The Fall of Icarus

Having come up with a prompt for our group of intrepid bloggers (aka Comeback Bloggers) on the seven deadly sins...I confess to a temporary bit of sloth--not getting to writing my blog. And now the next prompt has been posted.

Oh dear, oh dear.

And NO--sloth is not the sin to which I would confess.

So, here's a quick primer--in early Christian church thought, the church fathers (those jolly guys) came up with seven sins they called deadly, presumably because committing such a sin put one in mortal danger.

As a point of fact, the enumeration of seven deadly sins is extra-biblical. You will not find such a list anywhere. But, certainly there portions of the Bible which highlight some of the seven: lust, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, anger and pride (or hubris).

While several variations of the list may be found in early church fathers' writings, it was Pope Gregory I who revised and cemented the list into seven. (Thanks, Greg.)

While I could confess to having "committed" most if not all of these, the one against which I personally guard is pride. I like the Greek word "hubris." It is a recurring theme in many of the Greek tragedies, as well as the Shakespearean tragedies. Briefly, hubris is defined as "overweening pride"--pride that goes far beyond being proud of something--your accomplishments, your family...your whatever. The qualifier "overweening" makes this pride something that goes beyond--to be SO proud that you really think you cannot be instructed, that you are far superior to many people, that you are the top, the best, the brightest...add your superlative.

I have been richly blessed in my life--good parents, happy childhood, loving spouse, the world's best children (oops--no, very good children--got to watch that "overweening" thing), and on and on. In addition to this list, I have benefited from a good education, lucky breaks in my career working life, generally good health. It becomes easy to be proud of these things--as though they have come to me because I deserve it.

Ah, ah--caution there for me.  Thankfully for me, there are some literary reminders not to allow one's pride to rise too high.

There is the wonderful Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus.  The "sin" that dominates is the sin of pride. And the myth is an excellent example of hubris. A mere mortal thinking himself god-like rises too high, either in power, or--as with the myth--too high literally.  And the gods, wanting to remind the mere mortal that he IS mere, smack him down. (Or her... of course...though the classics usually feature men.)

Pieter Brueghel "The Fall of Icarus"

Musee des Beaux Artsby W. H. Auden  About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.  --------------------------

Are you wondering why I included the Brueghel painting, and the W. H. Auden poem "Musee des Beaux Art"? Well, they are both about the fall of Icarus. Can you find Icarus in the painting? And can you figure out why Auden says "About suffering they were never wrong/The old masters"?

When I was teaching, I used this poem and the painting. It was fun to ask the students  first what they saw in the painting. The overall scene is a bucolic one--a ploughman, a clear blue sky, a ship sailing somewhere.  But where Icarus was in the painting?

Once they found him, I would ask--why did Brueghel so place him?  

Discuss among yourselves.

Happy birthday, Will in the World*

Once again, my favorite morning pick-me-up is the Writer's Almanac, wherein quotidian anniversaries are noted.

So, from today's entry, I am reminded that today is the accepted date of William Shakespeare's birthday.

Out of curiosity, I ran a quick search of previous blogs I have written (there are some 671, but who's counting?), there are 19 ... now 20 ...which deal with or mention William Shakespeare.  While there are certainly other subjects that I have written about as frequently, writing about Shakespeare ranks near the top of my preferred topics.  Not surprising, of course, for someone who was an English major (that would be me) nor for someone who was perhaps the greatest writer in the English language (that would be Shakespeare).

Here's a measure of his impact, as the Writer's Almanac reported it:

Shakespeare wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and a couple of epic narrative poems. He created some of the most unforgettable characters ever written for the stage, and was a master of the language of various social classes. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, he coined 3,000 new words, and he has contributed more phrases and sayings to the English language than any other individual. Shakespeare gave us such commonly used phrases as "a fool's paradise," "dead as a doornail," "Greek to me," "come what may," "eaten out of house and home," "forever and a day," "heart's content," "love is blind," "night owl," "wild goose chase," and "into thin air."

So, happy birthday, Will.  Thank you for adding infinitely to the richness of our understanding of human nature, for adding so much to the English language, for giving us phrases we use every day without ever thinking who penned them in the first place.
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*For an excellent accounting of the making of Shakespeare, read Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt

The Human Experience

Something about Nora Ephron’s death has touched me deeply.  I think it’s partly her wonderful snarkiness which is being remembered, and the way she celebrated women’s experiences as captured in her screen plays and movies.

But, the most touching detail of all about her life to emerge is her list.  Her collection of essays entitled “I Remember Nothing” included two lists: things she will miss and things she won’t miss.  Among the things she won’t miss are—dry skin; taking off makeup every night; panels on women in film; Clarence Thomas…read the whole list for yourself.  Among the things she will miss are—her kids; fall; reading in bed…

The list ends “Taking a bath; Coming over the bridge to Manhattan; Pie.”  That closing raises such a lump in my throat.  And, then I realize—what she is saying she will miss is the human experience.

It is such a trite and obvious observation that it hardly seems worth noting but the only way we experience anything is through our existence.  We are born humans and that is how we perceive and know all we know.

A while back in this blog I posted a poem I had written in 2006.  Herewith—

Knowing

This is a road on which
The only detour is death.
The body ages undeniably
There is no turning back
So helplessly you watch—
As skin sags
And flesh congeals
But you keep on living
The lure of living is knowledge
In death there is no knowing
So you live because you want to know.

By Donna F. W.
© March 2006

Among the comments I received on that post was one from my father who suggested: “how about writing a sequel to "Knowing", about life after exchanging this land of the dying for the land of the living, one pointing to eternal death, and eternal life?”

Well, I never did write such a poem.  I am firmly planted in this life’s experience.  I do not deny that some people believe in another existence to come.  It simply is for me that whatever we believe is born out of our human experience and understanding in this world.  We can’t really KNOW if there is anything else.

So, Nora Ephron’s list touches me deeply.  When the human experience draws to a close, there will be things we will NOT miss and things we do miss.  Perhaps the most compelling thing is the ability to experience any of it.

Words, words, words

Yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac imparted wondrous trivia about the humble pencil. Herewith some of the tidbits. A common pencil (think No. 2) is hexagonal to keep it from rolling off the table. It is yellow because the best graphite—what we incorrectly call lead—came from China and yellow was the traditional color of royalty in China. Start drawing a line with a common pencil and you can go for 35 miles before you run out of graphite.

Before the advent of computers, or even typewriters, writing was a hand affair. Some of America’s best writers wrote their masterpieces long hand using pencil. John Steinbeck particularly favored the pencil. He started every day by sharpening 24 new pencils. When he wrote East of Eden (oh, I do recommend it if you’ve never read it), he used 300 pencils.

Why this reverie on pencils? Well, writing and more specifically writing words. Words words words. I just finished reading a marvelous new literary biography: Lyndall Gordon’s Lives Like Loaded Guns. The subject is Emily Dickinson, who had her own way with words. Gordon has a dual thesis—first, she posits quite convincingly that Emily suffered from epilepsy, and that the disease may have accounted for her success as a poet. In part, the disease fueled some of the content of her poems, both in subject matter and style. A poem such as “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” which is sometimes interpreted as a description of madness makes much more sense if you understand it as a foreboding of the effects of a seizure. As for style, Gordon points out how Emily’s unorthodox use of words and punctuation can be a verbal representation of a seizure like state. Read a poem such as “After great pain a formal feeling comes” and think epilepsy. The closing line “First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –“ sounds so like the onset of a seizure.

Not only do the poems shed light on the prospect of Emily’s awareness of her illness, but also the details of her life line up in support. Gordon most convincingly traces the historical record of visits to physicians and medications prescribed for Emily. She slowly withdrew from the world, narrowing her circle of contacts. That is not to say that she did not carry on lively correspondence with various friends. But, if you accept that she suffered from epilepsy, for which at the time there was no effective treatment to forestall seizures, her withdrawal makes absolute sense. She would have isolated herself to avoid the stigma that accompanied having a seizure in public.

Gordon points out that Emily’s father in his effort to help his daughter exempted her from most household chores, which freed her to write poetry. She may have been counseled not to marry—which also freed her. Read this little poem—and see how its meaning dovetails nicely with Emily’s awareness that her illness freed her.

A Death blow is a Life blow to Some

Who till they died, did not alive become —

Who had they lived, had died but when

They died, Vitality begun

Second, Gordon chronicles the adulterous affair between Emily Dickinson’s brother, Austin, and Mabel Loomis Todd, wife of an Amherst professor. Emily Dickinson’s grandfather had built a homestead on Main Street in Amherst. There, Emily’s family—her parents and her brother Austin and sister Lavinia—lived. When Austin married, he and his wife Susan had moved into a house (called the Evergreens) built immediately next door to the Homestead. When Austin began his affair, some 27 years into his marriage, he and Mabel would meet at the Homestead. By then, the senior Dickinson parents were dead, and the Homestead belonged to Emily and Lavinia.

Imagine, sometimes up to three times a week for several hours at a time, the house being taken over by the lovers. They used a room downstairs, the dining room, as their place of assignation. Emily presumably stayed upstairs, writing poetry. No wonder her “life stood like a loaded gun.” Gordon credibly writes that the stress of this untenable situation may have hastened Emily’s death.

The stress of the affair may have killed or at the least hastened Emily’s death, and it also led to a multi-generation feud over who was the heir to Emily’s writings. Sue, Austin’s estranged wife who had been Emily’s dear friend, and Mabel, the mistress, each thought themselves the true beneficiaries of Emily’s life work. Their feud then was passed on to the next generation with Sue’s daughter and Mabel’s daughter each claiming the right to Emily’s words.

WORDS. Wondrous that we have pencils that write them. Wondrous that we have a poet such as Emily who flexed them to her use. And wondrous that we have a biographer such as Gordon to ferret out the details of a complicated life and record that life in words.

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photo of Emily Dickinson:

Daguerreotype of the poet Emily Dickinson, taken circa 1848. (Original is scratched.) From the Todd-Bingham Picture Collection and Family Papers, Yale University Manuscripts & Archives Digital Images Database, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Road Trip

WARNING: This post contains some comments critical of Mormons. If you think you will be offended, eschew reading this. I do whole-heartedly believe that in the United States there is and should be religious freedom. I also believe that there is freedom of speech.
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While we were in Utah, we went on several road trips. Herewith the story of two trips. I have one other road trip story--our trip to Antelope Island, that will wait for another blog.

ROAD TRIP I was to Big Mountain, and eventually into Salt Lake City. We got directions from the concierge at our hotel--she said we could go directly to Salt Lake City, OR (always take the "or"--it's much more fun) we could turn off the interstate highway to Emigration Canyon. Then, instead of following that road, which would require us to turn left toward Salt Lake City, we should turn right. And go up Big Mountain. OK.

Once we reached the top of Big Mountain, we saw why the alternative route was so much better. Wonderful views all around. It was from the peak of this mountain in 1847 that Brigham Young, and his party of Mormons he was leading to escape persecution, viewed the valley below. Young is reputed to have looked down into the valley and announced: this is the place. I'm a sceptic--I have a suspicion the travelers with him were getting tired of the long road trip they were on. Maybe Young sensed a potential insurrection, and quickly announced they had reached their destination.

The route they were traveling--now called the Mormon Pioneer Trail--was not a new westward trail. In fact, as the historical marker pointed out, the ill-fated Donner party had passed that way the year before. They took too long blazing a trail down the mountain, which delayed their departure to get across the Sierra Nevada mountains before winter set in. (I note that the adjective "ill-fated" seems to be permanently attached to the Donner party...or, conversely, the Donner party is forever destined to be described as "ill-fated.")

I asked our son and daughter-in-law to show a little affection...and, of course, dubbed the photo "Big Love." (Tee-hee)

Yes, the winding road you see is the one we traveled.

Our eventual destination--Salt Lake City. Here are the gardens--quite lovely. What you don't see are the two-by-two sets of missionaries, young people everywhere. They constantly approached us as we walked around, asking if we had any questions about Mormons.

Uh, no--no questions.

The Temple--which non-Mormons are not allowed in. So, we took photos from the outside only. The statue atop the Temple is of the angel Moroni.

We also toured the Beehive House, nearby Temple Square. Here we had the strangest of encounters. I have read a fair bit about Mormons; I am always interested in learning history. But, I am not persuaded by their religious philosophy. Actually, I find aspects of their history quite puzzling. One of the signature beliefs of Mormons that most non-Mormons would know is that at the outset of establishing their religion, Mormons practiced polygamy. In fact, it was this practice that frequently made them the object of scorn, and resulted in their being persecuted and driven from various communities in which they had settled. Polygamy was adopted as a practice because Joseph Smith, the original founder of the religion, had received a direct revelation from God that he should take a new (younger) wife...and then another, etc. Around the time that Utah wanted to join the United States, the revelation to practice polygamy was withdrawn. OK.

So, anyway, I was curious to see the Beehive House, which was for a time the official residence of Brigham Young. The house is actually several connected houses. Understandably, with multiple wives (he was believed to have had 55 wives), Young would have needed a house with quite a few bedrooms. The three young women who showed us around the house immediately made it a point to underscore that they were "missionaries, not historians" so they couldn't really answer any questions we might have. It was clear their primary goal was to proselytize, right down to distributing postcards for us to fill out for "more information." When our daughter-in-law declined, the one young woman said--oh, a non-believer.

I had taken some photos in the house--then at one point asked something about the furnishings of a particular room, only to have the young woman say--oh, these furnishings are from the time period. In other words, not authentic original furnishings. So, I stopped taking photos. I smelled a distinct odor of historical hypocrisy.

Road Trip II was a simple little jaunt to follow Route 224 out of Park City. And on the map, the road was clearly "there." Admittedly, the map notation did say "closed in winter." Hmmm.

Yup, that is a road.

To get to this point, we had already climbed a mountain road with hairpin turns, drop-offs and no guard rails. I wasn't quite at the toe-curling stage, but I was getting close.

The car you see is the little tiny Toyota Yaris that the car rental company had allotted to us.

We were now at a juncture, and had pulled off into a parking area. I saw a man there playing with his dog, and inquired whether he could tell us anything about the road ahead. His answer--well, yes, he knew the road continued on up and down another mountain, but he had never driven it. His parents lived "over there" somewhere and his brother drove the road, but not him. YIKES. And we were going to forge on? By now, my husband was thoroughly enjoying our road trip, and my palms were sweating.

I just had to show you the GPS indication of the up-coming hairpin. This was one of MANY such turns. In fact, part of the time, the GPS showed our car driving in the middle of NOTHING. No road, just blank space, and the icon representing our car.

But as we reached the final mountain peak, and started down the last hill, this gorgeous valley lay before us.

Once on the other side of the mountain, we continued on to Sundance--where Robert Redford lives. His home--not that we saw it, but we had an inkling where it was--is up a similar mountain road, but it was paved. Pffffttt!!! If you want real adventure, you drive the unpaved road.

I am not sure I ever really understood the closing lines of Robert Frost's marvelous poem "The Road Not Taken" before.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Oh, yes--it DID make all the difference to take the road less traveled.

A Reluctant Homage

Marilyn Monroe at 84
(Marilyn Monroe: June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962)

Had it not been for a hot summer’s night
No bottle of pills beckoning to slumber now and forever
Had it not been for a buzzing telephone fallen away to the floor
She would have been eighty four
Today

I was standing pool side at the rich house where I was working
Summer’s work, a lowly house girl
Maybe I was on break or watching the two children
I can’t remember
Then

But someone came out from the rich house and said
Have you heard the news?
Marilyn Monroe is dead.
You’re joking, was my quick response.
Now?

I wasn’t really fond of her
I never liked women who played to the stereotype
Dumb blonde and all, big boobs
Women are so much more.
When?

I knew so little of her
Dumb blonde? Not even blonde.
Marilyn. Oh really Norma Jeane.
Nine short years of fame.
Gone.

But I was wrong, she was much more--
But too many men beheld her with their eyes
And saw what they wished to see
For her to ever be more
Forever.

On this bright day, summer’s first
No matter what the calendar says
She would have been eighty-four
A life-time ago.
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A poem composed (by me) this day, June 1, 2010, in homage to a woman.

Photo credit: a still shot from the movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"

Memory, the Warder of the Brain*

Yesterday, my husband and I spent a fruitless hour searching for my glasses. I try to be very methodical about stowing my bifocals, with their attachable sunglasses. Yet, earlier in the day, we went to the grocery store, and when I went to extract my glasses, they weren't there--not to be found in my eyeglass case.

So, I began replaying the events of the previous day--where had I been when I last had my glasses. When we returned home, we both began looking for my glasses: in the car, on the floor of the garage, in my purse (turned completely inside out--remember the lost camera?), in every other glasses case in the house, under beds, down inside couches...get the picture? EVERYWHERE. Nothing. . .until, suddenly, my husband appeared in the garage. I was out there once more. Here they are, he said. Where, I asked sheepishly. Next to the laundry hamper. OF COURSE, I had taken them off to remove my sweater, laid them down, then left the room.

Memory.

An episode such as my lost eyeglasses is what I call the coffee cup syndrome. No doubt, you are familiar with it--you pour yourself a cup of coffee (or tea), walk into another room, get distracted by something, put the cup down, walk away, and then...Then you can't remember where you put that cup. So you walk around, trying to recreate your last series of activities to figure out where the coffee cup is.

I don't know if my short term memory is becoming less efficient as I get older. Whatever the reason, it's frustrating.

A friend of mine recently invited me to accompany her to a live performance by Garrison Keillor. He opened his two hour monologue referencing sonnets--he went on to reminisce about memorizing sonnets in school. And promptly began reeling off strings of poetry.

The requirement to memorize poetry has pretty much fallen out of favor. In some ways, that's sad. I know just a few poems entirely by heart, but wish I knew more. My grandfather had committed many poems to memory--and when he was blind, he could recall them at great length, even trading lines of poetry back and forth with a friend of his.

Oh, I can't really claim that if I had more poems committed to memory that I would not misplace my glasses, or even that I could track down my coffee cup immediately.

I just want memory to be that warder of the brain. Or, maybe for the brain to be the warder of memory!
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* Macbeth, act 1, sc. 7, l. 65.

Dust to Dust

Watching the news about the horrific consequences of the tragic earthquake in Haiti has got me thinking about dust.

With the first images coming out of this natural disaster, I have been struck with the way most people are covered in dust. Now, almost a week later, there are a few heart-warming stories of more survivors who are being pulled from the wreckage--and always, there is the dust.

The instant impulse is to cringe at the sight of so much dust--but then I got to thinking. There is an immortality to dust. One of my favorite church services in the cycle of the Christian calendar is Ash Wednesday. I grew up in a church tradition that did not emphasize the liturgical church calendar, so I came to Ash Wednesday services later in my worship experience. My personal faith tradition is solidly Protestant, but the current pastor of our church has a fine sense of the symbolism that a more liturgical approach affords.

He led us in our first Ash Wednesday service about a decade ago. Part of the service included the imposition of ashes--where we all go forward, and receive the sign of the cross on our foreheads. The ashes are derived from the burning of palms from the prior year's Palm Sunday service. For someone who loves and values poetic symbolism, I thrill to this cycle of meaning.

As each worshipper approaches the pastor, he asks our given name, and then says "Donna, remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."* Now, you might think that smack of mortality would be depressing--but it's not. In fact, I find it reassuring. I am dust.

I find myself thinking about the endless cycle of life that dust encompasses. Even after we perish and return to dust, from that dust new life emerges. Some people hear that statement--you are dust and to dust you shall return--and despair. Not me. I hear that and think--how wonderful: Dust from the beginning of time still encompassing cells from the beginning of time, and continuing on into the forever.

There are two wonderful poems that capture this sentiment so much more artfully than I can express. X. J. Kennedy is a contemporary poet, and Walter Raleigh is--yes, that Walter Raleigh. His poem was written in 1618, the year he was executed by order of King James I--yes, that King James.


IN FAITH OF RISING
by X. J. Kennedy

When all my dust lies strewn
Over the roundbrinked ramparts of the world
I can be gathered, sinew and bone
Out of the past hurled
Delaylessly as I
Flick thoughts back that replace
Lash to dropped lid, lid to eye,
Eye to disbanded face
No task to His strength, for He
Is my Head—Him I trust
To stray the presence of His mind to me
Then cast down again
Or recollect my dust.


EVEN SUCH IS TIME
by Sir Walter Raleigh

EVEN such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

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*Genesis 3:19

Portrait of Walter Raleigh and son from the National Portrait Gallery, London

A Season of Reunions

October is (almost) here--one of my favorite months of the year. I love the changing seasons, and autumn shows us such a bright and colorful face. Add to the lush color the bite in the air, and a touch of wood smoke, and I am in heaven.

I signed up to teach a late start class this fall--and class started yesterday. We are a month behind all the other classes, but end at the same time. Consequently, course content is greatly compressed. Each class is 2 hours long, and obviously we are moving at a breakneck speed to cover all the material.

I always use a portion of the first class to cover the contents of the syllabus. I point out those things that I think are most critical for students to know about the class. I also confess to being as tough sounding as possible--that way the hangers-on (and there are always some) will shake lose and decide not to return. Partly to engage the students, and partly to keep them attending to the task at hand, I ask them what questions THEY have about the course. After I gather about a half a dozen questions, I then hand out the syllabus and tell them to start looking for answers.

Yesterday, one student asked one of the predictable questions. She asked--will there be a lot of reading. Another confession here--I wait for such questions. So, then I can stop, peer over my glasses and scrunch up my face and say --This is a reading and writing class, what do you think? OF COURSE we will do a lot of reading.

I have actually had students ask--will we have to write a lot in this class. Much hangs on the definition of "a lot." To me, writing four papers, each 4 pages in length, and one research paper of 10 pages is NOT a lot of writing. To students, that is the equivalent of having been sentenced to Siberia to work in the salt mines for the rest of their lives. They invariable groan and squirm.

The other favorite interaction for me is when I ask them to write on the spot an initial essay--that way, I have in hand an example of their writing without any assistance from any outside source. Not always, but frequently, a student will look around and say--does anyone have a pen or a pencil I can borrow. Another pause from me--and then I saw, this is a WRITING class and you came without a pen or a pencil.

I have just too much fun.

Anyway, the start of class reminds me that this is also the time of year that colleges begin to send out notices for homecomings and class reunions. My own alma mater is actually celebrating its 100th year of existence this fall.

Several years ago, I attended my college class 40th reunion. Thinking that 40 plus years has passed since I graduated from college always makes me feel--well, old. After that reunion, I came back home and sat down and penned a poem.

Herewith:


Class Reunion

At the fortieth gathering of the class of ‘66
The talk is less of remembering
Than it is of surviving.
We are done with warmed over reprises
Of night raids,
Of whatever happened to. . .
Our conversation now turns somber
As round we go with a catching up.

—Two years ago I suffered a cerebral
Hemorrhage, bleeding out in my brain
Relieved only by the surgeon’s skill
Drilling to relieve the pressure
I’m OK now but I have returned
To the church and God—

—I found out last summer that
I had colon cancer. I am
Done with chemo now and the doctors
Say I have a good chance of
Living five more years—

We all sit there stunned into
Silence—afraid to speak lest
We too be struck by malady.
We drift away with vague murmurs
To come back in five years.

The next day word comes that the
Class president who walked us
Through our survivor stories
Suffered a coronary and
Required quadruple bypass surgery.

Five years? I’ll be glad to live
Until tomorrow.

By Donna F. W. © 2008

Anyone out there attending a class reunion this fall? 'Tis the season.

Changing Tastes in Poetry Part 2

I promised to write a bit explaining how modern poetry works. Since poetry is one of my links (along the right side here), I checked to see some of what I have previously written about poetry. You know, I don't want to repeat myself too much.

I found that I had outlined some of the principles of modern poetry in an earlier post, Tie a Poem to a Chair. (The title of that post comes from the first line of the wonderful poem by Billy Collins entitled Introduction to Poetry.)

Since I made the point that older poetry uses external elements to hold a poem together, to give it cohesion (rhythm, meter and rhyme), you will anticipate that something must hold modern poetry together. The cohesion for modern poetry moves to the interior of the poem.
Instead of the ends of line ALWAYS rhyming, a modern poem uses internal repetion at times. Simply repeating a word, or even using alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds) or assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) can help hold a poem together.

Modern poetry tends to be very spare in expression. Where a poem such as "The Raven" can go on (and on), a modern poet seems to pluck just one or two words to say exactly what the poet wants. Or a single image stands in for a host of meaning.

Let's take a poem by the poet Barbara Crooker . Her poems have been featured several times on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac (which I have mention before). You can find more of her poems on the link provided to her name. And, I found at least one other blogger who analyzed a poem of hers called Ordinary Life.

Let's read the poem first.

Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton,
'We are All Writing God's Poem'

by Barbara Crooker

Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
I've driven into spring, as the woods revive
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
in the heart," but it seems like things
are always ending—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.

"Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We are All Writing God's Poem'" by Barbara Crooker, from Line Dance. © Word Press, 2008.

I would venture to say that for some of you, reading this poem for the first time, it will seem to be a series of disconnected thoughts. But, in fact, the poem links idea after idea after idea by repetition of a word or a thought, each time in a new context.

When this poem was featured on The Writer's Almanac, I loved it so much that I sent it off to a friend of mine who also listens to the Almanac. After a couple of weeks, she sent back to me this analysis below which shows how the poem ties everything together by internal repetition.

So, let's look at it again, with the help of colored text that I will italicize to help make it evident.

Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton,
'We are All Writing God's Poem'

by Barbara Crooker

Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
I've DRIVEN into spring, as the woods REVIVE
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
in the heart," but it seems like things
are always ending—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of PHLOX curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
LAVENDER, THISTLE, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.
------------------------------

See how the poem holds together with all the links?

Beyond all these internal links are wonderful lines.

--"The sky's the soft blue of a work shirt"

--"their gaudy scarves flung over bark's bare limbs"

--"a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,/and aren't we just"

--"the moon spills its milk"

Those images are just delicious.

I am struck with how many times she uses clothing as description. And I am struck by the ordinariness made wonderfully special--opening a window, making coffee, steam rising.

My favorite portion is the image of the tractor trailer called Glory Bound that inspires the poet to say "and aren't we just."

I tell my students that the poet takes the ordinary events in life and transforms them into something extraordinary. The poet is inspired by everyday circumstances that those of us who are not poets would simply shrug off. The poet, however, mulls these events and ponders the meaning of it all.