Merwin, oh

Reading through Merwin’s poems, I found myself a bit frustrated. Yes, there are some lovely, unexpected images, some punchy lines, some admirable sentiments. But, for me, it tends not to add up to a satisfying poetry experience ("For the Anniversary of my Death" is a notable exception; I love this poem.).

The “it doesn’t make any sense” argument just doesn’t stand up, though. Of course it doesn’t make any sense, and it makes all the sense in the world, depending upon how you see it. To force myself to articulate what I thought wasn’t working I decided to take one poem, “Bread,” and look at it more closely.

It’s unfortunate for Merwin that his first stanza so quickly brings to mind Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (which reads, “The apparition of faces in the crowd;/
Petals on a wet, black bough”). Compare that to Merwin’s opening lines: “Each face in the street is a slice of bread/ wandering on/ searching.” Faces in the crowd, faces in the street…both poems evoke city life, and, while Pound’s setting might specify a more dense concentration of people, Merwin’s poem also suggest a multitude. He is talking about every face in the street. Whether or not he meant to, Merwin suggests Pound, but what he does with the idea of a crowd of people can’t compare with Pound’s simple, evocative imagery. In place of “petals on a wet, black bough,” we have, here, “a slice of bread.” Of course, that bread is so ordinary may be Merwin’s point, but the image is such a random, bland suggestion that it is difficult to respond to it as one can to Pound’s poem.

It is a weak beginning in its own right (Why are we talking about slices of bread???), and weaker still because of the comparison to Pound that it seems to suggest. But Merwin could have redeemed the odd, uninspiring image in the following stanzas. Instead, he starts talking about caves and “clutching” and “true hunger.” When did we see false hunger? If the faces are slices of bread, this does not suggest that they are hungry, but, rather, it could imply that someone else was hungry for them. And as for these caves, what have they to do with anything? If Merwin ever explains the connection, I can’t discover it. Sure, a reader could manufacture some tie, but the same reader could manufacture their own, better poem and save themselves the trouble of reading this one. Certain lines are affecting (“hung with the hollow marks of their groping,” and “rising its radiance to the moon” appeal to me), but they cannot save an aimless poem.

Now, I’m not suggesting a poem needs to make sense in the most straightforward, logical, orderly way. Pound’s little two-liner is quite random in its own right. Why, one could ask, does he bring up petals? But in this case, the image is rich, proactive, satisfying, beautiful. In “Bread,” there is little to touch the reader in the same type of penetrating way, stirring the senses to react, calling forth an emotion from the reader’s breast. A poem, I think, does not need to make sense, per se, but it must inspire a reaction, and I tend to value emotional reactions above intellectual ones (though both together is the ideal). Reading “Bread,” I was not moved to feel, nor to think very much (except by this “assignment,” and that is a force external to the poem). Apt after all, perhaps, that it is so titled, for it reads like a dry, white slice of bread.

Perhaps I haven’t been as articulate as I could, but it’s a start. I’d be curious to know what scholars have made of this little beast, what sense they’ve found in it, and what merit, if any.

PersonalUniversalRICH

I want to touch upon the subject this post's title suggests, but first I want to comment upon your idea of variations on a theme, so beautifully described ("waltzes over so much terrain", etc.). I'm reminded of this idea with which I'm enamored: the way in which multiplicity reveals an common, unmovable truth. (It occurs to me now that this, too, is a discussion of the personal and the universal.) I see Joyce and Beckett as opposites in this way: Beckett tries to get at the truth by gradually eliminating superfluous. Joyce, on the other hand, presents a multiplicity (the different stories of Dubliners, the different styles of Ulysses), and lets the truth sit comfortably at their center: the common ground, the thing that does not change when everything else does. Rich, I guess, would align herself with Joyce in this way. She takes the different variations, and by stringing them together the reader finds what they have in common (the theme), and knows it. I think I feel this less in Strand, where there's more (at least with "The Story") of a sort of linear plot, a progression.

But the other personal/universal discussion I wanted to have: Rich is one of those poets who seems to like to write about specific stories (sometimes from her own life, sometimes not) in order to illustrate something universal about the world/life. It's obviously a pretty standard way to go about writing. But what interests me is the way it sometimes, in these poems, works for me, and others: not at all. "For the Record" upset me most in this way: I felt that I couldn't appreciate the poem without some context. Is she talking about a specific natural disaster? Where, and when, did the freeways burn, etc.? I feel like, if I had only had a setting, I could have appreciated her descriptions as capturing that moment, and then, myself, drawn the connection between the single event and all others like it. Why does Rich feel the need to remove the specific context herself, to force the universal upon her reader? To me, it seems presumptuous and rude. But I know Ian disagrees (we've discussed), so I'm curious if this is just my bias.

I'd like to contrast "For the Record" with "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff." Here Rich does provide a very specific context. She makes it clear that this poem is about these two women, at one particular moment in time. It is left for the reader to abstract those coveted universal truths from the piece, and I find this a more satisfying relationship between poet and reader. I can admire the way Rich captures Paula's voice, how she describes that woman's emotions, her sorrow. The universality of it is so obvious, Rich doesn't have to go an extra step (as she does in "Record") and remove the specifies, whittle away the references, so that the situation becomes almost only an allegory. It seems to me a more difficult feat to present both at once, rather than only the general. That said, "Paula" was not my favorite. I liked some lines extremely, but others (the final couplet, for instance) seemed trite. Can't win them all, eh?

Adrienne Rich

You know something amazing? That passage in To the Lighthouse where Mr. Ramsey is thinking of himself as someone who plods through the proverbial alphabet (of life?). He greatly contrasts Mrs. Ramsey, who we can assume is someone who flashes through the alphabet with scintillating brilliance while he gets stuck on the letter Q:
"For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then this splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. . . But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q" (Woolf, 37).
Flashes. Whenever I begin reading something new, it feels like an experiment. I observe and try to maintain a balance between emphasizing the small details while keeping the whole in mind. Sometimes an epiphany will dawn on me. Such epiphanies are so exciting when they occur that they feel, for a brief moment, like going flashing through the alphabet, running my hand all the way down a piano keyboard, or eliminating the perceived pause between an inhalation and an exhalation. Discreet patterns disappear, and a whole work comes together. I don't fish, but I'm also thinking of Hokusai paintings of Japanese fishermen, pants rolled up, fishing lines out, ready for action, but still unsure if they will catch the big fish.
Reading the selection of Adrienne Rich's poetry felt a lot like reaching for Mr. Ramsey's R or waiting for the big fish. I encountered a stanza that really brought her work together for me in "Planetarium": "I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind". I love the occasional pockets in literature where a writer seems to come out and state his/her mission. Might this be such a moment in Rich's work? It was after writing the following in my initial post that I had another realization: I wouldn't dare be so assuming, but the notion of human beings as instruments resonates with me. After all, isn't sound, communication, and the building of harmony (or dissonance) what we do in a way? Another question arises for me when I consider the traditional characterization of the sciences and humanities as masculine and feminine. I wonder what Adrienne Rich, a feminist writer, is doing with the sciences in her poetry. Is there an underlying feminist statement or challenge she is trying to make? What I realized was that the epiphany I thought I had had was just another struggle to get from one letter to the next. The flash was but a charming illusion.

And so, here begins my next post on Adrienne Rich. The last one was stale and myopic! Here we go again! Wee! I'd just like to draw out a connection that I'm entertaining between Rich and Strand. In both "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" and " For an Album", Rich thematically grazes on the power of stories, the first beginning with an anecdote about her son burning a mathematics textbook with a friend and traversing through book burnings, poverty (and with it colloquial English that reflects the socioeconomically disadvantaged), and the echoes of stories that are heard with the age old act of sex: "What happens between us/ has happened for centuries/ we know it from literature/. . .there are books that describe all this/ and they are useless" (353). I love the way Rich weaves such a rich (haha) tapestry of the political and the intimate-- in juxtaposing the two, they become strange allies. I was left thinking about how interconnected everything in this poem was, and as I mull over how exactly Rich waltzes across so much different terrain, I realize that what it all has in common is that it is united by style, language, and alignment on the page. Even if the moves are different, everything might be considered a variation on the same theme. Inger Christensen does this in what I consider the ultimate way in her poem "alfabet" which reads like a meditation. Strand's story concerns feel different to me, but since we studied "The Story of Our Lives" earlier in our blogging adventure, I thought I'd give it mention. OK, this is choppy, but it's time to post. This one has been sitting on the stove for way too long.

Mary Mary

I'm glad you mentioned repetition. It's one of the recurring devices in Oliver's work that I find really effective. I think there's sometimes an aversion to repetition on the grounds that it's simplistic, when in fact it can be used (as in Oliver) in a very specific, sophisticated way. Life is, after all, repetitive, and so it makes sense that this should be mirrored in the language of a poem. There's also something soothing about it that sometimes does sooth and other times (as in "The Swamp," as in "When Death Comes") proves quite disturbing in the contrast between this lullaby-like rhythm and the poem's stark reality.

Sections 2 and 3 of "Rain" I found especially powerful. Maybe I hadn't read enough Oliver before now, because I was really surprised by their bleakness. Pleasantly surprised. 2 is another great example of repetition proving powerful. I hear in it the falling rain and the trudging men. An atmosphere is evoked, as well as an emotion.

As for the question of looking closely at detail or "glossing over," to reduce Frost's proposition to rather trite terms, I think I understand both desires, but I value the examination of detail far more. The other seems escapist. Escape is sometimes necessary, but I don't know that it should be condoned. Oliver is great because she often manages to combine a resolute look at what is with a broader sense of the whole.

A last note for now: "Hawk" is great. I'd never encountered it, but...wow. The way it ends just before the moment of the kill! I can't help thinking of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The Windhover," with the twin images of a raptor in the morning. Oliver is of course less flowery than GMH, but I think they're actually similar in the sense that they're both writing with a reverence for the might of the bird they're seeing. Of course, GMH believes god to be responsible, while Oliver doesn't posit a greater force. Still, I think, religion is present, perhaps even in the attention to detail. This honest looking-at is a sort of faith: that the uncovered will have some meaning, some significance. And, of course, it does. To observe! And to then record! No small feats.

Mary Oliver

The introduction to Mary Oliver's work in VBCAP remarks on American nature poets being naturalists trying to get to the root of things- to come to a comprehensive understanding of natural and/or worldly phenomena, to understand, to "know". Kate, I'm fairly sure you made reference to Mark Strand's fearless attention to detail in a conversation we had earlier this week, and I'm just thinking of that phrase as well suited towards the naturalist mission. In order to know something, this kind of paying attention is what pays off. One of my favorite bits of wisdom from Oliver is that, "to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." To pay attention, to relinquish our fear of detail. . . and suddenly I am brought back to the famous opening lines of Robert Frost's "Directive", "Back out of all this now too much for us, back in a time made simple by the loss of detail". What significance do these lines carry in the context of this naturalist notion of a kind of ultimate knowledge arising from the close attention to the world around us? Frost's lines convey a longing to escape this kind of paying attention. In my own life, I understand why one might want to get back to a simplicity that does not require the perspicacity that fearless attention of details asks of us. . . a place of rest and restoration rather than duty and action, making out the connections between everything.
I love the image of the tree being eternally opened by lightning in "Rain", the way it is described as a "yellow thread" descending from the sky. Although this short poem only captures a moment, without paying attention, the careful verbal construction of this moment would be lost. The idea of lightning as thread evokes a sense of the sky and the earth, which we typically see as disparate, coming together as two pieces of fabric held together by a single golden thread.
One of my favorite themes in Oliver's work is that of acceptance. Her work also embodies the idea of letting go rather than giving up and is evidenced by her meditative way of asking questions that don't require urgent answers, as in "The Swamp 2", her visions of stillness in the face of death in the third section of the poem, and the delightful scarcity of words inherent to "At the Edge of the Ocean" and "The Garden". This exploration of the natural ebbs and flows in rhythm nicely demonstrates that there is no single way to write poetry or explore the world. I also love that she often repeats phrases and questions multiple times. For me, it continues to demonstrate an acceptance that being present in the world does not mean going at the same pace all the time. We may never receive answers to many of the questions we ask, but there is a great deal to be learned simply by the asking.

2nd Strand

Mark Strand...

For me, it's all about images. I read "The Story of Our Lives" in Intro to Creative Writing back in freshman year, and, while I forgot the poet, and even that it was a poem, I remembered the image I had formed of the couple in the room of their lives, flipping through the book of their lives. Now, reading "The Prediction," for instance, I again felt that what I was taking away from the poems, more than anything, was an image. There, the young woman walking, and then, at the end, somehow and no doubt a bit hazily I see the woman in the man in the woman, and the moon, etc. It's so atmospheric, but he does it with so few words!

"The Dreadful..." I'm less sure about. It's shocking, of course, and I like the moment of realizing that it's not going to be a literal poem, but in the end it's just to vague for me. I feel like he's trying to be sensationalist, but without a much greater purpose. Why is there all of this violence? What purpose is it serving, other than to shock us. This is generally my complaint with Strand. I feel it less in the other poems, but even in "The Story" there are moments where I'm not sure whether he isn't just being clever. But this is a small thought, really.

"Where Are the Waters..." was really beautiful. I think he's less typically this lyrical, so it was a pleasurable surprise. I liked taking the journey of the poem, right up until the last line, which so horribly broke with the lyrical beauty. But, I suppose, if it's read in the right voice it could be nice.

Hmmm...so it sounds like I'm most impressed with his imagery, with his power of description, and least with his philosophy. I actually think I LIKE his philosophy in many places, but it's the fact that I'm not sure he's entirely consistent, the fact that I'm not sure he's really scrutinized his poems to be certain of their truth (he seems to write for sound more than meaning?), that troubles me just a little. But only just a little. Mostly, I love how he creates these little worlds, that really do seem like oases, seem so much larger than their few lines.

Alright, well, that was NOT timely. But there will be no more such procrastination! Onward to...whom?

Mark Strand

I have some general and specific thoughts about the selection of Mark Strand's poetry, so I'll just pour a few of them out for this first entry. One of the things I really love about his work is that it is grounded in the senses but still manages to philosophize about language-- I'll only touch on the sensual aspect of his poetry in this first short entry.

A couple of things I loved: In the first poem, "Keeping Things Whole", the second stanza about the displacement of air caused by walking strikes a resonant chord within me. Last week I was walking with a friend and we did a little meditation focusing on the feeling of the air between our fingers. The sensation was intimately intense, and it felt like sharing a secret touch with the wind. So at the moment, "Keeping Things Whole" really speaks to me.

Strand has this brilliant way of turning phrase that keeps me on my toes more than many of the poets that I've been reading recently in preparation for the GRE subject test. I appreciate the way he takes classical subject matter (like a relationship gone sour) and shapes it into something innovative and new as in "Coming to This" when he refers to "the heavy industry/ of each other" and the meat sitting "in the white lake of its dish". I love that in this poem, a landscape is suggested by the depiction of a dysfunctional relationship (I imagine a landscape of coal plants, which I suppose is fitting for me to imagine, given I just read an article about the direction that Europe's energy infrastructure seems to be headed in), that the meat sitting sadly in its dish ends up being a reflection of its own bleak, dead landscape.

OK, that's all for tonight. I need some sleep, but I wanted to get going on this.