Continuum - Allen Curnow

[continuum]

Can be read here:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=134

--


This is one of my favorite poems (hence the username!) from the anthology I'm studying for my AS Levels this year. Any thoughts?! It's pretty funny but when we were discussing this in class everyone seemed quite puzzled about what Curnow was trying to say. We pretty much skipped over the poem because it was too obscure and self-indulgent (which I think it's meant to be).

Oddly enough, I formed a very special connection with the poem. As cheesy as it sounds, it was one of those experiences where everything else fades and it's just you and the poem. It was moving and exhilirating at the same time; for a second, I even wondered if Allen Curnow was "the one." That was until I realized that even if he were alive - he would've been 96 by now.

So, I get what it's saying on a very subliminal, emotional level. I just can't seem to put what I'm feeling into words or to conduct a worthy critical analysis.

Would love to see what you guys have to say! :)

[ktd222]

We pretty much skipped over the poem because it was too obscure and self-indulgent (which I think it's meant to be).

Oddly enough, I formed a very special connection with the poem. It was one of those experiences where everything else fades and it's just you and the poem. It was moving and exhilirating at the same time

I'd love to discuss this poem with you. You start. What is it that you see happening in this poem?

edit: by the way, I don't think it's self-indulgent or too obscure.

[continuum]

I'd love to discuss this poem with you. You start. What is it that you see happening in this poem?

edit: by the way, I don't think it's self-indulgent or too obscure.

Well, I didn't think it was a good enough reason to skip the poem; it's just most of everyone in class seemed to think it was.

Personally, I do think - compared to other poems we're studying - it is a little self indulgent, because it seems like Mr.Curnow's not even trying to make things easier for the reader. The line, "the moon does neither of these things/ I am talking about myself" almost seems like he's mocking us. The obscurity comes in at times when for e.g. he's talking about the clouds and he doesn't seem so sure about what he's describing himself: "query"/ "or something." However, I do think that all of this contributes to the poem and what he's writing about, and that it's been done intentionally. It's not that he doesn't know how to make things clearer; it's just that he doesn't want to (hence the self-indulgence).

Anyway, like I said, I've connected with the poem, but I can't seem to put into words what I actually think is happening. To a large extent, I think it's about the agony of the creative process; he can't "get off to sleep or the subject or the planet" which means there's obviously something that's welling inside of him. It's also about multiple identities: you have the moon, you have the "cringing demiurge" and you have the persona.

On a more personal level, I also think it's about just being stuck in a "moment." I can see very clear elements of depersonalization and I think the persona is caught outside of his usual self, and can't seem to escape this almost never-ending continuum he's in.

I also think the structure is very interesting. At first glance it seems like a very clear, organized poem (7 stanzas, 3 lines each) but when you start reading it the enjambents and the series of thoughts make you realize it's not so clear at all. And I think that's exactly what it's meant to be.

I'd love to hear what you have to say. :) I am a little confused about the last stanza and it's significance, and the clouds bit. I think the fact that there are two clouds (and one's an "adversary's") adds to the conflicting identities and possibly the conflict that's going on inside of him. And since clouds have been traditionally associated with the imagination, it could have something to do with the persona's conflicting realms of thought/ imagination. I don't know; I tend to get very confused when I start trying to analyze the poem!

[ktd222]

Wow! Your comments are insightful. I can’t imagine adding anything new. I think this poem is all about the speaker, the “I am talking about myself” in stanza one, and the author part of him who’s incessant about describing an experience. The author being described as a demiurge, for me, changes the struggle between the two personas(the “I,” and the author part of the “I”) to almost a divinely struggle of urges. It is the urges: one for sleep, and the other for needing to describe an experience he’s having. The weight of the struggle, and the two personas identities can be witnessed in description leading up to, and the clouds themselves: “barefoot, palms, washed-out creation,” certainly these are words with religious implications; but also words which hint at an imaginative/creative struggle as well. “One cloud being his and the other’s an adversary,” initially creates a good/evil relationship; then comes the phrase “which depends on the wind,” which totally throws any identification as to whether the author part of him, or him too, is good or evil.
Even the poem itself seems written with moments of poetic flow(even overflow), and moments of vague, choppiness. To start off the poem with a line which flows as gracefully as the image of the moon itself rolling over the roof and falling behind his house, and to take the image back with “the moon does neither of these things,” is to literally halt the flow that had just begun. I think there’s what’s called assonance happening in the first line. The poem seems set up in a struggle where you get alternative switching between creative urge and the urge to leave thoughts as it is and go to bed. I think the poem is set up in this fashion. Although I have to tell you, as you’d already pointed out, the multiple occasions in which enjambment is used makes it difficult to identify spots where the urges switch.
In stanza five, the sentence that start off “Not unaccountably…” sets up as almost a mathematical equation, where two negatives(words in this case) equals a positive. So the sentence reads the chill rising in his throat is accountable by him, as if he knew this moment of inspiration was coming. And although he knows, and for “its part the night sky empties/ the whole of its contents down,” that non-author part of him is still able to turn away from thinking thoughts and go to bed. I think you hit it on the head when referencing the title to “this never-ending continuum” of urges he experiences. But I think in the end his authority, and not the author part of him, that wins over and he goes to sleep.


Hope I helped.

[continuum]

Me? Insightful?! :D That's a compliment coming from someone as judicious as yourself! And very a very motivating one at that, considering I have a mammoth exam in a little more than 30 hours.

So, I loved your insights. :) Definitely helped. While I did detect the presence of a conflict, you've really articulated it well for me! I also think the idea of the poem being a "divinely struggle of urges: sleep and creativity" is very interesting and it's definitely the underlying theme for the poem. The ending makes a lot more sense too now!

Thanks again! I'm off to go study the other 29 or so poems in the anthology (plus the 12 short stories). I look forward to participating regularly in forum discussions and discussing more poetry with you. :)

[TearsDoDrop]

hello (i'm new here and only arrived because i was searching for thoughts on continuum)!

I'm doing AS Lit and Lang as well and i really enjoyed the poem too! In the entire collection, this was by far the best. I was so excited about doing the essay but when i sat down to it, i relaised that i have a mess of thoughts about it. Actually, two mutually exclusive perspectives on it.

The comments you guys made really helped to get a lot of things into perspective. But i have one more interpretation that i'm particularly adamanant about - although a lot of people dismissed it. To me, the poem was very metaphysical (from the bits where Curnow says that "he lean[s] from the porch across.. the washed-out creation" - but how can one lean so far out? It seems more like a half-physical-half-intellectual leaning out into the universe (probably for inspiration?). The interpretation i made is that the author is actually someone separate from the persona (but not entirely) in the sense that the persona is a creation of the author as he writes one of his pieces - a character in a story or something. Every activity that the persona is engaging in then, is what the author is making happen. The fact that the moon "rolls over the roof and falls behind {a} house" in itself gives the setting a fictious feel, like something out of a story - does the moon's natural motion include such activity? Also, "may depend on the wind.. or something" seems to suggest that the clouds could depend on something other than the wind - who else but the author who can always write the clouds away? Also the "(query)" seems to show that the persona is asking whether it is the moon who dusted the bright clouds, or something else. The long moment stretching is also suggestive of a story, how one moment can have so many things happenning and another passes off in just one short sentence. The noticable exclusion of "I" throughout the poem except in the third line, furthers the persona's apparant lack of control. He cannot do things at his own will - "not possible to get off .." .

In the end, the author "pac[ing]" the persona back to bed, shows how much control he has over the persona. He decides when the persona will sleep and he decides when he cannot take thoughts off his head. To me, this theme that an author controls the life of a character, correlates with the fact that Curnow himself was very relgious. He could be establishing the nature of how, for him, "God" must control our lives - writing our scripts and such.

The other thought - was something like you guys argued. A sense of depersonalisation and such.

[manesha]

well, thanks to the whole of you, that poem was so tough for me to grasp... but after reading your criticisms and opinions, i've started getting a notion of it... i used to hate it because it was the only poem i failed to understand but now i've perceived the beauty underlying in it and it has actually turned out to me among my favourites!!
i just wanted to express my thanks and hats off to your analytical skills!

[CSpark]

I'm new here first of all, and secondly I am shocked to hear that most of you people are studying this poem in A levels, whereas I have this poem in my O level syllabus. I don't know why analysis of seems quite difficult to me especially since the poem has lots of self contradictions. So I have a request, would you please support your ideas and personal opinions with references like beliefs or something that helps me go into the depth of this poem. btw do you think that Allen Curnow has sleep issues and that the poem revolves around the plot that he cannot write any more because he has no ideas .. I'm not sure but I have a hunch about this.

[cafolini]

Pretty clear to me.