THE KISS THAT CONQUERED TIME: JENNY KISS’D ME
by Leigh Hunt

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add
Jenny kiss’d me.

A short poem need not be minor. Haiku. Short poems by Merwin, Bill Knott, and many others are instantly memorable and prove the point. “Jenny Kiss’d Me” by Leigh Hunt conveys true joy in eight lines.
The ABABCDCD rhyme scheme; the 7-8-7-8-7-8-7-4 syllablic count and the internal rhymes (sat/that) construct this lyric. The truncated last line pulls the preceding scheme up short. Its four syllables clinch the argument and hark back neatly to the first line and the title.
What makes this poem larger than its margins is the introduction of “Time” in the 3^rd line by direct address.  And in an accusatory way: “you thief”!  The verb “love” enters the poem here, not on behalf of the speaker or Jenny, but it’s time itself who loves.
The last four lines, ruminative, colloquial and beautifully rhythmic (my favorite part is “health and wealth have miss’d me”), each opening with “Say,” create a litany. This is followed by the admission of age and then redemption ― the sumounting of these natural vicissitudes with the last four overwhelming syllables: “Jenny kiss’d me.”
Like the speaker, every reader will remember that Jenny leapt right out of her chair, the chair “she sat in,” and into the arms, no doubt, of our older, distraught and tired speaker who tells us that it’s not time that conquers all, but the kiss that conquers time.

Wonderful, no? And a note from last month’s newsletter, worth repeating —
[It has occurred to me that I should ask you, readers – and pass it on to others if you like — that I, and Plume, would love to see you offer your most beloved poem, with a short preview as I have so clumsily done above. If this appeals, send me your piece as a doc or docx file via this email – plumepoetry@gmail.com   –with Poem for Newsletter in the subject line. I’ll try to publish as many as I can, and to further entice you, I can say that this monthly epistle has a healthy readership, for which we are most grateful.]

OK.

And now, let’s turn to Associate Editor Joseph Campana, and his exegesis of three stanzas from Wallace Stevens’ great “Auroras of Autumn”:

It’s my first autumn in 18 years. This year, living in Washington, DC, it’s been especially beautiful, the weather so pleasant you can’t really stay indoors. In the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, the maples yellowed and reddened and now fall. Since I moved to Texas, I’ve had hints here and there from trips–a day or two at a time, more a quotation than the novel itself.

Quotation may be the life-blood of literature. Some ancient works would be utterly lost but for fragments, scattered here and there. In Shakespeare’s time, people made commonplace books in which they wrote down snippets and snatches of longer works in a book to review and consider. In so doing they tried to digest long, complex works (that one would not likely carry around) and those many works lived, scaled down, together. And yet these commonplaces can also make strange works domesticated, simplified. As in, is that really all you got out of Tacitus? Or Seneca? Some writers seem eminently quotable, lend themselves easily to excerpt. Others only appear to.

Why am I telling you this? In part because of the injustice I am about to do to Wallace Stevens, a great architect of consecrated disorientation even, as his poems never themselves look or sound disoriented. For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ve chosen three stanzas from the ninth section of “Auroras of Autumn” because this year autumn, with its force and penumbra, is ripping me to shreds. I consent.

Let me take one stanza at a time. I have so many questions.

“Shall we be found hanging in the trees next spring?
Of what disaster in this the imminence:
Bare limbs, bare trees and a wind as sharp as salt?

The first thrusts us into autumn–quite literally–like bodies thrown high into the tops of trees. Are we hanging like the dead? Are we on a gallows of time or merely hanging around? Who wouldn’t be waiting for spring with the vivid loss of vegetative life so evident in the fall, the leaves literally cascading death down at our feet. No wonder it feels like a disaster, but I’m startled by the idea of experiencing autumn as an imminence. The mournful quality always seems to project us backward (the vivid green of summer) or forward (the spring Stevens anticipates). But what if it is right here? What if we stay in the now of the fall? The answer is clear: wind as sharp as salt. Autumn is a great cleansing it turns out as the dead are swept away.

“The stars are putting on their glittering belts.
They throw around their shoulders cloaks that flash
Like a great shadow’s last embellishment.”

What great nonchalance the cosmos possesses here, stellar radiance an accessory to take up or cast off like a belt or cloak. What, however, might a “great shadow’s last embellishment” be? Is it the moment light casts or dispels the shadow? Is it dawn or is it dusk? No matter how exquisite the leaves of autumn, auroras are all about gradations of light and dark, the world framed and therefore visible.

It may come tomorrow in the simplest word,
Almost as part of innocence, almost,
Almost as the tenderest and the truest part.”

What it is this, Wallace Stevens, the poet who once ended a poem “the the”? The simplest word seems not to be “the” in this case. Is it the shadow? Is it “autumn”: could this finally be the great and clear statement about the nature of autumn and how the many parts of the poem are its auroras? What would be the tenderest and truest part of autumn–that we fear death but can’t help watch the world blaze into oblivion before our eyes?
from “Auroras of Autumn”

“Shall we be found hanging in the trees next spring?
Of what disaster in this the imminence:
Bare limbs, bare trees and a wind as sharp as salt?

“The stars are putting on their glittering belts.
They throw around their shoulders cloaks that flash
Like a great shadow’s last embellishment.”

It may come tomorrow in the simplest word,
Almost as part of innocence, almost,
Almost as the tenderest and the truest part.”

For a biography of Wallace Stevens see the American Academy of Poetry site here.

Ah, exactly so, Joseph  –What would be the tenderest and truest part of autumn–that we fear death but can’t help watch the world blaze into oblivion before our eyes?

And so, as I prepare our Halloween offerings to the neighborhood’s children and their guardians, let me leave you with a reminder concerning our fall reading period, in the form of – yes, another note — attached to but sometimes overlooked on our submissions page:

NOTE: Due to the necessity of managing the effects of Hurricane Milton, we at Plume will read new fall submissions exclusively between November 15 — November 30, rather than October 15 — October 30, as previously designed.  If you have already submitted, you may have received a Decline email; please resubmit in the new time frame. As usual, submissions received outside of this period will not be addressed. We look forward to receiving your poems in November!

This information appears in Duotrope, as well.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I did not encourage you to spend some time with our Special Feature this month: Odesa Poets Portfolio, with an Introduction by Ilya Kaminsky.

Finally, as usual, some recent/present/forthcoming titles from Plume contributors:

Teresa Cader                      AT RISK

G,C, Waldrep                     The Opening Ritual

Charles Bernstein &          The Kinds of Poetry I Want:
                                             Essays and Comedies
Paul Auster

Diane Seuss                         Modern Poetry: Poems

Molly Peacock                    The Widow’s Crayon Box: Poems

Claudia Emerson &            Ungrafted: New and Selected Poems
Dave Smith

Paul Muldoon                     Joy in Service on Rue Tagore: Poems

Dzvinia Orlowsky               Those Absences Now Closest 

That’s it for now, I think – enjoy the issue!

Daniel Lawless
Editor, Plume