to the rest of me, though maybe others experience my face
as large compared to their
own faces or those
of their precious
brats, whose hats
are too big for their heads.
Small is good, it’s
been said, though not of tits, yet tits too large are just not done,
let’s say enormous
is evidence of overkill,
the pamphlets
say grow them medium,
foothills
instead of mountains,
trickles, not fountains.
When I was much
younger and with child,
the ultrasound lady told me
to prepare for big, big height,
weight, eyes, brain,
thoughts, big love
of Chekhov and airplanes
of the World
Wars, big trouble, big
impact, born, warned
the ultrasound bitch,
with the big purple cord
of a Gordian
knot around his neck.
I almost don’t want to mention them,
lest I break their spell, the wild asters
have taken ovaries
to a whole new level,
their bevelled sepals,
thorny
petals, like the barbed mop
of a precocious tween
in the gifted program,
her name, Althea.
The asters’ voices—
they only orate at night
under stars painted
by a middle-
aged whatshername
from the Middle
Ages—remind me of what
Gwendolyn Brooks called
the “voices
of my dim killed children”
in her poem “the mother.”
She read it in a gymnasium
somewhere
in Michigan in early fall.
Brooks told us
her throat was sore,
and announced she’d be drinking
warm pineapple juice
to ease her pain. I could see
its pollen hue
through the transparent stein
she sipped from,
a habit
I have since adopted,
though it burns to swallow.
Wild asters adorned Gwendolyn’s
frock
and the scarf she tied over her hair,
and asters swayed in the dark
at the border
of the gymnasium.
The stars that night
were painted as if a cheap
watercolour brush
had been used like an ice pick,
in a stabbing motion, by some
Althea, some unbaptized bookworm.
DIANE SEUSS is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Modern Poetry and frank: sonnets. Her seventh collection, Althea: Poems, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2027.
Ancient poet, touched by the Muses themselves, so you claimed at least, with a branch of laurel, or was that just boasting?
I stare at the fifteenth of your fragments of unknown position: "with the pitiless smoke of pitch and cedarwood", an uprooted line without a poem.
Kapnos, smoke, fumes, steam, nèleès (poet.), without pity, merciless. I sit with your written orphan on the table while my neighbour burns off brambles. I see the smoke over the dry field, pitch black and menacing, and smell that cedar,
a smell that's three thousand years old. Was it a fire or a sacrifice, or were you just watching your neighbour? Hesiod, marble poet, when will you finally finish that verse?
T. S. Eliot’s “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”
By Casey N. Cep
In 1927, Richard de la Mare had an idea for some Christmas cards. Because he was a production director at London’s Faber & Gwyer, his cards were festive poetry pamphlets that could be sent to clients and sold to customers for one shilling a piece. Because two years earlier Geoffrey Faber had lured a banker from Lloyd’s Bank to work as an editor at his publishing house, Faber & Gwyer had T. S. Eliot to contribute to the series.
Words of stern moral advice to a besotted young man are delivered with a brisk and even sunny touch
Carol Rumens
26 January 2026
Song
Why, Damon, why, why, why so pressing? The Heart you beg’s not worth possessing: Each Look, each Word, each Smile’s affected, And inward Charms are quite neglected: Then scorn her, scorn her, foolish Swain, And sigh no more, no more in vain.
Beauty’s worthless, fading, flying; Who would for Trifles think of dying? Who for a Face, a Shape wou’d languish, And tell the Brooks, and Groves his Anguish, Till she, till she thinks fit to prize him, And all, and all beside despise him?
Fix, fix your Thoughts on what’s inviting, On what will never bear the slighting: Wit and Virtue claim your Duty, They’re much more worth than Gold and Beauty: To them, to them, your Heart resign, And you’ll no more, no more repine.
The Devon-born poet and essayist Mary Chudleigh, 1656-1710, is rightly thought of as a proto-feminist; see, for example her short poem, To the Ladies, beginning “Wife and servant are the same, / But only differ in the name”. Her prose Essay on Knowledge explores incisively, but with fuller argument, related themes, including the importance of women’s education. In fact, Chudleigh had many things to say on a range of subjects, and it’s rewarding to discover her hard-won scientific knowledge.
Prof Kevin Killeen has written an excellent introduction to her 2,000-line poem The Song of the Three Children, Paraphras’d, which, not without some justification, he has headed Mary Chudleigh’s View of the Entire Universe. A devout Anglican, self-taught in the subjects which were probably her deepest interest, Chudleigh blends her scientific understanding with a rich, biblical narrative, culminating in a praise-song to the “Jewish heroes” Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the children who, in the Book of Daniel, un-scientifically survived incineration.
In her more sociable and immediate forms of writing, Chudleigh was able to argue a case with admirable clarity. I chose Song this week partly because of its form: enlivened by the repetitions the genre traditionally allows, its rhythms sing freshly from the page. Its critique of artificial femininity is impartial, sympathetic to the generic male it addresses, Damon, and it demonstrates the rational but Christian basis of the writer’s gender politics. It’s not a lecture, though. It has a brisk and even sunny touch.
Chudleigh, it must be admitted, presents the owner of the “Heart” coveted by Damon with uncompromising disapproval. However delightful her “Face” and “Shape” the woman is judged superficial, somewhat confected. What are missing, in Chudleigh’s opinion, are “inward Charms”. These aren’t charms in the usual sense, but qualities of more lasting worth. The poem appeals not only to Damon’s values but to his vanity. If he continues to pursue this undeserving woman so desperately, he will look ridiculous, despised both by those who witness his humiliation, and the heartless woman herself.
As to the nature of the commended “Charms”, we learn two of them, at least, in verse three. It’s interesting that “Wit” as well as “Virtue” is recommended. Wit was a quality Chudleigh herself possessed abundantly – which is not to suggest the Song is a ploy to win Damon for herself. (Chudleigh would never stoop so low.) The word “wit” originally denoted knowledge and understanding and, since Chudleigh makes it the companion of “Virtue” and equally entitled to Damon’s “Duty”, she brings together the original meaning with the narrower one associated with spritely humour.
The poem is didactic in tone, of course, but it clearly has Damon’s happiness in mind as well as his moral instruction. The repetitions are playful – tonally varied and sometimes startling. It’s in the first line that the device is most insistent, and even impatient: “Why, Damon, why, why, why so pressing?” The repeated “no more” later has, perhaps, the cadence of a failed suitor’s sigh. The fifth line of the middle verse cleverly mimics the love object’s dallying and reluctance: “Till she, till she thinks fit to prize him.”
It would be interesting to know more about Chudleigh’s process of composition. Did she write the poem for an existent piece of music, or in anticipation of a new one? Did she write music herself? I’ve hunted unsuccessfully for a recording of the Song with music, but perhaps it’s hiding somewhere in plain sight. If anyone spots it, please provide a link!
The text used here is from the Poetry Foundationsite where other examples of Chudleigh’s work can be found.
