Poem of the Week – Fireworks Music by Clara Brussel

We discovered this week’s lyrical poem in the May 1947 edition of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Harriet Monroe founded the publication in 1912 with a “desire to print the best English verse being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written.”

Her admirable mission statement captivated the interests of thousands of emerging writers, many of whom became the most lauded poets of the last century. Naturally, the majority of the poets Monroe published did not achieve celebrity status, but nevertheless, their brilliant artistic accomplishments remain accessible in Monroe’s magazine’s wonderful e-archives. Very little is known of Clara Brussel’s life.

We were able to ascertain that she was born in New York in 1921, won a local poetry contest aged sixteen and attended Brooklyn College. Fireworks Music mellifluously uses a beautiful display of fireworks to prompt reflections on humanity’s habits, hardships, and triumphs.

Enjoy the fireworks and we hope you enjoy this week’s choice as much as we did.  

Fireworks Music by Clara Brussel (1947)

I

Misfortunes vaster than ours
Blazed in the foreign sky.
We look at the tangerine
And lemon-colored display,
Seaweed and starfish forms,
Branching and shedding spores,
Centipeded, they swarm 
And hum, and flake away,

II

They fall into the sea.
The multitude gathered in,
Children awake too long,
Harassed family men,
Adventuring conscripts, girls
Moist from excursions among
The foamy fords of love
Watch them innocently.

III

Religious and royal once,
They now unfold no shrine
But tabernacles of sense,
Plain pleasure to the eye,
(All purposes are sheared,
This age, to gratify)
A slender line between
The gaudy and the feared.

IV

These rockets,
St. Catherine wheels,
Incomparably excel
The ones that lit the stream
Above the sovereign barge- 
Occasioning the Handel
Minor and sturdy piece-
They fling their baroque arch
Over no victory, no theme:

V

New fires that can scar
As readily as these move
Complaisant hearts to lift-
Are also spectacles
Witnessed by those in love,
Withstood by the very small-
And by laborious making-
shiftRendered common as stars.

VI

Hence it is hard to amaze.
The curious explosive stuff
Is kindled as it flies,
Shows lemon tangerine,
And monsters fling their quills.
Hideous harms have been praised
And men are faulty enough
Whether alive or killed. 

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