Poetry Bookclub 2

[quasimodo1]

In the first stanza, Roethke is making a connection with Yeats referencing Davies work as subtext. Each stanza uses a different subtext: Homer and Virgil are two others. As Stlukes mentioned, "Orchestra" is a corresponding work serving both as inspiration and connection. Sir John Davies' theme or themes are ...comparing the natural order with that of the cosmos, the microcosm of man vis the macrocosm of God and/or the universe... the overall harmonies of man and the natural world. Davies uses Homer, I think, as a lens to meditate and elaborate on these comparisons.

[quasimodo1]

On the composing of "Four for Sir John Davies" in Theodore Roethke's own words: "Let me say boldly, now, that the extent to which the great dead can be evoked, or can come to us, can be errie, and astonishing. Let me, at the risk of seeming odd, recite a personal incident. I was in that particular hell of a poet: a longish dry period. It was 1952, I was 44, and I thought I was done. I was living aone in a biggish house in Edmonds, Washington. I had been reading-- and re-reading--not Yeats, but Ralegh and Sir John Davies. I had been teaching the five-beat line for weeks--I knew quite a bit about it, but write it myself? --no: so I felt myself a fraud. Suddenly, in the early evening, the poem "The Dance" started, and finished itself in avery short time--say thirty minutes, maybe in the greater part of an hour, it was all done. I felt, I KNEW, I had hit it. I walked around, and wept: and I knelt down--I always do after I've written what I know is a good piece. But at the same time I had, as God as my witness, the actual sense of a Presence-- as if Yeats himself were in that room. The experience was in a way terrifying, for it lasted at least half an hour. That house, I repeat, was charged with a psychic presence: the very walls seemed to shimmer. I wept for joy. At last I was somebody again. He, they--the poets dead--were with me. Now I know there are any number of cynical explanations for this phenomenon: auto-suggestion, the unconscious playing an elaborate trick, and so on, but I accept none of them. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life."

[stlukesguild]

A fabulous quote... Roethke channeling Yeats. It certainly suggests the author certainly believed in the notion that one of the roles of the poet was to engage in a sort of dialog with one's predecessors. Perhaps not unlike the already quoted comments by Eliot.

I'm looking now at the second poem in the suite, The Partner, where Roethke has moved on from the dance per se:

Between such animal and human heat
I find myself perplexed. What is desire?
The impulse to make someone else complete?
That woman could set sodden straw on fire.
Was I the servant of a sovereign wish,
Or ladle rattling in an empty dish?

Roethke seems to move on to questions... unanswerable... about love/desire/sex and whether it is all part of some plan of nature... or of God... part of the music of the spheres... the universal harmony... or nothing but a sound (and a fury?) signifying nothing?

We played a measure with commingled feet:
The lively dead had taught us to be fond.
Who can embrace the body of his fate?
Light altered light along the living ground.
She kissed me close and then did something else.
My marrow beat as wildly as my pulse.

I am continually struck by Roethke's ability to suggest multiple meanings... or ask multiple questions... with a single phrase: "Who can embrace the body of his fate?"

[quasimodo1]

Who can embrace the body of his fate?
Light altered light along the living ground.
Roethke in describing the "body" of his fate intends to speak of the multiple fates which comprise a life, perhaps his life up to this point. Is the next line adjoined to this one? The light which alters the "light" is the metaphor for each small fate illuminating the next as he (we) moves through a life. So it might follow that Roethke doesn't view fate as a predestined end but one shaped and formed by all influences, definitely including a poetic ancestry.

[Jozanny]

I. The Dance

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
That made him think the universe could hum?
The great wheel turns its axle when it can;
I need a place to sing, and dancing-room,
And I have made a promise to my ears
I'll sing and whistle romping with the bears.

For they are all my friends: I saw one slide
Down a steep hillside on a cake of ice,--
Or was that in a book? I think with pride:
A caged bear rarely does the same thing twice
In the same way: O watch his body sway!--
This animal remembering to be gay.


Although Roethke was dead before animation had advanced to make it possible, this opening has the false sentimentality of the Coke polar bear commercial, while the narrative voice lacks the courage to really link the caged bear to bear baiting itself, which Davies no doubt knew of if he was a true poet of the Renaissance.

I hate to be the odd woman out while digesting my kippers (a breakfast practice I adopted from The Turtle Diary once I could afford it), but Roethke really does have a limited use of tropes to authenticate himself. A great poem does more than scan perfectly, and Roethke doesn't quite break the mold while staying within the mold. He obsesses certain things well--clumsy manic feet, dishes, the body itself, but I'd like it if he would really try to put a fist through his retrospective fragmentation now and then.

I don't know how many more pieces we're going to discuss, but I'd like to nominate "Epideral Macabre" for the next. More daring in its chances.

[quasimodo1]

Jozanny: You really need to get intouch with you feelings. Criticizing Roethke for his editorial restraint...you know, that has been a kind of background music. I'll go with that.

[Jozanny]

Jozanny: You really need to get intouch with you feelings.

I am too in touch with them already and have no idea what you are intending to rebuff with this sentiment.

Criticizing Roethke for his editorial restraint...you know, that has been a kind of background music. I'll go with that.

Was I doing that?

[quasimodo1]

No rebuff intented, Jo. I totally get your response and wish for the fist occaisonally.

[stlukesguild]

I will add... that like Jozy I also thought almost immediately of bear-baiting with Roethke's image of the caged and dancing bear. Considering the Renaissance source of inspiration I somewhat suspect that he was not unaware of the allusion himself. Should he have been more forceful... the fist... the kick in the groin? Perhaps that is better left to Bukowski. Seriously I do agree that formalism can get rather dry and leave you wanting something more... but then again I'll take the formalism of Wilbur and Hecht over the "expressionism" of Sexton, Plath, Bukowski, and Ginsberg any day. But we are speaking of Roethke. While he is not Yeats or even Eliot I do find that he is not some effete formalist afraid of stepping on any toes. There is a certain muscularity there. If anything he may be too indebted to his predecessors.

[stlukesguild]

Before this discussion wanes... and hopefully Petrarch shows up to offer some of her thoughts... I would like to suggest that it might make sense to begin thinking about possibilities for the next poet of discussion. I believe Octavio Paz and Anna Ahkmatova (sp.?) were tied for second in the original poll. I would certainly be for renominating them as potentials for future discussion. I'm throwing out this idea now in order that we might have time to make nominations, hold a poll, and actually get the needed book(s) without a lot of down-time.

[Jozanny]

Why does *force* have to be associated with Bukowski's cheap theatrics? Look at Donne:

Death Be Not Proud


Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne




He is beloved for more than being Elizabethan.

[quasimodo1]

Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
Shook with a mighty power beyond his will,--
Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.
This stanza has a force beyond most others; I see Roethke on a height overlooking the purgatorial doings of the human race if only temporarily and while composing this poem.

[Virgil]

Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
Shook with a mighty power beyond his will,--
Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.
This stanza has a force beyond most others; I see Roethke on a height overlooking the purgatorial doings of the human race if only temporarily and while composing this poem.

I agree, that was a remarkable passage.

[Petrarch's Love]

I've been meaning all week to put down a few comments in relation to Davies' Orchestra and the Roethke, and at last find myself with that most precious of all possessions, a bit of spare time.

St. Luke's pointed out earlier in the thread that the focus of Davies' poem is the musica universalis or the music of the spheres, and the universal dance that accompanies that music. (For those unfamiliar with the concept of the music of the spheres, I put a little basic information and a few pictures in a blog entry awhile back, which might prove helpful:http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=4861). Again, as St. Luke's has already said, the opening lines of Roethke's poem:

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
That made him think the universe could hum?

refer to this old way of understanding the workings of the universe in terms of a universal music and a universal dance. The lines might also be a criticism of our current culture. Is there something wrong, something lost to an age that no longer can "think the universe could hum?" I think that in some ways this relates to the number of questions in the Roethke that Virg. has been attending to. Orchestra is a poem that, in many ways, provides a cohesive vision, a delightful answer to the workings of the universe. It suggests the way everything is connected to everything else by means of the cosmic dance. Roethke's poem not only questions whether we can still imagine such an answering vision, but also, if it is no longer possible to think the universe could hum or that everything is connected in a delightful universal dance, then he questions what it all means. We see things dancing, but don't know the wherefore, don't know the prime mover: "What's the cue?" (Roethke, "The Partner" ln. 17) Of course the questions in the Roethke don't neccessarily have to imply a criticism of the modern age. They do, however, suggest a mind wondering, inquiring into the meaning or lack of meaning in the world. What are the living? What happens in the animal movements of bears and men? What happens when two bodies meet? "Did each become the other in that play?"

One of the loveliest things about Davies' Orchestra is the way it lightly plays with, and intertwines thoughts about both love and the cosmos. The framing story of Davies' poem is a classic carpe diem pitch from one of the suitors of Penelope (Odysseus' faithful wife from the Odyssey). He invites her to dance, which she obviously interprets as at least prelude to a sexual advance, and prudently denies. What follows is his defense of dancing starting with the origins of the universe and the dancing of the cosmos as ordained by love. In the context of the frame story, there is obviously a certain bias of the poem to calling upon love as being central to the universe, with the goal of getting the girl to give in. Yet the pleasure of the poem, like many of the best poems in the same period (there's a very Spenserian feel to Orchestra) is that, while it never transcends erotic love, never leaves the body entirely behind, it none-the-less broadens into much more than that. While the poem starts with erotic love as it's theme, it continually moves ("moves" of course, being a key word for both the Davies and the Roethke) back and forth between physical love and physical movement, and a wider universal sort of love, and a movement of the mind and, ultimately, of the soul. Every imaginable thing: sun, moon, planets, plants, animals, gods, graces, words...is a part of the dance, which in turn owes its origins to love, but exactly what sort of love shifts gracefully and seamlessly throughout the poem. At times dancing seems like a metaphor for love; at times both seem like a metaphor for erotic love. At other times all of the above merge into an inclusive vision of universal movement. At one point he even alludes to a specifically erotic tale, that of Venus and Mars caught in Vulcan's net, only to claim that they were simply engaged in an innocent bit of dancing :

This is the net wherein the sun's bright eye
Venus and Mars entangled did behold;
For in this dance their arms they so imply
As each doth seem the other to enfold.
What if lewd wits another tale have told,
Of jealous Vulcan and of iron chains?
Yet this true sense that forged lie contains.

This cleaning up of a familiar lusty myth is partly just a flirtatious bit of fun. Taken within the framing story one could read it as the suitor telling Penelope..."see they were only dancing and we should dance just like Venus and Mars " It's also just another example of the way the poem dances around the themes of love, sex, physical movement, and the way they all relate to one another. What seems to be an amorous entanglement may in reality be a dance. In other places, what would seem to be merely movement takes on amorous overtones: the sun loves the earth, there are even hints that rhetoric can make words a bit "licentious"

For Rhetorick clothing speech in rich aray
In looser numbers teacheth her to range,
VVith twentie tropes, and turning euery way,
And various figures, and licentious change:

Roethke, of course picks up on this playful and delicate blurring of the lines between love and sex and dancing and divine vision, and in turn produces his own nuanced lines entwining them all. In Roethke's poems, however, while there is a similar degree of movement between the various shades of love and experience, there is, in places, less assurance about how all these things relate, anf more unease; less lightheartedness in the play.

My personal sense of the mind behind Roethke's poem is one that is troubled and has been taking comfort in that delightful and moving vision of the Renaissance poet. There's something comforting, perhaps cathartic, in his obvious attachment to the beat, the meter, of the poem. There's something about the way he frames his questions that makes it seem as though the writing of them is in some sense providing him answers. The poem seems like a pleasant but fragile break in a time that otherwise has been filled with profound uncertainty. I think one of the central lines has to be that in the Dante stanza of "The Vigil":

All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.

This is a description of love, but could just as easily be a description of poetry. Part of what Roethke seems to desire to do is to "summon a vision and declare it pure," but it is uncertain whether that is entirely possible to a mind that may no longer be capable of thinking the universe can hum; it may not even be desirable in a world "for the living. Who are they?" Certainly part of Roethke's poem seems to be an even more explicit version of the carpe diem elements of Orchestra. He suggests that "The flesh can make the spirit visible," and the answer to the question who are the living, could certainly be that they are those who die; the answer to life is in le petit mort at the conclusion of the poem. Another part of the poem is an attempt to form some sort of pure vision, while still acknowledging on a certain level, the impossibility of doing so, either in life or in poetry.

Roethke in describing the "body" of his fate intends to speak of the multiple fates which comprise a life, perhaps his life up to this point. Is the next line adjoined to this one? The light which alters the "light" is the metaphor for each small fate illuminating the next as he (we) moves through a life. So it might follow that Roethke doesn't view fate as a predestined end but one shaped and formed by all influences, definitely including a poetic ancestry.

I would also add that to anyone who has been reading a lot of Renaissance poety, the idea of a "fate" as an allegorical human figure is likely also at play, giving the term body the potential for a slightly more literal valence.

[Jozanny]

Petrarch offers an orderly collegiate analysis, while I return to my tireless percussion of "yes but this isn't enough to save Roethke for me..."

It is not because I am channeling the confessionalism of the Beat generation, as luke and quasi attributed to me yesterday, so much as I am channeling Donne, Dickinson, Bishop, and even Robert Frost. The modernist Shakespearean who taught me to be honest with my own work and to eschew formalism if I had to, also taught me something about mastering formalism to the degree that you could transcend it. Bishop's work, still so fresh, and so vogue, does this. As her TNR critic pointed out, "One Art" her one and only villanelle, might have just as easily been Shakespeare's, or Donne's, and yet is an absolutely perfect signifier of the 1970's.

To now channel Calvino, Roethke loses me with his signifier(s). His dialectic is Eliot? Well, Eliot's most famous rebels bulldoze Roethke's romantic naturalistic tropes, but no wait, his dialectic is Yeats modernist irony through which he yanks the Renaissance design configuration (and nostalgia for it) from its grave? Frost shuts all this groping down with one eloquent American compliment and contrast in "Fire and Ice".

Back to Roethke:

Did each become the other in that play?
She laughed me out, and then she laughed me in;
In the deep middle of ourselves we lay;
When glory failed, we danced upon a pin.
The valley rocked beneath the granite hill;
Our souls looked forth, and the great day stood still.

Charming, but why hide yourself in the cliche of angels on a pin when you have the skill enough to defy expectations? I want to like the guy, I really do, but he is neither over-arching enough nor presents himself with a muted originality so that I can adopt him within my own poetic affection.