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One's up the ladder and one's on their knees, painting the faded brick
At Readercon, one of the panelists on "Children of the Daughter of the Night: Descendants of Tanith Lee" raised the question of Lee's poetry. I remembered that she had written and published some and even that it had been collected at least once in her honor, but I don't think I remembered at the time that the collection was Unsilent Night (1981), published by NESFA Press when she was Guest of Honor at Boskone 18. Since I remembered none of the poems, I picked up the book again tonight and while Lee is frequently discussed as a Decadent and Symbolist writer, I'm wondering if we should talk about her as an Imagist as well.
Parting
Cool, your hair drifts like the water,
As you move in this ancient sunrise dance
Which began with the first girl at the first well,
Her arms and yours like the necks of swans,
Twining the red pitcher.
This is how I shall remember you all my life.
This clear crystal daybreak thing,
After the night's sharing, the lamp, the dark,
The shelter of love.
So, in the wine-press of battle,
Trampled into a strong drink for death,
So in the marshes, and the bitter places,
In the rusty tents,
Hungry and thirsty, far from all wells,
And afraid,
So in pain and loss, so in dying, if some god wills it,
I will remember you, and your floating hair,
Turning and smiling, you, lifting the red pitcher from the well,
Like a dream not vanished with sleeping.
You must not weep now
That the charm of ivory you are pressing into my palm
Is too little.
It was so simple for you to give me something beautiful
To carry forward to the world's end.
It was so simple for you to give me something beautiful.
The Wreckers
My life's a sea of glass,
Where ships with many-coloured sails,
Weighed with strange cargoes, flying stranger gales,
Run to the harbour light
Before the wind's cruel whip.
My thoughts are rock,
My thoughts the wreckers are,
Where founder white fish vessel, fish-bone spar,
Lost in imagination's night—
Which boasts no dock
For any ship.
That's no Sea Garden (1916) or Arrow Music (1922), I know, but it's not out of their lineage, either. Not all of the ten poems collected in Unsilent Night are in that style—some of the more conventionally rhyming ones work, some really don't—but I'd love to know if it showed up in her other poetry, whose small amount seems scattered through other collections and publications. Inevitably on the panel, we talked about Lee's own influences, either acknowledged or visible (for years I second-guessed my association of The Seventh Seal (1957) with "Malice in Saffron" until a recent re-read of The Book of the Damned (1988) reminded me of the "death-cowled priest who screamed that the Day of Wrath had come" and now I'd bet money on it). I don't know who she read for poetry, but those incantatory, classicizing lines make me very curious.
Parting
Cool, your hair drifts like the water,
As you move in this ancient sunrise dance
Which began with the first girl at the first well,
Her arms and yours like the necks of swans,
Twining the red pitcher.
This is how I shall remember you all my life.
This clear crystal daybreak thing,
After the night's sharing, the lamp, the dark,
The shelter of love.
So, in the wine-press of battle,
Trampled into a strong drink for death,
So in the marshes, and the bitter places,
In the rusty tents,
Hungry and thirsty, far from all wells,
And afraid,
So in pain and loss, so in dying, if some god wills it,
I will remember you, and your floating hair,
Turning and smiling, you, lifting the red pitcher from the well,
Like a dream not vanished with sleeping.
You must not weep now
That the charm of ivory you are pressing into my palm
Is too little.
It was so simple for you to give me something beautiful
To carry forward to the world's end.
It was so simple for you to give me something beautiful.
The Wreckers
My life's a sea of glass,
Where ships with many-coloured sails,
Weighed with strange cargoes, flying stranger gales,
Run to the harbour light
Before the wind's cruel whip.
My thoughts are rock,
My thoughts the wreckers are,
Where founder white fish vessel, fish-bone spar,
Lost in imagination's night—
Which boasts no dock
For any ship.
That's no Sea Garden (1916) or Arrow Music (1922), I know, but it's not out of their lineage, either. Not all of the ten poems collected in Unsilent Night are in that style—some of the more conventionally rhyming ones work, some really don't—but I'd love to know if it showed up in her other poetry, whose small amount seems scattered through other collections and publications. Inevitably on the panel, we talked about Lee's own influences, either acknowledged or visible (for years I second-guessed my association of The Seventh Seal (1957) with "Malice in Saffron" until a recent re-read of The Book of the Damned (1988) reminded me of the "death-cowled priest who screamed that the Day of Wrath had come" and now I'd bet money on it). I don't know who she read for poetry, but those incantatory, classicizing lines make me very curious.
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Trampled into a strong drink for death
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I would have accepted it in a heartbeat if it came across my desk for Strange Horizons or The Deadlands.
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"Where founder white fish vessel, fish-bone spar" almost feels like a quotation, but I can't place it. It might just be her rhythm (and absence of even indefinite articles).
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Thank you.
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You're welcome!
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Even Immanion Press doesn't seem to have collected her total extant poetry. I wish someone had.