Saturday, December 18, 2010
Happy Holidays!!!
The holiday season is upon us and winter is in full swing here in the Washington D.C. area. For some reason I've had a keen eye towards differences lately. It seems every day that we discover more differences in our world. We find differences in the way we think, learn, celebrate, dance, exercise, compete, and eat. Yes, human beings are strange creatures, but our uniqueness is one of the things to love about us. Even amongst our differences, there is one common thread that I think all people could agree on: peace. We all could use peace in our lives and around the world. As we move toward Christmas, I wanted to wish everyone a joyous and peaceful holiday season (no matter what you personally celebrate!). Here's a brief movie featuring Alfred Lord Tennyson's classic Christmas poem Voices In The Mist. You can also check it out on my youtube channel at:
Sunday, October 17, 2010
No tricks, just a little treat...
Yes, we are still months away from National Poetry Month and the start of my fourth year of blogposts, but in the interim I wanted to share something that I thought everyone would enjoy. In a graduate course that I'm currently taking we had an assignment to create a video to use in the classroom. The video I came up with brings to life Gary Soto's poem Oranges, which I wrote about in the first year of this blog. Check this video out! I hope to make more of them to post here (assuming I have time to make them!). Let me know what you think.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Let Evening Come --- Jane Kenyon
LET EVENING COME
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
--- Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon's Let Evening Come:
A long time ago I settled upon this poem to end the third year of my National Poetry Month Blog. It is the type of poem that you read and cannot forget. The images enter your brain and suddenly the natural world is inside of you. The light, the cricket, the moon, the fox, the wind, the bottle and the oats, and the evening---all of it comes together to deliver a simple truth: there is beauty in this life of ours and even though life will certainly end the beauty will remain with us, just in another form, in the comfort of faith, family, and friends. I read an interview with Jane Kenyon pertaining to this poem. A woman who battled the demons of depression, Kenyon has written some of the most startling and honest verse about the pain and paralysis of mental illness. This poem stands in contrast to her others, working as a harbinger of hope and goodness amidst the many horrors we must endure. As Kenyon said in the aforementioned interview, "How, when there could have been nothing, does it happen that there is love, kindness, and beauty?" I honestly don't know, but thankfully we have poets like Jane Kenyon to explore this question for us.
As the poem starts it is made clear to the audience that this is a poem about the balance of what is coming next and what is happening right now. The conflict between the present and future is fascinating to me: the inherent lineage between what you do now and what you will do next. "Let the light of late afternoon / shine through chinks in the barn" is an opening that serves many purposes. Utilizing a command is a very distinct way to set the poem's tone. In the images, we notice that afternoon is slipping off toward night because it is late, but also we can see it tangibly in how the light is escaping through rough spots in the barn. The metaphor of an aged body of a person who's light---I mean life---is fading is unavoidable. Are we to read something extra into the contrast of the light "moving / up the bales as the sun moves down"?
Kenyon continues the commands, this time advising the cricket to find its call. She compares the cricket to a "woman tak(ing) up her needles / and her yarn." Again we have a comparison that evokes age, but also evokes an earnestness and purposefulness. While knitting might be associated with old woman, the fruits of their labor---hats, scarves, gloves, and other items---serve important purposes to warmth and preservation in cold seasons. The second stanza ends with the first appearance of a refrain that drives the poem and will predictably become the final line of the poem: "let evening come."
We are building to the arrival of evening, just as a well-lived life builds to its end. But the essence isn't in the beginning or the ending, as cliched as it may sound the essence of life is in the living. It is in the dew, but more so in the hoe being used to produce and labor, rather than being "abandoned / in long grass." It is in the stars and moon's "silver horn" because there should be a certain time in all of our lives where night does not signal a stiff ending to our day, but rather a period of discovery and activity. But in this instance, Kenyon uses the stars and the moon as further signals that the close of day is also the close of life's rhythms and essential movements. "Let the fox go back to its sandy den. / Let the wind die down. Let the shed / go black inside. Let evening come." The list is a progression of life, in its many forms, taking natural paths towards closure. Even when closure has occurred in one form, there are other objects and elements of like that remain. Kenyon illustrates this beautifully in the penultimate stanza. For the bottle, useless after its liquid is drunk; for the scoop, useless without a hand to operate it; for the air soon to be expelled from the lungs, these are the items most lonely and prone to loss, still she urges them to "let evening come." But why does Kenyon do this?
Most people are afraid of death, they just choose not to talk about it. I can respect that. Morbid conversations about death are not particularly endearing and even amongst the closest of friends it is a topic that is likely to induce some level of unease and discomfort. What I've come to discover is that while most people are afraid of death, they are more afraid of the unknown and of losing control, the things that death ultimately represents. The unknown is only frightening if you allow your mind and soul to stray from your faith and belief in fellow human beings, in a sublime sense of goodness and balance in the universe, and/or in a higher power. And what is there to fear about losing control, in fact I would argue that we are often at our best when we do not hold total control over a situation. Jane Kenyon's answer and her testament to faith is present in the poem's final stanza: "Let it come, as it will, and don't / be afraid. God does not leave us / comfortless, so let evening come."
There's a certain magic to the fact that many people near death can hold on just long enough to say final goodbyes, as if they have a minuscule amount of control over their mortality, enough to hold out for the little things that are most important to them. Similarly, I find the presages of the gravely ill as to when they will die to be shocking in their accuracy. In our age and experiences we come to know the rhythms of our bodies, just as well as the shortcomings that undo us. We come to see, feel, and hear the world around us, all of it. Some may say we come to know these vital details when all is lost already, when it's far too late for practical use. Jane Kenyon shows us this is not what we should be concerning ourselves with; we should let go and "let evening come" because "God does not leave us / comfortless." I take great comfort in this poem and I hope you do as well.
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
--- Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon's Let Evening Come:
A long time ago I settled upon this poem to end the third year of my National Poetry Month Blog. It is the type of poem that you read and cannot forget. The images enter your brain and suddenly the natural world is inside of you. The light, the cricket, the moon, the fox, the wind, the bottle and the oats, and the evening---all of it comes together to deliver a simple truth: there is beauty in this life of ours and even though life will certainly end the beauty will remain with us, just in another form, in the comfort of faith, family, and friends. I read an interview with Jane Kenyon pertaining to this poem. A woman who battled the demons of depression, Kenyon has written some of the most startling and honest verse about the pain and paralysis of mental illness. This poem stands in contrast to her others, working as a harbinger of hope and goodness amidst the many horrors we must endure. As Kenyon said in the aforementioned interview, "How, when there could have been nothing, does it happen that there is love, kindness, and beauty?" I honestly don't know, but thankfully we have poets like Jane Kenyon to explore this question for us.
As the poem starts it is made clear to the audience that this is a poem about the balance of what is coming next and what is happening right now. The conflict between the present and future is fascinating to me: the inherent lineage between what you do now and what you will do next. "Let the light of late afternoon / shine through chinks in the barn" is an opening that serves many purposes. Utilizing a command is a very distinct way to set the poem's tone. In the images, we notice that afternoon is slipping off toward night because it is late, but also we can see it tangibly in how the light is escaping through rough spots in the barn. The metaphor of an aged body of a person who's light---I mean life---is fading is unavoidable. Are we to read something extra into the contrast of the light "moving / up the bales as the sun moves down"?
Kenyon continues the commands, this time advising the cricket to find its call. She compares the cricket to a "woman tak(ing) up her needles / and her yarn." Again we have a comparison that evokes age, but also evokes an earnestness and purposefulness. While knitting might be associated with old woman, the fruits of their labor---hats, scarves, gloves, and other items---serve important purposes to warmth and preservation in cold seasons. The second stanza ends with the first appearance of a refrain that drives the poem and will predictably become the final line of the poem: "let evening come."
We are building to the arrival of evening, just as a well-lived life builds to its end. But the essence isn't in the beginning or the ending, as cliched as it may sound the essence of life is in the living. It is in the dew, but more so in the hoe being used to produce and labor, rather than being "abandoned / in long grass." It is in the stars and moon's "silver horn" because there should be a certain time in all of our lives where night does not signal a stiff ending to our day, but rather a period of discovery and activity. But in this instance, Kenyon uses the stars and the moon as further signals that the close of day is also the close of life's rhythms and essential movements. "Let the fox go back to its sandy den. / Let the wind die down. Let the shed / go black inside. Let evening come." The list is a progression of life, in its many forms, taking natural paths towards closure. Even when closure has occurred in one form, there are other objects and elements of like that remain. Kenyon illustrates this beautifully in the penultimate stanza. For the bottle, useless after its liquid is drunk; for the scoop, useless without a hand to operate it; for the air soon to be expelled from the lungs, these are the items most lonely and prone to loss, still she urges them to "let evening come." But why does Kenyon do this?
Most people are afraid of death, they just choose not to talk about it. I can respect that. Morbid conversations about death are not particularly endearing and even amongst the closest of friends it is a topic that is likely to induce some level of unease and discomfort. What I've come to discover is that while most people are afraid of death, they are more afraid of the unknown and of losing control, the things that death ultimately represents. The unknown is only frightening if you allow your mind and soul to stray from your faith and belief in fellow human beings, in a sublime sense of goodness and balance in the universe, and/or in a higher power. And what is there to fear about losing control, in fact I would argue that we are often at our best when we do not hold total control over a situation. Jane Kenyon's answer and her testament to faith is present in the poem's final stanza: "Let it come, as it will, and don't / be afraid. God does not leave us / comfortless, so let evening come."
There's a certain magic to the fact that many people near death can hold on just long enough to say final goodbyes, as if they have a minuscule amount of control over their mortality, enough to hold out for the little things that are most important to them. Similarly, I find the presages of the gravely ill as to when they will die to be shocking in their accuracy. In our age and experiences we come to know the rhythms of our bodies, just as well as the shortcomings that undo us. We come to see, feel, and hear the world around us, all of it. Some may say we come to know these vital details when all is lost already, when it's far too late for practical use. Jane Kenyon shows us this is not what we should be concerning ourselves with; we should let go and "let evening come" because "God does not leave us / comfortless." I take great comfort in this poem and I hope you do as well.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Nothing Twice - Wislawa Szymborska
Nothing Twice
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.
No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.
One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.
The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.
----Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak
I first encountered this poem in graduate school when I was studying Eastern European poets, specifically Polish poets. Wislawa Szymborska stood out among her male counterparts. Her talent was unmistakable, but the hopefulness and playfulness in her language was what differentiated her from other poets from Eastern Europe. Nothing Twice is a sterling example of Szymborska's spirit as translated by the equally talented Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. We know that there is no magic pause button when it comes to life; we can't rewind the good moments and fast forward through the tragedies and atrocities. We live and life is unforgiving, for better or worse. But in its exactness, life has the unique partner of memory. We remember what we did in the past when we encountered a similar situation and hopefully we adjust our behavior and expectations accordingly. Still, memory can be useless, for example when we step outside of our comfort zones to experience new things. There is an exhilaration that comes with the sense of fear you feel when experiencing something new, mostly because you are letting go. Not in control, you rely on the world around you and are open to all it has to offer. In Nothing Twice, Szymborska is urging us onward to days of meaning and worth, rather than days that end leaving us wondering where they went.
"Nothing can ever happen twice." The poem begins with this statement, a statement so strong that we can do little more accept it as fact. Deja vu aside, Szymborska is spot on with her initial point and she follows it with this related analysis: "In consequence, the sorry fact is / that we arrive here improvised / and leave without the chance to practice." The tone, at this point, is matter-of-fact and a little disappointed by the merciless nature of life. I'm reminded of a line I've referenced a few times in this blog, even once earlier this month: If only I knew now what I knew back then…It is a great philosophical dilemma—are we meant to only possess essential knowledge after the moment it could have been most useful to us? Who knows, and more importantly is that even the question we should be asking? Without a lively and adventurous spirit we'll lack those experiences anyways, which is why Szymborska takes a different, more humorous approach to drive home the same point as before in the second stanza. "Even if there is no one dumber, / if you're the planet's biggest dunce, / you can't repeat the class in summer: / this course is only offered once." I love how seamless the rhyme scheme and tone weave together to infuse humor into the poem. You can't help but laugh when you read those lines and picture yourself wearing the dunce cap.
The poem begins a shift from the conceptual to the concrete in the third stanza with the mention of specific kisses. Sure, "No day copies yesterday" is a valid and valuable line, but for the line and idea behind it to have the greatest impact an individualized emotion connection needs to be established. By inserting the word "precisely" in front of kisses, Szymborska dares you to flip through your catalogue of kisses and pull out some of those fun, sensual, surprising, and even embarrassing ones. These are the moments that have made you who you are today, because no two were "precisely" alike you begin to see the parallel that she is attempting to convey about days. If the kiss isn't enough, Szymborska presents the example of an "idle tongue" that "mentions your name by accident." Invoking a lost love, the poet is further casting out her nets to yank in the readers by their hearts. The mere accidental mention of her love's name fills her with the beauty of a rose, "all hue and scent." Even when the love is present with her in the next stanza, the poet moves from the wondrous rose to the tireless, painful ticking of the clock. It's a jarring shift, but highly effective in reminding us that time is unrelenting and carries on with the same "precision" that we earlier saw attached to the far more attractive feature of kisses.
In the final two stanzas Szymborska returns to the style and tone that made the beginning of the poem so strong. She supplies a rhetorical question about fear of time, which fits nicely on the heels of the shift of the previous stanza. Szymborska also provides a quasi rhetorical answer: "It's in its nature not to stay: / Today is always gone tomorrow." Yes, that is true, but a large part of me feels I knew that already, in fact I feel like Szymborska told me that already. At this point in the poem, I need a stronger ending; thank goodness there is one stanza left! Up to this point most of the poem has focused on the nature of time and our reaction to it, showing how no two days are the same so we must live them fully. This is a great message, but to reiterate this again would steer the poem into a predictable zone that the poem wouldn't be able to recover from. Instead of cruising, Szymborska opts for the bumpy path and this change-of-direction works like a charm. We are the ones on display in the final stanza, our nature is examined and the ultimate similarity is revealed: just as each day, each moment is different than the next, we, too, possess this same level of uniqueness. I am unlike any other human being who has ever existed, who currently exists, and who will ever exist. When you take this individuality and combine it with the same individuality of days in our lives then you see the pristine opportunities we have before us in pretty much every moment we are alive. It's a shame we waste so many of these moments with the stupid fallacy of operating under what others think of us.
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.
No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.
One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.
The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.
----Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak
I first encountered this poem in graduate school when I was studying Eastern European poets, specifically Polish poets. Wislawa Szymborska stood out among her male counterparts. Her talent was unmistakable, but the hopefulness and playfulness in her language was what differentiated her from other poets from Eastern Europe. Nothing Twice is a sterling example of Szymborska's spirit as translated by the equally talented Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. We know that there is no magic pause button when it comes to life; we can't rewind the good moments and fast forward through the tragedies and atrocities. We live and life is unforgiving, for better or worse. But in its exactness, life has the unique partner of memory. We remember what we did in the past when we encountered a similar situation and hopefully we adjust our behavior and expectations accordingly. Still, memory can be useless, for example when we step outside of our comfort zones to experience new things. There is an exhilaration that comes with the sense of fear you feel when experiencing something new, mostly because you are letting go. Not in control, you rely on the world around you and are open to all it has to offer. In Nothing Twice, Szymborska is urging us onward to days of meaning and worth, rather than days that end leaving us wondering where they went.
"Nothing can ever happen twice." The poem begins with this statement, a statement so strong that we can do little more accept it as fact. Deja vu aside, Szymborska is spot on with her initial point and she follows it with this related analysis: "In consequence, the sorry fact is / that we arrive here improvised / and leave without the chance to practice." The tone, at this point, is matter-of-fact and a little disappointed by the merciless nature of life. I'm reminded of a line I've referenced a few times in this blog, even once earlier this month: If only I knew now what I knew back then…It is a great philosophical dilemma—are we meant to only possess essential knowledge after the moment it could have been most useful to us? Who knows, and more importantly is that even the question we should be asking? Without a lively and adventurous spirit we'll lack those experiences anyways, which is why Szymborska takes a different, more humorous approach to drive home the same point as before in the second stanza. "Even if there is no one dumber, / if you're the planet's biggest dunce, / you can't repeat the class in summer: / this course is only offered once." I love how seamless the rhyme scheme and tone weave together to infuse humor into the poem. You can't help but laugh when you read those lines and picture yourself wearing the dunce cap.
The poem begins a shift from the conceptual to the concrete in the third stanza with the mention of specific kisses. Sure, "No day copies yesterday" is a valid and valuable line, but for the line and idea behind it to have the greatest impact an individualized emotion connection needs to be established. By inserting the word "precisely" in front of kisses, Szymborska dares you to flip through your catalogue of kisses and pull out some of those fun, sensual, surprising, and even embarrassing ones. These are the moments that have made you who you are today, because no two were "precisely" alike you begin to see the parallel that she is attempting to convey about days. If the kiss isn't enough, Szymborska presents the example of an "idle tongue" that "mentions your name by accident." Invoking a lost love, the poet is further casting out her nets to yank in the readers by their hearts. The mere accidental mention of her love's name fills her with the beauty of a rose, "all hue and scent." Even when the love is present with her in the next stanza, the poet moves from the wondrous rose to the tireless, painful ticking of the clock. It's a jarring shift, but highly effective in reminding us that time is unrelenting and carries on with the same "precision" that we earlier saw attached to the far more attractive feature of kisses.
In the final two stanzas Szymborska returns to the style and tone that made the beginning of the poem so strong. She supplies a rhetorical question about fear of time, which fits nicely on the heels of the shift of the previous stanza. Szymborska also provides a quasi rhetorical answer: "It's in its nature not to stay: / Today is always gone tomorrow." Yes, that is true, but a large part of me feels I knew that already, in fact I feel like Szymborska told me that already. At this point in the poem, I need a stronger ending; thank goodness there is one stanza left! Up to this point most of the poem has focused on the nature of time and our reaction to it, showing how no two days are the same so we must live them fully. This is a great message, but to reiterate this again would steer the poem into a predictable zone that the poem wouldn't be able to recover from. Instead of cruising, Szymborska opts for the bumpy path and this change-of-direction works like a charm. We are the ones on display in the final stanza, our nature is examined and the ultimate similarity is revealed: just as each day, each moment is different than the next, we, too, possess this same level of uniqueness. I am unlike any other human being who has ever existed, who currently exists, and who will ever exist. When you take this individuality and combine it with the same individuality of days in our lives then you see the pristine opportunities we have before us in pretty much every moment we are alive. It's a shame we waste so many of these moments with the stupid fallacy of operating under what others think of us.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Hatred - Gwendolyn Bennett
HATRED
I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.
---Gwendolyn Bennett
Gwendolyn Bennett's Hatred:
With all the poems I've featured that centered on love, you had to expect I would eventually balance them out with a poem or two about something not as pleasant. I don't enjoy turning toward pessimistic and negative topics, but such detours are sometimes refreshing, and other times they are downright necessary. If you're asking why hatred or anger are necessary, then, by all means, let me explain why. Think for a moment of the man who bottles up his anger, never letting even the smallest smidgen of disapproval or disgust seep from his tightly controlled body. Or consider the woman who puts on a happy face every day, even though her daily life is plagued by inequities, degradations, and abuse. Believe me, I could provide you a long list of examples, but that's not what's important. We all face moments that prove how severely unfair life (and the people in our lives) can be. To deny that these moments exist is wrong, just as it is wrong to deny that moments of sheer brilliance and love exist. In fact, a lifetime of denial only clears the way for a monumental, and sometimes deadly, explosion. The raw emotions contained in anger and, yes, hatred are direct relatives to the similarly powerful emotions that accompany love. It goes without saying that love and hate are intertwined, but Gwendolyn Bennett offers today's poem as further proof.
"I shall hate you / Like a dart of singing steel / Shot through still air / At even tide." Never has hatred been more poetic and beautiful than in those initial lines from Gwendolyn Bennett's poem Hatred. Working against our expectations, Bennett eschews our typical ideas about hatred being a snarling, unrefined emotion. Sure, the venom is still present in abundance, but Bennett presents a notion of hatred that is polished and premeditated. The dart she compares her hatred to is made of "singing steel" rather than rugged, rough metal. When the dart is "Shot through still air / At even-tide" the poet has, indirectly, become a calculated sniper with her hatred, aiming and firing away at the "you" character the poem is addressed to. Still, this represents just one incarnation of her hatred; she has more in her repertoire than deadly force. Her hatred will also be doled out "solemnly / As pines are sober / When they stand etched / Against the sky." For some the violent hatred might be the most frightening, but for others this stoic hatred that resolves to grow regardless of the elements around it is far more terrifying. This second hatred is resolved and thought-out in a manner that indicates a change-of-mind is nearly impossible.
Just when I said it was impossible for Bennett to reverse her hatred for the "you" character this poem is addressed to, she threads the needle and draws the first stitch towards forgiveness when she asserts that "Hating you shall be a game / Played with cool hands / And slim fingers." Her joy in hating this person is actually, I believe, a good sign. That she can derive some happiness from this activity is indicative of the depth of her emotional connection with the person…or it's indicative of how horribly she was wronged by the person, which, come to think of it, would be a very bad sign for any chance of forgiveness. This indecisiveness is a nutshell example of why this poem is excellently constructed, and a further example of the poem's brilliance is on display when Bennett reasserts her dominance: "Your heart will yearn / For the lonely splendor / Of the pine tree / While rekindled fires / In my eyes / Shall wound you like swift arrows." She will decide how this hatred will arrive upon him and what brand of hatred it will be. You can bet that Bennett will opt for the most painful and lingering form of hatred.
If you're like me then by this point in the poem you were chomping at the bit to find out what it was that this person did to Bennett. I promise I'm not a gossip hound, but with these tour-de-force descriptions of hatred it's hard not to wonder what generated them. Bennett employs a technique common in come of the best horror and suspense films ever made: she doesn't show us the root of her hatred, instead offering just enough to let our imaginations run ferociously wild. "Memory will lay its hands / Upon your breast / And you will understand / My hatred." These lines essentially say "You know what you did," and while some readers may view this as a cheap ending, I'm not one of those readers. It is a private ending to a very public poem, but by turning inward Bennett opens the poem back up to her audience. We all have ghosts traveling with us from past indiscretions we'd rather forget. These reminders can be suppressed, but they always find a way to break free, whether it is a familiar scent from that moment or a word that was spoken that day. Our present is not immune to our past; if we were wrong, someone still possesses a memory of it, even if you are the one with the memory, even if you are the one unable to forgive…yourself.
I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.
---Gwendolyn Bennett
Gwendolyn Bennett's Hatred:
With all the poems I've featured that centered on love, you had to expect I would eventually balance them out with a poem or two about something not as pleasant. I don't enjoy turning toward pessimistic and negative topics, but such detours are sometimes refreshing, and other times they are downright necessary. If you're asking why hatred or anger are necessary, then, by all means, let me explain why. Think for a moment of the man who bottles up his anger, never letting even the smallest smidgen of disapproval or disgust seep from his tightly controlled body. Or consider the woman who puts on a happy face every day, even though her daily life is plagued by inequities, degradations, and abuse. Believe me, I could provide you a long list of examples, but that's not what's important. We all face moments that prove how severely unfair life (and the people in our lives) can be. To deny that these moments exist is wrong, just as it is wrong to deny that moments of sheer brilliance and love exist. In fact, a lifetime of denial only clears the way for a monumental, and sometimes deadly, explosion. The raw emotions contained in anger and, yes, hatred are direct relatives to the similarly powerful emotions that accompany love. It goes without saying that love and hate are intertwined, but Gwendolyn Bennett offers today's poem as further proof.
"I shall hate you / Like a dart of singing steel / Shot through still air / At even tide." Never has hatred been more poetic and beautiful than in those initial lines from Gwendolyn Bennett's poem Hatred. Working against our expectations, Bennett eschews our typical ideas about hatred being a snarling, unrefined emotion. Sure, the venom is still present in abundance, but Bennett presents a notion of hatred that is polished and premeditated. The dart she compares her hatred to is made of "singing steel" rather than rugged, rough metal. When the dart is "Shot through still air / At even-tide" the poet has, indirectly, become a calculated sniper with her hatred, aiming and firing away at the "you" character the poem is addressed to. Still, this represents just one incarnation of her hatred; she has more in her repertoire than deadly force. Her hatred will also be doled out "solemnly / As pines are sober / When they stand etched / Against the sky." For some the violent hatred might be the most frightening, but for others this stoic hatred that resolves to grow regardless of the elements around it is far more terrifying. This second hatred is resolved and thought-out in a manner that indicates a change-of-mind is nearly impossible.
Just when I said it was impossible for Bennett to reverse her hatred for the "you" character this poem is addressed to, she threads the needle and draws the first stitch towards forgiveness when she asserts that "Hating you shall be a game / Played with cool hands / And slim fingers." Her joy in hating this person is actually, I believe, a good sign. That she can derive some happiness from this activity is indicative of the depth of her emotional connection with the person…or it's indicative of how horribly she was wronged by the person, which, come to think of it, would be a very bad sign for any chance of forgiveness. This indecisiveness is a nutshell example of why this poem is excellently constructed, and a further example of the poem's brilliance is on display when Bennett reasserts her dominance: "Your heart will yearn / For the lonely splendor / Of the pine tree / While rekindled fires / In my eyes / Shall wound you like swift arrows." She will decide how this hatred will arrive upon him and what brand of hatred it will be. You can bet that Bennett will opt for the most painful and lingering form of hatred.
If you're like me then by this point in the poem you were chomping at the bit to find out what it was that this person did to Bennett. I promise I'm not a gossip hound, but with these tour-de-force descriptions of hatred it's hard not to wonder what generated them. Bennett employs a technique common in come of the best horror and suspense films ever made: she doesn't show us the root of her hatred, instead offering just enough to let our imaginations run ferociously wild. "Memory will lay its hands / Upon your breast / And you will understand / My hatred." These lines essentially say "You know what you did," and while some readers may view this as a cheap ending, I'm not one of those readers. It is a private ending to a very public poem, but by turning inward Bennett opens the poem back up to her audience. We all have ghosts traveling with us from past indiscretions we'd rather forget. These reminders can be suppressed, but they always find a way to break free, whether it is a familiar scent from that moment or a word that was spoken that day. Our present is not immune to our past; if we were wrong, someone still possesses a memory of it, even if you are the one with the memory, even if you are the one unable to forgive…yourself.
Friday, April 23, 2010
I Walked Past A House Where I Lived Once - Yehuda Amichai
I WALKED PAST A HOUSE WHERE I LIVED ONCE
I walked past a house where I lived once:
a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
Many years have passed with the quiet hum
of the staircase bulb going on
and off and on again.
The keyholes are like little wounds
where all the blood seeped out. And inside,
people pale as death.
I want to stand once again as I did
holding my first love all night long in the doorway.
When we left at dawn, the house
began to fall apart and since then the city and since then
the whole world.
I want to be filled with longing again
till dark burn marks show on my skin.
I want to be written again
in the Book of Life, to be written every single day
till the writing hand hurts.
---Yehuda Amichai
I could mention the hippocampus and other parts of the limbic system. I could drone on about the importance of the cerebral cortex. Heck, I could even diagram how a memory is formed and retained within your brain. It would be nice to understand why we fixate on certain memories, while others rush away like rain water toward a sewer. Even a cursory understanding of the biology and psychology behind memory won't better help us understand Yehuda Amichai's poem "I Walked Past A House Where I Lived Once." No, this poem is most accessible to those of us who have lived, lost, and live with the memories of what we once had. The loss could be as simple as a favorite pair of shoes that were completely worn down and needed to be tossed out. The loss could be as grand as a person, a loved one you couldn't imagine life without. In the case of this poem, Amichai's loss is a composite of many things he no longer has, but it all starts with his house.
"I walked past a house where I lived once: / a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there." Am I the only one who thinks that is a haunting start for a poem? And the mystery is not wasted on me; in the poet's former residence the figures could be memories of him and his lover, or possibly his parents, or maybe they are two random strangers living in this intimate space that was once his. I often wonder about the houses I grew up in as a child. How did the families that came after mine see the house? Did they treat it the same way we did? Decorate it differently? Clean it regularly? Some of the questions I ask are foolish, probably because when viewed together they appear to refer to the house as if it is alive. Leaving a house behind for a new location, there is the undeniable feeling that your family is lessened and that something or someone is missing, a void that is only slightly filled by the new house. Amichai offers a clever metaphor of "staircase bulb going on / and off and on again" to demonstrate the emotional tension that comes with moving. The pain is reflected in the physical edifices of the house itself: "The keyholes are like little wounds / where all the blood seeped out." Certainly there is a loss in leaving a place and sometimes an even greater emotional strain in having to start over somewhere new.
While losing a house can be traumatic, there seems to be no greater trauma than losing a person from your life. When a friend, family member, or lover disappears from your life the pain is long-lasting and while its intensity might decrease over time it will never completely be washed from your consciousness. The sight of his old house has led Amichai back to memories of his earliest love: "I want to stand once again as I did / holding my first love all night long in the doorway." Amichai wants to return to a simpler, purer time in his life. He wants to recapture the hopefulness and optimism his younger, more naive self once had. I can't blame him one bit because I know I have felt the same way. When you realize you're mortal and moving past moments in your life that were colored with seminal greatness you want to hit the rewind button and experience them all over again. This desire has to be tied somewhat to the fear that life is passing you by and that you might not have many moments left like the instances of early love Amichai wrote about in this poem. In Amichai's case, once the moment ends that era of his life slams to a close in a dramatic fashion: "When we left at dawn, the house / began to fall apart and since then the city and since then / the whole world." He has tied his well-being in the present to a single night of youthful reverie, asserting that in leaving the house that one night everything in his life, including the house, began to rot before his eyes.
As the poem moves toward its conclusion I find it interesting that Amichai starts his final three stanzas with the phrase "I want." This recurring beginning acts as a familiar, prayer-like chant as Amichai details his physical and emotional desires. The "I want" constructs could be read as forceful demands and a valid case could be made for this, but I would argue that they are battered, desperate pleas. "I want to be filled with longing again / till dark burn marks show on my skin" are the words of a man who already has been burned and bruised, and if he's going to feel that way then he wants the payoff that comes with it. "I want to be written again / in the Book of Life, to be written every single day / till the writing hand hurts" are lines that acknowledge the imperfections of love and memory, and yet Amichai wants those bittersweet moments of life to return to him. Momentum clearly builds as the poem reaches its end and the momentum seems to point to one thing: Yehuda Amichai has had enough of his past memories, he wants to return to making them in the present.
I walked past a house where I lived once:
a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
Many years have passed with the quiet hum
of the staircase bulb going on
and off and on again.
The keyholes are like little wounds
where all the blood seeped out. And inside,
people pale as death.
I want to stand once again as I did
holding my first love all night long in the doorway.
When we left at dawn, the house
began to fall apart and since then the city and since then
the whole world.
I want to be filled with longing again
till dark burn marks show on my skin.
I want to be written again
in the Book of Life, to be written every single day
till the writing hand hurts.
---Yehuda Amichai
I could mention the hippocampus and other parts of the limbic system. I could drone on about the importance of the cerebral cortex. Heck, I could even diagram how a memory is formed and retained within your brain. It would be nice to understand why we fixate on certain memories, while others rush away like rain water toward a sewer. Even a cursory understanding of the biology and psychology behind memory won't better help us understand Yehuda Amichai's poem "I Walked Past A House Where I Lived Once." No, this poem is most accessible to those of us who have lived, lost, and live with the memories of what we once had. The loss could be as simple as a favorite pair of shoes that were completely worn down and needed to be tossed out. The loss could be as grand as a person, a loved one you couldn't imagine life without. In the case of this poem, Amichai's loss is a composite of many things he no longer has, but it all starts with his house.
"I walked past a house where I lived once: / a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there." Am I the only one who thinks that is a haunting start for a poem? And the mystery is not wasted on me; in the poet's former residence the figures could be memories of him and his lover, or possibly his parents, or maybe they are two random strangers living in this intimate space that was once his. I often wonder about the houses I grew up in as a child. How did the families that came after mine see the house? Did they treat it the same way we did? Decorate it differently? Clean it regularly? Some of the questions I ask are foolish, probably because when viewed together they appear to refer to the house as if it is alive. Leaving a house behind for a new location, there is the undeniable feeling that your family is lessened and that something or someone is missing, a void that is only slightly filled by the new house. Amichai offers a clever metaphor of "staircase bulb going on / and off and on again" to demonstrate the emotional tension that comes with moving. The pain is reflected in the physical edifices of the house itself: "The keyholes are like little wounds / where all the blood seeped out." Certainly there is a loss in leaving a place and sometimes an even greater emotional strain in having to start over somewhere new.
While losing a house can be traumatic, there seems to be no greater trauma than losing a person from your life. When a friend, family member, or lover disappears from your life the pain is long-lasting and while its intensity might decrease over time it will never completely be washed from your consciousness. The sight of his old house has led Amichai back to memories of his earliest love: "I want to stand once again as I did / holding my first love all night long in the doorway." Amichai wants to return to a simpler, purer time in his life. He wants to recapture the hopefulness and optimism his younger, more naive self once had. I can't blame him one bit because I know I have felt the same way. When you realize you're mortal and moving past moments in your life that were colored with seminal greatness you want to hit the rewind button and experience them all over again. This desire has to be tied somewhat to the fear that life is passing you by and that you might not have many moments left like the instances of early love Amichai wrote about in this poem. In Amichai's case, once the moment ends that era of his life slams to a close in a dramatic fashion: "When we left at dawn, the house / began to fall apart and since then the city and since then / the whole world." He has tied his well-being in the present to a single night of youthful reverie, asserting that in leaving the house that one night everything in his life, including the house, began to rot before his eyes.
As the poem moves toward its conclusion I find it interesting that Amichai starts his final three stanzas with the phrase "I want." This recurring beginning acts as a familiar, prayer-like chant as Amichai details his physical and emotional desires. The "I want" constructs could be read as forceful demands and a valid case could be made for this, but I would argue that they are battered, desperate pleas. "I want to be filled with longing again / till dark burn marks show on my skin" are the words of a man who already has been burned and bruised, and if he's going to feel that way then he wants the payoff that comes with it. "I want to be written again / in the Book of Life, to be written every single day / till the writing hand hurts" are lines that acknowledge the imperfections of love and memory, and yet Amichai wants those bittersweet moments of life to return to him. Momentum clearly builds as the poem reaches its end and the momentum seems to point to one thing: Yehuda Amichai has had enough of his past memories, he wants to return to making them in the present.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
After Years --- Ted Kooser
AFTER YEARS
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
---Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser's After Years
Some people prefer testing attitude with the question 'is the glass half empty or half full,' but I think the moments when we feel curious about our place in the vast, perpetually changing universe are an even better test. The only problem with this alternate gauge of perspective is that these moments are, by nature, spontaneous; a contrived moment of introspection will not tell us anything about ourselves. I don't need someone telling me I'm strange, or destined for greatness, or utterly purposeless; believe me, I will discover these things on my own. In fact, it's imperative that I discover them on my own, just as Ted Kooser does in his perfectly bittersweet poem After Years.
The speaker in Ted's poem stumbles into one of those moments where an internal pause button is pressed on the giant remote control inside of him. He sees a former lover "from a distance" and it literally stops him cold in his tracks. Ironically, while he is physically still, his mind hums along at warp speed through his own personal ecosystem created within his memories. Upon seeing her, Kooser sharply observes "the glittering face of a glacier / slid into the sea." One random near rendezvous seems responsible for, or at the very least connected to, the slow dissolution of the natural world. It's funny how the coming together of man and woman is linked to the separation of nature. Kooser takes this idea further: "An ancient oak / fell in the Cumberlands, holding only / a handful of leaves." At this point it appears the poem is all bitter and no sweet. I know what you're saying to yourself: It has to get better, right?
If you answered maybe to that preceding question then kudos to you my friend. There is no guarantee that this poem will turn sappy and earn itself a spot on the cork board above some lovestruck sophomore's desk. That uncertainty, which is embedded in the natural world and in our dormant human connections, is the central vein of Kooser's poem. It is precisely why "an old woman / scattering corn to her chickens / looked up for an instant," and we are not surprised by this. We accept the woman into the poem because this is one of those spontaneous moments of introspection brought on by a severe case of the what-could-have-beens. Now we may not be surprised by the old woman, but what she sees is rather interesting. Her view propels us into the final third of this poem and constructs an extended metaphor that brilliantly ties a knot with the poem's beginning.
"At the other side / of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times / the size of our own sun exploded / and vanished." Surely this is a big deal. A star sizably larger than our own sun, which is central to our existence, has not only exploded, but it completely vanished. Keep in mind that this colossal event was triggered by the chance encounter between Kooser and his former lover at the poem's start. Strangely enough, it is only a partial connection because it's not even acknowledged that the woman saw Ted. In fact, it's implied that she didn't notice him at all. For a star to blow to smithereens because of this near reunion, well, there must be some serious unrequited love and simmering passion going on. This is the point in the poem where we get to the test on a person's perspective. Let's push on to the poem's end: the star has exploded, "leaving a small green spot / on the astronomer's retina." So what does that have to do with testing to see if you're an optimist or a pessimist? Be patient, let's look at the final lines that follow and check out how Kooser brilliantly twists the poem back to its beginning roots, namely his long held love for the woman he views from a distance. The star's explosion, caused by Kooser's chance viewing of his former love, is viewed by an astronomer who Kooser tells us resides in "the great open dome / of my heart with no one to tell." Some (mostly snooty) people scoff at poem's that use hearts, either the word or the image. Overtly sentimental words or images should never be banned from poems, but they should be used carefully and creatively as Kooser does in this poem's ending. The heart—his heart—is the constant that ties this ending to the poem's other parts. All of these happenings, from the glaciers to the Cumberlands, have occurred within the world of his heart, contributing a depth that is shocking and powerful. Reading this poem, I identify a longing for a lost love that others might view as sad, but I see it is a moment that reminds us of the rare fate of being human.
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
---Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser's After Years
Some people prefer testing attitude with the question 'is the glass half empty or half full,' but I think the moments when we feel curious about our place in the vast, perpetually changing universe are an even better test. The only problem with this alternate gauge of perspective is that these moments are, by nature, spontaneous; a contrived moment of introspection will not tell us anything about ourselves. I don't need someone telling me I'm strange, or destined for greatness, or utterly purposeless; believe me, I will discover these things on my own. In fact, it's imperative that I discover them on my own, just as Ted Kooser does in his perfectly bittersweet poem After Years.
The speaker in Ted's poem stumbles into one of those moments where an internal pause button is pressed on the giant remote control inside of him. He sees a former lover "from a distance" and it literally stops him cold in his tracks. Ironically, while he is physically still, his mind hums along at warp speed through his own personal ecosystem created within his memories. Upon seeing her, Kooser sharply observes "the glittering face of a glacier / slid into the sea." One random near rendezvous seems responsible for, or at the very least connected to, the slow dissolution of the natural world. It's funny how the coming together of man and woman is linked to the separation of nature. Kooser takes this idea further: "An ancient oak / fell in the Cumberlands, holding only / a handful of leaves." At this point it appears the poem is all bitter and no sweet. I know what you're saying to yourself: It has to get better, right?
If you answered maybe to that preceding question then kudos to you my friend. There is no guarantee that this poem will turn sappy and earn itself a spot on the cork board above some lovestruck sophomore's desk. That uncertainty, which is embedded in the natural world and in our dormant human connections, is the central vein of Kooser's poem. It is precisely why "an old woman / scattering corn to her chickens / looked up for an instant," and we are not surprised by this. We accept the woman into the poem because this is one of those spontaneous moments of introspection brought on by a severe case of the what-could-have-beens. Now we may not be surprised by the old woman, but what she sees is rather interesting. Her view propels us into the final third of this poem and constructs an extended metaphor that brilliantly ties a knot with the poem's beginning.
"At the other side / of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times / the size of our own sun exploded / and vanished." Surely this is a big deal. A star sizably larger than our own sun, which is central to our existence, has not only exploded, but it completely vanished. Keep in mind that this colossal event was triggered by the chance encounter between Kooser and his former lover at the poem's start. Strangely enough, it is only a partial connection because it's not even acknowledged that the woman saw Ted. In fact, it's implied that she didn't notice him at all. For a star to blow to smithereens because of this near reunion, well, there must be some serious unrequited love and simmering passion going on. This is the point in the poem where we get to the test on a person's perspective. Let's push on to the poem's end: the star has exploded, "leaving a small green spot / on the astronomer's retina." So what does that have to do with testing to see if you're an optimist or a pessimist? Be patient, let's look at the final lines that follow and check out how Kooser brilliantly twists the poem back to its beginning roots, namely his long held love for the woman he views from a distance. The star's explosion, caused by Kooser's chance viewing of his former love, is viewed by an astronomer who Kooser tells us resides in "the great open dome / of my heart with no one to tell." Some (mostly snooty) people scoff at poem's that use hearts, either the word or the image. Overtly sentimental words or images should never be banned from poems, but they should be used carefully and creatively as Kooser does in this poem's ending. The heart—his heart—is the constant that ties this ending to the poem's other parts. All of these happenings, from the glaciers to the Cumberlands, have occurred within the world of his heart, contributing a depth that is shocking and powerful. Reading this poem, I identify a longing for a lost love that others might view as sad, but I see it is a moment that reminds us of the rare fate of being human.
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