Below are three very different poems from the second half of the twentieth century, each of which make an imaginative re-use of the Christian Nativity narrative.
December 21st Jean Valentine
How
will I think of you
“God-with-us”
a
name: a word
and
trees paths stars this earth
how
will I think of them
and
the dead I love and all absent
friends
here-with-me
and
table: hand: white coffee mug:
a
northern still life:
and
you
without
a body
quietness
and
the infant’s red-brown mouth a
star
at
the star of the girl’s nipple…
1974
Note
about December 21st :
The words in quotations, “God-with-us,” are a literal translation of “Emmanuel”
and the next phrase “a name: a word” recalls Jesus Christ. The “girl” offering
her nipple to the infant evokes Mary.
***
from
Midwinter Day Bernadette Mayer
…
Like the
curtain like the moon’s oval pebbles
Under the
exciting microscope
Of the Western
world
I speak out loud against it
Other lights
in the town might be broken
By accident or
widespread vandalism
But they’re
too high and look like Christ
On the cross
with the hands of an eye’s fluorescent fish
Like a talent
unspotlit and queer
To be me is to be
Queer sleep
after death, its modesty deriving
What from the
eyes of the immodest living
Is offered at
the cost of a ruinous leaving
Well, I have
to close them
This paid incandescent light
Is like the
vigil of a virgin
Last to tell
before my eyes I’ll end.
From dreams I
made sentences, then what I’ve seen today,
Then past the
past of afternoons of stories like memory
To seeing as a
plain introduction to modes of love and reason,
Then to end I
guess with love, a method to this winter season
Now I’ve said
this love it’s all I can remember
Of Midwinter
Day the twenty-second of December
Welcome sun,
at last with thy softer light
That takes the
bite from winter weather
And weaves the
random cloth of life together
And drives
away the long black night!
1982
Note:
Midwinter Day is an extraordinary book-length poem written on a single day, the Winter Solstice, December 22, 1978 (published in 1982). The passage above is excerpted from the very end of the poem.
***
Christ Climbed Down Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Christ
climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and
a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
for everybody's imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
for everybody's imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings
1958
***
Independent Reading and Research: Term 2
1. Some of you still need to fine tune your proposals. Make sure you've clearly stated the title and author of the main text (novel; play(s); collection of stories, poems, essays) you are reading, the title and author of the text you are reading to gain background, context, and/or a critical perspective on the main reading, and the approach you are taking. (The options are outlined in the previous post.)
2. Quotation Responses: You will complete ten quotation responses on the main text and two on the supplemental text. Consult the models on the blog and the feedback on your summer work in order to improve your work.
3. Blog posts: You will also write two blog posts. In one you will discuss the main text and in another the supplemental text. It should be absolutely clear what texts you are referring to. This post should intelligently and insightfully (but not necessarily formally) discuss the texts and the ideas you have about the texts. Be bold. Be specific. Be thoughtful and convincing.
This work will be due January 13.
