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    Selected Poems and Pygmalion and Galatea, a One-Act Play
    Selected Poems and Pygmalion and Galatea, a One-Act Play
    Selected Poems and Pygmalion and Galatea, a One-Act Play
    Ebook126 pages45 minutes

    Selected Poems and Pygmalion and Galatea, a One-Act Play

    By Robert Manns

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    About this ebook

    Robert Manns' Selected Poems is comprised of two large poems and a number of smaller verses of various forms that recount is happy, sometimes frustrated, years of bachelor-hood. By a Turning Root is his invasion of several classical forms and a very sound illustration of the poet as visionary.

    Pygmalion and Galatea was first produced by Lucille Lortel at the White Barn Theatre in Westport and clearly signals an early influence by England's Christopher Fry. The sculptor makes a statue, then falls in love with it. That's transcendental love. When the statue comes to life, she's interested in more than love in that form. The comedy investigates Pygmalion's paradoxes.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateDec 2, 1999
    ISBN9781491750216
    Selected Poems and Pygmalion and Galatea, a One-Act Play
    Author

    Robert Manns

    Robert Manns was born in Detroit; spent six years in New York, where he received his first productions; and later moved to Florida and eventually Atlanta. He wrote his first play when he was 19, his first poem when he was 21. He has taught dramaturgy at Emory University in Atlanta and, while director of Callanwolde Art Institure in that city, initiated the poetry readings still held today. Even before serving as field representative for the National Audubon Society, wildlife and the environment had solidly manifested themselves in his writing.

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      Book preview

      Selected Poems and Pygmalion and Galatea, a One-Act Play - Robert Manns

      The Pines of Atlanta

      Image342.PNG    I Iron    Image342.PNG

      The cough of cannon along the creek

      Disturbed the streets; the city’s people

      Opened doors, broke glass and listened.

      Mulattoes listened and one Chinee.

      A clouded sun with rain advancing,

      Broken ridges, broken floodplains,

      Horsed men, men unhorsed and half faced,

      Rang the arsenal city in alarm

      In the field, on porch, at church.

      Scream of the barn owl from a belfry

      Measured sanctimonious chagrin.

      Quick devastation was an easy task:

      The muddied roads held men’s limbs

      And lost children. When rain and smoke ascended

      A frog leapt from puddle to puddle

      Declaring aftermath simplicity.

      The woodcock in the bog tore its nest

      Then maternally submerged her young.

      House and warehouse of the foothill city

      Stood                              enrolled.

      How does a great river run brown along its length?

      Much as a lesser body, Peachtree Creek, runs red.

      It appeases what is in it. Mud, from a week’s rain,

      Ran in the Chattahoochee. It circumnavigated city,

      While creek and a myriad of tributaries absorbed Atlanta blood

      As a sponge’s tentacles search surrounding water.

      The city pigeons were confused by commotion

      If not engined, so well engineered. For when last

      Did man arouse his wildlife in the mass,

      Not preying? Possum and raccoon were embraced by oak;

      The hog-nose snake gave snarling way, retreated into pine.

      People froze their smiles, framing subjugation.

      As Union army stacked its arms

      Black Molly spread her stanchion legs,

      And as one celestial body fell

      One other rose to fill its space.

      This was the time of the coming

      And soon was the time of going,

      Soon, soon the time of going,

      But between the thought and the resolve

      Hung the decision.

      The great white Northern general disdained to shave

      Or make a distempered beard behave.

      The leg stood straight in its stirrup. War was death.

      To wait was merely to wait on death;

      The dried tongue cracked an order.

      Multilaid

      Molly gathered together her liquid thighs, smiled

      On a once-erect body limp in chiggered grass.

      She howled to see the scampering of mice,

      The responsiveness of ear to order,

      Gun to muscle, charge to vocal discipline,

      New white slaves to political decree.

      Amidst the red Azalea blooms

      The general ordered fire.

      Three troopers’ horses took to the road

      Out of saddles. Fire, he ordered.

      So came torch to granary and warehouse.

      Rods of flame caressed the depot,

      Melted ties, ovened the sun;

      The dogwood that, till then, was white

      Became the blushing petalled cross

      Of Christendom quite at a loss

      To fend, arrest, deter, repulse.

      Beginning was as was its end,

      Iron invaded and destroyed

      Iron, leaving ejaculated pine

      In the streets and decimated forest

      To forage in the wooded floor,

      To recede, and then in time to seed.

      When the metallic army moved away

      Teeth                             decayed.

      Image335.PNG   II Water   Image342.PNG

      Here, while some years passed, many elsewhere flew

      Quick as swifts. Here, where pace was ordered

      By the sun, decelerated rivers,

      Loitering creeks and the waddling swamp,

      Only cemeteries were quickly made

      To keep disease beneath the spade.

      That which grew beyond destruction’s limits,

      Untended, unfettered, unabashed,

      Was the pine of long and short leaf, loblolly,

      Slash and pitch, straight-trunked or crooked,

      Always green needled, mixing with poplar,

      Oak or, if not mixed, not too far

      Out of hardwood, since pine is sociable.

      Drop of cone will keep it close. Generally,

      A trunk stands erect as its own

      Needle, much as age shows first in the hand.

      When a tree, for squirrel or lightning, strips its bark,

      It is planking

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