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The Poetry Challenge Day 4: This poem is about staying up all night. Use it to greet the day.
Now that we’re back on dry land, headed home on the subway with empty pockets and heavy eyelids, a wave of contradictory feeling washes over us. We’re happy that it happened, but we’re sad that it’s ending.
(Just beginning for you? It’s not too late to join our Poetry Challenge. Start on Day 1, and continue at your own pace.)
Bliss and loss go together. This is an old idea in poetry. “Recuerdo” can be classified as an aubade — from “aube,” the French word for “dawn,” it rhymes with “Oh, God” and denotes a song whose singer ruefully greets the new day after a night of passion. The three stanzas track the arrival of morning. We see the first light:
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
Claudia Rankine, poet
We marvel at the blazing sunrise:
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
Lauren Groff, novelist
And finally we face the prospect of a weary morning commute:
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
R. L. Stine, novelist
It’s a modern poem with ancient roots, going back at least to the troubadours of the Middle Ages.
The aubade flourishes wherever lovers try to cling to a few more moments together before the sweet sorrow of parting. Romeo and Juliet, at the end of Act III in Shakespeare’s play, recite an aubade for two voices as the sky pales and the lark sings at the end of what will be their only night together. Romeo says, as he prepares to depart:
More light and light, more dark and dark our woes!
Juliet tries to forestall the encroaching day by insisting that the lark is really a nightingale.
The stakes aren’t always life and death, but the rising sun often casts a shadow of sorrow on a romantic scene. The loss is part of what fuels the romance: We can’t smile because something happened without sighing because it’s over.
The 17th-century English poet John Donne — one of Millay’s favorites — was a master of the aubade. Poems like “The Good-Morrow,” “The Sun Rising” and “Break of Day” are full of ardor, disappointment and unabashed horniness:
Why should we rise because ’tis light?
Did we lie down because ’twas night?
He asks these questions in “Break of Day,” which happens to be made up of three six-line stanzas of couplets, just like “Recuerdo.” This is not a very common form in English; the best-known examples come from the Renaissance — from Donne, the Elizabethan sonneteer Sir Philip Sidney and the poet and composer Thomas Campion.
Millay, an assiduous reader and enthusiastic quoter of poetry, was surely familiar with their work. It’s no accident that the courtly, archaic phrase “good morrow” springs to the lips of her ferry riders as they greet the old woman at the end.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl–covered head,
Emma Straub, novelist
The Renaissance’s old love language — the naughty puns, the sighs of longing and strategies of seduction, the paeans to the beauty of beloveds masked by fanciful Greek and Latin names — had grown obsolete long before Millay’s time. But the urge to suspend complex feelings in the medium of poetry never gets old. Modern poets fill the old vessels with fresh insight, looking at the pains and pleasures of love from new angles.
In the poetry of Donne and his contemporaries, the speaker of the poem is almost always a man, with women as implicit audience and explicit objects of desire. Millay and her contemporaries, writing in the era of women’s suffrage and changing sexual mores, brought a jolt of realism to the language of romance. Millay’s sonnets reckon with the end of love not in a spirit of swooning regret but with brisk, sometimes cynical acceptance.
She was part of a cohort of American women poets whose work dispensed with both Victorian attitudes about love and post-Romantic lyric conventions. In that vein, Louise Bogan’s “Leave-Taking,” from 1922, is a modern aubade that is also a break-up poem. The lovers, “waking from the sleep of each other,” seem to agree that they would be better off apart. The inevitability of separation is what allows them to see love as “perfect.”
Poetry is not the only form to reckon with the passage of time in this way. Movies love a ticking clock, and every generation has its own cherished all-nighter. The baby boom remembers “American Graffiti”; millennials love “Superbad.” But the perfect cinematic aubade is the Gen-X touchstone “Before Sunrise,” in which Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet on a train leaving Budapest and wander through Vienna until the sky goes wan. (To see Hawke’s reading of “Recuerdo,” click here).
The flip side of the aubade’s desire to stop time in its tracks is the urge to rush toward the future, to grab hold of time before it passes. The aubade finds its counterpart, its anticipated answer, in the carpe diem poem. That’s Latin for “seize the day” — YOLO, you might also say — and it’s the oldest pickup line in the book. In 17th-century English poetry, lustful swains (often shepherds, for some reason) are always beseeching their beloveds to “make much of time” and get busy.
Andrew Marvell, whose couplets we glanced at earlier this week, sums up the argument: Let’s be merry now; we’ll be too tired later.
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
The charm of “Recuerdo” is that it chronicles both the seized day (or night) and the weary aftermath, rolling time up into a ball of happy memory. See how much of it you remember in today’s game. Carpe diem!
Today’s task: The final stanza
Question 1/3
Fill in the blanks of the final stanza. The first couplet should be easy!
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank. Need help? Click “See Full Poem
& Readings” at the top of the page.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis, Nick Donofrio and Joumana Khatib. Additional editing by
Emily Eakin, Tina Jordan, Laura Thompson and Emma Lumeij. Design and development by Umi Syam and
Eden Weingart. Additional design by Victoria Pandeirada. Video production by Caroline Kim.
Additional video production by McKinnon de Kuyper. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg. Illustration
art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson.
Audio of “Recuerdo” from “Edna St. Vincent Millay in Readings From Her Poems” (1941, RCA); accompanying
photograph from Associated Press.
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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