My Poem Asks a Question

So, I’ve got this poem. It talks back to Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” and I wrote it during last week’s discussion of engaging our reading. It’s okay, I guess, but to tell you the truth, it’s just kind of sitting here, staring at me, asking me “Now what?”

I feel a sort of, I dunno, obligation to it? A responsibility for it? It could well be that it doesn’t deserve much attention, though. I mean, what good is it? Is it any good? Like most any young child, it sits, restlessly anxious about its future.

If it’s like most of what I write, it will never see the public light. But that’s often because, as we talked about when we did our writing back, this is as much about cementing some ideas in our heads, in articulating our questions and wonderings, in committing to them at least enough that we can formulate them in written terms. For me, I can always take notes on something, but it isn’t until I do something with it–here, writing back to Marvell in another poem–until I really begin to own those ideas, carry them more permanently. That random text message or whining dog at the kitchen door isn’t going to disrupt my thinking now.

So no, there’s no obligation to make this poem go anywhere at all. . . . On the other hand, there’s that one stanza I wrote in the middle. In it, my speaker–that Coy Mistress seducer guy–is telling Death what we would do if given more time:

And most of all, I’d world alight
With flame of choice and purpose bright
Spur each and all to find their path
And free be they to seek delight

That’s part of the promise to live a carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More lifestyle. At least, I’m beginning to think it is. To embrace the world, to enjoy each moment given fully, “In all things know fond beauty’s seat.”

And this stanza says I’ll go out into the world and show everyone the “flame of choice,” to find their path. There is the way to happiness.

So, um, that is what carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More is about, isn’t it? I mean, the ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More of the stanza is that my insincere speaker really doesn’t commit to such a promise, even in a literal life and death situation. But is his lying about “spurring each and all to find their path” the right direction, anyway?

Last week, I off-handedly mentioned that carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More could also be translated as “pluck the day,” so I do know that there is more to it, at least something different from how Marvell portrays it. All Marvell’s speaker wants to do is use it for sexual conquest, but the Epicureans back in the Greek and later Roman Classical Age had a broader philosophy, that of removing our anxiety towards death, that of living a life of sensual pleasure, not merely sexual. The Epicureans looked not for hedonistic pleasures but for moderation, wisdom, the absence of pain, the vitality of friendship and community, simplicity as a guide.

Now, of course, I’m talking about the Epicureans here like we all understand why I brought them up. Here’s the link. 

1. Andrew Marvell uses a carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More philosophy
2. This philosophy is ancient, dating back at least 2000 years to Roman poetry about it
3. The greatest Roman poet to say the phrase itself is Quintus Horatius Flaccus (this, by the way, is fair warning that I’m going to try and pronounce a bit of Latin this week); anyway, we call him the poet Horace.
4. He wrote about carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More in his famous Ode 1.11
5. Horace, in a letter to his friend Albius, called himself “porcus ex Epicuri grege” (“POR-kus ex E-pi-KEE-ree GREE-geh”). Translation? “A porker from Epicurus’ herd.”

Pretty funny, I guess, to call yourself a pig, but if we accept it as a metaphor for humility, for eating and enjoying the moment like any domesticated animal, like a pig in the garden, Horace is identifying himself as EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More, the earlier Greek philosophy by, um, Epicurus.  

Somewhere, somehow, in this ancient poet’s mind, carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More emerged from such a philosophy. And somehow, from this little trifle, I have maybe dreamed up the idea that there is more to carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More than Marvell suggests. Well, not from whole cloth–I’ve got more than this link, but it is also very fair to say, I’m not going to be able to commit to my poem–let alone my larger questions about imminent death and making good choices in life–armed only with the evidence that around 40 BCE some dude in Rome called himself a philosophical porker.

No, if I want to see how accurate all these connections are, if Marvell is more nuanced than I think he is, or if Horace is more nuanced, too, then I have to dig into this original carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More poem, don’t I? I have to ask, if Mr. Flaccus is a porcus ex Epicuri and Marvell is one who perversely shnuffs along after young women, I’m going to have to, I guess, . . . .sort out some pigs!

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Theme

This is Literary Nomads, where we wander through literature and language, near and far.

I’m Steve Chisnell, and I have to apologize, but I’m going back to ancient Roman pig farming, and I’m dragging you along with me.

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Odes, Book 1, Poem 11

I could say a great deal about the history of Horace’s Odes. He wrote four books worth of them, and they have been praised ever since for their style and structure, and it’s a fascinating little history for poet geeks like me, but we’re going to have to come back to how they were put together another time, I suspect. I’m on a quest. And we must not stray overmuch from our path.

Back when we were talking about Marvell’s poem directly, I mentioned Horace, but I actually went more at a guy who could’ve been Porcus’s–I mean, Horace’s–dad, the poet Catullus. He was that guy who was all about the seducing-of-women-over-expanses-of-time, showering his love with first dozens and then hundreds of kisses. It was his poem #5 which started off this giant tradition of adoration poetry that all sounds like Marvell’s. 

But Horace, ah, HE was the one who gave us the 11th poem of his 104-poem series of odes. The one of all of his works that has really struck the popular imagination ever since. Powerful. He’s given us such hits as nil desperandum (Do not despair) and nunc est bibendum. (Now it is time to drink). And who can forget, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (“It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country”). Yup, Mr. Flaccus hit it big, but no one could anticipate carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More. 

Here’s the ode:

Tū nē quaesierīs, scīre nefās, quem mihi, quem tibī    (Um, let’s just do the English, shall we?)
fīnem dī dederint, Leuconoē, nec Babylōniōs
temptāris numerōs. Ut melius quidquid erit patī,
seu plūrīs hiemēs seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositīs dēbilitat pūmicibus mare
Tyrrhēnum: sapiās, vīna liquēs, et spatiō brevī
spem longam resecēs. Dum loquimur, fūgerit invida
aetās: carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More, quam minimum crēdula posterō.

But whose translation?  Here are two:

Leucon, no one’s allowed to know his fate,
Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers
In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes.
This could be our last winter, it could be many
More, pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks:
Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines
And forget about hope. Time goes running, even
As we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.
                                        –translated by Burton Raffel

Or a more common one:

You should not ask, it is wrong to know, what end the
gods will have given to me or to you, O Leuconoe, and do not try
Babylonian calculations. How much better it is to endure whatever will be,
whether Jupiter has allotted more winters or the last,
which now weakens the Tyrrhenian Sea against opposing rocks:
be wise. Strain your wines, and because of brief life
prune short long-term hopes. While we are speaking, envious life
will have fled: seize the day, trusting the future as little as possible.

Whichever we prefer, the base message is fairly pointed: He tells Leucon, probably a young girl but who may be historical or fictional, to stop trying to predict the future. Instead, accept what we have. The wisest don’t waste time with hope but spend their days in simple pleasures like wine. 

Hmm. So far, the advice sounds pretty EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More: simple pleasures, daily life, sensuous choices, no anxiety or despair. 

Let’s take just a moment with a few lines, though, shall we? The word Horace uses about fortune-telling is nefas, meaning it is “wrong to know.” It’s an interesting idea that I hadn’t expected to find. Some knowledge is not for humans. I get it; I just didn’t expect a kind of Edenic Tree prohibition in the poem: but that we don’t need to (or should) know what the gods have planned? Okay. Good luck with that advice, but let’s hang onto that as we move forward.

In Latin, our famous line is carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More, quam minimum credula postero, “pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.” Or, as accurately, “Harvest the day.”

Carpe comes from the Greek carpizein which means to “enjoy the fruits of.” In Greek, carpos is “fruit.” If we want to go back further, the Indo-European roots of the word, “kerp,” was used to mean “pluck, gather, or harvest.” For fun trivia, it’s the same root we use for the word “excerpt,” a small plucking out from a larger text. 

Well. What the heck? It makes sense, too, even poetically. The rest of the poem also uses imagery of harvesting: straining the wine, pruning back. And as I hunt around for translations of Horace from the Latin, almost all of them avoid using the word “seize.”

• “Pluck the day”
• “Harvest the day”
• “Pluck this day”
• “Pluck the flower of this day”
• “Reap the harvest of today”

More than this, those folks who aren’t me and know Latin enough to write it, tell me that if I wanted to say “Seize the day” in Latin, I would choose a different imperative verb, like “rape” for seize, or ‘cape” for take. 

So we gotta ask, is there a major difference between the words “pluck” or “harvest” and “seize”?

Mistranslation’s Tradition

You betcha. Definitely. Big difference.

Playing just a bit more with imperative verbs, let’s note that the Latin word for “seize” that I just mentioned, “rape,” comes from “rapere,” the same term used for seize, abduct, to take by force. It’s used in Roman law in the taking of women as “raptus.” By the early 1600s, of course, we all guessed it, we borrowed it through the French and called it “rape.”

So, yeah. Somewhere, somehow (and truth to tell, we don’t know the whos and the whens and whys of it) Horace’s famous little ode was mistranslated into “seize” or “rape the day.” Not very ironically, I think, the phrase carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More as mis-understood this way, was soon acquired by the Cavalier poets and many afterwards, all well-schooled in Latin you may remember, to bend against coy mistresses in verse. You and I, we may have missed our Latin grammar in middle school, but these earlier poets, like Marvell, certainly had not. 

Now, it may well be that you are skeptical that this is a serious breach of translation, and I might be with you on that. After all, we’ve all been using the phrase “seize the day” all the time and not thinking about rape at all!  That’s the problem with looking at the etymology of words–words change meanings, and Seize the Day today simply means to make the most of it, to grab it and enjoy it, to enjoy life to its fullest, to take what we want when we want it, to drink and to lust and to . . . okay. I’m perhaps over-stating again.

Whether we hang on to the etymology or not, the tone and meaning of seize and harvest are hugely different. A seizing is a taking, a more forceful act, even–I’ll risk saying–one of machismo. Attached to it are questions, even, of morality. Is that thing you just seized, um, yours to seize? Why did you have to seize it . . . if it was yours just to, you know, pick up gently? Inherently, it is an aggressive, even violent term. And maybe that’s what we mean when we call upon people to Seize the Day: get aggressive, assert yourself, take risks, gamble!

It was certainly what was going through Peter Keating’s mind when he made the phrase popular all over again in the movie Dead Poet’s Society, didn’t he? Live every moment like it was your last. Of course, he was quoting specifically Cavalier poet Robert Herrick, who we already minced a bit a few weeks ago, telling everyone to have sex while they’re still young and pretending this was a gentlemanly tradition for courtly men.

The tradition for courtly men.

What was Horace up to?

Well, let’s see. I’m going to offer you a reading of the poem that isn’t so common, but I think stands the test of credibility. I mentioned that we don’t know much about Leuconoe, the girl in the poem. We know this: she has a Greek name, so she is–sorry to say–likely a servant who is practicing old superstitious fortune-telling (Babylonian astrology, tea leaves, etc.). Add to this that Horace’s speaker gives her tasks to do: “strain the wine”–and we might consider her even a slave. He tells her not to worry about what the future has in store for them; just think about the now and forget about hope. Harvest this day. 

Ah, Horace is subtle, isn’t he? Far more subtle than Marvell! Is he–Is he trying to seduce this young servant girl? Stop looking for hope in your old superstitions. Instead, don’t worry about what the future holds for us. Just accept the now, what is happening now, because we may die tomorrow. The agricultural metaphors that hint at fertility and reaping. 

Geez. For sure, the Roman poets were as a school far more subtle than the later English. But it’s there, I think. Horace is up to something not so different from Marvell, after all. Damn.

But I don’t want to stop just there, yet. But let’s keep peeking at Porcus Flaccus’s poem to see if there are any other issues going on. 

Here I’m going to get a little geeky with poetry rhythm, but bear with me. In Roman poetic meter is a form called a choriamb. A what? A choriamb-–c-h-o-r-followed by i-a-m-b. We may know a two-syllable iambic foot from Shakespeare and other poetry: di-DUM.  di-DUM, di-DUM di-DUM. Well, the Romans when they were being clever did a four-syllable series called a choriamb. It went like this: DUM-di-di-DUM. DUM-di-di-DUM. You pulled off something like this in poetry, your audience sits up and notices it. Check out that choriamb! Wowwww. 

In English, this is used more often than we’d at first think: Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing (with feathers)”. Sylvia Plath: “Feet to the Stars,” and “Gilled like a fish” and “Snug as a bud.” 

In Horace’s Ode, we have these several times: the girl’s name:LEU-co-no-AY, and VIna Liq-UES (for straining the wine). And, you guessed it, “CAR-pe di-EM.”

Horace wanted us to hear this especially. To carry it away with us as a beautiful rhythmic spoil of the poem. In this case, he practically ends the poem with it. It’s the first of a triple choriamb of the last line: “CAR-pe-di-EM, QUAM mini MUM, CRED u-la-POST -ero.” Harvest the day, trust the future as little as possible.

I can almost hear the Roman men walking away from the performance, nodding their heads in secret knowing: CAR-pe-di-EM, a subtle, coded phrase for seducing those who they may overpower. Seizing.

Is it possible that the mistranslation came not from the words but from the understood seduction that quietly underlays Horace the Pig’s poem?  I don’t know, really. I offer only what I’ve found here. And we may have to get a Latin poetry expert to tell us more. 

Oh, but actually, much of what I just said (not the men walking away with secret knowledge part and not the pig part) is offered by David West in the Oxford World Classic edition of Horace’s poetry.

It’s been there from the start.

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Reconciliations

I have to admit, this one has surprised me a bit. When I thought I would go back and dig a bit at Horace, I had intended to open up the EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More philosophy and find a broader vision of what we might do with death and life. 

I figured that, well, somewhere along the way in history, there had been a failure to launch in the translation department and the more aggressive term was accepted, a failure to recall a truer history. But maybe I had been romanticizing history, even the Classical Age–it seems a silly mistake now, I admit. 

And I’m still not wrong about the misuse. I still suspect that the ethos of our poetic speakers is at question: that is, their characters are people of broken virtue. The only thing that Marvell’s has going for him is that–to my mind–he is clearly an ironic construction for the broader unspoken philosophy. Horace’s? I can’t see the same ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More. Here his speaker offers the knowing wink of the subtle predator (or maybe hopeful opportunist), but I don’t see that Horace in any way disagrees with his position. Are there subtleties here that I can’t see? That others–at least in my research–have not seen?

The guy is praised for his complexity, his devotion to themes of love and wine, friendship and moderation. Much of his work, like Virgil’s, was written for Caesar Augustus. Working, then, in a climate of politics and war just as Marvell did, scholars today argue about his self-presentation, the layers of meaning which may obscure his own position. Ode 11 may well be something like that, something closer to Marvell than I realize.

He undercuts himself frequently (I’m thinking now more sincerely of the EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More pig comment), often humorously. His humor in most of his work is genial, kind, not biting or aggressive. Many have called his work “playful.” 

Maybe the wit is the reverse of Marvell. I mean, maybe Horace is putting the carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More concept out there earnestly as EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More philosophy and, unless I have misunderstood the potential seduction here, it appears as a wink of misuse, what he sees (though we may not) as a playful by-the-way look-at-what-I-can-also-do-with-this approach. It is not clear that Marvell approves of the philosophy at all. 

And it may be that the seduction is so subtle here that it really does not exist. We have to admit that. But I don’t want to admit it only to make myself feel better about a potential pure carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More harvest of the day image. 

Idealism and Harvests

But this has thrown me, I admit it. Maybe I’ve got Marvell on the mind, a mania for the Marvel-lous. Anybody who’s been listening through certainly must think so, by now. And I promise, we’re very close to setting him down and moving on. What I want to carry with me are still the questions which come from his poem. And now with Horace.

We’ve spent some time with the word “seize” and I stick to those arguments. I don’t like the translation, and I suspect that we are doing ourselves some cultural damage by using it (now THAT is a topic we will definitely have to address. (What’s that? I already planned on doing it in just two weeks? Deal. And now I’m talking to myself, too.)

But what about the “plucking” and “harvesting” as terms? What do they, in earnest, suggest about carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More? Less aggressive, for sure, but I try to avoid defining ideas by what they are not. It’s a good strategy sometimes to acknowledge what something isn’t, but let’s talk about what it is. . . 

Agrarian. Gathering and growing and collecting the bounty. If we’re making wine and harvesting, the plants are full, the fruits mature. It’s time to take them in their ripeness, else it is wasted. (Note to Self: Bring back Seamus Heaney’s amazing poem “Blackberry Picking” where he tries to hang on to the over-ripening blackberries until they rot in pails, his hands stained with juice like Lady Macbeth’s.) 

So there is only a limited time for the proper harvesting, the rules set forth not as morals but as absolutes, the way the world works . . . naturally. Everything has its time, its place. Days move on to nights and then to new days. And a new day is ours for the plucking, the picking. The fruit will be as different as experience, but its satisfaction, fulfillment, sustenance. The day is a fruit that provides us sustenance and satisfaction, contentment, happiness. It’s . . . simple.

If we do not enjoy our day, if we fail to make full use of it (or, like Heaney in his youth, we try to horde too much of it), it is gone forever, wasted, lost. It’s not that our entire lives will end in death tomorrow–that’s not the fear. The natural sustenance is found through what today is, then what the next today is. 

This is my reading of the best and most accurate translations of carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More from Horace’s Ode. It is in this spirit that I can see the less common translations, “Pluck this day,” “Pluck the flower of this day,” “Reap the harvest of today,” making sense. These are translators who see the Ode as I want to, I think.

And, until I myself learn Latin and use it as a tool for interpreting Classical Roman poetry, I don’t know if I can go any further to find other layers, darker or not.

But I will remember that our Cavalier poets and for hundreds of years before and after them, studied Horace in his original Latin. They knew what they were doing. And that those who did not, who are simply sucking upon the words of Peter Keating and using it for their own ends, they may well be misunderstanding the questions Horace and others have actually posed.

Sidebar: Tom Schulman, who wrote Dead Poet’s Society, did attend a boys prep school in the 1960s and then went to Vanderbilt, may well have studied Latin. On the other hand, he also wrote the screenplays to 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag and What About Bob?, so who knows?

I don’t think going down this trail to Horace’s Ode has been a waste of time at all. But I have to admit that, while I’ve learned I much admire the correct translation of carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More, I don’t know that we’ve learned as much as I expected us to. Maybe. It’s just more experience to carry with us as we move ahead.

And if we could not find satisfaction with the original utterance of carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More in tracing it back from Marvell, maybe we can trace Marvell forward to see what’s been made from it.

But that will have to be next week.

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Mailbag: Can I Get a Copy of the Poem You Wrote?

Anne67 asks if she can have a copy of the poem I wrote last week. 

And I say, of course!  With a but.

First, the rough draft that you heard last week was exactly that, an initial draft with a few limited revisions, not ready for prime time. If you want to play with that, be my guest. Everything that is produced for Literary Nomads is Creative Commons copyright. Take and use as you wish–especially if you’re a teacher–and I only ask that you give my work appropriate credit.

How do you do that? At the bottom of each episode’s Show Notes you will find a way to cite the words and ideas offered. Just cut and paste! If you want a transcript of the episode, you’ll always find a link in the Show Notes and on the website, WaywordsStudio.com. Just go there to find an almost word-for-word transcript of what we talk about. 

Now, as for the use of that poem, because it’s a draft, know that I don’t myself consider it ready for publishing, so I would ask that if you use it, present it that way. As I said at the beginning of this episode, the poem is asking me to do something with it. So, I think my plan is to next take it to my local writers workshop to see what they say about it. Then I’ll make revisions and publish it for the website or bring it back to the podcast for review again.

On that note, two things!

First, if you would like to offer constructive feedback on my poem “To His Bold Master,” please do!  Just drop me an email or leave a comment on the website. And I’ll definitely use your advice either in revision or in discussion here.

Second, if you have another question about the writing back that I’m doing, or the idea of carrying a message forward, or anything else we’ve been talking about–heck, even something readerly we haven’t been talking about–drop me a question for this Mailbag!  You’ll find a link in the Show Notes (gosh, everything is there!), and I would love to hear your thoughts!

Just ahead, I want to see where Marvell and carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More have been used in other literature and in our broader culture; I want to see how it matches up to what we’ve been talking about. And then, I suspect, we’ll find that fork in the trail that we need, one that will turn us towards our next site for an extended stay. 

But that’s still ahead. For now, thanks for going back to Rome for a few minutes with me, and now, go read something.

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Outro

Follow me and find me along with supplements, bonus episodes, resources, newsletters, and still more at Waywords Studio dot com.  That’s Waywords Studio (two s’s in the middle) dot com. Thanks for listening! 

Music for Literary Nomads is by Randon Myles.

Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski.

Literary Nomads is a production of Waywords Studio. Find me at Waywords Studio on most social media and at Waywords Studio .com.

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Bibliography:

“A Reason to Learn Latin. Unrolling the Wisdom and Humor of Horace’s Poetry.” Christian Science Monitor. Christian Science Monitor, https://www.csmonitor.com/1987/1230/dbtom30.html. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.

A Selection of Horace’s Odes: Eighteen Translations with a Translator’s Preface and Translator’s Notes. 24 Apr. 2014.

Cook, Virginia. “A Poet’s Request : Text and Subtext in Horace’s Odes 1.1.” Theses, Dissertations and Capstones, Jan. 2011, https://mds.marshall.edu/etd/33.

Cowan, Robert. “A Cruel and Pointless Trick? False Non-Closure in Horace’s Odes.” Dictynna. Revue de Poétique Latine, no. 20, Dec. 2023. journals.openedition.org, https://doi.org/10.4000/dictynna.3539.

“Getting Horace Across.” Harvard Review, https://www.harvardreview.org/content/getting-horace-across/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.

Harrison, S. J. Horace. 2014. Cambridge University Press.

“Horace.” The Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/horace. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.

Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Oxford World’s Classics: Horace: The Complete Odes and Epodes. Edited by David West, Oxford University Press, 2008. DOI.org.  

Nisbet, R. G. M. “The Word Order of Horace’s Odes.” Proceedings of the British Academy, The British Academy, 1999, https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/3900/93p135.pdf.

Pepys, Samuel. “Horace (The Diary of Samuel Pepys).” The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 30 June 2021, https://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia/11695/.