Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 4: 'You' by Ram Spudd Stephen Leacock

For the month, the fourth of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

Verse from Ram Spudd, "one of nature's gentlemen," as celebrated in Stephen Leacock's Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (Toronto: Gundy, 1915).

YOU

                                          You!

With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,

And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!

                                          You!

With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and contracting chest,

Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and dinner-jacket vest.

                                 It is too much

                                 Your touch

                                 As such.

                                 It and

                                 Your hand,

                           Can you not understand?

Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair

                                Unnoticed fell.

                                I guard it

                                Well.

                                Yestere’en

                           From your tiara I have slid,

                               Unseen,

                               A single diamond,

                               And I keep it

                               Hid.

Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill

                               A quarter dollar,

                               And I have it

                               Still.

Related post:

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 3: 'My Little Suffragette' by Thaddeus A. Browne

For the month, the third of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

Thaddeus A. Browne had a decades-long career as an Ottawa civil servant, though his Citizen obituary (9 March 1935) makes more about his standing as a literary figure.

I'm not sure that Browne was a widely known as a writer of poems and prose; I'd never encountered his name before buying The White Plague and Other Poems (Toronto: William Briggs, 1909). Of its twenty-two poems, 'My Little Suffragette' is the second to take on soldiers in petticoats. 

MY LITTLE SUFFRAGETTE

                         Little blue-eyed suffragette,
                         What for suffrage calling yet?
                         Stop your worry, cease your fret,
                              Don't you see the harm it brings? 

                         If a vote were given you,
                         Many things no doubt you'd do,

                         You might mould the world anew

                              As upon its course it swings. 

                         But I want to tell you this,

                         Winsome little suffrage miss,

                         You are keeping me from bliss

                              By your interest in such things. 

                         You have worried my poor mind,

                         You have been to me unkind;

                         Good it is that Love is blind,

                              Or he might have taken wings. 

                         What! you did it just to tease!

                         Little minx, give me a squeeze.

                         Love you give me ecstasies

                              What's your choice of wedding rings?

Remarkably, the poet did marry... though not until middle age.

 Thaddeus Augustine Browne
1878-1935
RIP

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 2: 'The Tame Apes' by Robert E. Swanson

For the month, the second of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

Verse from Robert E. Swanson's Rhymes of a Lumberjack (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1943). The accompanying illustration is by Bert Bushell.

Not the sort of thing I expected from the publisher of "Poet Laureate of the Home" Edna Jaques.

THE TAME APES

            Tame apes of the jungle they call us,
                 He-men of the forest are we;
            Who spend our money on poker and booze,
            And don't give a damn if we win or lose.
            And a carefree life in the forest we choose,
                 On the slopes by the Western Sea. 

            We live a tough life when we're working,
                 We play just as rough in the town;
            We're suckers for women who wear high heels,
            With well-moulded bodies and looser ideals,
            That trip down the street, dolled up in their seals;
                 Just waiting for us to come down. 

            We paint the town red when we're spending.
                 It's drinks on the house by the crock.
            Then our friends are many, and women smile.
            It's "What is your hurry? Please tarry a while."
            But when she's all spent—we walk the last mile
                 Down to the Union dock. 

            Then it's "Give you an upper? The hell you say!
                 You bums can sleep on the floor!"
            The world seems cold, and people will shun.
            But a tame-ape brother won't see it undone—
            He's still got a crock! ... the son of a gun!
                 So you step in his stateroom door. 

            "Say! ... Who's pushing' camp up at Kelley's?
                 They tell me you're running full slam.
            Now the air is blue with cigarette smoke—
            Someone is trying to tell you a joke;
            You kinda forget you're going' broke
                 To the jungles: but who gives a damn? 

            So back to the jungles you're headin' once more—
            To the brush where the tame-apes roam;
            To the little old camp, by a railroad track,
            Where the blue smoke curls from the bull cook's shack,
            And the smell of the bunkhouse welcomes you back.
                 By Gawd! but you soon feel at home. 

            And before the dawn breaks in the morning,
                 From his bunk the tame-ape will roll.
            While still it is dark, he heads for the brush;
            When the push-ape hollers, he'll scramble and rush—
            Get down on his knees, in the cold damp slush,
                 And scratch for his choker hole. 

            Soon the hooker will holler for the straw-line;
                 Then the apes in the brush don mad.
            One runs with the end up the hill, sheer;
            When he hollers out "Line!" you get in the clear,
            And bound over logs and chunks like a deer;
                 If you're slow ... well, it's just too bad. 

            Then you think of the stake thhat you squandered.
                 And the plans that you conjured before;
            So you make them again, in the very same way—
            You'll head into town with your heard-earned pay;
            But you know in your heart you'll be king for a day,
                 Then come back to the woods once more. 

            But life to a woodman is freedom,
                 Not measured in dollars sublime;
            But to come and go and quit when he please,
            Not beg for a job on bended knees.
            No roadie to tycoons, with rich properties,
                 Who would see him in Hell—for a dime.

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 1: 'Snow in April' by Marjorie Pickthall

I haven't given National Poetry Month the attention it deserves. The first year of the Dusty Bookcase saw  James MacRae, he of William Arthur Deacon's The Four Jameses, recognized. The following April, National Poetry Month was pretty much given over to fellow James, Cheese Poet James McIntyre. The year after that, I produced a chapbook and promoted an evening celebrating the first James – by which I mean MacRae (né John J MacDonald) – in beautiful St Marys, the small Ontario town he'd chosen to call home.

National Poetry Month month has received little recognition since. I aim to make amends by posting verse – one poem every three days – until the cruelest month runs its course. Some I like, some I very much dislike; all are shared for no other reason than I find them amusing, interesting and/or infuriating.

We begin with 'Snow in April' by once-celebrated, now neglected Marjorie Pickthall. It isn't one of her best, but I like it. So, now that April's here, from The Complete Poems of Marjorie Pickthall (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1927):

SNOW IN APRIL

                  Over the boughs that the wind has shaken,

                  Over the sands that are rippled with rain,

                  Over the banks where the buds awaken

                  Cold cloud shadows are spreading again.

                  All the musical world is still,

                  When sharp and sudden, a sparrow calls,

                  And down on the grass where the violets shiver,

                  Through the spruce on the height of the hill,

                  Down on the breadths of the shining river

                  The faint snow falls.

                  Last weak word of a lord that passes—

                  Why should the burgeoning woods be mute?

                  Spring is abroad in the spiring grasses

                  Life is awake in the robin's flute.

                  But high in the spruce a wind is wailing,

                  And the birds in silence arise and go.

                  Is it that winter is still too near

                  For the heart of the world to cast out fear,

                  When over the sky the rack comes sailing

                  And suddenly falls the snow?

Related posts:

National Poetry Month Bookend

Local Poet!

A Mildly Eccentric Man Turns Nasty

A Local Poet is Recognized

Verse for an April a Century Past

Now That April's Here, Virna Sheard's 'April'

'April Night' by Archibald Lampman

The Heart Accepts It All – John Glassco