'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing'

I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting earworm. Much of this past Sunday was devoted to the Phil-Spectorized Righteous Brothers, with an emphasis on Bobby Hatfield stretching the word “baby" across, by my count, seventeen syllables. In addition, I sometimes compose a spontaneous score, heavy on the rhythm, to lines published as poetry, not songs. 

R.L. Barth has sent me the manuscript to a collection, In Civvies: A Half Century of Epigrams, written between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s. As the title suggests, most of these poems are unrelated to Vietnam, where Bob was a Marine serving as a patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in 1968-69. He hopes to publish them soon. Preceding the text of In Civvies as a sort of dedicatory epigraph is “Hoisting a Glass”:

 

“Here’s to the masters of the epigram:

Martial, Ben Jonson, Landor, Cunningham.”

 

Here is Bob's “Preferences”:

 

“I’m tired of the Homeric.

Just give me Robert Herrick.”

 

This might serve as a sort of “answer poem” or sequel to Bob’s "Reading the Iliad," In my case, I sang it rather ridiculously to the revised tune of “We’ll Follow the Old Man” as performed by Bing Crosby & Co. in White Christmas. Continuing the Herrick theme, here is Bob’s “His Response”:

 

“When as the roof’s a-tottering,

I’d be the man dares clearly sing;

But tell me, Herrick, tell me where

I might find tunes to rout despair.”

 

The first two lines are adapted from Herrick’s “His Desire”:

 

“Give me a man that is not dull

When all the world with rifts is full;

But unamaz’d dares clearly sing,

Whenas the roof’s a-tottering:

And, though it falls, continues still

Tickling the cittern with his quill.”

 

As "I’d be the man dares clearly sing" suggests, back to music: a cittern is a stringed instrument in the lute family and a quill is the plectrum used to strike the strings. Much of Herrick's work is eminently singable and Swinburne called him “the greatest song writer ever born of English race.” Along with originals, Bob includes translations of ten epigrams from the Latin of Martial and one dedicated to the Roman poet, “To Martial”:

 

“After your death, Pliny wrote praising you

For genius, satire, wit, and candor too.

Now, take this note across the centuries:

Tribute from one of your lesser legatees

Who, Pliny-like, would also recommend

Your poems, you—good company, good friend.”

 

Bob has edited editions of Yvor Winters’ poems and letters, and he dedicates “The Jeweler” to the memory of Winters:

 

“Each facet, sharp and bright,

Despite the turning hand

Immersed in the pure light,

Divides light, band from band.”

 

Winters wouldn’t have approved of my predilection for singing poems, though I try to keep it to myself. He writes in his essay “The Audible Reading of Poetry” (The Function of Criticism, 1957):

 

“A formal reading which avoids dramatic declamation will necessarily take on something of the nature of a chant. This kind of reading itself has dangers, however, for the reader may carry the procedure so far as to appear precious, and worse, he may deform syllables in the interests of what he considers musical intonation, much as a musical composer will draw syllables out or hurry over them in setting a poem to music.”