B.H. Fairchild - Body And Soul

BODY AND SOUL


Half-numb, guzzling bourbon and Coke from coffee mugs,
our fathers fall in love with their own stories, nuzzling
the facts but mauling the truth, and my friend’s father begins
to lay out with the slow ease of a blues ballad a story
about sandlot baseball in Commerce, Oklahoma decades ago.
These were men’s teams, grown men, some in their thirties
and forties who worked together in zinc mines or on oil rigs,
sweat and khaki and long beers after work, steel guitar music
whanging in their ears, little white rent houses to return to
where their wives complained about money and broken Kenmores
and then said the hell with it and sang Body and Soul
in the bathtub and later that evening with the kids asleep
lay in bed stroking their husband’s wrist tattoo and smoking
Chesterfields from a fresh pack until everything was O.K.
Well, you get the idea. Life goes on, the next day is Sunday,
another ball game, and the other team shows up one man short.

They say we’re one man short, but can we use this boy,
he’s only fifteen years old, and at least he’ll make a game.
They take a look at the kid, muscular and kind of knowing
the way he holds his glove, with the shoulders loose,
the thick neck, but then with that boy’s face under
a clump of angelic blonde hair, and say, oh, hell, sure,
let’s play ball. So it all begins, the men loosening up,
joking about the fat catcher’s sex life, it’s so bad
last night he had to hump his wife, that sort of thing,
pairing off into little games of catch that heat up into
throwing matches, the smack of the fungo bat, lazy jogging
into right field, big smiles and arcs of tobacco juice,
and the talk that gives a cool, easy feeling to the air,
talk among men normally silent, normally brittle and a little
angry with the empty promise of their lives. But they chatter
and say rock and fire, babe, easy out, and go right ahead
and pitch to the boy, but nothing fancy, just hard fastballs
right around the belt, and the kid takes the first two
but on the third pops the bat around so quick and sure
that they pause a moment before turning around to watch
the ball still rising and finally dropping far beyond
the abandoned tractor that marks left field. Holy shit.
They’re pretty quiet watching him round the bases,
but then, what the hell, the kid knows how to hit a ball,
so what, let’s play some goddamned baseball here.
And so it goes. The next time up, the boy gets a look
at a very nifty low curve, then a slider, and the next one
is the curve again, and he sends it over the Allis Chambers,
high and big and sweet. The left fielder just stands there, frozen.
As if this isn’t enough, the next time up he bats left-handed.
They can’t believe it, and the pitcher, a tall, mean-faced
man from Okarche who just doesn’t give a shit anyway
because his wife ran off two years ago leaving him with
three little ones and a rusted-out Dodge with a cracked block,
leans in hard, looking at the fat catcher like he was the sonofabitch
who ran off with his wife, leans in and throws something
out of the dark, green hell of forbidden fastballs, something
that comes in at the knees and then leaps viciously towards
the kid’s elbow. He swings exactly the way he did right-handed,
and they all turn like a chorus line toward deep right field
where the ball loses itself in sagebrush and the sad burnt
dust of dustbowl Oklahoma. It is something to see.

But why make a long story long: runs pile up on both sides,
the boy comes around five times, and five times the pitcher
is cursing both God and His mother as his chew of tobacco sours
into something resembling horse piss, and a ragged and bruised
Spalding baseball disappears into the far horizon. Goodnight,
Irene. They have lost the game and some painful side bets
and they have been suckered. And it means nothing to them
though it should to you when they are told the boy’s name is
Mickey Mantle. And that’s the story, and those are the facts.
But the facts are not the truth. I think, though, as I scan
the faces of these old men now lost in the innings of their youth,
I think I know what the truth of this story is, and I imagine
it lying there in the weeds behind that Allis Chalmers
just waiting for the obvious question to be asked: why, oh
why in hell didn’t they just throw around the kid, walk him,
after he hit the third homer? Anybody would have,
especially nine men with disappointed wives and dirty socks
and diminishing expectations for whom winning at anything
meant everything. Men who knew how to play the game,
who had talent when the other team had nothing except this ringer
who without a pitch to hit was meaningless, and they could go home
with their little two-dollar side bets and stride into the house
singing If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, I’ve Got the Time
with a bottle of Southern Comfort under their arms and grab
Dixie or May Ella up and dance across the gray linoleum
as if it were V-Day all over again. But they did not.
And they did not because they were men, and this was a boy.
And they did not because sometimes after making love,
after smoking their Chesterfields in the cool silence and
listening to the big bands on the radio that sounded so glamorous,
so distant, they glanced over at their wives and notice the lines
growing heavier around the eyes and mouth, felt what their wives
felt: that Les Brown and Glenn Miller and all those dancing couples
and in fact all possibility of human gaiety and light-heartedness
were as far away and unreachable as Times Square or the Avalon
ballroom. They did not because of the gray linoleum lying there
in the half-dark, the free calendar from the local mortuary
that said one day was pretty much like another, the work gloves
looped over the doorknob like dead squirrels. And they did not
because they had gone through a depression and a war that had left
them with the idea that being a man in the eyes of their fathers
and everyone else had cost them just too goddamned much to lay it
at the feet of a fifteen year-old boy. And so they did not walk him,
and lost, but at least had some ragged remnant of themselves
to take back home. But there is one thing more, though it is not
a fact. When I see my friend’s father staring hard into the bottomless
well of home plate as Mantle’s fifth homer heads toward Arkansas,
I know that this man with the half-orphaned children and
worthless Dodge had also encountered for his first and possibly
only time the vast gap between talent and genius, has seen
as few have in the harsh light of an Oklahoma Sunday, the blonde
and blue-eyed bringer of truth, who will not easily be forgotten.

---B.H. Fairchild


B.H. Fairchild's Body And Soul

Out of all the poems I’ve presented this month, I saved my very favorite poem for last. This is my favorite poem. Unabashedly I love this poem and the fascinating story it tells, shuffling the wide gauntlet of emotions from gritty to heart-warming. Fairchild's characters are well developed and many of the lines are well crafted lyrics. When I think of good, lasting poetry I think of this poem. You don't have to love baseball, be from Oklahoma, or have lived through WWII to enjoy this poem, probably because the poem's theme is universal. Like Fairchild's working class families, all of us endeavor to persevere through adversity and carve out our slice of greatness. Sometimes it takes the pinnacle of brilliance to deliver perspective---in this case, a baby-faced farm boy with a mischievous swing who'll eventually slug his way into the New York Yankees hallowed history.

Before I delve into the meat of Body And Soul, it's important I explain a little more about the important place this poem occupies in my mind and heart. When B.H. (Pete) Fairchild came to read at Emerson College two years ago, one of my grad school professors, Dan Tobin, introduced me to B.H. Fairchild. Dan knew the depth of my admiration for Fairchild's poetry and wanted to make sure I could pick his brain for a few minutes. After his reading, I asked B.H. about Body And Soul, specifically about the shocking turn of revealing "the kid" to be a young version of the legendary Mickey Mantle. As I was asking my question a fit of goosebumps cascaded down my arms and then over my whole body. It's rare that we come face to face with the creators of our favorites. I never met Alfred Hitchcock for coffee to ask him how he conceived the final haunting scene of Vertigo. Steve Carell and I have yet to cook up burgers on his George Foreman grill and talk about the intricacies of playing Michael Scott. I wasn't alive to sit in on an Otis Redding recording session at Stax Records in Memphis. I could continue with a litany of other favorites, but I think you catch my drift, or as Otis would have said "you dig." Poetry might be one of the last accessible art forms. Please tell me you see the inherent and wicked irony in this last sentence. Poetry isn't as difficult, high brow, or esoteric as some would have you believe.

Body And Soul is by no means a short poem. It's probably the longest poem I've presented this month, but I would surprisingly contend it's the easiest to read. The long lines Fairchild utilizes mirror a storytelling speech pattern that is just as easy to fall into as a sing-song-Dr.Seuss-rhyming-speech pattern. Fairchild makes this clear, telling us "our fathers fall in love with their own stories, nuzzling / the facts but mauling the truth." Some poems beg to be read to a crowd; Body And Soul is one of these poems. Colloquialisms and slang take the poem from the page and put words into the reader's mouth. I've never been to Commerce, Oklahoma but I feel like a townie when I read " grown men, some in their thirties / and forties who worked together in zinc mines or on oil rigs, /sweat and khaki and long beers after work, steel guitar music / whanging in their ears, little white rent houses to return to / where their wives complained about money and broken Kenmores / and then said the hell with it and sang Body and Soul /
in the bathtub and later that evening with the kids asleep / lay in bed stroking their husband’s wrist tattoo and smoking /Chesterfields from a fresh pack until everything was O.K." Now that he has us firmly entrenched in the life and lore of small town Oklahoma, it's time for the story to begin.

The teams gather and the visiting team is one man short, "but can we use this boy, / he’s only fifteen years old, and at least he’ll make a game." Sure as hell he'll make a game, he'd make any game, especially in a sandlot with a crowd of has-beens and never-was ball playing mechanics and factory workers. They look forward to this game with a vigilant enthusiasm that makes all the hardships smaller. They look forward to putting on the uniform, loosening up their arms, swinging the lumber, tasting dirt and spitting tobacco, rubbing the balls seams against their fingertips. The game is an event, even if there is no great crowd watching and even if they'll never gain a dime off their efforts. And the game heats up: "But they chatter /
and say rock and fire, babe, easy out, and go right ahead / and pitch to the boy, but nothing fancy, just hard fastballs / right around the belt, and the kid takes the first two / but on the third pops the bat around so quick and sure / that they pause a moment before turning around to watch / the ball still rising and finally dropping far beyond / the abandoned tractor that marks left field. Holy shit. / They’re pretty quiet watching him round the bases, / but then, what the hell, the kid knows how to hit a ball, / so what, let’s play some goddamned baseball here." Yes sir, let's play some baseball. Fairchild captures the nuances of the game and playing it so naturally. It's obvious that he grew up playing and knows what it's like to drive the winning run in, but also give up the winning run.

After another home run by the kid, the order turns around and he's at bat again. The pitcher has seen him take two solid pitches and park them deep outside the park. He's determined not to give up a third homer to the kid, who lines up left-handed for his third at bat. "They can’t believe it, and the pitcher, a tall, mean-faced / man from Okarche who just doesn’t give a shit anyway / because his wife ran off two years ago leaving him with / three little ones and a rusted-out Dodge with a cracked block, / leans in hard, looking at the fat catcher like he was the sonofabitch / who ran off with his wife, leans in and throws something / out of the dark, green hell of forbidden fastballs, something / that comes in at the knees and then leaps viciously towards / the kid’s elbow." I have to pause to point out how seamlessly Fairchild moves between the characters and the action in this poem. Here, he moves from the kid, to all the players, to the pitcher, and then back to the kid. The pitcher's life melds with his process and we, yet again, understand just how important this game is to these men. The pitcher is using it as a release and an emblematic reminder of happier days. But even though his anger is magnificent and his love for the game is true, he was not kissed with talent like the kid he's pitching to. The kid "swings exactly the way he did right-handed, / and they all turn like a chorus line toward deep right field / where the ball loses itself in sagebrush and the sad burnt / dust of dustbowl Oklahoma. It is something to see." It sure is something to see and, thank God, Fairchild makes sure we see it.

The kid will come to bat more times and smack more balls into oblivion. He wins the game single-handedly for his team. "And it means nothing to them / though it should to you when they are told the boy’s name is /Mickey Mantle. And that’s the story, and those are the facts." The whole poem has been tinged with magic, but this is where the spell is cast. This is where the poem finds its gravity and cements itself in our minds. In finding this gravity, Fairchild has created the exact moment where the most incisive question must be asked: "why, oh / why in hell didn’t they just throw around the kid, walk him, / after he hit the third homer? Anybody would have, / especially nine men with disappointed wives and dirty socks /and diminishing expectations for whom winning at anything / meant everything." We've seen the dust that accumulates in their lives and we've seen the broken parts in need of repair but lacking the funds necessary to have them replaced. So many of the characters in this poem are bankrupt in some way. To see them lose this baseball game, especially to this kid, is heart wrenching. You can't help but think these men deserve better. But why didn't they pitch around Mantle? Fairchild seizes this question with an elegant sweeping answer: "And they did not because they were men, and this was a boy...And they did not / because they had gone through a depression and a war that had left / them with the idea that being a man in the eyes of their fathers / and everyone else had cost them just too goddamned much to lay it / at the feet of a fifteen year-old boy. And so they did not walk him, / and lost, but at least had some ragged remnant of themselves / to take back home. But there is one thing more, though it is not / a fact. When I see my friend’s father staring hard into the bottomless / well of home plate as Mantle’s fifth homer heads toward Arkansas, / I know that this man with the half-orphaned children and / worthless Dodge had also encountered for his first and possibly / only time the vast gap between talent and genius, has seen / as few have in the harsh light of an Oklahoma Sunday, the blonde / and blue-eyed bringer of truth, who will not easily be forgotten." Wow, I still get chills reading these final fourteen lines. This is the type of writing that changes lives. I know this because it has changed my life, it has made me understand that writing a poem of this magnitude goes beyond working remarkably hard. The pitcher in this poem worked remarkably hard in all facets of his life and still came up empty. I don't want to be that pitcher. I don't want my hard work to go by the wayside. I want affirmation that I've been blessed with unique talent and, although I might not be a genius, I have poems and stories worth telling.

Langston Hughes - A Dream Deferred

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

---Langston Hughes



Langston Hughes’ A Dream Deferred


All month long I’ve shared my favorite poems with all of you. I’ve taken you into my thoughts and laid out my interpretations, leaving it up to you to agree or disagree. Truthfully, I don’t think you have a choice; the poem will speak to you or it will fall on deaf ears. The poem might not speak to you the first time you read it, but in later encounters it will resonate (as I pointed out last night with Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening). Joseph Brodsky, the Russian writer who spent much of his life in the US, theorized that every person should know one poet cover-to-cover. There are many poets that I know thoroughly, but I’m still searching for the poet that I’ll know completely in the way Joseph Brodsky advocated. This search, this quest, is about making a dream come true, about avoiding the deferment and explosion.

Langston Hughes is for many people the poet Joseph Brodsky spoke of. Hughes was a witty, courageous writer. A major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, he was more than a witness and activist; you need only look at a handful of his poems to understand how diverse a writer Langston Hughes was. A Dream Deferred is undoubtedly Langston Hughes’ most famous poem. (Yes, Lorraine Hansberry borrowed from Langston for the title of her iconic play A Raisin In The Sun) I’m consistently intrigued by poems that “crossover” and achieve mainstream appeal and significance. Why will Rudyard Kipling’s If or Robert Frost’s The Road Less Traveled be quoted at a thousand high school and college graduations this spring? Why will a young man woo his beautiful would-be girlfriend with Pablo Neruda’s Love Sonnets? Why does A Dream Deferred seem to spread, seem to “explode” and dazzle young minds? These are questions with simple answers, in fact I’ve already answered them. These poems speak to people en masse. So, then, the ultimate question becomes why do these poems not just speak to people, but speak to overwhelmingly large groups of people. Poetry lab is in session, let’s take on A Dream Deferred as experiment number one.

The poem begins with a question that excludes no one. I’ve never met anyone who has no dreams (and I hope to never meet anyone so hopeless as to have no dreams). Dreams are a universal currency, stockpiled at night when the world itself slows, but never sleeps. Why are dreams important? They serve as motivation, inspiration, and the almighty hope that each of us requires. Our society is plagued with circumstances that are disheartening; Langston Hughes knew this---he lived this---but he still had dreams. He had dreams he acted on and dreams that dried “up / like a raisin in the sun.” I love that simile; I love all the similes in this poem. A dream deferred would seem to die from inactivity and lack of effort, but it would also seem to die from constant thought and the inability to release it, hence the reference to a dream that “fester(s) like a sore---And then run(s).”

What else would a dream deferred resemble? Rotten meat. A Syrupy Sweet. I buy both of these. I can smell the stink of my deferred dreams. I can taste the sugar of the dreams I pursued but never fully realized, still hoping that I can bring them to fruition. And I’ll always feel the weight of the dreams I waited on and said I’d one day pursue. Those are the “heavy load.” With that heaviest of similes looming over the end of the poem, Langston Hughes steers the poem in a completely fresh direction. He bookends the poem’s initial question that launched us into a world of memorable similes with another question: “Or does it explode?” This ending is pure genius. It’s so natural that I wonder if it was the first piece of the poem to arise in Langston Hughes’ mind. The ending is not cartoonish as some of the other similes in the poem are, it opens into the most frightening possibility: that our dreams can explode. With no other similes, no other images, this is what Hughes leaves us with---the abrupt ending of a catastrophically exploding dream. This is why the poem has crossed over: the daunting mystery of imploding and exploding dreams, the hanging silence, and the new dreams that will rise like dust from the kicked up tracks of dreams deferred.

Robert Frost - Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

---Robert Frost


Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

I did not love this poem the first time I read it in high school. I did not love it when, like a boomerang, it returned to me in college. And just last year, this was a poem I would skip over if I saw it in an anthology. There didn't seem much I could gain from this poem. It was straightforward; why should I waste my time and thinking power on a poem that clearly didn't need me. Frost had created a world that was compact and confined, or so I thought. Mary Oliver deserves much of the credit for this poem finding its way into my favorites. (Please do yourself a favor and pick up her Poetry Handbook from your library or bookstore. It's a spirited read on basic poetry concepts with an intended audience of writers and readers alike) In reading her Poetry Handbook earlier this year, I found Oliver's close reading and clinical treatment of Frost's Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening to be enthralling and highly educational. As Oliver proved, this just might be the ideal teaching poem. It has rhythm and meter, a fully developed structure, characters and images, an underlying story, and much mystery. I did not love this poem at first sight, but I've grown to love this poem---as often is the case with love.

Frost begins this iconic poem with a declaration that establishes a sense of the relationship between the poem's speaker and other characters. He starts, "Whose woods these are I think I know." Aha, I know who lives here, but wait, "His house is in the village though." Because he lives a distance from this spot, "He will not see me stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow." The observing of nature and people has always been central to poetry; dare I say poets are glorified voyeurs...Frost's speaker in this poem is pausing for a rest in these woods filling with snow. He doesn't need to do much in terms of imagery to make this beautiful, a snowy woods is naturally incandescent and requires little to grow beautiful in our minds. Instead, Frost utilizes the first stanza to establish much of the poem's framework. He answers questions of where we are and what season we are in, while also texturing the poem's circumstances.

The second stanza turns our view to the speaker's horse, further flesching out the image of him stopping on this snowy evening. He has dismounted from his horse, who "must think it queer / To stop without a farmhouse near / Between the woods and frozen lake / The darkest evening of the year." Frost's generousity in endowing his horse with perceptiveness and intelligence is curious. He intends to raise our eyebrows with this bit of personification. Are we seriously to believe that a horse can discern all of the qualities in this situation that Frost lists? He gives these qualities to his "little horse" as a way of supplying them to readers. We can't avoid these questions, if nothing else for fear of being upstaged by a horse who rivals Mr. Ed in intellect. But why would we want to avoid these questions---they are, indeed, intriguing. Why is he stopping? What appeal does this woods hold? Are his intentions creepy? holy? sincere? for profit? And, like that, Frost has me hooked. Part of his ability to reel me in is certainly due to the tight rhyme scheme and carefully crafted lines with no extraneous words or repetitive line structures.

The third stanza picks up where the previous one left off with more personification. The horse's movement causes his bells to shake, which Frost interprets as asking "if there's some mistake." The horse has become a full fledged character and a mouthpiece for the reading audience. He has transitioned from a "little" insert to complete a rhyme scheme to a vital component in the poem's story. Frost is notorious for his attention to sensory detail. Notice his ear for sound in this poem, especially the third stanza. The calming quiet of a snow storm settles into our hearing when Frost describes the outside as "the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake." But in this excellent bit of description, Frost is also omiting attention to the pivotal question of why the speaker is stopping, allowing tension and mystery to build. Oh, that Robert Frost was a crafty bugger.

Reaching the concluding stanza, we wonder if this reason for stopping will emerge and if a sight will be laid out before our speaker that will catalyze his respite into something larger and emblematic. Frost is direct and evasive at the same time in this final stanza, a very difficult task to accomplish. He praises the woods as "lovely, dark and deep," which seems to be an unlikely compliment. Dark and deep imply unease and impending danger or surprise, making their use as complimentary all the more intriguing. Why has he stopped? We'll never know, but we do know why he's leaving---well, we sort of know why: "But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep." These are the type of last lines that deserve a haunting voice and an eerie wink. They leave me wanting another stanza, but I know another stanza would just about ruin their intrigue that Frost so carefully built in this poem. If we know what these promises are then they are less meaningful---as they are in this poem, these promises can be molded to fit readers specific impressions. The haunting refrain that ends the poem is unexpected and represents a tonal surprise. The sleep is obviously an allegory for much more, but again Frost is evasive and vague, which suits this poem very well. It teeters on the fringes, a perfect place for the poem's location and speaker.

Wallace Stevens - A Postcard From The Volcano

A POSTCARD FROM THE VOLCANO

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
There had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion’s look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is … Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

---Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens’ A Postcard From The Volcano

Poetry lends itself to nostalgia. Words---like pictures, sounds, smells, and other sensory perceptions---trigger memories. At my cousin Kenny’s wedding this past weekend I spent time with extended family members. It is always special to share updates and swap old stories, but I’m partial to the stories or phrases that remind us of the family members that are no longer with us. A simple word, such as Zulch, immediately and vividly conjures up my grandfather. I can picture him eating the jiggling, brown gelatin meat dish one holiday after another, imploring the rest of the family to join him. It didn’t matter to him that the cow’s brain was primarily used to make Zulch, but to us it did. I’m thankful for memories like this and the weight that a single word or phrase can carry within an entire family.

In Wallace Stevens’ A Postcard From The Volcano words are majestic treasures, especially when coming from the mouths of the next generation. Stevens frames the poem with a complete first tercet. He sets up the characters (children and the collective “we” narrator/speaker), he introduces the primary conflict (time’s relentless cycles), and he supplies a stunning metaphor ( “our bones…these were once / as quick as foxes on the hill”). This thoroughness is not a rarity within Wallace Stevens’ poetry. His writing was lyrical and imaginative, thoughtful and experimental, story driven and sound driven. It would be fair to say that Wallace Stevens endeavored to stretch himself as a poet like a child stretches a piece of taffy.

Many lines from A Postcard From The Volcano have made their way into my memory bank. The distant story and the direct address are balanced nicely in this poem, provided Stevens’ lines to have their maximum impact. For example, the third stanza, chock full of ideas, is nestled tightly between two image driven stanzas. “with our bones / We left much more, left what still is / The look of things, left what we felt.” These lines jump off the page and nearly jump out of the poem. It is a declaration of fulfilled experiences to future generations. They are to carve out their own places in this world, but not before knowing they owe much to their ancestors, much more than they might believe possible. The past generations, for which Stevens becomes a spokesperson in this poem, are naturally creators. Stevens mentions a specific mansion in the wind and summarizes “We knew for long the mansion’s look / And what we said of it became / A part of what it is.” Through their words, the act of naming and describing, they crafted the essence of their times and, as aging requires, they bequeathed these accomplishments to the children growing rapidly into the places they previously occupied. These children, as Stevens points out, “Will speak our speech and never know.”

It might be true that every word, sentence, and paragraph has been written before. It might be true that original ideas are nearly impossible to come by these days. And it just might be true that we owe our art to the generations that preceded us, especially the most recent generation for continuing the traditions and styles. Still, don’t we also deserve credit. We recognize the “mansion” just as others have before us and we don’t shy away from describing it because Wallace Stevens or some other writer, actor, musician has described it as “A dirty house in a gutted world, / A tatter of shadows peaked to white, / Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.” There’s no rule stipulating that only one poem can be written about nightingales, sunsets, marching bands, or a host of other topics. The world would be a bland and uniform place is this was true. Fortunately for us, we have words, tethered to our memories, collectively supplied by our ancestors---immediate and ancient. Because of the generations before him, Wallace Stevens was able to write this poem, shining a poetic spotlight on the diminishing emphasis of gratitude to our ancestors, both blood and artistic. And in a small way, this brief essay continues the fight that Wallace Stevens took up with this poem, a fight he was almost certainly continuing for someone else before him.

Emily Dickinson - My Life Closed Twice

1732 (MY LIFE CLOSED TWICE BEFORE ITS CLOSE)

My life closed twice before its close–
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

--- Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the foremost American poets of the 19^th Century. This dazzling duo represents stark differences in writing styles. As we’ve already seen this month, Whitman’s imagination and vitality are incomparable. He subscribes to no rules and believes a holy world of possibility exists inside and around each of us. His contemporary, Emily Dickinson, could not be more different stylistically. Dickinson published very few poems in her life, kept to herself, and lived a life of morals and mystery. Her poems adhere to a strict rigidity in terms of rhyme, meter, and tone. Still, Dickinson shows immense flashes of creativity within the constructs of order she imposed upon her poems. I read her poems and marvel at the challenges she faced (mostly self created) as a writer. Ms. Dickinson and Mr. Whitman are the mother and father of American poetry. As one of their many children, it’s only fitting that I delve a little deeper into their poems.

My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close is a classic. If you were to check out poetry anthologies with Emily Dickinson included, I’m almost certain this poem would be one of her selections. Well received because of the depth and widespread appeal of the topics it addresses, this poem tackles the inescapable: life and death, heaven and hell. Dickinson begins the poem with a curious quartet of lines: “My life closed twice before its close— / It yet remains to see / If immortality unveil / A third event to me.” She creates the illusion of small deaths, the closures that exist in our life and dispatch feelings so final they appear to be preparation for our ultimate end. These crushing moments of loss and sorrow do little to make us excited for death, but after reflection and quiet moments we can glean some worth and value from them. Dickinson wonders if more small endings are in store; even though she doesn’t directly ask, there are undertones of anticipation. The tone she employs is not overtly angry, terrified, or dumbfounded. There is resignation in her simple lines, a forfeiting to the impending end that should be more than frightening to readers.

In the second quatrain, Dickinson clarifies that these events---the small closures---are not positive and, furthermore, they can’t be avoided. “Huge” and “hopeless” in her past, these endings have left a tangible scar on Dickinson. She expects more of the same. Humans are creatures of habit and routine; to draw from experiences in predicting the future is natural. What does she deduce? A memorable closing couplet “Parting is all we know of heaven / And all we need of hell.” What does that mean? Seriously, what does that mean? I’ve read this poem enough times to ask that question and formulate a varied assortment of answers. Tonight, as I read the poem, this is what it means to me: Heaven requires a faith driven separation from those still on earth with a distinct belief in a blessed reunion, while hell is a pariah and the ultimate punishment. We’ve only had one person come back from heaven, proving that the “parting” is particularly permanent. In the same breath, that parting is all we want of hell. We don’t need anyone to come back from hell to tell us how it is down there. Our imaginations are good for many things, and in this case they suffice to create our own conceptions of heaven and hell, conceptions that are more amazing and more terrifying than anything a first hand account could supply.

More so than any other poet, my interpretations of Emily Dickinson’s poetry changes as I acquire life experiences. Perspective is a strange thing---it can, and will, revolutionize our tastes in a gradual way. I might have read My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close when I was sixteen and hated it. Then, I might have revisited it at twenty five and loved it. And I could reread it at sixty two and abhor it again. These interpretations are contingent upon my life experiences coloring my readings of this poem. This is certainly the case with most poetry and artistic work in general, but I find certain writers trigger these evolving tastes more than others. Ms. Dickinson and Mr. Whitman are two I grow to love and respect more with each expiring breath. I get the feeling this fondness is bound to grow, rather than retract.

Bertolt Brecht - And I Always Thought and I Need No Gravestone

AND I ALWAYS THOUGHT

And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone’s hearts must be torn to shreds.
That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself---
Surely you see that.

I NEED NO GRAVESTONE

I need no gravestone, but
If you need one for me
I wish the inscription would read:
He made suggestions. We
Have acted on them.
Such an epitaph would
Honor us all.

---Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht’s Two Poems

Today I include two poems from Bertolt Brecht, who some of you might know for his contributions to theater. These poems are from the same collection of East German writing as Peter Huchel’s poem Roads that I wrote about yesterday. Up to this point I’ve shared a poem a day, but I figured with their length it might be worth packaging these two poems together. They share a direct and honest tone, a reflection seemingly near the end of life, and the belief that simple resolutions might exist. Many people would read these poems and find little poetic about them. Heck, you might have read them and wondered why are these some of Matt’s favorite poems. I’ll tell you why: they are brave. While one admits wrongs and reverses beliefs, the other encapsulates a whole life into two lines. There is undeniable courage in both of those things.

And I Always Thought unravels a held belief for the sake of exploring the good and bad sides of it. The title segues into the first line and Brecht’s ideal that “the very simplest words / must be enough.” Brecht is laying his writing style on the line. Simple words---many writers have extolled the values of using the simple words and not clouding essays, stories, and poems with ostentatious words. We shouldn’t use words for the sake of showing that we know how to use them, we should use words because they are meant to be used in a specific situation. Brecht also believes whole-heartedly in the power of his words: “When I say what things are like / Everyone’s hearts must be torn to shreds.” I’m fascinated by his idealism and the hope he has in his own talents and their ability to profoundly impact others. He becomes a coach in the final two lines, telling us: “That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself--- / Surely you see that.” It is almost as if all of these lines are the personal credos Brecht has operated under for his entire life; now, he is reexamining them. The ambiguity of the poem’s title and first line is worth considering. And I Always Thought could imply a rethinking of these ideals, while it could also represent a reaffirmation of them. The poem lends itself to either interpretation, but in reading it countless times I think it’s clear that Brecht is not yet ready to give up on his beliefs. After all, he’s willing to record them in a poem and share them with others.

I Need No Gravestone is a frighteningly assured poem. From the very first line, the poet is convinced of his place in the world. He deals in absolutes. He doesn’t need a gravestone, but he’s willing to make a concession and offer to accept one if the world (and we) require one. Where would the poem go without this clever turn---we wouldn’t have a gravestone or inscription to consider. It’s sly, but after admitting he doesn’t need or want a gravestone, the poet then offers explicitly what it should say. This decisiveness and attention shows he’s been thinking about this---a lot. And in this inscription he compresses his life (and his words that he idealized in the first poem) to two lines: “He made suggestions. We / have acted upon them.” For someone who always thought the very simplest words must be enough, I wouldn’t have expected anything else.

Peter Huchel - Roads

ROADS

Choked sunset glow
Of crashing time.
Roads. Roads.
Intersections of flight.
Cart tracks across the ploughed field
That with the eyes
Of killed horses
Saw the sky in flames.

Nights with lungs full of smoke,
With the hard breath of the fleeing
When shots
Struck the dusk.
Out of a broken gate
Ash and wind came without a sound,
A fire
That sullenly chewed the darkness.

Corpses,
Flung over the rail tracks,
Their stifled cry
Like a stone on the palate.
A black
Humming cloth of flies
Closed their wounds.

---Peter Huchel (translated by Michael Hamburger)

Peter Huchel’s Roads

20^th century Eastern European poets were (and some still are) consumed with images. Their eyes are different than most poets’; their vision is sculpted by harsh landscapes, mysterious disappearances, and the lingering cloud of the state and communism. Michael Hamburger, the editor of the anthology East German Poetry, provided insight as to why poets like Peter Huchel are important, writing , “All of them, beginning with Brecht, have been preoccupied with moral and social problems to a degree rare among non-communist poets; and that is another reason why their work is, or should be, of special interest to American and British readers with no direct experience of an almost totally collectivized society.” Hamburger is correct; the artists, actors, writers, and poets are sometimes the best lens through which to view a society, especially one that is vastly different. Who knows, maybe during the Cold War our government was employing literati to pore over volumes of fresh writing from Soviet and Communist Bloc nations? That might have been military money well spent.

What can we learn now through a close reading of Peter Huchel’s poem Roads about life in East Germany during communist rule? Of course, we won’t learn logistics, statistics, and government secrets. What we will learn is the intricacies and nuances of being a citizen. The fears, which there were many, of the average man. The poem begins in violence: “Choked sunset glow / Of crashing time. Roads. Roads.” So many poems focus on the serene beauty of sunsets, whereas Huchel destroys that immediately by terming it a “choked” sunset. This implies violence, but also an unknown person or force committing the choking of the sunset. Additionally, the sunset isn’t a calm end to the day, instead it is “crashing time.” This introduction of time and place leads us to the poems main focus: roads. Already, we’re off to a bumpy start.

I find it interesting that in the examples of roads Huchel provides, the first is overtly the most positive of the bunch, yet it is also the most vague. “Intersections of flight” is an interesting definition of roads, but it also implies an industrious voyage beyond the constraints of the ground. I view this line as a glimpse of hope, because the rest of this first stanza is marred by death: “Cart tracks across the ploughed field / that with the eyes / of killed horses / saw the sky in flames.” These are the type of lines that jolt you from your seat. I remember reading this poem for the first time on a plane and I literally grabbed the armrest when I reached the end of the first stanza. The tracks of a ploughed field are representative of a valuable local road, but Huchel has them viewed through the eyes of killed horses. These horses aren’t just dead, they’ve been killed. There is a large difference, the kind that writers in communist countries would have noticed immediately.

From the flames the dead horses view, we land in a second stanza “with lungs full of smoke” and “hard breath of the fleeing.” We are now citizens of this dangerous state. Huchel invites us to join him as inhabitants of this broken land. Broken is an apropos adjective; Huchel uses it to describe a gate in this stanza, but so much of the land seems broken. There are shots that trigger the fleeing and a fire that “sullenly chewed the darkness.” There is no respite from the onslaught of disturbing images. The third stanza begins: “Corpses, / Flung over the rail tracks.” These corpses are treated to “a black / Humming cloth of flies” to shore up their wounds and gashes. The poem ends so gruesomely, and yet I’m in awe of the commonplace presentation of death. Death is not the rare moment that comes after a life has reached its completion; rather, death is common and indiscriminate, arriving for everyone, even the young. Is this the type of thing we might have found valuable to learn about life in East Germany years ago?