Behn  (1651-1704)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops

None know the horror of its sight

Save those who meet death in the wilderness

But one is enabled to see

To see branches move at its passing

To hear at times the wail of black laughter

And to come often upon mystic places

Places where the thing has just been.

                                                          --Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

 

THE WARNING

Just now,

Out of the strange

Still dusk...as strange, as still...

A white moth flew: why am I grown

So cold?

            --Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914) (her form is the 'cinquain')

In my childhood in Beverly Hills California, where our storms tended toward fire and quake, Los Angeles poet Myra Cohn Livingston served as Artist in our schools. Her first lesson was to use our real eyes, rather than to "buy in" to other people's metaphors and similes. She liked to remind us that "snow" wasn't "winter" in Southern California.  I knew that if I "saw" the leaves turning something other than crinkly-and-brown, I should get my eyes checked. 

On the other hand, she would bring in brilliant objects and ask us to come up with lists...what are they? what are they to us metaphorically? We would take metaphor-hunting walks. We would find the telephone in the seashell, the moon "as the north wind's cookie." (That last is Vachel Lindsay, in case you were wondering.)

And she would read us poems, across time, across space, from a stream she knew where poetry was always happening inside itself. A famous children's poet, she didn't believe in talking down to children. Her anthologies still sit on my shelves, and are of interest to my 43 year old self. 

Her anthologies for children (among her more than 90 books), always included international work, spanning six centuries or more. Here for Halloween are some selections from Why Am I Grown So Cold: Poems of the Unknowable (A Margaret K. McElderry Book, Athenaeum, 1982).

 

Comments

[jim cummins]

Jenny, a lovely tribute. I can see her at work with the kids; I'd love to have that memory. The Stephen Crane poem reminds me of Robert Graves' intro to THE WHITE GODDESS, where he describes that eerie moment in a clearing in the forest, when you suddenly sense the goddess has just been there ... Happy Halloween. (I love bats flying in front of the moon!)

[Jenny Factor]

Jim, thank you so much! She was all that! And more. I was so lucky to have her powerful imprint on my childhood, not to mention the early instruction we all received in verseform, and her smarts about not having us 'read young'. she believed children loved to listen into what was almost just beyond them. I will have to look up the Robert Graves. I know that I think of the poem moment, when it feels a certain way, as the 'moment in the forest.'' The draft's words are like breadcrumbs to get back there....but only a disappearing and disposable path. Are you well?

[jim cummins]

Jenny, I'm doing well, thanks, and would guess you are the same after that wonderful post. Just to have your head elsewhere than the political rants of this so-called campaign is a triumph! I'm going to do a week of BAP blogging starting Nov 26; really looking forward to it.
Stay well, dear J.