To get this thing moving, since I haven't really been able to do any serious posting, because of exams, these past few weeks; let me get back to the first poem Quasi sent me. If anyone needs it, I'll forward it, but I think it is time to get into a little bit of close reading.
Quote:
PACING THE TURN OF THE YEAR
A sudden season
has changed our world.
Everybody is out
to see, or bask, or
with their kind to exuberate.
The sudden changing implies a big step forward, the word exuberate seems to imply an overflowing - people are going outside to bask and see, which implies people were on edge, and remaining indoors.
Quote:
Everything is new.
This line to me seems to be purposely hyperbolic. The opening of the poem comes off as overly confident, but I can't help but feel this line really is ironic, in the development, as what comes marks a very direct shift.
Quote:
Trees that were only sticks
into the overcast
yesterday, are
soft and full of catkins
like newly shampooed children being
readied for the party.
Again, I feel a trace of hyperbole. This implies a certain freshness, and the youthful images imply a sort of coming into maturity, but readied for the party again has a dark layer floating over it, which will anticipate what is to follow. After all, the verb shampooed has a sense of someone else preforming the action, and of shaping these children for the occasion, and giving them this facade of cleanliness. The metaphor is unsettling to an extent, as it seems to be confident. The link between the Catkin, which would imply a blooming, and the shampoo, which would imply a grooming, seems to be rather difficult to believe. The metaphor doesn't seem to match well with the simile that follows it, and therefore creates a sense of presentation over reality.
Quote:
Slender young saplings
shine, all the tender leaves
distinct, notes of music
atremble for a chance musician
strolling by to hear and
play -- for everybody, on bikes
or park benches or
wandering along
Again, the musicians are playing for someone, putting on the show, instead of just playing. The music of the trees feels arranged, and constructed for the passers by. The trees seem to be imbued with a romantic optimism, and seem to be constructed to show it. The strolling-day-in-the-park imagery that follows, implies a sense of natural pastoral, where everyone is relaxed, and not working.
Quote:
the way
wended their way anywhere
on the odd quiet morning
the European war
was somehow ended; nobody
felt like cavorting, singing,
dancing, as their parents, 1918
in November, had.
Now the poem gets specific. We know we are now talking about the end of the Second World War, and the optimism of the people at it finally being concluded. However, the poem throws in a sharp jab here, by bringing up how the earlier generation had gone through the same thing, 27 years earlier. How then can a reader continue reading, without failing to notice that this dream of a better tomorrow wasn't actually a reality? There was a flaw in the end the last time, and this sense of false hope now begins to unsettle the poem.
Quote:
A muted celebration
this sudden season.
All but the oak.
They had a muted celebration, and that implies that they had perhaps a darker finish. There was, I would think it can be argued, no cause for celebration after the First World War. Certainly for the Victors of the war, I would argue, there was a greater sense of having vanquished an enemy the second time. After all, World War 2 had more of an enemy surrendering feel to its end, rather than a ceasefire ending. And I think that is touched upon here. The Old oak, an Evergreen tree, which will take over a lot of the poem from this point onward, has not undergone anything. The Old grudges as misunderstandings still pervade the forest. The old hostilities are still there.
Quote:
Rusty tatters left from far-off August's
leafy towers and gables,
in deeps and fullness, the amassing
in gloom and shadow of
greenness; now
ruined arthritic knobs and wrenched
limbs; next to nothing now
covering his nakedness.
Now the poem questions the destruction. These above lines don't seem to distinguish whether they are talking about the First or Second World War, and that seems to darken them. What is being focused is the pragmatic butchery, and not the celebration. The rawness of the world, and the damage - the celebrations of August - the month in which V. J. Day happened, and also referencing the summer season - are offset by the winter that follows, as people try to recover, and peace together what has happened - families are torn, countries in pieces, and generations of people wiped out - cities destroyed, and nuclear bombs dropped. The image of the naked man who dominates the end of the verse, then, seems to me a metaphor for an old, warn out world, which tries to cover itself up. Everything has been exposed - the butchery and the savageness of humanity - and there is no where to hide from this revelation.
Quote:
The new is going to last?
These celebrants
toss their curls and
rollerblade past
the question.
Now then, the poem turns back on itself and asks the important question - after all this, has anything changed - this momentary peace and celebration for the end of fighting, is it really going to last, or are we just going to go back and do it all over again, which is what happened last time.
Quote:
It was not posed by the
dour oaks,
stolider even than
the firs, their shabby
winter wear refurbished
at the tips,
standing there woodenly under
scrambling squirrels, a warm bath of
sunshine, thunderstorm,
by turns.
Now the Oaks reenter the poem. They are unmoved, the poem argues, they are evergreen, and have not been shaken by the winter, the sunshine, thunderstorms, or turns. They aren't putting on the celebration, they don't perpetuate this sense of cause for celebration. The unmoving oak remains standing, and the squirrels just scramble around them. The oaks have been cleaned, and made to look new, but they have not changed. The Oak knows too much, and knows nothing has changed. In it is a sense of realization that nothing changes.
Quote:
Part of a celebration
is to discover
patience? And how
painful hope can be?
These questions, being rhetorical, seem imbued with the negative answers ingrained in rhetorical questions. The celebration is a celebration that is not going to last, or is just one step forward. The celebration then is just celebrating that we may have learned something, not that everything is made OK. Perhaps from this, something may change, despite the fact that not everything will, and this is just one step. The final question though, suggests hoping for anything to really change perhaps can be more painful. One can't help but recall the romantic sense of life after the French Revolution, that seemed to die before it was born with the rise of Napoleon. In that sense then, the poem asks if whether hoping for a brighter future is perhaps more painful, and whether celebrating something isn't just getting your hopes up, before they are squashed with the next catastrophe.
Quote:
Alone, and mute stands
dark, one huge oak tree.
These final two lines then, set the poem off with a dark perspective. Of course, this poem was published way after 1945. It can be understood then, that the poem questions what has really changed, and what the world has really learned. The Old Oak remains solid and Large, and unmoving. The fact that the poem is a reflection allows it to acknowledge that right after World War II, the world didn't get less violent, but went on as if nothing had changed. The bearing of the world, symbolized by the naked man earlier seems not to have shaken anyone. The hope and optimism seems in vein, there really wasn't cause for celebration.
A very dark and pessimistic poem, I would think. Though, I think the poem does offer a sense of hope within it, and isn't completely dark. I think it, by making the Oak Tree Mute seems to imply that perhaps this demon can be silenced, and that perhaps maybe later we can achieve an end.
In many ways, this poem reminds me of On The Marginal Way by Richard Wilbur (another deeply haunting, yet unbelievably powerful poem), available here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=171784
I think, if one is an optimist, one could compare the celebrants in Pacing the Turn of the Year to Wilbur's girls lying on the red rock:
Quote:
That now recline and burn
Comely as Eve and Adam, near a sea
Transfigured by the sun’s return.
And now three girls lie golden in the lee
Of a great arm or thigh, and are as young
As the bright boulders that they lie among.
For this brief moment, the land with the people are in harmony - though the tide will change and wipe flood the picture, there is a brief pause, where everything is calm and peaceful, and I think the pessimism of Avison is not complete - there is still the hope, and though painful, perhaps things may change.
