Collected Poems 1937 - 2007: Law, Love, Politics and War

By John Cabeen Beatty

Collected Poems, 1937 -- 2007, is an unusual mixture of serious and light verse written over his adult life by Jack Beatty. The poems are relatively short, most are less than one page. the subject matter ranges from description of a magnificent sunset on the Oregon Coast, to World War II, to the war in Iraq and our own challenge to the Rule of Law.

A sketch of a few of the poems indicates the field they cover. The poem Air Raid reminds us of the Nazi attack on Poland that ignited W W II. Earl Baldwin of Bewdly marks Britain's failure to appreciate that peril.

View from the window above recreates a Sunday morning at Princeton. If time exists contemplates time as a two way street. A misanthropic toast raises a glass to old Ebinezer Scrooge. Six sonnets bring vignettes of the Normandy invasion, four sonnets are vignettes of the battles in Alsace. Provence paints the sobering start of reconstruction, and Apre la guerre the harsh first winter after the war. Acropolis, the longest of the poems, is a dream sequence set in postwar Greece relating back to ancient Greece and Normandy.

1066 or dates are important and Greek roots are delightful learning poems for middle schoolers. Advice for Dr. Selling and The vermiform appendix of Dr. Henry Dixon needle two eminent physicians, and Chief Judge Herbert M. Schwab does the same for that Court of Appeals judge on his sixtieth birthday. Re House Bill 2648 is a poem submitted to the Oregon State Senate opposing enactment of that measure, surely a unique method of lobbying.. Song of the Elderhostlers deals with pointy snails.

Two sonnets and two thirteen line poems are moving memorials. The vivid portrait of Frederick Augustus Burnaby of the Horse Guards is described in a colorful descriptive eight stanza poem.. The bargain by Octavian and Antony to settle their differences by the murder of their respective commanding generals is considered in a poem by the generals as the height of ingratitude. Of temples and the gods compares the Temple of Zeus with the Lincoln Memorial. A rat is a rat is a rat is a play on Gertrude Stein's poem. James the Just teases a federal judge. Reading Ulysses is a left handed compliment to James Joyce. A view from the Getty, considers the smog that obscures the view from that pinnacle of museum wealth. Christmas in the reign of error reflects on climate change. Three sonnets of Nurnberg deal with devastation, torture and the Rule of Law. The variety of subject matter adds to the enjoyment of these well written poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 10, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469108629

John Cabeen Beatty

Jack Beatty is a lawyer, senior judge, WW II artillery captain with a lifetime engagement in public affairs. An Oregonian, he lives in Portland's west hills writing novels and poetry on subjects ranging from Rome and Gaul to WW II, Iraq, torture and the Rule of Law.

Book preview

Collected Poems

1937-2007

Law, Love, Politics and War

John Cabeen Beatty

Copyright © 2007 by John Cabeen Beatty.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Seek in the west

Across the golden cloud

Pick up the sea bird

Sailing back from Byzantium

Rhadamanthus

Welt politic

Sea, rain and sand

Air Raid

Earl Baldwin of Bewdly

View from the window above

Sitka Harbor

Ecola Beach

Armageddon

Not like planks the dead lie

Mideastern Christmas carol

Deprecation of a theme by Collins

Ages since the vanquished bled

(Houseman)

A queen is she

A misanthropic toast

Christmas is coming

How shall I hold you?

Spring reaches the Plaza

A touch of wonder

Escapist

Though half the earth

If time exists

Between extremities

Passage of seasons

Cyclic song

Raemaker’s Christendom

Thunder break

Lassitude

The world is weighted

Retrospective: the Class of 1941

The wind we call Chinook

The prism portal

Croyden Field

Six Sonnets of Normandy

Weymouth

Utah Beach

The strewn gulls

Hedgerows

The balding wall

Night barrage

Four sonnets of Alsace

Christmas Mass

Rittershoffen

The drifting snow

From shadow comes a woman

Provence

Potsdam

Bacon and the Crown

Old soldiers

Concord Bridge 1947

Après la guerre

1066 or dates are important

Greek roots are better?

(For Clarissa Jean Beatty)

Advice for Dr. Phillip Selling

The vermiform appendix of

Doctor Henry Dixon

Departing for college

A bearded Nash quoting son

Chief Judge Herbert M. Schwab

(On his sixtieth birthday)

Re House Bill 2648

An Act Relating to Separation

Leaving the bench

Why no school named Adams?

Song of the Elderhostlers

(On a barge in Burgundy)

The Federal Rules

Life in the upper story

Your love so gaily thrust

Remembrance

As night comes on

I know that you are dead

State v. Westlund

Burnaby of the Horse Guards

(Portrait by James J.Tissot)

Octavian and Antony

Of temples and the gods

The Cocktail Party revisited

Of trilliums and geese

Mr. Huxley makes a point

Clarissa Dalloway

Election 2000

Saint Valentine dissected

New Year 2001

New Year 2003

Primary education

A rat is a rat is a rat

James the just

Speculation

The propensity of man

Man and Superman revisited

Life at the Apex

Lady come and marry me

Doodle by an exasperated

school board chairman

Reading Ulysses: a Parthian shot

The red-tailed hawk and the tortoise

(For Trask Pernetti)

A lucky frog

The never to be forgotten Tuhys

Memo to Anthony Morse, Jr.

A view from the Getty

Norwegian Wood and the Raj

Retrogression

Christmas in the Reign of Error: 2005

The French seventy-five

Holly Rommel’s First Birthday

Anatomy 101

The comma

Neanderthal wisdom

Leche the disappearing cat

(For Kellie Halden)

Three sonnets of Nürnberg

Do you remember

In London Tower

The Rule of Law

New Years 2007

Explanatory Notes

For Ginna

More lovely and more temperate than

any summer’s day

Preface

I began writing poetry during my undergraduate days at Princeton, and this small collection of serious and light verse is drawn from the occasional exercise of this discipline over the years.

In general, the earlier poems come first, although the sequence is not consistent. I have shifted some poems around because of my sense that certain poems belong with others and vice versa. The influence of World War II is obvious. That war was a defining event for my generation, certainly for me, and it accounts for many of the poems. The present Iraq adventure, ill advisedly undertaken and poorly executed, may prove equally defining and surely less fortunate, but its ultimate impact remains to be seen.

The Nürnberg poems touch on my sense of the moral and constitutional questions at stake. I think of my constitutional law professor, the late Herbert Wechsler, then so recently returned from his role as chief assistant to the American Judge on the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg, and his view that we should judge the enemy only by standards that we would apply to ourselves, and feel obliged to