2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page i Green Thoughts,Green Shades 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page ii 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page iii Green Thoughts, Green Shades essays by contemporary poets on the early modern lyric Edited by Jonathan F.S.Post university of california press berkeley los angeles london 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page iv University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2002 by the Regents of the University of California A slightly different version of chapter 9 appeared in Alice Fulton, Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strange- ness of Poetry (St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1999), 85–124. James Merrill’s poem “Tomorrows” appears in chapter 2 by kind permission of Random House, Inc., publisher of James Merrill, Collected Poems, ed. by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001). Elizabeth Bishop’s poems “A Miracle for Breakfast” and “Sestina” appear in chapter 2, from Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems: 1927–1979. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Far- rar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Green thoughts, green shades : essays by contemporary poets on the early modern lyric / Jonathan F. S. Post, edi- tor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-21455-2 (alk. paper).—ISBN 0-520-22752-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English poetry—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. I. Post, Jonathan F. S., 1947– PR533 .G74 2002 821'.040903—dc21 2001048051 Manufactured in Canada 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 10987654 321 The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page v for susan, jessica, and fred Joys oft are there george herbert “the family” 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page vi 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page vii Meanwhile the mind,from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness: The mind,that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates,transcending these, Far other worlds,and other seas, Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. andrew marvell “the garden” 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page viii 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page ix contents acknowledgments xiii introduction: green thoughts, green shades Jonathan F.S.Post 3 one / the face of the sonnet: wyatt and some early features of the tradition Peter Sacks 17 two / sidney and the sestina Anthony Hecht 41 three / naked numbers: a curve from wyatt to rochester Heather McHugh 59 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page x four / ben jonson and the loathèd word Linda Gregerson 86 five / donne’s sovereignty Calvin Bedient 109 six / anomaly, conundrum, thy-will-be-done: on the poetry of george herbert Carl Phillips 136 seven / milton in the modern: the invention of personality William Logan 160 eight / finding anne bradstreet Eavan Boland 176 nine / unordinary passions: margaret cavendish, the duchess of newcastle Alice Fulton 191 ten / “how coy a figure”: marvelry Stephen Yenser 220 eleven / saint john the rake: rochester’s poetry Thom Gunn 242 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page xi twelve / edward taylor: what was he up to? Robert Hass 257 list of contributors 289 index 293 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page xii acknowledgments were it not for the help of several people, Green Thoughts, Green Shades would never have been more than an idea. So let me thank them at the outset: Calvin Bedient and Stephen Yenser, my colleagues at UCLA; and Linda Norton, literary acquisitions editor at the University of California Press. That it had a chance at life is owing to the nourishing hospitality of Doris and Darryl Curran, who feted, fed, and occasionally housed a number of the contributors: for thirty years these two made poetry part of the Los Angeles climate until the end of the millennium, when, to the great sadness of all, Doris died, leaving me, and others, with many unpaid debts. That Green Thoughts finally grew into a book, of course, is a matter of the goodwill and huge talent of the contributors themselves. I continue to learn much about poetry from my UCLA students, most recently those who have taken my smorgasbord of a seminar, “How to Read a Poem,” which has frequently included poems both discussed and written by the contributors. Two of my early teachers, Harvard Knowles and David Sofield, showed me their ways with verse some years ago; it is high time I thanked them in public—the latter, as luck would have it, too, for continuing a lifelong conversation about poetry in the form of a wonderfully useful reader’s report he provided the press. I want to express my appreciation as well to the press’s second reader for an astute response to the manuscript. It is a pleasure to acknowledge both Anne Myers and xiii Curt Whitaker, my graduate research assistants, for their superb help in preparing the manuscript for publication; my colleague Michael Cola- curcio and former student Diana Engelman for some quick answers when I needed them; and the Council on Research of the Academic Senate of the Los Angeles Division of the University of California for continuing to support my research. As manuscript editor, Joe Abbott was resourceful, as well as restrained, in his suggestions for improvement. Rachel Berchten moved this book through the production phase with great expedition. My deepest thanks to them both. Special thanks also to Peter Reill, the director of the Clark Library and the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, and to the staffs of each for their many kind- nesses over the years. All the essays were written specifically for this collection. xiv acknowledgments 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page 1 Green Thoughts,Green Shades 2208_FM.qrk 10/4/01 8:29 AM Page 2 introduction Green Thoughts, Green Shades jonathan f. s. post The poet’s instinct is to shun or shed more knowledge than he can swing or sing. robert frost New Poets of England and America green thoughts, green shades is a book of original essays about lyric poetry written in English during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies. What differentiates it from other recent collections concerned with the early modern period—to adopt momentarily the period nomenclature currently in use among historicist scholars—is the simple fact that all the essays printed here are written by practicing poets, by people who spend much of their lives thinking in verse and about verse. All the contributors are or have been distinguished teachers of poetry, often in workshop set- tings, sometimes in lecture halls at their schools and around the country; and almost all have written important criticism, some over the course of four decades, although only a few have concentrated their interpretive energies in print on poetry of the early modern period. Underlying the invitation issued to contemporary poets to write about lyrics of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries was, therefore, the potential novelty of the encounter itself. What might some of today’s poets find of special interest in their forebears and worth retrieving for fellow readers of poetry? And of equal interest, what do their emphases tell us about their own poetry and, more broadly, about how the past continues to form the present? To be more specific still: given that theoretical and political consider- ations have dominated the last two decades of “literary” criticism (even 3 necessitating the frequent use of quotation marks and sometimes a strict division of labor within English departments), I began to wonder, both as an interested reader of lyric poetry of the early modern period and as one who envies at times the direct encounter with verse characteristic of contemporary writers and writing, what a series of readings of early lyrics and their authors might look like if these readings were performed by poets who have themselves lived through, indeed participated in, the cul- ture of change that has affected “literary” studies. What, for example, might a reading of George Herbert look like by the author of From the Devotions (1998), bearing an epigraph from Donne’s “Hymn to God, My God in My Sickness”? Or of Anne Bradstreet by the author of Outside History (1990) and Object Lessons (1995)? Or of the earl of Rochester by the author of My Sad Captains (1961) and, more recently, The Man with Night Sweats (1992)? How would a poet and critic of the American sub- lime regard Donne? Or a self-identified logophile follow the curve of a copia-happy English Renaissance? Where might be the new angles and emphases? What new “figures” might emerge, in person or in form, es- pecially if one invited the author of Dance Script with Electric Ballerina (1982) to think about Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle; or was lucky enough to have the poet of “The Book of Yolek” and the author of Promised Lands (1990) concentrating, respectively, on unfolding those seminal Renaissance forms, the sestina and the sonnet? By way of Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden,” the title of the book seeks to call attention to the concinnity of these encounters. For the most part poets chose—or were chosen by—their poets or their subjects; or with the slightest of editorial nudging, they were pointed in one of several possible directions.