soft babble

[Image source: https://filmforum.org/film/hester-street-film-2017 . Carol Kane as Gitl in the 1974 movie Hester Street, directed by Joan Micklin Silver. Based on the 1896 novel Yekl, A Tale of the New York Ghetto by Abraham Cahan.]

 

Or spits her fire out in some dim manger of a hall,

Or at a protest meeting on the Square,

Her lit eyes kindling the mob . . .

Or dances madly at a festival.

Each dawn finds her a little whiter,

Though up and keyed to the long day,

Alert, yet weary . . . like a bird

That all night long has beat about a light.

The Gentile lover that she charms and shrews,

Is one more pebble in the pack

For Sadie's mother,

Who greets him with her narrowed eyes

That hold some welcome back.

"What's to be done?" she'll say,

"When Sadie wants she takes . . .

Better than Bennie with his Christian woman . . .

A man is not so like, 

If they should fight,

To call her Jew . . ."

Yet when she lies in bed

And the soft babble of their talk comes to her

And the silences . . .

I know she never sleeps

Till the keen draught blowing up the empty hall

Edges through her transom

And she hears his foot on the first stairs.

(from the title poem of The Ghetto, and other poems by Lola Ridge (1918)).

transom = transom light, i.e. the window above the door, which could be opened to provide cross-ventilation using a transom operator (wand-like assembly). 

This poem is set in Hester Street, Lower East Side.

Part of the excitement, aside from the mere fact that this poem of the Lower East Side exists, but part of the excitement in this early poetry (her first collection) is that her language and practice are all over the place. Lola Ridge resisted any kind of control, she was an anarchist and some of that gets into the language, there's no rules. And not being in control it runs a gamut from arch literariness to sharp originality to genre cliché. 

Inappropriate as it would be, it's not impossible that this ghetto is echoing Tennyson's brook of 1886.

I chatter over stony ways,

   In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

   I babble on the pebbles.

My ear snagged on the expression "soft babble" -- the rest of this post, I should explain, isn't about Lola Ridge. It snagged for the embarrassing reason that I remembered using it myself in an old flailing poem. Is it an expression, I mean a fixed form, or is it just two words that are capable of coming together? Anyway, I did a search for it. It's virtually always used in the context of water or human voices.

The earliest I could find was this review in The American Monthly, Vol 2 No 2 (February 1861).

A MAN. By REV. J. D. BELL. 12mo., pp. 642. Philadelphia, J. Challen & Son, 1860.

  Here is a book that we like.

  We have been fond of this writer for a long while. We snuffed the same Ontario breezes in infancy. We have rejoiced on the same unbounded prairies, and dreamed and wondered in the same infinite forest solitudes, and, though we know not each other, are not strangers. Under brown old oaks by the drowsy babble of brooks in the sunny west have we lain poring through slumbrous summer afternoons upon the soft babble of waves, and the earnest, fiery, yet tender, sometimes almost sad pages of John Bell. But this is a vigorous book, a healthy book . . .

Elsewhere in the same number, an article on measles notes that it isn't really a dangerous disease so long as it's well treated. Convalescence is critical: the patient must stay indoors, avoiding draughts. No washing and no exercise: sudden changes of temperature are the main risk. 

The religious department published its views on divine providence, "the more readily now, because, in the crisis that is upon our nation, men's hearts are failing them for fear, and they need to be reminded of the grand and consoling truths contained in this doctrine".

Another article is headed SECESSION:

The stirring drama of secession is likely soon to open another scene in the fearful drama of civil war. 

   A people so utterly at the mercy of a reckless mob, so blind to their own interests, so deluded in their estimate of their own powers, and so deceived in regard to those whom they oppose, it is folly to expect will exercise either common sense or forbearance. If a war is prevented, it will be owing solely to the cool forbearance of the North . . .

The author was coming from a religious position:

The truth is, God is speaking to the world in vindication of His own law and the claims of humanity, and producing a witness in the current history of our land, whose testimony shall extort a verdict from all nations, fully exonerating His religion from complicity in the "accursed thing". . .

It was leading him to prefer war to humiliation ( the war began two months later). 

The good neighbors began to go home when they had taken their tea, and the rector and his daughter went with them to the gate, when there was a soft babble and commotion of good nights, and every two people repeated to each other, "What a lovely moon!" and "What a glorious night!"

A Rose in June, by Mrs Oliphant (Boston, 1874). Margaret Oliphant was a prolific Scottish novelist.

While those sweet mingled strains have filled the room, Jeva in thought has been away in the quiet woods . . . . she has heard the soft babble of the brook, tinkling over the pebbles and whispering by the grasses.

Aunt Hepsy's Foundling, by Mrs Leith Adams (London, 1884). Novel set in New Brunswick. 

UK band Palomica's album Incoherencies and soft babble (Seaford/Bristol 2015/2016)

https://palomica.bandcamp.com/album/incoherencies-and-soft-babble

Flat calm, soft babble, rushing current or thundering rapids, an individual river can change its own mood and character on any given day.

https://americasgreatoutdoors.tumblr.com/post/630423192997085185/flat-calm-soft-babble-rushing-current-or

An earlier post on Lola Ridge:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2019/11/of-fields-before-i-had-had-my-milk.html

Bobbing in Amoretti

Ruins of Kilcolman Castle in 1885

[Image source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilcolman_Castle .]


At the bright porthole, the sea-line tilted.


Arion, when through tempests cruel wracke,
  He forth was thrown into the greedy seas :
  through the sweet musick which his harp did make
 allu'rd a Dolphin him from death to ease. (XXXVIII)

But where have I read that porthole image, only recently? Oh yes, I remember now, it was in Lola Ridge:

I wish Celia
could see the sea climb up on the sky
and slide off again…

What is it with boats, and seas...  and horses?  Such constant elements in our dreams, but so marginal in daily life, these obsolete forms of transport?

Well, but here we are once more, on the seas of Spenser's poems, specifically the Mar Menor of the Amoretti.

THEY, that in course of heauenly spheares are skild,
  To euery planet point his sundry yeare:
  in which her circles voyage is fulfild,
  as Mars in three score yeares doth run his spheare... (LX)

Sixty years? But Mars orbits the sun in just 1.9 years. ...?

Blinding salt and sun. These sunlit waves are the smooth flow of Spenser's verse; the rippling, interlinked rhymes in Spenser's sonnet form.* Maybe the flashes are also the cupids (which is what "amoretti" means). For Shakespeare, cupids were only a joke (CLIII, CLIV), but Spenser senses them everywhere.

Spenser, writing these sonnets in 1593-1594, was 41. His bride in June 1594, Elizabeth Boyle, was 18, the same age as Sidney's "Stella" (Penelope Devereux) when she married Lord Rich in 1581. It was Spenser's second marriage, he already had two children.

sweet is the firbloome, but his branches rough. (XXVI)

If Sidney wrote Astrophil and Stella in (say) 1584, that would make the author about 30. (Five years older, incidentally, than Stella's detested husband Lord Rich.)

But that rich foole, who by blind Fortunes lot
The richest gemme of loue and life enioys,
And can with foule abuse such beauties blot; ... (AS XXIV)

Samuel Daniel was about the same age when Delia started to emerge in 1591. Shakespeare wrote the bulk of his sonnets around 1592, when he was 28. Spenser's greater age, and the fact that he (unlike other sonneteers) was successful in winning his trophy wife... both these things make a difference.


And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread,
For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong
Be strewed with fragrant flowers all along,
And diapred lyke the discolored mead.

(Epithalamion, St. 3)

Diaper, a kind of fabric; Discolored, of various colours.

But Ilona Bell, tracing a courtship dialogue through the Amoretti, discerned that Spenser was compelled to modify some of his male behaviours and attitudes, and eventually to accept his beloved's strength and independence.

But like a steddy ship doth strongly part
  the raging waues and keepes her course aright :
  ne ought for tempest doth from it depart,
  ne ought for fayrer weathers false delight.
(LIX)

I wish I felt more convinced. But when Spenser is awed by his bride's "words so wise" (LXXXI), and, in contrast, abases himself as "your thrall, in whom is little worth" (LXXXII), it just sounds insincere. (And, if it could be taken seriously, not terribly flattering to the monarch who had rewarded his efforts.)

It didn't turn out a particularly fortunate marriage for Elizabeth Boyle. Four years later (1598), the Irish rose against the colonists and Spenser's castle in Cork was burned; Ben Jonson says a child was lost in the fire.

So that jus polliticum, though it be not of it selfe just, yet by applicacon, or rather necessitie, it is made just ....

(A View of the Present State of Ireland)


A year later (1599), Spenser died in London. Elizabeth married twice more. With her next husband she made an unsuccessful claim on Spenser's estate; instead it went to Sylvanus, his son by his first marriage. Sylvanus repaired Kilcolman, but in 1622 it was destroyed again, this time for good.

Gaynst such strong castles needeth greater might, ...

(XIIII)

It was in this building that Spenser must have composed most of the Faerie Queene's 33,000 lines. After the little bobbing sea of the Amoretti he intended to go back to his ocean and write the other six books.

Then as a steed refreshed after toyle,
  out of my prison I will break anew :
  and stoutly will that second worke assoyle,
  with strong endeuour and attention dew.

(LXXX)
Assoyle, discharge a duty.

It didn't happen like that. His courtship, or marriage or the state of Ireland or something else entirely had changed him too much. His only work on the Faerie Queene during these last five years was, presumably, the Mutability cantos. Their dense brilliance suggests that he had been standing back from his masterpiece too long, maybe he had theorized it too much, maybe he' couldn't be the same tireless unreflective swimmer any more.

Spenser had been granted Kilcolman Castle (and 3000 acres of North Cork) by Sir Philip Sidney, whose father Sir Henry Sidney was sometime Lord Deputy of Ireland. The castle had belonged to the Earls of Desmond until confiscated by the crown.

How Vlster likes of that same golden bit
Wherewith my father once made it half tame; ... (AS XXX)

Indeed, it was under Henry Sidney that the crown forces first began to kill civilians as well as military opponents. Lord Grey continued the policy.  Spenser (for a time his employee) lamented that Grey was "blotted with the name of a bloody man, whom, who that well knewe, knewe to be most gentle, affable, lovinge and temperate; but that the necessitie of that present state of thinges enforced him to that violence, and almost changed his verrye naturall dispostion."

In Ireland, Spenser thought, the sword was necessary.

Therefore by all meanes it must be foreseene and assured, that after once entring into this course of reformacon, there bee afterwardes no remorse or drawinge back for the sight of any suche ruefull obiect as must therupon followe, nor for compassion of their calamities, seeinge that by no other meanes it is possible to recure them, and that theis are not of will, but of verie urgent necessitie.

(A View of the Present State of Ireland)

  then know, that mercy is the mighties iewell,
  and greater glory thinks to saue, then spill.
But if it be your pleasure and proud will,
  to shew the powre of your imperious eyes :

(XLIX)


*

* Spenser's ingenious rhyme-scheme in the Amoretti is:

ababbcbccdcdee

Some typical Sidney rhyme-schemes:

ababababcdcdee;    abbaabbacdcdee;    abbaabbaccdeed

Daniel and Shakespeare:

ababcdcdefefgg

Sidney's rhyme-schemes all enforce the structural separation between octet and sestet. The Daniel/Shakespeare rhyme-scheme admits the octet/sestet division; but whether it's manifested in any given sonnet depends on other factors. Spenser's rhyme-scheme expressly forbids it. Instead, the Amoretti-shape is like a 12-line wave, growing to a crest at the centre (lines 5-8), then gently subsiding. Only the final couplet is without dependence.

*

Like so much of the rest of our planet, the Mar Menor is being wrecked by economic growth; in this case agricultural run-off and eutrophication. In 2016, 85% of the vegetation was lost when sunlight could no longer penetrate the water. In October 2019 its shores wriggled with thousands of expiring fish, after September rains washed more than 150 tons of fertilizer into the lagoon.

https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/10/22/inenglish/1571743580_215496.html

of fields Before I had had my milk

Dawn-wind

Wind, just arisen
(Off what cool matters of marsh-moss
In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars,
Or niche of cliff under the eagles?)
You of living things,
So gay and tender and full of play,
Why do you blow on my thoughts -- like cut flowers
Gathered and laid to dry on this paper, rolled out of dead wood?

I see you
Shaking that flower at me with soft invitation
And frisking away,
Deliciously rumpling the grass . . .

So you fluttered the curtains about my cradle,
Prattling of fields
Before I had had my milk.
Did I stir on my pillow, making to follow you, Fleet One --
I, swaddled, unwinged, like a bird in the egg?

Let be
My dreams that crackle under your breath . . .
You have the dust of the world to blow on.

Do not tag me and dance away, looking back . . .
I am too old to play with you,
Eternal child.


*

Poem by Lola Ridge, text as published in Poetry (October 1918). The text on PoemHunter has "mattress" in the second line -- which must be right, I suppose -- but inferior punctuation, etc.

Lola Ridge, b. Dublin 1873, emigrated age 4 to New Zealand, educ. Sydney, moved to San Francisco 1907 then New York. Worked as a model and in factories. First book, The Ghetto, about the Hester St area of the Lower East Side. Committed left-wing activist (her third collection is called The Red Flag), d. New York 1941.


*

East River

Dour river
Jaded with monotony of lights
Diving off mast heads….
Lights mad with creating in a river… turning its sullen back…
Heave up, river…
Vomit back into the darkness your spawn of light….
The night will gut what you give her.


*

An Old Workman

Warped… gland-dry…
With spine askew
And body shrunken into half its space…
Well-used as some cracked paving-stone…
Bearing on his grimed and pitted front
A stamp… as of innumerable feet.


*

Wall Street At Night

Long vast shapes… cooled and flushed through with darkness….
Lidless windows
Glazed with a flashy luster
From some little pert cafe chirping up like a sparrow.
And down among iron guts
Piled silver
Throwing gray spatter of light… pale without heat…
Like the pallor of dead bodies.


*

Here's one of the longer New York poems.


Flotsam

I

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
High-flung signs
Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
Girls in black
Circling monotonously
About the orange lights…
Nothing to guess at…
Save the darkness above
Crouching like a great cat.
In the dim-lit square,
Where dishevelled trees
Tustle with the wind—the wind like a scythe
Mowing their last leaves—
Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze—
Pale oval arcs
Like ailing virgins,
Each out of a halo circumscribed,
Pallidly staring…
Figures drift upon the benches
With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling—
Slovenly figures like untied parcels,
And papers wrapped about their knees
Huddled one to the other,
Cringing to the wind—
The sided wind,
Leaving no breach untried…
So many and all so still…
The fountain slobbering its stone basin
Is louder than They—
Flotsam of the five oceans
Here on this raft of the world.
This old man's head
Has found a woman's shoulder.
The wind juggles with her shawl
That flaps about them like a sail,
And splashes her red faded hair
Over the salt stubble of his chin.
A light foam is on his lips,
As though dreams surged in him
Breaking and ebbing away…
And the bare boughs shuffle above him
And the twigs rattle like dice…
She—diffused like a broken beetle—
Sprawls without grace,
Her face gray as asphalt,
Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges…
Shadows ply about her mouth—
Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree,
That dances above her its dance of dry bones.

II

A uniformed front,
Paunched;
A glance like a blow,
The swing of an arm,
Verved, vigorous;
Boot-heels clanking
In metallic rhythm;
The blows of a baton,
Quick, staccato…
—There is a rustling along the benches
As of dried leaves raked over…
And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand,
Tucking the displaced paper about his knees.
Colder…
And a frost under foot,
Acid, corroding,
Eating through worn bootsoles.
Drab forms blur into greenish vapor.
Through boughs like cross-bones,
Pale arcs flare and shiver
Like lilies in a wind.
High over Broadway
A far-flung sign
Glitters in indigo darkness
And spurts again rhythmically,
Spraying great drops
Red as a hemorrhage.

*

Here's another of her poems remembering childhood. This is a section from the autobiographical sequence Sun-Up.


Celia

Cherry, cherry,
glowing on the hearth,
bright red cherry….
When you try to pick up cherry
Celia’s shriek
sticks in you like a pin.



When God throws hailstones
you cuddle in Celia’s shawl
and press your feet on her belly
high up like a stool.
When Celia makes umbrella of her hand.
Rain falls through
big pink spokes of her fingers.
When wind blows Celia’s gown up off her legs
she runs under pillars of the bank—
great round pillars of the bank
have on white stockings too.



Celia says my father
will bring me a golden bowl.
When I think of my father
I cannot see him
for the big yellow bowl
like the moon with two handles
he carries in front of him.



Grandpa, grandpa…
(Light all about you…
ginger… pouring out of green jars…)
You don’t believe he has gone away and left his great coat…
so you pretend… you see his face up in the ceiling.
When you clap your hands and cry, grandpa, grandpa, grandpa,
Celia crosses herself.



It isn’t a dream….
It comes again and again….
You hear ivy crying on steeples
the flames haven’t caught yet
and images screaming
when they see red light on the lilies
on the stained glass window of St. Joseph.
The girl with the black eyes holds you tight,
and you run… and run
past the wild, wild towers…
and trees in the gardens tugging at their feet
and little frightened dolls
shut up in the shops
crying… and crying… because no one stops…
you spin like a penny thrown out in the street.
Then the man clutches her by the hair….
He always clutches her by the hair….
His eyes stick out like spears.
You see her pulled-back face
and her black, black eyes
lit up by the glare….
Then everything goes out.
Please God, don’t let me dream any more
of the girl with the black, black eyes.



Celia’s shadow rocks and rocks…
and mama’s eyes stare out of the pillow
as though she had gone away
and the night had come in her place
as it comes in empty rooms…
you can’t bear it—
the night threshing about
and lashing its tail on its sides
as bold as a wolf that isn’t afraid—
and you scream at her face, that is white as a stone on a grave
and pull it around to the light,
till the night draws backward… the night that walks alone
and goes away without end.
Mama says, I am cold, Betty, and shivers.
Celia tucks the quilt about her feet,
but I run for my little red cloak
because red is hot like fire.



I wish Celia
could see the sea climb up on the sky
and slide off again…
…Celia saying
I’d beg the world with you….
Celia… holding on to the cab…
hands wrenched away…
wind in the masts… like Celia crying….
Celia never minded if you slapped her
when the comb made your hairs ache,
but though you rub your cheek against mama’s hand
she has not said darling since….
Now I will slap her again….
I will bite her hand till it bleeds.

It is cool by the port hole.
The wet rags of the wind
flap in your face.


*

Terese Svoboda on Lola Ridge:

http://bostonreview.net/poetry/terese-svoboda-lola-ridge

and on her own journey into writing Ridge's biography:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/small-house-lola-ridge/

[Image source: https://therumpus.net/2016/11/anything-that-burns-you-a-portrait-of-lola-ridge-radical-poet-by-terese-svoboda/ .]