Poetry Bookclub 2

[Virgil]

I agree Jozy the cliche of angels on a pin could have been left out, but look at the brilliance of the lines before that:

She laughed me out, and then she laughed me in;
In the deep middle of ourselves we lay;

I love those lines!! I really do think that Roethke is an outstanding poet.

And kudos to Petrarch for that analysis. It enlightened my thinking of the poem.

[Petrarch's Love]

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..."

Petrarch will now attempt a disorderly, non-collegiate analysis, but may fail miserably:

Jozy--While I appreciate your criticisms of Roethke--he's hardly being a shattering rebel and iconoclast in a poem like this--I also think the estimation of this poem very much depends upon the needs and expectations one brings to it. Your criteria for appreciating the poem seems to be linked with whether it is sufficiently innovative, and I'll certainly agree that it doesn't achieve the kind of innovation you're pointing to. It is not fresh in the way you describe the work of other poets being, and I'll state now that I fundamentally agree with you that this poem is not up there with Donne's "Death be not proud," or the top of of Frost's or Dickinson's works, but then that is a rather high bar to set.

So, I agree that this poem is not, perhaps, at the very height of poetic production and certainly that it isn't shattering any boundaries. All the same, I cannot help but wonder if "they also serve who only stand and wait"? The poem may not be bursting forward, but there's more appeal to it than simply that it scans well. There's some real talent there, not just at the formal level of producing smooth iambs, but in his ability to create layers of meaning in a single line, to create a certain kind of play between the words and the ideas. Some of those lines, including those the ones Virg. pointed out above, are really outstanding and both effective and affecting (not simply affectations) in their own right. Yes, he's intentionally channeling the past in this poem, but I think it would be grossly unfair to characterize this as a poem that creates a hollow echo of the past devoid of feeling. If one comes to it with the expectation of finding a great and ground breaking piece of verse, then there's bound to be some disappointment, but if the expectation is to find some pleasure in a piece of verse that uses its language well to convey certain images, thoughts and emotions, then I think it will not be a disappointment. Take this stanza:

What shape leaped forward at the sensual cry?
Sea-beast or bird flung toward the ravaged shore?
Did space shake off an angel with a sigh?
We rose to meet the moon, and saw no more.
It was and was not she, a shape alone,
Impaled on light, and whirling slowly down.

There's an obvious Ovdian/Yeatsian touch to this stanza, and yet I don't think its only merit is that it is imitative. I get the same sort of pleasure from the metamorphoses of this stanza as I do from parts of Ovid (perhaps not the pinnacles of the Metamorphosis, but some of the good bits). I respond, not just because it sounds like Ovid, but because in its own right it conveys the same feeling just as well as some of Ovid's passages, or Yeats' passages. I could know nothing about the earlier poets and still find this effective, whereas hollow imitators dependent on form alone for their effect usually fall very far short of being able to provoke any kind of emotional response independent of a response to them as a shadow of the past they imitate. While this may not be one of the all time "great" poems (and again, I am not claiming it is), I think it would be a disservice not to appreciate and enjoy the very real qualities it does have to offer.

This is to say that I sense some real substance here, some genuine pleasure to be had in this poem apart from a mere reliance on nostalgia and formalism. At the same time, it would be remiss to say that nostalgia plays no part in the poem, and I think to try to punch a fist through it, so to speak, would likely ruin part of what it has to offer. As I said in my previous post, my feeling is that part of the function of this poem is as a kind of comfort, a fragile yearning for something the poet is trying to find and yet not quite certain ever even existed. I think this quality in itself is both real and moving in the poem. His attempts to re-create "that first fine careless rapture" of high moments, both in the poetic past and in the past of his own life, may not ultimately be successful in all places in the poem, but there is something inherently moving about the attempts themselves.

Of course, it may not just not be your cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that. Figured I would put my 2cents worth of defense in though.

[Petrarch's Love]

And kudos to Petrarch for that analysis. It enlightened my thinking of the poem.

Thanks, Virg. Glad if my thoughts on the poem could be helpful.

[Jozanny]

What shape leaped forward at the sensual cry?
Sea-beast or bird flung toward the ravaged shore?
Did space shake off an angel with a sigh?
We rose to meet the moon, and saw no more.
It was and was not she, a shape alone,
Impaled on light, and whirling slowly down.

There's an obvious Ovdian/Yeatsian touch to this stanza, and yet I don't think its only merit is that it is imitative. I get the same sort of pleasure from the metamorphoses of this stanza as I do from parts of Ovid (perhaps not the pinnacles of the Metamorphosis, but some of the good bits). I respond, not just because it sounds like Ovid, but because in its own right it conveys the same feeling just as well as some of Ovid's passages, or Yeats' passages. I could know nothing about the earlier poets and still find this effective, whereas hollow imitators dependent on form alone for their effect usually fall very far short of being able to provoke any kind of emotional response independent of a response to them as a shadow of the past they imitate. While this may not be one of the all time "great" poems (and again, I am not claiming it is), I think it would be a disservice not to appreciate and enjoy the very real qualities it does have to offer.

A very fine apologia. Bravo! But it may point to the difference between a poet's rivalry with his or her predecessors, and a critic's ability to illuminate for a mature readership; I am not sure. Eliot would no doubt object, since he negotiated the full terrain. When I do sit and read my betters, which isn't often, I ask what I can steal if it is profound enough. Roethke is new to me, didn't floor me, and occasionally rumbles my digestion.

I'll maintain an open door policy in the meanwhile.

[Petrarch's Love]

A very fine apologia. Bravo!

Thanks.

But it may point to the difference between a poet's rivalry with his or her predecessors, and a critic's ability to illuminate for a mature readership; I am not sure. Eliot would no doubt object, since he negotiated the full terrain. When I do sit and read my betters, which isn't often, I ask what I can steal if it is profound enough. Roethke is new to me, didn't floor me, and occasionally rumbles my digestion.

I figured you were reading it with the mining eye of the poet, since that's usually the perspective that what most desire some sort of innovation. As for reading like a poet, versus reading like a critic, it's an interesting question. Though I certainly can see they are two different modes of approaching a poem, I personally find it very hard to think of them as entirely separate modes, and impossible to think of them as mutually exclusive. Absolutely the reason I ended up in literary criticism was because at a young age I began reading poems with an eye to writing poems. It was not the reading of poetry but the writing of poetry that made me want to study it, to read it with the goal of seeing how it ticked. I was, as you say, floored by certain things and interested in what worked and how it worked with an eye toward using it myself and to experimenting with how to make it new. I make no claims to being a poet of any worth (which I'm not), but writing, for writing's sake, is still often something at work in my mind when I'm reading poetry: how does this work? How could it be reproduced? Improved upon? (Though I have also since found other reasons to analyze poetry, the most important being to teach it or open it up for others). I also write poetry in order to produce criticism. Any significant critical work I've done has also involved producing hundreds of lines of poetry in imitation of the poet(s) I'm working with. I need to have that first hand insight into how the poetry is working, what the rules the poet is making and breaking are, how they play out. I have trouble understanding how some of my colleagues can be literary critics without ever having any kind of interest in writing poetry, and how poets could have little interest in analyzing it, though I don't question that both can do their jobs very well without taking the other into account; I just can't personally identify with how one functions entirely without the other. I suppose I must, in this respect, have some sort of mindset in common with T.S. Eliot as you mentioned above, though naturally with no claims to anything approaching his level of skill as either a critic or a poet.

When it came to this poem, I think I had both my poet's cap (which looks for great stuff to use) and my critic's cap (which is primarily interested in detached judgement) conveniently off and was appreciating the experience provided by the poem with relatively little detachment. Read for appreciation's sake I thought it worked quite nicely, though this could also simply be a matter of taste, and clearly you just weren't taken with it, which is fine. Thanks for the thoughtful posts you've been providing.

[Virgil]

Henry James said the following:

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

What he means is that an artist be allowed his subject matter. It is his choice and his perogative. How we judge him is by what he does with the subject matter.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch... You raise an interesting question. Does a writer/poet read in a manner inherently different from a critic/academic? Certainly we might suggest that a critic/academic reads in a manner somewhat different from the common reader, so is the poet's eye still different yet?

I raise this question wondering from my own position. I have had my differences with Mortalterror (among others) in my preference/admiration for certain forms of literature in which the narrative is not the central issue. Undoubtedly this owes much to my own perspective as a visual artist. While narrative exists in visual art it is commonly frozen and assumes a recognition of the story by the audience. If not... the "narrative" is often quite ambiguous... or open-ended... or of little real importance as opposed to mood, atmosphere, "feeling", etc...

In art one regularly hears of the painter who is referred to as "a painter's painter"... suggesting that while he or she may have a certain acceptance within the larger audience of art lovers, painters tend to recognize some real depth and ability that is perhaps not more commonly recognized. Are there not poets referred to as "a poet's poet"? At the same time, might one not assume that there is something of Bloom's "anxiety of influence" involved in any artist confronting the work of a predecessor? The art lover or poetry lover can approach a marvelous painting or poem without the least anxiety... without a sense of a bar set too high for one to ever master... without a sense of hostility directed toward the masterful (read authoritative) work that seemingly challenges all that one values or struggles toward in one's own work.

[Virgil]

One last post on “FOUR FOR SIR JOHN DAVIES.” I would like to really explore the last section, “The Vigil.” But first notice how he gets to the last section.

The first section could be summed up as the poet’s search for a theme that reflects the universe’s “hum.” Why he finds it in the dancing bear I can’t figure out, but so he does, and the central facts I think of that first section are the master that coordinates the dance and the solitary experience of the poet. Here he tries “to fling his shadow at the moon.”

The second section can be summed up as the making love and how that interweaves with the humming of the universe. We see this in the lines “We played a measure with commingled feet” and “Who's whistling up my sleeve?” and “O what lewd music crept into our ears!” And the solitary consciousness is replaced by “we” and other “she.” “She kissed me close, and then did something else” and “I gave her kisses back, and woke a ghost.”

The third section can be summed as the aftermath of the love making and try to understand the love’s relationship to the hum. “We two, together, on a darkening day/Took arms against our own obscurity.” and “The flesh can make the spirit visible;/We woke to find the moonlight on our toes.” The question then arises if they transcend into the Platonic ideal of perfect love within the universe’s motion:

What shape leaped forward at the sensual cry?--
Sea-beast or bird flung toward the ravaged shore?
Did space shake off an angel with a sigh?
We rose to meet the moon, and saw no more.
It was and was not she, a shape alone,
Impaled on light, and whirling slowly down.

And so we come to the final section where we find the narrator not in the heavens but as Dante just before entering Paradiso on the “purgatorial hill.” The question becomes can the physical love of the two transcend into the perfect form of love. The poet trembles at the moment and ponders it:

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.

Can the two make the leap from Purgatory to Heaven? Ultimately it’s not the single ego of the poem who strives but the two, “we.”

Though everything's astonishment at last,
Who leaps to heaven at a single bound?
The links were soft between us; still, we kissed;
We undid chaos to a curious sound:
The waves broke easy, cried to me in white;
Her look was morning in the dying light.

Then he has a moment of individualism:

The visible obscures. But who knows when?
Things have their thought: they are the shards of me;
I thought that once, and thought comes round again;

But notice how the central “I,” the ego of the first section is weakened now, just “shards” and discarded as in the past, “I thought that once.” The central ego has been fragmented and the we is quickly reconstituted and the forces of disintegration “mocked.”:

Rapt, we leaned forth with what we could not see.
We danced to shining; mocked before the back
And shapeless night that made no answer back.

And finally central ego is completely dissolved into the female form, and word “form” is quite key.

The world is for the living. Who are they?
We dared the dark to reach the white and warm.
She was the wind when wind was in my way;
Alive at noon, I perished in her form.
Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall:
The word outleaps the world, and light is all.

Notice how all four sections of the poem have the motif of "leaping" somewhere in the section. It sets up the final leap, the leap to the heavens of the fourth section. Their love has reached the Platonic form, and all this through “word” of poetry.

[quasimodo1]

This posting is not meant to preclude any discussion of Roethke. I mean to update participants that the following poets have been mentioned for the next discussion: Octavio Paz, Ana Ahkmatova, Eugenio Montale and Mebdh McGuckian. We need at least one more, hopefully an English or American poet for balance. That is all.

[Dark Muse]

What about Elizabeth Bishop, she was mentioned the first time around. Hah, I would say Plath, but I seem to be the only one who likes her.

[quasimodo1]

Muse: Consiser Bishop and Plath added to the list. At some point we'll have a proper vote.

[Jozanny]

Hah, I would say Plath, but I seem to be the only one who likes her.

Eh, I would not say you were the only one DM. I think "Blackberrying" is one of her more powerful efforts; I would however, sit out a Plath discussion, despite the fact that I have her hubby's Collected Poems, and read The Bell Jar. I am weary of the Plath saga, the romanticism-as-tincture to her illness. My mother was bipolar, untreated and undiagnosed for a long time, and what this does to families is neither prophetic or particularly charming. Plath's emotional instability is too closely married to any analysis of her contribution to the canon. At least Bishop's small if near perfect output can stand by itself, despite the fact that all of the poets entrenched in this era seemingly loved their mood disorders and sinus pressure.

Now, quasi has politely hounded me to introduce Roethke's "Epidermal Macbre" which I selected in post 200, but here is the link again because I can waste myself til death if I like.

Even though I am less than sold on Roethke's trinket jangling with his schemes and couplets, and this post made me miss part of The Newshour, for which I will hold quasi responsible (glares sternly), what I like about the piece, is what this annotation states eloquently:

Much of Roethke's poetry stemmed from what W. H. Auden described in a review as "the experience of feeling physically soiled and humiliated by life." For Roethke this began with his own physical ungainliness. Many of his readers identified with his poems describing the pursuit of spirituality, continually hampered by a sense of the obscene, the earthly, and the mundane. The Roethke contingents among us provide a counterbalance to the Whitmanesque celebrants of the body and should remind caregivers to be respectful of modesty and shame.

I can relate, and like the metaphor of the body as an ill-fitted suit which is malevolent in its own right:

The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.

[Virgil]

What about Elizabeth Bishop, she was mentioned the first time around. Hah, I would say Plath, but I seem to be the only one who likes her.

I like Syvia Plath. I like Elizabeth Bishop too.

[Dark Muse]

I like Syvia Plath.

Well at least I am not completely alone. Usually whenever I mention her name, people have a tendency to look down their noses at me, like I am such unsophisticated pauper because I happen to enjoy her work. Or they presume that the only reason I must like her is because it is just the cliche thing to do based upon the popularity given to her life story and past, and that I could not just genuinely happen to enjoy reading her work.

I do not think everyone must like her, but I am tired of others pulling the snob card out, just becasue I do.

[quasimodo1]

"Poetry is usually considered the most local of all the arts. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, can be enjoyed by all who see or hear. But language, especially the language of poetry, is a different matter. Poetry, it might seem, separates peoples instead of uniting them." T.S. Eliot in his Nobel speech. I'm quoting Eliot on how poetry seperates people, at least in an appreciative sense...also Eliot is referring to the local nature of poetry; and in Roethke's work as JoZ has so eloquently commented, he never got over his sense of province. Or his physical sense of self. The point about poet's various states of mind, or lack of, and how that can temper your enjoyment is well appreciated. No one could pay me to be in John Berryman's head, even for a second.